The Problem with the health insurance industry is that there is no free market for it.

This is one of those ideas that just popped into my head this morning, but it seems to make sense. Think of a traditional capitalistic market, such as toys, food, or pretty much any other market. Generally the more competition there is in these markets, the lower the prices. Cost cutting measures in these industries would involve making more of the product per man-hour and for a few cents less, and make up the loss through volume. They can then try to out compete each other, etc.

I then realized that the health insurance(and most other insurance) industries don't work this way, in fact they CAN'T. What's the most effective cost cutting measure for an insurance company besides denying claims? Its volume, but not in mass production of some type of widget, instead by expanding the risk pool of insurers to low risk groups of people. The problem is that people don't get built off the assembly line.

There's a lot of talk about "choice" and competition within the insurance industry, the problem is that population shifts, and and growth, occurs too slowly for costs to drop. There are no pricing wars within this industry in regards to premiums, simply because the amount of people any individual company can potentially sign up is negligible, and may not offset the costs of paying claims.

Usually, in a capitalistic market, the more competitors there are, the lower the prices in that market. In the Insurance industry, the opposite happens. The reason is simple, for every new competitor out there, the size of the risk pool for EVERY insurance company out there actually drops, and this can increase costs for those companies that are then passed on to the both current and future policy holders.

This tells me that the industry itself isn't sustainable in the long term at all, and the cracks are apparently showing now. They can try other cost cutting measures, I hear a lot of talk of computerizing claims and billing, but over any extended period of time, this would have a limited effect. We were promised the "paperless office" back in the 1980s, I doubt that the 2000s can deliver on the promise any more than the 1980s had.

The most effective cost cutting measure for insurance companies would be consolidation, not competition, the problem is that this would be advocating for a monopoly, which is generally bad for customers of any sort. It seems to me that the insurance industry will end up being destroyed, or at least marginalized, in this country, if not by being replaced by some public financing system, then by destroying themselves. I just hope we are smart enough to be able to set up an effective public system to fall back on when that happens.

Long time, no post...

Had a lot of shit go down, mostly medical and personal related, so I'm not going to bore anyone, have a new post for today, and besides, I said that posts would be infrequent anyways. Oh well, on with the post.

Excellent video on single-payer health care...

I believe it summarizes single-payer health care quite nicely, and in an easy to understand manner. I also encourage anyone who watches this to go to the website itself.

The Flash movie is here.

Shout out to blondeatlast and bobbolink over at DU for bringing this video to my attention! Thanks for posting it over there!

The "S" word...

Socialism, a word that encompasses a political philosophy that is sometimes hard to quantify except for in one manner, in the United States, calling yourself a Socialist is practically a guarantee that you will LOSE an election, regardless as to how good your ideas actually are. Is it any surprise that out of the 535 people in Congress, only ONE is a self proclaimed Democratic Socialist, and that's the guy on the left, Bernie Sanders, Senator of Vermont.

So what makes Bernie different? That's a good question, and, to be honest, I don't think I can answer it, only the people of Vermont can answer it, they elected him, Gods bless them.

It could be simply a part of the iconoclastic character of the state of Vermont, which seems to me to like to buck trends and be a trend setter themselves(I hope).

However, on the national stage, being a Socialist can cost you an election. This is because of a combination of misinformation and accusations that date back to the Cold War and even before the war. "Red Scares" and accusations of Communism were enough to wreck lives and suppress political activism in all areas of life. The erroneous association of Socialism with Communism, which are related, but also different, political philosophies, lead to electoral and personal failures of many Socialists in the country.

The irony is that while Americans generally don't like the word "Socialism" itself, the policies of Socialists or ideas of Socialism itself aren't nearly as strongly opposed. A classic example is that of Upton Sinclair, who was an author in the first half of the 20th century, and was also a political candidate in California for Senator, Congressman, and Governor. He was a Socialist, and when he ran under that label, he lost, however, on his Governor run, he ran under the Democratic Party, and, while he still lost, didn't lose by nearly as large a margin, the Republicans smeared him as a "Communist" during his run.

