When all good common sense says one thing, and greed for money says another, our own government is proof that today, unfortunately, money always wins the debate. It's time we at least call this beast for what it is, and stop trying to sugar-coat this thing as if there is any real debate about merit going on at all.
The real reason every citizen's health is not ensured as a right of being a citizen---as in Canada, and much of Europe and Asia---is because of greed, plain and simple. The theory behind this Universal Health Care principle is that if you keep people healthy individually, then you keep the people collectively happy, healthy, able to work... and so, pay taxes. Objections to this idea do not come from any theoretician of any merit, any big thinker, or from any unbiased evaluation. Specifically, the only arguments against such a plan come from the greed of those people involved in the private, insurance-funded field of medical care. These include, but are not limited to, all of the following, in no particular order:
1. Doctors and Scientists, Therapists, etc.
2. Pharmaceutical companies
3. Hospitals, HMOs, Clinics, Mental Hospitals, etc.
4. Insurance companies
All of these four groups argue so vehemently against Universal Health Care because under Universal Health Care they would all stand to lose big money. But again, let's be straight about it. Only these people charge such exorbitant fees for their services and add huge markups to their products. Even in down times, people get sick, in fact, illnesses increase in times of economic and political strife. This is why for too long the capitalization on medical services has been an unfair business. This "debate" about health care going on right now at the Capitol and broadcast through every media outlet in the country is a SHAM debate. it is merely the money, power, and lobbyists of these industries fighting against any change in the existing order of things.
Let's take them one by one. Doctors are esteemed in our society very highly. Most, but not all doctors, therapists, plastic surgeons, and the like come from good families with money. They were graced by the fortune of being able to go to school get educated. They took the Hippocratic oath to only do things to help people and nothing more. We hand them our mothers, wives, and children, let them poke and prod them as they feel appropriate, and so grant them all the respect and trust that we grant to only gods. Yet, this is not enough. 150,000 a year under a UHC (Universal Health Care) system is not enough. Many times I have wondered, too many times, whether helping people stay healthy is really most of these people's true desire in life.
They complain, these doctors, along with several other of these conspirators, that quality of service in countries that have UHC is inferior. There is no objective proof to this at all. And if lifespan statistics be any indication of health, is it any coincidence that this lifespan is highest in countries which have some type UHC along with drug price regulation? The "gotta have it now" argument they peddle states that under UHC people will have to wait for medical services. Really? The last time I saw a doctor at the scheduled time was when I was five years old in the Bronx, and Doctor Granada, the man who delivered me, came to my house with his little black bag. Never have I seen a doctor on time since then, not even once, always I wait like an idiot with nothing to do, reading magazines and watching programs that pump the very idea of disease into my head.
Why, then, should we reward someone monetarily simply because they have an education? In the old days, yes even before my Bronx days, the doctor would work for a chicken, or whatever you had, so long as he could make you well and preserve his reputation as a true man of Hippocrates. But, then, along came drug companies, hospitals, and insurance. Insurance was started, of course, by racketeers, also in New York City, and was meant to, for a fee, protect a person against harm to his being or property. Now the chicken becomes 300.00 for a 12 minute specialist visit. Long deemed illegal, this racketeering has since changed hands and become the insurance industry, so strong that its services are required, and so must be purchased, by anyone who buys a home, drives a car, or who intends to have any sort of decent medical care. Listen to how this industry works: when you are young and do not need health care as much, your premiums are low. Then , the older you get, the more sick you get, the more they go up. In fact, if you ARE sick already, they can just reject you, and so you cannot pay to get better, not those exorbitant fees as they now stand. They are all overpaid, insurance a monopoly. Repeat this mantra to everyone you see: Anything required, about which we have no real choice, should be regulated. You know, like local telephone company...
Now it is funny how every time we debate health care insurance and HMOs and the like are the first things that get mentioned. Here's an idea: eliminate insurance completely from the discussion. Eliminate the middle man.
Now the drug companies. Many countries even without UHC have some form of price controls on pharmaceuticals, and much better quality control than is provided by American "self-policing" and the FDA. A pill that costs two cents to make, a pharm company can currently charge 10.00 for, and nobody says anything about it. When gripes to start coming in, these companies talk about "research and development" and "testing" as justification for the gouging. Another great business to be in, is it not? Like insurance, which is required, drugs are required to treat illness. How would any of you readers like to own a business where your customers pay for your research and testing phases, or how would you like to own a business whose services are required by the state? Pretty cozy setup, wouldn't you say?
And let's not forget the hospitals. The Holiday Inns that reek of alcohol and iodine, that, like the pharm companies, have shareholders and board members who care first of all about the figures. State-run hospitals as an alternative would almost certainly cut their business at least in half, and so they would have to cut their Penthouse Suite rates from 1000.00 a night (with meals) to a more reasonable rate.
In short, there is no argument against Universal Health Care that holds water. Even those supplied by these four overpaid clown posses have no weight at best, and at worst, are downright lies. I have seen state-run medical services in several countries, and their quality of service and appearance are barely distinguishable from the poshest LA psychiatric clinic.
Give the people the choice. Universal Health Care would open up a million jobs just in the construction stage alone, and put several hundred thousand more medical personnel to work after the setup is complete. Offer the option to pay a flat tax per-head, or to go with private coverage.
