Outsourcing Citizenship
In the war against the middle-class the government has been outsourcing jobs for decades. Now the government is going one step further. They are outsourcing citizenship to bring corporate citizens into their constituency, and give them the rights that go with it. This country started with an agreement between citizens and leaders. Over time we have evolved into shareholders (all shareholders are not equal) and owners. Our Constitutional rights as citizens have been stripped away while the Constitutional rights of corporations have grown. Today, a corporation has the same value as a natural citizen and made the law-of-the-land by the Supreme Court. This corporate citizen acts like a natural citizen. It looks to the government for the conditions to be productive so it can continue to grow.

Corporate citizens have become a weapon in the war against the middle-class. They can be used to take away the power of the vote form the middle-class. Corporate citizens can get congressman to listen to them and ignore the voice of the voter. This is why all polls in America show the government completely out of step with the majority of its natural citizens in every sector in society. On healthcare, education, taxes, war, environment and a host of others the people and the government are not on the same page. It’s not the government following the will of the people. Instead, it’s the government doing the bidding of its corporate citizens by writing legislation to legalize the assault on unions and teachers.

But, the needs of a citizen and the needs of a corporation are not the same. Natural citizens need and want opportunity and means to be successful and happy. They want government to provide a level playing field for all. Corporate citizens want and need control of the market to maximize profits. The natural citizen wants to live the American Dream and retire while the corporate citizen will be struggle to grow into an empire- builder. Natural citizens used to say their thanks with a handshake. The corporate citizen says thanks with a cash contribution.

The only weapon of the natural citizen is being taken away. He’s being disarmed. But, it’s not his guns he’s losing. What is being taken away is his VOTE. Given to those with citizenship, by the Constitution. The vote – the most effective weapon of the citizen to force the government to listen to him, is being given to corporations. Today their votes are meaningless. They have been made meaningless by a political system driven by money. Who can own the most government? A citizen’s vote has no political value to a congressman, he can’t put it in his war chest. In the battle between the natural citizens and the corporate citizens you only have to look at D.C. and see who represents who. There are thousands and thousands of these corporate citizens. The lobbyists and the think tanks and the media are grafting themselves onto the three branches of the government. It’s Ike’s worst nightmare.

Presidents throughout my lifetime have initiated foreign wars without the approval of the Congress. So why doesn’t Congress take back its power? Since all wars are now political the Congress would rather the White House start the war. The Congress will manage them. With war so profitable for corporate citizens why would they ever want to limit such a money making product? They wouldn’t. That’s why war is no longer a few pages every couple of hundred pages in history books. War is a part of our daily lives.
The government doesn’t have to be afraid. Votes don’t matter anymore.
Hoa binh

Experiencing technical difficulties are we? Thanks for the clue. Now I know the boundaries. I think my working presumption is correct.

If more people like Donna Smith would publicize this kind of information, maybe it would affect the zeitgeist, and something might be done about the situation.

From a Canadian, Wow powerful artical Donna

The author (above) writes poignantly: "How much death and how much suffering will be enough to warrant our collective attention in appropriate proportion to the damage being done? Talk about a war on your own people? As far as I am concerned, we have nothing to say to other countries about human rights when we so blatantly participate in the death and pain for so many of our own."
Please read the following about how the conservative, Christian right has perverted the virtues that Plato and Jesus spoke of into permission for them to take a decent life from a poorer soul so that they may prosper:
* “We get what we want, or what we don’t refuse. We accept the fact that we will always have poor people around us, and that poverty is part of human destiny. This is precisely why we continue to have poor people around us. If we firmly believe that poverty is unacceptable to us, and that it should not belong to a civilized society, we would have built appropriate institutions and policies to create a poverty-free world. . . To me poor people are like bonsai trees. When you plant the best seed of the tallest tree in a flower-pot, you get a replica of the tallest tree, only inches tall. There is nothing wrong with the seed you planted, only the soil-base that is too inadequate. Poor people are bonsai people. There is nothing wrong in their seeds. Simply, society never gave them the base to grow on. All it needs to get the poor people out of poverty for us to create an enabling environment for them. Once the poor can unleash their energy and creativity, poverty will disappear very quickly.” - Mohammed Yunus, founder of Grameen Bank and recepient of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize.
* “How easy it would be for the world’s rich to eliminate, or virtually eliminate, global poverty. (It has actually become much easier over the last 30 years, as the rich have grown significantly richer.) Measured against our capacity, the Millennium Development Goals are indecently, shockingly modest . . . The target we should be setting for ourselves is not halving the proportion of people living in extreme poverty, and without enough to eat, but ensuring that no one, or virtually no one, needs to live in such degrading conditions. That is a worthy goal, and it is well within our reach.”
* Peter Singer, “What Should a Billionaire Give . . .” NY Times Magazine, Saturday 17 December 2006.
* “And now, for the sake of these things which I have spoken unto you—that is, for the sake of retaining a remission of your sins from day to day, that ye may walk guiltless before God—I would that ye should impart of your substance to the poor, every man according to that which he hath, such as feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the sick and administering to their relief, both spiritually and temporally, according to their wants.” Mosiah 4:26
For the first time in human history, we have the necessary wealth and technology to end poverty everywhere. So why don’t we care enough to do it?
* "Our ruling elite, including Barack Obama, are courtiers, shameless hedonists of power, who kneel before Wall Street and daily sell us out. The top corporate plutocrats are pulling down $900,000 an hour while one in four children depends on food stamps to eat.
We don’t need leaders. We don’t need directives from above. We don’t need formal organizations. We don’t need to waste our time appealing to the Democratic Party or writing letters to the editor. We don’t need more diatribes on the Internet. We need to physically get into the public square and create a mass movement. We need you and a few of your neighbors to begin it. We need you to walk down to your Bank of America branch and protest. We need you to come to Union Square. And once you do that you begin to create a force these elites always desperately try to snuff out—resistance." -- Chris Hedges, columnist
* I would like the fat pigs at Goldman Sachs and Citigroup to stand face-to-face with the tough farmers that my parents and great-grandparents were--they had to be to survive alone on the prairies, with miles between neighbors and NO doctors, in the late 1800s. The pigs at Citigroup would have died without their massages and Amazon-killing widescreen HDTVs. My grandfathers would have knocked them out with one punch.

