TGIF! [DOT 22/3/24]

22/3/24 MegMegMcGee 60

Hope everyone had a great week so far. TGIF!

Maybe his gravy filled heart will finally explode

New York Attorney General takes initial step to prepare to seize Trump assets
https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/21/politics/trump-calls-ny-attorney-generals-bond-suggestions-impractical-and-unjust/index.html

Stonks!

Dow closes more than 250 points higher as major averages surge to fresh records: Live updates
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/20/stock-market-today-live-updates.html

Sprots!

On betting’s biggest day, a new scandal puts the sports world on edge
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2024/03/21/sports-betting-ohtani-scandal/

Swell!

New fear unlocked

Man arrested after allegedly boarding Delta flight using photo of another passenger’s ticket
https://www.yahoo.com/news/man-arrested-allegedly-boarding-delta-045604654.html

Have a super day!

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60 Comments

  1. Jennifer Slopez! No. It’s too much.

    Did I ever tell you [OH NO. PREPARE TO TAKE A DIRECT HIT] that when we got our previous dog from the shelter we were driving home and we settled on a name. I said, “well, if we’re going to go with that name, we might as well [add a last name so the full name would be the same as that of a well-known New York-based celebrity.]

    It was genius. Nobody ever forgot her name. My friends and neighbors still reminisce about her (she lived to be 16 1/2.) We’d be in our vet’s crowded waiting room and the staff, who loved the name, would call out the full name very loudly. Everyone’s head would snap around, in the expectation of seeing the celeb, but disappointingly it was just our elderly German shepherd.

  2. I’m kind of surprised Trump hasn’t declared bankruptcy yet. He’s done it eleventy billion times before so I know he’s not averse to it. I assume he’s trying all of the other options first, but you can bet your ass he’ll file the second Letitia shows up with the sheriff.

    • I read something about this recently. He has declared bankruptcy six times. Related to the Atlantic City casino failures I think. If you can’t make money running gambling dens your name is either Donald Trump or The State of New York.

      But he’s never declared personal bankruptcy. It’s the entities that went into bankruptcy. So, he was able to explain those away as a canny financial tool that all business geniuses use. The MAGAts probably believe this is true, many of them having declared bankruptcy themselves.

      But at this point, with his personal finances so intertwined with the countless shell companies and holding companies and the creditors, he would kind of be dragged into personal bankruptcy. And by the way, I hope Mel has booked two first-class tickets to Slovenia for her and Barron, maybe with a stop at the private bank in Zurich to make sure that Don has been keeping up with his monthly payments and that there’s an updated copy of the will in the lockbox.

      So, sending your company into bankruptcy is a shrewd move, but declaring yourself a bankrupt is not a good look for someone on the campaign trail who pretends to be this wildly successful wheeler dealer. I think one of the things that might hurt him the most is the appointment of the Special Master, or whatever the title is, who oversees and approves or denies Trump Organization financial moves.

      Imagine the screaming headlines:

      [Trump tweet] “Trump Organization posts Record Profits, we are BACK, and we will Make America GREAT Again!!!”

      [More sober headline in the WSJ] “Trump Organization Special Master Reports $700 Million Loss For FY2024. Sale Of Three Properties Imminent.”

    • …I’m not familiar with the procedural nuances on the paperwork side of the thing but the pitch a few people have floated that now wouldn’t be the time to that which offers maximum delay the way the overlapping countdowns this or that triggers make a twisted kind of sense?

      …like…if he can play up how “the man” in the form of a hard-charging black lady making him pony up or sending in the baliffs to repo his shit is him being horatio on the bridge valiantly fending off the might of an eminent domain wielding state

      …& parlay a bit of that into the part where the other black lady prosecuting him whose picture they couldn’t tell apart from the NY one is a fallen woman

      …he can keep the grift dialed up to 11 until throwing the bankruptcy spanner into the works buys him his best shot at a delay that punts past polling day…& insulate himself by having it be the business proxy version he likes & not the personal one

