TEA's vs. ALEC

TEA's vs. ALEC

On "responsible Republicans..."

Here in Montana, the media (liberal or otherwise) is describing Republican legislators and their supporters as being either "responsible" or "conservative."   I questioned a reporter about that, saying that it seemed to me that "conservative" and "responsible" were the same thing - at least in the minds of the Republicans.  I would suggest a different alternative - the TEA's vs. ALEC Republicans.  

Whatever  happened to the TEA's?  (They still meet occasionally in Great Falls under the name TEA Party Patriots). The Spring primary which replaced Paul Kantor (considered a TEA), who was in line for House leadership, with a real TEA (who teaches Austrian economics on the college level) put paid to the idea that the "moderate" or "responsible" Republicans were more electable than the "conservatives", who were thought to include TEA's. Apparently, he only criteria for being "responsible" was to go along with some of the more absurd Democrat policies and programs.

Kantor's willingness to compromise on immigration policy (being "responsible") was given as the reason for his defeat.  Never mind that Obama has deported more "illegal immigrants" than any previous administration, but the fact that he is now showing some humanity towards women and children, etc. is used against him.  In fact, it was Kantor's vast complicity with the banksters and foreign policy alliance favoring American hegemony and perpetual war which defeated him.  AIPAC (American-Israel Political Action Committee), which nearly everyone in Congress follows whether they like it or not, is becoming a liability, as well - especially in a place like Montana.  All across the country, Republican voters actually prefer limited government, peace, bringing the troops home, and expanding personal freedom and opportunities - something that Republicans always promised, but hardly ever delivered.  Voters don't like the Republican Oligarchs and war-mongers any better than they liked the "Cold War Democrats" and Wall Street toadies like Max Baucus.   

With the experience of many ALEC-dominated legislative sessions behind us, I have trouble distinguishing the  "conservative" Republicans from the "responsible" ones. Some are sane and intelligent, and actually interested in improving things.  But many of those, like John Bollinger (Schweitzer's Lieutenant-Governor, and an early candidate for Max Baucus's Senate seat), changed their party affiliation to Democrat - "out of the frying pan and into the fire."  George Paul is a local example of the opposite trend - life-long Democrats changing to Republicans, based on the  failures of both parties to do anything more than "the same old thing."  And the TEA's, so much reviled by the liberal media and pundits, actually wanted smaller and less-intrusive government, peace, bringing the troops home, cutting military and Homeland Security spending, protection of individual rights under the Constitution, etc. Many of them also supported balanced budgets with sound money (Gold Standard or equivalent- maybe Bitcoins, now), Fully Informed Jury system, the right to self-medicate and chose whatever sort of health care and cures one prefers, instead of only those dictated by the State.  

That's another part of the ACA that is never discussed.  None of the proven and popular "alternative medicine" practices are covered (as they are, for example, in Germany), and if you use it, you still have to pay for the aliopathic "drugs and scalpels" system which only treats symptoms, not the causes of illness and disease. The whole "War on Drugs" could be eliminated by recognizing the basic right to self-medicate and use traditional medical treatments which the (legal) drug cartels have outlawed. 

What is ALEC?  The American Legislative Exchange Council (aka, "the Broker State") controls a third of state legislators nationwide, giving them an effective majority nearly everywhere.  Both "schools" of Republicans, if that label applies, along with "Blue Dog" Democrats (which is about all we have in Montana) seemed to follow the ALEC agenda implicitly, and nearly all Republican state legislators, for many years, actually took the ALEC "training" in how to submit their "model bills" to do such things as reduce prison overcrowding (by building more prisons), and "reform" every other government service or program either by privatizing it (often at twice the cost in overhead and rakeoffs of various kinds), or by cutting it to the bone, and relying on "private charity." Destroying the environmental movement, along with Social Security, Medicare, and any sort of universal health care not supplied by private corporations was the main purpose of ALEC all along.  

Their talk of "Jeffersonian Federalism" and "non-partisan", non-profit status is totally fictional. And every sort of dangerous, predatory corporation had a seat at the table, starting with the Prison and "Defense" industries, and including everything from the major food and drink producers (all opposed to GMO labeling, and almost any sort of environmental/food supply protection), Agri-biz like Monsanto and Cargill (who maximize their revenues on volume, not quality) to the major banks and insurance companies, retail chains - in short, anything and everything which presently thinks it  profits from war and the destruction of the planet.  

