By Mark L. Taylor
The Commoner Call (8/6/20)
In the midst of a deadly pandemic all the false illusions, flaws and deadly foibles of the American medical industry have been stripped bare. Before the pandemic some 30 million limped along without health insurance and many millions more had over-priced, high-deductable plans that were essentially useless, leaving many families essentially uninsured. Now, in the midst of a deadly pandemic, we have millions losing their jobs, and with that … health insurance for their families.
In one of the most callously cruel acts of political malpractice ever, neither party is addressing the issue. The irony of well-paid legislators, who enjoy good, taxpayer-funded health care choosing — CHOOSING — to ignore this humanitarian crisis is one of the most shameful chapters f abuse of citizens in this nation since the brutal July 5th, 1932 military attack on the World War I veteran Bonus Marchers.
A small rebellion of delegates to the Democratic National Convention have declared they will not vote for a Democratic Party platform that does not include Medicare For All.
Judith Whitmer, a Sanders delegate and chair of the convention’s Nevada delegation, told Politico Monday that while a majority of petition signatories are Sanders delegates, some of presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s delegates have also taken the pledge. The largely virtual Democratic convention is scheduled to begin August 17 in Milwaukee.
Whitmer noted: “This pandemic has shown us that our private health insurance system does not work for the American people. Millions of people have lost their jobs and their healthcare at the same time. There’s people leaving the hospital now with millions of dollars in medical bills. What are we going to do about that?”
Keep in mind, we are all one diagnosis, one careless sneeze or one tumble from the front porch reaching to get the mail — which no doubt now includes demands for contributions to congressional campaigns — from the same fate. We are truly all in the same high risk-dingy together, and congress and the White House don’t care a bit.
While corporate bailouts and liability protection for corporations consume the attention of our congressional … ahem, representatives, the $600 a week added unemployment benefits from the initial CARES Act that kept many afloat and the economy limping along have evaporated.
Add to that the end of federal protection from eviction and we are going to see up to 28 million quickly made homeless in a nation already so dysfunctional we already had the largest homeless population of any western industrialized nation. We will have whole families out on the streets — children out on the streets — with no place to go. When a government chooses — and make no mistake, it is a choice — not to assure the basic needs and protection of its citizens while comforting the corporate class and obscenely wealthy it is fair to say that government has failed. It is morally illegitimate.
And it is a bipartisan betrayal. Both parties have abandoned us. For example…
An effort to channel just 10% of the bloated War Department budget to needed pandemic services and family relief was recently defeated by a congressional coalition of Democrats and Republicans in both houses of congress, leaving our communities and many of our neighbors exposed and defenseless.
Meanwhile, with all that money going to weapons, the crew of the aircraft carrier USS H.W. Bush reported an outbreak of coronavirus. The War Department won’t release the number of sailors sickened.
- Joe Biden Assures Wall Street Donors Not To Worry About Legislation to Reign in Their Greed: How Joe Biden could actually usher in an even worse fascist than Trump in 2024. Link To 10-Minute Video
(Commoner Call cartoon by Mark L. Taylor, 2018. Open source and free for non-derivative use with link to www.thecommonercall.org )
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Is The U.S. A Failed State In 2020? Experts’ Answers Range From “maybe” To “hell, yes”
By Matthew Rozsa
Salon (8/5/20)
f the United States isn’t a failed state in 2020, it is rapidly on its way toward becoming one. Economists, historians and public health experts I spoke to would generally agree with that sentence, even if they might disagree on some of the details or the severity of the crisis.
Since 2000 we have had two major economic crashes, the related issue of persistent income inequality and an environmental crisis that threatens the future of civilization. In 2020 we are also facing a pandemic and a social uprising against institutional racism, made worse President Trump’s incompetence and the apparent threat he poses to democracy. One might say the real question isn’t whether the U.S. is a failed state, but how we can pull ourselves out of the muck before it is too late. …