O-Slammer-Care and the Constitution
How the 'Sacred' Document cures everything
by Brian Wright
A continuation on last Monday's piece following
the passing of the health
care bill. This week I comment on the role of the Constitution in resolving O-Slammer-Care (meaning you do what the government says or you go to the slammer) and, truly, 99% of any real political-economic problems Americans face.
— bw
So in response to my column last week, an ad hoc impromptu commentary on the recent "Patient Protection and Health Care Affordability Act," I receive a letter from my best friend from high school in God's Country, Oklahoma. (He thinks I'm perhaps too 'cause-oriented,'
and I'd have to agree... but I'm doing a lot lately to turn my life around.)
:)
O-Slammer-Care
His letter:
BW
I gotta weigh in once and a while: I have high hopes for Obamacare. It seems credible from my privileged-to-not-give-a-shit vantage that something had to be done about the pathetic performance and outrageous costs of health care in good ole USA. Surely our standing behind numerous third world nations in all sorts of health care metrics for the populace indicates we needed to make some significant changes.
More broadly, I have come to believe that the invisible hand of free enterprise (all too often aka greed) has no place in health care. There are greater goods in caring for one another than riches and power. In other words, I'm self diagnosing that I'm an advocate of socialized medicine. I don't fear the screwed up feds doing any worse for me than the all-too-profit-motived Blue Crosses of the nation. I don't see socialized medicine as any less logical than socialized roadways (aka the interstate highway system).[1]
RB
Actually, I quote his email verbatim. He's a sharp cookie and comes from strong true conservative roots—his mother was the chair of the Goldwater for President organization in Oklahoma City, and I have fond memories of discussing conservatism and individualism with her back in the day.
Him, too. Had my friend gone over to the dark side?
RB,
Say it ain't so! I see images of Kevin McCarthy running away from the pod people with Dana Wynter in Invasion of the Body Snatchers. They stop to rest, then she goes to sleep, and Yikes! She's a pod person! What happened to you, my friend? Your dear mother would be appalled that you'd even consider endorsing the socialized medicine her hero Ronnie did TV spots against—the old 1950s spots were actually pretty good and hard core (Michael Moore makes them into a caricature).
Anyway, no one is more aware than I am of the antihuman qualities of the US health care system. I reviewed Sicko favorably, and, aside from Moore's pervasive intellectual dishonesty, the movie fairly depicts the horrors of Cartel Corporate Medicine. But since we both realize cartels are made possible by government privilege, prohibition, and compulsion, the solution isn't like the Swedish Chef adding more Gefringee-Gefrangee government to the pot. In fact subtracting government—and the chubby-privileged, for-profit corporate menace—is the answer to getting quality private-system health care, and gives you alternatives...
My mom's case is important, at least in terms of educating me as to what a benign health care system needs. The The Henry Ford Health System—"a comprehensive, integrated, non-profit, managed care, health care organization located in Southeast Michigan"—lunches on Medicare and requires that you stay more or less in its system of approved doctors. They're good, Tony Robbins good. The mission of professionalism and quality care runs from the director to the clerks.
For roughly $50 a month and some copays, Mom is totally covered for everything. She's on dialysis now, she's had some eye surgery, and some major work on her foot. All covered, and the professionals in the system are uniformly OUTSTANDING. Anyway, I've written a couple of columns from the street-level perspective. And I'd say, HF is a good model of the direction we could head for everyone... chartering other organizations who are semi-philanthropic as non-profit health care systems. That ain't Blue Cross Blue Shield and it sure ain't government health care.
The current general system is bad, but there are ways around it, like Henry Ford. With the government you follow orders and incompetent bureaucracies, with none of the choice available in a private system. It's like trusting the maintenance of your automobile to the DMV. Government does not work in areas where human needs are vital; that's why we don't trust it with food production and distribution. We'd all die much sooner.
Note: By bringing up the Henry Ford System, I do not mean to disparage the infinite alternatives that would emerge upon government exit of the healthcare area... nor the alternative-economy
options that already exist (and which I'm going to use personally). In particular, I feel we would have a flowering of community-coop medical systems for the great majority of needs; for people who are uninsurable, charitable facilities would certainly be available... and some part of the existing government infrastructure can manage these small numbers while the entire system is liberated.
It's vital that we understand that the current American horrific health care system is a) government-rife, b) government-privileged —mainly to fat cat
Big Pharma and the for-profit "insurance" companies—and c) buried in government prohibitions and compulsions. The reason we do not have quality affordable health care is because alternatives are prohibited... by government. We can't afford it, because a) the government makes it expensive (for the benefit of the fat cats) and b) the government has stolen every last penny it can, so we don't have any money to spend on fixing potholes, much less good medical care.
