On Saturday, April 1, the emergency measures Congress put in place to extend medical coverage at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic expired. This means that states can end Medicaid coverage for people who do not meet the pre-pandemic eligibility requirements, which are based primarily on income. As many as 15 million of the 85 million people covered by Medicaid could lose coverage, although most will be eligible for other coverage either through employers or through the Affordable Care Act. The 383,000 who will fall through the cracks are in the 10 states that have refused to expand Medicaid.
I do believe our problem is a revenue problem, not a spending problem. After over 40 years of tax cuts, too much really is not enough? It seems that way. And why should we buy into any plan from a party that openly supports a criminal plan, to subvert elections and our government? I will take Joe Biden over President Fraud, any day. He is decent, honest, knowledgeable and more effective than I had hoped.
Let's cut to the quick here: people have internalized the falsity that to be responsible means to spend less. Nope. To be responsible means to spend **the appropriate amount necessary** to adequately deal with the issue at hand. You get what you pay for. If something in your house needs repair, and it costs $100 to fix it properly, but you either refuse to fix it because you don't want to spend the money, or you only spend $50 and do a slipshod job, that is not being responsible. That is being a half-assed penny pincher, and since it's definitely going to break again now, you've just wasted your money entirely. Such responsibility! As we would say when I was a kid "...NOT!"
Oh, and don't get me started on "running the government like a business." How about you run it like the thing that it is? Do you drive your car like a bicycle, or brush your hair like your teeth, or cook your oatmeal like your tater tots? Geezus, I hope not. No, folks who like the idea of treating the government like a business feel that way because they like the idea of business, and do not like the idea of government. Why not make the disliked thing more like the preferred thing? Well, guess what? Every damn developed human society has had a government for a reason.
This nonsense is triple hilarious given how big businesses never get accused of "recklessness" when pouring massive amounts of other people's money into complicated, evasive schemes to enrich themselves. No, no, no! That is what you call INVESTING! Perfectly sensible, and as the stakeholders of Silicon Valley Bank can attest, always a recipe for long-term stability and success!
I could go on and on, and get more and more sarcastic, but I am currently in my plaid pajamas and would like to maintain the midnight mood I am manifesting through this sartorial selection. So I will just say this: I'm a responsible adult. I'm a patriotic American. I am fine with paying my taxes, and I wouldn't mind a good deal *more* government spending, as long as my taxes get spent on *actual* responsible investments: fully-funded programs that will help make life easier in clear, direct ways for our citizens as a whole.
I would sooner spend a trillion dollars for universal childcare and eldercare, than spend one dime more on a fighter jet that cannot fly. I feel this way because I have altruistic values. How irresponsibly reckless of me!
Biden and congressional Democrats need to publicly, loudly, keep the Republicans’ feet to the fire on producing a budget proposal. The Democratic response to Republican denigrating the New York DA, and every other diversion, should be a loud,
“Yeah, right. Where’s your budget?”
To every idiocy from the mouth of MTG or Lauren Boebert,
Ah yes, "cut all those horrible taxes...just not for the things I like." I remember well, when I lived in Washington state at the turn of the century, when such a thing happened with state taxes there. People (mostly in suburban and rural areas) decided to "cut taxes" in an off-year referendum. Suddenly, what HAD been a, frankly, European-level-awesome suburban bus system (I lived in west Olympia, on the edge of town and country) disappeared. Overnight. People were OUTRAGED: "Where did my buses go?" Well, they went away, because you voted to not pay for them anymore. What, you mean tax money doesn't go into some government vacuum cleaner or politician's pockets? Rush told me it did! You mean, it actually PAYS for things? Who knew?
A Pulitzer Prize-winning sociologist offers a new explanation for an intractable problem.
By Matthew Desmond, Published March 9, 2023, Updated April 3, 2023
'In the past 50 years, scientists have mapped the entire human genome and eradicated smallpox. Here in the United States, infant-mortality rates and deaths from heart disease have fallen by roughly 70 percent, and the average American has gained almost a decade of life. Climate change was recognized as an existential threat. The internet was invented.'
