When we are at war, and a soldier deserts his or her post, leaves, goes to the enemy and tries to help the enemy and hurt our soldiers, that is considered treason. In other words, broadly speaking, if you try to make war against or seriously injure the American government, which is basically its people, you are committing treason. But, every day in Congress, and for the last 8 years at least, Republicans have been working against the American people and in favor of international corporations. In some cases, as for example, currently, they work for American health care corporations whose interests are their stockholders, some of whom are not even Americans, and against the American People.
For some reason, apparently Americans believe that anyone is allowed to say anything they want on radio or television with impunity. Consequently, Americans do not fight back against a whole range of commentators, politicians, lobbyists, and owners of major international corporations who seek to destroy the American Middle Class while pretending to support America. This latter is of course a lie. Rupert Murdoch, the owner of Fox News, the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal has become an American Citizen in order to live here and take advantage of all American society has to offer. But he is not a true American. He uses his media empire to support other corporations whose philosophy and policies are the same as his. Their goals are to destroy the American Middle Class. That is why all his outlets are fighting health care, unions, green energy and regulations on unfettered Wall Street gamblers. This support is done surreptitiously, by the transfer of obligations between corporations. Some do not want to be associated with certain Right Wing interests, like some of the Murdoch media spokesmen. So they use interlocking relationships. Who is to say what transpires in a quiet conversation between two members of boards of directors of two different companies with two different objectives. I may want something to which you have access. It could be a favorable editorial…news is all for sale these days…very little news is delivered objectively. Certainly not by Murdoch media. They have a point of view. So you get me a favorable editorial on television, and I get you access to a senior Republican Senator on a committtee who will fight against regulation on my company. It’s not in writing. It is guaranteed by the power that each party brings to the discussion.
Let’s take the oil and energy companies. They are fighting cap-and-trade and alternative energy sources as fiercely as they possibly can. But the gasoline companies know that Americans are one step away from nationalizing them after the $4.50 per gallon oil price fiasco. They know that the next time they do something stupid, they might not get away with it. It might generate an irrational response. We are all pretty committed to free enterprise of course, but as an angry response…yes…we could see government regulation, done on what would be termed an emergency basis, that would clamp down on oil companies very severely. So what do they do? They create a subliminally charged telebision message that quietly runs in the background across all statiions, very horizontal and not too deep. The message is that oil companies are basically energy companies and, like the rest of us, they want clean energy. They run these ads even though they know that it often takes forever for government to act. Partially because there are states where people will elect reactionaries in any political climate.
ENRON began as a company called Northern Natural Gas, of Omaha, Nebraska. Twenty years later, this company, formerly regulated, formerly providing excellent natural gas services to homes throughout the middle part of the country for many, many years became a private speculator, owner of pipe lines, controlling and speculating on all forms of energy. ENRON itself, which had been founded to purchase such companies as Northern Natural Gas to take advantage of an era when regulatory rules were removed, became so powerful that it could literally shut off the electricity in parts of California. It could shut down hospitals and turn off air conditioning in homes. Companies went bankrupt and people literally died. At what point does greed and neglect of social responsibilities become criminal? In the case of ENRON, it was not a $400 billion looting of California, or deaths from heat or bankrupt companies. No. The government didn’t step in and say: enough. It was only when employees and stockholders lost money, when ENRON went bankrupt and hurt Wall Street that there were investigations and eventually people went to jail, or had mysterious heart attacks just days before going to jail.
It is said by some in the Senate who are working frantically to try to get health care reform to the public this year that 14,000 people a day, right now, are losing health care coverage. 47 million people have no health care. The Republicans break that down–according to their own not-very-credible calculations–so that it turns out that, according to them, only about ten people are really without health care. But for some reason 76% of people surveyed nationally say that health care is their biggest problem and they want it solved. The Republicans say that many people will lose their private health care and be “forced” onto public health care. There are a lot of people out there right now who would love to be “forced” onto public health care…Medicare, for example. Republicans say that tax breaks and health care savings accounts are the solution. Well, if that is the case, the Republicans were in power from 2000 to 2008, why isn’t the problem solved? We have had all kinds of tax breaks. We have health care savings accounts. They don’t make the smallest, slightest dent in the problem. People like Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin and Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee know this. If some people outside Congress know about it, then surely Republicans who legislated these things know about it. So, what does that mean? Really, what does it mean? It means that they are lying. There is no point in being nice about it. We need health care reform. Ryan and Alexander are lying to the public to prevent the public from getting health care. We know that because a. they lied and b. those kinds of lies, if successful, would stop health care reform, leaving us right where we are now.
