Part 3: The Flaming, Red Hot Crisis at the GOP Scandal Factory

[This is the final part of this three part post.  Thanks for visiting!]

Part Three
of three parts

Health Care "Skull Duggery" Reaches Adulthood

Every single week since the Congressional "debate" on the Affordable Care Act began five years ago, mountains of cash -- on average about $1 Mn every seven days -- has flowed directly from the parasitic "health insurance" corporations and the "hard working" pharmaceutical manufacturers into an irritating collection of little street gang hit men in these illicit 501C-4s along with the express orders to discredit the bill with "everything they've got." 

As the result of this, we've had every sort of nightmare including health care rationing, death panels, economic euthanasia, enforced vaccinations, Washington politicians between you and your doctor and the homosexual agenda spewed at us relentlessly in an well orchestrated, well financed public relations campaign.

It was an everyday "career opportunity" for the mouth junk boys such as Beck, Limbaugh, Savage and Hannity.

The dutifully obedient corporatists on the Supreme Court did their part, too.  In the decision "legalizing" ObamaCare, the already heavily soiled Chief Justice painlessly inserted his own "poison pill" into the mix by declaring that the Affordable Care Act could, indeed, be legally financed by an "imposed tax."  That seemed innocuous enough at the time -- something appearing to be only a nondescript judicial detail -- but, now we can see that this was nothing less than the judicial insertion of another desperately concocted vulnerability to be exploited later to stop implementation of the program.

The money boys' almost phobic "Hail Mary" reaction in hastily fabricating the IRS scandal is full evidence that it was "now later," that is, that it was time to press the exploitation potential that their boy, Chief Justice Roberts, had so craftily laced into the decision like a terrorist grenade.  It may be more than innocent irony that while the favorite explosive device of terrorists is plastic C4 , the favorite corrupt money moving device of the anti-democracy oligarchs would be the 501 C-4 exemption clause.

Naturally, the IRS would be involved in financing the Affordable Care Act in a number of ways, but one important duty would be to review individual claims for the federal subsidy and authorize it for those citizens who met the bill's criteria.  The think tanks decided that the best way to undercut this process would be to discredit the IRS, hence the ridiculous 501C-4 scandal.

The mechanism the think tanks selected for this task was to embellish the "invasive" nature of gathering the information necessary to determine if individual citizens would qualify.  Predictably, this set the hill billies' hair on fire, and the chumpy news pundits couldn't get enough of it.

The think tanks and their obedient, domesticated 501C-4s had already invested literally billions of dollars into convincing the hill billies of the Republican base that the IRS was purely "Satanic big government."  MeanMesa can easily imagine an Affordable Care Act interviewer working to sign up eligible citizens facing a shot gun in the hands of a toothless, near sighted, overweight, crippled diabetic with no health care options but full of the propaganda.

MeanMesa visitors have already concluded long ago that the Republican Party would be left as nothing more than an untalented, castrated clown if the fear and distrust of its base were ever to be shaken.  Further, after the lunatic fringe of the party assiduously excluded one voting block after another following back room verdicts of ideological impurity during the campaign, the population of the Grand Old Party's faithful has fallen to a depressing all time low.

At the same time, the political cash available from the GOP's cynical, openly craven, billionaire owners has reached an all time high.

The self-inflicted damage which began as the Party's comical ideological witch trials has grown far worse since then.  While PEW reports that only 28% of American voters self-identify themselves as Republicans, 61% of that 28% want the future GOP to become even more conservative. [Read more.]

Only election crimes in Republican controlled states preserved the tea bag GOP's illegitimate death grip on the House of Representatives after the 2012 election.  As long as this remained no more than an incomprehensibly complex political subtlety, it enjoyed a certain synthetic immunity from wider political outrage, but that, it turns out, was temporary.  Even more low information voters are now having the nagging suspicion that "something's not quite right" with the old, previously settled, majority rule principle. 

A Tour of Republican Hell - 2013

The "hellish nature" of the present torment facing the oligarchs and their wholly owned Party derives primarily from the comparison of the "products of politics" and the "products of policy."  The first may be flamboyantly incendiary, but the latter have significantly more "staying power" with voters.  The carefully imaged picture of an American disaster which the oligarchs have invested so much to fabricate is now countered daily not by contradicting politics, but by unavoidable reality.  The ogre in the closet is the Republican record of governing, but, for Republicans, the "man eating monster" is the visible fact of the recovering country.

Everyone -- even the otherwise uninterested -- can see everything for themselves, that is, on their own -- without faux editorial assistance from the oligarchic echo chamber media.

The value of the stock market is stable at an all time record high.  Half of its current value was created during the Obama Presidency.  A respectable fraction of the 40% wealth lost by middle class Americans in the Republican fiasco of 2008 is being slowly restored.

Nationally, consumer confidence is climbing back to a workable level.  

There are regional housing markets with actual inventory shortages.  Home prices are slowly increasing [Read More.] throughout the bankster induced foreclosure wastelands.  New home construction is faltering back to reasonable levels.

Even after the suffocating House tea bag austerity tantrums vaporized 750,000 government jobs and Obama's jobs programs [Read more.], the overall unemployment figures still continue their torturous descent down to the 5% the US economy considers "normal."  On the down side, domestic labor costs have dropped so low that manufacturing businesses are dragging their plants back home from China to enjoy the low labor rates created by the GOP's wild austerity policies.  

The GOP's Nightmare (Image source)

The Federal budget deficit which exploded when Obama visibly added the un-financed Bush war costs is dropping in a repeat of the Clinton years.  While deficits were solidly perched in the trillions during the autocracy, Obama is expecting an astoundingly low deficit of $650 Bn this year.  The national debt -- the topic chosen to replace discussion of Republican jobs failures -- shows the results.

After a well lubricated beginning which promised "no real pain for anyone," the Republicans' economy wrecking austerity programs have begun to reach the base of the Party.  All across the nation confused hill billies and bigots are slowly realizing that their roads and bridges are collapsing, that their children are sitting in over packed public school classrooms and that the police and fire departments in their own towns are smaller and smaller.

Now that the dust has settled after the media onslaught of the earlier years of the Obama Administration, it turns out that the rabidly "free market" states with wall to wall Republican legislators and governors slicing and dicing general funds -- and services --  to "spur growth" and  "provide incentives" for their local gangs of "job creators" are being revealed as failed parasites desperately dependent on federal spending to sustain their horrible governance.

