Democrats stoke terror of entitlement cuts for vulnerable Americans

Terror: a state of intense or overwhelming fear

Terrorism: the systematic use of terror, specifically as a means of coercion

                                                                                                    - Mirriam Webster Dictionary

In an exchange meant to make her sound like a nice person, Senator Tammy Baldwin (D) of Wisconsin announced she's planning to bring a guest to President Trump's address to Congress tomorrow night. In an appearance on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," she said she's bringing a woman with cancer who is "terrifed about the possible impacts of a cut to Medicaid." 

I'm sorry a woman has cancer. I'm sorry she needs Medicaid for her treatment. Mostly, I'm angry that she's "terrified" because the bellows stoking her fear is her Democrat host for tomorrow's speech.

I first became aware of the depth of the terrorism (yep) perpetrated by the left as regards entitlement programs in an online group for a rare disease from which I suffer. Immediately after Trump's election victory, the woman who started the group into which she'd poured years of hard work announced she was shutting it down because Trump "ran on cutting Medicaid, subsidized housing, and abolishing the Americans With Disabilities Act" (ADA). Making sure she didn't lose housing, medical care, food support and civil rights would be a full-time job. No more time for anything else for her or, as she warned, the other disabled people in the group. I wasn't a frequent visitor to this group because I don't like to define myself by my medical condition, but I did hop on occasionally to ask questions about a disease that I sometimes have to spell for doctors. But for many, it was a lifeline.

These are the actions of a terrorized person. When her stunning announcement was made in a series of rolling posts over weeks, group members were expressly told no questions were allowed--confirmation bias only, please. Some people who seemed truly fearful upon hearing this "news" tried to ask for sources but were removed or ignored. Terror spread.

It's not my intention to mock this woman and the other terrified people. What you may be detecting as snark is anger and deep sadness about what these people are going through. These stories are illustrative of the effects of Democrat propaganda fed to vulnerable people. The Democratic Party should swap out their donkey icon for a spoon.

In the months since the election, I've tried to find any mention of Trump's saying he's cutting these programs. I've found the opposite. He has expressly said he isn't, and I can't even find his mentioning the ADA. 

That's not to say I'm in love with the budget bill. It sets the budget goals for fical years 2025-2034. It raises spending across all sectors every year. This isn't new. Years ago I recall pundits saying only a Democrat can call a spending increase a cut. 

So where are the savings supposed to come from? From cutting wasteful spending. This has been directed to be done carefully by each department, not just by DOGE but by the departments themselves. If the $2 Trillion in cuts can't be achieved, the bill directs that the tax cuts be rolled back to make up for it. If it looks like they'll have to cut at the meat of important entitlement programs, it's up to the American people to push back on that. These plans will take time. Nobody is cutting Medicaid tomorrow--if at all--in a way that will hurt the poor and disabled. 

So lets cut the hysteria. It's impossible to research this topic (save reading the actual bill) without slogging through a swamp of hyperbolic opinion pieces talking about how important benefits for the needy may have to possibly potentially be cut. Interestingly, few of them include cuts in waste or fraud in their fictional yarns about how cuts would/could be done, and if they mention it, it's only to say fraud is extremely rare.  Speculative hand-wringing pieces about how spending cuts could potentially be horrific are endemic. No wonder people are afraid. 

These successful terror tactics are diabolical and as old as politics. Trump says something and people then fill in what they think he must really mean or follow their own crazy domino theories of what one of his actions will surely lead to. Then they present it as fact. The piles of media about looming devastating cuts are merely theories manufactured by people who are critical of everything Trump does, so all of their hypothetical outcomes are horrible. The narrative itself is horrible too.

Like this headline from the Autism Self Advocacy Network, "ASAN condemns Trump's baseless attacks on people with disabilities." The article says Trump blamed January's plane/helicoptor crash on disabled people. Remember when he did that? You don't because he didn't. What he really said was that DEI was responsible; yes, seemingly without evidence. I didn't approve of his timing. But that is not the same as saying disabled people caused the crash. That is simply a group with an axe to grind trying to move people to action by putting words in Trump's mouth.

Most of the media's language surrounding Trump's alleged cutting of entitlement programs stems from the aggressive $2 Trillion spending cut goal in the latest budget language and from DOGE's stated goal. People run with that and say things like, "This may lead some people to think that it might be possible that the government could maybe potentially cut entitlements because we don't see how you can cut that much from the budget without likely enacting entitlement cuts."

Is that a direct quote? No. Is it an accurate depiction of the prolifigate use of qualifiers used in everything I've read on the subject? Yes. 

Agressive cuts to waste, fraud, abuse and simple overspending might, maybe, possibly, probably, lead people to think, make people believe--these are the words and phrases used around the idea that Trump's spending goals could, in someone's opinion, lead to entitlement cuts. The most often-cited reason is they can't see any other way, which could mean they lack imagination, intelligence, political will, or they could be right. But there is no true data, just scare tactics wrapped in CYA qualifiers used to incite terror in the most vulnerable among us and those who care for them.

I have some words for what Democrats and their media partners are doing here: shamful, discraceful, cold blooded, political, evil.

Think of these motivations as they parade their "plus ones" at tomorrow's speech. CNN reported that the House Democratic Policy and Comminications Committee sent a memo to Democrats to bring someone who has been hurt or will be hurt (?) by Trump's policies. I understand there'll be a number of disabled veterans there. It would be nice to think the disabled are actually being respected by congressional Democrats instead of used as props to prove some nebulous point or to terrify other disabled people even more. 

Yeah. That would be nice.

    

Beware of refusing government benefits--they'll punish you for life

There are two ways they'll get 'cha:

1. Widows/Widowers/Divorcees

Your spouse has died while employed. He died before retirement age, or he/you are past retirement age and he was still working. (This also applies if you're younger but legally disabled.) You were on his employer's health insurance plan. If you don't make the right decision, you will pay penalties for the rest of your life.

