Clinton seizes health care wave, and 'Ground Zero'

Oh please. Hillary gets more money from the insurance and pharaceutical industries than almost anyone else in Congress. If you think she is going to turn on her benefactors you are nuts.

She may get money from them, but that's irrelevant. The train is rolling on this issue. It is unconscionable that we can give $800 billion taxpayer dollars so far to the Iraqis via the war...and powerful Iraqis are making billions off us in this war, just like Halliburton and Blackwater execs...yet leave
50 million people here without basic health insurance.Do we really believe Iraqis are more deserving of our money than we American citizens are?

And there is no reason the insurance industry can't participate. Most Americans would likely favor a program which offers middle
class participants grants and/or tax breaks to enable them to purchase private insurance. That's certainly what I would choose were I uninsured. Less stigmatizing and there is a feeling of control that one
doesn't get with a Medicaid or Medicare card.

Hillary was incapable of getting universal health care passed when we had a Democratic Congress and her husband was the president. Oh well, I suppose withholding sex from your husband isn't effective when he's off screwing around.

Helena, Bush and the GOP have proposed tax breaks and other incentives for folks purchasing private health insurance. The Demoncrats keep blocking that though. They want taxpayer-funded health care. Another boondoggle.

Helena

You are fooling yourself. The reason the Clinton machine is so good at raising money is that the contributors know their contributions will be remembered. Clinton won't do anything the insurance industry doesn't want her to do. Period.

[quote]
Helena, Bush and the GOP have proposed tax breaks and other incentives for folks purchasing private health insurance. The Demoncrats keep blocking that though. They want taxpayer-funded health care. Another boondoggle.

Posted by: John D | October 4, 2007 11:24 AM
[/quote]

AND YOUR PROOF FOR THIS ALLEGATION IS???

Put up or shut up, "Joseph Stalin of Streamwood"!

Kids have health care. The needy already have health care. The U.S. is not a socialist state. The government caused the problem with health care in America by over socializing medicine to the extent it is not completive, and we want to exacerbate the problem? U.S. Capitalism refers to an economic system in which the means of production are all owned and operated for profit, and in which investments, distribution, income, production and pricing of goods and services are determined through the operation of a market economy. It is the right of individuals and groups of individuals acting as "legal persons" or corporations to trade capital goods, labor, land and money (see finance and credit). see http://www.InteliOrg.com/

Your first commenter says it all: the health insurance lobby, like other big business interests, has had a firm grip on everyone in higher office for decades, chiefly via campaign financing.

None of the politicians want to change campaign financing because that's how they got in. It's eroding our democracy. We have government of, by and for big business.

The best we'll see on health care is a little tinkering around the edges and Democrats are more likely to do that than Republicans.

"Go Hillary," I guess, said with limited enthusiasm . . .

Dr. Coles,

"U.S. Capitalism refers to an economic system in which the means of production are all owned and operated for profit, and in which investments, distribution, income, production and pricing of goods and services are determined through the operation of a market economy."

Please explain where in the Consitution you find any evidence of the statements you are making. "Capitalism" as a word hadn't even been invented when the Constitution was ratified, so obviously it is not used in the Constitution.

Also, let me know where the words market economy occur in the Constitution. You are falsely asserting that America was founded as a "capitalist" country. It was not.

Furthermore, the definition you referred to as "US Capitalism," is simply the definition for capitalism which, again, is not a term that is included in this nation's founding documents and not unique to America.

I like HIllary but all this is another burden that will put on the working man.

I've watched the ad, its truly inspiring knowing that only one central person has stood by 9-11 rescue workers for the past 6 years ensuring their health care needs are taken care of.

And as a former child covered by the "CHIPS" program which Hillary sponsored through the senate, I can honestly say that my single-working(teacher)-mother and I owe our financial stability and the reason I can afford college now to the low cost of the CHIPS health care.

Thank you Senator Clinton.

"EVERY MOTHER, DAUGHTER, SISTER, AND FEMALE ALIKE SHOULD MAKE SURE THEY VOTE HILLARY" OTHERWISE WE LOSE!

THEY SAY THE BIBLE WAS WRITTEN IN A PARAPHRASE, SO GET OUT THERE AND REGISTER TO VOTE, AND VOTE. DEFY YOUR HUSBANDS AND BOYFRIENDS AND FAMILY AND JUST VOTE!

IF YOU DON'T, WELL THEN AGAIN IT WAS WRITTEN IN A PARAPHRASE!

