False Assumptions that Can Destroy America

  

One big problem is that a false statement that supports a preconceived notion is instantly accepted by conspiracy theory-seeking MAGAns. A February national Leger poll, sponsored by the Los Angeles Times, has some nasty conclusions about California: “As Californians, we are often aware of how the rest of the nation perceives our state, and —shocker— it can be negative. Half of U.S. adults believe California is in decline… [Our severely polarized divide] fuels the negativity, with 48% of Republicans considering California ‘not really American,’ the survey found.” LA Times, February 14th. Reports from Trump himself suggest that California water shortages are so severe that even Beverly Hills residents are relegated to brushing there teeth once a day. As a resident of Beverly Hills, I will note that there are no significant water restrictions here.

Last year Trump said: “If you look at California, it’s got brownouts and blackouts every single day… People can’t turn on their air conditioners.” Funny, I ran my air conditioner without restriction, and I cannot remember the last time we had a “brown out.” He must be thinking about Texas. I won’t pretend it’s all a bed of roses here. Real estate is still way too expensive, our climate continues to attract homeless people, and recent wildfires and atmospheric rivers generated by climate change have pushed homeowners’ insurance through the roof, but my friends in Texas tell me their insurance costs have become even more pricey. Additionally, our recent real estate increases pale in comparison to the increases in the urban markets in Texas and Florida, no longer able to market themselves as bastions of cheap housing. I’d still rather live in California. Hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires and coastal erosion are big issues in red states.

As I have noted before – see my recent Are Economic Realities Still Major American Voter Issues? blog – elections in this country have devolved from issue-driven into identity/tribal culture wars where too many Americans have outsourced their opinions to their tribal masters. If you listen to Trump – in his Truth Social account or in rallies – when he finally finishes spewing his perceived victim status and stops trying to raise bits and pieces from his constituents for his legal defense funding (hmm, I thought he was a billionaire?) – stooping to selling his customized Bibles for Easter (left above) – he likes to present patently false “alternative facts” that are lapped up by his massive “anything you say” MAGA believers. And even when GOP congresspeople share their disbelief in private conversations, they will not admit that publicly. FOT. Fear of Trump.

But if you want to see what “issues” the GOP has formally proposed, if that even matters to Trump supporters at all, you can look at the 180-page fiction-driven Republican budget document, “Fiscal Sanity to Save America.” And even when individual GOP candidates tell you otherwise, the benefit cuts and policy changes that they deny are happening are very much parts of this platform. Truth: Simply, the GOP proposed tax cuts almost entirely benefit the rich and no one else, the infrastructure and environmental reductions slam most of us but diminish regulations and responsibilities to businesses, while most of the remaining budgetary reductions come almost exclusively from elimination or reduction to medical and retirement benefits to almost everyone.

The last time we had a major tax cut for the rich – the 2017 Trump era reduction in corporate taxes – the reduction did not, as pledged, remotely pay for itself. Instead, the deficit cranked up another $2 trillion (and is still rising), creating almost no new, high-paying jobs. Very much the opposite of the job creation of Biden’s infrastructure act.

Writing for the March 31st Los Angeles Times, columnist Michael Hiltzik highlights some of the proposals described in the GOP budget document: “It calls for cuts in federal pay and benefits, repealing Obamacare, and — most important — slashing benefits in Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security… The budget plan would rescind government funding of renewable energy technologies and block EPA rule-making aimed at reducing automobile emissions, a contributor to global warming.

“It would repeal funding for the IRS that improves the agency’s ability to go after rich tax cheats, and cut capital gains tax rates even below the preferential rates enjoyed by investment income. It would impose work requirements on a panoply of assistance programs for low-income Americans… In arguing for the effective repeal of the ACA [Obama’s Affordable Care Act], for instance, the committee asserts that ‘Obamacare has not fulfilled its promise to guarantee plan retainment, affordability, quality of care or availability of doctors.’… Yet for some reason the program is more popular than ever. A record 21.3 million people chose ACA marketplace plans for 2024, up from 8 million when the marketplaces opened in 2014.

“The study also asserts that the ACA ‘has dramatically escalated the unsustainable rise in American healthcare spending.’… Actually, the opposite is true. The growth rate in U.S. healthcare spending has fallen by about one-third since the ACA’s enactment in 2010. Healthcare economists estimated in mid-2023 that medical inflation during the previous year had come to about 0.1% — while inflation for all goods and services came to 3%.

“In the 12 years before the enactment of the ACA, per capita healthcare spending in the U.S. rose by more than 93%. In the 12 years that followed, it rose by about 61% — including a sharp one-time 10% spending spike in the first pandemic year of 2020. That was about twice the annual increase during the previous decade and more than three times the increase in 2021. By any measure, Obamacare has succeeded in flattening the healthcare cost curve.

“That brings us to the Republican Study Committee’s prescriptions for Social Security and the other major benefit programs, Medicare and Medicaid… The committee members grouse about how Social Security has expanded since it was originally signed into law by Franklin Roosevelt in 1935, through ‘the addition of disability benefits, dependents and survivors benefits, and the incorporation of automatic cost-of-living adjustments.’… Predictably, they don’t mention who was responsible for these changes: Disability was added in 1956, under Dwight Eisenhower; cost-of-living adjustments were enacted in 1972, under Richard Nixon, and went into effect in 1975, under Gerald Ford. All three presidents were Republicans.” I know, I know… those are all issues, and who votes for issues these days? Our elections are, for MAGAns anyway, simply the implementation of culture wars mandated by their cult leader.

I’m Peter Dekom, and wouldn’t be nice if we simply stopped hating and voted on issues that do not force so many American citizens to adopt and follow values they abhor?