When your spouse dies while employed, you'll be offered COBRA benefits, even if you're Medicare eligible. COBRA legislation was passed in 1985 to give employees and their dependents temporary access to their former employer's health insurance plan. You can receive COBRA for 36 months after your spouse's death. What if you choose it?

COBRA is no walk in the park. While it gives continuity of care to widows (whom professionals advise not to make important decisions for a year), it's expensive. With COBRA, your spouse's employer provides an umbrella for you to continue on the identical health plan you're used to. Many choose it because they've met their deductable for the year. Some choose it due to complex medical issues for which they've assembled teams of caregivers. The only difference is that now you're responsible for the entire premium. Many widows won't be able to afford that, but some will and will do it just to avoid adding more change to an ever-growing pile of change at the worst time in their lives.

If you wish to end it or it expires, you'll need to go on Medicare. That's when you'll find out you've made a big mistake, and you had no idea this was even a thing, let alone something that would cost you more money forever.

You will be charged, without exception, a 10 percent penalty for each year you were eligible for Medicare but chose not to enroll. For example, if you choose to stay on COBRA for the allowed 36 months, you'll pay 30 percent more for your Medicare premium for the rest of your life.

How the Affordable Care Act (aka ObamaCare) makes Medicare penalties possible:

It's an astonishing feat of slight of hand, really. The ACA mandated that people have and employers offer "creditable coverage." This means it must be "affordable" and offer "minimum essential coverage."

Most widowed people never think going on COBRA is a risk to their financial future because it's identical to the plan they were on when their spouse died. The reason COBRA doesn't meet the standard under the ACA is it's not "affordable."

So the government penalizes you for choosing expensive health insurance, whatever your personal reasons, during what experts say is the most stressful time in a person's life, because they decided for you that it's too expensive. So, to remedy that they make you pay more money for your Medicare insurance for the rest of your life.  

Well, that sounds reasonable to absolutely no one. Especially because nobody tells you this when you're faced with the decision. When asked why they don't mandatorily tell widows about the COBRA penalty, the Social Security representative I spoke with after 9.5 hours on hold said it's because, well...because they don't. "It's not in the packet we have for widows." That was the actual answer. Even though every widow with a working spouse will be offered COBRA because it's the law.

2. Retirement-age workers:

Our aging population and bad economy has led to more people (11 million) working past retirement age. According to the Pew Research Center, the 62 percent of retirement-age workers who work full time is up 33 percent since 1987. 

You become eligible for Medicare in the seven months straddling your 65th birthday. If you or your spouse have the audacity to work and stay on your employer's health plan past that age, you're going to eventually pay the price. Pew also notes that record numbers of retirement-age workers are eligible for employer benefits like 401(k), pensions, and health insurance. You decide to take it. 

Here's where you'll get tripped up. The majority of older workers work for small companies. Small companies don't have to offer health insurance under the ACA, but if they do, they're required to offer "creditable coverage." If your insurance doesn't meet that standard, you'll be penalized when you go on Medicare. Your employer doesn't really have to tell you the insurance they offered doesn't meet the standard. Surprise! This happens more often than you'd expect because the ACA allows for substandard plans to be "grandfathered" and "grandmothered(?)" in. I've spent hours researching whether small companies pay a per-employee penalty for doing this (large ones do) and some resources say they do, some say they maybe do, some say they don't... I give up. I'm sure that's how they feel too when met with these reams of regulations.

They use the same 10-percent-per-eligible-year penalty system for these workers. I couldn't find any reference to a percentage cap, e.g. if you work until age 75, you'll pay 10 percent for the 10 years you could have been on government insurance. That's a 100 percent penalty, doubling your premium for the rest of your life. If you work longer, it'll be more. (There are also potential Medicare Part D penalties under this scenario, but this is already an exhausting amount of information, so I won't go into that now.)

And here you thought you were saving the government money by not burdening them with your healthcare bills and taking care of it independently! It seems the government thinks that's a bad thing. They argue that they want literally everyone who is eligible for Medicare to enroll because they're spreading the risk by making healthier people pay premiums to cover costs for less healthy enrollees. I understand that risk pools are a part of insurance underwriting, but I'd like some hard data on how much money they're saving under this system.

Possible Solutions

Does the penalty system profit the government on the backs of some of society's most vulnerable: widowed people, the elderly, and the disabled? How does the math shake out from the penalties collected vs money saved by not having to pay for their medical bills for years?* I think at least an estimation of that data should be available and debated so we can move to the important thing: changing policy.

Medicare doesn't tell you about these penalties. The bipartisan BENES 2.0 Act would require them to warn people about the penalties of delaying Medicare enrollment, but there has been no action on the legislation since it was introduced in May of 2023. They should add language to the bill (just in case someone tries to read it again) that mandates all widows be warned during their inevitable contact with Social Security after their spouses die so they, I don't know, WON'T CHOOSE COBRA. 

Legislation was introduced in May, 2024 to allow those on COBRA to enroll in Medicare Part B without penalty. One problem with the bill is that it would apply only to those who begin COBRA coverage January 2025 or later. I'd make it retroactive. In fact, I prefer a bill that wipes out penalties altogether for the 779,400 Americans who pay them (as of 2021, the last year for which data is available). 

If I could make policy, I'd eliminate the penalties (retroactively) and (after looking at the numbers) propose a 5 percent decrease in premiums for each year someone doesn't enroll in Medicare. 

After all, we already have laws in place to help delay people's retirement as long as possible (raising retirement age, increasing benefits for each year you delay, not giving widow's benefits to widows younger than 60, etc.) to keep income taxes rolling in and Social Security dollars in government pockets. Why are opposite systems in place to encourage Medicare enrollment as soon as possible?

