Sociopolitical Discussion

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.

Why the Neurodiversity Movement Matters

/ MeltdownMessiah / 1 Comment

I was a reasonably young child when I was diagnosed with ADHD. I wasn’t one of those cases where the diagnosis was just being tossed around and applied to kids behaving as kids always have…in my case (as with many others back in the 1980s), it was a legitimate diagnosis. I was prescribed Ritalin at that time, and it did seem to do the trick–when I was in school. By the time I’d been home for a little while, I was twice as difficult to deal with as I’d been before the diagnosis and prescription. Before that, I’d been a handful–no surprise to anyone who knows me as even an acquaintance, even as an adult–after that, I was a holy fucking terror.
It didn’t take long before my mother stopped me taking the Ritalin, because it was ultimately a bit of an issue. If it had been a few years later, they probably could have found some sort of scheduled dosage that might not have produced the same negative side-effects. Whatever the case may be, life goes on.
Years later I was further diagnosed with passive-aggressive personality disorder, not to be mistaken with someone behaving in a passive-aggressive manner. They are two distinctly different things, though there are some commonalities in the manifestation of passive-aggressive personality disorder and an individual being a passive-aggressive asshole–but there’s no sense in going into that here. As with other personality disorders, there is no drug treatment associated with the passive-aggressive disorder–it’s a wiring issue rather than a chemical one.
Passive-aggressive personality disorder frequently goes hand-in-hand with anxiety disorders, major depressive disorder (MDD), suicidal ideation, and substance abuse. You might have guessed it if you figured there’s a reason I mention all of those things in particular.
You win the prize!
There is no prize.
Get used to disappointment.
In addition to these things I’ve already mentioned, there have been strong signs of PTSD related to assorted experiences from my childhood (both as a young child and in my teen years). With all of those factors combined, I like to think I’ve turned out to be a reasonably functional adult and a productive member of society. I definitely have my issues here and there, and I can certainly still be quite difficult to deal with in even small doses (depending on the day)…but, all-in-all I’m keeping it together rather well if I do say so myself–and I do, so don’t argue with me.
I wish there had been something like the neurodiversity movement when I was younger, or that it had been more well-established and well-known at that time. I spent most of my life feeling like there were things wrong with me as if I were broken or damaged in some way–and perhaps I was to some extent. I still frequently refer to myself as being precisely that. I laugh and joke about how I’m broken or damaged, dysfunctional and maladjusted…but there’s that kernel deep inside that curls up into a little fetal shape whenever I do it.
It’s ok, though, I’m a bit of a masochist.
The neurodiversity movement is focused on treating these (mostly high functioning) people as being nothing more than a natural (and sometimes valuable) thread of the overall tapestry of human diversity. It’s refreshing and more than a little bit liberating to be treated as if I fall into a spectrum of what can simply be called a person with a normal human brain–as preconditioned as I might be to consider it anything but normal.
There are a lot of us out here.
Some of us are more high functioning than and some less so, but there’s no cause to pretend that we’re somehow less than other people, regardless of where we fall on that spectrum. It takes some degree of patience to deal with some of us, myself included. Personally, I recognize how challenging I can be on a normal basis and I make concessions for that. I’m not exclusive in doing so. Most of us who fall into the neurodivergent categorization are well aware of these things and we’ve learned to cope (as best we can) and to provide a bit of leeway for others in our lives. This isn’t true for everyone, of course, as there are extreme cases, but a large number of us are just like everyone else, just with a little bit more psychological/emotional/mental baggage in tow.

For some additional reading on the Neurodiversity Movement, I’m including the following link:

https://www.understood.org/en/friends-feelings/empowering-your-child/building-on-strengths/neurodiversity-what-you-need-to-know

