The NFL draft started last night, in prime time. I’m fascinated, flabbergasted, and horrified by all the ink spilled and money spent on the draft–what a spectacle it’s become! Even before the draft, there are literally thousands of “mock” drafts, including those that attempt to predict all seven rounds of the draft, like this example. It’s insane! Why go through these exercises when you can simply wait for the draft results? I guess articles like this get clicks, but still …
After the obligatory national anthem and a military flyover featuring four helicopters (A flyover? For the draft?), the commissioner got down to business, Somewhere in the neighborhood of 200,000 people were in attendance outside of Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wisconsin. There’s one tradition I do like: lusty boos for the commish (the commissioner). It’s all in good fun.
Anyhow, many people have noted the spectacle of mostly Black players being “selected” by mostly white owners. Echoes of the slave auctions of the past? I don’t go there, since the players selected in the 1st round become instant millionaires — they’re not slaves, obviously — but there’s something to the comparison.
When a player is selected, networks like ABC, ESPN, and the NFL Network show instant video highlights, over which “experts” intone whether the pick was wise or unwise, an overpay or a steal, and so on. Each player has a “tale of the tape” with all the player’s stats, including height, weight, arm length, speed in the 40-yard dash, even wrist size! The coverage is exhaustive—and exhausting, especially if you’re not a fan.
If only America took its wars as seriously as it took NFL football. If only events in Gaza were covered with the same objectivity and attention to detail as the draft. Given the media resources expended on it, you’d think the NFL draft was the lifeblood of America, the linchpin of our democracy. Perhaps it is?
With legalized betting, you can now bet on when a player will be drafted. Again, those odds are carefully calculated and supported with reams of data. NFL owners love all this legal betting—it puts a ton of money in their pockets. Just don’t read all the fine print about how America has more gambling addicts than ever.
Football remains #1 in America (along with the Pentagon, I suppose). At so many colleges and universities, the most richly compensated and often most powerful person is the football coach. A fortunate professor with tenure might make $100,000 a year as the football coach takes home several million dollars. Who says America’s students aren’t learning the right lessons at college?
Everything about major American sports like the NFL has been corporatized and monetized. Despite that, I still enjoy following “my” team, don’t ask me why, even as I marvel at the excess of America’s new national pastime of football. Call it a guilty pleasure, something that gets my mind off atrocities and all the other violent excesses of America. I’m just another member of the hoi polloi in the Colosseum, waiting for my bread and circuses. Next up: the Lions take on the Bears as the Eagles fight the Seahawks. Let the games begin!
Bears against the Lions—Bring it on! (AI-generated image)
I woke to the news that Pope Francis had died at the age of 88. Francis had qualities that I admired, including his lack of pomp and his support of the disadvantaged. As Caitlin Johnstone notes, Francis was an advocate for the Palestinians. He was known as a “liberal” pope, so my guess is that we’ll soon see an old-school conservative elected as the new pope.
Pope Francis (Tiziana Fabi/AFP/Getty Images)
I was raised Catholic, getting confirmed back in 1979, but I’m very much a lapsed one today. I think the Church should allow female priests and should not persist in upholding chastity for the hierarchy. I think the Church should speak out far more strongly against genocidal nuclear weapons and warfare in general. I think the Church should use its great wealth and power to ease the suffering of people around the world. And I know all this is not going to happen in an institution dedicated to its own survival.
There are, of course, many “good” priests, “good” sisters, committed to charity and guided by the teachings of Christ, but those who are bumped upstairs, who become the bishops and cardinals of the Church, are often those who are most committed to the trappings of power. They are the most political, the most worldly, the most vulnerable to vainglory and sin, especially the sin of pride and the lust for power.
Perhaps a new pope will carry on the legacy of Francis, but something tells me that the College of Cardinals is going to coalesce behind a traditionalist, a symbol of orthodoxy. There will be no Vatican III, no fresh opening of the Church, no revolutionary spirit.