Why not a carrot rather than a stick? It's just a hypothesis, but given our population's demographics and increased life expectancy since Social Security was enacted, it could wind up saving taxpayer dollars while simultaneously giving a break to these hardworking, sometimes broken people. Unless saving money isn't really the goal.

Oooh, and while we're problem solving, maybe we should take another look at that Affordable Care Act. Do it for the widows and the old people.

*Our federal government spends $848.2 billion per year on Medicare, $15,727 per Medicare recipient. Costs have risen from 10 percent of our federal budget to nearly 14 percent in the last 30 years. Medicare Parts B and D have several revenue streams (including premiums), but most revenue is from "government contributions." If each of the 779,400 people who currently pay Medicare penalties delayed enrollment for just one year, it would have saved taxpayers more than $12.3 billion. If each person pays a 10 percent penalty for that year, the government earns just $14.5 million. So, I suppose, they're making money on both ends in the current system, because each person who delays also pays. But incentivizing them to continue on private insurance could save more money than penalizing or threatening penalties if they don't. It's an imperfect calculation, but it shows me that we'd save a lot of money if we encouraged people to delay Medicare enrollment rather than penalizing them. 

Do your Thanksgiving plans pass the deathbed test?

There will be three empty seats at my family's Thanksgiving table. My husband, his little brother and my father all died in one year's time. If they were alive, they wouldn't miss it for the world. In addition, there will be no sweet dog under the table waiting for someone to drop food. If he were alive and well, even he wouldn't miss it.

I assume if you're reading this, you're alive. In my opinion, being dead is the only good reason for missing a Thanksgiving dinner you would have attended had the presidential election results been different. Some of you were planning to be there but you're following the advice of many disgruntled Harris voters and rejecting your family and/or friends because they voted for Trump. Please take more time to think before doing something you can't take back. 

And if you're a Trump voter who won't shut up about how his winning is the greatest, please appease your loved one who is upset about how you voted, stuff your mouth with turkey, and let it go for a day. 

I understand these things can be very upsetting, and I empathize. I've been there. The presidential candidate I voted for hasn't won my state since I began voting in 1984. Sometimes my candidate won the general election, but I've been on the losing side of the presidential election five times. I doubt many voters have had uninterrupted winning streaks, so we've all been where you are now, and it sucks. 

Since the election, there's been a lot of bad advice going around leading people to do some pretty distressing things. Women shaving their heads; vowing to abstain from sex; saying they wrote off their sister "and it felt so good;" people ending online "friendships" with people they now consider Nazis; grieving, confused parents reeling after being told by their children not to set a place for them at a holiday table ever again because of how they voted.

On MSNBC, a psychiatry resident affiliated with Yale advised people to skip the holidays with family if they voted for Trump. “To say, ‘I have a problem with the way that you voted because it went against my very livelihood, and I’m not going to be around you this holiday, I need to take some space for me,’” she said. 

"Take some space for me" when it's not all about you because there are other people at that table.

If you're disappointed, upset or devastated about the election results, you've had a couple of weeks to deal with your feelings. So now it's time to do a little exercise: 

• Picture yourself on your deathbed. (It may be easy for those who've faced their own mortality or who've experienced loss. It may be harder for the young or those who've never lost anyone, but try to picture it anyway.) Pretend someone who loves you is there holding your hand and asks, "Is there anything you regret? 
  
  
• Dig deep and be honest with yourself.  If you dump family or friends because of this election, will you think of the person you rejected in 2024 and deeply regret it on your deathbed?
  
  
• Ask yourself: Will you be able to fix it, make it right? As someone who lost my best friend to politics, I can say from experience that deathbed reconciliations, while better than nothing, ring hollow because of the time lost before your loved one died. I thought we'd have time to fix our friendship when cooler heads prevailed, but she got sick and died. Love isn't a faucet you can turn on and off. Though you're estranged from your loved one, chances are if one of you is leaving this earth, love will win. 
  
  
• Ask yourself why you're choosing loss for a politician who'll never know your name. I promise Kamala Harris won't be by your side holding your hand as you pass. The same goes for Donald Trump. No matter how much time, money or emotion you've poured into this election, you don't know or love these people. They don't love you.
  
  
• It's time to get real, and the only thing in this world that's real is love. If you love someone, or if you are loved by someone and you're willing to throw it away over politics, you'll probably live to regret it. Ask yourself if you'd rather have a few difficult discussions about your differing politics or die with regret.
  
  
• What if it's not you on the deathbed? Maybe it's your grandma, one of your parents or, God forbid, a child. Maybe you won't be there holding their hand at the end because you let something as ephemeral as the politics of this moment destroy the love in your real life. Maybe sudden death will take away the chance for a deathbed reconciliation, and you'll be left with no choices at all. Just loss.
  
  
• Think about your family gathered around the Thanksgiving table and know that any one of them could be gone by next year. This could be your last chance.

Indulge my lecture because I know loss. I'm a relatively young widow who had no close girlfriends to help me through it because I'm the only one of us who made it out of her 50's. The last few years have been a growing snowball of death, and I know it's not over. Your parent or grandparent would likely die for you. They might give you more than they can afford to give to keep you from being homeless or hungry. Your real friends, the ride-or-die kind who've been with you through everything aren't replaceable. These people and the love they have for you are a gift, and as the saying goes, they aren't like busses. There won't be another one coming in 10 minutes.

So please rethink your decision to end relationships with loved ones over this election or any future one. I know the stakes were high. I know each side believed this was the most important election of their lifetimes. I believed it. I've been around long enough to bet this won't be the last time we believe it.  

