Month: July 2025

How Income Taxes Work…and Why The Big Beautiful Bill Isn’t So Beautiful

/ MeltdownMessiah / Leave a comment

It stands to reason that I’m no fan of the Congressional Budget Bill that was recently signed into law. There’s a lot to hate about the contents of that legislation, and I’ve touched on some of those things previously. But it’s worth taking a moment to look at the “good” portions of what we’ve all heard referred to as the “Big Beautiful Bill” as well. This is, after all, the bill that everyone is so proud of and so certain you should be proud of too.

Before I get to all of that, unfortunately, I’m going to have to spend some time on a bit of a tangent. This will be long, tedious, and number-heavy, but I will do my best to make it at least marginally interesting too. It could be beneficial for everyone to read it. It seems like many people don’t understand the basics of how taxes work, so I also want to take some time to delve into that, while discussing how we are shortchanging Social Security and our Federal Revenue by catering to the wealthiest people in America. To do that, a discussion of how Taxes work is sort of imperative.

The 2017 Tax Cuts were set to expire this year, but are now permanent. However, I’m not sure how many people actually comprehend how tax rates are applied or how the brackets work, so it might be worthwhile to dedicate some time to explaining that.

For an individual (I’m not doing this for all statuses, you can do that shit yourself):

We’re going to make this simple; we’re going to pretend you earn $1 Million a year. Yes, I understand that less than 0.5% of Households fall into that category. In America, fewer than one million Households earn at least $1 Million in annual income. Congratulations on becoming part of the Top 1%, you magnificent bastard.

For the first $11,600 you earn, you owe 10% of that in Federal Taxes, which is $1,160. The math on that little bit is simple, just remove a 0 from the end.

For every dollar you earn between that amount and $47,150, you owe 12% in Federal Taxes. This comes out to $4,266. So, if your income were exactly $47,150 per year, you would only owe $5,426 in total. But that’s not you. You’re earning a whole hell of a lot more than that now.

For every dollar between $47,150 and $100,525, you are paying 22% in Federal Taxes, which translates into an additional $11,742.50.

The next bracket takes you all the way up to an income of $191,950. At that point, you are paying 24%, or another $21,942. If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll see that our current Tax Burden is sitting at $39,110.50.

From $191,950 to $243,725, we are looking at a rate of 32% paid out to the Federal Government. That adds another $16,568 to your tax bill.

The next bracket is in effect up to $609,350, at a rate of 35%. That tacks on an additional $127,968.75. Your total Tax Burden is now sitting at $183,647.25. I know, that seems like an awful lot. But, come on, you’d be earning more than $600,000, giving up less than a third of that doesn’t seem so bad. Don’t be so greedy.

For every dollar above that, regardless of how much more you earn, we’re looking at a static rate of 37%. So, for the rest of your $1 Million income, it’s only another $144,540.50. See, that really isn’t so bad.

So, on your brand new $1 Million salary, you’d owe the IRS a grand total of $328,187.75 for the year, leaving you with $671,812.25 of your income.

Of course, there’s also Social Security Tax, which is currently 6.2% on everything up to $176,100. If that seems unreasonably low to you, next year the cap will be higher, because it adjusts annually according to the average wage index.

We’re going to stop here for a moment. Consider it the equivalent of a Scenic Overlook on a road trip. Much like a Scenic Overlook, you can take this as an opportunity to relieve your bladder. If you’d like to know one major reason Social Security is going to be depleted by 2032, we just skirted past it. One primary cause is that you (with your $1 Million annual salary) are not paying into Social Security on $823.900 of your earnings. That would have been $51,081.80 that could be contributed in addition to the $10,918.20 you’re paying in. The math on that one is easy, too, because it’s another example of simply removing a 0 or two. Instead of paying $62,000 into the Social Security fund, you only paid $10,918.20. If your salary were $5 Million, you avoided paying $299,081.80. That hardly seems reasonable, does it?

As we discussed (you lucky bastard), fewer than 0.5% of American households had an annual income of more than $1 Million in 2022, according to the World Economic Forum. Somewhere in the vicinity of 400,000 to 500,000 people earn $1 Million or more a year. Assuming they were all capped at exactly $1 Million, and there were 400,000 of them, that would be $20.4 Billion not being collected for Social Security every year because of that cutoff at $176,100. This has been a problem since the 1980s, because earnings for upper-income levels have risen substantially faster than those of the rest of the population.

Despite President Trump’s assurances that the Congressional Budget Bill would remove taxes on Social Security, that is not what happened. Instead, what we received was a temporary Deduction that applies to all income for people 65 and over, though it does include Social Security income.

The final version passed by the Senate makes this a $6,000 Deduction for individuals with adjusted gross income of up to $75,000 annually, or $150,000 for couples filing together.

The deduction will expire after four years and does not apply to all recipients, including those who claim Social Security benefits before they turn 65. So, unless you’re over the age of 61, you won’t be benefiting from this temporary deduction.

This is where we locate yet another major driver behind the failure of our Social Security program. Some estimates suggest this will accelerate the depletion of Social Security by two years, pushing the date up to 2032. All while increasing the federal debt by 7% over the next 30 years. So, suppose you’re under 58 years old as you’re reading this. In that case, you can dispel any assumption that you’ll be able to benefit from the tax-free Social Security (or Social Security at all) when you do turn 65, because the Social Security Trust will more than likely be empty, no matter how much you personally paid into it throughout your employment history. I’ll come back to the depletion of Social Security after I finish going over how your taxes work and take some time to touch on the other “good” things found in the Congressional Budget Bill.

Moving on, there’s the Medicare Tax of 1.45% up to $200,000, and 2.35% on every dollar beyond that, so you’re paying $21,700 into Medicare for the year.

Deductions then factor in, and the odds are that your effective tax burden will be substantially decreased.

First, there are Above-The-Line deductions. These are subtracted from that $1 Million you earned for the year before anything else factors in, decreasing your Tax Burden by formulating your Adjusted Gross Income.

If you paid toward Student Loans, used a Health Savings Account, contributed to a traditional IRA, or any of several other things that contribute to your overall deductions, that’s something you can figure out on your own. Those things are deducted before the Standard Deduction.

The Senate version of the Congressional Budget Bill allows people to deduct income paid as tips (in careers where tips are customary). This amount is capped at a maximum of $25,000. I’m not sure how common it is for someone to earn more than $25,000 in tips over a year, but since most tipped workers are at or below the Federal Poverty Level, it seems unlikely that there are many. This is only in effect through 2028.

The Senate proposal limits that deduction on Overtime Pay to $12,500 per individual. This is also temporary, expiring after 2028.

So, those are some of the “positive” things we can look forward to.

The Standard Deduction was previously $15,000 for an individual or $30,000 for a married couple filing jointly. Once the changes took effect, the Standard Deduction increased to $15,750 and $31,500, respectively.

