Thursday August 13, 2009, 11:15 pm
Noted with thanks,David

Thursday August 13, 2009, 11:22 pm
The 14 Defining
Characteristics Of Fascism
by Dr. Lawrence Britt

Dr. Lawrence Britt has examined the fascist regimes of Hitler (Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia) and several Latin American regimes. Britt found 14-defining characteristics common to each:

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism -
Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays. TOP

2. Disdain for
the Recognition of Human Rights -
Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc. TOP

3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats
as a Unifying Cause -
The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc. TOP

4. Supremacy of the Military -
Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized. TOP

5. Rampant Sexism -
The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Divorce, abortion and homosexuality are suppressed and the state is represented as the ultimate guardian of the family institution. TOP

6. Controlled Mass Media -
Sometimes to media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common. TOP

7. Obsession with National Security -
Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses. TOP

8. Religion and Government are Intertwined -
Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions. TOP

9. Corporate Power is Protected -
The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite. TOP

10. Labor Power is Suppressed -
Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed. TOP

11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts -
Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts and letters is openly attacked. TOP

12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment -
Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.

13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption -
Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders. TOP

14. Fraudulent Elections -
Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections. TOP
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
To my fellow residents of the United States:
Does the above sound familiar?

Thanks, David.
noted.

Thursday August 13, 2009, 11:36 pm
You cannot currently send a star to Tim because you have done so within the last week.? *****

Friday August 14, 2009, 2:29 am
G'day mate! Na , me mind is busy with something else! wanted to tell you my heart is there with you! I don't like fighting , but i like to find a way for all of us to exist with mutual respect for each other, and to work with each other, to get into middle ground! too left and too right doesn't make it right!
as the Buddha said the Middle path is the way
namasté, peace be with you and all of Humanity!

Friday August 14, 2009, 4:22 am
This is a very crucial tipping point. What has happened is in the direct funding and organizing of the street thugs by corporate owners. This is exactly where fascism goes from theory to the nightmare of practice, and where everything from death squads to dictators are so often born and made from.

Friday August 14, 2009, 5:50 am
Thanks David.

Friday August 14, 2009, 7:32 am
August 14, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist
Republican Death Trip
By PAUL KRUGMAN

“I am in this race because I don’t want to see us spend the next year re-fighting the Washington battles of the 1990s. I don’t want to pit Blue America against Red America; I want to lead a United States of America.” So declared Barack Obama in November 2007, making the case that Democrats should nominate him, rather than one of his rivals, because he could free the nation from the bitter partisanship of the past.

Some of us were skeptical. A couple of months after Mr. Obama gave that speech, I warned that his vision of a “different kind of politics” was a vain hope, that any Democrat who made it to the White House would face “an unending procession of wild charges and fake scandals, dutifully given credence by major media organizations that somehow can’t bring themselves to declare the accusations unequivocally false.”

So, how’s it going?

Sure enough, President Obama is now facing the same kind of opposition that President Bill Clinton had to deal with: an enraged right that denies the legitimacy of his presidency, that eagerly seizes on every wild rumor manufactured by the right-wing media complex.

This opposition cannot be appeased. Some pundits claim that Mr. Obama has polarized the country by following too liberal an agenda. But the truth is that the attacks on the president have no relationship to anything he is actually doing or proposing.

Right now, the charge that’s gaining the most traction is the claim that health care reform will create “death panels” (in Sarah Palin’s words) that will shuffle the elderly and others off to an early grave. It’s a complete fabrication, of course. The provision requiring that Medicare pay for voluntary end-of-life counseling was introduced by Senator Johnny Isakson, Republican — yes, Republican — of Georgia, who says that it’s “nuts” to claim that it has anything to do with euthanasia.

And not long ago, some of the most enthusiastic peddlers of the euthanasia smear, including Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House, and Mrs. Palin herself, were all for “advance directives” for medical care in the event that you are incapacitated or comatose. That’s exactly what was being proposed — and has now, in the face of all the hysteria, been dropped from the bill.

Yet the smear continues to spread. And as the example of Mr. Gingrich shows, it’s not a fringe phenomenon: Senior G.O.P. figures, including so-called moderates, have endorsed the lie.

Senator Chuck Grassley, Republican of Iowa, is one of these supposed moderates. I’m not sure where his centrist reputation comes from — he did, after all, compare critics of the Bush tax cuts to Hitler. But in any case, his role in the health care debate has been flat-out despicable.

Last week, Mr. Grassley claimed that his colleague Ted Kennedy’s brain tumor wouldn’t have been treated properly in other countries because they prefer to “spend money on people who can contribute more to the economy.” This week, he told an audience that “you have every right to fear,” that we “should not have a government-run plan to decide when to pull the plug on grandma.”

Again, that’s what a supposedly centrist Republican, a member of the Gang of Six trying to devise a bipartisan health plan, sounds like.

So much, then, for Mr. Obama’s dream of moving beyond divisive politics. The truth is that the factors that made politics so ugly in the Clinton years — the paranoia of a significant minority of Americans and the cynical willingness of leading Republicans to cater to that paranoia — are as strong as ever. In fact, the situation may be even worse than it was in the 1990s because the collapse of the Bush administration has left the G.O.P. with no real leaders other than Rush Limbaugh.

The question now is how Mr. Obama will deal with the death of his postpartisan dream.

So far, at least, the Obama administration’s response to the outpouring of hate on the right has had a deer-in-the-headlights quality. It’s as if officials still can’t wrap their minds around the fact that things like this can happen to people who aren’t named Clinton, as if they keep expecting the nonsense to just go away.

