Partners in Crime: The ‘Supremes’ Couldn’t Have Axed Roe Without Plenty of Help from Democrats

Biden and Abortion

An enraged public has been haunting the houses of Supreme Court Justices threatening mischief and mayhem. Conversely little attention has been paid to their democratic enablers. Are they getting away scot-free? Not if Suspicious Angels can help it. Have you heard the indignation and outrage coming from top democrats, the likes of Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and countless other democratic stalwarts? What they’d like you to forget is that several of those abortion-hating justices had plenty of help from their friends — presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden who promised to make Roe a federal law and didn’t, Nancy Pelosi and other leading congressional democrats expending a whole lot of energy to keep anti-abortion legislators in the House. To complete the perfidy, count on Bernie Sanders globe-trotting around the U.S. selling lefties out not for thirteen silver pieces but to preserve his place in the democratic hierarchy. In addition to their inaction on Roe, let us never forget their nearly 50-year history of authorizing the Hyde Amendment, a vicious law keeping abortion out of the reach of poor women. When all else fails, perhaps it’s time for some radical and extra-legal solutions. Suspicious Angels has you covered. Check us out in “Partners in Crime: The ‘Supremes’ Couldn’t Have Axed Roe Without Help from Democrats.

1,866 total views, no views today

Read More

What Happens if You’re Poor, Female and Black in the Richest Country in the World?

Time To Go

In the richest, most powerful country in the world, inequality touches every aspect of poor peoples’ lives. We all know that. But how many of us have stopped to think that 20 million American women, mainly Black and Latina, face an inequality that affects their right to control their bodies. That right, for one-quarter of women in the U.S. of child-bearing age, a little known but poisonous part of the US budgetary process has kept poor women from being able to afford an abortion. American women celebrated the passage of Roe v. Wade in 1973 making abortion obtainable. For three years it was also affordable. All that changed in 1976 when a bigot, Henry Hyde, slammed the abortion door shut on poor women. Forty-six years and four democratic presidents later, many of them blessed with democratic majority Congresses, the Hyde amendment continues to threaten the lives and prospects of poor women. Where is the voice of powerful women rights organizations like NARAL and Planned Parenthood? Enraged by a recent Supreme Court leaked draft opinion overturning Roe, these organizations and others mounted furious campaigns to express their displeasure and rake in oodles of money from women afraid their right to obtain an abortion will go away and leave them with the same choice (none) that poor women have had for forty-six years. On the Hyde Amendment, a chilling silence. Check out “What Happens If You’re Poor, Female and Black in the Richest Country in the World?” for all the dirty details.

3,770 total views, no views today

Read More

Patients on the Losing Side When Healthcare becomes Big Business

Privatizing Healthcare

In these days of “my way or the highway” corporate-captured authoritarian medicine, healthcare honchos call the shots. You have rights you are not told about including the right to communicate with your medical team prior to your surgery or other procedure in order to lead the parade when it comes to how you will be treated. It’s called informed consent. Most healthcare providers are not big fans. Most patients do not even know it exists. That’s the way the owners of U.S. healthcare (profit-making doctors’ practices, for-profit and non-profit hospitals, corporate-owned emergency rooms and ambulance services) like it. Talking to patients takes time away from a busy doctor’s ability to do his primary job — hauling in more revenue. Patients are trained to believe that the doctor knows best. The facts tell a different story. Medical errors (aka death by doctor) are the third leading cause of death in the U.S. Unlike the sellers of other products and services, the purveyors of healthcare have taken it upon themselves to dictate how you are treated with virtually no governmental oversight. Find out how Americans have surrendered hegemony over their body parts to healthcare corporate capitalists and why this is a catastrophic move in “Patients on the Losing End When Healthcare Becomes a Business

869 total views, 1 views today

Read More

The Road to National Healthcare Turns Out to be a Dead End

For Profit Healthcare

The United States is one of only two countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (highly industrialized advanced economies) that does not offer universal healthcare. The fallout from this omission is grave and costly. Ever wonder why the U.S. with only 5% of the world’s population has the highest number of both COVID cases and deaths? Start with the 89 million Americans who were under or uninsured as the pandemic hit. Add in the fact that one-third of COVID deaths (330,000) could be traced to the lack of health insurance and what you wind up with is a dysfunctional system that is the real threat to U.S. national security. With so many Americans sick and dying in a country without a robust universal healthcare system, how can anyone ever feel really safe? Shocking to think that the U.S. spends almost twice as much as its nearest competitor on healthcare ($4.1. trillion or almost 20% of GDP in 2019) yet the life expectancy of its people has declined 2% from 78.9 years in 2019 to 76.6 in 2021. Better to move to Sweden or Denmark and expect to live to 83. Even America’s BFF, the UK has a life expectancy of 81years. Want to know more about the difference in healthcare in America and the rest of the developed world and how it affects our calamitous COVID experience? Check out “The Road to National Healthcare Turns Out to be a Dead End.

