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People Vs Profits in Health Care Debate
Isn’t it odd that whenever a fierce little skirmish takes place in a small, contested area, suddenly civilians are hit by white phosphorous or some other atrocious weapon? We immediately blame terrorists, insurgents, Al Qaeda, Taliban, Israel, Iran, Hamas, bin Laden, Muslims, or some other (usually swarthy) bad guys. They in turn blame the U.S, Bush, Obama, the CIA, Blackwater, the media, infidels, Christians, Israel, Iran, etc. Everyone gets madder and buys more weapons to kill more enemies.
But what if these cruel weapons were being deployed by an independent arms entrepreneur intent only on selling its products and expanding its markets? In terms of costs for advertising and marketing, it’s pretty cheap to hire a handful of malcontents, give them a minimum of equipment to go anywhere US forces and terrorists/insurgents are already killing each other and attack civilians in such a way that both sides would assume the other guys were doing it. Sales of their products would be enhanced, and if their hired terrorists got killed, so much the better.
We don’t know if that is happening, but of course we wouldn’t. When whatever anyone can imagine can now be blogged or photoshopped to whatever specifications someone is willing to pay for, how can we know which accounts reflect reality? Today’s commercialized media and communications, with large payoffs and few risks, are no longer reliable.
Over the last eight years We-the-People, besotted by TV and popular fictions about what’s out there in the real world, and befuddled about the reliability of information we get, have believed that we are in great danger that can only be removed by killing bad guys; that torture will make us safe, and if we torture someone it’s because they are already guilty, and therefore torture, (as well as killing by remote control and using high-tech weapons against unarmed civilians) is moral as long as it saves American lives.
Iraq was no threat to the US. Saddam Hussein was an arrogant, cruel dictator, but he wasn’t dumb enough to think he could successfully attack a nation with nuclear warheads and delivery systems reaching all over the world. Saddam and Iraq were, however, an enormous opportunity for the ideology of free-market capitalism as well as for the bottom line of KBR, Blackwater, Lockheed, Raytheon, and the rest of the military industrial complex.
President Bush had an infantile fantasy of being the most powerful man on earth, agent of God’s Wrath, commanding everything from nuclear weapons to how people have sex. Dick Cheney played on this illusion, and We-the-People gave them the money and power to make it a reality.
First we were dumb enough to think that an episode of made-for-TV "Shock & Awe" on Iraq would fix everything. Later we were dumber, believing that an international conspiracy of terrorism would be revealed and defeated through "enhanced interrogation" of kidnapped suspects, and by making old ladies take off their shoes before boarding airliners.
But recognizing that we have been gullible fools doesn’t reinforce our notion of ourselves as competent, moral people, so we set about explaining that killing villagers and torturing Muslims proves that we are more moral than they are because we are promoting democracy, saving our soldiers’ lives, and making our homeland more secure.
I draw a different moral: Peace doesn’t pay; war, killing, torture and terror are enormously profitable to those who make and broker the instruments, technologies and attitudes thereof. Security, surveillance and deterrence pay well. Fences, checkpoints, roadblocks, surveillance cameras and robotic weapons are profitable for the rich, at the expense of the poor.
The Taliban, the Israelis and al Qaeda justify attacks on civilians on the grounds that the civilians are sheltering the enemy, or are sympathetic to them. The Israelis declare that Palestinians "deserve" attacks with high-tech weapons because they voted for Hamas. Terrorists act for political, ideological or religious reasons, or out of rage or hopelessness – but not for profit. The terrorist mentality is "They deserved to what they got. We should have killed more of them." (... Oh, wait ... we still hear that around Kent, Ohio, every May 4.)
War has never made peace. Today, killing poor people with high-tech – and highly profitable – weaponry and unmanned drones just generates suicidal efforts to resist.
We have a similar dilemma over health care. Rationing medical care by ability to pay is enormously profitable to private insurance and big pharmaceutical companies. Gambling on the cost of medical care is especially profitable when the insurers get to decide what they will pay to losers.
The debate on health care reform has degenerated into an argument between those who believe that we must protect profits and those who believe we should protect people.
Who, then, will stop the profitability of war? The military industrial complex to whom we pay billions for death-dealing equipment? The media who profit from stirring up fear and confusion? The righteous who use sacred texts to justify cruelty and violence?
