Where Are We Going?

(This article is dedicated to the former Libertarian in our software development team who just retired and has provided the seed for other postings.)

To what extent should the government protect its citizens?

Conservatives without Conscience (CWCs), including Libertarians, want citizen protection by the government limited to national defense. CWCs even start wars on false pretenses and empower their enemies – anyone not like them – by exaggerating their capabilities and intensions. They also can’t say “9/11,” weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), or “war on terror” enough times in any given discussion about national security.

Beyond protection from foreign invaders, CWCs leave protection up to each individual citizen – “you’re on your own” and you deserve the consequences of ‘your’ failures not to get protection.

To give them some credit, however, the CWCs are very willing to provide a free enterprise solution for many forms of self protection. Insurance is one example. In fact, once in a while they even allow a government form of insurance. This is only for special situations where free enterprise can’t charge enough to make a profit – like flood insurance.

However, even here CWCs are more interesting in protecting free enterprise over the best interests of the citizen. They have allowed limited government-backed flood insurance. However, it’s a unanimous “NO” to limited government backed health insurance.

Leaving protection up to the individual also explains why CWCs are against gun control. Individuals must provide for their own defense. Remember, “you’re on your own.” Combine gun ownership with their desire to protect citizens from international terrorists and you get: Weapons are great but WMD’s are not. (This reminds me of a quote from comedian George Carlin back when ‘the enemy’ was communism, “Gabby Hayes had whiskers! Lenin had a beard!” Whiskers are good, a beard is bad.)

Progressives, on the other hand, know that there are factors in every individuals life that are beyond their control. Because progressives understand systemic causation, they realize that citizen protection by the government is much broader than national defense. Citizens not only need protection from actual – not imaginary – enemies of the state, they need protection from other forms of abuse that can grow out of concentrated power.

These abuses can exist in any manmade institution where no checks and balances exist to prevent them. Checks and balances are necessary to protect citizens from: any of our three branches of government, an abusive spouse, an abusive employer, an abusive preacher, an abusive producer or manufacturer that puts profit before the health and safety of citizens, banks too big to fail, or health insurance companies that deny coverage and drop citizens to maintain profit.

Despite popular dogma, progressives know that profit is necessary and vital to the success of the nation. That’s why the government must protect that ability by providing a court system. Combine the protection of profit with profit that abuses citizens and you get: Profits are great but PMDs, profits of mass destruction, are not.

And now with the recent decision by our activist United States Supreme Court and its five CWCs to eliminate the checks and balances on corporate political contributions, we also need protection from laws of mass destruction (LMDs). Add this decision to the actions of the GWB’s unitary presidency like wire tapping citizens, excessive signing statements that ignored Congressional law and the torture memos of John Yoo, and citizens have lost many of their hard won progressive protections.

Because of this broader view of protection of the citizenry, progressives not only want to protect citizens from WMDs, they want to protect citizens from PMDs, LMDs and many other elements of mass destruction.

Corporations can’t got to prison for illegal actions. We the people can.

We the people are left with PACs and what we can contribute to them to influence our elected representatives. Corporations are now their own PACs with their own funding and will now solidify their ownership of our representatives who will in turn outlaw our PACs.

Imagine the giddiness at the next board of directors meeting for the banks that are too big to fail. Now they can get as big as they want, take bigger risks, and they will make sure we pay for their irrational and unbounded exuberance.

Our Constitution goes to great lengths to protect the power of we the people over our government. The Supreme Court has now nullified all of them.

Support the Peace Team by signing their FAX petition to reconstitute the powers of we the people:

Corporations Are NOT The People

I call on Congress to confront and reverse, by means of whatever legislation is possible, the lawless Supreme Court decision granting full personhood rights to corporations to corrupt our elections.
In their haste to overturn all well-settled precedent, they deliberately left the United States of America exposed and vulnerable to the influence of any foreign interests with a corporate presence here. This decision by a rogue majority of the Supreme Court therefore represents nothing less than an act of TREASON against the people of the United States.

