Government ‘Mandate to Buy’

The health care Bill now making its way through the Senate has provisions requiring all citizens to buy health insurance from private companies, with penalties for not buying. It ‘forces people to buy’. Republican senators opposing this provision in the Bill may have a point, though they have lost credibility by opposing all meaningful health care reform. This would be the first time our Federal Government would mandate all of its citizens to buy a product or service. This demand by Government that people purchase a product from private companies is great for companies, but may not be very good for individuals. Certainly this can be viewed as Government interference in private markets. It goes well beyond Government regulation of free markets. Yet what else would assure we have universal health care coverage, bringing down the cost of health care for everyone? As someone who strongly advocates health care reform, I see this is a contradiction plain and simple. This mandate, though understandable, may be unconstitutional.

The “mandate to buy” may be the “poison pill” in the Bill. Without a doubt this provision will be challenged in the courts. And if the conservative Supreme Court decides this mandate to be unconstitutional, than the whole thing badly unravels! That will be the end of not only the latest attempt for health care reform, but the Presidency of Obama. So the question is, “who put this pill in the Bill? What compromise deal was struck with whom?” I am suspicious and see the underhanded influence of special interests and fanatical opponents of the ‘democratic agenda’ working in surreptitious and Machiavellian ways to keep hold on real Power (not the power that Democrats think they now have!). Democrats as usual lack the political sophistication and canny to uncover such orchestrated and elaborate political plots.

If the opponents of Health Care Reform spend many hundreds of millions in advertisements, lobbying efforts, political organizing and influence buying up to the very day of the Bill’s passage, what makes anyone think that they would then quietly recede in the background and adjust to the new realities? Entrenched Power has layers and layers of fortifications constructed over decades of  territorial control to engage their opponents at different stages with new tactics. If ‘plan A’ fails, there is always plan B and C and even D. The “mandate to buy” in the Bill may be their ‘plan F’ to undo Health Care Reform. And at the same time help their Republican operatives back into Government Power.

So what would make the current Health Care Reform Bill constitutional? It may not be constitutional to “mandate to buy”, but it certainly is constitutional to collect taxes! To make the Health Care Bill constitutional we need to create real change in our Health Care System. We need to have a universal coverage Medicare for All System where government collects taxes (not “mandates to buy”) to pay for health care while private markets provide that care. It’s simple, it’s constitutional and it’s already in place. Halfway measures to appease political opponents only gives the opponents more opportunity and ammunition to kill the Bill!

The Great Disconnect and the Undoing of America

What has Wall Street done with our ‘bailout billions’ ? It’s “our money”, as Conservative slogans often remind us — referring to taxes and entitlement programs. These billions, however, were to stabilize our Banking System and so save our Economy – saving homes from foreclosure and creating jobs through sustainable economic growth. The underlying idea to President Obama’s plan to save our country from collapse is that we’re in this together. That bankers, businesses and workers alike have one common goal, our common good. But whereas the Banking System has been stabilized, and Banks again are making huge profits (most have now paid back the bailout money they received), our economy still is not creating new good paying jobs. And many home owners still face foreclosure and bankruptcy. While our middle class continues to be seriously stretched to the breaking point.

Wall Street bankers took our money and once again are gambling with our lives. Instead of making loans to homeowners and small businesses to get our economy moving again, they are back to playing the same risky and reckless investment games. Our billions to them are now once again fueling another Stock Market bubble, with rising paper gains that add nothing to the ‘real economy’. The near linear rise in the Dow since last March, from 6500 to now near 10500, is a disturbing sign that the “ungodly hand of greed” is once again behind our unnatural economic cancer.

How could Wall Street be doing so well while Main Street and the Real Economy show no signs of sustainable growth? Very simply. The rise in the Dow only reflects our billions of bailout money to Wall Street which is now fueling the Stock Market bubble. Investment Bankers, like Train Robbers, are dividing the loot among themselves and their co-hoards, buying their loyalty (not talent) and calling it ‘fair compensation’. And this is our Great Disconnect! Wall Street and Main Street are on two divergent paths. The “trickle down theory” is not working (if it ever did!). The Wall Street gangs continue to give themselves billions of our money in bonuses, while the rest of the country is facing calamity of historic proportions. Can there be a Wall Street without Main Street? For the Gang of Wall strapped in their ‘golden parachutes’ this is a moot point.

White House Transparency: A False Comparison

Republicans have made much of the White House Social Secretary Desiree Rogers refusal to testify before Congress over the incident of the White House “party crushers”, Tareq and Michaele Salahi. Certainly this is a serious breakdown of the security of the President. As one who takes the protection of President Obama very seriously, I am concerned. But the protection of the President does not lie with the Social Secretary or any other White House staff. It lies exclusively with the Secret Service. And the Director of the Secret Service, Mark J. Sullivan, took responsibility and acknowledged blame. That was unique for any Government official to acknowledge. I only wish Pres. Bush and V.P. Cheney would also take responsibility for the grave mistakes their administration made and the great problems they left us to sort out and suffer through for many decades. But that’s not the full story with Republican condemnations of the White House for not letting the Social Secretary to testify.

In an attempt to diminish President Obama’s credibility with the people and to raise their mistrust in Government (the same Government that they ran for many decades) Republicans make the false comparison between Obama’s Social Secretary refusal to testify and Bush’s White House Counsel Harriet Miers and Political Adviser Karl Rove refusal to testify before Congressional committees over the appointments and firings of U.S. attorneys. Whereas the first isolated incident involved admittance to a social event at the White House, the circumstances with Rove, Miers, Gonzales and company involved a systematic orchestrated attempt to politicize government agencies through political appointments (and so Party loyalty) to non-political career positions. Whereas the first incident put our President at risk (exclusively the responsibility of the Secret Service), the subversion of our government to Party interests puts our Country at peril. These are not equivalent. This is a false comparison dripping with political spin.