And who will make sure every human being gets medical care for a healthy life? With the MIC sucking up our tax dollars for profits on weapons and warfare, and the insurance industry siphoning off family income and denying medical care, just how are we more moral than the rest of the world?
20 Comments so far
Show AllOne correction: It is no longer the military industrial complex. As the author so eloquently pointed out in this article, the media have a symbiotic relationship with the war machine...with each miltary venture providing media another golden opportunity to improve their abilty to hype fear and greed. It is now the MILITARY INDUSTRIAL MEDIA COMPLEX pulling the strings of government.
Just as fear and greed repeatedly succeed in getting Americans to support unneeded military costs, fear and greed are succeeding in turning a marginally effective, expensive health care system into a system that will provide less service at ever higher cost.
" just how are we more moral than the rest of the world?"
we aren't, in fact, as we have seen over and over again through many issues of political and economic importance, even relevant. we are not even a bug juice splatter on the windshield of life
how many single payer groups were allowed input into the disgrace that has been the healthcare debate - none. i rest my case.
healthcare has been turned over to the private sector in the us as has many other governmental responsibilities over the years, all of it as part of the nwo psyop who's aim is to control, enslave and indebt the world
simple as that
its simplicity seems at odds with its scope but there you go...
the mechanisms of control: banking, murder, war, covert ops, control of governments, currencies, illegal financial transactions, black ops, pandemics, false flag events
most of the activities are underground of course but they require above ground cover - we call these folks politicians. the ones david icke calls "the suits that come and go".
these folks are usually fools like bush, not the daddy but the son w. often they are deeply conflicted souls - in bush's case, an alcoholic and drug addict, he exhibited signs of sever mental illness even as a young child. i won't bother to go into it - read horns and halos. true psychopaths but not the ultra-dangerous sort as is his father bushdaddy
reagan would be another example of the buffoon. here was a guy who became president while sliding into senility, who had no interest in foreign policy whatsoever (by presidential order bush daddy was put in charge of foreign policy within months of reagan becoming prez). reagan fell asleep during important cabinet meetings on a regular basis. so much for the old gipper - a hollywood b-actor whose greatest acting role (outside the gig as president) was playing the straight man to a chimp named bonzo
bush daddy though is another case entirely as are the cases of his father prescott and his granddaddy samuel and others like cheney.
they represent the truly dangerous 1% of psychopaths, the ones we need to worry about.
we all know the dr lector type of psychopath- i ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti. but the fact of the matter is that most psychopaths operate in broad daylight behind their masks on normalcy. science today tells us that, give or take a point here or there, societies are populated by around 6% of psychopaths
further, they tend to gravitate into business or politics, hello dick cheney, robert gates etc.
i would say general mccrystal, appointed by the nwo shill obama to lead the destruction of afghanistan having been a special ops assassin for his career falls into the lector median
"if a psychopath considers himself normal, which is of course significantly easier if he possesses authority, then he would consider a normal person different and therefore abnormal. A normal person's actions and reactions, his ideas and moral criteria, strike psychopaths as abnormal. A normal person strikes a psychopath as a naive, smart-alecky believer in barely comprehensible theories about love and honor and conscience; calling him "crazy" is not all that far away.That explains why pathological governments always have considered dissidents as "mentally abnormal".
even more scary science tells us that psychopaths can recognize each other even in large groups - the tv show dexter is a good example of that. they can recognize each other even at young ages - 5 or 6 ears old.
so they recognize each other and organize themselves accordingly, hello congress and senate of the us - that goes a long way towards explaining the blowjob senators and the appalachia hike that was really the argentinian blow job
they have no conscience - hello bill clinton
they study "us" the normal folk and hold us in contempt
"They learn to recognize each other in a crowd as early as childhood, and they develop an awareness of the existence of other individuals similar to them. They also become conscious of being different from the world of those other people surrounding them. They view us from a certain distance, like a para-specific variety."
"They are, to some extent, self-aware as a group even in childhood! Recognizing their fundamental difference from the rest of humanity, their allegiance would be to others of their kind, that is, to other psychopaths."
