Perspective: How It All Happened

[Bfgrn]

That's not insurance....That's pre-paid medical.

BIG difference.

That is insurance, not prepaid medical. Dr. Belk is not charging his patients a monthly fee. Oh, maybe a ******* doctor doesn't know what he's talking about.

I'm certain you haven't the first clue ass to what you're blabbering about, as you have to constantly steal the words of others to try and mask your utter ignorance and rank partisan hack stupidity.

Insurance is for the unforseen, not for mundanities like sporadic office visits, chiropractic, alcohol/drug treatment someone, who is constantly chronically ill or -for instance- diabetics to go get a free ride on the backs of people who get their insurance as insurance against unexpected trauma and medical conditions.

Ignoramus twirps like you treat insurance as pre-paid medical for anything and everything...In fact it's exactly what you mean when you disingenuously use the term "insurance".

Hey Jethro, I didn't create the insurance scam, your beloved private sector 'captains of industry' did. And your beloved private sector insurance cartels, hospitals, doctors, big pharma, medical device suppliers are the ones who are draining our wallets.

Have the butler explain it to you, he works a real job.

 

[BlindBoo]

You watched it? Please give me a recap?

If you really did watch it, you would know that insurance corporations have been doing really bad things, and not even 'for the good of the people', but only for the good of their profits. Even REAL death panels, where Americans DIE, and claims department personnel are rewarded and incentivized to deny expensive treatments to fellow Americans facing serious and fatal illnesses AND then in the middle of fighting for their lives, they have to face bankruptcy and losing everything worked their whole life for to add the final dagger.

And despite the eeeeeeevil insurance companies focusing on their profits, they served us very well before government started meddling. There were good insurance companies and not so good insurance companies just as there are good restaurants and restaurants that suck. People are fallible, sometimes stupid, sometimes oppportunistic, sometimes dishonest. But to put all insurance companies in the same box is just as wrong as putting all Democrats into the same box or all Republicans into the same box.

However, once the government started meddling, it became more profitable for the insurance companies to please government instead of their customers. And the system did become very skewed. They'll pay the price though when the government takes it all over and puts the insurance companies out of business. And we the people will suffer the consequences of that in a much much worse way that any anecdotal consequences of a few bad insurance companies.

Another fallacy. Here is an excellent website written by a doctor. He gives an insider's view into our broken health care for profit over patient system.

Healthcare - Home

My goal for this website was to try to understand a system that has an enormous financial impact on everyone, but makes almost no sense to anyone. It's a system with hidden costs, enormous mark ups to discourage direct payment and a labyrinth of billing and reimbursement schedules that almost guarantee that no person directly involved could ever understand it. And we've started to see why this system is set up this way, who benefits from it, and who loses. The question is: How did it get this way?

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmHTte8jRLk]Nixon HMOs - YouTube[/ame]

 

[Oddball]

That is insurance, not prepaid medical. Dr. Belk is not charging his patients a monthly fee. Oh, maybe a ******* doctor doesn't know what he's talking about.

I'm certain you haven't the first clue ass to what you're blabbering about, as you have to constantly steal the words of others to try and mask your utter ignorance and rank partisan hack stupidity.

Insurance is for the unforseen, not for mundanities like sporadic office visits, chiropractic, alcohol/drug treatment someone, who is constantly chronically ill or -for instance- diabetics to go get a free ride on the backs of people who get their insurance as insurance against unexpected trauma and medical conditions.

Ignoramus twirps like you treat insurance as pre-paid medical for anything and everything...In fact it's exactly what you mean when you disingenuously use the term "insurance".

Hey Jethro, I didn't create the insurance scam, your beloved private sector 'captains of industry' did. And your beloved private sector insurance cartels, hospitals, doctors, big pharma, medical device suppliers are the ones who are draining our wallets.

Have the butler explain it to you, he works a real job.

Whether you created it or not isn't germane, deflectopottamus.

And it was your beloved Big Daddy Big Gubmint that made insurance a pre-tax deduction and deemed insurance not to be income during FDR's communistic wage controls.

Sorry your grasp of the the facts and history sucks so bad, Gomer.

 

[Foxfyre]

And despite the eeeeeeevil insurance companies focusing on their profits, they served us very well before government started meddling. There were good insurance companies and not so good insurance companies just as there are good restaurants and restaurants that suck. People are fallible, sometimes stupid, sometimes oppportunistic, sometimes dishonest. But to put all insurance companies in the same box is just as wrong as putting all Democrats into the same box or all Republicans into the same box.

However, once the government started meddling, it became more profitable for the insurance companies to please government instead of their customers. And the system did become very skewed. They'll pay the price though when the government takes it all over and puts the insurance companies out of business. And we the people will suffer the consequences of that in a much much worse way that any anecdotal consequences of a few bad insurance companies.

Another fallacy. Here is an excellent website written by a doctor. He gives an insider's view into our broken health care for profit over patient system.

Healthcare - Home

My goal for this website was to try to understand a system that has an enormous financial impact on everyone, but makes almost no sense to anyone. It's a system with hidden costs, enormous mark ups to discourage direct payment and a labyrinth of billing and reimbursement schedules that almost guarantee that no person directly involved could ever understand it. And we've started to see why this system is set up this way, who benefits from it, and who loses. The question is: How did it get this way?

I've only been in practice for about a decade and the system, as it is, began evolving long before my medical career began. Still, I can only guess that decades ago when insurance companies started to pay for medical costs, no one intended for it to end up like this. Insurance companies were originally run by doctors. Their idea was to spread the risk. They had a sense that getting sick usually wasn't fair, so going bankrupt because you were sick probably also wasn't fair. They had the idea that pooling people in advance made it easier on everyone, and improved access to healthcare.

It's a great irony that only a few years later, some business people (people who are very good with money, but not so interested in medicine) realized that they could make a lot of money on health insurance if they created a special insurance plan that excluded the sickest people. In other words, insurance for people who probably didn't need it, which was very different from the original idea of health insurance for everyone, but far more profitable. The idea of preexisting conditions is almost as old as health insurance itself.

Here's one way to look at how the system came to be: People usually try to find occupations that follow what they love, at least in the beginning. Hospitals can be callous in their billing, as we've seen, and doctors like money as much as anyone else, but fundamentally there was a point in their lives when they (doctors and people who run hospitals) decided to get into the profession of helping sick people. Some are genuinely compassionate. Some are biology wonks or technology wonks, or just like the action. But most of them lose interest pretty quickly when they have to start dealing with complicated financial matters like insurance payments.

The first insurance companies were started by doctors, but they couldn't stay in the game when the money professionals started showing. They couldn't compete financially, and they didn't have the mindset to try. So they did what most of us do: focus on the details that interested them (medicine), and left the tedious stuff (finances) to someone who was interested in it (insurance companies). Now the insurance companies could start building a system in their image.

As the system grew and healthcare became more complex, more people came into the health insurance industry who had a good understanding of money but little interest in healthcare. It's no secret that confused people are easier to take advantage of, so layers of confusion were slowly piled on and profits soared.

