I'm a big supporter of Obamacare I think all people should have an affordable way to get health insurance. In the last years I have been hearing from the Republicans all the imaginary bad things with health care that are happening or are going to happen. Most of their horror stories are imaginary and should be ignored.
Now I come to the problem. I personally know a couple who have retired, but are not eligible for Medicare yet. The difficulties they are facing to get insurance is I think an unattended consequence of Obamacare. Their premium is around a $1,000 a month before any subsidy. Their deductible is over $12,000 a year before the insurance pays anything. That basically puts their out of pocket expense at around $25,000 a year if they have any medical problems at all. They are not poor, but they still fit into the middle of the middle class. It seems to me that paying that much money a year for medical insurance shouldn't be happening if Obamacare has had the desired effect of lowering costs.
The other consequence of Obamacare is to union members who have had good insurance and still do, but now the insurance companies have changed the way they do business. The deductible has to be paid in total before the insurance pays anything. If you are a single person or a couple it might be fine, but if you have kids or have on-going medical problems you have to come up with the total deductible before the insurance kicks in. It's much harder for a family to pay for their insurance even with a good union policy.
I'm sure that Obamacare has helped millions of people, but it is also costing many people a lot more to get insurance. It is not the wealthy people who are picking up the tab for the lower income people, it is the middle class, and the middle class is struggling and this is another cost that they shouldn't have to bear.
Tuesday, January 27, 2015
Thursday, January 15, 2015
JOSHEPH GOEBBELS WOULD BE PROUD
I'm going to do something that the right-wing propaganda machine, (Fox News, talk radio, and unknowing and often lying right-wing pundits) are constantly doing, and something I despise. They compare liberals and Democrats to Nazi's or Communists. The real problem is the right-wings embrace of Joseph Goebbels Nazi propaganda machine.
Their goal is to de-legitimize this government. They want to take over. All you have to do is look at how they disparage the President. They have said he was unqualified, wasn't born in this country, and of course that he is secretly a Muslim.
Lets look at how the Nazi's acted. Liberals and undesirable can be interchanged with Jewish. Undesirables in this country are the minorities and the people who support their struggle.
The Nazi's burned books. We haven't gone that far yet, but the propaganda machine and their troops try to take out of history books anything they don't like. They wanted to tear pages out of biology text books, again about things they don't like. In Florida the legislators there want to make it mandatory that convicted criminal Dinesh D'Souza's movie is shown to all school children. They want to indoctrinate the children into their way of thinking.
Stand your ground laws are based on the false presumption that white people are being attacked by minorities and we should have the right to use deadly force when we feel threatened. I am waiting for the day when a black person shoots a white person, and uses that defense. I am sure the propaganda machine will find fault in that defense then.
We have a militarized police force that has no qualms killing unarmed people as long as they are a minority. It's always amazing that police investigations into deadly force seldom find that anything was done wrong. The justification for militarization is 9/11. The politicians have used scare tactics to justify all this. The Muslims are coming to rape your wife, and kill you and your children. They are all for torture as anyone can see by their support of it, and their denunciation of the Senate report. They say torture saved lives in this country, and you know these people are undesirables. When do the so-called undesirables in their minds from this country become fair game to them? We lost are right to privacy under that threat.
Voter ID laws and the like are meant to keep minorities from voting. The propaganda machine tries to make the argument that there is so much voter fraud, but they never produce the fraud. Pennsylvania's Mike Turzai (R-PA) famously said “voter ID, which is gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania done” I'm sure he didn't mean that ID laws were going to allow more people to vote. Sometimes the truth slips out.
They attack other religions, mostly notably the Muslims. Most people don't really get upset about that because it isn't their religion. These people should be worried. The machine has recently attacked the Pope because of his economic view. Sarah Palin said that the Pope's statements sounded kind of liberal. Fox News editor Adam Shaw said “Catholics should be suspicious when bastions of anti-Catholicism in left-wing media are in love with him.” The assumption being that the media is left-wing, and they are anti-Catholic, and the Pope has some how become untrustworthy because he doesn't agree with their doctrine. The Catholic Church is being demonized.
Michigan wants to enact a law called the Freedom of Religion Act that makes it okay to discriminate against gays. Of course gays are part of the undesirables that the right-wing is protecting us from.
Executions have always been a topic that is fought about with good reasons on both sides up until now. The states are using drugs that they don't want anyone to know what they are. In fact some states are trying to pass laws that would keep secret from the public and the press everything related to executions. These drugs are causing in some case cruel and unusual punishment in direct conflict with the 8th amendment to the Constitution, just like the loss of privacy is in conflict with the 4th amendment to the Constitution. The propaganda machine doesn't see a problem with this because undesirables are being put to death. They also don't have a problem with an innocent person wrongly being put to death.
The people who think both parties are the same are going to wake up one day and ask what happened to this great country.
Their goal is to de-legitimize this government. They want to take over. All you have to do is look at how they disparage the President. They have said he was unqualified, wasn't born in this country, and of course that he is secretly a Muslim.
