Trump didn’t start America’s mistreatment of people at our borders, Biden hasn’t stopped it, and the immigration policies of both major parties are steeped in white supremacy, lies, and a seemingly bottomless disdain for human life. As long as money is valued above humanity, atrocities will continue.
One of the most infuriating things about healthcare in the United States is that not only is it viciously expensive, the private insurance system is a deliberately confusing labyrinth filled with tricks and traps designed to maximize profit both for the insurance companies and for healthcare providers.
Prices for care vary widely not only from place to place, but also depending on who’s actually paying. The overwhelming majority of transactions in our day to day lives deal with fixed prices. The price one person pays is the same as the one everyone else pays, and things like haggling are not even an option. You pay the asking price, or you don’t buy that product.
That means that when we get a bill for hundreds or thousands of dollars for something related to health care, we tend to assume that’s just the cost, and seeing the size of some of those bills, it’s not hard to understand why people would be willing to pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars per month to avoid a bill of tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars for accident or illness. A good health insurance plan can make a huge difference in the life of a U.S. resident.
For example, when I spent a semester in Tanzania, I took the anti-malarial drug Malarone. It was the best option available, particularly because the alternatives had common side effects like intense, usually unpleasant dreams, or increased sensitivity to solar radiation. For a northerner visiting the tropics, it’s generally a bad idea to do things that make sunburns more likely.
The problem is that Malarone is more expensive. It’s a daily pill, and at the time I believe it cost $5USD per pill. Nowadays the same supply would cost a little over $7USD per pill. For a four month trip, that’s around $600, on top of any other expenses. The insurance I had at the time, through my father’s work, covered it entirely.
That’s not the actual cost to make the pills though- not even close. It’s also probably not what the insurance company paid for them.
The relationship between patient and insurer is very adversarial, resulting in the aforementioned labyrinth, but beyond that, the bills patients see are almost never what insurance companies pay. They negotiate better rates and prices, and then try to push the costs they can’t negotiate away onto the patient, with the kinds of results David Pakman discusses in this clip:
I can’t help but feel that the extortionate “asking price” helps push people into paying so much for insurance, to avoid medical bankruptcy.
My own experiences include a plan in 2008 and 2009 that wouldn’t cover any emergency rooms within about 10 miles of where I lived, spending months and countless hours trying to confirm that the coverage I was paying for in 2018 and 2019 was active, and on trying to find a doctor that would even accept it, getting charged $200 out of pocket for a 10 minute consultation with a doctor when it turned out the card I had been paying $600 per month to get wasn’t working, and many other delightful experiences.
I took a fall on my bicycle in 2009 that cracked my helmet in half, and decided to hope no serious damage had been done rather than pay for the emergency room. I was hit by a car while commuting on my bike in 2013 (the driver’s fault), and had to turn down the ambulance ride and avoid getting my injuries checked out for the same reason. In both cases, I got lucky.
The entire world is subjected to relentless propaganda about how the United States is “the greatest country in the world”, but much of that is just incidental exposure to messaging aimed at American citizens, designed apparently to keep us from realizing the degree to which we are mistreated by our country and its ruling class.
I sometimes see people from Europe wondering why Americans don’t take to the streets over things like the healthcare situation, poor wages and inadequate safety nets, and so much more. A lot of it is things like this. Protesters risk arrest. Many companies reserve the right to fire employees who get arrested, or who miss work because they got arrested, or who miss work for a protest or a strike. Losing work isn’t just losing a paycheck, for many it’s also losing access to healthcare.
Protesting for any change in a left-wing direction can result in brutal attacks by police with kinetic and chemical weapons, which can result in massive medical bills. Rioting even more so (though police often try to turn peaceful protests into riots).
The reality of the United States is that it has found ways to repress its citizenry far beyond what you might think is happening based on what the law says. Rather than direct government control, corporations set the conditions under which people can have a stable, healthy life, and the government only has to prevent you from getting around the obstacles created by the corporations.
Health insurance companies levy heavy taxes for access to medicine, the government just ensures that there’s no better alternative than paying, and that same pattern exists throughout the system.