Doctors, hospitals, and other healthcare providers didn't protest as the process slowly grew away from them because, while this was happening, they too, were making money, and didn't think they needed to worry about it. As the system became less and less transparent, insurance companies were careful to make sure that all of the major players were kept very happy. But you can't keep everyone happy forever, and when things get tight, that's when you start to learn who's running the system. Now, after 30 to 40 years of slowly allowing all of our understanding of the financial transactions to erode, we are left seeing more and more money dumped into a black hole with little understanding of what happens to it.

It's rare to see a discussion about healthcare costs that isn't centered on co-pays, premiums, and deductibles. These are all indirect costs. They tell you almost nothing about the cost of the final product (the medical services that you might need). If the cost of individual components of healthcare are mentioned at all in these conversations, the price given is usually the billing charge. But the billing charge has little to do with what health care costs either. You've seen in almost every section of this discussion that the billing charge is a hugely inflated price that almost no one ever pays.

Why would anyone want us to focus on a price that's almost never paid (unless you don't have insurance, of course)? Well, one reason might be that it makes it look like all that money is really going into paying for our health care. We all know how important an MRI can be, or an Emergency Room visit, and as long as people think an MRI really costs $4,000, and an ER visit costs $4,500, maybe they'll resign themselves to paying big insurance premiums, and we can all tell ourselves that it's the only way we can continue to have "the best health care in the world."

But if these charges have nothing to do with reality, then neither do any of the discussions. MRI's and ER visits cost hundreds of dollars, not thousands! This is all a very effective diversion because, if no one ever addresses the real problem, it's unlikely a real solution will ever be proposed. And if you don't want people to find out where their money is going, it helps to have them looking in the wrong place.

Just because this is written by a doctor, doesn't lend it any more credence than if had had been written by Kathleen Sebelius. Sure, I'm gonna take the premonitions of a random doctor in the San Francisco Bay area over reality.

You're through.

The good doctor has some points and makes some accurate observations. I checked him out and he has some impressive credentials and I have no reason to believe his comments were inspired by political motives. But being acquainted with a number of doctors and having a couple among my closest friends as well as a good friend who was recently an executive at Merck, I also know doctors don't usually have a firm grasp on all the economic dynamics driving the system. Their focus is on what the patient needs to recover and they often don't have a good understanding of why things are the way they are. But all the good doctors are frustrated at how stupid the system has become.

One thing Dr. Belk did get very right in that commentary was this:

-50 million people are denied access to basic healthcare in this Country, not because they can’t afford it, but because they’re not allowed to afford it.

I wish he had elaborated on that more.

He was also right about the pharmaceutical companies, but just as he fails to see how the government is manipulating the insurance companies, he doesn't seem to know was how much government has manipulated the pharmaceutical industry. And that will be getting worse.

(NaturalNews) The U.S. government has decided to enter the pharmaceutical business. Apparently, the drug companies aren't coming out with new "breakthrough" drugs quickly enough, and now the U.S. government plans to spend taxpayer dollars conducting research on drugs which will be turned over to Big Pharma. Those drug companies, in turn, will sell them for a profit. It's yet another clear case where the government is taking over the health care (sick care) industry and funneling profits into the hands of pharmaceutical corporations.

This is all happening because drug companies say they're scaling back their research funding to find new drugs. This terrifies the U.S. government, apparently, which doesn't recognize that scaling back drug company R&D is actually a good thing for America given how much economic damage and personal health damage is caused each year by Big Pharma's dangerous drugs. So instead of letting the failing pharmaceutical market contract on its own, Big Government wants to artificially prop it up with taxpayer dollars in much the same way that the feds bailed out Wall Street's rich banksters with trillions of dollars over the last two years.

Learn more: U.S. government launches pharmaceutical division

They say that even a blind squirrel finds an acorn now and then. I wonder if all our blind squirrels can ever see how much government intends to take over and control all our lives. And just about everything it does these days is moving us ever closer to that end.

The free market screws things up now and then, but it serves us far better and with far fewer landmines than government ever can.

 

[JoeNormal]

You watched it? Please give me a recap?

If you really did watch it, you would know that insurance corporations have been doing really bad things, and not even 'for the good of the people', but only for the good of their profits. Even REAL death panels, where Americans DIE, and claims department personnel are rewarded and incentivized to deny expensive treatments to fellow Americans facing serious and fatal illnesses AND then in the middle of fighting for their lives, they have to face bankruptcy and losing everything worked their whole life for to add the final dagger.

And despite the eeeeeeevil insurance companies focusing on their profits, they served us very well before government started meddling. There were good insurance companies and not so good insurance companies just as there are good restaurants and restaurants that suck. People are fallible, sometimes stupid, sometimes oppportunistic, sometimes dishonest. But to put all insurance companies in the same box is just as wrong as putting all Democrats into the same box or all Republicans into the same box.

However, once the government started meddling, it became more profitable for the insurance companies to please government instead of their customers. And the system did become very skewed. They'll pay the price though when the government takes it all over and puts the insurance companies out of business. And we the people will suffer the consequences of that in a much much worse way that any anecdotal consequences of a few bad insurance companies.

I swear this is like Bill Murray's Ground hog Day. It is always the same right wing propaganda...EVERYTHING that scurrilous people do, like insurance cartel's death panels is not because these people are scurrilous, it's because of GOVERNMENT. The ******* government made them do it, **** personal responsibility, **** morals and ethics. You right wing turds always preach 'personal responsibility', then you make excuses for your beloved CEO's and the hierarchy you worship. The 'captains of industry' can do no wrong, they are VICTIMS...victim-hood; the right wing mantra.

You right wingers need to educate yourself about who our founding fathers were. They were not 'laissez-faire' capitalist. They did not believe in any 'invisible hand'. They totally controlled corporations. They would have cancelled the corporate charter of these scurrilous insurance cartels in an instant, and arrested your beloved 'captains of industry'

Our founding fathers did not subscribe to Adam Smith's 'invisible hand'. They believed in very heavy regulations and restrictions on corporations. They were men who held ethics as the most important attribute. They viewed being paid by the American people for their services as a privilege not a right. And they had no problem closing down any corporation that swindled the people, and holding owners and stockholder personally liable for any harm to the people they caused.

Early laws regulating corporations in America

*Corporations were required to have a clear purpose, to be fulfilled but not exceeded.

*Corporations’ licenses to do business were revocable by the state legislature if they exceeded or did not fulfill their chartered purpose(s).

*The state legislature could revoke a corporation’s charter if it misbehaved.

*The act of incorporation did not relieve corporate management or stockholders/owners of responsibility or liability for corporate acts.

*As a matter of course, corporation officers, directors, or agents couldn’t break the law and avoid punishment by claiming they were “just doing their job” when committing crimes but instead could be held criminally liable for violating the law.

*Directors of the corporation were required to come from among stockholders.

*Corporations had to have their headquarters and meetings in the state where their principal place of business was located.

*Corporation charters were granted for a specific period of time, such as twenty or thirty years (instead of being granted “in perpetuity,” as is now the practice).

*Corporations were prohibited from owning stock in other corporations, to prevent them from extending their power inappropriately.

*Corporations’ real estate holdings were limited to what was necessary to carry out their specific purpose(s).

*Corporations were prohibited from making any political contributions, direct or indirect.

