I’m Not The Only One

The subject of Florida came up in a recent conversation, during which I complained that Florida requires recipients of food stamp benefits to take a drug test.  The woman with whom I was eating lunch said, “Good, they should do that here {in New Hampshire).  My tax dollars shouldn’t have to pay for someone’s drug habit.”

I couldn’t roll my eyes fast or hard enough at this ridiculous remark.

I replied, “Why should they test me for drug in order to get welfare benefits?  Nobody drug tested me when the state was stealing the money from my paycheck.”  Of course, you don’t have to be employed own property to pay local, state or federal taxes, as I’ve explained in a previous post.  But when most people think of taxpayers, they only include property owners and the employed within that definition.  But the system is set up so that everyone, including the unemployed, people on welfare, those whose incomes are from criminal activity and even illegal aliens are still paying taxes when they pay a bill or buy something. (more…)

I’ve been recently dosing myself on all five seasons of one of my favorite sci-fi TV shows from the 90s, Sliders.  As good as the show was, I remember being in high school when the gorgeous Kari Wuhrer was added to the cast, making it even better.   I Wikipedia’d (yeah, I said it) Ms. Wuhrer and was surprised to learn she had had breast implants.  She later had them removed when one of them encapsulated but she definitely had them when she was in Sliders.  I’m sure while her natural talents propelled her acting career one could argue that her implants got her foot in the door of many Hollywood studios.  She has been quoted in multiple sources as saying her body was her best asset. (more…)

California might actually be on its way to legalizing marijuana, at least up to an ounce.

Three Tuesdays from now, Californians will be going to the polls to decide on, among other things, Proposition 19, a.k.a. the Regulate, Control and Tax Cannibis Act of 2010.

For those unfamiliar with the proposal, Prop 19  mandates that people 21 and older can:

• possess up to one ounce of marijuana for personal consumption.
• use marijuana in a non-public place such as a residence or a public establishment licensed for on-site marijuana consumption.
• grow marijuana at a private residence in a space of up to 25 square feet for personal use. (more…)

For those of you whose eyes have drifted towards the header of this website, one of the large links reads “Barack Obama Research Paper“.  It was a research paper I wrote in my final semester of college.  As is the case with most aspects of liberal academia, students are strongly obligated to write left-leaning papers and complete other types of assignments that promote liberal values.

At the time, (fall of 2007) no living person was more popular than Barack Obama, especially in a public university in New York City.  I figured writing about Obama would make for an easy A, and I was right.  Later on, I came up with the idea of posting the text of that research paper on this site so I could pick up extra visitors consisting of people looking for research papers about Barack Obama.  More visitors mean more ad revenue.  Figured if I at least sell out I should have some cash in the end. As you can imagine, the number of visits skyrocket near the end of the school semester. (more…)

Yeah, I figured that headline would catch your attention.

How does legalizing drugs keep Mexicans from  illegally crossing our borders, or even encourage those already in the U.S. to go back where they came from?  To answer that  question, we first have to understand why they’re leaving, and it isn’t just because of a lack of economic opportunity.

Mexicans are leaving their country in droves because of the Mexican Drug War, which is in reality the United States imposing its will on Mexico to find and capture producers and traffickers of illegal drugs.   Our neighbor to the south is literally engaged in a civil war between the Mexican government and Mexican drug cartels. In 2005 the Pew Hispanic Center, a division of the Pew Research Center, released the results of a poll which indicated that 40% of Mexicans stated they would come to the United States if they had the means and opportunity to do so, and 20% said they would come to the U.S. illegally.  I’ve heard this poll quoted over and over in news stories regarding immigration (almost all immigration stories involve Mexicans, as if all illegal aliens were from Mexico).  Has anyone ever asked why so many people are tempted to leave their homeland?  Has anyone ever asked what the hell is going on in Mexico that so many Mexicans feel this way? (more…)

You know what really sucks about all this?

Universal health care has only been embraced by one state-Massachusetts.  If it’s so great, why has only one state out of 50 adopted it?

Meanwhile, 15 states (Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington) have already legalized marijuana for medical purposes (not including Maryland, which won’t bust you for possession if you can prove your marijuana use is for medical purposes), meaning this healthcare policy is at least 15 times as widely accepted than universal healthcare.

But which healthcare plan do the Obama Administration and the Democratic leadership want to implement on a national level?

Sad.

