Is Obamacare good because the right-wing opposes it?

Is Obamacare good because the right-wing opposes it?

By: Alan Maki Saturday June 30, 2012 6:18 am

Posted on FireDogLake

We are now hearing Obama’s apologists saying because right-wing politicians like Rand Paul and Mitt Romney oppose Obamacare that Obamacare and the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling upholding it must be good.

Opposition from Rand Paul, Romney and the Republicans aside, this legislation is patently unconstitutional because it forces and coerces people to purchase insurance from PRIVATE FOR-PROFIT insurance companies.

It would be constitutional only if people were being forced to purchase health insurance from a government owned co-op or public enterprise.

This is the bottom line. We should be defending the Constitution not backing out of this fight simply because these right-wingers are opposed for other reasons.

Just because a bunch of right-wing politicians are opposed to something doesn’t make it right— ethically, morally or Constitutionally; nor does their opposition mean that this Obamacare will work, because it won’t.

For starters, does anyone really think that the few good parts of this legislation will be adequately financed? If so, dream on— because right now Barack Obama, the Democrats and the Republicans refuse to adequately fund VA, the Indian Health Service, Medicaid, Medicare and the National Public Health Service as city, county and state health care services and agencies have had their budgets slashed while Planned Parenthood goes severely underfunded.

Obama and these Wall Street politicians aren’t going to adequately fund any health care programs when they have these costly imperialist wars to finance which are so profitable to Wall Street coupon clippers just like what they expect to make with people being forced to buy insurance from them.

War and health care are two rackets managed by the same Wall Street crowd and we pay the bill for both as they profit.

When all is said and done we are getting screwed again.

Plus this most undemocratic, unconstitutional and obscene ruling from the United States Supreme Court intended by Roberts to provide Mitt Romney with never ending ammunition now until election day has opened the door wide to allow the government to force people to purchase many other “social programs” from private for-profit corporations and it places Social Security in jeopardy. If you can be forced to purchase health insurance from private for-profit insurance companies will the next step be forcing people to purchase retirement accounts from these same insurance companies as the Social Security fund is turned over to a consortium of private insurance companies to “manage”— for a nice hefty fee of course?

The “Health Insurance and Pharmaceutical Bailout and Profit Maximization Act of 2012″ is just plain wrong and bad.

The moment calls for a massive movement to demand a National Public Health Care System which would also produce over ten-million new jobs by providing the American people with no-fee/no-premium, comprehensive, all-inclusive, universal health care— publicly financed, publicly administered and managed and publicly delivered.

In fact, Obamacare is a piece of extremely reactionary right-wing legislation that is anti-people at its very core while intended to bolster Wall Street profits.

Just watch insurance premiums now shoot sky-high— after all, there must be some reason Obamacare is being compared to auto insurance. Since the government forced the American people to purchase auto insurance from private for-profit insurance companies rates have been rising without letup and have you heard or seen one single Democrat or Republic stand up and insist on controlling the costs?

In Manitoba the provincial government led by Howard Pawley forced people to purchase auto insurance but this socialist oriented government did what was right and responsible by the people as they established a government owned, managed and administered non-profit public enterprise to replace the private for-profit insurance companies.

And Canada forces its people to pay a payroll tax to finance its single-payer health care system under the Canada Health Act but you don’t see any private for-profit insurance companies in the picture, do you?

There is no reason a National Public Health Care System can’t provide the American people with the same high-quality standards in health care we get from public education, Social Security and all the other government programs like water and sewer and roads.

Dear friends in the peace movement...

URGENT! PLEASE FORWARD WIDELY!

Dear Friends in the Peace Movement,

We can’t afford to let this opportunity slip by. By taking action over the next five days the peace community has a chance to inject a compelling and courageous peace advocate into the 2012 presidential campaign, to have a voice in the national debate over war, militarism, and military spending.

You know what is going to happen if we leave this election up to the two major party candidates. President Obama will defend his troop surges, his excessive Pentagon budgets, his preparations for war with Iran, his escalation of the drone wars, his crackdowns on whistleblowers, his indefinite detention policy, and his new role as manager of the White House assassination list. Mitt Romney will not question these policies, but will promise to pursue them with even more enthusiasm. In debates and interviews, the American people will have the Big Lie drilled into their consciousness: that our nation must accept escalating military engagement and must visit worldwide violence against all who defy the U.S. government.

Jill Stein stands ready to challenge the Big Lie. Jill Stein, a physician from Massachusetts, who has been a national board member of Physicians for Social Responsibility, has just won 29 state primaries to secure the presidential nomination of the Green Party. She is putting some badly needed fundamentals for peace on the table: Cut the Pentagon budget by 50%. Halt the drone wars. Pardon the whistleblowers. Restore our civil liberties. Make the Middle East a nuclear-free zone. She is driving home the point that the Obama/Romney fascination with war and violence is dangerous for our nation and the world. We need to make sure she is heard.

Jill Stein is closing in on federal matching funds that would double the value of donations to her campaign. Because she doesn’t receive big checks from Pentagon contractors and their lobbyists, public funding is essential to her campaign. She needs to raise about $24,000 by midnight on June 30th so that she can apply for matching funds.

That’s not much money to ask of a national peace movement. We can do it. And the payoff for peace will be tremendous.

So we urge you do two things. First, go to Jill Stein’s website: http://www.jillstein.org/donate, and make a generous donation to her campaign.

Second, please forward this email to your friends and networks. Forwarding this message is critically important.

Thank you for helping us open up a dialogue for peace.

Sincerely,

David Swanson, author of War is a Lie and also of Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial President and Forming a More Perfect Union

Medea Benjamin, co-founder of CODEPINK

Chris Hedges, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and senior fellow at the Nation Institute

Leah Bolger, retired naval commander and current president of Veterans for Peace

George Martin, three term national co-chair of United for Peace & Justice

Bruce Gagnon, coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space.

