Saturday June 30, 2012, 12:44 pm

MEDICARE FOR ALL: A SINGLE SOLUTION TO THE HEALTH CARE FRACAS:

It will take some time to digest the Supreme Court's decision yesterday, but it appears to have averted some terrible jurisprudence that might have very seriously restricted the government's overall ability to regulate the economy and protect citizens.

In upholding most of the Affordable Care Act, the Supreme Court lets stand legislation that offers some important benefits, but only to a portion of those who are uninsured, and will predictably fail to solve our nation's health care crisis.

However the health reform law ultimately plays out, we know two things for certain: Tens of millions of Americans will remain uncovered as will tens of millions of under-insured who will remain at risk of financial ruin if a major illness strikes; and it will leave the private health insurance and pharmaceutical industries in charge of prices and life-and-death treatment decisions.

There is a single solution to the challenges of providing coverage to the 50 million who are uninsured that would curb out-of-control health care costs and provide a humane standard of care to all who enter the medical system. That solution is an improved Medicare-for-All, single-payer system.

The improved Medicare-for-All approach starts with the premise that health care is a critically needed right that must be afforded to all, irrespective of any individual's ability to pay for care. It solves the problems of 50 million uninsured Americans simply and directly by establishing that everyone is covered by the improved Medicare-for-All system. Everybody in, nobody out.

Improved Medicare-for-All would prevent the deaths of the 45,000 Americans who die every year from lack of health insurance. It would eliminate the hundreds of thousands of medical bankruptcies—affecting millions of Americans every year—that occur because people can't pay their medical bills. These deaths and economic tragedies are entirely preventable; a system that permits them to continue is morally repugnant and must be replaced.

Robert WeissmanYES! Magazine / Op-EdPublished: Saturday 30 June 2012
There is a single solution to the challenges of providing coverage to the 50 million who are uninsured that would curb out-of-control health care costs and provide a humane standard of care to all who enter the medical system.
Medicare for All: A Single Solution to the Health Care Fracas
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digg It will take some time to digest the Supreme Court's decision yesterday, but it appears to have averted some terrible jurisprudence that might have very seriously restricted the government's overall ability to regulate the economy and protect citizens.

In upholding most of the Affordable Care Act, the Supreme Court lets stand legislation that offers some important benefits, but only to a portion of those who are uninsured, and will predictably fail to solve our nation's health care crisis.

However the health reform law ultimately plays out, we know two things for certain: Tens of millions of Americans will remain uncovered as will tens of millions of under-insured who will remain at risk of financial ruin if a major illness strikes; and it will leave the private health insurance and pharmaceutical industries in charge of prices and life-and-death treatment decisions.

There is a single solution to the challenges of providing coverage to the 50 million who are uninsured that would curb out-of-control health care costs and provide a humane standard of care to all who enter the medical system. That solution is an improved Medicare-for-All, single-payer system.

The improved Medicare-for-All approach starts with the premise that health care is a critically needed right that must be afforded to all, irrespective of any individual's ability to pay for care. It solves the problems of 50 million uninsured Americans simply and directly by establishing that everyone is covered by the improved Medicare-for-All system. Everybody in, nobody out.

NationofChange fights back with one simple but powerful weapon: the truth. Can you donate $5 to help us?

Improved Medicare-for-All would prevent the deaths of the 45,000 Americans who die every year from lack of health insurance. It would eliminate the hundreds of thousands of medical bankruptcies—affecting millions of Americans every year—that occur because people can't pay their medical bills. These deaths and economic tragedies are entirely preventable; a system that permits them to continue is morally repugnant and must be replaced.


The improved Medicare-for-All approach would eliminate the greatest waste in the health care system: the needless costs imposed by private health insurers. These firms impose hundreds of billions of dollars of excess cost on us via excessive profit-taking and executive compensation, marketing expenses, vast bureaucracies devoted to denying care, and imposition of massive paper-pushing obligations on actual health care providers.

It is not for lack of policy justification or moral force that Americans continue to suffer from a malfunctioning health care system. Our failure to have adopted an improved Medicare-for-All system is due in large part to the political power of the health insurance industry.

That political power can be overcome, however, by a grassroots movement that musters enough of its own power. The country cannot continue to survive the continued reign of the private health insurance industry, and it will not.

Winning a single-payer system will not be easy. In the near term, the single-payer movement will need to devote substantial energy to holding off efforts to further privatize and weaken existing Medicare.

The early steps forward in winning expanded and improved Medicare-for-All will likely come from state initiatives, where success will depend on local movements plus assurances that states pursuing improved Medicare-for-All can obtain needed waivers from federal laws and rules.