Thoughts On American Polarization

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We are polarized.
Our culture is playing a high-stakes game of tug-of-war with the Overton Window and the view through that window in America has been growing progressively more right-leaning and red over the years. The talking heads fanning flames of fear will tell you that America is being consumed from within by “communists” and “socialists” whenever there’s even a tiny concession made concerning basic human rights or the recognition that homosexuals, transgender people, women, or any sort of minority group haven’t been receiving a fair shake. The reality is that we’re nowhere near moving left in this country. Even the Democrats tend to disregard the most left-leaning members of their party.
In large part, this is due to Democrats not being progressive enough in their policies and largely being unwilling to play the same rhetorical shell game with facts and truth that the other side has become expert at playing. There’s an unwillingness to think big or take big risks within the bulk of the Democratic Party whereas the Republicans have no problem with lining up behind a man who represented the worst extremes of right-wing politics in America because they assumed that it would get them just a little bit closer to their ideal positions of power and authority. The most progressive members of the Democratic Party, on the other hand, have to fight tooth-and-nail to receive even marginal representation when it comes to matters of policy. There’s a bit of simpering cowardice and a lack of boldness within the bulk of the Democratic establishment, and it’s been that way for decades.
So yes, we are indeed polarized in several key aspects. That’s a hard truth of American politics. It does present a challenge.
The worst part about it all is that we’re not quite as polarized as it superficially might seem.
There are a lot of points where individuals on the left and those on the right are in total agreement. The focus is never on those things in our political discourse, especially through media of all kinds (whether we’re talking about mainstream media–and that does include Fox and OAN, though I see a lot of people trying to pretend otherwise–or social media). This division is cultivated by keeping people on the left appearing as crazy socialists to those on the right and the folks on the right appearing to be mentally deficient bigots in the eyes of the people on the left. These descriptors are certainly true of some individuals, but they aren’t representative of the bulk of either group.
This is going to devolve into a rambling diatribe, I’m sure. I know myself well enough to see that on the near horizon. I apologize for that being the case. I can only hope you’re able to keep up with me along the way.
I do lean Socialist in my political views. It can easily be inferred that I’m pretty far left of the Democratic Party (as a whole). I don’t dispute this at all. This is not to say that I think the Federal Government should become a nanny state or that I feel like D.C. should be the focal point of a new religion.
I’m not a nationalist, after all.
I believe the role of the US government is to serve the best interests of the American people. That’s it. That’s the sole purpose of it. Politicians are our servants, meant to act in our best interests. This is not what is happening.
What we see today, from the vast majority of our political figures, is a government acting in the interest of those who fund their reelection campaigns and provide them with hand-outs. They’ll toss some superficially pleasing and inoffensive concessions our way once in a while, as long as it doesn’t cost them too much by way of campaign funding…but that’s about all we get for the price of admission we pay by voting and participating in the democratic process.
This is not the way it’s supposed to be working.
We all know it’s wrong…right and left, center and fringe.
The only people who don’t seem to know it’s wrong are the ones directly benefitting from the oligarchy we’ve allowed to grow within our nation like an unchecked tumor.
This is not being written for the people who subscribed to the QAnon conspiracy. There’s no getting through to you if you believe Donald Trump was the literal savior of America (or the world). You’re too far gone for me to have any hope of reaching you. This is not for the militant leftists who somehow believe that we’re going to overthrow the American neo-fascist government and usher in a utopia of communal living and worker-owned industry overnight. Though people in those aforementioned groups still recognize that things are wrong with the political arena in America, they’re choosing to cling to fantasies and wish-fulfillment rather than reality. That’s a whole different conversation for a different day.
It’s also a conversation I don’t care to have.
Most of us aren’t bigots. Or should I say that all of us are bigots, just not quite the way the term gets tossed around?
I know that’s difficult for some people on the left and the right to acknowledge…but it’s true.
No, most people aren’t homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, or religiously intolerant beyond a tiny extent.
That tiny bit of bigotry…well…we all have it. We’re all ignorant, some more than others. We’re all biased in different ways, larger and smaller. We’ll never find any sort of resolution as a society if we can’t come to terms with the fact that we are all wildly imperfect.
The only thing we can do is come together. The more we meet new people and interact with others who aren’t like us, the greater the chance that we can overcome those cultural biases deep within our psychologies. I’m no less guilty of this than anyone reading these words.
For most of us, our biases are minimal…though no less problematic. These things can be overcome. I honestly do have this much faith in my fellow human beings. I’ll admit that I could be overly optimistic here, but I believe most of us are better than a lot of us think we are.
This is not to say that systemic racism is not a real thing.
It is.
This is not to say that there is a profound undercurrent of homophobia and transphobia within large segments of the population.
There absolutely is.
This is not to say that sexism in America (and a whole lot of the world) is not a real cause for concern.
It most assuredly is.
There are, without question, awful people out there who believe terrible things about other people based on either their ignorance or contempt.
