"...having nothing in them of the feelings or principles of ’76 now look to a single and splendid government of an Aristocracy, founded on banking institutions and monied incorporations under the guise and cloak of their favored branches of manufactures commerce and navigation [add technology], riding and ruling over the plundered ploughman and beggared yeomanry." --Thomas Jefferson
The first Donald Trump who comes along is all it takes to dismantle 200 years of American vaunted democracy and whatever little civilization was there by executive order. The "indestructible" system of checks and balances is collapsing like a house of cards.
A nation that substitutes job training--if anything--for education, religion for reason and unbounded greed for morality regresses to the dark ages and self destructs.
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The government has been taken over by a bunch of sociopathic (some also psychopathic) multi-billionaires who, in cahoots with utterly corrupt politicians in their pocket, have been exploiting and robbing the public blind for decades. Now they are obsessed with taking away even the pittance of basic healthcare from the weakest segments of the public--while redistributing obscene wealth to themselves and spending millions in public funds on personal security and preparing refuges in fear of those whom they oppress. Even academia is in on it. This is no longer a society, let alone a civilized one. Watch its demise.
"The American Health Care Act, which the House of Representatives passed Thursday afternoon, is a cruel bill, one that seems exquisitely designed to afflict the afflicted, comfort the comfortable, punish the sick, immiserate the poor, and move the United States—nearly alone among advanced countries without universal insurance—further away from a morally defensible health-care system."
--The Ultimate Reverse Robin Hood: If AHCA becomes law, average households will lose money and millionaires would get a windfall
"The AHCA, even by conservative think-tank calculations, will leave many low-income and sick people without insurance they can afford, and does so even as it makes health-care work better for healthy people. Brooks’s explanation, and his close association of morality and health, with the idea that “good lives” produce good health, is just a recasting of the prosperity gospel. What’s a religious philosophy mostly pioneered by wealthy televangelists and megachurches got to do with pre-existing conditions and Medicaid reform?"
--The American Health Care Act's Prosperity Gospel
"Conspicuously absent from President Trump’s celebration of Obamacare repeal passing the House was any mention of the people and constituencies it might benefit."
--Are Americans 'Sick and Tired of Winning' Yet?
"For the bottom 60 percent of the population — that is, households earning less than about $67,000 a year — full repeal of the ACA would end up meaning an increase in taxes due to the loss of ACA tax credits. (Under the Republican bill Congress is considering, the tax credits aren’t totally eliminated — but they’re no longer designed to give the most money to the poorest Americans, so it’s likely that at least some of the poorest Americans would see their taxes go up.)
But people in the top 1 percent of the income distribution — those with incomes of over about $430,000 — would see their taxes fall by an average of $25,000 a year.
And for the true elite in the top 0.1 percent — people like designated White House senior adviser Jared Kushner, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, and many major campaign donors — the tax cut is truly enormous. Households with incomes of more than $1.9 million would get an extra $165,000 a year in take-home pay under full repeal. That’s obviously more than enough money to make these hyper-elite families come out ahead regardless of what happens to health insurance markets."
--Repeal cuts taxes for millionaires, even if millions lose insurance
"Congress members and their staff, however, are so far still exempt from any changes."
--The Republicans’ amended health-care law could be devastating for four big groups of Americans
"Many experts believe the bill will result in millions losing their health insurance coverage. The CBO reported that the earlier draft of the bill would have led 24 million more Americans to find themselves uninsured by 2026. As written, the AHCA would also cut taxes for wealthy Americans and could weaken benefits for the 49% of Americans who receive health insurance from their employers. The House’s version could also end up hurting people with pre-existing conditions."
--The US House of Representatives has voted to make cancer patients pay up to $140,000 a year for “insurance”
"Appearing on “Morning Joe” on Friday morning, Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana didn’t flinch when host Willie Geist asked him a direct question about what would happen if the American Health Care Act—which the House narrowly approved a day earlier—became law.
"So everyone with a pre-existing condition right now who is covered under Obamacare will continue to have coverage?” he asked the congressman, who as House majority whip is the third-ranking Republican in the chamber.
“Absolutely,” Scalise replied.
“Everyone?” Geist pressed him.
“Everyone,” Scalise confirmed.
From off camera, Mika Brzezinski let out a sound that was somewhere between a groan and a gasp."
--From making unrealistic promises to striking back-room deals, the GOP is repeating the same mistakes in trying to repeal Obamacare that they criticized when it was enacted
"Idaho congressman Raul Labrador is facing the ire of his constituents over his vote in favor of the Republican health care bill this week. During a Friday morning town hall, Labrador refuted a voter’s claim that losing health insurance is a death sentence. “That line is so indefensible,” Labrador said. “Nobody dies because they don’t have access to health care.”
Research has consistently linked being uninsured to higher mortality rates. One example in Labrador’s district: 36-year-old Idaho Falls resident Jenny Steinke, who died of an asthma attack in 2015 after being unable to treat her condition due to a lack of insurance."
"Why would lawmakers back a bill that may strip health care from millions of the poorest citizens (many of whom are Republican voters), could make it cripplingly expensive for tens of millions more, likely leaves them vulnerable in the next election—and that ultimately could be toothless, as fellow Republicans in the Senate are already condemning it?
There is one resounding answer coming from Washington: Because president Donald Trump desperately wanted something he could call a “win.” And while it may not make sense as a political strategy, it does make sense in a context he knows well: reality TV."
--The health care vote shows Trump thinks the US presidency is just another reality television show
"Historically, being a woman in the US has basically been a pre-existing condition, considering 33% of American mothers have had a C-section, 20% of American women will experience sexual assault in their lifetimes, and 25% of women experience violent domestic abuse (compared to one in seven men)."
--Under the new Republican health care bill, being a woman is essentially a pre-existing condition
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