The Bright Side of GOP Suicidal Health Insurance [Tax Cut] Bill

Just a Wee Bit About the GOP Health Insurance Bill

Take your choice - House version or Senate version.

Why "SUICIDAL?"

As a Republican Congressman, you understand that your "political career" really counts on being re-elected. The fundamental concept of representative government means that this "getting re-elected" business is based on pleasing these voters of yours. Now, even before Trump and his cronies started the American Health Care Act, the US House of Representatives and the US Senate were already enjoying a 21% job approval rating [GALLUP],

The House version of the GOP health insurance bill managed to eek out a 12%-17% approval rating. Approval of the blatantly horrible Senate bill will, most likely, be slightly less.

Now, back to "suicidal." Pretend that you're a Republican House of Senate member. Your Party's President is polling a roughly 30% approval rating.

Why are you doing this? More importantly, why are you in such a rush to do this? We'll need just a couple of details to make sense out of this.

By this time we have realized that these horrible "legislative efforts" have almost nothing to do with health care -- both of them are unimaginably huge tax cut schemes. The "big picture" is a confusing one which invites all sorts of mis-perceptions as Americans try to maneuver through the domestic media's twisted account. In order to keep this part of the post short, we can approach this by the numbers.

1. The ACA is "falling apart" -- as Trump has taken great pains to repeat over and over -- because the insurance corporations are running from the ACA "exchange plan." The reason the corporations are in full flight is because the Republicans in the Senate fatally injured what is called the "risk corridor" in their latest budget bill.

The "risk corridor" was a mechanism in the ACA to reimburse the insurance corporations for money they would lose from the ACA's requirement that health insurance HAD to be "guaranteed issue," that is, HAD to be available to everyone regardless of old age, poor health or simple poverty. The authors of the ACA knew that lots of expensive insurance "clients" would flock to get ACA coverage, and that this would cost the corporations a lot of money.

Senate Republicans stiffed these corporations in the GOP budget bill, allocating only around ten cents on the dollar of what had been agreed upon earlier. The insurance corporations, staring at huge losses in insuring these "expensive" clients, closed up shop.

THIS is what Trump and the mind fogged GOP Senators are talking about every time they make the point that "ObamaCare is failing."

2. The ACA was passed in "reconciliation," that it, the ACA was budget neutral. Of course the ACA cost the government plenty of money, but the original bill included tax increases [i.e. 3% on capital gains which is how the very richest Americans "make" their money.] to generate the funds for the plan. The Republicans have ended almost all of these tax increases, leaving the ACA essentially unfunded. 

The "revenue neutral" GOP "replacement" is entirely intended to reduce these taxes and ACA coverage costs to create a $10 Billion dollar reduction in the deficit. Insurance coverage available under the rules of the new GOP plan would be painfully lacking compared to the ACA's "guaranteed" coverage of all sorts previously insured conditions. 

A major part of these "savings" would come from "limiting" the growth of Medicaid seven years "down the road." 40% of Americans get their health care from Medicaid. These are the people comprising the population in the CBO estimate that 22 million Americans would lose coverage.

The billionaires who own the Republican Party would receive almost all of the "deficit reduction savings" as tax cuts. "Limiting" Medicaid, in addition to several other multi-billion dollar reductions, should "free up" more than $10 Billion in direct "deficit reduction." [$100 Billion in savings over ten years] Senator McConnell is applying around $8 Billion of this to make the GOP bill "revenue neutral," while offering the remaining $2 Billion in legislative bribes which could lubricate his Senatorial attempts to get 50 votes.

The owners of the Republican Party will NOT settle for any less than $100 Billion in tax cuts in the next ten years.

THIS is why the Republican "health insurance" bill is, once the lipstick has been removed, a gigantic tax cut bill.

Of course plenty of the Republican looters in the Congress are not rich enough [Although most of them are, in fact, millionaires, they are "small potatoes" compared to the GOP's owners.] to really "reap the full benefits" of this scheme. So-o-o-o, it's only to be expected that they "need" to grease their own palms with whatever they can steal in the meantime.

Take a look at the following DailyKOS article -- great reporting!

Republican lawmakers move to cash in on healthcare repeal by buying up stock in insurance companies

By Dartagnan

Saturday Jul 08, 2017

[Original article here/DailyKOS]

Representative Mike Conway [R-TX]

Who knew kicking 22 million people out of their health insurance could be so lucrative?