In the land of Greed and Money nothing is free, not even (medical) lunch.
Wikilpedia gives a reasonable explanation of how money works in the system:
"In the United States, two thirds of all urban hospitals are non-profit. The remaining third is split between for-profit and public. The urban public hospitals are often associated with medical schools. [1] The largest public hospital system in America is the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation, which is associated with the New York University School of Medicine.
"n the U.S., public hospitals receive significant funding from local, state, and/or federal governments. In addition, they may charge Medicaid, Medicare, and private insurers for the care of patients. Poor uninsured patients receive their care for free. Public hospitals, especially in urban areas, have a high concentration of uncompensated care and graduate medical education as compared to all other American hospitals. ":

"Public hospitals in America are closing at a much faster rate than hospitals overall."

"The number of public hospitals in major suburbs declined 27% (134 to 98) from 1996 to 2002. It is thought that the increase in uninsured has drained public hospitals to near bankruptcy.

"Non-profit rural hospitals were disproportionately represented with high numbers of patients with uncompensated care. Public and non-profit rural hospitals form a large part of the health care safety net for the uninsured and poor underinsured in the U.S.

"For-profit hospitals were more likely to provide profitable medical services and less likely to provide medical services that were relatively unprofitable. Government or public hospitals were more likely to offer relatively unprofitable medical services. Not-for-profit hospitals often fell in the middle between public and for-profit hospitals in the types of medical services they provided. For-profit hospitals were quicker to respond to changes in profitability of medical services than the other two types of hospitals."

"Quarter-Million Dead and Not Counting" not surprising actually collateral damage is never counted and reported very accurately. At least not since Bush set the standards and Obama picked up his mantel and ran with it.

I am a survivor. I almost died from a severe acute attck of Lupus AND HAD NO HEALTH INSURANCE! Now I have scars on 20% of my body where the rash had gotten so bad because the drs wouldn't treat me because I coud not afford the $1500 tests. Kansas is a hellhole of a state for getting any kind of medical help if you are a "faller-through-the-cracker" (make barely over the poverty line as not to qualify for medicaid). This has to stop. Psychopaths must no longer be allowed to make their shape-shifting rules of insanity to govern us all.

How does one become indifferent to another's suffering? Dehumanize the victim. A particularly potent way to do this is to attach a moral qualification before we offer our empathy. After all if someone is morally reprehensible it is so much easier to withdraw one's personal support or endorsement of public support. It is especially appealing if I, as the one, who passes the moral test, apply the punishment or denial of a right to those who fail it. Even being 20 lbs overweight is enough to be denied the right to health care. So much for "forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors." and so much for the parable of punishment for the debtor who having been forgiven his debts did not forgive others. Self righteous condemnation is just too tempting a fruit to pass up. Physical sickness must be sign of moral weakness. Good thing God gives us such a sure sign of who is worthy because left to our own we might mistakenly extend our empathy to others. However since we are given the sign of who is worthy and since our evangelical Christian leaders are there to give us assurance should there be any doubt, we can be sure our cruelty is really God's will. As God's deputys we have not only have the pleasure of inflicting pain on our enemies but also we have the sanction, the assurance of doing His Will--on earth as it is in Hell. .

