Dan Froomkin, formerly of the Washington Post online, began his stint on Huffington Post this week. In it he pledges to continue to be an independent journalist who will not be part of the usual Washington cocktail weenie crowd. That’s the reporter and pundit crowd that promises good coverage in exchange for access to so-called important people at the Court of Versailles. Not quite jesters, these managers of our information go along to get along.

In the piece Froomkin speculates about the current health care debate and how Obama will eventually manage but probably not solve the problem. But it also could turn out to be yet another boondoggle like Medicare Plan D or….Homeland Security.
Our Fuzzy President is About to Come Into Focus

What I found unique and a further indication of Froomkin’s honesty is this paragraph:

Does Obama have the ability to stand up to corporate interests? There’s scant evidence of that so far. Indeed, most notably in the course of the financial industry bailout, he deferred to them quite spectacularly. And it’s not just corporate interests, either. There’s something about the military/national security complex [emphasis mine] that seems to set Obama back on his heels on such issues as dealing with Guantanamo detainees, coming clean about the Bush administration’s torture legacy or "Don’t Ask Don’t Tell."

Ah that phrase“military/national security complex reminded me of the Homeland Security Act. It was a whole new huge government scheme that turned out to be a way that the Pentagon could squeeze more money out of the taxpayers by appealing to fear and racism. The Pentagon already gets over $1 Trillion a year and the CIA doesn’t even have to give a clear accounting of how much they get. So how to get more dough? Come up with a place that can directly funnel tax money to your cronies, especially in the arms industry and the security business. It’s another part of what Naomi Klein calls "The Shock Doctrine". This is the privatization part. First you deregulate everything, and you privatize as much public stuff as possible which includes selling public parks and roadways, and you dismantle any remaining social safety nets just to keep the rabble weak.

Froomkin calls out this military/national security complex, but doesn’t go into detail. I look forward to him calling attention to this part of a very ugly part of our corporate state.

The angry right-wingers while hysterical and spouting misinformation are not all wrong to be very suspicious of government especially when we have heard about no-bid contracts to companies like Haliburton and Blackwater. What if we end up with a Homeland Medical Security Act that rewards the insurance, pharmaceutical, and hospital industries. but does little to help rising medical costs?

It’s the corruption, stupid. We must keep our eyes firmly on the crony capitalists and it sounds like Froomkin might be a welcome reinforcement to the band of young muckrakers like Sirota, Scahill, Greenwald, Klein, Prins, and, of course, Taibbi.