'On the problem of poverty, though, there has been no real improvement — just a long stasis. As estimated by the federal government’s poverty line, 12.6 percent of the U.S. population was poor in 1970; two decades later, it was 13.5 percent; in 2010, it was 15.1 percent; and in 2019, it was 10.5 percent. To graph the share of Americans living in poverty over the past half-century amounts to drawing a line that resembles gently rolling hills. The line curves slightly up, then slightly down, then back up again over the years, staying steady through Democratic and Republican administrations, rising in recessions and falling in boom years.'
'What accounts for this lack of progress? It cannot be chalked up to how the poor are counted: Different measures spit out the same embarrassing result. When the government began reporting the Supplemental Poverty Measure in 2011, designed to overcome many of the flaws of the Official Poverty Measure, including not accounting for regional differences in costs of living and government benefits, the United States officially gained three million more poor people. Possible reductions in poverty from counting aid like food stamps and tax benefits were more than offset by recognizing how low-income people were burdened by rising housing and health care costs.'
'The American poor have access to cheap, mass-produced goods, as every American does. But that doesn’t mean they can access what matters most.'
'If we have more than doubled government spending on poverty and achieved so little, one reason is that the American welfare state is a leaky bucket. Take welfare, for example: When it was administered through the Aid to Families With Dependent Children program, almost all of its funds were used to provide single-parent families with cash assistance. But when President Bill Clinton reformed welfare in 1996, replacing the old model with Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), he transformed the program into a block grant that gives states considerable leeway in deciding how to distribute the money. As a result, states have come up with rather creative ways to spend TANF dollars. Arizona has used welfare money to pay for abstinence-only sex education. Pennsylvania diverted TANF funds to anti-abortion crisis-pregnancy centers. Maine used the money to support a Christian summer camp. Nationwide, for every dollar budgeted for TANF in 2020, poor families directly received just 22 cents.'
'We’ve approached the poverty question by pointing to poor people themselves, when we should have been focusing on exploitation.'
'Those who have amassed the most power and capital bear the most responsibility for America’s vast poverty: political elites who have utterly failed low-income Americans over the past half-century; corporate bosses who have spent and schemed to prioritize profits over families; lobbyists blocking the will of the American people with their self-serving interests; property owners who have exiled the poor from entire cities and fueled the affordable-housing crisis. Acknowledging this is both crucial and deliciously absolving; it directs our attention upward and distracts us from all the ways (many unintentional) that we — we the secure, the insured, the housed, the college-educated, the protected, the lucky — also contribute to the problem.' (NYTImes)
You are exactly right, and I appreciate your calling out the disingenuous and dishonest prevarications of the Trickle Down remnant. Unfortunately the ahistoricity and anti-intellectualism of America is catching up with its ability to bluster convincingly. Not only the emperor, but the entire kingdom, has no clothes.
The debt ceiling issue is looming. Democrats need to talk about why we need a federal government loudly and frequently.
The climate disaster story of the drained Lake Tulare basin in CA now refilling and flooding a huge section of highly valuable farmland is going to require major disaster relief and will also push inflation higher because of higher food prices. Scientists are estimating it will take over two years to drain the long term inundation due to more rain and massive snow melt.
Parts of Tulare County are in Kevin McCarthy's district.
I think it is time for Joe Biden to go to the people of Tulare County and talk about what the government social safety net can do to put their lives and livelihoods back together.
Maybe this is a chance to get McCarthy voted out. The flood water will still be there in 2024.
It must be so confusing and eventually painful for repub voters to believe their party’s claim of the current administration’s “overspending and waste and threats of future economic collapse, yet want everything, yes everything that we all need for healthcare, housing, adequate food security, education, social security, even technological advances. And the list goes on.