Just as the Republican bill to slash much of the Affordable Care Act moved forward, Rep. Mike Conaway, a Texas Republican and member of Speaker Paul Ryan’s leadership team, added a health insurance company to his portfolio.

An account owned by Conaway’s wife made two purchases of UnitedHealth stock, worth as much as $30,000, on March 24th, the day the legislation advanced in the House Rules Committee, according to disclosures.

Health care stocks have soared in recent weeks as insurance companies salivate over the prospect of gouging more Americans with inflated premiums and cuts in benefits. The Republicans have also promised to loosen the regulations that prohibit these same companies from denying coverage to whomever they choose, which promises  to bump up the share price of conglomerates like United Health.  

Conaway was not the only Republican cashing in on his plans for other people’s sickness and death:

As the health care system overhaul advanced last month on the other side of Capitol Hill, Republican Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma purchased between $50,000 to $100,000 in UnitedHealth stock.

With the United States under Trump devolving into a Putin-esque kleptocracy, the stink of corruption has apparently become so normalized in Republican ranks that they’ve become completely desensitized to it. In Conaway’s case, however, enriching himself with insider information had already passed his personal smell test:

Conaway, who serves as a GOP deputy whip in the House, has a long record of investing in firms that coincide with his official duties. Politico reported that Conaway’s wife purchased stock in a nuclear firm just after Conaway sponsored a bill to deal with nuclear waste storage in his district. The firm stood to directly benefit from the legislation.

Making money off sick children and the elderly who your party plans to leave without any health care coverage represents a new low, even for a Texas Republican. However, the rest of his party  (and some Democrats as well) have made every effort to help him along. In 2012 Congress made a big show of passing something called the STOCK act in an apparent attempt to curb insider trading among lawmakers and their staff. The bill was subsequently watered down and partially repealed, specifically those provisions which would have made congresspersons’ stock transactions accessible to the public. And when the Securities & Exchange Commission moved forward with its first investigation of alleged violations of the act, the Republican-led Congress filed a brief with the SEC claiming the act could not be applied.

New York Magazine’s Eric Levitz explains why Conaway’s and Inhofe’s trading in individual stocks timed to coincide with legislation they are working behind closed doors to pass is not just “business as usual”:

It’s worth noting that, for the ordinary investor, it’s rarely wise to buy and sell individual stocks — as opposed to investing in mutual funds — unless one has access to special information. And given that the mere appearance of corruption has a corrosive effect on our republic, it’s difficult to understand why members of Congress don’t restrict their investments to such instruments.

But then, the Trump-era Republican Party has grown quite comfortable with complicity in manifest corruption — let alone with giving the appearance of it.

With the entire executive branch awash in graft from the top down, it’s simply become ridiculously easy for members of Congress like Conaway to blend in with their own petty corruptions, without being noticed.

And as for the “corrosive effect on our Republic,” well, that ship sailed last November.

Trump is "Unbelievably Smart" but He's Poor and Putin Knows It

Trump's The Two "Vital" Mysteries

There's no need to waste time on being opaque if your supporters don't care.

Every con man relies on some version of the "sleight of hand." When a con man is able to "corral" a sufficiently large audience which is sufficiently eager to be duped, the demand for an inconveniently high quality of this "sleight of hand" diminishes -- in the case of the new President -- to a very manageable, comfortable level.

Snake oil salesman with Russian secrets. [image]

Here's how the scheme is working.

Trump acts like a profligate, womanizing misogynist. His evangelical and women supporters don't care.

Trump acts like a junk yard cracker and racist. The industrial media has nothing to say because he is rich and that means he's smart.

Trump feeds the fire with the Muslims and incites more violence by Israel. This doesn't bother his supporters because he is rich and that means he's smart.

Trump insults the Mexicans - our second largest trading partner. This doesn't bother his supporters because he is rich and that means he's smart.

Trump promises to renege on settled treaties. Trump voters don't care if our word matters because he is rich and that means he's smart.

Trump promises to wreck health care and hand it back to Big Health. The poor and sick among his supporters are ecstatic because he is rich and that means he's smart.

It goes on, but the message is clear enough.

So, is there anything that Trump can show, say or do that will shake his mindless base?

The first of the "two mysteries" is that Trump is smart. MeanMesa needn't add a single word. The man, himself, is breathlessly contradicting this one almost every few minutes. The national security staff is in tatters -- sitting in empty offices with vacant desks. Trump has shown that he has no idea how the US government works. 