If we take the time to try and explain things to others without frustration and impatience, maybe we can come to better terms with one another. We might even be able to get through to some of the people who otherwise seem irredeemable.
We need to come together, sooner rather than later. If we can’t figure out how to do this, we’re going to continue being ground beneath the treads of those who benefit the most from us being at one another’s throats. Until we stand together, we’ll continue to find ourselves crushed, consumed, and disposed of.
We all see money being squandered on ridiculous corporate bail-outs while the middle class disappears below a rising poverty line. It’s fair to say that almost no one, regardless of party affiliation, sees something like that and agrees that it’s something good or right. We’ve been seeing it in D.C. a great deal since the pandemic started in early 2020. There was no hesitation when it came to bailing out Wall Street and corporations where the CEOs and board members had been seeing massive rises in profit while the employees receive barely subsistence wages. Money that was earmarked for small businesses, to keep them afloat during these troubling times ended up being approved as loans for companies that needed no assistance. People who were without work had unemployment benefits stripped away before anything had been done to improve their odds of returning to work. Politicians in Congress nickeled and dimed the actual voting population, trying to figure out just how little they could offer while still appearing to care just a little bit. And then, only a few short months later, they were doing the same thing all over again. They happily approved money for the people and corporate entities who fund their campaigns but decried payments (beyond a pittance) sent directly to people as socialism. We saw the same thing back in the recession more than a decade ago as well. We tossed money at banks and corporate entities while we allowed people to be swallowed up by debt and poverty.
We see these things happening while infrastructure around the country fails. Bridges and roads are maintained poorly, utility networks are neglected so that the providers can obtain record profits, some of those profits sure to be funneled into the coffers of the politicians who turned a blind eye or actively aided in deregulation under the guise of honoring the free market. Most of us see through these infantile rationalizations, but they succeed in these selfish grifts by counting on the polarization of our political climate to guarantee their base will still support them.
We squander countless billions of dollars on corporate welfare, regime-changing conflicts, and a war on drugs that has been a transparent failure since the beginning. All the while we’re told that it’s too costly to divert mere fractions of that money to programs that would improve the overall quality of life for American citizens…programs like universal healthcare or free access to higher education and trade school. We’re told that this is “socialism” and that we can’t afford it, while the rest of the civilized world succeeds in doing these things without becoming the socialist dystopias American politicians and media talking heads insist we would become. We’re told to worry about higher taxes when most of us are already paying more for insurance premiums and deductibles than we’d ever end up paying in increased taxes. We’re told that we should selfishly refuse to spend our money on someone else’s medical costs, even though that is precisely what our insurance premiums are for. The insurance companies don’t pay those bills out of some endless surplus of funds they generate for themselves, they utilize the money you and I are paying and divert that money to the medical costs of other individuals with the same insurance provider.
We’re told that raising the minimum wage in proportion with the cost of living (rate of inflation) and the degree of productivity will raise costs (creating a cascade effect of ever-increasing inflation rates) and force businesses to close their doors…but both of those things have been happening for decades while the living wage has remained stagnant. Some of these fears could be offset if we introduced universal healthcare, as employers would not have to dedicate funds to insurance companies for their co-pay portions.
We’re told that we should find nobility in pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps, often by individuals who come from families who passed wealth down generation by generation in the form of land ownership, business partnerships, or literal wealth. We’re told that America is a land of equal opportunity by these same people after generations of dominion have allowed their particular class to largely rig the game in their favor. As an individual who descended from a family who took advantage of the Homesteader Act back in the day. I’m familiar with the myth of Manifest Destiny. Those early Westward traveling settlers were handed parcels of land by a government that didn’t own the land in the first place…all for nothing more than working the land and making lives for themselves.
What is being given to us for our labor these days?
Insufficient wages, insurance that denies our claims when we need them most (while we make the higher-ups at these insurance companies sufficient money that they can buy politicians), and the sense of being beaten down beneath the feet of those who use our labor to elevate themselves?
Whether we want to admit it or not. We have these things in common. I have a decent job, as far as wages are concerned when compared to the difficulty. My insurance is pretty decent and not particularly expensive. There are plenty of us in this position.
For every one of us, there’s someone miserable where they are, and that misery is being compounded by the exploitation of the people they work for. It’s easy to claim they should just leave those jobs to find something else.
When are they supposed to find the time to look for new work while they’re still working the job they wish they could get away from?
What happens to them if they become ill while they’re between jobs?
What if the benefits aren’t as good but the pay is better?
These are concerns that could be entirely eradicated with something as simple as universal healthcare being in place. With guaranteed higher education or trade school, it provides the worker with better leverage as well.
Alright.
Fuck it.
I’ve babbled more than enough. I’ve probably lost the thread somewhere along the way…but I hope you’re able to follow along to some extent.

