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Why We Risked Arrest for Single-Payer Health Care
On May 5, eight health care advocates, including myself and two other physicians, stood up to Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and the Senate Finance Committee during a "public roundtable discussion" with a simple question: Will you allow an advocate for a single-payer national health plan to have a seat at the table?
The answer was a loud, "Get more police!" And we were arrested and hauled off to jail.
The fact that a national health insurance program is supported by the majority of the public, doctors and nurses apparently means nothing to Sen. Baucus. The fact that thousands of people in America are dying every year because they can't get health care means nothing. The fact that over 1 million Americans go into bankruptcy every year due to medical debt - even though most of them had insurance when they got sick - means nothing.
And so, as the May 5 meeting approached, we prepared for another one of the highly scripted, well-protected events that are supposed to make up the "health care debate" using standard tools of advocacy. We organized call-in days and faxes to the members of the committee requesting the presence of one single-payer advocate at the table of 15. Despite thousands of calls and faxes, the only reply - received on the day before the event - was, "Sorry, but no more invitations will be issued."
We knew that this couldn't be correct. We had heard Sen. Baucus say on that very same day that "all options were on the table." And so, the next day, we donned our suits and traveled to Washington. We had many knowledgeable single-payer advocates in our group. And as the meeting started, one of us, Mr. Russell Mokhiber, stood up to say that we were here and we were ready to take a seat. And he was promptly removed from the room.
In that moment, it all became so clear. We could write letters, phone staffers, and fax until the machines fell apart, but we would never get our seat at the table.
The senators understand that most people want a national health system and that an improved Medicare for All would include everybody and provide better health care at a lower cost. These facts mean nothing to most of them because they respond to only one standard tool of advocacy: money, and lots of it.
The people seated at the table represented the corporate interests: private health insurers and big business and those who support their agenda. The people whose voices were heard all represented organizations which pay huge sums of money to political campaigns. These interests profit greatly from the current health care industry and do not want changes that will hurt their large, personal pocketbooks.
And so, we have entered a new phase in the movement for health care as a human right: acts of civil disobedience. It is time to directly challenge corporate interests. History has shown that in order to gain human rights, we must be willing to speak out and risk arrest. We must engage in actions that expose corporate fraud and corruption. We must make our presence known.
And that is why the eight of us, knowledgeable health care advocates and providers, most of us parents, some of us grandparents, spoke out one-by-one at the Senate Finance Committee. And it is why we will continue to speak out and encourage others to do the same. Our voices must be strong enough to drown out the influence of corporate dollars.
Health care must become the civil rights movement of this decade. The opportunity is here. And we can create a single-payer national health care system.
Yes, we can.
Dr. Margaret Flowers is a pediatrician in the Baltimore are and co-chairs the Maryland chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP). Her statement was co-signed by Mark Dudzic, Labor Campaign for Single Payer; Russell Mokhiber, Single Payer Action; Carol Paris, M.D., PNHP; Katie Robbins, Healthcare-NOW!; Pat Salomon, M.D., PNHP; Adam Schneider, B'more Housing for All; and Kevin Zeese, ProsperityAgenda.us.
102 Comments so far
Show AllWell done, Dr. Flowers!
Baucus is simply the latest member of Congress to exercise naked power to ruthlessly suppress not only the will, but the voice of the people.
When crowded by circumstances, our political elite has no qualms about behaving tyrannously to eliminate any threats and deviations from their set agenda.
Tyranny. Sadly, if ignorant and complacent citizens even recognize the term, they probably associate it with something King George III did, or perhaps Caligula and Nero, or even the Pharaohs or Herod--or something they saw in a movie or half-heard about in school.
Like Tyrannosaurus Rex, or the saber-toothed tiger-- fearsome and terrifying, but extinct.
But Baucus and those like him are indeed plainly tyrants, and their tyrannous and self-serving refusal to even consider, much less acquiesce to, proposals for laws and programs that benefit the common (wo)man and serve the common weal constitutes heinous malfeasance. These duly-elected criminals would be deposed and imprisoned in a just world.
Sic semper tyrannis! Still: thank you for your courage and selflessness in speaking truth to power.
· Yr Obd't Servant
This needs to be attacked at a grassroots level. However, I suspect that we will sooner see protests over errant television programming than for a nation's right to decent healthcare. The people of the United States have been, are, and will be brainwashed on a daily basis by the corporate media. They will not hear an alternative voice, and, if they do, that voice will be demonized by that corporate media.