* * * * *

Posted by: Distrust and Verify | October 4, 2007 1:42 PM

I am sorry that I must disagree with your criticism of Dr. Coles’ statement(s) regarding capitalism and the United States Constitution. You are correct in observing that the Constitution does not explicitly protect or enshrine “capitalism” or a “market economy,” free or otherwise. However, the Constitution protects rights that form the foundation of both capitalism and the free market in a manner that is antithetical to socialism and other, anti-market philosophies.

Consider first the substantial protection of property rights explicitly set forth in the text of the Constitution. This is significant, of course, because the right to acquire, possess and dispose of private property forms the bedrock of both capitalism and the free market system. In particular, the Fifth Amendment explicitly prohibits the taking of a person’s life, liberty or property without due process of law, as well as the taking of property for public use without just compensation. These personal, constitutional guarantees insure that property rights are preserved except in the case of a civil or criminal debt owed, and a judgment or ruling rendered fairly, and that no individual can be forced to bear a disproportionate share of the public need through the sacrifice of his/her property.

Other explicit provisions in the Constitution serve the same purpose. The Sections 9 and 10 of Article I, explicitly prohibit the passage of bills of attainder or ex post facto laws, through which the British Parliament had been known to arbitrarily confiscate and forfeit the estates and property of disfavored individuals. The same is true of the prohibitions in Section 10 against State laws “impairing the Obligation of Contracts” – inasmuch as contracts remain one of the primary means through which individuals, in the exercise of liberty, may acquire property. The same is also true of the 3rd and 4th Amendments, which prohibit, respectively, the misappropriation of the homes of citizens, in peacetime, to house soldiers – and the unreasonable search for, and seizure of, real and personal property.

Two more somewhat obscure portions of the Constitution have also been construed as protecting the individual’s right to possess property from unreasonable governmental interference or confiscation. These consist of the “privileges and immunities” clauses of Article IV, Section 2, and Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment. The rights protected by the “privilege and immunities” clauses include “the right of a citizen of one state to pass into any other state of the Union for the purpose of engaging in lawful commerce, trade, or business without molestation; to acquire personal property; to take and hold real estate; to maintain actions in the courts of the state; and to be exempt from any higher taxes or excises than are imposed by the state upon its own citizens.” (From Ward v. Maryland, 79 U.S. (12 Wall.) 418, 430 (1870); and see Corfield v. Coryell, 6 F. Cas. 546, 551-52 (No. 3,230) (CCED Pa. 1825), and Saenz v. Roe, et al. 526 U.S. 489, 522-27 (1998) (Thomas, J. Dissenting.).)

Not only does the Constitution protect the right to acquire, possess and dispose of property, it also functions to guarantee another pillar of free market intercourse, to wit: that uniform commercial regulations provide free and equal commercial access, and prohibit State obstruction of foreign and interstate commerce. That was the explicit purpose of granting Congress the power “regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes” (Art. I, Sec. 8, Cl. 3), and the prohibitions against taxation by the states on foreign commerce (Ibid, Sec. 10; and see Wardair Canada v. Florida Dept. Of Revenue, 477 U.S. 1, 7-8 (1986).

So, no, the Constitution does not explicitly protect “capitalism” or a “market economy” of any sort, but it protects the fundamental building blocks of both. Citizens with the right to acquire, possess and dispose of property, as well as free access to engage in commercial intercourse can create Capitalism and a free market. And they have. Thus, in a more general sense, the Constitution does, in fact, protect capitalism and a free market economy.

Affording protection to these interests is also inimical to socialism – which functions on collectivization of people and their property – as well as basis in a centralized, command economy. That private property and collectivization are totally foreign to one another, or that a command economy is alien to a market economy, are both too amply shown by history and common sense to require much discussion.

So there.

BC,

Proof:

http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:ZYFfUcpcEswJ:www.aei.org/docLib/20070907_22127HPO_11Dowd_g.pdf+Health+INsurance+Tax+Credit+2007+Bush&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=4&gl=us

I guess there is one thing Hillary forgot to mention in the ad: It was husband's incomptance or pre-occupation with other matters that led to 9-11 in the first place.

I guess old Hillary forgot to mention in her ad that it was husbands lack of focus of his incompetency that lead to the events of 9-11. He had other things on his mind.

The real problem with health care in America today is Insurance companies. Anytime you have a bureaucracy as the middle man the consumer ends up paying and paying and paying. Now Hillary wants the government to be the main check writer? Who, in their right mind actually believes this scenario will lead to lower health care costs?

Obama will never get any headway with Clinton. Her team is just too good. Much as the Obama and Edwards supporter hate it, there is no question that Clinton IS the inevitable Democratic candidate and will be the first female US president.