1st Issue – Page 3 – Suspicious Angels

Profiteers vs Patients: The Two Faces of US Healthcare

April 3, 2023April 6, 2023 Suspicious Angels Leave a comment

Hospital Bill

It’s a country where more than 355,000 people die every year from untreated health problems. 14% are regularly denied medical care because of an unpaid bill, often less than $100. 34 million have friends or family members who died because they could not afford medical care. Unbelievably, it also happens to be the richest country in the world. It’s the U.S. where life expectancy is the lowest of all the advanced economies of the world. Despite a $4.3 trillion price tag, the U.S. healthcare system never fails to disappoint. Unregulated and privatized, healthcare in the U.S. takes its toll on virtually every American. Who’s guarding the hen house?

Government regulators are rewarded with lucrative job offers if they look the other way and they do. It’s a system where the winners are few and handsomely rewarded and the losers are everybody else forced to make do with an industry that puts profits ahead of patients. Only those with a strong stomach should read “Profiteers vs Patients: The Two Faces of US Healthcare.”

A Battle for the Ages: Antiwar Protestors Meet the U.S. War Machine

March 8, 2023March 8, 2023 Suspicious Angels Leave a comment

The Peace In Ukraine

Do antiwar protests prevent or stop U.S military actions all over the world? A hard question to answer. Although demonstrations and protests have accompanied every U.S. war in the 20^th and 21^st centuries, their success as a change agent is mixed. Demonstrations and rallies accompanied every phase of the Vietnam war. But it took over a decade of a losing war and a shattered presidency to make Congress turn off the money spigot financing the war. History repeated itself almost four decades later in 2003, when worldwide protests [between January 3 and April 12, 2003, 36 million people across the globe took part in almost 3,000 protests] against the Iraq war failed to stop the US and its European vassal states from invading Iraq. That wasn’t the end of the story. Ten years and another war hawk president later,

Congress finally showed a spark of gumption and refused to authorize President Obama’s war plans for Syria. History teaches us that the value of antiwar protests may lie in their power to finally get leaders to reject the myth of America as the rightful hegemon. Calling out the U.S. war machine in public protests may be only way to a saner, safer America. For all who hold out hope that the US will turn from its wanton ways, check out “A Battle for the Ages: Antiwar Protestors Meet the US War Machine.”

The Sky Isn’t Falling Henny-Penny, the Democrats Are

February 13, 2023February 13, 2023 Suspicious Angels Leave a comment

Falling Sky

Ever wonder where the progressive dems went? Here what one of their stalwart leaders proclaimed in 2020 —“In any other country, Joe Biden and I would not be in the same party, but in America, we are.” [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez]. It didn’t take her long to recant. A few months later —”we are united behind Hakeem Jeffries” [Joe Biden’s soulmate]. There will be no defections…”. The progressive caucus had previously vowed that they would vigorously oppose Jeffries speakership bid. Of course, they didn’t. it turned out that all Speaker Pelosi had to do was raise an eyebrow and the chickens went obediently back to their cages. Should we be surprised that not one brave soul was willing to risk Nancy Pelosi’s ire by withholding votes on her Speakership unless she committed to bringing Medicare-for-All to a vote. It only needed five nay votes to set party leadership back on their heels. Although the gambit had a lot of popular support among progressive democratic voters, it was viewed as a personal career-killer by House Dems. The misnamed members of the House progressive caucus voted in a solid block of yeahs to elect Pelosi without getting anything in return. Contrast that with the MO of 20 right-leaning Republicans two years later when they played political hardball to accomplish their goals. They knew that threatening to withhold their votes for McCarthy’s Speakership bid was a powerful weapon. Did it work? It took fourteen rounds of voting but ultimately they prevailed. Just shows the power of leverage. How weak and spineless the party that promised the people solutions to the financial problems crushing them and delivered instead to the usual suspects, the party leadership and their stable of rich and soulless donors. Democratic progressives should ditch their whining and excuse-making and admit they missed a singular opportunity to make their presence felt. Time to get real and take a leaf from the Freedom Caucus playbook. Maybe the fly in the ointment is that Progressives are beholden to the same gang of rich backer as Pelosi and her hangers-on. Read The Sky Isn’t Falling Henny-Penny, the Democrats Are and draw your own conclusions.

The “Gift” that Never Stops Taking —U.S. Healthcare Profiteers Racking in the Dough

January 5, 2023January 5, 2023 Suspicious Angels Leave a comment

US Medical Costs

Hope may spring eternal but some things are guaranteed never to change. Add to the list of inevitables like death and taxes, the one-of-a-kind American corporate, profit-obsessed healthcare industry. Did I say industry? Right, that’s what it has become. Gone are the trappings of what used to be called the healing profession that came complete with the committed doctor who made house calls. In its place, the U.S. government has allowed a cabal of profit and non-profit operators to make healthcare a colossus rivaling in power and profit other industrial behemoths in defense, tech and energy. Which brings us to the heart of the dilemma confronting the American people. What do you do when you live in a rich country that can afford to lavish oodles of dough on one of the most corrupt countries in Europe but can’t afford a national health care system that would restore healthcare to its original calling and provide a cost-effective solution to the millions without insurance or healthcare, others who go bankrupt even with insurance from sky-high medical bills and saddest of all the women and their infants who die in childbirth because they cannot afford medical care. The answer of the American public is a general sense of apathy and disinterest. A recent effort to “force the vote” which in 2020 called on what passes for democratic progressives in the House of Representatives to withhold their vote on Nancy Pelosi’s bid for the Speakership (the speaker is second line to replace the president) until she agreed to bring a Medicare-for-all proposal up for a floor vote. They didn’t and she didn’t. Business as usual in the swamp that U.S. politics has become. Has people power become obsolete in a corporate controlled oligarchy? The answer may be found in a little-noticed but powerful signal coming out of the election results in Oregon. Check out The Gift That Never Stops Taking — U.S. Healthcare Profiteers Racking in the Dough and you decide.

