It’s pretty hard to argue with him on this:
Well, this is the latest chapter of corporate Democrats crushing progressive forces both inside their party and against third parties. There’s nothing new here. It’s being pointed out in my former running mate’s autobiography, the late Peter Camejo, which is coming out in a couple weeks from Chicago.
What we’re seeing here is a legislation that doesn’t even kick in until 2014, except for one or two items on staying with your parents’ insurance policy until you’re twenty-six. That means that there will be 180,000 Americans who will die between now and 2014 before any coverage expands, and hundreds of thousands of injuries and illnesses untreated. This bill does not provide universal, comprehensive or affordable care to the American people. It shovels hundreds and billions of dollars of taxpayer money into the worst corporations who’ve created this problem: the Aetnas, the CIGNAs, the health insurance companies. And it doesn’t require many contractual accountabilities and other accountabilities for people who are denied healthcare in this continuing pay-or-die system that is the disgrace of the Western world.
For the drug companies, it’s a bonanza. It doesn’t require Uncle Sam to negotiate volume discounts. It allows these new biologic drugs, under patent, to fight off generic competition—that’s a terrible provision. And it doesn’t allow reimportation from countries like Canada to keep prices down.
The money line for me: “This bill does not provide universal, comprehensive or affordable care to the American people.” With that string of successes to sell it, how could it not be worth a trillion dollars? Here’s hoping this thing dies a mercifully quick death.
Watching this exercise in cowardice and compromise barrel down the pike over the last couple days, I’ve been thinking about this line from Tony Judt in the latest London Review of Books:
Courage is always missing in politicians. It is like saying basketball players aren’t normally short. It isn’t a useful attribute. To be morally courageous is to say something different, which reduces your chances of winning an election. Courage is in a funny way more common in an old-fashioned sort of enlightened dictatorship than it is in a democracy. However, there is another factor. My generation has been catastrophic. I was born in 1948 so I am more or less the same age as George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Gerhard Schröder, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown — a pretty crappy generation, when you come to think of it, and many names could be added. It is a generation that grew up in the 1960s in Western Europe or in America, in a world of no hard choices, neither economic nor political. There were no wars they had to fight. They did not have to fight in the Vietnam War. They grew up believing that no matter what choice they made, there would be no disastrous consequences. The result is that whatever the differences of appearance, style and personality, these are people for whom making an unpopular choice is very hard.
Why do you hate to agree with Nader? He’s the only honest and sane one who still participates in that rigged system; the rest of us honest and sane fellas have given up on it and are buying rice and ammo as fast as they can make it…
What gives?
He’s far too much a statist for my taste. By way of example, his stance on gun control is to tighten ‘em up and put more power in the hands of law enforcement and some kind of Federal licensing program. Besides which, he wants to be president, and you know what they say: there’s no president like no president.
Which is not to say he’s not infinitely preferably to Bush or Obama. Just not one of my favorites.
Yeah, I agree with that, but he’s still a badass. He’s done so much for this POS country that he’s like a modern day Jefferson or Paine in my opinion.
Those guys had their flaws too (like us all).
No doubt about that, sir.
Health care reform has been bugging me. Whereas we definitely need to improve our system of health care, dumping money into the coffers of insurance companies isn’t the answer. Thanks for posting Nader’s response. He makes cents/sense.
So. Let me get this straight, LT. You’re saying that Nader’s advocating some form of single-payer system that automatically covers everybody, sees health care as a fundamental human right rather than a profit-making enterprise, etc.?
Like Cuba’s, for example?
And, Daisy? I’m a little confused about what you think Nader’s saying that Dennis Cucinic (sp?), for example, hasn’t been saying for the past year.
Please clarify.
Sorry, Daisy. I should’ve asked Ben the same question.
Unfortunately, Kucinich flaked out this week according to the DN story I linked to. He’s promised to vote for the thing for vague reasons of not wanting to help disrupt Obama’s presidency or some such horseshit. (From what I’ve seen so far, it could use some disruption.) Nader pounds him pretty good, which is nice.
And, yeah, Daisy. I’ve probably said this, but the best line I’ve heard yet about the bill was it that was the Insurance Industry Bailout Bill.
Charlie Alpha:
Why do I suspect you are asking a rhetorical question vis-a-vis Nader’s position on health care? At any rate, Nader does advocate for single payer, and yes, this is similar to Cuba’s system.
BTW, I happen to be a defender of Cuba (yes, even Fidel, who most liberals posing as ‘radicals’ distance themselves from these days). I think that considering Cuba is essentially under incessant terror-attack (much worse than 9/11) from the US and the Miami Mafia– they have a relatively free society (certainly more free than ours would be if we had lost a concomitant amount of people [300,000 in adjusted numbers] in the last 50 years to terrorism- -and frankly they don’t torture people like we do and their prison population is still less per capita than ours).