The new Standard Deduction of $15,750 is a given, but anything else beyond that is specific to the individual. Assuming none of the Above-The-Line deductions apply to you, what that means is that you will only be taxed as if you earned $984,250 instead of $1 Million, which would knock $5,817.50 off of your tax bill. That doesn’t seem like much, but it’s not nothing. Of course, if you have to itemize your deductions, the change in the Standard Deduction is irrelevant.

Non-itemizing filers can now claim $1,000 in charitable giving per year, and couples can claim $2,000 for deductions.

The Senate’s version of the Child Tax Credit, while slightly lower, is permanent. So, instead of a deduction of $2,500 per child, it’s $2,200, but at least it doesn’t expire in 2028 as some of the Above-The-Line deductions will.

The State and Local Tax Deduction will increase from $10,000 to $40,000, and increase by an additional 1% every year until 2030, when it will revert to $10,000. I don’t know if you live in a state where you pay State Income Tax, but chances are good that you do. That percentage is extremely variable, depending on where you live (which you know if you read what I wrote regarding Single-Payer Healthcare), so I won’t bother calculating it. I live in a state without it, but work in a state where there is State Income Tax, so this is beneficial to me.

The changes to the Estate and Gift Tax will benefit almost no one.

It increases from an exemption of $13.99 Million to $15 Million for individuals and $27.98 Million to $30 Million for couples who file jointly. I say this will benefit almost no one because the minimum net worth to be part of the wealthiest 1% is $13.7 Million as of this January, according to Investopedia. So, less than 1% of the population has the potential to leave an Estate or Gift of $15 Million.

Now, the trouble is that the people who could benefit from that increased exemption are the ones who really don’t fucking need it.

Individuals like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel, Jeff Bezos, and other multi-billionaires avoid paying Income Taxes in several ways. Elon Musk receives no salary from Tesla, but was approved for a ten-year pay plan from the company last year that had a value of $44.9 Billion. The trick is that it was all in stocks, which means he won’t be paying any Federal Income Tax on that, while he can still use the stock value as collateral for loans, credit, and the like.

Mark Zuckerberg received an annual income of $1 last year, but received compensation amounting to $27.2 Million, which included $14 Million to cover his security and an estimated $1 Million in private jet travel. The rest, as you would imagine, came in the form of stocks.

Peter Thiel’s income is not publicly available. That’s something you might find amusing, considering what Palantir is capable of. Despite not knowing his annual income, we do know he has invested more than $5 Billion in Roth IRAs, which cannot be taxed, assuming he waits until retirement to liquidate them.

Jeff Bezos typically received a salary of $81,840, with total compensation that added up to $1.68 Million in 2022. Because of how he earns most of his money, via stock options, it was estimated he earned $8 Million every hour of the year between 2023 and 2024. And yet, there are several years in which he paid no Federal Income Tax, and has maintained an effective Tax Rate of 0.98% compared to his accumulation of wealth.

If you’re noticing a trend, you’re at least moderately observant. These people at the top of the American financial ladder are not even coming close to contributing their fair share in taxes. In part, because we don’t tax Unrealized Gains, which means all the stock options contribute to their Net Wealth and allow these people to live as they do, but are never taxed until they sell shares, and then Capital Gains Tax comes into play.

If something doesn’t seem wrong about that, you’re not paying attention.

There are years when the wealthiest people in the world are literally paying less in taxes than the people below the poverty level, and not just by percentage, but by dollar value.

Putting an end to that should be a priority. All it would take is implementing an Unrealized Gains Tax above a certain dollar value, maybe a 50% Tax on anything above $15 Million (just like the Estate and Gift Tax). Hell, Kamala Harris was far more generous, proposing a 25% tax on Unrealized Gains for anything over $100 Million. People freaked out over that because they had no idea what they were talking about, and because they were fed misinformation and fear-mongering that led them to believe their home’s increasing sales value would further increase their taxes. In reality, her proposal would have impacted fewer than 11,000 people nationally, and if you’re reading this, you’re probably not one of them. You probably don’t even know any of them, at least personally. That’s the kind of Tax Reform we need from something that anyone would consider worthy of calling a Big Beautiful Bill.

Now, I promised I’d get back to this, and I like to keep my promises. There’s one more massive driver behind the imminent failure of our Social Security program. It’s time to finish the discussion of why Social Security is likely to be bankrupt in only seven short years. We can thank Ronald Reagan and his Social Security Amendments of 1983 for that lovely little “fuck you,” with powerful assists from Alan Greenspan and a complicit and lazy 98th U.S. Congress.

Unfortunately, Trickle-Down (Supply Side) Economics was working out precisely as anyone but a moron would expect it to, and the decreased tax rates (for the highest income earners) were generating far less revenue than was promised. Our economy was in pretty big fucking trouble, because nothing but the delusional fantasies of our President happened to be trickling down. Reagan convinced a large number of people that Social Security was on the verge of bankruptcy, even though it wasn’t. But he had a solution. It was a two-pronged approach that would save everyone.

Surplus Social Security revenue generated by a Payroll Tax Hike implemented under Reagan, to the tune of roughly $2.7 Trillion, was meant to be invested in U.S. Treasury Bonds and held in trust until approximately 2010. That was it. That was his brilliant solution. It might have actually paid off, but Ronald Reagan was (predictably) Ronald Reagan.

Of course, Reagan, being the piece of shit he was, the surplus revenue raised by the payroll tax hike went into the General Fund instead of U.S. Treasury Bonds. Reagan then proceeded to spend every dime of that surplus that appeared during his remaining time in the White House. George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush followed suit and treated it like a fucking slush fund as well. Instead of putting $2.7 Trillion into trust, the money was spent on wars, covering the deficit from additional tax cuts for the wealthy, and shoring up other areas of the government.

Maybe this would have worked out if Social Security hadn’t stopped generating surplus revenue back in 2009, but it did. In 2010, it ran at a loss for the first time since 1983, by more than $40 Billion. This was money we borrowed from China. And we’ve had to borrow money from somewhere every year since then.

Well, we all sort of see where it goes from there. What’s worth noting is that, assuming we’d just kept the $2.7 Trillion where it belonged, and our Social Security shortage was by roughly $50 Billion every year, it could still be solvent through 2064, or 32 additional years from what is now projected.

Not Only CAN We Pay for It, We SHOULD.

/ MeltdownMessiah / Leave a comment

There’s always a lot of talk about how we can’t afford Single-Payer Healthcare here in America, and how much our taxes would increase if we were to implement a Universal Healthcare System. I got tired of listening to people who probably haven’t performed any mathematical operations more involved than basic addition or subtraction since they reached adulthood. I decided it was worthwhile to examine three countries that do provide for their citizens: Denmark, Canada, and the UK, to see how they compare to us here.

For the sake of simplicity, despite it making the whole process far more complicated for me, I’ve taken the liberty of converting all currencies to USD based on the conversion rates as they were today.

