Private insurance leads to less security, not more

If you are like most of us, you hate the insurance racket. It is like a giant cancer that is thoroughly capitalist in nature, yet is so destructive that it actually undermines and erodes the entire structure of the economic system that lets it proliferate. Everywhere, privatized insurance is eating away at any government social nets that have been established. It feeds on government social programs like a shark feeds on smaller fish.

Do you feel secure with the insurance companies ripping into your wallets on a monthly basis? I bet not. Most of what we pay for is so thoroughly hole ridden as to make our policies next to worthless. Lawyers and insurance companies go together, with insurance employed lawyers constantly creating bigger gaps in coverage that might make these companies have to pay out some small fraction of what they take in. This symbiotic relationship between these 2 groups is why we hate the corporate lawyers so much, yet find these crooks growing in number and influence by the second. Conservative, venal, vicious, arrogant, ignorant, and servile, these corporate lawyers fueled by insurance often fall later in their careers into government office, where they corrupt the government down into the sewer, too, alongside themselves and the insurance companies.

Wikipedia lists some interesting facts about the global insurance rip off. For example, that global insurance premiums have increased by more than 1/2 in just the last decade alone. Plus, that Japan and the US account for 1/2 of the insurance premiums paid in the world, though together our 2 countries only have 5% of world population! Do you feel all that secure now? Or less?

We have the worst medical system in the industrialized world and it’s the one disrupted the most by the insurance business. So if insurance is supposed to deliver security, it fails miserably to do so. Instead, the insurance business destroys overall social security, as it rips to shreds government and even religion based services to the community. That hospital might have a Catholic cross and pictures of nuns everywhere, but in truth, it is insurance agents running your medical care, not some benign (or not so benign) church.

Consider this too, that the $3.3 trillion global insurance business is quite connected to the directly financial sector, which is connected to those who would destroy government run social security everywhere, and replace it with private pension plans full of holes throughout. Private pensions, in fact, are nothing more than insurance plans for covering what will not exist anymore if the government run systems of caring for the elderly and infirm get totally closed down, as the super rich are constantly working to do.

Don’t mistake those hard working clerks everywhere in insurance selling offices for the crooks making the money, personally hidden away from your view. This is a business whose main work is simply in destroying the work of others out there actually helping deliver real services to those in need. The real owners are leeches on society, who drain off available funds to their own portfolios yachts,mansions, and golf club memberships. They are profiteers and pirates, not nuns, not government workers trying hard to deliver a service, not neighbors, family, and friends who might help you out in time of need. They are not providing you with a service, but rather ripping service you need away from you.

The insurance scams epitomize all that is going wrong with modern American society. Their leaders are running our government, and ruining it. They are the epitome of corruption, and today we are in a sea of that, largely because of their increasing influence on our daily affairs. It’s time to knock these companies way back down to size. It’s time for the public to make the laws, not insurance barons.

Texas football

The Park Cities, University Park and Highland Park, get Dallas city services, water supply, at no city tax cost to the residents. Super rich neighborhood, one of the richest in America. To add insult to injury, the Dallas Police department routinely patrols the “border” of these neighborhoods, to keep out the riffraff from the surrounding townships of Dallas, Oak Cliff, DeSoto and South Oak Cliff. Some of the most dirt poor areas of Dallas County. But the people and businesses in these townships, even though they also have the distinction of being separate municipalities, DO pay Dallas municipal taxes.
 
In Texas, Football is worshipped. It is their lower case g god. They sold the design to the State Legislature, which has to approve taxpayer subsidized business deals such as the New Improved cowboys stadium in Arlington, with a sliding roof over the hole , so God could still look down and watch His team play. One democratic legislator said quote “Well, if God approves of it, who are we to say different?” and voted yes to the proposition.

So now the Cowboys are no longer not in Dallas, they aren’t even in Dallas County, they are across the county line in Arlington, Tarrant Co. Texas. Just south of the Ballpark which his royal dumbness forced the City of Arlington to buy. For his team.

