The Republican-Teahadists have balls!
You’ve got to hand it to them, when it comes to being cynical and lie to America with a straight face they take the cake…that takes a certain degree of skill, good acting abilities, enormous greed and balls. The Republican-Teahadists are not offering any alternatives…but we have seen that movie before. They delayed, obstructed, lied, demanded compromise only to still vote NO. Now they are embarking on a scorch-earth effort to repeal what they have labeled “OBAMACARE” which is the same as to say they are wasting their time and our money.
Most Americans think that their time would and should be spent more constructively by trying to fix the mess the Republicans left and stop this obstructionism, partisan, vitriolic politics they have engaged in for the past two years. That is not in their agenda however, because they feel that denying President Obama even the smallest of legislative accomplishments will cause the American voter to judge him inept and incompetent.
I have often voiced my concerned that not only the American voter had a collective case of amnesia; but that being misinformed and uneducated made them vulnerable to believing lies. So far that is what the Republicans are counting on. But there is one thing they are forgetting: they are spending their political capital in something that the public really wants (according to the polls) and even if they still have a very dedicated, fanatical base of ignorant and recalcitrant right wing-nuts; the people in the middle get to see it and begin to question it. Don’t count the independents and the moderates out of the equation…and they are an even larger number than those on the extremist fringe of both parties…because when push comes to shove they will go to the polls and vote against the Republicans for obstructing and sabotaging everything!
And please, once and for all let us clear up this asinine claim that President Obama is a Socialist. Our President is at best a centrist, much too pragmatic and not committed enough to progressive causes as he has shown consistently. That of course pisses off most of us on the left; but be as it may, if he had been a SOCIALIST, the President would have taken over the banks as they were failing and falling all over the place rather than continue the bail out that President Bush started. President Obama had plenty of opportunities to lean to the extreme left and take advantage of the dismal economic situation the Republicans left us with. But in my opinion, if he didn’t confiscate the Auto Industry and have the government own it and run it, if he abandoned UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE and eventually even a PUBLIC OPTION; knowing full well that he was benefiting the insurance companies…then President Obama is a lousy SOCIALIST.
Put another way: had President Obama been a SOCIALIST he would have started a government run oil company, a government sponsored commercial bank, he would have eliminated the influence of insurance companies by expanding MEDICARE. None of that he has done and the Republicans are still bitching. Go figure.
This is what we would have if health care reform were successfully repealed, with no alternative plan to take its place:
· Thirty million Americans who would have coverage thanks to health care reform would continue to do without it.
· Millions more who are now sure they'll be able to keep or replace coverage if they lose their jobs will no longer have that security.
· Insurance companies will still be able to deny coverage based on pre-existing conditions. (According to a new study, that means about half the country will be uninsurable. We are indeed a nation of burned down houses.)
· Insurance companies will still be able to deny coverage to children with pre-existing conditions.
· Insurance companies will still be able to set annual and/or lifetime caps on health care coverage.
· Insurance companies will still be able to rescind policies after a person becomes sick.
· Young people would no longer be allowed to remain on their parents' insurance until age 26.
· Insurance companies would not be required to cover preventative care in new policies, without cost sharing.
· Insurance companies would not be required to spend at least 80 percent of premium income on medical care and quality improvements, instead of administrative costs or simply pocketing the profits.
· Insurance companies will still be able to deny coverage to rape victims and victims of domestic violence.
· Insurance companies will still be able to classify pregnancies and C-sections as "pre-existing conditions," and thus use them as reasons to deny coverage.
· Americans who don't have coverage through their employers will not have the option of purchasing coverage through health insurance exchanges.
· The Medicare Part D "donut hole" will remain open.
· The cost of employer sponsored coverage will go up. By 2019 employers and workers may have to cough up $3,000 or more per year in per-employee health care costs.
· Consumers who don't receive coverage from employers will see their rates go up as much as 20% for the same coverage by 2019.
· Four million small businesses will lose eligibility for health insurance tax credits, forcing small business owners to pay $40 billion in additional taxes each year.
· Repeal would add to the deficit and cost the economy about 2 million to 4.5 million jobs by the end of the decade.
Instead, the GOP opts for what ??? aptly dubs "principled helplessness," which holds that some problems cannot be solved because principle holds that they must not be solved, and ideology declares that they should not be solved — at least not by the collective "we," in the form of government.
If conservatives can successfully halt, hinder or "repeal" health care reform, they will cite it as proof that "government can't do anything," and their belief that "government shouldn't do anything" will exempt them from offering solutions or "doing something" — like governing. Government will stand by and "do nothing" as more Americans caught in the economic crisis slide further into unemployment, poverty, deprivation and desperation. Governing will be a lot like standing by and watching a train wreck, from a safe distance. Conservatives, who believe that government shouldn't help, will make sure it doesn't help, and cite such as evidence that government can't help.
