The fighters are circling each other and the fans aka voters, are watching closely. The President is calling the Democrats “socialists” and the GOP is holding its breath. The big question: can the Democrats pull together the two big items on their agenda that will win them the election?
I’m speaking, of course, about healthcare and the environment, two massive programs that will touch every person in the nation, especially if the Dems can make them happen the way some of them envision.
Both concepts are being driven by the far Left. The centrist already seemed to have chickened out, calling as they are wont to do, for moderation. But if these massive ideas are to come to fruition, moderation just won’t cut it. These are both bold concepts that need guts coupled with big fearless moves to make them work. It will take politicians and lawmakers with smarts, and the tenacity of a beaver to force these programs down the throat of a willing but terrified public.
The biggest argument against both as it often is, will be money. How can we pay for them? Won’t they just cost too much? The answer to the problem lies, strangely enough with the people who are generating the opposition.
The Republicans, especially those in congress, want to fight the battles on financial grounds, where at least there is a question to ask. The President, proving once again that he is dumb as a post, wants to fight these non-ideological battles on ideological grounds shouting “Socialist” at those antagonists he opposes. The only non-combatants that will be engaged by this argument are the already mindless MAGA hatted morons who breathlessly follow his every word.
But they do not matter. Nor do the true believers of the far Left. Neither is malleable enough to be changed. It’s the middle where this battle will be resolved.
So let’s look at healthcare and check out the most driven concept; Universal Healthcare for all, based on a single payer (government) system. The pros are obvious. First, everyone is covered, all the people, all the time – free or at a very low cost. It will be easier to use and will offer better care at a cheaper price.
Second, because everyone is covered the system will lend itself to preventative rather than corrective medicine. This will mean a healthier nation. That kind of comprehensive coverage that will save money in the long haul, will initially cost more
Those cons start with some people losing their employer provided healthcare, which many like. I’m sure that many of these plans are excellent. I know my union provided care was, But in reality it was no better than the Medicare that I now receive from the government. I have been using Medicare for 17 years and I have never had to shell out anything but small change for any procedure and I’ve had a few that were doozies cost wise; open heart surgery, knee replacement, eye treatments that cost thousands a month, etc. So the planned use of the Medicare model is just about as good as it can get.
And yes, as soon as I start writing about those expensive treatments, the GOP rises up on its hind legs and starts screaming about costs. So let’s talk about costs. Just about every non-government plan is run through insurance companies and if Mitch McConnell isn’t leading the drive to kill Single Payer, insurance companies certainly are. But do they have any of their facts straight or are they just Trumping it, lying about everything, hoping that you will forget what they said by tomorrow.
How can we possibly afford it? Even Mike Bloomberg had that to say about it. Now I like Mike, think he was a great mayor for NYC but that doesn’t mean he’s right all the time. Just look at the traffic problems his bike policy left behind.
I really don’t know what all these people are yelling about. There’s plenty of money. All we have to do is not squander it and we will have more than enough to easily handle healthcare and a lot more. This is especially true when one takes into account that as soon as we eliminate the insurance companies we save between 20% and 40% of total healthcare, which represents their profits. No matter how you slice it, that’s a big sausage.
Then there’s the cost of drugs. Full government control changes the balance when negotiating with the drug companies. It will mean reductions of over 50% in most cases up to 90% in many. That’s billions saved a year. And what did I say above? There’s plenty of money? There is. You just have to know where it’s hidden. It’s usually where the GOP doesn’t want you to look.
Our government waste is unparalleled. We waste over $5 trillion a year through bad Federal management and poor tax policies just like the last GOP tax bill. Do those huge corporations and their billionaire owners really need a tax cut? Aren’t they rich enough already? How much is too much?
We have wasted over $7 trillion in senseless wars in the Middle East in the last decade. I’m not proposing that we drop our guns on the ground and do an about face, but isn’t it time we made some kind of organized withdrawal.
The perfect example of waste is shown through the actions of the dummy in the White House when he throws away about $7 hundred million on sending our troops to the Mexican border just to establish an emergency situation so he can fight for his wall. This is as close to treason as I have ever seen. All we have to do is pick an enemy to complete the definition.
But before you get your balls in an uproar you should know that there is nothing out of the ordinary about the spending and the waste that this government has allowed. It’s just that the administration is so inept that it hasn’t been able to cover its tracks at all.
The GOP had always been the conservative party, the party of small government and balanced budgets. Yeah and the bridge you’re buying is getting longer and more expensive. Going back to the great conservative hero, Ronald Reagan and moving forward through two Bush’s and now a Trump, we have never had a balanced budget from any of them. The only balanced budget we have had since before Reagan was delivered by Bill Clinton, who actually left us with a surplus. Obama might have balanced the budget but he was left in such a deep hole by George Bush, that such a concept was absurd.