If your post-election relationship problems don't pass the deathbed test, then please suck it up and spend Thanskgiving with your family. Realize that though you think you're punishing them by skipping Thanksgiving, you're hurting yourself too. Try to make a pact with your loved ones not to discuss it. If Uncle Joe won't shut up about it, don't punish mom and dad for it. They'd throw themselves in front of a train for you, so get on one and go see them. 

Our loved ones may die and leave us, but our regrets won't. If you decide to go to Thanksgiving dinner with despite your political differences--even though it's hard, even if it's not fun--I bet you won't regret it on your deathbed.

Lies that divide

I belonged to an online group for people with a rare medical condition. The admin shut down the group after years of running it because just surviving was going to be a full-time job for disabled people because "Trump ran on getting rid of Social Security, Medicare, and disability benefits." They claim he's going to sign an executive order get rid of the Americans With Disabilities Act. If people in the group asked for sincere clarification or became worried and scared too, they were met with silence.  This makes me both sad and angry.

The stars of Morning Joe, Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough are the kinds of people in media responsible for a lot of the post-election fear Democrat voters are experiencing. They had Trump on their show so many times in 2016 that it likely helped him get elected. He was a personal friend. Then they spent eight years calling him Putin's Nazi white supremesist dictatorial dementia patient. Fast forward a couple of weeks, and these two "journalists" just came back from a visit to Trump's Florida residence, Mar-a-lago. So now that he's going to be the president again, he's not all of the things they were calling him just days ago? I know that I wouldn't get on a plane to break bread with a Nazi white supremesist dictator. Would you?

So what's happening here? Mika and Joe clearly never believed a word they were saying on air. It was all about ratings or doing what the bosses wanted or something. And there's a lot of it going around. It's becoming obvious to many (though it was clear to others already) that many of these "journalists" and TV personalities were LYING TO YOU. I'm so sorry for the people, some of whom I know personally, who believed them because the talking heads on TV didn't believe themselves. 

There are a lot of really frightened, angry Americans because of these liars. Are you going to let them lie to you and then steal people who love you from you by telling you to get kick them out of your lives? I truly hope not. 

Some on TV seem to believe what they say on air, like the cast of The View. We can respect people who have different views than we do if they're at least honest about their beliefs. But I can't respect people who seek to divide. On MSNBC, a psychiatry resident affiliated with Yale advised people to skip the holidays with family if they voted for Trump. “To say, ‘I have a problem with the way that you voted because it went against my very livelihood, and I’m not going to be around you this holiday, I need to take some space for me,’” she said. 

"Take some space for me" when in reality it's not all about you.

It's about all of us, and we really need to start acting like it.

So to all the people who are terrified, worried their favorite on-air personality is going to get locked in some Trump-sanctioned concentration camp because their favorite on-air personality said they were afraid of just that, I hope you're going to be okay. You'll never see this, because you clearly don't stray from your bubble, or you wouldn't be going online acting completely delusional and stopping years of hard work that helped people because you were spoonfed lies that divide.

What life is like under Harris-Walz

How could we know? Those of us who live in Minnesota know. We've lived under the federal policies of Biden-Harris for almost four years. We've lived under the control of Governor Tim Walz for six years. Combine the effects of those two sets of elected leaders, and we have life under Harris-Walz. I don't think this is what joy feels like. Please learn from us and work to make sure this destructive duo doesn't bring their brand of joy to your lives too.

Minnesota has made national headlines in recent years for all the wrong reasons. We used to be known as the birthplace of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Bob Dylan, and Prince. Now, we're known as the birthplace of the Defund the Police movement, changing lives across the U.S. for the worse.

Life for many of us has become increasingly hard for many reasons because of the failed leadership of these two. First I, then my mother, were widowed 364 days apart under Harris-Walz. Their policies  made our lives much more difficult than they'd have been under better leadership.

Unfortunately, an accurate picture of life under Harris-Walz requires some math. 

"Bidenomics" was repeatedly touted by Vice President Kamala Harris as "working,"  We two Mnnesota widows have had to deal with Walz' penchant for raising taxes coupled with Biden-Harris' inflationary policies that have made life very expensive, not just for us, but for everyone. Minnesota boasts the 8th largest income tax rate and the highest corporate tax rate in the nation. People are fleeing in droves.

My mom has spent the two winters since dad died rationing her heating oil, which went up by a staggering 99.6 percent between Biden-Harris taking office and my father's death in 2022. She keeps her thermostat in the 50s during cold winter nights. My property taxes are skyrocketing, so my house payment rises. Cost of upkeep rises. The same thing is happening to my mom.

The week after my father died, my 81-year-old mother was back at the job from which she had retired to ask for it back. Now age 83 and a recent cancer survivor, she holds three jobs. She said, "Because of inflation and taxes, it's almost like I didn't go back to [the aformentioned job]. It's a wash financially." Thus the other two jobs.

"But inflation is going down!" people say, while they mean, "prices are going down." They're not. They're up 20 percent because inflation should be added up year over year.* If inflation is down to 3.2 percent from its high of 8.0 in 2022, it doesn't mean prices are going down, it just means they're going up at a lower rate. (We really need to do something about our education system because this shouldn't have to be Dick-and-Janed to anyone.)

Walz has passsed an ungodly amount of tax hikes. He's repeatedly raised taxes (despite a growing surplus) on the middle class while enacting an insanely expensive green agenda. The MN Department of Health and Human Services has been embroiled in an unbelieveable amount of scandal during Walz' tenure, the most recent of which involves $250 million in stolen COVID funds meant to go toward feeding hungry children. No hungry children were fed. Walz has been issued subpoenas by three federal agencies regarding the scandal.

Speaking of scandals, under Tim Walz, our beautiful city, Minneapolis, is so crime-ridden and in many places, desolate, that many people who don't live in it don't want to go there, or do so only if they absoutely have to. Many who live there have lost their businesses or livelihoods forever. 

