No, DeSantis isn't really spreading C***D just to boost profits. He's doing it because he wants to be president

By THOM HARTMANN

This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

It has to be a scurrilous lie. Seriously: nobody is that evil.

Although it is the sort of thing that we've come to expect, because our unique-in-the-world, for-profit health insurance system leaves Americans financially vulnerable to sickness but offers huge profits to companies and CEOs in the system.

Some cynical people are suggesting that the reason Florida's Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, is forcing teachers and children to sit for hours every day in classrooms with unmasked children is because he wants them all to get infected with C***D … to make money for a friend of his.

Seriously. There's that theory out there, and it's almost too evil to believe it could be true.


That DeSantis is intentionally trying to expose children, families and public school teachers to a deadly disease simply because it'll make a few million extra dollars for his largest donor, billionaire Ken Griffin, whose fund is one of the biggest stockholders in the company that makes the only available monoclonal antibody drug approved to treat C***D.

And, of course, it might also take out a few hundred unionized teachers, a bonus in any Republican's book.

But it can't be true that DeSantis is spreading disease just to goose health care profits, can it?

After all, when the federal government offered to give Florida billions of dollars to expand its Medicaid program to provide free health care for the state's working poor, then-Gov Rick Scott and later Gov. DeSantis said a firm "no."

Even though all that money coming into the state to pay for health care could have goosed up the profits of any number of hospitals and health operations Griffin could invest in, DeSantis still refused to expand Medicaid statewide. (He did eventually sign an expansion of Medicaid for new moms, but it's a pittance and arguably a shout-out to the forced-birth crowd.)

Far more likely is that DeSantis just wants to win the Republican primary for president in 2024 and thinks having the Trump "base" and Fox "News" on his side will get him there.

After all, having hundreds of thousands of Floridians suffer disability or die — bankrupting family after family — just to score points with Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson demonstrates all the manly cred he'll need. Right?

It's another danger of having a for-profit health insurance system that doesn't cover everybody, so when a corrupt governor like DeSantis uses death and disease for political manipulation families end up ill, broke and desperate — as are millions of American families right now.

Wh**ever's going on with DeSantis, we're not Brazil and we really do need to get past behaving like a third-world country where the boss-man plays games with deadly diseases for political gain.

The best way to do that is to finally join pretty much every other developed country in the world and put into place a single-payer health care system like Medicare for All.

Listening to Mike Gallagher this morning who was related his overall tax bill last year. After deductions and tax "breaks" he ended up paying 49% of what he made back to government.

Like it or not, the rich pay the lion's share of our tax burden. They also run the business we do business with and work for. Do we honestly think they won't pass on the higher taxes to us down under???

What is fair and how much is enough????? Maybe we should make government stop spending so much and for sure stop giving away that which we don't even have.

Taxes | Wealth Ine******y
by Bob Lord | August 30, 2021 - 6:52am

— from Ine******y.org

The collective wealth of the seven wealthiest Americans, all white men, has now just about reached $1 trillion. These seven pay virtually nothing in income tax.

This past April, I reported on another obscene milestone in U.S. wealth concentration. Back then, for the first time ever, $1 trillion sat in the pockets of just eight rich guys, a group small enough to squeeze inside a single SUV.

Today, barely four months later, that “trillion-dollar club” will shortly kick another member to the curb. According to Forbes, the collective wealth of America’s seven wealthiest white men — Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Larry Ellison — stood at $996 billion at the end of the day yesterday. The seat in the Trillion-Dollar SUV about to be vacated belongs to Warren Buffett. The trillion-dollar club’s deep pockets soon won’t need his $100-billion net worth to make a trillion. So long, Warren.

Think about that. Just seven guys now control about $1 trillion in wealth, a sum nearly equal to one-third the $3.5-trillion package now before Congress for desperately needed programs that range from dental and vision care for seniors and child tax credits for rescuing millions of families from poverty to measures that can save our burning planet from c*****e c****e.

Put another way, the cost of what some are vilifying as “unaffordable” social spending for a nation of 330 million turns out to be barely three times the wealth held by just 0.0000022 percent of our U.S. population.

