Tidbits – Dec.12 – Reader Comments: Trump Plan – End Citizenship, Mass Deportations; It Was Close Election; Health and Death As Profit Industry – $1.39 Trillion in Profits; Syria – a Caution; New Resource – Elections and Health Policy; Take Action;

Reader Comments: Trump Plan - End Citizenship, Mass Deportations; It Was Close Election; Health and Death as Profit Industry - $1.39 Trillion in Profits; Syria - A Caution; New Resource - Elections and Health Policy; Take Action

Portside
Printer friendly  
Tidbits - Reader Comments, Take Action, Resources, AND cartoons - Dec.12, 2024,Portside

.
Resources:

.

.
 

Pete Hegseth's Mommy Calls Senators  --  Cartoon by Rick McKee

Rick McKee
December 4, 2024
Facebook

 

Syria - A Serious Question (Re: Liberation in Syria Is a Victory Worth Embracing) 
 

I am troubled by the possibility that you will embrace events in Syria as a "victory" in the tone of the piece from New Line Magazine published today. The actions of Israel, the attacks of Turkey, and likely balkanization of the territory with a terrible human cost is something that progressives in the US should be wary of, if not seriously worrying about the US role in what is likely to be a repeat of the disaster in Libya in the not so distant past.

David Barkin

If you like this article, please sign up for Snapshot, Portside's daily summary.

(One summary e-mail a day, you can change anytime, and Portside is always free.)

 

Re: Biden Urged To Act Now As Trump’s Mass Deportation Plan Looms
 

"President Biden must use the power of the pen to protect those seeking sanctuary from the coming deportation machine that will crush the human rights of our immigrant neighbors," said one Amnesty leader.

Chuck Dineen
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

 

Re: Progressives Slam Trump Plan To End Birthright Citizenship
 

"Emboldened by a Supreme Court that would use its power to uphold white supremacy rather than the constitution of our nation, Trump is on a mission to weaken the very soul of our nation," said Rep. Delia Ramirez.

David Benton
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

      =====

Stop using elite terminology. Don't say "birthright".

Use simple everyday language that everyday people understand:

Trump wants to ignore the constitution that says everyone born in the United States is citizen. What is he suggesting as an alternative?

Tom Abinanti

 

Re: Why I’m Voting Against the Military Budget
 

Bernie Sanders explains it all about the great mess of our vast military budget and the pentagon which mismanages it. Can we reduce the war machine? Can we spend the money on what we need: actually affordable housing, good schools, green infrastructure?  How can we elect 51 senators like Bernie? Thanks to Portside for sending this along.

Daniel Millstone
Post on Facebook

 

Re: The Most Billionaires Ever
 

Corruption both politically and economically have caused this disparity. The poor remain as such, the supposed middle class pays the tax burden and the wealthy totally enjoys the fruits of their gain. 

Nicholas Pappas

 

Unconvincing Argument  --  Cartoon by Mike Luckovich

 

Nike Luckovich
December 11, 2024
Atlanta Journal-Constitution

 

Re: Data Suggest R’s Win Streak May Be Short
 

Trump is a level of dumpster fire never seen before in American politics. Losing to him is like the Harlem globetrotters losing to the Washington generals 100 times in a row. I don't care if it was 1 point or 40 points losing to trump should indicate to the democrats that everything they are doing is wrong.

Ben Cupp
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

 

Re: This Was a Very Close Election, Trump Won, but Got Less Than 50% of the Popular Vote, Now Let’s Act Like That and Build on It – Monroe County, Pennsylvania – a Case Study
 

There are dozens and dozens of explanations of the ghastly outcome of the November elections. My ideas are still unclear. Jay Schaffner, via Portside, writes about his experience in North Eastern Pennsylvania. His critiques of the Harris campaign on the  issues and organization are useful, I think. People who might have been Harris voters stayed home by the million. But why did anyone not an ultra-right-wing billionaire vote for Trump? Millions of workers black and white, millions of women, millions of Hispanics did. I feel I need to understand that. 

