crowglossed:

I know I don’t have many followers, but there are currently 48 people in the running for Alaskan Congress. I’d love for this to get notes just to spread the fun and hopefully let everyone know that even Santa is sick of American politics at this point.

Help! I Could Keep My Brother Alive, But I Don’t Like His Wife!

Carolyn Hax, Washington Post,1 November 2021:

Dear Carolyn: What do I owe my siblings, if anything? My husband has been fortunate enough to make a lot of money, and we agreed long ago that it was for us and our adult sons, not our (many) deadbeat relatives.

My older brother pretty much raised me and helped my husband when starting out. Brother had a severe stroke three years ago, and Second Wife claims they have gone through all their savings and are now $140,000 in debt with all the costs. She is trying to guilt me into helping them. I do not feel this is appropriate.

She did quit her job to take care of him, but they were improvident and did not buy long-term care insurance. I ask her why she does not put him in a home or hire a full-time aide and she says they can’t afford it.

Brother’s adult children tell me Second Wife is horrible, which is why they choose not to help, either. Second Wife had the nerve to ask me to help buy Brother an oxygen concentrator. It is expensive: $2,500. I think this is pushing it. She comes off as bitter, so we said no.

Now she tells me she will have to launch a GoFundMe, because otherwise they will lose their house. This will be extremely embarrassing to my husband and me, because we are prominent in the community. What do you advise? — Family

Dear Family,

While your problem has, on the surface, a very obvious solution — let the brother who raised you and gave your now-wealthy family its start in the world die a slow, desperate death in poverty because you don’t like his wife’s attitude — families are complicated. Sometimes it’s not as easy as getting what you want from someone financially and emotionally and then abandoning them forever because you don’t care whether they live or die — because then the neighbors might talk! What a pickle.

Of course your brother should be forced to forego the medical care he needs because you don’t like his wife. That much is clear. It’s not about the money — you’d never miss a dime — but you think your brother’s wife sucks, so it’s just really not worth ensuring he has the medical care and housing he needs. Anyone in your shoes would make the same calculation without a second thought.

However, things get sticky when we start thinking about what really matters: how embarrassing it will look to people you aren’t related to, who you’ve never met and have no responsibility toward, if it comes out that your brother is an irresponsible poor who didn’t even get long-term health insurance before deciding to have a stroke in a country with an exploitative, unjust, discriminatory, and deliberately impenetrable medical system that drives millions of people into unimaginable debt every year.

It would be a kindness if the man who raised you and seeded your family’s vast financial success could just suffer in silence and die in the streets with his bad wife and leave you out of it. That’s an outcome you could be proud of — the kind of comfortable, happy little family story you’d be fine sharing with a few intimate friends at the club. But for your sister-in-law to publicly humiliate you by trying to stay alive and housed in order to fund your brother’s medical care, when she knows you simply can’t help him because you hate her! That is impudence of the highest order, and your brother’s wife is only creating for everyone a self-perpetuating cycle wherein she quits her job to care for her husband and has to beg other people for money to stay alive, and you have to keep not giving her money because you hate her because she’s so poor and embarrassing! The one and only solution in this situation is so simple — she shuts up, he dies! — and yet, this self-absorbed couple just can’t bring themselves to take the necessary steps.

There’s nothing you can do here, since funding your brother’s medical care as the most minimum thanks for his support at the most crucial times in your own life will only help him live a longer and more comfortable life without his wife having to make a big public show of their poverty at you. Some people really can’t see past their own self-interest! An upside: if your in-laws go forth with their crowdfunding plan, you will see your own visibility in the community grow in some interesting new ways.

you read it right, DM me a screenshot of your 20 calls & i’ll draw a doodle of your choice. (s/o to @mirandamharmony for the lovely idea!)

The US is being brought to its knees by this virus b/c of how unfathomably awful our gov is. We still have a chance to make it less awful (26 primaries still to come) so let’s do it!

Fox News hosted a town hall with Bernie Sanders on Monday, and I decided to watch it. Here are my impressions and takeaways:

Audience Reception on the Issues

The town hall took place in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, described by Fox News anchors Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum as an industrial town with a closed steel plant that voted for Obama and then voted for Trump. These are swing voters who Bernie Sanders should appeal to on issues like trade and workers’ rights. And, to be certain, when NAFTA, CAFTA, and TPP were brought up, the audience sided strongly with Sanders.

But on other issues, even though this town hall aired on Fox News, the audience was often very supportive. This might have best been illustrated by one of the most interesting moments of the town hall: Bret Baier asks the crowd how many of them have private work-provided health insurance, by a show of hands. Many hands raise. When asking the crowd whether they would want Medicare for All, more hands shoot up, some people stand, and some vocalize their support, as well. This is, I’m sure, not what Baier was expecting, because one of the arguments used against universal healthcare, often framed disingenuously, is that people want to keep their private insurance. The audience responded very positively to the idea of having stable, ongoing coverage.

