"What is a more democratic version of health care than having a democratic government running health care?"

Health Care is a stunning example of just how undemocratic America really is. For decades a majority of the population has wanted free and easily accessible health care up to 80% (polling and such). Yet in the 2004 election during one of the debates pundits pointed out that John Kerry didn't bring up the idea of Free Health Care because it has so little political support. So little meaning only a majority of the people, however it's the people that don't matter. In the 2008 elections it became a topic but not because we've become more democratic, it's because the system we have now costs a ridiculous amount of money. General Motors realized that it costs them $2000 more to make a car in Detroit than it does in Windsor (Canada). The state pays for health care so it's just much more efficient and cheaper, with better results than what we have now. So to recap, Free Health Care only because an issue that had Political support not when a majority of the public wanted it, but when business interests realized it was hurting their bottom line.

That doesn't sound like a very democratic society to me.

Whoa Whoa Whoa.....the only person talking about race is you rougy....it seems like you are desperately trying to throw in the race card like you have some kind of race chip on your shoulder And I'm going to venture a guess....tell me if I'm wrong.

"I guess Israel must have some significant business interests with the Kurds our you wouldn't think twice about them. They're the wrong race for you."

You're a freakin' conspiracy theorist hahahahahah. The Jews are running the world OH NO!!!!! Please, please answer me this, "Who is responsible for 9/11?" I'd give 10/1 odds that you think that our government had something to do with it. HAHAHAHAHAHAH *grips sides in pain from laughing too hard*. Go buy some more baked beans, SPAM and go crawl under your bunker you looney ape you. What a maroon...what a nincompoop.

Sheesh, if ida known I was getting into it with one of your kind (uh oh...I said your kind but before you get excited I'm not talking about "race" but consp. theorists) I would have given up a long time ago. Its like arguing with Chicken Little. The sky is NOT, I repeat, NOT falling. Just try not to get too excited militia-man.

'nuff said. You'll be happy to know this is my last comment so get your jollies in and then watch out for dem der Jews, especially the Hasidic ones.....I hear they're especially conspirational and world-dominating. No point in debating with an irrational loon. BTW stick to conspiracy theories....your poetry curdled the milk in my coffee.

^ You are a racist.

And you're blind if you think Iraq is better off now than had we never invaded.

You are saying that it's a good thing we invaded Iraq for the sake of those poor, underdog oil companies.

You say the Kurds are better off, but that's bullshit and you know it. It's just a talking point that you cling to in order to justify your jingoism.

I guess Israel must have some significant business interests with the Kurds our you wouldn't think twice about them. They're the wrong race for you.

"Your wording says more about your world view than about what happened. You say killed, but died is more accurate."

God, you are a disgusting human being. Died as a result of our invasion, or killed due to it, it amounts to the same thing. Not that you'd give a shit about them, since they're the wrong race.

"Yes, the proof of America's evil intent is conditions being placed on billions of dollars of aid that America is offering to just give the Iraqi people?"

Yeah, for no reason at all, out of the kindness of our hearts, because their country is in such great shape thanks to our invasion and occupation. They're just rolling in dough. I mean, it's not like we just barged in there uninvited. We liberated them! All they have to do is give absurdly lucrative thirty year contracts to big oil companies and that will prove that democracy prevails.

BreakstheEarth, ironically the very words "China" and "Chinese", along with hundreds of other words English has come up with, are ways of calling people things they don't call themselves. In the popular languages of China, the country is not called "China" or anything remotely resembling that word. Every language has a billion names for other places and people that aren't used by those people to refer to themselves. Personally I think this system is pretty inefficient. Imagine if Barack Obama was had ten thousand different names, when the world could just use the one he used himself: Barack Obama!

RhesusMonk, I think a LOT of Chinese people do in fact want to be more like white people, or at least be more marketable to white business interests (not "Western", as that would include blacks, Latinos, etc. too). We don't adopt black or Latino names, we adopt white ones. If black Americans had most of the world's wealth, we'd adopt black names. It's nice of you to think that there's no self-inflicted racism going on here, but there really is.

^ "In feudal Europe, corporations were aggregations of business interests in compact, usually with an explicit license from city, church, or national leaders. These functioned as effective monopolies for a particular good or labor.

The term "corporation" was used as late as the 18th century in England to refer to such ventures as the East India Company or the Hudson's Bay Company: commercial organizations that operated under royal patent to have exclusive rights to a particular area of trade. In the medieval town, however, corporations were a conglomeration of interests that existed either as a development from, or in competition with, guilds. The most notable corporations were in trade and banking.

