Healthcare Reform; A Modest Proposal

A Modest Proposal about News Coverage of Healthcare Reform

Make news reporters and TV anchors buy their own health insurance? We would have healthcare reform, and a public option already!

As news anchors intone ‘on the one hand, on the other hand’ about the ‘controversial’ proposals to reform healthcare, one thing is clear. If those well-heeled messengers of the day’s news were required to enter the open market and buy their own health insurance, we’d have long ago gone to universal health care, or at the very least, healthcare reform with a very real public option.

The press operates best when it is hungry, not overfed, a little bit mean. We have none of this at the higher levels of the USA’s chattering class at present. Get Lou Dobbs bargaining with Blue Cross/Blue Shield for his family’s coverage and we’d see him drop that fake Obama birth certificate sneer in a heartbeat. He would be howling for ‘fair and honest healthcare for all Americans’.

Take away Fox News’ Neil Cavuto’s free coverage and low copayments and he’d think twice about dissing efforts to level the playing field for working Americans who can get no insurance. He’d probably be holding the Canadian system up as an approach we should emulate.

Finally, make our Senators and Congressmen pay for their own health insurance. If we’d done that 20 years ago, Canada would probably be looking to emulate us!

Paying for Universal Health Care would be no problem if we’d pare back our gigantic Defense budget, cut our heavy spending on foreign aid and re-instate a reasonable tax on millionaires and billionaires. Heck, Warren Buffet even claims he’d be willing to pay a higher percentage of his income in taxes than his secretary pays. What a guy!

So when you read a headline about the ‘controversial’ proposals to reform healthcare, ask yourself, ‘controversial to who?” To corporate fatcats in Insurance company front offices, that’s who.

GOP: Greedheads Opponents and Piss Ants

The right wing misanthropes who have been mewling and puking about the stock market need to be taught a lesson, or two.
Obama didn’t break it, but he is working on fixing it.
The wingnuts who cheered when Dubya spent billions on a fraudulent war in Iraq now suddenly just can’t stand the thought of tax dollars going for schools and bridges and highways and medical research… and for pete’s sake.. JOBS???
Their lack of support for education makes sense. The stupider Americans are, the more likely they’ll fall for the same line of bull that has been handed out by malevolent GOP schemers ever since the Gipper entered center stage.
To review a few of the gigantic screw-ups which brought us to our current state of recession:
Repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, the law which kept banks on the straight and narrow? Obama had nothing to do with that.
Cutting the budget of the Securities and Exchange Commission even as financial markets became more and more complex? Obama had nothing to do with that.
Taking huge dollars from lobbyists while gutting the federal financial regulatory system?
Nope, wasn’t Obama.
It was Republicans, mostly.
Now Obama and his team are working to fix the mess. Republicans, what’s left of them, are howling and yowling like castrated cats in a clothes dryer. Spin ‘em some more.
Most likely, he will fix it. But first, Republicans, bend over… this just might hurt a little…

Rick Santelli: Investment Bank Finger Puppet

Why Rick Santelli Is An Investment Bank Finger Puppet

Some of us remember when news organizations actually employed journalists. Remember them? They were reporters and editors who worked hard every day to report facts, not opinions. Sometimes they were actually able to tell us something new, something we hadn’t heard before. If they tried to slip an opinion into their reporting, they were rewarded with a slap upside the head, and were sometimes even fired.

Those days are gone. The television networks now routinely employ political hacks, retired lobbyists, and even investment bankers to tell us what’s happening in the world. And they are quite generous with their opinions. Some are even paid to simply spout opinions every night.

Funny thing about opinions. They are cheap. Most everyone has one. But only a select few are chosen to pose as ‘pundits’ on TV. A handful of opinionators are now crowding our news channels, telling us what to think, how to vote, what to do. For years we’ve been getting more bullshit and less news.

Enter the latest B.S. artist with a flashy pitchfork, Rick Santelli of CNBC. His recent rant about President Obama’s modest plan to reduce housing foreclosures was covered as if it was something real and honest and from the gut. Consider that Obama plans to spend 75 billion to help homeowners (not speculators) avoid foreclosures, while the previous administration spent 300 billion on the TARP program to bail out banks. That includes some of Wall Streets biggest investment banks, what’s left of them. And much more TARP money will be forthcoming to the banks.

Nowhere have we seen anything about Rick Santelli’s background and history. A little digging reveals Mr. Santelli was a Vice-President of an investment bank, Drexel Burnham Lambert. Does that name ring a bell? It should. Drexel, Burnham was a notorious junk bond purveyor which was forced into bankruptcy only a few years ago because of illegal dealings in junk bonds and mortgages. Gosh, mortgages? That rings a bell, doesn’t it?

So what we have here is a national news network, employing a former investment banker and allowing, even encouraging him to make commentaries on mortgages and investment banking! They also recruited an artificial group of cheerleaders composed of floor traders at the Chicago Board of Trade, perhaps one of the most overpaid, under-educated groups in the nation. And this is the group that proposes to launch a Chicago-based Tea Party? This is not a silent majority. This is a very vocal and well-to-do, minority.

But this is much bigger than Santelli. Consider that NBC is owned by General Electric, a huge conglomerate which itself operates financial and mortgage divisions and received taxpayer support through the Federal Government’s Temporary Liquidity Guarantee Program.

In essence, Rick Santelli has joined the ranks of the finger puppets posing as news personalities, propped up by investment banks.

Why investment banks? They created this mess. Not only did the investment bankers stampede into toxic debt with all the enthusiasm of hogs to the garbage dump, they helped create the huge conglomerates that now employ former investment bankers, political hacks and retired lobbyists that pretend to give us the news!