In Beck's Nov 16th program where he compared a photo of the EU parliament to the biblical Tower of Babel announcing in essence that the EU will fail because it's God's will.
This series showed that unlike in the US every country in the EU requires that all citizens have universal medical and dental access, paid sick leave, paid maternity leave, paid annual leave. While we can all be proud Americans we don't have to be proud of the broken US social safety net.
Source: http://mediamatters.org/...
(For people who cannot view the above video, here is a transcript of that video)
Transcript:
Beck - EU parliament building, love it, beautiful building. Let's go back to Tower of Babel. Here's the Tower of Babel. It's unfinished doorway over here, pretty amazing. Put them side by side please. Coincidence.
Rabbi: There's no word in Hebrew for coincidence Glenn, but I have to reject the coincidence theory.
Beck: This is amazing. If you look at the unfinished doorway here, the little doorways here, the doorway here. You have these vertical buttresses which are all right here. It's unfinished, it's unbelievable. It's step down to all the unfinished work in both pictures in the same direction both from right to left. Strange so you are not saying they are building the Tower of Babel.
Mr Beck's unwarranted pronouncement of the economic demise of the European Union comes on the back of the United Nations Human Development Index which has 7 of its top ten rated countries listed as being associated with the European Union. While Mr Beck looks for examples of weakness in a couple of European Union countries, he ignores the overall economic success that the European Union has become, in a population that exceeds that of the United States. Wherein by law everyone has universal medical access, universal dental access. Comparatively America has in excess of 50 million medically uninsured people, an estimated 130 million who are dentally uninsured. 60 million Americans have no paid sick leave.
They live longer in the European Union than we do, even though they pay less for medical. They have less crime, higher literacy rates. Unlike in the US no matter what job you hold labor laws require that everyone in the EU receives paid sick leave, paid maternity leave, paid annual leave. The European Union countries routinely offer subsidized daycare, subsidized elderly care, low or no cost university tuition. Don't get me wrong we can be proud Americans, but we don't have to be proud of the weak American social safety net. We can do better than that! That's what elections are for and that's why in the aftermath of this election, we should continue our discussion attendant upon this issue.
For people who aren't familiar with this series I'd like to offer a link to the series published with the generous support of the DKos community.
http://democrats-ramshield.dailykos.com
(From Der Spiegel magazine, November 1st 2010)
The unemployment rate in the United States is at about 10 percent. But when the people who have stopped looking for work and are not registered anywhere are included, the real number is likely to be closer to 20 percent. For the first time since the Great Depression, Americans have a problem with long-term unemployment.
http://www.spiegel.de/...
Sometimes in America finding a job can literally be a life or death issue because too often whether or not you have medical insurance is linked to your job. This is not the case in the European Union! The simple fact is because of the weak social safety net, the American government is having to take economic risks in order to create new jobs that governments in the EU don't have to take those same risks because of a stronger social safety net.
The British Guardian newspaper makes exactly that point in the quote below.
From the Guardian.co.uk (Nov 7, 2010)
Weakening the welfare state just doesn't add up
America's inadequate welfare safety net has forced its leaders to take gambles to tackle unemployment – the UK must not follow
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Rajan is no liberal softie; he is a former chief economist of the IMF – and one of the few economists who can honestly claim to have forecast the global financial crisis. America's weak social safety net, in which so many benefits are time-limited to make finding a job a life-and-death issue, is one of a series of deep global fault lines. Rajan admires well-designed, strong social safety nets such as those in Germany and Scandinavia, that do not remove work incentives but look after people out of work. They take the pressure off governments to take wild risks to create employment.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/...
Source: http://mediamatters.org/...
(Quote from the above video)
SOROS: The European Union was built by a process of piecemeal social engineering, as advocated by Karl Popper. Indeed, it's probably the most successful feat of social engineering in history.
Beck prophesied that the EU will fail because Beck says it's an affront to God.
BECK: Let me alert all of the Soros bloggers out there...
Yeah, are you ready? Here's why they're doing it. Here's why they are pushing everyone into it because they're building a a new world order and here's why it will fail. Are you ready? Because what they are aiming for is an affront to God!
(Beck Shrieks)
Read full transcript: http://www.foxnews.com/...
To reiterate a reoccurring theme in this series is that for first time readers this diary offers the quote below from the German Spiegel magazine. This long term mainstream German publication should be setting off alarm bells in mainstream America, given the history that Germany has experienced. This quote warrants a very close read. To which the question should be asked are those who will not learn from history destined to repeat it. Clearly that caveat warrants some careful reflection.
(Taken from Der Spiegel magazine, November 1st 2010)
Agitators like Glenn Beck are "nationalist, racist and proto-fascist," says Henningsen. "They take advantage of the economic situation, almost the way the right-wing intelligentsia did back in the Weimar Republic."
http://www.spiegel.de/...
Reuters reported that in 2010 nearly 59 million Americans went without health insurance. To which this diary offers the quote below and the link to the full Reuters story.
(Reuters) Wed Nov 10, 2010
Nearly 59 million Americans went without health insurance coverage for at least part of 2010, many of them with conditions or diseases that needed treatment, federal health officials said on Tuesday.
http://www.reuters.com/...
Another worrying trend is the large number of people in the United States, which is estimated to be 132 million without dental coverage. Surely we can do better than this.
Healthcare debate: Dental care lacking for millions
Millions of Americans have no dental insurance and haven't seen a dentist in years
132 million people in the United States without any sort of dental insurance. It's an endemic problem among the unemployed, the poorly paid, and those without medical insurance.
http://www.philly.com/...
To reiterate while we can all be proud Americans we don't have to be proud of the broken American social safety net. We can do better than that. That's what elections are for and that's why we should keep this important discussion going in the aftermath of the mid-term elections.
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Source: http://www.cepr.net/...
In keeping the mantra going please allow me to reiterate one more time that while it is clear we can all be proud Americans, we do not have to be proud of the weak American social safety net. We can do better than that! The American working class deserves nothing less than a European social safety net, which includes universal medical access as a human right for all residents. That would put us on the road to restoring the American dream and ensure a second Obama term in 2012. Wherein the Democrats will retake the House of Representatives, so that America can finally get a European style social safety net.