"The American People will take Socialism, but they won't take the label. I certainly proved it in the case of EPIC. Running on the Socialist ticket I got 60,000 votes, and running on the slogan to 'End Poverty in California' I got 879,000. I think we simply have to recognize the fact that our enemies have succeeded in spreading the Big Lie. There is no use attacking it by a front attack, it is much better to out-flank them."--Upton Sinclair

He was right, of course, the American people like the policies of Socialism, at least to a limited extent. Most Americans prefer Socialism in small doses, if not in one solid platform, and they prefer solutions to problems that work, regardless of what political party or philosophy those solutions sprung from.

Issues #4 "Free" Trade and the worker

The first thing you will notice is that I put the word "free" in quotes when referring to "free" trade. This is done for a simple reason, most trade agreements that are BILLED as free trade aren't free trade. A classic example of this would be NAFTA, which, if you actually read it, has 22 different chapters to it. Much of it is dense, legalese, but basically it allows for freeing up capital, but not labor. This isn't free trade, this is an agreement to screw over the working poor in three nations, at the same time.

I'm against free trade as it is billed and implemented in the world today, the biggest problem is two-fold, lack of transparency in the process, like closed door WTO meetings, and the lack of international standards in labor rights, environmental protection, and respect for domestic laws. The biggest problem is that free trade is regulated from one end of the spectrum, the employers, rather than the workers.

Proponents of "Free" trade as it is implemented today refer to it as a tool for world peace and economic development. They are right insofar as "world peace" is concerned, but only partially, for while two nations that have such an agreement in place may not declare war on each other while the agreement is in force, this doesn't mean violence itself stops. What good is peace if you require paramilitary forces to break strikes, burn villages, and force people to work in Free Trade Zones?

By my thinking, if we are to have free trade agreements, they need to be equalized, if a World Trade Organization is to exist, there should be a World Labor Organization as well. A WLO would balance out the WTO in many aspects, because it would include a group of people in the regulation of trade that have been ignored up to this point, the workers themselves. This could include helping workers to establish unions that are independent of governments and allow unions from one nation to join the unions of other nations when their interests and concerns are similar enough. The composition of a WLO would be from the unions themselves, through democratic elections. In addition, to make sure it has teeth, no trade agreement or regulation can be agreed upon unless the WLO and WTO both agree to it, and the meetings and dealings of both organizations should be a matter of public record, including unfettered media access.

This is one of many reforms that can be instituted that are more closely related to what is called fair trade than "free" trade. We need institutions and policies in place that will allow us to protect domestic workers in all nations, and to allow for sustainable growth and poverty reduction, worldwide.

Labor Rights and the Employee Free Choice Act

It may seem odd that a self proclaimed Socialist would wait this long to reflect on labor rights, and, to be frank, it is. Then again, I'm somewhat scatterbrained as is, my mind will wander on its own, and, when I feel like it, I write down my thoughts.

I wanted to comment on the Employee Free Choice Act, right now there are four versions of the bill, mostly this is a scheduling thing with the Library of Congress website. More information can be found at the AFL-CIO website. The law in question is a good first step, and let us hope it passes the Senate. If you look at the AFL-CIO website I linked to, you can find out if your Representative is against working people or for them.

I think the law is a good first step in restoring labor rights and union representation in this country because it levels the playing field a bit between employers and employees. It increases the penalties against employers for employee discrimination and intimidation, it also allows for easier certification of Union in the workplace, and for help in mediation on behalf of Unions.

This is one of those items that makes me glad that the Democrats won back Congress last year, and hopefully, increase their majority in 2008 and win the Presidency. This is but one step in the correct direction to protect American workers against abuse.

Small changes to the blog...

This is the first, and only, post, that isn't political in some way. Anyways, I added the labels for my posts on the right, above the archives, to make it slightly easier to navigate the site. Since this isn't a current events blog, the timing of the posts themselves isn't that important. With it structured this way, I'm hoping I won't repeat myself, though I may revisit an issue or post if relevant to something I want to comment on that relates to it.

