It’s Time for Stewart and Colbert to Retire

The King is delighted when the Village Idiot is mocked by the Fool. The King is delighted when anyone is mocked by the Fool other than the King. Unfortunately for Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, their job is to mock the King and they have failed to do that for quite some time.

How would today’s Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert have covered the Irish Potato Famine?

“Stephen, did you see this piece in the Fine Outstanding Xenophobian today? I mean really. Blaming all the famine deaths in Ireland on a Papist pact with the devil.”

“Jon, how can you appear shocked? Those drooling cretins come up with the most ludicrous stories every day. Please, aren’t we above such things?”

“Stephen, true. We are above all this, but it doesn’t make their rants any less hilarious.”

“True, Jon. I mean really, do you see where they say Papists all have tails like the devil, which is why God is punishing them with this famine?”

“Stephen, you are so right. Everyone knows Papists don’t have tails. Even imagining Papists with tails has to be the silliest thing I’ve seen in a long time.”

“Jon, Papists with tails. The Xenophobian has done it again. Aren’t they just the village idiot? We are so much cooler than that.”

“Right, Stephen. Now, moving right along to today’s silly cat drawing.”

Not a word about the suffering Irish. Not a word about where the surplus food in Ireland was being shipped. Not a word about all those profiting from this particular genocide. Instead, they discuss the alleged flaws of the British propaganda system. Jewels before swine. Parody gold ignored for cheap laughs.

And there you have it. Even back then the Fox network would have decided the topic of discussion. And Stewart and Colbert would be more than willing to echo the distraction of the day. Fox tells you where to look, classic misdirection, and the two of them, for whatever reasons, are all too willing to follow Roger Ailes commands.

At times it feels like half of their broadcasts are wasted calling the Fox Village Idiot an idiot. Pitiful. Lazy.

It’s as if Stewart and Colbert were in high school and instead of mocking the principal, they decide to pick on the special education kids, who the principal encourages to smash ice cream cones against their own foreheads.

If Roger Ailes and his paymasters at Fox aren’t paying Stewart and Colbert, they should be. If they’re not being paid by Fox directly, they’re either complete morons or being reimbursed indirectly. "I don't care what they say about me as long as they spell my name right." Fox thanks both of them whenever they broadcast.

Satirists have to be held to a higher standard than the obvious low bar Stewart and Colbert have now set for themselves. They keep reveling in the awards received from those who benefit from their harmless (to them) form of social criticism. At the moment neither are worthy to lick Russell Brand’s boots.

We know they’re both middle-aged men with families, well, that probably says it all. Family men often have good reason to act in ways that others might call cowardly. It’s the same type of knee jerk fear which Fox feeds upon. Perhaps it’s time for both to pull a Chappelle and simply walk away. They’ve lost their edge. Leave it to younger or older people to carry on the attack. Leave before they become caricatures of themselves. Leave before they become even more of an embarrassment.

“Dying is easy. Comedy is hard.” Not long ago that quote cited by Peter O’Toole was brought to mind. Comedy is hard, gentlemen, and the two of you have gotten far too soft.

America's Criminal Medical Profession

It appears that all many people can talk about is the price of slaves. They say the slave owners should keep getting as much money as they can while others are saying the slave market shouldn’t exist at all.

There should never be a market for human rights. Neither freedom nor healthcare should ever become the subject of market haggling. Neither single payer nor Obamacare address the problem of the rights of human beings being held hostage by the for-profit healthcare system. In a way the present system is more insidious than slavery. Slavery was a bit easier to identify while today the smiling face of your family doctor may very well be the front for organizations which might as well be selling body parts. 

Single payer, Obamacare, doesn’t matter as long as healthcare professionals can charge as much as they want while keeping a scalpel to the throats of the American people. 

Keep haggling about whether you’re going to be working in the house or the fields. That’s what the present system wants you to do.

Withholding healthcare until a certain price is met is as criminal as criminal can be. And that is how the price is set by the medical profession in the current system. Doesn't matter if the individual, an insurance company or a government forks over the money. The crime begins with the medical profession creating the market.

License to Heal or License to Steal?

