(brought to you by FromDC2Iowa.blogspot.com*)
Adlai Stevenson remains to this day one of my political heroes from his 1952 presidential race 57 years ago. Although I'm normally relaxed about meeting people for the first time, when, 12 years later, Jack Valenti asked me at a Washington reception whether I'd like to meet him I was truly as nonplussed as if I was about to be introduced to Thomas Jefferson or Gandhi. Stevenson, sensing my reaction, launched into an enthusiastic explanation about what President Johnson had told him about me and how much he appreciated the opportunity to meet me. That's class.
I sure do wish we had him around today to help with the efforts at health care reform.
He lost that presidential election to General "Ike" Eisenhower by a 442 to 89 Electoral College margin. As for his reaction to the loss he used a line from an Abraham Lincoln story, "it hurts too much to laugh, but I'm too old to cry."
That's kind of how I feel about what seems to be happening to our last greatest hope for the kind of health care offered seemingly all the world's citizens but us.
Jon Stewart and some of the stand-up comics try to help us laugh about the corruption of our politics and the tactics of those who, for the sake of their own profits, are willing to add to that corruption of the political process -- even when it involves denying health care, and further accelerating its costs. But this is not really a laughing matter.
Adlai Stevenson had a word or two to say about them as well, such as: "The New Dealers have all left Washington to make way for the car dealers," "There was a time when a fool and his money were soon parted, but now it happens to everybody," and "Those who corrupt the public mind are just as evil as those who steal from the public purse."
Isn't that what the sickness industry, and the politicians they fund, are doing with their lies -- corrupting the public mind?
I'm reminded of the old bumper sticker: "If you're not outraged you haven't been paying attention." Goodness knows I've written about my own feelings on this enough. But maybe I haven't been sufficiently outraged in what I've written. For in addition to health care, Americans also need a greater sense of outrage about what Washington has been doing to us.
I don't often use this blog to reproduce others' writing in its entirety. But I came upon an expression of outrage over health care the other day that I thought worth repeating.
It is copyright, © 2009, by Gene Messick, wordsmith, http://earthhome.us, who also offers subscriptions to his "BAILOUT" publication with an email to TrueBlueNetwork@earthhome.us.
His essay follows:
Washington, early August, 2009: Combatants are withdrawing from the field of battle in DC. Retreating to their home Districts, Members of Congress are licking their wounds, as they fill their carpetbags with lies to tell constituents about why they failed to win the 2009 War for Healthcare Reform.
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Not since the Civil War a century-and-a-half ago are so many civilian non-combatants dying on American soil. As smoke clears from the current battlefield, citizen deaths from absence of Healthcare Reform will continue, at a rate of 20,000 per year, day by day thru the August month of Congressional conflict recess.
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This was a War that 76% of Americans have said they wanted won. Voters trusted Congress to win it for them. That's what they thought they said, loud and clear, in the 2008 November Elections ratifying and mandating Obama's Promises of Change.
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Having lost the Skirmish of 1993 to the same alien Empire of Corporate Healthcare forces, Americans have stood mutely year after year, watching the death toll of Americans rise as stockholders took their ever more sumptuous dividends, and callous CEOs used their increasing bonuses to buy bigger houses, yachts, rings and things. Ghosts of 300,000 Americans hover over Congress, peering down in silent support for tens of millions still living without Healthcare of any kind.
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Do these Ghosts-of-Failures-Past know who, and how many, will join them before murderous greed of an alien Empire Corporate Healthcare Industry will be expunged from the Earth, once and for all?
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For yet another month, fictitious alien Healthcare Corporations will continue to thrive as more living Americans are murdered for profit, needlessly.
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It's so outrageous that Keith Olbermann featured the national scandal Aug 3rd on MSNBC Countdown
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One-million-four-hundred-thousand dollars per DAY are being spent this time, to send their mercenary Lobbyists trooping thru the Halls of Congress, stalking, one by one, the 535 elected Senators and Representatives who's votes will determine the fate of our Nation.
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How in good conscience can pre-purchased Congress Critters chose to represent Empire Corporations that cannot vote, instead of American citizens who elected them? Healthcare Corporations are not citizens. They are unregistered aliens, ownable by anyone in the Global Empire Economy.
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The task of these Empire Lobbyists is not only to kill any hope of a Public Option, but to preserve forevermore the Private Option as the only Healthcare Plan available for most Americans, offered only to those who can afford to pay for increasing Corporate profits. Any of the rest can die in agony from curable illnesses -- as they have been doing for 16 years -- without murmur, without protest, for at least another generation.
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Killing Americans for Corporate profit has become so commonplace to currently living Americans, that they accept it as an inevitable part of being born American. While in-step Corporate Media distracts by reporting casualties from foreign Wars for Oil profits, ever growing numbers of American casualties caused here at home by our own Corporate Healthcare Industry are ignored, never reported.
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Every other advanced Nation on Earth has moved to conquer the Evil Empire of Corporate Healthcare Greed. Everywhere on the Planet, that is, except in the US. Lies about inferior Healthcare abroad which could so easily be debunked are left to stand, stitched and embroidered into the brains of successive generations of TV addicts by highly skilled -- and highly paid -- Empire PR propagandists.
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Creating cravings for more and more money is at the root cause of why sociopaths who operate the Healthcare Empire have been so successful. When the Empire took over, the measure of Healthcare success got changed: now it's measured by Corporate profits acquired, not by numbers of lives saved. And besides, exterminating the poor improves the economy of the Nation. Darwin was right says the Empire: survival for only the fittest. And the richest.
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Even as propaganda from the alien Empire swells from more billions of Corporate Healthcare Industry dollars thrown into it, cries by patriot citizens that innocents are dying does not transfer into the one word no one dares to speak: murder.