Also, I added an actual license to my blog, a Creative Commons license, the details of the license, and any questions about it, can be answered in the link on the right side of the blog. Basically the rundown is this, anyone can copy my posts as long as they don't try to sell it, make sure I'm mentioned(Solon is fine), and they can even modify the content, or add to it, though I encourage anyone who does this to link back to this blog and the post you are modifying.

Issues #3 Congressional Reform

So what do I mean by Congressional Reform, well, let's narrow it down to the House of Representatives. The Senate, generally, is OK as it is, however, I have problems with the "People's House".

Two things strike out as problems to me, first is Public Law 62-5 which was passed in 1911 and limited the amount of Representatives to 435. The problem is that the House is supposed to represent the people of this country, yet, how effective is it when the country has tripled in population since this law was passed, and added 4 states? Given this limitation, the ratio of citizens to representatives is now almost 700,000:1.

The second problem is the districting system, which has been so pervasive in this country, that people think its actually part of the Constitution. To be frank, its not, in fact, the ONLY mention of how Representatives should be apportioned is in Article 1, Section 2 of the Constitution, and it makes no mention of districts. Districts are the creation of states, nothing more, nothing less. As such, any reform to get rid of them is far less drastic than, let's say, the direct election of Senators, which required a Constitutional Amendment.

So why are these two issues problems? Well, Gerrymandering is a problem, its a fancy word for saying you can disenfranchise someone through creating district borders to create a political, or, in some cases, racial, minority, robbing them of Representation in the process. This is part of the reason why, if you ever seen Stephen Colbert's Better know a District, that the districts look so convoluted. This also leads to the incumbency problem, generally districts are either Democratic or Republican, hence, any Democratic or Republican Representative who wins in those districts can be guaranteed re-election till retirement. Its hard to dislodge an incumbent once they are elected, especially for the opposing party. Most districts are "safe" for one party or the other, very few, proportionally, are "in play", so to speak.

Having so few Representatives represent so many different people is also a problem and it will only be amplified as the population of the country grows. Many of us already have a huge disconnect between ourselves and our Representatives as is, imagine if the ratio grows to 1,000,000:1 or greater.

So, what are the solutions, it comes in two parts, one is that, through an act of Congress, they can repeal public law 62-5 and reapportion the House through a set ratio, like 600,000:1. The second part is harder, it involves getting rid of Districts, and will have to be done on a state by state basis. Basically allowing at-large elections within the States using Proportional Representation, which is basically just a fancy term for allowing everybody to vote for who they want based on politics and not strictly geography. In addition, this also simplifies the apportionment process in that politicians won't need to do horse trading to make sure they get the districts they want. In addition, we wouldn't lose representatives in one state due to another gaining more of a population than that other state, instead, both would gain representatives.

The fact of the matter is that, while this would be a change, it is actually less radical than other proposed changes to any level of government. This can also lead to a House that is less dependent on money and more dependent of keeping the people of the state they live in happy. They would also be more responsive, create less pork, due to the geography limitation being lifted, and third parties may actually have a chance at House representation.

Supreme court upholds Partial Birth Abortion ban...

So I read this link here, and, to my surprise, the Supreme Court, all medical experts, I'm sure(sarcasm), decided in their infinite wisdom that banning a needed medical procedure is Constitutional. Now, I could go on and on about how WRONG this decision is, the first thing that comes to mind is that the law in question ISN'T needed. All "Partial Birth Abortions" are done to save the life or health of the Mother. Apparently, Republicans value the lives of fetuses more than Women. Not to mention that Partial Birth Abortion is a POLITICAL term, not a medical term, for the procedures used.

To be frank about it, the Supreme court, at least 5 of the justices, are dumbasses. In my personal opinion, there should be NO laws outside of safety or compensatory laws, regarding ANY medical procedure. All this moralistic claptrap is just a thinly veiled attempt to control women's lives, and ultimately, the lives off everybody.

The truth is that this ban was and is an additional risk to women who end up having the most tragic things happen in their lives, their fetuses end up being non-viable, and/or pose a risk to the mother that she cannot carry to term. There has NEVER been one case of a perfectly normal and viable fetus being aborted in the 3rd term when the mother is capable of safely delivering it. This simply doesn't happen.

