Subscribe to Common Dreams News Updates
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
A Mean Streak in the US Mainstream
The US tolerates more inequality, deprivation and suffering than is acceptable here
When we Europeans – the British included – contemplate the battles President Obama must fight to reform the US health system, our first response tends to be disbelief. How can it be that so obvious a social good as universal health insurance, so humane a solution to common vulnerability, is not sewn deep into the fabric of the United States? How can one of the biggest, richest and most advanced countries in the world tolerate a situation where, at any one time, one in six of the population has to pay for their treatment item by item, or resort to hospital casualty wards?
The second response, as automatic as the first, is to blame heartless and ignorant Republicans. To Europeans, a universal health system is so basic to a civilised society that only the loony right could possibly oppose it: the people who cling to their guns, picket abortion clinics (when they are not trying to shoot the abortionists) and block funding for birth control in the third world. All right, we are saying to ourselves, there are Americans who think like this, but they are out on an ideological limb.
If only this were true. The reason why Obama is finding health reform such a struggle – even though it was central to his election platform – is not because an extreme wing of the Republican Party, mobilised by media shock-jocks, is foaming at the mouth, or because Republicans have more money than Democrats to buy lobbying and advertising power. Nor is it only because so many influential groups, from insurance companies through doctors, have lucrative interests to defend – although this is a big part of it.
It is because very many Americans simply do not agree that it is a good idea. And they include not only mainstream Republicans, but Democrats, too. Indeed, Obama's chief problem in seeking to extend health cover to most Americans is not Republican opposition: he thrashed John McCain to win his presidential mandate; he has majorities in both Houses of Congress. If Democrats were solidly behind reform, victory would already be his.
The unpalatable fact for Europeans who incline to think that Americans are just like us is that Democrats are not solidly behind Obama on this issue. Even many in the party's mainstream must be wooed, cajoled and even – yes – frightened, if they are ever going to agree to change the status quo. Universal healthcare is an article of faith in the US only at what mainstream America would regard as the bleeding- heart liberal end of the spectrum.
As some of Obama's enemies warned through the campaign – and I mean warned, not promised – this is the philosophical terrain where, his voting record suggests, this President is most at home. But many more are not. The absence from the Senate of Edward Kennedy, through illness, and Hillary Clinton, elevated to the State Department, has left his pro-reform advocacy in the legislature sorely depleted.
But there is something else at work here, too, beyond defective advocacy, and it lays bare a profound misunderstanding. Europe hailed Obama's landslide election victory as evidence that America had reclaimed its better self, turned to the left and bade farewell to ingrained racial divisions as well. That was a benevolent, but ultimately idealistic, gloss.
Obama's victory can indeed be seen as a reaction to eight years of conservative Republicanism under George Bush and a turn by US voters to the left. But that left is still quite a bit further right than in most of Europe. Nor was it just a leftward turn that cost John McCain the White House; it was also a rejection of the weaker candidate. Obama's great asset was that he came across as more competent on the economy, at a time of global financial meltdown. From this side of the Atlantic, we convinced ourselves that Americans had voted with their hearts, but there was a considerable element of the wallet as well.
That wallet element helps explain the deep-seated misgivings that have surfaced about Obama's plans for health reform. A majority of Americans believe they have adequate health cover. Their choice of job may be limited by their insurance requirements (and labour mobility reduced). And their calculations may be upset – sometimes disastrously – by accident or illness.
But with most pensioners protected by the state system known as Medicare, an "I'm all right, Jack" attitude prevails. It coexists with the fear that extending the pool of the insured, to the poorer and more illness-prone, will raise premiums for the healthy and bring queuing, or rationing, of care – which is why stories about the NHS inspire such dread. The principle that no one should be penalised financially by illness is trumped by the self-interest of the majority, then rationalised by the argument that health is a matter of personal responsibility.
The point is that, when on "normal", the needle of the US barometer is not only quite a way to the political right of where it would be in Europe, but showing a very different atmospheric level, too. For there is a mean and merciless streak in mainstream US attitudes, which tolerates much more in the way of inequality, deprivation and suffering than is acceptable here, while incorporating a large and often sanctimonious quotient of blame.
