USian Empire's Capitalist Healthcare Horror Turns Personal

AS REGULAR READERS KNOW, I was badly injured in a household accident on 7 January 2018. Since then, the effort to get adequate care for the injuries inflicted by that accident has thrust me into an eye-opening struggle with Kaiser-Permanente, which took over Washington state's Group Health Cooperative last year. 

This fight is significant to Dispatches because it exemplifies the deadly obstacles that confront us all in a realm wherein healthcare is permanently defined as a privilege of wealth rather than a human right.

Significantly, though I joined GHC as a voting member nearly 45 years ago, I never once found it necessary to challenge its policies or personnel to obtain needed care. Indeed – in perfect health at the time I joined – my membership was more than anything a political statement, endorsement of the co-op as the closest approximation to socialized medicine USian Capitalism will ever allow. For that reason – never mind the pathetic self-deception that proclaims healthcare-as-a-human-right to be achievable without full-fledged revolution –  I voted against the KP takeover and will lament the death of GHC and its former, implicitly socialist idealism for as long as I remain alive.

Though KP is allegedly a non-profit organization, its unwritten but nevertheless obvious policy – that health care is indeed a privilege of wealth rather than a human right – is no different from the policy of the Empire itself and the policies of the Empire's more brazenly murderous for-profit medical monopolies. 

Indeed KP has often been accused of concealing for-profit operations behind a non-profit disguise. Quoth Wikipedia:

“Kaiser has had disputes with its employees' unions, repeatedly faced civil and criminal charges for falsification of records and patient dumping, faced action by regulators over the quality of care it provided, especially to patients with mental health issues, and has faced criticism from activists and action from regulators over the size of its cash reserves.”

(To read the rest, go here or here.) 

Even After a Year of Nightmares Come True, It Seems None Dare Admit the Ultimate Horror of the Trump/Pence Regime: That Its Seizure of Our Species' Most Malevolently Apocalyptic Empire Is Tantamount to Nazi Conquest of the Entire World

FACE IT, PEOPLE: the Empire's global thermonuclear omnipotence and its better-dead-than-Red moral imbecility means that 72 years after the presumably victorious end of World War II, the Nazis have in fact conquered our entire planet.

And until we acknowledge this as-yet unspeakable fact, our efforts to build an effective resistance movement will forever be undone by our craven refusal to confront the admittedly horrific truth of our circumstances.

The pivotal question of our time – by far the most potentially apocalyptic of all human eras – is whether we will remain lost in our present fog of self-deluding euphemisms and/or inescapably trapped by our Big Lies of outright denial and thus in either case paralyzed by the deliberately suppressed, none-dare-say-it-aloud JesuNazi reality of the Trump/Pence Regime and the viciously white-supremacist, fanatically Christian tyranny by which it has already captured 24 of the 50 U.S. state governments. 

We should never allow ourselves to be deceived by the fact China, Russia, Vietnam, Cuba, Venezuela, Syria and a few other nations continue to courageously defy the USian global Fourth Reich. Here again the awful truth is that all these allegedly independent nations combined possess nothing approaching the thermonuclear might of the United States and its imperial subject-nations in Europe and the Middle East. Nor have Russia, China et al developed effective countermeasures to neutralize the JesuNazi fanaticism we know will prompt the Donald or his successors to nuke Earth to a bug planet were defeat ever to threaten the One Empire Under God.

 
In which context Hitler's final remarks... 

(To read the rest, go here or here.)

The Most Revolutionary News the US Press Ever Published?

Yes, I'm still profoundly disabled -- the pain of my torn hip and thigh ligaments and the associated buttocks-to-ankle hematoma far surpasses the anesthetic ability of my (begrudgingly*) prescribed painkillers  -- but the material accessed by this  Columbia Journalism Review link is by far the most newsworthy material I have yet handled, "yet handled" covering a journalism career that began in late 1956 and continues sporadically even now.  It is also the most potentially revolution-inspiring story I have ever covered, and I post this link with full knowledge of its implications.
Quoth CJR:

Meeting with lawmakers Thursday in the Oval Office, President Trump expressed his displeasure with the bipartisan immigration deal being discussed. “Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?” Trump asked, referencing immigrants from Haiti, El Salvador, and African nations. The Washington Post’s Josh Dawsey broke the story, reporting that Trump next suggested the US should instead prioritize people from countries such as Norway.

