Ray Charles, Health Care and the Spiral Downward

Our recent absence from the blogosphere is over. I have been catching up on my growing irritation with the Bama and his travelling circus. Cornel West put his finger on it ( Ray Charles coming up) in a New Yorker interview with David Remnick this week (Nov.2,2009). West said that he was impressed by the "spectacle" mastery of the President, Brother Barack. West loved the spectacle, but warned in Yoda like tones,"...in the end, even spectacle has to deal with the darkness. That's where the Blues man comes in." Of course, when talking about The Brother, with brother West, allusions to Jazz are never far away. But, it is hard to grove to anything in a bulletproof vest. Had West talked about being "black and blue" it might have made more sense given the state of the President's political agenda and the policy misfires that have been as frequent as a July 4th celebration on The Mall.

When think about our first Black/White President, I have been guided by a Ray Charles "Anthology" CD that resonated with the words of brother West. The track,"I Don't Need No Doctor" and "That Lucky Old Sun" were buzzing around in my brain as the non-health care, opt out-public option for almost no one bill was put forward by the Senate Majority Leader ( a misnomer of the first order). Ray needs love to heal him in his "I Don't Need No Doctor." If the insurance industry gets its way, that is the only thing any of will have to rely on for health care...
Plans to tax health acre benefits are in the same bone headed and heartless category as was the taxing of tuition remission benefits...socially regressive and put forward by Democratic administrations. Brother West has got to be singing the Blues over this one. As the screws are tightening on the poor and the middling classes, the endless work Day is accelerated by technologically niffy productivity tools. There's no place now that one may not work with the help of the electronic yoke around one's neck.

The compulsion to work, to check to response to check yet again and empty the emails....Sex offenders only wear ankle bracelets. The rest of us are faced with Blue Tooth, I-Pods, net books, notebooks, thumb drives and ten's of thousands of helpful applications that we do not have time to learn how to use because we are just trying to keep up with the storm of real tie info that may be useless anyway do to the push to get news out there 24/7. So Ray's critique of the work world of the sharecropper has morphed into the electronic sweatshop. The lash unemployment and global competition now substitute for the overseers whip....lose the family heath plan and have to go home and announce that. It is terrifying and almost universal in keeping the worker bees buzzing. Mr. Sun is lucky just playing in that sky all day...for sure.

I feel for Cornel West as he tries to stay honest while the show is already over and the failure is across the spectrum of domestic and foreign policy issues. Two wars, domestic "recovery" without employment, and the states cutting programs and services. The blessing is that people are stunned, scared and drugged...if they have insurance.

Have a groovy day,
Mr. Sun