In Denmark, there is no Federal Tax on the first $8,080 an individual earns. From $8,080 to $94,224, there is a 12% Federal Tax rate. Anything above $94,224 is taxed at a rate of 15%.

If someone were to earn a hypothetical annual income of $150,000, they would face a total Federal Tax burden of $18,673.68, leaving them with $131,326.32 of their income.

There’s also a Municipal Tax rate that falls between 22 and 27% on all income. At the highest rate, it would decrease the remaining amount to $95.858.49. This means they pay a total of $54,141.51 in taxes on an annual income of $150,000. At the lower rate of 22%, it amounts to a grand total of $51,673.68 they’d pay.

In America, an individual is looking at a tax rate of 10% on the first $11,925. They pay 12% on everything earned between $11,925 and $48,475, 22% from that amount to $103,350, and 24% up to $197,300. So, the same person earning $150,000 in the United States would have a Federal Tax burden of $28,847, which is substantially higher than the federal taxes paid in Denmark.

To factor in municipal taxes, the closest comparison is to consider state income taxes, where applicable.

In the eight states where there is no State Income Tax, that $28,847 is all the individual pays, based on their annual wage. Most of us, of course, live in the 42 states where there’s an income tax levied on an individual’s wages.

Fourteen of those states have a single rate applied to all income, as opposed to a progressive system like we have at the federal level. Arizona is 2.5%, Colorado and Mississippi are 4.4%, Georgia is 5.39%, Idaho is 5.695%, Illinois is 4.95%, Indiana and Louisiana are 3%, Iowa is 3.8%, Kentucky is 4%, Michigan and North Carolina are 4.25%, and Pennsylvania is 3.07%.

In Arizona, the individual would pay an additional $3,750, and in Idaho, they would pay $8,542.50 in addition to the $28,847 they’re paying in Federal Income Tax. The larger amount is $38,389.50, so an individual living in Idaho would pay only $15,752.01 less in state and federal taxes than someone living in Denmark, on the same $150,000.

For states with progressive tax rates, you could be facing a maximum rate of 5% in Alabama and Massachusetts, 3.9% in Arkansas, 9.3% in California, 6% in Connecticut, 6.6% in Delaware, 7.9% in Hawaii, 5.58% in Kansas, 7.15% in Maine, 5.25% in Maryland, 7.85% in Minnesota, 4.7% in Missouri, 5.9% in Montana, 5.2% in Nebraska, 6.37% in New Jersey, 4.9% in New Mexico, 6% in New York, 1.95% in North Dakota, 3.5% in Ohio, 4.75% in Oklahoma and Rhode Island, 9.9% in Oregon, 6.2% in South Carolina, 7.6% in Vermont, 5.75% in Virginia, 4.82% in West Virginia, 5.3% in Wisconsin, and 8.5% in the District of Columbia.

For someone in North Dakota, that would translate into a total State Income Tax of $2,925, while in Oregon, it would come to $12,894.50 above the federal taxes collected, or a total tax burden of $41,741.50. This is only $12,400.01 below the maximum federal and municipal tax burden on the same income in Denmark.

We already know that taxes are higher in Denmark than in the U.S.. That comes as no surprise. But now we understand what the difference is, instead of imagining some abstract higher dollar value. So, let’s take a look at two other nations with universal healthcare.

Canadian federal taxes are 15% up to $41,883.75, 20.5% from there to $83,767.50, 26% up to $129,853.86 and 29% up to $184,992.22. The same $150,000 annual salary would lead to a total of $32,693.57 in federal taxes.

The individual provinces have their own tax rates, of course. The highest rate you’d experience at that salary would be in Nova Scotia, which is 21% on anything over $112,894.50. The lowest would be Nunavut, which has a rate of 11.5% on any income above $129,853.13. Looking at the highest rate, you’d be looking at an additional $24,829.79 beyond the $32,693.57 in federal tax, for a total of $57,523.36, which is moderately higher than the highest burden you’d encounter in Denmark.

In the UK, there is no tax burden up to the first $17,220.90. We’re looking at 20% from there until $68,869.90, and 40% up to $171,441.80. So for the same income of $150,000, you’d pay a total of $42,781.84 in federal taxes. You’d also be responsible for National Insurance Tax of 8% on earnings from $17,220.90 to $68,869.90, and 2% on earnings above that. Thus, you’d be paying an additional $5,754.52 on top of the $42,781.84, for a grand total of $48,536.36, which is lower than in both Canada and Denmark, but still slightly higher than the previous examples of Idaho or Oregon.

Of course, in Denmark, Canada, and the UK, you benefit from Single-Payer Healthcare along with those higher tax burdens; burdens that may not be quite as comparatively high as people in the U.S. often imagine them to be. Those increased taxes are largely offset by what we pay for our Insurance Premiums, even with employer-provided insurance.

The cost of individual Health Insurance Premiums in the U.S. can average anywhere from as little as $1,368 to as much as $8,951 per year, and family coverage is often dramatically higher. None of that even factors in the Out-Of-Pocket expenses for care and medication or multi-thousand-dollar deductibles we’re responsible for, before Health Insurance provides any assistance at all. For example, I have comparably fantastic Health Insurance through my employer. The Deductible for my Family Coverage is $3,300 annually, with an Out-Of-Pocket Maximum of $7,500. God forbid we have to find help Out-Of-Network, though, because the Deductible there is $10,000. Halfway through July, my Insurance Premium has cost me $1,491. It’s worth noting that this is entirely separate from Dental and Vision Insurance. To put all of that in perspective, that means that, in addition to the $1,491 I’ve paid just for the privilege of having Health Insurance, I also have to pay $3,300 Out-Of-Pocket before Insurance begins contributing to further Medical Care or Mental Health expenses. Until I’ve paid $7,500 Out-Of-Pocket, all my Health Insurance will contribute is a percentage toward those costs. I want to remind you that I have exceptionally affordable Health Insurance compared to many people I know.

All of this is brokered through Insurance Companies that receive massive Subsidies from the tax dollars we’re already paying. Companies that actually increase the cost of healthcare in the process. UnitedHealth Group, made famous by Luigi Mangioni, is a perfect example of this.

UnitedHealth Group raked in $372 Billion in 2023, $281 Billion of that revenue from the insurance division headed by Brian Thompson, the man killed on a New York City street by Mangioni. Only two years earlier, UnitedHealth’s insurance division obtained 72% of its revenue from Federal Subsidies, and it can only be assumed that the percentage increased by 2023. In 2024, the Federal Government spent between $1.7 and $1.9 Trillion on Healthcare Subsidies. All of this is money paid out to an industry of middlemen who have inserted themselves between people and their healthcare providers, while making massive profits in the process. In contrast, the UK spent approximately $353.5 Billion on healthcare in 2024. That is less than 19% of U.S. spending. Of course, the population of the UK is just shy of 70 Million, roughly 20% of the U.S. population of nearly 350 Million. What that means is that the Per Capita spending is virtually the same, though actually lower for the UK…but the majority of U.S. taxpayers see none of the benefits associated with that health spending. Looking at those numbers, it makes me wonder why there would even be a need to increase Income Tax rates if we weren’t propping up a parasitic and unnecessary industry in the process.