Trump’s words may have been shocking, but they can’t be seen as surprising. His history of racist comments stretches back decades, and it was only weeks ago that The New York Times reported that the president, again in an Oval Office meeting, said Haitian immigrants “all have AIDS” and Nigerians who visit the US would never “go back to their huts.” Yesterday’s comments were nothing new for a man who launched his political profile on the lie that Barack Obama wasn’t a true American.

There is little I can add to the legitimate outrage (finally) expressed by CJR's courageously truthful reporting on the JesuNazi who has ridden the USian Empire's potentially apocalyptic political sickness to the most dangerously powerful throne in our species' history. Hence I urge you all not only to read the full text (the material quoted above is merely its introduction), but to circulate it as widely -- and as repetitiously -- as you can. Please please please do so, for the fate of our nation and indeed of our entire species literally hangs in the balance, with the outcome to be determined -- as never before -- by our news media's ongoing courageousness or lack thereof. 
__________________   

*I would be derelict in my reportorial duty were I not to report that the excruciating inadequacy of my prescription pain medications is a product of two uniquely USian conditions. The first of these is the fanatical Christian belief that all suffering is approved by their notably sadistic god -- that adequate pain medication is therefore defiance of the Divine Sadist's will. The second of these is the nationwide, seemingly "health"-oriented but ultimately fanatical Christian panic over the abuse of opiates, which in hideous truth is spawned by the fanatical Christians' terror over the allegedly "heretical" insights all mood-altering drugs are alleged to provide. 

Hence the spectrum of associated taboos, including the Trump/Pence Regime's ever-more-obvious intent to impose zero-tolerance, mass-arrest enforcement of federal marijuana laws in states that have legalized its medical and recreational consumption. Thus my prediction...

(To read the rest, go here or here.)

Much Longer Delay Due to Agonizing Groin Sprain: Must Be My Week in the Abrahamic God's Cosmic Torture Chamber

I DON'T KNOW how soon I will be posting here again as I am temporarily disabled by a groin sprain, the diverse agonies of which include moments of the most intense pain I have ever experienced --  my "ever" including a simultaneously impacted and abscessed wisdom tooth the sudden onset of which, on Labor Day Sunday of 1969,  was so devastating I passed out in the emergency room of New York City's Beth Israel Hospital.

But the only metaphor I can conjure up that even approaches accurate description of the peak magnitude of this 2018 pain is the ultimately inconceivable agony of some sadist digging with the point of a rusty 12-penny nail in the naked nerve tissue at the core of an untreated cavity in an abscessed and impacted tooth -- and then multiply the hurt times itself to maybe the 20th power. 

Fortunately, unlike the constant and seemingly relentless agony inflicted by the 1969 wisdom tooth emergency until it was blessedly relieved by BI-provided codeine, the most intense moments of today's groin-sprain pain  afflict me only when I sit on or try to rise from the way-too-low toilet-seats Puyallup's mercilessly profiteering Independent Living Incorporated imposed on Washington State's nonprofit Senior Housing Assistance Group when the appropriately acronymed ILI -- revealingly pronounced "eye lie" as if to tauntingly admit Capitalism's ultimate truth -- "renovated" these apartments. 

That project began in 2014,  continued through last year and included wrenching disruptions of our lives by temporary evictions which -- as if we had any doubts -- showed us the utter contempt with which the capitalists view lower-income elders. Though the evictions were of only one to three days' duration, they mandated exactly the same preparations as a permanent change of address. Nor were we reimbursed for our momentary homelessness.  

Moreover the renovation work the evictions were to enable was delayed without explanation at least three times. Hence because of the repeated packing and unpacking so necessitated, the evictions were at least thrice as disruptive as a permanent move --  often even more so for any number of reasons including the discomfort ILI's hurry-up-and-wait demands knowingly inflicted on physically disabled tenants. Such is the morally imbecilic savagery of USian Biblical Capitalism. 
 
As to my present-day circumstances, their negative aspects are but additional reminders of the same Christian Capitalist moral imbecility.  Capitalist governance -- its tax revenues and managerial skills exclusively dedicated to expanding Capitalism and boosting its obscene profiteering -- is utterly indifferent to the misery so inflicted. 