So pardon me if I
don't see more government as the solution. Government, especially in this realm, is always the disease masquerading as the cure. You don't end the criminal behavior of the corporate medical cartels by handing more power to the entity that causes and enables the criminal behavior of the corporate medical cartels. They all belong in jail, but better to simply pull the plug on them entirely and free the health care system from aggression and privilege of any kind. Do it for the children. Do it for yourself. Do it for my mom.
With O-Slammer-Care, like any government system, you don't get the "No" option. So get in line for a FEMA internment camp near you. I mean, does it bother you at all that O-Slammer has announced he can incarcerate anyone at will and throw away the key? That was in the context of "terrorists," but he means, basically, people like me. [Not so much you, yet, because people like you are doing such a great job selling the idea of 'cooperation.' But, believe me, the iron fist in the velvet glove will get around to you....]
Considering the level of motives? What has O-Slammer done about torture, rendition, Guantanamo and thousands of false detentions worldwide, ending the daily atrocities of the American police state in the War on Drugs and so forth? The Prosecutocracy is still totally out of control. [Check out the Don Siegelman case, governor of Alabama whom Karl Rove managed to selectively prosecute and send to jail, etc. Obama's boys do nothing to remedy.]
Very Important Point (VIP)
My friend, regardless of how we may feel about the government becoming involved in the health care business, it DOESN'T REALLY MATTER. THE GOVERNMENT HAS NO CONSTITUTIONAL AUTHORITY FOR HEALTH CARE.
There, sorry for shouting. I also produced a column in which the original author made the point quite convincingly. The feds do not have the Constitutional authority to create a health care system, or even to regulate one, or even to do all those other things the Demopublicans want and have implemented already. So the question is, do you think we should abide by the Constitution?
Yes?
No? ...well, this is about where I left off in the response to my friend, and what leads me to the big question or, more accurately, the BIG ANSWER: As I posed my rhetorical question it came to me that not only does the Constitution resolve the health care issue positively, the simple Constitution may prove to be the "Chicken Soup Concept to Solve All Our Political-Economic Woes in the Best Way for All Time, Hallelujah, Jesus."
The Constitution: Chicken Soup for All What Ails Us?
At the Liberty Forum last weekend, I set up my Sacred Nonaggression Principle and other books on a table next to an author-attorney, Mr. Robert K. Jones, who was selling his book, Secure the Blessings of Liberty. This is a guide to understanding the US Constitution, but, more important, an articulate, common-sense suggestion that Americans can reassert control of their federal government by massively insisting on the charter document.
Starting by reading the doggone thing...
... the Constitution, that is.
Jones' book isn't so much an argument for the Constitution as it is a friendly packaging of the people's owner manual: the Constitution itself. In putting together this advocacy monograph—which contains several useful references and illustrations of key areas of meaning—Mr. Jones approaches you and me as a friendly neighbor to remind us that we have some common responsibilities for neighborhood health... and knowing what the Constitution says is Job 1.
I've read the USC before, in fact, as a freshman in college, I committed it memory. So rereading it just this morning was not as much of a revelation as it might be for others. Still, you realize immediately that it's not much of a document, really. The seven articles and original ten amendments (aka the Bill of Rights) might be the equivalent of 15-20 pages of 1.5-line-spaced, 12-pt. Times-Roman font. Then, perhaps half of the material in the articles is procedural—e.g. how many reps, how many senators, qualifications, when you pass the joint in the Oval Office who gets the first toke :), etc.
So what you're left with is perhaps ten large-font pages that might be of interest, and five pages that can lead to some real kernels of Ah-hahhhh! understanding. And I challenge any person with a sixth-grade reading level and the IQ of mustard to find any authorization (contrary to what the Supremes and other judges have pontificated) for 95-99% of the powers the feds are exercising today.... By the same token, you will not read anything that concedes government violation of the people's natural rights (freedoms)—which are also enumerated in the document.
And 95-99% of those rights are clearly violated today.
Note: The Framers realized a constitution
could not create or bestow rights (i.e. natural human freedom), which are held inalienably, so for prudence they identified what were considered the most significant rights in play at the time. Then, ingeniously, they added the Ninth Amendment to cover the remainder:
"The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or to disparage others retained by the people."
The Constitution is written in clear and concise English and means what it says. The Bill of Rights, especially.
The meaning is stunningly obvious to any literate person all down the line. The people are acknowledged the sea of all their natural rights, while the government is strictly confined to a tiny island of powers. If there's a question, the 9th and 10th amendments mean we shall err on the side of the people's rights and against the government's powers. A pinch of treaty-making here, a
dash of voting right there, and we're cooked. That's it. So if millions of Americans read the Constitution tomorrow, they would "disenfranchise" the government the day after that.