Nobody wants this, in these four inductries. Because then they would have to adjust their prices in order to compete. By my reading this is the American Way. Mr. Obama, stop the dilly-dallying: make this thing a reality, the same way you stuffed the shirts of too-fat-already bankers.
Well wouldn't you know it, here we go again.
Let's put some things in perspective. One of the reasons the Prez got elected in November was because American citizens were rightfully angry at the status quo. We have been taxed progressively more ever since World War I, we have continually fought wars of some kind abroad ever since that time, we have continued to decrease civil liberties, and we have since been getting robbed by a monopolistic health care industry, fleeced by insurance---a requirement to survive---and we have stood by like idiots while the Constitution gets torn to shreds in the name of unjust wars. We have more enemies abroad than ever before because of our unjustified aggressive actions. No WMDs in Iraq, and no quick exit from Afghanistan, not with all those oil possibilities by the Caspian Sea.
I write today because I have been receiving mailings from Moveon.org frequently as of late, the latest "we need your help" being about Prez Obama's "drastic" 30% health care discount. To me, this is an insult, a trick and a ploy to get the claws of the insurance business into everyone, like good mafiosi. Furthermore, it is insuting because SINCE WHEN does MONEY make the issues change? Yes, I am realistic, I know how it works, but enough is enough already. Nobody asks for research, or a court date, or a hearing, or protests. I get letters 3 times a week from the "representatives" of the sitting administration and Barrack Obama asking me for donations and phone calls to my representatives. You've got a goddamned phone, pick it up, and call them up, or email them, yourselves, it would seem you all know each other a lot better. Stop jerking the working man, the 80% of citizens in this country around. Stop running away from the term "socialized medicine." Look at places that have it, check the lifespan of the inhabitants, and you will see, we pay top dollar for at best mediocre medical care, or as I call it, the Parrot Squad of the Averages.
Nevertheless, before I lose this fire, and so muse (because I too have been hypnotized in the past, asleep to what is really going on), let me say that we don't need conspiracy theories when the facts, common sense, and plain observation prove the perspective we should finally now, undoubtedly, begin to see. For force of effect, let's put this perspective this way, as what Bob says: Bob says the government is our enemy. This government is no longer OUR government, as the founding documents of this country say it ought be; it is not us, it is the "other."
We elect representatives and so we are a republic, but scarcely half of us bother to vote. Of the half that do not enter the polls, a good percentage would vote, but do not for varying reasons, not all bad ones, for instance, they say "there is no real choice." Blue team, or red team only get to play, and they are in fact identical; there is no difference between a liberal republican and a conservative democrat. The green, orange, or yellow teams, who want to play, have to face tremendous handicaps to get the attention and media exposure required to relay messages these days. They both, blue and red, speak the same, they both speak the words the surveys say some people want to hear, they do not lead so much as carry on with the bullshit line we've had since Wilson. Hyperbole, possibly, the point is many do not vote because they feel it is FUTILE. "This machine is a-rollin', baby, and no amount of sanity, rationaility, or reason will stop it." So, they look out for their own, pay no attention, if, it seems, they are smart.
Some of these people got up and participated last election because they had hope. Hope for real change. Hope for the poor. Hope for universal health care. Hope for human rights, for the end of silly wars of American lives sacrificed for business deals, even hope we would stop arresting people for growing pot, or smoking pot. All these folks mobilized because they saw a possible breakthrough. But no, you see, the government runs itself as a business, a racketeering loanshark arm of coersion, as of the Sicilian school after Lansky, applied to not just a city, but the entire nation. Covered with the tired robe of rhetorical "change" we quiet down a bit and take the (Merck and Pfizer, e.g.) soma...we stay sedated.
These are some of the Big Businesses that are the strongarms of, let us say, the syndicate, or, or Joint, the different "families" involved in making the American people pay up or pay the price, not for any valid reason, but for the syndicate's own easy existence and material benefit. The choices they pretend to offer the American people, as in candiate Blue, or candidate Red, Bob says, are both already approved by the mafiosi government. His examples:
1. The Congress, the Judicial System, the Executive Branch
--All of these people are making a good living on you. This is not a congress of fellow blacksmiths and bartenders. This is a bunch of lawyers and sons and daughters of rich daddies, most of whom have done little real work their entire lives. All of them suck up taxpayer money, which money also goes to those lunches, airplanes, vacations, the best wine and liquor and champagne, and an endless supply of paper, pencils, and hot secretaries, I will not speculate about hot tubs and Vegas trips. Let's not forget about that great Health Insurance Plan, remember, the one the Prez said we would be able to buy into.
2. Arms Dealers
--The real Big Business, also the related guerillas, guns-for-hire, and departments of association concerned with buying, selling, making, maintaining, designing, and distributing weapons of mas destruction. And small guns and knives and buckles and uniforms and war paint. My friend Bob says the military is our friend, forced to fight wars to expend weapons and secure strategic or lucrative (as in oil) real estate.
3. Big Banking
--Let's recap: we have been hearing for years from the Fed, from the past administrations, that we are broke, that we have no money for children's schools, or to fix roads, or achieve even an efficient bank balance. Yet, when the banks came a-callin', we not only found them the money, HUGE money (WHERE FROM??? TELL THE PEOPLE!), but we gave it to them toot sweet. Do they think we are all imbeciles?
