{"id":836,"date":"2009-09-30T15:43:10","date_gmt":"2009-09-30T15:43:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/onecity\/2009\/09\/health-care-reform-government-is-good-and-chuck-grassley-is-a-predator.html"},"modified":"2009-09-30T15:43:10","modified_gmt":"2009-09-30T15:43:10","slug":"health-care-reform-government-is-good-and-chuck-grassley-is-a-predator","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/09\/health-care-reform-government-is-good-and-chuck-grassley-is-a-predator.html","title":{"rendered":"Health Care Reform: Government is Good and Chuck Grassley is a Predator"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Chuck_Grassley_Predator_health_care.jpg\"<\/span><\/p>\n

by Ethan Nichtern<\/i><\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

The gentleman to your left seems not to like his job much at all. Maybe we should help him find a new one.<\/p>\n

As the Senate Finance Committee<\/a> debated the Public Option<\/a>‘s inclusion in the Health Care Reform Bill <\/a>yesterday, this line caught me in a WTF? moment to remember. “Government is not a fair competitor,” Republican Senator Charles Grassley<\/a> of Iowa said. “It’s a predator<\/strong>.”<\/p>\n

Did Mr. Grassley just call himself a predator? I mean, this is a Predator<\/a>. Clearly, Chuck has quite negative views on what government is. Why would somebody want to work in the government holding those views? And why would the people of Iowa vote for someone who would say such a thing? Sort of like supporting an arsonist to become Chief of the Fire Department, don’t you think?<\/div>\n


\nBy the way the Public Option<\/a>, which would simply give everyone more choice in health care coverage<\/a>, is far from dead. The House Health Care Bill<\/a>
\nis pretty sure to have it included, and public opinion is still very
\nmuch for a public option (you know, like almost every other country in
\nthe industrialized world has). But I don’t think we’ll make much
\nprogress until we get deeper at this strange wrong view that Government
\nis Bad. Government is Us, Mr. Grassley. You and me. Nothing more or
\nless. I am not a predator, sir. Nor are the people of Iowa who elected
\nyou.<\/p>\n

\"government_is_good.jpg\"<\/span>Check out this interesting website: Government is Good<\/a>.
\nGovernment is basically good, when held accountable. In democracy,
\nGovernment is interdependent citizens deciding what to do together. Why
\ndoes Chuck Grassley hate his job so much? And if he does, shouldn’t the
\npeople of Iowa interdependently decide to be governed by someone
\nwho…you know…likes government? Or could he at least give up his
\ninsurance which he gets from the…um…government (!), and see how 50
\nmillion Americans live, needlessly?<\/p>\n

Government is basically good, and basically us. Until we start electing people who understand that, we aren’t going to make much progress understanding interdependence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Ethan Nichtern The gentleman to your left seems not to like his job much at all. Maybe we should help him find a new one. As the Senate Finance Committee debated the Public Option‘s inclusion in the Health Care Reform Bill yesterday, this line caught me in a WTF? moment to remember. “Government is…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":74,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interdependent-activism-politics"],"yoast_head":"\nHealth Care Reform: Government is Good and Chuck Grassley is a Predator - One City<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/09\/health-care-reform-government-is-good-and-chuck-grassley-is-a-predator.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Health Care Reform: Government is Good and Chuck Grassley is a Predator - One City\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"by Ethan Nichtern The gentleman to your left seems not to like his job much at all. Maybe we should help him find a new one. As the Senate Finance Committee debated the Public Option‘s inclusion in the Health Care Reform Bill yesterday, this line caught me in a WTF? moment to remember. “Government is…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/09\/health-care-reform-government-is-good-and-chuck-grassley-is-a-predator.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"One City\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-09-30T15:43:10+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/onecity\/files\/import\/Chuck_Grassley_Predator_health_care.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Ethan Nichtern\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Health Care Reform: Government is Good and Chuck Grassley is a Predator - One City","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/09\/health-care-reform-government-is-good-and-chuck-grassley-is-a-predator.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Health Care Reform: Government is Good and Chuck Grassley is a Predator - One City","og_description":"by Ethan Nichtern The gentleman to your left seems not to like his job much at all. Maybe we should help him find a new one. As the Senate Finance Committee debated the Public Option‘s inclusion in the Health Care Reform Bill yesterday, this line caught me in a WTF? moment to remember. “Government is…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/09\/health-care-reform-government-is-good-and-chuck-grassley-is-a-predator.html","og_site_name":"One City","article_published_time":"2009-09-30T15:43:10+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/onecity\/files\/import\/Chuck_Grassley_Predator_health_care.jpg"}],"author":"Ethan Nichtern","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/09\/health-care-reform-government-is-good-and-chuck-grassley-is-a-predator.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/09\/health-care-reform-government-is-good-and-chuck-grassley-is-a-predator.html","name":"Health Care Reform: Government is Good and Chuck Grassley is a Predator - One City","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/09\/health-care-reform-government-is-good-and-chuck-grassley-is-a-predator.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/09\/health-care-reform-government-is-good-and-chuck-grassley-is-a-predator.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/onecity\/files\/import\/Chuck_Grassley_Predator_health_care.jpg","datePublished":"2009-09-30T15:43:10+00:00","dateModified":"2009-09-30T15:43:10+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/#\/schema\/person\/52c98770e14a482ace0de36ea672938f"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/09\/health-care-reform-government-is-good-and-chuck-grassley-is-a-predator.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/09\/health-care-reform-government-is-good-and-chuck-grassley-is-a-predator.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/09\/health-care-reform-government-is-good-and-chuck-grassley-is-a-predator.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/onecity\/files\/import\/Chuck_Grassley_Predator_health_care.jpg","contentUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/onecity\/files\/import\/Chuck_Grassley_Predator_health_care.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/09\/health-care-reform-government-is-good-and-chuck-grassley-is-a-predator.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Health Care Reform: Government is Good and Chuck Grassley is a Predator"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/","name":"One City","description":"The Interdependence Project","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/#\/schema\/person\/52c98770e14a482ace0de36ea672938f","name":"Ethan Nichtern","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/13e\/13ee2d28169053f9c0745fa2e72f15b7x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/13e\/13ee2d28169053f9c0745fa2e72f15b7x96.jpg","caption":"Ethan Nichtern"},"description":"Ethan Nichtern is the author of the acclaimed book One City: A Declaration of Interdependence (Wisdom Publications, 2007) and is currently finishing a novel. His writing has been featured in numerous print and online publications. He is the founding director of the Interdependence Project and the host of the I.D. Project\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s popular weekly podcast (available on iTunes). He is currently on the part-time faculty of Eugene Lang College at New School University in NYC, where he teaches Buddhism. Ethan lectures regularly at universities and venues around the country on Buddhism, meditation, contemporary culture, and activism.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/author\/enichtern"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/836","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/74"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=836"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/836\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}