And the College football teams, and the high school teams, and even the Middle School teams, are considered a farm where the NFL gets to hand raise its candidates for the pro teams. Where one high school team star in a thousand gets a chance to even try out for a professional slot.

They worship the oblong ball. There was one Governor, Mark White. He was Attorney General under Republican Bill Clements, until Bush the most active death penalty freak governor in Texas, (mark white helped him along) then lost the next election to Bill Clements. One of the few powers the Governor of Texas actually has is in deciding the school curriculum. What lost Mark White the Job wasn’t his Zero Tolerance, wiretapping, warrantless searches, death death kill them all bwaaahaaahaaahaaa attitude, and laws, no sir. It was football. Specifically the No Pass, No Play law. Which is as simple as it sounds, failing grades, no extracurricular activities.

Whut do you-all mean Bubba cain’t play no more football jes cause he’s dumb as a sack of dirt? That’s downright on-American!

One thing they used to protest the law was suspending the star player of the Chess Club for failing PE at one middle school. That’ll larn them sissy-boy eggheads not to fuck with our football.

But there is one and only one good thing about the way the laws are set up.

You know the difference between an Air Force recruiter and a NCAA recruiter? The NCAA recruiter isn’t allowed on high school campuses.

The good thing is I get to use that as an example for arguing with people like our good friend Ray. Whoever he is.

MoveOn flexes non-electoral muscle at last

Yesterday the Democratic Party’s liberal appendage, MoveOn.org, organized around 500 demonstrations throughout the US to express opposition to the War Against Iraq. There was one even in Pueblo, Colorado, not to mention the activities here in Colorado Springs, that got excellent TV coverage last night!

What caused them to finally get off their butts and show their real strength? After all, MoveOn claim to have 3,000,000 supporters (Democratic Party voting) in the US, so why ‘move on’ now at long last, when they have all the while pretty much sat around doing much of nothing for so very long? In short, the answer is that some Democratic Party politicians are beginning to panic at continuing to follow the Republican Administration into continuing The Petrol Wars, from Iraqi and Afghanistan occupations into launching an extension of this war into Iran, Syria, Africa, Pakistan, and Lebanon. This disaccord represents a beginning fracture within the US ruling stratas over whether united they can actually pull off this neo-con megatheft of the world’s most important natural resource, or not.

From the point of view of some of them, the consequences of military failure to successfully recolonize the Middle East petrol producing region and totally monopolize world oil resource supply, will be far more cataclysmic than even an Iraqi pullout at this time would be. Bush’s speech was a Rubicon crossed, of sorts. Is it better to pull out now, or go for broke? Many think it better to pull back instead of continuing to charge into disaster.

In short, some of America’s elite are beginning to think that throwing more bad money after all the bad money already looted from the American treasury by the Pentagon, Lockheed, Halliburton, Exxon-Mobil, Boeing, and others of the same ilk, is total suicide for the country, and even its super rich, too. Still, there is nothing to make us think that this fracture within US elites at this point can stop the upcoming Bush escalation into a major US government attack on Iran, Lebanon, and Syria. The dominant sector of the US elites think that it is now the only option that willl work, so the rest of us should not be surprised when this new and higher level of violence is begun. In fact, it already has been.

The University of Colorado at Colorado Springs sucks big time

Citadel Let’s face it. UCCS was designed by second rate people to be a second rate school. A simple visit or two is all that is necessary to come to this conclusion. America is full of these second rate schools and all of them have the same features. These middle schools masquerading as universities all were deliberatey designed not to become another Berkeley, Madison, Boulder, UT at Austin, etc. They were designed to be intellectually barren zones, devoid of life, liberty, and happiness. Just what is the formula for doing this that the architects of The University of Colorado at Colorado Springs followed so faithfully?

Location, location, location! That is the key to successfully designing the second rate, nominally public university. You got to build these places out in the boonies far from intellectual family, friends, and community. You want no liberal cafes, bookstores, video stores, nor public places of any kind to pop up. The ideal, is to enclose the campus building within a fortress of parking lots 40-50 miles out of the way. A place amongst the cows, and far from the people. UCCS didn’t quite meet this ideal, as it is not even that physically far from the center of the city. But just try to walk onto the campus from outside! It’s nigh near impossible!