There are many actions Congress can take to ameliorate this judicial crime, up to and including a Constitutional amendment to affirmatively repudiate the outlaw interpretation of five right wing ideologues, recognizing in the first instance that any such interpretation was unfounded on its face. Representative Grayson has already propounded a number of creative ideas, to which we should add bringing back The Fairness Doctrine with real teeth, aggressive public financing of elections, and of course directly forbidding corporations with any foreign ownership interest from exercising this outrageous new privilege. Another idea would be for Congress to exercise its Constitutional power to increase the number of seats on the Supreme Court, to install corrective votes. Any action that can be taken to keep wealthy corporate interests from further drowning out the voice of the people MUST be taken.

We remind the Congress that under 1 U.S.C. §1 they have the right to determine what “persons”, to include corporations or not, are covered by particular acts of Congress. Any claim to the contrary now represents a Constitutional CRISIS of historic proportions whether we like it or not. And we expect our representatives in Congress to stand up and like it NOT, and to act accordingly.

Stop the prostitution of our democracy. Stop the authoritarians of our Supreme Court.

The following was sent to leaders of the Democrat Party:

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Why are Democrats so afraid of the Republicans?

Why are Democrats so afraid of standing up for their progressive values?

Why are Democrats so afraid of a Republican filibuster? What have you got to lose that you haven’t already lost and are now ready to back down on? The filibuster will only delay the process. Well, it’s been delayed anyway. Their goal is to kill it – little by little and they keep succeeding. Stop playing their game. Make them filibuster.

Democrats are losing on health care and lost in Mass because they keep backing down. This is backed up by the only exit poll taken in Mass.:

“Generally speaking, do you think Democrats in Washington, DC are fighting hard enough to challenge the Republican policies of the Bush years, aren’t fighting hard enough to change those policies, or are fighting about right?”

• NOT ENOUGH 37%
• TOO HARD 15%
• ABOUT RIGHT 21%
• NOT SURE 27%

When will Democrats learn how to win consistently? When will Democrats learn from the success of last November instead of repeating the mistakes of that got us to this low point one year after the election for hope and change?

George Lakoff said in The Policyspeak Disaster for Health Care,

“The first rule of effective communication is stating the positive in your own terms, not quoting the other side’s language with a negation.”

When will Democrats stop paving the way for a major Republican victory in November? When will Democrats call their bluff?

Let them filibuster while you and the other Democrat leaders come up with a new plan to keep hope and change alive.

Thanks to Senator Joe Lieberman and other conservatives without conscience (Also known as right-wing authoritarians and tea baggers), we have a health care bill that is more to the liking of health insurance companies than to the majority of Americans.

This minority has ‘had their way’ with the majority and they could care less about those other Americans not like them, but not all is lost:

• There will still be Americans dying from lack of health care, but not as many.
• There will still be Americans who are denied health care, but maybe fewer.
• There will still be Americans who declare bankruptcy because of health care costs, but maybe fewer.
• Our lives and health will still be subjugated to insurance company profits which are not limited by true compitition, but more of us may be covered.

And, according to Bob Cesca, ” the Senate bill will reduce the cost of insurance for a family of four earning $54,000 from around $19,000 per year to around $9,000 per year.” Ten thousand in savings is almost a 20 percent discount.

Remember the CWC goal is to stop this bill. We cannot help them met their goal.

We should accept what the CWCs have created, but it must be called the Joe Lieberman Health Care Plan. Then Joe can be blamed when things go wrong and have to be fixed.

You ideas for health care put corporate profit above the health of all Americans. My life/health should never be subjugated to the corporate profit of your favorite insurance companies. My health care should not be limited by insurance companies coming between me and my doctor.

Our health care system is great for the rich, but lets 45,000 Americans die every year due to lack of health care. That’s wrong, and as long as you believe that profit for insurance companies ranks higher than health care for all Americans, your opposition to more caring ideas for health care is wrong too.

Health care only for people like you is wrong.

Your support for health care corporations over caring for the health care of Americans is beyond disgusting.

Please take your rich, “you’re on your own,” old, fearful, white-male attitude and retire ASAP. This nation does not need you and deserves someone who cares about those not like you.

In American, personal wealth will be redistributed one of two ways: taxation and accountability, or the lack thereof. Will redistribution recreate a wealthy aristocracy this nation rebelled against long ago, or will it provide for the common good and give all citizens an equal chance at creating their own wealth?

