The 17th Amendment Legacy
By now most of us have watched and listened to our popularly elected Senators as they rose up in the well of our corrupt neo-Roman Senate and huffed and puffed, pontificated, equivocated (weaseled), and positioned themselves in the earnest hope of being able to be on both sides of the current manufactured health care issue. Now that they have sanctimoniously voted to allow “debate” on the 2,000-page law, the real bribing/blackmailing can begin in earnest. If you thought the $300,000,000 bribe to Senator Landrieu to vote for debate was outrageous, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. What’s that you say? Isn’t bribery a crime? Well, bribery is a crime for dumb-butt citizens like you and me, but not for the self-anointed Potentates that occupy the 17th Amendment United States Senate. I suggest you go back and read my piece on the 17th Amendment (The 17th Amendment and the Rise of Special Interest) to gain a small understanding of how this monumental mistake has given rise to our corrupt and dysfunctional United States Senate. We all know the Senate is corrupt and I say it is also dysfunctional because the Senators no longer represent their respective state’s interest as was originally intended in the Constitution. Because each Senator is now popularly elected, special interests have gained power over State interests by virtue of funding the popular election and continuous reelection of Senators, thereby enshrining incumbency and ensuring that when you become bribed, you stay bribed. The Senators in reality represent special interests rather than their respective states and the indigenous citizen electorate therein and by so doing have become dysfunctional Potentates bent on gaining and maintaining personal power. The arcane and nutty rules of the Senate serve to perpetuate each Senator’s personal fiefdom, and as a result, the US Senate is a dysfunctional bunch of 100 individuals putting personal power first, special interests second, political party third while leaving the Country’s business relegated to pompous rhetoric and little else. This is hardly what our forefathers constructed as part of our carefully balanced democratic Republic and if one reads the Federalist Papers you will quickly determine that what has happened to our United States Senate is exactly what our framers feared would happen when special interest were given an avenue to corrupt by direct election of long serving Senators. In other words, the dysfunctional Senate is no longer the restraint on the public’s emotions it was intended to be and thereby has given the Administrative branch of government extensive power it was never intended to have. Don’t believe me? The current Administration has appointed over 30 Czars that has enormous power and discretion over all aspects of citizen’s lives and wherewithal and the US Senate wasn’t even consulted or asked to confirm the appointments. In fact, the Senate never even protested all that much because these Czars really don’t impact a Senators ability to remain in power. These appointed Czars are just another aspect of a Federal Government that is becoming more centralized and more powerful with each passing day, just like our founding father’s said would happen if we didn’t maintain our Constitution. Ratifying the 17th Amendment is just one of the more egregious failures of Constitutional maintenance that has lead to a continuing erosion of personal freedom by enabling an every increasing powerful and centralized Federal Government. Fellow citizens, this is really serious stuff, unless, of course, you don’t really care about representative Government, personal freedom, and things like that. You know, things that our Constitution was suppose to protect. Still unconvinced? Lets look at the manufactured health care issue. I say it is a manufactured issue because the premise of Health Care Reform is that the United States health care system is broken. That premise is patently a lie. The United States health care system is the best in the world and the only problem is that it costs far too much. Why does it cost so much? The most basic reason is that healthcare in the US is the best in the world and the best always costs more. Beyond that basic reason, however, is that the healthcare industry has became just that, i.e., they have become an profit making industry that has no constraints whatsoever as they build every bigger and ever more glamorous hospitals, buy physician’s practices by the carload, and then pass the costs on to insurance companies that they invest in and to the Government that aid and abets the whole process. When was the last time you visited a modern hospital? Most new ones have opulence entryways that rival Las Vegas, services that have nothing to do with healthcare and on and on. And you wondered why they charged $20.00 for an aspirin tablet. Then, of course, there is the matter of lawsuits that puts an unfathomable expense burden on the system that we all must pay for one way or another. What has this got to do with the Senate being corrupt and dysfunctional? I think if you have the stomach to read the 2,000 page healthcare law you will find nothing in there that addresses the cost associated with healthcare. So, you ask, if they are not addressing out-of-control healthcare costs, what is the Government Healthcare all about? Really! I’ll leave that for you to decide. Oh, by the way. I have included a link that lists all of the areas of spending that the $787 Billion Stimulus law encompasses. If you really care and dig deep enough, you will find new agencies and entities created to support Government Healthcare, Cap & Trade, Immigration Reform, among many other things that have absolutely nothing to do with Economy stimulus. This was done well before Healthcare, Cap & Trade, Immigration, etc., even made it to the floor of the Senate or House of Representatives. The United States Senate passed this so-called Stimulus law without even reading it and you wonder why I call the United States Senate dysfunctional.
www.propublica.org/special/the-stimulus-plan-a-detailed-list-of-spending
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Good stuff. I'd suggest a few paragraph breaks to make it easier to read. God invented white space so we wouldn't tire so quickly.
ReplyDeleteMy experience is slightly different.
ReplyDeleteInstead of coming the the US for medical care, we've been heading the other direction.
Like many Americans , who are older and self employed, I can only afford catastrophic health insurance. My Blue shield plan costs my wife and I $920 a month and has an $8000 deductible.
About 4-5 years ago we found a great solution.
Thailand!!
Like India, Costa Rica, Singapore and Malaysia, Thailand is trying to attract overseas patients who are priced out of their own medical system. It's difficult to estimate how many Americans are headed overseas for medical care but since there are millions of self employed Americans in my shoes, I would guess that we are not alone.
We went over To Thailand for complete physicals…to start.
(1/10 the cost of the same procedures in the US: ultrasound, X rays, stress tests, EKG, colonoscopies, blood work etc). We were paying about $240 to get $2400 worth of tests done.
Add $1000 for roundtrip airfare and $150 for a couple nights stay in a nice hotel (or you can stay in a hospital room for about the same amount)...we still saved...$1200.
In subsequent years we added dental work…also a fraction of the cost.
And last year I went there for my first every operation in a foreign hospital.
The operation on my throat was a success. Best of all....I saved thousands of dollars.
When my wife’s pacemaker replacement is due we plan to have it done in Thailand.
And what about the quality? I'm not medical expert but the hospital was ultra modern...it looked more like a 5 star hotel. The hospital was accredited by the JCI so their standards are pretty high.
Some of the equipment they used was new to me. For example when they Xrayed my teeth, instead of shoving a piece of film in my mouth and pointing a small x ray camera at one part of my jaw, they used a device that scanned the entire jaw at one time. It rotated around ME as I stood in the center. I had never had that done at my dentist in the US.
Recently I had to go to my local dentist in California for a toothache. He looked at my records and commented that I hadn’t been in to see him for 4 years.
I didn’t have the heart to tell him that the only reason he was seeing me now because it was an emergency.