“Courting Cowardice” and Then Some

I was going to write about the United States Supreme Court Courting Cowardice, but Maureen Dowd did so already and did a very nice job.   (Good work.)

But…you know…well, no, I don’t know.  Something doesn’t seem right with the courts.  The Supreme Court feels especially squishy, intellectually vulnerable to the push and pull of ideology and public opinion.  Cynics — of which there are many, too many — might try to convince me that the courts have always been this way and even worse.  But I don’t know…

Someone stick a pin in their butts..

Maybe I never really paid attention before and I like to think I am a guy with a propensity to pay attention.

Listening to so-called highlights from today’s Supreme Court hearings has me questioning the both the judicial and the intellectual integrity of the bench.  Aren’t the justices supposed to be refereeing the law?  Instead they seem to be talking from the gut, as you might expect people to talk at a cocktail party, especially one where they might be hedging  in order to fugue properly the social scene.

Is that what a Supreme Court justice does?

The court’s role is fairly direct.  They judge the constitutional validity of the legislative and legal proceedings.  Isn’t that right?  Especially for justices who claim to protect the Constitution as an objective and fixed code, it seems to me that a lot of the questioning in hearings is nonsense.

Should, for example, the court pass on hearing a case because we don’t have a history of social outcomes or a view of the future bearing on the case as Alito suggests?

What kind of cop out is that?  I thought we judged cases based on its constitutionality.  A copy of the Constitution, Justice Alito, certainly must be in your office somewhere (or you can find the Constitution online) along with a history of case law appropriate for assessing minority rights.

The issue before the court isn’t about making peace between warring parties, it about the rights of United States citizens.  Surely there’s something in our history to help the Supreme Court with that sort of assessment.

Furthermore, if the rights protected by the Constitution are objective and eternal rights, what will change 10 or 50 years from now anyway?  Passing judgement on legal matters based on social reaction is shirking the responsibility of the court, is it not?

I have thrown a lot of question marks in this post, but that simply shows that I am utterly confused.  What the hell is so great about the Supreme Court if it starts thinking and acting like  radio talk show hosts or pundits sitting around a table on a Sunday morning news program?

Related articles

• Supreme Court shies away from legalising gay marriage in America (telegraph.co.uk)
• Cowardice As a Political Philosophy (gawker.com)
• Alito’s provocative question (kstreet607.com)

How Business Ate My Brain

Listen to any politician or public policy wonk and you hear strong, unbroken business first rhetoric.  In fact if you think Citizens United is strange for essentially elevating corporations to citizen status, listen to politicians.  One would be forgiven to think that government represents business first, people second.

Has it always been this way?

In Minnesota some people want to slow down and take a look at sand mining operations developing primarily in the state’s southeastern counties.  Sand is used in frac mining — another business-first juggernaut that might need scrutiny — and there is a lot of sand miners need in Minnesota and Wisconsin.

Some people living in those areas want development to slow down, primarily to study impact on the environment and the local economy.

But you will hear politicians push back.  They don’t want the business to go elsewhere.

Frac Sand Mine near LaCrosse, WI.

Well, what if it might be preferable for that business to go elsewhere?  Suppose the frac sand mining operations cause long-term harm that outweighs short-term gain, for example?

Well, maybe, but the Business Zombies don’t give those possibilities much of a chance.  As quickly as a pragmatic argument like that emerges, it is chomped down by the Business Zombies.

This is just one example.  We could consider many others, like frac mining itself.  From the mad sweep to deregulate industry to dismantling pro-(domestic) business trade policy to enthusiastic tax giveaways, it is all done in the name of business.

On the other end we no longer find the political will to fund important social contracts that serve people, programs like Medicare and Social Security; we compromise our environmental protection laws; we cut funding for schools; we support unbalanced tax policies that hurt families; and the list goes on.

Why?  Because the Business Zombies have taken over.  Government of business, by business, for business…especially if you’re a multinational, tax-evading, increasingly foreign-owned business.  Domestic business?  Well, you have had your chance.  Quietly go away.