Lets look at how the Nazi's acted. Liberals and undesirable can be interchanged with Jewish. Undesirables in this country are the minorities and the people who support their struggle.
The Nazi's burned books. We haven't gone that far yet, but the propaganda machine and their troops try to take out of history books anything they don't like. They wanted to tear pages out of biology text books, again about things they don't like. In Florida the legislators there want to make it mandatory that convicted criminal Dinesh D'Souza's movie is shown to all school children. They want to indoctrinate the children into their way of thinking.
Stand your ground laws are based on the false presumption that white people are being attacked by minorities and we should have the right to use deadly force when we feel threatened. I am waiting for the day when a black person shoots a white person, and uses that defense. I am sure the propaganda machine will find fault in that defense then.
We have a militarized police force that has no qualms killing unarmed people as long as they are a minority. It's always amazing that police investigations into deadly force seldom find that anything was done wrong. The justification for militarization is 9/11. The politicians have used scare tactics to justify all this. The Muslims are coming to rape your wife, and kill you and your children. They are all for torture as anyone can see by their support of it, and their denunciation of the Senate report. They say torture saved lives in this country, and you know these people are undesirables. When do the so-called undesirables in their minds from this country become fair game to them? We lost are right to privacy under that threat.
Voter ID laws and the like are meant to keep minorities from voting. The propaganda machine tries to make the argument that there is so much voter fraud, but they never produce the fraud. Pennsylvania's Mike Turzai (R-PA) famously said “voter ID, which is gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania done” I'm sure he didn't mean that ID laws were going to allow more people to vote. Sometimes the truth slips out.
They attack other religions, mostly notably the Muslims. Most people don't really get upset about that because it isn't their religion. These people should be worried. The machine has recently attacked the Pope because of his economic view. Sarah Palin said that the Pope's statements sounded kind of liberal. Fox News editor Adam Shaw said “Catholics should be suspicious when bastions of anti-Catholicism in left-wing media are in love with him.” The assumption being that the media is left-wing, and they are anti-Catholic, and the Pope has some how become untrustworthy because he doesn't agree with their doctrine. The Catholic Church is being demonized.
Michigan wants to enact a law called the Freedom of Religion Act that makes it okay to discriminate against gays. Of course gays are part of the undesirables that the right-wing is protecting us from.
Executions have always been a topic that is fought about with good reasons on both sides up until now. The states are using drugs that they don't want anyone to know what they are. In fact some states are trying to pass laws that would keep secret from the public and the press everything related to executions. These drugs are causing in some case cruel and unusual punishment in direct conflict with the 8th amendment to the Constitution, just like the loss of privacy is in conflict with the 4th amendment to the Constitution. The propaganda machine doesn't see a problem with this because undesirables are being put to death. They also don't have a problem with an innocent person wrongly being put to death.
The people who think both parties are the same are going to wake up one day and ask what happened to this great country.
Thursday, January 8, 2015
THE RIGHT-WING CRAZIES ARE WINNING
For many years now the right-wing zealots in this country have been portraying democrats and liberals of any stripe as Communists; Socialists, or Nazi's. For the longest time I thought that these people were just plain ignorant. I have come to the conclusion they aren't. This is a coordinated campaign to demonize and disparage their political rivals. It's well know that corporations are taking over all political decisions. We have a Supreme Court that really doesn't take the law into consideration when making their decisions. When almost every decision is 5 to 4 along political lines how does the law come into play? No one can tell me that the law is so ambiguous that it can be looked at that way. The right-wing is winning.
Think back to when the Supreme Court decision "Citizens United" legalized big money to buy elections and politicians. President Obama at the State of the Union address mentioned that decision and the affect it will have on our political discourse by allowing all that money to flow. Supreme Court Justice Alito shook his head no during the speech like the President didn't know what he was talking about. I think the years that have followed have shown that President Obama was right. When corporations are looked at as people you know things are going down hill fast. The right-wing is winning.
Lets look at their campaign to demonize unions. They do this because unions are one of the last entities that have any power to fight back. They have tried to convince the workers that the "UNION BOSSES" have been using the money they pay for dues for things that workers don't want or need. The sad thing is that many workers have bought into this scenario even though there are no facts to back this up. The attack on public unions and the so-called "right-to-work" laws have pitted employee against employee much to the glee of the right-wing. The right-wing is winning.
The so-called liberal media is a fallacy that has been perpetrated on us. Most newspaper and television outlets are owned by big business. There are very few investigative journalists left. We have Fox News which is not a news station but a propaganda outlet for the right-wing. They attack PBS and NPR at every opportunity. The major network news shows are dominated by the same guests every week. John McCain, Lindsay Graham, Ted Cruz, or their ilk. The same panelists George Will, Bill Kristol, David Brooks and so on. All right-wing zealots. They attack science at every opportunity. They spout their take on the bible when it suits them, but in my opinion most of them have probably never opened the bible and read it through, they cherry pick passages to suit their warped outlook. The right-wing is winning.