Or is it simply that the UK and other nations are better equipped to efficiently provide for their citizens than the U.S. happens to be? I’m willing to admit that we’re just not very good at doing things efficiently or effectively. I think there’s more than sufficient evidence to reinforce that perspective.

Beyond purely financial considerations, Single-Payer systems are far less likely to deny service, and when it does happen, it is typically an administrative error. Whereas, here in America, it’s a cost-saving measure on the part of the provider to maintain its profit margins.

And, the real kicker, if you don’t receive at least your premium costs in coverage from your insurer (and most people don’t), that money gets spread around to everyone else covered by the same insurance provider and to the people working there, leading to massive profits for the corporations in question and CEO salaries that can reach as high as $23 Million in total compensation. For example, even though I have reached my Deductible of $3,300 for the year, my Insurance Company is highly unlikely to pay out even the $1,491 I’ve paid so far in Premiums for their percentage of the payments before the new annual cycle begins.

Of course, none of this even takes into consideration the portion of my Premium that’s paid by my employer, which has reached almost $8,000 so far this year. So, even if my Insurance Company somehow ends up paying out $5,000 for their part of my Healthcare expenses, they’ve already got $4,419 lining their pockets without either me or my employer paying another dime toward the Premiums. I don’t get that money back. My employer certainly doesn’t receive the excess back at the end of the year either. Have you ever looked at your paychecks and calculated how much free money you and your employer are handing over to an Insurance Company that (as a policy) does whatever it can to avoid helping you? Now, take a moment to consider that all of the money coming in from people like you adds up to maybe a quarter of what the Insurance Company has for revenue.

But, of course, it’s “Socialism” if your Tax Dollars provide Single-Payer Health Coverage for every Citizen in the U.S.. But if your money is distributed between the thousands of people with the same insurer (while lining the pockets of the obscenely wealthy), then it’s an entirely different sort of thing. It’s “Socialism” even though it’s a Public Service provided by the Capitalist Governments of essentially every other Civilized Nation in the world, as well as several that we consider less than “First World” countries.

One additional benefit worth noting is that public universities cap most tuition at less than $13,000 per year in the UK. Canadians can expect an average annual tuition of under $4,800, and college tuition is not charged at all in Denmark. Whereas in the U.S., In-State tuition averages roughly $11,000 per year (ranging from less than $7k in Florida or Wyoming to more than $20k in Connecticut or Pennsylvania), and Out-Of-State tuition explodes to an average of around $30,000 (from less than $13k in South Dakota to more than $60k in Michigan).

Which is to say that you can be both healthier and better well-educated at substantially less cost in those nations, even when you factor in the increased tax burdens. Of course, as I pointed out already, there’s no reason to raise the taxes individuals pay in the U.S. if we were more efficiently utilizing the slightly higher amount the U.S. already pays Per Capita for Healthcare Subsidies than the government of the UK.

Don’t let idiots and fear-mongers influence you. None of the nations discussed are “Socialist” countries. They just take the role of government more seriously, providing for the public good.

It might also be worth noting that, in 2023, UnitedHealth Group donated $792,500 via PAC contributions to federal political campaigns. Roughly 54% of those PAC contributions went to Republican candidates and 45% went to Democrats.

It also spent an even more substantial amount of PAC funds on In-State campaigns all across the U.S.. This was divided up between individual candidates, party contributions, and ballot measures.

And, in 2024, UnitedHealth Group (according to its filing with the U.S. Senate) dedicated $6.85 Million toward lobbying efforts, above and beyond Millions in PAC spending. Think about that for just a moment. This Corporation receives most of its revenue from Federal Subsidies. And then it spends a small portion of that revenue to support the campaigns and political parties that ensure it keeps getting that money.

It’s easy to spend that kind of money when a company brings in a net income of $14.4 Billion (which was UnitedHealth’s lowest profit margin since 2019), a number heavily impacted by the Billions they spent recovering from a cyberattack on one of their claims processing subsidiaries. With everything adjusted accordingly, they proudly claimed a record high profit of $25.7 Billion for last year.

Spending $6.85 Million through lobbyists and millions more through PAC contributions isn’t a challenge when you have that kind of profit involved. The amount spent on corporate lobbying was, after all, only 0.048% of the net profit.

Of course, UnitedHealth Group has already dedicated $3.37 Million toward lobbying efforts so far in 2025, so they’re hardly skimping on graft despite it not being an election year.

While the industry rakes in massive profits, it’s happy to return the favor by lining the pockets of politicians and political parties across the political spectrum, all to ensure it has its interests taken care of.

If you can look at this and think it’s fine, while Single-Payer Healthcare would be too costly, you’re not only missing the point, but you’re being intellectually dishonest.

America’s Healthcare System Is Terrible…But That’s Okay…It’s Getting Worse

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The Healthcare System in this country is so totally broken. And it never ceases to amaze me that so many people either fail to see that or simply don’t care. I can only assume that the bulk of those individuals have never known or loved someone with a chronic illness or a disability of some kind, or–god forbid–something atypical in their biology.

They’ve never listened to the tearful conversations with doctors who regretfully share the news that the procedure or medication they recommended on the patient’s behalf has been declined by someone who is paid by the Insurance Company to locate any possible errors in Medical Coding, Coverage Limits, or what their Tables indicate as Appropriate Treatments.

I assume that they’ve never watched someone they care about waiting months as they jump through one hoop after another, as the actual Medical Practitioners dot every “i” and cross every “t”, per the wishes of an Insurance Provider who is just as likely to Deny the recommended treatment after all is said and done.

Surely, they’ve never watched someone give up, too exhausted to keep fighting Denial after Denial, of something several Medical Professionals have confirmed they need or that would improve their Quality of Life

After all, how could anyone who has witnessed or experienced things like that be of the mind that our Healthcare System isn’t bad enough as it stands, and needs to be made worse? That’s precisely what the Trump Administration and Congressional Republicans have opted for. As it turns out, they didn’t need to do anything at all, because things were on the way to getting worse without any assistance.

Not only are we looking at huge numbers of people removed from Medicaid and Medicare, combined with rising costs for Health Insurance obtained through the Affordable Care Act Marketplace, thanks to the new Congressional Budget Bill…but, according to a new study, more than half of American Employers are planning to pass rising costs of Health Insurance on to Employees.

Even if you’re lucky enough not to see a bigger bite taken from your paycheck, you might be one of the fortunate many who can expect to see higher Deductibles and/or Out-of-Pocket Maximums. Of course, there’s no guarantee you won’t see those increased costs even if you’re also experiencing higher Premiums.

Apparently, this is because the Employer-Paid portion of Health Insurance is expected to increase by 6% next year, after a 4.5% increase last year. Naturally, the Employee is the one who should shoulder that cost.