I understand the importance of business and jobs, but business and jobs don’t preclude some thoughtful commonsense.  The fear of being marked as anti-business in this country leads to too many things happening too recklessly.  Everything is put into a context that business means everything.  It doesn’t.  If a business destroys the land, ruins the local economy, and shifts long-term priorities away from people, that’s a bad thing.  The costs are too high.

Where is the harm in asking whether something good for business is bad for people?

Related articles

• Please Sign Moratorium Petition (wisair.wordpress.com)
• Red Wing mayor hired for frac sand lobbying (lacrossetribune.com)
• Schmit calls for statewide survey on frac sand mining (minnesota.publicradio.org)
• Frac sand mining awakens activism in southeastern Minnesota (startribune.com)

Shut Down Simple-Minded Tax Cut for Job Creators Rhetoric

The simple-minded arguments promoting tax cuts for so-called job creators are misleading, incorrect, and frankly very stale.   For the most part, they do not fit the current economic environment and reflect a level fiscal irresponsibility that is in large part a cause of our national budget mess.  Smart tax policy has been absent for too long and it is time for that to change.

No smart business owner is going to hire people simply because he has more money.  If you manufacture widgets and you have a warehouse full of unsold widgets, what incentive do you have to hire more people to make more widgets?  You don’t have any incentive to do so.  What will you do with the additional widgets and the added costs needed to produce them?

The anti-tax movement argues that we need to ensure that “job creators” have the resources – i.e., money – to hire workers.  This argument has justified decades of increasingly unbalanced tax policy which favors the so-called job creators.  It is the “trickle down” or supply-side model that is not working, especially in our current depressed economy.

If the trickle down model did indeed work, we should be awash in jobs now.  The wealthiest among us are doing well.  They have money to invest.  Why are they not investing those resources here to create jobs here?  Because there is no demand for the goods and services in which they might invest.  Corporations likewise are sitting on record cash reserves.  Again, they are not investing here because it is not justified by demand.

If we want to stimulate growth, we need policy that puts more money in consumer bank accounts.  Often by sheer necessity, they spend the cash they have which then pushes up the demand we need.  Misleading rhetoric about “makers” and “takers” is unfair and incorrect.  One can make the argument – especially in the current market environment – that the middle and working class are the job creators.  Without growth their spending stimulates, we will be locked in stagnate economic growth.

Of course there is some investment underway.  However when businesses do invest, it is increasingly likely that they are investing in cheaper labor markets in the global economy.  We have a systematic labor and demand problem in the United States.  Maintaining tax cuts, subsidies, and other financial incentives behind the argument that it will spur growth has been proven a failed policy in the status quo and does not address the decline of our comparative advantages in the world economy.  We are poorer, less educated, and most importantly lagging behind other countries in our infrastructure and research investments.

Our remaining global stronghold is our financial sector – and to some extend our nation’s monetary system and reserve, although Republicans are determined to undercut that – but this sector serves a very small number of Americans.  Even American workers investing in 401(k)s see less from the financial sector as they have less income to invest and suffer most from the current era’s boon and bust market cycles.

We cannot expect to compete in old manufacturing sectors where we can no longer compete on the labor market, unless we want to undercut the middle class prosperity that has been a part of the American way of life for generations (which in fact is happening now).  We should instead be investing in future economic opportunities, maintaining a secure and educated workforce, and investing in smart infrastructure to sustain future growth.  But we are not doing this.  We are giving tax cuts instead and expecting something magical to happen.

Unfortunately, nothing magical is happening.  That’s obvious to anyone paying attention to our country’s economic trends over the past couple decades.

My two cents.

Related articles

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• Taxes Aren’t Theft, Tax Cuts For The Wealthy Are Theft (seeingtheforest.com)
• Boehner Says Taxes Are Theft, Here Is An Answer (ourfuture.org)

 

We Do Not HAVE to Cut Entitlements

I am listening to Virginia Republican governor Bob McDonnell make the argument this morning on NPR that we have to cut entitlements to balance the budget.  No we don’t.  We don’t have to do anything of the sort.  It is a political decision.  What we choose to cut and what we choose to fund is a matter of priorities.  The GOP puts priorities behind corporate subsidies, “job creator” tax cuts, and tax loopholes before the investments we have made in social programs like Medicare and Social Security, neither of which is bankrupt nor insolvent.  These programs simply need proper management — which includes proper funding — and they will be fine.  The choice to do otherwise is a political one.

