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Lessig's belief, and it's one that I share, is that the only way to stop the madness is to take the money out of politics. Unfortunately, thanks to some whacky SC decisions, that will require a constitutional amendment. And because Congress is highly unlikely to cut off its own money supply, it will have to come up through the states. That's also quite improblable, but maybe not impossible. This is one thing that liberals, conservatives, libertarians, and everyone in between should be able to agree on.
You realize health care reform has been on the back burner since I've been alive, some 53+ years. Putting it on the back burner, especially if republicans are elected means no reform at all. And certianly not UHC. If the issue matters to you at all, you vote for people likley to move it forward and not backward. This redorm is not perfect, far from it, but moving backward does not help in any way. Improve it, work to make the proer changes, but move it forward.
BTW, proper healthcare reform can help the economy. If you really want to help business, have UHC and remove it from the work place.
You know, sometimes I really wonder if those on the Right who are in favor of repealling ObamaCare truly know how deep the underhandedness goes with the Republican party's strongarming, bullying and manipulation on the health care reform front. I've just begun reading the book, "The Big Con," and it gives a very strong inditement of the Republican party on their efforts to kill health care reform during the Clinton era!
From pages 54 and 55 on how Republican party insiders pressured business lobbyist to change their position from supporting HillaryCare to denouncing it:
And yet...corporate power in Washington [DC] was still not fully realized. At the beginning of Bill Clinton's presidency, K Street was larger than ever in its physical size and scope, but its ideological and operational unity had deteriorated. Many businessmen noted that Clinton was not terribly liberal by the standards of the time - he favored expanded free trade and deficit reduction - and consider him the sort of Democrat that could live with.
But that moment in the early 1990s turned out to be a mere pause at the foot of an ascent just as steep as the one that occurred during the 1970s. And the episode that set off this next revolution in the role of business in government was Clinton's efforts to remake the health care system. At the time, health care reform seemed an unlikely candidate to spark a business backlash. Everybody assumed some kind of major health reform would pass. Solid majorities of the public said they favored overhauling health care in general and like the Clinton plan in particular. Business not only reconciled itself to reform but for the most part actively favord it, since skyrocking health care costs were, after all, eating away at profit margins. At the outset of Clinton's first term, the giant of the business lobby - the Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable, and the National Association of Manufacturers - all favored universal health care.
In due time, however, business turned sharply against this reform - but not because its interests were under attack. It did so because conservatives demanded it. Republicans, for both partisan and ideological reasons, wanted to kill health care reform and were enraged at business's conciliatory posture. The conservative activist Grover Norquist began convening a weekly meeting of business lobbyists opposed to health care (mostly representing small businesses, which for the most part did not insure their workers and did not want to start) along with conservative groups like the National Rifle Association and right-leaning pundits. These stragegy sessions produced, among other things, a concerted effort to pressure business lobbies to withdraw their supoprt for reform. The conservatives denounced groups like the Chamber of Commerce as a sellout to big government and disseminated their attacks through talk radio, taped television sports, and Wall Street Journal editorials. Congressional Republicans boycotted a Chamber awards ceremony and threatened to ignore Chamber lobbying on other issues. Under this pressure, the Chamber reversed itself, and corporate support for health care reform collapsed.
Footnote 18 from The Big Con: "Right in the Middle Of the Revolution; Activist Rises to Influence In Conservative Movement," Washington Post article dated September 4, 1995
With this backdrop in history, does anyone honestly believe that should any of the GOP presidential hopefuls get into the White House they'd replace health care reform with anything meaningful if anything at all? Everyone one of them are in Grover Norquist's back pocket; if not his then some other business lobby holds sway over them. Think of all the campaign financing Mitt Romney alone as received not from average citizens but from corporations and SuperPACs. Not one has the American people's interest at heart - except maybe Ron Paul, but his economic and foreign policy agendi are so radical I'd be terribly afraid to support him.
My point here is very simple, folks: If conservative activist led by Grover Norquist have been able to manipulate the Republican party into doing what he wants as opposed to doing what's in the best interest of the country, why would you support any of them who'd keep in place the same policies that got this country in the position its in now? The rhetoric we're hearing now is truly a rehash of the same BS that came out of the Depression era, as well as the Clinton era. All Republicans have done is dust off the old playbooks and found ways to :spin: the arguments anew. They don't offer anything of real substance.
To that, I thank Conservative for giving me the best advice I've received since joining this forum. I stopped reading liesurely SCI-FI novels and picked up a few books that tell the real story of our American politic. If more people took the time to learn the truth behind how America's been hijacked by crony capitalism from the Right for the last 30 years folks would likely never vote Republican again.
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