Class Warfare and Other Ramblings

The Republican leadership is crying because our current President dared to suggest the rich and super-rich pick up a bigger share of financing the government of this nation. Class warfare, they cried. Yes, they are right there is class warfare and it has been going on since this nation's first days.
In recent times the rich have become richer at a faster rate than any other time in history. The poor and middle class have lost more wealth than any other time in history. That is class warfare.
Yesterday, new data revealed the health insurance rates for employer supported health insurance took a dramatic jump in prices even though claims for services have decreased substantially. The high cost of medical care is the excuse insurance companies give. More likely, they are setting their rates high ahead of the upcoming healthcare legislation's implementation. The news agencies and all Republicans have given the piece of legislation the moniker of "Obamacare".
Obamacare is actually a racist nickname for a weak legislative (Affordable Healthcare Act) attempt to provide healthcare to all Americans. It was suggested by a black President but watered down by the obstructionist Republicans who have gone all out from the first day President Obama took office to keep anything he suggested from passing. The first words out of their Republican mouths were "we will do all that is necessary to defeat this President". The missing piece to this manifesto was the thought of "regardless of the harm or the needs of the American people. We don't care about this nation's poor and middle class. We only care about keeping our power and keeping our rich masters satisfied".
And the Republicans have carried out their class warfare masterfully. They've managed to enlist the upper middle class whites to their cause by creating a well funded group called the Tea Party. For any who have some curiosity about how this party evolved, just follow the money. It came from special interests such as Karl Rove and his friends in politics and the corporate world. The Koch brothers, those right wing icons of class warfare, are just an example of some of those who have created this alleged "grass roots" movement called the Tea Party. More like synthetic turf movement.
The upper middle class and marginally rich white population of this nation have been stirred into a fear frenzy that the "mud people" are taking over. Blacks are becoming President and illegal aliens are taking away jobs and putting a drain on the costs of government to the point profits are not what they used to be.
If you talk to the ground troops of the Tea Party you hear the words of the Rupert Mudoch Fox News stooges and the hate mongering talk show hosts of right wing radio stations that dominate much of the farm belt and plains of this country.
The reality of the Tea Party supporters is they seldom if ever hear an opposing viewpoint. They are constantly assualted with the hate and misinformation of the only radio they have available in many cases and they refuse to listen to independent sources of information. They claim to mistrust the government but never get information outside of the controlled press of the right wing movement intent on taking over the government.
Marshall McLuhan once speculated about media becoming extremely powerful and influential. His prophetic opinions have come true more than even he anticipated. George Orwell worried about Big Brother controlling the lives of common people. His thoughts became even more draconian than "1984" described.
Chris Hedges describes the cloistered and insulated lives of evangelical Christians which keeps them from ever hearing any other opinion or argument in his book, AMERICAN FASCISTS: The Christian Right and the War On America.
The sad truth seems to be Americans have chosen up sides and only listen and watch news they perceive meets their view of the world. And journalism has abandoned objectivity and checking facts when headlines and ratings are all important. Newpapers have folded all across then country for lack of readership. Some have modernized to online versions but most have become ghosts of times past. Even in those past times objectivity was hard to find but with groups like Clear Channel and Murdoch controlling vast segments of the information the world receives labelled as "news" the message has become obviously slanted to the right.
The myth of the liberal press has never been substantiated since the great majority of the mainstream press is controlled by corporate interests with little regard for liberal or progressive views. But then, myths are the currency of the misinformation masters such as Rove and the Koch brothers.
There is the myth about welfare "queens" taking in huge amounts of tax payer dollars while they sit home collecting welfare and having babies to stay on welfare. Ronald Reagan's campaign created the myth of the Cadillac driving welfare queen. Searches for that Cadillac driving woman failed. But the idea of slackers getting tax dollars to live the good life while the rest of us had to work for our money became a favorite topic of the mostly white conservative movement. And, it goes without saying most thought the welfare queens to be black women having multiple babies by different fathers.
A study just published this week talks about the nursing home industry hospitalizing Alzheimer patients who really didn't require hospitalization for such things as urinary tract infections. The study speculated the reason for the 2-3 day inpatient stays was quite likely motivated by money. Once these patients became inpatients their benefits switched over to the better paying Medicare from Medicaid. And, of course, their is the whole "end of life" industry where extraordinary medical procedures are used to extend the lives of frail and dying elderly patients. One of the more notorious examples of this was an Alzheimer victim in her late 80's being diagnosed with breast cancer. She was exposed to chemotherapy and a bilateral mastectomy in an attempt to combat the cancer.
The stories of the elderly in nursing homes being exposed to medical procedure after medical procedure with little or no hope of some curative effect are rampant. The costs of this practice by unethical medical professionals is in the billions of dollars. No one points fingers at these welfare kings making millions of dollars through unethical practice.