Also, since the Democrats want to emulate Canada so badly, how about adopting their nationwide medical marijuana policy?

Silly me, I was actually expecting a black President, even if he is only half black, to legalize it.  If black and brown people are still going to federal prison for marijuana-related charges by 2012, I’m voting for the next white guy I see.

When the Man is looking for a terrorist, not a drug dealer or robber.

In America, blacks and Latinos are often guilty until proven innocent when the police are looking for a drug suspect.  As politically incorrect as it may sound, it makes perfect sense for police to use racial profiling against blacks and Latinos when looking for suspects of drug-related crimes.  Even though statistics suggest that white Americans are the largest consumers of illicit substances it is almost always people of color involved in the production, distributions and sale of these illegal narcotics and are most often targeted in the War on Drugs.  I’ve always said that the only way to completely put an end to racial profiling against blacks and Latinos by law enforcement is to decriminalize drugs.

That said,  I don’t believe racial profiling makes any sense when protecting Americans from terrorism.  Those Americans who support racial profiling as a counter terrorist measure are probably the same idiots who think Africa is a country and Mexico is a continent.  Why doesn’t racial profiling work to sniff out would-be terrorists?  Because the terrorists in question are of the Muslim faith, and like Christianity, Islam is a religion, not a race.  Muslims come in all colors.  Since 9/11 we have encountered white American Islamic terrorists, a Hispanic Islamic terrorist, Chinese Muslims and an array of Islamic terrorists of African descent and/or origin.  In terms of numbers, Islam in the U.S. has been the fastest growing faith, but by blacks and Latinos, not by immigration from the Arabian peninsula.  The country with the largest Islamic population in the world is Indonesia, nowhere near near Arabia but in the south Pacific.  The majority of black people worldwide are Muslim, not Christian. (more…)

Happy 4/20!

I couldn’t let my favorite holiday pass by without posting something up on this blog.   Norm Stamper of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition offered a great argument of why marijuana is far less harmless than alcohol.  Stamper, a retired police chief from Seattle offered the following:

“Alcohol contributes to acts of violence; marijuana reduces aggression. In approximately three million cases of reported violent crimes last year, the offender had been drinking. This is particularly true in cases of domestic violence, sexual assault, and date rape. Marijuana use, in and of itself, is absent from both crime reports and the scientific literature. There is simply no link to be made.”

and…

“Alcohol-related traffic accidents claim approximately 14,000 lives each year, down significantly from 20 or 30 years ago (attributed to improved education and enforcement). Figures for THC-related traffic fatalities are elusive, especially since alcohol is almost always present in the blood as well, and since the numbers of “marijuana-only” traffic fatalities are so small. But evidence from studies, including laboratory simulations, feeds the stereotype that those under the influence of canniboids tend to (1) be more aware of their impaired psychomotor skills, and (2) drive well below the speed limit. Those under the influence of alcohol are much more likely to be clueless or defiant about their condition, and to speed up and drive recklessly.”

Check out the rest of the article here, and if you get the munchies, celebrate 4/20 with some kottonmouth kookies.

I’m actually quite amused to hear the latest about Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps and New York Yankees player Alex Rodriguez.  I’m amused because I’m sick of hearing about these people and how popular they are and how wonderful they are from the media and from friends and associate who are obsessed with these two athletes.

First, Phelps was caught in a photograph smoking marijuana, and now A-Rod, or as I always called him, A-Tard, has been caught with steroids in his body in a drug screening from several years ago.

Personally, I think marijuana is is no more a drug than caffeine, aspirin, sugar or tobacco.  I would go as far as to suggest that more people have probably developed health problems and/or have died from using caffeine, aspirin, sugar or tobacco than from using marijuana.  I don’t think it was right for Kelloggs to cancel the endorsement deal they had with Phelps, and NORML (National Organization for Reform of Marijuana Laws) wants potheads worldwide to boycott the company.  That will be a mighty financial blow to Kelloggs, considering how many stoners probably dig their hands into a box of Rice Krispies or Frosted Flakes and shove handfuls of dry cereal into their mouths after getting the munchies.

Some commentators are even going so far in their vilification of Phelps as to suggest that his Olympic medals be taken back because he cheated.  This is a ridiculous argument, because unlike steroids, marijuana is not a performance-enhancing drug unless you’re in the entertainment or music business.  In fact, I think if Michael Phelps was smoking marijuana when he was competing last year in Beijing, he should receive twice as many gold medals.

