Monday, March 24, 2025

Something to Know - 24 March

Free-market capitalism prioritizes minimal government intervention, with private ownership and market forces driving resource allocation and pricing, emphasizing individual economic freedom and profit-driven competition. Conversely, regulated capitalism involves government intervention to manage resource distribution and ensure social welfare, aiming to reduce economic inequality through regulations and public ownership, thus ensuring societal needs along with regulated market dynamics.
With the above short definitions in mind, how does Trumpism and all of its authoritarian leadership and Fascists agenda meet the needs of our democracy? They don't.
Right now, the Republicans are scrambling on how to take more from the have-nots to the already filthy rich, and remove or effectively weakan social programs, and eliminate all the ones that support and serve the care and welfare of its citizens. This ongoing  mob Con-Job is happening while some people are looking and thinking as though it is not going to affect them.

Heather Cox Richardson from Letters from an American heathercoxrichardson@substack.com 
Unsubscribe

8:53 PM (17 minutes ago)
to me
Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more

Fifteen years ago today, President Barack Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, often called Obamacare, into law. In addition to making healthcare more affordable, the law eliminated lifetime limits on benefits, prohibits discrimination because of pre-existing conditions, and allows young people to stay on their parents' health insurance policies until they are 26. In 2024, about 24 million people signed up for Obamacare coverage for 2025, while another 21 million adults were covered by the law's expansion of Medicaid. The ACA has increased the number of Americans covered by health insurance and slowed the rise of health care costs across the board.

Republicans immediately vowed to get rid of the ACA because they object to government regulation of business, provision of a basic social safety net, and promotion of infrastructure. Such a government, Republicans argue, is essentially socialism: it prohibits individuals' ability to control their businesses without government interference, and it redistributes wealth from the haves to the have-nots through taxes.

This is a modern-day stance, by the way: it was actually Republican president Theodore Roosevelt who first proposed universal healthcare at the beginning of the twentieth century, and Republican president Dwight Eisenhower who first tried to muscle such a program into being with the help of the new department created under him: the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, which in 1979 became the Department of Health and Human Services. Its declared mission was "improving the health, safety, and well-being of America." In contrast to their forebears, today's Republicans do not believe the government has such a role to play.

In 2014, Fox News Channel personality Bill O'Reilly explained Republicans' opposition to the law, saying: "Obamacare is a pure income redistribution play. That means President Obama and the Democratic Party want to put as much money into the hands of the poor and less affluent as they can and the healthcare subsidies are a great way to do just that. And of course, the funds for those subsidies are taken from businesses and affluent Americans who have the cash…. Income redistribution is a hallmark of socialism and we, in America, are now moving in that direction. That has angered the Republican Party and many conservative Americans who do not believe our capitalistic system was set up to provide cradle to grave entitlements…. Obamacare is much more than providing medical assets to the poor. It's about capitalism versus socialism."

In contrast, in 2022, former president Obama explained why the Democrats worked so hard to begin the process of getting healthcare coverage for Americans. "[W]e're not supposed to do this just to occupy a seat or to hang on to power," he said. "We're supposed to do this because it's making a difference in the lives of the people who sent us here."

The ACA shows, he said, that "if you are driven by the core idea that, together, we can improve the lives of this generation and the next, and if you're persistent—if you stay with it and are willing to work through the obstacles and the criticism and continually improve where you fall short, you can make America better—you can have an impact on millions of lives."


--
****
Juan Matute
The Harold Wilke House 
Claremont, California

Who is Asset Kraznov?
(we know where he is)


No comments:

Post a Comment