Mandate Madness

If you lived under a rock you would be one of the few people who would not be aware that the controversial healthcare bill dubbed "Obamacare" will be decided tomorrow. The right wing heritage foundation hatched plan ripped from Mitt Romney (who, like a teenager when caught with a porno by his dad) Has consistently ran away from the national version of his Massachusetts plan dubbed "Romneycare" while screaming "It's not mine, honest!" Bitch please.

The fate of this plan is now in the supreme koch (jeez I did it again) I mean, court. Now there is a good chance this thing could get struck down, at least in part. They could keep parts of it and get rid of the mandate, which in my opinion would be acceptable. Or they could scrap it all together. All in all the law is actually much better than what we have. Which in my case is nothing, I am uninsured and lucky enough to be healthy, but health doesn't always last. When I look at those arguing against healthcare reform of any kind, you see a lot of smug healthy 20-30 somethings who are consistently spouting the word socialism at you (as well as covering you with spittle) and telling me that health care is not a right. You've read this right, health care, the ability to live your live healthily, is not a right. This boggles my fucking mind. Maybe I'm missing something here but the way I see is that you get the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. You can't live if you die from sickness, you can't be free if you're a slave to medical bills that you can't pay because you happened to get sick or injured. Lastly you can't be happy if you're ill and can't see a doctor because you only had enough money to pay the rent. What am I missing?

I get pretty fired up when I hear the word socialism like it's the end of the world. We have things in the country that you could only get from socialism. Like roads and bridges, and schools. Unlike the wealthy most of us went to public schools, which gave us a basic education that allowed us to learn the basic skills we needed to either go to college, start a business, or jump into the workforce as a laborer. You will not see a private company build a road, unless it had a toll booth. Simply because companies are there to make profit. That's great, I love capitalism. Profit is a good thing, hard days work for a days pay. Socialism is also good too, when paired with capitalism. I am a big believer in balance, you can't have pure capitalism because you concentrate too much wealth at the top and the bottom falls out. Not to mention you would end up with corporate rule, wage slavery, etc. Pure socialism doesn't work either, because it could lead to authoritarianism. We need balance, we are too much on the corporatist side of the fence, workers rights are being eroded, corporations are making massive profits at the expense of wages for everyone, our government is bought by those with money who have skewed the rules in favor of the most wealthy and most powerful. It has to stop!

I seem to have went on a tangent there, back to the ACA. There are really good things in the ACA, like coverage for preexisting conditions, not kicking someone off their plan if they get sick, and keeping kids on their insurance until they're 26. Those are just a couple of the good things in this plan, I urge everyone to actually look into the plan before you make a judgment and cheer the death of a bill that actually might help you.

By the way, if they strike down the law, It is my hope that we get a single payer healthcare law, that is actually what I really want, get those insurance companies out!

http://www.healthcare.gov/law/timeline/full.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/individual-mandate-101-what-it-is-why-it-matters/2011/08/25/gIQAhPzCeS_blog.html

The Supreme Court screws us again.

As anyone who has been following the news knows, last Thursday the supreme court ruled once again in favor of corruption also known as Citizens United. The ruling, on party lines basically said that unions had to ask their members if they wanted their dues to be used for political campaigns. That's not the part that really bothers me, (I'd be happy if the corporations had to do the same) No the part that is egregious is the fact that the court did NOT revisit citizens united. Cenk Uygur of the Young Turks, does a great job lambasting the supreme sellouts on the bench during his show.

 As for the unions, I was part of a union in my early 20's, best job I ever had, decent pay, good benefits and I didn't kill myself at work every day. This ruling by the Supreme koch, I mean court, will further weaken union power in politics, which is already at historic lows. I could post charts and graphs to corroborate these facts but my guess is that anyone who reads this blog most likely has already seen the myriad of charts showing how the decline of unions has led to the decline of the middle class and the decline of the middle class is due to the decline of actual progressives in office who stand for working people.

So here we have the problem. The highest court in the land is being dominated by ideologues. What do we do? Well there's the obvious choice, vote Obama for another term and most likely he'll appoint a more liberal justice. Sounds great, but how well can Obama do against the tide of right wing money that is going to hit him like a surfer against a tsunami? No one really knows. That's not to say Obama can't raise money, his biggest strength is fundraising, which is sad because if he was half as good at governing as he is fundraising maybe America would be doing better. I know there are people who are going to say "now wait a minute Mr. blogger man, but those tea partiers in the house and senate wont let Obama do anything!" True, but he had a stretch of time where he did have control of the house, sure the senate wasn't filibuster proof but if he had fought, used the bully pulpit more, explained his vision to the American people instead of  always reaching out to the republicans, maybe this whole tea party thing might not have happened and we might have had real reform. If Obama even wanted reform in the first place.

I voted for Obama in 2008, I will most likely vote for him again in November, simply because, Romney would be an absolute disaster for everyone who is not a millionaire, and because he will be able to appoint a justice on the supreme court. Presidents come and go and change at the most every 8 years, but it's the court that is really at stake. If liberals can take back the court, they could revisit citizens united. I may be too optimistic. The only other option to get rid of this horrible auction of our government is to support one of the many amendment proposals to get money out of politics. There's Wolf-Pac http://www.wolf-pac.com/, there is Bernie Sanders who proposed S.J. Res 33 http://www.opencongress.org/bill/112-sj33/show . There is Dylan Ratigans get money out campaign. http://getmoneyout.com/ and hopefully many more to come. 

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This is a progressive political blog. My blog will contain my commentary on the different political news stories of the day as well as the 2012 election and beyond. I take all ownership over my opinions and will express my first amendment rights as any American should.