Briefs

Kavanaugh
Anybody who ever was a drunken high school boy can have no doubt that He Did It, whether he remembers it or not.  If he does remember, he'll lie about it — but far more disqualifying are the lies he already told during his 2006 confirmation hearings for the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, regarding his service in the Bush administration.  He was an adult by then, and presumably sober.

Trade War
China's threat to respond to the latest Tr*mpian tariff escalations by disrupting US supply chains must be taken very seriously, given that key components of important manufactured products just are not available outside of China.  Even unregenerate supply-siders like Larry Kudlow are able to see that; Our President, though, only will listen to his paleo-mercantilist trade advisor, Peter Navarro.  Can mainstream corporatist Republicans stop them?  Maybe.  Maybe not.

Big Lie
Jaws agape, anybody who has been paying any attention at all over the past forty years stared in amazement as Our President declared that Democrats want to destroy Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.  Will his base believe him?  As Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf, "in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods." 

Your best argument for Medicaid

The half of all Americans whose employers provide them with health insurance may be far too indifferent to Republican plans to demolish Medicaid. If they have parents, they should be paying more attention.

More than half the residents of nursing homes are supported by Medicaid, which assumes the costs after those residents have spent down their personal wealth. The average annual cost in the US is over $75,000 per year, so personal wealth tends to disappear quite rapidly. Not too far in the future, large numbers of baby boomers will need the level of care nursing homes provide.  What will their children do if Medicaid isn't available?

Essentially, they have three choices:

• Cover the costs themselves.  Ouch!
• Put mom in the spare bedroom, and tend to all her needs.  Eeek!
• Euthanasia.  (Don't get caught!)

When you put it that way, most people will understand why it's a good idea to get on the phone to their representatives in DC and raise a ruckus.  Spread the word, and do it now!

Nobamacare

Don't count on conservative "opponents" to torpedo the Ryan plan for ending Obamacare.  The Freedom Caucus is making noise, but at the heart of the current proposal is a goal dear to the far right: the destruction of Medicaid.

Most Americans who have health insurance enjoy it as an employee benefit, and are entirely indifferent to the cost of purchasing their own.  Nevertheless, the insurance exchanges got most of the attention in debates over the ACA — even though it was the law's expansion of Medicaid that was most significant in bringing health care to millions who lacked it.  The Republican "Patient's Choice Act" will not merely eliminate Medicaid for those enrolled in the expansion, but create a system of block grants to the states that will destroy the program entirely.

The single most important goal of the Obamacare repeal, like virtually every other piece of Republican legislation since Reagan, is to cut taxes on the rich.  Finding the money to do that inevitably involves reducing benefits for everybody else.  Ending Medicaid — which pays for half the babies born in the United States and half the elderly in nursing homes — uses a lot of money that otherwise might be lining rich people's pockets.  Sad.

The Patient's "Choice" Act will give poor patients a "choice" between medicine and food.  The chief hope for its failure is defections by Republican senators from states where Medicaid was expanded under the ACA, and where its elimination may do some real political damage.  Those senators now are working hard to figure out just how much damage might be done, and how well that damage might be offset by the gratitude of wealthy donors.

Corruption

In India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi invalidated most of India's cash in an effort to fight corruption.  Many believe his attempt at a cure may be more devastating than the admittedly severe disease, but it certainly is a valiant attempt.

In the United States, many believe that our President-elect will not be tempted to use his office to further enrich himself because "he's already rich."  Well, he was born rich, and had more money, decades ago, than you and I could spend in a lifetime — but somehow that didn't slow his pursuit of lots more.  Becoming President is not likely to change his behavior.

A little thing like the Emoluments Clause won't stand in his way.  A Republican Congress is not about to impeach and convict a Republican president for a little bit of self-dealing — nor, for that matter, a lot of self-dealing.  We can expect revisions to the tax code to make the party's benevolent billionaires even richer, at the expense of the rest of us.  We can expect windfalls for military contractors, the banking industry, any company that takes advantage of "public-private partnership" opportunities and, of course, property developers.

Deficit hawks will insist such expenditures be "paid for" with spending cuts in other areas.  The most "obvious" places for cuts already are being eyed hungrily by GOP ideologues: environmental protection, health care (including Medicare and Medicaid), Social Security, the tattered remains of the rest of the social safety net, and regulatory enforcement.

Anybody who expects our President-elect to start behaving like a "normal" president when he takes office is even more delusional than he is.

$15/hr

They were out there again today, demanding fifteen bucks an hour to work in fast food.  The restaurant industry is violently against it, of course, claiming it will raise the price of our burgers and "destroy jobs."

Let's just take a closer look.  First of all, fast food workers, these days, probably are not high school students earning a little gas money.  Lots of them are adults.  Plenty are single mothers, fitting in whatever work they can while their kids are in school.  They qualify for food stamps (SNAP) and Medicaid.

That means taxpayers are subsidizing McDonald's, Domino's, Burger King, and other multibillion dollar corporations that contribute to obesity, diabetes, and other conditions that elevate health care costs.  If the dollar menu goes to a buck twenty-five, and that results in fewer sales to poor people, we all come out ahead.

Other retail workers are in the same situation.  Wal-Mart actually helps its "associates" apply for food stamps and Medicaid; and who's paying for it?  We are – the taxpayers.

I'm angry.  Are you?