      …that way if the SPAC backend comes through he’s $3-$4 billion up in a place he can claim doesn’t walk-back the bankruptcy…& play the victim…& keep begging…& not have to campaign as more of a convict than he already is…& keep the whole “never surrender” base he wants to be able to threaten coup 2.0 with by hinting not saying he wins in november means the declaration of civil war

      …so…someone in that camp might think they have a course charted that comes through the reefs & the crosswinds into safe harbor

      …but…like @bryanlsplinter was talking about with an example closer to home…temperamentally-speaking…it’s a perspective that runs a lot closer to the way he operated when he was younger & had more routes available to bail him out & saw things different…it’s mostly more plausible to me…& in keeping with some of the more shockingly shoddy legal moves he’s been making…if he’s been high in his own supply for long enough that he actually would forgo the mechanism that’s served him so handily so many times because he’s all-in on claiming to be the wicker man slugging it out with the feds to protect the salt of the earth?

      • I think his assumption is just he can get re-elected (or installed via coup) and declare himself free and clear and that’s the only path he’s interested in. I also would guess that he doesn’t want “bankruptcy” to be the hot talking point of October, either.

        And while I’d give the national political media very little credit, worth pointing out that just like “old,” bankruptcy isn’t partisan or arguable if declared, and it’s obviously not a common move among presidential candidates.

      • There might be some type of strategy behind holding off on bankruptcy, but why would Trump start embracing the entirely foreign concept of “strategy” right now? I’ve probably mentioned it, but I worked in adult care facilities in graduate school. Persuading someone with dementia to do anything is almost impossible. Family members can occasionally get through, but others? Nope. And the best mind in Trump’s brood is Ivanka, who is avoiding him. Or maybe Barron, but I’d bet real money Trump doesn’t remember who Barron is. Dumb and Dumber aren’t going to persuade him to do anything remotely sensible. Hell, they’re probably hiding assets. My position is that he’s just a stubborn old dementia case who’s twice as bad because he’s never heard the word “no” in his life.

        And let’s not forget how important all this is:

        Trump canceled a rally in Arizona because his campaign was too broke: report

        • I mean, it’s a child’s thought of “if this one thing happens, I’m fine” so I don’t think it’s a strategy per se. Is it dementia? Shrug. Not a doctor, don’t know him personally, have years of family experience with it but I think he’s a weird dude and probably slipping but not willing to diagnose him from afar.

          But he’s definitely prideful, and I don’t think he wants to spend the next 6 months having to scream that he’s not bankrupt, actually he has tons and tons of money, it’s with his girlfriend in Canada and no you haven’t met her, and he’ll use it if he hast to (he’ll never use it.)

          • Dementia is hard to say, because that takes a lot of different forms from Alzheimers to Parkinson’s related dementia and more. But this is irrational behavior to the point of delusion, whatever it is. It’s on a par with someone jumping into the grizzly exhibit at the zoo and playing with the cubs. Mental competence has to jump into the discussion in a major way.

                • …personally I like steve carrell…but that character walks a fine line for a lot of people…& doesn’t always come down on the side they think it should

                  I’m Brick Tamland. People seem to like me because I am polite and I am rarely late. I like to eat ice cream and I really enjoy a nice pair of slacks. Years later, a doctor will tell me that I have an I.Q. of 48 and am what some people call mentally retarded.

                  …internally it works with the whole tone of the film & will ferrell movies aren’t an obvious candidate for progressive nuance in representation…although I have heard someone try to make that case & they had better material than I expected in a few ways…but carrell does a good enough job that for some people it put him in the bracket that has saga norén from the bridge in & they didn’t like it as a depiction of what they took to be an autistic-coded character

                  …maybe that’s why they kicked off the sequel with everyone thinking he was dead before he turns up at his own funeral like an accidental version of that “get low” flick…before going on to murder some people with a gun from the future or something equally nuts that I may or may not remember right…but I think someone remembered that they’d said in a card in the credits the first time that he went on to have like a dozen kids or something so they gave him an adjusted meet-cute & had him married before the final curtain the second go-around, I think?