Why would we impute motives to legislators because they don’t agree with us? Well, because two plus two makes four. When a memo from the Republican National Committee, sent to all Republican legislators and all those working to promote the Republican agenda says that the job is to stall health care legislation…delay it until the enormous propaganda campaign against it will persuade the public with outrageous lies that people should go against common sense and their own best interests. When American people are dying for lack of health care and an organization tries to stop legislation that will help the American people, when does that become treason? When does free speech become shouting “fire” in a crowded theater?
The Republicans say that they are merely trying to find a better way. And the Democrats, because they now hold all the cards, don’t want to seem domineering, even though the more they try to engage the Republicans, the more the Republicans go on television and cry “rape.” In other words, the Republicans have figured out that if they keep pretending to be shut out, people will believe them. The Democrats should shut them out completely and just get good things done without them to show the American People what good government looks like. So, if you are saying what is patently not true…that the President is a “dictator” and that he is trying to “socialize” the country and that he is illegally president because he was born in Hawaii, and all this plus literally hundreds of insults and lies per day on radio and television…when does this become trying to “injure” the vast number (76%) of Americans who want health care? All these diversions are attempts to kill a health care bill. And when do we leave off the controversial and get into treasonous.
We need to get serious about this. The weenies at Justice and the ironically weak-kneed Harry Reid, a very tough guy with a very weak attitude for some reason, will not get this done. We need an organization to make these pundits and congress people pay when they tell lies that effect our lives and the lives of our children. Senator Jim DeMint, has said, that the Republicans need to defeat anything that President Obama wants to do. He has said on the floor of the Senate that he wants to destroy the Democratic agenda. He is essentially saying that he will hold 47 million families hostage for a foolish, partisan political attack.
We need to find a way to have the Justice department take people like Jim DeMint to court for espousing serious harm to the American People. He is no different from any spy or saboteur. Like the Republicans, they always have an excuse as to why they did something. The Republicans lie, as do bank robbers and murderers about what they did and why they did it. No one says, “Oh yeah, I stole the plans to a nuclear submarine and gave them to the Russians.” They say that they happened to be in a room with the documents and they thought it would be nice if they copied them and made wallpaper for their son’s room.
This is all about money. Campaign funds. Democrat Max Baucus who chairs the finance committee, one of those working on health care plans, got over $1.8 million from health care companies and he is doing nothing to get a public health care option. A public health care option would force the private companies to compete in a state or region with at least one entity that has good quality service at a reasonable price. Baucus isn’t the only one. Senator Enzi, Republican, on the other committee in the Senate working on health care, the so-called “Kennedy” committee, where he is the ranking member, got $579.000. But Sherrod Brown, of Ohio, a Democrat, is on the same committee and is in favor of universal health care and a public option. He is also in favor of making pharmaceutical companies compete for government business to lower drug costs. He received $1.3 million. On the other hand, Senator Conrad, Democrat of North Dakota, who should be voting for a public option, has been holding out. He received over $1 million dollars in campaign contributions from health care companies. Senator Blanche Lincoln, from Arkansas, the poorest state in the country, where public health care should be a major concern, received $995,000. She is against a public option. Arkansas needs a new Democratic Senator.