The Republican base with actual employment, most of whom are non-union wage earners, have been constantly tempted with the wild fantasy of joining the billionaire oligarchs who own the Party, but these same dreamers are now facing the toothache reality of rapidly descending wages, benefits and job security.  While these GOP voters listen to the relentless drum beat blaming liberals and Democrats -- contrary to fact -- for the debt, the annual budget deficits and the utterly lack luster recovery, their personal financial condition continues to decline.

What is good news for Americans is bad news for the Republican Party.  2014 just might be the worst mid term election in that unfortunate Party's history.

The Big Picture -- Taxing the Top 500

Diving Through the Talking Points

Anyone who watches the "non-editorial" portion of the corporate media's "news fraud" will hear a few often repeated phrases.  Of course, this "non-editorial" portion turns out to still be quite "editorial." 

In contrast, the "pure opinion" side of these broadcasts is always relegated to the "mouth junk" pundits, and this part travels under the legitimizing aura of "openly" being "editorial."  However, the rampant flow of twisted phrases in the "non-editorial" portion are of the most interest here.

Let's look at a few.

Perhaps the most egregious is the phrase "job creators."  It is a favorite foundation for the remnants of Reagan economic state fascism still clinging to the idea of "trickle down" economics where vast sums of tax money are given to the oligarchs to "inspire" them to "create jobs."

Neck and neck with this first phrase, we find "small businesses."  The context will be something along the lines of "small business job creators."  Did you know that engineering construction giant Bechtel is classed as  a "small business?"

MeanMesa visitors already know that this is a "wagon load of day old manure."  Like the annual Peanuts cartoon where Lucy jerks away the football at the last moment, we see a similar "episode" monthly on the larger scale of our national economy.  The oligarchs, constantly complaining about "job killing" regulation, repeat the old mantra which gaseously refers to "setting capitalism loose" as a prelude to restoring "prosperity."

You know, "prosperity" as it is described in the latest frog choking GOPCon booklet, "The Path to Prosperity."

The oligarchic meaning of "setting capitalism loose" actually has almost nothing to do with "unfettering the captains of industry."  In the current US context, "setting capitalism loose" means returning to a "wholly owned" Senate and issuing the order for more looting.

It's neither God's will for the devout nor an exciting, innocent coincidence that the top 500 US companies pay almost nothing in corporate income taxes.  While they are paying "next to nothing," they are complaining about a conveniently high, theoretical US tax rate of 35% -- which none of them actually pay.

Hiding the Corporate Easter Eggs

All this became even more brightly illuminated under the embarrassing light in a recent Congressional hearing where a favorite clutch of domestic "petrogarchs" were charged with making sense of 1.) billions in federal subsidies, 2.) $4/gallon gasoline and 3.) astronomical corporate profits of 35% and better for the 1st quarter of this year.  All the while, the grey haired capitalists on "the bench" continued to complain about the potential loss of their $3 Billion/ year subsidies and the "highest corporate tax rate in the world" which they don't actually pay.

However, not to be distracted by "peanuts" in the petrogarch looting scheme, MeanMesa is actually more concerned with some of the story which was left conveniently unmentioned in the hearings.

This is the part which returns to the previous use of the term "Reagan economic state fascism."  This is also the part of the story which extends even beyond the edges of the corporate petrogarch cess pool.

"Easter Egg-wise" there are three primary channels through which our federal general fund money now flows to the "captains of industry."  The subsidies which were the topic of the hearings represent only one of the three -- in fact, almost always the smallest of the three.

In order of magnitude, we see three, well established drain pipes through which US federal tax funds can descend into the pockets of folks like the unfairly targeted, long suffering "oil queens" who faced that hearing committee.

Subsidies

Tax Incentives

Tax Expenditures

Some Brief Definitions

Subsidies:

A subsidy amounts to an actual "check" on the Treasury which the Congress has directed to be paid to an enterprise -- usually to conduct some sort of business activity which is not profitable, and in which the enterprise would, otherwise, have no interest at all.  In most cases subsidies actually amount to the payment  when the government "hires" some company to complete a task which it would, otherwise, that is, without the subsidy, not do.

The mischief usually creeps into the scheme during the process of determining exactly what unmet necessity the government will pay for with the subsidy.  The corporations receiving the subsidy are selected on the basis of "who can perform this vitally necessary work the best among all the choices."  There is plenty of mischief there, too.

Tax Incentives:

These are usually encountered when a corporate "neighbor" needs to be bribed to place a plant in a particular community.  They amount to publicly financed roads, bridges, site development, sewer and water lines and so forth.

Without the tax incentives, the corresponding corporate gang threatens to build a potential corporate building project "somewhere else."  Local communities, already starved for the revenue which will come from such new jobs, are anxious to burden local tax payers with the bill to build all this stuff.

The balance between paying this "price" to get the plant and the jobs into a job-starved town and the income tax revenues collected from the new workers usually settles the question.  We will return to tax incentives after the definitions.

Tax Expenditures:

Tax expenditures are often called "corporate welfare."  To get a tax incentive, an enterprise must get Congress to simply lower its taxes.  We all know how that works.

This process of simply "lowering taxes" lies at the semantic foundation of the Reaganesque economic syllogism "If you want more of something lower the taxes on it.  If you want less of something, raise the taxes on it."

Based on this absolutely solid logical premise, the Congress lowers taxes on "things" that it wants "more of" and raises taxes on "things" it wants "less of."  In the "less of" column we find "things" such as abortions and cigarettes.  However, in the "more of" column we find things like health insurance costs for large companies, electric cars and solar panels, but also an amazingly large collection of all sorts of things -- usually things made by, you guessed it, the exact same people who make campaign contributions.  We will return to tax incentives in the next section.

From: Open Left --

Taking Aim At Tax Expenditures--

This Time I Say 'Bravo' To Michael Lind 

by Paul Rosenberg 

(read the article here. )

Why are tax expenditures so darned popular, anyway? (image source)

American poor people love tax expenditures, right? (image source)

 The data shown above is from 2007-2008.  Things have gotten worse since then.

The "Fascist Gimmick"

At first glance, all of this maneuvering may seem to be simply "business as usual," a result of our government's intervening to direct the economy in ways that "normal" free enterprise might otherwise neglect.  However, the sheer scope of the process strongly suggests otherwise.

