Follow the Money

Show me the money.
 - R Tidwell

Get It Try It

There's very few things an HR officer can know about prospective employees. You can check their CVs, talk to their references, have them meet with current employees and see how they get on, chat with them yourself - but at the end of the day you really don't know. You're making an educated guess. And your reputation and career as an HR officer rest on how well you guess.

And so it is with political elections. And most politicians are generous on wide sweeping promises and heavy on the monosyllabic slogans and they rarely come through with anything they've talked about before assuming office.

The election turnouts in the US hover around the 50% mark. They're an indication of the people's lack of confidence in politics in general and their politicians in particular.

But given that most campaign promises might be no more than hot air and that one often goes on a 'gut feeling' instead of proper research there might be only one tool 'casual' voters have at their disposal: the good old Arthur Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes 'process of elimination'.

'How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?' says Holmes in The Sign of the Four.

The fundament of this methodology is finding at least one thing that is not a mere supposition but an unassailable fact. Think for example of Hercule Poirot's reasoning in Murder on the Orient Express: time and again there is a subtle but important distinction between what the Belgian detective is told is the truth (fact) and what he is actually able to perceive himself. That a suspect tells him so and so did whatever at some arbitrary time does not mean so and so did anything - it means only a suspect told him so.

When it comes to elections people are totally bamboozled: they're 'told' things. They don't really 'know' anything at all. Sometimes - as in The Usual Suspects - it helps to take a step back to see the picture more clearly. But that's not always possible.

The nip 'n' tuck race for the Democrat nomination has two candidates who to all intents and purposes do not have much different campaign platforms. Some pundits describe the differences as 'marginal' or 'minimal'. So - how to choose? Are there any real readily discernable differences twixt the two?

The one thing that keeps naggingly recurring is the health care issue.

Health care has become possibly -the- burning issue in this US election. And it's about time. And realistically it probably wouldn't have happened if Hillary hadn't started pouncing on it fifteen years ago. But today it's out there. And the only Democrat candidate saying anything reasonable is the same one - Hillary.

Hillary has a plan. It's a universal system. The same type of system everyone in the 'developed world' has save for the unfortunate suckers in the US. And they're abused like people nowhere else.

But given that coming out in favour of universal health care is a good way to get votes and given that Barack Hussein Obama basically picks up on everyone else's ideas like a political Bill Gates - why then hasn't he come out in favour of universal health care as well?

For say what you will but his 'idea' - it can't be called a plan - is essentially 'dandy' and without clout and leaves 15 million people in the US abandoned from the get-go. Is this any way to get votes?

Those fifteen million uninsured don't represent fifteen million voters but they represent a full 5% of the total voting population. And 5% is enough to swing almost any election. So why turn your back on them?

There are three possible reasons.

1. There are other people in the US who don't like the idea others will get for free what they had to work so hard for. You might lose their votes if you come out in favour of it.

2. There are major corporate interests outside the so called 'predator sector' who also like things the way they are - corporations who enjoy leverage with their employees because they mete out the meagre health care plans these poor people have. Do away with that and a lot of people who'd otherwise have quit their jobs and gone off in search of better fairer jobs might finally do so.

3. The predators themselves don't want change. These pharmaceuticals and insurance companies in the US have been getting away - literally - with murder. And people in the US don't grasp these predators have spent $1 billion over the past ten years lobbying in their federal capital and that the unheard of prices people are paying for medicines and health care are funding the continuing campaign to preserve the status quo. People don't realise that through the outrageous pricing and policies forced on them they're actually funding this campaign to keep them under the heel and in shackles.

The individuals who outright resent the fact others will now get for free what they've worked so hard for: they're a significant demographic. They can cast their votes but they can't do much more than that.

The corporations both inside and outside the 'predator sector' don't like Hillary's prospect either but they can do something about it.

What's a predator company to do when faced with the presidency of a matriarch categorically opposed to them? Someone who regards them - rightfully - as the enemy? Are they supposed to talk to her?

Yeah right. And as long as they've seen Hillary on the horizon - and it's been quite a long time now - they've been trying to figure out what to do. She's not going to put them out of business; they might have to cut back on flights to the Caymans and sell off a few BMWs but otherwise they'll be OK. It's just that their 'golden days' are numbered. And they don't like that and want to stop it. Of course they do.

But Hillary sees these predators for what they are: the enemy. And they know it. There's no way they can talk to her. She might strictly speaking be a politician but she's not going to even entertain a discussion of compromise - and certainly not on something like this.

So is there anyone they can talk to? Now there is! A candidate who will not come out on the side of health care truth and justice for all. A candidate who doesn't really stand for much himself but continually checks the way the wind's blowing. You can talk to someone like that!

Fifteen million: that's how many people get screwed over immediately an Obama gets to decide. Fifteen million fellow citizens, fellow human beings. For someone who hasn't seen the squalor of the US up close it might not seem like a lot. But it is. The disparity between rich and poor in the US is like that of a banana republic but the disparity between 'adequate' and 'abysmal' is almost more shocking.

Then why abandon them? And how can anyone in good conscience do such a thing?

The process of elimination: for whatever reason, for good or for bad, one fact is unassailable: Barack Hussein Obama has already turned his back on fifteen million of his fellow human beings. Nice move, you creep. If he doesn't want to win office on his high morals alone he must have another card up his sleeve.

Follow the money. Start at Pfizer.