Corruption and Hypocrisy In South Dakota: or Great Faces, Rigged Cases

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As could have been predicted, South Dakota Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg gets a pass for what should have been a clear-cut case of unintentional vehicular manslaughter (at the very least). After Ravnsborg killed a man in September, while driving distracted (clearly accurate based on the misdemeanors he was charged with), the Hyde County Deputy State’s Attorney finally announced that this asshole is facing a whopping three misdemeanor charges; using a mobile electronic device, driving in the wrong lane, and careless driving. Ravnsborg was supposedly sober at the time of the accident…based on an alcohol test performed 15 hours after the incident.

This man hit another human being with his car (while he clearly wasn’t paying any attention), called 911 to claim he believed he hit a deer, and went home to sleep…while another human being never made it home at all. Supposedly, if you believe the story released in Ravnsborg’s statement after he’d gotten a couple of good nights of sleep, the Sheriff had arrived and checked out the damage to Ravnsborg’s vehicle and sent him home. They claimed that they had both looked for the deer while somehow entirely missing the dying (or already dead) man in the ditch next to the scene of the accident. If that’s true–and I don’t believe it is–the Sheriff probably has no business being a Sheriff at all…he has even less business keeping his job if the story is a fabrication. The Sheriff was so kind that he even allowed Ravnsborg to borrow his own vehicle while the damaged vehicle was towed away.

None of this should really surprise anyone familiar with politics in South Dakota. This isn’t even all that dissimilar from an incident involving former Governor Bill Janklow back in 2004.

Even with eyes all over the state and the surrounding states closely watching this case and waiting to see the result of the investigation, there’s so much rampant corruption that this was almost a foregone conclusion.

Welcome to South Dakota, where accountability only exists if you’re poor or uninvolved with politics.

The Substrate Of My Beliefs

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I like to think that most of my decisions in politics and life are informed by defensible positions and beliefs.

I believe that LGBTQ people are, first and foremost, well…people. I believe that the love between two people is fundamentally no different, regardless of the sexual organs and gender expression. I’m not always great with using the right words, but I also grew up when referring to friends as “gay” as a term of endearment was commonplace. I still try to get things right, most of the time.
I believe that there is literally mountains of scientific and sociological data supporting the argument that gender is a sociological construct that varies dramatically from culture to culture and that the biological/chromosomal nature of “sex” is nowhere near the binary thing a lot of people cling to out of stubborn resistance to waking up and embracing new knowledge that transforms our earlier assumptions. I like the use of binary in those terms, though…because 1 and 0 could be seen as phallic and vaginal, respectively.
I believe that Black People and other minority groups are arrested, incarcerated, and killed at an improportionate rate because of a series of systems that are geared for inequity and inequality. In other words, I do believe that systemic racism is a very real, life threatening issue in America.
I believe that women are no less capable and valuable within our society, and that there are numerous hurdles and double-standards in place that make things more challenging for women than for men in almost every arena that matters.
I disagree with regime-changing conflicts that aren’t specifically and intentionally for the purpose of mitigating actual human suffering and torture.
I believe that we already spend altogether too much on military and defense, and that we could easily scale things back and do a better job of repairing failing infrastructure at home.
I believe that, aside from the indigenous people, every single person here in America is here because of immigration over less than a thousand years…and that we don’t get to simply say, “no more immigrants,” because they aren’t the right color of skin or believers in the right form of superstition. Most of our ancestors came here with little to nothing, but the dream of a different life. There have always been a small number of bad people who slip through, but the majority of immigrants all along have simply been people who want better for themselves and their loved ones.

I have plenty of other beliefs that are more debatable and more a matter of my personal outlook on things…but the ones I laid out here are the core of what I base my judgments upon.

As to my less concrete beliefs and influencing perspectives:

My views on climate change (I do believe we have had a negative impact that we can–and should–work to remedy) are open to disagreement. I’m no fucking climate scientist, but I’m inclined to trust those who are.

My pro-choice perspective is one based on the fact that it is not up to me to impose my own morality onto others or to have them impose their morality onto me. Additionally, the thought experiment is a solid one. If a fertility clinic were about to explode and I could either save a five-year-old child or a tank containing hundreds of viable, frozen, embryos…I would choose the child 10 times out of 10…unless they were particularly annoying. That, to me, showcases a very real distinction between which is a child and which is not.

I believe healthcare is a right and that no one should go bankrupt or have their lives destroyed because of the skyrocketing costs of healthcare in America.

That list could go on and on…but I would change those assumptions if I were supplied with logically consistent, rational, and well-informed arguments to the contrary.
The ones in the main post…those aren’t going to be changing.

Unwanted Richard: Life Coaching for the Modern Age

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I had a brief conversation with an old friend of mine yesterday evening, revolving around the topic of unsolicited dick pics and determining what suitable responses might be. This blog post is emerging from that bit of conversation. The trigger was a suggestion that the recipient reply with a text saying, “That looks like a child’s penis. I’m reporting this.”