What, then, should Mr. Obama do? It would certainly help if he gave clearer and more concise explanations of his health care plan. To be fair, he’s gotten much better at that over the past couple of weeks.

What’s still missing, however, is a sense of passion and outrage — passion for the goal of ensuring that every American gets the health care he or she needs, outrage at the lies and fear-mongering that are being used to block that goal.

So can Mr. Obama, who can be so eloquent when delivering a message of uplift, rise to the challenge of unreasoning, unappeasable opposition? Only time will tell.

Friday August 14, 2009, 11:05 am
Good input Tim, David S, Blue and Huda. Thanks David!

There are None So Blind As Those Who Will Not See
...It is said 'there are none so blind as those who will not see' which describes many of the protesters who seem to be in a state of amorphous rage, manipulated by partisans and ideologues who use disorder to promote agendas at a far remove from the interests of those they claim to serve and for whom health-care reform is but a convenient pretext for destabilizing the Obama presidency.

Friday August 14, 2009, 1:11 pm
imagine if good solid health care reform created by BOTH parties meant as much as glen beck's status. health care reform is about real people, good people, all people. when our life becomes worth less than our insurance giants freedom to price gouge and dump us the moment our lives depend on it -we become politically non denominational in that fight to live. with out reform -this very same thing has a good chance of happening to you and yours, if it already hasn't.

How I lost my health insurance at the hairstylist’s
by Downtowner, posted on Tuesday, July 7th, 2009 at 10:35 pm

So you’re chugging along doing all the things you do as a responsible citizen, you work, and pay your bills and your taxes, you are there for your children, and fighting for your marriage, you even volunteer. It’s spring, 1998, and gradually you just become so tired it’s a struggle merely to climb a flight of stairs.

Oh, well, you do have two daughters in college, another nearing the end of her senior year in high school, a son in middle school, a full-time job, a house to take care of, are back in college, and have two dogs, two cats, and oodles and oodles of marital strain.

Fatigue sort of goes with the territory, and like many working moms, you just push past it. You get up, you get the family off in various directions, you go to work, you go to class, you cook dinner, you help with homework, go to games and track meets, do housework, set boundaries for the two kids at home and field frequent counseling-like calls from the two who are not, you try to work through problems with your husband, and you collapse exhausted into bed, get up the next day, and do it all over again – it’s a routine you dare not interrupt with reflections on your fatigue – there is no time.

Then one day…


You show up two weeks later than you should have to the hairstylist (pretty common when you are constantly pressed for time) and instead of the usual lecture about the color of your roots, she turns you around in the chair and says:

“I look at people’s skin tones all day long and try to decide the best coloring for their hair, and I can tell you this: gray is not a normal human skin tone. Get out of here right now and go see your doctor.”

For some reason, though she is not the first person to note you don’t look your best lately, this is the one thing that manages to penetrate the fatigue-fog and you do as you are told.

You call on the way, check in, sit down in the crowded waiting room resigned to waiting for a couple of hours, and a mere minute later the doctor, passing by the glassed in sliding windows on the other side of the wall catches sight of you, comes out, and demands to know: “How did you get so anemic?” You say, “I am?” He says, “Come with me right now” takes your hand and drags you back to an examining room.

Later that day, at the oncologist/hematologist office, this new strange doctor takes blood, orders up an outpatient transfusion, tells you that you no doubt have acute myelogenous leukemia, could keel over dead at any moment as long as you are untreated, and should now go home and call him the very minute the HMO calls you and tells you to check into some local hospital or the other – but should on no account whatsoever check into that local hospital.

You find this direction to avoid hospitalization confusing, in light of the “keel over dead untreated” stuff and say so. Whereupon oncologist/hematologist guy says HMO will try to check you into local or even regional hospital – because it’s cheaper – but in his opinion no local or regional hospital should be treating leukemia, since cure rates double in large teaching institutions. Risk of keeling over dead while he is arguing for your life with HMO is less than risk of dying in local hospital. Then he writes you a list of five hospitals in Chicago that you can allow yourself to be checked into, and says if it’s one of these ok, but it won’t be, so call me when they tell you to go to a local hospital.

Sure enough, he’s right; they do, the very next day. You call him. He works some magic you know naught of (though local rumor tells you later that he informed HMO that he will be sure to make himself available to testify at your spouse’s wrongful death suit later) and you get the referral to the large teaching institution later that day.

Telling your children…no, you won’t write the details here, beyond saying that especially for someone who lost a parent at the age of eleven, it’s the hardest thing you’ve ever done to try to be honest about the prognosis (which is grim) but reassuring about your love for them and intent to fight for your life.

Skip ahead then. On your first day in large teaching institution, you are visited by a social worker, who surprises you by demanding to know not the details of your home life, or about your state of mind on being diagnosed with a more-lethal-than-not form of cancer, but simply: “Who is carrying your insurance, you or your husband?”

You think this is rather cold for a social worker and inform her somewhat frostily that you are sure the bill will be taken care of – it’s pre-approved.

Social worker looks at you with what you interpret as pity and says it’s really, really important. So you say, spouse, as you work for small non-profit that offers no benefits, but also admit to her that you think marriage is for sure doomed now.

“Good, good!” she says.

And you wonder why, why, on top of extra-lethal form of cancer, must you also get unbalanced social worker?

She must be able to tell from your expression that you think she’s nuts, because she explains, like so:

If you worked for a company that offered insurance, if you carried your family’s insurance, next year your insurer would slap a million dollar surcharge on the company policy for carrying a leukemia patient. The company would get the bill and someone in accounting would question “what is this extra million dollars we are being billed?”