Then there’s our military budget, almost $700,000,000 a year and climbing so fast the Pentagon can’t keep track. What else is new? So even a dumbaccountant can look around and see plenty of money floating around in all the wrong places. There’s so much money we wouldn’t even need all of it if we spent it right. No, money should not be an obstacle to Single Payer Healthcare. That dog just won’t hunt.
So if money is no object what else have they got? Well, there’s a small but very vocal group that will tell you that it will cause the quality of our healthcare to decline. Pardon me while I laugh my ass off. Right now our quality of healthcare ranks around 32ndor 33rd on an international scale of civilized countries, this despite the fact that we spend more than twice as much per patient than anyone else in the civilized world. Only someone as dumb as Donald Trump or as invested in the insurance system as Mitch McConnell would call our insurance based care sufficient. Anyone with any brains want’s to change it, and the only way to go is Single Payer.
The second big program is the environment. Here again the big noise being made is about money but in this case it’s not government expenditures but entrepreneurial profit. Yes, there are still a couple of ignorant clowns babbling about the idea that we can’t be undergoing global warming if we still have winter but really, these are mostly sheep farmers who don’t sell wool or meat. For anyone who thinks, the issue of climate change is settled. The only questions revolve around what to do and how fast, and even those are pretty much known qualities. The problem is not about knowing what to do; the problem is forcing a few greedy trillionaires to finally admit they have enough of everything and to back off, allowing the planet to exist.
It is absolutely incomprehensible that these successful men refuse to accept the science and move in a direction that will allow them to take advantage of the new technology that is already available to us. To what purpose? Sure, most of them will be dead before the planet but don’t they have any children? I mean the transition is going to happen with or without them. Renewable energy will replace fossil fuels and nuclear because it is already cheaper, safer and more universal.
There was a time when many of us thought that nuclear would be our salvation. Now we know that it very well could be our annihilation. Events in Russia and Japan have shown us the folly of the nuclear dream. And yet we ignore it. Right here in this country we have nuclear plants on each coast that are in terrible shape and could easily end all life in NYC and LA.
Indian Point outside NYC will close in 2021. One of the three reactors is already shut down and the other two will follow in two years. But the Diablo Canyon reactors in San Louis Obispo, CA catastrophically remain in service. The owner, Pacific Gas & Electric is tottering on the brink of bankruptcy due to its responsibilities in the series of fires that ripped through Southern California in the past few years. Many of those fires were caused by a lack of maintenance due to the company’s dropping stock price and lack of funds. This is also the cause of their lack of maintenance at Diablo Canyon where the two reactors, sitting as they do on fault lines and with their facilities aging dramatically, are a real danger to the largest city in the country. Right now PG&E can’t afford to fix the plant and can’t afford to shut it down. The California government must step in and seize the plant to save the state.
Nuclear power is the catastrophe in waiting but the long- term problem is fossil fuel, the danger that gave birth to nuclear. It isn’t as though the problem of fossil fuel is controversial. It’s clear as a bell. Forget CO2 in the atmosphere. All you have to do is stand near a plant burning it and try to breath normally. Coal, of course, is the worst and still our fat liar in the White House continues to be the cheerleader for an industry that has already killed hundreds of thousand of miners and is trying to kill the rest of us. “Coal is coming back,” the President, chants to his rallies. Sure it is! Trump keeps giving the coal billionaires tax and regulatory breaks because, he lies, their industry is so important to our economy. Last year 1000 jobs in coal disappeared in Wyoming alone, while only 5 new jobs were created in coal all across the state. Only someone as dumb or as invested in coal as Trump could try to sell it as a mover in the economy.
The advent of driverless cars will push electric cars, which are already cheaper to drive, off the roads in a very few years. Combustion engine cars will not even exist by then. Take away all the subsidies from both sides and it is already far cheaper to deliver a kilowatt of solar or wind energy than it is to do the same by using oil, coal or gas. So why don’t the fossil fuel magnets grab the initiative and jump into the field? I don’t get it. They can’t win and if they fight to the last well or pipeline, they will get killed by the new renewable technologies because even if people don’t understand the science of climate change they do understand the broken pipelines, the dead sea animals, the pollution that gives them emphysema and their kids all kinds of health problems. Most of the people in the country don’t make a living digging coal or pumping oil. They have no dog in the fight so they will go with what they can see and there is nothing so visible as an oil- coated bird or a cloud of coal smoke, enveloping a town.
Because they’re rich and stubborn, the likes of the Koch brothers will continue to fight and spend enormous amounts of money to stop the New Green Deal but they can’t win. Unlike cigarettes, there is no compensating factor to burning fossil fuels as opposed to using the sun and wind. There is no coolness, no sophistication, and no habit that has formed and must be fed. This fight will cost a fortune and take a while to win but this one is a no- brainer.
On both of these issues the Democrats must follow the Left. If they have the guts, the organization and the tenacity they will win on both as soon as they take the Senate and the White House. When they do, they will have changed the nation and gone a long way to changing the world. This too is a no-brainer.