And the Insurance Companies are blaming it on increased Healthcare Costs (ignoring the rampaging elephant in the room, that the existence of Insurance Companies is a major driver behind those increased costs). Of course, they’re also pointing the finger at the popularity of expensive GLP-1 medications used for weight loss. Naturally, as should surprise literally no one, fewer Insurance Companies will be covering GLP-1 drugs next year. And, to maintain their year-over-year Profit Margins, they’re likely to stop covering a lot of things people have come to expect and depend on. So, as we should have learned from “Shrinkflation” in virtually every other industry, we look forward to paying more for less.

And all of this comes about as a new report indicates one in three Americans live in a “Healthcare Desert” where people lack access to vital services such as Pharmacies, Trauma Care, and Primary Care Physicians.

That’s not altogether shocking. After all, roughly 150 rural hospitals have closed their doors in the last 20 years…and the odds are good that more will be following suit. It’s still horrible to imagine that an estimated 28 Million Americans live more than 30 minutes from the nearest hospital, and that about 50 Million live more than an hour from a Trauma Center. This is only going to get worse as a byproduct of the Congressional Budget Bill, because $10 Billion a year (to be distributed between all 50 States) for rural hospitals isn’t going to go half as far as GOP Senators think…or at least not as far as they suspect their supporters are stupid enough to believe it will. I opted to amend that because I’m sure the Senators knew exactly what they were doing, and they simply didn’t care.

As the cost of Healthcare goes up, the ability to access it is going down.

I’d sincerely like to hear someone answer the same question proponents of Single-Payer Healthcare are always being badgered with.

“How can we afford this?”

The Truth About Medicaid, Medicare, & Other Fraud: It’s Not What You Think

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It has always seemed obvious to me that if people want to know where Medicare and Medicaid Fraud come from, they need to stop looking for illegal recipients. It isn’t as simple as some might think to defraud programs like SNAP, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid by filling out an application with false information.

I don’t know why it bears mentioning, but neither Medicaid nor Medicare provides Beneficiaries with cash. They operate as a substitute for Health Insurance. That might come as a surprise for those of you who have never needed to use one of these programs. So, even if someone successfully applies via Fraud, they aren’t lining their pockets at the expense of Taxpayers.

Even if someone manages to obtain Medicare or Medicaid coverage through fraudulent means, what happens then? In the worst-case scenario, they would obtain medical treatment that they otherwise could not have received. Let’s assume it’s the most expensive surgical procedure from 2024, which is a Heart Transplant. At the most expensive rate, that would cost Medicare or Medicaid $1.3 Million, assuming it would cover the surgery in the first place. It would require more than 38,000 people receiving fraudulently obtained Heart Transplants to equal the $50 Billion House Speaker Mike Johnson claimed was lost to Fraud, Waste, and Abuse of Medicaid each year. If that seems absurd to you, you’re absolutely correct.

Just last week, CVS Health’s Omnicare (pharmacy services for long-term care & senior living communities) was found guilty of fraudulently billing the U.S. Government for invalid Medicare, Medicaid, and Tricare Prescriptions and ordered to pay $948.8 Million in penalties & damages. A massive $406.8 Million of that was for Damages, which were tripled as per the False Claims Act.

All of this came about because a Whistleblower brought attention to more than three million false claims between 2010 and 2018.

In 2021, the average Medicare Spending per Beneficiary was only a little over $15,000. To put that in perspective, it means the Fraud committed by CVS translated into the equivalent of the total annual spending for just under 9,000 Beneficiaries, or just under 1,000 Beneficiaries each year for which CVS was found Guilty of the illegal billing.

And this is just the Fraud from one Corporation. I can assure you that they are not alone.

One thing that people need to understand is that Improper Medicaid payments are not the same as Fraud. It’s a challenge for some people to wrap their heads around that distinction because certain individuals have played fast and loose with conflating the two things…because it suits their agenda.

According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Improper Payments made up only 5.09% of the total payments made by Medicaid in 2024. Of that 5.09%, roughly 80% (or 4.07% of the Total) were caused by missing documentation that would determine whether a payment was correct or incorrect, and payments that went to the right Providers in the right amounts, but that may not have complied with some regulations or statutes. In all of those cases, if the paperwork had been correct, they wouldn’t even factor into these numbers, because the payments wouldn’t have been classified as Improper or because they wouldn’t have been issued in the first place.

It’s the remaining 20% of that 5.09% where we find people who weren’t eligible for Medicaid. But it is also where we locate the individuals who were eligible but received a service that wasn’t covered.

So, while all of these 5.09% of Improper Payments count as Monetary Loss, they do not constitute Fraud. All of the Fraud falls into the minuscule 1.02% of the Total Payments.

Yes, we should be combating Fraud, but it’s not the Beneficiaries of Medicaid and Medicare who are the criminals, guilty of committing the vast majority of Fraud; it’s Ambulance Services, Pharmacies, Nursing Homes, and other Providers who have utilized creative bookkeeping and manipulation of the system. The victims are the Beneficiaries, Legitimate Providers, and Taxpayers alike.

Fighting Fraud doesn’t involve cutting funding for Medicaid, and it won’t have any impact on the rate of Improper Payments, because the Beneficiaries were never the primary Source of them.

What I hate more than anything is that this is ultimately yet another dog whistle for anti-immigration proponents. I’m not going to use Undocumented as a descriptor here, because we’ve all heard the plan, shared far and wide wherever cameras are rolling, that the Trump Administration intends to strip Documented Status from Immigrants, including those who are Citizens. It was never about doing it the right way; it was about being the right ethnic makeup, which is why there was so much support from people who believe in “The Great Replacement” myth.

Across the years 2021, 2022, and 2023, Wyoming and South Carolina were the two states with the highest rates of Improper Medicaid Payments (at 20.7 and 20.5% respectively), with Delaware, Connecticut, and Idaho following close behind. As you might notice, none of these five states are among the most populated, and none of them are near the top of the list of states with the largest immigrant populations.

California, New York, New Jersey, Florida, and Nevada are the states with the largest immigrant populations, yet they all fell below a rate of 9% during those three years.

So, people need to stop pretending this is even remotely connected with our Border Policy or Immigration Statistics, because there isn’t even a Correlation to mistake for Causality.

House and Senate Republicans upheld their promise not to tamper with Medicare as far as work and age Eligibility Requirements were concerned when drafting the 2025 Congressional Budget Bill. However, Eligibility for certain Immigrant groups will be impacted, as some Non-Citizens who were previously Eligible as Permanent Residents of the U.S. for at least five consecutive years will lose coverage 18 months after the Legislation is passed.

Medicaid, however, was far from off-limits to Congressional Republicans…and where they have tampered with Medicaid and other health coverage through the ACA, it could have dramatic and widespread impacts on healthcare systems across the nation.

