Betrayed

No, you probably haven’t heard of the 51st state, the state of Jefferson.  It’s been removed from most history books and long forgotten.  An initiative that originated in the counties of southern Oregon and northern California, they even had their own flag.  It’s a square with two x’s inside of circles, meaning “we’ve been double crossed.”

The issue surrounding the attempt to create this state was the same one that was at the heart of the American Revolution.  There was no adequate representation.

At the time, the people of southern Oregon and northern California were talking about a vein of copper that couldn’t be gotten out of this place — and still has not.  They felt decisions were being made by interests elsewhere, such as the southern California movie industry or the state government of Sacramento which was perceived as having little to do with them.

There’s not much you can do when you try to secede from a state and create your own.  There were multiple attempts made — some serious and some not.  Ultimately, they were not successful.

But the point is this.  The issue of lack of representation remains and is getting worse. And it applies to the whole nation.

I’ve been following elections, in the press and on television, since I was quite small. I’ve noticed that everything I see and observe now is worse in terms of lack of representation.  Oh, I like the name of Jefferson for the state that never happened.  After all, he wrote and said a lot of good things.

But the truth of the matter is that you and I are not represented.  And now we only have a choice of two presidential candidates — neither of whom seems to represent anybody I know. The general feeling is that these people have been put forth by powers that are not our own and we are given a choice between things that may or may not work.

We have been double crossed.  As long as I can remember, the presentations in the media have not focused on what job needs to be done and who can do those jobs.  Instead, they have focused on who will win, who do they represent, and what is their image. This has no relevance to the problems of individual Americans or the United States as a whole.

We have been double crossed because we are being manipulated — manipulated by fear.

I actually saw an advertisement on television today for something called “food insurance.”  Supposedly, terrorists might take over or some sort of tyranny where food will no longer be available to us.  They are trying to sell us meals that are good for 20 years, guaranteed, because we may be cut off from our food supply.  This seems to be rubbish.

The nation has told us that it does not have sufficient intelligence to discern what are or aren’t real dangers. So people are making money off fear.  You can turn on any cable channel and see ads for insurances – from eyeglasses to detailed aspects of your home — for the purpose of saving money.

We’re scared. And I can’t stand being scared anymore.

As an intelligent and outspoken individual, I have been forced into a political role that is alien for me.  I certainly never wanted to grow up to be a politician.  After all, those people just shake a lot of hands and worry about how they appear.  How about wondering who can do the job and where the job starts?

We have been double crossed. The economy is in shambles and so is our belief in government.  People on all mass levels are trying to manipulate us on style and not substance.

What exactly is the substance of an American life?  The one issue I am unabashedly qualified to speak of is healthcare.  I’ve been a physician for 30 years, I’ve had more specialties than I can count, and I’ve been a professor in medical schools.  During this time I have seen healthcare change.  I first saw it change in France, where I studied medicine.  Then I saw it change in the United States, where I’d returned to a system and country I idealized.  I am now dealing with a medical care system that is not what it should be or as it should be.

While studying in France, I was told that if you were an honest doctor and kept a log of expenses you would make a decent living.  If you were lucky enough to qualify for specialties, as I did, perhaps you’d earn a bit more.

But from the moment I returned to the United States, healthcare was dictated by what insurance would pay for and what it would not. First covertly, then questionably, and then overtly, people began to make alliances between health insurance and medical schools and health insurance and hospitals.  And now it is so overt that if insurance pays something, it gets done.  If insurance does not pay something, it does not get done.

Our honesty has been slowly eroded, as have the ideas of the Founding Fathers.  A long time ago, before Thomas Jefferson was president, he wrote the notes to Virginia.  In them he said “If people let the government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as the souls who live under tyranny.”

We are now in that state — one where other people are dictating health. Granted, some people up here in the great state of Jefferson cling to their individuality.  This is something that can be very dangerous.  They decline recommended interventions because they don’t feel like they’re paid for adequately, or because they cause too much pain, or because they don’t trust their doctors.

