Another Two-Thousand Page Page-Turner
ByWe haven’t even gotten done going over the things wrong with the House health care bill, and now the Senate bill has been released. Another two thousand pages. More will be revealed this morning, no doubt.
In the meantime, let’s hope it’s a better read than the House bill:
The House bill is 2,000 pages. And it’s not exactly Michener, is it? It would have been a lot faster-paced if they’d left out the subplot about the lieutenant and the governor’s daughter.Only one Republican would vote for a health care bill that doesn’t involve blowing things up. Now, will someone please tell them that swine flu comes from the Bay of Pigs?
Republicans in and out of Congress oppose the public option. They think it means putting a stop to insider trading.
The House passed some dumb amendment limiting funding for abortions, then misspelled it as the “Stupak Amendment.” Well, now who looks “Stupak”?
There is page after page of gifts to the insurance industry and individual congressmen itemized in the bill, but nowhere for the taxpayer to add a gratuity.
Most of the bill’s provisions aren’t supposed to kick in until 2013, a year after the Mayans said the world will end — a little concession to the Chamber of Commerce.
Former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell complains that the bill isn’t printed on 80 lb. paper.
Rep. Michele Bachmann opposes the Democratic bill. She wants to invite Uri Geller to bend the cost curve.
And some of the pages stick together.
11 Comments
November 19th, 2009 at 6:35 am
Your jokes are all directed at Republicans, but the Democrats control the White House, House of Representatives, and Senate and are largely responsible for the bill that you find to be such great joke fodder. You can’t blame all the crap on the Republicans/Conservatives but toast Democrats/Progressives just because they did “something”. The Democrats have not really fought for anything— a Republican pops out of the bushes and yells “Boo”, and they don’t grow a spine, they go running to MSNBC to cry on Keith Olbermann’s shoulder about “obstruction”! The House bill sucks and the Senate bill is going to suck. We know this. It sucks because the system is thoroughly and completely corrupt. We will be powerless to change it as long as we buy into the illusion of a two-party system. There is ONE party, and it ain’t concerned with us.
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November 19th, 2009 at 7:46 am
Tom,
This isn’t exactly on topic, but here’s a fascinating article in this month’s Harpers Magazine that those interested in the health care discussion might find worthwhile.
MM
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November 19th, 2009 at 12:17 pm
Thanks for the tip, Michael. The Harpers article is related to the one I submitted to HuffPost this morning: Human vs. Predator – Who Will Be Master? (not yet online)
Grassley thinks, “Government is not a fair competitor. It’s a predator.” And Grassley’s a tool. Government and the people are no longer masters, but servants to public corporations that, as Harpers suggests, are now large enough to threaten their creators.
That’s why we have leash laws.
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November 19th, 2009 at 3:04 pm
sorry, off topic but i don’t know how to start a thread yet.
But… Is anyone going to talk about the biggest news in WNC right now which is that Shuler has been caught 100% with his ethics/honesty pants down?
http://www.citizen-times.com/article/20091114/NEWS01/911130361
http://www.blueridgenow.com/article/20091113/SERVICES03/911131048
if he wasn’t in danger before, he sure is now. do we care?
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November 19th, 2009 at 7:34 pm
Shuler is a douche…but the more important question is why is Michael reading that pinko commie rag Harpers? Et tu, Brute?
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November 20th, 2009 at 2:39 pm
I just get Harper’s for all the naked pictures. I don’t actually read it.
MM
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November 20th, 2009 at 9:16 pm
It’s online now: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-sullivan/human-vs-predator-who-wil_b_363795.html
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November 21st, 2009 at 8:19 pm
Tom,
Just out of curiosity, how is congress going to undo 200 years of legal precedent? Corporate personhood gets its roots way back to John Marshall’s day. Are we talking the 28th amendment here?
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November 22nd, 2009 at 11:05 am
John,
Maybe you do it one township at a time:
http://www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/greenrights/5925.html
http://www.reclaimdemocracy.org/corporate_accountability/porter_township_ordinance.html
OCTOBER 2004
TAKING ON ‘CORPORATE PERSONHOOD’
KEN PICARD, STRAIGHT GOODS – Porter Township in northwestern Pennsylvania was an unlikely hotbed for an anti-corporate uprising. The tiny rural community about an hour north of Pittsburgh has a population of only 1500 people, many of whom are staunch Republicans with deeply-held conservative values.
But after the Alcosan Corporation, a Pennsylvania sewage-sludge hauler, threatened to sue Porter Township in 2002 for passing a local ordinance regulating the dumping of sludge in their community, town officials decided that their citizens had taken enough crap from corporations. Literally. So on December 9, 2002, Porter became the first municipality in the United States to pass a law denying corporations their rights as “persons” under the law. Weeks later, Licking Township, another rural Pennsylvania community facing a similar lawsuit, passed a more expansive ordinance revoking all constitutional rights of corporations within their jurisdiction.
Since then, dozens of other municipalities across Pennsylvania, some with as few as 1000 residents, have followed suit, reversing nearly 120 years of corporate encroachment on the rights guaranteed to all citizens under the US Constitution. Prompted by the failure of state and federal regulatory agencies to protect citizens’ health, safety and quality of life from large-scale corporate activities, these municipalities took matters into their own hands and reclaimed their right of self-rule. Though the laws fly in the face of more than a century’s worth of legal precedents that say corporations are “persons” protected by the Bill of Rights and the 14th Amendment, thus far these ordinances seem to be working.
Now some Vermonters are looking to follow Pennsylvania’s example and draft similar ordinances here to address environmental and public-health problems stemming from large corporate activities: the influx of big-box stores, the spreading of toxic sludge, even the proposed power increase at the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant. Proponents of this strategy suggest that these laws may even be used one day to challenge undemocratic principles that were written into the World Trade Organization charter and the North American Free Trade Agreement.
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November 27th, 2009 at 1:33 am
Good luck with that as there is plenty of case law [ Covington & L.Turnp. Co.v. Sanford,Smyth v. Ames, People v. Fire Assn.,U.S. v.Supply Co.,] establishing corporations as “persons” entitled to equal protection under the law. I am suprised it has stood for this long,and no I am not a proponent of corporate “persons”, sewage sludge “bio-solids”or individuals having status of federal citizenship [not existing before the 14th amendment] having no inalienable rights except through the 14th.
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November 28th, 2009 at 2:23 pm
An easier, and much more urgent fix might be for states to require a “no political speech” clause in corporate charters. If you want to form a corporation, then that corporation can’t spend any money on political speech.
That’s about the only way I can see avoiding the problems that might be caused if the Supreme Court does as people expect and grants corporations the same rights to donate to politicians and spend money independently in elections as citizens enjoy.
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