Obama's Health Care Plan: To Prevent Health Care Industry Collapse

On Tue, 25 Aug 2009 13:11:36 -0400, Amused <...@ru.s

Editorial comment: Medical insurance companies in the USA are bankrupt --
they gambled their subscriber's premiums on the stock market and lost.
Without insurance companies, American's health care will be non-existent
as no one in America can afford to pay for health care out-of-pocket.
This also includes Big Pharma, which is precariously set to collapse
within months without insurance company stock market investments
netting trillions of freshly minted dollars from speculating in the
derivatives market. So, the Bernanke Solution prevails again -- bill the
bloated health care costs to the tax payer in the form of "Universal
Coverage" aka 'government funded' health care. Meanwhile, the medical
corporations remain afloat momentarily with the political maneuverings of a
bankrupt monetary system shifting the burden of debt from one shell to
another. The bottom line is Americans simply do not have enough income to
support all of the ponzi schemes.

The New Bourbons

25.08.2009 Source: Pravda.Ru URL:
http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/108987-bourbons-0

The most potent weapon in the hand of the oppressor is the mind of the
oppressed.

Stephen Biko

“Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you
feed him for life.” So the saying goes.

But is it necessarily true?

What if all the streams, lakes and rivers where this man sought to fish were
on private property? What if they were so polluted that few fish could
survive in them, and the ones that did were unfit for human consumption?
What if these waterways were diverted (i.e. outsourced) to locations this
man could not access? Clearly, under such scenarios, having knowledge about
fishing would be useless.

What if this man lived in a valley that contained ninety percent of his
country’s population, but only ten percent of its fishable waters? What if
the rest of the fishable waters were in parts of the country owned and
occupied by the remaining ten percent of the population? Surely economic
necessity would inspire our fisherman, and many of his neighbors, to migrate
to this sparsely populated, resource rich region of his country.

But there’s a problem. The “ten percenters” also control virtually all the
media outlets in the country, and for twenty-four hours a day, seven days a
week—on television, on the radio and in the newspaper—they “warn” the valley
people about the dangers of migration. “This sparsely populated region,”
they claim, “is not better, but worse, fraught with unseen perils that only
those who have historically resided here can ever hope to survive.”

So the valley people believe these media lies, and thus spend the rest of
their lives constantly fighting amongst themselves over the few edible fish
they catch, while living in constant fear that even those fish, and the
waters they live in, might someday be taken away.

Meanwhile the “ten percenters” lounge in their mansions, eat extravagant
meals, and laugh at the valley people’s gullibility.

Imagine this no more, because it is the reality of today’s America.

Why, one may ask, can’t the valley people recognize the injustice of their
situation and rebel against it? The answer is simple: the demagogy and
deceptiveness of the Bourbons.

Throughout American history, and to the present day, the Bourbons have
possessed the ability to divide the poor and middle-classes into categories
of race, gender, age, income and/or geographic location. Once they are
divided, it is relatively easy for the Bourbons to turn each category
against the others.

The Bourbons have historically created these schisms through an arsenal of
fascist political tactics: Placing the blame for social problems on innocent
scapegoats; manipulating fears, prejudices and superstitions; censoring
critics through threats and intimidation; repetitiously disseminating “great
lies” until they become accepted as truth; and appealing to emotion over
reason. When correctly employed these tactics—as America’s recent debate
over health care reform has glaringly illustrated—can easily incite a mob
mentality, which the Bourbons can then exploit for their own economic
interests.

Although the term “Bourbons” was originally used to describe die-hard
royalists in Europe, in the United States this word is often used to
describe America’s version of “royalty”—those who acquire fame or riches
through nepotism or cronyism, and who aren’t about to share them with
anybody.

The first of these Bourbons were wealthy landowners in the American South.
Prior to the civil war, these landowners profited immensely from the
institution of slavery and wanted it preserved at any cost.

Yet slavery had a negative economic impact on many poor, white Southerners.
After all, why should the Bourbons pay wages for hired hands when slaves
could be forced to work on the plantations for free? Why should the Bourbons
use the services of the local blacksmith, cobbler or carpenter when slaves
could be trained to perform such tasks?

Naturally the Bourbons were concerned that the poor whites would eventually
figure out that slavery only benefited the rich. To quash this potentiality,
they trumpeted the doctrine of “State’s Rights” and “white supremacy,” doing
it so effectively that many of these poor, Southern whites lost their lives
during the American civil war defending the “right” of the Bourbons to own
slaves.

Although the Northern victory in this war subsequently resulted in the
abolition of slavery, it did not diminish the influence of the Bourbons.
Shortly after Reconstruction ended and the Northern troops went home, these
Bourbons mandated that all Southern institutions would be segregated by
race. The injustices these “Jim Crow” laws ultimately produced caused
cartoonist Thomas Nast to condemn them as being “worse than slavery.”

Yet, since the Bourbons deceptively hid these injustices behind the mantra
of “separate but equal,” the United States Supreme Court, which had decreed
just a few years earlier that African-Americans had no rights that a white
person was bound to respect, ruled that these racist laws were
constitutional.

When the civil rights struggles of the 1950s and 60s began to challenge “Jim
Crow” segregation, the Bourbons, concerned they would no longer get away
with paying African-Americans sub-standard wages or bits of tin redeemable
only at plantation stores, and fearing the loss of power if
African-Americans were able to remove the obstacles impeding their right to
vote, again used appeals to “State’s Rights” and “white supremacy” to
encourage poor, white Southerners to attack anyone who supported the civil
rights movement.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once discussed the effectiveness of these appeals
by recounting a conversation he had with white guards while imprisoned in
the Birmingham jail. After learning how little these guards were paid, King
told them, “You ought to be marching with us. You’re just as poor as
[African-Americans]. You are put into the position of supporting your
oppressor, because, through prejudice and blindness, you fail to see that
the same forces that oppress [African-Americans] in American society oppress
poor white people.”