4. Insurance
--Wouldn't you love to have a business selling a product the government says you must have? For a home loan, for a driver's license, to own a vehicle...and now, maybe, for health care too? What is a 30% discount? It is an insult, because the increased business will actually benefit the insurance coffers in the end, with the increased business and perhaps total control in health care. WHY is it so hard just to offer a health care like Canada does, or like Germany does, or like most industialized nations, even Iran. Why, because insurance and banks have a long relationship. Reseach any of this yourself, thoroughly, and you will see. Insurance is one of the powers that be, and the way it looks, soon opting out will not be an option. This smokescreen about how difficult it will be to get ithe 30% frequent flyer discount is to make their aggressive move look charitable. It will pass, and the costs will rise, and the uninsured will still continue to pay cash rather than feed the insurance machine. Which brings us to another related "field":
5. Health care Industry
--All facets, nothing is exempt. Phramaceutical companies, hospitals, doctors, every single one of them is overpriced for what they do, and they know it. It's not as if they are compensated for success. Aspirin advertises 5% better results than placebo, and this is THEIR sponsored study. People die by the thousands yearly by taking only aspirin, and yet new, clearly untested pharmaceuticals hit the shelves at an amazing speed, pushing and selling pills and services with 1000% markup, with arguable success for the measures. They claim that they offer the best service, when clearly a look at your almanac, or here: http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-613.pdf
...will show that this is clearly not the case. Having been to some of those places, I have seen it with my own eyes. We must wait if we are not in emergency. Is that a problem? Only for Ph.D. pseudo-doctors who have the gall to suggest aesthetic treatment is in line with the oath of Hippocrates, or that the insurance will pay for it. 100.00 pills, 3,000 a night beds, 200.00 shots, it's ok, insurance will pay. If the doctors and beds had to take chickens, like in the old days, maybe we wouldn't value so highly someone who was lucky enough to get a good education. As is, they should be paid like bricklayers, who are much more tired after work.
There are more, many more, but I am getting tired. I am dismayed that a President who promised health care for everyone is seemingly resoritng to the bribe of a 30% discount on medical insurance. "Green jobs," to build what, again? Why not build public hospitals, schools, clinics, and let the working men really work and earn a living, in the mean time creating real infrastructure and jobs and facilities for millions in education and health care?
Aw don't worry , I am sure we can find the money.
Sin taxes are not new to the United States of America. To sum these sorts of taxes up quickly, they are, in a nutshell, designed to punish people, monetarily, for activities and products that "the Establishment" feels are no good for public consumption.
What this new Sin Tax on tobacco has done is effectively double the price of cigarettes, and in every respect this is a losing proposition, and one entirely against freedom and the American Way. We might have to come to grips with the fact that this is no longer the usual American Way we grew up hearing about, with its emphasis on liberty and accompanying responsibility. No this is not our Daddy's America. This is damn near a communist state, by which I mean one where the government ever-exceedingly tells its people what to do.
Despite the crying and whining and childish "nasty habit" rhetoric of non-smokers, they do not want to tell you obvious facts about the lung cancer they are so concerned about. Namely, that well over half of people diagnosed with lung cancer never smoked at all. Try to find the actual circumstances of the studies in question, and you will get no more than a summary. They will not tell the details about the actual studies, nevertheless people, even our leaders, accept these "results" as gospel, that the ills of our country will be healed with the more or less prohibition of tobacco. They do not tell you, either, that we have yet---despite trillions invested over the years---to find the cause of one single cancer; how do you suppose we could be so lucky as to have stumbled across lung cancer's cause? Simple, if you smoke and have lung cancer, they mistakenly, and quite unscientifically, therefore cite that smoking as cause.
Well then let's consider our overall health and well-being and ask what else it is that we might not like and should tax, for reason that it is "not good for you." We could start with a primary educational system that is nothing more than learning how to follow orders. While we worry about cigarettes our young people are the most ignorant in the world, shoeless school-goers in Nigeria becoming more educated than our well-protected youth. We could cite hundreds of food products, preservatives, genetically engineered foods, and exhaust fumes which, undoubtedly, have a hand in that cancer rate among non-smokers, as we, the idiots, accept as truth their silly claims that "second hand smoke" from cigarettes is responsible. We could point to aluminum cans our "basic American foods" come in, caffeine in coffee, breakfast foods and snacks and fast foods empty of nutrients and loaded with carcinogenic material. We could point to fat people, who, well, they always disturb my sense of aesthetics, and so maybe they should be taxed for offending me, as does people's lack of washing themseleves properly, undoubtedly because that time in school that should have been spent on biology and hygiene was spent relaying to children the ills about smoking or sex. We could cite perfumes that make me sneeze and gag, obnoxious amounts of gold and diamonds, that nevertheless are legal and untaxed to any greater degree. We could point to atomic and hydrogen bomb blasts, ans pollutants from factories, all of which we inhale, every day.
But I am not here trying to get people to accept smoking. I realize this is a lost cause because of the venomous hatred so many have been instructed to generate towards a simple cigarette, and the godlike status of "science" to the simple-minded yet "educated" among us. What I wish to do is address these sorts of sin taxes on grounds of liberty. You cannot tax these cigarettes when diamonds and gold, hormone-injected meats and vegetables, obscene luxuries, junk foods and the like see no increase. Automobiles that are gas guzzlers, costing 100,000 dollars and more, are allowed to continue, and with no extra taxes added to the purchase prices.