"Crime is down. The numbers prove it!" people will say. But when Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) numbers are calculated correctly, crime is up. Since 2020, the Minnesota BCA numbers show violent crime has gone up by 23.3 percent statewide.** And nobody can claim "crime's going down now," because it dropped by a lesser percentage in 2023 (6.9) than 2022 (8.6), so it's going UP. Tim Walz has overseen all of it.

Walz took three days to call in the National Guard during the Floyd riots. When asked to do it, he disparaged the guard by saying they were not highly-trained soldiers but were just "19-year-olds who are cooks." Nice words for a man who "proudly served" 24 years in the Army National Guard. 

He ordered Minneapolis' 3rd Precinct police to "stand down," to flee, to let it burn. As we watched the fleeing and flames, I said to my husband, "this is going to set a precident for the nation." I'm not psychic, just awake. Walz helped launch the Defund the Police movement, a local cancer that metastasized nationally post Floyd and helped increase crime and deflate morale among police everywhere. 

If you live in a city outside of Minnesota that was burned, looted, destroyed and/or not rebuilt in 2020, you have Tim Walz to blame. 

This is just a small sample of the joys of living under Harris-Walz. Walz gave us snitch lines meant to pit neighbor against neighbor; he seized and held onto emergency powers with an iron grip, only relinquishing them after the MN Senate wrestled them away after 17 months; he signed more than 100 executive orders during that reign of power; his mandate to send COVID-positive patients to nursing/care homes caused preventable deaths of the elderly and disabled giving MN the highest percentage of COVID deaths at nursing facilities in the nation; millions of missing COVID relief dollars; rampant scandals; making MN a "Trans Refuge State," thereby sanctioning child kidnapping by the state and stripping away parental rights; our unofficial sanctuary state status via generous welfare benefits for illegal immigrants, making us a magnet for them after we already took in huge numbers of refugees, straining all of our resources from medical care to schools.

Harris gave us tie-breaking votes in congress that caused high inflation; Bidenomics, which didn't delicately place the American dream into the dustbin of history, but threw it into a trash compactor; the fastest growing segment of job seekers are retirees; food shelves struggling to keep up with demand; families becoming homeless due to exploding rent and mortgage rates; stratospheric cost increases across all energy sectors; wars breaking out around the world; 350 million missing children; a border open not only to those yearning to breathe free, but to those seeking to destroy us, even if it's one woman or child at a time. 

Our lives under Harris-Walz could be yours if we don't vote to stop it.

The good news is that America has been in bad shape before and recovered. Minneapolis was dubbed "Murderapolis" in the 90s, but crime had come down significantly by the end of Republican Tim Pawlenty's two terms as governor. The gas lines and rising interest rates of the Carter years led to the Reagan recovery because people were sick of their plummeting standard of living and voted their way out of it.

We too can vote our way out of this. We need to do it. My mom can't work forever, and I will lose the home my husband and I worked so hard for if our economic policies don't change. Our children, grandchilden and great-grandchildren deserve a future that's much better than life is now. 

I hear there are about three persuadable people in the country right now. But since my family has lost three Republican men since the last presidential election, I'm hoping to persuade at least three people to vote Republican if they haven't yet, or if they were planning to sit it out--please don't. Hungry children and exhausted widows are depending on you. We could use some joy.

*Using Consumer Price Index numbers, when Trump left office, inflation was at 1.2%. For the years 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 respectively, the equation is: +4.7+8.0+4.1+3.2=20%. 

**Violent crime in MN year over year for 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 respectively: +17.2+21.6-8.6-6.9=+23.3. When crime shoots up by 38.8% over two years, a collective 15.5% decrease over the next two years isn't a net drop but a significant gain. 

Supreme Court decision allows Biden-Harris et al. to alter 2024 election

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s pending court case is America's only hope to reverse it for future elections

In the movie, "A Few Good Men," Jack Nicholson's character famously screams, "You can't handle the truth!"

Can you handle the truth? Can you handle a lie? Or do you, an adult who can vote, take up arms, enter into contracts, etc., need government to decide for you what you can and cannot hear, see, or know, and where information is allowed to come from?

Do you need to be protected so you don’t have to do the work of deciding what’s true? Or worse, do you need to be fed an unbalanced diet of heaping helpings of propaganda? Your government thinks you do.

You may not have heard of Murthy vs Missouri. It was a case decided by the Supreme Court in June and reported with barely a whisper, though it affects every American just as much, if not more, than the cases the media shouted about. 

It's a startling example of government's fight to censor speech, and the Supreme Court's ruling allows the Biden-Harris administration and its agents to continue to ask or threaten social media companies to censor information it doesn't want its citizens to know. 

Because of that decision, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has brought a new case that may be our last best hope to keep government out of the censorship business. Since he's one of what the U.S. Governement calls "The Disinformation Dozen," a group frequently targeted for censorship by the Biden-Harris administration, he may have a better chance of prevailing. (The fact that our government has such a name for any group of Americans based upon their excercise of their First Amendment rights should scare all of us.)

In a nutshell, the Biden-Harris administration (using plaintiff Surgeon General Vivek Murthy's name) was fighting to continue to censor online "misinformation, disinformation" in matters ranging from COVID 19, the Afghanistan withdrawal, Ukraine funding, to elections. Attorneys General from Missouri, Louisiana, and five citizens who claimed they'd been censored were fighting to stop them.

Though the Court decided against the plaintiffs, they didn't dispute the facts cited in the lower court case that the Biden Administration and its agents engaged in censorship via threats to and coersion of social media companies. This is real, it happened, and thanks to the Court's ruling, it continues.

The case began its life as Missouri v Biden. The Fifth Circuit court ruled against Biden et al. The ruling reads like a distopian movie script in which the FBI and other agencies dangled threats that included inacting Section 230 restrictions to get companies like Facebook to play along. Section 230 protects online media companies from being held liable for what people post on their platforms. Meta owner Mark Zuckerberg said revoking it would be an "extential threat" to his platforms. 

