They’re enthusiastically letting people die: low income working people have to put off medical care or, like Charlene Dill, cut their medications in half to be able to buy food for their kids...
If the Constitutional purpose of the governors in those 11 Republic states is to promote the general welfare of their citizens and protect them from the kleptocrats that do things adverse to their rights and their communities’ interests, then they have failed miserably. But if their purpose is to serve the morbidly rich oligarchs of “healthcare” so they can get reelected, they are role models for future (mostly) GOP grifters who can sleep at night knowing that their criminally stupid decisions kill people, even their own voters.
The Alaska rep. says it all; these guys would push their own kid under a bus for $1 million or, in this case, $1.5 million. We can rant and rave all we want about how horrible these people are but they will in turn, just look at us with a blank stare that says, 'What's your problem?' The solution is to take away the voter with a positive message, with the truth. We all need to get more involved at a local political level; good 'ol grass roots action.
Democrats really need to get the majority in congress fix the filibuster and add 4 SC justices so citizens united can be reversed, so damn annoyed by these white evangelical fascists wedging their way into politics and people's private lives. 🤬
I remember a conversation I had with a Canadian woman well before the ACA was implemented. She said she thought it was a good thing that the Canadians want to take care of their people.
This is also why the British, after WWII, established their national health care system. They cared for each other during the War and wanted to continue what they learned the hard way after the War.
It's a death cult. Republicans rejoiced when seniors were dying of Covid & were happy when Blacks were more susceptible and it started in Democratic Cities. That's why they pushed the no masks but unfortunately for them it's their voting base who's been effected. The Repugnant Representative who is ok with abused kids dying because it saves money isn't a unique position. It's actually their platform.
You can play this game all you want Thom, and yes Republicans are for austerity on the local level even more than many Democrats are, but the bottom line is it is the Democrats who were our only hope for a national health care system and Obama scapegoated Joe Liberman as he openly decried the publlic option and Democrats campaigned against Medicare for All (and continue to do so). Since the implementation of the Affordable Care Act we have seen the uninsured and underinsured skyrocket to over 80 million Americans, 20% of Americans in collections for medical debt, less than 50% of physicians now in private practice, an estimated 100,000 deaths per year due to lack of access to medical care, 400,000 deaths per year due to medical errors, and a 200% rise in the use of nurse practitioners and physicians assistants as first line encounters with patients. I could go on, and yes Republicans are partially to blame on the local level, but if Democrats and their media would not have been lying against Medicare for All over the past eight years (Biden and Hillary Clinton included) we might be in a different place. I will add that president Obama did not exactly use his bully pulpit for anything apart from what the health care lobby would allow him to put in the conservative health care plan that he passed which put for profit conglomerates squarely in charge of our collective well-being.
I too was disappointed when the public option was shut down. But I think, at the time, they felt that was the only way to get anything through. I agree with you though--some kind of universal healthcare needs to be implemented.
One thing I've learned about the ACA since 2020, is that it included enabling language that has since created new efforts to privatize Medicare. Under Trump the effort was abbreviated as DCE. Since Biden was elected, the protests against DCE resulted in a revised version called REACH: https://nwcitizen.com/entry/medicare-direct-contracting-scam-renamed-aco-reach
Conservatives are deathly opposed to education, their preference is indoctrination, the unquestioned and unquestionable absorption of lies and myths, but lies and myths that are useful in creating an ideology of victimhood, which requires a non thinking collective mentality to organize and counter the threat. Thus they actually reduce their agenda to a simple common denominator, the liberal, in what ever manifestation he or she appears.
Liberals are not so alarmed or united, in fact they are factinalized, with this and that group demanding that their cause take front and center, be it race, religion or economics. Thus the advantage goes to the motivated, the energized and ignored.
Here is an example, which the Democratic party seems to ignore, which shifts the outcome to the liberals. Abortion rights. It was the biggest factor in states where it was on the table, like Kansas, and just today Wisconsin.