The American spirit is fast dying. A proud people once leery of threats to any and all threats to their freedom, in fact who came here to preserve these liberties for themselves, now find themselves under the tyranny of the majority, without the corresponding respect for their minority. We have become docile sheep, willing to withstand anything the majority of brainwashed by shabby science people shove in our faces. Like sheep, we make not a peep, while the taxes we already pay are squandered by a wasteful and overall stupid government. To throw stuff into the sea would seem to be a citizen's recourse...until he estimates that as requiring just too much effort, especially when a cold six-pack awaits him in the refrigerator, a TV dinner in the freezer, and Family Guy on TV.
Finally, this tax is an insult to our intelligence. This government, which as the years go by exhibits more and more incompetency, somehow came up with almost a billion dollars to bail out the banking and auto industries, how, and where the money came from, we are not explained, but wouldn't you know it, we need to tax cigarettes, already taxed more than their cost to produce, in order to get kids health care.
This is an atrocity, and inane for yet more reasons. What happens if people quit smoking, as obviously the insurance industry, which started this whole mess, wants us to do? Who will pay for childrens' health care then? What will we tax? Isn't it funny how in less than 100 years, in fact about 60, we have gone from a country which barely taxed its citizens at all, to a country which taxes us left and right, and requires permits and licenses for just about everything. We are free? Free to pay taxes, and do what we are told. This is the worst form of tyranny, and the reason we parted with our last similar oppressor, England.
This tax is furthermore unconstitutional, as nobody in Congress represents the smoker; as it seems to me, this is called "Taxation Without Repesentation," and shows again our willingness to accept mediocre science and logic as national guiding principles, and a hot rod of burning tax up our behinds. Fast we are becoming a nation of a great divide, namely between those people who want to think for themselves, make their own choices, run their household their way, and raise their kids as they see fit, and those who want the government to support them, raise their children, tell them what to do, and tell them what is good or bad for them. These latter would get along anywhere, even in Afghanistan, or Rwanda, and not make a peep about the conditions, because they are by nature, sheep. Luckily, for America right now, the so-called "educational system" has been producing these mindless sheep at an ever-increasing rate, guaranteeing the need for nannies. Otherwise these stupid policies and infringements on personal liberties would not be allowed to happen.
Already the discontent is rising, I can feel it, I hear it from my friends, this discontent of the other half that knows and respects freedom and liberty, and what these things mean. The talk of stopping payment of all taxes to this government is growing by the day. Not only that, what will they come for next? You know the old story. They came for blacks, I wasn't black, so I didn't do anything; they came for the Jews but I wasn't Jewish so I didn't do anything. They came for the smokers, but I didn't smoke, so i did nothing. Soon, they will come for you, or what you enjoy, and you know what? There will be no concern left to help you.
Wake up America ...or whatever the hell this country has become, because it certainly is not what our founding fathers intended, read the old documents and feel it rather than parrot the interpretations, of which there is no shortage, by people with axes to grind. We talk about the old days as if we have somehow improved. On the contrary, our founding fathers knew what liberty means, and today would not recognize this Oligarchic Nanny State we call America...as we, with all our goody-goody rhetoric and fancy Blackberries can't add 2 numbers together, and slowly degenerate to a third world country. Obama says we don't need those outsourced jobs here in America, apparently secure that other nations will require the needs of a service economy---while we starve, or leave the handling of our foods and clothing and gadgets in the hands of Thailand, Korea, Malaysia, and China. Stupid, stupid policy.
Were we to truly tax sin, I dare say, 99% of the people running our government, the banks, the big businessmen...would be, right now, flat broke, despite their non-smoking facilities and green tea.
It's time to decriminalize or even legalize marijuana and cannabis products. This can be done by rescheduling them to Schedule V.
Three times this government has asked the people about issues close to their hearts, and three times the people have overwhelmingly stated that their number one concern is the legalization of marijuana. Personally, I believe we have bigger fish to fry, such as Universal Health Care and Job Creation, but without doubt I agree that this marijuana issue should have a priority tag attached to it.
I could quote hundreds of famous authors and men of reknown in support of legalization. I could cite the hundreds of arguments that were used against alcohol prohibition as well to support the end to this tyranny we call the "war on drugs" especially as it relates to marijuana. I could show medical studies which show marijuana as no more harmful than Oreo cookies. I could call attention to the growing prison and jail system and a clogged court system both fueled by the arrest and harrassment of marijuana smokers who commit no harm to anyone.
But these reasons have all been explained before, and it seems the only people who do not listen to them are those with an interest in keeping the substance illegal, such as the courts, the police, the DEA, the military, drug companies, and "clinics" who have everything to lose when we legalize. No, what I wish to call attention to is the matter of Truth and disclosure, and above all the principle of fairness.
This country has seen a government "by the people for the people" become an "Other," by which I mean an entity that the average American does not see as its own, but rather an entity apart from him, that is an oppressor rather than supporter of the freedoms and liberties guaranteed by the Constitution and the other documents which form the basis of the United States of America. The illegal status of marijuana and cannabis products needs to end because it is a living and constant symbol of lying by government, a demonstration of "truths" selectively chosen only when they fit the needs of the establishment.