In Missouri v Biden, the judge wrote, "...the present case arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history." Joe Biden, DHS, CDC, FBI, DOJ, and CISA were just a few of the many defendants. The resulting injunction required many defendants to immediately cease their censorship activities as regards social media platforms. 

Then the Supreme Court took the case. When doing so, they stayed the lower court's injunction until they could hear the case, therefore allowing the Biden et al. to continue "coercing" social media companies to censor whatever or whomever they choose.

I've read the ruling, which was a 6-3 decision penned by Justice Coney Barrett, and the dissenting opinion, penned by Justice Alito, as well. It's a lot. 

To be clear, the Court doesn't reject the facts that the government and its agents engaged in "coersion and significant encouragement" to censor. They merely found that it was a poorly-constructed case and therefore lacked "standing" to bring it. Some reasons they lost the case were:

• Because online media were busy little censorship bees prior to government threats (even if the threats broadened and extended censorship), they didn't prove that government was the first and only censorship entity. If the plaintiffs had sued the social media platforms as well, the Court may have been able to rule differently.
• The Court said the plaintiffs had built their case not just on past harm due to government-required censorship, but that their case required a threat of "substantial future harm." They couldn't prove that the government would do it again. It's hard to prove a future action, so the case shouldn't have been built on this speculative requirement. It helped them lose. 
• They sued too many people. The list of defendants is so sweeping (41 individuals and 13 agencies/departments) that the Court found it hard to rule that they all had equal responsibility or outcomes. The Court didn't like that the case treated such a large group of defendants "as a monolith" and suggested the case was flawed by this grouping and justice would be better served had plaintiffs sued fewer entities and individuals or brought suit against each of them separately. 

The ruling in Murthy v Missouri has left a road map for for others who can prove government censorship has harmed them, leading to RFK Jr's pending case, Kennedy v Biden. The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals has already ruled that Kennedy has standing. We can only hope that RFK Jr. has excellent representation and a case built on solid arguments. This case includes a large number of defendants as well (23 individuals in 7 agencies/departments).

In the meantime, the Biden-Harris administration, its elected and unelected officials named in the opinion--FBI, DOJ, DHS, State Dept., CISA, U.S. Election Assistance Committee (EAC), etc.--can continue to, as the dissenting opinion states, "browbeat" and "threaten" media to censor whomever they wish. 

Page 142 of the Missouri v Biden ruling cites testimony showing that government censorship of speech about elections continues: 

When asked if government cyber censorship of election speech established in 2020 is ongoing, FBI Agent Elvis Chan testified, "we've never stopped."

After election day 2024, there may be court cases or charges of fraud. Because government is allowed to censor, will people be able to speak freely about it? Not likely.

Allowed to continue unfettered, the Biden-Harris Administration and its agents will continue to do this, conveniently, right through the 2024 election. So think about this when you vote: which candidate fought, did battle, and threatened media to secure her ability to censor you? 

Sometimes the truth hurts. It can be shocking. I think we can handle it. It should be a call to action to vote against censorship and for our right to speak freely. All of our other rights depend on it.

New law gives power over free speech to U.S. president--is ban of X planned?

Be careful what you wish for," as the old saying goes. And as I often say, "When they want you to look over here  (and talk about the subject they choose), watch what they're doing over there."

While American news outlets were busy chattering about the South Carolina primary, impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas, etc., legislators were crafting this:

The bipartisan “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Application Act” was signed into law in April 2024. It was, of course, shoved into a giant appropriations bill. (If you're slogging through the law, it's in Division H.) It not only requires a ban or forced sale of TikTok but gives unilateral power to the president of the United States to shut down online platforms.

This gives sweeping censorship powers not only to a person, but to an office, because power can always change hands. We're living in one of the most illustrative times in American history of that ever-present fact. As I write this, the president is...Joe Biden?

The TikTok ban doesn't doesn't take effect until 270 days after the law was enacted and gives the president power to extend it for 90 days. Why? I'm not a mind reader, but I believe the law was written with a seemingly-arbitrary 270-day grace period to give TikTok a chance to save itself (the left REALLY wants this), while making it look like they're banning TikTok (the right REALLY wants this), thereby punting a political football until after the 2024 election. Conveniently, 270 days from the law's enactment is January 19, 2025, otherwise known as Inauguration Eve.

Then it could be open season on X (formerly Twitter) or any other media platform the president sets his or her sights on. I question whether TikTok, the only platform named in the law, was its true target.

Watch how the law defines people it seeks to squelch with language so broad that it might be harder to find social media platform owners who don't meet the bar required for a platform's extinction: 

• The law ultimately allows the president to shut down any online platform whose owners or parent companies are controlled by a "foreign person or combination of persons" deemed adversaries. 
  
  
• An "adversary" is the above-mentioned person(s) who "is domiciled in, is headquartered in, has its principal place of business in" an adversarial country. 
  
  
• These persons must have at least 20 percent ownership "directly or indirectly" in the entity that owns the platform.
  
  
• Most importantly, this law applies to "a person subject to the direction or control of a foreign person or entity." 
  
  
• The list of foreign adversaries can change at any time at the discretion of the Secretary of State. 
  
  

This is an expansive, fluid law filled with definitions meant to apply to as many individuals and entities as possible. It gives power to one person and could apply to most online communications platforms. 

If you’re comfortable with this power being given to our current president, would you be comfortable with it being given to the last one? Or the next?

Whatever you think of TikTok (I'm not a fan), contrary to what people who love it and use it believe, it allows U.S. government censorship. Whether or not X is censoring speech is more subjective. The left claims increased censorship of mostly pro-Palestinian content, and censorship claims by the right have largely disappeared with the platform's 2022 acquisition by X Corporation, owned chiefly by Elon Musk, a foreign-born billionaire. 