The "fascism" we're talking about here has nothing to do with "death camps" or "attacking Russia."  Instead, what we see when we view this in the "big picture" context, is a massive case of illicit wealth redistribution to the top from everywhere else.  The "every where else" most likely includes you and me.

Tax Incentives:

Tax incentives allow free enterprise entities to force local communities to compete with each other by providing infrastructure at public expense.  The traditional role of free enterprise entities is to invest what is needed to start their plants and offices, accepting such costs as legitimate operating expenses.

If you want to build a plant or an office somewhere, you should have to plan on spending whatever it takes to get that done.  Such expenses become a part of your business plan.  The profits you hope to make after your investment starts to return should include paying for all these start up costs.

However, when you can get a local community to start paying for all of this under the threat that you will take your enterprise somewhere else, that local community becomes a "partner" in your enterprise -- except, it's not really a partner at all.  In fact, it is not only "not a partner," it remains a "hostage" even after your business is rolling along happily in the future.

The tax paying citizens in the community benefit from the jobs you have created and the revenue from taxing the income of your employees, but they have no say in the conduct of your business -- not at first or later.  The goal of the local government which  used to be looking after the needs of the community becomes split.  It must now look after the needs of your business -- starting with paying for all the roads, sewer and water lines, etc. but never being actually "paid back" for having financed any of them.

This process began in earnest during the Reagan years, and Republicans have kept it going at a greater and greater level since then.  It is "at the heart" of the exportation of jobs and factories to other countries where not only are labor rates lower, but locally financed tax incentives are even higher than here.

What had previously been "national socialism" has become "international socialism" with conservative American GOPCon "capitalists" at the helm.

Tax Expenditures:

When we turn our attention away from the "fascist" term to the "national socialism" term, we see the basis for the comment during the Bush bail out of banks and brokers.  "Capitalize the profits, but socialize the losses."

These wealth redistribution gimmicks amount to the same thing except that they are "pre-emptive."  They occur before the losses even have a chance to happen.  Further, especially in the case of tax expenditures, the money never reaches the Treasury so it never suffers from the public "outing" of the other instruments such as subsidies and tax incentives.

When we conclude that the cost of running the government is more or less stable, the prospect of enterprises "dodging" part or all of their tax burden means that the cost is being distributed to lower percentile tax payers.  We not only pay into the profit coffers of these giants when we buy their products, we also pay into them when we effectively pay their taxes.

A traditional "free enterprise" entity pays its own way and makes its profits when its sales revenue exceeds its expenses.  When part of those profits come from having us pay its taxes, the model becomes, well, much more shady.  In such cases, the government has stepped in, diverting our tax money to its private profit.  We pay the taxes, and the corporation moves what would have been its tax payments into the profit column.

Why would "our" government do something like that?

Easy.  It's no longer "our" government.

Campaign contributions to win elections.  

Lobbying jobs after losing elections.

The fascist part comes from the fact that once these oligarchic interests have successfully penetrated what would have otherwise been a representational democracy, the primary goal of the government becomes split between taking care of the needs of the country and taking care of the needs of the oligarchs.  The more complete the corrupting saturation becomes, the more "pressing" the needs of the oligarchs become and the less "pressing" the needs of the American population become.

Now that the country is essentially broke, we have to look for where the money actually went.  The figures are big ones.

In the next two years, we will "spend" $125 Billion on top of the $3 Trillion already "spent" on high income tax breaks.  We will "spend" $200 Billion a year to pay the interest on the money we "borrowed" to pay for the wars and tax breaks.  We will "spend" roughly $400 Billion per year on tax expenditures which have been written into our on-going tax codes by sympathetic Congressmen and Presidents in the past.

All this together would pay off all of the national debt in less than ten years.

Instead, GOPCons are trying to sell reductions in Social Security benefits and the destruction of Medicare as the "only way out" of the mess they have made.

What would be needed to make this happen?  American businesses who actually pay their own expenses before they start taking profit from their revenues and counting on us to "make up the difference."

The result of all this is what we have now -- a suffocating collection of businesses which are fundamentally unable to pay their own expenses while still making the outrageous profits their sponsors demand.  These "businesses" can neither establish themselves in the first place without onerous local tax incentives nor operate afterwards without generous tax expenditures.  The outright subsidies are little more than the "frosting on the cake."

It's no wonder that a quiet drift toward national socialism looks so appealing to these "captains of industry."

There is an election coming in 2012.

What Health Care Reform Looks Like From the Ground

A Letter to President Obama from Precinct 384

This quick note is about a serious difficulty we are having with Organizing for America’s (OFA) health care talking points.101

I am an “Obama soldier” from the campaign -- precinct 384, NE Albuquerque, neighborhood team 39. Naturally, I went to the new OFA office this morning after receiving last night’s phone call. I met the all the friendly, bright eyed, eager folks hunched over their laptops and picked up a copy of the canvassing material.

After looking through it, I am concerned that this effort is making the same mistakes that were made in the campaign -- at least, the same mistakes with respect to the precinct 384 “voter universe.” For 30%-40% of the voters in this precinct, the talking points are a “clear miss.” In fact, I suspect that they even go so far “off target” as to be insulting. This is too similar to an unfortunate repeat of what happened in the endless 2007 - 2008 Presidential campaign “slug fest” where the most persuasive campaign issues seemed to simply be “over our heads and over our pay grade.”

I’ll note the exact conflicts the “Three Principles”President Obama’s promotion plan presents in the real life situations of this constituency.

1. Reduce Health Care Costs
This constituency: They usually don’t pay for treatment. They wait until things get really serious, then they go to the ER and apply for “No Pay” treatment. That process is frustrating, uncertain, demeaning and time consuming. They suffer from all the subtle indignities of this process -- especially when they know that other people have actual health plans. They are totally ready to pay more taxes to get dependable care.

The emphasis on “keeping” your doctor means very little to my neighbors. They don’t have a doctor. They have probably never seen the same doctor more than once or twice. They are completely accustomed to taking what they can get. “Go to the Doctor,” to them, means packing up the family and waiting in the ER for 5 or 6 hours, then not having enough money for medicine until payday.

2. Allow Choice of Coverage and Doctor
This constituency: They have never made any choices at all so far. Period. No choices! Coverage to them means the “safety net.” They, frankly, don’t understand what “choosing a coverage” means. They have never had an employer provided insurance plan, although they may know people who have. A 21st Century version of "keep away."

