Unequal Protection: Jefferson Versus the Corporate Aristocracy
by: Thom Hartmann, Berrett-Koehler Publishers
Snip
Let monopolies and all kinds and degrees of oppression be carefully guarded against.
— Samuel Webster, 1777
Snip
Very few people are aware that Thomas Jefferson considered freedom from monopolies to be one of the fundamental human rights. But it was very much a part of his thinking during the time when the Bill of Rights was born.
Snip
The first large privately owned corporation to rise up in the new United States during the presidential terms of Jefferson (1801 to 1809) and Madison (1809 to 1817) was the Second Bank of the United States. By 1830 the bank was one of the largest and most powerful private corporations and, to extend its own power, was even sponsoring its directors and agents as candidates for political office.
In President Andrew Jackson’s annual message to Congress on December 3, 1833, he explicitly demanded that the bank cease its political activities or receive a corporate death sentence—revocation of its corporate charter. He said, “In this point of the case the question is distinctly presented whether the people of the United States are to govern through representatives chosen by their unbiased suffrages or whether the money and power of a great corporation are to be secretly exerted to influence their judgment and control their decisions.”3
Snip
Thomas Jefferson’s vision of America was quite straightforward. In its simplest form, he saw a society where people were first and institutions were second. In his day Jefferson saw three agencies that were threats to humans’ natural rights:
*Governments (particularly in the form of kingdoms and elite groups like the Federalists)
*Organized religions* (he rewrote the New Testament to take out all the “miracles” so that in The Jefferson Bible—which is still in print—Jesus became a proponent of natural rights and peace)
*Commercial monopolies and the “pseudo aristoi,” or pseudo aristocracy (in the form of extremely wealthy individuals and overly powerful corporations)
Full Piece
*********************
WIKILEAKS: 7 SHOCKING GITMO REVELATIONS
A massive leak of more than 700 military documents, attributed to infamous transparency group WikiLeaks, was released Sunday night. Much of the new information deals with detainees held in Guantanamo Bay, records that begin immediately after the September 11 terrorist attacks and range to 2009, including documents relating to 172 prisoners still held at the controversial detention facility.
Full Article
***************
Rising Gas Prices Expected To Increase Exxon’s Earnings By More Than 50%
The country’s five biggest oil companies — BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, and Shell — made a total profit of nearly $1 trillion over the last ten years. In 2008, ExxonMobil broke its own record for most profitable year for a public company in history by making more than $45 billion. And according to an analysis in the Wall Street Journal, rising oil prices in 2010 mean that Big Oil’s profits this year “could come close to rivaling the industry’s record year in 2008”:
Full Article
************
Rick Santorum: I Would ‘Absolutely’ Let The Country Default Over Defunding The Health Care Law
SANTORUM: [The health care law] is a program that if the president wants to defend, he should stand up and say the 2012 election is about Obamacare. We’ll put this on hold, and make it a referendum on Obamacare.
WALLACE: Well ok that’s 2012, but you’re saying you’d let the country go into default on this issue.
SANTORUM: No I think the president would let this country go into default on this issue.
WALLACE: But you would make that the condition — you’d make that the price?
SANTORUM: Absolutely. Absolutely.
Full Article
****************
Beyond ForeclosureGate: It Gets Uglier
by Michael Collins / April 23rd, 2011
The ForeclosureGate scandal poses a threat to Wall Street, the big banks, and the political establishment. If the public ever gets a complete picture of the personal, financial, and legal assault on citizens at their most vulnerable, the outrage will be endless.
Foreclosure practices lift the veil on a broader set of interlocking efforts to exploit those hardest hit by the endless economic hard times, citizens who become financially desperate due medical conditions. A 2007 study found that medical expenses or income losses related to medical crises among bankruptcy filers or family members triggered 62% of bankruptcies. There is no underground conspiracy. The facts are in plain sight.
Full Article
******************
Is This Patriotic?
Stripmining American Jobs
By RALPH NADER
It is time to apply the standard of patriotism to the U.S. multinational corporations and demand that they pledge allegiance to the United States and "the Republic for which is stands…. with liberty and justice for all." This July 4, 2011 would be good day for Americans to demand such a corporate commitment.
Full Article
***************
Kentucky Church Unanimously Votes To Stop Signing Marriage Licenses Until Gay Marriage Is Legalized
Members of Douglass Boulevard Christian Church, located in Louisville, KY, unanimously voted to stop signing marriage licenses for heterosexual couples until same-sex couples are afforded equal marriage rights. The decision comes at the same time that a CNN poll shows that a majority of Americans now support legalizing same-sex marriages, the fourth poll to show similar results in the past eight months.
Full Article
*************
Wall Street Front Group Loading Up Conservative Activists With Soft Ball Questions For GOP Town Halls
As members of Congress return to their districts and conduct town hall meetings with constituents, lawmakers who voted for the Republican budget are facing a backlash from their constituents. The budget, written by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), effectively ends Medicare, severely cuts Medicaid, cuts taxes on the rich, and lowers corporate tax rates. As ThinkProgress has reported, everyone from Ryan, to Rep. Pat Meehan (R-PA), to Rep. Lou Barletta (R-PA), to Rep. Charlie Bass (R-NH), and others have faced heated questions about the GOP plan.
Slate’s Dave Weigel reports that American Action Network, a relatively new conservative front group founded by a group of Wall Street bankers, is loading up conservative activists with softball questions and talking points to bolster Republican lawmakers on the Ryan plan:
Full Article
***************
REPORT: The 46 Year-Long Republican War On Medicare
Last week, in a dramatic vote, the House of Representatives voted to effectively end Medicare by voting for Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) budget proposal. Under Ryan’s plan, the public health insurance system known as Medicare would be replaced with a system of inadequate subsidies seniors would use to purchase private insurance.