The corporations have succeeded in a seventy-six year campaign to overthrow the advances made in the thirties. Initially, they were disorganized, but that did not last long. Right-wing think tanks, since the eighties, funded by such near fascists as he Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Carthage Foundation, the Earhart Foundation, the Charles G. Koch, David H. Koch and Claude R. Lambe charitable foundations, the Phillip M. McKenna Foundation, the JM Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation, the Henry Salvatori Foundation, the Sarah Scaife Foundation, and the Smith Richardson Foundation, all strive to push their dissembling message.
They crafted an alternative political meme that did not announce their true intentions, a meme that drew upon the religious right-wing and the disaffected poor and working class who were ignored by the democrats once basic rights were established. They did not talk about their true agenda which was overarching power to the rich and the hell with the rest. Once they started with the red-baiting and fear-mongering and jingoism, they eventually swayed the poor into supporting their oligarchic plans under the ludicrous lottery-based idea that anyone can become rich and that it is only a matter of character that prevents one from doing just that. This, in turn, plays into racism, sexism, and ageism. The poor have went for it hook, line, sinker.
Even telling one of these brainwashed pseudo-citizens that single-payer will save $350 billion is not enough to convince them. They get a confused look on their face and burble something like, bbububub...socialism, umumumum...choice, and then look around for help from their corporate mouthpiece to provide them with talking points. Yet they cling. What must happen, a cancer death and bankruptcy in every household?
I am afraid we give the people too much credit. They voted against their own interests for twenty-eight years. Now they are ego-invested and would rather die in a waiting room than admit that the corporatists have bent them over and driven them into hell.
As a friend of mine once said, "When the peasants eat worms, then there will be a revolution."
Cherenkov: Excellent post!
Sioux Rose
Dr. Flowers: Thank you for your courageous advocacy on behalf of what is right! I am so disgusted by not only this, the close-out of the only option that makes any real sense, but also in seeing the SAME EXACT tactics used to provide lavish sums to the corporate bankers & Wall St charlatans, while leaving so many without fnancial assistance for either bad loans or housing values that have plunged so low as to make mortgage payments a bad joke.
If the media was not owned by those who benefit from these uneven outrageous policies then more citizens would recognize what's truly at stake, as opposed to being manipulated by clever buzz words no doubt designed by ph.D marketers. That the nation's treasure remains held hostage by the war makers and their high-tech killer designer counterparts, the bankers, Wall St and now the insurance moguls is obscene, and in my view constitutes a treason against the citizenry. Nor is this treason confined to the boundaries of the United States, as these policies have increased the misery of so many across the world.
Since our own machinations for stripping these political whores of power have become disabled, the hope is that persons of integrity outside the U.S. (like the brave Spanish Judge) will assist our citizenry. Power is in the hands of the moral equivalent of Darth Vader, and it may require an unusual ad hoc group of nonwarriors to take down its pervasive killing machine. Every (sacred) thing is at stake!
Sioux Rose,
You are correct in your general analysis of the current state of affairs in this country. It follows the course of policies exposed in Ms. Klein's book, "The Shock Doctrine:...." This scenario is the second installment, the multiple trillion dollar financial squeeze being the first. The third, IMHO, is the lack of will to investigate thoroughly and prosecute, if necessary, any and all elected and appointed individuals for treason, torture, breaking and/or ignoring or rendering moot without Congressional approval treaties, aiding and abetting, lying while in office, conflicts of interest, collusion and/or breaking of RICO laws, including impeachment of SCOTUS members involved in the 2000 Presidential mis-election, etc. ad nauseum. And I mean ad nauseum to the point of every waking moment a reminder just how pathological our elected representatives are. These sub-human denizens will suffer no citizenry opinion except that of the dollar. And we all know that story.
Until a hundred million people gather and march, nothing will be done for the betterment of human beings by this forsaken government.
Sioux Rose
DOG LEG: I began reading Ms. Klein's most astute & excellent work on a recent trip to California. As I sat at the Dallas (or was it Houston?) Airport, I could not believe the message that repeated over its loudspeakers that said something about being careful what words (hate crimes?) one used there as it could be grounds for their arrest! I am NOT making this up. The deeper I got into the book, the more the parallels emerged and it was very clear that much that was deployed on other nations had indeed begun to come home.