However, what the law does say is that, if a fetus doesn't have a brain, but is on the mother's life support, so to speak, she is FORCED to carry it to term, regardless of the risks to herself. The head of the fetus can fill with fluid and expand, increasing the risk of the mother developing severe problems during labor, and she could end up, in BEST case scenarios, being handicapped for life, not to mention emotionally damaged.

This type of shit REALLY pisses me off, because laws like this address problems that DON'T EXIST AT ALL!!!!! Oh, and I don't care for the "graphic" depictions of the various procedures, that should not be a factor for anyone, open heart surgery is nasty itself, most people would throw up just because of the smell and the amount of blood involved, but guess what, its saves a life.

The fact of the matter is that most pregnancies fail, the key here is that most fail within the first 2 months of pregnancy, its called a Miscarriage, if you are Christian, this is God's way of having an abortion. Sometimes, though, the woman's body doesn't implement this self-defense mechanism in time, and fetuses that aren't viable then continue to develop past the point where they can be miscarried. In some cases, they are still "alive" in the Terry Schavio sense, without brains, and such, other cases, they actually die and decompose within the Mother. This can be exceedingly dangerous, blood poisoning isn't unheard of in cases like this.

The point is that these women, and their doctors, should be free from bad laws like this so that they are free to make decisions that are best for their own health. For if they can't even make that decision for themselves, how can anyone call this country free?

Issues #2: The Right to Vote.

This may come as a surprise to many Americans, but we don't as Americans, have a right to vote. The Constitution of the United States has several Amendments that restricted how states can restrict the right to vote, but there is no explicit right that is stated anywhere in the Constitution. You can read the Constitution right here.

Voting is a right that the States give to their own citizens, rather than a federal right. To give a comparison, all American citizens have the right to free speech because of a combination of the First Amendment and because of Section 1 of the 14th Amendment. In this case, the 14th Amendment restricted the power of states to limit free speech, the First Amendment, originally, only applied to the Federal Government, hence why Congress is mentioned by name.

Next let's look at the 15th Amendment, which says this:

Amendment XV

Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Notice the wording of the first section, it doesn't give an explicit right to vote to citizens of the United States, rather it restricts the power of states from denying that right on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. Now, there are two other Amendments we are going to look at, the 19th Amendment, and the 26th Amendment. Both of which share the same wording as the 15th Amendment, and therefore neither one guarantees a federal right to vote to anyone, but restricts states from denying the vote to women or those that are 18 years old or older.

So what does this mean? The question can be complicated, first we have to examine Citizenship within the United States, first, there are two basic levels of citizenship, Federal and State, all citizens of the States are citizens of the Federal government, but not all State Citizens are Citizens of all States, does that make sense? Let's put it this way, I'm a Citizens of Missouri and a Citizen of the United States, however, I am NOT a citizen of let's say Illinois, I don't live there, and therefore the rights that may be extended to citizens of Illinois do not extend to me.

The Federal Constitution is not a restrictive document, the 10th amendment states that any power NOT mentioned in the Constitution or its Amendments are instead enumerated in the states. When the country was founded, after the Articles of Confederation were replaced by the Constitution, less than half of white males could vote, the reason was that most did not own property, and hence didn't qualify. This was, and still is, Constitutional, however, over time, the states themselves extended the franchise to include, at least, all white males over 21 years old.

Over the years, as the country expanded, laws in various states have expanded the franchise to other people, for example, before the 19th Amendment was passed, many western states extended the franchise to women, and many other states lowered the voting age before the passage of the 26th Amendment.

States have this power, but, at the same time, just because one state gave its citizens these types of rights, before the passage of these Amendments, doesn't mean that when a citizens moves away from that state, they retain that right. A modern day example would be with convicted felons, many states take away the right to vote, permanently, from convicted felons, while others do not. A felon in states that don't restrict the right to vote in this way may lose that right if they move to a state with these laws.

