CSotD: An Unhealthy Conversation
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Jones is often provocative, slinging purposeful insults, but generally backed by an intelligent political argument. This isn’t a particularly polite cartoon, but he addresses a critical question and, if the Mike Johnson character is ranting incoherently, the elephant cuts right to the nub of the issue: If the GOP has such a reasonable position, why are they telling lies about the shutdown?
Part of the reason is that, in our fraught atmosphere, commentators can find themselves backed into safe positions of both-sidesism and whatabouts. This isn’t new: Will Rogers built an entire career on dismissing politicians as foolish and plain folks as wise, and, for the most part, skated over the actual issues of his day with genial bumpkin wisecracks.
Given how stridently Republicans are blaming Democrats for the shutdown and taking none of the blame on themselves, Hands takes a safe but almost progressive stance in blaming everybody. “They’re both doing it” sounds like milquetoast to the left but could well offend the right, both being deeply invested in the stance that it’s entirely the other guys’ fault.
However, Matt Davies identifies and isolates the actual cause of the shutdown: Trump’s massive Big Beautiful Bill allows Affordable Care Act subsidies to end with the year, which will make Affordable Care unaffordable for many people, and includes cuts to Medicaid and allied programs that will similarly increase premiums beyond millions of people’s ability to pay them.
Even if you accept that we need to trim spending, it seems to many on the left that a country that can offer Argentina $20 billion, drop another billion fixing up Trump’s “free” jet and spend $200 million on a ballroom for the White House, could also afford tax credits to allow middleclass and poor families to afford health care.
Granted, money in government can be hard to follow, and it’s easy to mislead the public by pretending setting a national budget is like setting a family budget. But having particular expertise offers the choice of educating and explaining, or of misleading.
Governance often includes a seeming gulf between not just the haves and havenots, but the elite and the average. When National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett suggested that the solution to health costs was for poor people to get jobs with good health benefits, it came across as “Let them eat cake.”
Which, BTW, Marie Antoinette never said, but the story is that she was told the peasants had no bread and responded with a phrase better translated as “Well, then they should eat brioche” because she assumed everyone had a full larder of choices if the bread happened to run out.
Similarly, Hassett knows so little about the job market and fringe benefits at the people’s level that he might as well have suggested they win the lottery or strike oil in their backyards.
Ramirez demonstrates this insensitivity by expressing admiration for stock-swappers and inside traders who make millions, and coming out against a proposal for them to get out of the game as long as they are voting on laws that can make them wealthy but hurt their constituents.
It’s a reminder of when, in the first debate with Clinton, Trump declared that not paying his fair share of taxes meant he was smart. There was a time that might have been a campaign-killer, but today it’s admired.
Espinoza sure can’t be accused of soft-pedaling his take on Dear Leader’s appeal as a strong, clever leader who only bullies other people, not his own supporters.
Then again, Trump has nearly made those claims himself and has certainly praised himself above other giants of the presidency, and Espinoza names actual policies, perhaps phrased in less than flattering terms.
Meanwhile, Boris didn’t have to make up the astonishing notion of putting the incumbent president on a dollar coin. There has sprung up around Trump such a cult of personality that this is a genuine proposal which apparently is getting serious consideration.
Boris simply changed the wording to reflect his reaction to a proposal some people might call “political blasphemy.”
The coin won’t be challenged by those who have bent the knee and kissed the cheek(s) in response to Trump’s endless demands and lawsuits. The fact that they have given in and sometimes paid millions in fealty to Dear Leader is unassailable; whether they wear those expressions of guilt and regret over it is the artist’s opinion and open to discussion.
Juxtaposition of the Day
But to return to Jones’ accusation of lying, the rightwing has seized upon a demand that is not being made, for funding specifically to provide health benefits to undocumented people.
This is not an exaggeration or out of context. It is a lie. The undocumented are ineligible for Medicare or Medicaid.
Now they’re rephrasing the lie, saying that the problem is aliens who receive emergency treatment paid for with government funds.
Ironically, Jesus specifically addressed emergency medical treatment in his parable of the Good Samaritan. It doesn’t take a degree in theology to unpack his message, but it takes a significant effort to declare yourself a Christian and deny such an obvious, well-known teaching.
But beyond that, consider this: In 2022, undocumented aliens paid approximately $96.7 billion in local, state and federal taxes, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. That included $25.7 billion in Social Security taxes, $6.4 billion in Medicare taxes, and $1.8 billion in unemployment insurance taxes, none of which benefits they are eligible for.
It seems possible to apply some of that to hospitals for the funds they already keep for uninsured patients, so that they can continue to follow the law and common human decency, and treat undocumented aliens who were injured on the job, involved in auto accidents, or had the hell beaten out of them by armed, masked secret police.
But the moral challenge is to not lie about it.
And to not sit by quietly while others do. The priest who passed by the wounded man, and the Levite who did likewise, did not actively harm him, but neither did they help him, for which they were condemned.
If you need to read the story again, here it is.
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