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While I agree wholeheartedly with all of the information provided in Ariel's dissertation, I disagree with the conclusion that the Nation's greatest issue is not Healthcare. I quote from Poetic_Badger of open.salon.com: "The Founding Fathers couldn't have been clearer when they said in the Preamble (to our Constitution); "We the people of the United States, in order to establish a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." Promote the General Welfare is a clear assignment of responsibility to citizens to care for each other, they knew that if you cared for the weak it would make us all stronger, and make the US a special place where religions, races, and ethnic groups would all work together for the common cause of a more perfect union. General Welfare covers housing, food, education and health care, these are all the duty of us citizens (the minimal role of government to which we all belong) , and the provision of this General Welfare is part of what they wrote about, it was so important that it is in the first sentence, not added as an improvement like the amendments, but a core feature of our democracy." That said, our government on every level, has failed us miserably in the area of General Welfare, in particular- Public Health. The Previous Administration, (I'll not use the R-Word, as they don't admit responsibility for anything, much less their rhetoric), increased the national debt exponentially to finance the President's private War. The man should be shot by firing squad, following a Summary Court Marshall- once for each American killed or wounded- I digress. We must have Health Care Reform at any cost- those that agreed to fund the War, can say nothing believable regarding the cost of one of our Fundamental Rights. How they manage to live with their war crimes is beyond me. Furthermore, if the Government needs to pay for healthcare they need look no farther than the Energy Companies who have had the use of our irreplaceable Natural Resources nearly free of charge for more than a century. Every barrel of oil and cubic foot of natural gas taken from Public lands belongs to the People- not the Oil and Gas Companies.