The still deeper connection between the wealth of our “trillion-dollar seven” and that $3.5-trillion in social spending: Whether that spending becomes reality likely will hinge on the v**es of so-called political moderates who insist the program must by “paid for.” Those same moderates will hold the deciding v**es on the “pay fors” advocates for the social spending are proposing: increased taxes on the country’s enormously rich, including the trillion-dollar seven.

And that gets us back to how we got into this mess in the first place. ProPublica recently exposed what many of us already suspected: Our trillion-dollar seven — and their fellow billionaires — barely pay any tax as a percentage of their true income. Between 2014 and 2018, America’s 25 top billionaires paid federal income tax during that five-year period equal to just 3.4 percent of the increase in their collective wealth over that same period.

Can we change this dynamic?

Yes, but to do so, those political moderates will need to agree to end the tax-avoidance strategy — “Buy-Borrow-Die” — that allows billionaires and the merely super-rich to escape tax on the enormous gains they realize on their investments. This s**m works really quite simply. The wealthy buy an investment or, in the case of the trillion-dollar seven, found a company. Then, as their asset soars in value, they never sell. Instead, they borrow against the increased value of their asset whenever they need cash. Finally, they die, and each death wipes off the tax liability on all the gain that’s gone untaxed, sometimes for an entire adult lifetime.

What makes the Buy-Borrow-Die strategy possible? The gaping loophole in our tax law known as “stepped-up basis.” Under this loophole, those who sell inherited assets get treated as if they had purchased the assets at their fair market value on the date of the deceased owner’s death. The end result: If Jeff Bezos’ children inherit his Amazon stock, about $200 billion in gains will face no tax at all.

Our political leaders have been aware of the stepped-up basis loophole for decades, yet have done nothing while the super-rich have been using Buy-Borrow-Die to accumulate obscene piles of untaxed wealth.

But the Biden administration is now calling for Congress to end stepped-up basis to fund the programs we need to move our country forward. Will our lawmakers now summon the courage to tax the trillion-dollar seven? Or will our nation’s wealth continue to concentrate — into a trillion-dollar six?

We’ll soon know.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/obama-poses-a-question-that-we-still-cannot-answer/ar-AANkZVT?ocid=msedgntp

Like Clinton, Obama held so much promise, only to be a failure as a result of their own undoing. What a wasted opportunity it was.

Obama poses a question that we still cannot answer
Analysis By John Blake, CNN 1 hr ago


The "Yes We Can!" bumper sticker that seemed to be plastered on every passing car. The "fired up, ready to go!" chant that once rocked arenas.

Barack Obama standing in front of a crowd: Then-Democratic p**********l nominee Barack Obama waves during a campaign event on October 20, 2008, in Tampa, Florida.© Joe Raedle/Getty Images Then-Democratic p**********l nominee Barack Obama waves during a campaign event on October 20, 2008, in Tampa, Florida.
And, of course, those iconic photos of Black, White, and brown people shedding tears of joy at a victory celebration in Chicago's Grant Park that November evening in 2008.

These are glimpses of "the unadulterated political joy" that millions of Americans felt 13 years ago when Barack Obama was elected the nation's first Black president. They also feel like quaint snapshots of what seems now like another country.

It's hard not to feel nostalgic about those moments because Obama has been back in the news. A new documentary series, "Obama: In Pursuit of a More Perfect Union," is airing on HBO this month. Obama recently celebrated his 60th birthday at his vacation home on Martha's Vineyard. Tributes to the former President have poured in from pundits who argue why Obama still "matters."

a group of people standing in front of a crowd: An Obama supporter holds up a sign reading "Yes we can" as President-elect Barack Obama gives his e******n night victory speech on November 4, 2008, in Chicago's Grant Park.© Eric Thayer/Getty Images An Obama supporter holds up a sign reading "Yes we can" as President-elect Barack Obama gives his e******n night victory speech on November 4, 2008, in Chicago's Grant Park.
But left unsaid in all of these accolades is an inconvenient question that's grown even more urgent after a tumultuous year marked by persistent racial divisions, an i**********n at the US Capitol and a partisan divide over wearing masks during a p******c that's k**led at least 618,000 Americans:

Will we ever believe a political leader who talks about hope and change again?