That’s why so much activism now includes efforts to help protesters avoid the steep penalties for exercising their right to protest, and it’s also why I ended up settling on my favoured approach to working for change.
This same dynamic exists to various extents in all capitalist countries. It is not the only form of repression, but despite all the talk about the “free” nature of capitalism, it is still a form of repression, and from what I can tell, it’s only getting worse.
If you want to help pay for the content of this blog, cover the costs of my recent move, and feed my pets, please head over to the Oceanoxia Collective on Patreon. My patrons are a wonderful group of people who give according to their abilities that I might live and work according to my needs. I’m grateful for every one of them, and you could join their ranks for as little as one U.S. dollar per month!
Whether it’s banning references to climate change, or sending armed goons to invade the home of a scientist calling out false COVID numbers, the Florida Republican Party hasn’t been shy about suppressing or ignoring science that relates to ongoing crises.
That’s why it was rather alarming to hear that Florida governor Ron DeSantis has declared a state of emergency over a looming industrial disaster.
Work crews were pumping millions of gallons of contaminated wastewater into an ecologically sensitive Florida bay on Sunday, as they tried to prevent the “imminent” collapse of a storage reservoir at an old phosphate mine.
Officials in Manatee county extended an evacuation zone overnight and warned that up to 340m gallons could engulf the area in “a 20ft wall of water” if they could not repair the breach at the Piney Point reservoir in the Tampa Bay area, north of Bradenton.
In addition to the direct kinetic and water damage of a flood that size, mine waste ponds tend to contain toxic, often radioactive materials, as in this case.
Crews are working both to plug the leaks, and to drain the pond, but it’ll be a little over a week before they’re done. In the meantime, the area is being evacuated.
If you do a quick search for “mine tailing disasters”, you’ll see that this is neither a new problem, nor one that is limited to any one part of the globe. The reality is that dealing with the problem of mine waste has been put off more or less indefinitely, rather than cutting into profits to address the issue. It should come as no surprise to my readers that I think this is not a problem that can be put off much longer.
Obviously climate disasters like storm-fueled floods or drought-fueled dust storms or fires can spread toxic waste, but “storage solutions” like this also put drinking and irrigation water at risk. Unfortunately I think the problem goes deeper than that. As I mentioned this past September, the industrial activity involved in non-fossil energy technology is neither cleaner than any other form of mining and manufacturing, nor is it exempt from the ways in which the profit motive encourages companies to cut corners and ignore problems.
I very much hope that the immediate danger is averted, and neither the homes, nor the jail in the flood zone are harmed. Once the crisis has passed, however, the larger problem remains, and as with so many others, the longer we delay dealing with it, the more it will cost in blood and resources to deal with it.
If you want to help pay for the content of this blog, cover the costs of my recent move, and feed my pets, please head over to the Oceanoxia Collective on Patreon. My patrons are a wonderful group of people who give according to their abilities that I might live and work according to my needs. I’m grateful for every one of them, and you could join their ranks for as little as one U.S. dollar per month!
I’m working on some other stuff, but in the mean time, since it’s relevant, here’s some info on the Blackwater mercenaries Trump decided to pardon, and on the efforts by right-wing media to whitewash their crimes. This is another example of how Trump is not – in any way – meaningfully separate from the mainstream conservative movement of the United States. He is louder and less subtle, but none of the things he has done are really outside of the GOP norm. His absence will not make conservatives suddenly start caring about human life.
BREAKING: ICE just announced the first confirmed case of COVID-19 in a person in ICE detention.
The moment is urgent: We must drastically reduce the number of people in ICE detention. Failing to do so will result in an unnecessary, and preventable, humanitarian crisis.
— ACLU (@ACLU) March 24, 2020
This is one way that concentration camps can become death camps. People crowded together without adequate sanitation, health care, or even sleeping conditions is a KNOWN formula for spreading disease and increasing the death rate.
It’s also a great way to increase the rate of mutation within the camp, which gives better odds on a newer, more dangerous form of the disease coming out of them via guards and other staff. This, in turn, may become justification for other, more brutal “measures”.
