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A lot of Banana Republics end up rioting in the streets and we're well on our way.
You hit the nail on the head Tom! Insurance companies do one thing: Deny!
These hi tech giants really don't care the least bit about anyone other than themselves. Just look at what they did to one of the largest homeless encampments in the country that just happened to be in the heart of silicon valley.
http://news.yahoo.com/police-breaking-down-huge-california-homeless-camp-151657325.html
I'd love to have Steve Doocy take a test to qualify to vote. He probably has such terrible understanding of American government that he'd fail.
I am always happy to get the historical perspective the "found book garage attic library" has sparked Thoms' level of analytics.
It occurs to me that the cops have always operated as the ENFORCERS OF CAPITAL POWER and the people on top like it that way and when Cops walked a beat they got to know their PEOPLE and took on the role as DEFENDERS OF THE NIEGHBORHOODS against criminals and disorder. That might mean an Officer Katie talking to the kid that just stole a candy bar and just listening why the kid stole it, instead of shooting him from the squad car, or beating him, or tazing him' and arresting him.
You don't need a degree to see which model the Power of Capital prefers. Officer Katie disrupts that system that relies on us all remaining separate, fearful and insecure.
That kid officer Katie saved from the system might just start feeling that he or she, is not worthless, but more importantly, someone in their culture, not only in their family, gives a shit and maybe the kid feels CONNECTED to something that offers hope and that feels GOOD! A future of being CONNECTED TO OUR COMMUNITY breeds commitment to each others wellbeing and that threatens the school to prison pipeline that feeds the current police state.
I think the deployment of all this Military equipment, Swat Tactics to serve traffic ticket warrants, Drug Searches, Tear Gas. Automatic Weapons, body armor, Tear gas and it's use are all intended to supply the Elite with a local Army they can control. I don't think they have any current intentions (these are plans in case of total Climate Driven Rebellion when we'll all be looking for them!) but the un- inintended consequences are all these mis-fires that are being tried out on the poulations that conveniently are not deemed to be human by most Republicans, Conservatives and a lot of Democrats.
People seem to forget that EVERY MONARCHY IN THE WORLD STARTED WITH AN ECONOMIC MONOPOLY! Currently the top 1/2% own vastly more than any historical Earthly Empire and I think they're forming their Army so that they won't have to bother with Governments. History shows the path!
As a physician with more than a little slant to liberalism, I have to commend Thom... he nails all of the issues except for two: 1) Medicine often crosses state lines! I work in St. Louis and nearly 40% of our patients are from IL. So whatever system we come up with in MO will not apply to IL patients; and 2) States do not have the resources of the Federal Gov't to run budget deficits. It is quite clear that if we chose to fight illegal wars for more than a decade while decreasing taxes on the wealthy, the Federal Gov't can run as much deficit at is choses. States don't have that luxury. These are the most important reasons why we need a single payer, Federal Gov't sponsored system called Medicare for ALL! All we needed to do back in 2008 was to allow the age for Medicare start at birth and allow richer Americans to buy as much Medicare supplemental insurance as they want. We don't need the exact system of Canada but need to make health care our number one priority. So to say I was a "little disappointed" by the way our Dems sold us out to Big Pharma, Big Insurance would be the understatement of the year. We lost maybe the only opportinuity of my lifetime to provide healthcare for every American, not just the ones who can affort it.
Reply to; Jussmartenuf,
I think we are already being sensored in ways we can't prove... can you get FSTV on line? ..
SINGLE PAYER: I've been saying this for years, along with all liberals and progressives, that were deeply disappointed when democrats chose to stand behind a healthcare plan that republicans and big business wanted (essentially legislating like republicans, rather than democrats the people voted for). The glaring problem of course is is that obamacare is centered around for-profit insurance companies.. Democratic apologists defending obamacare say they tried and were shot down rings hollow, because filibuster-proof majorities that Democrats had in the House and the Senate during that time..
"""The fact that insurance companies do get rich off allowing or denying health care payments, though, is at the core of what’s wrong with our healthcare system. It’s the reason why we spend so much more on healthcare than any other developed country in the world, and it’s the reason why people continue to get screwed over by their insurance companies despite the new protections in Obamacare."""