The judiciary race for seats on it’s Supreme court was a contest between women’s rights and fascist anti women’s rights. And in the Primary it appears that the women’s rights advocates have won, because abortion was on the table. The Democrats elected their favorite primary candidate ,and poured money into the most right wing, fascist anti abortion’s candidacy, which they believe they can beat in the general and both won.
The entire liberal agenda, almost,is worthy but Democrats can’t organize, using fear, around immigration, trans rights,gay rights, but the right wing can and does.
What the liberals can organize around is fear of fascism, but to do so they have to have guts to call it out for what it is. Kevin McArthy, MTG, Boebert, Gosart, evenRomney.. all of them are fascists, and defining fascism the way Mussollni did, then so is Liz Cheney.
Wealth inequality is built in to the American system. Black college graduates earn less than white high school drop outs. Medical care, child care, sick days ... and all the things that a GENUINE government provides to support the MIDDLE CLASS and a healthy society is anathema to the Republican party. Supporting SOCIETY...is not SOCIalism. Republicans change words to support their disinformation, misinformation and down right LIES!
The system we have now works for the children of the well to do.
We have a democratic form of political system. The inequality element comes from our authoritarian economic system that perpetually creates oligarchs who eventually undo regulations that chain this authoritarian economic system to minimize it's abusive nature.
Until we create a democratic economic system that prevents the developement of oligarchs, our democratic form of governing is under constant threat.
In the 1860s, the plantation oligarchs of the South started a Civil War to protect their low cost slave labor. In 1933, the industrial revolution oligarchs asked retired Marine general Smedley Butler to lead an army of disgruntled WWI veterans and remove FDR from Office. Butler instead blew the whistle on these oligarchs and FDR went on to pass many new laws of the New Deal to protect and empower citizens. Since then, the new oligarchs of our time have been methodically destroying the New Deal and its protections. They are getting closer to privatizing the remaining tools of citizen empowerment, Social Security and Medicare. Then the oligarchs can get their cut of those trillions of dollars we have tucked away for all citizens and continue impoverishing the 99%.
Here's a disturbing, but relavent, quote from Heather Cox Richardson:
"The idea of strangling government programs and saving tax dollars has gotten to the point that we had the extraordinary scene in Alaska earlier this week of Republican state representative David Eastman, who attended the January 6, 2021, rally in Washington, D.C., suggesting that children dying of child abuse would save the state money in the social services those children would otherwise need." -- https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/february-22-2023.
Such evil is becoming the norm in USofA and we have to stop it by understanding why they believe they are morally right about their superiority and willingness to kill fellow citizens.
Their core values include both a social hierarchy of inequality and the use of severe punishment/reward to mantain the ranking. This keeps them at the top and all others in their lower, less threatening, positions. As the decades have gone by, the punishment element has gone from dog whistles to blantant death threats and daily mass murders to enforce their hierarchy.
On the other hand, the rewards, tax cuts and elimination of regulations, legitimized by lackeys of the oligarchs have maxmimized the protection and empowerment of the oligarchs. These oligarchs then help realize and enforce their imaginary hierarchy.
Sadly far too many low income people vote for Republican candidates that support their racist views. It is not a coincidence that the 11 states are ones that have actively supported slavery for centuries, both private ownership of people and state ownership through the states' prisons. Similar appeals were made successfully to move the people of Italy, Germany, and Japan to fascist governments, and have been used more recently in India, Brazil, and the United States. Small wonder that the Republicans oppose public education and NPR and any other source of information.
After losing my job in 2010 and finding it very hard to find another, I went to Texas and stayed in a house in Houston owned by an Islamic group for women who needed temporary assistance. While there, on Black Friday after a cold rain I was walking by a construction site and slipped in the mud, which is the slimiest wet clay and worse than ice. I fell and broke my ankle. I was taken to a hospital and spent the entire afternoon sitting in the hallway of the emergency dept. I had no insurance, so all I got that day was an elastic bandage and a pair of crutches, and a single ibuprofen pill. A few weeks later, I got a bill (I left the US and stayed out for 6 years so I never paid it). The amount I owed was $4,275. Such bloated health care costs inflicted on people who can't pay them are egregious.