Furthermore, their commitment to tout le monde can be witnessed from their foreign policy (see: Angola circa 1960′s-1990′s or the thousands of doctors they send around the world for free) to their domestic priorities (e.g., free healthcare, free schooling all the way through university, et.al.).
The US is free in many ways, but it has become a proto police-state coupled with the naked aggression of autocratic corporations. So, while poor, Cuba is a more moral society in many ways than our own. And I think there is a certain individual freedom living inside a moral society; and more and more we Americans are forced to behave like evil fucks if we participate at any level in our society. This weighs on me and many others; and I suspect the average Cuban can take a little more pride in their society’s behavior writ large than we can.
But, this may be beyond the pale –politically– to most Americans to even suggest such a thing. But most Americans are evil, retarded, borderline-sociopaths with the emotional maturity of an 11-year-old. So, I don’t care what most Americans think about my politics; which is why I am heavily armed.
Lock & Load…
Good god, LT, we agree on Cuba! Straight down the line, it seems, and absolutely. And, re, your last paragraph, even more. Or so it seems to me.
Not so much on Nader, though, for reasons we can take up at a later point. Meanwhile, a hint:
Kucinich gets to cast a vote, Bennie. Nader doesn’t. Otherwise…
C to the A (and ya don’t stop)
I’m glad we have an accord.
So what’s your beef with Nader? Sure, he’s no Ward Churchill, but if ya got to vote for someone why not a guy like that?
I gotta know why you are sour on my homie? Is it cuz — like Ben– you think he’s a Statist, Gun-Grabber with air-bags for lungs and seat-belts for bones? I heard he has a “I am the goddamn clean air act” tattoo on his xxxx [redacted].
Viva La Revolucion!
I’m not sure I follow, CA. You mean that Nader would probably fold too if he had the vote? Hell, that certainly could be. To be honest, I’ve never followed Nader real closely. He always lands an interview on the hot topics, but he doesn’t write anything of any interest otherwise. (If I’m missing something let me know, LT. I’m always interested in hearing more.)
As to Kucinich, it just looks sad. This is one of very few times I remember in his political career when he could have made a difference, and he folded like a yard-sale card table. Not really any skin off my nose, I guess. What’s gonna happen with this turkey is gonna happen, and I have no more influence over it than I do over the next March storm. It’s fun for spectator sport, but really just the same old horseshit.
Well, yeah, Bennie, I think that if Nader were in Kicinich’s shoes, he’d be doing exactly the same thing. Which, yeah, is really sad.
Far as I’m concerned, there’s nothing much to distinguish these two guys, analytically. Actually, Kucinich may even enjoy a slight edge, if only to the extent that he’s got a much better persona, and is therefore more amusing to watch.
Which is why we don’t vote, LT.
As concerns my beef with Nader, otherwise known as “Mr. I’ve Got A Regulation For Everything, Including Your Lunch,” calling him a statist is in my estimation a radical understatement.
More specifically — and personally — I hold him primarily responsible for not only eradicating the only bona fide internal subversion of the Big Three car corporations ever to actually gain traction (pun intended) in Detroit back in the early-70s, but, collaterally, of putting the boots to a truly unruly counterculture that had emerged on the streets as well.
Frankly, if I wanted the sort of orderliness Ralphie helped instigate — all in the name of “social responsibility,” of course — I’ll start hanging out at local donut shops. Okay?
I think Kucinich won my heart a little during the last couple of Democratic primaries with some of his one-liners, so, yeah, I’d give him the edge.
C/A
So… isn’t Cuba a heavily regulated and state-controlled experiment? I thought we all understood that capitalism is the tiger stalking us and government is the cage we’re stuck inside. The cage is indeed illegitimate, but the tiger is deadly and needs to be killed first, then we can dismantle the cage…
Look, I’m an Anarcho-Nihilist most days, but there will always be a State– it’s just a matter of who runs it and in who’s interest… Nader is just trying to make this POS country a little safer and more just– by regulating the corporations. I still can’t see what’s wrong with that…
It beats doing nothing waiting for the rEvolution to come. Unless you think that things should get worse before they can get better (which is how I feel 99% of the time) — in which case Nader is still your guy cuz he helped put Bush/Cheney in office for 8 years (this is a Trotskyist Wet Dream yes?). What could have been worse?
Could you explain exactly what you meant with your penultimate paragraph. I’m genuinely confused.
