The Unnecessary Death of My Aunt, Hazel by Cynthia McKinney

The Unnecessary Death of My Aunt, Hazel

by Cynthia McKinney

The author is a former U.S. Representative from Georgia and 2008 Green Party candidate for President of the United States.

“My aunt, while still in intensive care, was forced to be transferred to the hospital that had, in my opinion, committed a capital crime.”

I never want you to take the journey that I'm currently on. So, I want to tell you about it.
It starts on the front of the refrigerator. "The Healthiest Foods on Earth." A two-page primer from apple to watermelon, touting immunity to male fertility support. Inside the refrigerator, natural and organic foods only. On the countertop is the Jack LaLanne juicer, the Magic Bullet, the handy food chopper plus, the food saver vacuum sealer--all items familiar to us because they are constantly hawked on the midnight cable channels. Hanging from the kitchen cabinet door are plastic bags for recycling: one for plastics, the other for aluminum cans. The house and car are filled with reusable shopping bags made of recycled materials. By the way, a new car was in the works, and not because of the cash for clunkers program of the Federal Government. An American-made hybrid was preferred--keeping U.S. workers working. In the back seat of her Ford Focus is a booklet, "Living in a Healthy Body: A New Look at Health & Weight." What I'm trying to describe is someone working very hard at changing a typically indulgent "American" lifestyle into one more respectful and healthy for the body, healthy for our earth.
So, in an act of preventive medical care, my aunt Hazel went to the doctor to have a colonoscopy. We are all bombarded with television commercials advising us to have a colonoscopy. I know in the black media, those ads abound. And so, dutifully, my aunt abided by those suggestions for healthy choices and had her first colonoscopy. What the family knows is that her colon was perforated. That's when our journey took us on a wrong turn.
“My aunt abided by suggestions for healthy choices and had her first colonoscopy.”
Unfortunately, the facility that performed the colonoscopy had told my aunt not to call before the results were published and that would take up to two weeks!!! When my aunt called them because she was feeling so bad, they told her that she'd be ok overnight and that they would call her in the morning. The hospital told my aunt to go to sleep overnight and they'd call her back in the morning. But my aunt-tee continued to deteriorate so badly that her daughter called 9-1-1 and by the morning, my aunt-tee was already in surgery at another hospital that was not too busy to care for her. This is when the perforation was discovered and repaired.
While my aunt was recovering in the second hospital, in intensive care, a letter was sent from the hospital where the colonoscopy was performed stating that they were the insured's provider and that the hospital performing the emergency surgery would not get paid. The hospital performing the colonoscopy demanded my aunt-tee back. So, against the desires of the hospital providing the emergency surgery, my aunt, while still in intensive care, was forced to be transferred to the hospital that had, in my opinion, committed a capital crime.
My aunt-tee deteriorated after the transfer, but fought like heck to live. Unfortunately, her body had been so poisoned by the doctor's failure to recognize that he had perforated her colon that her body became toxic. The third affront to my aunt-tee's health and life occurred when morphine was administered, ostensibly for pain and gave her such a blow to her vital statistics that the family objected to a second administration of morphine. But guess what!!! She was given morphine again, despite her children's complaints!!!! My aunt never recovered from that.
My aunt, a divorced mother of two, struggled to live righteously. Those of you in southern California know that she accompanied me almost everywhere I went. She was a hard-working woman, a proud homeowner in Watts, a student working on her Social Work degree, finally able to achieve her dreams after deferring them for so long in order to help her children realize theirs. She also took to the campaign trail too many times, traveling to Georgia to help my father and me realize ours. I can't even believe that she's gone--through no fault of her own--and I'm still wondering how the heck my aunt ended up in this place despite all the care she took of herself. This is unfathomable to me. And sadly, too many families are arriving at this same place. Iraqi families devastated by U.S. occupation; Afghani families devastated by U.S. war; U.S. families also devastated by U.S. policy makers. Why?
“Her body had been so poisoned by the doctor's failure to recognize that he had perforated her colon that her body became toxic.”
For the last four years, I've spouted off the racial quality-of-life disparities that exist in our country. I've said it so much, it's as if no one heard me. Because even during my tenure in Congress, I gave floor speeches, but the policy change never came. I spoke at banquets and conventions about it, but the policy changes never came. Two steps forward always seemed to end with one step backward. If we got the money appropriated, in too many instances, black institutions couldn't be in charge of it, so only a trickle at best reached the community. I found that the "plantation" was alive and well in patterns of federal spending. So when Dr. David Satcher, President Clinton's Surgeon General, found in a 2005 study that over 83,000 blacks die unnecessary and premature deaths each year due to their treatment after they arrive in a doctor's office, among other factors, I added that datum to my panoply of quality-of-life stats. And now, my aunt factors in Dr. Satcher's numbers.
I have seen such betrayal and lack of principle in the current "health care" debate, I had no intention of getting into it. In our Power to the People campaign, I wrote a platform that included policy recommendations to eliminate all disparities still extant in our society, including for health care. A single-payer system is so obviously needed, it should be too politically costly for our Democratic majority in the Congress and our Democratic White House to do anything else. I recommended an end to war. I advocated public ownership of the Federal Reserve. I even anticipated the skullduggery of the bailouts and recommended that if the "powers that be" were intent on forcing Congress to give these bailouts to institutions that conducted what I would call criminal behavior, then at a minimum, a credible person like David Walker, former U.S. Comptroller, should audit all corporations and institutions receiving such funds. I suggested that Senator Obama use the power of his Senatorial pen to amend the bailout legislation to this effect. It didn't happen.
“'I'm still wondering how the heck my aunt ended up in this place despite all the care she took of herself.”
My aunt-tee had a policy of rarely voting for an incumbent. She understood that just as she was trying to change herself into a lifestyle that she could believe in, she wasn't going to get political, social, and economic change that she could believe in by voting like everyone else, for the same special interest candidates. Once she decided that it was necessary to step outside of the box of political conformity, she discovered that there were Independent, Green Party, Libertarian, and other political party candidates on her ballot that she had long ignored. She began to listen to them and learned to explore the totality of her options. It was glorious to watch my aunt-tee's liberation.
So why is she in the morgue now?
Not enough people took that journey with her. Not enough people saw her example. Not enough was done to change policy. At a time when the policy makers have never been so divorced from the reality borne by the average citizens that they govern, the American people have shown an amazing ability to accept graft, corruption, death, and destruction while continuing to believe that hope alone can produce real change. Why did Cindy Sheehan protest without thousands in front of President Obama's $50,000 a week vacation home?
“Over 83,000 blacks die unnecessary and premature deaths each year due to their treatment after they arrive in a doctor's office.”
I've tried to walk my talk. Just last week it came out that one "journalist" who called for my lynching was on the FBI payroll at the time of his comment. He claims to have been paid to say provocative things. I've withstood a lot--for the people. But now, I really don't know how much more walking or talking I'm able to do. I just wonder, how many more will have to experience this before more people write their own Declarations of Independence from this political disorder.