Moreover, McDonald repeats the GOP lie pinning the blame for our deficit on Obama’s reckless spending.  This, he says, only makes cuts to entitlements even more urgent.  The argument implies that we are spending ourselves more into a deeper hole because spending increases are out of control.

In fact, the Wall Street Journal‘s radical left-wing rag Market Watch attempted to debunk this myth long ago.  As have others.  And others.  And still others…

But the myth persists, and it persists in large part because GOP politicians cannot be straight with the facts.  Without any qualms whatsoever, the GOP repeats the same tired rhetoric.  On the one hand, insisting that we must cut entitlements is only true if you want to cut entitlements in the first place, which is exactly the advertised goal of conservative politics.  And then on the other is a blatant lie, one among many, attempting to both deflect responsibility and sabotage the efforts of a president for whom they have visceral dislike.

These positions are nothing less than petty politics.

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Debunking the Fair Compensation Myth

The very wealthiest 1% in the United States possess more wealth than the bottom 40%, the top 20% possess more than the lost and dying middle class.  (See well-documented report here.)  Any suggestion that policy redistribute this inequality draws cries of anti-American socialism, most loudly from those barely hanging on in the sinking tiers of America wealth.  This is simply a symptom of ignorance.  A full 1/3 of Americans believe they are among the top 10% of American income earners and nearly all still believe the United States is the land of upward mobility and economic security.

Those are problems of understanding and conditions of cognitive dissonance.  But there is another layer to inequality and it resides mostly on the upper tiers of wealth distribution.  It is the idea that the very wealthiest somehow earned and deserve their growing wealth.  This view is supported by the idea that without competitive compensation — as unfair as it might seem — we would be worse off because “talent” would not be attracted to the complicated careers of corporate management and high finance.

There is a simple one word answer to this (although you still sometimes see it written in its more archaic two-word form):  Bullshit.

This is where the obligatory apology and reassurances need to enter any polemic about capitalism and its rewards.  Most people, myself included, do not want to live in a world where people are not awarded for their talents and efforts, we don’t want to take away the benefits of good fortune, but increasingly talents, efforts, and even good fortune play an ancillary role to strategic regulatory and market regulation.  While most of us work hard to earn a living and pay our way, a very elite few employ others to work even harder for them to change the rules that favor their privileged interests.

How else do you explain public policy that gives breaks to high incomes, subsidizes profitable industry (cf. fossil fuels, mercenary wars, industrial agriculture, etc.), and dismantle social structures that distributed opportunity more equally (cf. education, health care, social security).

The fact is, in an era when we invested more of our wealth in our common interests, we all did better, rich and poor alike.  In fact, in the second half of the 20th century right, high-priced talent and corporations produced enormous wealth for this country, indeed for large parts of the world.  American society was the envy of the world,  It was the source of innovation and creativity and we made political decisions to foster those characteristics.

If we returned to those days, does anyone really think a wealthy capitalist — a “job creator” — would stash his wealth in a mattress somewhere in the Cayman Islands?  (That, by the way, is another policy-enabled issue that we should address.)  If the potential for profits exists to be taken, someone will take it.  If today’s titans are unwilling to take risks, others will follow.  Someone on the sidelines today — squeezed out perhaps because of the enormous comparative advantage that those with great wealth enjoy — might be happy to invest for a single-digit margin where today’s robber barons expect double-digit.

Would we be any worse off if that happened?

Eventually money would return to the market.  Think of a reverse auction.  Investors would jump in if they thought opportunities were being usurped.  Likewise, for every CEO unwilling to spare his talents for anything less than tens of millions, there are talented people willing to take the helm.  Perhaps economies of scale enable tremendous compensation, but it need not be this way.  We didn’t pay CEOs 350 times the average compensation of his employees to attract his talent 30 years ago, why is that necessary today?

