The Jaker

"The Commonwealth must ensure that every time this ultimate sanction is carried out, it is done fairly."

George Bush will inevitably get out of the mess he has made -- he leaves office in three years and two months, not that anyone's counting. But the rest of us will be left with his handiwork: crushing national debt, rising economic inequality, a poisoned political atmosphere and, oh, yes, the war in Iraq. We're the ones trapped in the dark with no exit sign in sight.

In the Senate, Republicans have a tremendous built-in edge because small states, which lean Republican, are so overrepresented. As a result, Democrats can win a majority of votes nationwide and still not gain control. In the last three Senate elections, as the political journalist Hendrik Hertzberg has pointed out, Democrats have actually received 2.4 million more votes than Republicans, yet the G.O.P. has won 11 more seats. The Senate's 55 Republicans represent 131 million people (assuming each senator represents half a state's population); its 44 Democrats represent 161 million.

By the same token, the Republicans could retain control of the House next year even if the majority of voters cast their ballots for Democratic candidates. Meanwhile, the G.O.P. has padded its lead by aggressively redrawing the Congressional map. Between 2000 and 2004, redistricting created roughly a dozen new Republican-leaning districts nationwide.

Congressional committee chairmen are now appointed largely on the basis of their fealty to the Republican leadership and their ability to raise funds for G.O.P. candidates. When bills go to a conference committee to iron out differences between the House and Senate, they are rewritten to please conservatives and then thrown back to the floors of the House and Senate, where they can't be amended. Interest groups are told that loyalty to the G.O.P. is the price of access. One lobbyist reportedly complained: "I always thought my job is to look out for my clients. Suddenly, I'm working for the Republican Party."

''It's nice to make a stand" against abortion, he said, when ''it's not a real bullet, it's more theoretical."

In London, where congestion pricing began in February 2003 after a year of planning, traffic has been reduced by a third and some bus lines are moving twice as fast. Officials are so satisfied that they intend to nearly double the size of the congestion-pricing zone in 2007. One thing seems certain: New York would not charge nearly as much as the $14 it takes to drive into London's financial district during the day.

The funny thing is that the solution - national health insurance, available to everyone - is obvious. But to see the obvious we'll have to overcome pride - the unwarranted belief that America has nothing to learn from other countries - and prejudice - the equally unwarranted belief, driven by ideology, that private insurance is more efficient than public insurance.
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The economic and moral case for health care reform in America, reform that would make us less different from other advanced countries, is overwhelming. One of these days we'll realize that our semiprivatized system isn't just unfair, it's far less efficient than a straightforward system of guaranteed health insurance.

This is why international action to address both global poverty and global inequality is needed. Global redistribution through taxes that would be levied by an international body may seem far-fetched today, but the logic of development that we are witnessing – particularly the move away from nation-states as the locus of sovereignty – suggests that it may eventually come to pass.

Journalists, of course, are the last people who have any right to poke fun at this Democratic endeavor. Indulging the desire to appear nonpartisan, most news stories regularly balance reports about actual Republican disasters and cratering poll numbers with assertions that voters have no idea what Democrats stand for.

When asked by an NPR reporter last week if she regretted her vote on Iraq, Clinton, considered by some to be the early favorite for the Democratic nomination responded, "You know, I really can't talk about this on the fly. It's too important."