The insurance company would explain to them that the million is for you, and it is yearly, but is, ahem, “fixable.” They will say “as long as she is on your insurance (wink, wink) this charge will be there. So what you have to ask yourself (more wink, wink) is whether this employee is worth a million dollar a year salary on top of what you are already paying her.”

Social worker said she had seen small business owners go almost broke trying to cover this charge, and had even heard of one who defiantly did go broke, throwing all of the employees out of work. But more usually, she said, they just fire you.

“Wait, wait!” say you, “Isn’t it illegal to fire someone for their health history? Suppose I’m all well and working?”

She looks at you with more pity, says yes, so of course they will have to find “cause” to fire you, which any employer can always do.

“But I am a very, very good employee!” you protest.

“Yes,” she says, “but they can always find some cause.” The real problem she goes on to explain, is that you will find a new job, that company’s insurer will slap them with the surcharge, they will take their turn at firing you, until you’ve been through six or seven jobs in a year, fired “for cause” from all of them, which of course looks very, very bad to a prospective employer.

“So in a year or so of this, you will not just be uninsurable, you will also be unemployable.”

She asks who your husband works for, since they’d probably try to do this to him too. You say he is a cop working for a municipality, which pleases her. “They have all sorts of layers of officials, elected and otherwise, to work their way through to get to the decision, then once they do they have to get past his union, so it will take much longer to get him fired.” She also, though, offered sympathy for the fact that what with the police union and the municipality fighting out whatever “cause” they got him on in such a public profession, it was sure to end up in the local papers and disrupt all our lives – including the children’s – when they did get that far.

You remind her you seem headed for divorce, and she says, well, okay then, just carry the COBRA to the limit and keep on working for small not-for-profits that don’t offer insurance.

You ask her what you are supposed to do for health care and she says sooner or later the insurance companies would force you onto Medicaid – either by means of making you unemployable and broke, or by means of you being uninsured and going through any and all assets you have paying medical bills until you are broke and sick enough that you can’t work, and end up on Medicaid.

You are rather horrified, but have other things (like trying to stay alive and simultaneously on top of what your teenage children are up to from the hospital many miles away) on your mind, and besides, this all seems so uncivilized and melodramatic and “worst case scenario” and…unlikely, somehow, so you set this aside for now.

You live. In fact you are cured!

A year later you are divorced. You are struggling to get by as a single mother, and you are making the COBRA payments.

Your ex comes by to pick up your son and tells you that the municipality he works for’s administrator told him in absolute shock that the insurance company slapped a million dollar surcharge on the municipality’s insurance policy, and said it would go on yearly until you are off, but since you had exercised your right to COBRA it would “do no good” if your ex was gone. The administrator said he was so shocked and offended that he went to ALL the other carriers possible, and one by one they all gave him back a “no bid” with the proviso that they would welcome the opportunity to bid…just as soon as that leukemia patient’s COBRA rights expire. So barring leaving all the municipality’s employees naked of insurance they were absolutely trapped.

Social worker begins to seem less melodramatic to you.

Your COBRA rights expire.

You go on ICHIP, the program for uninsurable Illinoisans. It’s easy, because your disease is on the short-list of twelve or so that automatically render you “uninsurable for life.” You discuss the horrible policy benefits with your car insurance agent – who is also a trusted friend. She tells you she is also on ICHIP (though it was much harder for her to get on it - she had to get three denials from private insurers) and the entire benefit it provides is to “get you through the door of a hospital” since if you really do get ill you will get benefits so minimal that you will be forced to pay the vast majority of the bills until you are bankrupt and forced onto Medicaid.

Social worker begins to seem downright reasonable to you.

The day comes when you weigh the many, many hundreds of dollars you are paying on a monthly basis, through ICHIP, but to the very insurance company that once charged your ex’s employer a million dollars (coincidentally, the exact bill for your treatment over your year of leukemia fell just short of that million, by about ten dollars, so this company was out exactly nothing) of what is starting to smell like blood money, against your daughters continuing in college and your son eating on a regular basis.

You get a second job.

Your daughter gets sick with Type I Diabetes while uninsured and you weigh those hundreds of dollars to the insurer you now thoroughly detest and you drop that insurance and buy her insulin and syringes and test strips and trips to the doctor instead. You are now so broke that if you would just give up and quit your two jobs and collapse already you are certain you would qualify for Medicaid. But you are stubborn and you go to work.

Your mother – who though she has been a strict vegetarian since birth has very high cholesterol that will not respond to diet and who has been on high blood pressure medication for decades - survives her third heart attack and you consider the fact that your father died at 39 of a heart attack and you think that probably you are not far away from one yourself.

Your oldest sister says while visiting Mom at the hospital that she has been on high blood pressure and cholesterol medication for a decade too.

Your nearest-in-age sister, also a strict vegetarian, goes to get her cholesterol checked and sure enough is placed on high cholesterol and high blood pressure medication. She is also diagnosed as almost completely deaf in her left ear, as your father was at a very young age, and as you suspect you are too. She gets a miniscule hearing aid. You are careful to not put the phone to your bad ear.

Your little brother is diagnosed with cholesterol that doesn’t go down in response to a diet (you get hilarious stories about your sweet and gentle sister-in-law’s brutal enforcement of said diet) and high blood pressure. He goes on medication.

You go to the drug store and test your blood pressure when you wake up with the blood pounding in your ears one day and, sure enough, it’s crept up to high borderline. You try a myriad of things and finally hit on running every day and cutting all of the salt out of your diet to get it to the high end of “normal.” You check it once a week.