Daniel Millstone
Post on Facebook

 

Re: Unions Brace Themselves As Trump Prepares to Defang Labor Board

(Posting on Portside Labor)
 

Trump’s NLRB will likely be filled with lawyers from the union-busting world hell-bent on rolling back workers’ gains.

Local 671 Teamsters Union
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

 

AI Astroturf
 

One of the most distressing trends in the wake of Democrats losing the Presidency, House and Senate, having already ceded the Supreme Court; is the number of bot "Mobilizations" suggesting we should get together and vent before hunkering down to a fixed agenda of mobilization for transgender rights, anti-deportation mobilizations. As a distraction from confronting the billionaire tax give away these are harmless past times. 

But it is irksome that there is no interest among the working families wing of the Move On robotics world for consensus building. Trump won a 13% jump among Latino men who are cheerfully willing to see mass deportations. Native Americans are more likely than transgender children to commit suicide. But the focus is adamancy on the key component of supporting cosmetic surgeons' wages. I noticed no interest in women's equity in pay, nor abortion rights In the fixed menu of things Move On thinks we should set our hair on fire about. The group genuinely seems to want to manipulate by disparate cells, building not consensus but only astroturf groups without input into an agenda. Fight Back sloganeering could be straight from the Jan. 6th turnout. The model is disturbing and seems cynically interested in being merely busy accomplishing little but burnish to the Move on billion dollar enterprise of influence peddling.

The most obvious coalition building, it seems to me, could be in curtailing child labor for example. This would be something suburban moms and labor folks and simple decency could coalesce around. Forcing children to work in meat plants (the purpose of the legalizing of child trafficking by "ending u and t visas" per Project 2025) should be a unifying winner for those who feel economically constrained by a labor "market" eroding wage gains. But instead the distraction 'coalition' seems oblivious to how to build out and carve the questioning away from Trump's working class endorsers. 

Instead content to continue the same trajectory (losing elections and eroding public support for progressive ideas) by continuing to fail, refusing to listen to those who do not agree blindly and a strategy of doing the same thing over again, only louder; promising, without sincere expectation, a different result.

Ellen Starbird

 

Re: Mass Protests Force South Korean President To Revoke Shocking Martial Law Declaration After 6 Hours
 

I think, in many ways, what we witnessed in the last day, in the 24-hour period, is extraordinary. It’s an extraordinary example of what Americans must learn from South Korea about how people, ordinary people — it’s not governments or the military that will secure our democracy. It will be people and people power. And I think we have to take the lessons and learn from Dae-Han and other South Koreans that have been organizing under an authoritarian-leaning government for the last several years, as we prepare in 2025.

And I just have to add, I mean, what we witnessed in that six-hour period of a strongman declaring martial law and the reaction by the people and the other elected officials, including members of his own party, going and protesting and vetoing that martial law order — imagine what would have happened on January 6 if the American people actually went, as the MAGA people were rioting and raiding our halls of Congress, and if members of Congress and the people actually showed up and refuted and condemned this action, what difference that would have made and the difference that 2025 would be for this country and for the world.

Mary-Alice Strom
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

 

Re: Google A.I. Agent Aces 15-Day Weather Forecasts
 

Thanks for posting this article.  Deep Mind seems a perfect case for AI as a public utility or, at the least, for Google to pay for the vast store of publicly supported data collection.  Very interesting development.

Thanks again.

Kate Pfordresher

 

Re: Revealed: The Operators Behind Four Major Neo-Nazi X Accounts
 

Anonymity has long been a tactic used by extremists to spread their ideology while avoiding social consequences, from Klansmen hoods to online pseudonyms.

David Berger
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

 

Re: Sabotage as a Tool of Solidarity

(Posting on Portside Labor)
 

As a wise person once told me, the labor movement grew before there was a National labor relations act. Perhaps he was thinking of sabotage.

Georgia Wever

 

Claim Denied  --  Cartoon and Commentary by Rob Rogers

 

I do not condone violence against corporate CEOs, but I also do not condone health care giants that deny claims while raking in billions in profits.

