Non-violent grass roots reform and Democracy: Assault On Democracy And Health Care During Pandemic

At a time when the pandemic has shown that we need improvements in our health care more than ever, the political establishment from both Parties are relentlessly trying to stop any chance of getting Medicare For All, and furthermore, evidence shows that pollution makes this far worse, and instead of trying to reduce pollution they're rolling back environmental protections. And there using the panic over the pandemic as an excuse to make it worse, not better. As I pointed out previously in Fake Corona-virus Apocalypse? the vast majority of countries with a Single Payer Health Care System, Universal Coverage or state run insurance, if not health care are handling the pandemic much better than the United States, with a much lower death rate as a result. (The source I used to select most of the countries with Universal Health care, "Very Well Health," only listed eighteen countries with universal health care at that time, since then they added another fourteen, but only three of those fourteen, Italy, Belgium and Spain hare being hit harder than the United States with many of the other eleven handling it much better, so if anything the difference is even bigger, showing that these countries are handling it even better than before.)

Furthermore, the vast majority of the public has supported Medicare for all consistently for years, even before the pandemic as the most recent poll shows, Poll: 69 percent of voters support Medicare for All 04/24/2020 In all fairness if you Google polls for support for Medicare for All you'll find many with a smaller margin supporting it; however, keep in mind these polls are controlled by the commercial media which has a financial incentive to oppose Medicare for all. Our current for profit system takes an enormous amount of money from premiums and spends it on things that have nothing to do with health care, including high CEO salaries, payments to stockholders, campaign donations and lobbying against the interests of their customers, and an enormous advertising budget, including propaganda ads smearing Medicare for all. The media makes a fortune selling these ads which are paid for with money you give insurance companies in the form of premiums, yet you have no say in how it's used. Media companies also have interlocking boards of directors and stockholders with insurance companies, so they have an incentive to oppose Medicare for all, yet even their polls say the public support it, even if some of them say the margin is smaller than 69% or 70%.

Furthermore, a study shows Medicare for All Would Save $450 Billion and 68,000 Lives each year 02/22/2020 Where are those savings coming from? It's coming from profits or other expenses that enrich people controlling powerful institutions instead of providing health care! If we passed Medicare for All the a large portion money being to corrupt the system will dry up, although there are more scams we have to stand up to. So is it really a surprise that the establishment profiting off a a corrupt system is trying to stop this reform, as the following article shows?

COVID-19 Isn’t Halting Corporate Media’s Attacks on Universal Health Care 04/19/2020 by Andrew Caballero-Reynolds

There’s nothing like a global pandemic to demonstrate that a universal single-payer healthcare system like Medicare for All is not an idealistic fantasy, but an immediate, urgent necessity. When over 16 million Americans have already filed for unemployment benefits within the last three weeks, it’s clear that the American system of making health insurance a privilege only for those who work—or for those poor and old enough to qualify for Medicaid and Medicare—has made the US especially vulnerable to Covid-19.

Despite the false choice often presented to us by politicians and corporate media (our health vs. “the economy”), not only is it possible to address both, a stronger coronavirus response is an absolute prerequisite for avoiding the worst-case economic scenarios (Jacobin, 4/1/20).

While there have been several op-eds (Washington Post, 2/26/20; New York Times, 3/11/20; Bloomberg, 3/13/20) recognizing that Medicare for All is necessary because it’s disastrous to have people delaying or avoiding necessary treatment during a pandemic without a vaccine, many in corporate media are still engaging in class warfare by continuing their crusade against universal healthcare (FAIR.org, 4/29/19, 10/2/19).