That is exactly what happens here Matt. I live in Alberta and a few years ago our government gave people on welfare three months welfare and a one way bus ticket to British Columbia. They where glad to go as BC pays higher welfare payments. It didn't go over very well. Proof you are right. Oh by the way we have the lowest taxes and the highest standard of living but we offer the lowest welfare payments. . We also have the youngest population in Canada and the highest educated as they come from all over Canada as this is where all the work is.
Alice. Of course they go bankrupt here how do you work with a bad knee, hip, or shoulder. Alice poeple die here all the time because they are waiting for health care that is what happens when it is rationed. We are also taxed to death here. You have no idea how expensive free health care is. Please don't get me wrong I don't want your system but Canada has the only the only true single payer system in the world. Everyone else has some sort of mix. We both need something in between. Here you can buy smokes booze and drugs but you can buy better health care and to me that is just wrong.
The feds have done a bunch right and have the capacity to do a lot more except the right wing keeps saying the government does not work and then sends congressional people there to make sure government fails.
On the other side, the left wing sends people there of whom many are gutless and will not stand up for their values when attacked by critics in their electorate.
Sandlewould, Your information is very well taken, thank you for taking the time. I was in total agreement with Tom's blog concerning Obama's shortfall on not demanding single payer, it was a sell out to the insurance industry and buying off Joe Lieberman. Lieberman represents Hartford, Conn which has the disinction of having the most insurance company home offices in the world. In looking for FSTV on my DircTV if find it simply does not exist. The channels run 347, 349. RSTV 348 is not listed on menu. Why is this? RT does not exist either. I live in Dallas area in Texas and Hartman is not available either on TV or radio, but Beck, Limbaugh and other right wing and religious nit wit stations are. What gives.
When Mike Baucus was put in charge of the Senate committee to set up the ACA, he never mentioned single payer, he was a paid tool who i wrote 5 years ago and told him he needed to have a T shirt made that said "I am a chicken shit Republican" and wear it. His passing this miserable excuse for a health care bill got him a promotion to the Ambassadorship of China. Go figger, like you say mafia type government.
Once Vermont goes single payer, how long until other states realize they are better off buying one-way tickets to Vermont for their needy? There are some cities in the North that do a similar thing with their homeless - rather than build and maintain a shelter in the winter, they find some distant relative of the homeless person in Florida or some other warm state, and buy the homeless person a one-way ticket there.
I saw a 20/20 special about a similar thing in California. When mentally ill patients are released from the hospital in the wealthy suburbs, the police give them a "courtesy ride" to downtown LA.
Reply to #4: Kend, spare us the whining about your Canadian system. In Canada no one is bankrupted by medical bills and left out in the street, or dead. Compared to that, waiting six months for a knee of hip replacement -- without an ugly-ass bill to look forward to for the grand finale -- would be a piece of cake from our point of view. You're complaining to the wrong people. Don't be expecting any sympathy from us. - AIW
Sorry it wasn't Thom quoting Sen. Chuck "ANything for a Buck" Schumer. My bad.. I got the post confused...
Thom, one of your other "home states" is also working on Single Payer...Oregon. And we just might have it shortly after Vermont.
I have been fighting insurance companies now for close to a year! They do everything possible to obstruct, to make getting care as difficult as possible. And, for the life of me, I cannot figure out why they are necessary! They do nothing for health care...they don't set broken bones, they don't prescribe meds, they don't do physicals, they don't even soothe a sore throat. The only thing they do is take our money and, sometimes, pay part of a medical bill. Even after the ACA was enacted insurance companies still deny services. My husband has been attempting to get a problem first diagnosed...nearly impossible because insurance wouldn't allow needed tests...then when we finally got the diagnoses we have to wait until January to have the life-saving procedure! With Single Payer this problem would have been diagnosed and treated last June!!!
Basically I am not all that happy with the ACA because it didn't address the concept of insurance which is totally not needed in the first place! But I am very glad that people who have never before been able to see a doctor can now do that.
Wow Thom, pump the brakes a little. As a Canadian I can honestly tell you our system far from world class. Waiting six months to a year for knee, hip or shoulder surgery is far from world class. I have always said on this blog you would have single payer if you would have done it state by state like Romney tried to do. Forcing states to use a system that is designed by the Fed was a bad mistake. Has the Fed done anything right in the last fifty years.
