3 Scranton-Area Catholic Hospitals are Shutting Down Because of Obamacare

The other day Father Z posted a little entry about how the “Magisterium of Nuns” is making war on the American bishops.  The liberal sisters, who have compromised their Catholic identity, are trying to set up an alternative magisterium over and against that of the actual duly appointed shepherds.
In the debate about Obamacare, for example, the LCWR types and the Sr. Keehan types provided cover so that pro-abortion “catholic” politicians could vote in favor of legislation that, down the pike, would provide federal funding of abortion.
Take a look at this from CatholicVote with my emphases:

The bad consequences of Obamacare are on full display in Pennsylvania, but the lessons that the situation provides should motivate us all into taking action nationwide.
Jeffrey Lord at American Spectator has done us all a service by calling attention to the scandal in PA:
Can you say “October Surprise”? A mushrooming political battle over ObamaCare involving the White House, two incumbent Pennsylvania congressmen, three Catholic hospitals and a nun has just exploded in, of all places, Scranton, Pennsylvania. Charges from the Scranton medical community of intimidation by the Obama White House and its allies are filling the air.
It is a long, complex story, which I encourage you to read, but Father Z does a good job of summarizing:

• 3 Scranton-area Catholic Hospitals are shutting down because of Obamacare regulations that are set to go into effect soon. The CEO of the hospitals, Kevin Cook, is on record saying Obamacare is “absolutely” responsible for their painful decision to shut down. There’s a strong posibility the hospitals will be sold to a secular organization which would perform procedures against Catholic teaching. In other words, it is becoming more and more difficult for Catholics to have access to ethical health care.
• Sr. Carol Keehan – the nun and President of the Catholic Health Association, who famously received a “thank you pen” from President Obama for her work in turning Catholic congressman to give up their opposition to Obamacare, has been trying to bully Kevin Cook into changing his story about why his hospitals are closing, because she knows what a political powder keg the headline “Catholic hospitals closing because of Obamacare” will be in this critical election season
• CatholicVote has entered the fray: we’ve recorded a powerful radio ad to air in the Scranton market, so that Catholics and other citizens can know about the harmful consequences of Obamacare in their own district. Congressmen Paul Kanjorski and Chris Carney both voted for Obamacare, and both are facing tough challenges from pro-life alternatives this November.

Here’s what you can do to help our mission to educate Catholics and other citizens about the harmful consequences of Obamacare, and about the need to elect responsible, pro-life representatives….
1. Watch the ad
2. Help us with a small (or large!) donation so we can buy airtime for the ad by clicking HERE.
3. Share this message with your friends and family!
I believe this story is important because it shows in real-life terms that the flawed legislation pushed through Congress and signed into law by President Obama is already hurting the quality of health care offered in this country, and especially hurting Catholic hosptials. It is therefore especially scandelous that some high-profile Catholics, such as Sister Keehan, continue to attempt to obfuscate the truth of the matter because of ideological commitments. Again, I would encourage you to read Jeffrey Lord’s full exposition of this story.
Let’s stop what is happening in PA from happening to other Catholic hospitals across our country!

Full credit for this post goes to Father Z over at What Does the Prayer Really Say.

Healthcare Bill - USCCB's Response

By 1 Sarah Rozman

As President Obama signed the healthcare bill into law, the USCCB released a 2 statement from Cardinal Francis George, president of the USCCB. A few highlights:

• Why the bishops support reform of our healthcare system: “so that all may have access to the care that recognizes and affirms their human dignity.”
• Why the Catholic bishops have opposed this bill’s passage: “There is compelling evidence that it would expand the role of the federal government in funding and facilitating abortion and plans that cover abortion. The statute appropriates billions of dollars in new funding without explicitly prohibiting the use of these funds for abortion, and it provides federal subsidies for health plans covering elective abortions. Its failure to preserve the legal status quo that has regulated the government’s relation to abortion…could undermine what has been the law of our land for decades and threatens the consensus of the majority of Americans: that federal funds not be used for abortions or plans that cover abortions.”
• What the need for an Executive Order signifies: “deficiencies in the statute itself.” The Cardinal continues, “We do not understand how an Executive Order, no matter how well intentioned, can substitute for statutory provisions.”
• Why the bill is “profoundly flawed,” part 2: “It has failed to include necessary language to provide essential conscience protections.” Cardinal George also notes why the bill could leave many immigrant workers and their families “worse off.”
• Why pro-life Members of Congress should be recognized: for their “principled actions…[working] courageously to create legislation that respects the principles outlined above. They have often been vilified and have worked against great odds.”
• What role the bishops play: “As bishops of the Catholic Church, we speak in the name of the Church and for the Catholic faith itself.”