Access to healthcare needs to be viewed as a fundamental human right. Too long we have viewed healthcare as a privilege or a benefit. A benefit is a cake on your birthday, not leukemia treatment for your sick child. We must first see the issue correctly that access to healthcare is a birthright.

The lesson of "Sicko" is that many people who HAVE health insurance can't get healthcare. The majority of medical-related bankruptcies are filed by people who HAVE health insurance. Michael Moore put an exclamation point on this in "Sicko" by presenting 9/11 first-responders whose heroic actions caused life-threatening illnesses, and who were denied healthcare in spite of having insurance. He put some of them on a boat and took them to Cuba for healthcare.

Yet even the left-leaning MSNBC TV hosts call the plan to force this same bad-faith insurance scam on every American one of Obama's "achievements!"

I don't know why Donna Smith avoids the term, but what we need is a single-payer health insurance system, just like the ones that have proven so effective and efficient in Canada and throughout the rest of the industrialized world.

Back in the mid-seventies I was in my mid-twenties...a single mom working a full-time job as an electro/mechical repair tech who played music in a band on the weekends. My wages were ok and money I made playing music allowed some extras.

My employer provided a first-rate health insurance benefits package that was, by today's standards, amazing. Full medical/dental for myself and my daughter through Blue Cross/Blue Shield. It cost me NOTHING and I NEVER had to fill out paperwork...never had a complication, hold-up, confusion or denial of coverage. The doctor's/dentist's receptionist just took a scan of my insurance card, smiled and sent me on my way...assuring me I didn't need to worry about a thing.

I had that job for ten years, altogether. In 1983 my starting pay was around $7.85 per hour and my half of the rent/utility and general living costs may have totaled $200-$250 per month. What I made as a musician generally supplemented my regular paycheck well enough to allow a fair degree of security and some frills.

At the beginning of my ten years with them the owner was providing a full-coverage Blue Cross/Blue Shield plan (BC/BS was the Cadillac of the health insurance industry at the time) to all of us...we were a small business with only twelve employees. This 'perk' was provided at NO COST. No weekly extraction from my paycheck to pay my half of the premium. There were no co-pays or paperwork to do. Family members were included...denial of coverage was rare.

When I left the company, ten years later, my employer could no longer afford the BC/BS plan for us. Our coverage through them kind of gradually deteriorated. The premium costs to the company rose at such a rate that he had no choice but to (every couple of years) trim down the plan, start shopping around for a cheaper provider AND begin passing on some of the cost to us.

By the time I resigned our health insurance options were reduced to coverage similar to what we had all along (now unaffordable!) and a couple of those early HMOs (we had to fill out/file our own legalese/double-speak-filled paperwork...often BEFORE we could even go to a doctor's appointment! And NO DENTAL coverage...replaced by a whole bunch of restrictions, qualifiers and requirements concerning coverage of spouses and/or children. Well, dental was available, but expensive...few of us signed up for that or family coverage. I was making $10.00 per hour by then.

During my over thirty-five years of regular 'day job' employment my wages were relatively stagnant. Working mostly blue-collar types of jobs my highest hourly wage was $15.87 in 2001. It was $9.27 last fall... 2010...in a different line of work because there didn't seem to be any semi-skilled tech jobs left...at least I couldn't find one. After a life-time of "hard work and playing by the rules" (a favorite bit of advice from presidents, I've noticed, on how to achieve the GAD (Great American...you know...Dream)...and faced with a $430 per month cobra policy while in between jobs...I had no real choice but to become uninsured. The added distinction of being unemployed came about six months ago.

I am lucky enough to live in an area with a decent community health department (that is now dealing with reductions in funding, state budgetary decisions to out-source most services to local clinics (who charge co-payments on services and prescriptions similar to private insurance). Considering my age and pre-existing conditions it seems unlikely that I could get insurance, even if I could afford it, as an 'individual' unaffiliated with an employee 'group policy'.

I consider myself 'lucky' to have ANY kind of health care coverage.

I also strongly believe that, being uninsured...and very under-employed...if I had a serious or 'life threatening' medical issue I would undoubtedly become one of the statistics Donna Smith refers to...and only a few people would even wonder if it might have been different........"maybe if she'd had the same health care coverage and pay-scale our senators and representatives have provided for themselves and their families...it might have been different."

Hmmm...all of us...every last one of us......making over $170,000 annually and having the SAME health care coverage as what our supposedly elected representatives enjoy. What a concept!

