“Healthcare Billionaires” is a phrase that should not exist

I’ve mentioned some important spending bills in Washington over the last few days. Here is an update. Joan McCarter of Daily Kos reported the House passed a bill to increase the direct relief payments from $600 to $2000. Because the bill didn’t go through the standard committee process (there wasn’t time) it needed to get a 2/3 majority, which it did. The House also overwhelmingly voted to override the nasty guy’s veto of the National Defense Authorization Act, funding the military. Both now go to the Senate. And in the Senate … McCarter reported Moscow Mitch blocked a request for a vote on the $2000 relief checks. That was followed by Sen. Bernie Sanders blocking a quick vote on overriding the veto of the defense spending bill. Sanders now threatens a filibuster. Several GOP senators want a vote on the $2000 checks (which is not the same as wanting the bill to pass), especially the two senators from Georgia who face a runoff election a week from today. Moscow Mitch is looking for ways to poison the bill for the $2000 checks. This would allow him to hold the vote and still have the measure lose (with the bonus of blaming Democrats). When the nasty guy vetoed the defense spending bill he said it was because it was missing two things – which don’t belong in a defense spending bill anyway. One is an act that he claims allows Twitter to censor him (not true) and the other is to demand an investigation into voter fraud. Mitch is trying to combine both of those into the bill for the $2000 checks. Either would poison the bill. Rep. Louie Gohmert has a reputation of being a nasty guy bootlicker. Hunter of Kos reported Gohmert has filed a lawsuit claiming that when the Electoral College votes are counted in Congress on January 6 the vice nasty has the power to throw out votes he doesn’t like. Short answer: the Constitution does not say that. Gohmert has been part of a group strongly urging the vice nasty to disrupt the proceedings on January 6 and strategizing how to make it all come out in the nasty guy’s favor. Hunter concluded:

It's already been made clear that even conservative courts are not going to go along with Republican attempts to stage an outright coup. House Republicans and Trump are instead working to so delegitimize our elections process that the violent far right comes out to do what the courts will not. Just because it probably won't work doesn't make it less dangerous. This is another test of the system's bounds. They will be tested again, and again, and again.

Mark Sumner of Kos reported the “March for Trump” is on for January 6 with plenty of instructions on how to get to Washington as a group. But there is nothing about what the nasty guy expects them to do once there. Also, there is no idea how many people will show up (there will be lies about crowd size). Public Citizen tweeted a headline from Newsweek:

Healthcare Billionaires Got Nearly $150B Richer Due to COVID Pandemic.

And Public Citizen responded:

“Healthcare Billionaires” is a phrase that should not exist. Why do we tolerate a system that grants health care CEOs record profits during a mass death event?

I’ve written a few times now that for a person to become a billionaire they are exploiting someone or something. In this case they are exploiting their patients. I’ve also written that healthcare is incompatible with the profit motive. Leeia tweeted:

There are 57,000+ names on the Vietnam Memorial in Washington DC. Imagine the size and scope of a Covid Memorial.

Matt Ghaffari responded:

December is now the deadliest month in USA #RepublicansDontCare Jan - 0 Feb - 1 Mar - 5,277 April - 60,738 May - 41,703 June - 20,112 July - 26,446 Aug - 29,532 Sept - 23,418 Oct - 23,974 Nov - 36,964 Dec - 63,575++

And Leeia replied:

December’s death toll from COVID is higher than the number of names recorded on the memorial wall.

I was by myself at Christmas. Leah McElrath explained why I did so in a heartbreaking story. She hasn’t been within 20 feet of her mother for ten months because her mother's lung function is already minimal. Mother lives with stepfather, sister, and nephew. Nephew visited his father and they went on a holiday outing. Nephew caught COVID and brought it home. Jared Yates Sexton tweeted:

This government is not designed to help people but to serve as an organ to redistribute the people's wealth from the bottom up. Any gesture otherwise is only intended to keep people from understanding this and realizing how angry they should be. It does not have to be this way. We can have an actual government for and by the people that serves public good rather than a system that plunders our wealth and sells out our well-being. It can be different. It has to be different. For decades now there has been an economic consensus that wealth is best served being handed over to the wealthy and allowing the powerful to operate based on their own interests. That consensus has to be broken. If it isn't, fascism and economic collapse are inevitable. This austerity is artificial. This suffering and inequality is by design. We can live better lives than this. We can have a better society than this. And this current path is completely unsustainable anyway. The pandemic made it very clear. The fates of the wealthy and powerful are vastly prioritized over the rest of us. Heading into the new year, we have to recognize that ugly truth and fight to change things before it's too late. It's not too late, but the clock is ticking.

Back in September I wrote about a big story by The New York Times that the rich nasty guy hadn’t paid income taxes in ten of the last fifteen years. At the time I didn’t read the transcript of the associated Gaslit Nation episode. Sarah Kendzior, one of the hosts of that podcast, sometimes reposts threads and back about mid December she reposted a thread of quotes from that episode.

With Trump, people have been reluctant to follow the money. Because when you follow the money, you don't find someone who is incompetent. You find someone who is deeply immersed in organized crime and in covering for organized crime. Trump spent his life structuring his businesses in order to launder money for and whitewash the crimes of the Italian mafia and then the Russian mafia, which extended to his collaboration with the Kremlin and especially with Putin. The Mueller probe was low-hanging fruit. They did the bare minimum. They didn't risk their lives to go after the Trump Crime Family and we are paying the price for that. 200,000 dead Americans paid that price. Trump figured out how to share very little of his fortune with the country he now leads. As POTUS, he takes American taxpayers' money directly, treating the govt as his personal piggy bank. That's what kleptocrats do. People need to look at Trump mentor Roy Cohn, who dreamed of dying owing the US govt big money. Aquisition isn't the goal; debt isn't a problem. A luxurious lifestyle, powered by fraud and threat and untouchable by law, is the goal. They don't see obtaining wealth as an investment in the future. The accumulation of raw power is what they value and what they want to pass on to their offspring. The laundering operation itself outweighs the value of monetary assets The US government knew all about Trump's tax fraud and other crimes! The IRS and the Dept of Treasury have been investigating Trump on and off for my entire life. The FBI knew for decades. These institutions act as his enablers.