However, this doesn't seem to bother Trump supporters. They think that this means because he is rich, that means he's smart.

This leaves us with the:

2nd mystery.

What if Trump isn't actually rich? Even to the heretofore blind, marching Trumpkins, such a revelation will almost certainly lead to a conclusion that he isn't smart, either.

Trump's Poor. And Putin knows it.

By 4CasandChlo

Saturday Dec 31, 2016

[Visit the original article  here - DailyKOS]

We tend to flag, or at least strongly resist speculation here, especially when one speculates as to facts that might support a theory. But, with respect to key aspects of Trump’s business status, and the potential conflicts with the Office of the President, we must speculate, because he simply won’t provide the facts to questions that must get asked.

So, I’m going to speculate, thus;

Trump is not only, “not a billionaire,” he carries so much debt that, relative to his hard assets, he’s poor, especially with respect to cash flow through cash intensive investments such as resorts, etc, where one has to pay large monthly bills to keep the lights on and the greens, well — green. In any given quarter, Trump faces situations where he doesn’t have the cash to keep up “appearances” and must borrow cash, at whatever rate, to maintain the cloak of worth, I mean wealth ...I mean, the wealth that makes up his self-worth.

I’m not a CPA. I’m a lawyer, but not one with any business experience. This is truly a layman’s “speculation” and experts here can tell me that I’m wildly wrong - which would be good. I look forward to learning. But, let’s start putting some real easy facts all in one place, ones we all agree don’t even need citation at this point.

1. We know that he promised to “self-fund” his campaign, and yet not only did he not “self-fund” it, he charged HUGE fees to his campaign to use Trump property. We also know that he never had anywhere near enough campaign money. From the beginning, the “Billionaire” had the “poorest” campaign.

2. He promised to donate all that money made in one evening to veterans groups, and had not done so when checked-in on, months later. (This is part of the larger pattern, a “Foundation” that he never paid money into, and hadn’t paid a lot of real money out of, one under criminal investigation. Most true billionaires have real foundations with real people who really help various causes because it helps business. It’s more polite to be worth billions if one can point to the appearance of “doing good” and yet Trump can’t even do that).

3. Upon winning the presidency, one of the first things he did was set up cash cow, meet/greets with his sons and various other tawdry behavior.

4. Even as President-Fucking-Elect he sells tickets to his New Years Eve party. Yet another potential conflict boil-up.

5. We know he took risks that could get a guy thrown in jail — paying off the Florida Attorney General $20,000 to drop the investigation into his Trump U and when he did it, he did so in yet another way that could get a guy thrown in jail — having his "charity" pay for it.

6. By the way, just what the f*ck is a “billionaire international real estate developer” doing even setting up something as stupid as a “U” to begin with? Never mind “Trump Steaks" - Unless one simply needs easy cash?

My point is, at every single point where he could have simply made his life easier by “not charging” or “avoiding a conflict” or “staying out of jail,” he’s gone with the move that carried the most risk but picked up five figures, over and over. No, I don’t think it all can be blamed on being short-fingered.

Which leads to two relevant questions. Speculation. What if, the real reason that Trump can’t “divest” himself of his business interests is because “divestment” would leave bare that he still owes more money than he has? He’s insolvent. What if he’s willing to put up with dancing the “Presidents can’t have conflicts” line because the alternative is “My debts outweigh my assets. I’m not rich, once one has stripped away the 757 and gold toilet, and I’m not willing to do that.”

Of course, I’m speculating, and I’m not a CPA or CFP. And, of course, you can simply read what people who are, actually, CPAs and valuation experts, people at Bloomberg, and see what they think (they still think he's rich, but note his debt doubled). But, Bloomberg basis its findings on something I’m not willing to trust — Trump’s reports, and specifically, they trust he’s accurately reported his debts. I find my lying eyes far more trustworthy. I scan the landscape and cannot escape one fact. Trump takes ruinous risks, monthly, to pick up $10K here or $20K there.

He has to. He’s poor.

And Putin knows it, and can prove it.

I’m speculating. Our President-Elect is free to “prove” me wrong.

Well, now. This seems to explain a lot.

Additional Reading

Was Trump Bailed Out of Bankruptcy By Russian Crime Bosses? - DailyKOS

Social Engineering - GOP Style

Is Killing Off the Old and Infirm

the Newest Scheme for GOP "Social Engineering?"

Unhappily, there will be little chance for a quick death.

Illiterate, Christ loving Trumpkins totally on board.

