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Is Obama Planning to Sign Congress' Health Care Reform Bill With Lipstick?
Over the coming weeks, Americans will find out whether the man they elected their president is just a great orator and politician or whether he is also a great leader.
Of the central features of candidate Barack Obama's health care proposal, he said one thing was essential -- a public insurance option to compete with the private insurance industry that is now dominated by a cartel of Wall Street-driven, for-profit behemoths. Another thing Obama said he would not support -- a requirement that all of us be forced by law to buy overpriced health coverage from private insurance companies.
Many of the people who voted for Obama did so because they believed his health care proposal was the best among the field of Democratic candidates and -- no contest here -- far better than the insurance industry-backed plans advocated by the Republicans.
Obama was not alone in calling for a public insurance option. So did Hillary Clinton, among others. About the only thing that distinguished Obama's plan from Clinton's, in fact, was his opposition to forcing all of us to buy health insurance. "Why should we force people to buy something they can't afford?" he asked repeatedly on the campaign trail.
After listening to the speeches he made in Montana and Arizona and to comments made by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and his press secretary, Robert Gibbs, on the Sunday morning talk shows, I'm wondering what happened to the guy Americans elected.
Having worked in the health insurance industry for nearly 20 years, I know Obama and Clinton were right in insisting that a public health insurance plan is vital to reform. A public plan not only will serve to "keep the private insurers honest," as Obama used to say before he started waffling, but it will also provide millions of people who now have no insurance at all with good coverage at a more affordable price. That's because the big for-profit insurers waste increasingly big chunks of your premium dollars on nonessential things like exorbitant CEO salaries and profits for the big institutional investors who own them. A public plan would not waste your precious dollars that way.
But unless I missed it -- and I even read the transcript of his comments to make sure I didn't -- Obama never even mentioned the public insurance option in his opening remarks in Montana, where he stood just a few feet away from one of the insurance industry's biggest friends in Congress, Senator Max Baucus.
The president finally seemed obligated to mention it in the Q&A session. In response to a question from a man who lost his insurance when he lost his job, Obama said this of the public insurance option, using language that would make you think some well-meaning but naïve freshman congressman just recently came up with the idea:
And one of the options that's being debated is, should there be a public option, all right? (Applause.) And I want to -- I want to just explain this briefly, because this is where the whole myth of a government takeover of health care comes from. And not everybody -- not even every Democrat -- agrees on the public option, but I just want at least people to be informed about what the debate is about.
The idea is, if you go to that marketplace and you're choosing from a bunch of different options, should one of the options be a government-run plan that still charges you premiums? You still have to pay for it just like private insurance, but government would not -- this government option would not have the same profit motive. It would be obviously like a non-for-profit. It would have potentially lower overhead, so it might be able to give you a better deal, should you be able to choose from that option among many others. That's what the debate is about. (Applause.)
Now, what the opponents of a public option will argue is, you can't have a level playing field; if government gets into the business of providing health insurance, they will drive private insurers out of the health insurance market. That's the argument that's made. (Applause.) And I -- that is a legitimate, it's a fair concern, especially if the public option was being subsidized by taxpayers, right? I mean, if they didn't -- if they could just keep on losing money and still stay in business, after a while they would run everybody else out. And that's why any discussion of a public option has said that it's got to pay for itself, it's not subsidized by private insurers.
I don't know about you, but to me that sounds an awful lot like a guy who is trying to talk himself -- and us -- out of the best idea he and many others in the Democratic party have come up with to reform our badly broken, profit-driven health care system.
Less than 48 hours after setting us up for his soon-to-be-even-more-obvious capitulation to the demands of the insurance industry, the New York Times reported in its online edition that the Obama administration had begun sending signals "that it has backed away from its once-firm vision of a government organization to provide for the nation's 50 million uninsured and is now open to using nonprofit cooperatives instead."
Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said on Sunday morning that an additional government insurer is "not the essential element" of the administration's plan to overhaul the country's health care system. "I think there will be a competitor to private insurers," she said on CNN's State of the Union. "That's really the essential part, is you don't turn over the whole new marketplace to private insurance companies and trust them to do the right thing. We need some choices, we need some competition."
