Nudge

:Written by one of the Bookworm Patriots:



During the healthcare debate last year, President Obama told the American public they would be able to keep their current healthcare plan if they wanted.  The opposition was quick to point out that insurance companies would be forced to increase premiums because they would lose customers to the Federal government's plan.  This would "nudge" people to the new plan.    

Once the new healthcare bill was passed, some of the 39 separate companies that make up the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association increased their premiums.  The BCBSA insures over 100 million Americans and employs about 1,000 people.  Most of the 100 million individuals are employed by companies who use BCBS to insure their employees.  But because this economic climate is rocky for many companies, their costs must be as low as possible.  When BCBS increased their premiums, some companies left BCBS or opted to provide a plan to their  own employees that was affordable (but with higher out-of-pocket costs to their insured employees).

This is how the Feds nudge you in the direction they want you to go.

Last week was open enrollment for many companies who provide healthcare to their employees.  At the last minute, my wife discovered that her employer opted for a plan that would provide fewer benefits to her and her coworkers because premiums had been increased.  Fortunately, we were able to put her on my plan.  If I was still unemployed (as I had been not long ago), we would have been at the mercy of her employer and upcoming universal healthcare plan (since we are expecting a baby).  For now, we were able to resist the feds attempt to nudge us off of our private healthcare.

Thousands of other Americans have not been so fortunate.  The unemployed, the underemployed, if anyone has a chronic condition that requires insurance to avoid a life of debt - you know that if you lose a certain level of medical coverage, you'll be forced onto the government dole.

Look at the policies that the Obama administration has promoted and the potential to "nudge" you into a certain behavior.

9-12 Videos

Please check our facebook page for video clips of the 9-12 rally!

9-12 Rally

Two of the founders of the future bookwormpatriots.com attended the 9-12 rally in Washington DC this afternoon.  They will be uploading video footage from the event in the coming days.

Thanks to all!

Bookmarks!

Greetings!  We are putting together a massive and interactive book club to be part of the future bookwormpatriots.com.  We will be selling bookmarks to raise funds in order to put this project together for the educational betterment of the American people.  Final pricing and purchasing means ill be available by Monday.  We already have a PayPal account, just in case some of you do not use credit cards. 

This is what the front of the bookmark will look like…

What do you think?

Jefferson

The documentary entitled "Jefferson" is currently airing on the History Channel.  It will be repeated on August 31st at 12:00 pm and 6:00 pm.  Please watch this documentary and comment on any inconsistencies that you have found in your reading on Thomas Jefferson!

How can words define us if their meanings change?

We’d like to spend some time discussing Fascism.  There were a few replies to our post a couple of weeks back that posed the question, “What is Fascism?” Last year, if we were asked that question, we might have responded by saying that Fascism is a far right ideology in which a strong military is a central basis for control both inside and outside of the country. 

All of us can probably agree that historically speaking, some of the most radical policies have been passed in times of war or strife. The New Deal and the Patriot Act are just two examples.  The New Deal caused the depression of the thirties to become the “Great” depression (read New Deal or Raw Deal) and Americans gave up control of their own lives, because they believed their politicians could adequately make their lives better.

When the Patriot Act was introduced, Americans trusted that their government would only intrude on the terrorists.  Do you feel the same way now?  What if some nut job who was associated with the tea parties committed a violent crime, and the entire group was deemed a terrorist organization?  Those who supported the Patriot Act could become the terrorists they so despised, in the eyes of formerly trusted politicians.  Okay, we’ll come back to this is a minute.

Take a look at the illustration below.  In school, we learned that there was only right and left.  We are going to focus on the socialism line for today’s purposes.

Fascism is still on the right, isn’t it?  That’s because there are two different lines.  Fascism cannot hold the same place as Anarchism because it is a socialist policy.

Fascism is manipulated capitalism.  Just like Nazism and Communism, Fascists pick the winners and losers in the economy.  Big business is state-owned with unionized workers, while the small businesses are privatized (sound familiar?).  The purpose of these economic policies is to equalize the citizens.   
Now return to pondering about the times of great strife in America.  It isn’t necessarily accurate to say that Fascists love wars in a physical sense: they love creating war-equivalencies.  The war on hunger, the war on drugs, the war on terrorism, the war on global warming, and the war on healthcare costs all have something in common.  Each of these has been used to tug at the emotions of good Americans, because in times on war we’ll do anything to win!

Over the years the ‘crisis’ or ‘war mentality’ of Fascism has come to mean ‘war’ in a physically violent sense.  Due to the fact that most Conservatives and Republicans are supporters of our military and of military actions, their ideology has become synonymous with Fascism.

We contend that America is no longer the capitalist nation we once were.  America has morphed into a sort of ‘Soft-Fascism.’ If you disagree, just think of how many institutions were taken over by the government in the last three years.

Please purchase Jonah Goldberg’s book Liberal Fascism, you will learn things you didn’t know and be better prepared to speak on the subject of socialism in general.

Our official logo!