Kevin Zeese, executive director of Voters for Peace

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Six Donors Will Do the Trick! Two days ago we asked for your help, and you responded. Jill Stein's push toward matching funds has made great strides! Donors in each of 17 stateshave now given more than $5,000 - that means just THREE MORE STATESare needed!  NORTH CAROLINA: Just two donors needed at $150 each! FLORIDA: Two $250 donors get it done! VIRGINIA: Four donations of $250 are all that's needed! But WHY STOP THERE?? Forward this to everyone you know in those three states - and the ones listed below - and there's a great chance ALL will clear the $5,000 mark! CONNECTICUT ARIZONA DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA MISSOURI TENNESSEE MAINE Forward by using the link at the bottom of the page! And don't forget the social sharing buttons at the top! WHY WE ARE ASKING The NPA was founded to foster conditions where alternatives to the sold-out corporate parties could take root. Jill Stein's candidacy will help that happen!  Your vote for candidates who have endorsed the Unified Platform is a straw that will break the duopoly's back. Stein has endorsed it, so we're asking you to help Jill trade her megaphone for a bullhorn!    Donate to the Stein campaign by clicking here.

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Alan L. Maki

Director of Organizing,

Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council

 

58891 County Road 13

Warroad, Minnesota 56763

Phone: 218-386-2432

Cell: 651-587-5541

Primary E-mail: amaki000@centurytel.net

E-mail: alan.maki1951mn@gmail.com

Blog: http://thepodunkblog.blogspot.com/

Why is this story not being told by the MainStreamMedia?

Albert Bender, a columnist for News From Indian Country, writing in the Communist Party's publication--- The People's World, wrote about Native American unemployment in Indian Country and Obama. I wonder why so few publications carried this article?

http://peoplesworld.org/native-americans-left-out-of-economic-recovery-as-always-2/

Native Americans left out of economic recovery, as always

by: Albert Bender

June 11 2012
Up until the past few weeks, there had been a lot of hoopla about a blossoming economic recovery. Job creation for the early part of the year had been averaging 200,000 a month. (Keep in mind, though, that responsible economists maintain that 345,000 jobs per month are needed for at least two years to get back to even five percent unemployment - and the latest numbers for May show only 69,000 jobs created.)
Indian America, looking at the historical record, would have found little reason to rejoice at the so-called "good economic news." Why? Because historically, economic recovery, as a national news pundit recently said, "is growth for white America, but there will still be three times the unemployment rate for blacks and Hispanics."

But that statistic can look good, considering that the Native American unemployment rate would be 10x greater than the white jobless rate. Indeed, as is well known in Native circles, on reservations across the nation the unemployment for Native Americans routinely ranges from 80-90 percent - and this has been the economic situation for generations. For urban Native Americans, the jobless rate averages around 48 percent. In general, Indian Country is in a permanent depression even when the national economy is on the upswing.

But once again it seems the economy was just having another false start, as in the last couple of years, and now appears at the edge of falling off the economic cliff. I cannot but take wry satisfaction in a failing recovery, a recovery that bypasses Native American misery.

The above quoted statistics of Native unemployment are years old because reservations in particular and urban Native Americans in general, incredibly, have been purposely excluded from government employment data since 2005. To cite a not atypical example, South Dakota has nine reservations, with unemployment ranging from a "low" of 12 percent on one smaller reservation to 89 percent on the largest reservation. These figures were last compiled in 2005. South Dakota's overall unemployment rate is 4.7 percent, exclusive of reservations.

Native American joblessness is so high, it is off the charts. It is so staggering and is not compiled because to do so would be an additional stunning moral indictment of U.S. government treatment of Native Americans.

The last absurd excuse given by the Bureau of Labor Statistics for not collecting American Indian employment data was that there was no money in the government budget for such compilation.

This government attitude is highlighted by the fact that as far back as 1990, in statistical tables from the U.S. Bureau of Census that contained information on American Indians, African Americans, Asian Americans and others, the category "American Indian unemployed" contained, instead of numbers, the letters MD=Missing Data. No other population had such a classification. Again, this was a shocking, clumsy attempt to hide astronomical unemployment.

The position of the Obama administration to combat joblessness in American Indian communities and others of color is that an economic recovery will uplift all the jobless; a strong, robust economy will translate into jobs for all. This simply will not work due to the institutional racism endemic in American society. The very disturbing question is who always gets the lion's share of the jobs even when the economy is on the upswing? Whites have always received a disproportionate share of jobs.

To cite an example of who does not get the jobs: In early March, the mainstream media was touting apparent job gains, but noted that Latinos were being bypassed. The national jobless rate dropped to about 8.1 percent, but the Latino unemployment rate remained at 10.6 percent. The white jobless rate dropped to 7.9 percent. Incredibly, the media posed the question: Why the disparity? - and remarked that economists and labor experts also weren't sure.

More absurdity: the 'experts' subsequently stated they simply didn't know. Whites have always gotten the lion's share of employment. Without massive employment programs for communities of color, this will continue. After all, white Americans have for over 200 years had their own special "jobs programs" - racism. Communities of color, in particular those of Native Americans, need affirmative action jobs programs; otherwise, "economic recovery" will do little to remedy Native American joblessness.

"Red" Finns got their name because of their adherence to revolutionary working class Marxist ideology.

More and more people are asking me about Marxism.

This blog published by the Gus Hall Action Club did an excellent post about why the working class needs revolutionary ideology:

http://gushallactionclub.blogspot.com/2012/04/marxism-for-99-philosophy-is-stamped.html

Check it out.

Gus Hall, a Minnesota native, was among the most famous "Red" Finns.