Her less-than-forceful insistence on a government insurance organization was paralleled by Robert Gibbs, the president's press secretary. "What I am saying is the bottom line for this for the president is, what we have to have is choice and competition in the insurance market," he said on CBS's Face the Nation.
Not only is Obama clearly ready to throw the public option overboard, he is embracing the requirement that we all be forced to buy insurance from private insurers. That means your tax dollars and mine will be used to pay subsidies to the big insurers to provide coverage to people who can't afford to buy their policies, because the big insurers charge far more than they should because Wall Street investors demand that they do.
One of the people who undoubtedly talked Obama away from the public option and into supporting this mandate is his new BFF, Aetna CEO Ron Williams. Williams, who made $65 million off of Aetna's policyholders' premiums over the past two years and who was the mastermind behind Aetna's shedding of eight million members a few years ago to meet Wall Street's demands, is the insurance industry's leading champion of requiring us all to buy insurance. And, of course, without a public option, we'll all be forced to buy coverage from Aetna or one of the other private insurers.
According to a recent article in Forbes, Williams has been to the White House a half a dozen times recently to advise the president and his staff on health care reform. That same article quoted a Wall Street analyst as saying that Aetna likely will dump about 600,000 policyholders during the coming months to satisfy its investors' unrelenting profit demands.
During his speech in Montana, Obama talked a lot of trash about the insurance industry. Don't be fooled by that tough talk. It's all part of a strategy to try get us to believe we'll get the reform he promised during the campaign. Industry leaders are in fact delighted he's denouncing their behavior, because they believe most of his supporters -- who were hopeful the stars might finally have aligned for real reform -- will be fooled into thinking the reform bill that reaches his desk will benefit them more than the special interests with their armies of lobbyists. And they know the nonprofit cooperatives Sebelius and Gibbs are now trying to sell us on don't have a prayer of succeeding. The big for-profits will never let them get off the ground in any meaningful way.
Sadly, I believe the fat cats are winning and that the bill Congress sends the president will be one that gives an industry with an unsustainable business model a new lease on life and a guarantee of unprecedented future profits.
So I hope the president's aides are buying lots of lipstick. He'll need all he can get to put on that pig of a bill.
- Posted in
79 Comments so far
Show AllWendell Potter is one decent man in a world of sleazy operators.
By turning over "health care reform" to Congress and the medical cartel (insurance/pharma/AMA) at the onset without establishing a vision, Obama relinquished any possible legacy of being considered a great leader. The best he can hope for now is to end up with a half-baked bill that might make it look like he at least threw a crumb or two to the cartel's customers.
While Obama has not demonstrated leadership on this issue, he has proven that he listens more to people who would never vote for him in a million years, while ignoring what was once the Democratic Party base.
Yep after Canada Introduced Single payer, every Insurance Company went belly up. Tens of thousands of people were thrown into the streets having lost their jobs. Death panels formed to eliminate every person over 65....I mean really we have no one over 65 up here in Canada.
Why is it not possible for Citizens of America (Excepting those all too few that frequent sites such as these) to look outwards for examples rather then "buy into" these tales of the Apocalypse if the God of Profits not worshipped ?
The Insurance companies in Canada remain one of the most profitable sectors of the economy.
Americans are motivated by the corporate media pushing their fear button and their greed button.
History has proven that you can sell any product or any idea in America simply by pushing the voters' fear and greed buttons, irrespective of the vote being cast in the marketplace or the ballot box.
Just as Carl Rove kept the Dubya Regime riding high by pushing the fear and greed buttons, the medical cartel (insurance/pharma/AMA) is turning "health care reform" into an ever larger extortion racket by pushing the fear and greed buttons.
"fear button and their greed button."
and their hate button
Don't forget the demagogic 'American exceptionalism' button. This is the one that allows Beck and Hannity to shout, "We have the BEST health care in the world!" while their flock nods in fact-denying agreement.
