UNACCEPTABLE

While the people of this country clamor for the Change that We Need (and were promised in the last election), Congress is busy making deals with the very people whose greed and contempt for the American citizenry caused the problems in our current health care system. The healthcare, pharmaceutical and insurance industries are paying up big time to bend ears and rules their way.



This is completely unacceptable and we all have to do something about it. Who cares if they pass any healthcare bill at all? Whatever they pass will not be the right answer to our problems, it will be the right compromise to continue the current unacceptable system.



The people of this country are aware that the system is broken.

We are aware that changes must be made.

We are being bombarded with propaganda from the healthcare and insurance industries about what change will work and what change won’t. And yet, consistently, polls show that the American public supports a government-run system of healthcare over the current proposals in Congress, which focus more on changing insurance regulations.



We know we are about to get screwed when we read articles like the one published in today’s Washington Post, “Industry Cash Flowed To Drafters of Reform.” (The title of this post is a link to the article-just click)

The voice of the people has been excluded from the debate and the new law is being written by private interests with only a profit motive. Unacceptable.

“Health-related companies and their employees gave Baucus's political committees nearly $1.5 million in 2007 and 2008, when he began holding hearings and making preparations for this year's reform debate." Unacceptable.

“During a Senate break in late June, for example, Baucus held his 10th annual fly-fishing and golfing weekend in Big Sky, Mont., for a minimum donation of $2,500. Later this month comes "Camp Baucus," a "trip for the whole family" that adds horseback riding and hiking to the list of activities." Unacceptable.



“…Friends of Max Baucus, and his political-action committee, Glacier PAC…collected $3 million from the health and insurance sectors from 2003 to 2008, about 20 percent of the total, data show. Less than 10 percent of the money came from Montana." Unacceptable.

“Many former Baucus staff members, including two chiefs of staff, lobby on behalf of the pharmaceutical industry and other health-care players and have been closely involved in negotiations on the legislation.” Unacceptable.

“Baucus and his aides strongly dispute any assertion that campaign contributions have an impact on the senator's policy views and proposals…During an interview earlier this year with the Missoulian newspaper, Baucus said that "no one gets special treatment." He added: "Your word is your bond back there." Unacceptable.

Just know this: The American People are not stupid. Members of Congress can SAY whatever they want and conveniently choose to BELIEVE anything they want, but the American people aren’t buying a word of it—not from ANY of these clowns.



And, President Obama, you said that it was the hard work, determination and small donations of people like me that helped you to get elected. If that is true, then here is some advice from someone who worked on your campaign: DANCE WITH THE ONE THAT BROUGHT YOU. You better figure out a way to pull this healthcare bill out of the crapper. Anything less than real change is Unacceptable. (Can you say “one-termer?”)

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And a little sidenote to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee: Guess what? Blocked your emails. Until you can control your members and start choosing the best interests of the nation over party, you can kiss my small donations good-bye. Oh, I know; you can make up my measley funds with money from your corporate friends, but you risk losing it all again in the next election, don’t you?? YOUR ACTIONS ARE UNACCEPTABLE.


This graft and corruption is not happening behind closed doors, in back rooms or alleys, it is happening RIGHT in front of our eyes and for the television cameras. The news media is reporting it and anyone that is paying attention should be aware that Congress and Senate are FOR SALE. If the current sham of a health care plan gets passed, the people of this country will share some of the blame.

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Moyers and Winship Lay it On the Line

Bill Moyers and Micheal Winship have “Some Choice Words for the ‘Select Few.’” And they lay it out brilliantly. Has anyone read this article? It’s a must-read for anyone that is having trouble grasping the reason for everything that is wrong in this country.*



Blame the illegals, blame the poor, blame the unemployed, blame the liberals, blame the conservatives, blame the religious zealots, blame the godless, blame the blacks, blame the Asians, blame the Hispanics, blame the welfare recipients, blame the younger generations, blame the environmentalists, blame the scientists, blame the feminists, blame Hollywood…have I missed anyone?
All of the above is a con man’s trick to get you to look the wrong way while the real culprits rip you off and make their getaway. BLAME THE SYSTEM.

And so, what is the answer? As with any other very large problem, there are many answers, many actions for us to take on many fronts to constructively confront the problem. But I did find one answer among the comments following this article:

Sun, 07/12/2009 - 18:05 — Damon Neal (not verified)
This problem will not go away until Congress enacts a law that repeals the 1868 Supreme Court ruling that granted "personhood" to corporations. Failing that, a group; perhaps the ACLU or MoveOn.org; could search for a case to reintroduce the issue to the Federal Court system. In 1864, former corporate lawyer Abraham Lincoln wrote, "Corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed." Remember this was 4 years before the actual decision was handed down. And if you read the history of this decision, there is evidence that a clerk inserted the language and that the Supreme Court itself never actually made the specific ruling. Perhaps a there was some skullduggery at work. However it happened; it's time to de-person the corporations.