It’s time to take some of the profit out of the for-profit healthcare system currently victimizing the people of the United States. This is a small step and one which can be implemented on levels which do not necessitate the consent of an entire nation.

If you’re not intelligent enough to already have realized that the present for-profit healthcare system in the United States constitutes a human rights violation, you might as well go back to watching black and white 1950s sitcoms on your smart phone, and stop reading altogether.

“I will prescribe regimens for the good of my patients according to my ability and my judgement and never do harm to anyone.”

That’s one translation of the Hippocratic Oath. “First do no harm” is one way of saying it.

Let’s face it, the for-profit healthcare extortion system in the United States is doing a lot of harm to a lot of people.

When a doctor asks a high price for their services, they are saying one thing. They are saying that if you don’t meet their price, they will withhold their services. That’s how a market is supposed to work. Unfortunately, when doctors withhold their services in order to get more money, people have been known to die. It’s pay or die when it comes to the present healthcare extortion system in the United States.

Individual states license doctors to practice their discipline within that state’s borders.  States currently allow licensed medical professionals free reign to charge excessive amounts for their services. The argument that the medical profession exists within a free market and doctors are worth whatever they can get remains entirely bogus. In reality, the for-profit medical profession is an extortion racket where, unless a patient meets the system’s financial demands, something very bad might very well happen to them. Has anyone, anyone ever, compared prices when they needed brain surgery? The states through their licensing powers become willing partners in this extortion racket. Doctors in the present system are asking their patients that most delightful of questions, “Your money or your life?”

If a licensed hunter is limited in the number of deer he can bag in one season, certainly a state has the authority to limit the profit margin on licensed professionals within its jurisdiction. If states and local governments can regulate the prices charged by cab drivers, those same licensing authorities most certainly have the capability to cap the incomes of medical professionals whose entire careers depend upon the state issuing them a license to practice.

A modest proposal. Allow doctors to make as much as they want through earnings and investments within the current healthcare system. However, if their income is more in a year than the governor of the state which issues their license, they will be charged a fee of 75% of those overage monies, which will be paid to the licensing authority. On the plus side the licensing authority will take those monies and initiate a program which reimburses doctors 5% of their outstanding student loans if they perform two weeks of non-profit medical community service each year. Of course there will be other trivial details which can be worked out rather easily once this concept is accepted by those of good faith.

It’s time for individual states to stop participating in the healthcare extortion racket. If any doctor says they will leave the state if they can’t make as much money as they can extort from their captive audience, well, here’s your scrub hat, what’s your hurry?
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Obamacare Coronates New Welfare Queen - The Insurance Industry

Now that the entire population can go online and shovel even more money into the anti-human rights money pits which is the for-profit health industry, it might be nice to see who really benefits from this new “entitlement”.

Previously uninsurable. Yeah. Now they can give Wall Street cash out of their own pocket.

Previously unaffordable. Now the government can pay Wall Street directly, instead expanding Medicaid and cutting bankers out of the loop.

More of the new poor on Medicaid. See above.

Cocktail napkin numbers: 50 million uninsured today.  Estimated that 25 million will become insured under Obamacare.

Let’s say half of that number goes to Medicaid. Fine. That leaves 12.5 million. Let’s say the average payout by the Feds is $200 a month per policy. Remember: this is actually a new corporate welfare program since the government subsidizes premiums depending upon the citizens income.

$200 a month times 12.5 million. That’s 2.5 billion a month going directly from the United States Treasury into the pockets of the for-profit healthcare industry. That’s 30 billion a year, for starters, looted from the people of the U.S. by agents of the insurance racket.

Remember: cocktail napkin numbers.  Of course these numbers more than double with the citizens’ contribution to the monthly premiums. 

So Obama and the Democrats are subsidizing the insurance companies by a few billion a month. Somebody should get the award for insurance salesman of the millennium.

“Healthcare should be a human right.”

That’s Obama pretending to be a law professor while being President. He says it should be a human right because if he said healthcare was a human right, he would have to do something about it. So he sort of says healthcare should be recognized as a human right and therefor he can continue to do business with the for-profit health insurance industry as they violate everyone’s human rights from the jump. Somebody should put “courage” on the Oval Office’s Word of the Day calendar.

Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, healthcare. These are human rights. Half a million died during the Civil War in order to restore the human right of liberty to those in slavery. Denying the human right of freedom for profit is called slavery.

For-profit healthcare and slavery have a lot in common. They both restrict a human right so somebody can make a buck. For-profit healthcare and slavery both treat human beings like commodities from which the last single cent should be wrung. Neither system is concerned about the people they harm.


Withholding vital healthcare in order to increase profit is the moral equivalent of allowing slaves to die to increase profits. The business of rationing healthcare for profit is equivalent to owning slaves. 

If you are in the healthcare business simply for the money or if you profit excessively from the suffering of others, you might as well consider yourself a slave owner. 

Slave owners and healthcare profiteers should always be ostracized.

So there you have it. Obamacare will soon be pumping billions of dollars a month into a corporate healthcare system designed to profit by withholding a human right from everyone. Obamacare is pumping billions of dollars a month into the moral equivalent of the slave system. Congratulations.

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Medicare for the Unborn

Let’s begin with everyone agreeing on one point. Good prenatal care should be available to all who make the choice to avail themselves of it.

How many people in this country would never consider applying for “goddamn Welfare” even if their lives depended upon it? Quite a few American citizens were raised to believe, and still think to this day, that “goddamn Welfare” should be avoided like the plague and it might even be sinful to receive “handouts” from the government. Sound like anybody you might have met?

The way the present system is set up, if you are relatively non-affluent, you really can’t afford to pay for medical insurance. If you aren’t willing to get on your knees and beg the government for “goddamn Welfare”; well, the odds are you’re going to end up without any medical coverage at all, including prenatal.

Medicaid is “goddamn Welfare” to a large segment of people in this country.

In most instances, who cares?

But there are circumstances where the individual who refuses to utilize adequate medical treatment, for financial or philosophical reasons, is putting not only themselves at risk but also the potential life of a future United States citizen. Should the health and well being of fetal possible voters be risked simply because their parent refuses to beg for “goddamn Welfare” and are too non-affluent to afford adequate medical care on their own?

Of course not. Once a choice is made, potential citizens have the right to arrive in this world without being physically or mentally damaged by their parent’s neglect. Who will protect the rights of these potential citizens? Who will assure they come into this world without the stigma of “goddamn Welfare” being attached to them in perpetuity?

Proper prenatal care should be a guaranteed right for all those who need it. Lack of medical care should never be a factor in anyone’s choice.

Future citizens have rights too. Prenatal care is a right these potential citizens should never be denied.

Knowing that this right is being enforced by the government might very well be a major consideration in whatever choice the adult might come to make.

Which is why prenatal coverage should be part of Medicare. Already Medicare covers senior citizens and disabled citizens. Why shouldn’t Medicare cover potential citizens? After all, Medicare isn’t “goddamn welfare”. Having prenatal coverage become a recognized as a right under Medicare would help those who despise welfare and who don’t have enough money to pay for private insurance make choices in the best interest of themselves and future generations.

And while we’re at it, children shouldn’t be forced to suffer owing to either the idiocy or the moral choices of their parents. Children, future voters, should maintain the right which brought them into the world and be covered by Medicare as well.

All children have the right not to suffer due their parent’s particular point of view or income.

Paying for it would be simple. Raise the income limit for the payroll tax and let those making over $125,000 a year pay taxes at the same rate as the rest of us. If it helps pay for prenatal care, and helps folks make the right choice, you’re damn right those swimming in bucks should pay their fair share.

If you want people to make the right choice, you have to help them out. Recognize that prenatal and childhood healthcare is a right for all Americans.

Start from there.

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Tokenism

Imagine a large city somewhere in the northern United States where one night 2/3 of the population relocates to warmer climes.

Boom! Out of nowhere a massive number of houses are left abandoned. Boom! In an instant municipal tax revenues are insufficient to fund basic necessities of civilization. Boom! Everybody left in town has to stop what they’re doing and start bailing 24/7 because they know they’re on a rapidly sinking ship.