Grab a look at “The Fast and the Furious,” LT, and you’ll get the drift. Now, back it up about 40 years and what you’ll get is a much broader swathe of social involvement, including little cells that had sprouted in various corners of the Big Three who were busily violating just about every rule in the corporate book in order to produce Forbidden Machinery. Also, Yenko, Baldwin, and a few others on the outside who’d figured out how to finesse corporate restrictions in order to push things even further.
Where might all this have led? Who the fuck knows? Along came Saint Ralphie of the Knotted Sphincter, mounting his moral mission to increase “corporate accountability” by targeting — yeah, you guessed it — the only truly dissident sectors to have emerged within the corporations.
This prick did more to restore the Big Three’s internal order during the late-60s/early-70s than any three people I could name, meanwhile turning what might have evolved into a socially constructive dynamic into a bad Vin Diesel movie.
Further questions?
C/A
Wow; I have no idea what you are talking about. Maybe a source text would help me. Got one?
Anyway, I still don’t see how regulating corporations is bad for liberty. This is where me and the Libertarians part ways. Corporations are autocratic and fascistic by nature. But if you say that some guys building “forbidden machinery” inside the corporate model could somehow subvert the institution I guess I’m gonna need some empiricism and theoretical framework to explain how…
I’m open… but gotta have some data for me.
A blown black ’69 Hemi Charger is cool; but yeah, that movie sucked. I happen to own one of the new Hemi motors (6.1L) and it gets 425hp just like the old-skool ones. But, the ride is smoother and my seats are heated. I kinda like it.
I’m a Mopar guy for the record…
Hemis are way cool, but I’m more inclined to big block Chevies, myself, LT. Like a street-legal blown and injected 502, dialed in at a little over 800 h.p. at low boost (without nitrous, of course).
I’ll look for something resembling an adequate source I can point you to, print-wise.
Actually, there’s a really low rent “documentary” that includes a few clips of Nader when he was campaigning against muscle cars back in the day. I think you’ll see what I mean, assuming I can come up with it (in which case, I’ll ask Ben to post a few excerpts).
Last point: I’ve absolutely nothing against regulating corporations. Hell, I’d like to abolish the muthafuckers altogether. But that was tangential to what Nader was after (at least in my estimation).
C/A
You sound almost reasonable in that last post; what are you on dope? Heh heh.
I guess I still think Nader has noble intentions; which explains my defense of him. But, if you think he’s sinister in his aims then I’m open to your evidence.
I try. I really, really do, LT.
And what do I get in return? Branded as “reasonable” (well, okay, “almost reasonable,” but the distinction is so minor that I’m electing to ignore it altogether).
Not to whine, but I can’t see where I’ve said ANYTHING in this exchange deserving of such an insult. Fact is, I’ve tried very hard to never be “reasonable” about anything in my life, and feel that I’ve been for the most part successful.
I’m truly hurt and deeply offended.
Well, I take it back then.
I am wondering– how does one “abolish” corporations without the long-arm-of-the-law? The State is required to dismantle them in my opinion. So, more government means more freedom paradoxically. This is why me and the Libertarians can’t never play nice. Just wondering where you come down on this one C.A.
Weeell… Okay.
But, geez, “more goverment = more freedom”???
Talk about twisting yourself into a logical knot, LT. What’ll it be next, championing the old saw about embracing the “lesser of evils”???
(sigh)
At least we agree about the libertarians (I think).
I’m not following the government=freedom equation either. I think certain kinds of folks would like to propose it that way, but I’m not sure corporations as we know them could exist without the superstructure maintained by willing governments by and large run by the same folks running the corporations. Governments still own the monopoly on force, for one thing. (Even the private “contractors” like Blackwater, or whatever the hell they’re calling themselves now, only exist because of legal constructs created to ensure their aims are the same as the government’s.) I don’t think the two constructs are natural enemies by any stretch of the imagination. I’d argue they’re just flipsides of the same coin, and I’ll put myself down for dismantling both as much as humanly possible.
I see that a more robust explanation is in order. Well, here it is:
Corporations have the power and money to do as they wish. They also lack any morality that might circumscribe them; similar to a sociopath– a big, strong, rich sociopath.
The ONLY thing that can constrain them is the FORCE of the government. If it were not for the armed force of the government then corporations could (and have and do) run rough shod over any individual or community without pause.
This to me seems elementary, and so I’m a little baffled by your objections to my syllogism. Let me offer a few examples to help demonstrate.
