Mandatory Microchipping of Civilians in the Obamacare Bill (…or… not?)

by Scott Creighton

***UPDATE*** Looks like I may have read over this a bit too quickly yesterday. Sorry. I don’t usually do that before posting. a reader, John L. pointed out that this may very well just describe tighter control over the registration and monitoring of implantable devices such as pace-makers, morphine drips, and so on, and on a closer inspection I concede he may be onto something. The fact is the “data” mentioned in this bill seems to refer to data collected ABOUT the devices, not BY them or IMPLANTABLE DATA STORAGE devices. I will continue to look into it but at this point it does look like John L is correct.

Did Obama Sandbag His Own Health Care Bill?

by David Michael Green, Information Clearinghouse

…So Obama and the Democrats – the alleged party of the people, mind you, as opposed to those Wall Street hacks in the GOP – wrote a bill that takes a system whose fundamental flaw is the profitization of human beings’ most intimate and core vulnerabilities, and they exacerbated that problem, literally forcing tens of millions of Americans to buy a grossly flawed private product they probably don’t want, under peril of government-imposed penalty. If the great governance theme of our historical epoch is, as I believe it to be, the capture of the state for purposes of private enrichment, there can be no greater example than this bill. No longer content with simply using the state to aggregate the wealth of working people to facilitate its easy transfer to elites, this bill marks a frightening step further. Here we have corporate interests using the state (again, under the control of the nominal people’s party, no less) to now engage in coercive ‘marketing’ on their behalf. A big and bold line has been crossed with this legislation, and it does not bode well for the future. Welcome to our brave new world.

[read the rest, here]

How the Corporations Broke Ralph Nader and America, Too

(As the Wikileaks story is already being relegated to the “yesterdays news” back pages, less than 24 hours after it broke, Chris Hedges writes about how the media, the republicans, and the democrats all actively conspire to turn this nation over to the corporations and the bankers by deliberately undermining real investigative journalism in America. We are left with TV talking points like “Nader cost us the election” and “support the troops” while real stories, important stories are shown the light of day for a second, then swept down the memory hole.)

by Chris Hedges, Information Clearinghouse

Nader’s descent from being one of the most respected and powerful men in the country to being a pariah illustrates the totality of the corporate coup. Nader’s marginalization was not accidental. It was orchestrated to thwart the legislation that Nader and his allies—who once consisted of many in the Democratic Party—enacted to prevent corporate abuse, fraud and control. He was targeted to be destroyed. And by the time he was shut out of the political process with the election of Ronald Reagan, the government was in the hands of corporations. Nader’s fate mirrors our own.