Cowardly Republican House Speaker, Paul Ryan, once again is preparing to obliterate Medicare, the health care element of Social Security, allowing the new Republican overlords to divert the costs into glorious tax cuts for the oligarchs who own the Party.

However, isn't "cowardly" just a little over the top? 

Not really. Aside from the fact that the Social Security recipients presently receiving benefits from the highly successful program paid for them, and Speaker Ryan's scheme literally means absconding with the cash thanks to the almost unlimited power he now enjoys. the little Speaker has not been emboldened sufficiently to dare cutting benefits to voters. Cutting benefits to the next generation will be painless enough, but cutting benefits to the present recipients turns out to be just a tad to scary.

You may recall that Romney tried this -- with the same "next generation" caveat. Before Mittens the last hideous Republican President, George W. Bush, also impaled himself in the classical, Medieval style of "hoisting his carcass on his own petard."

Well, in each of these historic miscalculations there were more than enough in the opposing Party to scuttle the dream. This time around, there aren't.

There is also nothing even vaguely resembling a functioning Supreme Court. 

All those troubling, inconvenient, Constitutional "checks and balances" are a thing of the past, now. No one can stop them. 

Unhappily for the GOP, there may be more than a few "pissed off" survivors, still breathing and still waiting to case ballots in the 2018 mid-terms.

If you think Paul Ryan isn't serious about ending Medicare, think again

By Joan Carter

November 15,2016

[All links remain enabled. Visit the original 

Joan Carter article here - Paul Ryan's Plan to End Medicare/DailyKOS]

A "Better Way" design for health care that frees up cash for
the Billionaire Owner$ of the Republican Party

Last Friday, House Speaker Paul Ryan went on Fox, the very best place for Republicans to shop their lies, and told some whoppers about Medicare. Those whoppers are what he's using to justify the one big thing he thinks he's going to get out of president-popular vote loser-elect Donald Trump: the end of Medicare. Here's what he said in that interview:

What people don't realize is that Medicare is going broke, that Medicare is going to have price controls. Because of ObamaCare, Medicaid is in fiscal straits. So you have to deal with those issues if you're going to repeal and replace ObamaCare. Medicare has got some serious problems because of ObamaCare. Those things are part of our plan to replace ObamaCare.

First, it already has price controls. Second, it is not going broke. Third, it's not going broke in large part because of Obamacare. In fact, the Medicare controls in Obamacare have actually extended Medicare's solvency by 12 years. Even the fact-checkers say so. So the whole premise Ryan is shopping to explain why he wants to blow Medicare up is a big, fat lie. Which you probably already knew because Paul Ryan.

When Ryan says "those things are part of our plan to replace Obamacare," he's talking about his "Better [sic] Way" plan. Which includes repealing the Independent Payment Advisory Board, a body created under Obamacare that is tasked with recommending cuts in payments to providers who participate in Medicare, if necessary. Note the IPAB can't make those cuts, but recommends them to Congress. If Medicare is going broke, which it isn't. Because of the law IPAB is part of. His plan would also expand Medicare Advantage, the privatized part of Medicare. The big part of that plan, however, is his long-standing proposal to turn Medicare into a voucher program.

Ironically, sort of, is that his plan would give subsidies to seniors to buy private plans. Just like Obamacare—which he wants to repeal—does. What it really means is an end to the program seniors have been relying upon since 1965 for their health care. (He also will block grant Medicaid, allowing the states to take the chunk of Medicaid money they receive and do what they will with it. This is important for seniors because Medicaid is the program that provides funding for long-term, nursing home care for low-income seniors.)

Now, Ryan likes to stress that this change will only apply to future retirees. He's lying. These changes would undercut current financing for Medicare, and would throw current beneficiaries into chaos. But it would end one of the most popular and successful government programs ever created, and that's what Ryan is all about. It remains to be seen if that's what Trump is all about, and whether he's going to let Ryan call the shots.

How the GOP Continues to Exist

This is a DailyKOS article which MeanMesa would like for all blog visitors to read. Although it was written several months ago, it has everything to do with the 2016 election outcome. Enjoy.

The Most Important Article

 You'll Read Today About The Democratic Party.

By Dartagnan

Saturday Nov 21, 2015

[All links remain enabled. Visit the original article  here The Democratic Party/DailyKOS]

Where can we find enough Republicans to keep the government crippled?
The old Confederacy now has a "Western" and a Northern" Branch.