Before the 1964 Civil Rights Act, a corporation could refuse to hire as an employee or serve as a customer anyone who was not white (and since they own the means of production– this exclusion is tantamount to economic terrorism or outright murder due to impoverishment). The government outlawed this by threat of force and so non-white people were now hired and served. (The Brown Vs. Board of Education decision comes to mind as well- the National Guard being sent out to integrate the schools… but I’ll stick to corporate power for now).
I think too of laws that abolish child labor, or unsafe working conditions (I’ve worked construction, rock-fall, oil-field, et.al. jobs my whole life, and those jobs are still very dangerous; the only protections we have are those mandated by law, I can assure you– the companies I worked for only did what was required by law to protect us).
See, I can think of 1001 examples of how my life and the life of many of us are safer, more just, longer, and thus more free due to the use of force (or the threat of it) by the government against corporations. It seems self-evident.
Sure, the govt. is the corporation’s bitch, and mainly serves it, but when it regulates them, it serves the cause of freedom. Corporations have less obvious blood on their hands– like the mob boss who orders the hit– cuz their proxies (the govt) do all the dirty work (like the mob goons) — so yeah Ben, government looks like the bad guy (and is the bad guy). But, as my homie Chomsky says, government is at least in theory controlled by the people and can be used for good (e.g., Civil Rights Act, Labor Laws, Fighting Fascism/Hitler, et.al.). Corporations are wholly unaccountable and autocratic– and are impermeable to democratic impulses. They exist only to increase market sahre and maximize profit– no other reason (unlike govt which is at least able to “provide for the general welfare” and such shit; to the extent the people force it to- which is in direct proportion to their level of commitment. So the more committed the people, the better the govt. Like Cuba maybe, or Venezuela under my homie Chavez).
So yeah, I hate the govt too– but kill the tiger outside our cage first, then dismantle the cage. Timing is everything. Just as the tiger is bigger, stronger and willing to kill/eat us with insouciance; corporations are bigger, stronger and similarly outfitted with a certain blase aplomb when it comes to aggression.
Kill the tiger, with the aggregate power/force of the State (which in theory is We the People) then dismantle the cage. Castro didn’t abolish the State, he appropriated the means of production (and some US corporations) and used these industries to raise the standard of living for the people. I’d say this is more freedom, yeah.
I think my point obtains. More government can equal more freedom. I say this as an Anarchist. I say it as a working class fella, who knows every company I’ve worked for would have no problem killing me in order to make/save a buck if they weren’t forced to provide safer conditions by LAW/Force. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t shoot a cop with a double tap to the center mass with a 5.56 nato round from my carbine if he tried to serve a no-knock raid on Casa Diablos. There is no dichotomy there.
Lock n Load.
and so how does one abolish corporations without the force of the state?
I realize corporations are chartered by the state, but without govt, they would still exist– who would prevent a few rich guys from getting together in a cabal. Think: the mafia. Without the state, corporations would just be mafia families with even less (read: no) regulations or restrictions on their abuses against the proles.
Come on guys, I know you already know this. You’re just testing me– right?
Well, I’ve read it before. Chomsky even runs a variant of it — though he’s far more tactical and far less over-reaching in his application than you. However, you’re presenting the entirety of political movement in the United States as the result of one of two powerful interests: government or corporate. I think Chomsky would probably give those very limited gains in worker safety as a victory to a third interest. (And would probably concede that without the collusion of government and corporate interests, those gains would be far greater.) Now, as an Anarchist, what do you think that third interest might be? Not to be facetious, but as an Anarchist, it’s kind of odd that you seem to have overlooked it entirely.
I’ll come back with more about your odd worship of governmental force later (if CA doesn’t beat me to it). As an anarchist myself, I find its application a little less benign than you.
Wow, I think despite my very long and detailed explanation, my main (and most salient points) seem to have been overlooked.
I understand that worker or citizen uprising is a factor, but it is a piston without a crankshaft a transmission with no drive-shaft to the rear axle. Without the power (i.e., force of law/violence) of the State, those worker collectives would have been crushed. (remember that the govt sent in the national guard to support the workers in the UAW uprising in the 30′s; the GM goons/cops were gonna beat the incipient union to bloody bits
until the federally sanctioned NG showed up; food for thought).
I, again, submit the Cuban model. The people supported the revolution, but it was the guns (and willingness to use them) of the newly minted state (in Castro’s et.al. hands) that allowed the people’s desires to come to fruition. I know you don’t think that United Fruit, or AT&T, or any of the mafia run cabals on the island would have just given over to the new socialist/communist philosophy without the state taking it from them.
Corporations are only civilized to the extent they are reigned in by the state. Without it, they would be pure mafioso cabals. This is, again, self-evident.
