I’ve been an avid Bill Maher fan for many years. I find him to be astute, fair and absolutely intolerant of intentional stupidity – much like me.
A few months ago, he started in on this idea that what’s really wrong with this country is that we don’t treat each other very well, and that we’re obsessed with money. The two feed into each other until we get to the point where we are, well, here.
The first time he really brought it forward publicly was in an interview with Elizabeth Warren, Chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel for TARP. He talked about the recent return to usury in our society, and how we’re having to work too hard to convince lawmakers that it’s not okay for credit card companies to use dirty tricks to bury fellow Americans under mountains of debt.
In a later episode, he goes further to illustrate examples of how we’ll do just about anything to anyone for money: Soldiers in Iraq being electrocuted in the shower because of shoddy electrical work.
“How can one American kill another American to save a little money on wire?” he asks, and it’s a good question. Greed exists in every society; but only ours touts it as a virtue.
Lately, he seems to be developing it into something of a philosophy:
“It used to be that there were some services and institutions so vital to our nation that they were exempt from market pressures. Some things we just didn’t do for money. The United States always defined capitalism, but it didn’t used to define us. But now it’s becoming all that we are.”
and:
“Prisons used to be a non-profit business, too. And for good reason — who the hell wants to own a prison? By definition you’re going to have trouble with the tenants. But now prisons are big business. A company called the Corrections Corporation of America is on the New York Stock Exchange, which is convenient since that’s where all the real crime is happening anyway. The CCA and similar corporations actually lobby Congress for stiffer sentencing laws so they can lock more people up and make more money. That’s why America has the world;s largest prison population — because actually rehabilitating people would have a negative impact on the bottom line.”
But the real travesty in this transition of capitalism as an economic model to becoming a social framework is, of course, health care:
It wasn’t that long ago that when a kid broke his leg playing stickball, his parents took him to the local Catholic hospital, the nun put a thermometer in his mouth, the doctor slapped some plaster on his ankle and you were done. The bill was $1.50, plus you got to keep the thermometer.
But like everything else that’s good and noble in life, some Wall Street wizard decided that hospitals could be big business, so now they’re run by some bean counters in a corporate plaza in Charlotte. In the U.S. today, three giant for-profit conglomerates own close to 600 hospitals and other health care facilities. They’re not hospitals anymore; they’re Jiffy Lubes with bedpans. America’s largest hospital chain, HCA, was founded by the family of Bill Frist, who perfectly represents the Republican attitude toward health care: it’s not a right, it’s a racket. The more people who get sick and need medicine, the higher their profit margins. Which is why they’re always pushing the Jell-O.”
Read the rest of his article here.
You can also watch his presentation on Real Time here (it starts in at 2:04, and I don’t really know what the URL in the top is all about):