As a native Texan, I apologize for your mistreatment. If we had allowed the extension of Medicaid from Obama's Affordable Care Act, maybe you could have has some insurance and gotten better treatment?
Texas protects and empowers our local oligarchs as they continue stealing everyone's income and wealth. Texas is not a refuge for workers or those seeking a living wage. And ,even though we are a minority majority state, we don't vote to kick out the lackeys of the wealth hoarders.
Well congratulations to Representative Eastman for achieving a new low!
We have turned the insurance industry and the credit bureaus into gods, and they are not benevolent. Worst of all, they don't do what is right on-top of screwing-up. Look at the hacking involved with the bureaus? Nice of them to make our identities available to the other bastards besides them.
Republican shills for the insurance industry are the ONLY reason we do not have a public option. To some of the commenters, don't blame it on the people who CALL themselves Democrats. One party, one whole party wants to solve this problem and help poor people. The other party wants everyone to work regardless of their circumstance. They want those who do work to have to accept whatever crap insurance the glorious job-creators offer. As Rep. Grayson said on the floor in 2009: "If you get sick, America, the Republican health care plan is this: Die quickly. That's right. The Republicans want you to die quickly if you get sick."
Andrew Van Dam is brilliant for pinning this down and getting it published. This article should go to every kid turning 18, every person with low wages or no wages, and on everyone's social media in those red counties.
Thanks Thom, and thanks Democratic Party for trying to save lives.
Most the Americans with health insurance could care less about the Americans without health insurance. Capitalism has made Americans very selfish and me oriented. How these people can claim to know God is beyond me.
"We are critical of our capitalist system, which we define capitalism as the employer-employee relationship, and believe is inherently flawed, exploitative, and at odds with democracy.
"We believe a better future is rooted in democracy: in our politics, our economy, our workplace, and our daily lives. ... "
If the Constitutional purpose of the governors in those 11 Republic states is to promote the general welfare of their citizens and protect them from the kleptocrats that do things adverse to their rights and their communities’ interests, then they have failed miserably. But if their purpose is to serve the morbidly rich oligarchs of “healthcare” so they can get reelected, they are role models for future (mostly) GOP grifters who can sleep at night knowing that their criminally stupid decisions kill people, even their own voters.
The Alaska rep. says it all; these guys would push their own kid under a bus for $1 million or, in this case, $1.5 million. We can rant and rave all we want about how horrible these people are but they will in turn, just look at us with a blank stare that says, 'What's your problem?' The solution is to take away the voter with a positive message, with the truth. We all need to get more involved at a local political level; good 'ol grass roots action.
Democrats really need to get the majority in congress fix the filibuster and add 4 SC justices so citizens united can be reversed, so damn annoyed by these white evangelical fascists wedging their way into politics and people's private lives. 🤬
I remember a conversation I had with a Canadian woman well before the ACA was implemented. She said she thought it was a good thing that the Canadians want to take care of their people.
This is also why the British, after WWII, established their national health care system. They cared for each other during the War and wanted to continue what they learned the hard way after the War.
Heartless and amoral. And they think they are proud of their cruelty
Their pride is from protecting and empowering a USofA where equality applies only to white, wealthy, heterosexual, misogynistic, racist men.
It's a death cult. Republicans rejoiced when seniors were dying of Covid & were happy when Blacks were more susceptible and it started in Democratic Cities. That's why they pushed the no masks but unfortunately for them it's their voting base who's been effected. The Repugnant Representative who is ok with abused kids dying because it saves money isn't a unique position. It's actually their platform.
You can play this game all you want Thom, and yes Republicans are for austerity on the local level even more than many Democrats are, but the bottom line is it is the Democrats who were our only hope for a national health care system and Obama scapegoated Joe Liberman as he openly decried the publlic option and Democrats campaigned against Medicare for All (and continue to do so). Since the implementation of the Affordable Care Act we have seen the uninsured and underinsured skyrocket to over 80 million Americans, 20% of Americans in collections for medical debt, less than 50% of physicians now in private practice, an estimated 100,000 deaths per year due to lack of access to medical care, 400,000 deaths per year due to medical errors, and a 200% rise in the use of nurse practitioners and physicians assistants as first line encounters with patients. I could go on, and yes Republicans are partially to blame on the local level, but if Democrats and their media would not have been lying against Medicare for All over the past eight years (Biden and Hillary Clinton included) we might be in a different place. I will add that president Obama did not exactly use his bully pulpit for anything apart from what the health care lobby would allow him to put in the conservative health care plan that he passed which put for profit conglomerates squarely in charge of our collective well-being.
