Brewmaster Eric tackles Health Care, Real Winner is America

"The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter." Winston Churchill

Landmark legislation has stuck the EVBC! Thanks to the recent passage of national health care, we no longer feel bad about not offering benefits to...well...anyone. Aside from the curative powers of Imperial Stout (deliciously bottle aging as we speak), the East Village Brewing Company offers neither its fans nor its employees anything in the form of health benefits. In fact, some people argue that drinking is actually BAD for your health, but because they're incredibly lame we'll ignore them for the time being.

I myself tried to keep tabs on the whole back and forth in the legislative houses, watching the struggle of private interests against public good, the eternal battle of "it's my money and I need cancer screenings now" vs. "death panels give you communist crabs which ultimately cause auto-immuno-abortions that undermine the very blah blah blergy blag". It's like Ali-Frazier, except boring as shit and drawn out over months and months (so its really more like the 1893 Bowen-Burke classic... google it...it lasted 111 rounds. I'm not kidding). I know to others this whole human drama was expertly unfolded with all the Belt Insider intrigue that you come to love after years of twitter-stalking Nancy Pelosi, but I personally got lost about four seconds in.

I'm no rube - I've seen democracy at work plenty 'o' times and I've seen it falter just as many. I saw the machine at work in "big campus" politics - that's right, class president elections. To be totally honest, I pretty much gave up on democracy when during my Junior year of college the write-in candidate "My Balls" got elected in a landslide. That's right, no actual human 'won' technically..."My Balls" did. I would've even forgiven the dudes from Beta House who clearly stuffed the ballots (everyone knows that drunk pledges show up in droves on election day, majority of them at the behest/threat of their equally as plastered elders) if the embarassment had ended there. No, Tastemasters, second place vote didn't go to a human either - say hello to vice president "My Sac".

IT WAS THE SAME GODDAM JOKE. AND IT WON BOTH MAJOR ELECTED POSITIONS.

So much for student government by and for the people. In a move befitting a warring African nation, the powers-that-be decided President Balls and VP Sac weren't fit to take office, and gave it to the third place "enrolled human" student instead. What a crock. I guess this is how all those legislators must feel about having to settle for some health plan that made NO one truly happy. Perhaps the real accomplishment was just getting it passed though...I mean, no matter who took office during my fateful Junior year, the real triumph of the democratic spirit was that TWO write in candidates took it with relative ease. The people spoke, and they wanted My Balls and My Sac in charge of their collective fates. And maybe this really isn't about MY balls... or YOUR balls... but OUR balls... and you know what? That's really what democracy is all about.