America’s wealth redistribution will either benefit all of us or a select few at the expense of all of us. America’s wealth redistribution will either raise all boats or only those that can be well maintained. America’s wealth redistribution will either enrich the common good or engorge the well off. America’s wealth redistribution will either create and maintain a foundation for our democracy and our infrastructure, or let both crumble for the sake of self-interest. America’s wealth redistribution will either protect citizens and their shared resources from abuse or empower the abusers as they ravage the shared resources and protect their ‘individual’ gains. America’s wealth redistribution will either empower all citizens to become wealthy or empower a few to control most of the nation’s wealth. America’s wealth redistribution will either provide for a broad based common wealth, which gives all citizens a equal chance for success and building personal wealth, or will concentrate wealth and power in a very wealthy aristocracy.

For the last 60 years, our tax laws have favored the very wealthy at the expense of other Americans not like them. The tax cuts for the wealthy are highlighted by the chart below which shows the drop in the highest tax rate between 1945 and 2008.

60 Years of Tax Cuts for the Rich

As detailed in another posting, the impact of the above tax cuts has given 16 percent of American families, those who make over $105,000, a 361 percent greater tax cut than the other 84 percent of American families. America’s growing, but young, plutocracy is becoming wealthier and more powerful.

To these tax cuts, add the surreptitious use of privateering. Privateering takes a portion of the remaining tax revenues and diverts it to companies like Blackwater and other sole-source defense contractors, or to ‘too-big-to-fail’ banks. And so the wealthy CEOs get richer still and more powerful.

This redistribution of the nation’s wealth to the wealthy is also shown by the chart below. It shows how family income distribution has changed from 1945 (blue) to 1970 (green) to 2008 (yellow). (All incomes were adjusted to 2008 dollars.)

Through Tax Reduction The Nation’s Income Goes to the Rich

(Data for this chart were obtained from the Census Bureau: 1945, 1970 to 2008.)

In 1945, while all citizens were helping to fund their share of the common wealth, only 6.6 percent of the nation’s income wealth was distributed to those making more than $75,000. (In 1945, taxation was based on funding the common wealth to protect and empower all citizens. This progressive taxation also took into account the effects of systemic causation. This progressive taxation was exemplified by the tax rates during WWII, which included up to 32 brackets and rates that ranged from 10 percent to 94 percent.)

By 1970, after the highest tax rate was dropped by more than 30 percent, that same group tripled their share of the nation’s income to 18.3 percent. By 2008, even more favorable tax cuts allowed the wealthy to keep even more of their income. Now they capture 32.4 percent of the nation’s income wealth – about a five fold increase from 1945.

Of course, while this transfer of wealth to the rich was happening, the funding of our common wealth was reduced just as dramatically. Now a college education is becoming affordable for only the very rich and grades K-12 are underfunded and failing in more and more public school districts as tax cuts rule. Now citizens die from food poisoning and inadequately tested drugs due to lack of independent inspectors which are paid with falling tax revenues. Now our nation and state infrastructures are literally falling down or being overwhelmed by nature and citizens die as a direct result of tax cuts. Now we have to borrow from other nations to pay our war bills and bank CEO’s bonuses. Now we have corporations that build facilities that electrocute our troops so they can maximize their profit. Now we have a health insurance system that lets 45,000 Americans die to maximize CEO bonuses.

As the wealthy have become disproportionately wealthier and more powerful, what has happened to accountability for the nation’s wealth between 1945 and 2008? In 1945, with highest tax rates at 94 percent, all families were proportionately funding our common wealth – our elected officials were accountable to the voters for our common wealth and used it to protect and empower all citizens. In 2008, with the highest tax rate at 39 percent, mega rich individuals, who have gained the most from the nation’s common wealth, became accountable – to themselves and to shareholders.

This difference in the distribution of wealth and whose accountability for the redistribution is explained by the strict father family model of conservatives without conscience (CWC) and the nurturant family model of progressives. As stated by George Lakoff in Making Accountability Accountable ” To progressives, it [accountability] means social as well as personal responsibility — responsibility for both oneself and everyone else who could be harmed by one’s failure. To conservatives, it means individual responsibility only.”

