Ted Cruz not only seems not to have learned his lesson during The Shutdown, viz., that Americans are tired—tired—tired of gridlock and partisan politics merely; incredibly, he seem to have been emboldened by it all, ready and willing to trumpet out louder blasts of rancor and meanness while pursuing an anti-American agenda of more and more for the top 1% super-rich and less and less for the bottom 85% suffering poor.
Of course, he never—The Right never—tells the truth; The Right is trying its hardest to protect the average American, so it says—by opposing Obamacare(!)—failing to mention how millions of Americans, without Obamacare, are unable to afford ANY health insurance at all: or failing to mention what Michael Moore revealed in his film on healthcare, Sicko (2007), viz., that big health insurers consciously opposed insuring people in order to increase their profits, profits that doomed these uninsured (including children) to die because their families could not otherwise afford the procedures without health insurance! This injustice Obamacare would eliminate. But nothing is too sordid, or too amoral, for presidential hopeful Ted Cruz to champion. The Tea Party is emphatically “politics as usual”: more for the “haves,” less for the “have nots.”
What speaks volumes about the state of education today is that Cruz was graduated from Harvard Law School—a top student according to a well-known Harvard Law School professor, Alan Dershowitz. But Cruz did come under harsh criticism from Dershowitz for his conduct during the shutdown, saying that Cruz’s antics were “unconstitutional” and would have appalled a Hamilton or a Madison. That a wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing anarchist can graduate from our top law school, then be elected to political office, become the spiritual leader of one of our two political parties, and an aspirant to the presidential office to boot, I find absolutely horrifying—and very depressing. It speaks volumes about the diseased nature of politics and education in our nation today.
An argument Cruz used repeatedly during the Shutdown—as justification for it—was his opposition to a medical devices tax: how unfair it was, and how it would stifle a company’s R&D by lowering its profit margin. But an independent medical research group tackled Cruz’s points and—no surprise here—found his arguments to be without a shred of truth.
The naked truth is this: Companies which sell these medical devices don’t put much money into R&D even when they do make good profits (!); that these companies force doctors and hospitals to sign an agreement not to disclose their prices so hospitals and doctors can’t shop around for the best prices; that hospitals and doctors pay 50% more in the US for these devices than in other countries where there are open prices, controls and checks; that these companies, furthermore, lobby Congress, giving money to its members in return for their support. Cruz and others thus work not for the American people but for these medical devices companies. And Cruz thinks he operates on “principles?” And just what “principles” might those be that enrich his own pockets at the expense of the average, poor American’s?
Len Sive Jr.