Senator Gregg, Republican of New Hampshire, $694,000…against public option. Republican Senators Hatch of Utah and Grassley of Iowa, both against the public option. Hatch got just under $1.3 million and Grassley, just over $1.3 million. Senator Cardin of Maryland, got $1.3 million…voting yes for a public option. Senator Collins and Senator Snowe, both Republicans, both from Maine, got $750,000 and about $450,000 respectively. They are both voting no and should be removed from office by the good people of the lovely state of Maine. Senator Barrasso, a doctor, a Republican, and a strong complainant against legal settlements against doctors (wonder why?) only in office for a short time, has received almost $300,000 already. He’s against almost anything that smacks of reducing costs for patients. Senator Spector of Pennsylvania, a recently converted Democrat, has received $1.3 million from health care lobbyists but seems to favor a public option. Senator Dorgan of North Dakota is an unusual case. He has received only $300,000 from health care sources. He is a very strong liberal on most causes and on universal health care. Yet we still do not know his opinion on a public option for health care. And finally, Senator Wyden, Democrat of Oregon has received over $650,000, but he has not committed. What we do know about Senator Wyden is that he has submitted a strong bill for health care reform and he has been a very strong advocate for the people on health care for some time. So we don’t know the problem there. But if he doesn’t vote for it…throw the bum out.
We need to toughen up in this country. If someone in Congress is doing something deliberately to harm your family and those of other average citizens, you need to take some kind of action. Our elected representatives need to know that they are not on their own when we elect them to act on our behalf. And those who would deliberately lie to make many of our citizens vote erroneously against their best interests and those of their families–we need to find a way to punish those people for treason. If it is treason, i.e. hurting millions of American families, but it is technically legal, then we need to find a way to severely punish them that is technically legal.
Yes, let’s find a way to severely punish anyone who disagrees with the Democratic party. First, we’ll give them a derogatory title like “Neo-con-Republican,” because it’s easier to hate people when you label them. Then, we’ll ridicule their beliefs, and, when they make legitimate counterpoints, we’ll simply resort to ad-hominem attacks because equality and freedom means we all have the right to listen to Democrats and do everything they say. Disagree? You’re an ignorant, treasonous neocon!
Look, this is simply not true. And we do not call people names who do not try to stand in the way of helping Americans who are losing their health care in huge numbers in the face of enormous expenditures, some estimates as much as $2 million a day, by the health care lobby. We have made it clear that the Neocon (Neoconservatives, which is how they are designated) are treasonous in our opinion because treason is not against a piece of paper, it is against living, breathing, fellow citizens.
And “severely punish” someone? You are certainly not someone who would consider yourself being “severely punished” either in public or private debate but probably weakly attacked. You have an excellent grasp of the issues. But your information is as slanted, as that which you receive supposedly from liberals. But you have not substantiated that information is being with held at all. By the way, whatever ad hominem attacks were launched will be reviewed. In advance, if there were…sorry. Now, in response finally and again to the term “Neocon,” President Obama has been called a Nazi and, somewhat humorously, a Stalinist in the same article…apparently by someone who never studied comparative government or political systems. In any case, the list of neoconservative barking dogs is so long that there is no way to address it in this blog. They are pathetic, ignorant people and if that is an ad hominem attack on someone like Michael Savage, so be it. Those people are Neocons as are those who support them. I would consider this a good debate if the issue were not so important to people’s lives. Too important for misinformation. By the way, I don’t know how you can get any more objective evidence than the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, not supported by any political party and having no political affialiation whatsoever. I don’t see how it would be difficult to find the AMA and the AAFP. Or the PNHP. All on the web.
I agree with you that treason takes many forms, but I strongly protest the assertion that blocking universal health care is tantamount to treason.
Essentially, you are suggesting that by not wanting to offer “free” health care to everyone, critics and “obstructionists” are implicitly causing harm to those people without insurance, which makes them traitors to America.
Not only is that a weak argument, but it is simply not true. The critics of this legislation are not the ones making people sick and they are not denying anyone care. The primary difference between what you believe and what your political opponents believe is on the issue of whether or not universal health care is a fundamental human right. And I don’t much care for your view that this topic is somehow “too important” for debate.
Republicans, Independents and conservative Democrats and Libertarians have every right to form the opinion that health care is a privilege, earned through hard work and dedication. They not only have the right to this opinion, but they have the right to voice it, rally for it, vote on it, and live by it – without being called names, or threatened with sanctions or “severe punishment.”
