This is what happens when lawyers and corporate money steer public policy, rather than the votes of The People. Corporations don’t care if you die (unless it affects their profits) and corporate bosses can almost never be prosecuted if their decisions kill you. A HUGE majority of Americans want action. All we get from our government are excuses why it can’t be done.
We need to elect INDEPENDENT candidates who are ready to overthrow the two-party, dog and pony shit show they pretend is democracy. If America were an actual democracy, we’d have fixed this after the first time school children were murdered in Sandy Hook…or long before. ~jg #vote #N0H8
Jamie Gray | Conjurer of Bytes, Notes & Words. Seeker of Truth, Peace, & Harmony. (Photo: Gray Area Productions)
Authors Note: All opinions expressed here are just that: opinions. If you don’t like mine, I probably won’t like yours either. Let’s just nod, and walk away. Maybe come back with solutions instead of opinions. Because of the two, only solutions actually matter.
Capitalism is survival of the fittest. Dog eat dog. Caveat emptor. Profits and power are the cornerstone of the elite class, a self made royalty in a society that measures value and worth by the dollar and acre.
In contrast, most of us ordinary people see the importance of the common good. We recognize the inherent value in taking care of everyone, not just the ones who would kill and eat everyone else in order to ensure their own survival. As human beings, adopting degrees of Socialism is the acknowledgement that we’ve transcended to those higher places. It’s evolution of the species, to a new place, where we learn take care of our own. ALL of them, even if they don’t look like us or speak our tongue.
Socialism doesn’t mean everyone gets an equal share, like in communism. Instead, socialism seeks to ensure that everyone gets an equal chance, and less lives are wasted. Even a capitalist should be able to grok the concept of less waste. Isn’t prevention of wasted human potential just as important as protecting human life itself? Our society should be made up of haves and have-mores, instead of haves and have-nots. The rich can still get richer. They just can’t do it by exploiting people to the point of sickness, starvation and homelessness. THAT sounds like Humanism to me…and shouldn’t we ALL be humanists? #HumanityFirst ~jg
Authors Note: All opinions expressed here are just that: opinions. If you don’t like mine, I probably won’t like yours either. Let’s just nod, and walk away. Maybe come back with solutions instead of opinions. Because of the two, only solutions actually matter.
All insurance is a scam. Health Insurance is a fucking crime. You have insurance, you think, ‘Cool I’m covered’. But nope…you still have to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars. How is that fair?
Insurance should be fucking insurance. I get sick. I’m insured. Insurance fucking pays, not me. It’s not really insurance if they get you coming and going. You pay all that money up front…every month…hundreds of dollars, maybe thousands per year. Sometimes they take it right out of your paycheck, before you ever see it.
Then you get sick. You give em the card, cross your fingers and pray. Deductible here. CoPay there. Deny this. Pro-rated that. You get out of the hospital, and before your recovery is even complete, they start coming: A bill from this doctor you don’t remember. A charge for this test and that screening. You haven’t even gotten back to work, and you’re buried in red ink.
What the fuck people. How is THIS the ‘best’ healthcare? If they save your life and then take your house to cover the cost…and that’s if you HAVE insurance. If you don’t, good luck even getting the services you need. When they know they aren’t getting paid, they somehow manage to do the barest minimum. Imagine that. For-Profit Hospitals putting profits above the best healthcare for all. WhoDaThunk?
Fuck Capitalism. Services like healthcare, police, fire, EMS, ambulance, military, prisons, education. These should NEVER be privatized. Everyone has the right to the best services we can provide when it comes to health and safety. People shouldn’t have to worry about paying the bills for these services. It should be included in our taxes, even if they are a little higher.
Separate but equal doesn’t work any more in healthcare than it does in education. Haves and have-nots alike should be protected from harm as citizens of an advanced and equitable society. Exploitation and greed have no place competing with the Hippocratic Oath for healthcare dollars. Those dollars are best spent on research, not drug commercials, dividends and CEO salaries.
The only way you do that is to get rid of the insurance companies and big pharma. Our universities, properly funded by tax dollars, could be an amazing core of medical research and medicine development…for the good of ALL, not just the shareholders and board of directors. No more price gouging on critical medicines. No more rationing of new medical treatments to the well-to-do and connected.
That’s what socialized medicine could be. It doesn’t have to be a poorly designed and inequitable system. There are plenty of examples of socialized medicine around the world that are models for a better standard of care than ours.
Healthcare is a human right, in a society that has advanced to the point where we CAN CHOOSE between profit and doing the right thing.