The phone just rang and it was the hospital that performed the botched colonoscopy on my aunt, that ignored her call for help, that demanded that she be transferred while she was in intensive care, that administered morphine twice, despite objections from the family and from which her vitals never recovered. They wanted to know how my aunt would rate their service. I told them poor on every count.
Thank you for reading this with empathy and I thank you all for your support. I apologize for any appointments that I've missed while I've been on the road to this place I'm in now.

Ms. McKinney can be contacted at hg2600(at)gmail.com.

US Health System Ranks Last Compared to Other Countries

WASHINGTON - The US health care system ranks last among other major rich countries for quality, access and efficiency, according to two studies released Tuesday by a health care think tank.

The studies by the Commonwealth Fund found that the United States, which has the most expensive health system in the world, underperforms consistently relative to other countries and differs most notably in the fact that Americans have no universal health insurance coverage.

"The United States stands out as the only nation in these studies that does not ensure access to health care through universal coverage and promotion of a 'medical home' for patients," said Commonwealth Fund president Karen Davis.

"Our failure to ensure health insurance for all and encourage stable, long-term ties between physicians and patients shows in our poor performance on measures of quality, access, efficiency, equity, and health outcomes."

In "Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: An International Update on the Comparative Performance of American Health Care", the study focused on interviews with physicians and patients in Australia, Britain, Canada, Germany, New Zealand and the United States who were asked to speak about their experiences and views on their health systems.

The US ranked last in most areas, including access to health care, patient safety, timeliness of care, efficiency and equity. Americans were also last in terms of whether they had a regular physician.

"The US spends twice what the average industrialized country spends on health care but we're clearly not getting value for the money," Davis told AFP.

She also noted that 45 million Americans, or 15 percent of the US population, have no health insurance, which contributes to the country's medical woes.