Today corporate profits rise — dramatically rise, to record levels — and worker compensation lags, even declines, and the trend is for the worst.

The myth of fair high compensation is perpetuated by those who profit from it.  They sustain it to keep complaints away.  Once we believed kings ruled by divine right.  The time to pull back the curtain is long overdue.

Moreover, looking at so-called talent, it isn’t so rare.  What’s the difference between a hot shot hedge manager in New York versus someone with similar talent and ability in Mumbai?  The answer is Wall Street.  One has access, the other does not.  Likewise a kid raised in Manhattan’s wealth stands to gain much more than a kid raised in rural poverty.  We created this wealth, no one did it alone.  One depends on the other.  It is time we put credit where credit is due.

But most importantly, if unrealized opportunity exists, it will be exploited.  It is absurd to think that we need to sustain an economic system that disproportionately favors the few at the expense of the majority.  It isn’t talent that matters, it is access to power that matters.  If our democracy is protected — something which itself is in doubt (cf., Citizens United) — citizens can regain control of that power.

We accomplish by voting wisely, that starts with turning against the regressive Republican Party.  We are not talking socialism, we don’t even need the redistribution that sustained the 50s and 60s in this country.  We simply need parity, both economic and political parity, along with the safety nets — social security, health care, education — that gives a strong society a solid foundation.

The truth is the world is changing.  The economy is changing…rapidly.  It is a global one.  Someday — which is really yesterday — we need to find a way to remain competitive in the global market.  What is happening instead is we are allowing a slim minority of people harvest the capital of generations and make off like bandits.  In the long run, even those of us who are better off will lose in this game.  It is time we wake up and get our accounts in order.

Related articles

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• Economic Leaders Pay Lip Service to Decreasing Inequality … While Pushing Policies Which INCREASE It (washingtonsblog.com)
• Wealth Inequality Will Keep Growing Unless Workers Demand Better (guardian.co.uk)

Dead Snow and the Decline of Conservative American Politics

Well, shit’s going to hell in a hand basket out there and I don’t know what think.  Anyone pooh-poohing the Zombie Apocalypse hasn’t been paying attention to the GOP, that’s for damn certain.  I only wish they would kills us in the old fashion zombie brain-eating way rather than this slow, tortured death.  Seriously, our destruction isn’t even in good taste, instead it unfolds like a bad Vincent Price film filled with unnecessary theatrics and a crying Speaker.  It is downright pathetic.

Such Well-Behaved Boys.

More pathetic still — when we delve into the plot — we can see that  the Boehners, Cantors, and McConnells of the world are the zombie masters.  The zombies are you and me, or more specificallly the zombies are those of us who march with the political dead casting votes for regressive conservative masters.  How else do you explain a vote for Bachmann?  There has to be a zombie involved somewhere.

Zombie bites have consequences, very bad consequences.

Oh,but then there are the masters master…the ubermeisters…reigning over the obedient Boehner et al.  The concentration of power — the fasci — tying industrial might to political power and ordering a bunch of ortsgruppenleiter about.  Oh wait…best to reign it in a little.  People will get all indignant over any hint of a Third Reich references.  (I wouldn’t dare.)  Slandering opponents as Nazis is reserved for the geniuses of the Tea Party anyway, and only then when insulting the sitting President of the United States.  No one dare suggest that there might be a little fasci at work behind the doors at Koch Industries, for example.   That would be scandalously unpatriotic, even unfair.  (How dare I?)   I can’t spell sturmabteilung anyway.  Heil!

What’s this?? See…We all can have a little fun.

Anyway, no one needs to freak out.  You can have intolerant fascists without the Nazi part.  Remain calm.

I write this only to remind myself to watch that really strange, kind of lame, Norwegian zombie film, Dead Snow (2009), and see if I can draw any connections between that and the really bad episode of current American politics, the 113th United States Congress.

