My soap box on a public option

Word in the blogosphere tonight is saying the public option is dead.

Where to even start on this one. We need a public option.

Fear has been spread of Death Panels. The truth is, we already have them. On a regular basis people with "Insurance" are denied coverage for trumpet up reasons. You could say I'm being a Left wing nut job on this one, but when you have people testify to Congress that they're job was to find reasons to deny coverage (Public Record, go look it up) what else can you call it but a Death Panel? Maybe a Greed Panel is a better term for them. After all, they're not so much about killing the patient, as saving the company money. The patient dying is just a side-effect of protecting the bottom line. In other words they're saying a person's life is just part of doing business.

Between when I was hit by a car (2003) and my brother's recently broken knee (2009), I've seen it myself how the insurance companies stand between the Doctors and the patients.

I was hit by car while working, so workman's comp picked up "the bills" (just not all of them). The problems started before I even left the accident scene. Do I get life flighted or raced in the back of the ambulance? Life Flight was more expensive than the ambulance. The choice was the ambulance because they thought it would be better for me to die in that than in the air, and it'd free up the chopper for someone that might actually make it to the hospital. (I've always been stubborn, so I made it via ambulance).

While I was still in Surgical ICU the insurance company complained about the time I was spending in the hospital. After I was released, it continued to go down hill. Every time I saw a doctor, an insurance company nurse (an LPN if I remember right) was in the room. Her whole reason to be there was agree or disagree with the doctor on what treatments I needed. I HAD TO FIGHT FOR A PSYCH EVALUATION, because the personality shift I had wasn't worth them worrying about. Only reason I even got one was because I went and set it up myself. Then it became a race to see the doctor I selected vs their corporate whore / shrill of "Doctor". Then they refused to pay for it, even though they sent me to 2 of their whores (the first one agreed with the doctor I chose). I never got any of the counseling 2 of the 3 Doctors said I needed. Not once did I receive any physical therapy, and the cane I walked with for months, was paid for out of my own pocket. The PNMR guy was more interested in sucking up to the insurance company than treating the patient. Physical damage included my brain, my neck and my hip. (I had to learn to walk again, on my own).

My brother is Mental Handicapped, because of that he's on SSI (with medicare). I got him to take Tang Soo Do with me. The school I study at has a history with teaching the mentally handicapped. My brother is 5'9" and about 95lbs. When he was in jr high (in the 90s), he joined the wrestling team, and some how managed to break his knee. He had a healthier weight back then. In April or so this year (2009), he was working a kick drill, but not shifting his weight right. As a result, the knee that had the scar tissue and the like broke again. At first we thought it was a sprain, so I took him home, and our mom iced it. The next day, it was 2x the size. So I took him to the ER (he's afraid of hospitals). We had problems with one Doctor, but were able to get a second opinion. He got free crutches and a free brace for his knee (things my mom could not afford), physical therapy, x-rays at each follow up visit, and lots of great advice. Not once did someone from Medicare or the Government show up to tell the doctors what they could and could not do.

A health care co-op won't work. They won't have the power that the big companies have. They'll look good, but won't last. Not when Big Insurance can reward and punish the peasants.

During Open Enrollment last year at work, the Blue Cross rep they sent out, said we'll be punished for using our Insurance (not the exact wording but the gist of it). How? Our premiums will go up. We'll have to pay even more than we are now. But if we grit our teeth and bare it, our premium will go down, and we'll be rewarded for being good little peasants who don't upset their golden apple cart.

The "Tea-baggers" have been saying that they'd lose their current health care if there was a public option. Sadly they're probably right. Not because the United States Government would mandate it, but because Companies would see it would be cheaper to force their employees into it. The company saves money, and has a better bottom line. You think they'd pass the money on the employees? Please the employees are slaves. Most of the people with jobs are doing more work with less pay.

Most employees don't realize that though. They think that the company screwing them is in the employee's best interest. From a conversation with a guy from FedEx last week. Nutshell version "Yeah, FedEx cut my pay, I have more work to do, but I still have a job". Talking about Unions and UPS. He said UPS had better benefits and pay. But because of UPS being a union shop, UPS let people go instead of doing pay cuts. (Or so the FedEx guy claimed).

Glen Beck lately has been talking about how great the American Health Care system is. Go look up his news stories from January 2008. He said on the air (at cnn I believe) that the American Health system was crap. He didn't say it just once either. He said it in a video from home when he was recovering. He said it on the air multiple times.

Now he's saying that the US has the best Health Care in the world. If that's the case, why did Remote Area Medical start opening up around the country? Remote Area Medical is supposed to be for 3rd world countries to help the people there to have a fighting chance. Has the United States become a 3rd world country?

We, The People of the United States, need change. We need to stop having a 3rd world level health care system and actually start pretending to be an industrial country again. Why is it other countries, countries we're told we're better than, have free health care? If we're so much better why don't we have a health care system they want instead of one they criticize (go look up the news papers coming out of England this week, we're being laughed at. The Daily Mirror called the U.S. The "Land of the Fee").

Enough!