If Corporations did not share the same status in the eyes of the law as any other citizen, then the Supreme Court would not be able to find that paid lobbyists for the corporations have free speech rights to flood campaigns with money. It is not even a hidden pay-for-play scheme; it is an open bribery, as the Moyers/Winship article points out. Corporations are not people and they should not have the same rights as people do. This one change in the law could go a long way to fixing our current crisis of government corruption.

A total overhaul of the campaign system could follow on the heels of such a change. Imagine a system where every candidate starts out with the same chance and has access to the same media, etc. We might actually get some decent people with better ideas and the best interest of the country to run for office. And they might actually be able to work the will of the people once inside rather than being forced to play the corrupt system that currently exists.

On a similar note, I recently became aware of the following website. NPR decided to turn the “tables” (or the cameras) on the healthcare industry by taking pictures of the lobbyists and requesting that people identify them. Check it out here:
http://www.npr.org/news/specials/2009/hearing-pano/
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105923744


As many people are aware, Senator Max Baucus is at the center of crafting the supposedly “reformed” health care system. It appears as though very little, if anything, is actually going to change under Mr. Baucus’ leadership. It becomes crystal clear why that is when you take a look at the following chart, created by the Sunlight Foundation and found at the following url: http://blog.sunlightfoundation.com/2009/06/22/the-max-baucus-health-care-lobbyist-complex/



What I have pasted here is a cropped image of the actual web of bribery and corruption. Please click on the link above to see the full image (and join the Sunlight Foundation if you are so inclined).

Now, for a nice, bone-jarring overview, check out this website that lists the monies paid out by the 250 largest lobbying firms:
http://projects.publicintegrity.org/lobby/top.aspx?act=topfirms

Who can now deny that our federal government is a corrupt organization? Everyone talks about the corruption, journalists, bloggers, interest groups and others have provided the evidence of this corruption. What are the people waiting for?

Who believes that the government will cleanse itself? If you do, please post comment below.


*I am strongly considering cancelling my online subscription to WaPo considering the obvious collusion and perversion of journalistic integrity that is going on there. I don’t pay anything for it so I am not sure that it would send any message meaningful to those in charge at the once-respected news outlet.

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How Many Police Does It Take To Silence the Voice of the People?

The following is the text of a newsletter that I received regarding the current health care debate in this country. Though much has been made about real change in our nation’s health care policies, we are in real danger of no change, especially if we leave the decision up to our bought-and-paid-for Senators. Obama’s health care plan never included the kind of REAL CHANGE that this country needs in order to stay viable and healthy (physically and economically). But the small amount of change that he has supported is in danger of being stomped out, too. Please view the video, read below and pass a link to this blog on to your friends, neighbors, co-workers and family members that are concerned about the rising cost of health care and insurance.



How many police does it take to silence the voice of the people? That’s a question a despot might ask in a totalitarian police state.

But this week the Senate Finance Committee thought it was a hilarious joke as they ejected one brave activist after another, for protesting that not even one spokesperson for single payer health care was being allowed to sit at the hearing table. Yes, Senator Max Baucus (MT), who had preemptively declared that consideration of a single payer option was off the table, actually joked, “We need more police [1:58 on video].” And the rest of the Senate panel just laughed their heads off.



Senator Chuck Grassley (IA), the ranking Republican, not to be outdone in his contempt for the people, then asked if there was “somewhere they can watch it on television [2:05 on video],” which elicited additional hearty guffaws. Yes, what a wonderful entertaining show that would be, the spectacle of the will of the people being excluded while corporate special interests, like butchers, carve up our pocketbooks and our bodies.



…It’s time for the U.S. Senate to get the message that We The People are not just a joke to be laughed off. Why is it that not ONE senator on that committee has the integrity to stand up for an even handed debate of health care issues? Why should any of them be elected to public office ever again?

So let’s see a show of hands. How many of you would like to sign up now for a commie Marxist national health care system ... like in Canada, England and other pinko Bolshevik countries like that? How stupid do they think we are, to try to reduce the terms of the debate to such an ignorant level?

Meet the new mass media scare label, “socialized” medicine. As opposed to, like, what? ... the ANTI-social corporate medical insurance industry we have now, where patients have no role except to be cash cows, by design never to be actually cured?