Like Congress, Dead Snow takes forever to get going and when something finally does happen, it is a  lot of senseless — and very predictable — mayhem featuring zombies who happen to also be Nazis.  Leave it to the Norwegians to provide the allegory.

And is there an allegory?  No, not really, not in Dead Snow, at least.  It is a teen zombie movie, a budding cult classic.  That’s all.  But who cares?  The hint is apt.

(P.S.  Tubing behind a snowmobile is very dangerous.  Don’t do it.)

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Michelle Obama and the Oscars

What does it say about the state of politics when Michelle Obama‘s Best Picture cameo at last night’s Academy Awards causes disunity and bitterness?  Conservatives — proving again that they are what they are — complain that Hollywood’s “liberal elite” tipped its hand, showing political favoritism.

You know what…shut the flip up.

That prime time idiot Rush mocked it and this afternoon people in once-progressive Minnesota are calling WCCO radio smelling something sour.   Some are even criticizing the bangs!

Come on, people.  Really?

Michelle Obama is the First Lady of the United States of America.  Let’s show some respect, if not gratitude.  Michelle Obama added a dash of class, something the ceremony often lacked.  And for many people, especially children, the First Lady is someone they look up to as a role model.  Given the context of Hollywood celebrity, this is a refreshing twist.

Can you imagine Democrats raising a fuss if Laura Bush presented an award?  What about Nancy Reagan?  She could have conducted séance and gotten away unscathed.

Of course the hand that really tipped is the conservative hand.  Maybe there is a reason why they pick on Hollywood’s success.  These are creative, intelligent, and open-minded people who create a  successful synergy between art and business.  One might surmise, therefore, that there is a case of resentment at play here or maybe jealousy.  And I can understand it.  If conservatives mock and complain about the success of intelligent creativity perhaps that is all about looking from the outside in and not possessing it for oneself.

Keep whining if you can’t say anything nice, I suppose.

 

Related articles

• Michelle Obama’s Oscars Moment Was Pretty Controversial, Actually (theatlanticwire.com)
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The Economy Affects Democracy

A high degree vindictiveness runs through political discourse today and I think it is a direct outcome of our stalled economy and declining prospects for a stronger future.  Democracy doesn’t do so well when the base of economic progress and opportunity shrinks.

And the problem isn’t blameless.

Today we have an economic plutocracy controlling political discourse that favors its already established and successful interests.  Those fortunate to be in positions of opportunity — which increasingly is a privilege for the few — or simply hold access to power through wealth and connections have gained substantial economic benefit in recent decades, even in the short “post-recession” years.

Government economic policy has been reformed to align with the existing power and wealth interests of the status quo.  Therefore it should not be surprising that political choices which would shake up those policies and raise economic growth for the majority is not a priority of the already well-established and powerful few.

In America today, wealth literally buys a voice in our democracy.  The Supreme Court saw to it that money speaks louder than people. and increasingly our political discourse isn’t about helping people, it is about helping business, free enterprise, and a mythical group called “job creators.”  Conservatives and liberals alike kneel before the altar of free market principles as if it — and not the people who live and work and vote — represent their constituency.

The result is a depression of political consciousness and the destruction of national community.

In the short run, anyone in roughly the top fifth of income earners might benefit from the policies catering to the very wealthiest and so people in that group might go on supporting those policies.   But in the long run, protecting the interests of  the few over the interests of all, is a short-sighted allegiance that will bear bitter fruit.

Policies that benefit the few come at the cost of our global competitive advantage.  What made the United States strong was its progressive access to opportunity and a shared benefit from economic growth.  These advantages supported the greatest advantage of all:  A strong and engaged democracy.  But as the United States becomes more economically divided, it becomes more divided in the ideological realm as well.  Democracy falls victim to this kind of divide.

I believe economics and politics are directly connected and social progress evolves out of a connection that serves the most citizens fairly and objectively.  When you look at the world’s democracies, the don’t emerge from economies plagued by chronic poverty and inequality, they emerge from prosperity.  I think we can draw the conclusion, therefore, that the rise of incivility, the failure to govern, and an overall decline in American social well-being and prosperity that we see today is at least in part an outcome of a society that is increasingly an economically divided and for many a less prosperous society.