*Corporations were prohibited from making charitable or civic donations outside of their specific purposes.

*State legislatures could set the rates that some monopoly corporations could charge for their products or services.

*All corporation records and documents were open to the legislature or the state attorney general.

The Early Role of Corporations in America

The Legacy of the Founding Parents
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What caused the Progressive movement

We tried unregulated corporations in America. The closest experiment to total deregulation in this country occurred between the end of the Civil War and the beginning of the 19th century...it was called the Gilded Age; an era where America was as far from our founder's intent of a democratic society and closest to an aristocracy that our founder's were willing to lay down their lives to defeat.

It was opposition to that same Gilded Age that was the genesis of the Progressive movement in this country. When you study history, almost always just cause is behind it.

The only enemies of the Constitution are those who try to wield it as a weapon against the living, by using the words of the dead.
Me

Excellent post. Groundhog Day is exactly how I described it in another forum I used to frequent. Something sucks in the world? Must be government's fault somehow. It couldn't possibly be the sainted corporatists.

 

[Bfgrn]

And despite the eeeeeeevil insurance companies focusing on their profits, they served us very well before government started meddling. There were good insurance companies and not so good insurance companies just as there are good restaurants and restaurants that suck. People are fallible, sometimes stupid, sometimes oppportunistic, sometimes dishonest. But to put all insurance companies in the same box is just as wrong as putting all Democrats into the same box or all Republicans into the same box.

However, once the government started meddling, it became more profitable for the insurance companies to please government instead of their customers. And the system did become very skewed. They'll pay the price though when the government takes it all over and puts the insurance companies out of business. And we the people will suffer the consequences of that in a much much worse way that any anecdotal consequences of a few bad insurance companies.

I swear this is like Bill Murray's Ground hog Day. It is always the same right wing propaganda...EVERYTHING that scurrilous people do, like insurance cartel's death panels is not because these people are scurrilous, it's because of GOVERNMENT. The ******* government made them do it, **** personal responsibility, **** morals and ethics. You right wing turds always preach 'personal responsibility', then you make excuses for your beloved CEO's and the hierarchy you worship. The 'captains of industry' can do no wrong, they are VICTIMS...victim-hood; the right wing mantra.

You right wingers need to educate yourself about who our founding fathers were. They were not 'laissez-faire' capitalist. They did not believe in any 'invisible hand'. They totally controlled corporations. They would have cancelled the corporate charter of these scurrilous insurance cartels in an instant, and arrested your beloved 'captains of industry'

Our founding fathers did not subscribe to Adam Smith's 'invisible hand'. They believed in very heavy regulations and restrictions on corporations. They were men who held ethics as the most important attribute. They viewed being paid by the American people for their services as a privilege not a right. And they had no problem closing down any corporation that swindled the people, and holding owners and stockholder personally liable for any harm to the people they caused.

Early laws regulating corporations in America

*Corporations were required to have a clear purpose, to be fulfilled but not exceeded.

*Corporations’ licenses to do business were revocable by the state legislature if they exceeded or did not fulfill their chartered purpose(s).

*The state legislature could revoke a corporation’s charter if it misbehaved.

*The act of incorporation did not relieve corporate management or stockholders/owners of responsibility or liability for corporate acts.

*As a matter of course, corporation officers, directors, or agents couldn’t break the law and avoid punishment by claiming they were “just doing their job” when committing crimes but instead could be held criminally liable for violating the law.

*Directors of the corporation were required to come from among stockholders.

*Corporations had to have their headquarters and meetings in the state where their principal place of business was located.

*Corporation charters were granted for a specific period of time, such as twenty or thirty years (instead of being granted “in perpetuity,” as is now the practice).

*Corporations were prohibited from owning stock in other corporations, to prevent them from extending their power inappropriately.

*Corporations’ real estate holdings were limited to what was necessary to carry out their specific purpose(s).

*Corporations were prohibited from making any political contributions, direct or indirect.

*Corporations were prohibited from making charitable or civic donations outside of their specific purposes.

*State legislatures could set the rates that some monopoly corporations could charge for their products or services.

*All corporation records and documents were open to the legislature or the state attorney general.

The Early Role of Corporations in America

The Legacy of the Founding Parents
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What caused the Progressive movement

We tried unregulated corporations in America. The closest experiment to total deregulation in this country occurred between the end of the Civil War and the beginning of the 19th century...it was called the Gilded Age; an era where America was as far from our founder's intent of a democratic society and closest to an aristocracy that our founder's were willing to lay down their lives to defeat.

It was opposition to that same Gilded Age that was the genesis of the Progressive movement in this country. When you study history, almost always just cause is behind it.

The only enemies of the Constitution are those who try to wield it as a weapon against the living, by using the words of the dead.
Me

Excellent post. Groundhog Day is exactly how I described it in another forum I used to frequent. Something sucks in the world? Must be government's fault somehow. It couldn't possibly be the sainted corporatists.

So true Joe, but when have you ever heard a conservative side with the little guy over the big guy? They worship wealth and anyone who creates wealth for themselves is immediately 'moral' and superior. And it is crucial to conservatism that the little people must literally love the order that dominates them.

But what do you really expect Joe, when you understand this it TRULY who and what they are:

Nothing turns out to be so oppressive and unjust as a feeble government.
Edmund Burke

 

[Meister]

Another fallacy. Here is an excellent website written by a doctor. He gives an insider's view into our broken health care for profit over patient system.

Healthcare - Home

My goal for this website was to try to understand a system that has an enormous financial impact on everyone, but makes almost no sense to anyone. It's a system with hidden costs, enormous mark ups to discourage direct payment and a labyrinth of billing and reimbursement schedules that almost guarantee that no person directly involved could ever understand it. And we've started to see why this system is set up this way, who benefits from it, and who loses. The question is: How did it get this way?

I've only been in practice for about a decade and the system, as it is, began evolving long before my medical career began. Still, I can only guess that decades ago when insurance companies started to pay for medical costs, no one intended for it to end up like this. Insurance companies were originally run by doctors. Their idea was to spread the risk. They had a sense that getting sick usually wasn't fair, so going bankrupt because you were sick probably also wasn't fair. They had the idea that pooling people in advance made it easier on everyone, and improved access to healthcare.

It's a great irony that only a few years later, some business people (people who are very good with money, but not so interested in medicine) realized that they could make a lot of money on health insurance if they created a special insurance plan that excluded the sickest people. In other words, insurance for people who probably didn't need it, which was very different from the original idea of health insurance for everyone, but far more profitable. The idea of preexisting conditions is almost as old as health insurance itself.

Here's one way to look at how the system came to be: People usually try to find occupations that follow what they love, at least in the beginning. Hospitals can be callous in their billing, as we've seen, and doctors like money as much as anyone else, but fundamentally there was a point in their lives when they (doctors and people who run hospitals) decided to get into the profession of helping sick people. Some are genuinely compassionate. Some are biology wonks or technology wonks, or just like the action. But most of them lose interest pretty quickly when they have to start dealing with complicated financial matters like insurance payments.