                  …either way it’s worth noting that the other bit of his future that gets spelled out at some point is that he went on to work in one or other of the bush white house administrations

                  …clearly a complicated guy but the “when he gets weird we just mentally edit him out of the scene until he goes back to normal-seeming or something drastic happens” thing is one of the weirdly true-to-life strands of how they all managed to take the whole production more seriously than seems natural…so…I dunno…it was a bit lightning-in-a-bottle for me…get why some people might have come down on “problematic”…but I laughed my way through the whole thing?

  3. Good morning to everyone who doesn’t have to spend the entire weekend trying to keep up their life-long lie that they’re a multi-billionaire when they can’t even get a bank/insurance agency to back the bond they need to cover on Monday for…checks notes…lying about being a multi-billionaire.

    🙂

    • Yeah…the funny thing is, I have believed for a long time now that the SS retirement age should be lifted by about five years–and the payroll tax ceiling needs to be entirely eliminated.  Now, Republicans are–of course–not getting into the details, so I’m sure their “plan” is to make everyone who works for a living work forever, but on principle a retirement age of 65 isn’t realistic anymore.

        • This is dead-on, and not only should the rules probably be different by job, but also giving manufacturing workers (for example) a better and earlier retirement is probably a win-win both for those workers but also for younger workers who might have a better shot at a better job. (It might even benefit companies to have a younger workforce, but I care about that way less than the worker side of things.)

          Edit to add: Retirement age shouldn’t be “as long as you can work until you cannot work any longer” either, it ought to be you put in your years, go enjoy what you have left before you’re a shell of a human being.

      • If the position is “people shouldn’t be forced to retire at 65” I agree. There’s basically a stigma attached to age, and people start questioning you about “why are you still working?” when for a lot of people, it’s not optional. And frankly, 65 ain’t dead yet, by a long shot. Even if it’s an option for me, I won’t take it. What would I do? Watch TV? I’d rather work and use that money for nicer leisure activities like travel.

        I think too often 65 is used as an arbitrary cudgel to force older, higher-paid workers to leave.

        But I’ve got a buddy who was a mailman who just retired and couldn’t. fucking. wait. Delivering mail in Florida is like weightlifting in a sauna with attack dogs and lightning and mailboxes full of black widows and snakes, and I completely understand. And I’m glad he had the option to make that happen.

        • My oldest brother died a couple of years ago, at the age of 70. Sudden, unexpected heart attack, and preparing to go into his job the next day. You can’t imagine the shockwaves that this sent through my family and…

          Anyway, the point is, he went was an engineer and went to a Vo-Tech and took his first full-time job at 18. He never took a dime out of Social Security. He didn’t need the money and he enjoyed his work and they enjoyed him. Once we made the funeral arrangements his company closed for the afternoon so everyone could attend the wake, which they did, and closed entirely the following day for the funeral.

          I’m getting distracted. My point is that I’m still working, sort of, but I’m not going to be like my brother. The minute I turn 62 (the very minimum age) I’m going to file. $35 a month? I’ll take it! I’m also looking into getting SSI, which is widely and wildly abused in New York, but that’s not a high priority. Plus the administrators and the minions are still all “working from home” (meaning they’re not working at all; try to renew a passport or contact an employee of the Department of Motor Vehicles) so I think I’ll let SSI slide. Although in the near future I have three more, different, medical follow-ups, and follow-ups to the follow-ups, and at one of my previous ones they told me they would facilitate getting me an absentee ballot, but I’m going to let that slide too. Putin won with 90% of the vote? My local machine pols must have laughed. Amateur.

        • For me, the position is a couple of things:

          Social Security should not be claimed until age 70.

          Pensions need to be brought back.

          Different sectors need different retirement ages to be able to claim those pensions.

          Now, #3 is impossible. There is no way that gets through anything, and even if it did, the opportunity for gaming the system (by employers) is huge.

          #1 and #2 are theoretically possible, but will never make it through Congress. Ever.

      • As someone who just turned 65, I feel qualified to respond to this.

        If I retired tomorrow, my social security, in perpetuity, would be 10% under the amount due at full retirement age of 67 years. If one retires at age 62, the amount is reduced by 30%, and if one works until age 70 the amount is increased by 30%. The government has effectively made 70 retirement age in order to increase one’s meager social security as much as possible.