The effects of a corporation were similar to a monopoly. On the one hand, the ability to have sole access to markets meant that the business was encouraged (e.g., the ability to be an exclusive trader provided an incentive to the East India Company to accept financial risks in exploration) and the negative effects of competition were avoided (to take the same example, exclusive patents cut down on merchants sponsoring piracy). Innovation was stifled, however, and prices were unregulated. (In the case of patent corporations, the town or monarch was ostensibly able to regulate prices by revoking the patent, but this rarely occurred.)"

wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporation_(feudal_Europe) Locate from search box under 'corporation'. Scroll to 'feudal europe'.

Ha. I love this, people follow Misean view of economics without realizing that at it's cores it is against all statism and democracy as a whole. How would you like to be ruled over corporations and business interests?

You make an assumption here that is false. Businesses get the ruling over us when they are able to enforce the rule of law over us. When we are free to choose what we want when we want it, the consumer is in power.

On the other end of the spectrum, the labor side (means of production). There will always be a fight between the business owners and the workers. When there are many workers, the companies will be able to force lower wages, and vice versa, that is just the way it goes. I think one of the modern success stories of free markets and interesting self regulatory bodies that emerge are the labor unions. They were able to strike out their claims more effectively and nimbly than any government regulation.

When the power is in the hands of the people, they have to recognize that their dollar is indeed power, and where they choose to invest it directly affects the world around them. It is a world where much more thought and responsibility has to be taken into account.

I realized that capitalism possess no soul and could not work unless we were all robots and did not care about the welfare of others.

Business is all about providing solutions for people directly. You aim is for consumer satisfaction. Who are these "others" to which your refer? If a company charges a fair market price for its product, it can pay its workers well, and his family can prosper as well, the consumer also gets his product at a reasonable price. It is the happy medium. It is when the government interferes with this that the unfairness is introduced. When we are forced to pay twice what a hair cut is worth because we need to make sure the barber is placed in a position in society that we wish to make the new minimum, you undermine the consumers right to evaluate what things are worth, and thus undermine the entire price structure. Things will begin to break down and inflation will result, lowering the buying power of everyone and thus returning this man to the same status of which you wished to lower him out of, and over-complicating things by placing a moral agenda on economics that all don't hold to.

The key to good governance and national economy is the mixture of both
This is dialectic reasoning to think you can mix to things that are fundamentally opposed to each other. Trying to merge two opposites is not wisdom. This is the idea of having your cake and eating it too. You can not have the powers of the market work if they are stifled in other areas. There ends up with a bubble of something eventually, and the market will always find that and exploit it until it bursts. The resent housing bubble is the greatest explained of poor government regulation. the The Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 caused the housing bubble by not alowing banks to use their normal risk evaluation models when considering blacks and other minorities for loans. The result was the sub prime mess of today; enterprising capitalist's found a way to exploit poor government controls for economic redistribution of wealth and manged to make the poor, more poor, and the rich more rich...which is usually now much government "level the playing field" laws go.

I was assured a full....
You were assured something, but where they something you even wanted? Where they something you asked for? The main problem with this whole idea is the massive waste that goes on, communism is extremely ineffective. It provides things to those that provide nothing. It provides things to those who do not want those things. It essentially is the most unfair system one could make when trying to make something effective and efficient. This is why Soviets could launch objects into space, but could not provide soap or women's pantyhose to its people, there is no real model for determining the value of things OTHER than peoples demand for them. There is no government system you could make until after you have a pricing model for them, it hasn't been shown to be possible without massive inflation or more widespread enforcement of market strategies.

Central planning nearly always results in tyranny of the most extreme kind. Once the power is centralized, the ability to abuse that power becomes irrefutable as far as history is concerned. The idea of the philosopher king (or planners)lacks the merit or the understanding of human nature. People are greedy. To place the power of all our lives in the hands of the few only begs for the worst kinds of tragedy that the world have known. More over, the few that we ask to do it are no wiser on those things than ourselves. Do you think that the hundreds of people on capital hill know what the best course of action is on green energy? Do their one or 2 advisers? No they don't. The only thing they can do, is force it. Even if it isn't the most wise course of action.

Ha. I love this, people follow Misean view of economics without realizing that at it's cores it is against all statism and democracy as a whole. How would you like to be ruled over corporations and business interests?

In my early studies of economics I believed in Austrian economics, in the power of free unfettered capitalism to cure all ills, until I realized that capitalism possess no soul and could not work unless we were all robots and did not care about the welfare of others.

The key to good governance and national economy is the mixture of both, not the extremes of one over the other. There is a reason there is no Western nation that fully implements Austrian economics as national policies, it is wealth creationary but it is at odds with the welfare of the people under it.