Well I suppose a people that will believe they see the Image of Jesus Christ in a piece of burned toast will believe in just about anything.
Sioux Rose
RAY: Advertising's 3 fates include greed, fear and VANITY! Do not forget that last one. How else did people start smoking cigarettes? Watching a stud in a movie light one up, or the gorgeous movie star set forth a subliminal chain reaction. On unconscious planes it read something like, "I want to be/look just like him/her." If a person can be convinced to pick up something THAT toxic, that makes them cough as soon as they take in its first breath, then it becomes chrystal clear how powerful a force advertising is. Next in line, military recruitership and the "Be all that you can be" campaigns. Subliminal, "Pay no attention to those dead bodies in the corner, or that unfortunate bit of collateral damage moving slightly off camera, guts in his hand."
Maybe Canadians should stop lying about their ages to appear younger! :evil
Did you check out the conference in Halifax last week end. I liked Leo Gerard - the resounding "NO!" when he asked the audience if anyone would be willing to trade Canadian Health Care for the American system. He certainly showed what the party - er - stands for.
Vern, beyond decent. Admirable. When he saw what his company and his lifestyle was doing to others, he quit. How many would give up so much in order to live honorably? I would call him a Samurai.
Obama on the other hand, is a different story. We voted for a man full of fire and promise - public option and NO mandate, and ended up with a waffler. Actually we ended up with a dog on a corporate leash. Pitiful.
When the people fear their government there is tyranny,
when the government fears the people there is liberty.
~ Thomas Jefferson
I don't think Obama's a waffler. I think he, and most Dems it seems, buy into the myth that politics is about compromise. Maybe it used to be when politics was a boxing match, with agreed-upon rules and boundaries. Now it's an outright cage-match, with no rules, only what you can get away with. The Repubs have realized this (and made it this way) and now take advantage of the situation. The Dems can either play the game as it exists or be blown out of the water. Seems like they don't even know the game has changed.
Compromise requires each party giving up something. The Democrats require the Republicans to give up nothing in return for the Democrats giving up everything. That is capitulation, not compromise!
It is neither, it is all part of the phony show; the ruling classes need to give the illusion of choice.
Sioux Rose
SOCIALIST: Exactly!
Right on!
Interestingly, I can see validity in the posts just prior to mine. It seems there is an element of compromise, capitulation, and phony show in all this. I guess, depending on one's outlook at the time, they can all be true in any given event.
In any event, what is happening is that nothing much gets done for the people. This really is nothing new, just read some American history. The thing is that the situation has gotten so dire and so all-encompassing that each day we tarry the more perilous the situation gets.
Obama is on a short leash, and he's known it since he won the election. I'm sure he was schooled on what he could expect to do and what he would never be able to accomplish. He's also a quick study and has learned already that the masters will not put up with much progress.
So, what will we do about this?
His complicity makes him weak. He calls it unity.
Say, did you know his Grandmother, the one he got in trouble for referring to her as a "typical white person" was a VP at the bank of Hawaii?
Lets set the record straight as I'm from Hawaii and actually have friends that new obama and his parents and grandparents.
His grandmother, who for some period raised him, worked as a mortgage loan officer in a local hawaiian bank giving out regular honest home mortgages just like thousands of other good standing banks and savings and loans around the country. These banks and home mortgages helped put middle-class americans in their own homes.
She was very knowledgeable and an expert in her field who was the go-to-person in the mortgage department but never rose as high as her abilities warranted because of the gender glass ceiling. Obama's grandparents (mothers side) were not rich by any means but like so many in those days were working middle-class people.
I am not trying in any way to justify Obama's corpratism and will include the lead to my email to friends on his overall performance and healthcare in particular:
"To think there is a substantive difference between todays republicans and democrats is to buy into the "Bad-cop, good cop" paradigm and think that the "good-cop" is on your side."
Hey Ralph, I just happened to read that she was a banker--actually VP of the Bank of Hawaii, I think--working her way up from clerk-- and wondered, since she was the one constant in Obama's formative years, if it influenced his views of bankers. He sure surrounds himself with them.