Now imagine instead of so many people leaving in one day, the process involves decades. You know what I’m talking about.

When a municipality’s survival is based on a single industry and that industry fails, for whatever reason, you know there’s going to be big trouble. When the mine goes dry, when buggy whips become obsolete, when auto companies are more attractive to oil cartels than to their customers; and the mine shuts down, and the buggy whip factory burns to the ground, and the Big Three falter and almost fail; there’s a good chance a new ghost town will come into existence.

Suppose that in this same suffering town that for every dollar spent on cheap food, three to five cents was immediately taken and shipped overseas. Sort of like yea olde tea tax but instead of taxing tea and sending the money to King George, today’s modern consumer buys from Burger King (or other mega-brands) and at least a 3% tax levy is immediately sent to corporate headquarters, which exists somewhere outside the reach of the municipality’s taxing authority (and probably outside the reach of the IRS as well). Would you object to 3% of your dinner bill going to support governments or corporations over which you have no control? Congratulations! you’re already doing just that (and probably more). Goodbye money!

Can any suffering community survive if a sizable amount of its treasury is systematically plundered?

Is there a way to stop this? Is there a way to keep a community’s cash within the community, where it will, if not stop the ship from sinking, at least increase the chances sailing into a safe harbor?

Yes, there is.

When people say “buy local” the response is usually “yeah, sure”. It’s a nice thought but unless a community’s survival is at stake, not many people care much. In struggling communities where that 3-5% burger drain is vitally important, “buy local” is simply picking up a bucket and helping out.

How to do it.

Stop eating at national chains. They do next to nothing for your community and funnel vital currency to banks in the Bahamas (you get the idea).

Create a local currency which will only be accepted where it is most needed. Governments all over the world, from Switzerland to Brazil to Oregon, have created their own local currencies and success ranges from moderate to fantastic. The idea is to keep the money flowing within the community for as long as possible, leading to substantially more sound local fiscal health.

Here’s one way for any city to start printing its own money. (Variations of this idea have been successful all over the world.)

When municipalities find themselves on shaky financial footing they often decrease payroll. Cops, firefighters, teachers, garbage collectors, etc., etc., take pay cuts. Fair enough, if there’s not enough money, you have to spread the pain. Unfortunately, less money being paid to citizens means less money can be spent in the community and the economy becomes even more depressed. A downward spiral is created.

What if there were a way to minimize any mandated payroll cuts within a hurting community by a city issuing its own currency? What if instead of a 20% payroll cut in U.S. greenbacks, there were a 20% cut in U.S. greenbacks but half of that cut was made up by issuing those employees local currency?

How could a city afford to back up a local currency?

Let’s play with some numbers. Joe Smith is about to have his pay decreased from $600 a week to $480 a week. Ouch. Ouch indeed. $120 less a week is killer. What’s a city to do? For any number of reasons the city can’t keep paying Joe that $120 but it can do something. To make the pain a little less it can pay Joe an extra $60 a week in bus tokens.

What is a dollar bill other than a promissary note? What is a bus token other than a promissary note? A dollar bill is backed by the full faith and credit of the United States government while a bus token is backed by the full faith and credit of the local government and the local municipal bus company. We’re not talking high finance here, we’re talking about maximizing what resources remain in suffering communities.

How would it work? Say Joe gets his reduced pay check and a voucher for thirty $2 bus tokens. Say he cashes in his voucher for tokens. He can ride the bus thirty times if he wants. Joe wins. The city wins because it really didn’t cost them much and Joe is a happier employee. And the bus company, previously underutilized, shows that it can do its job and Joe becomes a good spokesman for its services.

Or Joe can take his bus tokens to the local farmers’s market and see if the merchants there will take his tokens in lieu of U.S. cash payment. History has shown this works. Why not? Farmers take buses too. Or Joe could take it to his local Ma and Pa restaurant and see if they would like some of his tokens. Why not? Ma and Pa know that the tokens are backed by the full faith and credit of the local bus company and besides, they can give their busboy a couple at the end of his shift because he’s been such a fine worker. And you know busboys ride the bus, right?

