Letters to the editor, Sept. 8, 2009
McKeon and health care
Our own Congressman “Buck” McKeon made a speech on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives on August 9, 1994 under the title of “Don’t Rush the Health Care Bill.” Here we are some 15-years later and Republicans are still asking “what’s the rush?”
Answer: Now is the best chance America has had to actually accomplish something over the insurance industry’s barrage of well-funded falsehoods. That industry is working frantically to preserve and protect its massive profits.
First and foremost, corporations have a legal and fiduciary responsibility to shareholders to produce profits, even over human health or life. And this moment in time is as fleeting for health care reform as was the life of its patriarch — Sen. Ted Kennedy.
Good Republicans know this and favor health care reform. This is evidenced by another House speech of “Buck” McKeon on October 6, 1999 in which he fought “to extend health care options to the 44 million people in our country who remain uninsured.” Obviously he wanted reform when his party was in control, but not now when they aren’t.
For example, about a minute into his YouTube video titled “Rep. McKeon on Democrats’ Health Care Plan” Buck made the fallacious assertion “Ultimately, the ultimate goal is so that they can have the government making decisions on rationing health care to individuals” to scare us into submission. Observe, terrorists use fear as a tactic to divide and conquer, and so do bad Republicans.
Apparently health care reform has less to do with reform than power politics. By their obstructionist conduct, Republicans demonstrate they care less about the health of the American people and minimizing the majority in order to regain power for the benefit of those they represent, like big insurance corporations.
After their bogus “pulling-the-plug-on-grandma” campaign, Republicans will next focus on massive budget deficits and why we should tremble with fear over them. Never mind their deregulation policies created and continue to exacerbate the problem. Never mind the unquenchable war hawks, as Rep. McKeon in his recent YouTube video with Rep. Turner, bemoan a $1.2 billion cut in defense spending proposed by the Obama Administration, and never mind this cut represents less than .3 percent of the $550 billion they spent on defense last year.
Apparently Representatives like McKeon, who never wore the uniform, are okay with borrowing billions of yen from China to fund nuclear missile defenses and stealth bombers in light of a terrorist armed with a box-cutter on a commercial airliner. But they can’t find any money for health care reform to protect American lives here at home. Apparently an over 500 billion dollar military budget isn’t enough but the estimated 100 billion for a public-option is way too much.
What’s the big deal over the public-option? If past practice is any indication, the government will simply contract it out to the private sector anyhow. So it won’t be “government-run” but government sponsored, kind of like Blackwater. So fear not Republicans. It’ll be okay.
Joe Orawczyk, Yermo
On prisoners
We have to many prisoners so we turn them loose. Why should we spend twice as much on criminals as on the decent people? The solution is simple — ship them all to Afghanistan. Give them a gun and turn them loose and forget them.
Joe Golden, Yermo