        As for pensions, well, I’ve worked for small businesses like most of this country (99.9% of businesses in the US are classified as small). I’m not a teacher, first responder, union worker, or government employee so I have no pension. Or so I thought – it turns out I get a whopping $132 a month from a company I worked for in the late ’80’s-early 90’s.

        If social security is going away or if retirement age is increased, I’ll take a one-time check for my payments over the last fifty years, with interest. My money was not a donation. And I’d happily invest it in a short term treasury bill and earn 5%.

        • …I think there’s a similar penalty-to-top-up scale for the UK state pension…which is literally the fund people pay into under the name “national insurance”…though the employers have to pay in as well…& the whole thing in most places that cut paychecks is deducted at source through a thing that gets acronym-ed to PAYE

          …there’s a group of people who were born in the 50s who campaign as WASPI

          https://www.waspi.co.uk/

          …for Women Against State Pension Inequality…basically they made their arrangements based on a retirement age that moved while they were on the cusp & they did the math on how that shortchanged them & have been seeking redress for a while

          …if you click that link the homepage features a pair of “live” counters…one shows the number (it’s in a six-digit range heading for 300K) of women that applies to who are now dead

          …the one underneath that clocks up while you watch…is the money that saved the government…by the time I post this it’ll have just about have crept past £4,074,750,000.00

      • Yeah isn’t the easy answer just … have income levels raised that pay into social security? It’s bullshit that a person making 168,000 and a person making 10,000,000 a year are paying the same amount in.

  6. Here’s an extract from “The City,” an NYC-centric website that I read faithfully (I read about a dozen total):

    Immigrants accounted for 45% of the workforce in 2015, a figure that fell to 32% in the pandemic. While the number has recovered to 44.3%, slightly below the 2015 peak as jobs lost in the pandemic returned, according to a report released Thursday by state comptroller Tom DiNapoli, the rest of the country has seen a steady increase in the share of workers who are foreign born.

    I had no idea. I suppose it’s all the service jobs, construction…45%! What were the rest of us doing? The “border crisis” might not be a bad thing after all, if we’re slipping down into Italian and Russian birthrates and we need to bring people in to perform various tasks for us.

    • …I decided I didn’t really have a reliable baseline to gauge if that was higher or lower than I’d have expected as a proportion…but certainly nigh on half of NY workers not being “native” wouldn’t strike me as unlikely…45% hailing from a different country rather than being children of parents for whom that would be true…feels high…but without a sense for the methodology on the dataset I don’t know if it’s too high at the low end of the boundary for its margin of error?

      …according to the census.gov data…between ’20 & ’23 the overall count went down by around 3% for a running total somewhere in the 19.5 million range…but the employment figures seem to indicate they’re a ’21 vintage…so between 19.5-19.75 or so for total population…with about 7.6million or so households “2018-2022″…averaged out between genders it’s about 60% in employment in the 16-65 age range…& around 30% households that speak other-than-english at home…& in ’21 a shade under 7.9million jobs…so slightly more jobs than households…but…when I think about how many people seem to see a lot of people in their vicinity working more than one job to make ends meet…got to think there’s a lot of paypackets…likely in cash…not showing up in that picture?

      …so…45% of the 7.9million listed jobs being positions held by people who are migrants in the sense of just hitting town from foreign climes & not just out of state seems hard to credit…but per the census numbers a bit over 14% qualify as below the poverty line…& people averse to admitting to questionable immigration status to a degree that has them not filling out census forms the way the GOP wishes all of them wouldn’t showing up disproportionately at that end of the scale…where cash in hand from multiple “employers” is attractive enough that one migrant might account for 2-5 jobs in the non-reporting economy…45% composed of criteria that would be blind to the one-person-many-gigs element

      …that I could see without really looking like a stretch?

      …haven’t got a moment right now but I might manage to remember to go back & read the actual report & see if any of that actually tracks…but off the top of my head having skimmed the landing page here https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/NY/PST045223 that’s where I got to?

