Up From Facebook

The  quote "Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society,"  (is  attributed to U.S. Supreme Court Justice  Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. As we enter the 2026 IRS filing season, you may be treated to the libertarian* propaganda that taxes are just government stealing. In a representative democracy such as ours, the majority has authorized the imposition of taxes in order to pay for the services we enjoy (the military, roads and bridges, the legal system, etc). Of course, Republican borrow-and-spend policies have long ago outstripped the ability of taxes to pay for the government services that Republicans demand (military invasions of sovereign countries, ICE occupations of American cities, Trump golf excursions). That said, we do have taxation with representation in the US, and a casual comparison reveals a general trend of high taxes/GDP ratio correlated with a high democracy score. So the data seem to support Holmes. *Libertarianism is the apotheosis of solipsism,...

“We talked about this a little. We talked about this back in our Senate days,” Vance revealed, later adding how “all of us put the tinfoil hat on from time to time.” He’s running for president in 2028, peeps. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/jd-vance-aliens-demons-devil_n_69c93d9de4b0a014076f69bb?origin=home-latest-news-unit

When I retired, my health insurance became traditional Medicare, what right-wingers call “socialism.” I’d read enough not to be seduced by the candy offered in “Medicare Advantage” plans, the free market plans that were supposed to be superior to traditional Medicare. So far, no regrets for me. Sadly, tens of thousands of Americans do regret the Medicare Advantage choice. “ At 70, landscape artist Anthony J. Petchkis lives with a host of health problems. There was the heart attack that sent him on an ambulance ride from his home in the mountains of New Hampshire to Portland, Maine, for   an arterial stent. His cholesterol is stubbornly high. He has diabetes, gout and rheumatoid arthritis. He takes eight medications a day.   “Until this year, he at least felt confident insurance would fully cover his medical bills, which he estimates run to   several thousands of dollars a year. Then his Medicare Advantage plan dropped him.   “How am I going to pay all these things go...

A couple days ago , Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) called Social Security a 'forced retirement program' and said workers' payroll contributions should be gambled on Wall Street. My senator, Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) proposed adjusting the payroll wage cap so that people making over $400K per year begin paying their fair share — a "win-win." Let’s take each of these in turn: 1. No, Social Security is *not* a retirement program. It is retirement insurance. Retirement programs include such things as 403b and 403c plans, 401k plans, IRAs and personal savings. In all these plans, money is invested in the name of the person to become available to that person upon retirement. There is no personal Social Security account for each worker. Social Security is a pay-go program, where current workers are paying the benefits of current retirees (pace the Trust Fund).  For many Americans, Social Security is the only thing keeping them from living under a bridge eating cat food. Yes,...

The ammosexual response to the epidemic of gun-related deaths in t he US is that you can’t blame the guns, it’s the people. We should just put up with a level of gun violence far higher than any other industrialized nation. But then what about drugs? Using the same ammosexual logic, narcosexuals should point out that drugs don’t kill people, people kill people. Accordingly, we should relax drug laws and make narcotics freely available to everyone over the age of 21. It’s the price of freedom, right?   https://www.foreignaffairs.com/mexico/can-mexico-avoid-confrontation-united-states?utm_medium=newsletters&utm_source=fatoday&utm_campaign=The%20Stunning%20Failure%20of%20Iranian%20Deterrence&utm_content=20260319&utm_term=A

Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich died on March 13 th . His 1968 book “The Population Bomb” was both influential and controversial in its time and has proven to be better fiction than science since then. I was required to read The Population Bomb in college. I recall being beguiled by its arguments and probably too by the stature of its author. Over the decades, I’ve come to appreciate the value of prophecies like those of Ehrlich; they are specific enough that, if we live long enough, we can see if they come to pass. If they do, the prophet is validated. If they don’t, he is discredited. In the case of Ehrlich, he was massively and conclusively discredited by events that followed. “. . .    in 1970 he forecast that within the coming decade “100-200 million people per year will be starving to death” and “by 1985 enough millions will have died to reduce the earth’s population to some acceptable level, like 1.5 billion people”. Furthermore, by 1980 the life expectancy of the avera...