This transatlantic difference goes far beyond the healthcare debate. Consider the give-no-quarter statements out of the US on the release of the Lockerbie bomber – or the continued application of the death penalty, or the fact that excessive violence is far more common a cause for censorship of US films in Europe than sex. Or even, in documents emerging from the CIA, a different tolerance threshold where torture and terrorism are concerned.
Some put the divergence down to the ideological rigidity that led Puritans and others to flee to America in the first place; others to the ruthless struggle for survival that marked the early settlement years and the conquest of the West. Still others see it as the price the US pays for its material success. What it means, though, is that if and when Obama gets some form of health reform through, it will reflect America's fears quite as much as its promise. And it is unlikely to be a national service that looks anything like ours.
- Posted in
278 Comments so far
Show AllPolling has shown the public in America favour universal health care by about 75 percent. The single payer option was not even considered. The Health Corporations own both parties. Both parties are corporate lapdogs and do not reflect the wishes of most Americans at all.
And yet those same Americans, without accusing them of having a mean streak, will still vote for only Democrats or Republicans even though the record shows that both parties no longer represent The People. A little integrity in searching out truly credible candidates and voting for them, would go a long way to solving all of this... without marches, letters to congress, or violence. All it would take really, would be a personal commitment intellectual integrity, honor, and good citizenship.
http://www.gpln.com/citizen.htm
according to figures from the world health organization:
how much will national healthcare cost??
NOTHING.......ZERO......ZIP
in fact it will save us
RIGHT NOW
OUR GOVERNMENT spends $3300.00 dollars per person per year on health care.........then the rest of us pay thousands more
in ENGLAND where they have national health care....their GOVERNMENT spends $2900.00 per person on healthcare
and THEY have universal coverage
so we ALREADY pay for UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE..... we just are not receiving it.....
why not???
To everyone. You may want to go out to the source of this article, (The Independent), and post your comments there. I did. Let them know on the other side of the pond that we're not all right wing nuts in this country.
Don't underestimate how much better informed Europeans are about Americans than Americans are about Europeans. They know we're not all mean and selfish; they know that about half of us are. That half is the half which has eagerly swallowed massive deficit spending and taxation to pay for worldwide military domination including obscene amounts of weaponry and the invasions of other countries, but screams bloody murder at the thought of any amount of their taxes going to help the less privileged.
Europeans, who pay much more in taxes than Americans, are quite happy to do so providing the taxes support the welfare state and (Gasp! Horror!!) aid to poorer countries.
Europeans have known us a long time and pay us far more attention than Americans do them. After all, "World News" there doesn't, as it does in the US, mean American national politics or something the US is embroiled in overseas. It means something significant in the world regardless of whether the European nations have a dog in that fight. In the Vietnam years that was always first on the TV news in every European country, even though no European country was involved. Ditto with Civil Rights in the 1960s. It's always like that, there.
Rainborowe
Ms. Dejevsky, like so many other Britons and people from around the world, is evidently enamored of her illusion, fostered by Obama during the campaign, that he is a would-be populist savior from the ravages of the benighted yahoos who dominated the last political administration. Perhaps she should look more closely at Obama's record of shameful backdoor negotiation with the barons of health industry rape of the people. She might notice that, in a small foursome of golfers playing with the President at Martha's Vineyard during his current vacation, is none other than Robert Wolfe, CEO of UBS Switzerland, which has just been allowed to escape prosecution for a massive U.S. income tax evasion operation (what Swiss banks do, you know) by making a big "settlement" of its case. She can anguish as she wishes over the fantasy of Obama's "plans" being frustrated by "some people" in his own party as well as the unspeakable Republicans, but she as well as the legion of Obama supporters in the U.S.A. and around the world must do a 3 monkeys routine and see, speak and hear no "evil" about their Dear One.
Agree with all you've said. Bad governance all around and getting worse by the second.
Here have a Brit telling us what Americans want. Quite frankly, she's full of crap. To say that most Americans are satisfied with the healthcare system is pure, unadulterated horse manure.