    • The “border crisis” isn’t a bad thing. For one thing, undocumented workers do the vast majority of agricultural tasks. That’s one reason we keep having this pushback against DeSantis in Florida — he’s chasing workers to other states that aren’t trying to arrest them, so crops either aren’t getting harvested or they’re getting more expensive. (Anybody want to tie that to inflation? Because it’s a factor.)

      That’s just one example. In Florida undocumented workers fill most of the manual labor type jobs, like construction and landscaping and a bunch of others.

      Plus undocumented workers pay a ton of taxes and can’t claim refunds. Businesses MUST remit payroll taxes (failure to do so is a fast trip to jail and the IRS does not play games with payroll taxes) but those workers can’t get that money back.

      Bottom line: The entire country exploits undocumented workers. It’s a net benefit any way you look at it from OUR side. But Republicans want to exploit xenophobia, and their constituents aren’t hearing these facts or are incapable of grasping them.

      • This is actually the split in the GOP: The business leaders LOVE immigrants, especially the undocumented kind. They work harder, get paid less, pay into the system but take almost nothing out of it, are easier to commit wage fraud against, and are a fungible resource of employment that also keep wages down. On top of that, business leaders make decisions that profit them but screw people and places and they get to blame it on — you guessed it — the immigrants! It’s a wonderful closed loop of misery for everyone involved.

        Anyway, though, if you shifted immigration rules to focus more on punishing businesses that hired undocumented workers — say a $1M fine for every provable case — you’d see exactly how fast the GOP would backpeddle and lose their shit, because they know how the bread is buttered.

        • Already watched it happen. The Florida GOP concocted legislature to force businesses to use Everify to make sure every worker was documented. They reversed direction almost overnight, when the business leaders heard about it. And I literally mean almost overnight. To save face they tried to exempt specific industries, like agriculture, hospitality, theme parks, etc., which incensed the ones that WEREN’T exempted. Eventually they decided they’d force state and municipal agencies to use Everify. Because undocumented workers are frequently applying to work at the DMV. So we’ve successfully removed exactly zero undocumented workers from government agencies. In GOP terms, that’s an unqualified success.

        • “The business leaders LOVE immigrants, especially the undocumented kind. They work harder, get paid less, pay into the system but take almost nothing out of it, are easier to commit wage fraud against, and are a fungible resource of employment that also keep wages down.”

           

           

          Well, that’s it, that’s the whole point.

          They (migrants) are too valuable a commodity as is to make the path to citizenship easier. The system is working as planned, all the way around (for the billionaires, not us poors.)

          • …I forget if it’s actually from the man who was thursday or if he said it somewhere else…but it would make sense for it to have come from that one…either way I’m pretty sure g.k. chesterton was the one who put it this way

            The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.

            …with the “populist” appeal of shit-shows in the mold MAGA fits basically seems to set out to argue (largely in the sense of sophistry…or being two-faced first & out for themselves next through last) that if you can’t be rich the next best thing is to demand less government…the way it would make sense to do if you were as rich as them…rinse & repeat a few times & you wind up with the dolt45 definition of “solidarity”?

      • Big growers in Florida backed RDS and the GOP takeover of the legislature. Their shock that those ghouls would actually carry out the extreme policies they promised is a prime example of the intellectual collapse of the right.

        Business people are supposed to be able to weigh costs and benefits and establish contingency plans. Based on what every unbiased source could tell them, RDS was not going to moderate. But they overrode what their brains told them in favor of vibes.

          • Money changes hands for sure, but it’s based on feelings and friendships, not rational bargaining.

            One of the big defining features of corrupt countries is that the economy suffers in comparison to places where a ruler can’t just throw money at a pal. Based on pure economic calculation, businesses shouldn’t want Republicans in charge because that increases the risk that they lose out to another corrupt interest and weakens the overall economy. But that’s not what they feel.

            The reality is that authoritarian rule hurts multiple businesses for every one it helps. Maintenance of that rule depends on the multitude of losers continuing to back the few winners based on a combination of ideology, and when that fails, threats.

