We really want single payer. We compromised that to support a public option.

Then we compromised that to support a Medicare buy-in. I cannot and will not support health care insurance reform without either single payer, a public option or a Medicare buy-in because without one or the other of those provisions, the reform is just a huge robbery. It robs from ordinary Americans and gives to the insurance corporations who will, with their additional billions just have a tighter stranglehold on our political process.

The corporations are oppressing us. It's that simple.

This just another way in which they are oppressing us.

No, I am not a socialist. But neither am I a corporatist. I am a capitalist. I believe in a free enterprise system in which those who own businesses and those who work for businesses are responsible for what they do. The corporation was invented to limit the liability of the owners of a business for their own actions.

If you read the law of corporations or take a course in it, you will realize that the point of forming a corporation is to limit the liability of the shareholders or owners. Corp. Law 101. Corporations are essentially irresponsible, immoral entities. That is inherent in their purpose and function -- to shield the owners from responsibility.

Capitalism is based on investors owning the risks they take, investing responsibly so as to get the highest return.

The sole owner of a business is a responsible person. The business form that he has chosen does not let him off the hook if he makes a mistake or does something wrong. It is harder for him to cheat.

We want a public option or Medicare because they are alternatives to corporate health care.

The government is not as responsible as a small business owner, but at least every two to six years, individuals in government positions have to answer to us for what the government does.

We do not want irresponsible, unresponsive corporations managing our health care. That is why we do not want this bill. It does nothing about the core problem which is that irresponsible corporations are managing and controlling our health care, corporations that do not answer to us in any way. In fact, this bill will give us fewer alternatives to the corporate health care system we now have because it requires everyone to buy some form of corporate health care.

The bank bail-outs just gave away our money to irresponsible corporations. That was bad enough.

But this bill surrenders our very lives to the corporations. No, we will not accept this bill. It is so bad that no bill at all is better.

However, I do regret how so many who would still have been helped by even this lousy bill will not be getting even a small bit of assistance.

Still, I agree with you.

K&R

k/r.

is rigged shell games, monopolies, cheating and stealing. there's nothing wrong with an actual "free market" fairly regulated to keep crooks from stealing. it's a system that promotes competition and innovation. the republican versino of it is a farce...

a market for irresponsible corporations. The people who run and own the corporations are not responsible for anything except making money for themselves.

Seriously. You can't just compromise with yourself. An actual compromise needs the other side to agree to it, by definition of compromise.

Sorry about that.

Why the clicks are close together, I wish Skinner et al would fix.

And then the dyslexia thing-ee.

A few points:

(1) If capitalism is based on sole proprietorship, then where does the "capital" come from to start the business? The "hard work" of the business person who started as a working class person? Well, that is how the petit-bourgeois--the restaurant owners, bar owners, gas station owners, actors, web designers--but usually even they need a bank loan from the big capitalists who get their money from two places: (1) suppression of wages of those who mine materials and manufacture goods, or manipulation of other capitalists who've done so. While there are many honest small business persons (let's not idealism them, though, there are also monstrous members of the petit-bourgeoisie) they mostly get their start up funds from big capital, who gets its funds from our blood (often, literally)

(2) If capitalism (even petit bourgeois capitalism) works only from the individual morality and social responsibility of the individual capitalist (a new form of noblesse oblige), then working people are literally at the mercy of their kindness. What is to stop, say, 25% of these small capitalists from becoming thugs who game the system and overturn the rule of law and temperance through greasing pockets? Nothing.

You can't fight corporate capitalist with small-business capitalism. The American revolution was a bourgeois revolution that overthrew the monarchy (and a major step in the right direction.) But there will be no "petit bourgeois" revolution. The petit-bourgeoisie isn't large enough to take the big bourgeois on; they don't represent the interests of workers--the majority of people in the US; and they are by nature in competition with one another. They have the workers' sympathy to a point--but often (not always, but often enough) small businesses still discriminate against LGBTs, use cheap immigrant labor, and treat workers' with contempt.

What's more; many of the petit bourgeoisie are going to be forced into the working class or the unemployed. (In fact, let's face it, many of those who've been sold on the concept of being "small businesses" (web designers, e-bay sellers, cottage industry folks, piece-meal workers of all sorts) are actually not the petit-bourgeois, but unemployed working class people just struggling to survive.

A corporation isn't real
It doesn't think, it doesn't feel
A legal fiction, an ideal
By right should serve the commonweal.

And when it contravenes this task
Then all of us must duly ask
If law shall be a human tool
Or people play the fiction's fool.

Compromise entails both sides giving something..