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Introduction: This article / short-essay below is indirectly about how the current September 2017 push by a hastily formed cabal of far-right conservative Senators in the US Congress are using their latest attempt to destroy “Obamacare,” aka the Affordable Care Act, and cause more suffering and death among their constituents who apparently stupidly keep re-electing these constituent-killers to office.
A few hours past midnight 9/19/2017 I posted the short-essay that follow this preface and introduction to California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom. He arguably was the inventor or co-inventor and certainly was the prime accelerator of the eventual nation-wide to adopt same-sex marriage in the USA. He started this state-by-stated same-sex marriage rights “ball” rolling when in 2004 he, as Mayor of San Francisco and the SF Board of Supervisors authorized those marriages in the City and County of San Francisco and he and they helped perform those marriages, albeit if only for a few months until the state and/or federal government “stepped in” to call them illegal and halt them.
He was Mayor of San Francisco for two terms, 2003-2010. At this writing Newsom, in his 50s, has been California Governor Jerry Brown Jr.’s Lt. Governor for the last 7.5 years, 2010-2017. Meanwhile Gov. Brown Jr., in his 70s, has served an unprecedented 3rd and 4th term these same 7.5 years as California’s governor. Newsom, with not even 1/10-th Gov. Brown’s in-service knowledge and experience, is considered Brown’s “protoge” and will be running as a Democrat for Brown’s Governor job this year and in 2018. At this writing he has no opposition from a California Green Party candidate for governor.
The Gist: After 8 hours reflection on what I wrote in the early morning hours of Sept. 20, the gist of my remarks below, the first draft short-essay below, seems to be that the latest GOP Obamacare-killing anti-health-care-bill is another States Rights issue. But no one on the left and far-left, neither Democrat nor Green nor Bernie Sanders supporter, has yet well defined the implications of returning more state rights to the now 50 states. States Rights might have been of paramount when there were only 13 states, a loose federation of states (1770s) and no constitution. There are many more of them now. They depend far more today on their neighboring states, most of the other 50 states, and on the US government for their “economic growth,” their personal livelihood and any additional financial support they require in times of need or emergency, which for the poorest (and often conservative-run) of the US states is almost always. Increased States Rights would return state governments to autonomous entities “owned and operated” in too many cases by very rich and powerful “plantation owner” type conservative in their states. There would be little to no federal government “oversight” or legal influence on their affairs of state. Police forces could run riot. Death penalties could be unfairly, if not also arbitrarily and capriciously, applied to convict unfairly convicted and the death sentences when enacted become increasingly cruel and unusual punishment. Medical care affordability, availability could very widely by a state citizen’s social-economic class. The resulting increased divisions in local and state groups could be devastating to state economies and to the majority of their citizens in so many ways.
Somehow at 3 a.m. 9/20 I managed to clumsily talk about one or two of these worst cases in the remarks below.
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Original sent to Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, 3 a.m. 9/29/17:
Has anyone “in the left side of government” thought about making the general public much more aware of the dangers and benefits of More States Rights which can vary enormously from state to state vs. More Uniform — and more predictable – federally mandated and very similar if not also uniform Rights for all citizens in all states? At this point in time that debate framework would apply to individual Health Care Rights and the last minute push by the worst actors in the GOP dominated Congress to kill Obamacare with yet one more draconian bill to repeal it.
A closely related issue is the notion that “more states rights” creates a less united United States. A more United States means the public services, including quality affordable health care, that any person can receive while traveling from state to state will be similar, available and affordable in similar ways, and of similar high quality. A less United States means when you travel state to state, you can’t predict what you’re going to get in the way of health care… or the quality of gasoline, or the quality of the food and medicines or education, etc. In fact the less certainty that these potential huge differences in quality and available would create much greater fear of traveling out of state; having much greater fear of the unpredictable, more people would travel state to state less! Bye bye inter-state tourist business.
More precisely with uniquely state controlled health care that differs widely state by state, if you get sick in a super-conservative and habitually poor and more racist state like Louisiana or Mississippi, you are more likely to have a shorter life span. Your quality of life is likely to be more miserable more often. And you’ll die in more miserable circumstances as well. But if you get sick in a more liberal state, especially one with state-wide Medicare for All, like Hawaii may have soon, like California and New York State could have soon after Hawaii, you’re more likely to get the health care you need when you need it and your personal or family finances will not be destroyed for the rest of your days by the huge burden of debt that for-profit health care would create. Your life span would more likely be longer. Your quality of life throughout your life would more likely be better. And when your health gives out, your dying times are likely to be less miserable.
Some Meta Issues: The fact that we need now to have such discussions and consciousness raising of the vast majority of the American public, and have that consciousness raising happen very quickly, speaks also to the slow erosion over the last 4 decades in the quality of our K-12 and higher public education throughout the USA, in each and every state of the eroding union. The fact that the GOP and “The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy” (aka Koch Bro.s financed propaganda machine) has been instrumental in eroding public education and that now nation-wide erosion has led to such circumstances. And IMO the majority of the public needs to know that and learn it fast if we-the-people are to re-attain our power to control and replace the miscreants in Congress and the US presidency who now rule over us so cruelly.