My gosh, the Reagan/Clinton Dems have been working hard against all progressive policy proposals for years. We can't implement single-payer insurance because the nation took a turn in the opposite direction, embracing the "You're On Your Own" agenda. As it is, middle classers are still having conniptions about people living the good life on (sub-poverty level) welfare, some 15 years after the last welfare check was issued. Our problem is with our inability to clarify who is "deserving," who isn't, and why.
There's no point in paying healthcare Insurance premiums if the Insurance companies are not holding up their end of the bargain.
Mark: Why would any even mildly informed Democrat leaning citzen vote for a Republican just to vote against a Democrat? I'm thinking this group you speak of is quite small.
mathboy; "Overall," voter turnout for the 2014 midterms was the lowest turnout in 70 years. If in fact it was up in the states you mentioned, I'm willing to bet it was still only 3 out of 10 voting. The expensive right wing lies aired near election time seem to scare just enough vulnerable citizens into voting against their own best interests.
In my opinion citizens didn't vote because the Fascist controlled media has both frustrated and bewildered many into thinking their votes have zero impact on unending policy that beneifits only a fraction of the top one percent. Again, check the congressional voting record if you think both parties are identical....this from a staunch Democratic Socialist. Obama and many of the Dems in office simply refuse to go on offense! This leaves them in a constant state of defense, and thus the public perception of weak leadership.
Obamacare has led to a windfall for Big Pharma, Big Insurance and Big. Med. My partner's an oncologist. She says Private-non-profit facilities have lost all their funding to medicaid expansion...good for blue-state citizens, but all the non-profits are being swallowed up by for-profit hospitals. Yep, they blew it.. again...and hears why;
I won’t have time to listen to the podcast ‘till late tonight in the car…but in answer the question posed in Thom’s first hour; “Who's really manipulating the new world order? And why….?” I can only say I know this unequivocally and I cannot say how.
Lee Fong eluded to it recently on Thom’s show when he referred to a story in the NYTimes re. the “U.S.” (it should really be called, the Global Chamber of Commerce) literally threatening Pres. Obama, saying something like “all cards are on the table” if he used his executive authority to force transparency re. campaign spending. Thom’s reply was a stunned (paraphrasing here); “You mean they threatened to blow up the Whitehouse?!” The “U.S.” Global Chamber of Commerce is nothing more than a giant money laundering operation used to control and manipulate U.S. and Global policy. Their goal is no longer just to make money. They aren’t stupid, they know they already have not only more than could be spent in 10 lifetimes, but that they could literally outspend the amount of resources left on the planet. Their goal is to make sure that the global elite are the only ones who have access to what few resources are left on the planet and to build up the global security state sufficiently to protect themselves from the lowly masses at any cost.
Members of Congress who are concerned about this have eluded to it for years. I believe it was Chuck Shumar who said re. the banks; “Frankly, They own the place.” Even Pres. Obama is quoted at the beginning of every episode of Ring of Fire on FSTV saying; “You can’t change Washington from the inside, you can only change Washington from the outside”. Problem is, if you make enough noise to be heard on the outside, they use their tight control of mass media to ignore you and recently federally granted military might to shut you down. Just this a.m. Amy Goodman had on a father of 4 who is going to jail for 2 years for standing on public property outside a drone base to exercise his 1st amendment rights. Trying to change either major party from within would literally be like trying to change the mob from within. Organized crime now controls most, if not all the biggest multinational corporations…especially the security/defense industries and the banking industry. They, through outsourcing have seized control of the CIA and NSA and much of the State department and the Pentigon. And let’s not forget the Mob’s infamous ties to the casino industry (Sheldon Adelson..just try and tell me he isn’t in w/ the Chinese Mob). And of course there are the Kochs, who are so powerful they can fend off the mob, but if you ask me, they figure it’s easier to join ‘em then to beat ‘em.
Well known MI5 Whistle Blower, Annie Machon, has stated on RT’s ‘Breaking the Set’ , that the NSA and British intelligence keep files on elected officials that those officials aren’t permitted to see. Threatening to expose them or their family members, or recreate them digitally into an image that, well, let’s just say it would not be in the “image of God”, is why Democrats will never push back hard enough. This is why Democrats play “dumb”. So why do we waste our time, asking ourselves over and over again, why Democrats aren’t better at messaging? They are not stupid, of course they could message well and campaign on populism, if they knew they could get away with it…but they’d be squashed like bugs if they dared try if getting elected might actually lead to the possibility of getting progressive policy implemented. They are only aloud to speak about populist issues as long as they can’t actually accomplish anything…and the ubiquitous Corp. Media would completely ignore them. To usher in the Financial industry’s Goddess in 2016, the appointer of one Victory Nooland as Assist. Sec. of State (married to notorious Neocon Robert Kagan, co-founder of the Project for a New American Century) you can bet that sHillary Clinton will be campaigning big time on populism against, yep good ‘ol Jeb. Another Bush V Clinton ticket. How Quaint. Don’t fall for it!!!