You struggle – much – with your weight and the overwhelming need for naps and your ridiculously dry skin and your thinning hair. Your late-twenties daughter, who has just been diagnosed with a completely non-functioning thyroid gland, goes on thyroid medication and lectures you that these are all exactly her symptoms, so you should get your thyroid checked. You know it, and are aware (as your daughter is not) that your mother and sisters have all also been on thyroid medication for years, but you can’t afford it – or the regular doctor visits and monitoring that go with it.

You go to coffee with your friends. They have not had an easy time of it lately with their own and their husbands’ health. In fact, it’s been a horrible couple of years. Your heart bleeds for them and you can think of no words sufficient to describe their courage and grace. And yet sometimes you feel jealous that they have access to medical care, and then you just feel guilty and small-minded, because they need this care, and they are wonderful, wonderful people who have worked hard for the lives they’ve built and who give much back to their communities.

But still…you hear about one friend’s breast cancer, and you remember that your oncologist/hematologist warned you that all leukemia patients who survive eventually die of some form of cancer – because the chemo drugs are “the strongest carcinogens, in the strongest doses, known to man.” And you remember that your maternal grandmother died of ovarian cancer, and your nearest-in-age sister was successfully treated for ovarian cancer at the age of 24. But you know you can’t afford a tenth of the screenings you should be having on an annual basis – not even once.

Or you hear about a husband’s heart surgery and you think you might well need that one too – your mother, her sister, and one of your own have all had that particular surgery. But since you can’t afford the surgery, you don’t bother to try to have the tests you can’t afford either.

You don’t go get your hair done any more. You can’t afford it. So you do it yourself.

But you mostly fret about that because you will love forever the hairstylist who probably saved your life – even if you did end up uninsurable for the duration of that life in the process.

diarist’s note: Yeah, ok, this is my story. If you are annoyed by my writing it entirely in the second person, please be advised that I did it deliberately, because, quite frankly, this could be you.

Anyone can be uninsurable in America.

In about as much time as it takes to get your hair done.

I’m not looking for sympathy here – I’m alive and not everyone manages to survive the insurance fiasco that masquerades as “care” in our country. Besides, I’m so stubborn I’m planning on living until I’m old enough for Medicare. So I’d like to direct your sympathy to those who are still alive, but may not make it through another decade of having their “care” rationed by the insurance company accountants.

I know I’m not exactly breaking news here, so please, do not tip, do not rec, go directly to your friends and neighbors and explain to them that their medical care is a disaster waiting to happen, give them their congressperson and senator’s contact info and get them to call or e-mail.

Friday August 14, 2009, 3:34 pm
SHOCKING LETTER I GOT!!!

should we better call it deathcare???

Date: Sun, Jul 26, 2009 at 1:19 PM
Subject: A doctors response to the Health Bill (GREAT)

This is a letter written by Dr. Stephen Fraser to Senator Bayh. If you would like to send it on to your Congressman, he says to feel free to copy it and send it around to our friends and to senators and representatives.

July 23, 2009

Senator Bayh,

I ask you respectfully and as a patriotic American to look at the following troubling lines that I have read in the bill. You cannot possibly believe that these proposals are in the best interests of the country and our fellow citizens.

Page 22 of the HC Bill: Mandates that the Govt will audit books of all employers that self insure!!

Page 30 Sec 123 of HC bill THERE WILL BE A GOVT COMMITTEE that decides what treatments/benefits you get.

Page 29 lines 4-16 in the HC bill: YOUR HEALTH CARE IS RATIONED!!!

Page 42 of HC Bill: The Health Choices Commissioner will choose your HC Benefits for you. You have no choice!

Page 50 Section 152 in HC bill: HC will be provided to ALL non US citizens, illegal or otherwise

Page 58 HC Bill: Govt will have real-time access to individuals finances & a National ID Health card will be issued!

Page 59 HC Bill lines 21-24: Govt will have direct access to your banks accounts for elective funds transfer.

Page 65 Sec 164: is a payoff subsidized plan for retirees and their families in Unions & community organizations: (ACORN).

Page 84 Sec 203 HC bill: Govt mandates ALL benefit packages for private HC plans in the Exchange.

Page 85 Line 7 HC Bill: Specifications for of Benefit Levels for Plans = The Govt will ration your Healthcare!

Page 91 Lines 4-7 HC Bill: Govt mandates linguistic appropriate services. Example Translation: illegal aliens.

Page 95 HC Bill Lines 8-18: The Govt will use groups i.e., ACORN & AmeriCorps to sign up individuals for Govt HC plan.

Page 85 Line 7 HC Bill: Specifications of Benefit Levels for Plans. AARP members your Health care WILL be rationed.

Page 102 Lines 12-18 HC Bill: Medicaid Eligible Individuals will be automatically enrolled in Medicaid.. No choice.

Page 124 lines 24-25 HC: No company can sue GOVT on price fixing. No judicial review against Govt Monopoly.

Page 127 Lines 1-16 HC Bill: Doctors/ American Medical Association The Govt will tell YOU what you can make! (Salary)

Page 145 Line 15-17: An Employer MUST auto enroll employees into public option plan. NO CHOICE!

Page 126 Lines 22-25: Employers MUST pay for HC for part time employees AND their families.

Page 149 Lines 16-24: ANY Employer with payroll 401k & above who does not provide public option pays 8% tax on all payrolls.

Page 150 Lines 9-13: Businesss with payroll btw 251k & 401k who doesnt provide public option pays 2-6% tax on all payroll.

Page 167 Lines 18-23: ANY individual who doesnt have acceptable HC according to Govt will be taxed 2.5% of income.

Page 170 Lines 1-3 HC Bill: Any NONRESIDENT Alien is exempt from individual taxes. (Americans will pay)

Page 195 HC Bill: Officers & employees of HC Admin (GOVT) will have access to ALL Americans finances /personal records.