Politico contributing editor Bill Scher’s “No, Coronavirus Isn’t Proof We Need Socialism” (3/24/20) parroted the typical canards about technocratic centrists like New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo prioritizing “competence,” and the “nuts and bolts of effective crisis response,” over opportunistic “socialists” like Sen. Bernie Sanders trying to “exploit the crisis in order to advance their ideology.” (It’s worth pointing out that Cuomo’s “competence” delayed taking effective action against the coronavirus until New York State had by far the worst outbreak in the country—FAIR.org, 4/11/20.) Complete article

Some of the arguments partially refuted in the above article include claims that some countries with some version of Single Payer Health Care, including Italy and France, and perhaps Great Britain, claim that they're doing even worse than the United States. In addition to the arguments he made, it should also be clear that they selectively chose the countries with Single Payer that were doing the worst. In my previous article cited above I showed that the vast majority of countries with a Single Payer Health Care System, Universal Coverage or state run insurance, are handling the crisis much better. However, the following article shows that when people need their health care the most, like this pandemic, they're in danger of losing it as a result of job losses, making it even more important to support Medicare for All:

'The Next Crisis': Up to 43 Million Americans Could Lose Health Insurance Due to Pandemic, Study Shows 05/10/2020
by Julia Conley, staff writer

"The American healthcare financing system was not built to withstand the combined impact of a pandemic and a recession."

Medicare for All advocates on Sunday pointed to the latest study on the looming health insurance crisis already becoming apparent amid the coronavirus pandemic, which has led to job losses for more than 33 million people in the past two months.

Because health insurance is tied to employment for about half the country—160 million people—as many as 43 million are expected to lose their health insurance due to the pandemic, according to a new report by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) and the Urban Institute.

Analysts project that 43 million Americans could lose their insurance when the unemployment rate hits 20%. According to the Department of Labor, the current unemployment rate is 14.7%. Some economists estimate that between 19% and 23.6% of Americans are actually out of a job, including those who lost their jobs in the last two weeks and those who have not filed jobless claims. Complete article

Tying Health Care employment was never a good idea in the first place; whose idea was it?

It certainly wasn't mine, did anyone ever consult you about this idea or explain the benefits or flaws to it? The 69% of the public that think we should get Medicare For All don't seem to think this is a good idea.

This economic system was created by a small percentage of the public, over the decades without fully explaining or consulting with the majority of the public. These people are either very wealthy or have close ties to those that are very wealthy. Supposedly we have a free enterprise system where competition is supposed to provide incentive for people to work harder and make more money. However the market is divided up among oligarchs; and health care is one of the methods they use to discourage people from leaving their jobs even when wages are suppressed or they're treated unfairly.

Tying health care to employment gives more power to the employer, enabling them to partially control decisions about health care. One of the most brazen examples where an employer interfered with the health care of an employee was Burwell v. Hobby Lobby and Birth Control where the Supreme Court ruled that employers can impose their religious beliefs on employees by depriving employees of the right to contraception. This ignores the incredibly obvious fact that they're depriving the employee of their own religious freedom. Employees would never even think of trying to impose their religious beliefs on employers. Employees are also at risk of losing their health care when laid off during pandemics or for other reasons; and if employers impose on the rights of workers and they go on strike to stand up for those rights they risk losing their job and health care.

Medicare For All would solve all these problems and deprive corporate interests from using this to suppress the rights of their workers. This is just one of many policies where the political establishment routinely opposes the most popular policies favored by the majority of the public; and in most cases Bernie Sanders, and many independent candidates, supported the policies favored by the public, while both Joe Biden oppose many of these policies!

Polls With Citations: Americans Want Bernie’s New Deal For All 07/26/2019

On one issue after another, both Joe Biden and Donald Trump oppose the positions most popular with the American Public; they both oppose Medicare For All; taxes on the wealthy; the Green New Deal; higher minimum wages; tuition free college; regulations holding Wall Street or Big Banks accountable; ending big money in politics; a reasonable path to citizenship; universal childcare; efforts to curb income inequality; legalizing marijuana; caps on interest rates; and many more policies popular with the American public. They both support a rush to military intervention in other countries, virtually always based on lies; mass incarceration; and an economic system rigged to favor the wealthy among other things.

But of course this can't be true; can it? This is a democratic system we wouldn't vote for two nominees that oppose almost everything we support, would we?

Certainly not well informed people; but a large portion of the electorate isn't that well informed. Many of them get their information from corporate media which is controlled by a fraction of one percent, and they give us relentless propaganda avoiding many of the most important issues. They often repeat the most recent promises establishment politicians make without reminding them that they have a history of opposing these issues, and breaking campaign promises. Furthermore they refuse to cover candidates that they don't approve of. Bernie Sanders seems to be the exception, perhaps becasue he had so much support they felt they couldn't ignore him. However even he gave in and endorsed a candidate that opposes everything he stands for twice.