The way I see it, crafting arguments that equate dissent with treason and calling for severe punishment is particularly un-American. If anything here is treason, it’s that.
Finally, let me pose a hypothetical: if this legislation passes and, say, 10 years down the line, the system is just as cluttered and inefficient a bureaucracy as many other large, federally-run programs, and we have to deal with waiting times and lotteries and rationing, then it is a given that people will die waiting for treatment. People who had quality private coverage before they were forced onto a public plan that ultimately led to their death.
In your post, you defined treason as “hurting millions of American families.” Given the hypothetical situation above, would you, as a supporter of this plan, admit to treason? Would you accuse Obama of treason?
Or would you justify it by calling Rush Limbaugh a pill-popper and then pointing to all the people who didn’t die?
You have a serious misunderstanding of treason. If you want to examine who might be guilty of treason, it would be those people in power, (and remember that the last two years of the Bush Administration there was a majority of Dems in Congress) – who did nothing to deal with anything of note during that time nor did they represent the people or act in the interest of the American people. In fact at every turn they have fought those they represent, favoring faulty science, foreign law, and illegal immigrants . Our leaders profess to be ‘for the people’ but they are really ‘for the power’. They at every turn are against the people they are supposed to represent and almost with gleeful igorance do not consider the ramifcations of their decisions or the unintended consequences of their actions. They insist on punishing drive and indepdence and rewarding and encouraging dependence. They want to control our healthcare, what we drive, what we eat, how much we give to charity, and everything else about our lives. That is plainly NOT what America is about. We the people speak up about healthcare, about illegal immigration, about cap and trade (those who’ve actually heard about it – thanks to the miserable coverage by the mainstream media) about the loss of jobs and they simply IGNORE us — treating us like we are just stupid little people who don’t know better or understand their wonderful ‘grand plan’ for us all.
Here is the definition of treason: …The Constitution defines treason against the United States to consist only in levying war against the US, adhering to their enemies, and giving them aid or comfort.
Americans who knowingly conspire against America and other Americans in an effort to cause them harm could be guilty of treason. Someone is not guilty of treason by simply having an alternate idea or opinion. Obama and the Dems are apologizing around the world for the nation that has been THE most generous of all nations, most of the European countries would be speaking German now if it wasn’t for our assistance; also they are undermining our nations free trade, banking, insurance, energy and housing industries, and are outsourcing our jobs because they don’t understand basic economics or choose to ignore it, to expand government control over our lives to unprecendented levels. They are eroding our national sovereignty by destroying our language and borders – all for the sake of politics, letting more people in who will rely on government handouts who will vote to keep them in power. I would think this would all be far more damaging to our nation and our indigenous citizens as a whole than disagreeing with a plan for a faulty and highly inefficient and expensive healthcare system — it wouldn’t even be on the same scale.
Are you comfortable with the people in power thinking you are too stupid to make your own decisions about healthcare based on your resources? We cannot have a debate about healthcare without considering tort reform. This is the SINGLE biggest cause of the cost of our current system, yet the Dems ignore it? Why? Because most of them are attorneys perhaps? Or perhaps because attorneys are the largest contributors to the Democrat party?
We as consumers choose most carefully when we know we don’t have unlimited resources of time or money. Make Congress and the President subject to a budget, laws and healthcare plans they would like us to live by, and see how fast those all go out the window. They are propagating separate elite and a poor social classes – ala Communism/Socialism. The way you facilitate socialism or communism is to take out the middle class – that is what is happening. They are using Sol Alinsky’s plans to overwhelm the system and push so many programs and entitlements through simultaneously that we can’t keep up or learn enough about the legislation to say no – they are manufacturing ‘crises’ to enact these things quickly. They are constructing a network of Czars (where is that in the Constitution?) and officers for whom there is no oversight by Congress, thereby circumventing the normal checks and balances and where we will not have ANY voice by design.