Ever wonder why all those folks in rural, “red” America still vote in droves for the same Republicans who brag about gutting the very social programs keeping them alive? How someone like Matt Bevin can run a winning campaign in Kentucky based on cutting people’s access to affordable health care? How Republican governors can get away with refusing free Medicaid for their own citizens? Every election it seems that Democrats end up shaking their heads in dismay as yet another mean-spirited red-state Republican manages to defeat the Democrat by essentially promising to make his own constituents’ lives more miserable. Afterwards we all intone the familiar refrain which boils down to “these people don’t know any better.” If only the Democrats had a more effective “message” on the issues, we could surely reach those people who by all strands of logic ought to vote blue, and convince them that Republicans don’t have their interests at heart.

In one of the more insightful articles ever written about what motivates the rural poor to vote Republican, Alec MacGillis, who covers politics for ProPublica, took a tour through deep red America, asking the same questions. In an Op-Ed for today’s New York Times, MacGillis explains that it’s not all about guns and abortion that drives people in economically-depressed areas to vote Republican. In fact it’s something very basic to human nature, which the GOP exploits at every turn. And Democrats ignore it at their peril.

MacGillis’ first observation is that many people living in the nations’ more downtrodden areas—and specifically, the ones who benefit the most from programs such as Medicaid and Social Security Disability— are completely disconnected from the political process. They simply choose not to vote. Visiting a free medical clinic in Tennessee, MacGillis asked the people lined up how they felt about Obama. Contrary to his expectations he didn’t encounter hostility, Many people expressed support for the President. But practically none of them had bothered to vote:

[T]he people who most rely on the safety-net programs secured by Democrats are, by and large, not voting against their own interests by electing Republicans. Rather, they are not voting, period. They have, as voting data, surveys and my own reporting suggest, become profoundly disconnected from the political process.

West Virginia, for example, ranked 50th out of all the states in voter turnout in 2012. Other states near the bottom in terms of turnout include Arkansas, Kentucky and Tennessee, largely rural states that have significant populations of poor people, including large percentages of working-class whites.

Of course, the resulting vacuum left by huge swaths of Americans who don’t vote at all ensures that elections in these downtrodden areas will be won by those who do. Why, then, are the folks who choose to vote in these locales so overwhelmingly predisposed to vote Republican? MacGillis finds that the operative motivation is a strong sense of resentment among those who are just getting by towards those who have completely fallen off the economic grid:

The people in these communities who are voting Republican in larger proportions are those who are a notch or two up the economic ladder — the sheriff’s deputy, the teacher, the highway worker, the motel clerk, the gas station owner and the coal miner. And their growing allegiance to the Republicans is, in part, a reaction against what they perceive, among those below them on the economic ladder, as a growing dependency on the safety net, the most visible manifestation of downward mobility in their declining towns.

In his article MacGillis cites many specific examples of how this resentment operates in practice:

[T]hese voters are consciously opting against a Democratic economic agenda that they see as bad for them and good for other people — specifically, those undeserving benefit-recipients who live nearby.

I’ve heard variations on this theme all over the country: people railing against the guy across the street who is collecting disability payments but is well enough to go fishing, the families using their food assistance to indulge in steaks. In Pineville, W.Va., in the state’s deeply depressed southern end, I watched in 2013 as a discussion with Senator Joe Manchin, a Democrat, quickly turned from gun control to the area’s reliance on government benefits, its high rate of opiate addiction, and whether people on assistance should be tested for drugs. Playing to the room, Senator Manchin declared, “If you’re on a public check, you should be subjected to a random check.”

The belief that those who receive government assistance are somehow “undeserving” and “getting a free ride” is not only a phenomenon of rural areas, but is borne out in surveys nationwide.

That pattern is right in line with surveys, which show a decades-long decline in support for redistributive policies and an increase in conservatism in the electorate even as inequality worsens. There has been aparticularly sharp drop in support for redistribution among older Americans, who perhaps see it as a threat to their own Social Security and Medicare. Meanwhile, researchers such as Kathryn Edin, of Johns Hopkins University, found a tendency by many Americans in the second lowest quintile of the income ladder — the working or lower-middle class — to dissociate themselves from those at the bottom, where many once resided. “There’s this virulent social distancing — suddenly, you’re a worker and anyone who is not a worker is a bad person,” said Professor Edin. “They’re playing to the middle fifth and saying, ‘I’m not those people.’ ”