It's possible that many more Americans, under those conditions, will believe it. Government will be "the government" — serving the powerful, and remaining removed from and unmoved by the plight of many Americans. For those Americans, the possibility of government as "our government" — "of the people, by the people, for the people" — whose purpose is "to protect them and to promote their common welfare," to do "some things we can't do on our own" and "some things we do better together," could face. No entity capable of addressing the size and scope of the crises Americans fade, and driven by any interests other than private profit, will likely rise to fill the void.
The GOP's new "civility" and same old lies on health care reform disguise a "do nothing" philosophy of government that abandons Americans most in in need in the midst of a crisis.
There are problems of such great size and challenges of such broad scope that they are unlikely to be solved by individual efforts, or small-scale efforts at the state and local level. Americans understand this. That's why a majority opposes repealing health care reform, and wish it went further. But the GOP's objection to health care reform (and practically all reforms) is driven by a minarchism, favored by Tea Party libertarians.
Minarchism (sometimes called minimal statism, small government, or limited-government libertarianism) is a libertarian political ideology which maintains that the state's only legitimate function is the protection of individuals from aggression, theft, breach of contract, and fraud.
That not only runs counter to what the majority of Americans want but, as Christopher Beam explained in New York Magazine last month, it just won't work.
Libertarianism is a long, clunky word for a simple, elegant idea: that government should do as little as possible. In Libertarianism: A Primer, Cato Institute executive vice president David Boaz defines it as "the view that each person has the right to live his life in any way he chooses so long as he respects the equal rights of others." Like any political philosophy, libertarianism contains a thousand substrains, ranging from anarchists who want to destroy the state to picket-fence conservatives who just want to put power in local hands. The traditional libertarian line is that government should be responsible for a standing army, local security, and a courts system, and that's it — a system called minarchy...
Libertarian minarchy is an elegant idea in the abstract. But the moment you get specific, the foundation starts to crumble. Say we started from scratch and created a society in which government covered only the bare essentials of an army, police, and a courts system. I'm a farmer, and I want to sell my crops. In Libertopia, I can sell them in exchange for money. Where does the money come from? Easy, a private bank. Who prints the money? Well, for that we'd need a central bank-otherwise you'd have a thousand banks with a thousand different types of currency. (Some libertarians advocate this.) Okay, fine, we'll create a central bank. But there's another problem: Some people don't have jobs. So we create charities to feed and clothe them. What if there isn't enough charity money to help them? Well, we don't want them to start stealing, so we'd better create a welfare system to cover their basic necessities. We'd need education, of course, so a few entrepreneurs would start private schools. Some would be excellent. Others would be mediocre. The poorest students would receive vouchers that allowed them to attend school. Where would those vouchers come from? Charity. Again, what if that doesn't suffice? Perhaps the government would have to set up a school or two after all.
And so on. There are reasons our current society evolved out of a libertarian document like the Constitution. The Federal Reserve was created after the panic of 1907 to help the government reduce economic uncertainty. The Civil Rights Act was necessary because "states' rights" had become a cover for unconstitutional practices. The welfare system evolved because private charity didn't suffice. Challenges to the libertopian vision yield two responses: One is that an economy free from regulation will grow so quickly that it will lift everyone out of poverty. The second is that if somehow a poor person is still poor, charity will take care of them. If there is not enough charity, their families will take care of them. If they have no families to take care of them-well, we'll cross that bridge when we get there.
Of course, we'll never get there. And that's the point. Libertarians can espouse minarchy all they want, since they'll never have to prove it works.
(I would only add that, under "Libertopia" as Beam describes it, if that bridge is on fire when come to it, we won't put out the fire — on principle.)
The problem Republicans, having chosen to kick off their latest shot at governing with a cynically "symbolic" attempt to "repeal" health care reform, don't have the luxury of not having ideas that work, and not having to prove that their ideas work. On issues from health care reform to jobs and the economy, Americans just want something to work. And that means that government — the collective "we," that does those things we need done, that we can't do by ourselves, and that we do better together — has to do something.
Doing nothing just guarantees more misery for Americans caught in the grip of the economic crisis, at a time when Americans want solutions. If Republicans can't or won't offer solutions, and stick to declaring that "nothing can be done" about the problems and challenge we face, in two years they may find that Americans want nothing more to do with them.
Help us spread the word about these important stories...
SOURCE: http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2011010319/gops-do-nothing-plan-health-care
0 comments:
Post a Comment