Wifing Politicians: I don’t love these politicians (plutocrats)

I am writing to satisfy one issue, and that is why do folk take up for these political plutocrats regardless of political affiliation? It is as if folk cannot see they are all in the same gang of scratch my back crony-capitalist crooks. And for those unaware, crony capitalism refers to the intercourse between the state and corporate power. These cats have two sets of laws, one for us common folk and one for the elite folk. This manifested by two kinds of economic models of capitalism which breaks down to the over-regulated capitalism we have to abide by and the protected and unregulated variety for corporations, cartels and said participants.

Personally, as a libertarian, I unlike conservatives or liberals or progressives believe that part of the price of freedom is allowing others to have their freedom equally. Moreover, I believe whether I agree or like or dislike something, if it is peaceful and voluntary and harms no one, I can tolerate such. Unfortunately, this is not the game played by the ruling political elite regardless of party affiliation.

And even with all of the empirical evidence we observe, we allow these folk to play us like a fiddle, telling us things that do not even make sense yet many of us accept without question because we love our politicians. Love them so much we will let them lead us to poverty and a penal existence. So enthralled with them that we allow them, the federal government to give billions tax free in the form of TARP and even more via Quantitative Easing and all that so they can make loot in the markets at the cost of money that in theory should have gone to pay salaries of average employees. 

The real concern is that in order to do this, we have to be complicit in our own death. To accomplish this, they make up stuff; I mean artificially contrive stuff as well as the proof to support the stuff they made up in an effort to communicate impending doom. Take Global warming for example (ironically newspeaked into climate change) or any environmental cause. This the strategy used by plutocratic political elite and it is grounded in their sense of “moral absolutism” that makes them feel that since they have money, money shouldn’t be an issue to you thus your value as being regular folk, only exist to make them believe “WE” need them to tell us what to do.

We can also look at the civil rights and black power movements as examples. What did these folks do then? Well we were it before global warming and the environment. First, they focus on inequality amongst various societal sub groups like African Americans and encourage us to act against these certain political targets. It was just a few weeks ago the democratic held an all-nightclimathon talking about global warming.  This was 28 democratic senators all because some rich cat said he wanted to put $100 million behind politicians dealing with global warming. And we all know, including the money behind them, the politicians and the masses, that 60 percent in America think the economy is the most important issue to address and climate change next to the bottom, especially us black folk. Why, because climate change makes them wealthier.

In the early 1970s, Aaron Wildavsky, the former Dean of the Graduate School of Public Affairs at California Berkeley described their play book as being designed to “have middle class civil servants, hire upper class whites, to use lower class blacks” to stack the front line to complain against the political institution or policy (or lack of) at hand. And this minus-sum game as Wildavsky describes, often leaves African Americans worse off than we were before.

Take the recent election of Barack Obama. The change and hope mantra had folks wanting to tear the club up. But in 2014, what do we see? We see home sales going up for those with a price tag of $10 million plus, but not regular folk, especially if they are African Americans. Black Americans, Obama's most loyal supporters, are among the hardest hit by this uneven recovery.


The average price for a kilowatt-hour (KWH) of electricity hit a record of 13.5 cents in March based on data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics: meaning it was up about 5.5 percent from 12.8 cents per KWH in March 2013. In March, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics also shows that shrimp prices jumped 61 percent from a year earlier. Cost for pork items, especially bacon are also dramatically on the increase.  Ironically the story line is due to a disease. The increases of cost in agricultural and beef products have been conveniently blamed on a drought (disease and drought equally environment). 

All to make you think there are more things (the environment) which are more important than feeding your family, earning a living and maintaining a roof over your head (humans). Think about it PETA will tell you not to eat meat and that slaughtering cows is inhuman but they get their lot from VISA, who owns Omaha Steaks and got big loot in the Kentucky Derby (can’t make this ish up). 

You might be a progressive, but you are not a progressive elite and you, if defined as such are not seeking the same goal as they are.  The recession officially ended in June 2009, but we still are down 6 million jobs from pre-recession levels and now these cats got us believing that Obamacare and the economy are separate issues. But fact is that the new trend is not giving part-time workers company health coverage like Target, who will no longer offer health insurance to part time workers. Meaning, class, African Americans will be the hardest hit by this.