Page 203 Line 14-15 HC: The tax imposed under this section shall not be treated as tax Yes, it says that!

Page 239 Line 14-24 HC Bill: Govt will reduce physician services for Medicaid Seniors, low income and poor are affected.

Page 241 Line 6-8 HC Bill: Doctors, doesnt matter what specialty you have, youll all be paid the same!

Page 253 Line 10-18: Govt sets value of Doctors time, profession, judgment etc. Literally value of humans.

Page 265 Sec 1131: Govt mandates & controls productivity for private HC industries.

Page 268 Sec 1141: Federal Govt regulates rental & purchase of power driven wheelchairs.

Page 272 SEC. 1145: TREATMENT OF CERTAIN CANCER HOSPITALS Cancer patients welcome to rationing!

Page 280 Sec 1151: The Govt will penalize hospitals for whatever Govt deems preventable re-admissions.

Page 298 Lines 9-11: Doctors, treat a patient during initial admission that results in a re-admission -Govt will penalize you.

Page 317 L 13-20: PROHIBITION on ownership/investment. Govt tells Doctors what/how much they can own!

Page 317-318 lines 21-25, 1-3: PROHIBITION on expansion- Govt is mandating hospitals cannot expand.

Page 321 2-13: Hospitals have opportunity to apply for exception BUT community input is required. Can u say ACORN?!!

Page 335 L 16-25 Pg 336-339: Govt mandates establishment of outcome based measures. HC the way they want. Rationing.

Page 341 Lines 3-9: Govt has authority to disqualify Medicare Advance Plans, HMOs, etc. Forcing people into Govt plan.

Page 354 Sec 1177: Govt will RESTRICT enrollment of Special needs people! Unbelievable!

Page 379 Sec 1191: Govt creates more bureaucracy Tele-health Advisory Committee. Can you say HC by phone?

Page 425 Lines 4-12: Govt mandates Advance Care Planning Consult. Think Senior Citizens end of life patients.

Page 425 Lines 17-19: Govt will instruct & consult regarding living wills, durable powers of attorney. Mandatory!

Page 425 Lines 22-25, 426 Lines 1-3: Govt provides approved list of end of life resources, guiding you in death. (assisted suicide)

Page 427 Lines 15-24: Govt mandates program for orders for end of life. The Govt has a say in how your life ends.

Page 429 Lines 1-9: An advanced care planning consultant will be used frequently as patients health deteriorates.

Page 429 Lines 10-12: advanced care consultation may include an ORDER for end of life plans. AN ORDER from GOVT!

Page 429 Lines 13-25: The govt will specify which Doctors can write an end of life order.

Page 430 Lines 11-15: The Govt will decide what level of treatment you will have at end of life!

Page 469: Community Based Home Medical Services = Non profit organizations. Hello, ACORN Medical Services here!!?

Page 472 Lines 14-17: PAYMENT TO COMMUNITY-BASED ORIGINATION. 1 monthly payment 2 a community-based organization. Like ACORN?

Page 489 Sec 1308: The Govt will cover Marriage & Family therapy. Which means they will insert Govt into your marriage?

Page 494-498: Govt will cover Mental Health Services including defining, creating, and rationing those services.

Senator, I guarantee that I personally will do everything possible to inform patients and my fellow physicians about the dangers of the proposed bills you and your colleagues are debating.

Respectfully,

Stephen E Fraser MD

Friday August 14, 2009, 3:34 pm
this government is acting like nazis, not rightwing!!!!

9/11 was an inside job
WTC7 collapse was controlled demolition

PLEASE WAKE UP!!!!

Friday August 14, 2009, 7:29 pm
in 1933 hitler created a national heathcare just like obamas...sound farmiliar?..its a bad plan and im glad people are not afraid to speak their minds...we need heathcare reforms but his plan is just awful...but dont tell liberals that they will just say limbaugh or fox news or insurance companies made me say it...and 9/11 was not an inside job....but you want to belive it sooo bad nothing will make you think terrorists could have been responsible for it...america is the greatest country to ever exist in so many ways and seeing people tell the gov. what they think about "obamacare" is all part of it"freedom of speech"..shhhh liberals dont like that word

Friday August 14, 2009, 7:37 pm
Krisjanis I am not sure if you are backing what the letter said or not?I read it earlier in another post..and assumed you were holding the letter up as a terrible example of right wing hysteria-because thats what a sane person would do.
Could you let me know what your angle on the letter is?
I'm also confused re how you can say "this government is acting like nazi's ,not rightwing"..as clearly the nazi's were extreme right wingers.
If what you are saying is that the nazi's are not right wing..then it is vital to challenge that anti-historical notion(and even if you aren't saying that ,it still seems vital to nail this modern US neo-con notion/lie that the nazis were on the left).
It is only on the US right wing (and I include Alex Jones in this)..that nazism has been revised as being left wing..well lets nail this..
1)Nazism was supported by German industry as a "bulwark against socialism" which is why as Germany became more divided along left/right lines,German industry money poured into the nazi bank account.2)The nazi's rounded up,silenced,killed and incarcerated communists ,socilalists and trade unions...do you think they would have done that to neo-cons?It is an insult to the memory of the left to say that they were fellow travellers with nazism.3)Hitler et al hated socialists because they were internationalist,anti-elitist and opposed racism..littered through Mein Kampf are angry references to socilalists betraying Germany..threatening his vision of racial purity..and promoting peace.4)Hitler et al made alliances with conservatives to gain power in Germany.5)American capital loved Hitler as their profits increased during the initial nazi era,due partially to his use of slave labour.6)The nazi's self identity was as a right wing party.7)In terms of bigotted nationalism,militarism,elitism etc and hatred of trade unions and workers rights,the nazi's are merely a very exaggerated ,less moderate version of conservatism.8)In some countries including Britain,there has always been a fluid crossover between right wing conservatives and the neo-fascist parties.
No one in Europe including Germany ever referred to the nazi's as anything other than an extreme right wing party..It was the neo-cons (and strangely the historically very confused Alex Jones),who began to attempt to rewrite history and place the nazi's with the left.
I am of the left..and the anti-fascists I have associated with all of my adult life,are from the left..not a neo-con or free marketeer amongst them..funny that eh.
I recommend works by Iain Kershaw or Franz Neumann's classic study on nazism Behemoth to anyone who is serious about studying nazism..
Thanks David..and great post Tim.