As David Firestone put it today in the New York Times: “Cutting spending…might sound attractive to many voters until you explain what you’re actually cutting and what effect it would have.” Republicans cut taxes and then complain about deficits “but don’t want to discuss how many veterans won’t get care or whose damaged homes won’t get rebuilt...” so who to believe and who to vote for will determine the outcome people want or not. Voters need to get smarter fast.
When you read "The Deficit Myth" by Stephanie Kelton, you'll learn that when Congress does "deficit spending", they are spending money mostly into our American economy. President William Jefferson Clinton managed to balance the budget, which meant that Congress was not spending into the economy at the rate they spent in the past. A recession ensued.
When Congress spends money into our economy, we are investing in America.
When we buy and hold US savings bonds, we own our so-called "debt". That's a good thing. Our savings are backed by the full faith and credit of the United States. We will always be willing and able to redeem those savings bonds, with interest.
1. How do REPUBLICAN'TS explain to their constituents that all these positive things they want are a bad idea? Answer - critical race theory
2. I am asking my representatives to pass a law that says that all Senators and Congressfolk that say nothing can be done about gun violence must meet face to face with the victims parents or relatives and tell them that.
Wish that expiration of the extended medical coverage was a bad April Fools joke. Unfortunately, the Republicans in this country are so evil minded, aided by Republican Lite Democrats like Joe Manchin that it seems like we cannot move our country in the right direction. It does seem to be pretty clearly the forces of good vs evil. It is exhausting to have to watch to see whether they will successfully destroy the good that has been done. It is like dealing with a tantruming child all the time, who is willful and you don't know what damage they will wreak. You just know that you are starting to feel TSD (traumatic stress disorder) there is no P because it is ongoing so you never get to post.
Joe Biden has acted like an adult. He has shown the value of what he has learned in a career of PUBLIC SERVICE. I don't agree with everything he's done through his career...I'd probably give him a B...but as President he gets an A from me in this moment. The other guy...the one who can't lose, no matter what, is getting just what he deserves. To be publicly humiliated over hush money to a porn star. R's can defend and deflect all they want. He's a sad human being in so many ways. I told my conservative friends who worshipped him, that he'd be a one term President. That he wanted to be dictator. They called me all kinds of names.
I don't wish anyone evil...but I'm going to enjoy the spectacle of the next few days...and watch how the right...no they aren't "right" about much these days...and they certainly aren't the Grand Old Party...what do we call them that fits ?
On this day in 1865 the leader of the GOP, the Republican President entered Richmond VA. The shattered capital of the Confederacy. He was greeted by cheering former enslaved people, that his pen had freed from bondage...after the horror of Antietam's 23,000 casualties in one day...on land owned by pacifist Dunkers...with a US Army led by a General who didn't believe in abolition. Who thought the President was the "original gorilla". Truth is much stranger than fiction...
On this day in 2023 a man claiming to have some form of lineage back to Lincoln...who had the nerve to stage an event in front of the memorial to the Great Emancipator and compare himself favorably to Lincoln...is going to leave the gold plated tower with his name emblazoned on the top in ALL CAPS...and be arrested and booked...say that again. I didn't see his wife or daughter traveling with him yesterday...fawning over him as they did in June a few short years ago when he threw his hat in the ring at his tower of glitz and gold. How the mighty have fallen.
Now, his worshippers need to catch up with the truth...it may take awhile...but the day will come that DJT has an 80% disapproval rating. The hard core will continue to love him...because they do. Cue Leonard Cohen. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrLk4vdY28Q
I hope Biden’s barnstorming will help some, if not many, to see that the “bottom up and middle out” approach is better for the vast majority of US than the empty yet energetic bitching of the other team.
I do believe our problem is a revenue problem, not a spending problem. After over 40 years of tax cuts, too much really is not enough? It seems that way. And why should we buy into any plan from a party that openly supports a criminal plan, to subvert elections and our government? I will take Joe Biden over President Fraud, any day. He is decent, honest, knowledgeable and more effective than I had hoped.