The unfortunate human tendency to think yourself as better than your ”undeserving” neighbor is what drives these people, even as their own lives are diminished by the very policies they vote to impose on others. To call this a vicious circle would be an understatement. Republican politicians thrive on and exploit these very real resentments, which are not by any means limited to “red” states. That’s how people like Paul Le Page can be elected governor on an anti-welfare platform in relatively “liberal” states like Maine, where reliance on social programs, particular in rural areas, has increased. Meanwhile, those at the top of the economic ladder become more and more aggressive in securing all of the wealth for themselves, while the poor are played off against one another. Democrats can call it out for the ugliness that it surely is, but it is a reality seized upon in every Republican pronouncement from immigration to taxes. If you can get people to think they’re somehow being taken advantage of by an undeserving “other” (especially if that “other” is a different color than they are), you can motivate them to vote any way you want.

There are no easy answers for Democrats to deal with and change these attitudes. The most obvious solution—getting people to actually vote-- has become more difficult, particularly with the decline of unions, Democrats’ traditional mechanism for mobilizing voters. There is also an obvious and intractable racial component driving this “politics of envy” that MacGillis, somewhat surprisingly, never addresses. He might also have mentioned that the tendency of the national party apparatus to discount and effectively cede these rural voters doesn’t help matters, but instead exacerbates the problem. People aren’t going to respond enthusiastically to a party that apparently doesn’t even want to acknowledge their existence.

MacGillis also suggests that the resentment people feel towards others they consider “dependent” can be addressed head-on if the Democratic Party decides to make the effort:

One way to do this is to make sure the programs are as tightly administered as possible. Instances of fraud and abuse are far rarer than welfare opponents would have one believe, but it only takes a few glaring instances to create a lasting impression. Ms. Edin, the Hopkins researcher, suggests going further and making it easier for those collecting disability to do part-time work over the table, not just to make them seem less shiftless in the eyes of their neighbors, but to reduce the recipients’ own sense of social isolation.

Ultimately, however, the answer lies in investing the people who live in these areas with an economic future:

The best way to reduce resentment, though, would be to bring about true economic growthin the areas where the use of government benefits is on the rise, the sort of improvementthat is now belatedly being discussed for coal country, including on the presidential campaign trail. If fewer people need the safety net to get by, the stigma will fade, and low-income citizens will be more likely to re-engage in their communities — not least by turning out to vote.

Note: All links in quoted segments are MacGillis’s. Emphasis from the original article..

The GOP's Newest Creation: US Poverty

A Bit of "Cold Hearted," Unimaginative History

The history of a previous anti-poverty policy in the United States.

The right wing threats, screaming and whining was almost as great as under FDR.

MeanMesa is old enough to remember a time when the President of the United States actually spoke about poverty in the country. Granted, this was a long time ago, and not that many Americans can even remember this President all these years later, but, interestingly, this same President was busy doing all sorts of other things besides his "poverty policy" at the time -- some of them quite unpleasant and unpopular, but for this post we'll try to focus on his effort to solve the nationwide poverty problem.

Kennedy and Johnson [image]

The President was Lyndon Baines Johnson. He took office after the assassination of President John Kennedy. President Johnson served as President for roughly six years. [Prior to the assassination, Johnson had been Vice President. He served as President for the last two years of what would have been Kennedy's term.] By the time came for him to run for his second "elected" term, he was so unpopular -- thanks primarily to his eagerness to continue the Vietnam War, that he declined another run for the White House. Richard Nixon won that election in 1968.

Because of his stubborn escalation of the war in Vietnam, President Johnson was also quite unpopular with MeanMesa. At the time his rather progressive plan to reduce poverty was pretty much completely overshadowed by the national damage inflicted by the war. [Economically, the war was "creating poverty" on its own -- its average cost was estimated at $1 Mn per minute for 20 years.] And of course, the Americans who were, predictably, the most active opponents of Johnson's anti-poverty plans were the "tax cut loving" Republican reactionaries of the day.

Poverty and Politics

Are "anti-poverty" policies going to be politically radioactive forever?

Don't bother bringing your Geiger Counter to the Democratic Convention.

The reason that this bit of "poverty fighting" history is included in this post is because even so much as mentioning the problem is so shockingly alien to the issues which now inhabit our rather embarrassing "politics as usual" discourse. MeanMesa has posted a great deal about these "last days" prior to the "full transition" to the approaching US oligarchy. Such a dismal viewpoint is appropriately relevant when the post is about poverty

Widespread, more or less permanent, poverty is an inescapable consequence of the rapid, upward wealth redistribution currently underway in the US. As more and more of the wealth of the nation is systematically transferred to the pockets of the well connected billionaires, the remainder of the population faces the increasingly "hollowed out" economy of what is left.

