Sen. Booker: "The president himself has said it's the president's responsibility to bring the parties together and get a budget passed…And the president hasn't done that."
— The Bulwark (@thebulwark.com) October 5, 2025 at 4:10 PM
===
Sen. Ruben Gallego: "We know that Senate Republicans want to make a deal. They understand that 24 million of Americans are going to have their premiums doubled starting November 1…Four million Americans are going to lose their healthcare altogether."
— The Bulwark (@thebulwark.com) October 5, 2025 at 1:21 PM
===
Doocy: "So the Democratic position is that illegal immigrants should not have any access to taxpayer-funded health insurance?"
Sen. Mark Kelly: "Federal law is that undocumented individuals do not have access to medicare, medicaid, food stamps, or the ACA. That's the law."— The Bulwark (@thebulwark.com) October 5, 2025 at 3:40 PM
===
Very hard not to conclude that the Dem messaging strategy of focusing on healthcare has been highly successful at shaping public impressions of the shutdown fight so far despite being hated on here to the point that major accounts were actively adopting GOP framing to attack it
===
Oh my god they are going to absolutely annihilate rural america
— Schnorkles O'Bork (@schnorkles.bsky.social) October 5, 2025 at 2:04 PM
… The Social Security Administration evaluates disability claims by considering age, work experience and education to determine if a person can adjust to other types of work. Older applicants, typically over 50, have a better chance of qualifying because age is treated as a limitation in adapting to many jobs.
But now officials are considering eliminating age as a factor entirely or raising the threshold to age 60, according to three people familiar with the plans who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share private discussions…
Jack Smalligan, a senior policy fellow at the Urban Institute and a former Office of Management and Budget official through five administrations, wrote in a recent paper that if the proposed rule reduced eligibility for the disability program by 10 percent, 750,000 fewer people would receive benefits for all or part of the next decade. In addition, 80,000 fewer widows and children would receive benefits because of the loss in eligibility of a spouse or parent. That would lead to $82 billion less paid out in benefits over 10 years, Smalligan estimated.
Smalligan said research has shown that a majority of older Americans who apply for disability benefits don’t get another job. If the rule didn’t consider age as a factor, more older disabled workers would probably start taking early retirement benefits, significantly reducing their monthly benefit amount.
Older workers who claim retirement benefits at age 62 rather than receive Social Security’s disability insurance would receive 30 percent less in benefits for the rest of their lives.
“The criteria already is really tight enough that we’re actually restricting some people we probably should allow,” Smalligan said in an interview…
People familiar with the proposed changes said they are a priority of Russell Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, who sought during Trump’s first term to update the disability rolls through executive action. At the start of Trump’s second term, the White House budget office urged Leland Dudek, the acting commissioner at the time, to pursue rule changes shortly after he took office.
Conservatives have long argued that since Americans are living longer and fewer have jobs that require manual labor, many physically disabled workers could adapt to desk work, broadening their work options and resulting in fewer people being granted disability benefits. Social Security officials prepared to issue a similar rule at the end of the first Trump administration but ran out of time…
Sen. Ron Wyden (Oregon), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, argued that the rule change is just the first step in broader Republican plans to cut Social Security.
“This is Phase One of the Republican campaign to force Americans to work into old age to access their earned Social Security benefits, and represents the largest cut to disability insurance in American history,” Wyden said in a statement to The Post. “Americans with disabilities have worked and paid into Social Security just like everybody else, and they do not deserve the indignity of more bureaucratic water torture to get what they paid for.”…
No ACA plans because premiums are too high, no disability, no food stamps. Oh also we closed all the hospitals.
RIP rurals.— Schnorkles O'Bork (@schnorkles.bsky.social) October 5, 2025 at 2:05 PM
===
Guess where Comer, a wealthy man, gets his healthcare? From the government.
— davidrlurie (@davidrlurie.bsky.social) October 3, 2025 at 10:19 PM
On The Road – Albatrossity – Fall Colors in Flyover Country 2
Baud
Why you hate tax cut financed stock buybacks?
Baud
I don’t know how Dems can possibly compete with the Republicans’ working class focused political agenda.
Baud
Where your student loan payments are going.
Suzanne
I like this framing. It is no coincidence, I am sure, that the places where I have lived or done projects that have GOP government have terrible processes for doing anything. Underfunded and -staffed, confusing and with many Byzantine steps, time-consuming and inefficient. “Bureaucratic water torture” is a good way to put it. WTG, Wyden.
Why do they want to make your healthcare confusing and complicated?!
Baud
I haven’t logged into Blue sky for a little while. But while not surprising, this is still disheartening to read.
columbusqueen
Gee, I guess it’s time for me to climb onto an ice floe & float our to sea. I finally get decent insurance, apply for disability, but get the rug yanked out from under me. I hate this timeline.
Baud
@Suzanne:
The right demands that the things and people they hate be 100% pure. A single person getting a benefit they don’t deserve is a national scandal.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: 😂
Suzanne
The other thing about this….. all those disabled people who are now doing desk work…. what are they doing? Hospital billing? You closed the hospitals! That’s the biggest employer in these places. Much “desk work” requires training or a degree.
Once again, this is part of why I have argued that public universities need to be free or very, very low-cost at every level. You simply cannot expect people to make mid- or late-career changes in the modern economy without training and education.
Princess
@Baud: I didn’t see the adopting GoP framing bit. But I did see a ton of “the Dems may be fighting but they’re fighting wrong.” Mostly saying that the focus on healthcare was too narrow; they should be going after the fascism part. Problem is, a lot of Americans like the fascism bits. But no one wants their healthcare costs to skyrocket. I think your average elected Dem understands the limits of the American voting public better than the voting public seems to.