She is reading the surveys that ask Americans if they like their employer-based medical insurance and then conclude that most Americans are happy with the US health care system. Of course Americans are going to say they are happy with their coverage when the only alternative is no insurance.
"To say that most Americans are satisfied with the healthcare system is pure, unadulterated horse manure"
....or maybe she looked at the results of the last US election and saw most Americans voting for two parties that have had decades to catch up with Europe on healthcare and haven't done so. Even on this progressive site, during election periods you have people (supposedly progressives) supporting the Dems. So in Europe it will take a while longer for the gloss to come off Obama and he will be seen worldwide, as he is here, as the agent, not of change, but of the status quo.
Simplistic nonsense. Ordinary Americans are no meaner than any other general population anywhere and possibly even less so than some Europeans who might be mentioned.
First, you confuse the American populace with the powers that exert the greatest influences over every aspect of their lives. Second, you confuse meaness with avarice on the part of the latter. That avarice may, perhaps, be assisted by a "stupidity streak" on the part of the former, but it's more like propagandized ovine docility and surrender to the apparently inevitable.
RV: I like your thinking here. I think that while "mean streak" is questionable, maybe "stupidity streak" kind of misses the mark as well. Now "docility streak," there's a streak we can live with! Sheeples is by far the best derogative term being applied to Americans today. At my church (in the men's room) is a blown-up Far Side cartoon that shows hundreds of sheep following their leader over a cliff while a lone sheep is working its way back the other way saying "excuse me please!" That's sort of my personal soul-cartoon, as it might be of anyone who goes against the grain of the docile hero-worship of Obama that's helping to lead us over the cliff. (Ironically, most of the people at my church are Obama-dociles who don't even see themselves in the crowd of sheeples depicted in this cartoon.)
In general, I think the victims are to be more pitied than despised. The propaganda is almost overwhelming and much of it tends to be the exceptionalist self-flattering type that is very hard for Americans to resist. That same "we're number one" element, of course, makes it much easier for others to scorn and reject.
Who are these "victims"? The heartless, selfish, bastards who will deny nearly 50 million Americans the slightest chance of healthcare? Are you referring to these fat fools as victims of the overwhelming propaganda of exceptionalism? And this is so hard for Americans to resist? It's bad enough to have had to live a lifetime in this benighted country and watch it murder it's way through the 20th and now the 21st century. To quote another poster on this thread: "The US is the wealthiest nation in the world but that's only because everything they have - from the land where the country sits to the gas in the cars they drive - has been stolen by force from others." It is disgusting and appalling!
I'm not at all sure that "sheeple" or "docility streak" are appropriate concepts.
Why would the ruling class have to keep their disinfo machine running 24/7/365 if the majority were so sheep-like and docile?
I suspect it's just the opposite: that people are very non-docile, non-sheeplike. But when the ruling-class-manufactured struggles of everyday life consume nearly all your waking hours, it's a bit hard to find the time and energy to root around for the truth and begin organising effective resistance.
Come to that, how effective are we, here at CD, at organising a resistance? I've not seen any signs of it, have you? Yet I'd bet that we're on average well up in the IQ and white-collar rankings. If we can't do it, how can we criticise the less provided for not doing it? Wouldn't it be our task to get the organising off the ground?
Mairead: "If we can't do it, how can we criticize the less provided for not doing it? Wouldn't it be our task to get the organizing off the ground?"
Well said! I posited in a post just the other day something like this: Instead of banging on computer keys to whine, bitch, and point out obvious wrongs in the American system, why can't we use this medium of the greatest communication invention in history to ORGANIZE into large numbers that will not be ignored?!
For example: If all small anti-war groups merged into a National group of "ONE", the power would expand exponentially! The same with Single-payer, environmental, tax equality, living wage, overpopulation, and on and on and on, just IMAGINE what could be accomplished! It is said there is "strength in numbers" and I would add that there is "power for change" in numbers.