And so these tokens circulate within the community. Local businesses are supported because they take the tokens. International conglomerates are SOL because banks in the Bahamas don’t take local buses. Cash is kept within the city. Local commerce flourishes.

Suddenly everyone in town feels, and is, a little bit richer.

This is not a new idea. Do some research. Struggling cities can save what few greenbacks they have left for necessities which cannot be produced locally.

There is a vast economy within local areas which does not need multinational companies to survive. This isn’t a barter system, it’s better.

Besides, it might only be fitting if public transportation could save mining towns, or buggy whip boroughs, or even motor cities.

In Praise of New Jersey

As a tenth generation New Yorker, one might imagine that extolling the virtues of the Garden State is a task which I do not particularly enjoy.  New Jersey is often unnecessarily abused and that has usually been fine with me. But today I have arrived at a crossroads and have come to praise New Jersey, not to bury it.

Last week while driving along the Eastern Seaboard, I pulled into what was once known as a gasoline service station. I turned off the ignition, extracted my credit card, opened the door, and headed to the pump. Suddenly, I was confronted by a black man who demanded my credit card, and fuel requirements. Startled by this unexpected confrontation, it took me a moment to remember I had crossed the border and was now in New Jersey.

New Jersey - Home of the Gas Jockeys.

There are over 3,000 gas stations in New Jersey.

In a recent poll conducted by myself, over 99% of respondents agreed pumping your own gasoline is a pain in the ass. It’s not the worst thing in the world but it’s a dirty, smelly, inconvenient, and ultimately a dangerous job that the oil companies recruited you to do for them for free. Pump your own gas, sucker?

Around 1970 or so, most of the United States was bamboozled into thinking donating their time and effort to the oil companies would be a good thing. Mr/Ms Average Consumer would save a few pennies per fill up and what could possibly be wrong with that? New Jersey did not agree with this get rich quick scheme by the oil companies, and retail delivery of gasoline was kept in the hands of professionals.

Let’s say the average gas station in New Jersey employs four Gas Jockeys full-time over a week. That’s over 12,000 jobs. And that’s a conservative estimate. That’s 12,000 people kept off the welfare rolls. 12,000 jobs over a forty year period. Are you beginning to get the idea? 12,000 taxpayers as opposed to 12,000 welfare recipients. The State of New Jersey kept over 12,000 people off the welfare rolls for forty years by not allowing Ms Average Consumer to pump her own gas. The State of New Jersey prevented hundreds of possible service station explosions and fires by not allowing Joe Sixpack to handle volatile, explosive fluids on his way back from a Giants tailgate. The State of New Jersey helped thousands of young kids help keep food on their family’s table while possibly paying for their higher education.


The State of New Jersey (along with Oregon and Huntington, NY) did not allow the oil companies to turn their citizens into unpaid employees. New Jersey kept jobs in New Jersey, increased their tax base, reduced their welfare costs, reduced the number of gas station robberies by having more people around, kept neighborhoods safer by having more eyes on the street, and made everyone smell just a little bit better by not having that noxious gasoline aroma on your hands and clothes.

Until the 1970s, full service was the norm and self-service was rare.

As much as I hate to say this, congratulations New Jersey! You did the right thing forty years ago and you keep doing the right thing today.

My question is why doesn’t each state demand that explosive liquids be kept out of the hands of unqualified amateurs? Let’s say that states average 2,000 gas stations a piece. Let’s say an average of two full time Gas Jockeys per station. That’s four thousand jobs created instantly. Any state legislator who turns down the chance to create four thousand jobs in today’s economic climate should be recalled.

And for you free marketeers, remember, the price of goods isn’t created by the cost of goods, the price of goods is what the market will bear. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. But not at the same time you’re pumping gas.

This country messed itself up forty years ago (except for New Jersey et al). It’s time to atone for our sins. Bring back the Gas Jockeys for a safer America, for a more prosperous America, and, of course, for a less malodorous America.

Bring back the Service Station. Employ hundreds of thousands of Americans as Gas Jockeys right now. Stop pumping your own gas, the oil companies should work for you, not you for them.

“Hey, you know your left rear tire looks a little low?”

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