After Francis I see regression, not reformation, and it makes me sad to type that.
In “The Matrix,” Agent Smith asks humanity’s hero, Neo, “What good is a phone call if you’re unable to speak?” It’s a powerful scene and perhaps the creepiest in the film.
What good is democracy, America, if you’re unable to speak? If your opposition to genocide in Gaza leads to you being labeled a terrorist and sent away to a place where your voice won’t be heard. If your shouts for peace, for greater fairness, for real change are simply drowned out by the “speech” of those with vastly more money than you, thus vastly bigger and louder megaphones.
Who does Donald Trump listen to, small donors who send him $20 or $200 or Miriam Adelson who gave him $100 million? Who would you listen to if you were Trump? Small wonder he’s Making Israel Great Again (MIGA).
Broadly speaking, Americans don’t want a war with Yemen. They don’t support Israel’s annihilation of Gaza. Yet your wants simply don’t matter. You have no say. Not when billionaires and powerful corporations have already bought “your” president and “your” representatives.
Public funding of elections is absolutely essential to curbing this corruption. Despite what the Supreme Court claims, money isn’t speech, and corporations are not citizens. Money is money, and those with the most money shouldn’t be allowed to use that money to drown out the voices of everyone else.
Oh, in the scene above, you’ll note that Neo is “bugged.” We’re all bugged as well. It’s called a Smart phone.
Remember in February of 2021 when Democrats said they were going to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour? That raise would have lifted nearly a million workers out of poverty while placing Democrats firmly on the side of working-class Americans.
You may recall the “Senate Parliamentarian,” an obscure official, ruled that the pay raise couldn’t be included in the proposed bill, a decision that Democrats said they oh-so-reluctantly respected. And so the federal minimum wage still sits at $7.25 an hour (the last time it was raised was in 2009).
Vice President Kamala Harris, presiding over the Senate, could have simply overruled the Parliamentarian, but she and the Biden administration chose not to.
Think about that. Biden/Harris ran on a platform of raising that wage to $15. Biden himself promised it and promoted it. But when push came to shove, they didn’t shove, nor did they even push. They just caved to their corporate overlords.
A counterfactual: What if the Democrats had done what they’d promised? What if Harris had run in 2024 on a proven record of delivering higher wages to workers? What if she’d said she was going to raise it even higher, say to $20 an hour, when she became president? My guess is that she would have fared far better with workers and may in fact have won the election.
Elections have consequences, Democrats like to say. So too does a broken promise.
America, Land of Preemptive Pardons and Preemptive War
I woke this morning to the news that President Joe Biden has issued preemptive pardons for Dr. Anthony Fauci, retired General Mark Milley, and members of the January 6th Congressional committee. These pardons are intended to shield them from persecution and prosecution by incoming President Donald Trump.
Preemptive pardons: I’m not a legal eagle, but are these in any sense Constitutional?
More and more, U.S. presidents are assuming the powers of popes and kings. A preemptive pardon is a form of absolution in advance, or perhaps a type of indulgence to spring one from the purgatory (or inferno?) of Trump’s wrath. Or perhaps a preemptive pardon is akin to the royal touch: the old belief that monarchs, as God’s representative here on earth, could touch their subjects and heal them.
America used to have an idea and ideal of the president as first citizen, as a public servant accountable to the people through our elected representatives in Congress as well as the courts. Now, it’s the “unitary executive,” the president as commander in chief of us all (not just the military), as supreme leader. It doesn’t bode well as Trump takes the reins today, does it? Expect to be ridden hard, America.
Partisan Democrats may be cheering Biden’s preemptive pardons today, but how about in four years when a lame duck President Trump issues his share of “get out of jail, free” preemptive pardons?
This idea of “preemption” recalls Vice President Dick Cheney and his idea of preemptive war. Basically, it went like this: If there’s a 1% chance a country might attack the United States, that’s all the justification a man like Cheney would need to launch a war (and without a Congressional authorization of the same, mind you). Again, it grants to presidents (and vice presidents like Cheney) the power of monarchs, which isn’t exactly what the Founders of America had in mind when they set up our government.