The problem with healthcare is not whether we do or don’t do a plan that has been supported by insurance.  The problem with healthcare is that people die.  They die younger, and they die in pain.  Too often, it is without adequate alternatives from their government. So the question is — what do we do from here?

Time and time again, it has been said that the only way America does things is with the direction of money, corporations, and large moneyed interests.  Being a doctor today is not what I put in for.  Whether it’s due to the high doctor suicide rate or the issue of retirement without replacement, there are very few doctors left.  And the shortage is increasing.

Most people in rural places — like northern California and southern Oregon — never see a doctor.  Instead, they see a nurse practitioner whom they believe to be a doctor. Nurses are wonderful people. I relied on them a great deal when I was in training to learn practical methods.  But they are not trained to deal with rare cases or emergencies.  And there is absolutely no law known to me which necessitates their supervision.  So for many, there’s really nothing left that works.

A revolution would be a nice idea.  Perhaps it would give us a chance to choose the two candidates who are running against each other for our vote.  Short of revolution, there are a couple of things that you can do. Not many, however, because most of your rights have already been stolen from you by moneyed interests, just as they’ve been stolen from me.

One of the things you can do is just not vote.  If you don’t vote, we still have laws in the Constitution that would force a new Constitutional Convention.  This would be a way to tell the world, in capital letters and a screaming voice, that the election has nothing to do with us.  We have not chosen these people, they do not represent our interests, and they are not helping.  This is at least worth consideration.

It lies contrary to everything you were ever told as a young person in school.  We are taught that voting is the way to express yourself in a democracy or even in a republic.  But the truth of the matter is that the vote is meaningless because you have not had the right to choose the people who represent you.

They are people from moneyed families who are able to get money for campaigns.  In other words, we have an oligarchy.  We have nobility as real as the nobility in Europe we fought when we had the Revolution. You can pull back from it and not grow. If one person does, it makes little difference. If everyone does, somebody is going to notice.

There’s something else you can do.  You can try to create your own corporations and your own moneyed interests in order to fight.  That’s what I’ve done — me, my beloved husband, and a few other people who want to join me.

My America, the one I’m living in right now in 2012, is not the America of the Founding Fathers.  Not at all.

The idea is this.  What is the most inalienable right of man? It is the right to live, and to live as long and healthy as possible.  But this right is trampled on every single day by corporations – like corporations with environmental carcinogens that are killing people.  This has been proven by scientific research.  Good, honest, decent research from other countries.  Research that is not been paid for by drug companies.

I trained as a scientist to trust research.  But I am living in an America so adulterated that I cannot trust a piece of research until I can see who has paid for it. There is honest research, mostly from elsewhere, and there is a government telling us lies. So we must build a corporation of our own.  In our case, this is a political action committee — The American Natural Health Initiative.

There are several groups of people who have double crossed us.  Those two double x’s inside the circles on the state of Jefferson flag have never had more meaning.  In general, we’ve been double crossed by every financed interest that I can think of. The drug companies are but one.

Only slowly is the government beginning to realize that the drug companies falsify data and falsify communications.  Of course, the government itself falsifies data and communications.  It remains to be seen what enforcement of these things needs to be done.  But if you have to enforce honesty, one has to ask the question of what happens the day after the enforcement ends.

There are many medications that help people but make no money. They’re non patentable medications — they have no sales force and no one else makes money off them.  The drug companies have gone to considerable lengths to ensure they are not known and not used. Doctors are only human and exhausted and tend to prescribe things that drug company representatives – not always known for their sophisticated knowledge – try to sell them.

So between corporations killing them and the inability of doctors to save them, people are dying.  They’re living less and they’re living sicker.  Every day, practicing in a rural place – a place like the state of Jefferson — I see such people.

I only see one way to win back America from drug companies. This is a plea to look at the American Natural Health Initiative.  Together, we can gather the resources to fight those who contradict everything the nation was built on.