The attack dogs are out in every location, in every media, with fangs and claws bared. The health care industry is out to use President Obama to prevent you from getting health care. The Murdoch WALL STREET JOURNAL, after attacking Bill Clinton’s hugely successful economic program, one which actually put money back into Social Security and paid down some of our long-term debt, has now turned its Wall Street supported venom on the black guy. Let’s not evade the issue. They really think, racists that they are, that African-Americans are somehow weaker and dumber than other Americans. First of all, even if they were right, in Obama’s case they are only half-right. So they think that they can break him down with all their idiotic ruminations about whether a health care plan will work. They think he’s going to “break,” whatever that means. They are going to find that a lot of African-Americans are not only smarter than Neocons, but tougher. And there are plenty of White Liberals standing on either side.
David Brooks, New York Times columnists and Chicago University-style right-winger, thinks the Democrats are being foolish by becoming too Liberal. He thinks, or probably wants us to think, that we need to remain Centrist. Let’s face it…the only thing that standing in the middle of the road gets you is– run over. The Right Wing is not standing in the middle of the road. Senator Demented from South Carolina, still representing the Strom Thurmond wing of the Republican Party says that he wants to ruin the health care prospects for all Americans so that it will lead to the destruction of the Obama regime. Somehow he didn’t get the message any more clearly than David Brooks, the genial host of his New York Times column and host of his life, which could be termed “Totally Confused by Politics.” His philosophy of “why can’t we all just get along” is somehow lost on his fellow Neocon Republicans, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Mitch McConnell, Cigarette John Boehner, not to mention, Senator Jim “Strom” DeMint.
We need more Liberals in Congress, not fewer. And we need some very strong populists, the old Teddy Roosevelt kind. We need to kick some ass and take numbers. First of all, we want health care. It IS affordable. We could pay for it from only a third of the tax cuts the rich Republicans gave themselves in 2003. That is not conjecture. Look up what the average person making a million dollars a year got in tax reductions…additional tax breaks, my friends…and take that times one-third. Extend those numbers out and you have paid for half of the projected increase.
Then put a five percent tax on all health care plans for people making over $250,000 per year. Let’s suppose they pay as much as $12,000 per year. (It they’re dumb enough to pay more, they should pay more tax.) As it is, the employer pays half and they pay half. So they now pay 5% of $6000. How much is that per year? It’s $300, or basically $25 on top of $500. Their monthly payment goes from $500 to $525. But here’s the good news. If they move to a remote part of Montana or Missouri, there will be doctors there soon, with cable connections to doctors anywhere in the world.
And let’s say that little sonny finally gets his chubby little butt off the couch and gets good grades and wants to be a doctor. Mummy and Daddy won’t have to hock the ranch nor will Sonny have to move to India and then come back. President Obama and Nancy Pelosi are going to increase money for med students so long as they provide some public service or as long as they agree to work as family practitioners. In other words, if they actually want to practice medicine rather than simply get rich. Wouldn’t that be a novelty!
So Harry and Louise now work for the People and are being seen in ads trying to make up for the idiotic commercials they appeared in for Newt Gingrich and his anti-healthcare group in 1993-4. He will actually be able to get healthcare, first of all, then will be able to afford the health care that he gets. If Harry is laid off, he can immediately go onto the government plan. Poor Harry. Remember he was so confused by all the complicated health care proposals that the Republicans never let get off the ground. Now Harry is not confused. Harry is scared shitless. He just wants health care that won’t turn him down, won’t kick him out and will pay his bills when he gets sick.
Don’t be bamboozled or intimidated by the Big Bad Republicans who now have such a minority in Congress that we don’t need them for anything. We are going to run at least three more Republicans out of the Senate next time. Judd Gregg, coward that he is, is going to step down rather than be humiliated by being tossed out. The other two Republican Senators from the Northeast, who still don’t get it, will both be kicked out. We can simply replace some Senators with better, more Liberal and Populist Democrats. We’ll get rid of Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Evan Bayh of Indiana, Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas and Maria Cantwell of Oregon. Then we’ll have a real Senate, one that will work for the People for a change. If they don’t want to vote for health care for the People, let them work for the private industry that they are so concerned about. Some, like Cantwell, and Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, also hanging back on health care, don’t need to work at all.
Remember this: the people who are against a public option in the health care plan–which gives you, the citizen, as equal a bargaining chip as the health care companies now have–those people are the same ones who not only have come up with no plan at all, but who instituted Medicare Part D, with no controls at all on prescription drug prices. They are the same ones who want you arrested for going to Canada or Mexico, where the same drugs cost 50% less than you pay in the U.S. And they are the same ones who voted down the Schips program to offer reasonably priced health care for the children of poor working families.
If they do not vote for a public option on this health care bill, it only proves that they do not care what happens to you. So why should you care what happens to them?