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The Book of the Week is “The Conscience of A Liberal, Reclaiming the Compassionate Agenda” by Paul Wellstone, published in 2001. This career memoir humbly recounted the author’s triumphs and setbacks in community organizing and changing the world.
Wellstone, an idealist, and Democrat from Minnesota, got elected the first time he ran for the U.S. Senate in 1990. He explained that his proposal for a single-payer national healthcare system, would eliminate health insurance companies altogether– so of course the insurance industry lobbied against it.
Wellstone described how crucial the early weeks of pregnancy are for the lifelong health of the child. After about three weeks of gestation, the child’s “neural tube” begins to form. Epilepsy, mental retardation, autism or schizophrenia can result if these cells are damaged in any way by what the mother ingests, inhales, or any illness or injury she suffers. So coverage earmarked for maternal care in a healthcare bill might be a good idea.
On another topic, Wellstone voted against president Clinton’s welfare-to-work bill in June 1996. The senator spoke with multitudes of his constituents who were on welfare. If they were required to work, especially if they headed a single-parent household, they would actually become poorer, because, given the kind of low-level job they could get– the total food, housing and healthcare benefits they would lose– would likely exceed their wages. And they would have to pay for childcare. Or additional education.
Such is the situation for culturally-disadvantaged people stuck in the poverty cycle in America. Factor in social ills such as addiction, domestic violence, poor health, etc., that people in higher economic strata are better able to afford to deal with– and the problems of those “working poor” actually multiply, because one thing leads to another.
For the above reasons, many Democrats felt Clinton was siding with the cold, heartless Republicans. Moreover, unsurprisingly, at the book’s writing, the United States was dead last in the rankings of 26 top industrialized nations in “protecting children against gun violence.”
Wellstone wrote that during the 1993-1994 election year, one of his fellow senators cast several votes against his conscience with the goal of getting reelected. He lost the election anyway. Wellstone himself claimed he usually resisted peer pressure.
Wellstone made suggestions of how the government could reverse its greedy ways. One he hoped more state governments would implement, was to allow an option of state candidates to run “clean money” campaigns. At the book’s writing, Massachusetts, Arizona, Maine and Vermont let candidates opt to spend campaign dollars they received from only a publicly financed fund; rather than from private donors who expected a quid pro quo, and nowadays, almost always get it, thanks to campaign finance laws that resemble Swiss cheese, what with loopholes.
As is well known, representative democracy in the United States has become a combination greedfest / power trip. Ordinary Americans (ones who have no powerful political connections), in order to change laws, can’t afford to:
- pay for trips for senators and congresspeople;
- donate millions of dollars to candidates to get quid pro quos;
- have lawyers at the ready if they’re called out on any illegal behavior;
- hire lobbyists.
Wellstone did say BOTH PARTIES were to blame for this mess.
Read the book to learn much more about the occasions in which Wellstone formed coalitions with his opposition in order to try to pass legislation, how they horse-traded to get their pork, or block laws they didn’t want passed.