THERE ARE NOT MANY MORE DISTRACTIONS LEFT WHICH ARE AVAILABLE FOR OUR WEALTHY ELITE AMERICANS TO HIDE BEHIND IN MAKING SURE THAT FUTURE PROPER AND JUST CARE OF ALL OUR AMERICANS (IN A HUMANE AND JUST FASHION) CONCERNING THIS BLATANT NATIONWIDE LACK OF PROPER LEGAL REPRESENTATION AND HEALTH ~ CARE.
*** WEALTHY ELITE AMERICANS (WHO ARE ONLY 1% OF OUR USA POPULATION) SADLY ALSO CONTROL HOW OUR U.S.CONGRESS SPENDS THEIR BUDGET TRILLION$ AND HAVE OBVIOUSLY FOUND MORE WORTHY INTERNATIONAL CITIZENS THEN OUR OWN DESPERATE AND NEEDY POOR TO ASSIST !!!
Lawyers For Poor Americans has many other written articles that can be viewed with any www search engine by our name or our telephone number.
Lawyers For Poor Americans is a www lobby group of volunteers that sing out about the decades old neglect,abuse and injustices being inflicted on our poorer Americans that have become Crimes Against Humanity issues for the International World Court to investigate.
lawyersforpooreramericans@yahoo.com
(424-247-2013)
Mr. Potter will consider Mr. Obama a GREAT leader if he gets healthcare reform passed?
If the bar on being considered great is set any lower it will be underground.
I can't be too hard on Mr. Potter's excessively polite charactizations; after all, he was a career insurance company executive before he saw the light.
I give him credit for standing up to his former masters.
Normally, just the lede would have put me off:
"Over the coming weeks, Americans will find out whether the man they elected their president is just a great orator and politician or whether he is also a great leader."
Anyone not still enthralled with Obama can see that he is None of the Above. The passage of a "bipartisan" puddle of congealed dog vomit as "health care legislation" won't change that, no matter how brightly Obama grins as he hands a ceremonial signing pen to Max Baucus.
· Yr Obd't Servant
"I can't be too hard on Mr. Potter's excessively polite characterizations; after all, he was a career insurance company executive before he saw the light.
I give him credit for standing up to his former masters."
I had several decades in the insurance industry. Executives were usually very polite and soft spoken face to face. Then they would proceed to destroy their target behind their backs. They had passive aggressive down to a science.
Than being said I have read quite a lot about Mr. Potter and seen several of his interviews and I think he is the real deal. A person who lead a sheltered life of privilege only to put it aside and do the right thing once he realized what his industry was doing to average folks. Trust me after 30+ years in corporate america he is a true rarity.
I give him complete credit for standing up and doing the right thing.
Thanks for your informed and experienced endorsement of Mr. Potter, not to mention my judgement!
· Yr Obd't Servant
Yes along with your humility, you can easily add your excellent judgement to your resume of nobel human traits!
if if may invoke wacky ross perot for one moment - that giant sucking sound we hear is the last hope for health insurance reform going down the toilet.
as rachel maddow pointed out on her show, this represents the collapse of the democratic party - a collapse caused by the many millions of dollars of political contributions that have been funnelled into the coffers of the key politicians in charge of moving reform through the house and senate.
in a banana republic this would be called bribery, on the part of the health insurance, and treason on the part of the politicians, in this case undermining what is clearly supported by the vast majority of americans - that is: a single payer - the government. this is the only viable option for reform, period.
in the united states this is called the same old same old.
the cult of obama is taking some serious hits over this and other issues and his currency is being devalued faster than the sinking greenback.
turns out obama is the same old same old.
as arrianna huffington pointed out so clearly: obama needs to conduct himself as if everyone's interests are not aligned - which clearly they are not.
there has been a lot of media spin around the outbreaks of unruliness at the various town hall meetings around the country. the fawning corporate media has spun these dust ups as the work of "plants" who go the meetings with the express purpose of ruining them.