Granted, it is nearly impossible to get "regular people" (Sheeple) off the couches and out of the malls to commit to such a calling but WHAT IF SPLINTER GROUPS FORMED TO MERGE INTO A "BOARD" GROUP?! (i.e. Sierra Club, Greenpeace, One World, etc. became one entity. My GAWD what a concept. BUT...how do we pull it together as just C.D.'ers pounding on keys? Who among us has the charisma and contacts to start to form the snowball that will roll and GROW in time?
Well, there's my thought. And I believe it to be a workable idea. BUT, will the smaller groups be willing to toss ego aside in order to pick up that first handful of snow?
Any ideas to build on this?
You'd first need a forum that provides organizational capabilities that aren't available here. The mechanics are easy enough -- just a domain and a server. The hard part, as you suggest, would be persuading those who currently "own" and control existing groups to participate and direct their memberships to the umbrella organization. That's a lot of ego and segmentation to overcome.
RV: I have a domain and a server (Sun State Activist and the attached blog Principled Progressive) that perhaps has the capabilities to create the "forum" you have in mind. I'm also quite computer-tech unsavvy and would need some geek-type help to accomplish it. And of course your reference to "ego and segmentation" as obstacles is very well taken. Though difficult, we could do it immediately, if impossible, it would take a little longer.
Unfortunately, I'm not in a postion to be able to offer much help beyond some very general observations and perhaps a few "techie" inputs if needed.
In my own experience with any forums, there's always a delicate balance between free discussion, on the one hand, and total chaos, on the other. In order to accomplish the kind of organizational goals being considered, there'd probably have to be some fairly rigid "herding rules" and countervailing infiltration would be a very definite concern.
Kucinich2012: I quite agree that we do too much computer-pounding: or more likely that not enough of it gets translated to action because we never seem to "get together" to promote such actions. One problem, where using CD as an instrumentality for accomplishing this is concerned, is the total lack of any interactive capacity, apart from what exchanges might occur in the back-and-forth of comment boards. This is great but it isn't organization. I've put up my personal e-mail address on some of these boards as an offer of a beginning to develop an off-cyperspace e-list of action-interested people; and with very few exceptions no response has come back or the direct communication has petered out after a few exchanges. So what you suggest is still a great project waiting to happen and, like you, I welcome "any ideas to build on this." jerrydrose11yahoo.com
Any ideas to build on this?
1. A single message.
IMHLO - That message must be to stop the absurd war against future terrorism. Once again, once again, quitting AfPakistan or Iraq does nothing to keep us from getting sucked into the DRC.
Public Law 107-40 must be revoked. Congress must clean up the mess they created.
There's your single message.
2. This is an information-sharing site. Ideas and other thoughts are shared. Organizing is best done elsewhere.
Does Rachel Maddow know about CD? Jon Stewart?
As always, live in peace but hate Dick Cheney.
"For example: If all small anti-war groups merged into a National group of "ONE", the power would expand exponentially! The same with Single-payer, environmental, tax equality, living wage, overpopulation, and on and on and on, just IMAGINE what could be accomplished! It is said there is "strength in numbers" and I would add that there is "power for change" in numbers."
Outside the US, this is called a "political party". I believe you already have some in America,...no not the big two, the other ones, the ones that are working, even today on the issues you raised. You don't need to start one from scratch.
Well, as far as this citizen goes, you'd have to leave groups like the Sierra Club out. Too mainstream and locked into the money trough (and Democrats) in D. C.. Sorry, but in my opinion, they're weak and skittish when it comes to having to get down & dirty. Give 'em some LL Bean threads, an office, a latte and they're in their element. Leave 'em at home, because in the field, they're quite worthless.
We don't need no damn "board groups". They are the problem. They and others like them have long sucked-up to D.C. & the corporate money & Madison Avenue for nice ads in shiny magazines and fancy PR campaigns. Not to mention disguising themselves as leaders of "progressiveness".
If we need boards, its wooden boards --with nails in them.
Again, just my own take.
"why can't we use this medium of the greatest communication invention in history to ORGANIZE into large numbers that will not be ignored? ... Any ideas to build on this?"
Not at the moment, but I do agree that it's a wonderful idea. I'll look into it and see if there's anything going on that we could co-opt.
I've seen some good organizing suggestions here from time to time.