Not "just" bleary-eyed (so what? what's it to you?) dopers, but smart people with "high" positions no longer trust this government, and one of the biggest reasons is that this government has not been straight with the people about the effects of marijuana. As the argument goes, if the people who set our laws are supposedly experts, and verifiably, perhaps consciously lying to us about THIS issue, what else are they lying to us about? This line of highly understandable reasoning causes profound distrust of the government, and cynicism about government enterprises in general. Legalization would be a step in the right direction, demonstrating that this government does indeed guide itself by Truth and a commitment to the "best in the world" liberties we have documented.
We have become, regarding this respect for inalienable human rights and liberties, rather than a beacon, a third-world country. We are mocked abroad for the lip-service we give, without the corresponding and necessary legal protections, to freedom, in the same way as in the name of "freedom" we subject whole nations to our boycotts and bombs. History will not judge this period of American history favorably, and it will notice the Narcotic Act as no different than McCarthy's escapades, Crusades, and Inquisitions. Where is the crime to humanity? Where is the tort? WHO is allowed to tell a man what he can put into his body? What he can grow in his own backyard?
Ask around and you will find few people against legalization of this sacred herb. From my experience, the only people today who want people arrested for growing or smoking marijuana fall into three sorts. The first sort is plain ignorant, they only believe what they are told, and have never researched a thing on their own in their lives, they are parrots of what they hear, ignorant by all estimations, and will do what they are told regardless of what they are told. The second sort have something to lose by legalizaion, for instance, drug clinics and these sorts of "medical" personnel, the police, the DEA, the military, "Drug" or "Safety" Councils, Alcoholics-Anonymous-like organizations, and pharmaceutical companies, this latter who know how much money they will lose when more people realize how much more a simple herb can help their ailments, without side effects, and so without need for yet another pill. Keep in mind, for example, that aspirin advertises a mere 5-10% improvement over placebo, and thereby is considered effective medicine.
The third type who want drugs to remain illegal are those who sell it illegally.
Is it small businesses we are trying to save, then? This is a madness that has grown out of proportion, we continue to imprison more of our own people than any other country in the world by a landslide, in fact we hold over 25% of all the world's prisoners, and we dedicate billions of dollars to what has now become the prison industry. Yet, still, we cannot point to ONE SINGLE CRIME commited by pot smokers, other than those specifically legislated against the activity, as was once the case for alcohol. It did not take long to repeal the alcohol prohibition because people got angry. With marijuana people rarely get angry, otherwise this issue would have been over decades ago, the laws changed to reflect the freedom of a person to ingest into his body, in this America, whatever the hell he so chooses.
Three times, now, the people have spoken. You have asked for The People's input, and when you get it, it is ignored. What kind of joke is this? Keep ignoring these voices, and this presidency will be a one-termer, for sure, and the winner of the next election, I would bet my shirt, will be the one who says "I will decriminalize marijuana." Don't underestimate why people want this, many know it is a symbol of government oppression that needs to end before any "commitment to Truth" will be taken seriously. Re-establish trust, legalize or decriminalize immediately, as quickly as you taxed the cigarettes which, had we any American spirit, we should be throwing, like tea, into the sea.
[addenda: I write this after watching the President's first online town hall meeting. I recall that he specifically wanted to address the question about marijuana helping to grow the economy, to the response of idiotic laughter. While it is not feasible to use this herb for the purpose stated, it would have been a good opportunity to address the other aspects of the herb, namely, arrrest and incarceration. Really, it is insulting to laugh like idiots when half of them in that room (including the President) either once did or still do smoke grass. We should rather laugh intelligently, at for example the claims that windmills and solar panels will create jobs, or that banks deserve charity, or that sending "menial jobs" overseas is a still a good idea. These tickle me greatly...until I realize these people are serious.]
That America is an oligarchy, meaning a nation ruled by money, we can no longer doubt. The latest fiascos involving Big Banking and the American taxpayer prove this without qualification.
The crooked banker Geithner, our new Secretary of Treasury, with the full permission of the President, has allowed money from the coffers of the American taxpayers, meant to keep certain dying banks afloat, to go to rewarding unsuccessful, in fact detrimental banking executives with millions and sometimes ten of millions of dollars in bonuses to high ranking banking officials. Geithner looks out for these types because he comes from them, indeed, is still one of them.
Here is the definition of "oligarchy" from Wikipedia:
"Oligarchy (Greek Ὀλιγαρχία, Oligarkhía) is a form of government where power effectively rests with a small elite segment of society distinguished by royalty, wealth, family, military influence or occult spiritual hegemony. The word oligarchy is from the Greek words for "few" (ὀλίγος olígos) and "rule" (ἀρχή arkhē). Such states are often controlled by politically powerful families whose children are heavily conditioned and mentored to be heirs of the power of the oligarchy. This type of power by its very nature may not be exercised openly; the oligarchs preferring to remain "the power behind the throne", exerting control through economic means."
We need to recap the events that have led up to a country, for all practical purposes broke, somehow coming up with hundreds of billions of dollars to bail out Big Banking. The United States of America has had no money for children's education, to help the poor, to develop new projects meant to create jobs. Yet somehow, when the banks called, we were able, despite our dollar worth 65 cents Euro, to come up with the hundreds of billions.
