By Katie Jacob

Copy Editor

It has been troubling to watch as the Democrats, with control of the House, the Senate and the White House, refuse to produce the change that they promised. They failed to pass cram-down legislation as millions of Americans continue to be devastated by home foreclosures. They allowed GM and Chrysler to be pushed into bankruptcy, while they allowed billions and billions of dollars to be siphoned off by financial institutions with no strings (or at least not enough strings) attached.

Shockingly, the Obama administration and the Justice Department, in spite of claims that they would henceforth provide transparency, have stood behind Bush administration claims of states secrets, national security and executive privilege, to keep court cases concerning illegal wiretapping and torture from going forward and to keep the facts about the war in Iraq, torture and rendition during the Bush years from being made public. According to recent reports, Obama is considering the indefinite detention for prisoners and according to the New York Times, the government continues to collect the e-mails of millions of Americans.

With regard to health care, the leadership in the Senate took single payer off the table from the beginning and then, rather than unifying behind a strong public health option, came up with whitewash like triggers and health care co-ops, compromises that are certainly transparent in one thing — their intention to protect the interests of the health care industry. What we hear are excuses, calls for bipartisanship or the claims that the dems don’t have 50 votes to overcome a filibuster. These claims ring hollow; they are excuses not to act. The time to produce the kind of policy that is necessary to change the course of the nation is now. There are enough Democrats to do this. The question is, do they really want to?