INDEPENDENT ADVOCATE With Capitol City Newsletter Volume 28, Issue 159 October 30, 2014 IAE-ISSN 0893-9470 IAE-IRS-EIN 47-01752-60 Founded in 1986 © Marlin Pals, 2014 CAPITALIST FAILURES Ghost Towns The Rolling Stone magazine of October 2014 showed Lima, Ohio as an example of capitalist malfeasance. The number of closed businesses made it look like Lime, OH was a ghost town. They also had the corresponding number of deserted homes; even homes of the wealthy who had apparently abandoned the town. That is really unusual, because Detroit became a ghost town after Reagan took office. Reaganomics was supposed show how well capitalist could develop the U.S. Instead when Reagan got into office all businesses headed overseas. By doing so they showed how much confidence they had in Reaganomics and Republicanism. That was that they really had no confidence in Reagan or capitalism or Republicanism. If the Republicans don’t succeed in this election it most likely will be because of the failure of their “freedom enterprise” system. They contradict themselves when they say nothing is free when people need assistance, but then freely help themselves to whatever they want. Capitalists promised to provide a better and less expensive transportation system by privatizing everything, but now there is no inter-town bus service which includes small towns and almost none between cities. However, capitalists promised to provide such service for less than the price of what the government service cost. Perhaps people are finally realizing just what capitalists are offering. Really capitalists are sending the nation back to the Stone Ages and even further back. CHURCHES ARE PROMOTING SLAVERY Their Bibles Support It Capitalists use a misrepresentation of the Christian Bible to promote their ignorant concepts. Actually the Christian Bible is a misrepresentation of the Jewish Scripture which it is supposed to be based upon. There is almost no way of making a direct translation from ancient documents to modern language. It isn’t possible to make a direct translation from ancient English to modern English. We only get someone’s interpretation of the ancient languages. Christians used that fact to promote slavery and still do. The ancient documents had words which had multiple meanings and one meaning could have been “servant”. However, the most vicious of modern people chose to use the word slave. Women are in danger of hurting themselves by supporting slavery, because when slavery prevailed women were slaves. They couldn’t be in any professional occupation, such as a clergy. Women clergy who support slavery had best take off their clerical clothes and grab a bucket and scrub brush and get down and start scrubbing the floors. They won’t need clothing because clothing would only inconvenience a make critter – human, or otherwise, - who wanted to rape them. The clergy want to claim that ancient societies especially the Egyptian one had slaves and that the Egyptians held Moses and the Hebrews in slavery. However, a History Channel program, circa 2010 reported that Moses had not been a slave, nor had the Jews. In fact, the Egyptians didn’t use slaves to build the pyramids as has been famously reported. They used skilled workers who were similar in status to those of the Middle Class workers of the 20th Century. The workers got good pay, as well as vacations and health care and much more. If Republicans want to be really conservative they would return the U.S. economy to the days of Egypt when people had substantial living wages and benefits. The Egyptians has the most advanced library of any time at Alexandria, but Caesar wanted to capture the Egyptian queen for himself and destroyed the library in the process. It has been said that if the library in Alexandria hadn’t been destroyed by Caesar; Columbus or perhaps the Vikings might gone to the Moon instead of coming to America. As it stands, Republicans are very liberal in denying adequate life conditions to people even though the Constitution requires that people have adequate living conditions. When Limbaugh, et al, sneer at liberals they are really sneering at themselves. They don’t have any conservative credentials. They are the welfare queens whom Reagan always scorned. Republicans are the first in line for government handouts. They complain continuously about welfare, but then claim their welfare money which they won’t allow any others to have unless those others can claim to be elite also. Apparently they are really complaining that they aren’t getting as much welfare as they want. OBAMACARE’S REAL IMPACT Shameful coverage of Obamacares real impacts By Wendell Potter – FROM THE WEB The Omaha World-Herald published a cartoon which showed hot lava closing in on the White House. It is also known as “Weird Harold”, because it espouses Nazi like ideas, especially about racial matters. Its hatred of Obama and minorities is glaringly obvious in its cartoon. The Republicans are building sentiment for the impeachment of Obama. There some problems with the Health Care law, but there have been successes. The successes may over-ride the problems. If you read my column, (Potter’s) last week about a Senate hearing that showed how Obamacare has affected Americans, you might have wondered if I was in the same room with reporters who presumably covered the event. The disparity goes a long way toward explaining why so many of us are clueless about the actual impact the law is having on our lives. The title of the May 21 Senate Commerce Committee hearing: “Delivering Better Health Care Value to Consumers: The First Three Years of the Medical Loss Ratio.” I, (Potter), was one of four witnesses talking about the part of the law that requires health insurers to issue rebates to policyholders if they spend more than 20 percent of premiums on non-medical expenses, including profits — the so-called Medical Loss Ratio. Prior to the passage of the law, insurance company executives — who consider what they spend on medical care to be a loss — were in many cases devoting up to half of premiums they collected to pay for advertising and other administrative functions and to reward executives and shareholders. As I wrote last week, consumers have saved at least $3 billion since the provision of the law that mandates insurers must spend at least 80 percent of our premiums on medical care went into effect in 2011. The hearing wasn’t just about numbers, however. Katherine Fernandez, a small business owner from Houston, testified about how the MLR provision and other aspects of the law have enabled her family to pay less for far more comprehensive coverage than was possible in the past. She told the committee that because both her husband and son had pre-existing conditions, the only policies available to them pre-Obamacare would not cover any medical care pertaining to those maladies. And even then the policies had both high premiums and high deductibles. She said that during the 14 years prior to the law’s passage, her family paid more than $100,000 in premiums for what she described as bare-bones coverage. And the premiums went up sharply every year — 165 percent between 2000 and 2003 alone. She said she was elated when the Affordable Care Act passed. “No more pre-existing condition clauses … and insurance companies had to refund some of what we paid if they didn’t spend enough. What reasonable ideas.” This story is part of Wendell Potter. Former CIGNA executive-turned-whistleblower Wendell Potter writes about the health care industry and the ongoing battle for health reform.
Posted on: Tue, 04 Nov 2014 22:59:52 +0000