During the "well engineered" economic collapse of 2008, almost everyone in the country who owned anything at the outset wound up with 40% less by the time Obama had been able to move the wounded economy to the ICU. This 40% reduction took about six weeks.

The evidence of this is unavoidable. Roughly 65% of all new wealth generated in the US economy now flows directly into the dynastic fortunes of our soon to be total oligarchic masters. Concomitantly, as this redistribution proceeds, the predictable increase in poverty and near poverty [financial insecurity] increases proportionally.

At various times the billionaires, momentarily shocked by their self-created, precarious situation [i.e. guillotines], have taken steps to "buffer" the continuously more painful effect their ambitious policies have been imposing on the population. One might think that the issue of increasing poverty rates might have solicited a similar "cautious hesitation" in the execution of their overall scheme, but this turns out to not be the case.

The ever growing [and accelerating rates of growth] levels of US poverty are an unavoidable effect of creating the oligarch class, and the eager "oligarch candidates" roaming around at the atmospheric pinnacle of our current economy are clearly willing to accept such consequences as simply a "cost of doing business." 

The oligarchs also control the content of the political narrative expressed in campaigns. If anyone is questioning the observation in the preceding paragraph, please note that any proposal for mitigating poverty is a topic almost perfectly avoided in the 2016 Democratic Presidential campaign rhetoric. 

Understandably, the billionaires automatically hate any policy which might undermine their economic "harvesting" scheme. Obediently following the commands from above, Republicans, likewise, hate any job creating policy whatsoever, stranding them with their collective disdain for even the most modest investment in "jobs programs" -- a disdain apparently superseded only by their even greater disdain for any investment in a policy which might address the poverty disaster their decades long, previous policies have created. 

Although mindlessly fostering "poverty creating" policies has long been part of the sold out GOP's "marching orders," has this same line has now been "comfortably injected" into the Democratic side, too? The elimination of Sanders' "populist contentions" has cast the possibility of attempting anything material with regards to the poverty question to a "very dusty, very distant, seldom visited, horizon."

DailyKOS

Open thread for night owls: 

Zero questions about poverty in nine Democratic debates

By Meteor Blades

Friday May 27, 2016

[Visit this original article - DailyKOS]

Adam Johnson at Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting writes—In Nine Democratic Debates, Not a Single Question About Poverty:

Over 45 million Americans live in poverty—but you wouldn’t think potential leaders of the country are expected to know or care anything about this, listening to the questions asked by the elite journalists who moderated the Democratic debates this primary season.

A FAIR analysis of all nine democratic debates over the past seven months shows that not one question was asked about poverty. By contrast, 30 questions were asked about ISIS or terrorism (almost half of them concentrated in the December 19 debate, which took place days after the San Bernardino shootings) and 11 questions were asked Russia. Ten questions were asked about socialism or communism, all of which were directed at Bernie Sanders.

The candidates themselves have brought up poverty, either in their prepared remarks or in response to more abstract questions about the economy. Sanders brought up poverty in all but two debates, broaching the topic 12 times, or approximately 1.3 times per debate. Clinton brought up the issue five times in total, or a little more than once every other debate.

Don't even mention it unless you're looking for trouble. [DailyKOS]

According to the 2014 census, 14.5 percent of Americans, or over 45 million people, live in poverty, up from 11.3 percent in 2000. Child poverty (which Sanders points out consistently) is especially troubling, with an estimated 16 million Americans under the age of 18 living below the poverty line.

It's Politically Dangerous to Talk About Poverty

It's even more dangerous to try to do something about it.

Ask LBJ.

President Johnson had "a way" with his Congress. This Texan was famous for corralling a recalcitrant Senator up against the wall in the Oval Office and "reading him the riot act." Aside from being able to endlessly extend the Central Asian war in Vietnam, Johnson accomplished an astonishing number of other rather impressive, rather progressive, objectives during his administration -- but still, many of the techniques he employed to this end were unquestionably "meat handed" in a way that only a towering Texas politician could muster.

Lyndon Johnson left office in 1969. [image WP]

It must be noted that during this period many of the Republicans in Congress were still somewhat stable; FOX hate radio had not yet been invented; and, over 20% of the US population was in the throes of dire, more or less permanent, poverty. Although it took a prolonged, agonizing, political bloodbath to put Johnson's "Great Society" anti-poverty programs into law, we can see the effect in the chart [right]. 