In other words, for CWCs, the individual is solely accountable for their wealth and they have no responsibility for other Americans not like them. Nor do they believe that other factors have an impact on their wealth. They believe they are in control. For progressives, the individual and various systemic factors like the family you were born into and the availability of a good education, contribute to an individuals wealth. Progressives also believe we are all accountable for our effects on others. They that hold our elected officials are accountable for America’s common wealth and will not support those officials that show favoritism with our common wealth.

As political power has shifted from progressive elected officials to CWCs, funding for the common wealth was reduced significantly by substantial tax cuts for the plutocrats. The result has been a slow drift toward “you’re on your own” society where most citizens suffer more abuse and find it more and more difficult to get ahead. Increasing taxes on the mega rich is the only way to defund the rising plutocracy and re-fund the common wealth This in turn will provide for the protection and empowerment of all citizens to create their own wealth based on their abilities, better K-12 basic education, equal access to higher education, protecting our common resources like land, air and water, an infrastructure that enables equal, and safe access to the nations common wealth.

In summary, America’s common wealth has been hit by a triple whammy: tax cuts for the rich far larger that can be considered fair, tax refunds to the rich via privateering, and by a shift of household income into the excessively reduced upper tax brackets. In addition, accountability for the nation’s common wealth has been transferred from our elected representatives and handed over to rich individuals mostly accountable to themselves and corporate CEOs who are only accountable to shareholders. The ultimate effect of all this transfer of income and accountability is that our government is less able to protect and empower its citizens.

It’s time we all realize that privateering and tax cuts favoring the very wealthy are not what America needs. Just look at where they have gotten us – The Great Recession, a growing plutocracy, consumer debt at 100 percent of GDP, banks too big to fail, and ultimately the deaths of fellow citizens.

John Dean called them “right-wing authoritarians” in Conservatives Without Conscience (CWC). George Lakoff’s research, documented in The Political Mind, described their ideal family model as the “Strict Father Model.” Frank Schaeffer writes in Crazy for God, that he and his father helped train these “domestic terrorists” who are out to destroy a nation that is not made in their image.

Here is John Dean’s description of this group of single-minded American citizens:

Probably about 20 to 25 percent of the adult American population is so right-wing authoritarian, so scared, so self-righteous, so ill-informed, and so dogmatic that nothing you can say or do will change their minds. They would march [scare] America into a dictatorship and probably feel that things had improved as a result. … And they are so submissive to their leaders that they will believe and do virtually anything they are told. They are not going to let up and they are not going away.

The Strict Father Model, as discussed by George Lakoff in The Political Mind, is based partly on the use of punishment by a male authoritarian to teach his children ‘right’ from ‘wrong.’ This punishment ranges from James Dobson’s use of objects other than the hand to eliminate the “defiance” of infants as young as 15 to 18 months, to name calling by load-mouthed talking heads, to killing doctors who perform abortions.

The Political Mind includes the following references to punishment as a critical element in the strict father family model:

You need a strict father because kids are born bad, in the sense that they just do what they want to do, and don’t know right from wrong. They need to be punished strictly and painfully when they do wrong, ….

Mapped onto politics, the strict father model explains why conservatism is concerned with authority, with obedience, with discipline and with punishment.

The pregnant teenager has disobeyed her father and should be punished …

And why are conservatives [without conscience] punitive? It is assumed, in a strict father family, that the only way to teach a child right from wrong is to punish him for doing wrong. The lack of punishment is seen as a moral failing of the strict father. Moreover, the point of punishment – that is, physical “discipline” – is to get children to discipline themselves mentally so that they will do what the father says ….

Since a refusal to punish for an offense is seen as a moral failing by a conservative, conservatives insist on strict punishment ….

In the strict father model, there is an individual responsibility and direct action operating: the father gives a directive, the child is expected to carry it out, and if not, the father punishes. …

Lakoff also highlighted the link between the strict father family model and fundamentalist Christians – CWCs.

Why are fundamentalist Christians conservative? Because they view God as a strict father: Obey my commandments and you go to heaven: if not, you go to hell. Well, I’ll give you a second chance. You can be “born again.” Now obey my commands (as interpreted by your minister) and you go to heaven; otherwise you go to hell: authority, obedience, discipline, punishment.

