Congress Needs an Empathy Shot
Monday, December 4, 2006 at 2:00PM Then, empathy and love happen. Mr. Higgins befriends two of the main organizers (including the progressive and spirited Miss Jones) and an older woman, with whom he falls in love. For this woman, feelings towards him are not about money - she doesn’t know who he is or how much money he has. They are about the hero she thinks he is; someone that will stand up to management and fight for what’s right.
At first, an undercover J.P. Merrick, can stand up in day to day situations; in the back of his mind, he knows he is management. Power provides that confidence. Afterwards, he learns empathy. He stands up because he comes to see his workers as real people: people with whom he hangs out on a crowded Coney Island beach. In the end, he saves everyone’s job and takes them all on a cruise. He becomes a hero, not through having accumulated obscene wealth, but through doing the right thing. Okay, it's Hollywood in the 40s, but still.
While, it’s hard to imagine today’s CEO’s spending an hour in the jobs of their union or other workers, it needn’t be a stretch to bring back the sense of fairness that walking a mile in someone else’s shoes should inspire.
It’s that empathy that should be at play in the 110th Congress. Americans voted for and against many issues on November 7th. Most importantly, they sent a clear demand for change. It’s time to honor that demand.
Fairness requires a living wage be enacted at the federal level. It requires creating a mechanism for providing preventive and active health care coverage to all. It requires fixing Medicare Prescription D – no donut holes, no breaks for drug companies – instead caps for any drugs companies that want to be represented by the program.
We need a progressive social security tax so that billionaires can proportionally pay for social and financial insurance for a wider spectrum of aging Americans. We need to increase the higher education budget and replenish the $12 billion cut that was voted in last year. Congress, while funding post-Katrina reconstruction, should penalize insurance companies who don’t honor their claims.
The new finance committee should cap credit card company charges and interest rates. These firms don’t have to extract 28% interest rates from individuals and only 7% from corporations. Fairness requires examining the egregious multiple of 421 times the average workers compensation that CEO’s made last year. It should transfer that excess to secure employee pension funds and health-care costs.
Not each congressperson may pull a Mr. Higgins and live in the shoes of their average constituents, but they can listen, take the votes for them seriously, add some empathy and long term thoughtfulness, and change some damn laws!
Reader Comments (3)
Right on. I read recently that what the Democrats should do is pass bill after bill and send them on to Bush, with each bill placing Bush in the impossible position of vetoing it or alienating his base. Your list is fine, to which I would add embryonic stem-cell research (redux), amendment to the recent bankruptcy legislation that punishes credit card debt, and (my idea, solely) a balance-the-budget (or pay-as-you-go) law, a la the Republicans' previous legislation.
It would be fun to watch Bush/Cheney (and Tony Snow) bob and weave through that onslaught.
yes, your ideas are definite adds to the list the Dems should steamroll up to the White House. The bankrupty bill in particular was a way to not merely punish debt, but to ignore the fact that credit card companies can and do change the rules (i.e. their charges) once someone is in their debt - making it that much harder for someone to budget against a moving target. also, i like the pay-as-you-go, not as-you-borrow-enormously idea of yours...nomi
The first goal of the Democrats surprising return to a modicum of power has to be the certainty that the slight finger hold that the American People have on power is secured in a more permanent basis.
The first of this is an anti-Gerrymandering law that throws the congress to the Republicans in all but the most outlandish situations (Foley et al)that can take a 50% split in the vote and turn it to a 75% Republican Majority even before any actual vote chicanery.
The second part of that is the vote itself, the banishment of voter suppression with prison sentences for violation. The other part of this of course is a reliable, verifiable vote count. This might be three things in itself but covers only the first part of the minimum need.
The second challenge, and it a mighty one, is the broad investigation into the ecology of the swamp itself. There are land mines galore and more than a few Democrats with at least a few skeletons they would like to keep hidden.
There are however at least 50 newly minted congresscritters with no time to have started a closet much less have new skeletons there. So at least that should be a caucus able to shine the light where it needs to shine.
From these investigations, there would need to be a slew of indictments and RICO investigations, and from this must come a whole list of Impeachment proceedings, not just in the Executive, but in the Judicial sectors as well.
There are a whole slew of organizations that are barely secret, if at all, about their hatred for Democracy and Freedom. They are enemies of America, and without being McCarthyist about it, these folk need to be removed from positions of power for that alone.
This is way bigger than a two year job, so there will have to be priorities, and some fights not fought so others can still be won. Even the best and most skilled scenarios I can imagine, are way unsatisfactory. We will be doing well to keep a democracy at all.
And still there is a third vital need, and that is to re-establish that the Magna Carta, and the Constitution are not "just stupid pieces of paper", and to establish renewed structures, from press to property rights that will keep them from ever being wiped away again, or at least without our notice.
This too is a many year, multi pronged, thorny set of issues, that will be difficult to get an adequate result, much less an ideal one, none the less the basics must start immediately.
And all this, major as they are are only the minimal first steps to staunch the internal hemorrhaging, It doesn't address Iraq (and dealing honorably with the rest of the world), Financial stability (taxes, bankruptcy fiasco etc,) medical care, minimum wage, the many environmental needs, energy, FEMA etc, crime (of all collars), street drugs & gangs, ..... the list could go on for pages with many more important than the ones mentioned.