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Congress R’s and Blue Dogs: Give Up Your Government Health Insurance
- The middle-class needs protection from health care bankruptcy now.
In the ultimate act of moral and political hypocrisy, Congressional Republicans and so-called “blue dog” Democrats rail against “government controlled health care,” while enjoying the benefits of gold-plated government-controlled health care.
Here is the site where Federal workers get to choose from dozens of health care plans. We should only have such choices. (But we’re schmucks, you know, who are so much better off with the free market.) Members of Congress also receive benefits above and beyond “normal” federal employees, with a pharmacy and clinic on site at the Capitol.
Any opponent of the so-called “public option,” like the long-overdue for retirement Jim DeMint of South Carolina, the always despicable Lindsey Graham and the pasty-faced liar Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, should voluntarily surrender their Congressional health care plans. Since they are so insistent that only the private sector is capable of delivering value, let’s give them vouchers, and let them voluntarily source their health insurance from the private sector instead of the government.
Put your health care where your mouth is, Senators DeMint and Graham. I understand Aetna offers “excellent” individual policies — like the ones that your politicking leaves me and my family “free” to buy.
Get with the program today, fellow, and start supporting the free market. Otherwise, your consituents might start suspecting you of socialisim, or of not being “natural-born American citizens.”
Posted in Politics, The American Experience
Attention Citizens: Your 4th of July Has Been Cancelled
Photo by Timothy K. Hamilton, Creativity+
As we continue to live with the consequences of the anti-public onslaught visited on our society these past decades by the radical reactionaries who have been calling themselves “Republicans” and “conservatives,” towns and cities across the United States have been forced to cancel their 4th of July fireworks — and sometimes their entire 4th of July observations — due to a lack of public funds.
Cancel the 4th of July? Think about it.
Thank your local “conservative” for working so hard all these years to “starve the beast” of government. As the man said, “Wave that flag; wave it wide and high!”
Of course, if you live in a large-enough city, you can still enjoy a fireworks show this July 4th. One brought to you through the “benevolence” of the executive overlords at your local, global corporate entity, like Macy’s in New York, or Target in Detroit. The national fireworks show, on the mall in DC, is itself brought to you as a good deed by a consortium of defense contractors (Base Technologies, Inc.) lobbyists (Tell America; The International Webcasting Association), and the usual corporate citizens, like Boeing and American Airlines. This, in our executive-overlord dystopia, is the way things are supposed to work: our government is supposed to be beholden to the “benevolence” of corporations. Have some municipal initiative? Better get your private funding and the chamber of commerce on board, boys. Anything else would be socialism.
Of course, when your country is up for sale to the highest bidder, attractive properties like the DC Mall, or the West Side of Manhattan garner the most “investor” interest. Meanwhile, hundreds, if not thousands of smaller towns and municipalities have cancelled their 4th of July, including my home town of Yonkers, NY. A cursory Internet search gives you an idea of the scope of this “patriotic” farce; towns cancelling their 4th of July include:
Yonkers, NY; Parma, OH; San Jose, CA; Charlottesville, VA; Hialeah, FL; Mesa, AZ; Colorado Springs, CO; Niceville, FL; Garland, TX; Gwinnett County, GA; Miami-Dade County, FL; Flint, MI; Montebello, CA; Nixa, MO; Bristol NH; York, ME; Methuen, Peabody, Randolph, Abington and Bridgewater, MA; Roseville, CA; Gurney, Elgin, Berwyn, North Riverside and Harvey, IL; Newton, IA; Loxley, AL; Rahway, Milville and Ridgewood Park, NJ. This is a representative sample from 5 minutes on Google News, not an exhaustive list.
Plymouth, Massachusetts — you know, as in “Plymouth Rock” — cancelled its 4th of July parade and celebrations altogether; after many years of being funded by private citizen donations, this year the contributions just dried up.
As for me — I’ll be out riding my bike this weekend as usual. And despite my memories of wonderment at the little fireworks show that used to be staged at Ft. Totten in Bayside, NY when I was a kid, as I enjoy the unusual quiet this weekend, I’ll know who to thank.
