Dear Friends,                                                                                                     Briefings

            ~ Work requirements for Medicaid and other social programs are a declaration that healthcare is a privilege not a right. That declaration has been rejected by every other advanced capitalist country, and by those countries’ conservatives. Work requirements do nothing other than to make recipients of Medicaid and other programs worse off. Look up the data. That’s bad enough, the worst is that they are wrong in principle. Adequate and affordable healthcare for all, without any conditions is a requirement of democracy. (If you are doubtful, ask Angela Merkel.)

            ~ Reducing taxes on billionaires and corporations will give them lots and lots more lovely money. It will not significantly increase aggregate investment. Sustaining social programs across the board, and at all levels, federal, state, local, will sustain or increase aggregate demand, increase productivity, and so open up new possibilities for investment.

            ~ Let’s be clear: Republican attempts to deny working people adequate and affordable healthcare, and to undermine public education – and they’ve been appallingly successful at both – have one single purpose: reducing working class militancy.

            ~ When a government threatens companies, including large corporations, for raising prices because of tariffs imposed by that same government … almost (but not quite) you want to feel bad for the poor old capitalists, but certainly, if you have any connection with him (and I do) you have to hope that Adam Smith doesn’t hear about this. The reason to be concerned with Smith’s feelings is that he put forward a theory that truly and in principle ruled out government intervention of this kind. The reason not to feel sorry for today’s poor old capitalists is that they’ve been playing footsie-footsie with the state all along, and are always inclined to favor government when it supports their interests. Trump’s response to corporations raising prices is clear evidence that the order of the free market is hanging on by its fingernails. But the corporations themselves prepared the ground for this.

            ~ In recent Congressional sessions Robert Kennedy, Secretary of Health and Human Services, responded to necessary questions by a Democratic Senator, Patricia Murray, with a wild rant overriding her questions accusing her and, presumably, the entire Democratic Party with the destruction of the health of the American people in its entirety. Something like 500,000 Americans died unnecessarily because of lies about safety recommendations, and above all about the COVID vaccine. Kennedy was one of the liars in chief. How the hell can he get away with this? But he has. Every single person in that room – or is it a chamber? – every single person, including Kennedy himself, and all those who voted to confirm him, knows that he is not only totally unqualified for the position through complete absence of basic knowledge and expertise, but because he is a conspiracy theorist with the conspiracy theorist’s contempt for any other opinion than his own. Kennedy and Alex Jones are on a level. Senator Murray did her best, but the clear and simple truth about Kennedy did not come through.

            ~ Do you recognize Israel’s right to exist? Yes, and Palestine’s right to exist. Each depends on the other, both or neither.

            ~ An exercise in probability theory: if Trump makes any broad statement about anything, the probability is that he is lying; if Trump makes a statement and a random person says that he is wrong, the probability that he’s lying increases; if Trump makes a statement and someone who actually knows something about it says he’s wrong, the probability that he’s lying gets as close to certainty as probability theory allows. [All discussions of probability and probability theory in … a decent respect … follow from conversations with my friend Markus, who really understands it all. But he is not in any way responsible for my statements, which may well get things wrong.]

Love and solidarity,

            Bobby