One thing people can do is join the Mad As Hell Doctors Tour as they arrive at the White House in Washington DC in late September to demonstrate for single payer.
This is a well organized thing and should receive good publicity.
You can say "that sounds useless-- single payer is off the table"... well, not really, it's never going to be off our table, and the battle doesn't end just because "they" say so.
Madashelldoctors.com
A much better approach, I should think, than "call your congressman" (to do what?)
And why couldn't there be Mad as Hell demonstrations at hospitals and clincs around the country?
Jerry D Rose August 25th, 2009 11:09 am
A much better approach, I should think, than "call your congressman" (to do what?)
And why couldn't there be Mad as Hell demonstrations at hospitals and clincs around the country?
My thought is that pro-single payer health professionals should host free health care 'fairs' like the one in Inglewood, CA - massively attended by people w/no or inadequate health care - using them for education and voter registration. ACORN - which doesn't even list healthcare on its website, I'd guess due to single payer having been squelched by Obama and co. - would likely be glad to work on such a project.
This might go beyond demonstrations to build informed and activist constituencies, and could provide an outlet for disappointed progressive energies such as on this website: that is, many progressives and liberals would, likely, volunteer and/or donate to an event that combined direct care and progressive education.
abramawicz: Not (at all) meaning to steal your thunder, but before I saw your response here I had posted a comment of very similiar content on the CD article by Friel today on the "gang of 6" who are writing the "reform" bill. http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/08/25-0 comment at 2:44 p.m. I mentioned my belief that not only could such clinics "build informed and activist constituencies" as you mention, they could serve as an excellent vehicle of general public awareness of the medical plight of many of their fellow Americans. I think I could promote such an activity in my community, how about yours? You think there's enough of a "goodness streak" in your town?
RV, you forget that "mean," especially in UK English, also means, among its other definitions, "avaricious."
Mary Dejevsky has bought the loudness makes numbers scare tactics of the health care critics. koalaburger is right. It's all make believe. The moneyed interests and wealthy Americans are seen as the only ones worth having an opinion. In the meantime, dozens of Americans die needlessly every day for lack of affordable health care.
Your mistake is in assuming Obama fights for it.
Because Obama doesn't fight for it, doesn't pitch it, allows competing interests to frame it and doesn't oppose it, doesn't offer an alternative vision, takes a "hand off" approach on everything demanding some moral fortitude--triangulates on the rest, has made backroom deals to gut it, represents the interests of the corporate class, now mouths the rhetoric that reinforces the status quo (i.e. "majority of Americans believe they have adequate health cover" then why do the majority support single payer? What is the point of reform?), aligns with Blue Dogs while threatening progressives, has begun slashing "entitlements"--Medicare and Social security while he funnels billions into Wall Street and has abandoned any notion of leadership and change. The Right is left to channel the outrage and the anger is given a mean expression.
Obama is complacent and complicit and we should all hold him in contempt as little more than "ultimately idealistic, gloss" on a toad fawning for the empire of capitalism in decline.
Vern, don't you just love the way the Dems are proposing to cut the existing medicare budget to pay for the subsidies that will go to the private insurers? Not only is Obama and his insurance campaign contributors not giving you anything remotely resembling universal medicare, he is actually proposing to weaken the medicare system you do have. Now that is cheeky.
http://wsws.org/tools/index.php?page=print&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwsws.org%2Farticles% 2F2009%2Fmay2009%2Fssmd-m14.shtml
Yes, it makes me sick.
The people who made my life rich and full as a child are ailing and frail now.
One of my father's surviving sisters turned 92 this past weekend. I brought her roses. She can't walk now--the arthritis in her knees causes a great deal of discomfort. I see the worry in her face even though she is financially secure.
When I was a child I walked through her formal rose gardens...She won't allow anyone to touch those roses and they still bloom through all the overgrown foliage. We laugh about the small things, but to think that they would want to rob these wise old souls of their meager security in their final days when they are weak and dependent.
The US is primarily made up of people unwanted from other places; criminals, poor uneducated imigrants, fanatic religious followers, and the mentally impaired. The make up of our national gene pool explains alot in my mind as to why our nations thinking is usually backwards, violent, and self centered.
