NYC's shakedown of Whole Foods worked: leftists get anti-ObamaCare frocer in coup

Amazon's takeover of Whole Foods Market, which I noticed was made after the Texas grocer was shaken down by New York authorities in a clear political attack for CEO John Mackey's opposition to socialised medicine that started in a 2009 Wall Street Journal article and later interviews on Fox News, is nearly complete.

Their strategy to cut prices will likely attack the long-standing policies of buying from farms within a 150 mile (240 km) radius and pushing food from that area in order to buy more from the larger farms, meaning sadly one of their virtues in buying from farmers we love in our area could be coming to an end.  I enjoy buying produce, meat and eggs from many local farms in our area (Wil-Moore, Doko, and others at the farmers' markets) and have built relationships with such farmers over the years. Whole Foods' relationship with many farmers will be under attack thanks to Amazon's likely game plan to cut costs at the expense of local farmers.

The Seattle retailer's new plans will discard loyalty programmes we see at other grocers but require for the major discounts Amazon Prime, which is over $100 annually that is best known for offering X-rated programming that pushes the Left's propaganda, which as we've noticed recently, a report from Parents Television Council notes the domination of TV-MA, the television equivalent of the NC-17 rating at movies, in premium streaming services;  Amazon's original content features liberal propaganda that Americans have rejected, but critics love at the awards shows.  Amazon pushed sexual perversion in one such award-winning show as they are one of television's New Big Four.

Also beware that they will become part of The Washington BLEEP's empire to push Starbucks' values and be the complete opposite of what made them a top notch grocer, which is the free market. Will this be the end of local farms' work with them as Seattle Values replaces the ideals of John Mackey?  I fear the local farmers that will lose their top distributor under Seattle Values.

This was the full article as posted by Mr. Mackey.  It is evident the shakedown of them began for his opposition to socialism, and the result is one of the Left's power brokers shook them down.  Because of the possibility of actions by The Washington BLEEP, I've decided to post it in its entirety before it could be removed by the said organisation after its takeover.  His analysis on the "Standard American Diet," as is called by the Keatleys of the Base 10 Method gymnasium and Health-Bent cooking site, and something I've known through my long term association with dancer Caroline Lewis Jones for many years in both taking dance and studying food, this analysis is absolutely correct.

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 Health Care Reform

"The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money" —Margaret Thatcher.

With a projected $1.8 trillion deficit for 2009, several trillions more in deficits projected over the next decade, and with both Medicare and Social Security entitlement spending about to ratchet up several notches over the next 15 years as Baby Boomers become eligible for both, we are rapidly running out of other people's money. These deficits are simply not sustainable and they are either going to result in unprecedented new taxes and inflation or they will bankrupt us.

While we clearly need health care reform, the last thing our country needs is a massive new health care entitlement that will create hundreds of billions of dollars of new unfunded deficits and moves us much closer to a complete governmental takeover of our health care system. Instead, we should be trying to achieve reforms by moving in the exact opposite direction-toward less governmental control and more individual empowerment. Here are eight reforms that would greatly lower the cost of health care for everyone:

1. Remove the legal obstacles which slow the creation of high deductible health insurance plans and Health Savings Accounts. The combination of high deductible health insurance and Health Savings Accounts is one solution that could solve many of our health care problems. For example, Whole Foods Market pays 100% of the premiums for all our team members who work 30 hours or more per week (about 89% of all team members) for our high deductible health insurance plan, and provides up to $1,800 per year in additional health care dollars through deposits into their own Personal Wellness Accounts to spend as they choose on their own health and wellness. Money not spent in one year rolls over to the next and grows over time. Our team members therefore spend their own health care dollars until the annual deductible is covered (about $2,500) and the insurance plan kicks in. This creates incentives to spend the first $2,500 more carefully. Our plan's costs are much lower than typical health insurance, while providing a very high degree of team member satisfaction.

2. Change the tax laws so that that employer-provided health insurance and individually owned health insurance have exactly the same tax benefits. Right now employer health insurance benefits are fully tax deductible for employers but private health insurance is not. This is unfair.

3. Repeal all state laws which prevent insurance companies from competing across state lines. We should all have the legal right to purchase health insurance from any insurance company in any state and we should be able use that health insurance wherever we live. Health insurance should be portable everywhere.

4. Repeal all government mandates regarding what insurance companies must cover. These mandates have increased the cost of health insurance many billions of dollars. What is insured and what is not insured should be determined by individual health insurance customer preferences and not through special interest lobbying.

5. Enact tort reform to end the ruinous lawsuits that force doctors into paying insurance costs of hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. These costs are ultimately being passed back to us through much higher prices for health care.

6. Make health care costs transparent so that consumers will understand what health care treatments cost. How many people know what their last doctor's visit cost? What other goods or services do we as consumers buy without knowing how much they will cost us? We need a system where people can compare and contrast costs and services.