There is a phrase, from the Bible I believe, that says something to the effect of, "And the Light beholdeth the darkness and understood it not." I cannot understand what motivates these people? Don't they have enough of everything? I made the comment that perhaps a protocol for a diagnosis of "Excessive Greed Disorder" needs to be designed as these "Masters of the Universe" truly see human life as equivalent bleeps on a computer screen. There is absolutely NO moral outrage, perhaps no sentiment at all, for the depraved indifference causing real families to leave their homes, many to go without adequate healthcare (I just got quite a guilt trip from a dentist for waiting so long to deal with a bad tooth. I knew I'd be looking at several thousand dollars in "help" and now have to face that music), and wars chosen with a cavalier disregard more suitable to guests ordering wines at a banquet table (on someone else's tab).
There is little question the purveyors of this "ideology" of greed mated to militarism are a sick bunch indeed. They are more of a threat to the world and its peoples than any pandemic, and just as insidious. WE are at the point where one nation alone cannot take this behemoth down... it must be a concerted effort made among allies across the globe. Problem is, of course, that leadership in too many nations buckles to this group. The one area standing out in defiance is South America... perhaps that region will become the great multi-colored hope for mankind.
"Another World IS possible." Thank you Brazil and the World Social Forum!
S. Rose,
There is an old saying, "Don't take it personally, its just business." It means people do the business of the corporation for the corporation, not people. That is the pathological aspect. These people do not consider what 'cause and effect' is occurring. That isn't their job. And if I have learned anything in 62 years it is that Americans do their job and nothing else, nine times out of ten...When these people do start considering it, the suicide rates go up, domestic violent crimes go up, etc.:)
Sioux Rose,
I have to agree with everything you post. "Excessive Greed Disorder". I have to bring that one up at work. I am a psych nurse at the North Dakota State Hospital. And, believe it or not, the Hospital, as well as the entire state of North Dakota is run by Republicans who all suffer from this disease. Maybe they should publish an article about "Excessive Greed Disorder" in "Psychology Today". I wonder if anyone would see themselves in it if they read it?
I think Maslow's Theory explains it well with The Hierarchy of Needs in that "Deprivation of basic needs (including the need for self-actualization as well as physiological needs) can cause neurosis and maladjustment. The satisfaction of those needs is the only treatment."
The contemplation that only a small percentage of the population is realizing self-actualization at any given moment is a possible link to this mass neurosis of fear and pathology.
Sioux Rose
PETS: I can see three major factors that contributed to a phase that essentially gave greed a sexy facelift. They are: 1. Ronald Reagan, as president, promoting the most naked grab of personal excess any leader ever dared to evidence previously (in America) 2. MANY churches pushing this idea that "God" wants you to be rich, that a prosperity ethos (while nature was already demonstrating the collapse of ecosystems) synchronous with Calvinism was a good thing. And this stance essentially offered as subtext: that if you are NOT doing well, you just don't have things right with "God" and 3. The Astro-logos that has seen each of the outer planets move through Capricorn, the sign of worldly achievement, ambition, and the quest for status over the course of the past 4 decades. (This influence operates as a subtle backdrop and tends to "flavor" the experience of time as specific qualitative themes becomes dominant or fashionable.) Republicans identified strongly with # 1 & # 2 and got swept along with # 3. This is why so many show no shame when they do things like open check cashing places with usurous rates in poor neighborhoods. I met a DISGUSTING minister who showed me a property bragging about the low price. A friend of mine is a realtor and looked up the statistics so I knew what he paid for the property, and how he, like a prostitute, wanted to "just turn a trick" and make a cool $25,000 for simply putting his name on a shingle. He has a used furniture place that probably sells donations that people give since they think he's raising money for his church.
Since the Bible relates the LOVE of $ as the ROOT of ALL EVIL, it's pretty clear where this has led. Our leaders are absolutely beholden to the 'god' of money (Mammon), and also see no moral disconnect in profiting from wars (Mars rules) based on false pretexts. There is no more telling recipe for evil than the merging of these twin dark motivating forces.
I'm not sure what your comment on the hate crimes means.
While I personally do not agree with the hate crimes legislation, the people ranting against it in way too many situations, have no freaking idea what they are talking about. The hate crimes legislation only come into play in cases of physical violence.