The United States is also far behind in adopting modern health information technology, which translates into spiralling costs and poor care.

"We pride ourselves on being advanced on so many areas of technology but it's not the case on health information technology," Davis said. "Other countries have just moved ahead."

Britain got the top score in overall ranking among the countries in the study, followed by Germany. New Zealand and Australia tied for third followed by Canada and the United States.

The second study delves into why health costs in the United States are so much higher than in eight other countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development: Australia, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands and New Zealand.

The study, "Multinational Comparisons of Health Systems Data," found that even though the US spends the most on publicly and privately financed health insurance, its citizens had the most potential years of life lost due to circulatory and respiratory diseases as well as diabetes.

"This study blows a lot of myths about the US health system," Davis said. "We spend three times what the average country spends on a day of hospital care and we also spend twice what the average country spends on prescription medication."

Health care is likely to be a prominent issue in the 2008 US presidential elections with various candidates already promising to tackle rising costs and the burden placed on big business to provide health insurance.

The Docile American The Nexus of God, Labor, Health Care and the Fear to Strike by Zbignew Zingh

A perplexed European asked me a question: Why, she asked, have there been no general strikes in America to end its aggression in the Middle East? Why, she asked, are Americans so unwilling to force their government do what must be done?

These are not new questions. Everyone with an inkling of history and a modest awareness of international news realizes that Americans, completely contrary to the foundation myth of the American Revolution, are incredibly docile. It stings, however, when someone from the outside points out an obvious weakness.

Citizens of other industrialized countries are able to organize national actions to achieve common goals. Americans at the university, labor, middle class and working class levels, however, seem to be utterly impotent and thoroughly disorganized in any long-term, coordinated endeavor that extends beyond electoral politics. We literally struggle to organize coordinated national events.

A general strike is one of the most powerful tools of non-violent civil disobedience. In a general strike all work stops, businesses shut down, consumers do not spend money, teachers and students stay away from school, employees call in sick, lawyers do not try cases, assembly line workers do not assemble, teamsters park their rigs, pilots do not fly, doctors practice only emergency medicine, and commerce grinds to a halt. General strikes are not violent, but they cause tremendous economic hurt. When properly coordinated and prepared, they are very persuasive. General strikes have toppled governments, such as in Argentina, and they have prevented the implementation of anti-labor legislation, most notably in France and in Italy.

Some argue that Americans are simply too economically comfortable to participate in any political action more strenuous that penciling an X on a ballot. That cannot be the answer. Indeed, the notion that Americans live better than everyone else is part of our national mythology. Although many Americans reside in spacious (and heavily mortgaged) houses and, by incurring massive debt, own lots of "stuff", citizens of several European industrialized nations live, on average, healthier, more secure lives and work far fewer hours than most Americans. Certain Asian countries are not far behind. Notwithstanding their better living conditions, Germans, French, Italians and Spaniards, for example, are still more willing to take concerted political action than are Americans.

There are several reasons for Americans' complacency and Europeans' engagement.

The Legacy of Slavery

Labor often takes the political lead in Europe, but not in the United States. The historical fact of American slavery has resulted in an easily manipulable working class, particularly one that is comprised of ethnically diverse peoples. By exploiting superficial racial phenotypes, big business interests have turned American workers one against the other.

In the nation's first hundred years, slavery was a mechanism for controlling "free labor". After emancipation, freed slaves (though hardly free in any real sense of the term) were used as a cheap labor reserve that both in the South and in the North was manipulated to hold back wages all across the industrial horizon, from Black to White. By inciting White workers to extreme racial animus against Black "competitors", business interests succeeded in preventing the creation of a unified labor front that could have benefited everyone

Subsequently, poor European immigrants, women and children have been exploited in the United States for the same reason and in the same way, just as were immigrant laborers imported from China and the Philippines during the industrial expansion of the late 19th Century. The entire American immigration policy of the 19th Century was an effort to control wages by bringing in cheap labor from overseas, much as "globalized" labor is used today.

In the 21st Century, migrant workers from Mexico, Haiti and Central America now serve the government sanctioned role of restraining wage growth among America's assembly line, service and agricultural working groups. Contrary to the more infamous immigrant xenophobes of the Republican Party, big business owners in the United States prefer a legalized "guest worker" system. That "guest worker" system would permit cheap labor to temporarily enter the United States while preserving the option of throwing that cheap labor away whenever it gets injured, old or demands fair wages or benefits. Furthermore, the neoliberal globalization of capital permits businesses to move rapidly around the globe pursuing the cheapest labor and the fewest regulations, thus adding to the wage-depressing effect. Although the best defense against such wage-depressing tactics would be to improve everyone's working conditions world wide, American labor has, instead, been led down the path of trying to protect its own turf by defending against both immigration and the outsourcing of jobs.

