How much longer will tens of millions of Americans be denied access to health care because the lords and masters of this coast-to-coast corporate greed machine that used to be the United States of America don’t give a damn about anything except profits?

How much longer, President Obama?

How much longer, Congressional Democrats?

We need a new health care system that provides health care for everyone. The current system is an atrocity, it subjects us all to exploitation by corporate thieves, it’s driven by greed, punishes the powerless, and enriches the corrupt. For far too long, at far too much cost in money and lives, the black line of corporate profit has determined who will receive health care and who won’t.

That same black line that’s drawn on you,
Is drawn on me . . .

We live in a nation being held hostage by corporate greed, corporate fraud, corporate control of Congress. Corporate power is pervasive, it’s so intrusive there’s no escape from it. The media calls it capitalism, they call it the free market system, they call it everything but what it is. But progressives call it what it is. Someone has to. Someone has to tell the truth about the corporate crime rampage that’s inflicting so much suffering across this country, that’s shattered our economy and is ripping America’s future away.

Below me, there was a homeless man
He was singing songs, that I knew complete . . .

The Sound of Silence

San Francisco

Imagine

Homeward Bound

He was young once, long ago. He believed in social justice, he believed in the power of idealism. He played his guitar in People’s Park, in San Francisco during the Summer of Love, he sang about peace and social justice. But life beat him down, injustice beat him down, the tin soldiers of Nixon, the tin soldiers of Reagan, the tin soldiers of Bush and Cheney and their corporate war machine beat him down, until the songs he loved were all he had left.

There on the steps alone, his guitar in his hands
It’s fifty years, still he stands . . .

But he’ll be gone soon, he has no health insurance, no one will cover him, he has a pre-existing condition called poverty. When he leaves this world no one will care, no one will even notice. He took a stand for social justice and was ridiculed for it, he took a stand for peace and was mocked for it. But he would not sell his soul for a corporate paycheck, he would not trade his labor for their money, there was too much blood on it.

Walking home, on those streets,
The river winds, they move my feet.

Harsh winds of malice, cold winds of deceit, blowing right through me like I don’t even exist, reactionary winds that chill me to the bone. Those winds are raging like never before, every day there are more threats of violence from the crazed right, there are more deranged slanders that Democrats are Nazis, there’s more insanity from Limbaugh and Hannity and Beck.

I looked out the window, down upon that street,
And gone like midnight, was that man.
But I see his six-string, laid against that wall,
And all his things, they all look so small . . .

All of his life, people who exploit others to enrich themselves made him feel worthless, made him feel small. Well he wasn’t small, and Karma isn’t small either. Someday, the Republican Party will be gone like midnight, capitalism will be gone like midnight, exploitation and injustice and oppression will be gone like midnight.

I don’t know if we can achieve real health care reform this year, but I know this much: he not busy being born is busy dying. The Progressive Movement is busy being born. The Conservative Movement is busy dying. New media is busy being born. Old media is busy dying. Multicultural America is busy being born. Racist America is busy dying. The right is bellowing with such fear and fury because the right is dying.

And they know it.