On the way home from work today, I was thinking what I would do in the current economic "crisis". If a company is too big to fail... That just means it's a monopoly, and it's time to whittle it down to size.

But Keith Olbermann said it best tonight with a special comment on Countdown.


Thanks to Crooks and Liars since I was at martial arts

What is this really about?

I live in Michigan. I just moved further away from the Detroit area, but still think it's considered a suburb. I'm on the out skirts of Ann Arbor. I would have posted on this sooner but I do not have any net access at home yet, and have to use common area of the complex I live in. However I have few hours of the day to go there.

So what was the Auto Loans about? Why were they needed? And why did the republicans against it?

1) The loans are about giving the Auto Companies money that the Banks are NOT giving them. The auto companies have to buy equipment, raw materials, and pay their employees. The banks were given shit loads of money but have chose to sit on it, instead of using it for what it was supposed to be used for. Getting cash back into the system in loans.

2) They're needed because the companies have debt. They have to pay everyone for building the car before the car is sold. Cars are not fast food. They do not get built when you order them. They get built in advance, but don't bring money in, until it's sold. People are having problems buying cars right now. Not because the cars they make suck, but because the BANKS are refusing to give loans, if you need the money for anything. Don't need the loan, you'll get the money.

3) Why did the Republicans in the Senate kill it? Because they want to make people slaves. I'm watching Chris Dodd right now. He's talking about how the Republicans wanting to blame the workers for the problems that the auto makes have. They want to say the workers are paid too much. The guy getting paid $18.00 an hour to sweep the floor is a myth. I've worked in the auto industry. I got $15.00 an hour when I worked for EDS at a GM plant. When I went to work for GM I was making 30.00 an hour. But I was doing project management. and I was under paid. Yes there were UAW guys that made lots of money and hour there... but that's because they were there for 20 years, and that was the raises they got for performance. The reason that we're not seeing the Japanese companies asking for the money, because they get their money from over seas banks. BANKS that are not SITTING ON money they got from a Government.

So what the republicans are saying is that people make too much. They're still trying to kill the middle class. They're about getting their buddies (the ones that bribe them with donations) more money, while they get the American people who elect them even less. They gave shit loads of money to banks, and the banks are not doing what they are supposed to do, yet the republicans say they want to be the fiscal group. Bull shit. They want to make us a two class society.

Fun things today

So today was Election day. I got up at 6am, got to the polls at 6:30, and I was about 13th or so in line (I got ballot 0013). It was a minor cluster, and there were lots of people there. By the time the polls opened the line had already doubled back on itself. We had the silly fill the bubble in kind, with black or blue ink. Oh even though I had ballot 13, I was the 12th person to cast their ballot.

The person in front of me used to be my Rep to the State Senate. I recognized him. He doesn't know me, but knows my uncle. It was fun, actually kind of argued with him over politics. The problem is he's been in the belly of the beast, and can't see the forest through the trees anymore.

After voting, I had to go outside and wait for my Uncle who went up there with me. In the process, I got to call a pro-lifer (she claimed she was a "right to life" person) exactly what they are. PRO-Slavery advocates. They want the government to micro-manage their lives, because they're scared of their own sexual organs. It actually chased her, and the former Rep away. I also got to say that Religious Beliefs have no place in politics.

Pro-choice is more than the right to abortion. It's about having a choice period. It means being able to chose what you do and how you use your reproductive organs. The Pro-Slavers won't stop when they get abortion abolished. They'll go after any kind of family planing. They've already gutted sex education. Which you can see as there has been a rise in teen pregnancy. Hell look at the Republican's VP choice's daughter. Being Pro-choice is about not having the government telling us how to have sex.

The best thing today... THE VERY BEST THING TODAY... I'm wearing new pants.
Why is that the best thing? The people who make the slacks I wear to work stopped making the flat front kind in my size, 40x32. Since I tore my last pair last week, I went out and bought new pants. 38x32. AND THEY FIT!!! Its a small victory, but I take what I can get where I can get it.

never thought I'd get to say this again

Kucinich for President.

If he had been allowed to speak like this at the so called "Debates" where it was a dog and pony show for Edwards, Clinton and Obamba, we'd be saying President Kucinich on Jan 20th 2009.

This is how you work a crowd.

SiCKO

So I watched SiCKO, finally. It was really good. I did laugh pretty hard at the going to Cuba bit, but I guess that's just me.

It brings up some interesting things. Other countries have Socialized Health care and it's not as bad as they sell it to be. I have a friend in Canada that said, yes it is hard to get to see the specialist, because he's so busy.

France, 35 hour work week with 5 weeks vacation.

Then it hit me. I know why the Congress makes a big scare of "Socialized Health Care". It is not about the money they get from the lobbyists. It is not because of things like the Red Scare.

The sad truth is, the Congress, the President and lots of other people in government have really great health care. It is paid for by taxes.

I think the most striking truth from the movie however... Was the Old British Parlement member who said the US Government doesn't Fear the Citizens the Citizens fear the Government. However at the same time, he was only half right. The rich bastards running things do fear the poor and down trodden. Why else are they purging the voting rolls of people they know won't vote the way those in power want.