Iran Inside Out
If nothing else comes from the past weeks’ headlines out of Tehran, let us hope that Americans, generally, will become aware that Iran is far more complex politically, historically and culturally than the average American has been led to believe. Current American perceptions seem so often hopelessly colored by a steady diet of Ahmadinejad’s anti-Semitic rants, half-remembered impressions of the American embassy hostage ordeal, and the occasional story of atrocities committed by the country’s despicable religious vigilantes.
photo by Tarnie/Creative Commons
We Americans, unfortunately, don’t have a particularly rosy history when it comes to international affairs in the post World-War world. Our sad history of military intervention in Southeast Asia, and our recent adventurism in Iraq shared a key characteristic: a willful blindness before-the-fact to the local historical and political context. It is almost as if, as a nation, we want continually to mimic the worst stereotype of the American tourist (or more kindly, revisit the high-minded naivete of Alden Pyle, the eponymous Quiet American of the classic Graham Greene novel) who even on the familiar ground of Western Europe, can still wonder why no one speaks “American.”
Those of us who live in the New York area, have the opportunity to correct some of our ignorance of contemporary Iran by visiting the compelling ‘Iran Inside Out,’ an exhibition of the “Influences of Homeland and Diaspora on the Artistic Language of 56 Contemporary Iranian Artists” at the Chelsea Art Museum between now and September 5.
Nothing you could do in a single afternoon will give you a better understanding of the true motives of Iran’s “green revolution” reformers, or prepare you to understand the context of the particular political and cultural crossroads at which Iran stands today, and the potential resolutions that may play themselves out there in the days, months and years ahead.
For those of us without convenient access to New York City, an online version is here: Iran Inside Out. Please take this opportunity to appreciate and ponder on the work of these brave voices.
Negar Ahkami, Oil Barrel No. 4
Posted in Politics, The American Experience, Uncategorized
The Wrecking Crew, by Thomas Frank
Acerbic history of our executive–overlord state.
“Judy Garland, 47, Found Dead
Singer Judy Garland, shortly before her death
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
Apollo Theater, Harlem, New York, June 25, 2009
In all seriousness. Poor, lucky, tortured, brilliant, boy. Your sudden death is oddly touching. Like Judy, one supposes, a testament to the outsize scale of your talent and your demons both. Do they always go hand in hand? You fit the mold like a glove (if you’ll forgive me), Michael.
So, here’s one for you, Jacko, in memory of Judy:
(Video above courtesy Sony Music Entertainment. Please click “Watch on YouTube” to enjoy.)
Posted in The American Experience
“Hunger can be a positive motivator” (as seen on “Countdown”)
Missouri Republican State Majority Whip, Cynthia Davis
From the department of “no comment” — and the great State of Missouri, land of the neo-Nazi adopt-a-highway program — proudly comes Republican State Majority Whip Cynthia Davis.
While 16% of Missouri’s children live in poverty, Ms. Davis went on record yesterday decrying the state’s $20 million Summer Food Service Program for poor children as nothing more than a covert (and implicitly disgusting) “expansion of a public program.”
Ms. Davis’s words are too priceless to paraphrase, so I reproduce below, for your edification, some choice quotes from her commentary, unedited. (You can read the whole thing here.)
“During hard times, many families find it even more important to pull together. Families may economize by choosing to not waste hard earned dollars on potato chips, ice cream, or Twinkies. Perhaps some families will buy more beans and chicken and less sweets.”
“If parents are laid off, that doesn’t mean they stop feeding their children, at least not any of the parents I know. Laid off parents could adapt by preparing more home cooked meals rather than going out to eat.”
“This program could have an unintended consequence of diminishing parental involvement. Why have meals at home with your loved ones if you can go to the government soup kitchen and get one for free? This could have the effect of breaking apart more families.”
“Who’s buying dinner? Who is getting paid to serve the meal? Churches and other non-profits can do this at no cost to the taxpayer if it is warranted. That is what they did when Louisiana had a hurricane.”
“When churches offer a meal, they can serve the individual with a sense of love and caring for those less fortunate. Government cannot match that. Bigger governmental programs take away our connectedness to the human family, our brotherhood and our need for one another.”
“…who created a new rule that says government must make up for any lack at home? The problem of childhood obesity has been cited as one of the most rapidly growing health problems in America. People who are struggling with lack of food usually do not have an obesity problem.”
“Anyone under 18 can be eligible? Can’t they get a job during the summer by the time they are 16? Hunger can be a positive motivator. What is wrong with the idea of getting a job so you can get better meals? Tip: If you work for McDonald’s, they will feed you for free during your break.“
The NBC/Amy Poehler comedy “Parks & Recreation,” the character of the mayor is a guy who has only one belief: that “government” is horrible, that “government” must be destroyed, that “government” is first and always the enemy of “the people.” Naturally, that’s why he ran for office. It’s supposed to be a parody! But state and municipal governments across the country are infested with these public service-loathing nutbags.