3. Better Quality Health Care
This constituency: They have no way to make an opinion about health care quality aside from their memory of outcomes. They haven’t experienced enough of a variety of health care, that is, the variety that is implied in the talking points, to make a judgment. As for reducing the paperwork, they have never had health care other than the “No Pay” kind which is always chest deep in agonizing, belittling paperwork.

I’m not interested in starting a class war here, but the OFA material seems basically intent on doing just that. Precinct 384 contains an awful lot of voters who are simply put off by choice issues presented to them at this level. The choice the voters in this neighborhood have made is simply one in favor of improved access to health care.

We registered a lot of these people who had never voted before to elect the President. When we talked to them and approached them in a suitable way, they were completely ready to learn about the election politics and VOTE! However, the Presidential campaign had the same “over their heads” direction as this health care thing, and we could have failed to deliver this state if all this population remained “left out” in favor of a campaign targeted at more prosperous urbanites.

Precinct 384 voters have the same worries as most other Americans. They know that, in a well designed response to the grave damage done to the country during the autocracy, major investments in not only health care reform, but also in climate change, energy policy and educational resource allotment, will mean huge spending bills moving through the legislative process. In the past, they have seen every such possibility of actual progress being ruthlessly looted as it is “negotiated” into oatmeal in the Congress. Traditional hillbillies, crooks and neo-con bigots join forces with "bought and sold" Democrats, emerging from their dens to savage any good idea, that is, to extract every possible illegitimate advantage for their friends and campaign contributors.

About 1/3 of New Mexico is watching these health care developments while “looking up” from the very bottom of the heap. We are a poor state with lots of immigration, education and public service issues. Our neighborhood team made our own campaign literature for 2008 for just this reason. And -- this seemed to work well. Both the President and OFA must make more of an effort to include this constituency by focusing on a description the new system and what it will be like for Americans in this very real situation.

I was never much of a John Edwards fan, but he talked about “Two Americas.” He was right. In New Mexico we need “Two Campaigns” and some way to keep them pointed at the right constituencies. The neo-cons are already targeting the new Democratic Congressional delegation from New Mexico. We can’t let this slide back to where we were when the state went for Bush in 2004.

To President Obama: “Remember us! Tell about a plan that relates to our ‘on the ground’ reality. We support you now, and we will continue to support you, but we would like to be included in the debate!”

Oooh. Health Care and the Senate

Creeping Into Sensible Health Care

How to reform health care without lowering health industry corporate profits. Have we exaggerated how bad the Senate has actually become?99

The fact is simple enough. HEALTH CARE CAN BE REFORMED WITHOUT HURTING CORPORATE PROFITS! IT CAN! IT CAN! IT REALLY CAN! This is the extremely, extremely difficult, complex and complicated policy our Senate must create as it charts its course into Obama’s future plans. Right.

My goodness. These altruistic souls have already promised to lower health care costs by two trillion dollars in the next ten years. Oh, wait a minute. “Promises” from the health care corporations? Did they figure we were stupid or just not watching?

The durable remnant of the Obama Campaign’s millions of supporters is what is now called “Organizing for America.” Although that name seems to clearly communicate the theme of such an organization, MeanMesa suspects that a tedious redundancy is probably still relevant. First, what is the alternative? “Not Organizing for America?” Or, perhaps, “Organizing for Something Else Besides America?”

The last title, “Organizing for Something Else Besides America” pretty much describes exactly Obama’s health care plan is up against in the U.S. Senate. To assist MeanMesa visitors in their efforts to understand all the seemingly incomprehensible arguments, now flying fast and loose through the “wholly owned” reactionary media, this posting of Short Current Essays will be divided into four delicious, nutritious and conveniently packaged parts.

That is, this MeanMesa Post is divided into four sections for your more convenient reading.

Part One: Adjustments: Hybridizing Corporate Private Health Insurance to Sustain Profits While Avoiding Better Outcomes
Part Two: Service Agreement: Congratulations on the Purchase of Your New Senator
Part Three: A Paragon of Senatorial Representation: The Fabulous Frist Family
Part Four: Solutions: Since We’re Creeping, How About Creeping Here?

The motivations for this “continuing to beat a dead horse,” approach are two fold. First, the engine at the “Organizing for America” e-mail factory has requested that all Obama campaign supporters “talk up” the health care plan in the hope of frightening enough Senators out of the pockets of the health and pharmaceutical industry’s lobbyists long enough to possibly pass something. Second, the media blitz of lies and deceptions has actually migrated beyond its irritatingly traditional role of regurgitating Limbaugh/Hannity wet dreams about President Obama being 1.) a child molester, 2.) a cannibal, 3.) a serial killer, 4.) a socialist, 5.) a Nazi, 6.) the Antichrist, 7.) weak on defense, or, 8.) a frustrated, under privileged, young black man who has always dreamed of bossing around Wall Street Bankers and automobile CEO’s to outrageous lies -- MeanMesa certainly tried to think of some other, less inflammatory term -- carefully crafted by the psychologists at the PHARMA headquarters on K Street.

The media frenzy plods along pretending ownership of the full range of credibility from the “dirty shirt” network pundit’s (these would be the likes of the slinking, genius Krauthammmmers, et al.) “hair on fire threats” of a bankrupt nation (already bankrupt, thank you very much...) to the entirely objective interview with the “woman on the street,” that is, the woman who is usually busy with her antiabortion shot gun in between her church sessions about homosexuals.

Heh, heh, heh. Remember: the best way to prevent the Fed’s from “getting between you and your Doctor” is simply to not have a Doctor! After all, doctors, although quite useful when needed, can get incredibly expensive when one faces their bills without health insurance to help pay them.

So, now that the tone of this posting has been set with such exquisite cordiality, let’s waste no more words on introduction.

Part One: Adjustments: Hybridizing Corporate Private Health Insurance to Sustain Profits While Avoiding Better Outcomes and Lowering Costs

The “nice lady” reporting the “news” emphasizes that a “public option” would bankrupt the private insurance corporations. Breathlessly, she adds that the “public option” would also bankrupt all the American hospitals.

Well, duh! Does anybody think they haven't been doing their damnedest to bankrupt us?

According to her “public opinion polls,” “most Americans” would almost instantly opt for a public program, leaving the “take” for the health care monopoly sketchier and sketchier by the minute. Such a development would literally starve the usual “rich and well earned rewards” of the corporate parasites into nothing more than table crumbs when compared to the annual trillions they are presently able to extort. Their rapacious franchise controlling every detail of medical care was not simply an unanticipated serendipity as was the case with, say, last year’s $4.50 gallon gasoline.