I too was disappointed when the public option was shut down. But I think, at the time, they felt that was the only way to get anything through. I agree with you though--some kind of universal healthcare needs to be implemented.
One thing I've learned about the ACA since 2020, is that it included enabling language that has since created new efforts to privatize Medicare. Under Trump the effort was abbreviated as DCE. Since Biden was elected, the protests against DCE resulted in a revised version called REACH: https://nwcitizen.com/entry/medicare-direct-contracting-scam-renamed-aco-reach
Conservatives are deathly opposed to education, their preference is indoctrination, the unquestioned and unquestionable absorption of lies and myths, but lies and myths that are useful in creating an ideology of victimhood, which requires a non thinking collective mentality to organize and counter the threat. Thus they actually reduce their agenda to a simple common denominator, the liberal, in what ever manifestation he or she appears.
Liberals are not so alarmed or united, in fact they are factinalized, with this and that group demanding that their cause take front and center, be it race, religion or economics. Thus the advantage goes to the motivated, the energized and ignored.
Here is an example, which the Democratic party seems to ignore, which shifts the outcome to the liberals. Abortion rights. It was the biggest factor in states where it was on the table, like Kansas, and just today Wisconsin.
The judiciary race for seats on it’s Supreme court was a contest between women’s rights and fascist anti women’s rights. And in the Primary it appears that the women’s rights advocates have won, because abortion was on the table. The Democrats elected their favorite primary candidate ,and poured money into the most right wing, fascist anti abortion’s candidacy, which they believe they can beat in the general and both won.
The entire liberal agenda, almost,is worthy but Democrats can’t organize, using fear, around immigration, trans rights,gay rights, but the right wing can and does.
What the liberals can organize around is fear of fascism, but to do so they have to have guts to call it out for what it is. Kevin McArthy, MTG, Boebert, Gosart, evenRomney.. all of them are fascists, and defining fascism the way Mussollni did, then so is Liz Cheney.
Wealth inequality is built in to the American system. Black college graduates earn less than white high school drop outs. Medical care, child care, sick days ... and all the things that a GENUINE government provides to support the MIDDLE CLASS and a healthy society is anathema to the Republican party. Supporting SOCIETY...is not SOCIalism. Republicans change words to support their disinformation, misinformation and down right LIES!
The system we have now works for the children of the well to do.
We have a democratic form of political system. The inequality element comes from our authoritarian economic system that perpetually creates oligarchs who eventually undo regulations that chain this authoritarian economic system to minimize it's abusive nature.
Until we create a democratic economic system that prevents the developement of oligarchs, our democratic form of governing is under constant threat.
In the 1860s, the plantation oligarchs of the South started a Civil War to protect their low cost slave labor. In 1933, the industrial revolution oligarchs asked retired Marine general Smedley Butler to lead an army of disgruntled WWI veterans and remove FDR from Office. Butler instead blew the whistle on these oligarchs and FDR went on to pass many new laws of the New Deal to protect and empower citizens. Since then, the new oligarchs of our time have been methodically destroying the New Deal and its protections. They are getting closer to privatizing the remaining tools of citizen empowerment, Social Security and Medicare. Then the oligarchs can get their cut of those trillions of dollars we have tucked away for all citizens and continue impoverishing the 99%.
Here's a disturbing, but relavent, quote from Heather Cox Richardson:
"The idea of strangling government programs and saving tax dollars has gotten to the point that we had the extraordinary scene in Alaska earlier this week of Republican state representative David Eastman, who attended the January 6, 2021, rally in Washington, D.C., suggesting that children dying of child abuse would save the state money in the social services those children would otherwise need." -- https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/february-22-2023.