And Australia was settled by convicts but you won't find the same inhumane and violent attitudes there to the same degree. They rather like their health service which is a mix of public and private and public hospitals provide medicines to their patients free of charge.
http://www.health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/Content/healthsystem-overview-2-delivery
I think that there is something pathological about a lot of Americans that runs very deep that can be traced back to slavery, the civil war, and the race issue. Guilt, defeat, resentment and unresolved superiority/inferiority complexes are very complex.
Maybe health insurance isn't a right but according to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the right to medical care is.
Yea I've heard that argument. "Health care is no more of a right than housing or food!" My comeback to that is: "Is having air to breathe a right?"
And just in case people still think that the US is not a "mean" country should note that every country in the world -- except the U.S. and Somalia -- has ratified the "Convention on the Rights of the Child."
Ya gotta love that one.
Why are food, shelter and healthcare not rights in the USA? It's not because they are too expensive. It's because they are too cheap. US elites don't want USans to know they can have food shelter and healthcare at 1/2 the price they pay today. So US elites say the only thing USans can do is work harder, churn more mammon, pay the higher price. Food, shelter and healthcare are not too expensive. They are too cheap, so the price has to be inflated to double the price in other countries. USans never really recovered from 9/11. And since, they got the shaft over and over, from US elites. Rights taken away, when they should be securing MORE rights than before. It's time for a revolution, but when are USans going to wake up?
Excerpt from eassay: "It is because very many Americans simply do not agree that it is a good idea ..." INSERT REAL REASON HERE: To bailout the Banksters in such a gigantic betrayal of the people. Fact is he abetted in the heist. Fact is he continues to let the least of us suffer the continued predations of the Money Class. More and more people are growing more and more distrustful of anything he, his administration, his congress says or does. I repeat-- he abetted the banksters in a massive cheat and betrayal, and he cannot be rehabilitated in the public's mind.
the writer is right about one thing - the left in the united states is right of any other left in the world. this much is undeniable.
yes there are progressives in the us but they are overwhelmed and shouted down by the birthers and the dead granny societies.
people like oreilly, beck et al would not be allowed on the air in most other democratic societies because they are both ignorant and hateful.
same goes for fat boy limbaugh and his ilk - hatemongers whose only audience are the illiterates because anyone with a grade 6 education should know that this tub of lard hasn't got a clue about any issue on the political horizon. but then haters don't need facts when they are preaching totheir kind.
so it is a fair comment, like it or not, to say the us is more right wing than theother industrialize countries - many call the us fascist and given the complete control excercised by the corporations through the fawning corporate media and the bought and paid for politiicans its not not to see why.
as for the mess we find ourselves in today - we - all of us broke it - we all of us own it
She is right about the U.S. political spectrum no doubt. But is that really a product of some "mean streak" inherent in the populace generally?
There appears to me to be a very concerted and longstanding effort by the governing powers (the real ones, not just their political facades) to drive it in that direction along with their media and quasi-religious accomplises.
I will grant, on the other hand, a certain apparent receptiveness to those rightward influences, perhaps because they're usually interwoven with self-flattering allusions to the superiority of The American Way(TM).
There is in a way, a "mean streak" in our culture. USAns seem to only be capable of sympathy if they know the victim or the victim is an immediate neighbor, otherwise the suffering tends to be dismissed as a personal failing.
I had an Austrailan girlfriend once, and the way she described it, USAns predominantly make the the conclusion that misfortune of someone they don't know is always the individuals fault, and also couple this with a peculiar logical leap that "therefore no sympathy for the person's misfortune is warranted". She sometimes got irritated with this, and called the USA "The land of it's-your-fault".
Ultimately, I think this is rooted in the unique way the US views individualism and personal freedom - reflexively extending the notion of "free choice" to personal decisions that are only perpherally related to the misfortune. By this logic, getting struck by lightning is "your own fault" too because the "you" went outdoors when a chance of thunderstorms was in the forecast.