But there should be no doubt about what must ultimately be achieved. We can no longer tolerate a system that pointlessly kills 45,000 fellow Americans a year. For those who doubt the political potency of this moral imperative, consider that economic facts counsel just as strongly for an improved Medicare-for-All system.

We can be our brother's (and sister's) keeper and be cost-effective at the same time. Indeed, it turns out that being cost effective requires that we take care of each other.
***

bY Robert Weissman | Nation of Change |

Saturday June 30, 2012, 1:08 pm
thx.

Saturday June 30, 2012, 2:36 pm

Yes . . . HELL YES!

Saturday June 30, 2012, 3:46 pm

The time has come....tax me for health care, that's not new, now finally we can all get medical care when we need health care.

I took a friend to the doctor, she has no insurance, saw the PA for a few minutes, got a some scripts and the total? Just under $300.00, no blood test, no x-rays, she is paid all of $9.00 a hours for years of experience as a child care provider. Apparently our children are not all that valuable to this society.

I tired of hearing about "socialized" health care, we have played the health care for profit game for many years and it has not served us well, time to walk a different path.

Saturday June 30, 2012, 3:57 pm
“Health is a human necessity; health is a human right” ―James Lenhart

"Every tax, however, is, to the person who pays it, a badge, not of slavery, but of liberty." —Adam Smith, "Father of Free Market Economics"

''No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, clothe and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed and lodged.'' —Adam Smith, Father of Free Market Economics

”. . .especially when the object is to reduce poverty.” —Adam Smith, "Father of Free Market Economics"

”When the regulation, therefore, is in support of the workman, it is always just and equitable; but it is sometimes otherwise when in favour of the masters.” —Adam Smith, "Father of Free Market Economics"

''Even our commercial policy should hold an equal and impartial hand: neither seeking nor granting exclusive favors or preferences.'' —Adam Smith, "Father of Free Market Economics"

Saturday June 30, 2012, 5:22 pm
Kit, I agree Medicare for All would be truly great. But we must remember that they don't cover everything and we would still end up needing a supplemental insurance. If we go to single payer, I hope they make it cover everything and include what is in the HCA also. Thanks, my friend, for all you do.


Sorry, couldn't do much lately. My daughter lives in Colorado Springs, and as you know they are on fire.
Wish us luck.

Saturday June 30, 2012, 5:57 pm
I'm just starting medicare but I'll still have private union health insurance for a year. I plan to use the Hell out of it while I can!

Saturday June 30, 2012, 6:45 pm

Elle, if people would just read Adam Smith they might actually learn what capitalism is about.

Barbara, sending good thoughts your way or really to everyone in Colorado. I hope your daughter and family stay safe.

Terry, use the hell outta that insurance.

Saturday June 30, 2012, 7:15 pm
Terry, I don't know where you live but... Look for a healthcare supplemental plan that reimburses the Medicare Premium that is tradtionally deducted from SSI/SSDI. It is available in some states and not in other. Typically it involves becoming part of an HMO which isn't the best way to do things, but it is a hell of a lot cheaper and returns the Medicare premium back into your monthly income.

Saturday June 30, 2012, 9:24 pm
Medicare for those in need who when better -- will then give forward to contribute by working at something they like and are capable of doing without hurting themselves -- to give to the pool of medicare -- then you might have something that works?

Saturday June 30, 2012, 9:43 pm
Kit, I hope you realize that the Capitalistic Government that we have in America is the longest living government in the world. All the Socialistic and Marist Governments are either shorter in time or have failed with many of them ready to fail this coming year or two.
The Supreme Court gave the death blow to Obamacare in that any state that wants to bow out of it can, and by taxing the American people it will become the largest tax increase in he history of the world. It must and will be repealed, and a new more modified one will be put into its place. If nothing else to keep the quality of medical care that America is used too. You never see Americans going to a socialist country for better healthcare, but you see illegal's and legal's coming to America for better health care.

Saturday June 30, 2012, 9:55 pm
@Bill writes The Capitalistic Government that we have in America is the longest living government in the world.

And it is headed for dire failure. Pretty soon won’t be no middle class around to buy their products so that CEO’s and shareholders can live in gated communities.

@Bill writes All the Socialistic and Marxist Governments are either shorter in time or have failed with many of them ready to fail this coming year or two.

As managed by despots. Our current govt now a theocracy and plutocracy will cause its own demise as well.

@Bill writes The Supreme Court gave the death blow to ACA in that any state that wants to bow out of it can, and by taxing the American people it will become the largest tax increase in the history of the world.