Friday August 14, 2009, 8:07 pm
I agree, Panda. This is the typical type of spin coming from the right wingers.

Friday August 14, 2009, 8:38 pm
It amuses me , to see our world turning into slogan and stones throwing fight! America in uproar for a health reform issue, but they didn't find it necessarily to stand up and ask their Government , whats going on with their tax money, killing innocent people, it must be the end of the world!( which i do not contribute to the doom theory any way,) any way its good that some one start to wake up and think.... any thinking is better than dead brain...
Namaste may peace prevail! peace be with you!

Saturday August 15, 2009, 12:11 am
Joe, you really stick to form, don't you?
You're so full of sh*t I can smell you
all the way in East Tennessee.
Health care reform is Hitlerian?!
I won't even ask you to explain THAT
little piece of effluvium, because you
could not possibly do it.
Perhaps if you were in catastrophically
bad health (or had a functioning brain)
you'd have a different opinion of affordable,
available health care.
But please, by all means, continue to spread
your drivel and piffle as much as you wish to,
because you're usually good for quite a laugh.

Saturday August 15, 2009, 4:20 am
the right is for smaller gov. and less gov. control over its people.. hitler(and the far left) was for big gov. and it all started in 1933 with his heathcare plan which was only another way to control the people....sounds farmiliar to me..people need to stop suckling the government teet!!! because the gov. wants just that

Saturday August 15, 2009, 4:50 am
When it came time for those big bail outs I didnt hear complaining from certain people now those same people are sooo concerned about spending for health care. A MUST Have Program. This health care plan is needed because there is too much corruption with insurance companies. Workers Comp is not paying people their health benefits because of corruption. It is too expensive to go to a doctor visit and to expensive to afford medicine. ANYWAY THINK ABOUT IT!! WHO WOULD NOT WANT PEOPLE TO HAVE AFFORDABLE INSURANCE THAT GIVES YOU DECENT CARE?

Saturday August 15, 2009, 7:00 am
10 AWESOME THINGS THAT WOULD HAPPEN IF HEALTH REFORM PASSES...and it will!

Forget the fearmongering scare tactics of the right, here's how your life will actually be better.

Confused over the dizzying array of outright falsehoods to terrify Americans into opposing a process that might deliver real benefits to their families? They've falsely claimed that the government would "take over" the health system, put private insurers out of business and let pasty bureaucrats decide what treatment Americans would receive. They've spun wild tales of federal agents coming into Americans' homes for lifestyle checks and faceless government officials making end-of-life decisions for patients. They've falsely claimed that the legislation being considered by Congress would cover undocumented immigrants, and they sent around elaborate-but-wholly-fake "analyses" of the supposed bill, with references to made-up page numbers and all.

Sounds like the lies and tactics about Obama during the election not being an American and on and on...

All of these serve the same ends: using the politics of distortion and distraction to capitalize on people's natural fear of change and compelling them to fight noisily against their own interests. And it can be somewhat effective -- that's clear from the raw, populist anger unleashed into the health-care debate in recent weeks by well-heeled corporate-lobbyists bent on derailing the democratic process. The industry-approved fog-and-monsters strategy has another benefit: It puts advocates of reform in the position of batting down a series of nonsensical arguments based on an endless string of health-policy straw men when they could be explaining why getting something decent done would in fact be good for the country.

So let's get past the fearmongering and look at some of the highlights of what's really in the more progressive legislation working its way through Congress. The proposals aren't perfect. As I've written before, in their current form, the bills fail the test of having a truly "robust" public insurance option, and as such has limited potential for cost savings. But they are also substantial reforms that would go quite a way toward beefing up the health and economic security of a lot of American families if enacted.

The following breakdown is based on the legislation developed by three committees in the House of Representatives (HR 3200) and the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee. A third piece of legislation is yet to emerge from the Senate Finance Committee. Reports suggest that the legislation coming out of Finance will be much more accommodating to the insurance industry and other corporate stakeholders. Much of the real legislative fight will come when the two Senate bills are combined and then, later, when the final Senate and House bills are reconciled.

1: THE FIRST THING THAT WILL HAPPEN IS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING

At least that's the case for a lot of people who now have quality health insurance.

If you have a decent health plan through your job, nothing will change for you in terms of your insurance.

In fact, if you work for a large or medium-sized company and have decent coverage at a price you can afford, then nothing can change for you -- you'll be ineligible to enroll in the public insurance option (which is discussed below).

If you have already have government-run health care -- if you're a vet, or are on Medicare or Medicaid or have a child in the State Children's Health Insurance Program, nothing will change for you in terms of your coverage. (One exception: Under the House bill, eligible children would be shifted from S-CHIP to a new public insurance program in 2013).