my take is different. republicans are getting upset at republican events and dems at dem events. finally, the american people are fed up with the endless bullshit and lies we get from our political leaders and to me it seems like they are not going to take it anymore.
i think it should be clear to most that the politicians do not represent the public anymore, and haven't for a long time. they are puppets or straw men who kiss the corporate ass for their money and do the corporate bidding.
the healthcare process has made this starkly clear in a frightening way.
same deal with the bank bail out - a bailout that was opposed by EVERYONE. there was no support for the initial 700 billion (remember ben bernanke said he just wanted to use a big number) bail out but obama went ahead with it and then increased the total amount of bail out to thirteen trillion. and that sum keeps rising.
thirteen trillion dollars represent 10 years of total income for the american government - government revenues for 1 year is around 1.3 to 1.4 trillion.
once again wall street gets the goldmine and the sheeple get the shaft. talk about same old same old.
obama continues the imperial wars. enhancing them in afghanistan and pakistan and soon to be starting new ones in latin and south america.
obama continues to hold and torture prisoners, many of whom are innocent peasants turned in by the northern alliance in afghanistan for the bounty offered.
obama presses to keep the torture pictures out of sight.
obama wants to look forward. no wonder. all he can see in his rear view mirror is a bunch of very angry americans trying to get his attention.
obama has turned the public option into a lousy piece of legislation that is, unbelievably, worse than the situation we have today. it will be a gold mine for the insurance companies and they now support obama and have agreed to spend 150 million dollars selling this new boondoggle to the sheeple with the able and ready assistance of their fawning corporate media.
just go to bloomberg today and look at the insurance companies' stocks - all of them are up on a day where the exchange lost 185 points.
after delivering the bank bail out to wall street brother obama is now set to bring the booty over to the insurance companies.
what a guy!
the cult of obama is taking some serious hits over this and other issues and his currency is being devalued faster than the sinking greenback.
Right now, Obama is worth about as much as used toilet paper.
Sioux Rose
LEBEAU: I guess I'm channeling Clinton in that "I feel your pain." Truly.
The interesting question in all this is what will money come to mean at the end of this tunnel. Dollars are turning into a stream of toxic waste. Printing up money and giving it to those who do NOT work, and have NOTHING to their credit. The vast majority offered the recent embarassment of riches just sits in offices trying to figure out, like the human equivalent of mosquitoes, how to suck the blood out of others so they can grow fat. The surrounding starving masses is of no concern to them.
When a society, ANY society, goes out of its way to throw fiscal rewards at its most insidious scoundrels, how far from the moral bottom can we be? What nation would still WANT dollars given the sums, as you pointed out, thrown at an unapologetically corrupt bankster caste while NO meaningful regulations or any form of discipline has been put in place to stop the hemmorrhaging of all this mulah! It seems to me it/US currency has lost all meaning, any actual connection with reality. And have you noticed how much the recently printed denominations of currency look like funny money?
Strange doesn't begin to define the texture and tenor of our times!
Siouxrose,
About the money: We have a fiat currency as you know which is controlled by 12 elite banks called the federal reserve. They are privately owned. They do not wish to see the value of the dollar reduced. So they move their trillians in a tight circle from speculation in stocks to the banks and back with some bribes thrown at the politicians. This will only change IF wages start to rise at the same rate or greater than inflation. Bernake is NEVER going to throw money out of helicopters unless they are flying over the Hamptons. Remember that very few people, relatively speaking, own most of the land and corporate stock. They will keep the money out of middle class and poor hands. You can stock up on coffee and buy gold and silver coins as a hedge but until you see
1) Unemployment back to less than 7%
2) Wages keeping up with inflation.
3) Bank interest rates on CDs at or greater than inflation.
your dollers will be quite adequate for sustenace.
Sioux Rose
AGG: I sure hope you are right. I waited 3 months for an appt with a trance medium who delivers very intriging info. I had intended to ask about the fate of this nation and its money supply, among other things. Due to a technical glitch, the scheduled appointment was postponed. I am very upset about this... nonetheless, I see some ominous portents from the astrological indicators, and I wanted to see if this OTHER source could pose any antithetical perspective; or if it would validate what I was noticing.