Twenty years ago I don't think some of the elected officials in this country would have been elected. You have Louis Gohmert and Steve King. We had Michelle Bachmann and Steve Stockman all complete morons. We have a new one in Wisconsin Congressman Glenn Grothman who thinks woman are bribed to have children out of wedlock. He also thinks that no one is entitled to a day off from work. I'm sure the list goes on and on. The point is, with voter suppression happening, and the uninterested voters who don't take part in our democracy, we are heading for a disaster. If the Republicans can't stop the crazy people in their party we are headed back to the time when you have no individual power to make your own decisions. The right-wing is winning.
The police state isn't far from becoming a reality. The deaths of people recently have brought this problem to the forefront, but this has been going on for awhile. It isn't just black men that are being killed or harassed, whites who try and protest or are on the undesirable list face the same problem. Look back to the Occupy Movement. People were abused many many times by the police with no consequences. The police have the same mentality as the Catholic Church has when it's dealing with the pedophile priests. They circle the wagons and don't admit that they have bad individuals working for them. The right-wing is winning.
We have laws being written and put into law by legislators who don't even read them before voting on them. They rely on the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a pro-business front, and they do their bidding. The right-wing is winning.
I could go, but the point is our country is being taken over by corporations and their stooges IE the right-wing who don't care about the country. Their only concern is that they have power. When these people are caught in lies what do they do? They say they were taken out of context, or they give some lame apology then go back to their lies with no consequence.
The liberal and progressives in this country are partially to blame. We focus on an issue to the exclusion of others. We let the right-wing frame the conversation in this country. It's time for people of both parties to start standing up and fighting back. The main thing is that we have to is get out and vote, if you sit home and let the right-wing tea-party types control things there might come a time when you will see what's happening, but by then it might be to late.
Think back to when the Supreme Court decision "Citizens United" legalized big money to buy elections and politicians. President Obama at the State of the Union address mentioned that decision and the affect it will have on our political discourse by allowing all that money to flow. Supreme Court Justice Alito shook his head no during the speech like the President didn't know what he was talking about. I think the years that have followed have shown that President Obama was right. When corporations are looked at as people you know things are going down hill fast. The right-wing is winning.
Lets look at their campaign to demonize unions. They do this because unions are one of the last entities that have any power to fight back. They have tried to convince the workers that the "UNION BOSSES" have been using the money they pay for dues for things that workers don't want or need. The sad thing is that many workers have bought into this scenario even though there are no facts to back this up. The attack on public unions and the so-called "right-to-work" laws have pitted employee against employee much to the glee of the right-wing. The right-wing is winning.
The so-called liberal media is a fallacy that has been perpetrated on us. Most newspaper and television outlets are owned by big business. There are very few investigative journalists left. We have Fox News which is not a news station but a propaganda outlet for the right-wing. They attack PBS and NPR at every opportunity. The major network news shows are dominated by the same guests every week. John McCain, Lindsay Graham, Ted Cruz, or their ilk. The same panelists George Will, Bill Kristol, David Brooks and so on. All right-wing zealots. They attack science at every opportunity. They spout their take on the bible when it suits them, but in my opinion most of them have probably never opened the bible and read it through, they cherry pick passages to suit their warped outlook. The right-wing is winning.
Twenty years ago I don't think some of the elected officials in this country would have been elected. You have Louis Gohmert and Steve King. We had Michelle Bachmann and Steve Stockman all complete morons. We have a new one in Wisconsin Congressman Glenn Grothman who thinks woman are bribed to have children out of wedlock. He also thinks that no one is entitled to a day off from work. I'm sure the list goes on and on. The point is, with voter suppression happening, and the uninterested voters who don't take part in our democracy, we are heading for a disaster. If the Republicans can't stop the crazy people in their party we are headed back to the time when you have no individual power to make your own decisions. The right-wing is winning.
The police state isn't far from becoming a reality. The deaths of people recently have brought this problem to the forefront, but this has been going on for awhile. It isn't just black men that are being killed or harassed, whites who try and protest or are on the undesirable list face the same problem. Look back to the Occupy Movement. People were abused many many times by the police with no consequences. The police have the same mentality as the Catholic Church has when it's dealing with the pedophile priests. They circle the wagons and don't admit that they have bad individuals working for them. The right-wing is winning.
We have laws being written and put into law by legislators who don't even read them before voting on them. They rely on the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a pro-business front, and they do their bidding. The right-wing is winning.
I could go, but the point is our country is being taken over by corporations and their stooges IE the right-wing who don't care about the country. Their only concern is that they have power. When these people are caught in lies what do they do? They say they were taken out of context, or they give some lame apology then go back to their lies with no consequence.
The liberal and progressives in this country are partially to blame. We focus on an issue to the exclusion of others. We let the right-wing frame the conversation in this country. It's time for people of both parties to start standing up and fighting back. The main thing is that we have to is get out and vote, if you sit home and let the right-wing tea-party types control things there might come a time when you will see what's happening, but by then it might be to late.
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