Here are the four things I think citizens should be demanding, with tens of millions going into the streets across the nation to demonstrate for them. First, the Supreme Court Citizens United decision has to be rendered meaningless by the Congress passing legislation that can overcome Trump’s veto. Second, Congress should pass legislation that creates publicly funded elections where it is illegal, with major penalties, for anyone to donate to election candidates. Third, the tax rate on the rich should go back to what it was between 1951 and 1964 (look at the graph heading this story). Fourth, Congress needs to create universal birthright single-payer healthcare. Are you prepared to do this? This is the nonviolent way Gandhi got independence for India without a war, Nelson Mandela ended apartheid in South Africa, and Martin Luther King got the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act passed and signed during the President Johnson administration.
In 1935, President Franklin Roosevelt created Social Security, an insurance contract between Americans and the federal government that pays out on certain life events. As a financial safety net, social security protects Americans from what Roosevelt called the “hazards and vicissitudes of life.”
Roosevelt’s plan has been vital to the American people, and has delivered payments on time, for generations. Today, 180 million employees are paying in, and 87 million people are receiving retirement and disability benefits under the program.
Due to fluctuating demographics and other factors, payouts under Social Security now exceed pay-ins, and most analysts agree adjustments are needed to keep the program afloat. With the help of Elon Musk, Republican lawmakers, who will soon hold majorities in the House and Senate, will try to cut guaranteed benefits instead of increasing the program’s revenue.
When billionaires slash programs to fund their own tax cuts
GOP legislators are toying with reducing payouts under the system, including raising the retirement age and other benefit cuts. As one […]
Literacy is essential to maintain a healthy democracy, and literacy is declining. Consider this: 54% of Americans can’t read and comprehend anything above 6th grade reading, and 43% can’t read and comprehend about 5th grade level. Even more alarming, as this report lays out, Gen Alpha, kids 2 to 12, aren’t even very interested in learning to read anything more complicated than their smartphones, and that is leading to a limited vocabulary and new contracted spellings of words. I see this as another factor in the neo-medievalist society that is emerging in the United States.
Illustration for Business Insider by Keith Negley
Joshua McGoun, a K-12 public-school teacher in Frederick, Maryland, first noticed a change in his students about 10 years ago. They began to struggle with focus.
Increasingly, younger kids were not nailing basic reading skills before third grade — a crucial window. Those who miss it have a tough road ahead in middle and high school. Even adept readers in their tweens and teens have become afraid of complex or extended reading tasks and more comfortable with short texts or bite-size summaries.
McGoun, who has a doctorate in education, shared one stark example. With struggling readers, he hands each child a book upside down and backward. “They should be able to turn the book the right way up and open it at the first page,” he said. These days, “some students aren’t able to do that.”
This is not unusual. Across the US, kids are struggling to read. Last year, reading performance for fourth graders hit its lowest level since 2005, and teachers expect that number to keep […]
Here is a first report on a new fusion technology that may become a very significant power technology to help us leave the carbon era.
Commonwealth Fusion Systems’s tokamak, a donut-shaped machine used to create nuclear fusion, in Devens, Massachusetts. Credit: Steven Senne / AP
If all goes to plan, Virginia will be the site of the world’s first grid-scale nuclear fusion power plant, able to harness this futuristic clean power and generate electricity from it by the early 2030s, according to an announcement Tuesday by the startup Commonwealth Fusion Systems.
CFS, one of the largest and most-hyped nuclear fusion companies, will make a multibillion-dollar investment into building the facility near Richmond. When operational, the plant will be able to plug into the grid and produce 400 megawatts, enough to power around 150,000 homes, said its CEO Bob Mumgaard.
“This will mark the first time fusion power will be made available in the world at grid scale,” Mumgaard said. Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin welcomed the announcement, calling it “an historic moment for Virginia and the world at large.”
The plant would represent a new stage in the quest to commercialize nuclear fusion, the process which powers […]
Adam Brown, Emergency Care Physician, Entrepreneur, and Healthcare Executive. - MedPage Today
Stephan:
In order to create change in any culture it requires 10% or more of the community, state, culture to change its consciousness about something. It can be good or bad. Trump got elected because there was a critical coherence of consciousness centered on fear, genderism, racism, and resentment. To change that the American population has to develop a counter-coherence, one that fosters wellbeing. I think this article from the medical literature is good news because it is beginning to become clear to the professionals who provide the actual care in the illness profit system, which is controlled by non-medically trained millionaires and billionaires, that the system simply is not working for them or their patients.
Credit: MedPage Today
The killing of UnitedHealthcare executive Brian Thompson sent shockwaves through the medical community, Wall Street, and social media. The motive behind the killing appears to be obvious: the bullets were reportedly inscribed with the words “deny,” “defend,” and “depose,” phrases that refer to insurers’ common practices of denying care, defending their positions in court, and deposing those who challenge them.
Some social media commentators embraced the murderer’s rallying cry. I was sickened by those comments suggesting Thompson deserved his fate. Let me be clear: this killing was abominable. No one deserves to lose their life because of a business decision.
That said, many of the decisions insurers like UnitedHealthcare have made are, themselves, abominable. They do deserve our outrage. We can simultaneously be outraged at both Thompson’s killing and the immoral actions of insurance companies.
Take, for example, Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield’s recent decision to limit payment for anesthesia serviceswindow. This policy would have limited payments based on CMS’ “physician work time values,” determination of how long a surgical case should take to perform. […]
Jeffrey M. Jones, Staff Researcher - The Gallup Organization
Stephan:
Here is another aspect of the changing coherence consensus emerging on healthcare. Note particularly the difference by political party. Republican voters simply do not understand that they are going to be severely impacted by the chaos Trump, Musk, and Johnson are trying to get the country into. That said, I think a new coherence is taking form that will carry the day to a new system, although there may be a very painful and unpleasant interlude created by the Republicans, and the uber-rich who own the privatized illness profit system.
Between 2000 and 2008, consistent majorities of Americans believed the government should make sure all people in the U.S. have health coverage. That changed during Barack Obama’s presidency, as he worked with a Democratic Congress to pass the ACA (also known as “Obamacare”) to increase health coverage in the U.S., sparking opposition by some Americans to a larger government role in healthcare.
By 2009, U.S. adults were divided on whether the government was responsible for ensuring healthcare coverage for all Americans, and from 2012 through 2014, majorities did not believe the government should have that role, as support among independents and Republicans waned. Public opinion shifted back to seeing healthcare access as a government responsibility in the latter years of Obama’s presidency, and this has been the prevailing view since.
More recently, agreement that the government has a responsibility to ensure healthcare coverage for all Americans has increased among independents and […]