The list of X Corp's investors changes, but most are not American. As the new law is written, the president wouldn't need to just look at Musk's financial ties in foreign adversarial countries, but at the totality of X Corp's investors.

An example of how this new law could be applied to X is that Musk's financial relationship with China is considered by some to be "cozy," and Tesla, which he also owns, is now an official car of the Chinese government. China is number one on the list of U.S. government adversaries. Few, if any, people who do business in China are not "subject to" their government's control.

Do you think there are any billionaire social media owners or large corporations, for that matter, who don't have business ties in China, the adversarial country cited in the TikTok ban? Whether it's good or not is up for debate. Since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, it's pretty easy to become financially engangled with them. 

Proponents of the law would say, "Why would Americans want foreign adversaries involved in their social media platforms? Isn't preventing that a good thing?" On its face it seems so; however, most efforts to chip away at rights or privacy are presented under the guise of "who wouldn't think this is good, this is for our protection," e.g. the Patriot Act.

Only the People should have the right to control speech through free market forces. We should speak about subjects important to us often and persuasively. One step removed from our own speech is our giving consent to congress to make laws on our behalf. This isn't a perfect system. Our representative government failed to protect free speech as Congress used our fear of China to hand over unilateral power to the president to limit free speech via this new law. Elections matter.

This new law, sweeping anti-free speech laws just passed across western nations, and recent Supreme Court rulings on First Amendment cases (the subject of my next post), show that our fight for free speech is constant and requires diligent attention to its protection. In other words, don't let yourself be distracted lest your freedoms be taken away while you aren't looking. 

God damn those people: Perspective needed on Afghanistan exit

Sparsely-attended Congressional hearing on Kabul Airport bombing 

I wrote this piece the day of the bombing at Kabul Airport in Afghanistan, which took the lives of 13 American soldiers and injured countless more. I ran across it recently, and thought I'd share it today, on its third anniversary. 

AUGUST 26, 2021:  I tuned in to FOX today for news about the bombing at Kabul Airport in Afghanistan. I took a trip around the dial, as I often do, to see what other networks were reporting. CBS was covering it. NBC had Hoda and Jenna doing a tribute to kindness. I like kindness, but I think NBC could use some perspective on what's important to air during what seems like a historic moment.

ABC aired a rerun of the July 27 episode of The View, which opened with an extended clip of testimony by some capitol police officers from the most recent January 6 hearing. I'm not at all surprised.

The irony wasn't lost of me as I listened to a capitol police officer testify, "...I feel like I went to hell and back protecting [his kids] and the people in this room," he said of the events of that day almost eight months ago. "But too many are now telling me that hell doesn't exist, or that hell actually wasn't that bad...Truly nothing has prepared me to address those elected members of our government who continue to deny the events of that day, and in doing so betray their oath [sic] of office," he said in his rerun testimony, as hell played out in real time in Afghanistan. 

President Biden announced in an April 14 speech that the U.S. would withdraw from Afghanistan between May 1 and September 11. On July 8, Foreign Policy Magazine published an exclusive interview with Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid. In it, he said that after foreign forces leave Afghanistan, the Taliban's goal is to create an “Islamic government,” and “we will be compelled to continue our war to achieve our goal.” Despite Biden's promise of an "orderly" exit, it was clear that this could get very messy.

They knew they'd be in the middle of this potentially messy withdrawal when they'd televise eight very public and publicized January 6 hearings, which lends credence to the theory of governmental/media misdirection. When they tell you to look over here, always ask, "What's happening over there that they don't want me to see?" They're still trying to misdirect as I write, with Hoda and Jenna prattling on.

I wonder when, or more importantly, if, we'll see a Congressional hearing on our withdrawal from Afghanistan. I wonder what the soldiers who are in the middle of this awful bloodbath would say.* 

Turning back to The View, the "ladies" begin to give their reactions to the harrowing January 6 testimony. Still no word about Afghanistan. I turn it off in an effort to hold onto my breakfast. To run this episode today shows that ABC wouldn't know perspective if it crawled in bed and snuggled with them. 

There's a startling lack of perspective on display everywhere you look. Some people are just in the wrong profession, and the list includes ABC executives (The View is in their news division), NBC executives, people producing and viewing January 6 hearings as infotainment, anyone in our government making decisions about Afghanistan, etc., etc. I don't accept any excuse for their lack of it.

I'm capable of perspective even though I just watched my husband go from robust health to taking his last breath in eight short weeks, during which we experienced hellish levels of incompetence and devastation. His little brother was found dead four days before my husband died, and I had keep it from him, for God's sake. 

The nightmare hasn't stopped in the three weeks since his death. Everything that can go wrong has. Appliances breaking, mice invading, and a legion of devestating heartbreaks too personal to detail here. Planning his memorial service has been horrific. I insist it be held outdoors because Covid's Delta variant is here, so I'm afraid the governor [Tim Walz] will suddenly decide to make the event illegal if I have it indoors, and I can't get people to return my calls because hospitality has died along with my husband in the industry that bears its name.  I'm left alone to deal with things that are too big for one person. I've never been so exhausted, so broken.

The cherry on top of all of the heartache and pain came two days ago. The head honcho at the cremation place called to say they FORGOT to take my husband's fingerprints, which I'd authorized to have made into jewelry for us to remember him by. Another loss in a hurricane of loss. 

Even after all of that, just weeks after watching my life partner of 40 years die and all of the resulting stress and pain I'm living through, I say to myself when watching scenes of Afghanistan: people hanging from the wings of planes, mothers handing their infants to American soldiers, young women screaming for their suddenly dead husbands, "Those people have it so much worse than I do. God bless those people, and God damn those who made the decisions that led to this disaster." 