7. Enact Medicare reform: we need to face up to the actuarial fact that Medicare is heading towards bankruptcy and move towards greater patient empowerment and responsibility.

8. Permit individuals to make voluntary tax deductible donations on their IRS tax forms to help the millions of people who have no insurance and aren't covered by Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP or any other government program.

Many promoters of health care reform believe that people have an intrinsic ethical right to health care-to universal and equal access to doctors, medicines, and hospitals. While all of us can empathize with those who are sick, how can we say that all people have any more of an intrinsic right to health care than they have an intrinsic right to food, clothing, owning their own homes, a car or a personal computer? Health care is a service which we all need at some point in our lives, but just like food, clothing, and shelter it is best provided through voluntary and mutually-beneficial market exchanges rather than through government mandates. A careful reading of both The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution will not reveal any intrinsic right to health care, food or shelter, because there isn't any. This "right" has never existed in America.

Even in countries such as Canada and the U.K., there is no intrinsic right to health care. Rather, citizens in these countries are told by governmental bureaucrats what health care treatments and medicines they are eligible to receive and when they can receive them. All countries with socialized medicine ration health care by forcing their citizens to wait in lines to receive scarce and expensive treatments. Although Canada has a population smaller than California, 830,000 Canadians are waiting to be admitted to a hospital or to get treatment. In England, the waiting list is 1.8 million citizens. At Whole Foods we allow our team members to vote on what benefits they most want the company to fund on their behalf. Our Canadian and British team members express their benefit preferences very clearly-they want supplemental health care more than additional paid time off, larger donations to their retirement plans, or greater food discounts; they want health care dollars that they can control and spend themselves without permission from their governments. Why would they want such additional health care benefit dollars to spend if they already have an "intrinsic right to health care"? The answer is clear: no such right truly exists in either Canada or the U.K. or in any other country.

Rather than increase governmental spending and control, what we need to do is address the root causes of disease and poor health. This begins with the realization that every American adult is responsible for their own health. Unfortunately many of our health care problems are self-inflicted with over 2/3 of Americans now overweight and 1/3 obese. Most of the diseases which are both killing us and making health care so expensive-heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, and obesity, which account for about 70% of all health care spending, are mostly preventable through proper diet, exercise, not smoking, minimal or no alcohol consumption, and other healthy lifestyle choices.

Over the past two decades, breakthrough scientific research by Colin Campbell, as documented in his book The China Study, and clinical medical experiences by many doctors including Dean Ornish, Caldwell Esselstyn, John McDougall, Joel Fuhrman, and Neal Barnard have shown that a diet consisting of whole foods which are plant-based, nutrient dense, and low-fat will help prevent and often reverse most of the degenerative diseases that are killing us, and becoming more and more expensive to treat through drugs and surgery. We should be able to live healthy and largely disease free lives until we are well into our 90's and even past 100 years of age.

Health care reform in America is very important. Whatever reforms are enacted it is essential that they be financially responsible and that we have the freedom to choose our own doctors and the health care services that best suit our own unique set of lifestyle choices. We are responsible for our own lives and our own health. We should take that responsibility very seriously and use our freedom to make wise lifestyle choices that will protect our health. Doing so will enrich our personal lives and will help create a vibrant and sustainable American society.

Of Rent-A-Mobs, absurd health insurance reform, and running the Peachtree instead of watching 40 hot dog eaters

R ent-a-Mobs. The classlessness of the Christian bashers has grown. Fresh off successes in overturning religious freedom via the overthrow of common sense in favour of selling out to every sin-pusher in the world, they have returned to Austin, where weeks ago, a bill to ban the murder of children after they are 20 weeks old was killed by the filibuster of Wendy Davis that reminded me of the Indianapolis 500's three qualifying sessions (Day One Q1 and Q2, Day Two) and where rules may deserve a change.

The delay tactic used was the bill would die at midnight if it was not passed. The roll call in the Senate started just before midnight, but the final approved votes were at 12:02 AM, killing the bill.

If it was INDYCAR, this problem, and another current session, would not have been needed, all Gov. Perry would have needed was to sign the bill that passed. In INDYCAR, if a car leaves the designated pit box at 3:59:55 PM, just seconds before the 4 PM gun that ends Day One Q1, that driver is entitled to make his runs, even if the green flag waves at 4:02 PM and the run ends at 4:05 PM, and if the driver's time is between 10th and 24th, he is in the field, or between 1st and 9th, he enters Q2.

Would common sense have prevailed?

For someone who was taught to hate orange early and still does with reckless abandon, seeing orange tee-shirts and the classless dress of the protesters had me laughing at what they were doing.

And oh, by the way; the rent a mob told pro-life legislators they hoped their daughters were raped. Now this is thuggery.