"Not only do they covet possessions and power and feel they have the right to them just because they exist and can take them, but they gain special pleasure in usurping and taking from others; what they can plagiarize, swindle, and extort are fruits far sweeter than those they can earn through honest labor. They also learn very early how their personalities can have traumatizing effects on the personalities of non-psychopaths, and how to take advantage of this root of terror for purposes of achieving their goals. "
given all of this information juxtaposed into the healthcare debate wouldn't it be prudent to just stand down this heavily compromised piece of legislative crap right now
see matt taibi's piece posted yesterday and stop wondering
lastly, obama as psychopath - never mind if he was born in the us - his name is barry soetero. his mom - whatever else her misgivings was a woman who lived with alcoholic men - first his father a drunken kenyan and then his step father a drunken phillipino
how sweet it is for that underprivileged black boy to run his finger over the button that commands the nukes...one can only wonder
all we know now is that there are at least two baraks/barrys
one ran for the presidency and the other is the president - you tell me which is the real one
lebeau, Barack Obama's stepfather was Indonesian, and a Muslim. If he was a practicing Muslim, he didn't drink. Obama did do what so many politicians do, said one thing before the election, and did another when in office.
Our job as the electorate is to pay attention and vote these people right back out. We're not doing that. The corporate media is making our job harder, being they are no longer the fourth estate. But we the electorate aren't doing our job, which is to pay attention. Until we refuse to vote for anyone accepting corporate money we will continue to get shafted.
When the people fear their government there is tyranny,
when the government fears the people there is liberty.
~ Thomas Jefferson
i'm trying to address this notion of psychopathology exhibited as character traits as a theme in the personality matrix of our so called leaders
to try to answer the question: why do these people act the way they do - start wars, profit from things like healthcare and the deaths of denied care patients and then go home and have dinner with the family
or the ceo's who pollute and ruin entire countries
the field is called ponerology and it answers a lot of questions and it also "arms" normal people in understanding who and what they are dealing with both in politics and business
they are sick and we need protection from these maniacs - like cheney and bush daddy et al
that's what i was trying to get at...
I think just calling it the corporate state says it all. And Obama is making it increasingly clear whose side he's on, and it isn't ours. He's shown no interest in reducing corporate profits, but quite willing to throw out protections for the people.
If Ronnie was the Great Communicator then Obama has to be the Great Capitulator. All three branches of "government" are just corporate toadies.
There is another story today about homeless children struggling to survive. I think a defining characteristic of Americans is that people will tolerate anything as long as it isn't happening to them. What's missing is a social conscience. Another word might be empathy. The prevailing attitude is "what's in it for me?". So far, I have seen no evidence that public unpopularity for war has anything to do with us blowing up other people's children.
There was a different time when people did care about each other, and recognized a common good. But that is not where we are today. Actually where we are today is exactly where the corporations want us. By thinking only of ourselves we are divided, not united, powerless and exploited.
When the people fear their government there is tyranny,
when the government fears the people there is liberty.
~ Thomas Jefferson
Caroline ,you asked some poignant questions,we need to answer them.How can the corporate financial,energy ,insurance,and military industrial and prison complexes trump any attempt at democracy? Campaign dollars. peace
Education, Health Care (HR676), roads and bridges, restoration of a real EPA and an FDA. Here are jobs.
Slaughter and mayhem are not the only ways to put people to work.
We have a Democratic president, and congress. Why are the Republicans running the show?
For God's sake Obama, to hell with them. You need not have consensus on everything. I don't want to hear about the 60 votes. George Bush would have grabbed the power from thin air to do whatever he wanted.
WE NEED HB676
On CSPAN, I heard an 'expert' from the Cato Institute claim that Hoover/Roosevelt CAUSED the Great Depression through their socialist policies, which were also responsible for the 40 years of 'suffering' that ensued. Forget the fact that the 40 years following the Great Depression were the best American society ever created, culminating with a flight to the moon.
When misinformation like this is so well funded, what chance does truth have? We are witness to a wholesale rewrite of our history in the effort to drive 'greed is good' into the minds of every American.
Yeah thats why the Great Depression had little impact on the Soviet Union.
And that's why the Great Depression has so little impact on the rural south agricultural areas. People who start with no money really don't miss out when other folks don't have any either.