Perspective. We need more of it.

*UPDATE: (If you Google hearings about the Afghanistan withdrawal, you get a lot of links to the hearing, held in March 2024, during which the Generals, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, etc., had their say. I had to dig to find a hearing with testimony from service people who were actually there.) The House Foreign Affairs Committee held a shameful, sparsely-attended hearing entitled, "During and After the Fall of Kabul: Examining the Administration’s Emergency Evacuation from Afghanistan” on March 8, 2023, notably just three months after Republicans regained the House. It's available on YouTube and was not cinematically produced by ABC. Witnesses included two soldiers who were there that day and several representatives of private agencies working to evacuate Americans and their Afghan partners, e.g., interpreters. One of the soldiers who testified--severely wounded that day--has a disclaimer under his name on the official Congressional Committee website that his testimony "...does not represent the views or opinions of the Department of Defense or U.S. Marine Corps." There is no similar disclaimer for any other witness or, notably, for any witness in the January 6 hearings. 

Elitism driving continued school closings

Science from around the globe overwhelmingly shows that children are at extremely low risk of serious complications from COVID 19 and are rarely the cause of outbreaks. Many say this proves schools should reopen. Most teachers, administrators and union representatives have been arguing for them to stay closed. One argument I've been hearing in favor of reopening schools is that if people (adults who might be at higher risk), can go shopping at big box stores, then children should be able to go back to school. Favoring keeping schools closed, I've heard teachers, etc., answer that argument with the notion that nobody goes shopping at a big box store for seven hours a day, five days per week. They also add that we have to think about teachers and staff who might be at risk and "have families." I'd bet on the fact that few people would shop at a big box store for that many hours. However, the workers at those big box stores probably spend 7 hours, 5 days per week (or more) at their jobs. Because they are essential workers. Because it's their job. They're also mostly adults (some at high risk), and, I believe, might actually have families. So tell me which is true: 1) Teachers and school staff are non-essential, therefore expendable, or,

2) They're just better than people who work at grocery stores.

Minnesota should pay its own bills - Even if it hurts

"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard."  - H.L. Mencken

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz has asked the federal government for "major disaster" aid to repair damage and other costs due to recent riots across the state. With damage estimated at more than a half  billion dollars, this is, the governor wrote in his letter to President Trump, "the second most destructive incident of civil unrest in United States history after the 1992 Los Angeles riots."

Walz didn't mention in his letter that the major disaster was because he and other leaders sat back and allowed the Twin Cities to burn.

Why on earth should dollars from every taxpayer in the United States pay for the action or inaction of our feckless state and local leaders? Minnesota's ruins are not their fault. U.S. citizens had no hand in electing these fearful people who wouldn't know leadership if it threw a Molotov cocktail at them. 

There's an old-fashioned notion called "principle." If you stand on it, it means you're on firm footing, solid ground. The principle here is that the cost of repairing the damage done to Minnesota cities should be borne only by those responsible. And yes, that is we, the citizens of Minnesota.

Like it or not, we are responsible for this mess. Responsible, principled adults pay their own way. You might be thinking, "I didn't vote for those impotent leaders, I voted against them." I understand how you feel, because I'm in the same boat. 

We didn't vote for the likes of Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, who ran for office on his disgust for police shootings and inequality, and helped usher in a slew of policies to "fix" the problem only after Floyd. We didn't vote for any of those "in charge" who stood twiddling their thumbs and looking scared while their cities were destroyed around them, inspiring scathing articles to be written about their weakness in publications from New York to L.A.  We didn't sanction those who ordered the police in the 3rd Precinct to run, sparking copycat attempts across the nation. 

We didn't vote for Walz, who took an upside-down approach to Covid 19 and locked down all of Minnesota--even counties with no cases--during a pandemic that ravaged some states but remained fairly low here. (Care facilities were the exception, accounting for a staggering 80 percent of Minnesota's deaths, leaving another stain on our state.) The result was mass unemployment, economic and food insecurity, under-educated children, and confusion from the utter lack of logic of reopening the state as Covid cases rose. And stress. So much stress.

If you listened closely, you would have heard it. ...tick...tick...tick... The BANG that followed was as predictable as Covid outbreaks after the mask-free masses burst shoulder to shoulder into the streets with the blessings of officials, including Mayor Frey, who just days before had instituted mask mandates with $1,000 fines and threats against business licenses. 

Yet we're still responsible, and we're going to have to pay the bill. We didn't vote hard enough. We didn't care deeply enough. We keep letting these people run the place, even though they're running it into the ground. 

We sit at the table alone holding that bill because we can't hand it to those truly responsible: the state leaders who crafted the narrative that George Floyd was murdered; the race baiters who lit the fuse; the useful idiots who did the bidding of the Marxist, racist leaders who control them even if they don't know it; the DNC and their compatriots in the media who egged it all on. It's not possible to make them pay in the dollars it will take to rebuild these communities (unless Joe Biden's campaign wants to pony up some money, like it did with bail for rioters and looters who destroyed our city).

We can make them pay, however, with loss of power. Vote harder in November. Care more deeply. Do more. For God's sake, don't give your children's minds over to those who seek to indoctrinate them. Get loud. Make change happen. We have time, because a lot of these elected officials have years left on their terms. While we wait (and work), get ready for your taxes to go up, because they will. 

We've paid in so many ways: fear, insecurity, loss of livelihoods, living in the national embarrassment that Minnesota has become. Even those across the state of Minnesota who don't have anything to do with what happens in "The Cities" still pay, and we're still responsible. We have no right to go to the federal government--our fellow Americans--with our hands out.

It's time to open our wallets. Maybe not just to pay for rebuilding what was torn down, but to help elect leaders who won't let it ever happen again.