Medicaid is funded through a combination of Federal and State Taxes, with roughly 70% of that funding coming from the Federal Budget. States often derive a significant amount of their funding through Provider Taxes, which are taxes paid by Health Care Providers (hospitals, nursing homes, and the like). The House version of the Congressional Budget Bill would have prohibited States from creating new Provider Taxes or increasing the current percentages paid by Providers, which are capped at 6%. The Senate version, however, gradually decreases that percentage to 3.5% by 2031, but only for the 40 States (and the District of Columbia) that employed Medicaid Expansion under the Affordable Care Act, leaving exceptions in place for nursing homes and intermediate care facilities.

This will dramatically decrease the amount of matching funds paid by Federal Taxes, creating a bit of a double-whammy on States that are being penalized for adopting Medicaid Expansion.

The concern here is that States will almost certainly have to make dramatic cuts to Medicaid as a result of the lost revenue, further cutting the number of people covered or the amount paid to Providers.

Of course, there’s also the addition of out-of-pocket expenses for Medicaid enrollees, as a $35 co-pay will be required for some services (again, only in States with expanded Medicaid) for individuals with an annual income of more than $15,650 (Federal Poverty Level). The Senate did add allowances for States to charge an even greater co-pay for Emergency Room visits for Non-Emergencies. The silver lining is that the co-pay policy doesn’t apply to primary care, mental health, or substance abuse services.

Access to insurance coverage through the Affordable Care Act marketplace is about to become more challenging as well. It will also be more expensive as enhanced subsidies are scheduled to expire at the end of 2025, which could result in some costs for ACA insurance coverage increasing by an average of 75%. I don’t know how many people can afford to see their Insurance Premiums go up by 75%, but I would be irate if it were happening to me.

Hundreds of thousands of Lawfully Present Immigrants are likely to lose insurance coverage through the ACA, because additional subsidies that keep those costs down will also be expiring.

All of this is devastating at a time when hospitals and medical facilities across the country are already facing massive budget shortfalls. Part of that comes from Medicaid and Medicare payments not being sufficient to keep pace with rising operating costs. Those skyrocketing operating costs are partially derived from administrative expenses produced by Insurance Companies, due to prior authorizations and the appeals associated with denials.

According to a report from the American Hospital Association last September, administrative costs alone accounted for more than 40% of the average hospital’s total expenses. Not only does the Commercial Insurance Industry delay and often deny necessary care for patients, but it also dramatically increases the costs for Providers to operate in the first place, which leads to increased costs for the rest of us. Of course, the Industry is thriving as a whole, with many Insurance Companies seeing record profits year after year.

You may notice some disdain for Insurance Providers, and that’s something I’m entirely conscious of. I’ve experienced frustration regarding the predatory practices of the for-profit Insurance Industry while researching their standards, profit margins, and actions.

What we’re likely to see if the House and Senate Republicans have their way, in addition to fewer people being covered by Medicaid (and health insurance in general), is staffing cuts at Providers or (in the worst case) closures. This is most likely to happen in areas where the population is lowest, impacting rural Providers more than those in urban areas…though the impacts would still be massive there as well.

Because of this, Senators added a $50 Billion fund ($10 Billion annually) to the Congressional Budget Bill, insulating rural hospitals from some of the worst impacts. The House version of the bill would have allowed rural hospitals that closed between 2014 and 2021 to reopen under the Rural Emergency Hospital designation, which allows Medicare to provide them with a potential lifeline. This could have been good, since 146 hospitals in rural counties closed between 2005 and 2023. The Senate, unfortunately, included no provision to reopen those hospitals under the retroactive designation.

So, there are some small bits of good mixed in with the bad aspects of that portion of the new budget, but none of those “good” things would be quite as necessary if it weren’t for all of the “bad” aspects of the Congressional Budget Bill. And altogether too much of that “bad” is tied up in transparent bigotry directed toward Immigrants, and the false claims that they are responsible for Fraud in the Medicaid and Medicare systems, along with the other things people often refer to as “entitlements.” Of course, while focusing on Legislation to further disenfranchise already disenfranchised people, the same Lawmakers are providing additional handouts to Corporations, the actual sources of Fraud, Waste, and Corruption.

America Is a Democracy, and You Don’t Know What That Word Means

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I hadn’t seen anyone attempt to make this fatuous argument in quite some time, but a politically illiterate individual on Threads pulled out the old, “America is not a Democracy, it is a Constitutional Republic,” nonsense just the other day.

If that dumbshit statement isn’t one of the surest pieces of evidence that education is important (and that our educational system is failing), I don’t know what is. Not to point fingers or anything, but I’ve only ever seen former Tea Party and current MAGA folks tossing this gem out there. You’re free to interpret that as you will. I know what I suspect is behind that particularly ignorant claim arising from one specific cross-section of the American Political Spectrum.

I know the people who say things like that like to believe it makes them sound intellectual in some capacity. I know they think it’s some sort of “Get Out of Argument Free” card that they can toss into a discussion when things aren’t going the way they want. Sadly (for them), all it does is clearly display that the person making the statement understands nothing about either a Republic or a Democracy…and probably shouldn’t be trusted as an authority on any matters of government.

This is why it sounds so stupid to anyone with a passing familiarity with political theory. It’s the equivalent of saying, “Brutus isn’t a dog, he’s a German Shepherd.”

A Republic is a subset of the Democratic form of Government, a Representative Democracy as opposed to a Direct Democracy (where everyone would be free and encouraged to weigh in on every matter and every piece of legislation), which would be tedious as Hell! Instead, a Democratic process determines Representatives who then act on behalf of the bloc that voted for them.

I’m tempted to ask if the person making that statement is stupid or simply ill-informed…but they’re not mutually exclusive…sort of like a Democracy and a Republic.

I suppose one might say, “He’s not ill-informed, he’s stupid,” because while not all ill-informed people are stupid, all stupid people are certainly ill-informed.

How the American Political Parties Shifted Platforms

/ MeltdownMessiah / 1 Comment

It amazes me that so many people still love to trot out the old–and I believed, sufficiently dismantled–argument that Democrats started the KKK, so they are truly the party of Racists and Segregationists…while Republicans are the party of Lincoln, and therefore must be the good guys who believe in Equality and Liberty.

I never can tell whether these people are making intentionally bad faith arguments based on disingenuous, and manipulative cherry-picked snapshots of party standards from a century and a half earlier…or if they’re sincerely so historically illiterate that they just accept this argument at face value from other people who presented the bad faith argument for them. It’s sad either way, because they either aren’t capable of thinking for themselves or they aren’t capable of intellectual honesty…and neither of those traits should be praised or rewarded.

I want to get one big fucking fact out of the way before I address the falsehood there. This one is going to be hard for some people to hear, especially some of us White People…but it’s something that needs to be dealt with before I even begin digging into the process by which the Democratic and Republican Platforms became what they are today.