I’m glad he got caught, because he really deserved to be taken down a notch or two.  His skyrocketing stardom seemed endless for a while there, and I’m so sick of seeing him in commercials and in print advertising.

I’m even happier to see A-Tard come crashing down. I’m a New Yorker, and the local media practically worships the Yankees and of course their golden child A-Tard. New York City is also home to the New York Mets but if you only knew New York by what you read and hear in the media, you’d only think there was one team.  What’s more, I have to share the same town with thousands of grown (supposedly) heterosexual men who worship the Yankees and have an unsettling adoration for A-Tard that borders on a same-sex crush. Then there are the women in this town who get all hot and bothered for A-Tard; for them, he’s like the Dominican JFK, Jr. In New York, you see A-Tard in all kinds of TV commercials and print advertising, and his fans are semi-cultish with a very low tolerance for anyone who speaks ill of their messiah.

So yeah, he totally deserves all this negative publicity and public scorning, but because he’s a douche, not because he took steroids.

Like marijuana, I also think steroids should be legal.  The only one A-Tard hurt by taking them was himself.  He’s shortening his own life by doing so, probably duct tapes his perky man-breasts flat and the ladies won’t be too happy to find out his penis has most likely shrunk to the size of a cashew.  There should be a separate baseball hall of fame for athletes on steroids, maybe even a steroids league within Major League Baseball.  After all, fans mostly want to see a great performance on the field more than they want to see a drug-free athlete with mediocre stats.  But punishing athletes for doing whatever they could to improve their game (aside from sabotaging their competition) sounds dumb, and it translates into a huge waste of our tax dollars to put these players through a trial.

Legalize steroids, create a steroid baseball hall of fame, and the inductees can have their genitals photographed to show all those young kids out there why they should be natural athletes instead of pumped-up hermaphrodites.

You’d probably call me crazy if I told you a book written eight years ago focusing on the flaws of the Clinton Presidency would have a greater wealth of relevance for Americans today than it did when it was written.  But Rob Nelson’s Last Call: 10 Commonsense Solutions to America’s Biggest Problems conveys serious issues facing our country (ironically, issues that have gone unresolved since 2000) and unintentionally puts the last eight years with George W. Bush in context.  The author draws examples from his own life, his experience working with the Clinton administration and being the co-founder of a Gen-X grassroots organization that was once 30,000 strong to illustrate then ten most pressing issues (which are actually far worse than they were when Clinton left office) to which he offers radical yet sensible solutions.

It’s almost impossible to not hear many Americans these days, especially liberals, look at the turmoil of the Bush Administration and long for the days when Bubba was in office. Bill Clinton’s Presidency as a result has become romanticized, with Bill’s less noble moments vanishing from public memory.  Written way back in 2000, Nelson frowns on what he considered to be the lame duck Presidency of Bill Clinton (needless to say, this book was published before George W. Bush became President) that failed to serve the Americans of the future.  This eight-year old critique offers a refreshing view of the Clinton Presidency, debunking the existence of the so-called “budget surpluses” of the Clinton years, Clinton’s signing of the Defense of Marriage Act which basically refused to acknowledge gay marriage, and continued air strikes in the Middle East and Africa.

The book focuses on the U.S. national debt, something that is often ignored in the discourse of national politics because it isn’t very well understood.  Most Americans don’t understand why it exists and understand even less how it will absolutely cripple the economy 10, maybe even 20 or 30 years in the future.  The U.S has borrowed trillions of dollars from banks around the world and pay about $300 million a year in interest payments alone.  At the end of the day, all debts must be repaid, Nelson argues, and the leaders of the present have decided America can gleefully live beyond its means, doling out funds to as many special interest groups as possible, and stick future generations with the tab.  As the then-twenty-something Nelson says, he was born at the beginning of the end of the American Dream. (more…)

According to NORML (National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws), there will be three major news segments on marijuana law reform in the U.S.

On Friday, January 16, the venerable NBC news show Dateline has scheduled an hour-long profile of the tragic death of Florida college student Rachel Hoffman. Ms. Hoffman was arrested with cannabis and unfortunately trusted local police to become an undercover informant, which ultimately led to her murder. Her shocking death has forced Florida law enforcement to re-examine the use of confidential informants in drug cases and raised the question publicly about decriminalizing cannabis for adult use.

