Livinglies's Weblog

The answer to our unique American set of issues is not a single issue proposed solution, but a sea change in our premise: either we are a nation of people and laws to protect, defend and promote the health, safety and welfare of all our citizens or we are a vehicle for corporate interests that will do anything to maintain their positions of power and profit. Getting rid of the influence of lobbyists and the effect of campaign contributions on candidates is not some lofty ambition or ideal; it is an imperative that is the ONLY answer to having food on the table, gas in the tank and a roof over our heads.

A candidate for public office must (a) spend the time to learn about economics (b)  demonstrate their independence from special interests, (c) demonstrate their proficiency in understanding how economic trends impact the average voter and (d) educate the voter as to how economic policies are being used against them and what they can do about it. 

BEWARE OF PLATITUDES AND QUICK FIX PROPOSALS THAT WILL NOT WORK AND CANNOT DELIVER RELIEF TO THE HOME OR DINNER TABLE. 

Prospective voters who are considering support for candidates for public office or propositions and petitions having economic consequences are stuck between a rock and a hard place. The growing realization is that, in particularly in a global economy, some complex events are somehow having an effect on their daily lives. 

In the absence of any real information for each voter to make their own decision they are forced to rely on “mainstream” news, which is more fact based entertainment than informative, candidates who will say anything to get elected, and special interest advertising that mischaracterizes the choices.

Voters understand that food, fuel and medical costs are taking away more and more of their income with the same effect as if a new tax was enacted requiring them to fund the largest corporations in the world, whose losses are covered by taxpayers and whose windfall profits are closely guarded from consumers who don’t get the benefit of cost reductions, stockholders who don’t get the benefit of dividends, and merchants who don’t get the benefit of sales revenue from people who don’t have anymore money to spend. 

These “ private taxes” are reflective of the growing pattern of privatizing public finance. In short they are private taxes sanctioned by federal, state and local governments who themselves are victims of the pattern. In my opinion this represents “PRIVATE TAXATION” sanctioned by government.

Let’s look at some of the “proposals” for healthcare that are offered and watch how they work.

1. American citizens spend more (35%-250%) on drugs, medical protocols,, tests and treatment than any other country in the world. The same drugs that cost $20 per pill in the U.S. can be purchased for $2.00 elsewhere. Protocols that would prevent disease or would cure them are virtually banned or are allowed to be “not covered” by insurance — resulting in the average person my age (61) taking thousands of pills per year that people in other countries are not taking because they don’t need them and because the pills themselves present risks of side effects that include everything up to and including death. 
2. The financial excesses of the medical-pharmaceutical-insurance industry is supported by “laws” that protect the industry and which little or nothing to do with the health of any person. These excesses are present ONLY in the United States. 
3. At the same time that we are spending more, we are suffering more medical disasters in more families every day. Longevity (life-span) in the United States is declining. Infant mortality is rising. Even average adult height has decreased in the Untied States and is now lower than many other countries.
4. Protocols like chelation IV therapy, food supplements and vitamins, gene therapy, human stem cell therapy, and primitive cell therapy are being used all over the world, growing back diseased or missing organs, improving overall health, and improving vitality while at the same time vastly reducing the demands for medical treatment. Those other countries are spending less and delivering more. Several third world countries have now become centers for medical care of those Americans who have the money, time and physical ability to reach them. 
5. National programs for health and fitness are not only improving physical health, but the all important index of happiness and contentment.
6. Ideological arguments against these other systems are bogus arguments designed to distract American voters from the truth: the system is working here for those looking to earn a profit, whereas the system is working elsewhere in the world for those seeking to maintain a healthy population.
7. The ideological argument against a single payer that negotiates prices, seeks preventative national programs and pursues the best possible treatments and cures is merely a hammer to threaten and frighten people with the prospect of “socialism” which most people translate as a loss of freedom, constant fear of government, loss of privacy, and a lack of disposable income at the end of the month.
8. The truth is that all societies practice socialism as to those services that the government elects to provide. In the United States, taxes are used to pay for military, police, fire, education etc. In an ultimate irony, the heavy reliance on ideological argument over common sense has resulted in the the outcome most feared by those who are cajoled into voting against their interests: loss of freedom, constant fear of government, loss of privacy, and a lack of disposable income at the end of the month.
9. The surrender of our healthcare to profit motivated private interests, like the surrender of prison management to private interests, like the surrender of regulation of sales of securities, creation of credit, expansion of monetary supply to private interests has led to a corporatocracy that threatens to consume the last dollar of every “average” American leaving them not only with no disposable income at the end of the month, but rather in debt up to their ears.
10. Meanwhile the countries with “high” tax rates (which can simply be translated as honest transparency, as opposed to hiding the taxes in your utility bills, and covering up the private power of taxation given to corporate America) have satisfied, happy, free, contented populations who get along just fine and their citizens are not in debt and who are able to save up money and pay for things in cash.

American citizens have the exclusive right to vote in what should be a free society, but instead they are confronted with a corporate-government set of rules where the opportunities and choices are closing in on the the average guy or girl who is just trying to get through the month. 

Our incomes are being used to fund corporate losses, corporate abandonment of our own population for employment and training, military adventures that are funded by borrowing (which is future taxation), and huge windfall profits of oil companies, agricultural companies receiving “subsidies”, pharmaceutical companies, and insurance companies.

The answer to our problems is not a single issue proposed solution, but a sea change in our premise: either we are a nation of people and laws to protect, defend and promote the health, safety and welfare of our citizens or we are a vehicle for corporate interests that will do anything to maintain their positions of power and profit. Getting rid of the influence of lobbyists and the effect of campaign contributions on candidates is not some lofty ambition or ideal; it is an imperative that is the ONLY answer to having food on the table, gas in the tank and a roof over our heads.