Rob Rogers
December 10, 2024
TinyView

 

Re: Insurer Sets Time Limits on Anesthesia During Surgeries
 

I would like to say this is unbelievable but alas, it is not unbelievable at all.  This is the world we live in.

Silvia Brandon
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

 

$1.39 Trillion in Profits!

 

BIG INSURANCE 2023: Revenues reached $1.39 trillion thanks to taxpayer-funded Medicaid and Medicare Advantage businesses

The seven big for-profit U.S. health insurers, which also control access to prescription drugs, have seen revenues increase by over 345% in the last decade

Wendell Potter
HEALTH CARE un-covered

 

Re: How Health Insurance Became a Boon for Business
 

How do you get this so wrong? It is *not* a "boon for business", it's only a boon for the health insurance industry, and their investors.

In fact, it's vehemently anti-competitive for every other business.

Allow me to prove this: around 2016, I did something no journalist or politician has done... I looked up the figures. Medicaid - younger people - spends around $7300/yr for men, and about $8400/yr on women.

Meanwhile, the last several years before I retired in 2019, my company was spending $12,000/yr per employee, and most of us were adding more.

Tell me any company, other than a health insurance company, would not be happy if they could buy into Medicare for all, and save $4,000 or more per employee.

Get the headline right.

mark roth
Silver Spring, MD

      =====

Pretty good history of our healthcare. One correction is that at the 2008 AFL-CIO Convention under President Richard Trumka, a Medicare For All resolution was passed. National and Local Unions went back home and continued to promote the current system to sell their lower health care costs as selling unions and their own re-elections. Some unions even profit from having their own union health insurance.

Jim Bertolone

 

Re: How UnitedHealth’s Playbook for Limiting Mental Health Coverage Puts Countless Americans’ Treatment at Risk
 

The company is policing mental health care with arbitrary thresholds and cost-driven targets, highlighting a key flaw in the U.S. regulatory structure. The poorest and most vulnerable patients are now most at risk of losing mental health coverage.

Silvia Brandon
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

 

Re: Violence Against Healthcare Workers Is on the Rise – What’s Behind This Social Ill?

(Posting on Portside Labor)
 

21 years as a Nurse and I've been punched, kicked, bitten, slapped, head-butted, scratched, poked, groped and spit on. I've had my fingers squeezed, my arm twisted and been run into and over by wheelchairs. Every time it happened there were ZERO consequences for the patient. I was told by management "It's part of the job. What could YOU have done to prevent this from happening?"

Robert Laite
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

 

Re: Palestinian-American Historian Rashid Khalidi: ‘Israel Has Created a Nightmare Scenario for Itself. The Clock Is Ticking’
 

The story isn't Hamas, religion or terrorism. Rashid Khalidi, the preeminent Palestinian intellectual of our time, is convinced that the Israelis simply don't understand the conflict - living in a 'bubble of false consciousness' 

Shelley Douglass
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

 

Re: The West Bank Villages Wiped Off the Map by Israeli Settler Violence
 

Since October 7, over 50 rural Palestinian communities have been forced to abandon their homes amid intensifying attacks, threats, and harassment by Israeli settlers — almost always with the backing of the army and police.

Michael Henry Starks
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

 

Practically No One  --  Cartoon by Clay Bennett

 

Clay Bennett
December 10, 2024
Chattanooga Times Free Press

 

Slippery Fascist Slope  --  Cartoon by Mike Stanfill

 


 

Mike Stanfill
December 4, 2024
Raging Pencils

Raging Pencils is a thrice-weekly progressive comic
developed and created by Dallas-area illustrator
Mike Stanfill, sometimes known as "Lefty", sometimes not.

Nixon sucked! Reagan sucked! Both Bush's sucked!
Trump BIGLY sucks!
De-suckify your political life and support
Raging Pencils using Patreon. Thank you!