I learned to live on very little a long time ago, but as someone else related in today's forum, the amount of $ that goes to vehicle registrations, property taxes, income taxes, retail taxes, and the various and sundry insurances, it eats up at least 30% of what I make. And lately things are breaking and people are doing such half-assed jobs that I find I have to spend too much time correcting others' mistakes, and it really takes away from creative writing time. These are VERY uneasy times... thank you for the advice.
Much obliged.
I respect your intelligence and analytical skills. I ask you, as a therapeutic exercise, to pretend you are a multibillionaire right now. Do you see any problems in your privileged world?
See what I mean? They are worried sick. They own the assets that are depreciating due to their ham fisted attempts at social intimidation. They are the ones severely limited in where they can live. They are the ones enclosed in their pretty cages. They are the ones looking nervously at all their underpaid staff. Just think of what it costs them to buy politicians at all levels. They have killers, kidnap artists and papparazzi always after them.
So your worries and the constant boxing in that goes on all around us by the elite is not as bad as it looks.
Anyway, keep fighting the good fight. I love your writing.
"finally, the american people are fed up with the endless bullshit and lies we get from our political leaders and to me it seems like they are not going to take it anymore."
I think you are right. The line in the sand is drawn. Our heels are dug in. We don't want to live with this celebrated cruelty all around. Obama knew we wanted real change and tried to derail us. Now we are going to derail him and every other corporate shill out there.
No more wars for corporation profits.
No more lack of health care. HR676 or bust!
. . . I'm wondering what happened to the guy Americans elected.
Read the article elsewhere on Lanny Davis. As you read, substitute the name Barack Obama for Lanny Davis and you will arrive at something close to the truth. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Is that what the Democrats have done? Or is the thrill of corruption, staring at the six zeros in a million, even better than an orgasm?
The "Healthcare Reform" debate is joke;
SinglePayer off the table
weak "public option" appears on the left of the debate
the status quo appears on the right
A "compromise" which will result in millions of new customers for private insurance companies (subsidized by the taxpayer) is the likely result.
Once again, the phony debate distorts the issues, leaves out large chunks of information and gives us phony reform which will result in another transfer of public monies into the coffers of the private insurance corps, and Big Pharma.
The Vampire System is now subsidized by its victims. Count Dracula Inc. You die prematurely and we pay our execs millions. That is brilliant
That is brilliant.
That is diabolical.
Mr. Potter, do some more reading.
As the research shows over at pnhp.org, the public option cannot work in theory and most of it has already been tried, and failed, in more than a few states.
If the publc option is open to all takers it might,in the long term, usher in single-payer. If the public option ends up being a dumping ground for the people the corporations can't profitably insure anyway, it will only enable the expansion of a NO INSURANCE COMPANY LEFT BEHIND program, wherein corporate welfare soars to new heights.
The insurance companies pretended to fight Medicare in 1965, but were relieved when it was finally established because they couldn't profitably insure a demographic limited to people over 65 years of age anyway. The insurance companies will buy in to a public option only if it is limited to a demographic they don't want to insure anyway.
Democracy was tried in the USA in 1776 but that failed in all the states too. So does that mean we should "read" some more, HUH TROLL?Go back to your corporate PR slime cave and drink some more blood. You are getting very pale.
Obama is controlled by lobbyists and Big Pharma created this bill from the beginning. The only thing we will learn from this is how naive Obama supporters really are.
I was one of those naive supporters right up until the healthcare roundtable when at first no single-payer supporter was allowed a seat..then when they were,not allowed to speak.Obama is owned by corporations and so is his Party.When will progressives learn to stop trusting the Republicrats who abandon them after playing to them in each election,and join a party like my Green Party or the Socialists,where they will actually be listened to!
Potter sez: "I'm wondering what happened to the guy Americans elected."