Do we really want to be THAT country? The one that chooses profits? Because WE have a choice. ~jg
New York writer and musician, Jamie Gray
Authors Note: All opinions expressed here are just that: opinions. If you don’t like mine, I probably won’t like yours either. Let’s just nod, and walk away. Maybe come back with solutions instead of opinions. Because of the two, only solutions actually matter.
I solve problems. I believe have a solution to everything. It’s who I am at the core, I suppose. Please don’t judge me if I try to solve yours.
When I look at the absolute mess in Washington DC, I see problems that need solving. Unfortunately, politicians aren’t very good at solving problems…at least not without creating more problems. Bigger ones usually. Expensive ones, dangerous ones, that cost us all.
“The US Capitol stands for what We The People are willing to sacrifice for the greater good.” ~jg
To me, things seem simple. There are gray areas, but by and large, there are simple, obvious solutions to every problem we face. We know must face them, but thanks to our bullshit pay-to-play political system, we usually choose to wait until it’s a fucking emergency.
Because God forbid we take one unnecessary fucking penny of profits from our corporate overlords. The economy will come crashing down and everyone will lose their jobs, if Amazon stock doesn’t continue to rise.
Well, Bezos can blast himself into space and fucking stay there, as far as I’m concerned. He’s a fucking pirate. No one should make billions of dollars in a pandemic. Even if it’s not TAXABLE income (so it doesn’t really count anyway). Give it BACK!
“Bezos can blast himself into space and fucking stay there, as far as I’m concerned. He’s a fucking pirate.”
I truly believe we can solve all of our problems. But the American people need to become engaged in our government. The People should vote for Solutions, not for people who make those choices for us, based on bribes (that’s what political donations really are) from powerful people and businesses.
We can hold Congress accountable to the vote of the people on those ISSUES. Right now, career politicians only REALLY answer to the fat cats who bankroll their elite lifestyles, and pay for their manipulative political propaganda.
And…Oh yeah. We gotta stop electing lawyers and career politicians. Congress should be people like you and me, who serve a term or two and do the best job they can for ALL of the Country (not just their party). Then they go back to their lives as teachers, truck drivers, and chefs. Lawyers shouldn’t make laws. They can write the laws AFTER regular people tell them what we want the Law to MEAN.
Bottom Line? We’ll solve a fucktonne of problems with TWO easy fixes. Get rid of political contributions, and implement term limits for every elected office. Simple shit, man.
But what do I know. I’m just a guy on a couch. ~jg
Jamie Gray | Writer. Musician. Just a guy on a couch.
I sometimes talk about revolution in songs I write. Because I believe in revolution. I think revolution is essential to true growth and change. Revolution is the only way to bring about true change when roadblocks and obstacles to doing the right thing cannot be surmounted by other means.
Peaceful revolution is evolved revolution. The evolution of revolution. You know, for the digital post-modern age. Revolutions of course, can be violent as well, but we must not allow our primitive fears and emotional preservation to make that choice for us. Peaceful protest is always more effective than violent acts of revolt. Protests must never be allowed to become acts of terrorism.
Violence must always be a last resort; an act of self defense. If we expect the world to see us as legitimate leaders, they must see a new generation of Americans. Not the policies of our grandparents, that Trump used to spur division, fear and hate, but policies of a new era.
Policies that represent the 75% of America that are already woke to upholding the truths that we SAY we stand for. That each person is equal under law, and everyone gets an equal chance in America. That the rich, white minority are not more entitled to fair treatment and opportunity than the rest of low-to-middle income, multicultural America that we truly are.
We, Purple America, America of ALL races and creeds, cannot let a small number of outspoken, self-serving, partisan, faux-Christian assholes leave our national American dream of homogeny and harmony in tatters of tyranny and tragedy.
Evil only wins in darkness, when good people say and do nothing to expose it or stop it. Speak up. Do something. Rebuilding together, once we purge our government of those who stood against America. All of them.
#FoxNews is NOT News and should be banned from calling itself “News”.
OR… they COULD try standing up to Trump’s bullying and embrace actual journalism.
Time to choose.
Trump again targets Fox: ‘They totally forgot who got them where there are’
“We came out here dressed in T-shirts and twirling Hula-Hoops and stuff, and they started gassing us, so we came back with respirators, and they started shooting us, so we came back with vests, and they started aiming for the head, so we started wearing helmets, and now they call us terrorists,” Mac Smiff, a local Black organizer in Portland, said. “Who’s escalating this? It’s not us.”
