I just read the first few paragraphs of an AP story discussing the probable Senate health care bill and am furious. No public option and no requirement that businesses offer health plans. Just read an update and it gets worse. The whole shebang to go through the insurance companies. You know, those creeps that have turned health insurance into an orgy of profit with little or no benefit to the people paying the premiums. Oh, yes, I exaggerate but only a little. I have friends that go through hell to get insurance, then pay such exorbitant premiums that it hardly benefits them to have the coverage. Then, every time they turn in a claim they have to re-submit at least three times to get it paid.
What happens to people when they go to Washington? Suddenly it's all about re-election and forget the people who elected you. The lobbying scum crawls out of the K Street sewers and gives them lots of money for re-election and suddenly they know so much better than any little old citizen back home what's best for this country.
Rather than turn health care over to the insurance people we should outlaw for-profit insurance and send all the current insurance execs to jail for life, preferably to one of the real nasty ones such as the Nevada State Prison.
The members of Congress have shown that they are not going to do any of the obviously smart things to provide health care insurance for all the people in this country. They aren't going to rein in the insurance people or the drug folks. They aren't going to jettison the phony Medicare enhancement policies or the horrible Medicare drug plan. Of course not. The lobbyists would cut off their election funds. So they will come up with a phony piece of excrement rewarding all the wrong people and they'll probably figure out a way to raise taxes on the strangled middle class to do it.
It's time for the citizens of this country to rise up, get our pitchforks, our vats of tar and loads of feathers, then take a trip to Washington. Start with the lobbyists--drag them into the street, dress them up in tar and feathers then march them over to Congress so they can watch the same thing happen to all their best friends in the House and Senate. Then put them all on a train and send them to Camp Baucus, except for the Blue Dog Dems and we'll send them to a no-kill shelter for re-training. I'll send word ahead to Dennis Kucinich and Bernie Sanders. There may be others worth saving but those are the only two I know about.
Showing posts with label health care. Show all posts
Showing posts with label health care. Show all posts
Monday, July 27, 2009
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Drop the grandstanding and get to work
26 Feb 2009
I saw the handwriting on the wall Jan. 20 while reading the 5 a.m. news on the internet. Republican Sen. John Cornyn from Texas announced he would hold up Senator Hillary Clinton’s confirmation as Secretary of State because he wanted more time to talk about her husband’s foundation. Wanted to be certain there were “transparency protocols” in place, among other things.
The hair on the back of my neck stood up and I thought, “Here we go again.”
What I heard that man say is, “I’m doing this because—I can.” Serving notice on day one that the Republicans have it in their power to obstruct and by gawd they intend to do it. More of the same tired game playing and showmanship from the same tiresome people.
I won’t run through the list of the many problems we Americans are facing right now but I have noticed something. President Barack Obama has the list and has presented many ideas about how we can approach the work ahead of us. He’s talking about creating jobs, providing health care for all Americans, making college affordable for all the Americans who want to attend, providing better pay and benefits for the women and men in the military.
He has asked for bipartisan support in coming up with solutions. And the Republicans decline to help because all they want are tax cuts and not for the 98 percent of non-wealthy in this country but for corporations and the wealthy two percent. The famous “base” of the ideological zombies.
I remember when Reagan took office in 1981 and everything was about tax cuts, tax cuts and more tax cuts. In order to make that work they slashed budgets, except for the Pentagon’s, that financial black hole. Then they sang this pretty song about how all the wealthy corporations and individuals would use that money they no longer had to pay in taxes to create trickle-down prosperity for the rest of us, roughly 98 percent of the population of the US of A.
Well, I’m still waiting. I have yet to see evidence that so much as a dime has trickled down from the two percent of the population these tax breaks benefited. I assume that Republicans either don’t understand how bad things are in this country or they don’t care. Their ideological stance seems more important than people or the planet.
Ideology is safe, it feels secure, it promises to eliminate questions. And we can all fall prey to that need for safety and security and pat answers to our questions. But there is a different way of approaching the world, of managing and governing.
