The Colbert Report: Send Your Medical Bills to Max Baucus
By Heather Saturday Oct 03, 2009 8:00am
From The Colbert Report:
Senator Max Baucus will pay for your medical bills from the $3.2 million he's received from the health care industry.
©2009 Crooks And Liars
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From the files of news we thought we already knew:
Chris McGreal @ the Guardian here
Drug and insurance companies say they are merely seeking to
educateBRIBE politicians and CON the public.There, I fixed it. :°)
It seems almost daily we hear news of the amount of money people like boner and the blue dawgs receive, but where are the PSA's to let the general public know?
Otherwise it's blog-site chatter to them.
Here my video junkie amigo:
Consider Orwell rolls in his grave here
Download here
The preeminent Corporations are the Media Conglomerates. They own the country.
It's the worst case scenario that could have ever happened to this country.
Had a baby this year. Healthy, no complications for Mom or daughter. Got "insurance". Working on paying off ~$12,000 not covered by "insurance". Will be forwarding bills. Hope this doesn't put Max in violation of HIPAA.
He'll need a HIPAA replacement.
With so much bribery going on, and so many brushing it off as “business as usual”, what if the tables were turned? What would be the response if crooks like Baucus paid HIS constituents for THEIR votes? With a population less than Rhode Island, that would be a few bucks for every voter in Montana, wouldn’t it?
Come on Baucus – spread the graft…
cause you can bet max the healthcare lobby's whore has not once seen an insurance bill -- or especially a denial -- since he's been in the senate.
brilliant. and i hope that bastard's office receives bags full of past due notices.
Funny thing is this morning I was looking up the definitions for Democracy and Republicanism, but ended up having to look in my Black's Law Dictionary, and apparently the definition I've been using came from there.
But online I was getting a lot of crap, and one site had an abstract trying to expound on how liberals were wrong to compare our modern corporate structure with Nazism, and on how Obama is trying to create an Oligarchy, so I glanced at the source, and it was New Republic, and clicked it off. Looks like the fascists have a new word to describe their own projections.
A republic is governance without a monarch from the latin 'res' + 'public' as in public affairs.
A republic is democratic insofar as it pursues policy according to the consent of the governed.
A strong democracy would yield a strong link.
The Democratic party purports to invoke a strong democratic link. They fail at this.
The Republican party purports to represent more than the very narrow interest of the well connected rich and powerful. It is a complete lie.
The Republican party was captured by the rich and powerful after Teddy Roosevelt.
The Democratic party was captured by the rich and powerful after Carter although the process was already underway in 1947.
We now have a terrifyingly weak democracy.
I was trying to figure out who was the last decent Repub President nad I wound up at Teddy R. As for the last decent Dem President...it gets kinda vague, but you're probably right, Carter, who was too nice to be President.
According to Black, a Republic is also supposed to be an open government where deliberations were not made in secret, but didn't necessarily say it was open in the sense of participation. (These are my words, not the dictionary).
I've seen somewhere in the past month or so, that republicanism usually includes a charter of some sort. But of course the Roman Republic was largely oligarchical, since only citizens could vote (and that was a restrictive status).
Even in our own country the general franchise wasn't held by all men, but only those that owned property until Andrew Jackson.
My own definition is that Democracy is the prevailing term, Black calls it the power originating in the people, and Republicanism can be the method by which it is achieved, but not necessarily. So our Founding Father's solution was to combine the Crown with the Executive Branch (but not those in office at any given time), with a Charter to limit the excesses of Democracy that they called "Mobocracy," to try to contain the excessive self-interest of democracy, which was Aristotles complaint, and to have a charter limiting the power of government.
And that balancing act was continued in our tripartite system of Separation of Power.
But starting with the Santa Clara County v Southern Pacific Railroad, and the whole Gilded Age (although I prefer the term Gelded Age), that delicate balance has become increasingly unstable on a National Level, although the balance was probably already at risk in every small town and state with their Mr. Potters, Jim Taylors and Montgomery C Burns.
Here's an interesting definition:
Res Publica: a politically organized body of people under a single government; "
wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
This would be comparable to Lincoln's Republican party and the fight to preserve the Union, the earlier Federalist debate, although I prefer the term polity.
But it makes nonsense of the republican argument that they're for individual and/or state rights.
Barrack Obama and a duplicate to Rahm Emanuel as well. Pack these bills in cement blocks.
Slap a Bill Enclosed Label on it.