Here, also, is 3 a brief interview with Cardinal George from CNS.
And Creative Minority Report posted 4 a list of the Catholic representatives who voted “Yes” on the bill. The list went on and on…84 Catholic congressmen voted “yes” on this healthcare legislation.

SOURCES:  date of original post: March 24, 2010
1 http://www.cufblog.org/?p=
2 http://www.usccb.org/comm/archives/2010/10-054.shtml
3 http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/1001219.htm
4 The List http://www.creativeminorityreport.com/2010/03/love-obamacare-thank-catholic.html

Health Care Reform - I would like to congratulate Barack Obama in his victory over the American people

Hello socialism, nice to meet you.

All I have to say right now is 

John 11:35

Jesus wept.

Out of sympathy with those who were in tears all around him, as well as from a deep sense of the misery sin had brought upon human nature.

and Matthew 15:13-14

He said in reply, "Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be uprooted.

Let them alone; they are blind guides (of the blind). If a blind person leads a blind person, both will fall into a pit."

Footnote from USCCB: [13-14] Jesus leads his disciples away from the teaching authority of the Pharisees.

and Galatians 6:7-8

Make no mistake: God is not mocked, for a person will reap only what he sows,

because the one who sows for his flesh will reap corruption from the flesh, but the one who sows for the spirit will reap eternal life from the spirit.

See who voted yes and no here.
And is this just a political ploy or is this for real?
I asked a person much more knowledgeable than I and here was the answer.

The Congress that enacted the bill is unlikely to vote to repeal it and even if that miracle happened, the President would veto and there certainly is no super majority to override.

THE REAL ARITHMETIC OF HEALTH CARE REFORM  NYTimes.com

Every Argument is a Theological Argument

Health Care Systems

Having lived in Britain for twenty five years I can say that most of the conservative American horror stories about the National Health Service are baloney. The British National Health Service provides pretty good basic care for the whole population. It has it's problems however. It's expensive. It is riddled with corruption. It is inefficient. It is top heavy with bureaucracy.

But the American system is riddled with corruption. Fat cats run hospitals to make a profit and get rich at the expense of sick people. Huge pharmaceutical companies rake in huge profits selling overpriced drugs to desperate people. Insurance companies rake it in. Kickbacks, corruption and graft drive prices of healthcare up for everyone and the first thing people in American think about when they get sick is, "How much is it going to cost?"

What makes me wonder is that the majority of people think that the problem is the system. "If we only had socialized health care that would solve the problem." or "If we only had more rules to get rid of the corruption and regulate the system, that would solve the problem." "If we could only reform the insurance industry..." Everybody has a good idea on the system level, but aren't they all missing the point?

Any system is only as good as the people in it. Britain's socialized National Health Service would be a dream if the people in it were honest, hard working, compassionate and self sacrificial. Likewise, the American private health care and insurance industries would work like a dream if the people within them were honest, hard working, compassionate and self sacrificial. Both systems are just systems. Both (as systems) have strengths and weaknesses. Both would work well if the people within them worked well.

G.K.Chesterton said, "Every argument is a theological argument." Same here. The reasons the systems are no good is because the people within them are not good, and how do we make bad people better? It is pointless simply appealing to some sort of moral code. Moral codes on their own are arbitrary. People are not dumb. They look at a moral code and ask "Why?" Without any higher principle for a moral code the moral code remains an encrypted code. A moral code without any higher being behind it is no more than a made up rule, so why should I obey it?

Systems are only made better when people are made better and people can only be made better by something called Grace, and grace can only be discovered through contact with the source of Grace, and that is why the Christian faith is not just an option, but a necessity.

 

This article was written by: Fr. Dwight Longenecker

I am saving it here in my notebook for personal reference. Full credit goes to Fr. Longenecker.

Images are my addition but I have not edited written content in anyway.