Later, I was surprised by how loudly the crowd applauded the following comment:

“The American people, I think, are ready to deal with justice in America. That is what we’re fighting for. And that’s economic justice, social justice, environmental justice, racial justice.”

Even though this was a Fox News town hall with attendees who appeared to be mostly white, the audience got really excited and loud when Sanders brought up racial justice. From that point through the end of the town hall, it was fairly clear that the majority of those in attendance supported most if not all of what he had to say. Viewers could hear Bernie chants here and there, particularly in the second half of the telecast. Towards the end of the town hall, one of the hosts was booed for asking if Bernie supported prisoners having voting rights for his own political benefit. When he was given an opportunity to provide a closing remark, he and the audience engaged in some call and response, and he was sent off with repeated chants of Bernie.

The message

The case Bernie Sanders made was for a politics and a movement for the working class. He’s advocating for a positive agenda that benefits all workers. In many ways, he appealed to liberal Democrats: he proactively discussed climate change, he discussed suppressing black people’s voting rights, advocated for universal healthcare, challenged the demonization of immigrants, and he didn’t criticize other Democrats when given a chance while criticizing Fox News. But he also advocated for policies further to the left of Democratic Party dogma: he criticized the military industrial complex and the Pentagon for refusing to do an audit and for wasting incalculable amounts of money, he called on us to “rid the world of nuclear weapons,” he said it’s not anti-Semitic to criticize Israel, and he brought up poverty over a handful of times, even mentioning childhood poverty. And that’s where the strength of Bernie’s campaign lies: appealing to the shrinking middle class on standard Democratic issues while also appealing to the poor and working classes of all ethnicities, and he was particularly effective in advocating for inclusive class-based politics and policy, even on Fox News.

What the town hall achieved

First,he looks like the front-runner and a leader. He was criticized by the center and the Democratic Party for appearing on Fox News, and he was criticized by some of my compatriots on the left for platforming Fox News. I see the merit in the latter argument, but Fox News is mainstream and has been for a long time. I’d be concerned if he went on Tucker Carlson, but that’s not what this was. That said, being a leader means making choices you think will be beneficial even when the decision is unpopular. Effective leadership also means walking the walk: Bernie Sanders is about working class politics; refusing to go on Fox News does, to some extent, leave out a platform where some of the working class goes for news–even if the outlet itself is a horrible news source. Trump won the votes of some Americans who voted for Obama; failing to try to bring those voters back into the fold would be political malpractice.

Finally,Sanders effectively demonstrated that he can take on Trump. At multiple times during the broadcast, he spoke directly to Trump: when he brought up his support for staying out of Syria and Yemen and ending endless warfare, he called on Trump to sign the measure he introduced to end America’s support for Yemen. He also went after Trump’s hypocrisy of refusing to cut Medicare on the campaign trail but then proposing budgets that support Medicare and other social insurance programs. At multiple times during the town hall, he positively contrasted himself with Trump. Democrats and many independents–and some Republicans–want to envision a candidate who can emerge victorious against Trump. Bernie’s performance could help some of those voters envision that.

Was his appearance effective?

Press coverage suggests it was. Here’s a sampling of headlines:

1. “Bernie Sanders may have just set the model for 2020 Democrats with his Fox News town hall” -The News-Times
   
2. “Sanders takes on Fox” - and emerges triumphant -Politico
   
3. “Bernie Sanders Beat Fox News on Its Own Turf” -Spin
   
4. “How wide is Bernie Sanders appeal? This cheering Fox News audience is a clue” -The Guardian
   
5. “Bernie Sanders Shines on Fox News” -The National Review
   
6. “Bernie’s victorious Fox News town hall” -Vice
7. “Bernie Sanders on Fox News is Most-Watched Town Hall of 2019″ -The Wrap

What could he have done better?

The first ten minutes of this town hall were particularly combative, and I think that largely stems from the initial focus on Bernie’s tax returns, which revealed him to be a millionaire, and possibly his desire to ensure that he articulated clearly that he is not on board with Fox News as a media organization. While the line of questioning about why Sanders wouldn’t just send his tax cut from Trump back–even though he voted against the bill–is completely asinine, I would like to see him come up with a better answer to what he’s doing with his newfound wealth. Ultimately, though, I think this is a debate of minimal consequence. You can certainly support policies that benefit the 99% without actually being in the 99%. Sanders, as he pointed out, also supports taxing himself at a higher level. And I think most people can draw a distinction between the Clintons, Donald Trump, Jeff Bezos, and others and how they generated their wealth versus how Bernie made his. And, not to forget, the very real degree of separation in their wealth.

And while I think that Bernie has improved on his messaging around foreign policy and developed a better vision of what that would look like, he didn’t proactively bring up foreign policy in the first half of the event. Mostly, I’d like to see him connect what’s happening at the border with our foreign policy. He said that people are desperate and “fleeing violence and misery in Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala.” This is true. He said we need more immigration judges. That’s also true. But he needs to then say that we need to stop intervening in the affairs of these countries and using diplomacy to support stability and economic growth throughout the Americas by supporting workers’ movements at home and abroad.