First of all, America as a nation is absolutely built on a foundation of White Supremacy, and that corrupt substrate still exists at the core of our society (regardless of party affiliation). It’s like a poison in the bedrock that finds its way into our spiritual and cultural soil and groundwater, tainting everything we do…and until we actively work together to leech that shit out of there, we’ll never be clean of it. The fact of the matter is that neither major party (nor the vast majority of smaller political parties) has been particularly interested in putting in that work, because the bulk of American politicians still benefit too much from their (conscious or unconscious) privileged status. That is a truth we need to remain aware of and vigilant to acknowledge and address whenever and wherever we see it manifesting.

Now, onto the claims made by people who insist on tossing 19th-Century Party Affiliations around as if they’re relevant to the platforms we see today. Those people are fixating on the titles while intentionally ignoring the most salient detail, which is to address which group was “Liberal” and which was “Conservative” at the time of Lincoln.

Just answering that single question turns the argument on its head. But I don’t mind going further into how the party demographics transitioned from what they were in the mid-to-late 19th Century to what they have been during my whole lifetime, and I’m currently 46 years old.

It started to take hold way back in the 1890s, in large part thanks to a Nebraska politician, William Jennings Bryan, who became the Democratic National Committee’s nominee for President, in response to backlash against President Grover Cleveland and the Conservative Democrats that dominated the party at the time. Unfortunately for Bryan, he lost to McKinley…twice.

After taking a brief hiatus from Presidential Campaigns, Bryan lost the Presidential Election for a third time, this time to Taft. But his influence didn’t fade, and he became Secretary of State under Woodrow Wilson (until he ultimately resigned from the position).

During his life, Bryan made huge tectonic shifts in the Democratic Party. He drew in people from the political left (progressives) while fighting against American Imperialism, the influence of men like J. P. Morgan and other members of the privileged class who sought to manipulate American Politics for their gain through Crony Capitalism, and many traditionally Conservative ideals. All of this, while also supporting Women’s Suffrage and the League of Nations, and being the first Presidential Candidate to receive endorsement of the American Federation of Labor for his unflinching support of Labor Unions.

He did oppose American involvement in WWI, supported Prohibition, and actively fought against the teaching of Evolution and Darwinism in the Scopes Trial. So, on several matters, he and I would not have been in agreement. He also refused to attack the KKK directly, though not because he supported it, but because he expected it to fall apart on its own. He had more faith in the spirit of the American People than he perhaps should have, in that regard…but that was who he was to the core. He was a man of faith, which largely influenced his decision to take on the role he played in the Scopes Trial.

He was far from perfect, but he was emblematic of what the Democratic Party was gradually becoming.

William Jennings Bryan was arguably the figure one can most easily point to as the origin of the shift in party alignments. But he was only the first set of symbolic supports in creating the bridge that spanned that gulf.

While the transition may have started a few decades earlier, it wasn’t until FDR and the “New Deal” era that we started to really see Liberals as the Democrats we see today and Conservatives as the Republicans we recognize. FDR was, in many ways, the apex of that shift in party dynamics and platform. I would love to see a single Republican today adopt a platform as progressive as FDR’s. Unlike William Jennings Bryan, we all know at least a little bit about FDR and the “New Deal.”

It started as mostly a series of Economic Reforms: offering relief for the poor and unemployed, reforming the financial systems to avoid future economic collapse, and building the economy back up from the dismal lows following the crash of 1929. Major changes to the Federal Reserve, combined with the establishment of the FDIC and the Securities Exchange Commission, along with other Financial Regulatory Bodies, were engineered under FDR’s guidance to restore consumer confidence and bring the U.S. back from the brink of full financial failure. And it worked.

Though ostensibly a response to the Great Depression, there was much of FDR’s “New Deal” that cemented the new bedrock for the Democratic Party, outside of the purely economic considerations.

While modern Libertarians like to pretend that Corporations should be free to act outside of Regulatory Space and that the Free Market will force them to behave ethically, there is no historical precedent for that being the case. It was, in fact, Federal Regulations (and the emergence of Regulatory Agencies) under FDR that brought an end to some of the most egregious examples of Corporate predation. The National Labor Relations, Social Security, and Fair Labor Standards Acts protected workers, ensured protection for the elderly, disabled, and unemployed, fought against Child Labor, supported the development of Labor Unions, provided the 40-Hour Work Week, established a Federal Minimum Wage, and otherwise made it safer and less oppressive to be a worker in the U.S.

It was Conservative control of Congress (including the presence of many Conservative Democrats) that kept FDR from going even further with his “New Deal” Policies. But, during that era, the Democratic Party was reshaped further into being the Party of workers, racial and ethnic minorities, intellectuals, and others who had previously been traditionally aligned with the Republican Party.

Then we come to the Civil Rights Era, where the party transition reaches the Third Act, and the Southern Strategy (that only those invested in a fictional version of history will claim is a lie).

While men like Bryan and FDR reshaped much of the Democratic Party, there was, unfortunately, still a great deal of the previous century’s delineation present in the American South. The Civil Rights Era brought this to a head, as was always going to happen. The Democratic Party and, to a lesser extent, the Republican Party suffered from a sort of Identity Crisis, wherein members of the respective parties were closer in alignment with their opposition depending on where they happened to be located geographically.

Unlike the previous two Acts of the Three-Act transition of party platforms and demographics, the Southern Strategy was the work of Republicans. It was their effort to obtain support from White Southerners who were still Democrats (though they had little in common with Democrats outside of the dozen or so states involved).

There’s a strange symmetry involved in seeing this from a remove, decades afterward. Where Bryan started the process of pushing the Democratic Party to the Left, it was the Southern Strategy implemented by Richard Nixon and Barry Goldwater that shifted the Republican Party to the Right.

One could argue (and I think, accurately so) that this started with the Republican Party taking on the banner of “States’ Rights,” which was previously a Democratic stance dating back to the time before the Civil War. This was in direct opposition to the platform of Abraham Lincoln, whom Republicans still want to claim, while defying virtually every aspect of Lincoln’s stated beliefs. This was part of Barry Goldwater’s “Southern Strategy” which focused on courting Southern Whites and dismissing further efforts to appeal to Black Voters, which included open opposition to the Civil Rights Movement as well as to Kennedy’s platform promoting expanded Unemployment Benefits, increased Social Security and Minimum Wage, sending aid to Economically Distressed regions of the country (including cities with larger minority populations), increasing Housing Availability, and so on. But it was the opposition to Kennedy’s Civil Rights policies that was most important here.

Kennedy fought for Voter Education and the removal of the Poll Tax (in addition to further increasing access to Voting Rights for Blacks). He used Executive Orders to promote Equal Opportunity and Anti-Discrimination for Employment, Housing, and Federal Contracts…becoming a champion of Affirmative Action within the Federal Workforce and beyond. Kennedy also struck a massive blow against Jim Crow by making it illegal, as it concerned Interstate Commerce.