Now who is benefitting by all this? Nobody but the bankers, and let's see who these bankers are. They are people already with money, people, in the words of one banker, whose "lifestyles would be shattered" if they did not receive their customary million-dollar-plus bonuses. This, a reward for unsuccessfully managing their businesses, in fact sending them down the toilet. Were we to be conspiracy theorists, we could say it is a small handfull, perhaps 2% of the population, who control most of the wealth in this country; we could say Obama has already been "cleared" by the banking powers that be to be effective in promoting this oligarchic agenda; that the appointment of known corrupt individuals with direct ties to banking, like Geithner, has now allowed the banks to fully and unremittingly dip into American taxpayer coffers whenever they so choose.
No businesses in America, with the exception of the automobile industry, which itself funds quite a bit of the oligarchic, and so banking/government complex, is able to receive any funds for a dying business. No bank wil loan money for such an enterprise. Yet, the people who are supposed to be watching our money allow it to happen, allow incompetent idiots with MBAs from Ivy-League schools steal money from Americans.
This all started because educated morons like Paulson and his predecessors have put the fear into the government that if these banks fail, so will the economy, and so the country; these are the same "experts in finance" who make the same statements about the stock market, and who got us in the mess to start with because they can't balance the books. We should be appalled at the amount of money banks have made at the expense of a nation.
It is nevertheles a lie. Failing banks would be bought by people who know better how to run such enterprises, and if they come from China, what's the difference, as we owe so much money around the globe maybe they are doing someting right while our top dogs (indeed) sip champagne and buy their 3rd home in Paris, and their 4th classic car. A lifestyle to keep up, indeed.
Is President Obama a shill for the Oligarchy? Had he already been cleared in advance by the oligarchs, knowing he would put some of their own in strategic positions? Think carefully about what it means when banks, historically some of the biggest crooks using usury and shady practices in loaning money and all dealings, get American taxpayer funds to help them out. This is like taking a man that has been beating you daily with a stick, and giving him a gun when his stick breaks.
This is sad, and I'm no conspiracy theorist, but I will tell you this. If this crap keeps up, this country is going to revolt, the American spirit hangs on, if barely, and will rebel against this whole situation. The step is coming where we will refuse to pay any and all taxes...then we will see what kind of resourcefulness our government can muster. Keep this up, and this revolution you do not want, where Americans rid themselves completely of this Leviathan, will occur. You cannot reward the most lucrative businesses in the world when they fail, and not punish them for the abuses of their position. There is no mercy on the part of banks when you do not pay back your loan, even if you are diseased and dying. Why should we have mercy on bakers who still sip champagne, and who only break a sweat over racquetball, or in the sauna at the MGM Grand.
President Obama, this is your call. Remember what you came from, who elected you, do the things you know common sense says should be done, one of which is do not listen to failures and hypothetical theorists, and you will be remembered as a reformer and genius. Keep listening to these weasels in banking and "experts in finance" and you will be remembered as THE President that officially turned over the country to the oligarchs, so that they no longer even have to hide their malicious, greedy, and incompetent forays into the wealth of American citizens.
Let the banks die, we will take the chance, and recover quickly from any problems. Maybe it is time for Fred's Bank, or, the Bank of the United States of America. Come on Barrack, don't be just another poltiician like we have been accustomed to seeing as of late. You want change, you rode the back of change and outrage at the status quo to get where you are. Make your word good. Let those banks die, take a quarter of what you were going to spend, and invest in jobs instead. With money and bread the working man doesn't even need banks, despite their trying to be involved---with credit and debit cards, automatic transfers, and so on---in every single financial transaction.
Ask yourself, Mr. President: Who is advising me? Why would it be to their benefit to recommend what they do? Think simple, think mom-and-pop shops, which built America, and see where this big business sympathy, and banking dole, is the worst form of communism there is. There is no free enterprise, certainly, when banks can go on welfare. And on welfare, should they get caviar and blackjack vacations, or rather cheese and beans for the sustenance. This banking flop is the result of Karma, a payback for what evils banks have done to America; please Barrack, let Karma do its work...you cannot in any way stop it, you can only delay this inevitable, an the longer you prohibit its work, the stronger will come its eruption.
The momentum gained by the campaign which elected President Obama is one that hangs from a thin thread. President Obama was elected--if we throw away the "anybody but Bush" motivation---by virtue of his novelty. This past election was a rejection of the corruptness of Politics and the President is the beneficiary. We liked his presence, his obvious speaking powers and charisma. We appreciated the fact that he was a little green, in fact, we liked him that way; he represented, to us, a fresh start.
We liked how he seemed to care about the working people.We cherished his talks about education. We liked how he admitted he not only partied, but that he even inhaled. The honesty was refreshing, and do not underestimate the hippie vote (I am a brother...) that went to Obama; he did, after all, say we need to decriminalize "marijuana laws." Add to this the change of scenery that still race-conscious individuals hail as a victory, and even I still get excited when I think about the possibilities for change.
Still, though, today we have seen little that makes sense or that appears to be change. We have installed people with questionable allegiances in high positions near the President. We have earmarked hundreds of billions of dollars for silly projects like tax rebates and windmills. Who will benefit from this? Why not just have a science fair, and award 10 million dollars for the production of the best idea? You'd save 299.9 billion, put more people to action and get more ideas working. Hell, make it a yearly prize. Also as for economics, why not legalize marijuana? It is an industry, it's being legal has kept the Dutch economy alive the past thirty years. As for the banks, how can the state justify paying the people who run the Federal Reserve Banks those salaries? We already know we sold away the American coffers, why not take them back, divorce ourselves from that Leviatahan? Who will fight us over it? Maybe the few dozen billionaires in this country, who who never ask how they could have made this type of fortune without someone getting the shaft?
