They're all lies: Inflation spike, high drug prices to spur innovation, Medicare Advantage advantages, & more.
We are swimming upstream in a current of lies we have been told from our inception. My commitment is to dispel them over and over using every news cycle. We will slowly open minds.
Notes
Inflation & Supply Chain problems are failures of private-sector profiteering, not the government
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Big Pharma uses the patent system to rip us off. Example: Insulin costs $6 to make. We pay $300.
Worthwhile Reads
BAM! Chuck Todd busted in real-time twisting guest’s poll of youth participation in Election 2022
The two infrastructure bills may be a worse capitulation than the two Obamacare bills.
Notes
If we examine the numbers, in the aggregate, Americans are not faring very well. Our society does not afford most a secure existence. We are kept in a constant state of silent fear and worry about our personal economies. That feeling is enslaving and allows us to tolerate injustices of all kinds. It keeps us at each other’s throats as we make each other the banes of our problems. We were indoctrinated from birth to believe certain “truths” that were not truths at all. These lies were designed to be smoke and mirrors to keep us in check. When I saw the light I started my Independent Media operations intent on not asking when someone would wake us up but to be one of the alarm clocks doing so. We had an impactful “Ask Egberto Anything” today. We made headway in having a dialogue not just among the progressive choir but with the Right. This is essential. The battle is not between the Left and Right. That is a manufactured fight. It’s between right and wrong. It is between a small overbearing oligarchy and the rest of us.
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Inflation & Supply Chain problems are failures of private-sector profiteering, not the government
GOP and mainstream media would have you believe that the government is at fault for inflation and supply chain failures. It is private-sector greed.
60 Minutes did a piece on the supply chain disintegration that was very well done. Anyone who watched it must conclude that it is a failure of a profiteering private sector we should be used to by now.
On the inside, away from the politicians that try to blame it all on President Joe Biden, there is a circular firing squad." The truckers blame the terminals, the terminals blame the shippers, the retailers blame the truckers and the shippers," said 60 Minutes' Bill Whitaker. "How do you get that contentious group to sit at the table, stop pointing fingers, and actually clear out this backlog."
There is no real answer. Why? The 60 Minutes piece is clear. The corporatocracy profits from the pain of the American people.
This month, the world's largest shipping line, Maersk, reported record profits of $16 billion — up 68% from last year. The ocean carriers — most headquartered in Europe or Asia — say demand for cargo space keeps rising. ...
Rick Woldenberg: I'd estimate that the domestic lead time is 45 days. And that's unbelievably slow. Pony Express could have gotten it here faster.
Woldenberg told us he tried to avoid the backlog by placing his Christmas orders in May, only to hit a monumental snag in Chicago.
There was so much cargo at the rail yards that his containers got stuck at the bottom of a pile for nine weeks. He told us it was like having his toys held hostage. The kicker? The rail line charged him for "storage." This on top of paying $30,000 for a container from China, ten times what he paid last year.
Rick Woldenberg: If that were as bad as it was, that would still be horrible but it gets worse because we get penalized for storage. And that's where it becomes the theatre of the absurd. So, the $25,000 to $30,000 is the market gone berserk but penalties are a punishment that is unconscionable.
Bill Whitaker: So wait a minute your-- your cargo is being held up?
Rick Woldenberg: Right
Bill Whitaker: For nothing you have done wrong?
Rick Woldenberg: Correct
Bill Whitaker: You can't go pick it up?
Rick Woldenberg: Correct.
Bill Whitaker: But you have to pay for it to be stored?
Rick Woldenberg: Correct.
The private sector always wins in our corrupt system. They profit from their pricing power or their monopolies. And if they fail, the government, we-the-people bail them out. Yet, there is always hesitation in giving a pittance to we-the-people when in need.
If we are to succeed in getting middle-class-centric policies, we must enlighten our peers, friends, and families to the truth. Doing so increases the probability of inoculation from the propaganda that continues to have us voting against our interests.
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Big Pharma uses the patent system to rip us off. Example: Insulin costs $6 to make. We pay $300.
We allow Big Pharma to screw us. We pay for the initial research of the drugs, and then they rip us off when we need it.
Big Pharma is at it again. They are fighting with misleading ads against any attempt to negotiate drug prices. Ironically, most of these drugs are initially researched with taxpayer dollars. So ultimately, we pay twice for the same medication.
The insulin fiasco is deeper. It is a drug that should be cheap, but they continue to pilfer Americans through many crony capitalist tools. I wrote a blog post about this titled "The insulin story, a perfect example of corporations stealing the wealth of most of us" some time ago that is remarkably prescient.
While the insulin rip-off is one example, it occurs in every segment of our economy. Indentured servitude by the masses is the outcome if we continue on the current path.
Recently I blogged about the advent of the standalone emergency rooms using their pricing power and dubious practices to rip off Americans in an article titled "These stories show legalized theft, the reason we need Medicare for All" that everyone should read.
There is a basic tenet we must recognize in our economic system that the article "Why our economic system is designed to keep most people broke by robbing us legally"
Americans have got to wake up. They are playing on the willful ignorance of too many.
Worthwhile Reads
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BAM! Chuck Todd busted in real-time twisting guest’s poll of youth participation in Election 2022
This Chuck Todd interview is a real-time illustration of the mainstream media trying to influence an election with a narrative change.
This interview was one of the strangest ones I have heard from Chuck Todd. Why? It was one of the clearest demonstrations of the media trying to direct a narrative even with one who knows the actual report is saying otherwise in the interview.
One of the guest's, John Della Volpe's, topics discussed was a poll that talks about young people being depressed. But, nowhere did the guest talk about the depression affecting whether young people would vote or not.
Chuck Todd volunteered the mainstream media narrative that young people under 30 thus have no incentive to vote. The guest pushed back. He said like 2018; the exact opposite was what he was seeing.
That did not fit what Todd wanted to hear. So instead, he tried to guide the guest to his position unsuccessfully continuously.
The mainstream media continues to do these sorts of things. We know the corporatocracy pays them. They may know that a successful Biden agenda means slightly fewer profits for their benefactors. As such, they implicitly buy into the corporate narrative.
Ironically, Joe Biden recently called out the mainstream media for continuing the empty-shelves-supply-chain narrative even as shelves are stocked with products throughout the country.
The two infrastructure bills may be a worse capitulation than the two Obamacare bills.
We must have very long memories. I have seen this game before. And guess who has always won? I do not need to answer. Not human infrastructure.
The shenanigans by some Democrats about the Build Back Better human infrastructure bill are worse than the one played out for Obamacare. And those were not only bad but inhumane.
Few remember that just like the infrastructure bill had to be done in two pieces because of Democratic intransigence, so is the infrastructure bill. Yes, I said Democratic intransigence. Why? Democrats in both cases had the number and just not the will, desire, or morality to do the right thing.
I can still remember Joe Liebermann holding Obamacare hostage to get his way. It did not matter that his blackmail would hurt many and is responsible for the abysmal state of our healthcare system. Remember these headlines/articles?
Sadly, we have a repeat performance this time by two corporate shills, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. They are holding Build back Better hostage until they get their way. Sinema does not want to tax the parasitic rich, and Joe Manchin just does not care about his constituents. He neither wants family leave nor the expansion of Medicare.
Republicans are irrelevant. It is up to Democrats to govern. Lieberman, Manchin, and Sinema make governing more difficult than it should be.
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