Preemptive pardons, preemptive war: What next? Preemptive censorship? (I know: we already have that.) Preemptive arrest and incarceration, as in the movie “Minority Report”? We think you may commit this act, this crime, this sin, so we must “preempt” it, and it’s all your fault for making us do this.
Except a Nuclear Apocalypse Would Be Unimaginably Worse
The wildfires in LA are horrific. People are losing everything. Thousands of structures have been consumed by flames. Ash, soot, smoke, poison the air. It’s devastating. Just look at this photo taken from space.
It looks like a nuclear apocalypse. Yet as devastating as the LA fires have been, a nuclear apocalypse would be unimaginably worse. A thousand times worse. A million times worse.
We see something like the wildfires in LA—as bad as they are, they remain on a scale that is comprehensible. We can fathom them. They will eventually be contained.
One atomic bomb like the one used at Hiroshima would be a thousand times worse (and don’t forget the blast wave and radiation as well as the fires). A thermonuclear weapon, a hydrogen bomb or warhead, would be one hundred thousand times worse. Unimaginable. Unfathomable. Unsurvivable.
There’s much to be learned from these wildfires in LA. Much more action needs to be taken to prepare for similar events in the future. Perhaps they might serve as a reminder as well of how much worse the fires could and would be from a man-made inferno in a nuclear war.
America, it’s high time we stopped building more nuclear weapons and started investing in improvements to our infrastructure, to disaster preparedness, to meet the climate-driven catastrophes that we know are coming.
America needs more fire trucks, more fire crews, even something seemingly as simple as more water. We don’t need more infernal (and inferno-producing) nuclear weapons.
“Peace” is a word rarely heard in American discourse. No matter the year, there are wars and rumors of war for America. This is obviously unhealthy for society, for the environment, for everything, an idea caught by a Vietnam War-era slogan, “War is not healthy for children and other living things.”
About all that war is “healthy” for is the continued growth of the military-industrial-congressional complex, the MICIMATT that truly runs much of America. As America’s war budget soars to $900 billion and as America dominates the world’s market in weaponry, accounting for 40% of that deadly trade, acts of violence and extremism continue to rise. The U.S., for example, has provided roughly $200 billion over the last three years to support Ukraine and Israel, most of it in the form of deadly weaponry. This is sold to the American people as a job-creator.
Back in 2021, I wrote about endless war feeding extremism in America for the Eisenhower Media Network. You can read the entire report here; what follows in an excerpt of what I wrote.
Endless War Fosters and Favors Extremism
Written in 2021
Since the attacks of 9/11/2001, America has been at war. A U.S. military vision of global reach and global power morphed into a global war on terror (GWOT). The GWOT led to invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq—wars that were based on lies and which promoted atrocity. Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, the leading issue publicly in America’s decision to invade in 2003. Afghanistan had no direct role in the 9/11 attacks; indeed, 15 of the 19 Al Qaeda terrorists were Saudi nationals. Yet the Afghan War was waged both in the false name of avenging 9/11 and of preventing such attacks in the future.
Both wars cost thousands of American lives killed, tens of thousands grievously wounded, and both failed. Temporary gains secured by U.S. troops at high cost in “surges” in Iraq and Afghanistan proved fragile and reversible, two words used by General David Petraeus himself, and at the time, to qualify them.
Nevertheless, whether these wars were led by Petraeus or a series of otherwise forgettable generals, progress proved elusive even as real money was being squandered (the two wars are estimated to have cost America more than $6.4 trillion by May of 2021). Yet as Army Lieutenant Colonel Paul Yingling wrote in 2007, a private losing a rifle suffers quicker and more adverse punishment than generals who continually lose wars.