The first insurance companies were started by doctors, but they couldn't stay in the game when the money professionals started showing. They couldn't compete financially, and they didn't have the mindset to try. So they did what most of us do: focus on the details that interested them (medicine), and left the tedious stuff (finances) to someone who was interested in it (insurance companies). Now the insurance companies could start building a system in their image.

As the system grew and healthcare became more complex, more people came into the health insurance industry who had a good understanding of money but little interest in healthcare. It's no secret that confused people are easier to take advantage of, so layers of confusion were slowly piled on and profits soared.

Doctors, hospitals, and other healthcare providers didn't protest as the process slowly grew away from them because, while this was happening, they too, were making money, and didn't think they needed to worry about it. As the system became less and less transparent, insurance companies were careful to make sure that all of the major players were kept very happy. But you can't keep everyone happy forever, and when things get tight, that's when you start to learn who's running the system. Now, after 30 to 40 years of slowly allowing all of our understanding of the financial transactions to erode, we are left seeing more and more money dumped into a black hole with little understanding of what happens to it.

It's rare to see a discussion about healthcare costs that isn't centered on co-pays, premiums, and deductibles. These are all indirect costs. They tell you almost nothing about the cost of the final product (the medical services that you might need). If the cost of individual components of healthcare are mentioned at all in these conversations, the price given is usually the billing charge. But the billing charge has little to do with what health care costs either. You've seen in almost every section of this discussion that the billing charge is a hugely inflated price that almost no one ever pays.

Why would anyone want us to focus on a price that's almost never paid (unless you don't have insurance, of course)? Well, one reason might be that it makes it look like all that money is really going into paying for our health care. We all know how important an MRI can be, or an Emergency Room visit, and as long as people think an MRI really costs $4,000, and an ER visit costs $4,500, maybe they'll resign themselves to paying big insurance premiums, and we can all tell ourselves that it's the only way we can continue to have "the best health care in the world."

But if these charges have nothing to do with reality, then neither do any of the discussions. MRI's and ER visits cost hundreds of dollars, not thousands! This is all a very effective diversion because, if no one ever addresses the real problem, it's unlikely a real solution will ever be proposed. And if you don't want people to find out where their money is going, it helps to have them looking in the wrong place.

Just because this is written by a doctor, doesn't lend it any more credence than if had had been written by Kathleen Sebelius. Sure, I'm gonna take the premonitions of a random doctor in the San Francisco Bay area over reality.

You're through.

The good doctor has some points and makes some accurate observations. I checked him out and he has some impressive credentials and I have no reason to believe his comments were inspired by political motives. But being acquainted with a number of doctors and having a couple among my closest friends as well as a good friend who was recently an executive at Merck, I also know doctors don't usually have a firm grasp on all the economic dynamics driving the system. Their focus is on what the patient needs to recover and they often don't have a good understanding of why things are the way they are. But all the good doctors are frustrated at how stupid the system has become.

One thing Dr. Belk did get very right in that commentary was this:

-50 million people are denied access to basic healthcare in this Country, not because they can’t afford it, but because they’re not allowed to afford it.

I wish he had elaborated on that more.

He was also right about the pharmaceutical companies, but just as he fails to see how the government is manipulating the insurance companies, he doesn't seem to know was how much government has manipulated the pharmaceutical industry. And that will be getting worse.

(NaturalNews) The U.S. government has decided to enter the pharmaceutical business. Apparently, the drug companies aren't coming out with new "breakthrough" drugs quickly enough, and now the U.S. government plans to spend taxpayer dollars conducting research on drugs which will be turned over to Big Pharma. Those drug companies, in turn, will sell them for a profit. It's yet another clear case where the government is taking over the health care (sick care) industry and funneling profits into the hands of pharmaceutical corporations.

This is all happening because drug companies say they're scaling back their research funding to find new drugs. This terrifies the U.S. government, apparently, which doesn't recognize that scaling back drug company R&D is actually a good thing for America given how much economic damage and personal health damage is caused each year by Big Pharma's dangerous drugs. So instead of letting the failing pharmaceutical market contract on its own, Big Government wants to artificially prop it up with taxpayer dollars in much the same way that the feds bailed out Wall Street's rich banksters with trillions of dollars over the last two years.

Learn more: U.S. government launches pharmaceutical division

They say that even a blind squirrel finds an acorn now and then. I wonder if all our blind squirrels can ever see how much government intends to take over and control all our lives. And just about everything it does these days is moving us ever closer to that end.

The free market screws things up now and then, but it serves us far better and with far fewer landmines than government ever can.

I wish the Dr. had elaborated more too. Of that 50 million, what is included are the illegals that are here without healthcare, and also, the young adults that just don't want to pay for healthcare because they are young and healthy.

 

[TemplarKormac]

Just because this is written by a doctor, doesn't lend it any more credence than if had had been written by Kathleen Sebelius. Sure, I'm gonna take the premonitions of a random doctor in the San Francisco Bay area over reality.

You're through.

The good doctor has some points and makes some accurate observations. I checked him out and he has some impressive credentials and I have no reason to believe his comments were inspired by political motives. But being acquainted with a number of doctors and having a couple among my closest friends as well as a good friend who was recently an executive at Merck, I also know doctors don't usually have a firm grasp on all the economic dynamics driving the system. Their focus is on what the patient needs to recover and they often don't have a good understanding of why things are the way they are. But all the good doctors are frustrated at how stupid the system has become.

One thing Dr. Belk did get very right in that commentary was this:


I wish he had elaborated on that more.

He was also right about the pharmaceutical companies, but just as he fails to see how the government is manipulating the insurance companies, he doesn't seem to know was how much government has manipulated the pharmaceutical industry. And that will be getting worse.

(NaturalNews) The U.S. government has decided to enter the pharmaceutical business. Apparently, the drug companies aren't coming out with new "breakthrough" drugs quickly enough, and now the U.S. government plans to spend taxpayer dollars conducting research on drugs which will be turned over to Big Pharma. Those drug companies, in turn, will sell them for a profit. It's yet another clear case where the government is taking over the health care (sick care) industry and funneling profits into the hands of pharmaceutical corporations.

This is all happening because drug companies say they're scaling back their research funding to find new drugs. This terrifies the U.S. government, apparently, which doesn't recognize that scaling back drug company R&D is actually a good thing for America given how much economic damage and personal health damage is caused each year by Big Pharma's dangerous drugs. So instead of letting the failing pharmaceutical market contract on its own, Big Government wants to artificially prop it up with taxpayer dollars in much the same way that the feds bailed out Wall Street's rich banksters with trillions of dollars over the last two years.

Learn more: U.S. government launches pharmaceutical division

They say that even a blind squirrel finds an acorn now and then. I wonder if all our blind squirrels can ever see how much government intends to take over and control all our lives. And just about everything it does these days is moving us ever closer to that end.

The free market screws things up now and then, but it serves us far better and with far fewer landmines than government ever can.

I wish the Dr. had elaborated more too. Of that 50 million, what is included are the illegals that are here without healthcare, and also, the young adults that just don't want to pay for healthcare because they are young and healthy.

Yes, he needs to elaborate on where he got this "50 million" figure from.