No indeed.

In fact, far from the unanticipated serendipity of sudden monumental profits, their current wave of success and prosperity is actually a meticulously crafted structure of corruption and bribery. To get to this state required literally billions of dollars to be purloined from your health care premiums and transferred quietly as campaign contributions to U. S. Senators. And, of late, probably also to U. S. Presidents and their opportunistic staff of Viking wannabe’s. These skunks spent equal millions convincing us that these campaign contributions barely even existed at all and that our insurance premiums were almost entirely directed at improving care, a road weary tale which began to lose more and more credibility as we watched our health care outcomes descend every year while their profits exploded.

They even spent millions convincing us that all this success of theirs was well deserved, honest, free market capitalism. Buying and owning the protection of corrupt politicians has usually been considered "good for profits" but seldom "good business," hence, the insurance corporations' infatuation with the cheezey public relations side of their fraudulent business plan.

For example, during the recent autocracy, the “Secretary of Defense,” Mr. Rumsfeld, while he was defending the American public from the deadly anthrax threat just happened to be, at exactly the same time, a major stock holder in the very company which was producing the sole, over priced antibiotic which could treat it. By the way, for any MeanMesa visitors who might not already be familiar with the details of this dismal tale, the anthrax used in the assassination attempt on Senators Daschle and Leahy was refined to a military grade possible only in U.S. military production facilities. By sheer coincidence, these were the two Senators who could have blocked passage of the Constitution shredding Patriot Act, a legislative erectile fantasy of the unelected Vice President.

Read more about the anthrax terrorist attacks through this link:
Remembering the Anthrax Attacks
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/03/04/anthrax/

Oh well. This is about health care.

The “hybridizing” idea is presented as a pragmatic necessity. The chances of any bill which could even so much as “drop a bird’s tail feather” on the established corporate industry profits by instituting actual health coverage are nil to none. Bills like that simply can’t go through the Senate.

They could get through a Senate populated with Senators who were responsible to actual constituencies of informed voters, but this is not the case. An unpleasantly large number of Senators represent the exact sources of “campaign contributions,” and those “sources” just happen to be health care corporations. Their “contribution” checks are, generally, sandwiched between an equal number of “contribution checks” from oil companies and other public enemies. This explains not only why we have crappy health care, but also why we have the smallest alternative energy infrastructure in the industrial world. And so many gas guzzling dinosaurs that even the car companies finally went bankrupt.

Now, given this terrible dilemma, the PHARMA/Health Insurance lobbyists have generously settled for a “half-measure.” Half-measures to them are absolutely nothing else than the mythical “pot of gold” reputedly located at the end of a rainbow.

Any legislation with the, for them, ultra-stinky odor of being a “full-measure” must be immediately destroyed as “far too radical” and “way too damaging to the established corporate status quo.” After the “full measure” legislation has been properly destroyed by their fully owned media and when the “half-measure” legislation is all that is left on the table in our Senate -- ooop’s -- their Senate, they can appear as the horribly injured and disfigured victims of all rational proposals and go right to work looting the “half-measure.”

This is the case with health care reform in the Senate. The best we are allowed to promote at this time is a carefully crafted, hybridized prostitute of what already exists right now. The product of this line of reform is “pretty much the same” as the horrible monstrosity which got us all so interested in the first place.

The rancid Senators who are comforting this hybrid health care whore are not all Republicans. Senator Max Baucus, (see MeanMesa posting: "U.S. Senators Forced Into Frightening Health Risk,” -- follow the link to access within this blogspot --
http://meanmesa.blogspot.com/2009/05/u-s-senators-forced-into-frightening.html)
a Democrat from Montana, who managed to place himself in charge of the Senate hearings on the subject, categorically denied anyone not strictly in favor of “nursing the whore back to health” any participation in his hearings. Actual health care reform -- the kind Americans want after being gang raped by the health corporations for so long -- was not even so much as a “topic for discussion.”

The owners of the Senators have issued their marching orders. Reform? No. Super minor “tweeks” which are so insignificant that we can still add everything we wish to the new bill? Yes! This “setting of the stage” leads us directly into Part Two.

Part Two: Service Agreement: Congratulations on the Purchase of Your New Senator

Gee whiz. Why, oh why is it so difficult to get health care legislation through the Senate? A short story almost always helps understanding on such matters.

"Look, Honey. ‘K Street New and Used.’ Let’s go in and look at what they have. Park over there.” A young couple peers at the sign from their sedan.

“Yes, dear.” The husband answers dutifully.

“Howdy! The name’s Jack ‘the snake’ Quick. What can I show you two today? We’ve got some great units and, of course, they are all at the ‘K Street New and Used’ guaranteed best prices!” Obviously the lot salesman, a slick middle aged man approaches them from the office.

“Well, we’re shopping for a good used Health Insurance Senator. We need something dependable and not too stylish. What have you got?” The couple responds in eerie unison.

“Oh. Those would be in the next lot. All the units for sale here are pharmaceutical Senators. The Health Insurance models are all on the lot just on the other side of the office.” Salesman Quick motions to an adjacent lot.

“Wow. There are some pretty impressive Senators over here. Do you have any with previous Health Insurance experience? We were kinda’ looking for something fairly new.” The young couple is impressed with what they see.

“You bet! Although, I’ll have to tell you, sometimes the ones with lots of mileage are the best. They already know all the legislative tricks, and if they’ve been in the Senate for a while, they can really deliver the goods.” Jack “the snake” Quick courteously advises them.

“You mean that they’re better than the newer ones?” The young husband asked.

“Well, yes. The maintenance on the newer ones can really get up there -- especially if you need to get them reelected. Since none of them are particularly popular, it can take some real cash to get them into the Senate where they can really do a good job for you. What exactly did you two need? Something special, or just a basic package for defeating health care reform?” Now, knowing that they had taken the bait, Jack Quick politely began his questions.

“Jack, we’re just plain old insurance lobbyists. If we can get a good model at a decent price who can sabotage Health Insurance reform, we’ll be satisfied.” The young couple answered, again, both almost at one time.

“Well, at the very top of the line, I’ve got a ‘McCain’ over here for around a quarter million. On the other hand, I can offer you the Democrat in charge of Senate hearings on Health Care for a lot less, say plus or minus $180,000. That would the ‘The Baucus,” a sturdy, yet comfortable Montana Democrat.” Jack was at his best. He motioned expansively across the lot.

