Democrats Stumble in DC and California
Most voters breathed a sigh of relief when Donald Trump was defeated for reelection. More relief was felt in California when far-right candidate, Larry Elder, was denied the governorship last October.
Since their election victories, Democratic President Joe Biden and Democratic California Governor Gavin Newson have disappointed and antagonized their supporters.
According to the New York Times, Biden ‘Over-Promised and Under-Delivered’ on Climate, even though the fate of humanity and many other species hangs in the balance. Biden has also dropped the ball on immigration reform, student debt relief, decriminalizing Marijuana, a $15 federal minimum wage, and has done nothing to expand Medicare. Except in his first 100 days in office, Biden has not utilized his power to issue Executive Orders that enforce current laws and would achieve some measure of improvement in people’s daily lives.
It’s not that the People couldn’t care less. The aggregate of polls give Biden a 52.8 percent disapproval rating, with only 41.7 percent approving. Biden, and his Yes Man, Boris Johnson, UK Prime Minister, both seem to be drowning in a sea of ignominy and are trying anything to recover their fleeting popularity.
All of the above pales in comparison with his warmongering against Russia. Others have likened his aggressive stalking of the Russian sphere of influence to a hypothetical scenario where Russia and allied troops are on our doorstep in Canada or Mexico.
The most important development in the Ukrainian standoff, last week, was the blanket endorsement of Russia’s position by Chinese President Xi Jinping, after a face-to-face meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. He, and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping called for the US-led military bloc to refrain from further expansion and for it to drop its “Cold War” mentality.
Would China join with Russia if fighting broke out over The Ukraine? Perhaps, if Xi and his government are angry enough over US incursions into the South China Sea, which China sees as its sphere of influence and definitely not the US’. However, China’s military would probably not be needed. Russia could drive its tanks and artillery on good roads all the way to Germany’s border, against token resistance from Poland and other Eastern Europe countries. Russia’s entire might is only a few hundred miles away, while US troops in the area are also only token forces.
Even a nuclear exchange, perish the thought, would leave more Russians alive than Americans. Russia has the best anti-missile defenses in the world, plus atomic bomb shelters where 40 million people settled in to the home away from home during a drill in January. Have you seen an American bomb shelter lately?
Fortunately, Russia has stated that it wants a diplomatic solution to the crisis. So what is Biden up to? His administration knows that the US has a weakened military posture. Americans like to play poker, which is a game where the bluff can be quite effective for a skilled player. Biden isn’t that player. Unfortunately, the Russians are playing chess.
We have come to the time in history when the age of maritime powers is fading. It’s been a long run of colonization and war, from Spain and Portugal, to France, Britain and Holland, and finally to the American Empire.
We’ve now come full circle to the days when the great powers of Eurasia are about to lead the world. The days of the ascendancy of the lands of the Ming Dynasty, the Mongols and the Czars are back. We should all be friends.
The Strange Case of California faux Democrats
The California legislature has an abundance of Democrats. It’s called a super-majority. The State Senate has 31 Democrats and only 9 Republicans. The State Assembly has 55 Democrats and only 19 Republicans. In addition, Democrats hold the offices of governor (Gavin Newsom), secretary of state, and attorney general.
It would seem that such a body could work wonders to reform our broken health care system. Especially since most of them ran on a platform endorsing single-payer health care. It’s not happening.
When AB 1400 hit the floor of the Assembly, Jan. 31, it was withdrawn by its sponsor, Ash Kalra (D-San Jose) without a floor vote. No one “forced the vote,” even though 19 other legislators had signed on to the bill. The bill suffered the same fate as Medicare for All (which is also single-payer) encountered, last year, in the House of Representatives.
The California Nurses Association, which actually cares about patient health, was incensed, “Assembly Member Ash Kalra, the main author of the bill, chose not to hold a vote on this bill at all, providing cover for those who would have been forced to go on the record about where they stand on guaranteed health care for all people in California.”
