Is Government the Problem?

The first problem facing early human beings was survival. 

The second was government.

These are the opening words (rough paraphrase) of an obscure, out-of-print textbook on American government written by Theodore Lowi.  I quote these words because I believe these are relevant to any debate regarding the current political impasse in Washington.

Imagine the earliest Homo sapiens struggling to survive in the Great Rift Valley, in the forests of Europe, on the steppes of Asia.  Imagine how the earliest human beings organized themselves to survive harsh and primitive conditions; how they hunted in groups to overwhelm large prey and better feed themselves; how they divided their labors and distributed scarce and hard-won resources.  In short, social organization - as manifested in government - is an evolutionary adaptation that enhanced survival. 

No doubt, there are rightwing ideologues inclined to interrupt me with this all too familiar screed:  Another stooge of the collectivist, commie-socialist state!  Misplaced invective misses the point.

Imagine Tea Party Republicans of today surviving without the trappings of civilization:  Living in a wilderness without neighbors, hunting their own game, growing their own crops, felling their own trees and sawing their own lumber, with no Internet connection to scam, spam, or troll other folks living in the valley below; with no cell phone - no fire, first aid, or police protection.

At least, with no taxes and no government, their meager subsistence would be theirs and theirs alone for the keeping … as their wives and children are carried off and eaten by lions and tigers and bears.

“Government is not a solution to our problem, government is the problem,” spoke Ronald Reagan in a failed campaign promise to limit the size of government.  Until the day arrived when government shuttered its doors and then we learned just how vital government is in our lives, our communities, and the life our country.

The first problem facing human kind was survival.  The second is self-sabotage.

$30 Million Per Hour, $1.6 Billion Per Week

If the government shutdown revealed anything, it exposed he craven hypocrisy of Tea Party Republicans whose lust for partisan terrorism far exceeds any real concern for deficits or debt. Forty million dollars per hour, $330 million per day, and $1.6 billion per week … these are conservative estimates of how much the government shutdown is costing the American people.  More here.

Hobby Lobby: Jews and Other Non-Christians Not Welcome Here

Hobby Lobby is a national chain of craft stores owned by billionaire Steve Green. Hobby Lobby refuses to carry any merchandise - Hanukkah, Passover, Deepavali, Kwanza, or Goth - that caters to a non-Christian clientele.

Green owns more than 550 Hobby Lobby craft stores nationwide, all of which close on Sunday. He is also known for his lawsuit against the Affordable Healthcare Act (aka ObamaCare), which he claims tramples on his religious liberty by forcing him to insure employees for medical services (such as contraception) that Green deems objectionable on religious grounds.

The Hobby Lobby controversy began when Ken Berwitz, who resides in Marlboro NJ, learned that his local Hobby Lobby store stocks Christmas items but nothing related to Hanukkah or Passover. According to Berwitz, a Hobby Lobby salesperson said: “We don’t cater to you people.”

This experience prompted Berwitz, who writes the Hopelessly Partisan blog, to ask his local Marlboro store why it supported Christmas but not Hanukkah. In response, Berwitz received this reply: “Because Mr. Green is the owner of the company, he’s a Christian, and those are his values.”

Here is how Ken Berwitz replied on his blog:

I have a great many Christian friends and acquaintances. And I can honestly say that I don't know even one who would ever see excluding Jews as having anything to do with Christian "values". But, evidently, Hobby Lobby owner [Steve] Green does. 

Well, here are MY values. I will never set foot in a Hobby Lobby. Ever. I will be sure to tell everyone I know the reason why, with a request that they pass it along to others …  Had they said this about Christians and had it been the other way around I would be just as annoyed. Shame on him. 

Of course, any retailer has the right to stock any merchandise and cater to any clientele it wants – discounting for bad manners and bad PR. Similarly, any excluded group that feels offended has the right to boycott.  In the hyper-opinionated blather of Cyberspace, one gripe always propagates another:

“Political correctness will destroy America,” writes Amber Wright, joining in the conversation. “Political correctness is forcing us to include an ideology like Islam alongside of Judaism and Catholicism or Christianity - it is nothing like those religions and should not be afforded the same considerations and protections.”