“Wow! A Democrat! And, that price is really in our ball park! Let’s take a look at ‘The Baucus.’” The young wife exclaimed. Jack smiled.

Top 10 Health Insurance Industry Contributions to Senators
McCain, John (R-AZ) $251,834
Cantor, Eric (R-VA) $113,850
McConnell, Mitch (R-KY) $200,200
Baucus, Max (D-MT) $183,750
Lieberman, Joe (I-CT) $101,400
Chambliss, Saxby (R-GA) $98,600
Collins, Susan (R-ME) $96,500
Kyl, John (R-AZ) $90,450
Warner, Mark (D-VA) $89,700
Hatch, Orrin (R-UT) $85,903
Nelson, Ben (D-NE) $83,300

Top 10 Health Insurance Industry Contributions to Congress
Camp, Dave (R-MI) $112,923
Pomeroy, Earl (D-ND) $104,500
Boehner, John (R-OH) $101,200
Deal, Nathan (R-GA) $100,000
Towns, Edolphus (D-NY) $87,750
Rogers, Mike (R-AL) $74,000
Blunt, Roy (R-MO) $72,800
Ryan, Paul (R-WI) $69,000
Tanner, John (D-TN) $68,500

(source: Consumer Watchdog: Health Insurers & Drug Companies Contributed $5.5 Million to Top 10 Senate and House Recipients Since 2005 http://news.prnewswire.com/DisplayReleaseContent.aspx?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/03-09-2009/0004985067&EDATE=)


There is another, similar table of top Senators and Representatives who have taken money from the pharmaceutical industry available at this same link.

Part Three: A Paragon of Senatorial Representation: The Fabulous Frist Family

No, no. Not the First Family. That would be the Obamas. We’re talking The Frist Family. We're not talking "The Hills Are Alive!"

Senator Bill Frist became the Senate Majority Leader during the autocracy. The old Majority Leader, Trent Lott (R-MS) had made a horrendous racist gaff at Strom Thurmond’s going away party. All of Washington was packed brim to brim with corrupt, reactionary Republicans in the House, Senate, the White House and the Supreme Court, but Lott’s crack was too dangerously racist even for them. In about 2002, the autocrat’s White House counsel had finally noticed that not all Americans were Southern bigots, and wisely replaced the old bigot, Senator Lott, with the new bigot, Senator Bill Frist. Once that was a fait de accompli, the meat handed sabotage of health care and the incredible financial dynasty of the Frist Family was set to move ahead without hindrance.

A laborious recounting of the precise details of the fraud will simply be too much. Instead, MeanMesa offers direct quotations (shown in sienna colored text) from two very well written articles. Both were originally published during the early years of the Bush autocracy, and, consistent with the general policy of deceit and deception prevailing at that time, we are supposed to have completely forgotten all about them by now.

All of this is presented here in hopes of setting the tone for a better understanding of how unimaginably corrupt the main players in the Senate really are. Yes, you have glanced at the “pay bill” lists in Part Two, but the dismal history of The Frist Family can add yet another dimension to the corruption which was encouraged to completely saturate every opportunity to fleece U. S. taxpayers.

All of this is quite relevant to the topic of this post. If there were only a few outrageous skunks sucking health insurance lobbyists’ cash under the door jam, solving our health insurance nightmare might be no more than a good, quick housecleaning. However, when we stare blankly at the following two stories, we can begin to understand why:

1. single payer is off the table
2. Obama has been reduced to trying to get even the most modest health care scraps through Congress, and,
3. the future of health care reform seems to encounter one obstacle after another.

The first of the two articles was published by John Nichols in November of 2006. The part reproduced here deals with Senator Frist’s role in sabotaging all possible reforms to the health care insurance industry long enough for his family to make billions of dollars profit from their private hospital company. The article, in its entirety, is available through the link provided. The remainder of it deals primarily with the Senator’s ugly self-embarrassment while diagnosing Terri Schaivo from the floor of the Senate and his gaseous, ineffective attempts to lie the unelected President out of the mess on 911.

In any event, take a moment, read the article and meet Senator Frist!

(source: The Nation magazine -- http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat/144105)
Farewell to Senator Bill Frist, R-Frist Family
posted by John Nichols on 11/29/2006 @ 7:30pm

It is too bad that outgoing Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tennessee, had decided not to seek the Republican presidential nomination in 2OO6.

It would have been entertaining to watch this sorry excuse for a senator try and explain a political journey that dead ended when the physician-turned-legislator diagnosed brain-damaged Terry Schaivo via videotape -- producing an assessment of her condition that completely contradicted that of doctors who had actually examined her.

The storm that followed his intervention in the Schaivo case represented the only instance in which most Americans actually noticed that Frist was one of the nation's most powerful political leaders.

After a number of earlier missteps, Frist had tended to avoid the limelight because he never did very well when he was in it --as the Schaivo fiasco so potently illustrated -- and because his primary purpose in the Senate, that of enriching his already wealthy family, was not exactly the sort of thing that politicians brag about.

The wealthy doctor ran for the Senate in 1994 with a simple mission: to prevent health care reforms that might pose a threat to his family's stake in Columbia/HCA, the nation's leading owner of hospitals. There was never going to be anything honorable about his service, but nothing all that embarrassing in a Washington that welcomes self-serving senators with open arms.

For almost a decade, Frist was a comfortably forgettable legislator -- a good hair, good suit, bad politics man of the Senate. Then, former Senate Majority Leader and soon-to-be Senate Minority Whip Trent Lott, R-Mississippi, went all segregationist at States Rights Party presidential candidate Strom Thurmond's going-away party in 2002. The Bush administration needed another prissy southerner to ride herd on the Senate. Frist fit the bill, moved into the nice office and became a comfortably forgettable Senate Majority Leader.

With the Republican-controlled Congress rendered irrelevant by its complete subservience to the Bush administration's political agenda, Frist quietly went back to the business of protecting the family business.

Things got seriously dicey for Frist only in the presidential election year of 2OO4, when the Bush administration found itself short on defenders. Everyone seemed to be turning state's evidence on the president. The ex-Secretary of the Treasury, the former Senior Director for Combating Terrorism on the National Security Council Staff and, now, the former counter terrorism chief in the Bush and Clinton White Houses had all come forward to suggest that Bush and Vice President Cheney really had missed the point of the war of terrorism -- badly. Suddenly, Americans were waking up to the fact that the rest of the world already knew: Iraq was not tied to al-Qaeda, had no weapons of mass destruction and posed no serious threat to the United States or its neighbors at the time that the administration committed this country to the course of quagmire.