Condoms are not the Solution to the AIDS Epidemic

It is the cult of the condom, and it does not tolerate any other gods.

Pope Benedict XVI is under fire for reiterating the Catholic Church's opposition to condom use while on his first pilgrimage to Africa. The pontiff told reporters that condoms are not the solution to the AIDS epidemic ravaging the continent; rather, they “aggravate” the problem.

His comments sparked a firestorm. “My reaction is that this represents a major step backward in terms of global health education, is entirely counterproductive, and is likely to lead to increases in HIV infection in Africa and elsewhere,” said Quentin Sattentau, a professor of immunology at Britain's Oxford University.

Even the French government got involved. “While it is not up to us to pass a judgment on the doctrines of the church, we consider that such remarks put in danger public health policy and imperative needs regarding the protection of human life,” a Foreign Ministry spokesman said. We can always count on the French to fight - to the last man, if necessary - for the right to strap on a plastic rubber for recreational sex.

However, Pope Benedict simply restated the church's long-held view that sexual abstinence and fidelity within traditional marriage is the most effective way to prevent the spread of HIV infection. He is right: AIDS is a disease caused by behavior; it is not hereditary or genetic. HIV is most commonly transmitted by sex between men, intravenous drug use and heterosexual sex. It is a disease that primarily plagues homosexuals, drug users and those who engage in promiscuous sex with multiple, overlapping partners. Correcting these behaviors will dramatically curb the HIV infection rate.

Moreover, distributing condoms has not been effective but has only made the situation worse. Nearly 22 million people in sub-Saharan Africa are infected with HIV. The AIDS crisis threatens the continent's economic and social stability. Africa is short on many things - food, water, good governance - but condoms is not one of them. United Nations, health and family planning agencies have relentlessly promoted them for years. Yet, condoms are not the solution for one simple reason: Their use encourages reckless sexual activity, a major source of the pandemic.

Contrary to the claims of so-called “experts,” condoms are not infallible. Many of them break, tear or come off during intercourse. Wearing a condom while having sex outside of marriage is a form of Russian roulette - a high-stakes game that comes with a potentially devastating price.

Birth control leads to higher rates of sexual activity. Condoms create the illusion that they offer protection from the moral and physical consequences of sex. Hence, individuals increasingly engage in permissive, risky behavior, expanding their appetite for more sexual pleasure. The result is a sex-obsessed, promiscuous culture in which sometimes condoms are used and other times they're not, depending on the person's “mood.”

Thus, AIDS is metastasizing across Africa because too many people have no regard for their bodies, and are willing to engage in deadly behavior. All the condoms in the world will not change this dysfunctional culture. Only a spiritual revival - one that is being led by the Catholic Church - can ultimately alter hearts, minds and actions.

The pope's critics do not have to look at Africa for evidence that condoms are ineffective in combating AIDS. All they must do is look closer to home: Washington, D.C.

The District's official report this week was astounding: The number of people with HIV infections rose 22 percent from 2006 to 2007. More ominously, the report said 6.5 percent of the city's black men are infected - that is more than 1 in 20. The disease is decimating not only the District's gay community, but its African-American neighborhoods. Yet, the city has a major condom distribution program: More than 1.5 million condoms were distributed in 2008. In other words, it is raining condoms and still the District's AIDS rate is soaring. The answer is not free birth control or more sex education, but a return to the old Judeo-Christian moral order - marriage, abstinence and personal responsibility.

From its inception, contraception was intended to supplant traditional morality; to replace the ethic of self-control, chastity and sex for procreation with a new one of sexual recreation. Artificial birth control was one of the most revolutionary - and destructive - inventions of the 20th century. It has fostered a shallow secularism based on hedonism and amoral individualism.

The sexual revolution of the 1960s destroyed the old America, which was characterized by the nuclear family and Christianity. Radicals, such as Herbert Marcuse and other New Left gurus, understood that overthrowing bourgeois civilization and capitalism depended upon destroying their cultural underpinnings. Marcuse championed the “pleasure principle,” arguing for a new society centered on sexual gratification. He openly called for “polymorphous perversity,” such as contraception, free love, abortion, pornography, homosexuality and divorce.