Now here is something that's somewhat of a gray area, Federal law. There are many Federal laws that further restrict how the states can restrict the right to vote, mostly as a response to the Civil Rights Movement. They include not having unreasonable tests to restrict the right to vote, like literacy tests, counting beans in a jar, and other Jim Crow type of laws. They also extend the non-discrimination started by the 15th Amendment by including National Origin in as a protected class of citizens.

These laws are enforced onto the states basically by saying the Federal Government will restrict funding for certain projects, like Highways, if the laws aren't enforced by the states. The states themselves will then enact the laws as state laws, to keep the funding. This isn't Unconstitutional because the States aren't guaranteed help by the Federal Government in the Constitution except for defense.

So what does this mean for the average citizen? Well, its perfectly Constitutional for states to restrict voting rights to only landowners, like many used to do in the past, or they could restrict it based on annual income, height, weight, criminal record, and pretty much any other reason OTHER than Race, Color, National Origin, Sex, or Age. Will any state actually do this? I doubt it, but that isn't the point, the point is that they could do this, not that they actually will.

In any case, this is a problem that should be resolved because of the potential for future abuse, and to alleviate concerns of botched elections. A simple solution was proposed by the Honorable Congressman from Illinois' Second District, Jesse L. Jackson Jr. A Constitutional Amendment giving an explicit right to vote for all citizens of the United States. He has a website up that illustrates this further, you can find it here. He also illustrates many of the problems of NOT having the right to vote in the United States, much better than I.

Democratic Party infighting, Primaries, etc.

I'll be honest, I'm a registered Independent, but, due to lack of options, have voted Democratic all my adult life. While I AM an independent, my state, Missouri, has an "open primary" which allows me to participate in primary voting for the party of my choice, even though I'm not officially registered with them. You can guess which party I vote within during the primary.

However, on this blog, I'm going to say that I like most of the Democratic candidates, its a pretty strong lineup, however, I'm not going to officially endorse any of them. All have strengths and weaknesses, that's a given, however, they all DO contribute something constructive to the debate. That's the whole point of politics in the first place, to bring ideas to the table and for others to decide if those ideas, and the people who have them, are worth supporting.

Of course, this is how things are SUPPOSED to happen, unfortunately, in both parties, this isn't completely the case, things like personal charisma, history, and perceptions matter just as much if not more than the ideas of the candidates themselves. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but, to be honest, its not all positive.

I'm not going to participate in the infighting, I already mentioned one Primary candidate's ideas on health care, Dennis Kucinich, and if others come up with ideas I like, I'll mention them, eventually. This is NOT a sign of endorsement of any of these candidates, so I just wanted to clear that up. I'm more interested in ideas that will help the people of this country, rather than just the people who declare such ideas.

Issues #1: Energy Reform, Solutions

As stated in my previous post, we would need to cut oil consumption to about one quarter what it is today. So, what are the solutions?

What we need is a comprehensive approach to the problem, and recognize that there is no single solution that will solve the problem for us. I don't care who is an advocate for Hydrogen cars, biofuels, electric, etc. All those are solutions that will have only a limited impact over the total consumption of oil in this country. They involve tradeoffs, such as having less arable land in the nation, due to using some for making fuel, or they have low energy density, and therefore limited range, or are expensive to mass produce, or involves toxic, difficult to recycle materials, etc.

The most obvious way to create oil independence in this country is to actually free us from the need for automobiles for most of our transportation needs. This will involve something akin to a whole new reindustrialization of the nation. In some cases it will require slight modifications of existing systems, in many other cases, it will require a total revamp of the design and layout of cities and towns.

One of the first things we could do is restore and expand our current railroad system, and limit diesel locomotives for freight, and have separate, expanded, electric high speed rail for long distance passenger travel. This would cut down on "gas guzzling" air travel, which has its own problems, like long waits, low turnover, and if you don't live near a major hub, quite a few switchovers. We need to divide the nation up into railroad regions, with some crossover for cross country travel, and quite a few regional, high speed, rail systems, that could cut down on travel times by an order of magnitude compared to car travel.