The only thing that would change for you in these circumstances would be this: your current insurance company would have a harder time screwing you over if you get sick. That's because, although your policy wouldn't change, it would be governed by new public-interest regulations for the entire health insurance industry. (See next item.)

2. NEW PROTECTIONS FOR CONSUMERS

Regardless of your place of employment or the kind of coverage you have now, new regulations would take effect in 2010 that would go a long way toward curtailing the insurance companies' worst abuses.
* Insurance companies could no longer deny coverage to people because they've had health problems in the past, nor could they charge hugely different rates for different groups of people (premiums could only vary by age, geography, tobacco use and family size).
* The House bill bans recissions -- the insurance industry's habitual practice of collecting premiums until someone gets sick, and then digging through their histories for an excuse to cancel coverage.
* Insurers wouldn't be allowed to cancel an individual's coverage for reasons other than failing to pay the premium.
* Insurers would no longer be permitted to impose annual or lifetime caps on benefits.
* Insurers that sell insufficient, cheapo plans that leave people vulnerable to medical crises would be required to disclose that fact to their customers.
* All insurers would be required to disclose how much of their spending is on health care and how much goes to costs like overhead, advertising, etc.
* The legislation (especially the Senate HELP bill) creates new tools for fighting insurance fraud and abuse.

3. MEDICAL BANKRUPTCIES WOULD PLUMMET

One of the most significant of these regulations is in the House bill: a cap on out-of-pocket expenses. If the measure passes, individuals would face a maximum of $5,000 in out-of-pocket expenses a year, and families no more than $10,000. For poorer families, the limits would be much lower: $500 per year, for example, for a family making less than 1.33 times the poverty rate.

In 2007, Harvard researchers studied thousands of bankruptcy filings and found that medical causes played a role in more than 6 in 10.

4. PEOPLE WHO COULD NEVER GET DECENT COVERAGE WILL FINALLY BE ABLE TO

So far, one of the great victories for the anti-reform movement has been convincing many small-business owners that health reform will put them under.

The reality is that small-business people, their employees, independent contractors, freelancers, entrepreneurs, part-timers and the "marginally employed" would be the biggest winners from the legislation if it passed as currently drafted. Small business owners and their employees -- as well as those other groups -- would, for the first time, be able to get decent coverage at a fair price, and if eligible, both employer and worker would be able to get extra help paying for it.

Under the current system, most of the largest employers in the country self-insure -- they pay their employees' claims directly and cut out the middleman.

Big firms that don't self-insure buy insurance on the large-group market, where risk is spread out over a large pool. Large-group plans tend to be more or less comprehensive and, relatively speaking, affordable.

But those forced to purchase coverage on the individual or small-group markets have little buying power and are routinely forced to pay budget-busting premiums for the worst possible coverage -- plans with high deductibles, caps on benefits and strict limits on what is and isn't covered.

This gets to the heart of the "public insurance option" -- the most contentious point of debate in the reform battle. It would work like this: The government would establish regional exchanges, or "gateways," that would be open to those who would otherwise be forced into the individual and small-group markets. These gateways would have relatively large insurance pools just like large employers -- and public programs like Medicare -- have now.

Within these large purchasing pools, people would be able to choose from among different insurance plans -- one a government-run "public option" and the rest offered by private insurers.

In order for private insurers to sell plans through the exchanges, they would be required to offer a standard set of benefits (which the public option would have to offer as well). They'd also be permitted to offer plans with more bells and whistles at a premium price.

For those enrolled in the public exchanges, the process would be quite similar to what employees in many large companies experience -- they would simply choose from among a variety of plans, with slightly different levels of coverage and costs.

Compared to the plans now available in the individual and small-group markets, they would pay a lot less for significantly better insurance (which, in reality, is what those "teabaggers" are protesting).

Because of pressure from Republicans and conservative Blue Dog Democrats, the public exchanges will phase in slowly, over a period of four to six years.

5. (ALMOST) EVERYONE GETS COVERED

That brings us to another "controversial" -- but ultimately commonsense -- piece of the puzzle, the "individual mandate." It means that (almost) everyone would either have to buy health insurance or pay a modest penalty that would contribute to the system. In the House bill, the penalty would max out at 2.5 percent of income. Waivers would be available in the cases of economic hardship or for those who have religious objections.

There will be those who get those waivers; others will be left behind -- it's not a truly universal system. But according to preliminary projections, the result would be an uninsured rate of 3-5 percent, rather than the 16 or so percent who lack insurance today, reducing the rolls of the uninsured by some 20 million30 million.

6. THOSE WHO CAN'T AFFORD THE PREMIUMS WILL GET HELP PAYING

Ultimately, even if the public exchanges were to succeed in bringing the price of health insurance back to earth, a lot of people would still be priced out of the market.

All of the Democratic plans come with subsidies to help those at the lower end of the economic ladder get access to decent health care. The most generous are in the House bill, and how extensive the subsidies will be in the final legislation will be a point of heated debate.

In the House bill, individuals making less than 400 percent of the poverty line -- $43k per year and families earning under $88k -- will be eligible for subsidized coverage on a sliding scale.

Those at the lowest income levels (but who earn too much to get Medicaid) will be required to pay no more than 1.5 percent of their total income for health coverage.

Subsidies would also be available for co-pays -- also for people earning up to 400 percent of the poverty line.

Finally, many small businesses would be eligible for tax credits for insuring their employees.

7. NO FREE LUNCH FOR BUSINESSES

Currently, large employers that rely on low-skilled workforces usually offer little or no health coverage, and much of these workers' health care is already subsidized by taxpayers in the form of Medicaid and Medicare payments, other public programs and unpaid bills for emergency-room visits. Under the proposals in Congress, medium and large firms would face a simple choice: Offer their employees decent coverage or pay something into the system to offset the burden their employees' health needs impose on the American taxpayer.

