Uncomfortably Numb

In my role as a government advocate for home healthcare it can be numbing to have to listen to the ambiguous dodging inherent in the replies of professional politicians (how is that even a thing, and why do we treat them with so much deference?).  It reminds me of the old lawyer gag "How do you know a lawyer's lying?  Their lips are moving."  As I read through Edmund Morris' fascinating "The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt" I'm reminded that this grasping for power utilizing evasive and duplicitious maneuvers is nothing new (not that I'm accusing Teddy of that - if anything he was political integrity's staunchest ally).  Among the type-A drivers that are drawn to politics, life is a game, power is the ultimate prize, money and its accompanied pleasures is the path to power.  In a capitalist society (which is still the best structure anyone's come up with, so far) money is the ultimate value, not life, liberty or happiness.  Smart people with marketing or divinity degrees invent a thousand ways to cloak that truism but it's a pretty thin veil and peering behind it was one reason I felt obliged to stop working for the hospital system.  My BAYADA team, along with my wheelchair-bound, vent-dependent client, met with the director of NC Health and Human Services a few months ago.  She is a bright, cheerful, energetic woman with a big heart and she quickly cut to the chase when asked for relief from the constant budget cuts and reduced private duty nursing hours, effectively saying 'no one here is unsympathetic to your plight, but our job (referring to the legislature) is to make $1.00 pay for $1.50 worth of benefits - if you can show me the numbers of how you can make that work, we can have a dialogue.'  I do like to see our taxpayer money being put into improvements in intermodal shipping centers and smoother infrastructure, because those things are increasing our presence as an inland port which is attracting more local and foreign investment, providing more jobs and increasing the tax base - it can turn $1.00 into $1.50. But I don't want all that increased income poured back into business in an unrestrained, poorly managed glorious orgy of growth - I'd like to see at least some of the benefits of productivity doled out to those whose infirmity through no fault of their own prevents them from fully participating in that productivity. (Note: I do not want to see those benefits doled out to those whose indigence or indulgence prevents them from being productive.)  If unemployment in Mecklenburg county is at 5.6% and over 5,000 new jobs were added last year and German manufacturers are arriving in droves, let's drop the talk of cutting the benefits to a man who can only move his eyeballs and yet persisted in aquiring his college degree and two Master's level certifications, who is as furiously productive as he can be, using just his eyes - without a nurse at his side 24/7 he would die within the hour.  Booker T. Washington states that "the highest test of a civilization or a race is its willingness to extend a helping hand to the less fortunate". The redeeming quality of a capitalist civilization is that it provides opportunities that improve the quality of life for everyone in it - not equally, obviously, but definitely better than most of the rest of the planet.  So no more equivocation, elected leaders, no more pats on the back with an "I'll look into it" thrown over your shoulders as you scurry away to your fund-raising luncheons.  Stand up to your craven peers, lock away untouchable funds for those who can't help themselves, give them peace of mind at least, if we can't give them wholeness of body.  Because the thought of the entirety of our august body of leaders dedicated to the single-minded pursuit of wealth, power and pleasure at the cost of the misery of their electorate is unsustainably numbing, indeed.