I think Sam Seder on the Majority Report said it best this week: the core of what the Republicans are doing is not policy, it’s ideology. It’s obvious every time they open their mouths. The policies they are advancing can only be seen as efforts to implement their extremist ideas, regardless of how negatively they affect large swaths of the population. They try to hide behind bogus concern for the well-being and “freedom” of ordinary people and “businesses”, but that’s a thin disguise. Listen to them talk for more than thirty seconds and the real agenda comes through, loud and clear.

Take Speaker Ryan (please). He seems dedicated to souring people on the very idea of insurance. Ryan repeats the claim that 1% of the insured incur 23% of the costs of coverage. Even if his numbers are correct, isn’t that what insurance is supposed to do? The system is based on the notion that everyone doesn’t typically get sick at the same time – everybody pays into the system, and much of those funds are diverted to those who need health care at any given time. Important safety tip: That can be ANYBODY. You may feel great on Wednesday and get a dire diagnosis on Thursday, or get hit by an effing truck. Reality has a way of turning “makers” into “takers”, in Ryan’s parlance.

Another thing our Ayn Rand-admiring Speaker spouts with some frequency is this notion of “rights” without intervention from the state. He claims breezily that we may all have a right to health care, but that doesn’t mean the government should guarantee that right. So … what is this “right” – the right to buy something? By the same token, we all have the right to buy a Mercedes or take a trip to the south of France. Ryan makes it sound as though the government is violating your rights and infringing upon your freedom by, say, providing Medicare when you’re elderly. They MAKE you pay for it, right? That’s force!

I just heard a right-leaning Texas health policy activist on NPR decrying Medicaid expansion because people will be “dragged into it”, as if providing a free health coverage option for people on limited incomes is an attack on their liberty.  Trump’s budget director Mulvaney is justifying their proposed cuts to meals on wheels and after-school nutrition programs by claiming that they are “not showing any results.” On the school nutrition programs, “there’s no evidence they’re helping kids do better in school,” says Mulvaney. Again, from an ideological perspective, this makes perfect sense. Whereas for most sentient human beings it would be enough that we are contributing to the nutrition of the young, the old, the most vulnerable, to these jackals, there has to be some positive, quantifiable value they can take to the bank. Disgusting.

Trump is not the only problem we have, folks. It’s this whole GOP mindset, subscribed to by some Democrats as well, but squarely within the Republican wheelhouse. That’s the real fight.

luv u,

jp