***
I'm wondering why all the mystery. He's been standing there in plain sight the whole time.
One part of Obama's health care reform calls for an insurance marketplace as a way to bring down costs. I suspect this is what Sebilius and Gibbs refer to with the "choice" and "competition" buzz words. But along with doing away with the burden of adjusting policies to meet state laws, the insurance companies will lose those pesky state insurance regulators. How appropriate given the recent study that found that AIG had conducted Enron-like accounting among its various companies and that their only worry had been state regulators. It makes a nice party favor, or the cherry on top of insurance's Obama Sundae.
Sioux Rose
PITCH FORK: Very astute post. I think the insurers are learning a lot from cutting people off from the care they THOUGHT their insurance would provide; and they'll be doing the same "dance" over property matters, especially as global warming/climate change begins to take a toll on our homes and yards.
Without a balance between big business and citzens' rights, everything simulates the moral decay evidenced by and through "disaster capitalism." The public is routinely exposed to toxic products, our water has big pharma run-off in it, our produce is laced with pesticides, meat carries hormones and antibiotics, but the PR machine pushes the idea that it's all about OUR CHOICES. So we are expected to be responsible for all the things that are subtly attacking us; and even when we pay at the various insurance tollgates, there's no guarantee we get to pass free and clear to our "destination." This game is so criminally "gamed" that it's a wonder people are still paying at all.
I had to spend 20 minutes today arguing with the local electric co-op because although I paid the electric bills on 3 properties, the cashier didn't properly credit my account. Lots of fun proving one's innocence, having to wait while computers don't allow changes EVEN WHEN receipts PROVE the money went in. More and more I see incompetence everywhere. I suppose it's an extension of the wise words of Kahlil Gibran (in "The Prophet") that "if you bake a bread with bitterness, you bake a bitter bread." Given the lousy pay and lack of job satisfaction in LOTS of persons, imagine all that bitter bread going round!
"Given the lousy pay and lack of job satisfaction in LOTS of persons, imagine all that bitter bread going round!"
How right you are, Rose! In a recent talk by given by Guy Finley (of which I posted a link to a short while back), he said that, being generous, probably 95% of the workers making things dislike or hate their job. He added that things made with 'negative energy' cannot help but reflect that energy in some form or fashion.
Sioux Rose
CHESS: I have a flight tomorrow. I sure hope the pilot falls into that 5% bracket!
Thanks for the response.
Bon voyage!
Speaking of "Disaster Capitalism" - I wonder what Naomi Klein's husband is up to. Oh yes, he is interviewing Wendell Potter for a piece on Health Care:
Fault lines – health care
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bTovVG47Cc
Avi Lewis's grandfather, David Lewis, was the second leader of the NDP. Tommy Douglas, the father of single payer health care, was the first leader of the NDP.
And, as Leo Gerard says - the lack of single payer hurts the economy (language warning):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Osk1ofyiPSM&feature=channel
RE their new presidents, Americans virtually always buy a pig in a poke.
And if a massive amount of lipstick isn't required during the campaign, it always is soon afterward.
Look at it optimistically: at least the cosmetics industry benefits.
It is really sad that not so long ago, so many people took so much pride in electing a black man president. Now we are finding out that Obama sold his soul at the company store, and all we got was a houseboy. All those marches I was in as a boy, turned out to be a waste of time. We can not have civil rights, or a government of the people, by the people, and for the people; we can not institute a government that will secure the entitlements, of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness for we the people; the beast just has too much purchasing power. Providing for the common defense is as much socialism as promoting the general welfare. Hopefully the young people who voted for Obama will abandon the corrupt political process, until their grand kids inhabit America; in place of the people who wrap themselves in body bags, salute the flag, and chant we are the patriots. Now, prove me wrong Obama or take your place in history. I asked God how my land got so screwed up, and the only words I heard was that “the Holy Spirit entered into their hearts that they would agree to turn their land over to the beast”. One can not defeat what one can not see.
malcolm x and m.l.k. did not sell their souls to the company store, so the company took care of them with a little wetwork...