The administration had few credible spokespeople left. The White House couldn't send Bush out in his "Mission Accomplished" flight suit. Vice President Dick Cheney was still trying to explain that Halliburton really hadn't set new standards for war profiteering. And then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice was having a very hard time explaining that she really, really, really did know what al-Qaeda was before counter terrorism czar Richard Clarke explained it to her.

The administration needed a Spiro Agnew to go out and start calling people names. And Bill Frist became, for a brief but not exactly shining moment in the spring of 2OO4, the White House's defender-in-chief.

The majority leader took to the floor of the Senate to denounce Clarke. "Mr. Clarke makes the outrageous charge that the Bush Administration, in its first seven months in office, failed to adequately address the threat posed by Osama bin Laden," Frist began. "I am troubled by these charges. I am equally troubled that someone would sell a book, trading on their former service as a government insider with access to our nation's most valuable intelligence, in order to profit from the suffering that this nation endured on September 11, 2001."

That was rich, considering the fact that Frist's Senate service had been about nothing so much as profiting from the suffering of the nation. By blocking needed health care reforms, pushing for tort reforms that would limit malpractice pay outs and supporting moves to privatize Medicare, Frist pumped up his family's fortunes at the expense of Americans who lacked access to health care. As Mother Jones explained, "Some companies hire lobbyists to work Congress. Some have their executives lobby directly. But Tennessee's Frist family, the founders of Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corp., the nation's largest hospital conglomerate, has taken it a step further: They sent an heir to the Senate. And there, with disturbingly little controversy, Republican Sen. Bill Frist has cosponsored bills that may allow his family's company to profit from the ongoing privatization of Medicare."

The Frists fared well during the senator's two terms. An $800-million stake in HCA that his father and brother had at the time Frist was elected in 1994 shot up in value over the decade that followed. Frist's brother, Thomas, rose steadily on the Forbes magazine list of the world's richest people in recent years. In 2003, Forbes estimated that Thomas Frist Jr. was worth $1.5 billion. According to Forbes: "source: health care."

So Bill Frist certainly knew a thing or two about profiteering from human misery.

Of course, when he attacked Clarke, Frist wasn't really concerned about September 11 suffering. He was simply looking for any way to discredit one of the few members of the Bush administration who had tried to take terrorist threats seriously. The problem with Frist's attack was that Clarke had already made a commitment to donate substantial portions of the earnings from his book, "Against All Enemies," to the families of the 9/11 dead and to the widows and orphans of Special Forces troops who died in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Oops.

Frist didn't just come off as a hypocrite, he looked like a fool. But he looked like an even bigger fool when, in an attempt to claim Clarke had lied to Congress, Frist demanded that transcripts of Clarke' 2002 congressional testimony to be declassified. Clarke's response? "I would welcome it being declassified But not just a little line here and there -- let's declassify all six hours of my testimony." Then, Clarke added, "Let's declassify that memo I sent on January 25. And let's declassify the national security directive that Dr. Rice's committee approved nine months later, on September 4. And let's see if there's any difference between those two, because there isn't. Let's go further. The White House is now selectively finding my e-mails, which I would have assumed are covered by some privacy regulations, and selectively leaking them to the press. Let's take all of my e-mails and memos that I sent to the national security adviser and her deputy from January 20 to September 11, and let's declassify all of it."

Suitably shot down, Frist then took to defending Condoleezza Rice's refusal to testify in public and under oath before the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United State -- only to have the administration decide to have her testify.

It was at that point that Frist began to recognize that he was not exactly ready for the political prime-time.

Before the Clarke catastrophe, there had been talk that Frist might replace Dick Cheney if the Bush political team decided to force the vice president off the 2004 ticket -- an admittedly dubious prospect, as Cheney remained firmly in charge both of the policy and political operations at the White House. After Frist's flip out, however, even Republican loyalists started asking whether the senator was good for anything other than taking care of the family's health care investments.

A year later, with his Schaivo diagnosis, whatever credibility his medical degree might have given Frist was gone.

When he decided not to seek reelection in 2OO6, no one was surprised, or particularly upset.

When he decided not to seek the party's presidential nomination in 2OO8, Republicans breathed a sigh of relief.

After 12 years of political malpractice, Dr. Frist is retiring to the obscurity he so richly deserves -- unless, of course, ethics investigators take an interest in how his family's fortunes rose during an otherwise undistinguished Senate tenure.

The second article (also posted in sienna text color) was originally published by Doug Ireland in the Los Angeles News, early in 2003. Although a stirring account of Senator Frist’s Senatorial Business Practices, it “fleshes out” just how outrageous things had become under the protective Bush autocracy.

Of course, we taxpayers were supposed to have also forgotten this nasty little piece of history long ago.

(source:www.laweekly.com/ink/03/08/news-ireland.php)
The Bad Doctor
Bill Frist’s long record of corporate vices
Doug Ireland
Published on January 16, 2003

While TV gushed last week over the Republicans’ new Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, intervening in a traffic accident, portraying the former heart surgeon as a “Good Samaritan,” in truth the GOP has simply replaced a racist with a corporate crook.

Frist was born rich, and got richer -- thanks to massive criminal fraud by the family business. The basis of the Frist family fortune is HCA Inc. (Hospital Corporation of America), the largest for-profit hospital chain in the country, which was founded by Frist‘s father and brother. And, just as Karl Rove was engineering the scuttling of Trent Lott and the elevation of Frist, the Bush Justice Department suddenly ended a near-decade long federal investigation into how HCA for years had defrauded Medicaid, Medicare and Tricare (the federal program that covers the military and their families), giving the greedy healthcare behemoth’s executives a sweetheart settlement that kept them out of the can.

The government‘s case was that HCA kept two sets of books and fraudulently over billed the government. The deal meant that HCA agreed to pay the government $631 million for its lucrative scams -- which, on top of previous fines, brought the total government penalties against the healthcare conglomerate to a whopping $1.7 billion, the largest fraud settlement in history, breaking the old record set by Drexel Burnham.