The net effect of these intentionally debilitating efforts has been the lack of pan-labor cohesion that characterizes the American working class. In a sense, American labor's class consciousness has been lobotomized. Labor in America tends to be parochial -- it has been trained, by centuries of racism seeded from above, to shun coordination with workers from different parts of the world. In sum, by taking the bait of racism, American workers have repeatedly manacled their own legs and ensured their own, and all other labor movements', feebleness as a political force.

But the legacy of slavery is not enough, by itself, to explain the docile American.

The Conspiracy Against The Working Class

In the late 19th and early to mid 20th Centuries certain active labor unions (like the West Coast Longshoremen led by Harry Bridges, the early Steel Workers, the early UAW, United Mineworkers and Cesar Chavez's United Farmworkers) were able to coordinate industry wide or regional strikes. The assertiveness and the successes of these activist unions scared the pants off the ownership class. As documented by Alex Carey in Taking the Risk Out of Democracy and by Australian university professor Sharon Beder in her books and articles about corporate and professional power relationships, business interests in the United States, such as the Business Roundtable and the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), embarked on a long-term program, a true conspiracy to "educate" the American public about the benefits of capitalism and the evils of democracy, socialism and unionism. It was a well-oiled, well-financed campaign, and, in part, it was a counter-reformist reaction to the increasingly socialized community that was evolving in Europe after WWII. The decades-long propaganda (1) effort continues today through the efforts of NAM's sister organization for the services industries, the ISM (Institute for Supply Management). Joining the pro-capitalism propaganda campaign are many of America's best known reactionary "think tanks" like the American Enterprise Institute, the Hoover Institution, the Heritage Foundation, the Discovery Institute and various large and ostensibly benevolent "funding institutions" on whom so many non-profit organizations depend financially.

The concerted effort was highly successful in subverting the American school curriculum, the mass media and American popular culture. By the 1950s, a majority of Americans thought it proper for the federal government to intervene on behalf of big business to "break" national strikes. The most well known modern example of these types of manipulation was Ronald Reagan's mass firing of the air traffic controllers in the 1981 PATCO strike and his use of military air controllers and non-union controllers to destroy the union. Reagan's aggressive use of the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act -- a thoroughly labor-hostile statute that persists even to the present day -- was actually applauded by the majority of Americans who, thanks to many years of cultural indoctrination, identified more with the interests of big business than with their own class interests.

Whereas many labor unions in Europe have socialist or communist affinities, contemporary American labor unions have been cowed by the well financed and ceaseless barrage of pro-capitalist propaganda. As a result, they avoid any political alliance more meaningful than the slightly less business-oriented Democratic Party.

Thus have the ownership class in America, through a concerted campaign of "education" and misinformation, succeeded in steering the American public away from the allure of European style union activism.

But the legacy of slavery and the conspiracy against workers alone cannot account for Americans' lack of political focus.

Religion as Antidote to Politics

Religion holds the greatest sway over the least politically thoughtful peoples. This is not an accident. The particular flavor of religion that dominates in the United States generally preaches doctrines of pacifism, obedience to authority and a focus on rewards in a life after death. It promotes a culture of minimal secular resistance and maximal secular resignation.

With a strong focus on otherworldliness, passivity and subservience, it is no mystery why American culture and class politics favor religious institutions. In absolute violation of 1st Amendment prohibitions, churches are granted tax concessions, they receiving federal funding through "faith based" initiatives and are otherwise supported as the main social structure of American society.

Curiously, notwithstanding its overt religiosity, American society is extremely violent in sports, sexual relationships, and crime. More curiously, beneath the religious veneer of submission, self-abnegation, sacrifice and spirituality lies a capitalist economic system that rewards violence, aggression, materialism, colonialism, self aggrandizement, selfishness and duplicity. The right wing "muscular" religious movements that have manifested themselves from time to time in United States history are amalgams of all of the social vices described above, plus racism wrapped in "patriotism", together with the traditional religious submission to secular authority. These "muscular" religious movements often work in silent partnership with ownership interests in the spheres of big business and politics, often to the disservice of the very people who make up the majority of these movements' lay membership.