Thanks to the COVID-19 outbreak, layoffs have increased, job interviews have been indefinitely postponed, and many places aren’t hiring new workers. All of that means I really need help paying my bills and keeping a roof over my head. Patreon.com is a way for you to help with that, even if it’s just a little bit, and get some perks and extra content in return. You control how much you give, and how long you give it, and every little bit really does help. When lots of people pitch in, it can make a huge difference. Please help if you’re able, and share my work with others. Thank you!
The science of climate change is a field that focuses on trends over periods of a decade or more. Unfortunately, not all the trends the informed viewer will encounter have to do with climate research – some have to do with those who reject that research for non-scientific reasons. These people – generally referred to as climate science deniers – will show the non-scientific basis for their objections in the way they will use the same objections, year after year, no matter what new data arise, or how often those objections are rebutted.
This trend of continuing the use of dead arguments long after their demise is common to all areas of science denial, from the anti-vaccination crowd, to young-earth creationists. The tactic generally involves making false claims that seem plausible on the surface, and that take far more time and effort to rebut than was expended on the original lie. As a result, in all areas where this problem exists, people end up building resources to ease the rebuttal process. For climate science, the handiest one is the argument list found on Skepticalscience.com. The purveyors of these lies have found that there is no point at which their bullshit will have grown too ripe for their followers to swallow, so they have no incentive to stop feeding it to them.
When talking about science, this endless dishonesty also means repeatedly lying about actual people and the work they do. Arguably the most popular target for this behavior is climatologist Michael Mann, first made famous for his “hockey stick” graph in the 1990s. There are a variety of claims made about his work, but one of the most persistent has been that his temperature reconstructions discounted the Medieval Warm Period. This was a period during which Western Europe and Southern Greenland experienced higher temperatures than during most of the last couple centuries, and that showed prominently in an early IPCC graph. The graph seems to have been based on data from England, and incorrectly described as representing global temperatures. Mann’s graph drew data from multiple sources around the planet, and so, unsurprisingly showed a different result. If you haven’t seen it, or if you’d like a refresher on the subject, I highly recommend you watch this video from Potholer54 on the subject:
Mann has, over the years, been subject to an endless torrent of harassment and lies, and eventually decided to sue one of the primary culprits for libel. This would be a fellow by the name of Tim Ball, has gained a reputation for inflating his credentials to lend artificial authority to his arguments against the general consensus of climate research. I’ll refer you again to some of Potholer54’s coverage of the subject, with the relevant portion of this video starting around 8 minutes in:
Mann’s lawsuit against Ball has recently been dismissed, which has been claimed as both a victory for Ball, and a validation of the claims Ball has made about Mann and his research. It may shock you to learn that this reading of the situation is, in fact, another lie. From what I can gather, the request for dismissal that the judge granted was not based on the merits of the claims made. It was based on Tim Ball being old and sickly, and the assertion that nobody takes Ball seriously, and so his lies could cause no real harm to Mann (link leads to a twitter-based image that I have transcribed below):
The BC Supreme Court has never made any finding, directly or indirectly, that you failed to produce your data.
The August 22, 2019 ruling said nothing on that subject.
Ball’s request that the lawsuit be terminated – for delay – relied heavily on his alleged state of health.
Ball said in an affidavit supporting his application that lawsuit be terminated for delay:
“My Health
82. I myself am 80-years old (born 5th November 1938. I am diagnosed a Type 2 diabetic controlled by insulin.
83. I had quintuple bypass surgery in June 2007.
84. After the trial adjournment in February of 2017, I suffered coronary heart failure. This occurred in May 2017. It result in the surgical insertion of five stints in my heart. I am on blood thinners and will be for the rest of my life.”
Ball’s request that your lawsuit against him be terminated for delay also relied heavily on his argument that Ball’s accusations have not damaged your reputation.