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Every trick of lies, every distraction, every diversion is employed to keep Americans from seeing that each and every one of them stands a chance to win the Corporate Greed Lottery, by becoming sick, and only then discovering that their Health Care Insurance will not pay, that they must bankrupt their family to pay skyrocketing treatment costs as CEOs print ever more glowing Annual Reports for stockholders.
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With the flick of a Corporate Empire pen writing: Claim Denied, the hopes and dreams of a lifetime of being a responsible American vanish, along with those of your family. How is this fair? How is this America's finest effort?
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How can so many be sacrificed on the Empire's altar for Corporate profit? Why are Americans so blinded to the slaughter that presents itself to them on and on and on? How many more families must the Finger of Corporate Induced Death touch before a critical mass has formed to resist, to fight, to conquer?
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How close are we to the end of the 2009 War for Healthcare Reform? Actually, it has not yet begun.
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What was sprung on the American people in the name of Healthcare Reform was a fraud. What both Houses of Congress presented was not Healthcare Reform Bills, but a pretense of Health Insurance Reform, a battle the Corporate Healthcare Industry knew they could win. The real War, for Universal Single-payer National Healthcare, was never allowed to be fought. Congress Critters pre-purchased by the Evil Empire made certain it never would be seen on the Congressional battlefield.
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Big Pharma attacked preemptively with its powerful Lobbyist Association, headed by a former crooked Congressman. He knew how to wangle concessions such that Big Pharma profits would remain guaranteed with no Government negotiation for price reductions, and no prescription drugs allowed to be imported from Canada. All this was secured without the first shot being fired on the Congressional battlefield. Clever? Perhaps, but only if Americans do not realize how they have been screwed again by Big Pharma's well lubricated enema.
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As July 2009 came to a close, those who were pre-purchased with Campaign Contributions, and those pre-positioned on key review Committees, valiantly pretended to be struggling to protect the American people, while serving their true Empire Corporate Masters.
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Here's voluntary testimony from an Empire Builder, a former Healthcare Insurance Executive who recognized God's promise that he was headed straight for Hell if he continued helping the Empire murder innocent people: pbs.org/moyers/journal/07102009/transcript
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What has emerged from Congressional Committees -- but NOT gotten to the floor of either the House or Senate -- are maimed and butchered Bills that only a Corporate Sociopath could cheer. And the Corporate Healthcare Empire is celebrating with all the billions of tax deductible dollars they can spend to keep a Public Option from becoming law. Private Option is healthy and well on its way to remaining the ONLY Option. Public Option will be DOA if it ever gets out of Congress to President Obama's desk. This Mission was Accomplished!
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Now on to their next Mission: send Congressional Critters back home to confuse the electorate into believing that a Public Option of any kind is (God forbid!) Socialism! It's Anti-American! It will steal your Freedom! It will ruin Healthcare for all Americans! It will bankrupt our Nation!
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All lies of course. Intended to confuse, discombobulate an easily fooled citizenry addicted to a steady diet of Corporate lies spoon fed to them over TV. But now after the Empire's most fierce flagellation of lies, there's a single remaining tiny ember of Living Hope that they must drown: HR 676 and its companion Senate Bill.
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With the sacrificial Judas Goat of a Public Option thoroughly bloodied, mangled, battered and on life support, not expected to survive, only one insignificant pocket of resistance stands any chance of driving a stake thru the heart of the Evil Empire, sending it back forever to Hades where it was born.
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Will this small cadre of Single Payer freedom fighters stand any chance of rescuing America? Can they use the August silence in Congress to expose how corrupt the Evil Corporate Healthcare Empire really is? And even if they do expose Congressional corruption, will it matter in this Healthcare debate?
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Can we convince every BlueCross-BlueShield-BlueDog Democrat that if they are successful in killing any Public Option by preserving the Private Option unchallenged, that not one single one of them will be returned to Congress? Do Blue Dogs care? Of course not. Whether they will retire or BE retired in 2010, the Empire assures them their purchased services will be rewarded for the rest of their lives.
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You see what True Blue Americans are up against? The purest bribery ever tried. We must make it seen, make it known, make it understood. Send the Evil Empire packing back to Hell. Rescue future generations of Americans, by giving them, every one of them, Universal Healthcare. It's a right, not a privilege: elsewhere, but not in America.
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Convince your vacationing Congressperson that HR 676 is the only live option that the Evil Empire has left for our discussion.
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* Why do I put this blog ID at the top of the entry, when you know full well what blog you're reading? Because there are a number of Internet sites that, for whatever reason, simply take the blog entries of others and reproduce them as their own without crediting the source. I don't mind the flattering attention, but would appreciate acknowledgment as the source, even if I have to embed it myself. -- Nicholas Johnson
2 comments:
Nicely outlined. Having worked in-house at an insurance company, and having participated in yelling matches with claims VPs over a wrongful denial that they wanted to make despite clear legal precedent to the contrary, I'm utterly on the side of the public option and not opposed to single payor. I don't think anyone comprehends what really goes on.
It is criminal and a pox upon America that corporate MBAs are allowed to make scads of money from the sickness and death of citizens and patients.
Look at the UIHC and look at the money made by administration there, as they fire the lowly drone workers. Does the VICE Pres, the Dean, and the CEO of UIHC really think they have 500,000 a year skills? The entitlement sickness has spread like venereal disease to these carpetbaggers.
Someone should look at the salaries of administration vis a vis the rest of the assembly line workers over the years. How much separation?
Run of the mill business types make 180,000 - 250,000 in mid level positions with skills that would grab 40,000 in real life.
What a scandal just in this town.
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