In addition to this, our cities and towns will need to be remade with an emphasis on pedestrian traffic and public transportation. Cities with existing light rail systems could greatly expand these systems, and use them to service as many areas as possible. Bus systems could be expanded, and the buses themselves converted to some renewable source of energy, whatever is economical for the particular city or town they service.

These types of reforms wouldn't eliminate automobiles entirely, however they would greatly limit the need to even have an automobile just to get to work or to the local grocery store. What could next be done is to expand tax credits for those who buy hybrids and, eventually, renewable or electric vehicles. This can include public financing for lower income working families, and also do the same for more energy efficient homes.

When I refer to reforming the cities and towns of this country, basically I'm talking about the death of suburbia. Unfortunately, suburbia is car centric, and has been marketed as such for years. The problem is that its simply unsustainable, if we wish to attain energy independence in any lasting form, we will need to rid ourselves of suburbs and exurbs.

There are many ways in which to accomplish this, and one of the ways to do this is through, oddly enough, marketing. What we need is a "new urbanization" where we revitalize existing neighborhoods, and build new neighborhoods. Include public financing for new and existing neighborhoods, tax credits, etc. to encourage middle class and working families to move into these neighborhoods. Just because we may have to sacrifice a little convenience just to make ourselves energy independent doesn't mean we have to make it entirely unpleasant.

This would create a building boom that would be unprecedented since the 1950s, and we can also plan ahead for future challenges as well. This building boom will help many cities rebuild their economies, open up new businesses and new investments, and put a lot of people to work. The cost can be great, but also manageable, and we shouldn't think of it as a burden, but rather an investment in the future, and we should tie in renewable ways to produce electricity, making "greener" neighborhoods and cities, and also help spread and eliminate some of the costs associated with pollution now.

Diversification of our energy sources is key to this, I believe, some areas of the country would be able to utilize the power of the Earth, through geothermic plants, others can utilize wind power, solar power, hydroelectric, whatever is practical for an area. I think this will go a long way towards complete independence from oil, even domestic oil.

Issues #1: Energy Reform, Oil problems

This is the first of my Issue series, these are issues of either domestic or international interest that I will tackle, stating both current problems, challenges, and then solutions. This may be divided into several different parts, depending on length of each post.

This first issue is a doozy, to put it mildly, Energy Reform is a term I sort of came up with to encompass energy independence challenges, new technologies in renewable energy, and the needed economic or structural reforms that need to take place for these issues to work as policy. This isn't a simple issue, and there are so many different approaches to take, it may seem overwhelming to the average person.

My focus on this issue will not be limited to just transportation energy, though that is a large part of the problem, but also "fixed" energy sources, in power plants, etc. In addition, the economy will need to transition from our current "fossil fuel" phase to a sustainable economy using renewable sources for energy.

The first source I'm going to talk about is Petroleum, and the current realities related to oil production and consumption. The United States, today, consumes about 20 million barrels of oil a day. Unlike many other natural resources, we don't hoard oil, not a lot of it, at least, so the product supplied, as shown in the table in the link, is product consumed. Contrast this with with the total amount of proved reserves within the United States, which is a little over 20 billion barrels of oil. Sounds like a lot of oil, doesn't it? However, do the math, 20 billion divided by 20 million equals 1000, which means a total of 1000 days worth of oil is present within the nation. That's a little under 3 years worth of oil, at current consumption rates. Now it doesn't seem like a lot, doesn't it?

Of course, this is assuming that all that oil can be extracted immediately after discovery, which isn't the case. Pipes can only be so large, and the oil is deep underground, so you have to drill. The total domestic production of oil is about 5 million barrels per day, so we have to make up the shortfall with imports. Now, before you ask, yes ANWR does exist, and production estimates say that it will be able to produce anywhere from .6 to 1.6 million barrels of oil a day, so it wouldn't be able to reduce imports by no more than a few percentage points. It should be noted that access to this oil isn't guaranteed until 2013 at the earliest, and given current trends, oil consumption is on the increase. Even worse, the total proven reserves in the United States peaked in the 1970 at 39 billion barrels and has been decreasing ever since.