Largest tax increase? Blah blah blah, Right wing Baloney

@Bill writes It must and will be repealed, and a new more modified one will be put into its place. If nothing else to keep the quality of medical care that America is used too.

I’ve worked in health care in America all my life and it needs fixing real bad.

@Bill writes You never see Americans going to a socialist country for better healthcare, but you see illegal's and legal's coming to America for better health care.

Wrong again. Your statements are wishful thinking and unfounded.

Sunday July 1, 2012, 7:05 am
Right on, Michael! There is a new show on HBO called "the Newsroom" - someone mentions the United States as being the greatest country in the world and Jeff Daniels has a mini rant worth repeating: "One of them is there’s absolutely no evidence to support the statement that we’re the greatest country in the world. We’re seventh in literacy. Twenty-seventh in math. Twenty-second in science. Forty-ninth in life expectancy. A hundred and seventy-eighth in infant mortality. Third in median household income. Number four in labor force and number four in exports. We lead the world in only three categories: Number of incarcerated citizens per capita, number of adults who believe angels are real, and defense spending, where we spend more than the next twenty-six countries combined, twenty-five of whom are allies." Oh, and we rank #37 in health care....

Sunday July 1, 2012, 9:47 am
Wow, Arielle, that's powerful.
The GOP keeps digging the hole deeper for themselves. They have nothing left to offer except another false-flag operation, but this time we are watching them.

Sunday July 1, 2012, 10:25 am
I fully agree. However there has not been a Congress in my memory that would pass it.

Sunday July 1, 2012, 12:45 pm
Healt care will be corrected but it will not be Obamacare that does it. There are over 60 percent of the voting population against Obamacare and it would appear that those for the taxing Obamacare in a huge minority and at this time in our history many of the Democratic Senators (rino's) would be put out to pasture.

America cannot stand this tax increase, as it is not fair to all those that do not take the health care then have to pay the tax. DUMB

Sunday July 1, 2012, 12:49 pm
noted

Sunday July 1, 2012, 12:54 pm
Bill I respect your right to your opinion, but I submit again. You don't know enough about what you are talking about. And you are simply regurgitating the opinions of Beck and Limbaugh and others. I know, when I visit my neighbors they are playing this nonsense on the radio. It is false. misleading and consists of fear mongering distortions. If you could get your head out of the echo chamber long enough to do some research, real research and use critical thinking skills you'd see an entirely different reality.

Sunday July 1, 2012, 1:10 pm
Ill health shouldn't be a commodity exploited on Wall Street's stock exchange. That's a SICK system. A free Market health system is just too disgusting. Singlepayer is the way to go.

Sunday July 1, 2012, 2:52 pm
Tax funded universal healthcare has been the normal system for the last century or so in every other country in the world that claims to be civilised. Which is why the conservatives keep talking about it as a wild experiment that's never been tried and that only crazy socialists believe in. Because if they let you all see the truth, people would say "Well duh, why don't we do what works for everyone else?"

Sunday July 1, 2012, 3:22 pm
It was clear to me when Congress worked on this bill with health insurance lobbyists and named it, "Health Insurance Reform" rather than Health Care Reform....just whose bread was being buttered. Not the patient's...or, should I say, "customers." The problem has always been the "middleman" who wants his enormous profits. What kind of people profit off someone's illness? Yes, the healthcare professionals deserve their payment. But, when you add in all the other "costs," this system is tremendously broken. The "public option" was always the best way to go forward.

Sunday July 1, 2012, 3:23 pm
If you're opposed to Universal Healthcare, and you have healthcare coverage, well, this is America, and you have that right, Since this is America, you also have the right to say so. If I think that someone who has healthcare coverage and votes to take away other people's coverage (or the hope of it), then I can believe that person is a selfish bastard. Since this is America, I also have the right to call that person a selfish bastard.

Sunday July 1, 2012, 4:10 pm
Medicare-for-All is why I voted for Dennis Kucinich in the primaries..I SO wish Obama would put Dennis in charge of this! Pres. Obama was able to push through Hillary's "reforms" suggested in the 90's! So I give him props for that (and just think what we Could've had After 10 tens?) but I also blame him for pushing through Hillary's ideas nearly verbatum Instead of Kucinich's REALLY Economical Medicare-for-All complete with the WAY to do it (guess who HE wanted to tax?;)!!!

Sunday July 1, 2012, 4:12 pm
Oops, should've been "ten YEARS"..but you get my drift..;)

Sunday July 1, 2012, 4:57 pm
MEDICARE FOR ALL!

We must take the control of healthcare away from Big Insurance and Big Pharma.
There are two things that should never be allowed in a civilized society, Health Care for Profit and Prisons for Profit. Big Pharma has become a driver of both.