I am but one of millions with a story to tell about our pathetic health care industry. Our complete lack of decent care and affordable coverage inspire frequent thoughts of moving to a different, more 'socialized'...and with luck, more civilized country than this one has become.

Once again we see how deep into the (alleged) Left the depredations of Moron Nation reach: wake up, people; we're in a war -- a war of subjugation and extermination against all of us who are not part of the Ruling Class -- and it is damn well time we started behaving accordingly.

But of course we never will -- at least not in white America.

Meanwhile the capitalists are not "indifferent" to the fact 45,000 people are murdered each year by the (deliberate) withholding of health care. No indeed; the capitalists maliciously applaud each death!

Why? Because murder -- or the threat of murder -- is the quintessence of capitalism. Every one of us killed by denial of health care is one less non-profitable mouth in the capitalists' slave pens. Each of our corpses is an example to terrify the survivors into working harder for less pay.

Death is the primary function of health-care denials: the extermination of those of us who are non-profitable -- that is, those of us too old or disabled or uneducated or too-long unemployed to be exploitable for profit.

Each of our deaths reduces the capitalists' tax bill; each of our deaths is therefore money in the capitalists' pockets. That's why the the capitalists want to abolish Medicare and Medicaid and destroy Social Security.

The capitalists' intent is -- exactly as a dear friend and colleague labels it -- a new holocaust, but without the visible apparatus of death camps, gas chambers and crematoria.

Those of us who are elderly, disabled, downsized into permanent unemployment -- especially those of us bright enough (and therefore dangerous enough) to have joined unions -- we are not collateral casualties; we are the intended targets of capitalism's Final Solution.

Yet even amidst socioeconomic disaster Moron Nation slumbers on, selfish and greedy as ever, opiated to submission by celebrity, compulsive consumption, prescription drugs and Christofascist theology.

(I salute your efforts, Ms. Smith, despite my criticism of your unwillingness to recognize capitalism as ultimate evil. Ideology aside, that you and your colleagues are accorded no more heed than Cassandra is absolute proof of the moral imbecility at the core of Moron Nation.)

I barely survived certain death when I got Leukemia six years ago and had lost my health insurance because of skyrocketing premiums. Luckily I was in California and not a RED state. Or I would be dead!

Conservatives are just like Nazis! They want to kill the disabled, ill and weak. And you can see it happening all over the country and in the GOP budgets. These are evil people. There is no other word for them. Health care fascists!

There is an awful opinion piece in the NY Times today about remodeling Medicaid. It is written by some idiot Republican governor (or something), and if you want a good example of the kind of disturbed thinking afflicting America today, read that piece.

The whole point this asshole misses, in the notion that Medicaid is deeply flawed, is that no one should be put on one particular health care plan because they are "poor," while others are put on a health care plan because they have more money.

Everyone should just be on the same health care plan, regardless of socioeconomic background. If someone has a specific disease or injury -- there is only way to treat it! The correct medical approach! Which every human being is entitled to regardless of income, race, ethnicity, or class.

I *love* the way they call Medicaid an "entitlement" program. As if it is something that people don't really deserve, but lust after like spoiled brats wanting mom or dad to buy them a Mercedes when they're sixteen, and throwing a tantrum if they don't. For if anyone is on an "entitlement" program, it is these fucking governors writing these stupid articles that the New York Times is willing to print -- while protecting those assholes from the opinions of readers, because they do not provide a space for reader comments when the editors themselves know that the readers would tear this guy's intestines apart, if given the chance.

I would love to revamp THEIR health care plans subsidized by the taxpayers. THEIR exclusive socialized medicine that they want for themselves, and themselves alone!

Quality health care is a human right, regardless of socioeconomic background. Don't revamp Medicaid. Open up an improved Medicare to the entire country. Pass single payer NOW.

And fire that governor who wrote that article. Or demand that he sign off on his own health care which he richly does NOT deserve.

Good article and many, many good comments.

With all the GOP budget cuts of funds for food for pregnant women and children under five of low income women and planned parenthood centers closed due to lack of funds or protesters threatening the providers of health care services the U.S. health care system will be even worse and the deaths of women , infant mortality , and sicknesses of children from lack of proper nutrition will increase. Food and health care are human rights not a privilege. Many of the right wing americans use the bible to protest abortion when there is nothing in the bible about abortion but they ignore the teachings of Christ to feed the hungry and heal the sick which is in the bible.

physical exhaustion from work exploitation and physiological imbalance from food poisoning by food industry contribute to medical needs that are not even contemplated by authority - we talking hundreds of millions of human beings in the highly managed, noble prised inspired economy