Let's cut to the quick here: people have internalized the falsity that to be responsible means to spend less. Nope. To be responsible means to spend **the appropriate amount necessary** to adequately deal with the issue at hand. You get what you pay for. If something in your house needs repair, and it costs $100 to fix it properly, but you either refuse to fix it because you don't want to spend the money, or you only spend $50 and do a slipshod job, that is not being responsible. That is being a half-assed penny pincher, and since it's definitely going to break again now, you've just wasted your money entirely. Such responsibility! As we would say when I was a kid "...NOT!"
Oh, and don't get me started on "running the government like a business." How about you run it like the thing that it is? Do you drive your car like a bicycle, or brush your hair like your teeth, or cook your oatmeal like your tater tots? Geezus, I hope not. No, folks who like the idea of treating the government like a business feel that way because they like the idea of business, and do not like the idea of government. Why not make the disliked thing more like the preferred thing? Well, guess what? Every damn developed human society has had a government for a reason.
This nonsense is triple hilarious given how big businesses never get accused of "recklessness" when pouring massive amounts of other people's money into complicated, evasive schemes to enrich themselves. No, no, no! That is what you call INVESTING! Perfectly sensible, and as the stakeholders of Silicon Valley Bank can attest, always a recipe for long-term stability and success!
I could go on and on, and get more and more sarcastic, but I am currently in my plaid pajamas and would like to maintain the midnight mood I am manifesting through this sartorial selection. So I will just say this: I'm a responsible adult. I'm a patriotic American. I am fine with paying my taxes, and I wouldn't mind a good deal *more* government spending, as long as my taxes get spent on *actual* responsible investments: fully-funded programs that will help make life easier in clear, direct ways for our citizens as a whole.
I would sooner spend a trillion dollars for universal childcare and eldercare, than spend one dime more on a fighter jet that cannot fly. I feel this way because I have altruistic values. How irresponsibly reckless of me!
‘‘Twas the night before arraignment, and all through Trump Tower
The old POTUS was stirring
His tummy was sour
The proof was in folders all stacked on his desk, while visions of GUILTY dances in his head
And Jill in her kerchief, and Joe in his cap, had just settled down COVID’s great wrath…
(Add on at will.)
Professor Heather Cox Richardson the Boston College historian nails it again. She’s on a roll.
Read every word and run for local office.
Read Professor Timothy Snyder ASAP and follow his guidance.
These two publish here. Thank goodness.
Substack writers could use editors, but HCR and Tim do not need editors. They need readers.
Thank you again, HCR, for the broad summation.
Biden and congressional Democrats need to publicly, loudly, keep the Republicans’ feet to the fire on producing a budget proposal. The Democratic response to Republican denigrating the New York DA, and every other diversion, should be a loud,
“Yeah, right. Where’s your budget?”
To every idiocy from the mouth of MTG or Lauren Boebert,
“Where’s your budget?”
Rinse and repeat, over and over.
“Where’s your budget?”
Ah yes, "cut all those horrible taxes...just not for the things I like." I remember well, when I lived in Washington state at the turn of the century, when such a thing happened with state taxes there. People (mostly in suburban and rural areas) decided to "cut taxes" in an off-year referendum. Suddenly, what HAD been a, frankly, European-level-awesome suburban bus system (I lived in west Olympia, on the edge of town and country) disappeared. Overnight. People were OUTRAGED: "Where did my buses go?" Well, they went away, because you voted to not pay for them anymore. What, you mean tax money doesn't go into some government vacuum cleaner or politician's pockets? Rush told me it did! You mean, it actually PAYS for things? Who knew?
Beatings will continue until morale improves.
'Why Poverty Persists in America' (excerts)
A Pulitzer Prize-winning sociologist offers a new explanation for an intractable problem.
By Matthew Desmond, Published March 9, 2023, Updated April 3, 2023
'In the past 50 years, scientists have mapped the entire human genome and eradicated smallpox. Here in the United States, infant-mortality rates and deaths from heart disease have fallen by roughly 70 percent, and the average American has gained almost a decade of life. Climate change was recognized as an existential threat. The internet was invented.'