Sunday July 1, 2012, 5:08 pm
Will not get involved but would like to say healthcare should be available to all.
From UK so can not imagine living with large health insurance bills and constant worry of becoming ill in this day and age So many people complain here and do not appreciate how incredibly lucky we all are.
A very important thread Kit

Sunday July 1, 2012, 6:16 pm
Real healthcare insurance for a civilized nation is called single-payer, as in Medicare; a half-assed compromise is called public option; we have neither.

Sunday July 1, 2012, 6:23 pm
Michael, you may call me what you want, but I grew up in a society that people took care of themselves. I also operated and managed my own 150 person crew for over 25 years out of Kelso washington. I do not have a television, and I read the daily liberal rag every day, to keep up up the news that will one day destroy America if we all do not pull together and put people back to work instead of the poor house and hospitals.

Anyway, have a nice day, and enjoy the 4th of July that we can all thank the early Christians for helping to make this country free.

Sunday July 1, 2012, 7:30 pm
Bill, who is putting these people in hospitals? Or is this just more rightwing idiocy? This society that you grew up in that people 'took care of themselves', were they doing their own cancer screening, hernia operations, kidney dialysis, cancer treatments etc, etc ,etc.? Your comment does nothing to address the topic of the thread, and your feeble attempt to credit christians for this 'free' country you think we're living in is laughable.

Sunday July 1, 2012, 7:38 pm
Health Care Is a Human Right

'The United States is the only major nation in the industrialised world that does not guarantee healthcare as a right to its people. Meanwhile, we spend about twice as much per capita on healthcare and, in a wide number of instances, our outcomes are not as good as others that spend far less.

It is time that we bring about a fundamental transformation of the American healthcare system. It is time for us to end private, for-profit participation in delivering basic coverage. It is time for the United States to provide a Medicare-for-all, single payer health coverage programme.

Under our dysfunctional system, 45,000 Americans a year die because they delay seeking care they cannot afford. We spent 17.6% of our GDP on healthcare in 2009, which is projected to go up to 20% by 2020, yet we still rank 26th among major, developed nations on life expectancy, and 31st on infant mortality. We must demand a better model of health coverage that emphasises preventive and primary care for every single person without regard for their ability to pay.'

Sunday July 1, 2012, 7:40 pm
@Bill Reese writes Michael, you may call me what you want, but I grew up in a society that people took care of themselves.

I am sure this sentence isn’t what you intended because it doesn’t make sense and leaves one doubting what exactly the intent of it was. Have a look at it again. Perhaps you’d like to improve on just what it is you are trying to get across.

@Bill Reese I also operated and managed my own 150 person crew for over 25 years out of Kelso Washington

And this, somehow makes you qualified to determine that the Affordable Care Act is wrong in comparison to the system currently in place? Perhaps you would digress and be a bit more specific. So far, I have only heard generalities. Statements made that only reflect on your opinion that the plan is flawed. There is nothing of substance, save a prior claim that it creates the largest tax in history.

You submit ideological opinions that sound vaguely reminiscent of the dogma that has been preached in America about socialism and Marxism for decades.

You submit your opinion that SCOTUS delivered a death blow to the Affordable Care Act, and place yourself in the opposite camp by calling it “Obamacare” as its detractors are known to refer to it as.

Sunday July 1, 2012, 7:43 pm
@Bill Reese continued

You conclude then that it must and will be repealed without really providing information on why save your opinion that it will somehow reduce quality of care. Are you implying that giving out more care to people perhaps you don’t believe are worthy of receiving care are you suggesting that the quality of care naturally reduces? Your statements aren’t squaring any circles here.

You further make the claim that one never sees Americans going to a socialist country for better health care, and claim that one sees illegal’s (another suspect reference of conservative bias and condescension) and legal’s coming to America for better health care. Your wrong.

From your words, I simply get that you really don’t know what you are talking about factually but are driven by emotions and beliefs taken from people you believe you think you know best and to which you have given your trust.

You then make claims that 60 percent of the voting population is against the Affordable Care Act and make interesting claims about the future of incumbent Democrats based on your infinitely rock solid knowledge of which way the population is going to vote.

Your stance doesn’t hold water as valid and doesn’t seem to be shaped by any real understanding save anger and discontent.