According to a written submission filed with the Court by Ball’s lawyer:
“Dr. Ball’s website did not appear in a Google Search of Dr. Mann or his research for at least 92% of all searchers, likely more. Dr. Ball’s website has a low ranking and low popularity as calculated by Alexa, software used to judge website popularity.”
“…there are eight years of evvidence to support the complete lack of damage to reputation in BC or elsewhere.”
Basically this is tantamount to saying that Ball’s accusations against you have been given no credibility by the average, reasonable reader.
In summary, the court’s brief ruling on August 22 made no finding on whether your claims were valid, or whether Ball’s pleaded defenses had any merit.
Such findings would have been made at a trial, which will now not happen (unless this ruling is reversed on appeal).
As ever, the science denial crowd is relying on the most superficial of glances to “support” their declarations of victory, so Mann has helpfully provided resources for those who wish to look into the subject – and the data – for themselves: https://twitter.com/MichaelEMann/status/1165641839627702274.
The reason I went into the Medieval Warm Period “controversy” in the beginning is because the science denial crowd has been using their “victory” to spread around the same long-debunked ideas about climate history over the last thousand years, in an effort to cast doubt on the properties of CO2 as a greenhouse gas. The basic idea is that if the “hockey stick” pattern isn’t real – if the Medieval Warm Period was hotter than today – then it can’t be CO2 causing current warming. We’ve known for decades that the pattern Mann found is an accurate one, and as I mentioned back in 2013, there have been multiple studies, by multiple teams, using multiple data sets from all over the world, that have all come to the same conclusion: The global temperature is higher now than it has been in hundreds of thousands of years, and we’re headed for temperatures not seen in millions of years.
We’ve been digging up carbon that was pulled out of the atmosphere over a period of hundreds of millions of years, and putting it back into the atmosphere in a matter of decades. It was much, much hotter back then, even with a cooler sun. If we continue on this path, we will go far beyond anything our species has ever encountered, or the species we descended from, or their ancestors, going back to the first mammals. If we do end up burning all of the fossil fuels we know about, we’re not facing the current nightmare scenario of 4-6 degree temperature rise. Accounting for feedbacks like the melting permafrost and seafloor methane clathrates, we’d be facing over 10 degrees of warming. It’s unclear whether humanity can survive in a world like that, but unless we make massive changes to how we live and how we use our technology, I would say the answer is a sepulchral NO.
Also breaking: diseases are caused by small “germs”, and not evil spirits!
There are regulations that are bad. Calling all regulations bad is a declaration that you don’t value human life.
If you found this post useful or enjoyable, please share it! If you want to help me make more like it, please consider becoming a patron over at my Patreon page. Your donations make this blog possible, and even as little as one or two dollars per month adds up to make a difference. If you feel you can afford more than that, you can get access to all sorts of other content and perks! Your patronage allows me to put more of my time and energy into making this blog a useful resource. Thanks for reading!
The American economy has been structured to force anyone who’s not wealthy into debt. All humans will require healthcare at some point in our lives, and politicians from both major parties have played a huge role in ensuring that when you get sick, you can’t afford treatment.
Faced with the choice between debt and death, most people choose debt, in the hopes that they can find a way out of it. Now that debt is being used as an excuse to ensla- imprison people.
This is not an accident. This is not “the free market” – this is people billionaires funding judicial campaigns so that they can indulge their megalomania and push us closer to fascism and slavery. Let’s not forget that many modern companies made large fortunes off of the American slave trade, as well as from the policies of Jim Crow and Segregation. These people never wanted slavery to end. They never wanted Segregation to end. They never wanted labor laws.
Their only allegiance is to money and power, idolized in themselves. Given the opportunity, they will enslave you, and they’ll use your government to do it, just as they always have.
If you found this post useful or enjoyable, please share it! If you think the contents of this blog are worth a dollar a month please consider becoming a patron over at my Patreon page. Your donations make this blog possible, and even as little as one or two dollars per month adds up to make a difference. If you feel you can afford more than that, you can get access to all sorts of other content and perks! Your patronage allows me to put more of my time and energy into making this blog a useful resource. Thanks for reading!
