Health Care Commies

Third cup of coffee is kicking in, and I gotta run soon. This'll havta be short (in more ways than one).

Health care. Everyone has heard the talk about how we need universal health care (or not) and how the politicians are gonna give it to us by subsidizing our insurance payments. How many have stopped and said, "my ass your gonna make some rich extortionist richer with my goddam tax dollars!"? Has it not occurred to these politicians that the profits skimmed by insurance companies and salaries for all the people who are needed to file claims and shuffle paperwork are the reason healthcare costs so damn much? Of course it has. What's more, the insurance companies' lobbyists are well acquainted with the legislators who are going to make it law to redirect your tax money strait into the pockets of insurance salesmen. Health insurance companies make tens of billions of dollars per year; they can afford to invest in lobbying for insurance subsidization. But, wouldn't it be more expedient and less costly for the tax payers, if they want universal health care, to just pay strait into a public pool of cash for healthcare and draw on it as needed, rather than give it to someone who's gonna skim a profit and then make it as hard as possible for you to get your money back? Why aren't the politicians talking about this? For starters, they need the insurance lobby's campaign donations. And, in the end, they need the insurance lobby's campaign donations. In the middle somewhere there is the matter of destroying an industry worth billions of dollars and replacing it with a state institution, which is kinda the definition of communism (although altruistic common sense says "so what?"). There is alot of ideological baggage associated with such a move--much moreso than there was when Soc. Sec. was created pre WWII). I say the health insurance companies are extortionists and, in a moral sense at least, racketeers. Basically they are bookies. You pay them, betting in essence that you will become ill at some point, and they make a counter bet that you will remain healthy. They back up their bet with their capital resources that you don't have; if you did, you wouldn't need health insurance. Thing is, it's just like Vegas. They know the odds [statistics] all too well, so their winning is guaranteed. As if that's not enough, a lot of these crooks like to make it as hard as possible for you to collect on your bet when you win. Meanwhile, you have no choice but to make the bet, because if you don't you're making the wildcard bet that you'll remain healthy right up until your sudden death. HSAs and all that crap are just other ways for third parties to get their hands on your money.

If the whole country had the equivalent of their medical insurance payment taken out of their paychecks (along with the employer's contribution which is an issue unto itself) and that money was put in a centralized account from which folks would draw when they needed medical care (think "non-profit health insurance company"), within a few years there would be ample billions extra (formerly known as "profits") which could be used for investment in health technologies that with promising returns and/or individual payment reductions. Of course, there's always gonna be a crook who gets in a tries to work the system for his/her personal gain, but we'll just have to take him out in the street and beat him/her to death. Works for me. At least then we'll be calling a crook a crook instead of an "insurance salesman."

The Path Forward

So, I was milling about the internet over my morning coffee looking for some info about the rise of the US Gov't propaganda campaigns. It's (propaganda that is) been integral to the United States as a people and a nation since the country's inception. Recall "Don't tread on me," T.P.'s "Common Sense," slogans like "taxation without representation." Also, the importance B. Franklin's connection if not control of the printed word in the colonies should not be overlooked. Certainly the success of the revolution would have been less certain without effective propaganda. It was after the rise of the Soviet Union that the US Gov't acknowledged the supremacy of and vowed to emulate and out-do the Soviet propaganda machine. It was that decision and successive efforts that put the infrastructure in place for the current taxpayer-funded pro-war journalism that is now being investigated by the few patriots of the Constitution in Congress.

Anyway, that's what I was looking for when I thought to articulate why we need to prosecute the current executive leadership to avoid in the future the kind of malevolent and destructive behavior and policies the current executive has enacted and the current congress has allowed. What's the connection? Well, part of fixing something is dismantling it and throwing out the bad parts. That's what we need to do to with both the Executive branch and the covert branches of our government that work to overthrow foreign governments and undermine the sovereignty of the American people.

To get the whole propaganda thing out of the way, let me just say that propaganda can be good. For example, for the purpose of informing people of some cause for action and the necessary action they should take. The old duck-and-cover, as if that's gonna protect you from fallout, might be such an example. Anti-smoking TV ads like that of truth.org are good examples of positive propaganda campaigns. However, when the purpose is to build paranoia, fear of a fictitious enemy, misinform or otherwise diminish the capacity of the people to make informed, rational decisions, then the propaganda undermines democracy and is the definition of anti-American. No surprise Team W is such a big user of propaganda. The programs that our government is using to subvert our own democracy through misinformation must be rooted out and exposed so that the people are fully aware of how malevolent politicians will misguide them with their own government if allowed. Not that it'll make any difference next time, but it is needed to create new faith in the government now.