Oh, one other thing; when epidemic levels of propaganda isn't enough to ensure their corrupt candidate get the nomination, they cheat like hell rigging the primaries, either by suppressing voter turn out in certain areas, using electronic voting without a paper trail, or a variety of other methods to rig the primaries.

Yea, they cheat like hell and I went into many of their methods in Epidemic 2020 Election Fraud Again which compiled a long list of election rigging evidence, mostly at the local level, which the mainstream media provides little coverage of, and when they do cover it they try to spin it.

They both also support cutting Social Security, even though they've both promised to protect it, there records say otherwise! They both have a record of trying to cut Social Security while in office, despite promises to do the opposite; in Biden's case, this record goes back decade. Trump was able to pretend otherwise, since he wasn't in government until 2017. Contrary to the way the media routinely presents it, Social Security is an earned benefit, which is paid for by payroll taxes. The real entitlements are the subsidies they routinely provide corporations even though they don't earn them. The following article shows how both nominees and leaders of both parties are interested in making excuses to cut it:

Even in a Pandemic, the Knives Are out for Social Security 05/11/2020 by David Sirota

We’re in the middle of a devastating pandemic and economic crisis — but that hasn’t stopped both Democrats and Republicans from coming up with new ways to assault and destroy Social Security.

During the 2020 Democratic primary, Joe Biden had to answer for his repeated attempts to work with Republicans to try to cut Social Security benefits. Biden responded by pretending he never tried to cut the program, and by insisting he would try to expand it as president. This prompted some of his defenders to wonder why Social Security was even an issue, when presumably the Democratic Party and Donald Trump himself have publicly insisted they would never dream of trying to slash one of the most popular social programs in history.

Fast forward to the present and you will now understand why Social Security continues to be a huge point of contention: it’s because some powerful people in the Democratic Party still do dream of normalizing the idea of cutting Social Security, and those folks are now getting a boost from Donald Trump’s administration.

This sordid, little cautionary tale started last week. As lawmakers such as Bernie Sanders, Ed Markey, and Kamala Harris were unveiling a proposal to give workers a $2,000 stipend during the coronavirus crisis, University of Pennsylvania professor Natasha Sarin countered with a research paper pushing an alternate idea: “Allowing workers to tap their Social Security wealth to finance consumption today.”

Instead of giving workers money in the same way the government is giving corporations trillions of dollars, or instead of vastly expanding unemployment benefits, Sarin and her cohorts want Americans to “borrow against their retirement benefits,” effectively turning Social Security into a reverse mortgage. This, they argue, “may well be superior to alternatives already legislated because it delivers relief to households that need it most.”

Echoing Biden’s own anti-deficit rhetoric when he pushed Social Security cuts, the researchers conclude: “In exchange for relatively small cuts in scheduled benefits, the government can send sizable checks to most households in a fiscally neutral way.”

The Summers Connection

What does this have to do with Democratic politics? Well, it turns out, a lot, actually.

Sarin interned at the Obama National Economic Council when it was run by Larry Summers, at the very time that administration considered proposals (reportedly led by Biden) to cut Social Security. Sarin remains a close ally of Summers — she recently co-authored a Washington Post op-ed with Summers that slammed the idea of a wealth tax.

That’s the same Summers now advising the Biden campaign.

Additionally, the American Prospect reports that “Summers not only plays a direct role (in Biden’s campaign), but has managed to insert close allies and protégés to argue against progressive policies, including his former student and frequent co-author Natasha Sarin.” Complete article

The establishment is full of think tanks filled with people who study how to manipulate the system so that one large class of people do all the work but a much smaller class of people take all the money. It's like a white collar mafia. But of course the most obvious technique they use is only covering candidates that support their ideology, so those representing the public can never get name recognition.