By 1970, ten years after Johnson left office, the national poverty rate had declined from over 20% to less than 12%. It remained at this lower level until the "poverty creating" policies of the Reagan era policy of upward wealth redistribution boosted it back up to over 15% -- roughly where it is now. [2016]

Washington Post

The Great Society at 50

LBJ's unprecedented and ambitious domestic vision changed the nation.

Half a century later it continues to define politics and power in America

By Karen Tumulty

May 17, 2014

[Excerpted. Read the entire article  here The Great Society at 50/Washington Post]

One day shortly after starting his new job as presidential adviser and speechwriter, Richard N. Goodwin was summoned to see the boss. Not to the Oval Office, but to the White House swimming pool, where Lyndon B. Johnson often went to ruminate.

Goodwin found the leader of the free world naked, doing a languorous sidestroke. Johnson invited him and top aide Bill Moyers to doff their own clothes: “Come on in, boys. It’ll do you good.”

It was an un­or­tho­dox manner of conducting official business. As they bobbed in the tepid water, the president “began to talk as if he were addressing some larger, imagined audience of the mind,” Goodwin later wrote in his memoir.

The 32-year-old speechwriter forgot his chagrin as he was drawn by “the powerful flow of Johnson’s will, exhorting, explaining, trying to tell me something about himself, seeking not agreement — he knew he had that — but belief.”

This happened in early April 1964, just a little more than four months after a tragedy in Dallas had made Johnson the 36th president of the United States.

“I never thought I’d have the power,” Johnson told Goodwin and Moyers. “I wanted power to use it. And I’m going to use it.”

“We’ve got to use the Kennedy program as a springboard to take on the Congress, summon the states to new heights, create a Johnson program, different in tone, fighting and aggressive,” he said. “Hell, we’ve barely begun to solve our problems. And we can do it all.”

Johnson’s vision would come to be known as the Great Society — the most ambitious effort ever to test what American government is capable of achieving. And in doing so, to discover what it is not.

In laying it out, LBJ even set out a specific time frame for it to come to fruition — 50 years, a mark that will be reached on Thursday. Johnson launched his program with a University of Michigan commencement address, delivered on the clear, humid morning of May 22, 1964, in Ann Arbor.

Today, the laws enacted between 1964 and 1968 are woven into the fabric of American life, in ways big and small. They have knocked down racial barriers, provided health care for the elderly and food for the poor, sustained orchestras and museums in cities across the country, put seat belts and padded dashboards in every automobile, garnished Connecticut Avenue in Northwest Washington with red oaks.

“We are living in Lyndon Johnson’s America,” said Joseph A. Califano Jr., who was LBJ’s top domestic policy adviser from 1965 through the end of his presidency. “This country is more the country of Lyndon Johnson than any other president.”

MeanMesa encourages visitors to read this entire article. It is fascinating on its own merit, but in the context of today's desperate politics, Johnson's energetic risk taking approach makes it an almost esoteric encounter. Even though it may appear to a remnant of the distant past, it isn't.

Getting Used to Perpetual Poverty

Welcome to the oligarchy. Borrow some money to regain your standard of living.

The Banksters need your business.

No one is any longer looking to the Congressional millionaires currently in control of the government for any relief from the gnawing factors sustaining these high levels of poverty. Sooner or later, even Republican voters may finally realize that these politicians are not working for anyone who isn't financing their re-election campaigns.

"Fleshing Out" Republican "Leadership"

1. They hate science and education. Both represents threats to their political careers.
2. They hate infrastructure. If tax money is spent for any project which might be used by the "non-contributing class," they consider it theft.
3. They love tax cuts. They have no concern for the long term damage they cause as the hollow out the economy. They have given no thought to the collapse of their "export to low wage workers then import to the domestic market" business plan. Soon enough, none of us will even be able to afford the after market Chinese goods.
4. They consider poverty an acceptable price to pay for the creation of their oligarchy.
5. They have no concern about the inevitable rise in violence as more and more Americans careen below the poverty line. For them law enforcement and corporate prisons are nothing more than "minor issues" associated with establishing the oligarchy.

MeanMesa sees no evidence that the current unacceptable level of suffering will relent any time soon -- or, perhaps, ever. There is now an eerie silence on the topic from the Democrats.