There will always be differences in wealth and achievement.  In fact, we celebrate wealth and achievement in this country perhaps like no other.  So it is important to understand that fairness is not about condemning success but it should be about maintaining rules and systems that truly do reflect shared obligations as well as opportunities.

Today, much like we experienced in our country’s history a century ago, the very fortunate have an unbalanced political and economic advantage through the sheer wealth they have amassed and the power it accrues.  It allows them to maintain a system which is out of balance with the economic realities faced by most Americans.  This is the threat to civil society and democracy that threatens from the shadows of our economic crisis.

The free market respects growth and profits, but not necessarily social well-being, equality, or even democracy.  These are values that arise from convictions of people, not the incentives of free enterprise.

As standards of living stall or decline, as the outlook for a better future becomes less promising, and as we become less willing to invest in our common good, social and political decline will grow worse, not better.  This is the risk that we face today.

So what is the solution?  A more sophisticated, better-informed voter, one who understands his or her best interests.  But greater equality and shared prosperity in economic growth is likely the seed to engage the voter’s interest in the first place.  One serves the other.

In the end, this is a very troubling chicken or egg dilemma that requires informed leadership to reset priorities and it is the responsibility of the people to elect those leaders.

It is a mess.

Related articles

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Maybe We Should Ask Republicans What They Mean When They Talk About Economic Growth

Marco Rubio is the latest “rising star” in a dying party to espouse the empty and pointless rhetoric of American conservativism.  The text of his response to President Obama’s State of the Union speech is here.

Marco Rubio

Understanding what conservatives have in mind when they talk about America’s future and economic growth requires holding their rhetoric accountable to the facts.

The simple fact is we have lower taxes, fewer regulations, and more wealth in the hands of job creators than at any other time in recent history.  If GOP rhetoric were anywhere near the truth, we should be awash in new jobs and prosperity.  But we are not.

Rubio claims that large government and taxes that promise to help the middle class has “failed every time it has been tried.” Well, that is true if you forget mid-century America or turn a blind eye to the strength of European countries like the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Germany.

Republicans like to say President Obama is anti-private sector, but the Obama administration overall accommodates the private sector quite well.  Obama went out of his way to remind us that the private sector is the key to prosperity.  In today’s political wars, however, the messenger is more important than the message.  Again, perhaps it is time to look at facts, not rhetoric.

We currently have the tax cuts, less government, and fewer regulations.  The wealthiest — the job creators — have seen their wealth increase by over 60% in the last decade.  So…keep asking…where are the jobs?  Where is the prosperity?  Where is the answer to these questions?

A classic worth repeating…because it is so true.

Rubio also says our financial problems begin with a country that spends too much, spends a trillion more than it takes in.  While that certainly is a problem, it is hard to see why this isn’t a funding problem.  We cut taxes with the idea that wealth would trickle down.  The increased overall prosperity would bring in increased revenues, the argument went, and that would cover the lower tax rates.  But as we see, that does not happen.

Moreover, Republicans — by giving even more cuts and subsidies, adding Medicare prescriptions benefits, and a few ill-advised wars — added to our financial unmet financial burdens.  Let’s not forget doing absolutely nothing to address the core issues behind the banking crisis that put us here in the first place and thus added even more to our deficits.

Yes…it is all the fault of government too big, isn’t it?  Hardly.  It is a mismanaged government finance policy that erroneously puts the blame on government generally.  Simply put, if you manage government to fail, it will likely fail.  It can’t be any more plain than that.

However, when Rubio argued that annual GDP growth at 4% would be a big part of helping balancing our books…he was right!  That’s why notable experts like Paul Krugman make the case for government stimulus to push economic growth.  It will be much easier to pay down the cost of this stimulus — and more — if we have ten years of growth versus doing nothing, as we are doing now, and let things remain stagnate.

(But Krugman, and others like him, is an expert.  He’s intelligent and informed.  He has spent his career understanding economics.  So he must be wrong.)