America’s wars have proven to be losers, shamefully so, yet no senior leaders have been punished or even demoted. Bewildered troops returning home from these meaningless wars often discovered grim prospects despite slogans of “support our troops” and “20%-off mattress sales” ostensibly held in honor of veterans and their service.
Donald Trump, a reality TV star and failed casino owner, gained popularity and eventually the presidency in part by promising to end America’s wasteful and winless wars overseas. It was a promise he failed to keep. Nevertheless, Trump’s message about wasteful and fruitless wars was noteworthy, demonstrating the domestic impact and blowback of open-ended and disastrous foreign military interventions.
Winless, seemingly endless, and often brutal wars have had a brutalizing impact on the troops who served. A state of constant war, James Madison warned, is corrosive to democracy. Wars without progress, wars without purpose, wars unsupported by the people (Congress has not issued a formal declaration of war since World War II), breed alienation, bitterness, and dismay. They also foster extremism.
Nearly one in five of the Capitol rioters charged for their actions on January 6, 2021 were military veterans. White supremacy is a known and increasing problem in the U.S. military. In response to riots and extremism, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin in February 2021 ordered military units to observe a one-day stand-down to address extremism. Remarkably, troops had to be reminded that attempts to seize seats of power in the U.S. government, as during the Capitol riot, were contrary to their oaths to the Constitution and against the law.
And it’s not just rank-and-file service members who apparently require lessons in civilian primacy. A letter signed by 124 retired generals and admirals warned of Marxism and socialism within the U.S. military and questioned President Joe Biden’s mental and physical fitness to serve as commander-in-chief. The civil-military divide manifested by this letter echoed a similar one in France where right-wing military officers warned of a civilizational struggle within France allegedly being aggravated by Muslim immigration and Islamism.
Extremism within the U.S. military undeniably exists; manipulation by senior leaders spouting big lies remains a serious concern, as do groups such as QAnon and the Oath Keepers that specialize in radicalization via misinformation. Yet the ultimate source of radicalization within the U.S. military, and possibly within wider U.S. society, is war itself.
Wars that are waged without the people’s support, under false pretenses, and with no profit to society other than to America’s military-industrial-congressional complex are conducive to rampant corruption and societal decay.
Endless wars and the deep wounds that come from them have served as an ideal incubator of extremism in America. The first and most vital step in ending extremism, therefore, is to end these undeclared wars and the resentments, violence, and hatred they breed.
On Twitter/X, I stumbled across this useful image that visually captures the U.S. political scene:
The modification I’d make to this illustration is with the caption. It’s not only Republicans who turn everything rightwards—Democrats help too. Consider Kamala Harris’ embrace of Dick and Liz Cheney during her campaign of ill-fortune. Or her embrace of military lethality and her celebration of Israel’s “right” to “defend” itself as it wages genocide in Gaza.
It’s Republicans and Democrats who are turning this country rightwards even as Democrats block any appreciable movement in progressive or “leftist” directions.
Mainstream Democrats will always say they need to do this as allegedly it’s the only way they can win, which is pure BS, as Harris’ defeat recently shows. It’s the old “fake left, run right” tactic, and corporate-friendly Democrats keep using it, if only to keep the money flowing.
No matter. Liberal magazines like The Nation are telling me that Harris lost because of “bigotry,” not because she embraced the Cheneys and left workers behind. I guess President Obama won two terms because of bigotry?
Given this “ratchet effect,” America desperately needs a political revolution, as Bernie Sanders in 2016 was wont to say, as rightist Hillary Clinton ran against Trumpist Donald Trump. (Trump makes populist noises, but his guiding light is self-aggrandizement.)
As Democrats offer rightist candidates like Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris, Republicans give us a plutocratic “man of the people” (never mind the contradiction here) like Trump. Facing that grim “choice,” sensing that Clinton and Harris and Democrats like them are not what they say are, many Americans opt for the scrutable plutocrat and his friends. Elon Musk, anyone?
And thus America’s problems are ratcheted up.
P.S. A hearty “Happy New Years!” to all my readers wherever you are!