As for education, why are we talking about spending money on higher education, while our most important formative years are spent being babysat and disciplined, stifling creativity, and establishing a lousy base for higher education to have to deal with? Do you really think rewarding schools which produce better government-test-takers will produce better, smarter people? In fact, shouldn't the opposite dole be happening? I have never seen laziness among eductaors like I have seen going on with my youngest son. Ditto sheet after ditto sheet, no interest generated, hopping from one thing to the next, just touched-upon to ready the test-takers. Who is advising the President here? Why do we allow people with no more experience than an AA degree the right to teach children during the time when these kids are most able to assimilate and retain knowledge? What do they have to teach? Pushing this idea, would we not be better served havng our most educated people teaching the youngest school-age children? Why do other countries spend less and get more out of their pupils? I can tell you why, it is because they recruit more dedicated teachers, who are trained more efficiently, and they allocate their resources more efficently, as in books and papers rather than buildings and School Board salaries. As for the curriculum and approach to learning, they allow freedom, they don't just talk about it as an ideal.
As for the bailouts, more money spent on dying animals. I understand the compassion for the animals, but sometimes, for the sake of society, it is probably better to just let the dinosaur die (I thank an old friend for this phrase). These banks, these stocks, these failing auto industries...they have had a good run. The banks made thousands of millionaires while burying many an unfortunate home owner, and at least underpaying their people in the trenches. Those bigwigs won't be at a soup kitchen, and if they are, after an 8-digit salary year, maybe they deserve to be there. Let's do some WORK, and by this I don't mean sit in front of your computer trading stocks, or traveling to Lisbon to sign a piece of paper. I mean for some of these folks, maybe they should get a job, where you are physically tired when you come home. No, it is not the ultimate, but those jobs are there. They ought have a taste, I mean it's been for many of them what, three or four generations since they picked up a spade with intent to do more than bet on it?
As for Health Care, finally, what's the hold-up here? Why is Moveon.org begging for money "so we can fight off" lobbyists? Shouldn't we rather be gathering facts to show to Congress? Invoke the obvious plan. SHOW your social security card number at government facility clinics and hospitals and participating doctor's offices such as we have now already. Tax every person $500 or so a year who wants this coverage, an option on the tax form. Expand the existing facilities, one per county at least, or as demand requires. What a project! Puts people to work! Let those who want their private insurance keep it. Over time, you will see expansion, as more people drop their private plans to adopt the government plan. Wait in line? I haven't seen a doctor on time since he came to my house when I wasfive years old.
And stop with the "regulation" talk as if it is a dirty word, it is insulting. This government for at least a half century has regulated everything, from driving a vehicle to paying taxes, to operating a business or building a home, and everything in between. You need a license to fish, or burn a fire. You are told not to speed, or even walk across the street a certain way. Inspections, registrations, regulations, all these things are what socialism is all about. Given that we already employ so many anti-Adam Smith, control of market principles, why not regulate those things we should regulate, and end the monopolies? Electricity cost, gas cost, local telephone lines, cost of prescription drugs, health care, etc.
The environment? Figure out how much each person uses in a day. Sell each person in a home that much electricity at a set price, wherever in the USA they live. Let's say 100 kw hours for ease of discussion. If you have 5 people in your house, you get 500 kw a day at the set (let's say .01/hr) rate. IF YOU GO OVER that amount you pay a surcharge. If the original cost was .01/hr, the surcharge boosts the extra usage hourly cost to .03/hr. This can be escalated at tiers of use. The idea is to save energy while we come up with something better. You can have all you want, but you will have to pay for it. Most people will cut down, or we will have lots of money going to generating more electricity.
Can we? Certainly. Will we? I remain unhappily skeptical.
Debt forgiveness is a mainstay in the US community, and we have forgiven billions of dollars in debt to many countries in the past few years alone. What debt forgiveness means is that those countries--oftentimes ruled by governments backed by or sympathetic to the United States--which have borrowed money from us no longer have to pay it back. This while we owe China billions, if not trillions by now. Yes I throw numbers around, just like we are now throwing money willy-nilly around to create comparatively few jobs. To give silly 500 dollar tax deductions.
Let us go on record, along with Noam Chomsky and hosts of others, that debt forgiveness can only be considered when the debts of our own people are forgiven first. Chomsky finds these debts should not be forgiven at any rate. We believe there is nothing wrong with forgiving a starving or poor nation what it owes us, SO LONG AS our own citizens have theirs forgiven first. What we are doing is similar to buying Christmas gifts for people we don't know while getting our own family nothing. Our LOWER education schools need boosting, NOT the "higher" education branches. They do fine with dinners and football.
