One Nation Under God

One nation, under God, indivisible, with health care for all.

And why?  Because, as the preable to the Constitution says, this nation was created to promote the general Welfare of the American people.

Medicare did that back in 1965, and before that we had child labor laws, wage and hours law, and the emancipation proclamatin to end slavery.

Anyone want to go back to slavery, child labor, and the rest? If so, be sure to sign your name, and to put your address, email, and phone number in the comments!

The push to get national health care has been a long one. It started with Truman, and the first plank was hammered into place in 1965, under LBJ, with Medicare and Medicaid.

Do you know what Medicare did back in 1965?

More than health care. We became a better nation.

I told that story on this blog back in 2009, but it's still a good story about how this nation got a little bit better because some people aspired to make it better for all.

Of course, the pinched-pockets have always been with us.

We could not afford to end child labor... Wage and hour laws would force companies into bankrupcty.... Medicare was socialism.... OSHA was the rise of the nanny state. The Chamber of Commerce has been one long waaaaaahh since the beginning.

But push comes to shove, most right-wingers actually do become socialists when they hit age 65. Theory hits the reality of old age sickness and poverty, and theory seems to get trumped every time.

You want to hear a funny story?

Here it is....

It seems that before the Koch brothers were pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into undermining the social fabric of this nation by buying entire elections, they were trying to get libertarian totem Frederich Hayeck to come to the U.S. to become a “distinguished senior scholar” at the Institute for Human Studies, which the Koch brothers wanted to turn into a libertarian citadel.

Only one problem: Hayek would not come because he did not want to leave Austria, which had nearly universal health care, for fear he might get sick abroad.

So what happened next?  It seems Institute for Human Studies vice president George Pearson (who later became a top Koch Industries executive) researched the problem and wrote to Hayek that he could get free health care in the U.S. through Medicare because Hayeck had paid into the Social Security system some years earlier when he was at the University of Chicago!

Like libertarian Ayn Rand, Frederich Hayek was only too happy to use "socialized" medicine and income support as soon as his own health failed and his bank accounts grew thin.

Theory is a nice thing, but it's not much use when you are sick or need to buy a loaf of bread, or cup of coffee! When push comes to shove, people tend to flip and flop as expediency dictates.

And speaking of flipping and flopping as expediency dictates, check out the video below, in which Mittens Romney praises the individual mandate of Obama care, circa 2006.



Amazing!
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