Sunday July 1, 2012, 7:56 pm
MJ M, thanks again as usual for supplying excellent supportive data, and facts, rather than assertions about this topic. I’d give you another green star but it hasn’t been a week yet since the last one.
It seems to be Bill’s opinion, rather than any knowledge of the situation, that the US is going to hell in a hand basket because we aren’t kicking any commie ass anymore and angry that the government wants to levy a tax so that more people can obtain health care than currently do now and that someone told him that such a thing smacks of Marxism, communism, or socialism. I’m sure Bill also thinks that if Europe is doing it, it must be effed up, because they’ve all gone socialist too. He has apparently heard from news media and crappy political ads and pundits that President Obama is a closet socialist but denies access to anything other than a liberal rag.
Bill is letting his christian sponsored socially darwinistic lens tell him that health care is only allowed for the people who earned it by being successful in the first place, and that those he considers failures don’t deserve it because they just don’t muster up.

Sunday July 1, 2012, 9:19 pm
Many persons on this site do not realize what the cost of this Obamacare will be to a country in recession. This fall God willing a more conservative group of senators will help remove this ugly beast and rewrite it by adjusting the existing health care. I mentioned that I was the owner of a small company from the standpoint that it might allow a sensible person to realize that we dealt with the health care industry for all of those 25 years.
The high tech medical care that is found in US hospitals today was not developed by Socialist countries, by by the US Capitalist. I have been in the emergency wards of Canada, Ukraine, and China, and I am sure not one person on here would feel comfortable if they had to be treated in any one of those three countries. Yes, I know they must have better ones somewhere, but not where I was visiting.
Yes, Obama is a Socialist and he was trained by Soros, and Wright, and about 4 others. Why is it he does not want any of his school papers put in for the public to read. Why do you think he has Hillary in the middle East trying to change all the Middle East Governments into brotherhood Muslim's that hate the US? Strange, but hundreds of innocent people would not have died if we had not funded the brotherhood terrorist in Egypt, Libya, and now Syria. Bring our troops home.

Sunday July 1, 2012, 9:48 pm
Bill, you wouldn’t be one of those pathological liars, would you? I have as much trouble believing that you’ve spent time in emergency rooms in China and the Ukraine as I do believing you’ve ever touched what you call a ‘liberal rag’.

Yes, bring the troops home. Is that supposed to give you some kind of credibility or respectibility? Bring them home to what, a life of PTSD, and denied the best medicine to treat it?

Sunday July 1, 2012, 9:56 pm
@Bill Reese writes Many persons on this site do not realize what the cost of this Obamacare will be to a country in recession.

Right the seniors whose medications which are suddenly less expensive, and the parents who can continue to keep their children covered on their health insurance plans to age 26, and the people who can no longer be excluded by your more benevolent capitalistic health plans for pre-existing conditions don’t realize that they have been hit by a train wreck.

@Bill Reese writes a more conservative group of senators will help remove this ugly beast and rewrite it by adjusting the existing health care.

Even with current favorable predictions the Repugnants will not be able to attain a majority of any kind sufficient to remove and/or rewrite the Affordable Care Act.

Sunday July 1, 2012, 9:57 pm
@Bill Reese writes I mentioned that I was the owner of a small company from the standpoint that it might allow a sensible person to realize that we dealt with the health care industry for all of those 25 years.

I disagree that it makes you the kind of sensible person who knows what they are talking about in terms of this situation. You may have run a business successfully, but that doesn’t mean you know a damned thing about health care. Nor does it make you qualified to run for office. As to its successfulness or not, that remains to be seen and is only your assertion.


@Bill Reese writes The high tech medical care that is found in US hospitals today was not developed by Socialist countries, by the US Capitalist.

Thank you for confirming your ideological, as opposed to factual bias. You are still fighting the cold war and you can’t let go of that mentality.

Sunday July 1, 2012, 9:57 pm
@Bill Reese writes I have been in the emergency wards of Canada, Ukraine, and China, and I am sure not one person on here would feel comfortable if they had to be treated in any one of those three countries. Yes, I know they must have better ones somewhere, but not where I was visiting.

This makes you, what? An expert in the health care systems of other countries? This makes you what? A complete expert in the socialist health care systems of the world? What’s the matter Bill, as a wealthy individual you discovered that your money couldn’t buy special privilege somewhere else?

@Bill Reese writes Yes, Obama is a Socialist and he was trained by Soros, and Wright, and about 4 others.

Thank you again Bill for wearing your racism, classism, elitism, McCarthyism on your shirtsleeves so we can identify more easily why you spout the things you do. All I hear coming out of you is the same echo chamber magic that Glen Beck and Rush Limbaugh spout daily, along with O’Reilly. You claim to have no tv and to only get the news from a liberal rag but I think you are telling a mistruth here.