You are a victim of the ignorance that comes from the repression of other viewpoints and arguments that is occuring through the mainstream Press and TV – who are supposed to deliver unbiased information to keep citizens informed so they can ensure their liberties are preserved. The Press is failing miserably because it is filled with bleeding hearts whose tollerance only extends to their own fingertips. If you were receiving ‘full’ information you’d realize that the Republicans are not all controlled by corporations and they have submitted alternate reasonable plans.
They have woken up from the coma of ‘absolute power’ to listen to their constituents – who are screaming to be heard. We DO NOT want Canadian/British style healthcare. We DO NOT want people who are not legal citizens to receive benefits from systems we pay into all of our lives. We DO NOT want faulty and unproven science dictating our energy needs and usage or taking us back a century or two, for the sake of increasing the flow of money into inefficient technologies that cannot touch our energy needs for decades ahead, and line the pockets of people like Al “I invented the Internet” Gore who are in a position to legislate programs that inure to their benefit.
Listen to what you said in your own article. Use government to suppress opposing viewpoints! If this were the Bush adminstration proposing such things you’d by whining and crying all over the place, having huge marches and protests and crying “Impeachment” – but when the shoe is on the other foot, your complete intollerance and lack of exposure to rational and factual arguments shines through.
Liberals will use all means possible including trampling on free speech – ‘their fairness doctrine’ and the ‘politics of destruction’ (ala Sarah Palin – their still after her even in her ‘retirement’) to squelch opposition.
They figure the people are stupid enough that if they say they won’t do something, then do the opposite that somehow we won’t catch it, or if they say they believe in tollerance and diversity… er..except for all you white folks (priveledged or not) ..that somehow that is more fair and just, or if they say they just want to ‘spread the wealth’ around a little bit, that there somehow is an innate unfairness in some having achievied success by hard work.
The Constitution doesn’t guarantee wealth or health to indivduals – it guarantees them the right to pursue happiness – it also doesn’t guarantee the right not to be offended. Wake up and take off your blinders .
No one who has spent part of a career as a counterintelligence officer misunderstands what treason means. But that does not mean that treason, or a willfull working against the best interests of one’s fellow man cannot also be called treason. That is called metaphor among educated individuals. As for your comments about other nations of the world and our sacrifices, that is those of us who volunteered to serve our country in time of need, we performed those obligations to rid the world of the same kind of authoritarianism that was practised by the Bush Administration and has now been overturned by the will of the people, by huge majorities in both houses of Congress and the Presidency. Using an old GOP phrase….”if you don’t like it move to another country.” Of course, we would not really suggest that. What do you think we Democrats are…barbarians? Republicans?
The 76% of people who say that they want to have affordordable, accessible health care will not be dictated to by those who already have safe health care nor by those shilling for the health insurance industry. The idea that a series of tiny mobs, acknowledged to be organize and paid by the health care industry, can disrupt meetings by Congressmen to explain the new legislation, is much closer to treason than it is to free speech.
The other hate-filled mottoes and supported ideas, such as the nonsense that President Obama could have somehow gone back 50 years and somehow rigged the government, the newspapers, and the nurses at the hospitals, at a time when it never would have occurred to anyone that a black man could become President, is absurd.
As, frankly, are almost all the words that come out of the mouths of Republican pundits, like Limbaugh, Coulter, Hannity, Beck and all the others who are paid by the huge international corporations like Murdoch to suppress the interests of the people. There are only two kinds of people who would work against their own best interests as citizens. Those who are paid to do so directly or indirectly, or are merely, sadly, dupes.