ABC 20/20 correspondent John Stossel’s investigative unit is going to cast its usually critical eye at government overreach and wasteful spending, this time specifically towards the noted case of medical cannabis provider Charles Lynch. By all media accounts and advanced in his legal defense, Mr. Lynch was operating a ‘Main Street’ medical cannabis dispensary in Santa Barbara, California in compliance with local and state medical cannabis laws. However, the federal government continues to selectively arrest and prosecute medical cannabis providers under federal laws. Mr. Lynch’s appeal for a new trial has been rejected and he now potentially faces a mandatory five-year sentence at an upcoming sentencing hearing. Depending on the editing process, the story will likely broadcast either Friday the 9th or 16th @ 10PM (eastern).

Business network CNBC has produced an one-hour special called Marijuana, Inc. to premiere at 9 pm (eastern), January 22. Fascinated by the multi-billion untaxed, unregulated cannabis business in the United States, notably on the west coast, producers fanned out to interview cultivators, medical cannabis dispensary owners, middle-class cannabis consumers and of course law enforcement.

I’m planning on watching all three and offering my review of each one.  Even if you don’t like marijuana, open your mind a bit and check out these shows.  I don’t like pistachio  ice cream, but I’m not suggesting we make it illegal.

A major reason I initially launched I’m Not The Only One was to write down all the thoughts and arguments I’ve had in the past regarding politics, economics, and other issues.

So I’m going to offer what I believe to be the top ten scams facing Americans today, in no particular order.

1) Affirmative Action

2) Bilingual education

3) College

4) The Anti-Globalization Movement

5) Welfare

6) Health insurance

7) Privatization of core government functions

Public schools

9) Unions

10) The minimum wage

Here’s where you, the reader come in. I’m a little disappointed with the lack of comments on INTOO. According to Google Analytics, for the last 30 days I’ve roughly gotten an average of about 50 people coming to this site every day, so someone is obviously reading this. I’d like my readers to tell me which scam they’d like me to discuss first, why I see it as a scam and who specifically benefits from the scam.

The ball’s in your court now. Drop me a comment on this post and whichever topics gets the most requests will be selected first for discussion by me. Also, I believe in instant run-off voting, so feel free to declare a second choice you’d like me to discuss first if your first choice does not get the most requests.

And I’m not going to discuss any of these scams until I see at least 10 requests. What I’m looking for here is reader participatio, so please don’t disappoint. Thanks.

For those who don’t know, April 20th is actually a holiday, one of few I even bother to observe anymore.

The importance of the day comes from the number 420, which has become a part of American marijuana culture, or counterculture, to be more precise.

The number supposedly originated in the Haight-Ashbury hippie scene during the 1960s, where 420 was the San Francisco Police Department’s code for marijuana possession. Pot smokers around the world acknowledge the significance of 420 and smoke on April 20th, and 4:20 am or pm, for those who need an excuse to smoke daily.

But I’ve always used April 20th to think about the War on Drugs (WOD) and how so much tax money is being wasted persecuting pot users and dealers. It’s been over 30 years since President Nixon blamed U.S. defeat in Vietnam on drug use and declared a war on drugs, and people are still getting high. The only thing the WOD has changed in this country in 30 years is the enormous amount of money the federal government spends which increases every year and our overcrowded prisons which create the demand for even more prisons to be built.

Even the National

The WOD is a major reason why 1 out of 100 Americans are currently incarcerated. This is the highest incarceration rate in the world-higher than China, Iran, North Korea, or those other “totalitarian” countries our government frowns upon. These numbers, which came from the U.S. Department of Justice and count state prisons as well as local jails, become even more sickening when you break them down:

• 1 out of 36 Latinos
• 1 out of 15 African-Americans
• 1 out of 9 black men between the ages of 20 and 34

The same article uses DOJ figures to conclude that violent crimes have fallen 25 percent in the last 20 years but last year the inmate population in this country grew by 25,000. So why is the incarceration rate increasing while violent crimes are decreasing? Take a guess.

Drug abuse is a health problem, not a crime problem. Being hooked on cocaine is no different than being hooked on oxycontin. In fact, the pharmaceutical industry has a synthetic version of every illegal narcotic out there. There’s a watered-down version of marijuana called marinol, a watered-down version of cocaine called codeine, and a watered-down version of heroin called morphine. The difference between cocaine and codeine is Pepsi and Diet Pepsi. It’s no wonder that, according to the DEA, more Americans are abusing prescription drugs than using illegal drugs and that Prescription pain relievers are new drug users’ drug of choice, vs. marijuana or cocaine. Like I said, people are getting high anyway, and now they’ve found a safer means through prescription drug abuse.

