Case In Point
Over the 2nd half of the 20th century, consumers chose a kind of voluntary socialist plan known as health insurance. Essentially, it is the sharing of medical bills by every member of the group. But administrative costs eat up over 30% of the premiums, so that in the end, policyholders were paying a very inflated price for the same care. As the U.S. reached majority coverage, the providers had to offer to file insurance for the patient, in order to stay competitive. Hospitals started buying out independent doctor's clinics and leveraging their size advantage to absorb the administrative costs.
In 1994, America rejected the socialist medicine plan of HillaryCare. Under that plan, hospitals & doctors would have become enslaved servants of the govt.. The federal govt. would have raised taxes sufficient to pay everyone's medical expenses which the death panels and rationing bureaucrats had grudgingly approved, assuming the patient wasn't dead yet.
In 2010, congress approved the fascist medicine plan of ObamaCare. Under this plan certain favored insurance companies would receive a windfall of 'customers' which the federal govt. is forcing to buy a deluxe high-risk coverage plan. Obama favors a socialist plan, but he sees fascist designs as an acceptable step away from capitalism
Too Big To Fail
By 2017, the smaller health insurance companies who are less capitalized, will fall away, leaving most of the nation reliant on Blue Cross as the only option to choose from. Without capitalism and real free market competition, there is no safeguard against the abuses of exorbitant rates and poor coverage benefits. Whenever the 'Too Big To Fail' class of corporations need their losses covered, politicians will surely pass appropriation bills to cover both the unpaid bills and the payroll to the corporate executives who give generously to lobbyists, PACs, and congressional campaign funds. But whenever corporate profits are realized, those profits are not similarly shared with the taxpayers. As Paul Dolman said; |
“They privatize the profits and socialize the losses, so whichever way the wheel spins, they win."
Republicans And The Keynesian Tar Baby
Stimulism And Other Forms Of Keynesian Economics
In 2009, the new president then tried to bail out mortgage corporations by bailing out the bad mortgages for people who should never have been given financing for houses they cannot really afford.
Tea Party Revolt
| In 2009, conservative citizens rose up in opposition to fascism. Rick Santelli stood on the Chicago Mercantile trading floor and gave an impromptu speech on CNBC. His speech went viral and his call to send tea bags to the White House was catching fire. It was like Peter Finch's meltdown in the 70s motion picture, 'Network'. America was 'mad as hell and not going to take it anymore!'. But America's grassroots is tired. Leftist groups demagogued the message of the Tea Party. Republican operatives sought to co opt the message and even tried to take over groups like Freedomworks. Other conservative grassroots causes eventually co opted many Tea Party groups. Today, the term is so ambiguous that no universal definition is operative for 'Tea Party'. |
Tall Building Business Interests
They want to quit paying employee benefits like health insurance and retirement pensions; so it only makes sense for big business to encourage governments to take over the fringe benefits. Not every local Chamber Of Commerce is turning to a fascist model. But the least corrupted chamber organizations are likely to be in small towns.
A New Political Dynamic
Respected Oklahoma blogger, Michael Bates, describes, in his 2011 post; how George Kaiser has benefitted from govt. sweetheart deals given to the few very well connected. Bates quotes from Bill Allison...
"..In 1984, Bank of Oklahoma bought Fidelity Bank N.A., an Oklahoma City-based bank whose books were loaded with bad loans. Kaiser, who was a shareholder and served on Bank of Oklahoma's board of directors at the time, favored the deal, which didn't work out so well. Fidelity's bad loans were a drag on Bank of Oklahoma, which, after declaring a quarterly loss of $51 million in 1986, turned to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation for a bailout. The FDIC deemed it essential to the state's economy, and rather than shut it down bailed it out the bank for $130 million. Five years later, after returning the bank to profitability, the FDIC sold it to Kaiser--for $61 million."
There are groups of "the little guy" on both the left and the right. Socialist groups like "Occupy Wall Street" are decrying the same fascism which Tea Party groups condemn. On the left, they rally to the cause of Bernie Sanders presidential campaign and make it a movement. In 2012, a similar movement on the right rallied to Ron Paul's Libertarian message. The Sanders and Paul movements ascribe to opposite solutions. Either pure socialism or pure free market capitalism. Tea Party and Libertarian groups are becoming increasingly focused on identifying neo-fascist economic policy. In some respects, they are finding political support from socialists who also decry the corporatism of today.
We saw a hint of this convergence in the last days of the 2015 Oklahoma legislature, when about 25 House Republicans formed an unofficial Conservative Caucus opposition to a hike in the tobacco tax. Ironically, the Democrat caucus voted with them in a majority coalition. The 'Tall Building Republicans' panicked and sent in Governor Mary Fallin to lobby for the tax increase on the House Floor. She disgraced and humiliated her office by openly begging Democrats to vote for a tax increase, yet the Democrats stood resolute; albeit for their own motivations. It's not at all a pure illustration, yet it shows the possibility that an anti-corporatism alliance can happen.
"It is too obvious, too easily demonstrable that fascism and communism are not two opposites, but two rival gangs fighting over the same territory."
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