The fragility of a new America
a person holding a kite in a city: A protester walks by as the American f**g flies at half-staff at the US Capitol on January 8, 2021, in Washington.© John Moore/Getty Images A protester walks by as the American f**g flies at half-staff at the US Capitol on January 8, 2021, in Washington.
It's an inconvenient question, because it's far easier to celebrate Obama's legacy than to consider that many of us abandoned the vision of America he embodied. The nation's first Black president was living proof that the nation could transcend its original sin of r****m, that its citizens could find common ground.

It was Obama who said in arguably his greatest speech that "America is not some fragile thing" that can't tolerate citizens demanding change.

"What greater form of patriotism is there than the belief that America is not yet finished, that we are strong enough to be self-critical?" Obama asked in his 2015 address in Selma, Alabama, on the 50th anniversary of a historic civil rights campaign.

But what happens when a large segment of White America stops pretending it even cares about democracy? What happens when these Americans refuse to accept the results of a p**********l e******n, praise foreign dictators and pass a new wave of v**er restriction laws?

These are the nagging questions that lurk in the background of all the recent nostalgia surrounding Obama.

It's common for pundits invoking Obama's "tattered idealism" to say the former President has changed since 2008. But American v**ers may have changed as well.

Obama may be the political version of the Last of the Mohicans -- a charismatic leader whose soaring rhetoric about transcending our differences now seems as outdated as a Blockbuster video store.

a group of people sitting on a motorcycle in front of a building: Trump supporters clash with police and security forces as they try to storm the US Capitol on J****** 6, 2021 in Washington.© Brent Stirton/Getty Images Trump supporters clash with police and security forces as they try to storm the US Capitol on J****** 6, 2021 in Washington.
The multiracial elation we saw in Grant Park may be the last time in many of our lifetimes we witness such unified joy.

Our politics will get even uglier
That's a brutal thought to contemplate. But consider some of the events of this past year -- even this past month.

The country still hasn't come to terms with a violent i**********n that saw a member of a mob brandish a Confederate f**g during an attack on the Capitol while others hung a noose and scaffold outside on the grounds.

A major political party is passing a wave of laws across the country that may restrict v****g by racial minorities and other groups that don't tend to v**e for them.

Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson, a hero of the right, traveled to Hungary the same week of Obama's 60th birthday to conduct a fawning interview with the country's leader, Viktor Orban, who once said: "...We must defend Hungary as it is now. We must state that we do not want to be diverse and do not want to be mixed. We do not want our own color, traditions and national culture to be mixed with those of others."

Barack Obama et al. riding on the back of a f**g: Then-President elect Barack Obama gestures during an e******n night victory gathering on November 4, 2008, in Chicago.© Chris McGrath/Getty Images Then-President elect Barack Obama gestures during an e******n night victory gathering on November 4, 2008, in Chicago.
And new census data are raising fresh questions about the future of our democracy. For the first time in the country's history, the number of White people in the US is declining -- a benchmark that's come about eight years earlier than projected.

The news should make anyone who knows this country's history shudder. It's been well documented that a segment of White America will abandon any commitment to democracy if they no longer consider themselves the dominant group.

One can envision a future where White politicians and partisan judges double down on v**er restriction laws and appeals to r****m in a desperate bid to hold onto power.

a person holding a sign: A demonstrator holds a sign outside the Pennsylvania Capitol Building to protest the continued closure of businesses due to the c****av***s p******c on May 15, 2020, in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.© Mark Makela/Getty Images A demonstrator holds a sign outside the Pennsylvania Capitol Building to protest the continued closure of businesses due to the c****av***s p******c on May 15, 2020, in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
That's why one commentator warned the shifting US demographics are about to "set our politics on fire."