I live in New York City, where the New York City Bar Association has identified as the marijuana arrest capital of the United States in both per capita arrest rates as well as racial disparity in enforcing marijuana laws. According to the Bar, for every white person arrested on marijuana charges, nine minorities are arrested. So much for New Yorkers being tolerant and sophisticated!

New York State seems to be the battleground of the WOD as my home state has the Rockerfeller Drug Laws, which were enacted in 1973 and require a minimum sentence of prison for the possession or sale of small amounts of drugs. The penalties apply without regard to the circumstances of the offense or the individual’s character or background. Even a first-time offender can be sentenced to prison.

So a drug addict caught holding can do jail time, even if what they really need is drug treatment, a far more effective and far less expensive alternative to incarceration. But under the Rockerfeller Drug Laws, a judge does not have the freedom to hand down such a sentence.

In a state with a billion-dollar budget deficit, you would think the Rockerfeller Drug Laws would have been repealed by now. But even today, these laws are still in effect and are the cause for the following statistics:

• There are over 15,000 drug offenders incarcerated in New York State prisons.
• In 2004, nearly 35% of the people sent to state prison were drug offenders, compared to only 11% in 1980.
• Of all drug offenders sent to NYS prisons in 2000, nearly 80% were never convicted of a violent felony.
• Over 50% of the drug offenders in NYS prisons were convicted of selling or possessing only small drug amounts.
• It cost the state over $1.7 billion to construct new prisons to house drug offenders. The annual operating expense for confining drug offenders comes to about $500 million per year.
• From 1988 to 1998, the state increased annual prison spending by $761 million. During that same time period, the state decreased annual spending on the State and City Universities of New York by approximately $615 million.

Drop the Rock is a campaign to get the State Legislature to repeal the Rockerfeller Drug Laws and:

• Restore sentencing discretion to trial judges in all drug cases.
• Make sentencing reform retroactive so that current inmates can petition the courts for review of their sentences.
• Expand the funding available for alternatives to incarceration, including drug treatment, job training and education programs so that judges have an appropriate place to send the offenders they decide should not be imprisoned.
• Significantly reduce sentence lengths for drug offenses.

We try to accomplish this goal through letter writing campaigns, urging our local State legislators to add themselves as co-sponsors to the current Rockerfeller Drug Law repeal bill which is currently in the State Assembly, and by annually lobbying the politicians in the State Capitol.

I can’t think of a bigger waste of federal tax dollars than the WOD, especially when our national deficit is in the trillions of dollars and the economy is in the crapper. The worst part is that drug use isn’t even mentioned in the U.S. Constitution. Doesn’t that make the WOD unconstitutional?

I know this post is a day late. I started Sunday morning but couldn’t finish because I had been invited to a 420 party around noon. While most of the crowd is busy “celebrating”, I try to talk to people about libertarianism, and especially about getting involved in Drop the Rock. The trouble with pot smokers is that they throw great parties, but when it comes to activism or even exercising their rights as citizens there’s much to be desired.

For further interesting reading regarding the immoral and fiscally responsible War on Drugs, check out:

Drugs Are Bad Enough Without A Phony Terrorism Link

Why Barack Obama Has My Vote

Copy/Paste

Healthcare and Life Expectancy

Happy 420.

P.S. If you’re still in a 420 mood, why not try some Kottonmouth Kookies?

After much procrastination, I’m finally going to explain why I will be voting for Senator Barack Obama in the New York Democratic Primary next month.

My support for Senator Barack goes far beyond identity politics. Unfortunately, my vote is not so much in support of him as it is a vote against his competition. Part of my support for him comes from his unofficial endorsement by Governor Bill Richardson (for whom I originally supported) who recently dropped out of the Presidential race. Many have speculated that because Richardson is Latino, and Latinos are the de facto junior partners in the Civil Rights Movement, that Richardson would automatically throw his support to the half-black Barack Obama. Already some of Richardson’s former supporters such as California state Senator Gil Cedillo and former state Democratic Senator Martha Escutia of Los Angeles have officially endorsed Obama now that the New Mexico Governor has dropped out of the race. Some people have even speculated that Obama may select Richardson to be his running mate.