 

[PoliticalChic]

I swear this is like Bill Murray's Ground hog Day. It is always the same right wing propaganda...EVERYTHING that scurrilous people do, like insurance cartel's death panels is not because these people are scurrilous, it's because of GOVERNMENT. The ******* government made them do it, **** personal responsibility, **** morals and ethics. You right wing turds always preach 'personal responsibility', then you make excuses for your beloved CEO's and the hierarchy you worship. The 'captains of industry' can do no wrong, they are VICTIMS...victim-hood; the right wing mantra.

You right wingers need to educate yourself about who our founding fathers were. They were not 'laissez-faire' capitalist. They did not believe in any 'invisible hand'. They totally controlled corporations. They would have cancelled the corporate charter of these scurrilous insurance cartels in an instant, and arrested your beloved 'captains of industry'

Our founding fathers did not subscribe to Adam Smith's 'invisible hand'. They believed in very heavy regulations and restrictions on corporations. They were men who held ethics as the most important attribute. They viewed being paid by the American people for their services as a privilege not a right. And they had no problem closing down any corporation that swindled the people, and holding owners and stockholder personally liable for any harm to the people they caused.

Early laws regulating corporations in America

*Corporations were required to have a clear purpose, to be fulfilled but not exceeded.

*Corporations’ licenses to do business were revocable by the state legislature if they exceeded or did not fulfill their chartered purpose(s).

*The state legislature could revoke a corporation’s charter if it misbehaved.

*The act of incorporation did not relieve corporate management or stockholders/owners of responsibility or liability for corporate acts.

*As a matter of course, corporation officers, directors, or agents couldn’t break the law and avoid punishment by claiming they were “just doing their job” when committing crimes but instead could be held criminally liable for violating the law.

*Directors of the corporation were required to come from among stockholders.

*Corporations had to have their headquarters and meetings in the state where their principal place of business was located.

*Corporation charters were granted for a specific period of time, such as twenty or thirty years (instead of being granted “in perpetuity,” as is now the practice).

*Corporations were prohibited from owning stock in other corporations, to prevent them from extending their power inappropriately.

*Corporations’ real estate holdings were limited to what was necessary to carry out their specific purpose(s).

*Corporations were prohibited from making any political contributions, direct or indirect.

*Corporations were prohibited from making charitable or civic donations outside of their specific purposes.

*State legislatures could set the rates that some monopoly corporations could charge for their products or services.

*All corporation records and documents were open to the legislature or the state attorney general.

The Early Role of Corporations in America

The Legacy of the Founding Parents
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What caused the Progressive movement

We tried unregulated corporations in America. The closest experiment to total deregulation in this country occurred between the end of the Civil War and the beginning of the 19th century...it was called the Gilded Age; an era where America was as far from our founder's intent of a democratic society and closest to an aristocracy that our founder's were willing to lay down their lives to defeat.

It was opposition to that same Gilded Age that was the genesis of the Progressive movement in this country. When you study history, almost always just cause is behind it.

The only enemies of the Constitution are those who try to wield it as a weapon against the living, by using the words of the dead.
Me

Excellent post. Groundhog Day is exactly how I described it in another forum I used to frequent. Something sucks in the world? Must be government's fault somehow. It couldn't possibly be the sainted corporatists.

So true Joe, but when have you ever heard a conservative side with the little guy over the big guy? They worship wealth and anyone who creates wealth for themselves is immediately 'moral' and superior. And it is crucial to conservatism that the little people must literally love the order that dominates them.

But what do you really expect Joe, when you understand this it TRULY who and what they are:

Nothing turns out to be so oppressive and unjust as a feeble government.
Edmund Burke

You seriously require an education...and, like Mighty Mouse, I'm here to save the day!



Bulletin:

FDR was as much a fascist as his hero, Mussolini...

As for the 'little guy'....



1. The propaganda of the New Deal (“malefactors of great wealth”) to the contrary, FDR simply endeavored to re-create the corporatism of the last war. The New Dealers invited one industry after another to write the codes under which they would be regulated. Even more aggressive, the National Recovery Administration forced industries to fix prices and in other ways to collude with one another: the NRA approved 557 basic and 189 supplementary codes, covering almost 95% of all industrial workers.


a. The intention was for big business to get bigger, and the little guy to be squeezed out: for example, the owners of the big chain movie houses wrote the codes that almost ran the independents out of business (even though 13,571 of the 18,321 movie theatres were independently owned). This in the name of ‘efficiency’ and ‘progress.’


b. New Deal bureaucrats studied Mussolini’s corporatism closely. From “Fortune” magazine:
‘The Corporate state is to Mussolini what the New Deal is to Roosevelt.’(July 1934)

 

[JoeNormal]

I swear this is like Bill Murray's Ground hog Day. It is always the same right wing propaganda...EVERYTHING that scurrilous people do, like insurance cartel's death panels is not because these people are scurrilous, it's because of GOVERNMENT. The ******* government made them do it, **** personal responsibility, **** morals and ethics. You right wing turds always preach 'personal responsibility', then you make excuses for your beloved CEO's and the hierarchy you worship. The 'captains of industry' can do no wrong, they are VICTIMS...victim-hood; the right wing mantra.

You right wingers need to educate yourself about who our founding fathers were. They were not 'laissez-faire' capitalist. They did not believe in any 'invisible hand'. They totally controlled corporations. They would have cancelled the corporate charter of these scurrilous insurance cartels in an instant, and arrested your beloved 'captains of industry'

Our founding fathers did not subscribe to Adam Smith's 'invisible hand'. They believed in very heavy regulations and restrictions on corporations. They were men who held ethics as the most important attribute. They viewed being paid by the American people for their services as a privilege not a right. And they had no problem closing down any corporation that swindled the people, and holding owners and stockholder personally liable for any harm to the people they caused.

Early laws regulating corporations in America

*Corporations were required to have a clear purpose, to be fulfilled but not exceeded.

*Corporations’ licenses to do business were revocable by the state legislature if they exceeded or did not fulfill their chartered purpose(s).

*The state legislature could revoke a corporation’s charter if it misbehaved.

*The act of incorporation did not relieve corporate management or stockholders/owners of responsibility or liability for corporate acts.

*As a matter of course, corporation officers, directors, or agents couldn’t break the law and avoid punishment by claiming they were “just doing their job” when committing crimes but instead could be held criminally liable for violating the law.

*Directors of the corporation were required to come from among stockholders.

*Corporations had to have their headquarters and meetings in the state where their principal place of business was located.

*Corporation charters were granted for a specific period of time, such as twenty or thirty years (instead of being granted “in perpetuity,” as is now the practice).

*Corporations were prohibited from owning stock in other corporations, to prevent them from extending their power inappropriately.

*Corporations’ real estate holdings were limited to what was necessary to carry out their specific purpose(s).

*Corporations were prohibited from making any political contributions, direct or indirect.

*Corporations were prohibited from making charitable or civic donations outside of their specific purposes.

*State legislatures could set the rates that some monopoly corporations could charge for their products or services.

*All corporation records and documents were open to the legislature or the state attorney general.

The Early Role of Corporations in America

The Legacy of the Founding Parents
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What caused the Progressive movement

We tried unregulated corporations in America. The closest experiment to total deregulation in this country occurred between the end of the Civil War and the beginning of the 19th century...it was called the Gilded Age; an era where America was as far from our founder's intent of a democratic society and closest to an aristocracy that our founder's were willing to lay down their lives to defeat.