This is only one reason why Barak Obama will never emulate FDR. That, and the fact that the U.S. no longer has access to or control of enough global resources to address our crumbling infrastructure significantly, and the facts that in the last 100 years, the population has exploded and become one entirely dependent for it’s very survival on industry. Industry, now corrupt beyond recognition, no longer needs us, nor has the desire to take care of us. When we no longer can buy the stuff they have made us dependent on, they will stop providing it and we will be left like helpless infants to fend for ourselves off the raw, unyielding land. Yes, the meek shall indeed inherit the Earth, what’s left of it, that is. Most of us do not have the resources or skills necessary to live off the land in the event the ‘Crash of 2016’ (great Book, Thom) that will lead to the collapse of industry. This collapse could well bring down the grid…which would lead to many melt downs at nuclear power plants, which, idiotically enough, are built to supply all the power they generate to the grid without first taking what they need to function. Why this flaw in design? Good question.
150 years ago, most American’s kept warm with wood. Can you imagine 315,000,000 people chopping down trees to burn wood in America? Let alone the fight for land to grow food when climate change combined with industry is draining the water supply at record speed. In the documentary ‘Call of Life’ (playing on FSTV lately) many scientists lay out precisely why a completely sustainable energy paradigm sufficient to meet global demand will be impossible 20 years from now. They say half of all species on Earth will be gone by then, and we may well be one of them. Sollutions? Check out Carolynbaker.net Zeitgeist.com & thevenusproject.com , start gardens, solar initiatives, wind initiatives in our communities? Yes! Absolutely! Never Give up. But maybe instead of bitching about republicans who are corrupt and deluded into believing they’ll be invited to the party at the end of the world, and instead of scratching our heads re. why the Dems refuse to be truly progressive, we should get our heads out of the sand re. the bigger picture and be talking about what we can actually DO NOW!
It’s no coincidence that “austerity” (ever wondered who coined that one?) is being pushed simultaneously all over the world. The names of the NWO string pullers?.. some are easy to find, many not. The organizations?.. many NGOs, the WTO the IMF the World Bank … not too hard to guess. Greed knows one obstacle; self-preservation. I think they have the technology to do one of, or all 3 things. 1)Leave the planet 2)live in the planet 3) build contained biospheres on the planet . How else can one explain their deliberate actions to deplete and destroy the Earth’s water, air and food supplies as fast as possible, other than mass genocide and population control?
We Democrats have some strategizing to do. I was wondering how Colorado's voter turnout differed from those of other states, since we have all mail-in ballots here now. I found this website: http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/data-mine/2014/11/05/midterm-turnout-decreased-in-all-but-12-states
It turns out that voter turnout was up in those states where incumbent Democrats lost senate seats. In a comparison between 2014 and 2010, the previous mid-term election, LA, AR, AK, NC & CO were in the top 8 of states with senate elections. (I have to discount MS, because the senate election in 2010 was unopposed, showing 0% turnout.) Now, NH was also up, and MI, the only state where a non-incumbent Democrat won, was above the median in relative turnout, so this isn't an absolute. But it looks like Republicans benefitted from increases in turnout. These 5 losers plus NH, had the 6 greatest increases in turnout among the 15 states with an incumbent Democrat in the Senate race. States that flipped from blue to red without an incumbent Democrat saw no correlation with turnout. So it looks like Republicans made sure to show up against vulnerable incumbents, whereas Democrats didn't. Democrats cannot legitimately blame generally low turnout. Not one running incumbent Republican Senator lost, and one even ran unopposed.
The states where incumbent Democrats lost were also all states that didn't have a senate race in 2012, but had one in 2010. Though again, so was NH. I don't know what that might mean.
British laws such as the Magna Carta and the 1660 Bill of Rights make up what the British call their Constitution, but that's a more colloquial meaning. It's not a single and founding document. These laws also do not make up the common law, which is by definition not statutory, but is made up of judicial decisions.