The fact that both the Democrats and the Republicans will not pass the Single Payer Health Care bill is a clear indication that these corporate parties are working to improve the ability of the very wealthy to get even more wealthy -- and to cut any programs to meet the needs of our society or to protect our environment.
We are reeling from the effect of the unlimited greed of the bankers and stock brokers allowed by our elected officials by the deregulation of the banking system and the repeal of the regulations put in after the 1929 crash. We lost once with the the theft of the assets and a second time by the massive bailout of the very people that caused the collapse of our financial system.
Our elected officials have clearly demonstrated that they are not public servants but are, in truth, paid mercenaries of the vastly wealthy.
A new civil rights movement for health care will not mend this situation. We need a civil rights movement for democracy. We need representatives that will really represent the people and vote on the advice of their constituents---not to please their contributors.
We must form new political parties and allow and fund candidates to replace the corrupt current members of Congress.
I suggest we form a political party that has the values of the Democratic party of the 1930s. We need the NEW DEAL DEMOCRATS whose platform is Roosevelt's Second Bill of Rights. Under that SEcond Bill of Rights, all of us have the right to a job, with wages enough for food, clothing and shelter, farmers have the right to sell their crops at a price that allows their families a decent living, the right to medical care, the right to be protected from economic fears of old age, sickness, accident or unemployement, and the right to a good education.
Do you want to be a NEW DEAL DEMOCRAT?
wantrealdemocracy: I certainly agree with your comments. Many of us have said similar things about the "Republicrats" for a long time. I was a lifelong Dem, voting for the lesser of two evils, but as Ralph Nader said, "you still wind up with evil," and switched to the Green Party. We have our problems as well, but nothing like the Dems.
The thing is, and many folks won't admit it, but our politicians (many of the Jewish ones as well) secretly admired the way the Nazis dismantled democracy in Germany and terrorized their own people before they invaded other countries in their insane and diabolical method for the 1,000 year plan for peace and prosperity. The Reichstag fire set the plan in motion, and in the 'Project For A New American Century,' there is a yearning for a "new Pearl Harbor" to rally the people for letting Big Brother control and protect us. I think the evidence is clear about 9/11 and the Patriot Act and all the rest of the illegal laws voted for since, by the Democratic Party collaborators of the Republican Crime Family.
We know how Republicans think: they're up front about it, but the deceit of the Democrats is even worse, because they give their constituents hope, for legislation they don't intend to pass.
Sioux Rose
PEACEMAN: The quest for absolute power corrupting absolutely knows no religious boundary, and it's pretty scary when religion--primarily the Calvinistic approach-applauds such behavior by placing into a context of individualized success.
SIOUXROSE: Absolutely correct! I always thought the Calvinist approach was a marketing strategy of the wealthy owners to make the common workers feel guilty that they weren't doing enough and to work harder for less.
The KKK went after trade-unionists as did Mussolini's blackshirts and Hitler's brownshirts. I saw a marvelous foreign film this afternoon--"Paris36" and I highly recommend it. It is a French movie with English subtitles, and looks like a reflection of today.
Single Payer Now!
Too bad we have to pay our insurance premiums...
Some of us don't, though there are reasons one would. Insurance companies use the money we give them to buy politicians.
Perhaps it is time to stop paying the insurance companies. I know that at least here in Oregon the hospitals are required to give care in the emergency room. Might be the ultimate civil protest just stop buying any thing. You have to stop feeding the beast that is killing us. By the way since Obama thinks it is alright to wage war on innocent people in Afganistan and Iraq amoung other places the Obama bumper sticker is off the bus.
Until we have single payer healthcare, WE DO NOT HAVE A DEMOCRACY!!!!!
Don't allow our greedy, self-centered, lily-livered, corporate-loving congressional personnel to tell us what we are going to get!!!!!!!
Tell them what to get for us - or get ready to find other employment at the end of their term! This includes you, Mr. President!!!
Call or write to your representatives and the President!
The very thought that hospitals and health care are for profit propositions strikes me as OBSCENE !!
We are and have been in the dark ages of health care. We would rather spend billions and trillions on military and weapons programs and use our finest scientific minds in building them than use them for finding cures for illnesses and diseases. We would rather leave our health care to a system that really only cares about one thing. Money. We would rather spend billions more on power grabbing around the world than work to end hunger and poverty. As a species we suck. I am a bear that can only laff at all this insanity.