Today there is a new crop of Bourbons, like Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck, Sean
Hannity, Ann Coulter, Bill O’Reilly, Rupert Murdoch and the
pseudo-journalists of his Fox “News” channel, all graduates of the Joseph
Goebbels school of broadcasting.

The issue currently inciting the demagogy of many of these Bourbons is not
based upon race (at least not openly), but upon opposition to President
Barack Obama’s proposals for health care reform. And even though these
Bourbons are just as despicable as the Bourbons of old, and even though
their tactics remain the same, their supporters are no longer confined to
the American South. They are now a nationwide army of mindless “ditto heads”
who believe that an Oxycontin addicted, draft-dodging hypocrite spews the
gospel, and that the Fox “News” channel actually disseminates news.

A recent tactic of these new Bourbons is to denounce Obama’s health care
proposals as Nazism. This was evidenced not only in the histrionics of
Limbaugh, but also during a heated exchange between Massachusetts
Congressman Barney Frank and a protester at a Town Hall meeting.

Although it is ludicrous for any rational human being to equate the laudable
goal of providing affordable health care to all Americans with
Nazism—especially since Hitler and his followers certainly demonstrated
scant concern about the health of the weak, the elderly, the infirm, or
anyone not considered an “Aryan”—it is also ironic. Many of the very
demagogues now using the word “Nazi” to discuss the policies of Barack Obama
were, just a few short years ago, vociferously condemning anyone who
compared the political tactics and policies of George W. Bush to those of
Adolph Hitler.

I personally experienced such condemnations after writing a Pravda.Ru
article entitled Bush vs. Hitler. While I did, and still do, believe that
these condemnations were simply a way to prevent Americans from realizing
how easily, and how successfully, the political tactics of Hitler could be
imported into a supposedly educated, democratic nation like the United
States, it was a testament to fairness, nonetheless, when even some
liberals, like Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart, criticized the use of
Bush/Hitler analogies.

This sense of fairness has not been reciprocated. As conservative columnist
David Broder pointed out in a recent column, no Republican politician has
openly condemned Limbaugh’s use of the term “Nazi.” Perhaps this is an
indication that the Republican Party is being hijacked, or has already been
hijacked, by the three “R’s”: the rich, the racists, and the reactionaries.

Naturally the lack of Republican and conservative condemnation of Limbaugh
words prompted me to explore why members of America’s “right-wing” become so
vocally outraged when analogies to Nazism are used to describe their
philosophies, programs, pundits, politicians and policies, yet remain so
conspicuously silent when such analogies are directed against their
political opponents.

The answer was simple: In America it is socially acceptable for minority
groups to use racially derogatory terms when referring to a person of their
own race or ethnicity. But it is socially unacceptable for people of
different races to use such terms. Thus, while it is socially frowned upon
for “non-Nazis” to use the term “Nazi,” it is acceptable for those who
endorse or sympathize with Nazi tactics or beliefs.

So I guess this means that the Republican and conservative condemnation of
my Bush vs. Hitler article was really a backhanded compliment, while
Limbaugh’s diatribe was just an example of the proverbial “pot calling the
kettle black.”

Not surprisingly, many of the Republican politicians and Bourbons opposed to
health care reform are the very ones responsible for the health care crisis
in the first place. They are the ones who so willingly take campaign
contributions and advertising dollars from fast food restaurants and “junk
food” manufacturers, whose products contribute to America’s obesity problem.
They are the ones who give tax breaks and advertising space to corporations
whose products—video games and consoles, DVD players, computers, and High
Definition Televisions—seduce Americans into an increasingly sedentary
lifestyle. And the financial kickbacks these politicians and Bourbons
receive from lobbyists for the medical and insurance industries have created
a nation where millions of Americans lack health insurance, and thus often
ignore the symptoms of a serious illness until the illness is so advanced
that only expensive treatments can combat it.

The late folk singer Phil Ochs, in his song There But for Fortune, explained
that oftentimes the only things that separate the affluent and secure from
the impoverished and homeless are happenstances of fate one cannot control.
In America the flux of one’s health can quickly move a person from abundance
to bankruptcy, and even those who are insured often find their coverage is
subject to the whims of their employers or providers.

America is one of the few industrialized nations without universal health
care for its people. Yet it’s disturbing to see how easily the demagogy and
deceptiveness of the Bourbons have transformed this reality into a badge of
honor, instead of a mark of shame.

The passage of time has shown that the Bourbons were rarely on the right
side of history. They are not on the right side of history today. But
history has also shown that they can do an immense amount of damage, to
people and nations, in their lust to thwart progress and positive social
change.

Of course the Bourbons could care less about how history remembers them.
Their only interest is in opportunistically exploiting the moment, and
anything and everything they can gain from it for their own profit and
selfish ambitions. Joseph McCarthy exploited the fear of communism. George
Wallace exploited racism. Now the Limbaughs, the Hannitys, the Becks, and
others of their ilk are creating and exploiting fears about health care
reform for the sake of ratings and profit.

And if they win, one American reality will remain unaltered: The health care
and health insurance industries will certainly not be in business for your
health.

David R. Hoffman
Legal Editor of Pravda.Ru


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