How magnanimous of Amber to include Christianity and Judaism but not Islam, a religion practiced by 1.1 billion people worldwide and 2.6 million people in America. Every school kid knows what Amber doesn't know: Freedom to worship is a fundamental human right protected by the U.S. Constitution. Will political correctness destroy America?  Funny how some folks invoke this term to spout bias and stupidity and then indemnify themselves against criticism:

Dear Amber,
Please note: Political correctness is also a form of free speech protected by the Constitution. Political correctness may or may not destroy America; but bigotry, hatred, intolerance, and oppression assuredly will.

Obamacare: Up Close and Personal

I dislike cliches but I'll use one here:  Obamacare for our family is "up close and personal."

Without going into too much detail and to preserve her privacy, I'll tell you about how Obamacare has given my daughter a chance to finally take care of her long-neglected health.

My daughter has had four jobs in three years, three of which provided no medical insurance.  The one company that did provide coverage left the state.  She was covered for only one year.  Before those jobs there was no insurance because of  the exorbitant premiums, lay-offs, and other extenuating circumstances, which I will not go into for privacy reasons.

During the long stretches of time she was not covered, she had to be hospitalized twice for life-threatening issues.  Each time, she had to go to the emergency room--the health care systems that conservatives always state is available for Americans who need it.  Those two emergency visits cost well over $11 thousand dollars.  Since these two hospitalizations occurred during the financial disasters and job losses of 2008 and 2009, her family was living off of unemployment and whatever her retired parents could send her to keep her and her family's head above water.

Going without regular medical check-ups for years has taken its toll on her health, and she has developed, as a result, chronic conditions that could very well have been prevented with regular check-ups.  

Now comes her chance to be able to afford medical insurance through Obamacare, since the job she now holds does not offer it.   Now that there is some proverbial light at the end of her unhealthy medical history, our family has had to stand by and watch the selfish, heartless, self-serving members of a minority of a minority try to obstruct and delay medical coverage for my daughter--and millions of other people's daughters, sons, fathers and mothers.  Why?  

Are the monsters in that minority afraid that people who have gone without insurance will benefit from this opportunity to buy it at an affordable price? Afraid it will be popular?  Afraid their constant attempts to ruin the lives of people, such as my daughter, will have a deleterious affect on their political brand?  

What in damnation's name is the reason they could give me for denying my daughter the opportunity to buy health care at an affordable price and force her to go another year without coverage and health care?

I'd like one of their fat-cat, insurance conglomerate funded, politicians to answer me that question.  

But, I'd also like them to know that their grotesque campaign to deny Americans a basic human right will not succeed.  

Right now, the minority of a minority and their hopelessly misinformed followers believe they are standing on principle.  But, I ask, what is the principle they claim they are standing for that would deny my daughter, and millions of other Americans, the ability to buy affordable insurance, insurance that could prevent her and them from having to deal with catastrophic health issues.




What principle are they defending?





There's a particular irony in all of this for our family.  My parents emigrated to this country of hope and opportunity in the early part of the 20th century.  But had they stayed in Italy, and had I been born there and raised my daughter there, she would not have had to go without health care for all these years, because Italy has a better system in place than does the "Hope of the World," the U.S.A.

Bloomberg's chart of the worlds most efficient health care countries lists Italy as #6; the United States, #46.

The U.S. has a chance to become a leader, not a "46er" in delivering efficient health care to her citizens. Do not allow the monsters in the minority of a minority to prevent this.



Infidel753 enlightens us further.

More

In principio erat verbum

That first word; can we imagine it being spoken as something more than infantile balbation, something more like a concept than a name? Names are spoken, but we invented them. We have names because we have want and that want came before the name. Without it there were no names nor those to name them.  In any sort of beginning there was a word and we made that word because we want, and what we want is more. In the beginning there was desire and want became word.  I want, therefore I am aware. I am aware, therefore I am.  In the beginning there was the word and the word was more.

Do we imagine some Lord uttering a command to the emptiness, or do we wonder why something so primordial and infinite embedded in a finite chaos of dirt and water and wind and nothingness would have words?  Was there a beginning without a prior want?  In whom dwelt the want that became God? Would words arise without anyone to listen?  But in any kind of beginning -- of man, of  God -- any dawn of any ego, that decision to change what had always been and what is now -- the want that made that decision became the word and the word was more. Let there be more than there is.