Sioux Rose
LAFFING BEAR: The whole premise that THE people are not being listened to, considered or respected places this concept of "WE" in a considerably different light. Persons who study the human mind go on to develop buzz words and the ways and means to frame issues to create an illusion of public consent. Be careful what you presume this "WE" consents to. A majority expected Obama to really start to change foreign policy AWAY from war. MILLIONS of dollars go into shaping a public consensus on the basis of false information and often alluring "experts" reciting their "testimony" without views presenting a true contrast being aired or published. It would be one thing if a thinking public actually went along with these policies; but it's quite another matter when the policies are made regardless. It is TREASON to me because NONE of these choices reflect MY beliefs or values (nor do they reflect the tenets of The Constitution) and yet they are being done in my name. AS someone else related the other day, he retracts his consent... the consent of being governed by such as these. Makes sense to me!
Thank you, Margaret Flowers and the other seven members of the Baucus Eight. I am deeply grateful to you for your willingness to be arrested rather than be quiet on this issue of such personal importance to millions of us who are not only your fellow citizens, but your patients.
Yesterday I had gotten discouraged by people here in this liberal forum who were calling single payer advocates purists and selfish and impractical and saying we just didn't know how things work. Today, I am not discouraged; I am inspired again by my fellows. I will not be distracted by the mind guards who would limit our attempts to make democracy work for all of us and not just those who benefit from the current cash flow. I will keep working for single payer, not only as a triumph for healthcare, but as the turning point in reclaiming our government.
Thank you.
I must have missed yesterday, but in any case, Obama and the Democrats have killed single payer insurance. Dead as the Dodo bird. Its terrible that we have been betrayed by the folks that we thought were on our side, but thats the way it is.
Resignation. WHY do we give up so easily? Feaq! I say it's fear! Any dispute??
None. I'm disabled, but I could talk someone into helping me out.
Dr. Flowers, I honor you for putting your own body on the line for us. Insanity is arresting doctors for trying to provide health care for all of us. The outrage is that the American people don't even know what's happening.
When the people fear their government there is tyranny,
when the government fears the people there is liberty.
~ Thomas Jefferson
Sioux Rose
KATHY: Is it any less insane than locking up those who advocate for peace and protest war? Any less insane than locking up those who smoke the peace pipe/plant instead of those who demand guns and get loaded on alcohol which frequently unleashes their violent impulses? Any less insane than locking up Father Dear and the small group who protest torture and the School of Assasins that has taught its methods throughout Central America? Any less insane than locking up persons for petty theft, yet GIVING boatloads of $ to those that BROKE the U.S. economy?
The U.S. has OFFICIALLY forfeited sanity... perhaps that explains the high numbers that are addicted, on anti-depressants, obese, or using all manner of street drugs just to make it through another day. Lives of quiet desperation have gotten louder!
Bravo!! And well stated. Thank you for taking the stand!
This is what I have been saying and what is being called "The New Oligopoly"
The New Oligopoly is made up of multinational corporations that have chosen specific product or service categories to dominate. They are powerful enough to control government, which to remind us is suppose to be made up of "we the people" with "civic virtue." They have changed the laws to make this a reality and we cannot let them get away with it. The existence of an oligopoly such as the ones recently referred to as "too big to fail" are now forcing us to rescue them. It is an insidious and unethical system that needs complete reform.
http://activism101.ning.com/profiles/blogs/oligonomy-defined
Where do I sign-up to stand by your side next time we need to represent single-payer healthcare?
Thank you Margaret Flowers for your service. I have written a stern letter to Baucus and made clear that I and others in my family would contribute and work for his defeat during the next election; and, that he is not insulated from the People and to think about that real hard. If your organization could set up a beat Baucus fund we could begin to fill the coffers well beyond what the insurance industry would do. Please consider this idea. It will generate a lot of funds to beat the sob.
Excellent idea. He is not my rep., but I'll donate. At worst, maybe, we would scare him by sheer money.
I'll be happy to chip in with you. Time to clean the garbage out of Congress.