This explains why James Dobson, the leading exponent of strict father childrearing, is a political conservative, [and] a fundamentalist Christian ….

Frank Schaeffer, a former founder of the religious right, exposes the strict father fundamentalist Christians in his book, Crazy for God, and the extremes of some to ‘punish’ America for what it has become. If they can’t “take America back,” they eagerly await its end time.

Crazy for God is a personal story about the rise of the religious right under the guidance of his father, Dr. Francis Schaeffer. His parents started as fundamentalist missionaries then went on to work with Presidents Reagan, Ford, George H. W. Bush and Congressman Jack Kemp. Frank and his father, together with Pat Robertson, the late Jerry Falwell, and Dr. C. Evert Koop (Surgeon-General in the Reagan Administration) helped found the Religious Right, the pro life movement, and turned religion into a political movement. “One of the reasons I left the movement … it was becoming increasingly extreme. … violence … vandalism … intimidation … an insurgency … turning America into a theocracy … a western version of Iran …”

Look at what the extremist CWCs are doing to education in Texas.

Frank’s father, Francis, wrote a book, A Christian Manifesto. In this book Francis Schaeffer advocated the overthrow of the government when the political process failed to meet their fundamentalist beliefs. His father was “setting the groundwork for individuals to decide that the line [Electing a black president, performing an abortion, stopping prayer in public school, taking their guns, etc] had been crossed.” Once the line is crossed, domestic terrorism is an option.

Since the publishing of A Christian Manifesto and the death of his father, Frank Schaeffer says the domestic terrorism mantra has been taken up by Fox News and some bloviated media voices. The result is “… violence … vandalism … intimidation … an insurgency ….” Frank Schaeffer states that just as the Justice Department is investigating foreign terrorists, they should be investigating domestic terrorists. “We have a group of people in this country who are Christian, who are fundamentalist, who have within their midst, individuals who are incredibly dangerous who are waiting to go off like bombs ready to explode with the fuse lit.”

These extremist CWCs, according to Mr. Schaeffer have “a philosophical view of the world which essentially has become fundamentally anti-American.” They even hate these United States – it is now fascist. The government of the United States is evil under its new leadership. The United States has crossed too many CWC lines. In their minds, “America is so lacking in measuring up to [their] standards, that they literally want to overthrow the order that we now know.” They consider this new world order as illegitimate and “They believe they are doing God’s work.”

The CWC messengers all use “code words” to scare their followers into action. These code words allowed them to say what they said to each other in private in public. Occasionally, they slip and their private thoughts become public statements, which they later try to retract, such as 9/11 and Katrina were caused by America crossing one of their lines in the sand.

They so hate America that they “are rooting for the Apocalypse.” All those not like them “must die.” The worse the news gets, the sooner the end times will arrive. They appreciate the work of the war-mongering neocons and the chaos war brings. “The more chaos in the world, the better as far as they are concerned. It’s all signs that Jesus is on his way back. They are going to escape in the rapture. … Any body not exactly like [them] will now be killed. … Out of these groups will come some very dangerous individuals.”

Anyone care for a military coup?

The DOJ needs to monitor our evangelical, fundamentalist domestic terrorists just like they monitor international terrorists. “There are people who are inciting what we would call our unhinged lunatic fringe. … If they can’t win democratically through the election process, they will take that itself as a sign of the end times.”

In 2008, “We came within an ace of the fringe of the fringe actually becoming the heart of the American Political System.” The mainstream, non-authoritarian, conservatism of William F. Buckley and Barry Goldwater has been replaced by the far right of the far right with Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee.

Evangelical Christian leadership must be challenged to pull back from its message of hate. Moderate members of Pro Life activist groups must blow the whistle on those who would commit violent acts. The DOJ and other law enforcement must take seriously the possibility of domestic terrorism and put it on an equal footing with international terrorists.

Within the Conservatives without Conscience, there is an extremist group – “The fringe of the fringe.” This group was raised within the ideal Strict Father Model and taught to accept authority without question. Their parental authority uses strong physical punishment to enforce what he believes is right. Their religious authority uses politics to create a culture war and identify the enemies of their imaginary theocratic America. Their media authority names their enemies and defines their failures. Their economic authority makes sure the religious and media authoritarians are funded even when they can’t make it on their own.