Anyway…this is all so tiresome.  What is it that Republicans want that we don’t have right now?  Are they really concerned about jobs or just growth?  And who are they anyway?  Millions of people vote GOP in this country as if those votes serve their interests.  Why?

I ask this because we should ask what exactly do conservatives have in mind when they talk about growth and prosperity.  The rank and file Republican voter certainly doesn’t understand this question.  If it simply is growth, especially for the wealthiest, Republicans have that and lots of it.  If they are talking about middle class growth and prosperity then things are not so clear.

Rubio served up a rambling list of tired complaints and clichéd promises that simply do not fit the facts of conservative principles.  They are intentionally misleading the public and misrepresenting their true objectives.  It is hard to understand how an informed and intelligent person could see things otherwise.  Show us some progress on the conservative agenda first, then may you have an argument that the less-is-more approach is a winning one.

If Rubio is a rising star representing the future of the Republican Party, there isn’t much to excite people expecting a more moderate and sensible GOP.  We have heard all of this before.  (We haven’t forgotten the 2012 elections already, have we?)

Alas, this is looking more and more like class warfare to me.  The conservative elite are pushing for more by demanding that the rest live with less…and pay for the privilege.  Conservatives have focused on dismantling government for nearly 30 years now.  It is the “Starve the Beast” argument and, unfortunately, it is winning and most Americans are losing.

How do conservatives address this fact?  How does their rhetoric square with reality?  It is time to ask more about what does a prospering America really look like in the ideal GOP world.

Related articles

• Translating Obama’s State of the Union and Rubio’s Response (usnews.com)
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“Freedom” is the Reason Healthcare Sucks in America

The concept of freedom has been co-opted by those who care least about freedom and that is why health care in the United States is expensive and sucks.

Too many people, in the name of some faux freedom, are all too willing  to bend over and take it up the ass by corporations and their health care-rationing death panels than those who understand that whether the bureaucracy is private or public, you have a choice.

The idea that private enterprise is inherently better — morally and economically — than the public sector enterprise is naive and simple-minded.  Medicare runs much more efficiently than private insurance conglomerates, for example, but that somehow is a threat to freedom.  Freedom my ass.  You pay or you pay.  Get your facts straight.  We have, for example, a ridiculous system of private care when people are more likely to be healthier (younger) and subsidized public care for older Americans.  What is Medicare if it isn’t a giant subsidy to an already profitable private enterprise??  This unbalanced approach will cost more and more.  Left unchecked, Medicare can reach 10% of GDP in a few decades, health care cost overall exceed 25% of GPD.  Why?  We are protecting profits, increasingly monopolistic profits, at the expense of affordable and available quality health care.    That’s why.

The hegemonic ideological state apparatus has been usurped!  The hegemonic ideological corporate apparatus…and profits, of course… rule instead.  And it does so under the kowtowing bent of our collective ignorance.  A disgrace.

(Althusser would agree, I think. It isn’t the ISA that threatens freedom, it is the ICA.)

Let me suggest this.  The people behind private health care, those who deny you care in the interest of profits, are the ones getting rich and not you. (It is one of those “if you have to ask you can’t afford it” kind of things.)  You are indeed free “to choose” an inefficient private health care program, but it is inevitably one that puts profits before your life and it takes everyone else down with you.

So I say screw the people who want private health care.  If you’re that stupid, don’t expect me to care when you die.  In fact die fast so you don’t suck up resources and drive up my costs.  Still more importantly, someone’s stock investment depends on your quick and ignorant death.  Stop wasting their money, patriot!  Ah, but wait…before you go, send a thank you card to the stock holders.  Thank them for protecting your freedom, your freedom to die in ignorance so that they can pay out of pocket for what you cannot afford.

We are what we are and we get what we deserve.  Hijacked freedom, however, is inexcusable and that’s the problem.

(P.S. and FYI.  I really mean to replace “screw” with “fuck” but I want to maintain my PG rating.  I wonder if “take it up the ass” jeopardizes my PG rating…)

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