Kerry Still Doesn't "Get It". Senator John Kerry, miserably failed candidate for President, is still completely out of touch with what really concerns Americans. Speaking to a group of 750 Democratic state legislators attending the National Conference of State Legislatures in Seattle this past Friday:

Kerry said Democrats have an opportunity to rebuild nationally by simply addressing the concerns that affect people's daily lives — energy, transportation, health care and security.

"We have to go out and fight for the real issues that make a difference in the lives of the American people and we don't need some great lurch to the right or lurch to the left or redefinition of the Democratic Party," the Massachusetts Democrat said. "The last thing America needs is a second Republican Party."

Conspicuously absent from Kerry's short list of what really concerns Americans are the powerful paired issues with which the Democrats could have blasted the Republicans out of the White House and their majority in both houses of Congress: debt and usury. The multimillionaire Kerry still just doesn't understand what life is like for working people. Apparently he doesn't even watch television, or if he does, just doesn't understand what he sees.
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Watch virtually any TV station on any nite of the week for more than two hours and you will see commercial after commercial after commercial for debt-consolidation loans and debt-reduction services. The extreme prevalence of such commercials practically shouts, for everyone in public policy to hear, that the people of the United States are drowning in debt, crushed by usurious interest rates! But Kerry doesn't hear any of it. The Democrats don't hear any of it. Nobody in public policy hears a word of it. Are they actually deaf? Or do they willfully ignore what they don't want to deal with?
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Do they all own stock in credit-card companies and banks? How else can we explain the refusal — not failure: refusal — of government to do anything at all about usury and the crushing debt burden that Americans suffer?
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As for those other issues Kerry mentioned, all of them subordinate in importance to the daily oppression at least 100 million Americans face with regard to consumer debt, energy costs (for gasoline and home heating) wouldn't mean much if people weren't paying hundreds of dollars a month just in interest to credit-card and other consumer-debt companies.
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"Transportation"? What does that mean? Most people provide their own transportation, via private car. Public transportation cannot compete with the convenience of the private automobile or SUV. You can't easily lug groceries or bulky items on a bus or train. If you have more than one person to transport, the higher costs of the private vehicle quickly drop below the costs of public transit, because it costs the same to drive two people as one, or five people as two. Public transportation makes no such adjustments. You don't have entire families traveling for one person's fare plus perhaps 2% for the extra energy required to move the extra weight. No, two passengers equals two fares; five passengers, five fares. Who can afford that? And public transportation doesn't run often enuf or late enuf to be really useful for anything but commuting to and from work. That's not likely to change.
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Mind you, it could change. We could perfectly well run vans half or a third the size and cost of regular buses, covering more routes with more frequent service for the same fuel cost as running one big bus, tho salary cost would be greater — altho with a smaller vehicle, you'd have a wider selection of drivers as could bring labor costs down somewhat. But who's doing that? Some private transportation companies are, but darned few.
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"Security"? What does that mean, and how good a job is any government doing about that? There are entire neighborhoods in this country where you still, in this day and age, take your life in your hands to go half a block to a convenience store to get a quart of milk. Kids have been killed in their own bed by stray bullets from driveby shootings. Forget about terrorism from abroad. It's crime from the block that kills most American victims of violence, often from the people who should be most protective of them. And why? Because we have 200 million guns in this country, and when somebody loses his temper, instead of raving and punching, he gets a gun and blows people away.
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We don't need the Federal Government to take care of that. States are entrusted with the bulk of law enforcement, and states are doing a lousy job. Indeed, state legislators are responsible for mass lawlessness because the laws they write are insane. "Youthful offenders" can commit multiple murder and serve a few years in juvie! then be released into the general public and the record of their ever having killed anybody is permanently concealed from the public! Drug pushers ravage neighborhoods but are never executed. We play at drug enforcement and call it "war". Some war! Only one side dies.
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As for "health care", surely that is something the states don't have to wait on the Federal Government to do. States can enact their own universal programs. (Indeed, as I understand it, Canada's universal healthcare program is administered by the provinces, not their federal government, tho I'm not sure how that works.) There has simply developed in this country a mindset that it's up to "the Government" — meaning the Federal Government — to take care of this, and every other level of government is helpless. But other governments are not helpless.
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Some municipalities are embarking upon creating wireless Internet service for their entire geographic area free to everyone. We've got "free" education for kids paid for by the general taxpaying population. We can do what we want about healthcare, whenever we want, at whatever level we want. Surely, for instance, any small town could create its own health insurance group, to itself or with neighboring towns or the county government, to bring healthcare costs down to a manageable level, and cover the indigent or working poor from public funds — if it wanted to. My city, Newark, has about 285,000 people. Couldn't that be made into a powerful group-insurance group? My state, New Jersey, has 8.7 million people. Surely that is a big enuf group to bring individual healthcare costs way down if it were constituted into a great big health-insurance "group".
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States and their creatures, municipalities and counties, have many powers they can use for the public good, if they will it. There's just a lack of will.
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Perhaps that's changing. Perhaps the one most important thing Kerry said is this:

"The states are now the laboratories, much more than before, because of the refusal of Washington to do what's important and necessary. You're forced to spend too much time cleaning up what Washington either messes up or leaves undone altogether."

Quite so. But the states have always been laboratories, and innovative state programs have always been watched by other states, and the Feds, to see what works and what doesn't. That's one of the strengths of federalism. You can have 50 different approaches all running at the same time, and compare and contrast
them as to costs and results. For instance, before the Federal Government addressed getting people off welfare, Wisconsin led the Nation in formulating and instituting a welfare-to-work program. Why hasn't any state instituted universal healthcare coverage?
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States have the power to solve big problems within their boundaries. They should stop being so timid, and start leading the way. We certainly aren't being led in the right direction by the Feds and if we wait for them to see the lite, the most enlitened areas of the Nation will forever be held back by the most benited.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 1,864.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 7:35 PM