J. S. Hochman MD

to Jared, Barry, Barbara, bettina, billy.neel, Brett, batlas, Brian, Brigette, Donny, Taylor, capthill, Carey, Cathy, Don, Bob, edye, paul, Gene, Gina, iand14, Jeffrey, joseph, Joyce, karen, Kelly

In response to the link, below, to a video Jared circulated of a really "pissed off" guy:

https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=2&ik=c7e3742ffb&view=att&th=12a25c8dec6d8467&attid=0.1&disp=attd&zw

Jared:

I am convinced that this kind of scree fits right into the "smoke and mirrors" that keep us all from focusing on the real issues. The real problem is that the United States has become a nightmare of political corruption that involves virtually every politician, state and federal, and the labels "Democrat" and "Republican" are just red herring distractions. Likewise, the labels "liberal" and "conservative" are meaningless distractions.

* What is "liberal" about a tax code that is 80,000 pages long now, in order to accommodate the special privileges that individuals and corporations have bought from politicians since the 22nd amendment eliminated the Constitutional restriction that allowed a federal tax on individuals only "if based on a census" (i.e. divide the cost of government by the total number of citizens).

* On the other hand, what is "conservative" about a two-term president who spent the nation into bankruptcy on a Middle Eastern war that has now lasted longer than Vietnam, killed a million people, and is unwinable?(What is "conservative" about who got all the money we've thrown away on it?)

* What is "conservative" about bailing out banks and insurance companies that had cheated and swindled their way to profits in the hundreds of billions, and allowing them to PROFIT by the hundreds of billions in the bailout?

* What is "conservative" about jailing a million and a half people in federal prisons for non-violent drug crimes (at a cost of $68,000 a year per inmate at privatized prisons owned by politicians and their fellow-travelers) when the infrastructure of the nation is falling apart, most importantly public education, and highways, bridges, power grids, water systems, etc.?

* What is "conservative" about the fact that 1 out of 51 people were on federal probation or parole in 1985 and the figure is now 1 out of 12? What is "conservative" about the fact that America is the only developed nation in the world that murders its citizens and calls it legal because 500 pounds of legal paper sanitize the act?

* What is "conservative" about a nation that permits a true tax rate of almost 51% (Holland's is 50%) (including income tax, sales tax, state income taxes, inheritance taxes, property taxes, etc, etc) and unlike Holland, which provides every conceivable kind of assistance to its citizens from birth to death, gives its citizens NOTHING?

It is not an issue of right or left, black, Hispanic or white, it is an issue of criminal exploitation of every person in the country by the less than 3% of the population who own 98% of the wealth and control a totally corrupted Congress and Executive branch through political "contributions".

* On that subject, when we were trying to legislate reform in our health care (ranked number 46 in the world, right behind Albania) insurance and pharmaceutical corporations spent $500,000 a DAY, that's $1000 a day on every member of Congress, controlling the outcome of the Health Care Reform Act. (The Act states that 80% of premium income must be spent on health care. Now the insurance company lobbyists are fighting to control how that is defined - so that their corporate aircraft, $100,000,000 a year CEO salaries, Board junkets to Monaco, etc., can be defined as "part of health care". Part of how they want to define health care is also the hundreds of millions they spend controlling what doctors can prescribe and how they can treat, their patients.


As long as the mega rich and the media they own can keep the American public "pissed off" about everything EXCEPT the REAL issues, nothing will change in this country for the average person who pays ALL the taxes. The founders of the American republic are spinning in their graves like gas turbines. For God's sake we had a revolution over a tax on tea! What would they think about America now? The Oligarchs of Wall Street and all their moneyed co-conspirators make King George the III look like Mother Theresa.

It is NOT about how many illegal Mexicans have smuggled their way into the United States to escape the drug war in Mexico and the grinding poverty the Mexican Oligarchs have kept them in since the Maya farmed them for food. It is NOT about how many guns you can own. It is NOT about corrupting the whole focus of education into passing meaningless tests that are supposed to create "accountability". It is NOT about piling laws and regulations on top of laws and regulations to keep 8,000 whacked out people from killing themselves every year with illicitly obtained prescriptive drugs. It is NOT about whether white people are threatened by the growth of minorities in this country. It is about everyone, white, black, brown, yellow, red, any color, being degraded into serfs as powerless as those of the middle ages.

The history of Mankind is a nightmare of exploitation of our own. What we have now is that same nightmare souped up by the information age, megabucks, instant communication, the ability to track every individual in the world constantly, and the complete distraction and bamboozlement of the American people from this reality.

Your friend in the video is definitely pissed of. But he hasn't a clue about what he is REALLY pissed off about. He's too busy listening to Rush Limbaugh and the other phonies and hucksters who have made themselves millionaires pandering to the big boys, and exploiting the rage of the little guys, as they distract their listeners from reality.

If you want to really get something done, tell everyone you know to wake up.
All this conservative-liberal, Democrat-Republican stuff is gossamer bullshit.
Joel