A few years back, when my 16-year-old daughter was around 12 or 13, the topic of boys sending pictures of their dicks came up in the car. I don’t recall precisely how the subject was broached, but there’s a fair-to-middling chance that I’d randomly tossed the topic out there for no apparent reason and with nothing that could be interpreted as an antecedent. Anyone who has known me for any length of time probably isn’t terribly surprised by that.

Perhaps to the chagrin of my adolescent daughter–and also my girlfriend, who was in the car with us–I began spouting off things I considered appropriate responses, if (and more likely when) she received her first unsolicited dick pic. It’s an unpleasant thought, knowing that the odds are high that my daughter(s) are subject to that sort of tacky, uncouth, and disgusting behavior from boys or even adult men (since we clearly seem to be incapable of growing up beyond a certain point in many cases)…but I sincerely believe it’s a conversation a parent probably needs to be having with their children.

These suggested responses are mostly geared toward young girls who receive unsolicited dick pics, but some of them are certainly appropriate for adult women as well (including transwomen, as a dear friend of mine has seen a massive uptick in men sliding into her DMs since she began transitioning). I felt it was my responsibility to share these suggestions with any other parents who might end up reading this blog.

Here’s a short list:

“My dad says you might want to have that checked out by a doctor.” — This one is lovely, in part because it implies the recipient shared the offending picture with her father and that the father felt like there was something wrong with the penis in question. It’s both emasculating and potentially paranoia-inducing.

“Why did you just send me a picture of an overcooked hot dog.” — Because it’s just objectively funny.

“I just showed that picture to my mom, and now she won’t stop laughing. I don’t know what’s so funny.” — This one is predicated on the assumption that the individual sending the pictures is perhaps suffering from a bit of fragile masculinity. The thought of being laughed at by an adult female, and the mother of the recipient, should be suitably discouraging.

“That is way smaller than mine.” — I suspect there’s a bit of latent homophobia lurking not far from the surface inside of anyone who’s inclined to send unsolicited dick pics. It’s an assumption, but I’m willing to stand by that assumption.

“Hey! I know this penis! I saw this one on that gay porn site.” — Again, assuming a certain amount of homophobia that accompanies that sort of toxic masculinity.

“My dad took my phone after I showed him the picture, and he just finally gave it back. He’s all flushed and sweaty and he changed clothes.” — This one plays on both the emasculation of the recipient’s father seeing the image and also on the suspected latent homophobia.

“That sort of looks like a penis, just really tiny. Is it a scale model?” — There is no harm in body shaming someone who’s sending you unsolicited dick pics. Die mad about it!

“Hey! That reminds me of giving my baby brother a bath.” — Again, there’s no harm in body shaming the penis of someone with that sort of toxic masculinity.

“Did you just send me a picture of your dog’s penis?” — Red Rocket! Red Rocket! Oh, come on…that’s just funny.

I think it’s important to force some humor and amusement into these sorts of situations, by whatever means necessary. Riff off of these suggestions, or find your own. Whether you’re a pre-teen or middle-aged, there’s a greater than 0 chance you’ve received an unsolicited dick pic…you may as well have some fun with it. Save screen caps and laugh about it with your friends (or even your family, if they’re not too uncomfortable with the subject).

Foreign Aid & International Relations

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It seems to me that public comprehension of foreign financial aid is generally pretty low.
Less than 1% of the US Federal budget is typically distributed in the form of foreign aid to other nations, mostly developing nations, but also countries where there are US military bases in place (it’s more than you probably think).
What’s especially humorous to me is the fact that these same people I see complaining about foreign aid being sent to other nations are often the same ones talking about how defense is the most important budgetary concern. It’s like they’re entirely oblivious to the plain fact that federal spending in the form of foreign aid is one of the most important tools in the box where national defense is concerned…no, I misspoke, it’s not like that…it is that. They’re entirely oblivious when it comes to anything pertaining to diplomatic relations, foreign policy, and total federal spending. It’s perhaps not their fault that they’re stupid people, they suckle at a steady diet of bad/misleading information and memes in place of study.
The same people who I see shouting out about American exceptionalism and the superiority of capitalist social and economic structures are seemingly unaware of the way foreign aid is a propagandic method to encourage capitalist transitions in other countries.
I suspect these people also aren’t aware of the fact that more than 3/4 of the foreign aid doesn’t actually go to foreign governments or entities of those governments. It’s perhaps too much to expect that these same people recognize that part of that calculated budget dedication to foreign aid is in the form of military aid (troops and training).
It’s clear that altogether too few people take the time to read or study history in even the most rudimentary sense. This is precisely why I suggested that there needs to be a better focus on sociology and history in our educational system…and not just the, “America is Awesome,” variety certain politicians have been so fond of.