Sunday July 1, 2012, 9:58 pm
@Bill Reese writes Why is it he does not want any of his school papers put in for the public to read. Why do you think he has Hillary in the middle East trying to change all the Middle East Governments into brotherhood Muslim's that hate the US? Strange, but hundreds of innocent people would not have died if we had not funded the brotherhood terrorist in Egypt, Libya, and now Syria. Bring our troops home.

Thanks Bill for showing me at least just how far you have gone off the deep end with your conspiracy theories.

Monday July 2, 2012, 3:40 am
Actually, the Supreme Court ruling dealt with the constitutionality of the law, not on weather it made any sense. I have lived in several countries with single payer systems and don't have a problem with health care per say, the question is do I want the government to have that much power.

Monday July 2, 2012, 5:45 am
Those are not theories Michael, they are living facts that one can read every day in even liberal news or conservative news.
To deny them is to say you really do not care about the private citizens of the Milddle East.

Monday July 2, 2012, 11:17 am

I don't accept a full altruistic society nor one that is fully and completely selfish. Neither Bill R nor any us grew up in a world where one totally took care of themselves. If you attended public school those funds come from the taxpayers - your education was not free it is paid for by those who have completed school and now support the next generation. If you went to a private religious school that too was supported by taxpayers, the churches are not taxed, the rest of us pick up the slack.

When the constitution was conceived health care was not explicitly named, it couldn't be imagined what a twisted mess we would allow to develop. The constitution was based on the precepts of the declaration of independence which most certainly states that we have a right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. Not if you can afford to live, but rather that we have a right the life.

When other countries have, over the years looked for model of health care, they laughing use the US as a model of what not to do, it's a convoluted mess that should not depend on how much money one has, just whether or not one is ill and needs health care. We are not serfs, we should not side with those who rule the fiefdom, we must stand together for the benefit of all.

There are some excellent comments here, my thanks to all of you.

Monday July 2, 2012, 11:22 am
@Bill Reese writes Those are not theories Michael, they are living facts that one can read every day in even liberal news or conservative news.

Which specifically are living facts Bill?

@Bill Reese writes To deny them is to say you really do not care about the private citizens of the Milddle East.

To deny what in the specific Bill? What are you referring to that you claim makes me insensitive to the private citizens of the Middle East?

Tuesday July 3, 2012, 8:43 pm
We do not need to redistribute the wealth as Marxist Obama want to do. We need to put people back to work. We are seeing what unemployment creates in Greece, Italy, and Spain to name three. We need to put the stupid EPA on vacation for five years and allow corporations to get back to work. If we want to rejuvenate the US we need to cut the price of gas to less than $1.00 for 5 years. Everything in America runs on gas and is valued by transportation. The price of food is dependent upon gas, the price of homes are dependent upon gas, the construction of road, parks, dams, power lines and chemicals are all dependent upon the price of gas. How do we cut the price of gas, we drill and drill. For every gallon of oil we set aside 10% of its value for alternative fuels development. Once Americas ingenuity gets to work there will be something better than electric cars and windmills or they will be improved upon.
The second step is to cut taxes so that the corporation is not giving all the profits to the government. The government has never created one dollar for the good of the people, they tax it and if it runs out the steal it or beg some other government to give it to them.
The third step is to reduce the size of Government. Get rid of all the Czars, pass laws that a president cannot use the Executive Order to write laws.
The fourth step is to hold our governments to the US Constitution and do a vetting on every member of our government bar none and they cannot hire lawyers to argue against the vetting process.
We saw how Capitalistic America was able to become the arsenal for all the Allies during WWII, including Russia, and we had work, less restrictions, lot of creativity, America became the leaders of the free world.
What is holding back America Government is holding back America? Stop Obama from exporting our jobs by stopping the Keystone pipeline, by farming out our top future military jet to Brazil, by farming out the S.F. Bridge.

Tuesday July 3, 2012, 9:02 pm
Bill it's late and I don't have the time and energy to respond to your position point by point. Suffice it to say, you live in a dream land. You want things to go back to a time, when in your view things worked. They only had the appearance of working for certain portions of the culture. I feel sorry for you that you really believe what you have written.

Wednesday July 4, 2012, 9:25 am
I respect your rights to have your own opinions about our government, but that does not mean I have to abide by them.

Have a Happy 4th of July and celebrate the Independence that gave us the abiliity to write the US Constitution that has made America GREAT!

Thursday July 5, 2012, 10:59 am
Bill Reese said; "You never see Americans going to a socialist country for better healthcare,..."
Hate to burst your bubble Bill, but our Illustrious Palin admitted that she took her family into Canada for health care. Gee, if our system is so great, why would she do that???