Also why do people slam communism so much? You know I lived under communism, I could not buy much but I was assured a full higher education at the states expense, preventive health care (not the treatment based health care practiced in the west) and a job till the day I died. But it was also an extreme application with a concentrated politburo at its core.

This is why the best implementations favor mixed economies, look at Canada, high tax rates, national health care, controlled economy to an extent yet no bank failures, no bailout schemes and pretty well off financially... now if only Harper fucked off.

What about change in content over the years? Depth and quality of coverage?

What about the fact that a majority of media broadcast in the United States all project the same core story/perspective using identical words with little to no variance?

Example: Russia invaded Georgia and they were the aggressor...when it was proven factually that Georgia initiated the invasion, resulting in an overzealous destructive response by Russia. The media had little to no mention regarding the US/Georgia relationship, US's oil pipeline interest through the Caspian region, and the US' support in training, militarizing, and supporting Georgian oil and business interests. Zero mention that the Georgian soldiers wore the SAME uniforms as US soldiers, and that a US soldier was reportedly captured by Russia. Another was reportedly killed. All by foreign media sources of course.

What about unbiased reporting?

In order to garner viewers, media outlets (i.e. CNN and FOX) will incur perspectives which are notably less than unbiased in order to 'satisfy' and 'maintain' a core viewership that fall along certain political lines? Why does the news media so readily fall into the 'everything the government says is true' box, often neglecting to ask the REAL HARD questions on issues that matter?

Why are alternative perspectives often unheard, or if they are, they are broadcast for the sole sake of causing unintelligent argument and conflict for the sake of entertainment value instead of actual substance?

Why are non-mainstream presidential candidates ALWAYS sidelined and not given equal exposure, no matter what their so-called 'popularity' factor is?

Why? Because the news media no longer works for the self interest of the citizen or the truth, but instead focuses on sensationalism for the sake of maintaining profitability in an advertisement funded medium. News outlets are also heavily influenced by political positioning by their ownership/corporation and resultant Washington connections through lobbyists.. such as over media/broadcast regulation issues, market ownership (tv vs radio vs print and regional restrictions).

Deny these problems if you wish News Media. But we the people (at least those of us with open eyes) see it.

Hmmm...

Yes, it would be nice to pronounce the way it is intended - as in (Buh-hoot, Joe Low Kee Uh); and, Red Sa veen uh.

Here is the standard first aid for spicy pepper burn. Granulated sugar taken directly into the mouth - a packet or tablespoon full, usually very quickly takes away about 50% of the burn.

The best method - in advance of taste testing – is to prepare four heaping tablespoons of regular sour cream, mixed with four heaping tablespoons of granulated sugar, and mix well. Have that nearby. The sour cream and sugar combo removes about 80% of the heat almost instantly.

I mix spices and pepper blends as an avocational business interest. Over the last 12 years, I have conducted many experiments and have found that water, beer, sodas, or MILK, do very little to help get rid of the heat. The best bet is the sour cream & sugar mix.

My best spicy seasoning mix incorporates Bhut Jolokia, Red Savina Habanero, and several other peppers and spices. It is fairly hot, but tasty. I have had it lab tested at 133,000 Scolville Heat Units, and that is pretty hot for a “dry rub” type of seasoning mix.

Hmmm...

Yes, it would be nice to pronounce the way it is intended - as in (Buh-hoot, Joe Low Kee Uh); and, Red Sa veen uh.

Here is the standard first aid for spicy pepper burn. Granulated sugar taken directly into the mouth - a packet or tablespoon full, usually very quickly takes away about 50% of the burn.

The best method - in advance of taste testing – is to prepare four heaping tablespoons of regular sour cream, mixed with four heaping tablespoons of granulated sugar, and mix well. Have that nearby. The sour cream and sugar combo removes about 80% of the heat almost instantly.

I mix spices and pepper blends as an avocational business interest. Over the last 12 years, I have conducted many experiments and have found that water, beer, sodas, or milk, do very little to help get rid of the heat. The best bet is the sour cream & sugar mix.

My best spicy seasoning mix incorporates Bhut Jolokia, Red Savina Habanero, and several other peppers and spices. It is fairly hot, but tasty. I have had it lab tested at 133,000 Scolville Heat Units, and that is pretty hot for a “dry rub” type of seasoning mix.

"Government meddling encouraged the "risk-free" stupidity in the first place."

As always QM spouts more shit then the fertilizer industry i mean wow that is a work of guiness really, there are so many false assumptions and generalizations in that paragraph that to start to break down everything you said would be a wasted and futile effort since clearly you been indoctrinated to a point of no return.