Private health insurers make money denying care–not providing it
Luigi Mangione, the young man who shot and killed a senior health insurance executive, is emerging as a folk hero of sorts in America. This requires some explanation for people outside of America.
Luigi Mangione
Most peer countries to the United States have national health care systems. Countries like Britain, Germany, France, Japan, New Zealand, and the like. These national health care systems, run by the government, are not perfect, but overall they are cheaper and produce better results for patients than the American system, where health care is basically wealth care for the rich and privileged.
America primarily has a privatized health care system where profit is the prime directive. (Programs like Medicare* and Medicaid are a public-private partnership and are government-funded; the former focuses on people 65 and older, the latter on the poorest of Americans.) Most Americans get their private health insurance with their job, else they’re required to buy private health insurance on their own nickel. These health insurance plans are expensive and often come with high deductibles and co-pays.
So, for example, when you visit a doctor for a routine appointment, your co-pay is likely between $50 and $100 per visit. If you get seriously sick, break a bone, etc., your health insurance provider may not start paying your bills until a certain yearly deductible is met, which may sit between $5000 and $10,000. Not surprisingly with these deductibles, co-pays, and the like, Americans often declare bankruptcy due to medical bills even when they have health insurance and are in theory “covered.”
A quick Google search reveals that an unsubsidized private health care plan for a family of four in America cost an average of $24,000 a year in 2023. Other figures suggest a cost of roughly $18,000 a year, but it depends on what state you live in as well as your age. The various plans that you can buy are quite complicated and include the aforementioned deductibles, co-pays, and other complexities. Employer-based plans cost less; perhaps in the neighborhood of $6000 to $8000 per year.
Again, health insurers’ #1 priority isn’t to provide health care. It’s to make money for shareholders—and for the senior executives in the industry. So their profit-driven approach to claims is the now infamous “deny, delay, depose (or defend)” strategy. As often as possible, they seek to deny claims outright, forcing sick and desperate people to fight an incomprehensible bureaucracy shrouded in fine-print legalese. Or they seek to delay payment on claims. Or they take Americans to court (“defend and depose”), forcing people to hire lawyers (quite expensive) while aiming for the quickest and cheapest settlement.
For the insurers, this strategy makes all the sense in the world. They are in this business to maximize profits and earnings, not to provide generous health care benefits.
Efforts to create a fairer and more just system for Americans have failed due to political corruption at the highest levels as well as propaganda (remember those rumored “death panels” if the government ran health care). The idea of a national non-profit healthcare system is nothing new; the Truman administration advocated for it after World War II, and various other proposals were floated by LBJ in the 1960s, the Clintons in the 1990s, and even tepidly by the ultimate sellout Barack Obama with his Affordable Care Act, which is unaffordable for many and less than generous with its care. These and similar efforts have failed as Big Pharma, the AMA, health insurers, and other forces have combined to exert tremendous pressure so as to prevent meaningful reforms that would cut into their profits, salaries, and market share.
Basically, the U.S. health wealth care system costs roughly double that of comparable countries with worse outcomes for patients. Again, this isn’t a surprising result, since the health and well-being of patients isn’t the guiding priority. It never has been. The U.S. system is all about producing the highest possible salaries and profits for Big Pharma, for health insurers, for privileged doctors (specialists often make yearly salaries in the high six-figures), and for all the other stakeholders (and shareholders) in the current system.
Here in America, the Hippocratic oath of “first do no harm” in medicine doesn’t apply. Our oath is the Gordon Gekko one of “Greed is good.” It doesn’t matter if people go bankrupt or die as a result. It’s wealth care, not health care, silly!
It’s unlikely the Trump administration will do anything to change this. Its top priority seems to be the expulsion of immigrants. Members of Congress are completely in the pocket of Big Pharma, the health insurers, and powerful medical lobbies, so don’t look for meaningful change there.
