Middle America needs to get a grasp on corporate greed, and recognize it as the modern day King George. Two of President Obama’s major initiatives, Health Care Reform and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act will fare much better if the working class skeptics see the role corporate greed plays in both issues.
Right wing media fear mongers have convinced Joe Sixpack and his buddies that their enemy in health care is the public option. They believe it will raise costs and lead to socialism, which will take away all of their money and freedom. They fail to look at the fact that their health care benefits have cost more and provided less at the hands of greedy private monopolistic insurance companies for years. Even with the threat of a public option on the table, the insurers are still unsympathetic to small businesses that would like to but cannot afford to supply their employees with decent health insurance. Greed has prompted insurance companies to favor their own profits over the services they provide to small businesses and consumers.
Similarly, polls indicate that Middle America feels the Recovery Act is failing to produce jobs, that it is costing money for no gain. Yet, there is gain; businesses are doing better. But the businesses are keeping the better for themselves. Despite the recent paths to economic recovery, employers are not willing to hire new employees. Current employees are often working longer for less in order to keep the jobs they have. The gloomy outlook in the job market is a result of reluctant employers rather than a failed stimulus package. Greed once again prompts businesses to favor their own corporate security over the well being of their employees and the people of America.
It is naïve to think we can rely on business to rescue us out of the mess they put us in to begin with. We need tea parties that put blame where blame is due: tea parties aimed at right wing legislators and their business cronies who exert their tyranny against the American public. Tell them we want a public option now, one that will reign in corporate greed in the health insurance industry. Tell them we want sanctions now against businesses and banks that have failed to use Recovery Act money to provide jobs and loans to small businesses. This is our time, our chance to legislate against corporate greed and for some financial fairness in our society. Let’s not lose it.
Jobs are always the last part of a recovery, and the jobs data out now suggests we'll be back to positive growth in the new year. Really, the thing we all need is sustained high growth to get us back under 9% unemployment by September 2010. A "v-shaped" recession is always preferable.
ReplyDeleteI certainly share this viewpoint. Corporate America has been acting badly for a long time. A comment I left several posts ago is apropos here:
ReplyDelete" "Free markets" are a myth. All sloganeering about government getting out of the way to let the wisdom of "laissez-faire" prevail ... is bunk.
Government subsidizes corporations and advances their interests on all levels. Corporations demand protection from competition, demand assurances that make business conditions safe and predictable for themselves, and demand intervention in the form of tax dollars when times are bad (but not for hard-pressed citizens who are forced to shoulder all burdens and hardships).
Globalization has turned corporations into sovereign entities that are no longer beholding to their government, their people, or their customers. Corporations push trade deals and other favors that make it easier for them to dominate world economies and dominate markets without having any obligations to their country or its people.
Globalization has killed ethics and morality. American style capitalism has turned into a pernicious evil as despicable and oppressive as any.
This myth of "free markets" is perpetuated by our news media, the PR industry, and our political culture that creates the "ILLUSION" that corporate culture is benevolent, rational, necessary, and desirable.
That is why there is now a total disconnect between Wall Street and Main Street."
Freedom itself is a myth. They keep telling us that we have it, that we are the only ones who have it as we slide further and further toward corporate feudalism.
ReplyDeleteObama's already being tied down like Gulliver and we don't have a chance.
The problem is that our government practices socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor. VP Biden that that truth slip during his recent daily show interview. Still he defended the bank bailouts, because without them there would have been a depression (his reasoning).
ReplyDeleteHe was right, but didn't mention that there was another way we could have gone about accomplishing that goal... Nationalize the banks and fire all the thieving CEOs. Of course the Congress would have never gone for that, because they're all bought and paid for by the same corporations and CEOs to which the billions were handed out.
So our VP and President have no choice but to defend the bailouts that bush signed off on when he was still president. And the Republicans get to attack him for it even though McCain would have done virtually the same thing.
McCain did mention during the campaign bailing out the HOMEOWNERS, which would have been much more effective (who knows if he actually would have followed though with that). Biden, when asked why we didn't go that route (by Stewart), said, "we're doing some of that now".
SOME of that now? And still no bill re-regulating Wall Street?
I would like to pose this question to any Senator worth their salt (assuming the senator is not a attorney). Why is TORT REFORM not a major component of this bill? Studies performed by www.AHealthInsuranceQuote.com and www.HealthInsuranceSource.net that liability insurance costs are approaching nearly one third of the operating expenses for specialty care physicians, units and facilities. Aside from medical provider costs, insurance carriers such as Humana Health Plans state that their costs of medical liability and defensive medicine accounts for nearly 10 cents out of every premium dollar collected (verified). Compare that to Humana’s reported pharmaceutical claims of 15 cents out of every premium dollar collected. Or better yet, 21 cents out of every premium dollar collected is paid back to physicians for physician treatments. Without TORT REFORM, medical provider costs will never drop.
ReplyDeleteAnon, studies that look more comprehensively at the tort reform issue predict that it would NOT lower costs of health care in any significant degree.
ReplyDeleteEven the simplest dinosaurs (like me) know that "tort reform" is a tired old rallying cry of rightists and Randians – it's another way of blaming ordinary people for the greed, incompetence, and criminality of certain among the wealthy and well-connected. If the least naive promoters of "tort-reform" had their way, I strongly suspect, nobody would be able to gain significant redress for even the most outrageous insults to public or personal safety. That's because the market is always right, of course....
ReplyDelete"studies indicate" is a leading phrase for many a deliberately misleading or even fraudulent claim. Every bogus, snake oil cure or diet plan starts with that phrase.
ReplyDeleteI've seen numbers that look more like 1%, but again, the numbers will look different depending on who paid for them.
Go ahead and ask - by all means, but I have a feeling those websites are insurance company owned and the figures are slippery.