Thursday July 5, 2012, 11:05 am
Bill Reese, I believe you've been listening to Glen "has been" Beck or Rush "the liar" Limberger wayyyyyyyyyy toooooooo much. Your "Floyd R Turbo" Marxist baloney just simply does not wash. Try facts for a change, it's quite refreshing!

Thursday July 5, 2012, 2:25 pm
@Bill writes We do not need to redistribute the wealth as Marxist Obama want to do.
It isn’t President Obama, who is not a Marxist, though I would praise him if he chose to become one who is pushing this. I would be willing to bet, what for me would be huge sums of money that you don’t have a clue what Marxism is about in the least save the fear fantasy that was taught to you when you were training to be in the Airborne. Common American people want a redistribution of wealth based on fairness and have called for it, not President Obama.
@Bill writes We need to put people back to work.
Well, yes we need to put people back to work. We have former President Bush a,d Alan Greenspan to thank for the fact that there aren’t any jobs. And we also have to pay them better than the living wage that has been decreasing because of Republican policies favoring business who pay the lions share of profit to CEO’s and shareholders. Over the past 20 years the wealthy have been paying working people less and less and less, and claiming more for themselves and their shareholders claiming that they are making businesses more efficient.

Thursday July 5, 2012, 2:26 pm
@Bill writes We are seeing what unemployment creates in Greece, Italy, and Spain to name three.
This unemployment has come about for a number of reasons Bill, and you’d know the reasons why if you truly did any reading. One is that the wealthy greedy folk in banks in both America and Europe have consistently called upon legislators to relax controls so that they could run casino games of commerce and banking packaging things that their customers couldn’t understand and that even they couldn’t explain, in many instances getting accrediting agencies to give them false secure ratings. Now you have Angela Merkel making non-marxist, very capitalistic elitist choices demanding austerity on other governments thus causing more people to lose their jobs. This is the same austerity your vaunted republicans are calling for in reducing taxes on the wealthy and gutting the safety nets for those who are retired and those who are out of work as proscribed by that idiot Ryan and others.

Thursday July 5, 2012, 2:26 pm
@Bill writes We need to put the stupid EPA on vacation for five years and allow corporations to get back to work.
We have a world in crisis, even if you don’t believe in global warming/climate change. People near coal burning fuel plants are causing people to get cancer and suffer from the sulphur and mercury in the air, because the EPA isn’t able to pass laws strong enough to protect the citizens from the wealthy businesses. Wake up Bill.

@Bill writes If we want to rejuvenate the US we need to cut the price of gas to less than $1.00 for 5 years.
And how exactly do you envision this? Do you have a clue at what drives the price of oil and gas besides wealthy speculators? It is the cost of sucking it out of the ground and then selling it in a free market, rather than a fair market, and shipping it, refining it etc. You really don’t have a clue? You probably think President Obama is acting as a Marxist and is setting the price high to act like a Marxist. Your premises and conclusions are really pathetic. You really don’t have a clue, and you have so many boogey men in your distorted world view that you can’t see this clearly.

Thursday July 5, 2012, 2:27 pm
@Bill writes Everything in America runs on gas and is valued by transportation. The price of food is dependent upon gas, the price of homes are dependent upon gas, the construction of road, parks, dams, power lines and chemicals are all dependent upon the price of gas. How do we cut the price of gas, we drill and drill.
The more you drill and the less you suck out of the ground, the higher the cost your gas, oil drilling and refinement prices become. Come on Bill, do some reading will you? The more you drill the more you make a mess, and you can’t really clean up these messes, and when people insist you clean up those messes, you raise the price of your product to cover the cost. So where the oil companies drill and completely ruin an economy and an environment for you is a small price to pay for the privilege of drilling and drilling and drilling. The sad fate of things is that we hit peak oil years ago.

Thursday July 5, 2012, 2:27 pm
Continued
Peak oil means we hit and have used 50% of the supply available from the world’s supply sites. That means the more we pump the less that there is to pump. The faster you pump what is left the faster it is used up. The smaller the amount you have to pump causes price increases. Oil companies are searching the world over for more areas to pump from and they are find that there are fewer areas where we can get oil from. We are using up that resource and instead of really working on finding replacements that don’t kill people and cause larger and larger areas to become uninhabitable all we are doing is chasing what little there is left. Can’t you see how stupid that is? You say you are concerned that we are going to leave nothing but junk to those that come after us, our children, yet you wish to pursue the very thing that will make that happen faster.