A lord of dust and gas and particles and heat; it means little to be lord of nothing. A God who never did anything and never wanted to: a Lord without volition is no more than dead matter and empty space. A lord, to be a lord needs more and so want itself  makes the Lord and so he makes the world, orders it, speaks the word to himself and creates his creation so that what he says can be a word.  From more, existence proceeds. God said more and there was more.

A lord: meaning us; us being separate from the nothing, separate from oblivion and the chaos and the word that separates is more.  The word that defines consciousness is more; we wake, we perceive we want and in that beginning the word becomes flesh, the flesh becomes word: let there be more.

Do we ever progress far beyond the primordial word?  We strive we desire we achieve, we preserve, we pile thing upon thing, experience upon experience -- we live and we want more. We want more life and we want more of desire itself because desire is life and life must want  more or it dies.

We struggle against entropy and we want more and in the face of ravenous oblivion, in the end, we want more and we invent agencies from which to beg for more as possibility fades. We want new realities where we can have more and there always is more to have -- and we imagine them, we fight to imagine them and we fight to preserve the imagining; the imagining of more and more forever when forever, nonetheless, is only nothing more.

In the beginning we say .  . .  but that was too long ago to matter. In our beginning was desire and if more comes after us, there will be no words at all.

Desiderium erat in princípio. In finis est solum nihil

Tea Party Republicanism = Totalitarianism

Government by brinksmanship, by blackmail, by obstruction, by hostage taking - the Republican Party is no longer a partner in representative democracy. More like a bad marriage to an abusive spouse, the GOP has been violating boundaries and abusing the public trust since the last government shutdown of 1996.

Like a bad marriage, Tea Party Republicans refuse to distinguish between YOURS, MINE, and OURS. The United States is not just THEIR country; it is also OUR country and MY country. It spends not just THEIR tax money; it spends OUR tax dollars and MY tax dollars too. Government should represent the values and priorities of the American people, not merely the demands of a rabble-rousing minority. Public policy debates without compromise and consensus are not my idea of “consent of the governed” when blackmail leaves a country held hostage and a majority of its voters disenfranchised.

This insurgent minority has:

• Employed covert and overt racism, deception, and defamation to delegitimize and undermine a twice-elected president;
• Tried and failed 44 times to overturn a healthcare reform bill passed by Congress, signed into law by the president, and upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court;
• Presented a list of non-negotiable demands to gut environmental protection and financial reform, weaken the social safety net, hurt the working poor, and further undermine the middle class;
• Threatened default on the public debt in violation of Amendment 14, Section 4, of the U.S. Constitution – thus risking a worldwide financial crisis.

Over the last four decades, the Republican Party has transformed from a loyal opposition into an insurrectionary party that flouts the law when it is in the majority and threatens disorder when it is the minority (John P. Judis).

[The Republican Party is] becoming more like an apocalyptic cult, or one of the intensely ideological authoritarian parties of 20th century Europe (Mike Lofgren).

A disciplined minority of totalitarians can use the instruments of democratic government to undermine democracy itself (Hannah Arendt).

These actions by Tea Party Republicans, as reckless as they are, are examples of nascent totalitarianism. Let the backlash begin.

The Sky is Falling

Candy Crowley's State of the Union this morning with Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA).  It seems the Republican line is that Congress needs to have a debate on health care because the public is panicked, confused -- because health care is being denied because of it, because hospitals aren't buying new technology because of it -- because they're making it all up as it goes along. Lying, misleading, giving false analogies. . . The desperation alone gives them away. At what time were they ever so animated at any question affecting the security of the United States? Were they ever so doubtful about abridging the bill of rights as they are about reforming one of the worst health care systems in the world?

Polls seem to show the public does not want this "debate," does not want ACA defunded or delayed.
Congress already had the debate.  It passed, it was signed into law, it survived a challenge in the Supreme court.

Health insurance premiums will soar says Sen. John Barrasso M.D. (R-WY). People ae going to die in the streets, chaos will ensue.

They've gone down 40% in his state says Howard Dean M.D. ,  Doctors won't see patients. You won't be able to find a doctor says the Wyoming dude.  The sky is falling, just like it was going to with Social Security, with Medicare, with female suffrage, with integration. . . .

My prayer for this Sunday morning?

God damn the Republican party.