For leftist revolutionaries, the pill and the condom have served as the hammer and sickle of cultural Marxism. “Birth control appeals to the advanced radical because it is calculated to undermine the authority of the Christian churches,” said Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood. “I look forward to seeing humanity free someday of the tyranny of Christianity no less than capitalism.”

That day has come. The 1960s counterculture has triumphed. Its decadent values now reign supreme, slowly sapping the West of its moral vitality. It has failed, however, to smash the Catholic Church. The Vatican is the last line of resistance.

The liberal elite know this. Hence, their relentless assault on Pope Benedict. The recent attacks on him have nothing to do with Africa or stopping the scourge of HIV. The deadly virus has killed 25 million around the world - part of the sexual revolution's countless victims. No other social institution has done more to fight AIDS or assist Africa's poor than the Roman Catholic Church. The real issue is more existential - and belligerent: the replacement of Christianity with the new quasi-religion of sexual liberation.

It is the cult of the condom, and it does not tolerate any other gods.

by: Jeffery T. Kuhner
Jeffrey T. Kuhner is a columnist at The Washington Times and president of the Edmund Burke Institute, a Washington think tank. 


http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/mar/23/cult-of-the-condom/

Well then, it must be safe!

"Just because it is on a store shelf doesn't make it safe."

I say that at least once a week . . . let me elaborate on that, "Just because it is advertised does not make it safe."

This ad is a real vintage ad. What will our grandchildren be looking at and shaking their heads at in dismay?
Viagra, Tylenol, Aspartame, Lindane, Q-15, Chicken Pox vaccine, Lipitor, Hormones in milk, Formula for babies, Lysol . . .

Don't expect Uncle Sam to be watching your back! Remember that the U.S. government does not require manufacturers to list the ingredients on the label of products that are used for family, household or personal care -- Yes, that's right; they do not even have to tell us what is them.
AND -- products that KILL up to 50% of lab animals by inhalation, ingestion or absorption can still receive the federal regulatory label of "non-toxic."

Our Fast Food Incident

“The onus lies on parents to educate their children about the ill effects of fast food.”

This is a quote from my latest entry on fast food.

In our family fast food is not part of our diet. This choice has evolved in our family. We all have made this commitment both individually and as a family.

The reasons start with the abuse of meat packing plant workers; the exploitation of immigrants who are working in THE most dangerous work in any American plant. The reasons continue because of

• the poor quality of fast food

• The fecal matter in hamburgers

• the hormones, chemicals and anti-biotics in the food

• the greed of the major fast food decision makers

• the inhuman treatment of animals raised and slaughtered for America's gluttony

• the high fat content

Because of our family commitment I, certainly cannot condone fast food -- especially as a “treat”.

We recently had a “situation” where a child's parent in my son's class brought McDonalds to all the kids as a treat in celebration of her son's birthday. Whatever happened to the old fashioned birthday party? ---->

• cake and ice cream
• pin the tail on the donkey
  
• drop clothespin in the milk bottle
• wheel barrow races
  

When we have one everyone raves at how cool it is. "Retro" is in guys! The kids have a blast, the parents kick back and relax and sometimes even play with their kids.

Anyway, the parent was taking "McDonalds orders" and my son raised his hand to say that we do not eat McDonalds could he just have his regular lunch. My son really likes this little guy whose birthday brought about this situation. He did not want to hurt his feelings but he knew our commitment. I do not think the teacher understood our stance on this issue. She told my son, "I will talk to your mother." I think she may have been a little perturbed at my solid, “No.” She mentioned how this was a special occasion and seemed put off that my son would be the “different” one. She alluded to the feelings of the parent and how the parent would not want to leave my son out of the special treat.

Special Treat? And that was supposed to make it ok? That would be elevating fast food to a special status – something to be looked forward to or viewed as some kind of treat of celebratory food.

If you've made a commitment – you keep that commitment.

Further, if it is bad for you – it is bad for you.

If giving money to fast food companies contributes to putting people in danger or in exploiting them – it does that even if we only SOMETIMES “eat McDonalds”.

Yes, the onus lies on parents to educate their children about the ill effects of fast food.

And now I know that it is soley in our family's hands. We will get no support from our son's teacher or school. What a shame.