Given these facts, in order to attain energy independence in this country we will have to reduce oil consumption by 15 million barrels a day, only using a quarter of the oil that we use now. Imagine the highway only have one quarter of the cars it has now, or just simply reducing our commutes to only one quarter what we use now. To be honest, this is possible for some people, however, for the large majority of us, this is impossible.

The problem is that this nation is car centric, and to be blunt about it, this leads to a large amount of wasted energy. No one can claim that traveling in a 2000 pound vehicle is the most efficient way to travel. Our towns and cities are designed around the automobile, and regardless of how many new technologies allow us to replace oil as the primary fuel in cars, none have as much energy per gallon as gasoline. This means some tradeoffs are in order.

Socialism for the 21st century.

One of the biggest misconceptions about socialism, especially in the United States, is that we want the State to control ALL aspects of the market, abolish all private property, and/or recreate the Soviet system in the United States or elsewhere. To be honest, this couldn't be further from the truth, most Socialists are realistic in our goals, and we really don't want a widget factory to be owned and run by some centralized government. To be blunt, that would be inefficient and a waste of government resources.

What we DO care about, however, is that the workers at the widget factory earn a living wage, work under safe conditions, and has strong representation, either through a Union, or the factory itself can be owned by them, as a Co-op. We also want to minimize the damage that such a factory would cause to the community it resides in, and make sure the factory owners PAY for any problems that the factory causes, such as environmental damage, and are properly taxed.

Most Socialists can actually be quite conservative, at least in a traditional way, we generally oppose privatization of public utilities, which seems to be a great experiment for local governments lately. Most people in the United States has at least 2 utilities that are publicly owned, and are therefore "Socialist". Most likely these are your gas and water utilities, the reason why they are public is because they are "natural" monopolies, in other words, competition cannot take place in the same community they serve due to safety and physical constraints.

Deregulation of these utilities and privatization, contracting out the utility to some private entity, usually ends up backfiring on the community. Rates go up, because this is a for-profit enterprise, all of the sudden, and service decreases, because public oversight is diminished. Its odd, but in a case like this, Socialists are among the most "conservative" people to oppose such measures.

Many Socialists believe the Energy infrastructure should be under national control, the reason seems obvious, its an interconnected grid, most of it crisscrossing state and national borders, and is vital to the national economic system. It should be regulated and run similarly to the National Highway System. In addition, we are advocates for a Universal Health care system as well, we consider both to be necessary for the citizenry to function.

As Socialists facing the challenges of the 21st century, we need to try to find the optimum balance between the needs of the citizenry and the existence of a private run market. We need to preserve the commons, the open spaces, public utilities, and open government for the people, and also allow for some flexibility to allow for innovation and to reward that innovation properly.

John Conyers and Dennis Kucinich has the right idea!

Thanks to this post over at Democratic Underground, this bill(H.R. 676) has been brought to my attention. Dennis Kucinich has a web page right here summarizing the bill. John Conyers also has a web page about this bill as well. This bill seems like a really good idea, I've reviewed it, and it pretty much is Medicare for all, allowing for physician choice and the transition of for-profit insurance companies to non-profit medical financial institutions.

I think the greatest strengths of the bill is the power to negotiate prices for prescription drugs and full coverage of primary, dental, and vision care. I believe this bill is an actual solution to one of the biggest problems facing the nation today, exploding health care costs. Health care should be considered a necessary public service, like police or fire protection, and should be able to take care of everyone in the country.

Thanks to Flabbergasted at DU for bringing this important bill to light. :)

On the Iraq War...

This will be my ONLY post on the Iraq war, not because I don't think it is important, but I'm NOT going to be a news site. I will not post everything that happens around the world unless it is related to a post topic I'm ranting about. Besides that, I think many other blogs and websites will cover the Iraq war much better than I.

Let me just say that I opposed the war since before it started, basically I'm apparently psychic because I knew that the claims of the Bush Administration about WMDs and Chemical/Biological Weapons in Saddam's possession was a bunch of Bullshit. This is basically the latest in a long line of wars of dominance that the United States participate in on some pretense that isn't related to reality, but rather is a lie.