Let’s pretend, for just a moment, that we have rule of law in America right now, and that this country is democratically run, and just having a crisis right now.
Kavanaugh will end that if we give him the power he seeks:
With Gamble vs. U.S., No. 17-646, the results of this case will have the power to change the lives of Donald Trump and every Republican scumbag in Congress (and beyond), as well as America as we know it. Gamble vs. U.S. deals with the “separate sovereigns” exception to the double jeopardy clause and, if overruled, will allow a sitting president to pardon both federal and state-level crimes.
For those who don’t see the danger, Trump and his partners in crime are vulnerable to multiple state-level charges. Because states are supposed to have some level of self-governance, the power to pardon those convicted of state crimes rests solely with the governor of that state. The President of the United States of America is currently only authorized to pardon people for federal crimes.
This is the Republican long-game. This is why the GOP has been fighting tooth and nail to rig the justice system to have as many conservative activists swinging a gavel as possible. I don’t know if it was the shift caused by the Southern Strategy, or the influence of powerful people wanting more power, but the GOP has been deliberately trying to overthrow democracy in America for decades. They also haven’t really been quiet about it – the desire to have total control has been at the forefront of their strategy, and it really seems like the Democrats were so used to punching hippies, that when the GOP started agreeing with the hippies and saying “yeah, no, we want authoritarian Republican rule in perpetuity”, the Dems ignored that the same way they ignore Antifa.
It’s almost enough to make one wonder if the gaggle of millionaires “representing” the left wing of this country aren’t actually fighting very hard for the American People. Every step of the way, they have insisted on returning to regular order after the GOP pushed the government to the right, including refusing to get rid of the filibuster even as the GOP abused it in a manner never before seen in American history.
Regardless, the Democrats are all we’ve got, and this supreme court fight may be all that stands between the GOP and total authoritarian rule.
Once Kavanaugh gets on the court, Trump will be able to pardon ANYONE in the country for ANY crime, and it’s not going to stop there.
Remember the laws proposed to make it legal to murder protesters with your car?
Or how about the Universal Military Service and Training Act of 2001, or it’s multiple predecessors?
Think about the camp that currently houses hundreds of children whose “crime” is that they came here or were brought here seeking refuge. Think about the thousands of dead in Puerto Rico. Think about the thousands of dead from Katrina.
Fascism in the 21st century will be just as brutal as it was in the 20th century, but in addition, the climate that the GOP ensured would be unstable is going to be killing off most of their targets anyway. And if someone gets charged with criminal negligence for letting thousands die of preventable disease, or flooding, or starvation? Well, they control the courts, and even if there’s a judge or two with a conscience, they’ll be able to just pardon them.
Or pardon a person who might “accidentally” let the A/C break in a concentration camp during a heatwave.
Or whoever was responsible for the now-undrinkable water left to rot in Puerto Rico while people were drinking from wells they KNEW were poisoned to survive.
However bad you think it is now – however bad you think it has been in the last century, Fascist America will be worse. There is no end to how bad this gets. The longer Fascism has hold, the more it consumes, and if you look at the rhetoric, policies, and actions of today’s GOP, they will make excuses for everything. It’s an ideology that requires a world-ending enemy to unify the nation, and there’s no limit to what humans will do to an enemy like that.
If you found this post useful or enjoyable, please share it! If you think the contents of this blog are worth a dollar a month please consider becoming a patron over at my Patreon page. Your donations make this blog possible, and even as little as one or two dollars per month adds up to make a difference. If you feel you can afford more than that, you can get access to all sorts of other content and perks! Your patronage allows me to put more of my time and energy into making this blog a useful resource. Thanks for reading!
The GOP is also looting the Coast Guard to find their genocidal ambitions.
If you found this post useful or enjoyable, please share it! If you think the contents of this blog are worth a dollar a month please consider becoming a patron over at my Patreon page. Your donations make this blog possible, and even as little as one or two dollars per month adds up to make a difference. If you feel you can afford more than that, you can get access to all sorts of other content and perks! Your patronage allows me to put more of my time and energy into making this blog a useful resource. Thanks for reading!
