Howard Schultz and Michael Bloomberg are disturbed -- greatly and deeply disturbed -- that Senator Kamala Harris wants Medicare for All and debt-free college. It's downright un-American, one of them huffs.
January 30, 2019

This is what happens when a fearless woman of color speaks truth to power: They tremble in fear and lash out.

Monday night, in the most-watched candidate town hall in CNN history, Senator Kamala Harris spoke truth: The way to affordable health care for everyone is Medicare for All. She explained her position pretty clearly: If everyone gets healthcare there's no need for someone in the middle reviewing claims and making decisions about what they need. People just get health care.

Michael Bloomberg and Howard Schultz know this, too, because they have both run multinational companies with strong presences in other countries with universal healthcare. Somehow, in spite of everything, they've managed to profit even as people in those countries got healthcare, funded partially with their tax payments to those countries.

And yet, on Tuesday both of them bared their teeth and went for Senator Harris' throat.

Howard Schultz was appalled that Harris wanted to do away with the health insurance industry (not the entire insurance industry as he claimed, by the way).

"You played Harris as saying she wants to abolish the insurance industry," Schultz growled. "That's not correct. That's not American. What's next? What industry are we going to abolish next? The coffee industry?"

Oh hey, what does coffee have to do with being a profit-taker in between patients and their doctors, again, Mr. Schultz? And how is it at all unAmerican to want our citizens to be healthy and not have to make decisions between their insulin and their rent? Jeebus, what an entitled fish he is.

Also, the insurance industry will figure out other ways to separate people and their money. They always do.

Bloomberg, on the other hand, was just appalled at how much it would cost. When reporters caught up with him in New Hampshire, he huffed and puffed. "I think you could never afford that," he declared. "You've you're talking about trillions of dollars."

Why is it, do you think, that these billionaires did not balk at the trillions they're adding to the deficit with their monster tax cuts? Why is it, do you think, that these billionaires are fine with financing the American war machine, but cannot abide the notion that real people need real healthcare, not just platitudes.

Here's a memo for Mr. Coffee: It isn't un-American to have universal healthcare in this country. What IS un-American? Standing by and watching the shredded social safety net be dismantled in the name of lower taxes for billionaires.

We need to change that.

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