One reason I am supporting Obama is because of his leniency towards federal drug laws. The federal drug laws and the Drug Enforcement Agency represent the most atrocious rape of the Constitution, which does not even mention drugs. The War on Drugs is really a war on black and brown people in America, and no one can really say they believe in racial equality if they support the War on Drugs.

Among all of the candidates, Obama is the only one who is committed to reforming this nation’s drug laws. On his campaign web site, Obama has appropriately placed his platform on drug laws under his commitment to civil rights, such as eliminating the harsher sentences for crack-related offenses (a drug predominantly used by black people) than the comparably softer sentences for that of cocaine (the drug of choice for white people).

Obama also wants non-violent first-time drug offenders (with the exception of dealers and traffickers) to serve their sentence in a drug rehabilitation center where they can actually get the drug out of their system as opposed to sharing a cell with cold-blooded murderers and rapists in the overcrowded federal prison system, where rape, gang activity and drug abuse runs rampant. This is an important step in prison reform because drug addiction should be treated for what it really is: a health issue, not a crime.

Because people of color make up the vast majority of incarcerated drug offenders (Blacks and Latinos make up 92 percent of drug offenders in New York State prisons), it would make sense that a President of color would want to reverse this 21st Century form of institutionalized racism.
I do feel Obama’s willingness to admit he personally experimented with marijuana and cocaine as a youth (the only candidate to admit this) shows he has an understanding and a sympathy towards those who use illegal narcotics. I don’t see the other front runners in either party addressing this issue, including John Edwards, the so-called “poverty candidate”.

Obama’s international upbringing is another reason I think he should be the next President. While Bill Clinton was certainly the most cosmopolitan and worldly President this country has had in 100 years, we truly need someone who can embrace a foreign policy that examines things through a truly international perspective rather than the nationalistic and myopic view of most Americans, especially our current commander-in-chief. America needs to recognize it is not its own planet, but a part of a world of many different nations, cultures and most importantly, perspectives. While I don’t necessarily think Obama’s competitors are a bunch of narrow-minded bigots, I do believe that they would make a wholehearted yet unsuccessful attempt at understanding the rest of the world, a task which Obama would find rather easy to accomplish.

I think another great reason for Barack Obama to be elected President of the United States is so that white Americans can stop referring to the U.S. as a white country. I am so sick of white people soiling themselves because of the latest Census figures showing an increase in Latin American immigration and a larger African-American presence in previously all-white suburbs and rural areas. Get over it, white people. This is not Europe; if you want to live in a Caucasian country, you’re on the wrong side of the Atlantic. Racially and ethnically speaking, the New World is neutral territory and should not be thought of as being home to a “white country” or the homeland of any race, with exception of Native Americans.

And speaking of race, I believe a mulatto (yeah, I said it!) President would trivialize racial tensions in America, particular the love-hate relationship between blacks and whites. Symbols are powerful, and the appearance of a biracial U.S. President would do more to sweep away racial tensions than any well-meaning Caucasian candidate. Sorry, Bill Clinton. Barack Obama is going to be the real first black President.

On my personal MySpace page some left-wing organization called United for a Better America requested to be added to my friends’ list. I hastily decided to add them and only today did I actually check this organization’s page. I’m not too surprised by what I saw; I pretty much knew what UBA’s political views were. After all, the page’s main photo is a gif file of a red stick figure and a blue stick figure with a red check mark under the blue, and if you wait a second the image changes to read “Vote Democrat”.

But this passage on the page really got to me.

We believe that healthcare is a right. We are the richest country in the world, yet over 47 million Americans have no health insurance — that’s nearly one in six Americans. As a result, over 18,000 people die per year.

Our nation is ranked 23rd in infant mortality, 20th in life expectancy for women, and 21st in life expectancy for men. Relative to other industrialized nations with universal health care, the United States ranks poorly; all while the Republicans stand on the side of big insurance companies.

Using a country’s life expectancy as an indicator of the quality of that nation’s healthcare system is a joke. This is a hollow argument that has been waged by almost every proponent of universal healthcare and was mentioned by Michael Moore in his movie Sicko, (saw the movie on bootleg) who claims that since Canadians live on average three years longer than Americans, their socialist health insurance system must be superior. (more…)