            Chile eventually saw much of the losers in the business community turn on Pinochet and back a move to genuine democracy. But it took massive economic bungling and favoritism for them to finally see what human rights activists knew all along – there was no rational interest to keeping Pinochet in power.

        • …florida’s idea of a “free” market has been pretty out there on the agriculture end for a while…& one of the bits that always got me twisted was how it worked with sugar…so…there might be better examples but it pairs up with st lucia in my head…even though that’s a tiny island compared to florida in acreage…just because sugar used to grow quite happily all over the little island but you don’t see much of it there…& you do find a proportion of the seasonal labor cutting sugar in florida comes over from st lucia for the work that their…getting to be grandparents rather than parents now…used to do at home

          …so…to get that to be industrially viable in florida to the point of ceasing to be in st lucia…growing the stuff in terrain that needs a lot of draining & working over to make it productive…wouldn’t pay its way if it weren’t heavily subsidized…to the point that the produce could be sold at a price point that undercut the costs of growing it somewhere it was happy to

          …back in the day it was st lucia’s prime export…the first lot to try to grow & sell bananas instead thought of it in the 20s but it wasn’t until the 50s that people started following their lead…& eventually they grubbed out pretty much every trace of sugar they could find & planted bananas in its place…& that & a really deep natural harbor being a great place to put some massive tanks & use as the sort of place that can take a tanker or two’s output & then feed it into different tankers (I forget but I think they might do a bit of refining?) was pretty much all that kept it from going bankrupt

          …bananas managed to pay in local terms a broadly live-able level of income for even marginal farmers for a pretty long time…not as long as the sugar did way back when…but…by around the turn of the millenium the equilibrium went off beam enough that the IMF was writing papers about how if they couldn’t restructure their way into being able to compete with production in well-known banana-growing heartlands like…*checks notes*…err…the EU…somehow…which has some sort of banana fetish apparently out of a desire to find common ground with the daily mail readers who lived in fear of brussels decreeing that henceforth they must be straight & not curved…the wheels could come off for a lot of people

          …the idea that in that equation it’s the florida natives who think people coming from there to work those sugar-fields is something they’re the ones in a position to be indignant about is…something else?

    • Having spent a lot of time in the seniors long term care facilities thanks to mom and dad.

      Without immigrants, there is no seniors retirement especially for white folks parents.

      From the nurses to the social workers.

      Forget the healthcare system.

      Xenophobes are so fucking short sighted.

      • …pretty much goes for the entirety of the NHS since there’s been one in the UK

        …the place that thinks plane loads of asylum seekers being flown to rwanda for a stunt is a vote-winner because of how that plays to the sort of voters who’ve been in denial about that since before they could vote clean through until those exact people are caring for their ungrateful aged ass

        …I know they say it takes all sorts…but some days I’d be fine seeing how the absence of a few might alter the way the world keeps spinning?

    • …this…it’s clear one size does not fit all & is a bad fit for many…the demographics say the numbers don’t work unless more people who can work longer but it’s a nonsense to expect everyone to be able to whatever they do as long as the people who do stuff they can keep doing well past their mid-60s…there’s got to be a sliding scale that says some people get to call it a day sooner than others in a way where, say, 40 years of backbreaking labor gets you a full boat but calling it quits at 60 if you’re otherwise healthy & spent your working life pecking at a keyboard…is fine if you can afford it independently but the state should get to see you as a discount payout to some extent

      …the devil would inevitably be in the details but it’s not immediately clear to me how that would be unfair or who to…so I don’t see why one-size-fits all has to prevent the line going both up & down at the same time based on tailoring it to circumstance?

      • Classic American brain: Lots of people know a public-sector worker (cop, mail carrier, county worker, whatever) who gets to retire “early” because they’ve socked away days off or get a pension or whatever, and this is always held up as meaning that working for a muni/county/state/government is somehow an easy job and it’s unfair … when instead they should be pissed that THEY don’t get that from their employer. They could! We used to have that! Pensions existed! My grandparents had them! Instead we get 401(k)s which are maybe a quarter as good, and even those are going to less than 40% of the working population.

