The health care industry wanted mandatory insurance and no public option. They got their bonanza, using a politician bought to the tune of $2.5 million in campaign contributions, to take the public option off the negotiating table – a public option the majority of Americans wanted – and negotiate this juicy deal for them.

What did we get? Nothing but a couple of long overdue improvements that could have been obtained through nothing more than crucial regulations, if the government had the back bone to stand up to the sharks.

But laissez faire capitalist America no longer regulates, we now trust the gangsters in Armani suits to regulate themselves, we've seen how well it worked with the banking industry.

By the way, the Republicans blamed the Democrats for deregulating this industry; today Obama appears to want to mildly regulate Wall street, and the Republicans are opposing him. So much for conservative logic … the same logic that blamed Obama for the bailout, while a no strings attached bailout was demanded by Bush and his cohort under threats of imminent economic collapse. But according to Republican arguments, Bush and his policies never happened … the Republicans had an eight years blackout.

Why did Republican politicians oppose the health care bill, knowing it was a blatant giveaway to the industry? Because, possibly following the battle cry of their deluded messiah Rush Limbaugh, they want Obama to fail at any cost. They consequently will oppose him no matter how conservative and

conciliatory his policies, they can't let him out-right wing them, so to speak.

As Obama said himself, whenever he picks up a Republican idea, this conservative idea is then immediately opposed by the Republicans. When will Democrats wake up and realize they are dealing with rabid bulldogs, bullies of the worse kind? It won't happen, because they are all working for the

same people, and these people are not us but the elite, industry, corporations, and especially Wall Street.

Why are some not-so-bright individuals screaming "socialism" (not to mention "antichrist")? If coercing the people to fill the pockets of private industry by buying private insurance is socialist, it is certainly a previously unknown, alien definition of socialism. Is mandatory car insurance a socialist law? Is a transfer of wealth from the poor and the middle class to industry a socialist policy? Are Republican voters living in the same world we do?

This health care fiasco is a textbook example of how, under all administrations, either right wing (Democrats) or far right wing (Republicans), the US government works: for the benefit of industry and to the detriment of the people when the two interests compete and clash, while dividing the people along oversimplified and inaccurate ideological lines to confuse them and bury the relevant issues, and implementing, without further impediment and while the people foam at the mouth spitting in each other's face, the unchanging agenda of industry: ever more profits.

Raphael Montoliu lives in Lakeport.