These were all policies that Barry Goldwater and Conservative Republicans opposed. One need look no further than the conflict between Republican Governor Nelson Rockefeller and Barry Goldwater leading up to the 1964 Presidential Election to see the massive fissure growing in the Republican Party under Goldwater’s influence.

It’s no wonder he lost to Lyndon B. Johnson, with his Regressive, Pro-Segregationist, and Anti-Civil Rights stances even revolting significant portions of the Republican Party at the time (the remaining Liberal and Progressive elements at least).

It was around that time when Strom Thurmond left the Democratic Party and joined the GOP, where he helped to manage Nixon’s campaign in the South. He was far from the last to do so, followed by notable figures like Jesse Helms and countless numbers of formerly Democratic voters. Many Republicans remained with their Party, believing they could rehabilitate it or that this shift toward Racist and Conservative Values would be temporary…but it was no longer recognizable as the Party of Lincoln by that point.

I’d like to make note of one funny aside. As counterintuitive as it may seem, George Wallace famously refused to leave the Democratic Party like many of his like-minded peers (despite repeatedly being repudiated at the national level by the majority). He did gradually soften his perspectives regarding Segregation and White Supremacy. Whether that was sincere or a performative shift to better continue surviving as he had up to that point is anyone’s guess.

Richard Nixon took Goldwater’s playbook and ran with it far more successfully, and I don’t mean that solely in that he actually won a Presidential Election. He focused his platform on the Coded Language of “States’ Rights” and “Law and Order,” which might sound familiar to voters who have been paying attention since 2015 or so.

The Third Act really doesn’t conclude until Reagan’s campaign in 1980 (and the subsequent eight years he led the Nation down the toilet), where Lee Atwater’s assistance helped to shift the overt Racism to more Dogwhistle-Coded language, focused on Economic Policies that would transparently benefit Whites more than any other group.

And it’s not difficult to discern how I feel about Ronald Reagan and the absolute disaster he was for America and the U.S. Economy, creating devastation from which we’re still picking through the rubble today.

So yes, the Southern Strategy is a real thing, and one that was discussed openly by the Candidates and Political Advisers involved in both its development and implementation. It’s on record, and trying to pretend it’s some Conspiracy Theory is ludicrous, at best, and entirely reliant on people never fact-checking what they want to believe is true. This isn’t like PizzaGate or any of the subsequent QAnon nonsense paraded around by the least credible people on the Political Right in America. There’s actually clear, concise data and historical records that don’t need to be twisted and distorted into the most bizarre shapes, explaining the Southern Strategy and how it was done.

Finally, to the people who want to make these bad faith arguments, all I can say is that you should read a book or two, and take some time to learn about American History…because even our High School Textbooks would have provided sufficient evidence to counter most of these ignorant claims. It leads me to believe that you didn’t retain much during your education, and that’s all the proof we need that the Department of Education should be more involved (rather than less) in establishing nationwide standards that aren’t associated with Standardized Tests, but on different methods of teaching and diverse styles of learning, to ensure that our Natural Born Citizens know at least as much as Naturalized Citizens have to.

I know I could pass a Citizenship Exam, do you? When taking that test, there is no Participation Trophy (and no points awarded) for waving a flag and displaying performative (though ultimately false) patriotism based on revisionist understandings that you didn’t even come up with for yourself.

My Assurance To You

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The current political climate in the United States has forced me to address far more political misinformation than I naively expected. I should have known better, having made it through not only the first Trump Administration, but also the year leading up to that and the interval of relative sanity that followed. The difference now is that I’m working as a journalist and don’t have the luxury of stepping away from the constant barrage of false claims, bad faith arguments, cherry-picked data, and data being tossed around without either context or nuance. On the positive side of things, I happen to enjoy doing research, and I’m good at it.

I’ve recently found myself sharing long, detailed posts on social media (Facebook, in particular, due to the lack of character limits being imposed), and someone suggested that they’d subscribe to it if I had a blog. I suddenly remembered that I do indeed have a website available where I can post these things. I’d been primarily focusing on using this space for reviews of books and audiobooks that I’ve completed, but I haven’t been doing that lately. Since I pay for the privilege of having this space, I might as well use it.

So, here we go.

I don’t expect you to take any of the things I post here at face value. You have no particular reason to trust me over any other entity sharing their political opinions online, and I don’t expect you to place that kind of faith in me. I want you to question what I say, especially if it doesn’t make sense to you. But I will make an assurance to you that I will not be posting something unless I’ve done my due diligence. I have dedicated time and energy to researching whatever the topic might be, using sources that are nonpartisan and unbiased. This is not to say that I am impartial, because (like everyone) I most certainly have my own set of biases in place. In my career as a News Producer, I have to exercise great caution to keep any of my opinions from influencing the news I’m assembling for the gradually diminishing audience for local television newscasts. But I do lean heavily on facts over feelings, even when they’re my own. If the facts and data don’t support something, it won’t be in my newscast unless I’m also supplying the facts and data that counter whatever that thing happens to be.

You’re always encouraged to research these things yourself; the resources are all readily available, and I’ll even happily provide links if they’re requested. I know not everyone has the time available to do so, and most people don’t enjoy research and collating data…at least not as much as I do.

I may mistype something here and there, double up or miss a word altogether, and even have an error in my math (though I typically double and triple check all the numbers). I apologize for any of those errors that may slip through. I’m not a fan of AI, but simple spelling and grammar checking algorithms are in play…however, they are occasionally more incorrect than I am.

As I said, I don’t expect you to trust me implicitly. What I do expect is that you know I care a great deal about being right, even when it doesn’t make me particularly nice. I don’t like being wrong, so I prefer to keep my mouth shut unless I know I’m not.

I’ll gladly admit when I’m wrong about a thing, but I go to great lengths to verify my sources and check my work before I share anything. Not only do I enjoy it, but I’m good at researching things, which is why I’m good at my job (and somewhat okay at my far less lucrative career as a writer).

Sure, I’ll tell someone an opinion is wrong, but that’s just me being an asshole, and we all know that. Of course, some opinions are informed by bad/false data, and I will try to address that…but opinions are subjective, whereas facts are not.

Five of a thing is always more than two of the same thing.

The sky appears mostly blue because molecules in the atmosphere scatter the light from our star in such a way (based on wavelength) that it looks that way.

The Earth is not flat.

We have been to the Moon, and astronauts left things behind on the surface even during the earliest missions.

And so on.

Some things are simply not a matter of opinion, and about which there are not equally valid arguments in opposition.

One thing I ask, beyond your belief that I care too much about being right to waste my time on the long posts without knowing I am, is that you do not use Google’s AI or ChatGPT as a resource. I can’t tell you how many times I happened to glance at what Google AI provided as a response to a search inquiry and felt like it either did not have the slightest capacity to recognize what was being searched for, or that it hallucinated a response that fell far out of line with any legitimate sources. That being said, I will acknowledge that it was closer to accurate more often than it wasn’t…but this is neither horseshoes nor hand grenades.