Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Health Care Horror

I haven't commented on the health care bill because it makes me too sick to do so. It is so obviously an epic bad faith catastrophe, that it's almost not worth commenting on. Suffice it to say that it represents something of a last straw for me. Mercifully, I am not alone.

Folks, you really do need to wake up, if you haven't already, and realize who the enemy really is and what you must do in response. It is time to defy, ignore, and where the opportunity exists, tear down the present system of governance. It is run by mountebank prostitutes in thrall to corporate interests that will leave you and I destitute if we do not respond with the necessary counter measures. Civil disobedience will be the way forward.

In the meantime, do not vote for anyone who expresses solidarity with Obamacare or Obama foreign policy which is no different than Bush's foreign policy. In fact, do not vote for anyone who describes themselves as a Republican or a Democrat. We can not begin to overcome the fetid swamp of national politics until we start to wound-on the way to killing-the two headed hyrdra that is The Democratic and Republican party. Do not align yourself with, or trust, any marches, protests, or other forms of dissent that are backed by entities connected to, however tenuously, either of the two monopoly political parties. Tea baggers and other such detritus will go nowhere. Do not align yourself with any movement that seeks to go back to some mythical old way of doing things vis a vis our economic system. The FIRE economy has always been a fraud, but we can't go back to that which existed before it, nor should we.

You will know if a new and seemingly progressive political movement has some hope of being on the right track only when both parties and the mainstream media viciously attack it. Any response that elicits less than full scale opprobrium from The Powers That Be will mean only one of two things, either the movement is too small to yet bother TPTB-which can be advantageous to a burgeoning progressive political movement- or that it is somehow already operating under the auspices of the TPTB and designated for co-optation from its stated purpose.

It's way past time for a radical departure from business as usual; work to make the new year new in more ways than one.

17 comments:

DED said...

Hey Edwardo,
Did you catch Ron Paul and Barney Frank on Larry King a couple weeks ago?

Edwardo said...

No, I missed it. I can't watch Barney Frank; he's just too repulsive for me to take.

DED said...

Well, this one might not be so bad. He actually agrees with Ron Paul on a couple of points.

Thai said...

Nice post!

You know me, as long as we all refuse to admit our own personal role in the mess, I think we will all end up with the mess we are in.

Thai said...

Barney Frank was kind of a hero of mine growing up... It is personally somewhat odd to for me to see how his views and my own have diverged as I have gotten older.

I do think at heart he is a good guy, I think he has become blinded by his own sense of doing what is right and that he has not come to see how he is really part of the problem.

I guess we all have a blind side.

Happy New Year!

Thai said...

I am a regular reader of this blog and I thought you might enjoy the latest post.

Rich is yet again "spot on" in my opinion.


For those who are following the issue closely absolutely know the insurers can't make money their old fashioned way- it is quite clear insurance companies are a dying business since they cannot control their members behaviors... think AIG unable to control CDS abuses, and how could they with the myriad of "controls" we have placed on them?

... indeed every serious look at the health insurance industry shows it the insurers are very near death.

So they have found a new way to make money instead!

Very clever those insurers.

Of course, in the end, whose fault is this really?

Would a public option really be any different? ;-)

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Thai said...

Oops, again link

Edwardo said...

Thanks for the link, Thai. This has always been what "insuring America" has been about, more money transfusions to the dying F(I)RE economy to the point that the government itself is going to collapse as a result of their epic wrongheadedness.


Government has become a handmaiden to the Finance/banking/Insurance and R.E. industries. The government of the good ship U.S.S. lollipop is going to kill the nation to save the insupportable FIRE economy and its pathological plutocracy from ruin.

I expect an expansion of our various military expeditions to be next great scam engaged in by the D.C. crowd. One wonders if and when the U.S. citizenry will wake from their slumber.

In the meantime I recommend this recent article in Harper's about the insurance industry.

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/10/hbc-90003701

Thai said...

Re: bailout the fire economy

I hear you, and completely agree, but only from one viewpoint.

