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We Need Leadership on HCR

by: StraffordDem

Tue Feb 23, 2010 at 13:36:33 PM EST


It's pretty obvious to even uninformed observers that the WH wants the public option to disappear.  But why won't they just say it?  Instead, we get mixed signals from Reid, the WH, and now the House.  Majority Leader Hoyer is now saying that comprehensive reform is in jeopardy...
Hoyer: Comprehensive health bill may be no go

Is it going to be the House that holds this up after all of this?

StraffordDem :: We Need Leadership on HCR
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Despite all of the granite and marble (0.00 / 0)
to be seen in the Village, stones are in short supply.

Republicans believe government is bad - then they get into office and prove it.

Obama Press Secretary: (0.00 / 0)
No We Can't!

Jeez (0.00 / 0)
I'd love to hear a solid policy reason for why the public option can't be considered rather than the malarkey about political will.  The truth of the matter seems that nobody in DC wants to expend the political capital to pass the most sweeping Civil Rights legislation in decades.

Contrary to Rovian theory, political majorities are not permanent.  The philosophy must be to use the majority, not feeble attempts to maintain it.  Cripes, it's not like these guys go back to flipping burgers if they lose.  Uggh.


"Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world." A. Einstein


[ Parent ]
HCR has nothing to do with civil rights. (0.00 / 0)
Civil rights have to do with citizen participation in governing (voting, holding office, serving on juries, proposing laws, etc).
Health care is a human rights issue--i.e. the right to be secure in one's person from insult and injury, which the government is set up to insure.
That our public corporations have been lax in meeting their obligations is an old story.  The impulse to rule is stronger than the willingness to serve in many people.  Indeed, we cater to the former when we select leaders, rather than public servants.

[ Parent ]
I disagree: plenty of connections (4.00 / 1)
Just Google "health care civil rights" and there's lots of stuff, such as: http://mcr.sagepub.com/cgi/con...

And there's the issue of discrimination in who gets marital health benefits, as highlighted in BH diary here. http://www.bluehampshire.com/showD...

You can't exercise your other civil rights if you're dead because of lack of health care.


[ Parent ]
Again. The equal protection clause is an obligation that's (0.00 / 0)
placed on federal public officials by the Constitution--ditto for similar provisions in state Constitutions.  One person's obligations do not make another's rights.  On the other hand, there's the assertion that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights.  But, that reference is to human rights or rights a person has by virtue of being human, regardless of age or citizenship or national origin.  EVERY PERSON.  "Person" is a word that sticks in the craw of conservatives because they want to be able to discriminate on SOME basis.  That they should be able to exclude children whose parents are not citizens from being educated at public expense was argued and discarded by the Supreme Court.
Conservatives have had a bit more success watering the concept of person down by proposing to extend human rights to artificial persons (corporations) and that needs to be reversed.  The idea that what man creates is of equal or greater value than a natural person needs to be refuted.  As does the idea that property ownership increases a person's value.

Moreover, the idea that the behavior (respect for rights) asserted as obligations in the Amendments to the Constitution need only be honored for "protected" classes needs to be refuted.  So, what I would argue is that instead of asserting that a person charged with criminal behavior shall not be forced to testify, it should be interpreted as "not even a person suspected of crime shall be forced to testify." Period.  No-one is to be coerced by the state.  Free speech is meaningless, if it does not imply the right not to speak.

Referring to human rights as civil rights also has the effect, similar to allocating human rights to corporations of lessening the importance of human rights.  Also, when you come right down to it, civil rights are actually civic obligations--something that our wanna-be rulers also prefer we forget.


[ Parent ]
just because it's a human rights issue (0.00 / 0)
does not mean that it is not also a civil rights issue. Yes, human rights are more inclusive, but depending on the venue in which we need to argue these things, the civil rights aspects are also worth considering.

[ Parent ]

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