On one side you have the cliffs, and on the other side you have the busy road. Then you have the wall, the signs that disallow parking, the signs saying it is illegal to cross the busy road on foot. Shoot, I’m surprised they don’t have machine guns pointed out over barbed wire blocking the community’s way to keep normal folk of the city away from the impressionable young minds jailed inside! So as it is, you do risk your life by trying to ambulate onto the grounds of higher education designed by second rate people to be second rate. Oh, and to produce conservative credentialed folk that are usually too stupid to realize that they got robbed of any real education by the time they stumble forth once again.

Maybe you want to commute a vehicle to approach this ivory tower of mediocrity? Some delectable conference ‘open’ to the tax payers of Colorado Springs has perhaps tempted you to breach the gates? Go right ahead inside! Pop out of your car, appraoch the automated university pick pocket, and chunk down your $7.00 parking fee. Oh what a bargain, no wonder people are knocking this place down to use a s a community resourse! Not. What you have instead is so-called university designed as gated community. Gated any way you look.

There are two common incorrect assumptions made about the UCCS. Number one- that it is actually a university. Wrong. A university is engaged in education, while UCCS is not. It is engaged in credentialing. That is, it is engaged in credentialing essentially people that remain uneducated. Number two- UCCS is thought of as being a publicly funded school. Not really. Go to their website and see where the money actually comes from.

Sure, some of it is from public taxpayers’ money, like the parking structures and general architecture of the area, all designed to keep the taxpaying lower classes of the public away and off campus. But the big political money comes from super rich people like Philip Anschutz. He just wrote off his taxes to the tune of $92 million given to control the direction that UCCS goes in. Think this supposedly public university is going to allow any public professor to bad mouth Phil? You can take all that chortle and nonsense about balance and free speech away, can’t you? This is a place paid for by the Mr. Bigs.

So you now see why the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs sucks so big time. Big money produces big crap once again in yet another American city. ‘Universities’ everywhere, and all populated by credentialed dunces. Thanks, Philip Anschutz. Thanks big boys. So much money to produce a UCCS! What a waste.

We Are a Nation Sunk Under Corporate Legal Bullshit

It is often said that we are a nation of laws? That’s certainly true, but just what kind of laws? Are our American laws there to provide protection and justice for the overwhelming majority of us, or are they to codify the privileges of the much tinier US elite, the corporations and their super rich owners?

If you don’t know the answer to that, then try to bring a law suit against a corporation or the corporate government that rules over us. Or what’s more likely to be the situation, try to defend yourself when the elites come after you. Fact is, justice in the US is sold in dollars and cents and if you don’t have the money, you’re going to do the time. You’re going to have your life messed over, and you will have no recourse if you come into contact with the No Justice System.

The corporations won’t go to jail, you will. You will, or you will go into limbo one way or the other. Quite simply, we are not a nation that benefits from having any real justice, but a nation sunk under corporate legal bullshit where justice is routinely turned on its head. It’s your lawyers versus theirs, is it not? Can’t fight city hall, and can’t fight the corporation. Don’t be stupid to think otherwise if you go into the US courtroom.

Did you think that the police are there to serve you? Think again. You are the centerpiece of nothing, Pal. What ever made you think that the US was about justice? Some fairy tale nonsense you learned in kindergarden? Those squads of cops all over the place, those prisons in every city and county? They’re there to protect property, not you. Most of us are lucky to own the shirt on our backs, or some small shed we live in. That’s not property! The cops are a goon squad to keep your sorry ass in line, so that property can be maintained. Not some trinkets that you might have accumulated, neither. Real property. Property you’ll never know or see.

When you watch these show trials over and over again, it’s about property. Manuel Noriega? He went to jail because he messed with US government property, The Panama Canal. Somebody steal your car? So what? That’s not property. Took your wallet? Big deal. Saddam Hussein going to get the death penalty? That’s because he tried to take property belonging to the US and European oil companies. Stupid low breed Arab he was! And what about that ignorant Slav, Milosevic? Didn’t he know that Slovenia belonged to Italy, and Croatia to Germany? It’s about property. Not about justice. Justice is not for common folk in this world of corporate control and greed.

