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Wednesday, August 13, 2003 |
3 QUOTES OF THE DAY
"We are a nation in which every criminal has the right to a lawyer, yet we don't feel every sick person has the right to a doctor,"
- - Jocelyn Elders
Private insurers add little to healthcare except waste, paperwork, marketing and advertising costs, profits, high executive salaries and sales commissions. Insurance firms don't heal or treat the sick, but they soak up huge amounts of resources that should go to treatment. Our country is already paying for national healthcare; we're just not getting it. Other Democratic presidential candidates propose tinkering with a flawed, bureaucratic system dominated by private insurance. But incremental changes haven't gotten our country anywhere close to universal coverage. As thousands of physicians are telling us, National Health Insurance is the cost-effective solution."
- - Rep. Dennis Kucinich, 8/12/03
"My plan is not reform. If you want to totally change the healthcare system, I'm not your guy."
- - Howard Dean (New York Times, July 30)
KNOW YOUR HISTORY - AUGUST 13th
1963 - - In Saigon, South Vietnam, a 67 year-old Buddhist monk protests war by burning himself to death.
RHINO HERE:
I didn't vote for Bill Clinton in '96 for two reasons: 1) Cause he chickened out on getting national health care done despite the profit loving health care industry's manipulating lobby, & 2) cause he whimped out by firing Jocelyn Elders.
Bio of Jocelyn Elders
http://www.africanpubs.com/Apps/bios/0772EldersJoycelyn.asp?pic=none
Most of the Democratic Presidential hopefuls are talking about health care but only one has the gumption to advocate a single-payer National Health Insurance; Dennis Kucinich. On Tuesday a new proposal was unveiled for single-payer National Health Insurance, with endorsements by thousands of physicians,including former Surgeon Generals & hundreds of med school deans & professors. It's published in JAMA; The Journal of the American Medical Association.
Proposal of the Physicians' Working Group for Single-Payer National Health Insurance
http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/290/6/798
In response to the proposal, Dennis Kucinich, who's made National Health Insurance a centerpiece of his campaign, issued the QUOTE OF THE DAY statement printed above. Last Sunday, Kucinich was on CNN's Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer and once again reminded me why I love this guy.
I've excerpted his CNN comments for today's RHINO'S BOTTOM LINE, which is a bit longer than usual since I couldn't find the complete transcript online. When is the media gonna give him the respect he deserves?
7:19:45 AM 
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Dennis Kucinich on CNN's LATE EDITION with Wolf Blitzer, Sunday 8/10/03 (Excerpted)
...BLITZER: ...I'd like to get your assessment of what's happening in California, because, as you know, political trends that often start in California spread around the country, including Ohio, among other places. What is your read on this recall? Do you hope that Governor Davis is going to be recalled?
KUCINICH: Well, I do not support the recall. I think the recall is destructive. It is going to cost California heavily. It is going to cost them not only in their bond rating but in the distraction from the major concerns which Californians have. I mean, look at it this way. California got into economic trouble, among other reasons, because of the Bush-Enron corruption, which resulted in energy prices going through the roof. So Gray Davis, in effect, is paying for George Bush's sins. We need to have some stability in all governments, and I think that we also need to know what the truth is about how California got into this situation in which it is. And I don't think that anyone can lay that squarely in Gray Davis's lap.
BLITZER: Well, when you say corruption, Bush-Cheney corruption, are you accusing the president and the vice president of the United States of being corrupt, in terms of the problems that Enron had?
KUCINICH: Absolutely I am. There's no question that this administration was in bed with Ken Lay. They've covered up all the meetings that deal with energy policy. They allowed Enron, to in effect, run the energy policy of this country, to be able to grow and grow, to capture wholesale markets, to put the country in a position -- and California particularly -- where the cost of electricity went up by a factor of four and five.
California hard to borrow money to pay the electric bill. California still remains in trouble because of Enron. You know what? We never had a chance to talk about Enron in the last election because the administration knew it was in trouble, they shifted the discussion to war. And now we find out there was no basis to go to war...
...BLITZER: ...Does the end, getting rid of Saddam Hussein, his Baath Party, the Saddam Fedayeen, all the elements that tyrannized Iraq for so many decades, doesn't that justify the means?
KUCINICH: Is it worth 259 American lives? No. As a matter of fact, we have to recognize that this administration took this country to war saying that there was an imminent threat and that Iraq had nuclear capability. That has proven to be a lie. They didn't take us into war in order to create regime change, because if that's the policy of this country, we're going to be very busy looking at regime change in North Korea, in Iran, in Syria and any place this administration feels it ought to. We have to work with the world community in order to achieve international security, and that's where the mistake was made. We should have worked with the United Nations, we should have continued the weapons inspections. And it's unfortunate, the administration took us into war, and now they're changing the reason why we went to war. They didn't take us into war so that we could get rid of Saddam Hussein, they took us in to get rid of nuclear weapons.
BLITZER: Let me ask you about a novel proposal you came up with the other day, a creation of a Department of Peace here in Washington. Among other things, you write this, you said, "Of peace, wherein we all may tap the infinite capabilities of humanity to transform consciousness and conditions that impel or compel violence at a personal, group or national level, toward creating understanding, compassion and love." What are you proposing, actually, by calling for the creation of a department, a federal bureaucracy of peace?
KUCINICH: Well, the same thing that Martin Luther King was talking about years ago when he talked about making nonviolence an organizing principle in our society, to create programs where we teach our children peace-giving and peace-sharing and mutuality and identifying the other person as oneself, where we learn that violence isn't inevitable. We look at the challenges of domestic violence, spousal abuse, child abuse, gangs in the schools, the problems that exist in racial violence, violence against gays. I mean, our society has potential to evolve, and I think people want a leader who recognizes the power the American people have to continue this challenge we were given by our founders to create a more perfect union.
On an international level, the Department of Peace aspires to work with the world community to get away from war, to make war archaic. We have to believe in our capacity to create a world which has the ability to survive. And I'll tell you, Wolf, policies of unilateralism, preemption, of nuclear first-strike, building new nuclear weapons, putting weapons in space, building missile shields that contemplate World War III, take us away from the kind of peace which the American people are ready for. We can achieve peace working with the world community, cooperating internationally. The Department of Peace built on a vision of people who for the longest time have believed that America has this great capacity to be able to not only improve itself, but to take us in a direction that's sustainable.
BLITZER: Congressman Dennis Kucinich wants to be president of the United States. We'll continue to cover your campaign. Congressman, thanks so much for joining us.
KUCINICH: Thank you very much, Wolf.
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6:29:36 AM
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© Copyright 2005 Gary Rhine.
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