Joshaugn – say what?! No one was glorifying Bush, he started the downward slide into socialism and eroding the boundaries of the nation to ensure cheap labor and to keep wages depressed. There are more people with healthcare they like, than without it, and we shouldn’t trash what works for the majority to address the minority. We should curb malpractice and frivolous lawsuits to reduce costs first, and people who cannot afford top level care are not ENTITLED to it. We get what we can afford – I don’t drive a Hummer, I drive a practical car I can afford. I don’t live in a mansion and have a tv in every room because I can’t afford it. I don’t get gold plated healthcare, but what I get I consider good and a good value for what I pay for it. The problem with socialized medicine is this: if people believe it is free they will abuse it. It has already happened in Hawaii, where a ‘public option’ was offered, and everyone who had private insurance bailed on their plans to join the state sponsored plan because ‘it was free’– guess what? It went bankrupt in 7 months and they completely abandoned it. What? Didn’t see that in the NY Times or on ABC, CBS or CNN? Hmm….’supression’ perhaps? One way to provide healthcare for those who can less afford it, could be to have a network of neighborhood clinics, staffed largely with Nurse Practitioners and a staff Doctor ot two – each member of your family could be entitled to up to 6 wellcare checkups and 6 illness visits per year. If you know your visits are limited you will use them more carefully. It’s like your household insurance, you don’t want to use up your one ‘free pass’ on a stupid incident, you save it for something really disaster worthy. So maybe a cut finger isn’t a medical emergency, but a nail through the foot is. The point is, if you know at some point you will have to pay something for the visit that takes you over your limit – you will use your ‘free’ visits more judiciously – that is how private healthcare works. In private insurance – you want plastic surgery? It’s elective. You need a bypass – it’s covered. Many emergency room visits are used for things that are not emergency room worthy because people either don’t have, can’t afford, or simply choose not to purchase health insurance. Holding up the passage of healthcare reform is not a treasonous act – and it’s not done out of contempt for those who don’t have healthcare. It’s done in an effort to address and expose serious flaws in the bill, that put too much power in the hands of bureaucrats, who have proven time and again that they don’t know how to manage much of anything – most of them are attorneys or professional politicians who have never worked in a regular business don’t have a basic grasp of economics, and have proven time and again, how inept they are with programs, and that they don’t have the faintest idea of costs, because frankly, they’ll be on their own plan and they have an assortment of good private plans, that we pay for for them! The tiny mobs you are referring to are real people, and sadly, they don’t have the skills at organizing , disrupting, and picketing in front of bank executives homes and extorting money from businesses by bussing in loads of union workers and ACORN people paid to protest – that are the roots of Mr. Obama’s experience, and that along with 140 days in the Sentate, are apparently all that qualifed him to be Commander in Chief. If you look at the anger of these citizens, they are expressing their Constitutional right to free speech, that we ALL are entitled to, though it seems that liberals think that right is reserved expressly to them for their somehow ‘more righteous’ causes. These are working or retired people who’s serious questions and concerns are being skirted by their elected representatives. They have the right to protest, and to ask questions of their government – and yes, they have the right to hold up huge bills that people in Government laughingly brag they haven’t read.. now what is it that we pay them to do? Just as war protestors who belittle our troops and call them babykillers, and those who still cling to the notion that Bush should be impeached, and those who insist that there were no WMDs in Iraq have the right to do – they are free to voice their opinions – no matter how much I might disagree with them. I certainly don’t try to shut them up. Fortunately, it’s still largely a free country, despite the last 30 years of progressive expansion of government and systematic curtailing of individual rights. You can call your opposition ‘dupes’ and uneducated if it makes you feel better, but I suggest you apreciate and respect that people have the right to viewpoints that you feel are not as ‘enlightened’ and ‘righteous’ as yours .
Thank you for your comment. As to the problems with the country for the last 30 years almost everyone agrees. We have spent more than we have earned in taxes. This was an almost exclusively Republican era, President and Congress. You Republicans, and I am glad to hear you admit it, spent like drunken sailors. Or like Rush Limbaugh in the Dominican Republic. You neglected everything, as you said in your long, long paragraph. You left the country in chaos. The last 30 years have been a disaster and I am glad you are willing to admit it. The Reagan era left us with $2.14 trillion in debt. The first Bush Administration left Clinton with $5.16 trillion in debt. The debt basically did not change until George W. Bush gave us another hit, and now we have $11.5 trillion in debt, the last $1.5 trillion of it in the last half of last year. $1.5 trillion dumped by Wall Street on the Obama Administration. So, we all agree with the sentiments about the last 30 years. The Republicans have created chaos, death and near Depression. Let’s hope we never see them in office again.