'On the problem of poverty, though, there has been no real improvement — just a long stasis. As estimated by the federal government’s poverty line, 12.6 percent of the U.S. population was poor in 1970; two decades later, it was 13.5 percent; in 2010, it was 15.1 percent; and in 2019, it was 10.5 percent. To graph the share of Americans living in poverty over the past half-century amounts to drawing a line that resembles gently rolling hills. The line curves slightly up, then slightly down, then back up again over the years, staying steady through Democratic and Republican administrations, rising in recessions and falling in boom years.'
'What accounts for this lack of progress? It cannot be chalked up to how the poor are counted: Different measures spit out the same embarrassing result. When the government began reporting the Supplemental Poverty Measure in 2011, designed to overcome many of the flaws of the Official Poverty Measure, including not accounting for regional differences in costs of living and government benefits, the United States officially gained three million more poor people. Possible reductions in poverty from counting aid like food stamps and tax benefits were more than offset by recognizing how low-income people were burdened by rising housing and health care costs.'
'The American poor have access to cheap, mass-produced goods, as every American does. But that doesn’t mean they can access what matters most.'
'If we have more than doubled government spending on poverty and achieved so little, one reason is that the American welfare state is a leaky bucket. Take welfare, for example: When it was administered through the Aid to Families With Dependent Children program, almost all of its funds were used to provide single-parent families with cash assistance. But when President Bill Clinton reformed welfare in 1996, replacing the old model with Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), he transformed the program into a block grant that gives states considerable leeway in deciding how to distribute the money. As a result, states have come up with rather creative ways to spend TANF dollars. Arizona has used welfare money to pay for abstinence-only sex education. Pennsylvania diverted TANF funds to anti-abortion crisis-pregnancy centers. Maine used the money to support a Christian summer camp. Nationwide, for every dollar budgeted for TANF in 2020, poor families directly received just 22 cents.'
'We’ve approached the poverty question by pointing to poor people themselves, when we should have been focusing on exploitation.'
'Those who have amassed the most power and capital bear the most responsibility for America’s vast poverty: political elites who have utterly failed low-income Americans over the past half-century; corporate bosses who have spent and schemed to prioritize profits over families; lobbyists blocking the will of the American people with their self-serving interests; property owners who have exiled the poor from entire cities and fueled the affordable-housing crisis. Acknowledging this is both crucial and deliciously absolving; it directs our attention upward and distracts us from all the ways (many unintentional) that we — we the secure, the insured, the housed, the college-educated, the protected, the lucky — also contribute to the problem.' (NYTImes)
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/09/magazine/poverty-by-america-matthew-desmond.html
Published March 9, 2023. Updated March 13, 2023, Updated April 3, 2023
Subscribers help: I do not have a gifting opportunity for this piece, if you do, please lay that link down here. Thank you.
You are exactly right, and I appreciate your calling out the disingenuous and dishonest prevarications of the Trickle Down remnant. Unfortunately the ahistoricity and anti-intellectualism of America is catching up with its ability to bluster convincingly. Not only the emperor, but the entire kingdom, has no clothes.
The debt ceiling issue is looming. Democrats need to talk about why we need a federal government loudly and frequently.
The climate disaster story of the drained Lake Tulare basin in CA now refilling and flooding a huge section of highly valuable farmland is going to require major disaster relief and will also push inflation higher because of higher food prices. Scientists are estimating it will take over two years to drain the long term inundation due to more rain and massive snow melt.
Parts of Tulare County are in Kevin McCarthy's district.
I think it is time for Joe Biden to go to the people of Tulare County and talk about what the government social safety net can do to put their lives and livelihoods back together.