If you or anyone in your family has ever been seriously ill, and as we ALL will be someday, you know the medical industry will pick your bones clean of every dime you ever earned in your life, just in time to drop you into the cheapest possible pine box.

Why are members of Congress fighting so hard to keep single payer health care out of the public debate? Because there are no fat profits in it for their special interest corporate campaign contributors, who maximize their profits the sicker we are. They cannot compete with a low overhead, efficiently-run government program, just like we have NOW with the existing proven Medicare system.

Instead, they will line up a bunch of corporate lobbyists and stooges to tell bald-faced lies. Just like Senator Jim Bunning himself who asserted that Canada and England had tax rate of at LEAST 60% to support single payer. (Not even close)

But they don’t even want anyone around to even have a chance to call them out on their willful and malicious lies. [THIS IS THE KIND OF LIE THAT, ONCE THROWN INTO THE PUBLIC FORUM WILL BE REPEATED OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN IN THE RIGHT WING MEDIA, REGARDLESS OF ITS INACCURACY-WATCH FOR IT.]

Yes, all those who love to preach to the rest of us about the free market and competition are shown to be interested only in a rigged market and a rigged debate. Baucus may put on a face of being slightly chastened, but he STILL will not allow any honest testimony on single payer.

But we can beat them.

This is the pivotal moment. We have been speaking out for HR 676 (Medicare for all) for YEARS. And now 8 incredibly brave activists have been hauled away because they would not remain silent. But in doing so, in putting their own bodies on the line, they have shown up the current “debate” for the total sham that it is.

...submit a one-click action page that we have specially configured to send your message to the Senate Finance Committee as a hard copy pdf that they can’t just laugh off, because it will be part of the permanent record. Plus your message will go to all your regular members of Congress, plus your nearest daily local newspaper as well if that option is selected.

Click on link in Blog Title to be redirected to the Single Payer Action Page or type the following address into your browser window: http://www.peaceteam.net/action/pnum982.php

At 3:20 of the video posted on the action page above you will hear a woman loudly ask, “I wonder how many there are?” Let’s show them.

Let’s show them there are millions and millions of us out here who will no longer be ignored, who will no longer be laughed off. Because they KNOW we can stop them if and only if large numbers of us will raise our voices now.

Let’s just do it.

And here is a list of all Senators on the Finance Committee, including at least a couple who you might have considered to be “liberals”. Where are their voices? Is there not a single one of them who will stand up and say, “No wait a minute, we need to hear what the single payer advocates have to say”? So, especially if one of these is one of YOUR personal Senators, they need to hear from you now. [THIS IS THE BEGINNING OF THE PROCESS THAT WILL EITHER CHANGE HEALTHCARE FOR THE BETTER IN THIS COUNTRY OR LEAVE US AT THE MERCY OF THE GREEDY CORPORATOCRACY.]



No, we don’t need more police. We need fewer Senators with plugs in their ears like Max Baucus. And he and the rest of them need to hear that.

My sixteen cents: (inflation)

For a long time now, we have been hearing about how costly single-payer health insurance would be, all the while watching our private, for-profit health insurance rise precipitously.

We’ve been told that the quality of care we receive would suffer in a single-payer system. Meanwhile, both the quality and the availability of care is decreasing for an ever-increasing number of people who can no longer afford health insurance or are unemployed and have lost their coverage.

We’ve heard that increased enrollment in Medicare would bankrupt the nation and that we would all be taxed at a higher rate to pay for it. News Flash: We are already paying for it. [That’s right, Senator Bunning, if you had been paying attention, the point has already been made in a multitude of studies and articles on the subject, some even by the government you work for, that the costs of the uninsured are being passed on to the rest of us in increased health insurance premiums and increased hospital and physician charges.] The kicker is, if you know anything about the way health insurance works, the hospitals, doctors, medical supply companies and pharmaceutical companies are CHARGING MORE for the care of uninsured people because those with insurance have the benefit of insurance companies bargaining charges down with providers. So, they bargain down charges and fees for those that have insurance and then the hospital charges the increased rates ONLY for those that do not have insurance coverage and, when those fees go uncollected, they then get passed on to the rest of us in the form of rising costs and inflated premiums (And are a nifty loss on the books at tax timewhich results in less taxes, therefore ripping off the taxpayers again).

Nice little racket, isn’t it? I can see how this system would be preferable to one in which the government sets the charges and the hospitals and doctors get paid for all of their charges instead of just some. Right, Senator Bunning???

And to answer the misguided statement again, NO, Senator Baucus, we don’t more police. We need a Senate that listens to WE THE PEOPLE instead of the greedy corporatocracy.

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