It was opposition to that same Gilded Age that was the genesis of the Progressive movement in this country. When you study history, almost always just cause is behind it.

The only enemies of the Constitution are those who try to wield it as a weapon against the living, by using the words of the dead.
Me

Excellent post. Groundhog Day is exactly how I described it in another forum I used to frequent. Something sucks in the world? Must be government's fault somehow. It couldn't possibly be the sainted corporatists.

So true Joe, but when have you ever heard a conservative side with the little guy over the big guy? They worship wealth and anyone who creates wealth for themselves is immediately 'moral' and superior. And it is crucial to conservatism that the little people must literally love the order that dominates them.

But what do you really expect Joe, when you understand this it TRULY who and what they are:

Nothing turns out to be so oppressive and unjust as a feeble government.
Edmund Burke

LOL, I like it.

I think the underlying force here is an incredibly simplistic, unworkable yet pure ideology that has been cultivated in their minds since before they could remember. They need to somehow make the pieces fit and that often results in a level of cognitive dissonance that I would probably find unbearable at this stage of my life.

I should probably cut them more slack than I do since I fell at least somewhat into this mindset all the way into my 20’s. My awakening came when I entered the corporate world as a professional at a high enough level to see the machinations almost all the way to the top of 3 separate major corporations. The one I work for now is somewhat different because until a few years ago, it was run by its founder who was both brilliant and a humanitarian. I know and respect at least the local movers and shakers but it’s been slowly changing since his death and I suspect that in a decade or so, it’ll be as much the sanctuary for douche bags and weasels that the others were.

 

[Redfish]

Excellent post. Groundhog Day is exactly how I described it in another forum I used to frequent. Something sucks in the world? Must be government's fault somehow. It couldn't possibly be the sainted corporatists.

So true Joe, but when have you ever heard a conservative side with the little guy over the big guy? They worship wealth and anyone who creates wealth for themselves is immediately 'moral' and superior. And it is crucial to conservatism that the little people must literally love the order that dominates them.

But what do you really expect Joe, when you understand this it TRULY who and what they are:

Nothing turns out to be so oppressive and unjust as a feeble government.
Edmund Burke

LOL, I like it.

I think the underlying force here is an incredibly simplistic, unworkable yet pure ideology that has been cultivated in their minds since before they could remember. They need to somehow make the pieces fit and that often results in a level of cognitive dissonance that I would probably find unbearable at this stage of my life.

I should probably cut them more slack than I do since I fell at least somewhat into this mindset all the way into my 20’s. My awakening came when I entered the corporate world as a professional at a high enough level to see the machinations almost all the way up through the management food chain in 3 separate major corporations. The one I work for now is somewhat different because until a few years ago, it was run by its founder who was both brilliant and a humanitarian. I know and respect at least the local movers and shakers but it’s been slowly changing since his death and I suspect that in a decade or so, it’ll be as much the sanctuary for douche bags and weasels that the others were.

were you forced to work for those douche bags? Why not start your own business and give all of your profits to charity? why don't you libtards ever practice what you preach?

 

[JoeNormal]

So true Joe, but when have you ever heard a conservative side with the little guy over the big guy? They worship wealth and anyone who creates wealth for themselves is immediately 'moral' and superior. And it is crucial to conservatism that the little people must literally love the order that dominates them.

But what do you really expect Joe, when you understand this it TRULY who and what they are:

Nothing turns out to be so oppressive and unjust as a feeble government.
Edmund Burke

LOL, I like it.

I think the underlying force here is an incredibly simplistic, unworkable yet pure ideology that has been cultivated in their minds since before they could remember. They need to somehow make the pieces fit and that often results in a level of cognitive dissonance that I would probably find unbearable at this stage of my life.

I should probably cut them more slack than I do since I fell at least somewhat into this mindset all the way into my 20’s. My awakening came when I entered the corporate world as a professional at a high enough level to see the machinations almost all the way up through the management food chain in 3 separate major corporations. The one I work for now is somewhat different because until a few years ago, it was run by its founder who was both brilliant and a humanitarian. I know and respect at least the local movers and shakers but it’s been slowly changing since his death and I suspect that in a decade or so, it’ll be as much the sanctuary for douche bags and weasels that the others were.

were you forced to work for those douche bags? Why not start your own business and give all of your profits to charity? why don't you libtards ever practice what you preach?

I didn't know the douchebags were there until I started with the companies and since I don't work for them any longer, I guess it's obvious that I wasn't forced to work for them.

Your post demonstrates another wonderful attribute of conservatism - black-and-white thinking.

 

[Bfgrn]

Excellent post. Groundhog Day is exactly how I described it in another forum I used to frequent. Something sucks in the world? Must be government's fault somehow. It couldn't possibly be the sainted corporatists.

So true Joe, but when have you ever heard a conservative side with the little guy over the big guy? They worship wealth and anyone who creates wealth for themselves is immediately 'moral' and superior. And it is crucial to conservatism that the little people must literally love the order that dominates them.

But what do you really expect Joe, when you understand this it TRULY who and what they are:

Nothing turns out to be so oppressive and unjust as a feeble government.
Edmund Burke

You seriously require an education...and, like Mighty Mouse, I'm here to save the day!



Bulletin:

FDR was as much a fascist as his hero, Mussolini...

As for the 'little guy'....



1. The propaganda of the New Deal (“malefactors of great wealth”) to the contrary, FDR simply endeavored to re-create the corporatism of the last war. The New Dealers invited one industry after another to write the codes under which they would be regulated. Even more aggressive, the National Recovery Administration forced industries to fix prices and in other ways to collude with one another: the NRA approved 557 basic and 189 supplementary codes, covering almost 95% of all industrial workers.


a. The intention was for big business to get bigger, and the little guy to be squeezed out: for example, the owners of the big chain movie houses wrote the codes that almost ran the independents out of business (even though 13,571 of the 18,321 movie theatres were independently owned). This in the name of ‘efficiency’ and ‘progress.’


b. New Deal bureaucrats studied Mussolini’s corporatism closely. From “Fortune” magazine:
‘The Corporate state is to Mussolini what the New Deal is to Roosevelt.’(July 1934)

My GOD PC, what is this world coming to? But...but...but...you guys keep saying FDR and Mussolini were Marxist socialists. And that fascism is a leftist philosophy! NOW, you're telling me FDR and Mussolini were corporatists? And fascism is really corporatism. Holy COW, does Jonah Goldberg know about this yet?

But NOW I get it!... Boy, that FDR was really a sly one. All those social programs, work programs, Second Bill of Rights and wage increases were just a diversion. Man oh MAN, have I been fooled.

What next PC? Marxists in Prussia voted against Otto von Bismarck’s compulsory health insurance? Churchill was the father of the British welfare state? The Welfare state is a characteristic of advanced capitalist economies? Labour was the last of the three British parties to accept a National Health Service???

Move OVER Ronald Reagan, make room for the new icons of the right...

But now that you mention it PC...it is all falling in place!