Be in the worst shape, lower rates, but double or triple rates for healthy ones? I admit I'm a fitness person. I've run nine marathons and made my super sprint triathlon debut last year. I lift weights and with my best friend, often take barre classes together (she was my dance partner). I avoid colas and junk food when possible, and prohibit quick-service restaurants, colas, and coffee from any intake. And, to take a cue from our British readers (considering the number of football posts we've done here), I do not tolerate fags, nor do I even use them. (If you're not familiar, that's a Brit term for a cigarette.)

With mandatory “health exchanges” coming in play and new approved health care under the “Affordable Care Act,” in effect, a healthy person would pay two to three (or more) times greater than what they currently pay, including mandatory payment for baby murders, and with the anti-Christian agenda of Dear Leader, it is no longer possible to count AIDS as a “pre-existing medical condition” as part of pushing sin legalisation.

So it's perfectly OK to reward poor health but if you're fit and do marathons and the rest, but anyone who is obese, has morbid conditions (including STD's), and the works will be rewarded with lower rates. Go figure. That's ObamaCare.

When in the course of human events . . . Those words mean things. It was 237 years ago those words launched the Declaration of Independence against King George III. How much of this holds true today as we have Dear Leader leading a generation to believe in dependence on the government.

Cultural Outrage has a New Lead. ESPN, which has taken over tennis (and is perpetuating its decline), once again showed the ultimate Independence Day disgrace; the Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Eating contest. Once again, there were two contests, a women's and a men's. What is with that show? Forget the chemical loads, I ran Peachtree Street! ◙

What liberals want next: humanist indoctrination before acceptance to college and poking on every medication you buy

In the University of California system, students who attend parochial schools cannot be accepted to the system because their science, literature, and history courses do not subscribe to the humanist worldview that is required, as the state has mandated, and a court has approved. Meanwhile, students are being forced into remedial classes. This is a byproduct of the failure of the educational system that mandates a humanist worldview to be taught in the schools.

So Catholic and Protestant parochial schools are now illegal in California, as they are denied admission to colleges because their textbooks do not comply with the humanist worldview. Meanwhile, we accept this and this.

The reversing of the Bush era trends towards Health Savings Accounts (on individuals) and new policies on Flexible Spending Accounts (on corporations) show how this wicked government of the CCCP want to destroy health care in order to make Big Brother bigger and to make them your deity. ◙

Opinion Digest

Paul Driessen: Greens Shackle National Security and Renewable Energy.

End of the American Dream: The Green Agenda Is About Getting Rid of As Many Humans as Possible.

Doug Giles: ObamaCare, Alinsky, and useful "Christian" Idiots.

Roger Hedgecock: Single Payer Coming Under ObamaCare.

All Your Nation Belong To Us. Ole, ole, ole, ole! Death to the USA!  ◙

Thinketh as The Thugocracy Beginneth

I bowled with her son at a now-defunct bowling alley known for the 1968 uprising when it was an all-white bowling alley where three died (and the nearby public university's sports arena is named in memory of the three victims) in the protests. She is a Briton who has seen the nightmares of socialised medicine on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, and had an interesting perspective on the issue, and it was referenced in today's local newspaper.

The socialised medicine rationing has me reminiscent of what could have happened to a college friend. A few years ago, she learned a serious growth had grown around her spine. She needed special surgery, and her symptom needs specialists. With the "death panel" that will consist of a majority of members selected by this thugocracy of the community organiser, they will likely say "her symptom is too expensive, you must die". This is a married mother of two children, not even 30, they want to kill with the federal health policy as it will be impossible to do such surgeries and experimental treatment (unless it is with babies killed under taxpayer orders) under the new orders of this régime. She was given her surgery and is still in rehabilitation, and still unable to be at her job years later, but thanks to a wonderful free market system of thinking outside the box and doing these necessary treatments, she is closer to returning to work and able to tend to her children. What if it was your friend or family member who has a similar symptom and with the new death panel, they ask she die instead of being able to be treated?

Words Mean Things: One Root Word

As I listened to the third hour this morning of Glenn Beck's radio show, he referenced the ruling party as the National Progressive or National Socialist Party. As Mr. Beck made the reference, I thought that Mr. Beck had referenced the modern rulers as Nazis.

Now before you go ballistic over that comment, people should understand the reference the root “Nazi” itself, as it means “National.” Such was used in venues as Italy's Autodromo Nazionale di Monza (The National Autodrome of Monza), the home of the Gran Premio Santander d'Italia. But the most infamous “stereotype” of the root “Nazi” comes from the shorthand abbreviation of the entire name of the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, the National Socialist Workers Party of Germany.

In light of the move of this nation to the socialist utopia, when looking at the entire Nazi reference from a literal standpoint, this nation is truly run, as Mr. Beck would reference, by the National Socialist Workers Party of America – Nationalsozialistische Amerikaner Arbeiterpartei. It is truly “Nazi” when considering the history of words and the meanings.