Not all religious institutions are the same. Since the end of the anti-war movement of the Vietnam War era, the stamp of the moderately "liberal" religious wing has marked many of the "activist" movements in the United States. Although there is nothing wrong with polite protest, modest acts of very civil disobedience and cordial petitions to government authorities to do the right things, they have been, more often than not, ineffective. The mythology of meekly petitioning the government to seek redress comports well with the predominant American church mainstream and it has completely overshadowed the concept of the civil servant as the people's servant. In other words, the moderately liberal church-led form of civil protest prays for relief just like supplicants would pray for God's intercession -- on bended knee. They demand nothing and they would never dream of organizing a national general strike any more than they would threaten their ministers or God herself.

Unfortunately, nations like the United States that have a strong religious bias are also more oriented toward arguments of faith than reason. If a people are brought up to accept miracles and mysteries at face value, then they are also susceptible to believing the miracles and mysteries of 9-11, the official (and oft changing) rationale for America's Wars of Middle Eastern conquest, and political authority generally. Rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar's is not a good foundation for demanding a better material life for the here and now. Faith in a higher authority also marches with faith in political authority, faith in elections and the judicial system, and an unwillingness to believe that leaders are anything less than wise and well-meaning. Faith can lead one blindly to accept the mysteries of religion and, when exalted to a level of jingoism, can cause one blindly to accept the mysteries of foreign and domestic policy.

Thus religion, as currently practiced in the United States, no matter how ennobling of the spirit, is frequently a brake on political activity and not the slightest threat to established power. It tends to dissipate resistance to authority while celebrating the wholesomeness of non-confrontational and supplicating appeals to the other side's rather dubious souls. Over time, the spiritual approach to politics can leave people out of practice, exhausted and wholly unused to more vigorous (but still non violent) resistance to authority. Eventually, as they unavailingly beat their heads against institutional walls, citizens' aspirations and organizational skills may atrophy, they may lose their collective social memory, lose their momentum and lose the self-confidence necessary to assert control of their own destinies.

In many polite American street demonstrations, church groups are in the forefront of organization. In every European general strike, by contrast, churches rarely play a secondary role, if any at all.

The Fear of Unemployment

Although all of the preceding causes partially explain Americans' political timidity, probably the single biggest reason why Americans do not take more direct actions like a general strike is their legitimate fear of losing their livelihoods.

In those European countries where the citizens are most politically engaged, they also enjoy the strongest social safety nets. Whereas Americans depend on their employers for their retirement pensions, unemployment benefits and health insurance, Europeans are generally guaranteed all of that as basic entitlements of citizenship. These guarantees make Europeans freer than Americans to express their opinions and demand redress from their governments and their employers.

The European social safety nets -- socialized medicine, free or heavily subsidized higher education, public transportation and rich unemployment benefits, among others -- are paid for by compressing the range of income between the working and the management classes, taxing excess personal and corporate income, taxing the added value of manufactured or processed goods sold in commerce (thus placing the highest tax burden on those who consume the most), and by NOT spending a lot of money on the military.

It is no coincidence that when American workers were the most strident (during the early days of the union movement), they also had the worst working conditions and the fewest employment benefits to lose if they were fired. Currently, any American worker who participates in a general strike stands to lose his or her job in an anemic economy where many jobs are low-paying service positions that provide dismal benefits. The American striker risks not only her job, but the loss of retirement benefits and, most importantly, health insurance for the worker and the worker's family. European workers simply do not have to take that risk. Whether employed or not (and their job protections are vastly stronger than in the United States), Europeans tend to have extended unemployment and health care benefits that mitigate the fear of unemployment.

Indeed, we should ask: Why was the American health care system designed as a system of private "insurance" in the first place? Why should the American health care system be tied to work?

Insurance makes sense for allocating risk among people who choose to participate in certain electives like driving a car or owning a house. Insurance is also appropriate if, upon your own death, you wish to provide money for your family. Insurance is not a requirement of life because you can live without a car, you can live perfectly well without life insurance and you can rent if you will not own property. Health care, however, is different. No matter who you are, no matter how you live, sooner or later you will become old, sick and need medical help. When you need medical care you will be the least able to afford it. Why should this be a matter of private insurance? And why should this "insurance" be tied to your job? Why do Americans always think of health care as a matter of employer provided "insurance" when this is not the way it works elsewhere in the world?