Depending on how you look at it there may be a silver lining to this pandemic, since shutting down the economy has greatly reduced pollution, which is something we can learn from, assuming we can stop politicians from selling out to the oil companies, which is what they continue to do even during the pandemic, as the following article shows:

Pollution made COVID-19 worse. Now, lockdowns are clearing the air. 04/07/2020

Even before the coronavirus, air pollution killed seven million people a year. Will today's cleaner air inspire us to do better?

AS THE NOVEL coronavirus tears around the world, it’s exploiting our biggest weaknesses, from creaking health care systems to extreme social inequality. Its relationship with one pervasive and neglected problem, however, is more tangled: Air pollution has intensified the pandemic, but the pandemic has—temporarily—cleaned the skies.

When new evidence emerged this week that dirty air makes COVID-19 more lethal, it surprised no one who has followed the science of air pollution—but the scale of the effect was striking. The study, which must still undergo peer review for publication, found that the tiny pollutant particles known as PM2.5, breathed over many years, sharply raise the chances of dying from the virus.

Researchers from Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health analyzed data on PM2.5 levels and COVID-19 deaths from about 3,000 U.S. counties covering 98 percent of the U.S. population. Counties that averaged just one microgram per cubic meter more PM2.5 in the air had a COVID-19 death rate that was 15 percent higher.

“If you’re getting COVID, and you have been breathing polluted air, it’s really putting gasoline on a fire,” said Francesca Dominici, a Harvard biostatistics professor and the study’s senior author.

That’s because the fine particles penetrate deep into the body, promoting hypertension, heart disease, breathing trouble, and diabetes, all of which increase complications in coronavirus patients. The particles also weaken the immune system and fuel inflammation in the lungs and respiratory tract, adding to the risk both of getting COVID-19 and of having severe symptoms. Complete article

Unfortunately there's little or no reason to believe that either Donald Trump of Joe Biden will do much if anything to protect the environment and learn from this unintended experiment, even though Joe Biden occasionally does a better job pretending to protect the environment. Both have clearly shown that they'll cater to the oil companies; and, as the following article show's Trump isn't even pretending otherwise:

Trump dismantles environmental protections under cover of coronavirus 05/11/2020

The Trump administration is diligently weakening US environment protections even amid a global pandemic, continuing its rollback as the November election approaches.

During the Covid-19 lockdown, US federal agencies have eased fuel-efficiency standards for new cars; frozen rules for soot air pollution; proposed to drop review requirements for liquefied natural gas terminals; continued to lease public property to oil and gas companies; sought to speed up permitting for offshore fish farms; and advanced a proposal on mercury pollution from power plants that could make it easier for the government to conclude regulations are too costly to justify their benefits.

The government has also relaxed reporting rules for polluters during the pandemic.

Trump’s ambitions reach even to the moon, which he has announced he wants the US to mine. Complete article

The absurdity of this situation is mind boggling; and what they're doing is incredibly obvious. They're enabling a fanatical president to be so incredibly horrible that they can convince the masses they have to accept Joe Biden as their nominee even though he's almost as corrupt if not as corrupt as Trump and he's not likely to do much better on any given issue. He's selling out the same corporate interests and has indicated with his actions repeatedly that he's not going to do much if any more to protect the environment than he is going to do to defend Social Security or provide health care for everyone!

Intentionally or not, they're using Donald Trump to prop up the lesser of two evils argument.

The problem is that we never would have gotten into this situation if we hadn't fallen for the lesser of two evils argument.

Every time we fall for this scam both evils get worse!

If this ever was a fringe conspiracy theory, that's clearly not the case any more, the evidence is so obvious that there's no longer any doubt about what they're doing. This isn't a conspiracy theory; it's a rational conclusion based on the evidence available, and this evidence has taken things to an absurd satirical extreme.

Amazingly, Biden has a long track record of telling people not to vote for him when he gets in arguments and he's either taking for granted or alienating many of the constituencies that he needs to win including Latinos, Asian-Americans, African Americans, Millennials and Women. Joe Biden has insulted many of these groups and clearly is relying on their opposition to Trump to be so strong that they'll vote for anyone to get rid of him, even though Biden isn't much different from him on many issues.