We should start by forgiving those college graduates who owe for their student loans, and provide government RUN health care for those who want it. The benefits to this are not hard to see. With more money to spend, these people would buy more things, contributing to the economy and so contributing to the collection of taxes and gross national product. More than that, we would see some domestic money freed up and available for more business enterprises and the accompanying increase of jobs. Whenever someone says "take care of our own first" he is sure to meet with opposition from the bleeding hearts and "pay your own way" folks among us. But when one considers the amount of money big banking makes on student loans, late fees, interest, government subsidies, and so on, it really makes sense to do just that, take care of our own first, then worry later about how to spend the surplus. A country trillions of dollars in debt wasting money by the day on ridiculous wars and shady scientific projects (not to mention 5-course banquets...) has no business forgiving anyone anything. This is the American people's money they are playing with as if it is their own. So when Condoleeza Rice went to Africa to tell another foreign country, like Jesus, that "all will be forgiven," she helped others before she helped her own. Find out who authorizes and approves these forgivenesses. I think you will be surprised where the orders come from. Divorce ourselves from these Fderal Reserve Banks that are just handmaidens to the coffers of China. And living high while doing it. Come on Mr. President, come back down to Earth, I gave you everything I had, you are screwing up right now. And some of that staff...oh my...
Angelo Caiazzo
http://truthopia.wordpress.com/
I will make this short.
A monorail system.
The ultimate goal is to connect by efficient monorail (or similar) every single town in America. The Fed pays for the infrastructure regarding the rails and the concrete towers that hold them up. Each town builds the station and is responsible for the costs of that. Once the stations are up, the Fed puts them on the grid. When they start generating revenue (say, 10 cents a mile tokens), a share goes back to the Fed in the form of a tax to recover invested revenue. The rails are owned by the people.
Probably at least a 30 year project, creating at least half a million jobs during construction, and close to that after they are done. We improve the country, we commit to mass transportation, we save the environment, we generate jobs, we link the country together, and we will be able to see real change right away.
As I write this, auto makers in Detroit are between a rock and a hard place since Congress has voted to deny them any money.
While I agree with this refusal, I am also concerned about the workers. A reduction in salaries, as Congress demanded for workers, was rejected by the industry as a condition of any bailout. United Auto Workers, it seems, would not bow to that demand.
Congress was on the right track, but executed the plan incorrectly. As I stated in the previous post, if we rather demanded the firing of EXECUTIVES, rather than actual workers, the problem would be solved.
Again I say, trim the fat, and let the workers keep their jobs, hiring their own for supervisory positions.
This is getting ridiculous, this constant stream of big businesses losing money, paying no taxes, while their executives make obscene salaries. The businesses fold, and those obscene salaries remain in the executives' bank accounts.
As I write this we are in debate with the auto industry as to how best help it survive as a business. I have a plan, a simple one, but one I believe will benefit the most people across the board.
Unemployment seems to me the biggest and perhaps only leverage Detroit can muster in its attempts at salvage. It is not the nature of a free economy to use public funds to save a private business; the unemployment card is therefore a security blanket and the only reason this predicament is taking up public time at all. Only because of this anticipated result do we allow a company that has overpaid its executives, wasted money on lavish advertisements, and by bad management run itself into the ground, a hearing before Congress.
Look at the numbers and you will see it is not the real workers' salaries that are the problem. These American auto companies pay lobbyists, advertising agencies, executives, and officials for these companies extravagant amounts of money. One chief executive, for example, makes a SALARY of over 100 million dollars a year, justified because this person, likely one responsible for his company failing, was "the best talent" and needed to be retained at that high rate...or maybe he would have been snatched up by Proctor and Gamble (and maybe then we'd be bailing P&G out). These salaries for people who have no direct hand in the manufacture of the product, this doling out of gigantic sums for Super Bowl ads and the like, these private jets and expense accounts...these I call FAT, fat in need of trimming. I don't know even one dealership owner who is anywhere near the Soup Kitchen, but I do know many mechanics who work paycheck to paycheck.
Now to save these companies all you have to do is trim the fat. It is better for about 1,000 executives in Detroit to lose their jobs than 100,000 on the assembly lines lose theirs. Let the workers run the show, nominate their own at an agreed salary, to be executives. It is very strange that a company can legitimately pay its "top men" 7, 8, even 9 figure salaries, while the actual workers do it for under 6. They have been underpaying their employees, living high on the hog themselves, and now, without penalty to them, they ask we finance their struggles (bound to continue, under present leadership at least). Strange indeed, even stranger that this continues a bad penchant of late: companies form, draw for shareholders and executives "one show goodbye" salaries, and then dissolve, bankrupt, without any detriment to the nouveaux riche, or return of those huge salaries.
Get rid of the fat, trim it off, and many of these companies will stand on their own. I would guess that half the money the Big Boys are now asking for could be garnered from the bank accounts of the men asking for it. What we should be saying then is, if you are so sure you can save it, use your own money. They ought be lucky if we match their funds (as any school requires...). Millionaires asking for handouts so they can expand their portfolios is insulting, our considering the propect, obscene.
Let's not kid ourselves. The American auto industry has been suffering for quite some time. All the while, big, big money has been doled out for executives who would "improve things" or "fix the problems." Even the Feds' imposing drastic tariffs on import autos, to help the industry, has done little to spurn sales. Easily, Detroit could be made eco-friendly, in production methods and products. But they have been granted many tax breaks for researching methods of doing this themselves, and they have produced little, whether to help the environment or the economy of the vehicles. Six-figure banquets and five-figure jaunts are not unheard of when those jets fly to do big biz.
The auto industry, as it is? Let it die. If you want the taxpayers to carry a burden under these circumstances, trim off the fat, and let the few move on and find another job, in order to save the many we are really concerned about here. Most of those execs and lobbyists and advertisers and vendors won't need to, though, since they already have plenty. But the great-great grandkinds, well they will need a college education, and a house, and...