I've observed psychiatrists visiting inpatient clients for less than five minutes and found out later they were charging Medicaid or Medicare for a full hour of services. I've seen prescribers who consistently prescribe more expensive medications that have no proven efficacy better than less expensive medications for the same disorder. Some of these prescribers make six figures each year giving "educational" talks about the very same new medication they've been prescribing with great frequency.
The practice of poly-pharmacy goes relatively unchecked in the field of psychiatry. Most patients I encounter anymore are prescribed multiple medications from the category of antidepressant, antianxiety, antipsychotic and mood stabilizer. In addition they're prescribed medications for the side effects of these medications or drugs know as adjunctive medications said to enhance the effects of one or more of the other drugs. When the medications prescribed by a patient's PCP are added to the psychiatric drugs often times a patient is taking ten or more medications each day. I once had a patient prescribed over 20 medications each day.
And the PCP is another culprit in the current trend of American medicine to give a patient a pill for everything. For them, many working for coporate practices, the rule seems to be the path of least resistance. If a patient comes to their office and complains of pain the prescription pad comes out and often times a narcotic analagesic is prescribed without exploring possible etiology of the pain other than the patient's vague complaint. Seldom do PCP and other specialitys confer about the whole picture of the patient medical profile. Such as what other medications does a patient take that might interact with the medication being prescribed. Some are beginning to question whether PCPs have become legal venues for patients with addiction problems. Prescription abuse of such medicines as oxycontin, percocet, xanax, valium and a good many others has risen dramatically. We have become a "pop a pill culture".
So, the question is who pays for this practice of poly-pharmacy besides the toll on the bodies of the patients? In many cases the patient is on tax paid benefits. I've had other professionals complain about these patients strapping the system with their costly care. Seldom do I hear complaints about medical professionals practicing on the boundary of unethical care. And, that is the problem. Too often it becomes easier to blame and denigrate the weakest member of our society for all the problems while ignoring the bigger systemic problems of greed and ethical behaviors whether it be in the financial realm or the medical industry or in our daily living.
The greatest example of class warfare is war itself. There is no longer any pretense about the equity of those who sacrifice their lives for American wars. The predominate majority of the "voluntary" military don't come from rich families except those in the officer ranks. There is no draft but there is the "poverty draft". Failure of politicians and the American corporate interests to create well paying jobs in this country has pushed young men and women toward enlistment. Promises of bonuses to enlist and the benefits of education and continuing healthcare on discharge appeal to a kid living in urban or rural areas of poverty.
Of course, Americans fail to educate themselves about the wars our politicians involve us in. We become sheep following the wolf to our own destruction. I just saw a figure today that we spend 3 billion dollars a day in the current wars involving American troops. So why do American parents insist their children wear all the protective gear to ride a bike, play sports and numerous other activities but seldom question their child's decision to enlist and face multiple deployments to combat zones? Why do parents rush to schools in terror if there is any possible scare of another Columbine type incident but fail to understand the terror of combat?
Back during the Vietnam war a song called THE UNIVERSAL SOLDIER became a wide-spread anthem of the peace movement. The song speaks to the history of young men (and now women) always heeding the call to go kill other humans no matter what size, what religion, what nation or philosophy. The relavence of that song remains as strong today as ever. As does Mark Twain's THE WAR PRAYER. As does Smedley Butler's WAR IS A RACKET declaration.
I often speak with young people and question why they would make the decision to take up arms to hunt other humans intending to kill them without knowing the reason. I ask why would we make a decision sometimes in less time than it takes to buy a new car or a new television but fail to educate ourselves about the culture of our alleged "enemy" and reasons we are supposed to hate them. We claim to hate big government and the politicians in D.C. yet we continue to allow ourselves to be seduced into wars without meaning or moral cause. I know because I was 17 when I decided to enlist into the Marines. I was 18 the day I entered Vietnam as a combat infantryman. I was 19 the day I left the combat zone to return to America. I have regretted my involvement every day since I realized early in my "tour" in Vietnam that I had been duped.
The rich and powerful want us to believe taxing them or asking them to pay a "fair share" to fund this nation's government which has allowed them to amass huge profit is "class warfare". They claim it will result in those who create jobs slowing the creation of jobs or failing to create jobs. Their arguments ring hollow since these are the people who "outsourced" American jobs at a record pace once the globalization gates were opened wide during the Clinton administraton. These are the people who have made a concerted effort to crush collective bargaining and diminish the wages of the American workers. They would prefer we return to the time when workers had no rights and the "bosses" ruled with an iron fist. These are the perpetrators of class warfare.
If the middle class and poor continue to passively follow these robber barons and their stooges in government, the class war will be lost and they (we) will become enslaved and indebted. Without resistance and an uprising of the type that took place in Egypt, the middle class will become poor and the poor will become even poorer.