Out of curiosity, does anyone know who's funding the regular Democrats efforts (not the Blue Dawgs)?
You know there not likely to be doing it out of the goodness of their own hearts.
so the Dem's keep quiet while Corporations write their own rules to cram through Congress?
So which are they, blue dawgs
Or Hush Puppies?
To me Health Care Reform without at least a robust public option signifies the final death blow of all of the New Deal reforms. For some reason the corporate elite prefer an America populated by undereducated poor people who can only find jobs serving burgers. So they funnel millions of their 'free-speech-dollars' into the pockets of the Congress Party. (There are no longer Dems or Repubs, it's the Congress Party now and they are beholden to a much smaller constituency than the American public.) The result: The 12,000 a year/$5000 deductible policy that i have now will cost twice that and cover me for less as i get older. Great job Congress Party. Wish i could get a refund on my Obama contributions...
I guess the bodies in the streets will be easier to pick up than the entire American middle class.
a constant supply of sick people to prop up their "to big to fail" system. Just the like the Military Industrial Complex needs conflict and war to survive.
Lest you forget, most of those bodies in the street will have died of morbid obesity.
"For some reason the corporate elite prefer an America populated by undereducated poor people who can only find jobs serving burgers."
Really, the reason isn't apparent to you? Their money would not go to fighting healthcare reform or any funding for any public services for the population at all.
They follow the model of Louis the XV as far as concern for the commoners below them. But as usual, inheritors and trust funders are usually so pathetically stupid that they are too shortsighted or just don't know how that all worked out for Louis.
This country needs a revolution and I believe we will have the correct one some day, without first a lot of suffering to mobilize people.
The arrogant and the lazy far too easily forget the power and will of human to survive.
Rather amusing and truthful editorial cartoon on the affair.
What if EVERYONE just refused to pay their medical bills? I mean every man, woman and child in America.
We need a tax revolt!
What are we waiting on? I'll join ya.
Their position is always with their feet on the heads of the ones they want to oppress while bent over in front of the ones they serve.
I know Colbert is making a joke here but it's not a bad idea.
What if citizens from all over the nation mailed their medical bills to these blue dogs? Or maybe we mail them to the Blue Dog's constituents?
Mail them to a central location so that it completely overwhelms the DC post office and their ability to function and deliver mail. Or mail them somewhere where they can be boxed in tens of thousands of boxes and placed on the steps of Congress.
is THEY would have to vote it into law.
How about cutting off insurance for all politicians...now? You want the job? Then you'll just have to do it because you care enough about this country. No bennies for you. Sorry. Your salary alone should be more than enough to cover the cost of a private plan.
This could start a whole new "tea party" style of demonstrations, this time from the left. I wonder what kind of counter-demonstration the right would come up with? It would have to be particularly stupid, in order to counter the message of political bribe--I mean contributions from the health care industry.
I was just reading on talk Left and think this should get out LOUD and CLEAR
NO PUBLIC OPTION NO MONEY NO VOTE do you get the message Twain made the post and it makes sense.
They are hitting us from all sides WE control the PURSE STRINGS.
NO PUBLIC OPTION NO MONEY NO VOTE
We need to send some bills to Ben Nelson also. Yesterday, he told between 250 and 300 doctors at a convention of the Nebraska Medical Association that the public option is shelved.
Business over people every damn time. I have absolutely no problem with forcing insurance companies out of the health care arena...guess I would never get elected to Congress.
Full article.
Sane folks call it " Health Care Reform"
Rescumlicans call it " Wealth Care Conform"
I very nearly sent Maxie B a letter the next morning informing him I would be following Colbert's advice -- still might. I figured it might lead to more trouble than it's worth without a movement behind it -- think Alice's Restaurant for the right inflection on "movement". So far I've seen one comment saying "I'll be sending Max my bill" and a few saying "it's a good idea"...well, how about joining that collective will into a movement that will back each other up when we actually do send him those bills?
Thank you, Stephen Colbert. This is a brilliant idea.
How amazing would it be for everyone across the country to send their medical bills to Baucus' Washington office? And with that $3.2M he also deserves to see the estimates for all the treatments and prescriptions that people need but don't even ask for because they are unaffordable. He could pay for those, too.
Singling out individual politicians seems to be an effective way to get the public's attention, whether for good or bad behavior. And truckloads of bills might speak louder than petitions.
Hmmm. What group could lead the charge? Progressive Dems? Move On?
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