Maybe this is a chance to get McCarthy voted out. The flood water will still be there in 2024.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/02/us/tulare-lake-california-storms.html
It must be so confusing and eventually painful for repub voters to believe their party’s claim of the current administration’s “overspending and waste and threats of future economic collapse, yet want everything, yes everything that we all need for healthcare, housing, adequate food security, education, social security, even technological advances. And the list goes on.
As David Firestone put it today in the New York Times: “Cutting spending…might sound attractive to many voters until you explain what you’re actually cutting and what effect it would have.” Republicans cut taxes and then complain about deficits “but don’t want to discuss how many veterans won’t get care or whose damaged homes won’t get rebuilt...” so who to believe and who to vote for will determine the outcome people want or not. Voters need to get smarter fast.
When you read "The Deficit Myth" by Stephanie Kelton, you'll learn that when Congress does "deficit spending", they are spending money mostly into our American economy. President William Jefferson Clinton managed to balance the budget, which meant that Congress was not spending into the economy at the rate they spent in the past. A recession ensued.
When Congress spends money into our economy, we are investing in America.
When we buy and hold US savings bonds, we own our so-called "debt". That's a good thing. Our savings are backed by the full faith and credit of the United States. We will always be willing and able to redeem those savings bonds, with interest.
1. How do REPUBLICAN'TS explain to their constituents that all these positive things they want are a bad idea? Answer - critical race theory
2. I am asking my representatives to pass a law that says that all Senators and Congressfolk that say nothing can be done about gun violence must meet face to face with the victims parents or relatives and tell them that.
Wish that expiration of the extended medical coverage was a bad April Fools joke. Unfortunately, the Republicans in this country are so evil minded, aided by Republican Lite Democrats like Joe Manchin that it seems like we cannot move our country in the right direction. It does seem to be pretty clearly the forces of good vs evil. It is exhausting to have to watch to see whether they will successfully destroy the good that has been done. It is like dealing with a tantruming child all the time, who is willful and you don't know what damage they will wreak. You just know that you are starting to feel TSD (traumatic stress disorder) there is no P because it is ongoing so you never get to post.
Joe Biden has acted like an adult. He has shown the value of what he has learned in a career of PUBLIC SERVICE. I don't agree with everything he's done through his career...I'd probably give him a B...but as President he gets an A from me in this moment. The other guy...the one who can't lose, no matter what, is getting just what he deserves. To be publicly humiliated over hush money to a porn star. R's can defend and deflect all they want. He's a sad human being in so many ways. I told my conservative friends who worshipped him, that he'd be a one term President. That he wanted to be dictator. They called me all kinds of names.
I don't wish anyone evil...but I'm going to enjoy the spectacle of the next few days...and watch how the right...no they aren't "right" about much these days...and they certainly aren't the Grand Old Party...what do we call them that fits ?
On this day in 1865 the leader of the GOP, the Republican President entered Richmond VA. The shattered capital of the Confederacy. He was greeted by cheering former enslaved people, that his pen had freed from bondage...after the horror of Antietam's 23,000 casualties in one day...on land owned by pacifist Dunkers...with a US Army led by a General who didn't believe in abolition. Who thought the President was the "original gorilla". Truth is much stranger than fiction...
On this day in 2023 a man claiming to have some form of lineage back to Lincoln...who had the nerve to stage an event in front of the memorial to the Great Emancipator and compare himself favorably to Lincoln...is going to leave the gold plated tower with his name emblazoned on the top in ALL CAPS...and be arrested and booked...say that again. I didn't see his wife or daughter traveling with him yesterday...fawning over him as they did in June a few short years ago when he threw his hat in the ring at his tower of glitz and gold. How the mighty have fallen.
Now, his worshippers need to catch up with the truth...it may take awhile...but the day will come that DJT has an 80% disapproval rating. The hard core will continue to love him...because they do. Cue Leonard Cohen. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrLk4vdY28Q
thank you for this important letter
Thank you Heather.
I hope Biden’s barnstorming will help some, if not many, to see that the “bottom up and middle out” approach is better for the vast majority of US than the empty yet energetic bitching of the other team.