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Dear Kent,
I support the public option. I believe we need a government that protects us from the powerful, not one that gives the powerful carte blanche to practice politics and profiteering as usual.
You say there aren’t the votes for public option.
Then you must lead. Find those votes. Show those Senators why public option is the common sense responsible…and moral…thing to do.
Along with running around wee towns in North Dakota, take a couple days and go visit Mayo. It’s about a six hour drive from Fargo. Plenty of time for thinking.
We just made that trip… and despite the outcome, I know they get it on healthcare.
The big insurance companies, the big pharma companies only get vampire capitalism…draining enormous overhead from the system. Draining the lifeblood from families and businesses and the U.S. economy.
Soylent greening all of us for their corporate bonuses and profits and toys. That’s not capitalism.
We know about what some call "socialism" in North Dakota…it’s in our state bank and state mill and elevator…heck, it’s in the highways and township roads we drive every day. Isn’t that what we call "government"?
Isn’t that what "We the people…" is at its fundamental best? Or should we follow the same ol’ trail of dysfunctional every-family-for-themselves anarchy which is all the Republicans are offering these days?
Please don’t tell us it can’t be done, there aren’t enough votes…find the will, find the way.
With respect,
your friend,
Sandy Huseby
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crossposted at Prairie Sun Rising
8 Comments
Very good, and good luck. We got yer back.
Any possible primary candidates, or is he just too entrenched?
Recd
Senator Conrad is hearing from North Dakota constituents through all sorts of media, including the alternative press.
Charlie Barber challenges him to confront the “Man in the Mirror.”
And yes, he is entrenched, all the more reason to expect more from him than rinkydink co-ops and weaselly dodges from the public option.
Prairie, what’s Ed Schultz doing on this? He’s always been such a cheerleader for ND, Fargo & Conrad, but I thought he was all “populist” and might hammer the Senator.
Do you know? Might that be a place to exert pressure?
Thanks for your eloquent work. I’m off to modify it to send to my two Neanderthals, Inouye and Akaka.
Prairie, My son and DIL are new constituents of Conrad.
May I suggest adding something along the lines of . . .
Senator, you realize, of course, that you are disproving the weepublicans’ claim that throwing money at a problem never solves it, by taking bribes from the healthcare insurance mafia . . . and being their number one ahhhhz-wipe on healthcare reform, thereby solving “their” problem, hmmmmmm?
Why this incompetent individual is coddled by the Prez and the rest of the Democratic elite, is quite puzzling. We should demand he either switch parties and make it official, or sit down and STFU!
As a former resident, I can say this with great conviction
Kent Conrad is a huge disappointment
He is a dim pinprick of light in the night sky in comparison to the bright warming Sun of the his predecessor, the vastly superior Quentin Burdick.
Kent Conrad has done nothing to distinguish himself as a member of the United States Senate. He has done nothing but accumulate campaign contributions from those industries over which he has governance. He has done nothing as a United States Senator for the greater good of his fellow United States citizens
Kent Conrad is known in the world of know-nothing-Washington/DC-cocktail-weinie-circuit as some sort of financial wizard – which couldn’t be further from the truth; the only reason he may have that reputation is because he followed on the coat-tails of the ‘the wiz-kid’ Byron Dorgan as Tax Commissioner. He first ran on a “pledge of balancing the federal budget” and (paraphrasing) “if the budget wasn’t balanced he was going to leave office” – that was around 1992 or 1994. I don’t remember him saying anything about George Bush’s budget deficits; I don’t remember him on the cable news criticizing the cost of the war in Iraq, contractor waste for instance; I don’t remember him railing about manufacturing jobs being shipped overseas, which devastated the tax base; I don’t remember him fighting for clean air and water as did his predecessor
Now?
He steps up and finds his voice?
Now?!?
On a subject for which he has no experience and shown NO interest in whatsoever in the decade and a half?
ZERO interest in the last 15 to 20 years
And NOW … he? … he? … is some kind of expert on health care and medical economics? Somehow his magical “co-ops” of 50 or 60 families out on the prairie are going to be a great competitive cog in the wheels of medical economics?
Reallllly?
This is policy that could last decades and … he … a person who has shown zero interest in the last 20 years is the one person who is the roadblock to millions getting some semblance of anything that is in the ballpark of what most of the rest of the world has?
Britain has universal health care
France has universal health care
Canada has universal health care
China is going back to universal health care
Venezuela has universal health care
Afghanistan has universal health care paid for by US taxpayers
Iraq has universal health care paid for by US taxpayers
And Kent Conrad is standing in the way of US citizens having health care
As I said, Kent Conrad is a huge disappointment
Thanks for all your comments, it’s difficult for me to comment more on this because North Dakota’s a small state where we are all pretty much on a first name basis if we’re involved in politics at all…but I hope that Kent will remember that his Immediate World is not Washington DC, it’s the folks back here in the state who put up yard signs, and do door knocking, and go to rallies, and contribute to campaigns.
Kent voted right on Iraq…he voted against the war and in those times that was not an easy vote. I give him credit for that. But he acted so damn wrong on Schiavo I almost puked at the time. And remembered.
And as difficult as it is for me to speak out right now, I cannot stay silent. My Mr. Sunshine, Lincoln, would expect no less from me.