The scales of justice weighing most evenly? Bullshit! On one side sits the dollars against you, and on the other side sits the cents you have. Result, you’re going to go flying off to jail, Chump. Flying just like the jailbird they’ll make you into if you get caught up within The System, the Injustice one. Here’s about the best summary of some of the more recent corporate legal bullshit that has been piled upon us by the Right Winger whores of the corporations. Gerry Spence’s essay, Kill All Lawyers He especially hits it right on about how the docs and insurers united to screw the rest of us over with their so-called ‘tort reform’ legislation.

Are there any readers out there dumb enough to defend the US system of corporate legal bullshit? How about you, Michael? Care to defend the sea that your profession swims in? A sea of corporate legal bullshit. A sea of nonsense so obviously not justice.

Extreme TB on its way

The news has hardly been noticed the mainstream public, but only about 2 months ago, the panic began to hit the world medical community. About 2% of the world’s 9,000,000 TB patients are now thought to have a new strain of it, totally resistant to all antibiotic treatment. The name for this condition is Extreme TB, as opposed to the more prevalent form of multi-drug resistant TB. Tuberculosis has been evolving into a form resistant to all present treatments, and as such, it joins with treatment resistant forms of strep and staph that themselves are newly plaguing patients worldwide. Plus, of course, there is the constant danger of a new rampaging flu epidemic to come sometime soon in the future.

While flu is a virus that mutates (evolves) over time,the microbial evolution of bacteria into forms resistant to antibiotics was not foreseen until just fairly recently. Now, the medical world is in total panic because there have been no technological magic bullets to come along that would help in stopping the spread of infectious disease across the planet once again. What we have now, is a microbial breakdown in the world’s ecologic balance. And like with the other ecological breakdowns, capitalism has been fueling the crisis by enmeshing much of the world in unsanitary poverty.

How serious is this situation? Well ask Bill Gates and George Soros. Both have been pumping millions of their own dollars into African TB prevention programs trying to put their little fingers into the holes in the dikes of our failing world capitalist medical system. Unlike some of the more dull witted super rich, these 2 men realize that drug resistant TB could ultimately kill off even rich folk like themslves, and not just poor Black HIV patients in South Africa. For a recent commentary about the evolution of this new and spreading pandemic, see this Guardian article

Oaxaca and Iraq- The people have a right to self defense

Oaxaca and Iraq demonstrate that the people have a right to self defense against state terrorism. Today, the Mexican police were assaulting the students holding a radio station use in their self defense against the governmental death squads that have been terrorizing the population of Oaxaca. When captured and jailed, the protesters have been severely tortured. What would the mealy mouthed, American Christian pacifist communkity have them do during the military assault on them? Turn the other cheek? Not throw rocks to stave off the capture of the one piece of media available to the Oaxacan community; the university radio station? Not to set fire to barricades to hold the government thugs back from capturing the protesters, and then jailing and torturing them? The American ‘peace’ pacifists would lecture them about the supposed lessons of Gandhi and non-violence, no doubt, as if self defense was some sort of violence itself! The US pacifist community certainly live with a surreal mindset lacking in clarity and reality. And what would they have the Iraqis do as the Pentagon terrorizes that nation? Sit down in the streets and pray? With their constant prattle about the need to be ‘non-violent’ martyrs, the pacifist community tries to deny that people under attack have the right to resist, by any means necessary, as Malcolm X would have stated it.

The resistance of the Iraqi and Oaxacan communities are two examples of the need to RESIST oppression with self defense, and not just the silly pacifism of overly religious folk. It is not just church mice that bring about justice, but real people using real tactics to defend their rights, and not just always spouting Jesus-Gandhi talk. All the ‘peace and justice’ pacifism that bogs down our Left activism in the US, is a denial of solidarity with those folks under the gun. They are also our heros, and not just US Quakers and US Catholic nuns who might accept arrest here at home. Peace with justice can only come about through united resistance of all types, including armed resistance of some type or other.