You mean the Okies who left the land and headed to california?
Over a million farmers lost their land in the US during the first 4 years of the depression.
The Soviet Union put an ad in a New York paper seeking workers for 6000 positions. They recieved over 100,000 Applicants in a weeks time.
My folks grew up on the "farm" during the depression. It also led to a lower price for all the products the farm produced. They could feed themselves but that was about it. If you sold your product you sold it at a loss.
"just how are we more moral than the rest of the world?"
Because God said we are. Now, if we all would just go to Confession today and apologize for all the bombing and killing and stealing and stuff, it will be as if nothing ever happened ever - except for all the good things...
Here is an interesting little tid bit ,which i assume some are already aware of. In ancient china, the doctor of the village or villages was only paid if his or hers patients remained well . if they became sick, while under his care, he got little or nothing. ancient chinese medicine was/is based mostly on prevention, so illness was a sign that the doctor misdiagnosed a person during a routine session that included pulse diagnoses, tongue, eyes and other ways to determine imbalance before a full blown illness manifested.
In capitalist/fascist Amerika... the people $uffer corp-rat health INSURANCE policies practicing DENIAL! DENIAL! DENIAL!... in lieu of health CARE for the common good and the common wealth. The people are kept divided (and made $tewepid) for the $ake of fascist corp-rat kulture (rapacious profits for big business). Indeed! This explains why there's welfare (TARP) for banksters on Wall $treet... in lieu meaningful assistance for people down on Main $treet.
Old Coyote Knose... that Rome is burning. It burns because...
1. WHERE THERE IS NO INSIGHT, THE PEOPLE PERISH!
2. WHOM THE GODS WOULD DESTROY, THEY FIRST MAKE MAD!(off).
And here's one other comment for ewe folks.
Last week... a guest propagandist for Mr. Oxycontin on talk hate radio (the soidisant "liberal media") suggested that TAX CUTS FOR INSURANCE COMPANIES would lead to true health care reform.
Does it get any more insane than this?
but we have known about all this for a long time. Ms. Arnold is not at all helpful. also i take exception to her refrain about we the people being dumb and gullible. Many of us recognized the cruel folly of all the bush cheney media lies, but have no power to change anything. And do not tell me to "vote" as if anybody not part of this big machine would be allowed to run.
right now a majority of our fellow citizens are opposed to the massacre of Afghanistan. We probably would like some health care too. If we could only all get out in the streets.....
Not all in the USA are dumb and gullible. But, a majority of eligible voters fit at least one of those descriptions, at least by their behavior at the ballot box.
Vote against all incumbents who support insane policies. You won't swing the election, one voter never does unless the electorate is small (the size of a legislature), but you can sure scare them. The more socialist parties of the early 20th century never won big at the ballot box, but they scared enough winners to pass much of their agenda.
These creatures are beyond scaring. They will detain you preventively and send your children to labor/reeducation camps. Oops, I mean become wards of the State. Instant Runoff Voting is the only chance and it could be too late.
The American People want jobs, health care, quality education, clean and healthy air, water and food, and less income disparity. We can reach the majority of Americans with these core issues. But we need candidates and organization, which is why we must avoid the "Patriot Community" and its spokesmen. Most all members of this group are discredited or have done or said things which can be used to discredit them in the future.
Americans are already ready to vote for other loyal Americans, loyal Americans who want America to succeed, Americans who want the next generation of Americans to have a better life than we had, Americans who want Americans to be stronger, better educated and more moral than any generation we have yet produced, Americans who want finally to close the gates to the temple of Janus in celebration of lasting peace. The voters are there, but the candidates are not.
The midterm elections will soon be upon us. Let us not sit out yet another election and watch helplessly the Fifth Columnist Neocons put their ideas over on us to destroy America, murder more of our children and make it increasingly difficult for us to ever recover from their ancient attack. It is time for American baby boomers to at last grow up and show some responsibility for and towards our great homeland.
Insurance companies feel the same way about customers that tobacco companies do. The only reason such companies care customers are alive is because if they're dead, they can’t keep pouring money into what the companies peddle.
Signed: Lawlessone [for more irreverence, see resistence-is-possible.blogspot.com]