403 total views, no views today

Read More

Let Them Eat Cake —The New American Way

Nary a peep of protest on the streets. No sign waving, no marching, no anything. Yet here we are on the crest of an 8.5% inflation tsunami. The statistics are mind-boggling —gas up 38%, beef up 20%, used cars up 40%, everything the American people buy: food, fuel, rent, clothing, up double digits. How about that summer vacation that you can’t afford to take or the visit to grandma that isn’t going to happen? The biggest burden falls on the 45 million students who are up to their eyeballs in debt beholden to crooked bankers, hedge fund sharpies and, would you believe it, their own government. What happened? $1.8 trillion owed by sixty-five percent of college graduates to the tune of almost $40,000 each.. Remember the crowds on the street protesting the Iraq war? It was young Americans who got the movement going. Back in the day, Vietnam protests were student generated. But forty-five million students in debt peonage don’t have the time or energy to protest. Stifling dissent is becoming the new American way. But curbing protest is not the only reason to hog tie students with huge debts. Profit has become a constitutional right for rich Americans. Banks raking in the dough of cash-strapped students. Defense contractors and their investors pocketing billions as the Biden administration prolongs the Ukraine war with more killing machines. The oil companies take a back seat to no one when it comes to thievery. Where are the government regulators when gas prices explode? Good question. Enough corruption in plain sight to start hundreds of mass protests. But the young people are no-shows trapped in a market-based higher education system that hands out rewards to providers at the expense of recipients. Maybe that’s why both Biden and Obama made campaign promises about debt cancellation and free public college that they had no intention of keeping. It’s not just the first amendment that’s on the verge of disappearing, there’s much, much more. In Let Them Eat Cake — The New American Way, we follow the money and discover the enormous profit center forty-five million Americans have become.

1,609 total views, no views today

Read More

Somebody Please Tell Twitter, Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon that the First Amendment is Not Optional

Big Tech Censorship

“The best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out.” [Oliver Wendell Holmes] That was then almost a century ago. This is now at a point where free speech and a free press (First Amendment, U.S. Constitution) have become optional, regulated by the nine billionaires who control all forms of media. You would think elected representatives, up to the president, would be all over corporate censorship of free speech, using the power of the bully pulpit to force them to cease and desist. The silence from Washington is ominous. A free ride for the corporate hacks who increasingly tell us what to believe and refuse to allow contrary ideas on their sites. They even brag about sharing their tyranny with their partners in crime, the government — “We have shared information about our analysis with law enforcement, policymakers and industry partners.” Count on it, none of the political cowards in the executive or legislative branches of government are going to go toe to toe with the corporate scoundrels that keep them on the gravy train. Want to know how we got here? Why the real answer to “bad” speech is more speech not less? Check out “Somebody Please Tell Twitter, Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon that the First Amendment is Not Optional.

875 total views, no views today

Read More

U.S. Hypocrisy and the War in Ukraine

Ukraine and U.S.

Not all refugees are equal in a world ruled by elites where incompetence, greed, and obeisance to wealth and power create calamitous conditions for the millions who are not wealthy or powerful. Along with their co-conspirators the mainstream media, the U.S. and its hand-maiden European countries would have you believe that there are two classes of refugees — the worthy and the unworthy [Noam Chomsky]. You can probably guess where the line of demarcation falls. On the worthy side, Europeans, in this case Ukrainians, majority white and with the patina of “civilized” stamped all over them. Here’s what’s in store for them as they flee home and country — “At the Polish border, guards hand out sandwiches to Ukrainians in waiting rooms. Polish citizens donate piles of toys and meet migrants with hot tea and free rides to where they need to go.” If you were both unworthy and fleeing war-torn Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya or Syria, you weren’t so lucky. As the bombs fell, and the refugee totals swelled, Hungarian Prime Minister Orbán announced that Hungary’s restrictive immigration policies would remain in place — [W]e aren’t going to let anyone in.” He’s not the only leader shaping his immigration policy to the skin color of refugees: “EU, fearful of refugee crisis, delays response on Afghan asylum.” [Aljazeera, 10/15/2021] Call it what you will — disgraceful, obscene, horrendous — chalk it up to the price extracted by one nation in particular whose dreams of a Pax Americana have spiraled down into a death grip on past glories fast slipping away. People all over the world are feeling the pain of that “grand delusion.” [John Mearscheimer] Check out what happens when racism determines the fate of millions in “U.S. Hypocrisy and the War in Ukraine.