Lastly, to everyone else who thinks government ran things are bad and we shouldn't do it. Remember that the next time you're in a car accident and an ambulance shows up from the Fire department. Remember that the next time your house catches fire.

Remember socialized things are bad, when you need a cop to help you. You are threatened or attacked and you file a police report.

Lastly remember you want to do away with government paid agencies when you send your next bill out in the mail. Or check your mail box for your tax return.

Censor this.

Why do people have no clue? Seriously first it was China with their great firewall. A laughable joke. Proxies and the like make it easy to get around. Heck there is a service I heard about a few years ago, where you can sign up, they allow an encrypted connection to your PC and use your bandwidth to get around the firewall.

Now it's the Wikileaks.org issue. Wikileaks is a web site that allows anonymous whistle blowing. A swiss bank had the whistle blown on them, about money laundering. So they found a moron symptomatic judge (bought and paid for most likely) to have the domain name taken away. It appears that it is better to protect the company than it is the consumer. A sad thing that is getting bigger and bigger in the US.

Seriously people, the companies and the government want to know what you are talking about. They want to control you. FISA and the like aren't about saving people, it's about control.

Its time to up the game. Use Tor, use PGP / GPG, SSH, SFTP, Password Safe, and TrueCrypt.

Tor will let you surf the web more anonymously. It makes the job of finding out where your going, and where you are harder. Basically it bounces you around a bunch of other computers before you get to the web server.

PGP / GPG, encrypt your email. Make it so only those you want to read your email can. Yes you can get it to work with gmail too.

SSH and SFTP encrypt your connection to terminal and ftp servers. Normally your password is sent in plain text, and anyone with a packet sniffer can see what that password is. SSH and SFTP encrypt the connection between you and the server. Meaning that they can't read your password, or what your getting from a packet sniffer.

Passowrd Safe securely store your user names and passwords. It has a nice gui in windows. It stores the data in an encrypted file. You can double click an entry and it will securely copy it to your clipboard for pasting, and the clears the clipboard when it minimizes or closes.

Lastly TrueCrypt offers Full Disk Encryption (as of version 5.0) that requires pre-boot authentication (for windows, need to check on Linux, and Mac OSX is planed for later). It provides some other nifty things too, like encrypted containers, that you can hide a second encrypted container in. That way if your computer is stolen, your data isn't accessible. Well after it powers off. It also works well on USB drives. I recently got an 8 gig drive, that I've put an encrypted container on. When I plug the drive it, it pops up the auto run menu, and asks if I want to mount the drive. I don't have to. I do have some stuff outside the encrypted section, but that's encrypted in a different way. There are some other tools that can do the Full Disk Encryption, like PGP, but Truecrypt is open source and only costs the price of the download.

Senator Levin...

So I was surprised by one of my Senators today. Levin, actually voted in favor of the Dodd / Feingold amendment. However, I forgot all about Stabenow (IE STAB IN THE BACK / STAB ME NOW).

She was one of the traitors that cross the line to side with the republic party on giving her corporate masters (she's bought and paid for) immunity.

I sent a fairly nasty email to her. Telling her thank you for cementing the position in our current police state.

If you don't think we live in a police state, you haven't really be paying attention have you...

Oh and speaking of masters... Anyone else see that our media masters are calling states for Obama, before ANY votes are counted?

My Senator is a Traitor living in Fear

This is a letter I sent to Senator Carl Levin of Michigan today.

Dear Mr. Levin,

I just watched you supporting the Specter / Whitehouse amendment to the FISA bill.

What you basically said, yes the telcos broke the law, but that's fine as long as no one can show they were hurt. If citizens can show they were damaged (by secret laws) then they can have a day in court. You statement was that because the telcos were acting in "good faith with the administration" it is ok to break the laws of the nation. This country is supposed to be above secret laws, and you're advocating them.

That is akin to you approaching me to murder someone for you, saying as long as I hide the body well enough, I won't be prosecuted. Even though we both know that I'd be breaking the law.

Everyone is damaged by the Telecommunication companies that broke the law, because U.S. Citizens can no longer trust that their conversations are private, and not being listened to illegally.

You sir disgust me. Stop living in fear.

Listening to Dodd on FISA

Man, I wish Dodd was still running. He's going a great job speaking against the immunity garbage in FISA bill. He's following up on what Feingold started before him (in the speeches).

Dodd is showing leadership, where are Clinton and Obama?

I like Chris Dodd

I think he's got what it takes to be a leader. He was my second choice behind Kucinich for President, and my first choice as the person who should replace Harry Reid as the Majority Leader in the Senate. He's also my first choice for VP.

A great example of what I mean, besides the fight against the FISA bill last month, is the video link below.

In a nutshell the Republicans wanted to ignore the amendments to the Intelligce commite's FISA bill, and vote on it just as it was presented. Why? Because Bush WILL sign that version of the bill. It protects the corrupt corporations that broke the law.

This is part of what Dodd had to say on the topic.