(Is there a People’s Party in the house?!   – promoted by eli_beckerman)

I think we’ve reached that point in the movie where the hapless, soon-to-drown protagonist frantically abandons his lifeboat as it is drawn ever closer to the waterfall,  in the desperate but curious hope that sending the boat to its demise will stave off his own death long enough for rescue by a passing commercial steamboat. The audience has seen, however, what the protagonist has yet to recognize: that his fate was self-inflicted,  and the promised help of the steamboat will never arrive.

One wonders what the elected pilots of the good ship MA Legislature have been thinking when they first set sail on this voyage.

First there was the curious assertion by the legislature and governor that they could provide affordable and universal heath care coverage by subsidizing private insurers already imposing tsunami inducing price hikes, without ever addressing the exponentially rising costs the price hikes were supposed to cover. Ignoring the only demonstratively seaworthy vessel for affordable and comprehensive health care for all — single-payer —- the legislature charted a course for failure at the very outset of its voyage, saying it would revisit the issue of costs once they reached open water.

http://network.greenchange.org…

Once ship has started to take on water, our legislators started to bail. Ending collective bargaining in an effort to temporarily reduce their costs is only the latest attempted port of call.  

An FY 2010 cut of $100 million excluding immigrants granted permanent residency status from coverage. Apparently, we hadn’t budgeted enough for lifeboats for everyone, so new legally accepted immigrants could no longer expect coverage. Last off the boat, first back in the water. Seem the universe of universal health care was an alternate universe, not ours.

FY2011 cuts of $20.8 million to disabled adults for care during the day (because they apparently only need care at night)  and $38 million in prescription drugs, because so many of our headaches were induced by the legislature to begin with.

Our scurvy sailors even took a $56 million bite out of dental care,  eliminating coverage for fillings for 700,000 adults, including 130,000 seniors, so we can all act like we have holes in our head.

http://www.massbudget.org/docu…

And for FY2012, House  Ways and Means has proposed eliminating the Commonwealth Care Bridge program providing health insurance to 20,000 legal immigrants still receiving coverage. Apparently the bridge has become a gangplank!

http://www.massbudget.org/docu…

But most desperate move of all has been to jump ship on support for collective bargaining rights, voting 111-42 to more quickly shift more of the costs of health insurance coverage from municipalities to their workers by no longer having to negotiate the changes.  The pilots of our ship of state have created a perfect storm: sinking their ship and scuttling their lifeboats in an effort to save money on health care,  without changing the actual cost of the care.

http://www.commonwealthmagazin…

So next year, now that the legislators are in open water, whose going to provide them a lifeline? Looks like they’re counting on that commercial tramp steamer:

Supporters of the speaker’s proposal included a broad array of business and education groups, including the Massachusetts Municipal Association, the Massachusetts Business Roundtable, The Boston Foundation, The Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education, Associated Industries of Massachusetts, the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, the Massachusetts High Tech Council, and Stand for Children, as well as various mayors and town administrators.

When campaigning for state auditor last year during the immediate aftermath of Scott Brown’s election to the Senate, I remember an insightful analysis by Jeff Crosby, president of IUE-CWA Local 201 in Lynn, Mass  about why so many union rank and file voted for Brown instead of Coakley. They had just been sold out by the Democrats in Congress on union health care benefits, and decided to back the candidate who opposed the bill instead of the candidate who backed it.

http://blog.aflcio.org/2010/01…

Still, when it came to the AFL-CIO and Governor Patrick’s re-election campaign, plus speaker of the House DeLeo’s, it was ultimately forgive and forget.  After all, the Governor and DeLeo were for casinos and slots, even if they couldn’t figure out how many slots should be inside the casino and how many should be out.

Now that labor has been sold out again, on the most fundamental of its tenets — collective bargaining — what will they do now?

Forgive and forget b/c Republicans also want to eliminate collective bargaining?  

Run their own candidates in the Democratic Party primaries and discover how entrenched the incumbents really are?

Or  break free of the wreckage of their support for the Democratic Party now that the party has abandoned them, and run candidates on the only other alternative major party ticket in the Commonwealth: the Green-Rainbow Party?  

As Jeff Crosby put it in his analysis of Scott Brown, having a seat at the Democratic Party table hasn’t exactly been a bowl of cherries.

We are so happy to have a seat at the table that we ignore the meal being served.

Now that the sailors have cut the lines, unions don’t have go down with the captain of the ship on this one.

Could a truly Green Jobs Legislative Campaign be in the making?

http://www.jillstein.org/2010c…

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