This extreme view of "freedom" also makes USAns blind to the fact that most people in out capitlist society are very constrained in the free choices they can actually make - the choices often being of the damned if I do or don't variety.
I suppose it's quite like the old "nature versus nurture" argument. Self-interest may be regarded, at least to a certain extent, as being perfectly natural and even essential to survival. The degree to which self-interest is enlightened and farsighted, on the other hand, would seem to depend very largely on environmental influences -- parental, educational, propagandistic, etc.
I tend to think it's the latter that's more deficient and distorted than the former in the U.S., but it's not a strongly-held opinion.
Was this a reply to my comment??? It is hard to tell. What does self-interest have to do with lack or empathy?
And sorry to say, but if humans are driven only self-interest, enlightened or not, why do I and namy other people help many causes, from a homeles person I pass on the street, to relief for Aghans who I will never meet. And no, I never make any sort of calculation or rationalization that these actions are in my self-interest, because they clearly is not!
Totally agree with everything you say. Limbaugh, O'Reilly and Beck exist at the pleasure of the corporacracy that owns the media. The total saturation of TV into American culture makes their job easier.
"people like oreilly, beck et al would not be allowed on the air in most other democratic societies because they are both ignorant and hateful"
Actually, oreilly would do well on the comedy channels. When people outside of the US see your fox news, they usually burst out laughing. Even funnier than those stupid infomercials.
Let's see.........
You can't get a mortgage without insurance.
You can't buy property without title insurance.
You can't drive a car without insurance.
You can't get a car loan without insurance.
We need insurance on our lives.
We need insurance on our health.
If you own a business you'd better have insurance.
A short story........
A few years ago I was "convicted" of driving an uninsured vehicle. A borrowed vehicle. Keep in mind that I had never been arrested and my greatest prior offense against society was a single solitary speeding ticket.
My sentence was a $300 fine, a six month suspended jail sentence and 2 years of unsupervised probation.
Then a month later I was informed that my drivers license was to be suspended again. Because I had no insurance! I protested that I had no vehicle. The response from the DOT was that if I had no vehicle then I had no need for a driver's license! And if I wanted to have a license then I should get "non-operators insurance". (remember that driving is a priviledge and not a right)
I wonder who was behind that little law?
Insurance companies own our government and we are their slaves.
And the health insurance people have been spreading lies about "socialized medicine" for many many years because they see the success of other country's health policies. And in the land of the free and the home of the brave, profit is valued above all else. Including health.
What state do you have your DL in? In every state I've lived in, the liability insurance is on the vehicle, not the driver. So, insurance is only needed when registering a vehicle.
But yes, "title insurance" when buying a house is certainly the biggest scam going.
Then there are those who get forced into buying "credit life insurance". Back when I bought my first (and only) new car from a dealer, they made me buy credit life insurance on the car loan!
I liked living in New Hampshire a few years ago because they
1. Did not require auto insurance
2. Did not require seat belt use (I buckled up anyway but was happy that I would not be pulled over if I forgot)
3. No helmet law
4. No sales tax
5. No incomee tax
They take their motto "Live Free or Die" pretty seriously.
It was the only place I've lived where I got along better with the Republicans who tended to be rough and ready free spirited mountain types as opposed to the Dems who were mostly uptight, status conscious "professionals" who had moved north from Massachusetts.
I agree with glb, that it's the insurance industry lobbing Congress that is creating the mess.
If I have another car to drive around that gets great gas mileage, it doubles my auto insurance. I can only drive one car at a time!
How about insuring the driver?
But NOOOOh! Mandatory insurance laws let the insurance companies suck every dollar they can get out of us.
The problem is Corporate Lobbyists + Congress, together in one room... making deals that leave the constituents out in the cold.
The vehicle needs to be insured rather than the drive because vehicles vary greatly in the damage thay can do to others or their property. I should not have to pay nearly as much liability insurance for my scooter as a hummer, and thankfully I don't.
And, if we didn't have mandatory car insurance, how would someone (or their family), who suffers damage, injury or death by a negligent driver get fairly compensated? The negligent driver wouldn't fare very well financially either.
The mean, sefish streak itself seem to be on display in this off-topic thread.