        Some people live to work, and I say, work until you’re 90 if that’s your druthers, but I work to live and if I could retire comfortably, I’d be happy to do so. I could find plenty of things to fill my time with.

        • A national health plan would be a huge plus for the economy and workers, but one of the main rallying points against it is the claim that people who don’t “deserve” care would get it.

          The thought that some 23 year old might break a leg doing skateboard tricks and get hospital care covered drives Fox News viewers on Medicare crazy.

          • The concept of a national health plan: As a voracious consumer of the American for-profit medical-industrial’s products (not by choice) I fail to see how they’re superior from stories my non-American friends have told me about what their experiences were like.

            Clement Attlee was lucky enough to push through a National Health Service in a Britain shattered by WWII. America proposed it, tepidly, but it never really took off. When Ted Kennedy primaried Jimmy Carter in 1980 it was one of his major platforms. It went nowhere, of course, because the hospital cartels and the health insurance companies don’t sit on their hands when great humanitarian advances like this are proposed when it would cut into the bottom line. Special shout-out to Joe Lieberman (I-Cigna/Aetna) to stymying Obamacare. Asshole.

            • Yeah, national health care is like the easiest sell to people — not only would it cost less, everyone could use it. The only people who don’t like it are the insurance companies and unfortunately, they have deep pockets (with Senators in them) soooooo, yeah, here we are, the only industrialized country to keep doing it the dumb way.

            • Well, if you look at any number of metrics, between overall health factors, life expectancy, lower rates of chronic disease and cost, the US system fucking sucks compared to most other nations with some form of national health care model.

              When people from other countries bitch about how our system is better, what they’re really saying is they want to be able to flash their cash and get what they want when they want it.

              When people here bitch about “rationing healthcare” they’re really bitching about the same thing, because we do have rationed healthcare here: it’s rationed to only be usable by the people with money.

            • …attlee would have been PM but generally people give “nye” (short for aneurin) bevan the credit in terms of founding or otherwise bringing into being a national health service…& although these days the “devolved” welsh parliament is dogged by that being the place the NHS seems closest to collapse I think it was basically cooked up & then all but brute-forced into the business of the parliament of the day by a bunch of socialist welsh doctors trying to change the system from within?

              …so…that might even be a thing that’s been known to pay off better than generally advertised…rather than always going the sell-out route

              …but even with the unfocused pride people take in the thing while it’s been chalking its way up to that fateful thousandth cut…if it went away I’m not sure you could get a replacement through the mother of parliaments these days, either?

    • One of the reasons that workers at the NYC Transit Authority got/get such lavish paychecks and unlimited overtime and retirement rules is that the work was so backbreaking and dangerous, and they managed to unionize. It’s not anymore, of course, except for the lunatics let loose on the platforms who assault them without any kind of  prosecution.

      At twenty, twenty-one, you could get in as an 18-year-old NYC public high school graduate, retire at 40, pension, lifetime healthcare. Used to be you’d stay in Long Island or Staten Island, vote for Al D’Amato, and live your life. Now, not so much. West Palm, baby! West Palm!

       

      • This actually reminds me that I should FOIL the state pension plan to see how much money is sent out of NY. We used to do it every few years; Florida got ~10% the last time we checked as I recall, which was second-most, and I bet that’s gone up a bit. NY still kept the vast majority of the pension checks, though.

      • My comment was absolute gibberish. Let’s try again. You are hired at the age of 18, you put in your 20 or 21 years, you’re about 40, so you take the pension and the lifetime bennies and then work part-time at your brother-in-law’s auto repair shop or liquor store. It’s not like that anymore but depending on who you are and who you know you can kind of replicate a life like that.

    • …someone reminded me recently that the case that made them (not this them…mcdonalds in the first instance I think it was but then everyone to protect against litigation) start labeling coffee cups “caution: contents hot” actually had a good bit more merit than the punchline has you remembering it having…so I did mean to see whether that was one of those…but I just adulterate my coffee with sugar &/or alcohol depending on how much weaker the flesh might be than the nominally-willing spirit so I haven’t got around to it yet?

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