We are in the midst of Great Depression Part Deux and in one lonely respect, it’s too bad that things are not worse. Seriously.

It would have been even more painful for us poor louts in the street, if you can imagine that, but a true bad-as-the-1930s meltdown would have busted corporate control of our federal, state and local governments. Instead, the fat cats have gotten fatter while the lower classes scramble for crumbs.

President Obama pretty much sold out on health care reform when he cut a toothless deal with the major drug manufacturers. He agreed to keep the Bushite ban forbidding Medicare from negotiating drug prices, meaning that Big Pharma can charge anything it wants for drugs that cost peanuts in Mexico or Canada.

What did he get in return for continuing this hemorrhage of taxpayer money? Big Pharma said to trust them to reduce drug prices by some astronomical pie-in-the-sky amount with nothing to force them actually do so. Kind of like Renown/Washoe Medical Center’s conveniently forgotten 1985 phantom commitment to reduce health care costs and take the burden of paying for the care of the uninsured off the backs of taxpayers — in exchange for a corrupt Washoe County Commission giving the bandits a free hospital. The current ownership got assets worth up to $120 million in 1985 dollars for a cool $3 million. You may read the damning 1995 Washoe County Grand Jury Report exclusively linked to the Web edition of this column.

U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., unilaterally surrendered on health care the day after the 2008 election, declaring that Medicare for all (single-payer) would not even be considered.

How bad is it? The greatest congressional champion of universal health care, Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, voted against the poison pill bill, which barely passed the house a few days ago.

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has introduced legislation in the Senate including a provision to establish a nonprofit government insurer. Good luck, senator, you’re gonna need it.

A top labor leader this past week made a chilling prediction: If Harry Reid holds out any hope of re-election, he’s got to do something to create jobs in northern Nevada.

I informed my friend that news out of D.C. says Reid is working on exactly that. Last Wednesday, TheNation.com reported that Reid is developing a jobs bill. Perhaps he will make an announcement at the president’s upcoming jobs summit.

“People I talk with are angry that the Democrats have not done what they promised to do in last year’s election,” my labor friend said.

Which brings me back to busting corporate control. A few years back, filmmaker Michael Moore said corporations have two political parties. Can’t the people have just one?

The Republicans are currently breaking in half, torn between pseudo-religious moonhowlers and tax-cutting corporate shills. Last month, more non-partisans registered to vote in Nevada than Democrats and Republicans combined. That brings the number of potential voting blocks to three.

Democratic leaders analyzing the loss of governorships in New Jersey and Virginia noted that a lot of Democrats just stayed home on election day.

Parts of the reconstituted New Deal coalition which last year elected Obama are sick and tired of being sick and tired, as civil rights legend Fannie Lou Hamer once so memorably complained.

African-Americans are sick and tired of being taken for granted by the Donkeyites. Ditto for organized labor. As New York Times columnist Bob Herbert put it, “President Obama’s strongest supporters during the presidential campaign were the young, the black and the poor — and they are among those who are being hammered unmercifully in this long and cruel economic downturn that the financial elites are telling us is over.”

And that the financial elites created. Which makes an old idea new again: formation of a labor party that will appeal to the groups Herbert mentions plus unions, which are increasingly sick and tired of being treated as the Democrats’ ATM machine.

Oh, yeah, I almost forgot — add in all those women angry at the abortion poison pill the moonhowlers put into the house bill.

Stealing a line from Ford Motors, Harry Reid knows that a quick and effective jobs program is job one. And if the specter of a five-party election isn’t enough to scare the bejabbers out of the Dems, I know of only one other button to push. In a five-party election, the guy who gets 20 percent plus one wins.

Support non-corporate media

We may be moving glacially, but at least we’re moving, trying to get KJIV.org back online in order to have an off-the-shelf radio station ready when the Federal Communications Commission finally approves a new full-power, nonprofit FM for northwestern Nevada. It’s only taken 13 years or so. Please consider donating what you can afford. You will find much more information about the project at ReSurge.TV, where you may contribute online or send a check or money order to ReSurge.TV, P.O. Box 10034, Reno NV 89510. I know you’ve heard all this before, but this is important, dammit.

In Washington, D.C., the Local Community Radio Act is getting close to a vote in the House of Representatives. The proposal will expand low-power FM community radio, an idea pushed by the FCC in 2000. Opposition by commercial broadcasters and National Public Radio (all the big boys hate competition) convinced President Clinton to agree to kill the idea. It got watered down to a handful of “pilot projects” while big bucks media conglomerates sucked up every full-power station in sight.

In northwestern Nevada today, most radio signals are owned by four big outfits. Programming diversity is non-existent. Country music today is basically 1965 rock ‘n’ roll and the available rock is corporately soft. As Henry Ford once said about his Model-T’s, you can choose any color you want as long as it’s black.

This is where conscientious columnists call for action in the form of contacting your local congresscritter to support the bill. I have no faith that pretty-boy neanderthal Dean Heller would vote for anything non-corporate. So don’t waste your 44-cent stamp.

Be well. Raise hell.

Andrew Barbano is a 40-year Nevadan, second vice-president of the Reno-Sparks NAACP, chair of the Nevada Cesar Chavez Committee, member of Sparks-based Communications Workers of America Local 9413/AFL-CIO and editor of NevadaLabor.com. As always, his opinions are strictly his own. E-mail barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us. Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Tribune since 1988.