Baucus (or should I say Bachus?) is not my representative either, but I "chipped in" some money for his campaign expecting him to be a ray of light compared to the Republican incumbent he'd challenged. What I got in return was his "We Won!" email and this shite of his. I'm thinking now of sending him a letter asking him to give me back my "micro" contribution since he's not up to his promisses.
Representative democracy is inherently corrupt, so much so, that it built during the time self-protection measures only a constitutional make-over could override. How many Paul Wellstones did we have in decades - and what happened to many of them? They were exceptions to the rule, aberration the current political model cannot tolerate. (Anyway, I'll join you in funding Baucus' opponent.)
I'm pretty much a radical lefty (from American perspective), but I could live with a social democracy of Western European type, knowing that direct democracy is still just a dream of humankind, a Utopia.
BTW, what happened to American communitarian spirit? Who killed it?
I don't think it would be easy to out-bid the insurance industry. Baucus is dragging some serious swag: he took in $11,602,479 in 2008 (In total, not just insurance, although insurance was ranked third behind securities and investments and lawyers and law firms. Think Goldman Sachs and AIG, two other major shareholders of stock in the senator allegedly from Montana.)
This doesn't count the campaign donation of compliant media, which also rewards those who go along to get along and punishes those that don't. I'd love to see Baucus and Pelosi made an example of what an aroused voting public is capable of despite the uneven playing field.
I agree. How can the average US citizen donate money to someone's campaign (or to try to get the evil Senators, like Baucus, defeated) when we're competing with wealthy corporations and powerful lobbying groups?
We don't have a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. We have a government of the corporations, by the corporations, and for the corporations.
Here is another related example of putting big-business money before people.
The American Cancer Society's mission statement says it is dedicated to "preventing cancer and saving lives—through research education, advocacy, and service." Yet what the Society seems to do best is accumulate wealth.
Both the National Cancer Institute and the American Cancer Society (ACS) are fixated on damage control—screening, diagnosis, and treatment—and genetic research, and are largely indifferent to cancer prevention.
Of an approximately $4.6 billion 2003 budget, the NCI allocated less than one percent to researching occupational cancers, even though they are the most preventable cancers. Over 10 percent of adult cancer deaths result from occupational exposures, which are also a recognized cause of cancer in children: parents exposed to carcinogens on the job often expose their unborn children to the same cancer-causing chemicals. And while the NCI says that diet accounts for roughly one-third of all cancers, it spends just $1 million on education, media, and public outreach to promote the consumption of fruits and vegetables for cancer prevention, while ignoring well-documented evidence that produce contaminated with carcinogenic pesticide residues increases risk. It also fails to educate the public about the cancer risks posed by a wide range of industrial by-products and contaminants, particularly dioxin.
The cancer establishment has been most negligent in its failure to provide Congress, regulatory agencies, and the public with well-documented scientific evidence of known cancer risks. This information is essential for Congress if it is to protect the public by legislating or banning the addition of recognized carcinogens, from food additives to pesticides.
...It is time for the cancer establishment to deploy its considerable war chest toward implementing meaningful cancer prevention strategies and eliminating the toxic output of industry. We must put lives before profits. Only then will we begin to make real progress in the war on cancer.
Read more at www.preventcancer.com
Reposted on www.Activism101.ning.com
Sioux Rose
CROMAG: A good friend of mine was the head of the American Cancer Society in Puerto Rico about 15 years ago. She told me the majority of $ collected went to salaries, and provided similar statistics on the appalling lack of funds for things that matter. It's similar with other disease-oriented organizations. Diabetes seems to me the one that could most easily turn conditions around since the introduction of so much corn syrup and sugar into unnatural foods (in babies even!) predisposes bodies towards this condition in response. Instead of teaching dietary changes, particularly in poor families, too much money is made in helping people to MAINTAIN these out of balance conditions.
I'm sure you've noticed that TV has countless drug ads, and some of the conditions being spoken about are ordinary: restless leg syndrome? Here's my MEDICINE: take a f--king walk! Your legs are restless from NO exercise! The virility drugs crack me up, that warning about the 4 hour erection... I'd like to see Saturday Night Live do a parody on that one, where perhaps he's good looking and the women are lined up around the block. Kind'a like sitting on Santa's lap. (I have to make myself laugh at something, the condition of our nation would otherwise make me sick, as it no doubt has millions.)