Final Thoughts

If you know me or were aware of my blog during the 2016 election, you know that I was a strong Sanders supporter and that I volunteered for his campaign. Over the past few years, my political views have shifted more to the left, and I’ve developed more criticisms of Sanders. In spite of that, I did come away from this town hall reminded of the appeal of the Sanders campaign: one that could represent a shift towards an inclusive working class policy focus and movement building, and away from a divisive Red State/Blue State paradigm.

I haven’t made any kind of endorsements for 2020 because, again, it’s too early, and there are many candidates running who will be out of the race a year from now. However, it was difficult not to come away from viewing the town hall with some combination of familiarity and inspiration. One could say I was feeling the Bern…

Your side already tried to make Warren look foolish by presenting her like this, Nathan. It didn’t work.

I assume this is against Warren, because of the emphasis on the word ‘trillions’ with no further explanation that it would save people money in the end.

Meh.

I was expecting a cartoon about Hillary after yesterday, but why Warren?

Today is a long one. You should do each of these separately and not in the same letter if you are writing.

–Call/fax your Senators and Congressional representative and tell them you OPPOSE HR 620, which would allow businesses more freedom to not comply with disability access and would put the burden of asking for access on the disabled. (URGENT– this is on the docket for TODAY)

–Call/fax your Senators and Congressional representative and let them know you OPPOSE the Graham/Cassidy/Heller ACA repeal.

Key points to bring up: (choose one or two that matter to you most if you don’t want to write or say too much) 

–This repeal is estimated to cause a spike in premiums of up to 20% in one year.
–This repeal is estimated to allow 32 million Americans to lose health insurance.
–This repeal gets rid of the Medicaid Expansion which covers about 11 million low-income Americans.
–This repeal will gut pre-existing condition protections.
–This repeal will gut women’s healthcare and family planning in the guise of “pro life” actions but the blow to women’s health affects care far beyond abortion.

–End by asking them to support Medicare for All or a similar single payer program.

– NEW YORK AND CALIFORNIA 12TH DISTRICT: Call/fax Chuck Schumer or Nancy Pelosi and tell them that you will not accept a border wall as part of a compromise effort with Trump over the DREAM Act. Reiterate that you will only accept a clean DREAM Act that protects ALL immigrants who were brought here as children (not only those who are able to go to prestigious universities or get high-paying jobs in lucrative industries) and that does not tear families apart.

–Demand more transparency on their meetings with Trump and make it clear that while you understand the necessity of private discussions among lawmakers in typical situations, based on Trump’s reputation, you do not feel comfortable with private meetings in this case.

You can do this with other Democratic Senators and Representatives, too, but Schumer and Pelosi need to hear us express concern that they may be compromising on things that are unacceptable to their constituents.

 1 capitalism = 1 liberal + 1 conservative  

1 liberal = 1 conservative - 0.001 

Does your Representative support HR 1976, the Medicare for All Act of 2021? National Nurses United is organizing voters to call their Congressperson and ask them to join the 69% of Americans who support the same access to healthcare that most other developed nations already benefit from.

Call 202-953-4101. You’ll hear a short message about Medicare for All, then you’ll be connected to the Capital Switchboard. Ask to be connected to your Congressperson’s office. (If you don’t know who that is, they can help you figure it out!) Then you’ll be connected to their office, where you’ll either leave a message or speak with their office staff.

All you have to say is: “ My name is (name). I’m a constituent from (town/city). I’m calling in support of HR 1976, the Medicare for All Act.”

progressivefriends:

Jesus fuck. Bernie just fucking killed the health care rationing question regarding a single-payer system in this debate stronger than I’ve ever heard a political question ever answered. Ever.

*may have been better if he pronounced the world “ration” correctly though.

Bernienailedit.

CHUCK TODD: Thank you. Before I get to the next question, Senator, I wanted to follow up on something you were talking about, the single-payer – referred to single-payer health care, talking about some of the European systems.You know, a common complaint in those European systems has to do with wait times for treatment, wait times for seeing specialists. How do you propose in your Medicare-for-all system to not have Americans have to deal with rationing of care?

BERNIE SANDERS: We are the only country in the industrialized world that doesn’t guarantee health care to all people. I’ve been criticized for saying that. Let me say it again. I believe healthcare is a right of all people. I will fight for a medicare for all, single payer system.

Second of all, alright. You want to talk about rationing, you got 29 million people in this country who have no health insurance. How’s that for rationing. They can’t got to the doctor. And, then you got even more who are under insured with high deductibles, and high copayments.

I have talked to doctors who have told me that people walk in the door extremely sick, and the doctors say, why didn’t you come in here six months ago when you first felt your symptoms?

And people said, “I had no health insurance,” or, “I had a high deductible”.

Chuck, some of those people die, or they end up in the hospital. You want to talk about rationing, that’s rationing. To answer your question. We spend almost three times more per person than the people in the U.K., 50% more than the people in France.

We can have a world class healthcare system without waiting lines, spending the same amount of money we’re spending right now.