The economic crisis is never the fault of high powered free market institutions! Oh no its the government!

You know the same government that has been lobbied into deregulating finical markets to the point where the FED,FCC, SEC and FDA are no longer regulator bodies but active participants in helping private business interest leverage profit over economic and social security.

Enron, Madoff, Sub prime markets! All the fault of the evvvil government! MY GOD WHERE IS REAGEN WHEN WE NEED HIM MOST?

Yes, that's a joke.

These fucking retarded conservatives think that you can't disagree with the government, or you're anti-American.

These are the same damn people that claim they want to reduce the size of government! (Which I generally agree with.)

They are so blind to their own hypocrisy that it is amazing, dumbfounding.

And I think here is the key: try to get them to define "Anti-American". You could call many foreign governments Anti-American, as they resist the spread of American culture and business interests. That's perfectly understandable. But for somebody born and raised in the USA, living here and serving in a government office where they are working to make this a better place (whether you agree or disagree with their tactics), how could you call them Anti-American? There just isn't a definition that would fit.

Business interests are putting more muscle behind a push to roll back U.S. financial regulations, with a major study just issued by a business lobbying group and some of Wall Street's top names gathering for a Treasury Department conference on the matter on Tuesday.

The conference being hosted by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson will include some of the nation's richest men, including multimillionaire Warren Buffett, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Citigroup (C.N: Quote, Profile, Research) Executive Committee Chairman Robert Rubin and General Electric Co. (GE.N: Quote, Profile, Research) CEO Jeffrey Immelt.

Reuters UK

Also Fannie & Fred's Anti-Regulation Lobby

>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:
You complain about Washington bureaucrats, but seem to see no potential problems with business bureaucrats. The Washington bureaucrats answer to us, business bureaucrats do not. It seems like you are saying the best way to make education more democratic is by making education less democratic.


What in my comments makes you think I don't scrutinize corporatism? Business bureaucrats can and should be held accountable if they break the law, but when you have a strong, large federal government then you are opening the door to corporatism influencing that government and the people's rights become incidental. A smaller limited federal government means the business interests (as with bank interests, military industrial interests, prison industrial interests etc.) would have influence on our legislation.

That has always been my stance, though you and NR seem to want to paint me as pro-corporate, which is ridiculous. Being pro-free market and anti-large government does not make me Newt Gingrich any more than your welfare state ideas makes you Karl Marx.

The following is from a Newsweek article read by Sen. Byrd (D, WV) during a congressional hearing on September 20, 2002:

The last time Donald Rumsfeld saw Saddam Hussein, he gave him a cordial handshake. The date was almost 20 years ago, Dec. 20, 1983; an official Iraqi television crew recorded the historic moment.

The once and future Defense secretary, at the time a private citizen, had been sent by President Ronald Reagan to Baghdad as a special envoy. Saddam Hussein, armed with a pistol on his hip, seemed "vigorous and confident," according to a now declassified State Department cable obtained by Newsweek. Rumsfeld "conveyed the President's greetings and expressed his pleasure at being in Baghdad," wrote the notetaker. Then the two men got down to business, talking about the need to improve relations between their two countries.

Like most foreign-policy insiders, Rumsfeld was aware that Saddam was a murderous thug who supported terrorists and was trying to build a nuclear weapon. (The Israelis had already bombed Iraq's nuclear reactor at Osirak.) But at the time, America's big worry was Iran, not Iraq. The Reagan administration feared that the Iranian revolutionaries who had overthrown the shah (and taken hostage American diplomats for 444 days in 1979-81) would overrun the Middle East and its vital oilfields. On the--theory that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, the Reaganites were seeking to support Iraq in a long and bloody war against Iran. The meeting between Rumsfeld and Saddam was consequential: for the next five years, until Iran finally capitulated, the United States backed Saddam's armies with military intelligence, economic aid and covert supplies of munitions...

The history of America's relations with Saddam is one of the sorrier tales in American foreign policy. Time and again, America turned a blind eye to Saddam's predations, saw him as the lesser evil or flinched at the chance to unseat him. No single policymaker or administration deserves blame for creating, or at least tolerating, a monster; many of their decisions seemed reasonable at the time. Even so, there are moments in this clumsy dance with the Devil that make one cringe. It is hard to believe that, during most of the 1980s, America knowingly permitted the Iraq Atomic Energy Commission to import bacterial cultures that might be used to build biological weapons...

The war against Iran was going badly by 1982. Iran's "human wave attacks" threatened to overrun Saddam's armies. Washington decided to give Iraq a helping hand.