From another viewpoint, blaming the FIRE economy is a kind of red herring diversion from the real issue- a "fierce conversation" with our neighbors.

For insurance is bailing them out for their own stupidity, and for this privileged, the insurers require payment.

SOME of our neighbors are doing unbelievably stupid/expensive things and then asking the collective bail them out: the insurance industry is simply the intermediary for this bailout.

It is always easier to blame the messenger as opposed to blaming "the victim"- but you know as well as I that many people are not victims.

As always, it depends

Edwardo said...

Thai said,

"From another viewpoint, blaming the FIRE economy is a kind of red herring diversion from the real issue- a "fierce conversation" with our neighbors."

You've lost me. Care to clarify?

BTW, Thanks, Ded, for the link.

Thai said...

Insurance exists to bail people out when they are in trouble, of course it costs money for this privileged and to the extent bailed out people continue to make stupid decisions, we continue to waste resources on stupid behaviors.

There is a world of people who are constantly getting themselves into trouble. Further, there are two groups of people who want to help these people and for very different reasons: 1. you and I who have some natural sympathy for those in trouble and 2. politicians, who are looking for the fealty of those in need.

For if I am in trouble, and you bail me out, I owe you a debt and politicians want my indebtedness/loyalty (think Tammany Hall).

But we all know the politicians do not actually have the personal resources to bail out all these people in trouble. Further, it is obviously better for them if they can get their fealty without having to use their own resources. So instead they use the resources of the FIRE economy to bail those in need out.

The problem is it comes with a price which that keeps getting higher and higher:
1. We spend more and more on stupid careless behaviors (think all the money we will waste rebuilding New Orleans below sea level. We should really just plow the whole place under the swamp and move to new real estate but this is obviously not going to win votes of some locals)
2. The FIRE economy must remain solvent in order to generate the wealth needed to push to favors to the masses who get themselves in trouble.

This is why IMO I think the political class will NEVER let the FIRE economy fail, at least as long as it is seen as the only means by which it can its wield influence on the rest of us.

My issue is with you and I and the rest of the population who does naturally have some sympathy for those in trouble. We are the ones who continue to let this mess occur as we are the ones who often approve of of the ways our government is helping our neighbors in need out.

My issue is when does this approval in itself become a form of enabling?

For if you look at many behaviors that are very very expensive to all of us, they are becoming more and more costly to the collective, not less.

The enabling is supposed to lower the costs of these things long term, it would appear often the reverse is happening.

Edwardo said...

Thanks for the explanation, Thai.

Here are a few select responses.

"This is why IMO I think the political class will NEVER let the FIRE economy fail, at least as long as it is seen as the only means by which it can its wield influence on the rest of us."

-I agree that they will do whatever they can to prop it up, but it can't be saved, because A.) it's not viable and B.) it involves killing the host to save the parasite.

"My issue is with you and I and the rest of the population who does naturally have some sympathy for those in trouble. We are the ones who continue to let this mess occur as we are the ones who often approve of of the ways our government is helping our neighbors in need out."

-I think you misunderstand me, though I am not sure why since I have incessantly been opposed to the sorts of measures you decry.

Thai said...

Fair enough

I guess it is simply the place I tend to see your anger being directed.

Is it the puppets or is it the puppet masters?

And at least to me, it is the voters who are both puppets and puppet masters and I therefore tend to not get angry at them and not the FIRE economy or even the politicians per say.

I get frustrated at the voters who I see as really doing this to themselves and that is why I say it is a "fierce conversation" we need to have with our neighbors.

Fool me once, shame on you.
Fool me twice, shame on me.

Thai said...

Sorry, more typos

I tend to get angry at the voters more than I do at either the politicians or the FIRE economy per say. The later is guilty but it is the former who is giving them both power.

I should take it back, yet I don't. I don't from fear.

Thai said...

re: "but it can't be saved, because A.) it's not viable and B.) it involves killing the host to save the parasite."

Amen

Luke McGreivy said...

On the other hand, we could have predicted this.

Thai said...

Sorry, one of my twins was apparently using my computer last night.