The disparity between rich and poor has blossomed since 2009 and the job participation rate is way worse, not to mention the average person has less money to spend and is taxed much more - all when our nation's debt is our greatest concern because WE paying the debt. And you know how I know we paying the debt? Because, more than 23 million American households rely on food stamps. Households operationally defined let us say as being four per household which equals 92 million Americans. And although more whites on welfare than blacks, we rely on it disproportionately more than whites.

This one reason why neither democrats nor republicans will ever simplify the tax code because this is the plutocratic politician’ main source of revenue (taking huge contributions (bribes) in exchange for tax breaks for the super-wealthy. They want inflation because the math proves that inflation (when prices go up) raises GDP subsequently making federal debt cheaper to service every year. But where we live and everywhere else, median household income is down 7% since 2000. And don’t forget if we removed the top 1% households from this equation, the decline for the bottom 99% would be more than closer to 30% (my math). Thus via the tax code and quantitative easing, the purchasing power we have is slowly being siphoned and swindled and given on purpose by our government to super rich folk, who in turn get to borrow money from the Fed at an interest rate of zero.

American politics is completely, owned, run and operated by the most powerful economic elite that politics and corporate America can proffer, which leaves out the democracy this republic was created on for the rest of us.  Yawl, especially black progressives, needs to stop wifing these politicians.  I mean if black folk regardless of political orientation put as much into protect, defending and believing in self and our communities as much as we wife these politicians, we wouldn’t have am problems. But we don’t, and now a majority of us believe and trust the government. When did we start to believe in and trust the government I ask again? Of all folk, African and Native Americans should never trust the government, especially the federal government. But that is just me, and unlike most, I don’t love these politicians.

7.1 Million Sign-ups Don’t Say Nothing

Unlike most folk of my ilk (poverty stricken African Americans), I find it troubling that we have given our Federal government the ability to make us buy a flawed product, or any product regardless if we want to or not. But putting that aside, I want to briefly discuss How I view the metrics of the Affordable Care Act or what is frequently called Obamacare (actual law in picture).

It seems as if many of its supporters are hooping and a hollering that the program has proven to be a success just because it had 7 million plus sign up. I on the other hand, can’t even understand how anyone can use this as an indication of success. Personally, to use this number I would have to know how many who signed up actually had insurance before but lost it due to the law itself. Next, I would have to know how many of those that signed up actually will be receiving Medicare. For example, currently, more than half the states and the District of Columbia are proceeding with a Medicaid expansion which allows them to extend medical coverage to single and childless adults, of which has encouraged jail operators in many of those states to use this criteria to enroll and provide coverage to inmates under ACA.

Last, I won’t be able to see the law in action until all the exemptions and waivers the President unilaterally awarded to businesses and other entities go into effect. Just looking at Maryland for example, we know that only 60,000 people have signed up for Obamacare through the state’s exchange although more than 70,000 in the state lost their health insurance. Is this a marker of success (I know more than 250,000 in total but I am not including Medicare).  But I digress.

Yet still, even without such, that I can see where the Affordable Care Act is going and all I have to do is look at the only other major health delivery operation the government runs is functioning, and that is the Veterans Administration Hospitals.

Everywhere you look the VA is having problems, both with patient enrollment and service delivery. In South Carolina recently, it was noted that problems at the Department of Veterans Affairs hospital in Columbia covered everything but the kitchen sink including but not limited to problems with surgical procedures, operating rooms not always being stocked with backup surgical instruments and equipment and not monitoring patient care close enough. More importantly, problems associated with infection control and rarely following up to ensure problems are solved adequately. And this is after reports of six deaths due to delayed screenings for colorectal cancer at the Hospital.

At the Buffalo Veterans Administration, New York, more than 700 patients at the Center may have been exposed to HIV, hepatitis B or hepatitis C because of accidental reuse of insulin pens, between Oct. 19, 2010 and November 2012.  Then there are the, three deaths that occurred at the Memphis VA, of which one of the deaths occurred because the patient was given a drug despite a documented allergy to that medication and another due to receiving a lethal dose of a painkiller. The last because VA staff did not give the patient the proper medication.

