WAD CITY

Buddy Roemer Doesn't Like Calling Decent Men Corrupt

I found this interview with Buddy Roemer, a third-tier GOP candidate I’d never heard of before, to be so refreshing. I can’t speak to him beyond these words, but I found myself nodding along throughout. It may need to be explained: this never happens to me when I’m listening to a Republican. But these are weird times.

His basic theme is that the system is corrupt, and on that point, I can’t argue. He’s not talking about people so much, but about ways in which we can fix the revolving doors and big money influence on policy. I certainly disagree with him in places, but on many of these points, he’s a lot closer to the sentiments of the Occupy movement than I think he or anyone on the left would be too happy to admit. Take this withering attack on Obama, which may be unfair on some points but which nonetheless explains exactly why so many of us on the left have been disappointed:

Then I saw bank reform after the collapse didn’t contain Glass-Steagall. It didn’t eliminate too big to fail. It didn’t increase capital ratios for banks. And then within a month of signing the bill President Obama went to Wall Street, had a fundraiser at $35,800 a ticket sponsored by Goldman Sachs. Well you know, I’m not a Rhodes Scholar. I’m not a rocket scientist. I’m a proud and practical man. But I call it corruption.

Can you elaborate?

When you sign an inadequate bank reform bill, and you go celebrate with the people who brought the system down — none of them went to jail. None of them had been called on the carpet. And you act like it’s business as usual. It is a disgrace, Conor. I mean, I could add health reform. I believe President Obama on health reform. We need it in this country. I’m a diabetic. I’ve been a diabetic for more than 40 years. I know that the quality of our health care, the expense of it.

And yet in the health care reform bill, insurance companies were not put under Sherman antitrust, costs go unabated, pharmaceutical companies were protected from price discounting and from fair competition and imports from Canada. There was no tort reform. There were no incentives for health care providers to lower their costs and maintain their quality. It’s a disgrace.

These are the largest givers to politicians: insurance companies, tort lawyers, pharmaceutical companies. I mean, the chief of the pharmaceutical association bragged to me about how Obama had called him and begged him not to spend money against the bill. And to sign off on the bill. It was the power of money. It wasn’t about what’s right, or what works. Or what can help people too poor to get health care. It was never mentioned. It was about the little inside baseball that they hope the average voter never understands