Deb: What do you think about the 2008 presidential election? What about the two Democratic candidates?
Shirley: Well, they are both incredible people, but I haven’t got a clear picture of where they stand on the issues and they do seem to shift from time to time. Neither supports HR676, which is basically Medicare for all. You know, we are the richest country in the world and we spend the most money on health care, but the health of our people is consistently ranked between 27 and 34, depending upon which study you read. The point is that for the amount of money we spend, our rating is incredibly low. More than half of the bankruptcies in this country are around medical issues.
Shirley: People feel secure if they have a health plan in place, but what they don’t realize is that a significant percentage of the premiums they pay, somewhere around 30%, goes to administering the program. The money does not go to the doctors or the hospitals. It’s a profit-oriented system. If we had Medicare for all, it would be a vastly different situation. I don’t know if you remember a doctor named Patch Adams.
Deb: I certainly do.
Shirley: He still travels around the country raising money for ‘humane’ hospitals, hospitals that will treat everyone regardless of their financial or insurance situation. He has been taking the time to talk about the benefits of HR676 along the way.
Deb: I have to tell you that I am terrified we’ll end up with John McCain, a carbon copy of George W. Bush and someone who is perhaps more hawkish. What do you think of his chances?
Shirley: Of course, we don’t have a crystal ball, so we cannot know for sure. In 2000 and 2004, George Bush really should not have been given the gift of the presidency. In 2000, there were significant election issues in Florida and then there were irregularities in Ohio during the 2004 campaign. Will we even get to an election? We’ve heard abut the possibility of martial law on the Internet and, of course, you have to take that with a grain of salt. However, martial law would effectively suspend the elections.
At the end of this part of the conversation, we both concluded that we wouldn’t put anything past the Bush administration.
About Her Impeachment Play
Shirley Golub is countering the misinformation being fed to the American public by the administration and the mainstream media by producing a full two-act theater production about the impeachment trial of George W. Bush and Richard Cheney. She explained that Bruce Fein, a well-known constitutional scholar, who actually wrote the articles of impeachment against both Bill Clinton and Alberto Gonzales, * wrote it along with Richard Lasser and a few other people.
“I” (the Impeachment Trial of George W. Bush and Richard Cheney) opens on May 17 at
the International Studies Academy Theater on Potrero Hill in San Francisco. Says Golub, “We need everyone to come out and see it. It’s designed to be educational so that people will understand why impeachment should be on the table. Of course, the Congress stretches time out as much as it can, but it’ll only take us a couple of hours to educate the public!”
Our conversation came to a close on that note, and I was even more convinced that we need more courageous people like Shirley Golub, Donna Edwards and Cindy Sheehan to challenge the politicians who have become too comfortable in their elected positions.
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