The second matter goes to the same end but on a larger scale. It is necessary to prosecute the Bush and gang for their misdeeds to absolve the rest of us for our failure to stop them. This is critical to set a precedent for what happens to leaders who so dramatically overstep the bounds of their office--lying to the press and the public, presenting false arguments for going to war, taking our country to war on false pretenses, killing possibly a million or more foreign nationals on their own soil during an illegal invasion and occupation, amazingly blatant nepotism in the form of no-bid contracts for the Vice President's former Company, pissing away billions of the people's dollars in a fantastically misguided boondoggle designed to profit the president and his cronies. It is also necessary as a means to salvage the image of the US in the world. As much as I believe that we're piling misdeeds upon misdeeds by staying in Iraq, that we are perpetuating a criminal war and that we could and should be spending all those billions of dollars much more wisely, I can't help but feel we have an obligation to the people of Iraq to protect them from the chaos that has besieged their nation (I mean, aside from that for which we're directly responsible). All one foreign national I've asked has assured me the US is under no such obligation, and I find it pretty easy to believe we're doing more harm than good (just look at what the Bushies have done domestically--just imagine if they could get away with murder here), so maybe we should just leave the Iraqi's to deal with the mess we made and stop trying to fix our mess with more of the same. So, we leave. But, in order to (re)establish our position in the world as a nation that is not evil, it’s necessary to demonstrate to the world and also to ourselves that the US does not stand for the kind of international crime that we as a nation have perpetrated against Iraq in the last five years and that we are not so stupid as to believe the lies on lies on lies that the Bushies have showered on us as explanations for US foreign policy. If we fail to at least try those in the Executive Branch and even Congress who dragged us into Iraq on a stack on false evidence then we admit no wrongdoing. If we are to admit no wrongdoing, we as a nation share the guilt of arrogance, contempt for human life and justice; we share the guilt for perpetrating an illegal war against a sovereign nation under false pretenses. Some might think such matters of justice are trivial, but I say, if we don’t have and use the authority to dispense justice in our own land, then we better keep out of Somalia (As if! They don’t have any oil.) or any future Iraq, Kuwait, Yugoslavia or Germany. Justice is not just for the weak. And, we must prove our justice is worthy here at home before it is exported.

It is absolutely critical that we dispense justice to ourselves. This is necessary for the purposes of setting a standard for accountability for our elected leaders/ representatives, absolving the American people of the criminal actions taken by few and supported by no more than half, demonstrating a standard for moral authority in a democratic nation that’s worthy of emulation, and last but not least: disarming those who would use our latest misdeeds as fuel for their hatred of the US. Actually, this is what I thought we should have done after 911. Of course we should have gone into Afghanistan and demonstrated our will and ability to retaliate for the attacks, but the most expedient way to deal with the terrorists, based on why they claimed to be attacking the US, would have been to say, “You’re right. Our bad. We’ll try to avoid doing undermining Middle Eastern governments and replacing their chosen leaders with West-friendly dictators in the future.” Tough on us, we’d have to admit we’re not always right, admit that we do have a program for subverting governments that don’t do what we want, and maybe even mean it when we say we’ll stop overthrowing the governments of other sovereign nations (well, except Venezuela, maybe).

Think of all the billions...or is it a Trillion…that have been squandered on securing our oil supply, when we could have spent that money (perhaps less) creating a whole new energy and transportation infrastructure. Instead, we blew it running a global war on an idea—an idea that may have some pretty good justification. Instead, we’ve done nothing but illustrate just how justified their actions were, and the growth of Al-Queda since 2003 is the obvious result.

Anyway, that’s why I think we need to prosecute the fuckheads in Washington who’ve been running amok these last seven years. The tie to domestic propaganda is double. The use of domestic propaganda—and this was biased misinformation, not positive in any way (except to Halliburton and Blackwater)—was a crucial piece of the Executive’s program to mislead the US into an illegal war. And, the continuation of domestic propaganda is a moral and legal parallel to the failure to prosecute the culprits responsible for the Iraq fiasco.

Granted, as optimistic as my idealism leads me to be, my pessimistic/ realistic side tells me that we won’t leave Iraq. We’ll be there for another hundred years. Bush and Cheney will never see justice. They’ll continue to profit directly and indirectly from their actions in the White House, and their cronies will have the money and the political machinery to continue to misguide our country right down the tubes for generations to come.

Hope, fear, change, hate, redemption, self-loathing and other vote-getters

“All forms of dedication, devotion, and self surrender are in essence a desperate clinging to something which might give worth and meaning to our futile, spoiled lives”.
—Eric Hoffer, TheTrue Believer

Politicians almost universally find themselves in the role of trying to form or ride on the wave of mass movements. This is necessary because fervent political support is key to their success, and in order to generate this support they must form a message or an idea that people can cling to. More importantly, this message must promise to fulfill some need for change—better for the politician and movement that this change be in an imagined reality than in the subject’s reality. This is true, because if the promised change can actually be fulfilled the mass movement ends. It is better to make wild, abstract and idealistic promises than suggestions about how real living conditions might be improved.

Initially this really turned me off from Obama, since he and Hilrod both harped on the “Change” bandwagon. Ya’ll get this? They tested buzzwords in focus groups and found people responded positively when the word change was used. Then they used “change” as much as possible, building massive support while more qualified candidates fell to the wayside. Only Edwards, whose one-note song, “oppression of the working-class” was equally disappointing, had significant support within the Democratic party. But, now Obama stands-out in sharp contrast to McCain and Hilrod as the one guy with a nuanced an objective understanding of the issues facing our nation. Regardless of how much he chants “change” and “hope,” he addresses each new attack on him as well as the real issues of the day with a depth of thought that suggests he thinks Americans are more than a bunch of idiots.

The other two candidates provide no objective solutions to any problems—only short-sighted, vote-getting, non-starter policy ideas, and more importantly prey on fear, derision, distraction and anything that will fool someone who wants to be fooled.

I think the following quote says a lot about the anti-elitist phenomenon that is responsible for our current douche-bag president and that Hilrod has recently decided to use against Obama. By inverse, it suggests Obama’s confidence indicates he is not particularly vulnerable to the draw of mass movements. How refreshing it is that he has chosen thus far to not prey on the fears and self-doubts of voters.

“The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready he is to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race or his holy cause.”
—Eric Hoffer, TheTrue Believer