Thursday July 5, 2012, 2:28 pm
@Bill writes For every gallon of oil we set aside 10% of its value for alternative fuels development. Once Americas ingenuity gets to work there will be something better than electric cars and windmills or they will be improved upon.
You need to read Confronting Collapse by Michael Ruppert or other books of that nature to change the BS you have crawling around your brain. We’re spraying oil on our crop fields and have reduced the amount of arable land we have left, because these fossil fuels are destroying the soil we are growing our plants from.
The second step is to cut taxes so that the corporation is not giving all the profits to the government.
BS. Corporations are hardly paying any taxes at all. You really are buying into the echo chamber created by Beck, O’Reilly and Limbaugh among others. If we reduced what CEO’s made and how much went to shareholders who don’t do a damned thing for the corporation, hired people to do the work and paid them a living wage, a real living wage, and increased taxes on the corporations we would become a dynamo of a country. It doesn’t trickle down my friend, it only explodes upward the way the deck is stacked.

Thursday July 5, 2012, 2:28 pm
@Bill writes The government has never created one dollar for the good of the people, they tax it and if it runs out they steal it or beg some other government to give it to them.
Pure BS rhetoric, pure BS. You’ve really bought the GOP lies and distortions hook line and sinker.
@Bill writes The third step is to reduce the size of Government.
Yep, I can hear this coming from the BS conservative echo chamber you claim you don’t listen to. You are so predictable and such a liar Bill.
@Bill writes Get rid of all the Czars, pass laws that a president cannot use the Executive Order to write laws.
More BS rhetoric.

Thursday July 5, 2012, 2:29 pm
@Bill writes The fourth step is to hold our governments to the US Constitution and do a vetting on every member of our government bar none and they cannot hire lawyers to argue against the vetting process.
If we did go to the constitution the way Jefferson and Addams knew it had to be to prevent corporations and elitists to take over the government we’d go back to a time where each corporation would have to apply for a charter, set for limited time, renewed if the corporation was useful, employed people, paid them fairly and it also kept a tight rein on how much the bosses of said corporations could make. The reasons things got out of control is because corporations during Grants presidency began buying senators and congressmen to get rid of these controls and caused, because of their abuse of labor, the rise of the first labor unions.

Thursday July 5, 2012, 3:14 pm
Hey Bill Can you really believe that you are going to get the kind of America your fantasies support from someone who believes in this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHEqCXY2B-w

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KN4M8PvpmW4&feature=fvwp&NR=1

Or is your racist hatred of Barack Obama the underlying driving force behind your claims? And that you'll vote for anything that comes along simply to be rid of him?

Thursday July 5, 2012, 4:02 pm

I remember hearing that during elections we get many paid trolls. I don't know about that, but I do know political talking points when I see them.

You are comparing US health care to the Ukraine? Really? Is that suppose to gain some points? People in the US are fleeced by insurance companies daily, and we should believe that it's all for the sake of this country? That's one smelly bull turd you're trying sell.

Did you watch the health care debates? Did you read the daily updates and changes in the bill provided free to the public by Thomas.gov.loc/? If so then as a yammering republican you know that the inflated size of this bill, the parts are mostly dysfunctional are all of, by and for your fellow republicans. Not because individually they even believed what they were doing, many of these people had been strongly supportive of national health for years. Then suddenly, a black man is elected, one of the most moderate of presidents in modern history.
Though he is black and has strange name, so that makes him a socialist?

Sell it on the streets old Bill or whatever your name. It sure isn't selling here. Try some real facts. Here's one for ya....people in Texas (in groups) buy condos in Mexico for the single purpose of having access to health care.

Thursday July 5, 2012, 4:52 pm
So Kit,I hope you’re not saying that yammering, dysfunctional republicorn racists can’t also be paid trolls. It’s obviously a prerequisite for the job!

Thursday July 5, 2012, 4:55 pm
Right on Kit and MJ M.

Friday July 6, 2012, 8:56 pm
Michael when you call me a racist just because I do not agree with the politics of a person, then you are
showing your true colors and could care very little of what is right or wrong as you will believe in only what your perceive. Very sad, but again it is your right to believe what you want to believe.

I feel sorry for anyone with an attitude like that, but have a nice day, and a wonderful summer anyway.

Friday July 6, 2012, 9:46 pm
Bill, nice try. My statement had nothing to do with our disagreement over politics as you well know. The tone of your claims are empty in validity in regard to the current president, ergo my conclusion that your dislike of him must be racist in nature. And I Bill, feel sorry that you feel compelled to labor under the delusions you have espoused in your comments. In turn, allow me the opportunity to wish you a nice day and summer as well.

Saturday August 18, 2012, 5:34 pm
Oh Kit, I recall reading and noting this long ago, but thank you for dropping this link on the radio show this morning. GREAT posts!
"Sell it on the streets old Bill or whatever your name. It sure isn't selling here. Try some real facts".