These “domestic terrorists” understand that failure requires punishment – punishment that will teach their enemy, as they were taught, the rightness of the “far right of the far right.”

This “fringe of the fringe” group believes that if they cannot ‘retrain’ or remake their enemies in their own image, then they will pray for the end times and create the chaos that proves the end times are at hand.

Our government needs to protect all American citizens from all terrorists – foreign and domestic.

A little background:
During the first hundred years of our country’s history, the spoil, or patronage, system was used to fill government jobs. Getting a job was based on political patronage and not on ability to perform. This lasted until 1883 when the Pendleton Act created a bipartisan Civil Service Commission and started a transition to awarding jobs based on merit. By 1900, only the senior positions were left as spoils to the victor.

In 1939, the Hatch Act was passed and prohibited federal employees from participating in politics. The Supreme Court upheld the act in 1947 and 1974 and Congress tried to drop the acts limitations in 1987 and 1990 but failed.

(Profiteering – A term for the act of making a profit by methods considered unethical.)

(Privatizing – The transfer of any government function to the private sector including governmental functions like revenue collection and law enforcement.)

From chapter seven of George Lakoff’s The Political Mind:

Privateering is a special blend of privatizing and profiteering. Privateering is the surreptitious destruction of the government’s capacity to carry out its critical moral missions of protection and empowerment. It is accomplished by privatizing government functions which results in the loss of public accountability and the transfer of wealth from the public coffers to corporations. Each instance of privateering damages the foundation of our American democracy.

Privateering requires:

• Someone in the government, an enabler, that is willing to eliminate a government/public function
• The transfer must be by surreptitious means such as by budget cuts, executive orders, signing statements, reassignment of regulators, purposeful lack of enforcement, putting lobbyists in charge of government agencies, no bid contracts, etc.
• Someone in private industry, a provider, must accept the government function
• The transfer must be arranged surreptitiously between the enabler and provider.
• There needs to be something to transfer like military functions, monitoring food and drugs, product safety, interrogating terrorists, disaster relief, or providing good education for all citizens.

Privateering has consequences:

• Profit becomes a key part of the process. When conflicts arise between profit and performing the transferred public function, the public will suffer.
• The public becomes a captive market and profit will grow to whatever the market will bear. Some may not be able to afford the cost.
• Wealth is being transferred from tax payers to wealthy corporations while services that should have been provided by the government are reduced or lost altogether.
• Each act of privateering removes accountability to the public and robs us of our democracy.

If you take privateering to the extreme, the government’s moral mission to protect and empower all citizens is transferred to private enterprise which will only protect and empower those that can afford the high costs. Our “life, liberty and pursuit of happiness” are subjugated to high profits and we will all pay what is asked or do without for a service the government should provide. Corporations become a surrogate government but with no accountability to the citizens.

One notorious example of privateering is a military for the highest bidder – Blackwater/Xe. Xe has tens of thousands of mercenaries and pays them in the neighborhood of $450,000 a year. They claim they can put as many as 20,000 ‘troops’ on the ground on short notice. Xe has made billions of dollars on the Iraq Occupation and two thirds of that has been through no bid contracts. All of this, and more, was paid for by we the people without any accountability to us for any actions by Xe.

Privateerng has also eliminated or replaced non-profit governmental drug, food, and environmental inspectors with high paid inspectors employed by the corporations who’s products they are inspecting. According to George Lakoff’s The Political Mind, these biased corporate inspectors have “fudged reports” for Johnson and Johnson, Pfizer, and Merck and citizens have died as a result.

As privateering has grown during recent decades, citizens have been poisoned by peanut butter and spinach. Again non-profit based government inspectors are eliminated or replaced by Congressional budget cuts, while leaving food inspection to food importers and producers where profit supersedes public protection.

Additional privateering has eliminated or replaced inspectors at the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). The result is the importation of millions of toys containing lead based paint.

Privateering is central to our nation’s health care. Only here, instead of destroying it as an existing non-profit government function for protecting citizens, it is already in private hands – hands that deny care to assure a profit.