"If recent history tells us anything, though, it's that the census news will create a fresh wave of right-wing anger, and that much of it will be directed against America's minority populations," Joel Mathis wrote in a recent column in The Week. "Our ugly politics are probably going to get uglier."

In such a future, there may be no leaders who talk about seeking common ground. There will be no stirring oratory about how America doesn't have red or blue states. It'll be a war of attrition where both sides seek only to turn out their bases for e******ns.

a person looking at the camera: US Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene wears a "T***p W*n" face mask as she arrives on the floor of the House to take her oath of office as a newly elected member of the 117th House of Representatives in Washington on January 3, 2021.© ERIN SCOTT/AFP/POOL/Getty Images US Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene wears a "T***p W*n" face mask as she arrives on the floor of the House to take her oath of office as a newly elected member of the 117th House of Representatives in Washington on January 3, 2021.
I foresee this future as a distinct possibility. Leaders will keep speaking to people's fears instead of their hopes. There won't be any poetry in politics, just trench warfare.

Even Obama, who embodies the idea that the US is a work in progress toward a more perfect union, sounded a note of skepticism in his recent memoir, "A Promised Land."

"Except now I found myself asking whether those impulses—of violence, greed, corruption, nationalism, r****m, and religious intolerance, the all-too-human desire to beat back our own uncertainty and mortality and sense of insignificance by subordinating others—were too strong for any democracy to permanently contain," he wrote.

"For they seemed to lie in wait everywhere, ready to resurface whenever growth rates stalled or demographics changed or a charismatic leader chose to ride the wave of people's fears and resentments."

A different type of hope and change
Some say there will always be an audience in America for idealistic leaders who offer visions of hope and change.

"This is a cycle that America always goes through," says Melanye Price, a political scientist who specializes in contemporary Black politics and political rhetoric.

"If I didn't believe that I might as well resign from my job, live off the grid somewhere and prepare for the coming race war."

She says the US has repeatedly shown the ability to "course correct." The Obama era was a glimpse of a country whose arc, to paraphrase Martin Luther King Jr., bends towards justice.

"I rely heavily," she says, "on the Winston Churchill quote: 'You can always count on Americans to do the right thing -- after they've tried everything else.'"

Eric Liu, the author and activist, is one of the most eloquent spokesmen about what makes the US so resilient. In one of my favorite books, "Become America," Liu writes:

"American history is a record of small groups of people who keep remaking this country over and over, and who reveal to us all that the perpetual remaking is the greatest statement of fidelity to our creed and our national purpose, which is not to be like Russia, white and stagnant and oligarchic, or like China, monoethnic and authoritarian and centralized, but to be more like America, hybrid and dynamic and democratic and free to be remade."

Liu says it may be good if Americans don't swoon over a leader the way they once did over Obama -- and for those on the right, former President Trump. He says change comes from the bottom up. It's part of the message he preaches around the country to encourage civic knowledge and engagement.

"My emphasis is on trying to fortify people so they don't need a savior leader to come and put in all their hopes in," he tells me. "I'm always quoting the great organizer Ella Baker, who said, 'Strong people don't need strong leaders.' "

Determining America's future
The massive protests that followed the murder of G****e F***d seemed to vindicate Liu's emphasize on citizen power, not charismatic leadership. It was driven by ordinary people hitting the streets.

But if a large segment of White America abandons any pretense of believing in democracy, I'm not sure we will ever see another leader like Obama gain such wide appeal.

Ours will be a future Obama warned about in his memoir, when the impulses of violence, r****m and intolerance will be too strong for any democracy to contain.

If that becomes our future, some may look back and regard the images of Black, White and Brown people sharing tears of joy in Chicago's Grant Park as quaint and naïve.

And when another charismatic politician says, "There are no red states or blue states, just the United States," people won't cheer and rush out to v**e.

Most won't even listen to such lofty rhetoric anymore.

Is this our future? Or will enough people still believe that "America is not yet finished" and commit to becoming the vibrant, forward-looking multiracial democracy that Obama embodied?

It's a question that Obama can't address. He's done his part.

Only we can answer.