Snip
But if Americans want to know why Republicans are so eager to kill Medicare, they should look to the party’s history with the popular program. Leading Republicans actually denounced the program as it was being designed, warning that it would take us down the road to totalitarianism or worse, and other leading Republicans were caught on record plotting to eliminate it after it was created:
- Ronald Reagan: Before he was president, Reagan actually lead a campaign against the creation of Medicare. He ominously warned: “[I]f you don’t [stop Medicare] and I don’t do it, one of these days you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it once was like in America when men were free.” [1961]
- Barry Goldwater: Goldwater, a conservative icon, said that establishing Medicare would lead us down the slippery slope of subsidizing alcohol for all: “Having given our pensioners their medical care in kind, why not food baskets, why not public housing accommodations, why not vacation resorts, why not a ration of cigarettes for those who smoke and of beer for those who drink.” [1964]
- George H.W. Bush: Bush, who would go on to be president after Reagan, said that Medicare shouldn’t be established because it was nothing more than “socialized medicine.” [1964]
- Bob Dole: In 1996, during his campaign for the Presidency, Dole openly bragged that he was one of 12 House members who voted against creating Medicare in 1965. “I was there, fighting the fight, voting against Medicare . . . because we knew it wouldn’t work in 1965.” [1965]
- Sen. Carl Curtis (NE): During the debate over the creation of Medicare, Curtis said that the “insurance industry has a remarkable record” and that Medicare “is not public welfare. It is not charity. It is not kindness. It is socialism. Socialism is not the answer to anything.” [1965]
- Dick Armey: The House GOP leader told reporters in 1995 that “we need to wean our old people away from Medicare.” [1995]
- Newt Gingrich: Gingrich, who is now likely running for president, told a Blue Cross Blue Shield conference how he plans to eventually get rid of Medicare: “Now, we don’t get rid of it in round one because we don’t think that that’s politically smart, and we don’t think that’s the right way to go through a transition. But we believe it’s going to wither on the vine because we think people are voluntarily going to leave it — voluntarily.” [1996]
- Rep. Jeb Hensarling (TX): During an appearance on MSNBC last week, Hensarling referred to Medicare along with Social Security as “cruel Ponzi schemes.” [4/15/2011]
It should truly come as no surprise that the GOP has always set its sights on Medicare. After all, it is a single-payer health care system has little involvement from the private insurance industry that is both incredibly efficient and remarkably popular among the general public. It completely violates the conservative mantra that the market should be the arbiter of all things.
Full Article
**************
Action Alert: Demand Pres. Obama Save Medicare
Republicans want to privatize Medicare and slash Medicaid to reduce the nation’s deficit. President Obama says he wants to preserve Medicare and Medicaid, but his budget proposal looks to those programs to find savings.
We agree that healthcare costs are a serious problem, but cutting Medicare and Medicaid won’t help.
Instead, we need to take the corporate greed and waste out of our healthcare system, and make healthcare a human right by extending Medicare to everyone.
Join us in sending this message to President Obama and your Congresspeople.
The current fiscal crisis is a crisis of healthcare costs. Healthcare costs per capita in the United States are the highest in the world, yet we leave our population uninsured or underinsured without access to care. These high costs are due in large part to the use of a fragmented multi-payer (multiple insurance plans) model with associated high administrative costs (1).
One-third of our healthcare dollars are used for administration rather than direct patient care. Administrative costs include developing and marketing plans, determining eligibility for the various plans and then processing the claims for the various plans which each have different rules. Contrast this with the relatively streamlined administrative cost of Medicare which is less than 3 percent.
The private market fails to provide people in the US with adequate healthcare. For-profit health insurance companies have a fiduciary responsibility to make money for their stockholders, not care for the sick. They make money by denying care and raising out-of-pocket costs for patients. Government programs internationally and in the United States have a better track record of providing universal, comprehensive care and controlling health costs (2).
We want to remind President Obama that the way to control healthcare costs, and guarantee healthcare to seniors, people with disabilities, veterans, and everyone in the US is through expanded and improved Medicare for all. This will ensure healthcare is a right to everyone, and allow us to create a sustainable healthcare system that controls costs.
Send this message now to support Medicare for all.
While we the people are tightening our belts, the health insurance industry is making record profits. The big five health insurers earned $11.7 billion in 2010 – a 51% increase since 2008 (3).
Send the message to President Obama and Congress today. Protect Medicare. Improve it. Expand it to everyone.
Call to Save Our Schools
Teachers initiate July march and days of action in Washington, D.C.
A coalition of teachers, parents, and academic activists has launched the Save Our Schools (SOS) March and National Call to Action. Fed up with government attacks on public education and the scapegoating of teachers for social problems, the coalition hopes to bring tens of thousands of supporters to Washington, D.C., for a march and rally on July 30, with strategy sessions and other actions held July 28-31.
“We stand united by one belief — it’s time for teachers and parents to organize and reclaim control of our schools,” reads the SOS statement.
Over the past two decades, bipartisan federal “reform” has done nothing less than declare war on democracy in K-12 classrooms, as decisions about what to teach and how to teach — even the reasons to teach — have been steadily transferred away from those most directly affected: teachers, parents, and students.
Snip
For quality and equality in the schools
SOS puts forward four main demands as its guiding principles:
• Equitable funding for all public school communities.
• An end to high-stakes testing used for the purpose of student, teacher, and school evaluation.
• Teacher, family, and community leadership in forming education policies.
• Curriculum developed for and by local school communities.
A lot remains to do to make the July days of action a success. SOS organizers are especially looking for volunteers to get the word out.
Support this crucial effort!
*************
Thats all for now. More later......... maybe.
Peace out peeps
0 comments:
Post a Comment