Deny, Deny, DeMint

If 2012 was the end of an era, I haven't noticed. The era of denialism is still rolling along, thank you very much and the ridiculous Right is getting better with practice.  The 2012 Election you see, didn't accurately reflect public sentiment at least the sentiment as viewed through ruby red glasses. 

Jim DeMint seems to think the Right didn't get a fair hearing, even though the echo of their primal scream still is as detectible as the Cosmic Background Radiation.  And besides it's just not fair.  In a fair and balanced world elections don't count, you know, because the true voice of the people is only communicated in Gnostic fashion by a mystical connection, not by those lying ballots.  In a Fair and Balanced world people wouldn't notice that Jim strongly endorsed Romneycare in 2007: they wouldn't notice that the voters elected someone who promised health care reform and re-elected him over the guy who couldn't stop inventing reasons why it was no longer good now that the Democrats endorsed it. They wouldn't notice that the Supreme Court endorsed the legality.

Of course Jim and all the GOP DeMintos hope you don't remember the era of "the silent majority" whose silence was the result of their not actually being there because he seems to be offering the same pathetic Nixonian explanation for the rejection of his own imaginary majority. But of course we do remember, we do notice and even the Sultan of Slime, Karl Rove himself seems bewildered by the insanity he's nourished into full monsterhood, shuffling toward Fort Sumpter to be born.

No, October first won't be the end of an era either, since some eras go on as if in a parallel universe, close to but separate from ours.  It may be the beginning of one however; an era in which the burden of illness and the cost of healthcare won't be a drag on upward mobility and entrepreneurship, but the old one will continue like some antique and grotesque paganism and people will continue to profit from the hysteria. More appeals to stock up on emergency supplies, special vaults in which to hide your guns and ammunition (stock up now before Obama takes them away) for the coming apocalypse and the horrible hordes of marauding minorities. . .

The Voice of the People

Tom Paine advocating the adoption of an American Constitution, urged cool and deliberate heads to prevail, lest some rabble rouser

". . . may hereafter arise, who laying hold of popular disquietudes, may collect together the desperate and discontented, and by assuming to themselves the powers of government, may sweep away the liberties of the continent like a deluge."

He was thinking of a 17th century uprising in Naples, a populist and tax revolt that ended badly because of the failure to control the mob and left Naples under the control of the Spanish Crown.  It's not a unique story. It's easy to think of more before and after that one. Can I help but to think of the mad remnants of the former Conservative party now spending endless millions on endless lies -- infuriating, frightening and focusing the anger of Americans against our constitutional and duly elected government, for the benefit of it's would-be overlords?  Can I help it when listening to Ted Cruz begging Americans to go back to Industrial Revolution era health care practices now when it costs far more than it did then?  A hundred years ago, if a worker had to miss a few weeks because of an injury incurred on the job, in a job that demanded 12 hour days and 6 day weeks and that demanded the worker live in filthy tenements, he was evicted and his family dumped out on the street, forced into crime or prostitution, disease and untimely death. Today, we have frustrated overlords spending millions and millions to dress that up as "traditional Values"  "Family" Values and telling us we can't afford health unless we have wealth.  It's too expensive. We can't afford to have "takers." 100 years ago when what passed for middle class meant squalor, a time when most people died in poverty and disease, it was enough that a tiny few made a fortune often using business practices that would make us wince -- unless we're Republicans.

Direct Democracies have usually succumbed to those desperate and discontented elements no matter how well off they may be, often led by cooler heads of the greedy and hungry for power.  Perhaps the kind of tactics now practiced by those who spend massive monies appealing to the public to take direct action against things that will benefit them and harm the aristocracy are simply following an ancient script.  That's why we were supposed to be a Republic, to have educated, enlightened professionals of our choice to make choices for us. Now the men who would be kings encourage Joe the Plumber - a man of the people who like so many men of the people just aren't smart enough, educated enough and are easy to rile up, delude, enrage and control. That's just what Congress was not supposed to be about; spokesmen for self justifying power.

"The Imbecile bourgeoisie of this country make themselves accomplices of the very people whose aim is to drive them out of their houses to starve in ditches" 

Wrote Joseph Conrad, back when we were starting to move toward the modern era, perhaps thinking that would ever change.

It's just a question.

Spread it around. See who has an answer.