I could give at least two examples of this, the Maine incident, which, thanks to Randolph Hearst, lead to the Spanish-American war, and the Gulf of Tonkin incident, which precipitated the Vietnam war. One war was quick and lead to the United States attaining a further expansion as a global empire, the other was an attempt at the same thing, but it failed.

The United States thought it learned from the mistakes of Britain and previous empires, the fact is, maintaining an overseas empire is expensive. We spun off some of our colonial territories when it was obvious that keeping a proxy government was cheaper than leaving it as a territory. Iraq, I believe, is yet another attempt at this, for, to be honest, we have a terrible time controlling proxies through subterfuge, and a war in Iraq would at least allow us a pretense to maintain a permanent military presence in that country.

The problem, of course, are the Iraqis, who don't want to be a proxy of the United States, an extension of American power in the region. We started a war of aggression, and that lead to an occupation of the nation of Iraq. We may hear that Iraq has a government that is independent of the United States, but let's not kid ourselves, they do not hold power in that nation, no more than a hostage has power even if he's allowed to go to the bathroom anytime he wants.

The question, of course, is whether the war is partisan, I would say it is, simply because the Republicans did dominate all 3 branches of government at the time the war started. Bush appointed or chose key members of PNAC to be members of his administration. This is fact, and can't be disputed, and PNAC themselves has been lobbying for an Iraq invasion since the late 1990s. Would a Democrat have done the same thing? I strongly doubt it, for Clinton didn't, and while I have my criticisms of Clinton, this isn't one of them.

Simply put, this is a Republican war, a Bush war, and blame should be put squarely on his and their shoulders. I don't dismiss those Democrats in Congress who voted for the IWR, however, we must heed the words of Harry S Truman and say: "The buck stops here."

As far as solutions to the quagmire that is costing us Billions of dollars a year and the lives of thousands of troops and Iraqis, in addition to the amount of ruin that has occurred. I propose a solution that is rather simple, if hard to swallow. What America must do is own up to its mistake, and cede control of the area to a truly international force, and pay any reparations for rebuilding a country we destroyed, and to pay the U.N. or NATO for keeping troops in the region for stability purposes.

This would cost us a shitload of money, but not that much more than what we already paid, in blood and cash, and we can at least remove the blood from the equation. A truly international peacekeeping force should be there for the sole purpose of allowing a stable, truly independent government to form in Iraq, regardless of the form that government takes.

What's in a label? Why I call myself a Socialist.

Probably the simplest reason why is because I agree with the Party platform of Socialist Party of the United States, not all of it, but the large majority of it. I could point out disagreements here and there, but largely, I'm a Democratic Socialist at heart, of the party of Eugene V. Debs.

However, I'm also a realistic political animal in this country, and realize that to most folks in this country, with the possible exception of Vermont, an openly Socialist candidate would never get elected to a federal office, Bernie Sanders being the sole exception of course. As such, with the field of candidates being so limited in my area and the nation at large, I vote for Democratic Party candidates more than any other party.

Being pragmatic isn't easy, I can never claim to absolutely agree with any Democratic candidate, however, I do believe that leftists such as myself need to influence the party both in and out of the party itself. Others have taken up the call to influence the Party from within, I choose to try to do it from the outside. I would never advocate for third parties to act as spoilers only, but rather they should give the larger two parties something to think about, and influence them that way. Basically this is a general position I hold that is similar to the Democratic Socialist of America, the link is at the right.

An Introduction is in order I think...

Well, what can I say that adds to my what I already stated so far? I figured I just start out by saying I don't intend for this blog to be anything other than my way to vent about what's wrong with the world, the U.S. and pResident Bush. Though I'm NOT going to just "bash Bush" or "Bash America", though many of my posts may reflect my frustration with both, rather, I'm interested in solutions that face us as Americans and Humanity in general.

Not only is this a blog for frustrations, but for ideas, mine, yours, whatever, if you want to have a constructive debate, go ahead and post, I may post back. I've opened this blog so anyone can comment, though you will have to go through what I call the "numbers" game to post, hopefully, this will cut out the spam. Its also, at the moment, unmoderated, however, this may change if things get out of hand.