And our newly-empowered Democrats run scared in the face of this nonsense. It’s becoming harder every day not to agree with Bill Maher’s recent rant:
Please let the at least mildly disturbed Rep. Davis know how you feel about her lunch program-hating comments, email her here.
Posted in Politics, The American Experience
Lindsey Graham is an asshole. (But you already knew that.)
- Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-SC, enjoys a little yuck-yuck during the 2008 Presidential campaign
Leading Republicans have been deploying two equally disingenous, almost laughably self-contradictory arguments to try and defeat health care reform, and especially the desperately-needed “public option” government-administered insurance plan.
First, they argue, it would be unfair to make insurance companies compete with the federal government. Now, coming from Republican folks who argue day and night that the private sector is always superior, always more efficient, this is an interesting paradox. Since it should be self-evident to all us schlubs who are not in Congress, that the current private health insurance system is working so very, very well — indeed, the American health care system is the greatest in the world, despite any stupid statistics (or your personal experiences) to the contrary — it would just be inherently unfair to have to compete with the big, bad federal government, which, after all, never does anything right and…. Well, that’s kind of where I lose them.
Perhaps more insipidly — Senator Graham, do you not avail yourself of your Congressional health plan? — is the argument that any federal insurance program would impose government “bureaucrats” on your personal health care decision making process. Senator Graham hit this week’s Sunday talk show circuit to make just this argument:
(Transcript of “This Week with George Stephanopoulous,” Sunday June 21, 2009.)
As a real citizen — who over the course of the last 20 years has received private health care coverage through just 2 employers (of my wife’s), but has been placed, with little or no control, into at least 16 different health insurance plans during that same time — I would like to offer Sen. Graham a little visual primer on the U.S. health care insurance system and “bureaucracy.” To wit, I have drawn this little graph for the Senator’s enlightenment:
Senator Graham begs to differ. When I see all those bureaucrats standing between me and my doctor in the diagram above, I’m just being a socialist (or fascist, depending on the day of the week) fellow-traveler. I should know it takes a Senate Republican, who receives generous federal health insurance for himself and his family, to explain to me how there are actually no “bureaucrats” in the diagram above, only hard-working, honest businessmen, doing the best for me and my family. So, after consulting the Republican talking points on health care reform, I realized I had to change the picture. So, thanks to Senator Graham, below is the “real” picture of the American health care insurance system:
Of course, while Senator Graham is one of the worst examples, the biggest meaningful obstacle to getting a reasonable public health care insurance option in this country are certain conservative Congressional Democrats. Please write your Congressional representatives, especially if you live in an area represented by one of these fence-sitting Democrats, and let them know that Senator Graham’s view of the public option is the view of a blind, old fool, and that the best way to remove “bureaucrats” from the relationship between you and your doctor is to institute some form of public health insurance program.
Do it before you get sick or go bankrupt. And don’t fool yourself that your flim-flam private insurance is going to keep this from happening to you. Have you actually read your health insurance policy? Do you even know what it covers, honestly? The fact is that the same “entrepreneurs” who brought you sub-prime mortgages, credit card contracts and Bernie Madoff sell you your health insurance. Think there’s much difference? Think again.
Health care was never truly a “market,” in any sensible meaning of that word, to begin with. The time is now to stand up and demand a health care system that works for all of us.
Posted in Politics, The American Experience
Iran: America’s most dependable mid-East ally?
(Video hat tip: Andrew Sullivan)
I’ve long been of the opinion that once the U.S. State Department and other American foreign affairs powers-that-be got over the long trauma of the Iranian revolution and the “loss” of Iran, that the S’hia Muslims and historical Persians of Iran were generally better suited intellectually and emotionally to be friends of America than the Gulf Arabs of Saudi Arabia. If the very dangerous and potentially incendiary and potentially harmfully destabilizing “popular” uprising today in Iran can, against very long odds, succeed, we may very quickly find the entire arithmetic of mid-East diplomacy changed. The first place that could benefit from that new arithmetic would be Afghanistan, of course.
We must, first and foremost, of course, not be tempted to militarily intervene, regardless of how things turn out. But with a great deal of luck, a new Iranian state could emerge that would be at least as friendly to American interests, while posing some of the same ideological challenges, as today’s China or Vietnam. That would be what, I think the pundits would call, a major inflection point.
Posted in Politics, The American Experience
Inspirations and Aspirations 