Another thing that really pisses me off is liability! How many people are ill due to exposure to toxic chemicals in their food, water, air, soil or via products they use around their homes? How about sick buildings? The net effect of a profligate use of toxic chemicals has rendered some persons far more susceptible than others. Tragically a climate of relative impunity is created as there are SO MANY toxic offenders, a decent lawyer would have much difficulty establishing a case without reasonable doubt. So under Bush the EPA stops doing regulatory work, and the FDA pretty much allows payoffs from Big Pharma to determine which products get the proverbial rubber stamp. Once enough people break down, the product is pulled from the market. What fun to be a Guinea Pig population! Downwinders like those living in NYC after 911, are told the air is perfectly safe, and now with so many unregulated products coming to us from other lands, safety protocols are a joke. Everything falls apart, no center holds when integrity fails to carry any meaning, and so many industries serve mammon (naked proft/the love of $) or Mars (militarism and its catalogue of increasingly lethal toys.) What a national ethos the US has bowed down to!
SIOUX ROSE: Those are some strong words and they need to focus on change but not necessarily the Obama way. "The greatest merit no longer goes to those who resolve problems but those who create them." Dissidents like Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and Dr. Margaret Flowers. That is the type of leadership we need from the public, for the public.
“In my country we go to prison first and then become President” Mandela.
PS If I had an erection lasting longer than four hours I probably be telling all my friends! LOL
"The virility drugs crack me up, that warning about the 4 hour erection... I'd like to see Saturday Night Live do a parody on that one,"
Ask and you shall receive...
http://www.dailymotion.com/video
/x4rkbm_dr-porkenheimers-boner-juice_fun
Good points about the proliferation of drug advertisements. "Ask your doctor about..." and fill in the blank with the expensive medication you DON'T need. Shouldn't it be, "Ask your doctor how good nutrition, exercise, and more vacation time can help you"? I can't keep up with all of these meds anymore. Every other person I meet is on antidepressants and you can't possibly convince them that they don't need these things-- because they ALL have "chemical inbalances." Yet, antidepressants aren't enough. The other evening I saw a commercial for a new drug- I kid you not- that is supposed to be taken when your antidepressant is not enough! It's called "Abilify." I couldn't even understand what it does or why you would need a supplement to your Prozak, Wellbutrin, or whatever else you might be taking.
Sioux Rose
NMLIB: It's the biological (or physiological) complement to "Disaster Capitalism." Why would a person NOT be depressed in these times? So if they wreck the nation enough and people feel depressed, how Orwellian to treat their depression, rather than the very valid collective estate that is the reason for it! INSANE R'U.S.
Call 800-578-4171 and press 0 to leave a message for the White House or 1 to leave a message for Sen. Baucus.
Dr. Flowers,
I applaud you and your organization for speaking on my behalf in that so-called "...public roundtable discussion..." to "reform" health care.
I watched it. I thought you were very effective. NO ONE snickered nor laughed that I could hear.
I could not believe what I was seeing. And I could not understand the exclusion of a voice for universal, single-payer health care. At first I wanted to think that it was a given that was being compared with 'corporate health care,' as represented in the meeting. Yeah, right. Assume nothing. Then the 'Hon.' Senator will say that no organization made its beliefs known, did not apply, yada, yada, yada. I did not see the third meeting. I wonder what happened then?
Here we are, listening to and admiring these folks that risked arrest...BUT, is ONE of us willing to do the same? How about thousands? Millions? Reality: Most of us are cowards. At least I can admit it. If enough of us do the same, maybe that truth will set us free.
We ALL need to be in the streets. Has not the Obama deception shown us anything? What we need to happen will NOT happen until millions march on DC. You may all rationalize yourselves into oblivion, but underneath it all, YOU KNOW THIS IS THE ONLY ANSWER.
I'm here. I'm on the same page.
So, here we are! Now...how do we get a few million more to join the march?....
Keep hammering away, make signs for your front yard and stick them to walls, stop signs, stuff like that. And tell your kids to spray paint it on the freeway overpasses!:)Do mass emails.
mustbefree May 9th, 2009 8:52 pm......It's a beginning...gives us a year......email all and make it so, eh??
I volentered!
The Senators and Congressman should have their government subsidized health care cut off. Of course most of them are fairly wealthy, so it would not hit them the way it does most people.
A pediatrician asks to discuss single payer health care. The answer - "More police". Classic and iconic.
Joe