Privateering is destroying America’s democracy by eliminating our governments moral mission to protect and empower all of its citizens. Privateering is supplanting that moral mission with protection and empowerment of the rich, by the rich and for the rich. The protection provided by existing government agencies is being eliminated or replaced by self-serving for-profit corporations that give short shrift to citizen protection or, as in the case of health care, are being kept with self-serving for-profit corporations that give short shrift to citizen health. Maintaining health care privateering prevents government protection for all citizen’s lives – some 46,000,000 at last count.

Other Privateering realities:

Privateering results in spending more on defense contractors and spending less on corporate regulation. Both put profit first while ignoring accountability to and protection of citizens.

Privateering implies an ‘inefficient’ government is being replaced by ‘less bureaucratic’ private enterprise. Privateering doesn’t remove government from the process, it replaces it with an unaccountable government that costs significantly more.

Without war, Blackwater can’t make a profit, without denying care, health insurance can’t make a profit.

Conservatives without conscience (CWC) want life protected at all costs while it exists in the womb. Once you are born, however, CWCs believe “you’re on your own.” Your life after birth and your health are totally up to you – even though they are both subject to many systemic factors:

• your parents,
• your parent’s genes,
• drunk drivers,
• contaminated peanut butter,
• exploding gas tanks (Think Ford Pinto),
• improperly tested medications,
• contaminated air, water or soil,
• violent criminal acts, or
• any abuse by others.

Protecting life against all the things we can’t control is a moral issue. That’s why we need health care for all citizens – not just those that work for companies that provide health insurance or those that are rich and healthy enough to afford their own insurance.

Germany’s health care system is totally private and covers every citizen from birth to death. Citizens pay for insurance. Profit is allowed for providers of health care but insurance is non-profit. In fact, in all other democracies which provide health care for all their citizens, health insurance is non-profit.

Why does America let 20,000 citizens die each year due to lack of health care? Why does America let 700,000 families a year declare bankruptcy because their health care costs exceed the limits of their health insurance, if they have insurance? Why …? Profit for insurance companies.

Profit above life is morally wrong!

You’ve heard the question before – Do you still beat your spouse? – and there is no answer that doesn’t imply a negative. Well, polls being sent out by the ‘leaders’ described in Conservatives Without Conscience (CWC) to their fearful supporters are also making negative implications by asking questions that aren’t based on anything real.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) has included several fear mongering questions in their State of the Nation’s Health Care Survey that was mailed to supporters this month. They ask their right-wing authoritarian followers to rate their agreement with each question from strongly agree to strongly disagree and include undecided.

Under the heading of The Price of Health Care Reform, they ask:

In order to reform America’s health care system I would be willing to:

• Give up my right to a private doctor altogether.
• Pay a premium to have the right to see a private doctor.
• Submit a special form to a government official to determine whether I am allowed to have a medical procedure.

First, has anyone proposed the first two options anywhere? Well, that doesn’t matter. The idea is implied by the question. Can you see the flood of emails going out now about having to give up access to a private doctor or paying extra to see one? How long will it be before the CWC leaders make this a key “talking” point.

Second, the third option is currently already true if you replace ‘government’ with ‘insurance company.’ This is how the CWCs hide the reality. Supposedly the government would require that you fill out a form for health care. However, when was the last time you went to a new doctor or hospital and didn’t have to fill out many forms before you could get service?

Under the heading of Rationing and Restricting Health Care, the NRSC asks the following:

Are you concerned that health care rationing could lead to:

• Denial of treatment in cases where the patient’s prospects are deemed not good?
• A “lottery” system of determining who will get priority treatment?
• A “quota” system which would determine who would get treatment on the basis of race or age?

Again each question implies a negative that is not based on any written proposal on health care. This question tries to hide the reality that rationing is already happening.

According to T. R. Reid’s new book, The Healing of America, 20,000 American’s die each year because our health care is rationed by the insurance industry. There are 700,000 bankruptcies declared yearly because health care costs exceed the insurance ceiling and the family must pay. Insurance companies will cover you as long as the cost of your care doesn’t exceed their limits. Once the costs of your care start to impact their bottom line, your health care is subjugated to profit and will be rationed.

Our health care system rations health care to the healthy and those that can afford to pay for it.

The CWCs are lying while calling President Obama a liar.