A drug abuse rehabilitation program at Miami’s Veterans Affairs hospital failed to monitor patients, provide sufficient staff, control access to the facility or even curb illicit drug use among patients because Staff members were frequently absent or in a back room instead of monitoring patients in the drug abuse rehabilitation unit. As expected numerous deaths have resulted as a consequence, specifically due to cocaine and heroin overdoses. The Miami VA is part of a network which also saw five cancer patients die because of long waits and delayed care. Not to mention that in 2009, the Miami VA revealed that nearly 2,500 veterans might have been exposed to HIV and other illnesses during colonoscopies performed with improperly cleaned equipment. In 2010, the St. Louis VA hospital may have exposed more than 1,800 patients to HIV and hepatitis in 2010 as a result of contaminated dental equipment. At the West Los Angeles VA Medical Center a 47-year-old Air Force veteran had the wrongtesticle removed during surgically which left him without any functioning testes.

I could go on and on but the fact remains that what we see with the government run VA is what we can expect from the government run Affordable Care Act. The delays that new veterans facebefore receiving disability compensation and other benefits often is way way longer than the private sector, with an average wait time of 273 days. Even worse are those veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan filing their first claim, wait nearly two months longer.  And don’t live in New York, Los Angeles or Chicago because that time is doubled.

Across the VA system we observe benefits claims taking longer than ever to process according to a recent report by the Center for Investigative Reporting. Before 2009, the number of veterans waiting more than a year for their benefits was 11,000. Since 2009 that figure grew to 245,000. And all the Federal Government does is asking for and gives more money as if that is the solution.  It is not. The problem with the VA, which is indicative of how the federal government manages health systems. It is one of management, administration, lack of understanding about health care delivery and oversight.  And this is the case for other VA hospitals around the nation in places like Dayton, Atlanta, Pittsburgh and Jackson,Mississippi.

All of the aforementioned is happening even after five years ago the president made a pledge to repair the VA bureaucracy. There should be no way in the world that a dysfunctional systemlike the VA top brass keep getting millions and gain capacity in only by underserving the millions veterans. Yet VA network directors get tens of thousands of bonuses every year on top of six figure salaries.
Rica Lewis-Payton, the network director of the South Central Health Care Network, which includes Jackson, got almost $36,000 in bonuses last year: Washington, D.C., Diana Rubens, the VA executive in charge of the nearly 60 offices that process disability benefits compensation claims, collected almost $60,000 in bonuses. Rima Ann Nelson, the former director of the St. Louis VA (where HIV and hepatitis exposure is believed to have occurred),  had received close to $25,000 in bonuses since 2009; At the  Atlanta VA Medical Center, three of which VA’s inspector general linked to widespread mismanagement, former director James Clark received $65,000 in bonuses over four years.

Again, the issue is management. If we do take the 7.1 or 10 million as a metric of success, we must acknowledge that less than a million of that number did not have insurance, meaning folks who had private insurance were forced to purchase government insurance, allowing the federal government to run and control 16 percent of the U.S. economy. If this isn’t a corporate takeover or monopoly, nothing is.  Second, the ACA to reduce the cost of CARE and or better management. Insurance is based on math and the actuarial sciences. 

Fact is that comparatively speaking, young men use very little health care when compared to young women use more than young men. No way in the world would folk stand for young men saying they should pay the same rates of women, when the fact is that young men driving habits dictate they should pay more than young women.

But like I said, numbers won’t tell the story, but if you look at how the government currently runs health care from filing claims to service delivery, we need only look at the VA and the disproportionately negative health outcomes occurring compared to the private sector. And if Obamacare is managed in the same inept manner, as long as hospitals and insurance companies raking in the loot, money will go to huge profits before health care is provided. And as a result, all the regular folk gonna see is higher co-pay, higher deductibles, higher premiums, folk losing their doctors, not having access to the hospitals in their community and the same old federal mismanagement practices. I mean, is it feasible to expect that people who never read the ACA prior to voting to pass it as law, actually know what it does to manage it even modestly? The real issue is not having coverage but lowering cost and improving service delivery. Unfortunately politicians have people equating health insurance to improved health care or even just health care when it is not. Having health insurance makes you no healthier than having auto insurance makes you a safer driver.

Will Anna Brown Be Next After Trayvon? Homeless Black Woman, Booted from ER, Arrested & Died in Jail..

Anna Brown, whose home was destroyed by a tornado in 2010, went to three different hospitals complaining of leg pain in the days prior to her death, including her visit to St. Mary’s that led to her trespassing arrest.