In 2017, another single-payer bill looked like it would go all the way to then-Governor Jerry Brown. A heroic efforts by then-Senate leader, Kevin de León to get the bill passed was ambushed at the last minute by Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon (D-Lakewood), who may or may not care about patient health. De León’s departure for the L.A. City Council has left an obvious leadership gap in the legislature that neither Rendon, nor Newsom seems capable of filling.
It took de León, now an L.A. City Councilmember, to summarize what single-payer was all about. As he commented last year, “it was an embarrassment that California, which has the fifth largest economy in the world, doesn't have health care for all, but health care only for those who can afford it.” Subsequently, the City Council voted last August to endorse AB 1400.
Yet, Gavin Newsom, who ran on a promise to work for the passage of single-payer health care, did nothing to help counter the big money that was lobbying (bribing) the legislators.
The biggest opposition comes from the Hospital-Pharmaceutical Complex, including Blue Cross and Kaiser Permanente who have billions in profits at stake. Their cynical argument is that it would cost consumers too much.
However, Healthcare-NOW, which supports for a single-payer health care system in the U.S., says that 95 percent of the U.S. population would save money, while only 5 percent would pay more, citing a 2013 paper by University of Massachusetts at Amherst economist Gerald Friedman. The paper states that the system would reduce U.S. healthcare costs by 24 percent, or about $829 billion in the first year by negotiating the cost of prescription drugs and reducing administrative waste.
Currently, 2.7 million Californians are without health insurance and 12 million, or a third of all residents, are underinsured and cannot afford co-pays and deductibles.
What is Single-Payer?
People who want better health care have been trying to get a single-payer system in California since 1994, when a huge campaign supported the measure when it was a ballot initiative. It lost to a deluge of spending against it, but it created a movement for single-payer that won’t give up.
First of all a true single-payer plan is free, and it applies to everyone.
In 2007, I worked with a statewide group of doctors, nurses and health care advocates to draft a ballot initiative called the California Health Security Act. This proposed California constitutional amendment would have gotten rid of the big corporate insurers, in favor of a state government billing and payroll system. The single-payer initiative could have saved Californians billions of dollars and an untold number of lives (including 1,500 homeless deaths during the Pandemic), while improving health care.
A single-payer initiative would have provided for medical care for all California residents without premiums, co-pays and deductibles. In other words, free health care. What’s more, our Health Security Initative would have fully paid for all treatments, prescription drugs, devices, emergency care, preventive measures, rehabilitative care, longterm care, mental healthcare, dental care, vision care, women’s healthcare, and work-related injuries.
The Attorney General’s office did an analysis and reported that this initiative, which provided for free health care in California, would cost in “the low tens of billions of dollars.” If it cost $20 billion, this could have easily been raised by taxes on the filthy rich, on food and drinks that are unhealthy, and on big corporate landholdings.
However, the Attorney General did not take into account the relief it would provide to California employers who would no longer have to foot the bill for employee health care and battle their unions about its cost. Nor did the AG think about the relief that ordinary Californians, including the unemployed, homeless and immigrants, would feel by knowing that they would be taken care of when they became sick.
Unfortunately, the state Democratic Party machine would have nothing to do with our initiative, preferring to back the doomed Sheila Kuehl bill in the State Senate (doomed because they knew Gov. Schwarzenegger would never sign it). And several of the labor unions that had previously supported single payer bills and initiatives were involved in internecine battles. As a result we didn’t get enough signatures to put it on the 2008 ballot.
In any case, the ultimate solution to what to do when people get sick is to remove the profit motive from health care. Why should anyone make a profit from your illness or injury? A single-payer system works well in most civilized countries. In addition, no one should be allowed to warehouse our elders just because they can make a profit. If there is ever a time when love and caring is needed, it is with those who cannot help themselves because they are too sick, too injured, or just too befuddled.
Don’t let anyone tell you that the giant corporations make health care better. They virtually steal new drugs, equipment and procedures from the universities, including our own public University of California. Then they sell these innovations back to us, even though they were paid for by taxpayer money. It is time for not just change, but a revolution in health care, where we focus on making people well, and keeping them healthy, not on making billions for corporations.
