VHeadline's Washington DC-based commentarist Chris Herz writes: My readers will know that I had great fears about the election of Barack Obama.  I thought that this personally rather attractive man would be able to put a bright smile on the ugly face of the empire, distracting us all from the destruction that it brings everywhere.  And of course this is what our elites expected him to do, and he has certainly done his best to deliver.

But the rot at the heart of empire has gone so far that it is impossible to conceal.  The brittleness of the empire has made all but faux reform in any direction impossible.  Any real reform, say in the health care area would fatally impact other areas of corporate concern, perhaps in the area of our utterly insane militarism.  The corporate state, even in extremis cannot afford this.

In any rationally governed state a health system which consumed 17% of gross national product to deliver what must be regarded as indifferent results would not be tolerated.  Many countries without the resources enjoyed by our supposedly rich one do far better with state financed care for all.  Reform would have happened years ago, before the festering set in.

It is a near certainty that Washington will not produce anything like a state-financed system on the Canadian or European model.  Instead the present system of privatized insurance will be maintained, even strengthened by requiring premium payments from ALL employed workers with the unemployed continuing to do without.  As well expect the contributions coming from corporate coffers to be reduced still more, even though they have been falling for years.

• The US corporate leadership do not admit me into their conclaves, but I can suspect that these are rather bright guys.  They are as able, even better able than you or I to see the bankruptcy of the state which they have economically parasitized.

The problem is that these businesses are totally dependent for their profits on the corrupt manipulation of public policy.  This is most pronounced in the military/industrial complex of course, but is to be found in telecommunications, media, health care and just about anything else on down the line.  Thus a management-type at Boeing can see in weakening his counterpart at HealthSouth or Blue Cross an attack on his own position.

This system of public/private partnership (in a simpler age we called it corruption) would undergo the same sort of systemic breakdown experienced by its counterpart, the late and unlamented USSR, were some would-be Gorbachev to try to manage some serious reform to any of its constituent components.

This will not be permitted.