 

Politicians, Power, And The People's Health: US Elections And State Health Outcomes, 2012–2024
 

Nancy Krieger, Soroush Moallef, Jarvis T Chen, Ruchita Balasubramanian, Tori L Cowger, Rita Hamad, Alecia J McGregor, William P Hanage, Loni Philip Tabb, Mary T Bassett

Health Affairs Scholar, Volume 2, Issue 12, December 2024, qxae163,

Our descriptive study examined current associations (2022–2024) between 4 different types of state-level political measures and 8 different state-level health outcomes. The political measures included 2 rarely used in public health research (political ideology of elected representatives based on voting records; trifectas, where 1 party controls the executive and legislative branches) and 2 more commonly used (state policies enacted; voter political lean). The health outcomes spanned the life course: infant mortality, premature mortality (death at age <65), health insurance (adults aged 35–64), vaccination for children and persons aged =65 (flu; COVID-19 booster), maternity care deserts, and food insecurity. For the first 3 outcomes, we also examined trends in associations (2012–2024). Overall, higher state-level political conservatism was associated with worse health outcomes, especially for the measures of political ideology and state trifecta. For example, in 2016, the premature mortality rate in states with Republican vs Democratic trifectas was higher by 55.4 deaths per 100 000 person-years (95% CI: 7.7, 103.1). Their slope of the rate of increase to 2021 was also higher, by 27.0 deaths per 100 000 person-years (95% CI: 24.4, 29.7). These results suggest elections, political ideology, and concentrations of political power matter for population health.

Elections are crucial to democratic governance, with results shaping political priorities, policies, programs, resources, and—often underappreciated—population health.1-10 At issue is who is elected, with what political agendas, both individually and as tied to political party affiliations and governing coalitions. Such statements might seem to be truisms, but US population health research engaged with issues of governance and health has primarily focused on policies proposed or enacted8-13—and also more recently, voter political lean (as spurred by the impact of political polarization on responses to and the harms of the COVID-19 pandemic)14-23—and not on who enacts the policies and their power to do so.1-7,21-25 Consequently, limited US empirical evidence documents links between political ideologies, political power, and population patterns of health and health inequities.1-8,22-25

How and why politics affects population health, including the magnitude of health inequities, is at core an interdisciplinary query

 

TAKE ACTION: The US Labor Movement Calls for a Halt to US Military Aid to Bring a Ceasefire to the Region
 

The US Labor Movement Calls for a Halt to US Military Aid to Bring a Ceasefire to the Region

When the National Labor Network for Ceasefire was formed it was on the basis of agreement to a statement that made a number of core demands:

  • An immediate ceasefire in Gaza between Israel and Hamas.
  • Restoration of basic human rights.
  • Immediate release of hostages taken by Hamas.
  • Unimpeded full access for humanitarian aid.
  • Our president calling for a permanent ceasefire.

In the more than a year since, it has become clear that these demands will never be met so long as the U.S. government continues to provide open-ended military aid to Israel. The unchecked supply of weapons has led to the expansion of the conflict to multiple countries and is drawing the US into a growing regional war.

For this reason, NLNC is issuing a new statement that, in addition to its original demands, calls upon the U.S. government to end all military aid to Israel.

  • There must be a ceasefire in Gaza, and the fundamental rights of people must be
    restored.
  • The hostages taken by Hamas must be immediately released, along with the
    release of Palestinian prisoners of war.
  • To achieve these ends, the U.S. Government must halt military aid to Israel
    immediately.

Ten national unions and more than 250 local and regional labor organizations endorsed the original statement. Together this represents more than half of all union members in the U.S. The labor movement spoke out and its position was widely covered in the media.  

IT IS TIME FOR US TO SPEAK OUT AGAIN!

We urge unions and other labor organizations to endorse this new statement, and encourage their members and allies to also sign on as individuals. Together we can make a powerful statement on behalf of organized labor and help to build the movement to bring this terrible conflict to an end.

Organizations can endorse and individuals can sign onto this new NLNC statement here:

https://laborforceasefire.org

Spread the word!
Please share this announcement
with other union leaders and members.