Just a note -- My son wasn't complaining.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Portion of source article:

Where does hamburger come from? Hamburger comes from cattle. The cattle start on ranches, and then are sold to feedlots. And the feedlots aren't small little operations with 30 to 40 cattle in them. They're enormous, and can have up to 100,000 cattle in a single feedlot. This has huge implications for food safety, because these cattle are often living like in a medieval city, in their own manure. From the feedlot, they'll get shipped to the slaughterhouse, processed into smaller cuts of meat, and then go to the grinder -- many slaughterhouses have a grinder right nearby -- and then go into further processing at a patty plant. Then they'll be at the fast-food restaurant, from the patty plant. ... . . . .There a couple of problems when it comes to contamination of the meat. Some of it is visible manure on the meat. The other problem is the invisible aerosoled manure that is spread everywhere. Let's talk specifically about the packers and the role that they play. You talked about the power of the fast-food companies. I think people in general don't understand the dynamics of the meat industry and how it's segregated. Who are the big players on the block? Who are the ones that really control the meat industry? There are really three companies that control the beef industry in the United States. Excel, which is a subsidiary of the huge agribusiness company Cargill. ConAgra, another huge agribusiness company. And Tyson IBP, which is the biggest meatpacking company the world has ever seen. These three companies are the heart of the American meatpacking industry. How powerful are they? They're very, very powerful. If you're a rancher or if you're a consumer, these three companies have an enormous impact on the sale of cattle and on the meat that's being purchased. ...

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Portion of another source article: "Battling Food-Poisoning Bacteria":

"Public concern over E. coli O157:H7 has skyrocketed since 1993, when the microbe—in undercooked hamburger patties—killed four children in the Pacific Northwest. In that single outbreak, 477 people were infected from the undercooked, contaminated hamburger.

Foodborne disease-causing bacteria such as E. coli O157:H7 are found in feces and spread to food through fecal contamination. One of the prime ways to reduce bacterial contamination is to reduce fecal contamination in livestock and poultry slaughter facilities. Current federal regulations mandate zero tolerance for visible fecal contamination and for E. coli O157:H7.

At the slaughterhouse, visual inspections and carcass cleaning have been two of the standard tools for reducing the likelihood of E. coli and other bacterial contaminants in meat.

But 'the human eye is not very sensitive and often can't tell the difference between feces and blood clots that can be on a carcass,' says ARS microbiologist Mark A. Rasmussen at Ames."

"Battling Food-Poisoning Bacteria" was published in the February 1999 issue of Agricultural Research magazine.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Can you handle some more??

In this article for Mother Jones magazine, Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation, details the often brutal economics of working in today's meatpacking plants. "Over the past four years," Schlosser writes, "I've met scores of meatpacking workers in Nebraska, Colorado, and Texas who tell stories of being injured and then discarded by their employers." Schlosser explains why the current system -- in which some plants slaughter cattle at a rate of 400 per hour -- is less secure for the workers, both physically and economically. "A lack of public awareness, a lack of outrage, have allowed these abuses to continue, one after another, with a machine-like efficiency. This chain must be stopped."

Our Greed

The Hell Greed Produces

Human needs include: clean water, nutritious food, safety from the elements and from the aspects of nature that are dangerous.

Why do so many people believe that we deserve access to the planet's resources to satisfy basic human needs? Clean water, nutritious food, safety from the elements and from the aspects of nature that frighten us are simply expected to be available or delivered as if they were our due. Maybe part of the problem is in our not knowing what is "enough". Maybe part of the problem is not remembering to look around and see who needs help and then . . . . SHARE (like our kindergarten teachers taught us) I think the root problems are greed and laziness fueled by self imposed ignorance.

Isn't this familiar:

When we are thirsty, we just go to the refrigerator for a cold beer or soda or to the tap for water that we know is clean and healthy. Of course, we let the tap run for a minute or so to make sure that the water is also cooler. We watch that water go spinning down the drain and I would bet that not one in a thousand Americans can tell you just where that wasted water flows. For too many of the rest of the world's inhabitants, water is more precious than gold.

How about these scenarios:

• We want our food "super-sized" but we throw away large portions of what we buy.


• We use cars that are huge, fuel inefficient, poorly designed and heavy in order to feel "safe" from the other huge, fuel inefficient, poorly designed and heavy vehicles that clog the roads and spew filth into our air.
  