"O con noi o contro di noi"—You're either with us or against us
Benito Mussolini

"Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists"
George W. Bush

 

[Redfish]

LOL, I like it.

I think the underlying force here is an incredibly simplistic, unworkable yet pure ideology that has been cultivated in their minds since before they could remember. They need to somehow make the pieces fit and that often results in a level of cognitive dissonance that I would probably find unbearable at this stage of my life.

I should probably cut them more slack than I do since I fell at least somewhat into this mindset all the way into my 20’s. My awakening came when I entered the corporate world as a professional at a high enough level to see the machinations almost all the way up through the management food chain in 3 separate major corporations. The one I work for now is somewhat different because until a few years ago, it was run by its founder who was both brilliant and a humanitarian. I know and respect at least the local movers and shakers but it’s been slowly changing since his death and I suspect that in a decade or so, it’ll be as much the sanctuary for douche bags and weasels that the others were.

were you forced to work for those douche bags? Why not start your own business and give all of your profits to charity? why don't you libtards ever practice what you preach?

I didn't know the douchebags were there until I started with the companies and since I don't work for them any longer, I guess it's obvious that I wasn't forced to work for them.

Your post demonstrates another wonderful attribute of conservatism - black-and-white thinking.

If you had your own small (0r large) business would you do everything possible to make the business successful and make as much profit as possible so you could expand and hire more people?

If you borrowed money from friends and relatives to start the business would you want to pay them back as fast as possible with interest?

If you answered yes to either or both, then you are a capitalist.

If you treated your employees like shit and cheated on your customers and suppliers what would happen to your business?

Just because there are "douche bags" in some businesses does not make all capitalism bad. Do you think there are douche bags in socialist governments?

most of these things are very black and white, the grey only exists in the minds of douche bags

 

[Redfish]

Bush and Mussolini quotes---------totally different context. nice try though

 

[JoeNormal]

were you forced to work for those douche bags? Why not start your own business and give all of your profits to charity? why don't you libtards ever practice what you preach?

I didn't know the douchebags were there until I started with the companies and since I don't work for them any longer, I guess it's obvious that I wasn't forced to work for them.

Your post demonstrates another wonderful attribute of conservatism - black-and-white thinking.

If you had your own small (0r large) business would you do everything possible to make the business successful and make as much profit as possible so you could expand and hire more people?

If you borrowed money from friends and relatives to start the business would you want to pay them back as fast as possible with interest?

If you answered yes to either or both, then you are a capitalist.

If you treated your employees like shit and cheated on your customers and suppliers what would happen to your business?

Just because there are "douche bags" in some businesses does not make all capitalism bad. Do you think there are douche bags in socialist governments?

most of these things are very black and white, the grey only exists in the minds of douche bags

I'm sure there are. They seem to be a little more benign variety however because there are limits on how much government douchebags can make (take).

And yes, I am generally a capitalist but one that recognizes that there need to be limits on how much damage an entity can do. I also recognize the need for a safety net and believe that profit is not the ONLY reason that a corporation should exist.

 

[Foxfyre]

I didn't know the douchebags were there until I started with the companies and since I don't work for them any longer, I guess it's obvious that I wasn't forced to work for them.

Your post demonstrates another wonderful attribute of conservatism - black-and-white thinking.

If you had your own small (0r large) business would you do everything possible to make the business successful and make as much profit as possible so you could expand and hire more people?

If you borrowed money from friends and relatives to start the business would you want to pay them back as fast as possible with interest?

If you answered yes to either or both, then you are a capitalist.

If you treated your employees like shit and cheated on your customers and suppliers what would happen to your business?

Just because there are "douche bags" in some businesses does not make all capitalism bad. Do you think there are douche bags in socialist governments?

most of these things are very black and white, the grey only exists in the minds of douche bags

I'm sure there are. They seem to be a little more benign variety however because there are limits on how much government douchebags can make (take).

And yes, I am generally a capitalist but one that recognizes that there need to be limits on how much damage an entity can do. I also recognize the need for a safety net and believe that profit is not the ONLY reason that a corporation should exist.

None of us who see capitalism as a flawed system but far superior to any other are advocates of no regulation at all. The federal government should secure our rights with just enough regulation as is necessary to prevent us from doing economic, enviromental, or physical violence to each other. And then it should leave us alone to form whatever sort of society we wish to have.

None of us who see capitalism as a flawed system but far superior to any other are opposed to safety nets. But we do not want the safety nets provided by the federal government because once they can take one person's money in order to benefit another, all the restraints on how much government can grow and benefit itself are removed.

And other than not-for-profit organizations organized specifically to do good things, what reason other than profit is justification for a corporation to exist? Or to have incentive to exist?

Whenever we begin to see private labor or property as something the government should be able to order and command for the 'greater good', we have relinquished our unalienable rights and become wards and property of the state to do with whatever it chooses. Or the world government.

That is the ultimate goal of the dedicated Marxist and/or the militant religious extremist. Freedom loving people who fail to recognize the warning sides that it is in progress will lose their freedom. But that sure does take care of any flaws or weaknesses in capitalism, doesn't it.

 

[PoliticalChic]

So true Joe, but when have you ever heard a conservative side with the little guy over the big guy? They worship wealth and anyone who creates wealth for themselves is immediately 'moral' and superior. And it is crucial to conservatism that the little people must literally love the order that dominates them.

But what do you really expect Joe, when you understand this it TRULY who and what they are:

Nothing turns out to be so oppressive and unjust as a feeble government.
Edmund Burke

You seriously require an education...and, like Mighty Mouse, I'm here to save the day!



Bulletin:

FDR was as much a fascist as his hero, Mussolini...

As for the 'little guy'....



1. The propaganda of the New Deal (“malefactors of great wealth”) to the contrary, FDR simply endeavored to re-create the corporatism of the last war. The New Dealers invited one industry after another to write the codes under which they would be regulated. Even more aggressive, the National Recovery Administration forced industries to fix prices and in other ways to collude with one another: the NRA approved 557 basic and 189 supplementary codes, covering almost 95% of all industrial workers.


a. The intention was for big business to get bigger, and the little guy to be squeezed out: for example, the owners of the big chain movie houses wrote the codes that almost ran the independents out of business (even though 13,571 of the 18,321 movie theatres were independently owned). This in the name of ‘efficiency’ and ‘progress.’


b. New Deal bureaucrats studied Mussolini’s corporatism closely. From “Fortune” magazine:
‘The Corporate state is to Mussolini what the New Deal is to Roosevelt.’(July 1934)

My GOD PC, what is this world coming to? But...but...but...you guys keep saying FDR and Mussolini were Marxist socialists. And that fascism is a leftist philosophy! NOW, you're telling me FDR and Mussolini were corporatists? And fascism is really corporatism. Holy COW, does Jonah Goldberg know about this yet?

But NOW I get it!... Boy, that FDR was really a sly one. All those social programs, work programs, Second Bill of Rights and wage increases were just a diversion. Man oh MAN, have I been fooled.

What next PC? Marxists in Prussia voted against Otto von Bismarck’s compulsory health insurance? Churchill was the father of the British welfare state? The Welfare state is a characteristic of advanced capitalist economies? Labour was the last of the three British parties to accept a National Health Service???