It hardly seems like Biden is even trying to appeal to voters or campaign this latest article indicates that he's using the pandemic as an excuse not to campaign, Biden's outreach to Dems lags as Trump syncs up with GOP 05/20/2020 but he hardly put much effort in during the primary either, often relying on the media to present him as inevitable. And he often blatantly insults his own constituents, the latest is that he said "If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black" 05/22/2020 and implied that he may not be back to this particular show and was taking African American's for granted because Trump's so bad; but, of course, reasonably well informed people know he's not much if any better than Trump.

And of course Biden will be hit with one scandal after another during the general election campaign, right now the most popular ones seem to be Tara Reade's accusation and it wasn't long ago Exclusive: 1996 court document confirms Tara Reade told of harassment in Biden’s office 05/09/2020 and the Ukraine scandal isn't going away anytime soon as another story just came out Recording of calls between Joe Biden, ex-Ukraine President Poroshenko leaked 05/20/2020 "Edited recordings of the calls were played at a news conference Tuesday in Kiev by Andriy Derkach, who has claimed he has proof showing that Burisma Holdings, the Ukrainian natural gas company that employed Biden’s son Hunter Biden, paid then-Vice President Joe Biden $900,000 in lobbying fees."

The entire Democratic establishment and most of the mainstream media is unified in claiming there's nothing to this scandal; however this is just one of many cushy jobs Biden's family and relatives of many other politicians get that the vast majority of us could never get. His family is filthy rich thanks to their political connections, and they're clearly more corrupt than most politicians. There's an incredibly long list of other scandals that will be rolled out before now and November that the Mainstream media has been sweeping under the rug during the primary season as I pointed out in Joe Biden Really Was Taken Off The Trash Heap

There's no doubt that Trump will Beat Biden "Like a drum" once he's finalized as the nominee until the election and there's little or no chance that he'll win, especially with Biden insanely trashing his own base one time after another, ensuring there'll be little or not enthusiasm for him at all!

Are they trying to rig the General Election for Trump again by rigging the primary for the only candidate that can lose to him again?

As insane as this sounds the overwhelming amount of circumstantial evidence seems to indicate that's exactly what they're doing!

They began their efforts to rig the primary long before the pandemic but when it came along they were quick to take advantage of it, for some reason even postponing the Ohio election at a time when they only had 67 infections and no deaths in the state according to Worldometer on the Wayback Machine, (two more infections happened the day after it, which was when they started breaking it down by state); the entire country still had fewer than 7,000 diagnosed cases and less than 110 deaths attributed to Corona-virus at the time, but the states surrounding Ohio weren't any worse of than they were, although both Illinois and Florida were and they held their primaries on that day anyway. Two days later when they shut down the economy in large parts of the country including New England there were still fewer than 11,000 infections and only 160 deaths in the United States, and only two of those deaths were in Connecticut, and there were very few infections at that time in Northern New England, yet they were going into a total panic; some health care organizations had already begun overreacting weeks before that.

If the numbers being put out by Worldometer and the CDC now are accurate, there was a massive pandemic where the United States got hit much worse than the rest of the world coming shortly after that, but there should have been no way for them to know it, yet they seemed to. But the shut down of the economy didn't stop the pandemic, and an argument could even be made that it might have made it worse somehow, since the infection rate and death rate didn't skyrocket until after they shut down the economy. This is why I wrote Fake Corona-virus Apocalypse? By that time the infections had reached almost 124,000 infections and 2,229 deaths, according to Worldometer, but I was skeptical about how they could gather that data in real time, and to some degree I still am.

However, since then the CDC has provided their own numbers on the pandemic based on the death certificates, which often took weeks to report, and, for the most part they confirmed the high numbers in April, and presumably, when the death certificates are complete from May will also confirm that as well. In order for this to be a hoax, it would have to be enormous; and the CDC would have to be involved in it faking the numbers. Many of the most common conspiracy theories, about this being done for purposes of greed, won't stand up to scrutiny, since the elites involved in it would have been able to make as much money if not much more with business as usual.