709 total views, 1 views today

Read More

U.S. in the Crosshairs: Today an Empire, Tomorrow a Failed State

WAR

Being an empire is hard work. Trillion-dollar military budgets, multiple countries to invade, sanction and turn into wastelands. For decades, it has consumed the half-wits that design and carry out what is laughingly referred to as U.S. foreign policy. As the Russia/Ukraine fiasco captures the world’s attention, it’s important to understand how the U.S. with its long history of fomenting international discord has been a major part of the momentum bringing the world to this perilous moment. Since 1945 the U.S. has embraced military solutions to world problems. It hasn’t worked out well for the U.S. or the countries in its crosshairs. Greece and Italy were among the first victims and once the CIA got through interfering, both countries were safely in the hands of rich oligarchs in business and finance. In a pattern that would be repeated endlessly, the U.S. sent troops to Korea. Much more than a losing a war, the toll included three million Koreans, 38,000 Americans and a destroyed country. It happened again in Vietnam and more recently in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Somalia and Yemen, to name a few. Not that the U.S. with its impressive fire power hasn’t put a few in the win column. Solid victories in the Dominican Republic and Panama, two little countries with a combined population of just over six million and pathetically few military resources. How good is that? Nonetheless the U.S. keeps plugging along, alert to even an infinitesimal injury to its bloated self-worth. There’s lots more to talk about but little to brag about. For an unmatched tale of villainy and ignominy, check out U.S. in the Crosshairs: Today an Empire, Tomorrow a Failed State.

718 total views, no views today

Read More

To Shield Corporate Healthcare Crooks, US Anoints COVID the Lone Perp

Fix For US Healthcare

It’s the worst kept secret in the world. Even the clueless media have to come to grips with it.

Hospital Outsourcing Often Prioritizes Profit Over Patients. “[Texas A&M Today 8/20/2021];

 

“The Catastrophic Cost of Uninsurance: Covid-19 Cases And Deaths Closely Tied To America’s Health Coverage Gaps” [Families USA 3/4/20210];

“Push for Profits Left Nursing Homes Struggling to Provide Care” [The New York Times 5/7/2020];

The invasion of private equity and other corporate criminals into the health industry has put a deteriorating healthcare system on life support. COVID made a bad situation a shit show. With only 5% of the world’s population and the biggest healthcare budget in the world, the U.S. is also first in the number of COVID cases and deaths. It’s clear that COVID isn’t the only perp. Could part of the answer be the 89 million uninsured or underinsured Americans that have been victimized by corporate honchos chasing profits? Or does it come down to a $4 trillion healthcare market, 20% of U.S. GDP, that has motivated a corporate gold rush? With 24% of hospitals under private ownership, more than half of emergency room physicians working for private, profit-making companies, 70% of nursing homes and 47% of doctors’ practices owned by private companies, America’s healthcare woes began long before COVID and will outlast it. Want to know how America’s healthcare grifters sacrifice people to profits and spin fairy tales to hide it? Check out “To Shield Corporate Healthcare Crooks, U.S. Anoints Covid the Lone Perp

488 total views, no views today

Read More

For-Profit Healthcare Meets the Pandemic and Collapses

Single Payer Now

Although the U.S. has less than 5% of the world’s population, U.S. COVID cases currently (as of Jan. 18, 2021) comprise a staggering 20% of world-wide COVID cases and 15% of the world’s COVID deaths. How is that possible? It boils down to one big lack —a national single payer health care system (aka Medicare-for-all). Instead America has a for-profit healthcare industry focused on private gain not public health. The evidence is everywhere you look whether it’s the contradictory messaging coming out of government health agencies, stumbling and bumbling progress in acquiring needed equipment and supplies and the specter of all segments of the medical industrial complex from providers to institutions trying to make a quick buck off the backs of desperate Americans. How could single payer healthcare surmount these obstacles? First and foremost, end the reign of the private health insurance industry where faceless bureaucrats hold the power of life or death over their customers by denying treatment or medication. End those punishing premiums, deductibles and copays that make health insurance unaffordable for a vast number of Americans. End employees’ fear that losing their jobs will cut off their families’ access to medical care. End those narrow provider networks which rob people of the freedom to choose a provider or facility. Between for-profit medical care and rampaging COVID, it’s been a bleak winter in the U.S. To those of you who shake your heads in frustration or bow them in resignation, check out “For-Profit Healthcare Meets the Pandemic and Collapses” and prepare to be dumbfounded at how deep the rot in for-profit medicine goes.

943 total views, 1 views today

Read More