I think the state in the hands of leftists, can do good. It already has, especially in the Latin America (e.g., Cuba, Venezuela, et.al.). And no anarchist utopia would survive in the real world (read: Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell for an example), a more dominate state would crush and/or subsume it, so we must deal with the real world here. The state will always exist (for at least the foreseeable future) and so we must acknowledge its capacity for evil (well documented) and for good.
To the extent it is used to force corporations to act in a more civilized fashion, it is a democratic and laudatory force. I’m still unsure (mainly cuz nobody will answer it) how a corporation (like say, Blackwater or Haliburton) would be abolished without the use of force in the hands of the state? Private security teams staffing even normal corporations are replete with former LEO, Military personal and the concomitant weaponry. Some corporations are like small armies in themselves. I’m curious to see the explanation for how a few anarchists (e.g., me, you, et.al.) would abolish these behemoths?
Who stopped Hitler? The Anarchists or the giant State apparatus of the the US and Britain? George Orwell was staunchly aligned with the conservative forces of the state in order to defeat the larger enemy of Fascism. I happen to agree; mainly cuz I believe that not all oppression is equal (I think I remember Ward talking about this– that the ‘oppression’ a first world wage slave suffers is not the same as the oppression a 3rd world peasant endures) and that some systems of domination and control are worse than others.
Fascism is worse than capitalist democracy, and that Nazis are worse than Republicans (just barely). I happen to think that corporations are worse than government; and the government can in theory be used for good; but corporations are innately totalitarian and amoral.
So if I had to support a Republican to defeat a Nazi I would, and once the Nazi was defeated, I’d turn my sights on the Republican. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, blah blah.
I hope my arguments don’t get turned into straw men here; or the ad hominem doesn’t start to creep in (“worship of government force”). I believe I see state power for what it is– mostly used for evil, but at times necessary to fight a larger evil. Just as sometimes harsh words or even fisticuffs are insufficient to put down a bully; and the .45JHP round to the torso is needed. Sometimes the power only manifesting in the state can dispatch a bully too large and powerful for mere citizen/worker uprisings.
We’re all vegetarians between meals, and being an anarchist while safely under the protection of the state from the avarice and amoral corporations that stalk us– should be recognized for what it is: a philosophic luxury. We need the state. I know I would be dead (or fired at the very least for refusing/objecting to the risky conditions) already from inadequate safety standards on my job-sites if it were not for OSHA standards. I’ve been working class my whole life and done jobs so dangerous that I’ve literally seen amputations in front of my eyes. OSHA saves lives. Period. I know you think those standards are low (I agree) but those low standards are not abstractions, they save lives (compared to NO standards). Real people are more free, more whole due to them. I could give 1001 more examples, but I’m not sure it would help at this point.
I follow your argument, m’man, I just have a very different perception of the role of government in resolving labor disputes. You seem to see them as helpful in the labor wars, and I would disagree wholeheartedly. Could you give me a source on that? Everything I’ve read indicates the opposite: that the government was instrumental in crushing labor movements, and particularly those considered more radical — and in my view — more effective. I know Big Bill Haywood and the IWW certainly didn’t see the government as very helpful, for instance. (And speaking of sources, and since you mentioned Churchill, have you read Agents of Repression or the Cointelpro Papers? There’s nothing in there to indicate the government as being of much use in advancing progressive causes — to put it mildly.)
As to how one might dismantle a corporation without the state, well, I’ve been involved in a few protests against local corporations — Newmont Mining, comes to mind — and the line of cops always seems to perform the service of protecting the assholes in said headquarters, not helping us on the outside. Given the energy and commitment I’ve seen at those protests, I’m pretty sure that if that line of cops were not there, there would be no problem dismantling the motherfucker.
And that’s not to say that OSHA doesn’t save lives. It’s just to say that there is more than one way to achieve worker safety, and ways to do it much better, that don’t rely on centralized government. Worker collectives and power enforced by those aforementioned radical labor unions, for instance. (Rudolf Rocker keeps flashing through my mind, if you haven’t read him.)
Sorry if you took offense at my earlier post. Just having fun . . .
Also, since we’ve been concentrating exclusively on the US government as it pertains domestically, it might be an interesting thought experiment to ask yourself how well the US government has protected the interests of, say, the Western Shoshone, the Lakota, or the Iraqi people from corporate interests.
“We need the state.”
You’ve just said all that needs saying about your purported “anarchist tendencies,” LT.
A liberal, yeah. But an anarchist?
(convulsive laughter)
And Ben’s correct, BTW. You really should a little bit of labor history before presuming to sum up the supposed benefits bestowed upon it by the state.