At the time I wrote that article Bernie Sanders was still in the race, and I speculated about the possibility that he might be able to expose the cheating, which seemed unlikely even then, since he remained silent about epidemic levels of cheating in 2016. I indicated that it would take something far-fetched to turn it around; but that by delaying the primaries there was a chance that this could happen. Technically there's still a chance since Joe Biden still doesn't have the delegates he needs, and he's such a pathetic candidate that he could still collapse before it's too late. But with Bernie Sanders caving so completely, remaining silent about epidemic levels of election fraud, and even endorsing a candidate that opposes everything he stands for it seems virtually out of the question assuming something that might seem miraculous to many doesn't happen.

Bernie Sanders was recently asked if he would run again, Sanders says another presidential run is 'very, very unlikely' 05/11/2020 He responded by saying “I think the likelihood is very, very slim at that;” the premise of this question seems to be either that he might consider challenging Biden, assuming he wins and runs for a second term, or, perhaps far more likely is that Trump is now virtually guaranteed a second term, because Biden is so pathetic he can easily be beat. It seems to me that the best chance that a "very, very slim" chance would happen is the unlikely chance that something goes so wrong with Biden's campaign that they decide to replace him because they have to admit that he doesn't have a chance of beating Trump.

For a long time, I've been arguing that we only have the illusion of democracy since the mainstream media controlled by a fraction of one percent of the wealthiest people pre-select which candidates can get name recognition to enable them to be viable. They've been doing such an incredibly bad job at it that this is no longer even true, except for the most clueless people; we no longer even have an illusion of democracy.

If there is a "very, very slim" chance that Bernie runs for president comes true it just might be another charade, to restore the illusion of democracy. I've been arguing that the reason they provided any coverage at all for Bernie Sanders is because he's so popular that they can't ignore him without losing the last of their credibility. This may be partly true; but, Bernie Sanders still indicated that he would support the nominee at the begging of both the 2016 and 2020 campaigns regardless of the circumstances, effectively supporting the duopoly system. Many left wing critics of the duopoly system criticized him early on when he made this decision, claiming that he was damaging their chances of creating a viable third party candidate. Some even refereed to him as a pied piper candidate to lure away progressive voters from the Green Party or Socialist Parties.

He even remained silent about ranked choice voting most of the campaign with one exception, where he said he supported it in a town hall in Concord New Hampshire on December 28 2019, but it wasn't until he was asked about it by an advocate for it, and hardly got any media coverage, nor did he bring it up again in any of his rallies or elsewhere as far as I can tell. He could have done much more to draw attention to it, but instead he seems to be supporting the duopoly, by endorsing Joe Biden, who opposes everything he stands for.

He also picked a very odd time to suspend his campaign, the day after the Wisconsin primary, instead of the day before. Unlike the Ohio primary, this one was taking place after the daily death toll as a result of the pandemic sky-rocked above 1,000 per day nationwide, and Wisconsin was getting their share of infections and deaths for a state it's size. He did recommend that the primary be delayed while Biden was recommending that it take place and said it was safe, initially. After being criticized for saying it was safe, Biden flip flopped, of course, which is standard operating procedure for politicians. I thought he should have stayed in, of course, and so did many other progressives; especially since the pandemic showed more than ever that we need Medicare For All. However, if he was going to suspend his campaign partly because he was worried about the pandemic as he said, then the time to do it would obviously be the day before the primary. Now it's virtually guaranteed that we'll get a president who supports the white collar extortion operation controlled by insurance companies that considers profits for the oligarchy far more important than providing health care, partly because the politician fighting for it the most caved and endorsed one of the crooks totally opposed to it.

Now it's virtually out of the question that Biden could be replaced as the nominee; but, in the unlikely event that he was replaced with Bernie Sanders, he's shown that when it counts even he might not be reliable. There's a chance that they could merely be restoring the illusion of democracy, since many people would be far more likely to trust him than either Biden or Trump. In the unlikely event that Bernie did manage to get the nomination, most people from the left, including me would support him; but we have to be prepared to push many of the most important issues from the grassroots level, not relying on politicians.

This needs to include massive media reform so that a fraction of 1% can't control well over 95% of the national media! As long as we have an oligarchy system controlling the media they'll be able to rig elections by only covering candidates they support!