2024 Archives

President Musk and his sidekick Donald Trump are demanding that Republicans in the House and Senate cut funding to numerous programs that help average Americans (including food, medical, and even child cancer research) and raise the debt ceiling to pave the way for the federal government to borrow another $5 trillion to hand to billionaires in the form of more tax cuts. You won't hear about what they're doing, or how we and our children will pay for it, on billionaire Murdoch-family-owned Fox "News," of course, nor on billionaire-owned rightwing radio stations, or from podcasts supported by billionaires. But that's exactly what's happening and it's no secret. This is called oligarchy, as I detail in The Hidden History of American Oligarchy: Reclaiming Our Democracy from the Ruling Class. It's a very different form of government from democracy, which is what most Americans believe we still have.

As the old guard fades and democracy is under siege, the next generation of leaders is missing in action: who will step up and fight? Monday morning MSNBC and CNN (and, presumably, Fox, etc.) gave Trump roughly 40 minutes of live television time to rant and lie, threaten an Iowa newspaper and pollster, propose privatizing our Post Office, and muse about ending schoolchildren's vaccine mandates for polio. Everybody watching cable TV probably saw it; it was later the topic of numerous newscasts and newspaper articles that are still echoing across the news space. Around the same time, President Joe Biden spoke at the inauguration of the Francis Perkins National Monument to FDR's famous Labor Secretary and principal author of the New Deal. He truthfully pointed out that his one four-year administration had helped create 16 million new jobs, more than any single presidential term in history (and more than the jobs created by the Bush Sr., Bush Jr., and Trump administrations combined).

Americans are wondering out loud why we're getting ripped off by giant insurance companies when every other developed country in the world has healthcare as a right… In the wake of the assassination of UnitedHealth CEO Brian Thompson, Americans are wondering out loud why we're getting ripped off by giant insurance companies when every other developed country in the world has healthcare as a right and pays an average of about half of what we do — and gets better outcomes. As I point out in The Hidden History of American Healthcare: Why Sickness Bankrupts You and Makes Others Insanely Rich, and brought up with Joy Reid on her program last week, America is: — The only developed country in the world that doesn't recognize healthcare as a human right, — The only country with more than two-thirds of its population lacking access to affordable healthcare and a half-million families facing bankruptcy every year because somebody got sick, — The only country in the developed world where over 40% of the population carries $220 billion in medical debt, — And the only country in the developed world that has, since its founding, enslaved and then legally oppressed and disenfranchised a large minority of its population because of their race. These things, along with UnitedHealth's $370 billion in revenue and $32 billion in profit, are connected.

The Best of the Rest of the News. — Elon Musk’s Billion-Dollar Bargain: Buying the White House, One Regulation at a Time. — Man of the Year or Man of Their Wallets? — The Billionaire Death Grip on America’s Healthcare System. — The Corporate Death Toll? — Big Brother Trump — The final betrayal of disgusting traitors Joe Manchin and Kirsten Sinema — Geeky science: Unlock Your Brainpower — Hunter in a Farmer’s World: ADHD: Learning How To Learn — Wisdom School: Mind Over Pain: The Brain Hack That Reduces Pain Naturally