Here's an interesting take from The American Spectator. ◙

United States of America, R.I.P.

With this passage of America's Affordable Health Choice Act of 2009 and the student loan "reform", the United States of America has been executed by Communists intent on imposing their agenda.

WIth the death of self-sufficience, comes slavery to the government.

The arrogance of a dictatorial régime of Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid, within a span of less than 50 months, has created excessive government control.

It is now time we stand for the New National Anthem of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics:

Pelosi's Socialised Medicine

By Bobby Chang

The utter arrogance of Congress to pass a Communist-style health "care" policy is outright arrogant. As I mentioned in July, I have a friend who tore her ACL and needed surgery (fortunately it was caught early, and she is doing very well; saw her at a show for her group; another friend of mine danced in it).

Once again, the rules of Congress created the Communist style rules - One Side Only from the Left.

One Congressman noted the current leadership has a "command and control" style of governing, demanding people do what the government tells you or penalties will be severe. We saw it with automakers, and we saw it with industries. Now they want us to do it with healthcare.

As Glenn Beck says, we have a new National Anthem. Please Stand for the National Anthem.

Socialised Medicine Hazards

By Bobby Chang

In the discussion of the President's plan for socialised medicine through "health care reform," which would turn the nation fully into being run by Europe after courts began declaring years ago that European laws override American laws, and now with the idea of European-style socialism with tax rates over 50%, a message I received from a friend, Caroline Lewis-Jones, a dancer, and also warnings from doctors about athletic injuries reminded me of why we cannot have socialised medicine, and how its plan to have government bureaucrats determine what types of medical treatment are possible, the long waits, and restrictions on medical care (including an emphasis on killing through “abortion,” including mandates on training doctors to kill, and “euthanasia”) are extremely dangerous for the health of the person. The proposals of socialised medicine and restrictions on specialists would virtually prohibit medical research (except for baby-killing), new medicines and vaccines (could you imagine Jonas Salk producing the polio vaccine with government-run health care banning research on new medicines; speaking of polio, Bill Cullen's polio was why he sat at desks on many of his game shows; you could see how it compromised him when he hosted the syndicated 1970's version of Pyramid; also he was already seated in position in many game shows where he was a guest panelist), and experimental surgery that is used only in this country where innovation has long been rewarded.
As I read the report from Mrs. Lewis-Jones, whom I have supported her efforts against cancer and a local hospice (she lost her mother two weeks after I lost my father), the report mentioned she had a severe knee injury, as she tore her anterior cruciate ligament (ACL), and will have surgery Monday for repairs. It will likely take months (probably into next summer) to heal the severe injury (a friend at church had an ACL tear that took months to heal from playing sports with the kids), with Mrs. Lewis-Jones' rehabilitation probably taking longer because of her nature as a professional dancer.

The nature of her treatment reminded me of the rationing of medical care services and medicine under "single-payer" socialised medicine, which is the model plan of this Administration. Imagine if it was under the new ObamaCare, and she is told to visit a general practitioner, and not a specialist who works with knees, which is what she needs for her injury, as the specialist works with dancers and athletes. The general practicioner makes a diagnosis but tells her to wait in the mandatory waiting line for the knee specialist. The waiting line for her severe injury takes her a minimum of two months, and then she is told to wait six to eight months for surgery, as her ACL injury line is long from high-school athletes who have blown their knees from ACL tears, who cannot wait. Meanwhile, she is out a minimum of two years from her livelihood and occupation because of government waiting lines that could mean waiting a total of six months, then eight months for surgery, and the rehabilitation which will take a year.

Is this the type of medical care we need when someone has a severe knee injury such as an ACL tear, and requires two years from calling the doctor to being cleared again, when currently the injury can be detected quickly, surgery immediate, and rehabilitation is much faster, and she can be ready within this time next year? As a friend of Mrs. Lewis-Jones (we saw each other at the South Carolina Philharmonic concert in January that I thought was not suited for Wien), I cannot imagine her losing her occupation for two years because rationed health care ensures she cannot be treated for her severe knee injury.

As we go into next week, please keep Mrs. Lewis-Jones in your prayers as she goes under the knife of the doctor to repair the torn ACL.

This injury makes me appreciate the specialists who will tend to these injuries with special care designed for dancers and athletes. These are the types of doctors socialised medicine would eliminate, and ruin careers of friends such as her career.

Oh, by the way. It is a sad state of affairs when many do not know what is Santander after watching last week's Großer Santander Preis von Deutschland. After reading the Max Mosley controversy at the Nürburgring, I hope many of you will know what is Santander. Some in the Northeast may have something from them – I own shares of Santander.) Do not use any search engine – Google, Yahoo!, Bing, et al, in answering the question – What is Santander?