The answer is precisely because it ties Americans' health care to their jobs, and by that tie so are they are also tied up. Americans are understandably afraid to do anything that might jeopardize their employability because there is far more at stake than just a paycheck. That fear rules out making too many demands on employers, it rules out doing anything that risks the stigma of arrest or criminal prosecution and it certainly rules out the possibility of a general strike. Americans have been chained to their jobs by the fear of losing health benefits for themselves and their families just as medieval peasants were tied to the land that they were forced to work for others. The system has been rigged, brilliantly so, to make sure that American workers are forever serfs and forever politically hamstrung.

Polls show overwhelming public support for socialized medical care (2) in the United States, yet politicians step gingerly all around the subject. The most that the majority of politicians are willing to do is to expand in tiny increments the preexisting private insurance system. For that they expect applause, but deserve none. Retaining the existing health care structure is not just about preserving the profit gravy train for the insurance industry. Most importantly, it is a well crafted political system that was designed to keep American workers in thrall, in a state of constant insecurity, tied to their paychecks and politically blunted. For these very reasons, the American system undoubtedly appeals to those in other parts of the world who also would like to weaken or dismantle their own socialized health programs in order make their citizens as tame as Americans are.

Big business will resist any wholesale abandonment of the current American medical care system of employer-based private health insurance unless, in so doing, it can slough off the cost of employer provided medical insurance and put yet another financial handcuff on its employees. For small and family-owned businesses, however, socialized medicine is a necessary equalizer that gives them the ability to compete in a business landscape that is otherwise heavily weighted in favor of huge corporations.

The European model shows that socialized medicine is essential for a democratic society. That model also shows that it is affordable in the United States if, as in Europe, we more tightly compress the range of compensation between the working and the management/ownership classes, eliminate the frictional costs associated with the private administration of health care (3), fairly and appropriately tax individual and corporate income especially at the highest ranges, impose a value added tax on consumer items, eliminate hidden government subsidies for the likes of energy conglomerates, agribusiness and Wall Street, and, most importantly, drastically reduce military spending.

So long as their necessities of life remain tied to their jobs, Americans will remain docile and there will never be an American national general strike. So long as Americans are incapable of organizing a national general strike, they will lack one of the most useful non-violent democratic tools to bring their own government to heel. For the very reason that the present system perpetuates the status quo, those people and entities who profit the most from it will fight tooth and nail to preserve it. But for that reason alone, in order to begin the process of freeing the American people from a culture of political servility, everyone else should fight tooth and nail for socialized medicine and other basic needs that are totally and unequivocally independent of employment.

Zbignew Zingh can be reached at: Zbig@ersarts.com. This article is CopyLeft, and free to distribute, reprint, repost, sing at a recital, spray paint, scribble in a toilet stall, etc. to your heart's content, with proper author citation. Find out more about Copyleft and read other great articles at: www.ersarts.com. copyleft 2007.

ENDNOTES

(1) The word "propaganda" derives from the Latin and is related to the verb "to propagate", or to multiply, disseminate or breed. In the 17th Century, Pope Urban VIII instituted a college of Propaganda constituted to educate mission priests around the world. "Propaganda" was a more or less neutral term until the last century when, as part of a pro-capitalist counter-propaganda campaign, it was "negativized" and associated with communism or socialism.

(2) Socialized medicine in the United States is known as either "universal" health care or "single-payer" health care. The words "socialized" or "socialist" are strictly taboo in American politics due, in large measure, to the success of the "educational" campaigns of the ownership class described above and the antipathy of the religious institutions to any coherent political creed that challenges their own cultural hegemony.

(3) The notion that the "private sector" is always more efficient than the public sector is another myth propagated by business interests. Because the private sector requires that "owners" extract "profit" from an enterprise, that profit must come from someplace. It usually comes from reduced wages of workers, higher worker "productivity" at the cost of employee layoffs, higher consumer prices, a reduction in the quality of goods or services or, most usually, a combination of all four. Privatized public utility companies with their history of providing less service at higher prices are a good example of how the reality of private enterprise rarely matches its hype. In the field of private health insurance, William McGuire, the CEO of UnitedHealth Group Inc., left office last year with a retirement package worth about $1.1 billion. That represents a lot of health care premiums and it is but one example of the private sector's diversion of assets from the commonwealth to personal wealth.




"IN TIMES OF UNIVERSAL DECEIT, TELLING THE TRUTH WILL BE A REVOLUTIONARY ACT." - George Orwell