Big Pharma’s Latest Get Rich Quicker Scheme

November 11, 2022November 11, 2022 Suspicious Angels Leave a comment

Vaccine Capitalism

Who among us can forget the last two years as we cowered in our homes shunning contact with friends, neighbors, even relatives. When we dared open our doors, we were sheathed in masks, many of us went the final mile and donned gloves. “Social distancing” kept us isolated. What happened to our kids was equally damaging to their psyche. Their schools were shut down and education became a haphazard system of “remote” learning, which is to say very remote and very little learning. The usually docile servant of the establishment finally spoke out — “The Pandemic Erased Two Decades of Progress in Math and Reading” [NYT, 9/1/2022] even though of the over one million Americans who died of Covid, an infinitesimal percentage were children (1,332) and less than 2% of them needed to be hospitalized. Yet despite being the least likely to suffer serious illness or die, children were subject to the same restrictions as the elderly who were the most likely to die. Fast forward one year and the chickens are coming home to roost. The pandemic lockdown, including mask mandates, social distancing and lack of exposure to germs, a guaranteed immune booster, have left millions of children unusually vulnerable to early-onset RSV. “Where these infections might have been spread out over time, they’re happening all at once now,” [Céline Gounder, a senior fellow at the Kaiser Family Foundation and infectious-disease specialist]. If you’re finding it hard to believe such stupidity (and cupidity), read “Big Pharma’s Latest Get Rich Quicker Scheme” and see up close and personal how greed rules the healthcare system of the exceptional nation.

Now You See It, Now You Don’t: The Biden Student Debt Forgiveness Scam

September 18, 2022September 18, 2022 Suspicious Angels Leave a comment

1.5 Trillion Hole

Let’s say you’re a high school senior looking forward to beginning your college career.

Warning: the caution lights are flashing red. The American post-secondary education system is in shambles extracting what often turns out to be a lifetime of indentured servitude for more than half (55%) of bachelor’s degree recipients (2020). Don’t believe me? At this very moment, 15% of all American adults report they still have outstanding undergraduate student debt. Student loans now outpace auto loans by close to half a trillion dollars ($412 billion). In fact, student loan debt is second only to mortgage debt. Why so much debt? It’s not just our own government, add in the private sector, the financial community getting rich off the misery of young Americans and then there’s rapacious colleges both public and private. Over the past twenty years the average tuition at public colleges and universities has risen 144%, many times greater than the rate of inflation. The easy availability of student loans has sparked a veritable gold rush— college presidents being paid like corporate CEOs, senior administrators living high off the hog, expensive vanity building projects, and football and basketball coaches making off with multi-million-dollar salaries. Like the football coach at the University of Alabama who will make $10 million this year. The worst obscenity of all — forgiving student debt won’t cost the average American one cent in extra taxes. The same can’t be said for the $64 billion dollars going to Ukraine, most of which will land in the coffers of U.S. defense contractors and Ukraine oligarchs. Don’t think students deserve a debt jubilee? Read Now You See It, Now You Don’t: The Biden Student Debt Forgiveness Scam and maybe you’ll change your mind.

Plague on Your House

August 29, 2022August 29, 2022 Suspicious Angels Leave a comment

People Over Profits

All hail the healthcare industry taking its place alongside big oil, big tech, slimy defense contractors and big banks as the oligarchic masters of the U.S. empire. If you thought America was the world’s greatest democracy, a revelation awaits. If, in fact, America was ever a democracy (the jury is still out), all traces of it went out with girdles and phone booths. If you still cling to your high school fantasies of living in the greatest democracy the world has ever produced, get a load of this —“Functioning democracy means that there’s a correlation between the will of the people and the policies that affect them… [The US] may call itself democratic, but in essence, it’s an oligarchy.” With oligarchy comes income inequality — tons of it. America now leads the advanced economies that make up the G7 in the inequality sweeps. You know where you’ll find lots of it? In healthcare where one hundred million people struggle with medical debt, 41% of all American adults. While the suffering among the people intensifies, there’s good news for healthcare oligarchs —the CEOs of 178 health care companies collectively made $3.2 billion in 2020, 31% more than in 2019. During the same period, millions of people were suffering and dying from COVID. You need a strong stomach to handle this —in 2020, the ratio of CEO-to-typical-worker compensation was a stunning 351-to-1. There’s more, much more about how economic inequality is deepening the class divide between the haves and the have-nots. Check out “Plague on Your House” for all the nauseating details.

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

July 11, 2022July 11, 2022 Suspicious Angels Leave a comment

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.

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

June 10, 2022June 10, 2022 Suspicious Angels Leave a comment

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.

Category: 1st Issue