So there we are,
again, it isn't rocket science. When a document says "A" and the Supreme Court says the document says "Not-A", the document says "A". Case closed. The people are the ultimate authority of what the Constitution is and means. [The Supremes have said all those items in the table are constitutional; they're either lying or illiterate... possibly both. But they are wrong.] Unless we know the rules and insist on them, unless we exercise our natural rights against the state, the state will ignore them. Regarding our current issue:
The "Patient Protection and Health Care Affordability Act" is unconstitutional, obviously.
A number of states are mounting a 10th Amendment challenge to O-Slammer-Care, on narrow Constitutional grounds.
Republicans are no more in favor of the Constitution than Democrats, especially during manufactured-war time.
Interestingly, by launching the Constitutional challenge to O-Slammer-Care, Republicans may well open Pandora's box... people will insist on repeal of 95-99% of the federal government and an end to full employment for trillionaire central bankers.
Which may effect, by unanticipated means, the Jeffersonian revolution—a refreshing of the Tree of Liberty—"the people" have been working for for quite some time.
One can only hope.
Before I wind up, I want to refer once again to an excellent column written by Robert Greenslade, that I cribbed essentially verbatim into my own column, when it came to me last summer. In that article, Greenslade lays to rest, in succinct detail, every one of the standard arguments that occasionally the feds feel compelled to make that their actions are Constitutional.[3] It's brilliant and timely.
Let's create a movement!
Seriously, the conversations I had with Robert Jones along with the reading of his brief manifesto—I do wish he'd have included an index, plus a brief discussion of the concept of "federalization" (the applicability of a right or power from the federal law
to the state law: for example, the fed law extends that the states cannot violate freedom of speech... I think)—lead me to think a simple Restore the Constitution movement of private citizens is in order.
Irrespective of any existing political parties, e.g. the Libertarians or the Constitutionalists.
Take it national through the government schools. Now that's a revolutionary concept! In any case, just as the Kennedy administration —no, I'm not proposing this be accomplished via government—had
a national physical fitness program for teenage school children, we can have a national movement for people from all walks of life to push the Constitution: reading clubs, discussion clubs, prizes for the number of laws identified that violate the sacred document, etc.
Bringing us together.
If someone were to launch such a program through sophisticated marketing and presentation technology, I have no doubt within five years we would be on the way to every American knowing the Constitution and applying it consistently... leading to small government and liberty. Then, instead of people blithely accepting, say, O-Slammer's program "to detain indefinitely without charge and without notification anyone he feels is a threat," the president would be tried and convicted of treason within two weeks, and sent frog-stepping to Leavenworth in chains and an orange jump suit. And traitors like his predecessors would not be at large, either.
In my book the Sacred Nonaggression Principle, Chapter 4, I identify the Barrier Cloud, which is an impediment to general human liberty caused by external and internal forces. The internal cause is an immature brain structure (the limbic system) that does not properly question authority.
My sense now is a National Constitution Reading movement may be just the perfect strategy for challenging and eventually undoing the internal cause of the Barrier Cloud. Many of us who are more radically libertarian—I tend, myself, toward the Lysander Spooner humanist-anarchist
argument —would nonetheless be elated should authoritarian government be arrested by an aroused citizenry and confined to the Constitution as written.
For just about everyone else, the Constitution is at least a familiar idea, like a friend you haven't talked to in a while. As it became clear that America's salvation (we could get jobs and live decently, not aggressing upon others) would ensue from the Constitution's rigorous exercise, what could be more natural... The Constitution is the perfect tonic, the magic pill, that can save our country and our world.
But we have to take it (read it, push it) quickly and en masse; time is definitely running out.
[1] My friend later added:
"In this writer's opinion Obamacare has become necessary to move toward the fairness and justice warranted in our health care system. Without government intervention, the misnomered "freedom" laced into our private health insurance industry would continue rip off the average consumer and condemn the less fortunate, innocent children and all, to third-world quality care. I for one find this unacceptable... and I don't see a free market solution in any of our lifetimes."
[2]
The federal income tax as written in the statutes and coded in the regulations is not a direct tax (and has never been held by the courts to be one); as such it does not apply to earnings that are not federally privileged. But if you work for the federal government or a federal corporation, it is a constitutional tax that you are legally required to pay. For more information: Cracking the Code: The fascinating truth about taxation in America, by Pete Hendrickson. His Website is losthorizons.com.
[3]
Rarely do the federales even deign to talk about the constitutionality of the acts they inflict on what they regard as their slaves and/or livestock. Maybe you get a "necessary and proper" mantra out of them and a direction to staff.
A continuation on last Monday's piece following 
With O-Slammer-Care, like any government system, you don't get the "No" option. So get in line for a FEMA internment camp near you. I mean, does it bother you at all that O-Slammer has announced he can incarcerate anyone at will and throw away the key? That was in the context of "terrorists," but he means, basically, people like me. [Not so much you, yet, because people like you are doing such a great job selling the idea of 'cooperation.' But, believe me, the iron fist in the velvet glove will get around to you....]