Such evil is becoming the norm in USofA and we have to stop it by understanding why they believe they are morally right about their superiority and willingness to kill fellow citizens.
Their core values include both a social hierarchy of inequality and the use of severe punishment/reward to mantain the ranking. This keeps them at the top and all others in their lower, less threatening, positions. As the decades have gone by, the punishment element has gone from dog whistles to blantant death threats and daily mass murders to enforce their hierarchy.
On the other hand, the rewards, tax cuts and elimination of regulations, legitimized by lackeys of the oligarchs have maxmimized the protection and empowerment of the oligarchs. These oligarchs then help realize and enforce their imaginary hierarchy.
Sadly far too many low income people vote for Republican candidates that support their racist views. It is not a coincidence that the 11 states are ones that have actively supported slavery for centuries, both private ownership of people and state ownership through the states' prisons. Similar appeals were made successfully to move the people of Italy, Germany, and Japan to fascist governments, and have been used more recently in India, Brazil, and the United States. Small wonder that the Republicans oppose public education and NPR and any other source of information.
After losing my job in 2010 and finding it very hard to find another, I went to Texas and stayed in a house in Houston owned by an Islamic group for women who needed temporary assistance. While there, on Black Friday after a cold rain I was walking by a construction site and slipped in the mud, which is the slimiest wet clay and worse than ice. I fell and broke my ankle. I was taken to a hospital and spent the entire afternoon sitting in the hallway of the emergency dept. I had no insurance, so all I got that day was an elastic bandage and a pair of crutches, and a single ibuprofen pill. A few weeks later, I got a bill (I left the US and stayed out for 6 years so I never paid it). The amount I owed was $4,275. Such bloated health care costs inflicted on people who can't pay them are egregious.
As a native Texan, I apologize for your mistreatment. If we had allowed the extension of Medicaid from Obama's Affordable Care Act, maybe you could have has some insurance and gotten better treatment?
Texas protects and empowers our local oligarchs as they continue stealing everyone's income and wealth. Texas is not a refuge for workers or those seeking a living wage. And ,even though we are a minority majority state, we don't vote to kick out the lackeys of the wealth hoarders.
Well congratulations to Representative Eastman for achieving a new low!
We have turned the insurance industry and the credit bureaus into gods, and they are not benevolent. Worst of all, they don't do what is right on-top of screwing-up. Look at the hacking involved with the bureaus? Nice of them to make our identities available to the other bastards besides them.
Republican shills for the insurance industry are the ONLY reason we do not have a public option. To some of the commenters, don't blame it on the people who CALL themselves Democrats. One party, one whole party wants to solve this problem and help poor people. The other party wants everyone to work regardless of their circumstance. They want those who do work to have to accept whatever crap insurance the glorious job-creators offer. As Rep. Grayson said on the floor in 2009: "If you get sick, America, the Republican health care plan is this: Die quickly. That's right. The Republicans want you to die quickly if you get sick."
Andrew Van Dam is brilliant for pinning this down and getting it published. This article should go to every kid turning 18, every person with low wages or no wages, and on everyone's social media in those red counties.
Thanks Thom, and thanks Democratic Party for trying to save lives.
Most the Americans with health insurance could care less about the Americans without health insurance. Capitalism has made Americans very selfish and me oriented. How these people can claim to know God is beyond me.
We CAN do better than anti-democratic capitalism:
"We are critical of our capitalist system, which we define capitalism as the employer-employee relationship, and believe is inherently flawed, exploitative, and at odds with democracy.
"We believe a better future is rooted in democracy: in our politics, our economy, our workplace, and our daily lives. ... "
https://www.democracyatwork.info/messaging_statement
This is the third or fourth in a row of ain't it awful realistic depictions in different categories. But we need to get out of our navels and look at what to do to change things. Register for a program tomorrow, Thursday, with Brian Swimme, my vote fir the best mind on what to be thinking: https://open.substack.com/pub/suzannetaylor/p/would-you-sign-up-for-the-human-survival?r=22nl7&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web. Trust me about how good he is.