• We then sacrifice our own children and the children of the world to keep the cost of that fuel low.
  
• We want our swimming pools full and our lawns green and our behemoth, SUVs clean.
  
• We pour pesticides and fertilizers onto our lawns and farms but we don't want to be reminded where all those toxins eventually flow.

As a culture we act as if we just don't know or care about how wasteful we are.

How to help people wake up? So many people don't want to see how the rest of the world lives. How to help people wake up to the misery and desperation that millions of human beings face every single day so that we can continue to wallow in wasteful materialism and ignorant over-consumption?

If possible, and the corporate media makes it all quite possible, we simply don't want to be depressed or made to feel shame for our consumption of the world's wealth. People shy away from images placed before them that might make them lose a moment's worth of slumber. Or, worse yet, they are numb to the images -- they are disengaged from that reality when it doesn't touch them personally.

How to help people wake up? How to help people to care? Those are the questions on my mind tonight.

FAST FOOD NATION

Book Recommendation FAST FOOD NATION
By Eric Schlosser
Houghton Mifflin; 356 pages; $25

Eric Schlosser's "Fast Food Nation" is a good old-fashioned muckraking expose that's as disturbing as it is irresistible, and that ultimately calls for the boycott of one of the most powerful and lucrative industries in the U.S.
This is the stuff of PR department nightmares.

Exhaustively researched, frighteningly convincing, this book seeks no less than to peel back the smiley- face image that the fast-food industry has worn for decades and reveal what lurks behind the Happy Meals, secret sauces and fries. The book's subtitle pretty much says it all: "The Dark Side of the All-American Meal."

"Hundreds of millions of people buy fast food every day without giving it much thought, unaware of the subtle and not so subtle ramifications of their purchases," writes the National Magazine Award-winning Schlosser. "They rarely consider where this food came from, how it was made, what it is doing to the community around them. . . . The whole experience is transitory and soon forgotten."

Beginning as a two-part article in Rolling Stone that generated the most mail of any piece published by the magazine during the 1990s, Schlosser's journalism successfully expands into a comprehensive, sobering book-length account of the historical and cultural rise of fast food, an industry that within a relatively brief period of time has "helped to transform not only the American diet, but also our landscape, economy, workforce, and popular culture. "

Interestingly, the men who created these empires were traveling salesmen, high school dropouts and iconoclasts -- which is ironic, considering the homogenization and regimentation their companies imposed with fanatical rigor.
Schlosser presents a litany of charges against the fast-food companies and their practices

• marketing to children
• establishing the indentured servitude of franchising
• manipulating a minimum-wage workforce (primarily young, unskilled, recent immigrants) by withholding medical benefits
• perpetuating turnover to deter unionizatio
• yet taking full advantage of government subsidies for nonexistent "training."
• These are just a few of the greed-is-good tactics employed to keep profits high.

What's most revealing is how the fast food industry has single-handedly altered American agriculture. Companies such as McDonald's, the nation's largest purchaser of meat, have encouraged consolidation and centralized production. Today very few companies supply the vast majority of the nation's beef, poultry and potatoes, the staples of the fast food diet; small businesses, ranchers and farmers are disappearing. Most alarming, says Schlosser, is how changes in food production and cattle raising have increased the likelihood of widespread outbreaks of food-borne pathogens, such as E. coli.

Schlosser contends that the real health dangers remain hidden from the general public, while the meat packing industry continues to vehemently oppose further regulation of their food safety practices. Moreover, the meat packing industry enjoys a rare immunity from federal intervention.



Although the U.S. government can demand the nationwide recall of a stuffed animal or toy, according to Schlosser, "it cannot order a meatpacking company to remove contaminated lethal ground beef from fast food kitchens and supermarket shelves."

Schlosser's research is impressive:

• statistics
• reportage
• first-person accounts
• interviews
• mixing the personal with the global

But of the book's many memorable images -- visits to a slaughterhouse and a Willie Wonka-like "flavor" factory, Mikhail Gorbachev addressing a fast food convention in Las Vegas, the suicide of a Colorado rancher --

None is more indelible than Schlosser's description of Eastern Germany, where "in town after town statues of Lenin have come down and statues of Ronald McDonald have gone up."

Schlosser suggests we stop buying what they sell.

I, for one, have taken that suggestion to heart.