After Rumsfeld's visit to Baghdad in 1983, U.S. intelligence began supplying the Iraqi dictator with satellite photos showing Iranian deployments. Official documents suggest that America may also have secretly arranged for tanks and other military hardware to be shipped to Iraq in a swap deal--American tanks to Egypt, Egyptian tanks to Iraq. Over the protest of some Pentagon skeptics, the Reagan administration began allowing the Iraqis to buy a wide variety of "dual use" equipment and materials from American suppliers. According to confidential Commerce Department export-control documents obtained by NEWSWEEK, the shopping list included a computerized database for Saddam's Interior Ministry (presumably to help keep track of political opponents); helicopters to transport Iraqi officials; television cameras for "video surveillance applications"; chemical-analysis equipment for the Iraq Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC), and, most unsettling, numerous shipments of "bacteria/fungi/protozoa" to the IAEC. According to former officials, the bacterial cultures could be used to make biological weapons, including anthrax. The State Department also approved the shipment of 1.5 million atropine injectors, for use against the effects of chemical weapons, but the Pentagon blocked the sale. The helicopters, some American officials later surmised, were used to spray poison gas on the Kurds.

The United States almost certainly knew from its own satellite imagery that Saddam was using chemical weapons against Iranian troops. When Saddam bombed Kurdish rebels and civilians with a lethal cocktail of mustard gas, sarin, tabun and VX in 1988, the Reagan administration first blamed Iran, before acknowledging, under pressure from congressional Democrats, that the culprits were Saddam's own forces.

The United States was much more concerned with protecting Iraqi oil from attacks by Iran as it was shipped through the Persian Gulf. In 1987, an Iraqi Exocet missile hit an American destroyer, the USS Stark, in the Persian Gulf, killing 37 crewmen. Incredibly, the United States excused Iraq for making an unintentional mistake and instead used the incident to accuse Iran of escalating the war in the gulf. The American tilt to Iraq became more pronounced. U.S. commandos began blowing up Iranian oil platforms and attacking Iranian patrol boats. In 1988, an American warship in the gulf accidentally shot down an Iranian Airbus, killing 290 civilians. Within a few weeks, Iran, exhausted and fearing American intervention, gave up its war with Iraq.

Saddam was feeling cocky. With the support of the West, he had defeated the Islamic revolutionaries in Iran. America favored him as a regional pillar; European and American corporations were vying for contracts with Iraq. He was visited by congressional delegations led by Sens. Bob Dole of Kansas and Alan Simpson of Wyoming, who were eager to promote American farm and business interests. But Saddam's megalomania was on the rise, and he overplayed his hand. In 1990, a U.S. Customs sting operation snared several Iraqi agents who were trying to buy electronic equipment used to make triggers for nuclear bombs. Not long after, Saddam gained the world's attention by threatening "to burn Israel to the ground." At the Pentagon, analysts began to warn that Saddam was a growing menace, especially after he tried to buy some American-made high-tech furnaces useful for making nuclear-bomb parts. Yet other officials in Congress and in the Bush administration continued to see him as a useful, if distasteful, regional strongman. The State Department was equivocating with Saddam right up to the moment he invaded Kuwait in August 1990.

Mr. President, I referred to this Newsweek article yesterday at a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Specifically, during the hearing, I asked Secretary Rumsfeld:

"Mr. Secretary, to your knowledge, did the United States help Iraq to acquire the building blocks of biological weapons during the Iran-Iraq war? Are we in fact now facing the possibility of reaping what we have sewn?"

The Secretary quickly and flatly denied any knowledge but said he would review Pentagon records.

I suggest that the administration speed up that review. My concerns and the concerns of others have grown.

A letter from the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention, which I shall submit for the Record, shows very clearly that the United States is, in fact, preparing to reap what it has sewn. A letter written in 1995 by former CDC Director David Satcher to former Senator Donald W. Riegle, Jr., points out that the U.S. Government provided nearly two dozen viral and bacterial samples to Iraqi scientists in 1985--samples that included the plague, botulism, and anthrax, among other deadly diseases.

According to the letter from Dr. Satcher to former Senator Donald Riegle, many of the materials were hand carried by an Iraqi scientist to Iraq after he had spent 3 months training in the CDC laboratory.

The Armed Services Committee is requesting information from the Departments of Commerce, State, and Defense on the history of the United States, providing the building blocks for weapons of mass destruction to Iraq. I recommend that the Department of Health and Human Services also be included in that request.

The American people do not need obfuscation and denial. The American people need the truth. The American people need to know whether the United States is in large part responsible for the very Iraqi weapons of mass destruction which the administration now seeks to destroy.

We may very well have created the monster that we seek to eliminate. The Senate deserves to know the whole story. The American people deserve answers to the whole story.