Indeed  I survive only because of the blessed volunteer helpfulness of my Communist Labor Party comrades, two additional local friends and three fellow SHAG tenants, to all of whom my deepest gratitude and most profound thanks. Unless my heart quits unexpectedly from the literally breath-stealing stress of fighting the groin-sprain pain, I will most likely outlive the hardships inflicted by our nation's implicitly genocidal limits on medical and dental care, which means I will return to posting Dispatches as soon as possible. Meanwhile my most profuse apologies for the interruption of these news briefings, analyses and commentaries. Updates will follow as events unfold.

LB/9 January 2018

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Dispatches Late Due to Illness; Should Be Up by Friday 5/1

Had a severe flare-up of the weeping leg ulcers that are one of the more grotesque side-affects of Congestive Heart Failure, and after nearly eight hours at Kaiser-Permanente's superb Tacoma Urgent Care facility (formerly Group Health's), have discovered I will be mostly homebound for the next several weeks, which should at least enable me to get Dispatches back on schedule. (Goddess willing and the creek don't rise.) 
LB/4 January 2018

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As Capitalism Becomes Ever More Undeniably Evil, Will the USian PseudoLeft Evolve True Revolutionary Consciousness?

Admitting How Fiercely We Hate Our Oppressors Is Neither Ideology nor Ideological Discipline, but It Is the First Step toward Liberation

THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA MACHINE, owned as it is by the same moral imbeciles who own the USian Empire's economic and political systems and all their global subsidiaries, long ago became the for-profit version of Josef Goebbels' Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda.

Exemplifying how Capitalism's momentum invariably thrusts it toward fascism, Mainstream Media was headed in that direction even under the independent ownership that characterized most USian newspapers and broadcast outlets during the years of my later teens and earlier manhood, 1956 through about 1980 or thereabouts. 

While the only meaningful difference between local Capitalists and their global counterparts has never been more than the geographical limits of their greed, the socioeconomic interactions characteristic of local ownership exercised enough moral restraint on publishers that in most instances, mass media did not metastasize into its present-day malignancy until the news monopolies took over. 

Microcosms of empires and imperial tyranny, the monopolies quickly ended any pretense of accountability to local audiences or even to local elites. Soon afterward the monopolists' suppressed or co-opted the various unions and other organizations that had previously guaranteed print, radio and television journalists a modicum of editorial independence.

 

During the same period, the monopolies' overwhelming financial power leveraged the collegiate journalism schools to impose the gate-guard functions that guarantee the press corps remains forever purged of any trace of revolutionary or even reformist consciousness. 

Hence by 1983...

(Read the rest here or here.)

House Democrats Unconditionally Surrender to Trump, Join Republicans in No-Impeachment-Ever Pact, Defiantly Uniting Both Parties in Implicit Declaration of Neoliberal Dictatorship

Engineered by Trump/Pelosi Collaboration, the Deliberately Under-Reported Decision Kills Any Hope of Judicial or Legislative Relief from Capitalism's Murderous Greed and JesuNazism's Genocidal Malice

EVEN ALTERNATIVE MEDIA seems loathe to admit the pivotal significance of the Democratic (sic) Party's deliberately under-reported unconditional surrender to the Trump/Pence Regime at the start of the weekend on Friday 15 December. 

The brazen bipartisanship of the Democrats' no-impeachment-ever pact with the Republicans was certainly the most glaringly indicative, breathtakingly abject Congressional surrender in all the nearly 78 years of my lifetime. It was probably the most cravenly submissive act since Congress concluded in 1934 the Bankers' Plot conspirators were too rich to jail and thereby enabled the One Percent's subsequent and now utterly victorious 83-year campaign to convert the United States into the de facto Fourth Reich. 

In any case there is no question the Democrats' no-impeachment-because-Trump-is- our-man-too vote – and that is precisely its message – was maliciously scheduled to take maximum advantage of the fact at this time of year (and especially on Fridays), most USians are distracted from politics, whether by the anticipated lusts of weekend frolic, the sublimated lusts of holiday shopping or – most likely – by the wrenching realization this will this be their bleakest midwinter holiday season thus far, with the tombstone above the corpse of their personal American Dreams reminding each of them that every subsequent holiday will be progressively more wretched until they themselves are buried in the same graveyard as their aspirations.

So now it's “Happy Holidays 2017” as we anticipate being murdered by genocidal tax “reform.” Soon it will be “Happy New Year 2018,” when we will begin dying from the saber-cuts and axe-blows to the stipends and services that hitherto kept us alive.

While such seasonal preoccupations are surely one reason to blame for why so many USians were oblivious to the vote itself, the more telling reason is that...

(To read the rest, go here or here.)