The deal also meant that HCA can continue to participate in Medicare. And, as part of the Bushies’ deal shutting down what Deputy Assistant FBI Director Thomas Kubic called “one of the FBI‘s highest-priority white-collar crime investigations,” no criminal charges were brought against the top HCA execs who presided over the illegal bilking of federal programs designed to aid the poor -- and that includes Senator Frist’s brother, Thomas, HCA‘s former CEO (and current director), who’s been described by Forbes magazine as “one of the richest men in America,” with a personal fortune estimated at close to $2 billion.

What did HCA do? It inflated its expenses and billed the government for the overrun; it billed the government for services ineligible for reimbursement (like advertising and marketing costs). HCA violated both law and medical ethics when, as Forbes put it, “the company increased Medicare billings by exaggerating the seriousness of the illnesses they were treating. It also granted doctors partnerships in a company hospitals as a kickback for the doctors‘ referring patients to HCA. In addition, it gave doctors ’loans‘ that were never expected to be paid back, free rent, free office furniture -- and free drugs from hospital pharmacies.”

This is the ethical climate that reigned in the Frist family’s money machine. In an unguarded moment, Senator Frist told the Boston Globe that conversations with his doctor father about the family calling were like “benign versions of the Godfather and Michael Corleone.” Apparently the senator considers defrauding the government “benign.” So too does the Bush White House, which dictated the Justice Department deal with HCA that let the crooks escape jail just as Frist was being anointed the Senate‘s majority leader. A pure coincidence in timing, of course.

The senator has always claimed no current connection to HCA because the $26 million he and his wife hold in the company’s stock is in a so-called “blind trust.” But it was the family‘s dirty money that bought Frist a place in the Senate. In 1994, Frist -- who’d never bothered to vote before first running for the Senate that year -- spent some $3.4 million of his personal fortune to buy the seat from Tennessee (HCA‘s headquarters) that he now occupies. Moreover, “In the Senate, Frist has used his influence to further HCA’s cause by stopping a strong patients‘ bill of rights, gridlocking a mandatory Medicare prescription-drug benefit, and promoting caps on damages for victims who sue negligent hospitals like HCA’s,” points out Jamie Court, executive director of the Santa Monica--based Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights, who adds, “The Senate should not replace a racist with a principal backer of one of the largest corporate swindles ever perpetrated against the American public. If Frist was a patriot first, he would have sold his HCA stock long ago.”

But Frist‘s pandering to the lobbyists of the voracious healthcare industry knows no bounds. “Frist isn’t the senator from Tennessee -- he‘s the senator from the state of Health Care Industry Influence -- he’s gotten more than $2 million from the healthcare sector, giving him the dubious distinction of raising more cash from healthcare interests than 98 percent of his colleagues,” says Nick Nyhart, executive director of Public Campaign.

Consider the special servicing he gave to pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly. In another example of his “patriotism,” Frist engineered the insertion into the Homeland Security bill of a provision that would protect Eli Lilly from lawsuits over Thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative used in its vaccines. Thousands of lawsuits have been filed against Lilly by parents who believe Thimerosal caused autism and other neurological maladies in their kids. The Frist-authored rider shields Lilly by forcing those lawsuits into a special “vaccine court,” where they can be easily scuttled, potentially saving Lilly hundreds of millions. The pharmaceutical industry was the largest single contributor to the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee that Frist chaired, ladling out some $4 million -- and Lilly was the single biggest contributor to the GOP from that industry, having given $1.6 million in the last election cycle, 79 percent of it to Republicans.

Now, we are getting somewhere. The voices in the Senate which repeat and repeat that effective health care insurance reform is “not on the table” have their own history. Please don’t be caught presuming that most of them are honorable, well intentioned elected public servants. They aren’t. They have every intention of ushering another decade of their parasitic masters’ uncontrollable avarice, a savage, unchecked greed that will drain your check books, leave you with expensive insurance policies which won’t cover whatever kills you and just steams on ahead, endlessly and relentlessly converting your misery into corporate profits.

Part Four: Solutions: Since We’re Creeping, How About Creeping Here?

Patient MeanMesa visitor! Even after all this negativity (“Not my fault! They did it!"), there remains the traditional MeanMesa optimism to always try to include some sort of solution to the dreary problems we face. In keeping with that positive ambition, consider the following possible solution to, at least, some of the health care insurance problem.

Instead of the faltering, unending, neurotic placebos being bandied about by the Senate as they “divvy up” our health care money this way and that, always trying to conjure up some split which will divide all the trillions we spend into palatable chunks of “profit,” let’s dare to focus on dividing the care rather than the money for a moment. There may actually be a solution, so, here we go!

Start with a list of all the things that the insurers (allegedly) presently reimburse. The list would include all sorts of medical maladies from appendicitis to ingrown toe nails. Once the list was completed, and, by the way, the things on the list have to be medical expenses that our contemporary private insurance companies actually pay for -- not pretend things that they say they will pay for and then don’t -- divide the sicknesses.

On one side of the list will be the sicknesses that the new Single Payer/Public Option system will pay for, and on the other side will be the sicknesses that the private insurance companies agree to continue to cover. Let the government program “scoop up” the least profitable among all the medical problems Americans have. Reserve the remainder for the private insurance companies.

A vast amount of our current bills would be transferred to a “non-Vampire” public program, enjoying all the not-for-profit cost savings currently limited only to Medicare (although the VA has a few, too) Prices should drop immediately. Medicare spends around 6% of its total reimbursement on administration. Private insurance companies extract around 30% for their wretched, forest gobbling administration and, of course, their sacred profits.

After the Great Divide has been accomplished, we can still continue to move toward a rational health care insurance plan, administered by our government (note the word “our”) and paid for by tax money. However, instead of scrapping with these “greed monkeys” for every nut and bolt, we can commence to debate about the list! We can avoid all their crooked little “crumb” schemes and negotiate the transfer of more and more illnesses from their list to ours (note the word “ours”)!

As the matter became more and more of a question of who will cover what, the purchase price of a friendly Senator would get lower and lower, maybe even disappearing entirely with federally funded campaigns. Monumental insults such as Senator Frist would become a thing of the past.

Best of all, the “split ticket” approach might mollify the Senators we have right now long enough to a.) get the health care reform started in a big way, and b.) set the stage for finally getting rid of all these crooks who have already long ago sold their souls.

Good riddance, and GOOD HEALTH!

Last election, we spoke to the Republicans. In the next election, we must speak to the incumbents. We will be amazed when we see some of our taxes begin producing improvements in our lives.