I am not advocating picking up the gun and going after ‘them’. But what I am saying is that the message and tone of pacifism is a bunch of religious babble, in general. It does not help in building a US antiwar movement to only talk about Jesus, ‘nonviolence’, and Gandhi. The religious message is not our only one, and should not even be our dominant one. It hinders our ability to communicate with the US community at large to always emphasize only this liberal religious sermonizing about ‘peace’. An antiwar community is about much more than just ‘peace’.

I am overjoyed that there are peoples around the globe that are defending themselves against our government violence, and the violence of their death squad allies around the globe. They are doing it with rocks, molotov cocktails, guns, and bombs. They are doing it peacefully if they can, and not peacefully if that avenue is cut off to them. One just gets sick of Englsih speaking (principally) pacifists saying that that is wrong. Let’s tell the truth here. Much of Anglo pacifist sermonzing is pure bullshit. The people have a right to resist and defend themselves no matter what the pacifists in imperialist countries might say.

Let’s say it straight. We want this government organized, US imperialist army defeated. And it is because the US army is wrong in their battle on behalf of the imperial Super Rich in this PARTICULAR war, not just because all battles and all warfare is wrong to fight. It is not just pacifists that are anti US war making. Non-pacifists also hate this US governmental war making, too. Let’s open up the US antiwar community to those of our population that are not religiously motivated by pacifism and spouting non-violence all the time. A ‘peace’ movement that is only trying to convert folk to liberal religous faith is self limiting. There has got to be more message than that.

May the people of Iraq and Mexico push the forces of US hegemony aside, and build themselves a better world.

Taking it to the streets

Protests in Nepal
This picture was taken in Nepal shortly before soldiers began swinging their sticks and firing into the crowd. Recent events have wrought inumerable protests such as this. Except for the Ukraine, Haiti and Bolivia, few have ended favorably. Protestors in western nations have thus far faced only tear gas, rubber bullets and trunchons, nothing like the massacres in Uzbekistan and China.

Look hard at this picture. Do you think the American People could ever see themselves brave enough to face this moment?

Americans have seen their elections stolen, their treasury looted, their sons and daughters killed to enrich war profiteers. They’ve seen a president lie to take them into war, try to steal their Social Security, stack the Judicial Branch to a marked imbalance, hold himself above the law against invasion of privacy, exempt himself from new laws with “signing statements,” imprison people without due process, insist on being able to torture, limit free speech to “free speech zones,” declare a war on terror but refuse to acknowledge prisoners of war, weaken pollution standards and call it a “Clear Skies Initiative, ” sell protected public lands, promote the outsourcing of jobs overseas, seek to legalize the payment of poverty waves to illegal immigrants, inhibit states and foreign nations from taking action to avert global warming, double the U.S. deficit in order to give a tax break to the super rich, launch the thoroughly illegal war against Iraq and supervise the killing of now upwards of 250, 000 Iraqi lives, more than half of them children.

Feel free to add to this list if I’ve missed something.

Most recently we’ve learned that the president considers it his right to intimidate political opponents like Ambassador Joe Wilson by “declassifying” the CIA status of Wilson’s wife, thereby endangering the life her colleagues, her contacts, her friends, and all of their contacts and friends, everyone who foreign governments now suspect might have been CIA informers.

More Americans are coming to see that our president might have conspired, abetted or at the very least permitted the mass murder of 2,986 Americans on September 11th, 2001, to create the rallying cry of “9/11” not dissimilar to Remember the Main, the Lusitania, Pearl Harbor, and the Gulf of Tonkin before it. Each as dubious as the Reichstag fire.

Is it time as well to consider that the fate of the world rests in the hands of a man who believes in the end times as foretold in the Book of Revelations? Is it possible that our president does not care if Armageddon is hastened in the Middle East because anyhoo it has been prophesied?

If President Bush attacks Iran, this time using nuclear weapons, will it finally occur to the American people to do something to stop him? Are they up to the task?