8. MORE LOW-INCOME WORKERS ELIGIBLE FOR MEDICAID

All of the plans being considered by Congress make more of the working poor eligible for Medicaid by lifting the income limits on eligibility.

9. SOME THINGS WILL CHANGE, BUT YOU'LL NEVER NOTICE

The right's fearmongering is only effective because the health care debate is often so complex. Opponents of reform paint dark conspiracies about some of the more-obscure provisions in the reform package (a good example being the gross mischaracterization of a rather innocuous provision that makes counseling on living wills and other end-of-life decisions available to ill seniors as a "government death panel").

It is true, however, that the proposed legislation contain a number of provisions that aren't getting a lot of attention in the debate.

For example, there are measures that would impact the way doctors are paid, allocate additional dollars for developing the health care workforce and bring new technologies online.

These provisions will have a significant impact on a variety of stakeholders -- mostly health professionals -- but ordinary people looking for health coverage are not going to notice anything different about their health care.

10. OVER TIME, THE SYSTEM WILL BECOME HEALTHIER

Everything depends on what the final legislation entails. But if it were done right, those systemic changes -- greater competition, tighter regulation, technological improvements, a greater emphasis on prevention, the buying power and efficiency of less-fragmented insurance pools and an end to treating the uninsured in emergency rooms -- would gradually "bend the cost curve" of health coverage and offer insurance to tens of millions of people who today struggle with the health problems and stressful economic insecurity of living without insurance.

As I've argued before, the Democrats' approach is far from perfect. But the things outlined here are essentially what would come about if the more-progressive version(s) passed.

Understanding what's actually contained in the legislation leads to an unavoidable conclusion about the anger we've seen in recent weeks: it's doubtful that at anytime in the history of our nation have a group of people been so furiously opposed to something that would so obviously be an improvement over what they now have.

It's nothing less than a testament to the power of industry propaganda.

Full article here

Who are you going to believe? The Bushies, Beck and Limbaugh who got us into this mess and plunged this country into a shipwreck and want the rest of your blood, or a party that has consistently brought programs that has improved the lives of all of us, including the naysayers in this thread.

Saturday August 15, 2009, 4:53 pm
Joe it's not solely about big state/small state..it's about oppressive state vs welfare state.When the Republicans enormously expanded militarim,increased surveillance on the US people,stripped them of their once inalienable rights..that was an extension of an oppressive state.When the state appears as if it may do something humane,you start talking about a big state..when i truth it is an extension of welfare.
Your concepts are confused i'm afraid.
Lets look at historical examples of market based econonomies with oppressive states..South and Central America are littered with them.Pinochet's Chile had an economy shaped by "the Chicago Boys" ie Friedmanite right wingers..yet opponents were "disappeared" and brutally repressed with US support.The same was true in other American backed states inc El Salvador,pre-Castro Cuba,Somoza's Nicaragua..all based on market freedom..and repression.
You have a narrow view of freedom,based only on that which you see as free market freedom..this does not confer rights to individuals in other ways .. free markets deny rights to all but a small group of very rich owners...
As for America being the best country in the world..well you are entitled to your belief..but statistically somewhere like Sweden or Norway with it's greater equality,democracy,fairness,universality,equality of opportunity etc are better countries than America.
In truth..in trems of democracy..hell the whole world saw America's limmitations in the year 2000..and in terms of health you are the 39th best country in the world..in terms of free speech,The Patriot Act,MacCarthyism/Post MacCarthyism all demonstrate a few problems there...As long as there are victims such as you holding sway Joe,willfully nibbling the cheese and turning your little hamster wheel, whilst waving your stars and stripes...rewriting history ,politics and reality in your mind ,so that America always comes out number one,then America will never get anywhere near to acheiving it's great potential.

Saturday August 15, 2009, 5:01 pm
Thanks for setting the record straight, Panda. I will add that America borders on a 3rd world country in large pockets. This weekend we had free medical care brought to Los Angeles by the organization that provides this care to 3rd world countries (Africa). California is bankrupt. If other states want to know what the future holds for their cities and the country, they should watch California. We should be embarrassed.

Saturday August 15, 2009, 9:50 pm
Okay, Joe, keep going.
You obviously don't know that
health care in this country is in
such a garbage hole, and has been
for years, that only the government
is able to repair it at this point.
If it takes "big government" to fix
it, then fine, so be it. If health care
reform is Hitlerian, then I say Sieg effin'
Heil. Whatever it takes to repair health
care right now is exactly what we need, so
bring it on. This is NOT about big government,
small government, politics or town hall meetings,
Joe, this is about HUMAN LIVES, but your small
mind could not possibly grasp that concept.
I've told you before and I'll tell you again:
Do NOT start with me, little boy, because you
will NOT win.

Saturday August 22, 2009, 12:01 pm
Excellent point, Pastor Tim!!!

Saturday August 22, 2009, 12:02 pm

Friends of David Buchan and those interested in him::

David has asked me to thank all who have put up with his antics over time and those of you who have re-sent him (and new) 'friend requests'...He is unable to reply due to care2 restrictions but just wants you to know that he cares for each and every one of you...

His message:

"Don't give up, there is a big world out there and YOU can do something to help those who cannot help themselves...Please do it...So long, it's been an absolute privilege to know you...David XO"

-------
Please message me if you want to remain in contact with David. He treasures his friendships here. I'm hoping this is just a temporary glitch with Care2...Marion

Saturday August 22, 2009, 10:43 pm
Antics?
What antics?
'Love ya, David! :-)