That’s why so many Americans, deeply frustrated with an exploitative system of healthwealth care, where costs rise year by year as benefits shrink, sympathize with Luigi Mangione, even if they disagree with his murderous method of expressing his anger and disgust.
Put bleakly, America’s health wealth care system is another way of enriching the few while impoverishing the rest. It is also a form of social control. (Act out, protest—lose your job, your health care, maybe your life.) Only the most revolutionary acts are likely to change this system. That is exactly why the government, the mainstream media, and corporate elites are acting to suppress sympathy for Mangione.
Consider this article by Ken Klippenstein about a mom who, frustrated with her health insurer, repeated “deny-delay-depose” while saying “you people are next” on the phone; she quickly apologized, but not before the police and FBI were called in and charged her with threatening “an act of terrorism.”
Know your place, Americans. Stay supine and obedient or they’ll take away your health insurance. Better yet, they’ll finally give you affordable health care—in prison.
Most people think Medicare is a government program. That’s only partly true. While Congress created Medicare, and continues to develop Medicare coverage and appeal rules, decisions to pay claims are actually made by private companies. The government does not make those decisions. This was one of the compromises made in order to pass Medicare in 1965 – and the public-private partnership continues to date.
Indeed, the entities granting or denying coverage, and those deciding whether or not to pay claims, are mostly private insurance companies. For example, Anthem is the parent company of “National Government Services,” one of the major Medicare claims administrators. Another Medicare administrative contractor, “MAXIMUS,” is a for-profit company that helps state, federal and foreign governments administer programs.
In addition, about 30% of Medicare beneficiaries are enrolled in private “Medicare Advantage” plans. These plans are also run by private companies, mostly within the insurance industry, and they make Medicare initial coverage decisions for their enrollees.
We know that when Medicare is working right and covering necessary care, everyone is content. But, if coverage is denied unfairly… don’t blame the government. It’s probably not “Medicare” that made the decision; it’s most likely a private insurance company that’s paid by Medicare to make coverage decisions.
Thanks to a reader, Sally Moore, for pointing out the public-private nature of Medicare. It’s more complicated than I thought—I should have known better.
Update: A classic cartoon from Tom Tomorrow seems appropriate here:
Liberals at The Nation Applaud Joe Biden for Lying
At The Nation, Elie Mystal has an article, “Of Course Joe Biden Was Right to Pardon His Son.” Mystal’s argument, such as it is, asserts that Republicans are worse than Democrats when it comes to hypocrisy and persecuting their rivals, so Joe Biden was right to shield his son from their partisan efforts to persecute him. In a nutshell, the argument is that Trump’s done worse, plus Biden is a “loving father,” so that makes the pardon justifiable.
He loves his son, Trump is worse, and that’s all you need to know.
It’s a mind-boggling “argument,” which got me to write this short note to the editor:
That Joe Biden was right to pardon Hunter isn’t as questionable as the nature of the pardon given. The pardon is sweeping, covering 11 years, and open-ended, covering just about every conceivable federal crime. It’s likely no accident it begins in 2014, when Hunter started on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company, where he “earned” $1 million a year. The sweeping nature of the pardon suggests that much is being swept under the rug here, especially Hunter’s dealings with Ukraine and China.
More than this, however, is President Biden’s integrity. Time and time again, Joe Biden said he wouldn’t pardon his son under any circumstances. That he trusted the justice system and jury trials. Those assertions now stand revealed as lies.
In his article, Elie Mystal says it’s all about power here. Perhaps he should think about justice and integrity as well.
I can see Joe Biden pardoning Hunter for specific crimes (like firearm charges) that he believes are overdrawn, but an eleven-year blanket pardon that coincides with Hunter’s highly questionable actions in regards to Ukraine? After Biden had sworn, again and again, he was not going to pardon Hunter for anything?
That Elie Mystal, the Nation’s justice expert (!), can applaud Joe Biden here is truly sad. Come on. Claiming that “Trump worse” or that Biden’s a “loving father” is no excuse for anything.
Bracing Views 