The Democrats' Authoritarian Health "Reform" Bill and the Ascendency of Corporatism...

[laughingliberal]

in the Democratic Party

If Barack Obama and today's Congressional Democrats were passing Social Security for the first time, instead of a creating a public program, they would likely be mandating that every American buy an annuity from a private, profit-driven Wall Street firm like Goldman Sachs (who could keep 15%-20% of their payments for overhead, profits and executive salaries) with the IRS serving as Wall Street's collection agency. If they were passing Medicare today, they would be mandating that every American buy a health insurance policy from profit-driven companies like Aetna, Humana and Wellpoint that would start paying benefits with 40% co-pays and $10,000 a year deductibles when they turn 65.

Therefore, when Senate "liberals" argue that their health "reform" bill, while compromised, is like the first iterations of Social Security and Medicare and provides a "starter home" that can be added to later, many progressives respond that its foundation is built on quicksand and that it's not incremental reform but a step in the fundamentally wrong direction.

Democrats and liberals once stood for providing a social safety net through government programs like Social Security, Medicare and unemployment insurance, which were administered by government employees for the benefit of the American people and not by private companies for the benefit of their shareholders and executives who receive multi-million dollar salaries and bonuses. For over 60 years, they stood for the principal that health care should be a right and not a privilege and that Medicare should be extended to all Americans.

Democrats in Congress, under the leadership of Barack Obama, have now turned that principal on its head and made health care neither a right, nor a privilege, but an obligation for individual citizens and a government-mandated profit center for private corporations. <snip>

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/miles-mogulescu/the-democrats-authoritari_b_402146.html

Have to agree

[ThomCat]

1. history has not been kind to our government.

Our government as a whole has been dragged so far to the right, and has become so corrupted by lobbyists and corporate money that what was possible in previous generations isn't any longer.

Our current government is corrupted. They are all far right wing, with a few notable exceptions. They all serve corporate masters, and care more about what lobbyists think than what voters think.

What they are doing today IS radically different, and worse, from what our politicians in the past did. That is because the system in Washington has become incrementally corrupted and broken.

That is why so many reformers have been insisting that we need to get campaign finance reform, and we need to slam shut that revolving door between government and lobbyists.

Most of all, we need to find a way kill that absurd notion that corporations are somehow people and therefore deserve political speech. Corporations are psychopaths by their very nature. They are amoral and care for nothing but advancing their own wealth and power. Executives are legally bound to do what best serves the best interests of the corporation, even if that is in the worst interest of our government, or out public. Corporations don't care. So there is no reason why corporations deserve political speech. They have no interest in the public good. None. And without that interest in the public good their speech can only inevitably cause harm when it backed by their rich corporate bankrolls.

The answer to the history of corruption that has made a real safety net impossible is to create a history of reform that separates corporations from government.

[Goldstein1984]

3. Someone else posted it earlier but...

this is a lot like "Rollerball," isn't it?

Well written. In a nutshell, we have to take our government back from the corporations. The problem is that all of our livelihoods are so woven into the health of the economy/corporations that we cannot take any decisive action without hurting ourselves in the process.

I'm am an advocate of a major boycott of all business. Needless to say, it would be like charging a well-defended hill.

The only practical option is to retaliate against incumbents during every election. Throw them out fast and throw them out often, until the message gets out that political longevity is in the hands of the electorate, not corporations.

[laughingliberal]

4. Oops, must have missed the 1st posting, sorry 'bout that

but thanks for the comment

[Goldstein1984]

5. No, your OP is good and not a repeat... (+1)

I meant that someone besides me had already made the Rollerball reference--corporations running the world.

I get a gut feeling that we're heading for a world like the desolate authoritarian dystopia in Philip K. Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" (The book on which "Bladerunner" was based.)

[xchrom]

2. As opposed to this healcare reform scam --

I am even more skeptical of those who drag out
the 'authoritarian' word.

[Goldstein1984]

6. I think as people become more and more disenfranchised

the 'authoritarian" word is going to seem more an more appropriate.

When I wrote it, I was thinking of the way the Philadelphia police managed the crowds of G20 protestors using rubber bullets, tear gas and LRAD weapons; the way the police in Copenhagen stifled dissent by excluding the public from the conference, arresting protestors outside, including "preemptive arrests;" the way our own government ignores the 4th, 5th and 6th Amendments of the U.S. Constitution; how executive privilege has been expanded to include immunity from investigation and prosecution from war crimes; how we used unmanned drones to carry out targeted executions inside the borders of nations with which we are not at war, killing innocent civilians at the same time.

I think 'authoritarian' is very appropriate.

[noise]

7. Authoritarian can also relate

to the tendency of people to put too much trust in their leaders. In this scenario the problem isn't with the leaders who are selling out to special interests but rather the problem is the "whiners" who can't shut up and simply trust their leaders.

[Goldstein1984]

8. Our "leaders" exist for only one purpose:

To serve the interests of the people.

I have far more respect for the "whiners" who cry foul when campaign promises are broken than for those who stand by a "leader" who isn't putting the needs of the people before special interests.

We are nothing if we do not hold our elected representatives accountable.

Obama receives an email from me almost every day. Whether he or his staff ever read them is their problem, not mine.

(I never liked the term "leader" because I'm not following)

[tblue]

9. RFK Jr. said 100% of Republicans are corrupt, and 75% of Democrats.

I'm okay with flushing our 75% down the toilet.

[Blasphemer]

15. Sounds good to me.. nt

[truedelphi]

16. You can include hypoctritical also.

Heads of state riding in limos to the Copenhagen conferences.

Obama mentioning Ghandi in the same speech in which he expands War.

And on and on.

Somewhere in a manger in Bethlehem, in a different time and space, a small infant SHRIEKS.

And his parents have no way to calm him.

[johnaries]

10. Right = Obligation.

It's really a very simple formula, but one many people tend to forget.

Anonymous Woman to Ben Franklin: "So, what type of a government do we have?"
Franklin: "A Democracy, Madam; if we can keep it."

[tblue]

11. I don't think it ever really was a democracy.

There was always some class of people not allowed to vote, and the two-party system and the way campaigns are financed, concentrate power in the hands of a few.

Now we have stolen elections, a unitary executive branch (Bush), blatent violations of our Treaties and our Constitution and the War Powers Act -- and there's no recourse! And the Justice is still playing politics by not doing its job!

This is when I get so mad at Obama. Why couldn't he just wipe the slate clean and say, "This shit is over!"

Oh sorry, I'm not bring "realistic."

[johnaries]

13. "Why couldn't he just wipe the slate clean..."

Because that would make him a dictator. Unlike Bush the Unitary Exeutive, Obama is trying to let Congress do it's job. Which is difficult with people like Lieberman and Nelson holding important legislation hostage.

[mmonk]

12. Wow. That is confirmation of something I wrote and have even

tried to explain to persons outside the Democratic Party. I had written that the nation at this time needed an FDR but got another Clinton. This battle inside the party is finally getting the attention it deserves. As more average citizen Democrats become familiar with this which in many instances has been silent by the media in general, the greater the chances, I think, of a resurgence of the "Democratic wing".

[Echo In Light]

14. "america has one political party with two right wings" - Gore Vidal