It sounds simple. During discussions you forget everything you “know” and you listen to all the other people in the room, attentively and with an open mind. No one is called upon to change his or her mind. Just listen.
What happens, and there is evidence out there to verify this, is that people who have learned to listen this way find they are able to hold two or more opposing thoughts in their minds. Their minds don’t change, they grow. There is openness, expansion, and in that environment new ideas show up.
People who are locked into ideological zombiehood never get to experience that bigger, grown-up mind.
So here’s the deal. New jobs would take people off the dole and in time provide some disposable income. Affordable health care would benefit businesses large and small, helping to create more jobs, and making us more competitive in this country and the rest of the world. Affordable college would create a more productive work force and possibly even a thinking population. I have to remind myself that the leading zombies went to university. Higher education doesn’t always ensure an open mind.
All the ideas President Obama offered are up for bipartisan discussion and we need creative solutions to our problems. But you can’t squeeze them through an ideological funnel. Three Republican senators managed to get past the cant to help pass the stimulus package. I’m anxious to see if any other Republicans can drop the ideology and get to work.
I saw the handwriting on the wall Jan. 20 while reading the 5 a.m. news on the internet. Republican Sen. John Cornyn from Texas announced he would hold up Senator Hillary Clinton’s confirmation as Secretary of State because he wanted more time to talk about her husband’s foundation. Wanted to be certain there were “transparency protocols” in place, among other things.
The hair on the back of my neck stood up and I thought, “Here we go again.”
What I heard that man say is, “I’m doing this because—I can.” Serving notice on day one that the Republicans have it in their power to obstruct and by gawd they intend to do it. More of the same tired game playing and showmanship from the same tiresome people.
I won’t run through the list of the many problems we Americans are facing right now but I have noticed something. President Barack Obama has the list and has presented many ideas about how we can approach the work ahead of us. He’s talking about creating jobs, providing health care for all Americans, making college affordable for all the Americans who want to attend, providing better pay and benefits for the women and men in the military.
He has asked for bipartisan support in coming up with solutions. And the Republicans decline to help because all they want are tax cuts and not for the 98 percent of non-wealthy in this country but for corporations and the wealthy two percent. The famous “base” of the ideological zombies.
I remember when Reagan took office in 1981 and everything was about tax cuts, tax cuts and more tax cuts. In order to make that work they slashed budgets, except for the Pentagon’s, that financial black hole. Then they sang this pretty song about how all the wealthy corporations and individuals would use that money they no longer had to pay in taxes to create trickle-down prosperity for the rest of us, roughly 98 percent of the population of the US of A.
Well, I’m still waiting. I have yet to see evidence that so much as a dime has trickled down from the two percent of the population these tax breaks benefited. I assume that Republicans either don’t understand how bad things are in this country or they don’t care. Their ideological stance seems more important than people or the planet.
Ideology is safe, it feels secure, it promises to eliminate questions. And we can all fall prey to that need for safety and security and pat answers to our questions. But there is a different way of approaching the world, of managing and governing.
It sounds simple. During discussions you forget everything you “know” and you listen to all the other people in the room, attentively and with an open mind. No one is called upon to change his or her mind. Just listen.
What happens, and there is evidence out there to verify this, is that people who have learned to listen this way find they are able to hold two or more opposing thoughts in their minds. Their minds don’t change, they grow. There is openness, expansion, and in that environment new ideas show up.
People who are locked into ideological zombiehood never get to experience that bigger, grown-up mind.
So here’s the deal. New jobs would take people off the dole and in time provide some disposable income. Affordable health care would benefit businesses large and small, helping to create more jobs, and making us more competitive in this country and the rest of the world. Affordable college would create a more productive work force and possibly even a thinking population. I have to remind myself that the leading zombies went to university. Higher education doesn’t always ensure an open mind.
All the ideas President Obama offered are up for bipartisan discussion and we need creative solutions to our problems. But you can’t squeeze them through an ideological funnel. Three Republican senators managed to get past the cant to help pass the stimulus package. I’m anxious to see if any other Republicans can drop the ideology and get to work.
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