The TEA's wanted to solve the problems which Big Government was so busy creating - usually through wars, corporate welfare, and federal programs such as the ACA, No Child Left Behind, Homeland Security, etc, which all too often exacerbated and perpetuated the "problems" supposedly being addressed.  Instead of providing the  affordable, accessible health care products and services we obviously needed, the problem was defined as a "lack of insurance coverage."  Suddenly, "health insurance" became the focus of the debate, rather than actually delivering health care in a fair and efficient manner.  And it remains there, today.  It was amazing to watch Lewis and even Amanda Curtis (the two Dems in the Montana congressional campaigns) keep talking about "insurance coverage" rather than "health care."  

What the  Republicans had learned was that only people with above-average incomes want "health insurance."  This is because they have wealth and property to protect from the medical bill collectors.  We are all just a car-wreck or serious illness away from bankruptcy, and being "insured" offers some protection against that. That is what is being "insured" - their property - not their  health. All the rest of us want actual Health CARE, not some promise by a predatory corporation that they will pay part of our bills, and guarantee that we are admitted to hospitals for treatment, only to find, after the fact, that those "procedures" weren't covered. 

By "expanding insurance coverage" under the ACA (and as Obama, for once, accurately explained),  healthy, young working people are now forced to pay for those with "pre-existing conditions," the elderly, etc.  That is exactly what the ACA does, and the Democrats paid heavily for advocating such an absurd system.  All the way through, we were promised a "robust public option" - Medicare for anyone who wanted it, or who qualified by being lower income.  That would have worked, but the Democrats, led by Sen. Max Baucus, Finance Committee Chairman, wrote the legislation (for reasons which were apparent in the results - why not the "Human Services Committe" or whatever?  It was all about bailing out insurance companies, not providing health care.)  He actually had the proponents of the public option and Single Payer removed by force from his hearings.  Then, he just turned it over the insurance lobbyists, who "respectfully requested" that everyone be foreced to participate, with federal subsidies (to pay insurance premiums, not for health care) for lower income people.  

The result  is that costs continue to increase, and very little services are provided except to those who live in states with expanded Medicaid.  In Montana, you still have to be destitute and over 65 to get it, unless you have a pre-existing medical problem or disability of some sort.  By making insurance companies cover this, the burden has been put on the workers rather than the banksters and corporations who are profiting from making people sick.  

Every Montana Democrat followed Max Baucus (and Hillary Clinton before him) in serving the insurance and pharmaceutical "industries" rather than the people of the United States.  Schweitzer broke away, speaking out in favor of Single Payer (Medicare for all - and private insurance restricted to wealthy people who wanted or needed it to protect their assets), and he was elected Governor for that, but the Dem Party machine, always responsive to Finance Capitalism, rejected it and still does.   As early as President Truman or before, Dems supported some form of "socialized medicine", but the Republicans didn't. When they were still doing polls about it, at least 60% of ALL voters favored a single-payer, "Medicare for All" policy.  Instead, they pulled a "bait and switch" on us, with the Republicans adding to the confusion by calling "Obamacare" "socialized medicine."  The very process of passing the ACA and making it compulsory sunk the Democrats all by itself.  

And don't forget the legal Drug Cartels - the most profitable sector of the economy, who extort $100's of billions of dollars every year from taxpayers and consumers - a racket that far exceeds all the costs of the so-called "illegal drugs" problem - mostly the $100 billion or more attributed to the "War on Drugs" which maintains the illegal cartels and coercive marketing to a captive (poor, largely minority) market.  The human costs to the rest of us are much higher, as anyone who has been arrested for "possession of dangerous drugs" can attest.  

The ACA insured (no pun intended) that we have bad insurance plans, costing 4 times more than they should, which mainly insure that doctors and hospitals will be paid, while depriving us of the freedom and resources to actually discover and purchase the health care we really need.  The price we pay, whether as taxpayers, policy-holders, or as a percentage of national GDP, is somewhere around 4 times more than it should be.  Considering how poor the service is which most of us actually receive, it's even worse.  We have some of the worst health care statistics in the "developed world."  Cuba, for example, has far better numbers than ours (illustrated in the Michael Moore film, "Sicko"), with an expenditure that is perhaps 4% or less of their miniscule GDP, and they train thousands of doctors for other poor countries, and do a lot of international work like fighting AIDS, malaria, Ebola, etc.  

But every developed country in the world (and quite a few "underdeveloped ones") has some sort of universal health care system available to all, at low and affordable or free prices.  We can study any or all of them, and make vast improvements to our own.  This, more than anything else, is what the ACA PREVENTED.  It is not a "path to Single Payer" or anything else. Instead, it saved the rotten system we already had from any real reforms or improvements.  
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