Move OVER Ronald Reagan, make room for the new icons of the right...

But now that you mention it PC...it is all falling in place!

"O con noi o contro di noi"—You're either with us or against us
Benito Mussolini

"Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists"
George W. Bush

So, another one of my posts in which you were unable to find even the tiniest of errors?



1. “He was a staunch proponent of revolutionary rather than reformist socialism, and actually received Lenin's endorsement and support for expelling reformists from the Socialist Party. He was in fact first dubbed "Il Duce" (the Leader) when he was a member of Italy's (Marxist) Socialist Party.”
Roman Salute & Benito Mussolini -The raised one arm salute is a myth re: Roman Salute: Cinema, History, Ideology & myths debunked by Dr. Rex Curry along with Gladiator: Film and History. PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE & SOCIALIST SALUTES & SOCIALISM: The socia

2. Not only was Mussolini, the major Fascist a socialist, but the progenitor of Progressivism was Fascism, and the 19th century Progressives made no secret of their support of Fascism and of Mussolini.

a. "All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state."
Sounds like FDR, doesn't it.



3. And intellectuals and elites in America, they saw the evil right away, didn’t they?

a. The 1934 Cole Porter hit ‘You’re the Top” had the perfectly acceptable line “You are Mussolini.”
b. The Chicago Tribune supported his invasion of Ethiopia (Change of Subject: Streetworthy? The case for and against Italo Balbo

 

[JoeNormal]

If you had your own small (0r large) business would you do everything possible to make the business successful and make as much profit as possible so you could expand and hire more people?

If you borrowed money from friends and relatives to start the business would you want to pay them back as fast as possible with interest?

If you answered yes to either or both, then you are a capitalist.

If you treated your employees like shit and cheated on your customers and suppliers what would happen to your business?

Just because there are "douche bags" in some businesses does not make all capitalism bad. Do you think there are douche bags in socialist governments?

most of these things are very black and white, the grey only exists in the minds of douche bags

I'm sure there are. They seem to be a little more benign variety however because there are limits on how much government douchebags can make (take).

And yes, I am generally a capitalist but one that recognizes that there need to be limits on how much damage an entity can do. I also recognize the need for a safety net and believe that profit is not the ONLY reason that a corporation should exist.

None of us who see capitalism as a flawed system but far superior to any other are advocates of no regulation at all. The federal government should secure our rights with just enough regulation as is necessary to prevent us from doing economic, enviromental, or physical violence to each other. And then it should leave us alone to form whatever sort of society we wish to have.

None of us who see capitalism as a flawed system but far superior to any other are opposed to safety nets. But we do not want the safety nets provided by the federal government because once they can take one person's money in order to benefit another, all the restraints on how much government can grow and benefit itself are removed.

And other than not-for-profit organizations organized specifically to do good things, what reason other than profit is justification for a corporation to exist? Or to have incentive to exist?

Whenever we begin to see private labor or property as something the government should be able to order and command for the 'greater good', we have relinquished our unalienable rights and become wards and property of the state to do with whatever it chooses. Or the world government.

That is the ultimate goal of the dedicated Marxist and/or the militant religious extremist. Freedom loving people who fail to recognize the warning sides that it is in progress will lose their freedom. But that sure does take care of any flaws or weaknesses in capitalism, doesn't it.

Well, I frankly don't see how an advanced society would even be possible without government intervention of some kind. At the very least, they keep the supply lines greased for any production or development to occur. Then there's infrastructure and development of technologies that don't have an obvious short term payoff.

 

[Bfgrn]

You seriously require an education...and, like Mighty Mouse, I'm here to save the day!



Bulletin:

FDR was as much a fascist as his hero, Mussolini...

As for the 'little guy'....



1. The propaganda of the New Deal (“malefactors of great wealth”) to the contrary, FDR simply endeavored to re-create the corporatism of the last war. The New Dealers invited one industry after another to write the codes under which they would be regulated. Even more aggressive, the National Recovery Administration forced industries to fix prices and in other ways to collude with one another: the NRA approved 557 basic and 189 supplementary codes, covering almost 95% of all industrial workers.


a. The intention was for big business to get bigger, and the little guy to be squeezed out: for example, the owners of the big chain movie houses wrote the codes that almost ran the independents out of business (even though 13,571 of the 18,321 movie theatres were independently owned). This in the name of ‘efficiency’ and ‘progress.’


b. New Deal bureaucrats studied Mussolini’s corporatism closely. From “Fortune” magazine:
‘The Corporate state is to Mussolini what the New Deal is to Roosevelt.’(July 1934)

My GOD PC, what is this world coming to? But...but...but...you guys keep saying FDR and Mussolini were Marxist socialists. And that fascism is a leftist philosophy! NOW, you're telling me FDR and Mussolini were corporatists? And fascism is really corporatism. Holy COW, does Jonah Goldberg know about this yet?

But NOW I get it!... Boy, that FDR was really a sly one. All those social programs, work programs, Second Bill of Rights and wage increases were just a diversion. Man oh MAN, have I been fooled.

What next PC? Marxists in Prussia voted against Otto von Bismarck’s compulsory health insurance? Churchill was the father of the British welfare state? The Welfare state is a characteristic of advanced capitalist economies? Labour was the last of the three British parties to accept a National Health Service???

Move OVER Ronald Reagan, make room for the new icons of the right...

But now that you mention it PC...it is all falling in place!

"O con noi o contro di noi"—You're either with us or against us
Benito Mussolini

"Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists"
George W. Bush

So, another one of my posts in which you were unable to find even the tiniest of errors?



1. “He was a staunch proponent of revolutionary rather than reformist socialism, and actually received Lenin's endorsement and support for expelling reformists from the Socialist Party. He was in fact first dubbed "Il Duce" (the Leader) when he was a member of Italy's (Marxist) Socialist Party.”
Roman Salute & Benito Mussolini -The raised one arm salute is a myth re: Roman Salute: Cinema, History, Ideology & myths debunked by Dr. Rex Curry along with Gladiator: Film and History. PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE & SOCIALIST SALUTES & SOCIALISM: The socia

2. Not only was Mussolini, the major Fascist a socialist, but the progenitor of Progressivism was Fascism, and the 19th century Progressives made no secret of their support of Fascism and of Mussolini.

a. "All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state."
Sounds like FDR, doesn't it.



3. And intellectuals and elites in America, they saw the evil right away, didn’t they?

a. The 1934 Cole Porter hit ‘You’re the Top” had the perfectly acceptable line “You are Mussolini.”
b. The Chicago Tribune supported his invasion of Ethiopia (Change of Subject: Streetworthy? The case for and against Italo Balbo

You are faced with a real quandary PC. Either Mussolini was a corporatist and fascism is really corporatism, OR Mussolini was a socialist.

Pick ONE...

No surprise Lenin endorsed Mussolini. Lenin was a communist, not a socialist. The Soviet Union officially abandoned socialism in 1921 when Lenin instituted the New Economic Policy allowing for taxation, local trade, some state capitalism... and extreme profiteering. Later that year, he purged 259,000 from the party membership and therefore purged them from voting (shades of the US election of 2000!) and fewer and fewer people were involved in making decisions.