When I hear that our Administration spent $11 million to redesign a Medicare plan-finding tool that gives seniors inaccurate info, I'm gobsmacked that seniors can still support this President. I mean, of course I know the real reasons they still support him, but I do wonder how many more times the mustache-twirling villain can tie the girl to the train tracks before the girl stops voting for him. And, not for nothing, but a single Medicare-for-All program that covers everything would obviate the need to distinguish between plans in the first place.
Economists say that cancelling all student loan debt would boost the economy -- mainly by freeing people to spend money buying homes and starting families instead of paying debt installments. Economists may also overstate the effect that the resulting taxes would have on economic growth, forgetting, perhaps, that tax hikes on the rich don't hurt (and I'd say help) economic growth. In any case, I guess this is where the right "remembers" its "morals" and says we can't forgive debts just because it would be good for the economy. We could forgive the loans because they were extortionate to begin with, but no right-wing "moral" ever leads to criticism of big money.
Nathan Robinson warns that Sen. Warren talks a good game about slamming the rich, but "her campaign seems suspiciously designed to stave off revolution." I think he made the case better here back in September, but all I'll say is this: Sen. Warren did help build the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and it's not her fault this Administration has gutted it, but she's never really passed any legislation, and Sen. Sanders has passed a lot of it -- mostly amendments to other bills, but that's still legislation.
Hamilton Nolan warns that "Billionaire-Funded Protest is Rearing Its Head in America," although of course we all remember that billionaires funded the Tea Party "movement." Sadly, where billionaires may not be able to find a whole lot of pro-war, pro-pollution, or pro-racism protestors, they will find a sizable number of pro-charter school protestors, since charter schools purport to help poor folks, particularly from areas where public schools aren't funded well enough -- though that does suggest that funding our public schools properly would be a better solution.
Great Moderate/Billionaire Hope Michael Bloomberg said back in January that legalizing pot would be "perhaps the stupidest thing anybody has ever done." He actually had a sympathetic message buried in that dung nugget -- that addicting substances curtail freedom and thus shouldn't be legal, though I would argue that pot's a lot less addictive than heroin, and I wonder what he'd do about the legality of tobacco, alcohol, and caffeine -- but saying "stupidest thing anybody has ever done" just about insures that message will never get heard. I mean, George W. Bush did far, far stupider things nearly every day of his Presidency.
Finally, we learn from S.V. Date at the Huffington Post that our President has spent $115 million on security and travel expenses just on his weekend golf excursions. Yeah, $115 million ain't a whole lot in the context of a $4 trillion federal budget, but corruption is corruption, and the next time our President goes on about how the Mueller investigation cost TEH 35 MILLYUNZ OFZ TEH DOLLARZ!!!!!, you can mention that he's spent more than three times that in taxpayer money just playing golf. Oh, and that some of that money has gone into his own pocket. Oh, and he kicked transgender folks out of our military because their health care costs would have amounted to about one-fifth the cost of his golf trips.
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