Baud
@Princess:
It’s funny because I saw a troll on Reddit complaining about Harris talking to Liz Cheney about the fascism part during the campaign.
I’m so old I remember when Dems lost because they didn’t focus on affordability.
Suzanne
@Baud: When I was a full-time project manager, I saw this a lot. Republican-led places would just have stupid rules for no reason.
Like one municipality. They wouldn’t be able to tell you how much the permit application fee would be in advance, because they would calculate it by the number of drawings plus some additional charges that were always poorly explained. So you couldn’t get a check cut in advance and have it be accurate! So, invariably, you get down there, expecting to pay $500 or whatever, but it actually came out to $507.13. So you’re standing there, digging in your pockets for change. And for what purpose? Just to be difficult, to grind the gears just a little more. Charge $525 even, make it easy? Nah.
Baud
@Suzanne:
One of the ways right wing states pay for tax cuts for rich people is to jack up fines and fees.
Baud
PSA for all you corn dog eaters
Suzanne
@Baud: Agreed. But I don’t even mind paying fees that are fair. In Arizona, one of the problems we often ran into was that the fees to the State health department were incredibly low. Like, we would have projects or such large scale that the permitting fees were in the hundreds of thousands of dollars….. but the state fees were under a grand. What was the result of this? The state office that did the plan review only had two people in it, and so projects took months to get approved. I asked why this was, and I was told that the state cared more about fees being low and thus appearing to be “business-friendly” than being actually effective (which is what businesses actually want, BTW).
The result of this, of course, is that the lost time cost many times more than an increase in fees would have cost. My clients would offer to pay ten times more for expedited service. Nope. I had one client who offered to directly fund an additional salary for a plan reviewer. Nope.
Meanwhile, some of the blue states I work in are far more sensible.
Baud
@Suzanne:
Businesses keep falling for it.
Suzanne
@Baud: Normies keep falling for it, too. Nothing is free, as we all know. Low taxes and low fees? Means shit service and shit results.
TONYG
@Suzanne: “Plenty of desk jobs for disabled people without college educations in economically depressed rural areas of red states.”. Are these rural voters really dumb enough to believe this shit?
Baud
Accurate
Suzanne
@TONYG: I remind myself that many people in this country believe that only women do “desk jobs” and therefore they are easy and not real work, and they do not require specialized skills of any kind.
montanareddog
I would have preferred Senator Booker to say: “
The presidentTrump himself has said it’s the president’s responsibility to bring the parties together and get a budget passed…Andthe presidentRussell Vought hasn’t doneno interest in doing that.”My take is that the Dems should be hammering home that Trump is not in charge, just a sundowning figurehead obsessed with his grievances while his goons run amok.
Baud
Dems bring game.
Geminid
I saw this headline for a Politico article:
Michael Whatley, Moore’s principal Republican opponent, raised $5.8 million in the same period.
An item on this morning’s Politico Playbook:
Beah Bayh is the son of Evan Bayh and the grandson of Birch Bayh. He will try to be the first Indiana Democrat to win state office since 2012.
Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear is only a second generation politician. He will visit New Hampshire this week, perhaps because he wants to run for President three years from now. The Pro-Palestinian organization IMEU Policy Project is not rolling out a red carpet though. Insead they’re running ads criticizing Beshear for being overly supportive of Israel.
This Playbook item does not surprise me, but I still think it’s a little weird.
p.a.
@TONYG: saw a youtube (IIRC How Money Works) in part about this. Rising SS disability diagnoses by docs to help these types of people: educationally unqualified for any “desk” job but physically unable (usually back/skeletal issues) to do the grunt jobs requiring standing 8+ hours a day. Often these are rural white areas.
Interesting aside in the video that there was a movement to let cashiers/counter workers use seats or stools, and it was fought and mostly defeated by Ray Kroc because he thought it looked unprofessional.
Baud
Everything is a scam
Geminid
@Suzanne: I think this is one reason many people underestimate White House Chief of Staff Susan Wiles.
Baud
Cute
Ohio Mom
Generally, to get Social Security Disability (SSDI) you have to have worked and paid into Social Security for 40 quarters (one exception to this rule is that a few specific terminal diseases will also let you qualify without the full 40 quarters, why only those diseases, I don’t know).
It’s well known that it’s very, very hard to qualify, even with the requisite 40 quarters and a solid diagnosis. The majority of applicants get turned down, they appeal, they appeal again with an attorney, this can go on for years.
The attorneys work on contingency. If an appeal is successful, Social Security calculates back benefits from the day the poor schlub first applied. It can be a huge lump sum, and the attorney takes a big portion of it.
Once someone makes it through this gauntlet, they can start on Medicare, but only after IIRC, they have been collecting SSDi for two years.
I’m not exactly sure of the point I’m trying to make, this is too early for me. I think I’m saying that the system is already set up to reduce paying out, it is already cruel.
satby
Margaret Sullivan today:
It’s notable that the mainstream press is largely playing its usual “both-sides at fault” game, but Americans nevertheless do understand the reality. This underscores that Big Media is no longer the gatekeeper of news and information.
Baud
Re the OP
Remember that Republicans deliberately hurt white rural folks because that creates resentment that can be directed elsewhere.
Ohio Mom
@p.a.: In many other countries, cashiers are allowed to sit.
satby
That’s the exact path my sister’s disability claim took, and it did take years. She had MS, was not only unable to walk but it also affected her vision, and because her disease course was swift, the denials were stated as due to MS not disabling people “so quickly”. One of the things about SS disability is that those patients often are sicker that their age cohort and die sooner, so over time collect less than they paid in. My sister died 3 years ago at age 66.
p.a.
@Ohio Mom: I’m beginning to see it here in blue New England.
Barbara
@TONYG: They imagine they will be the exception. There are marginal claims for disability but they are hard to discern. I did a lot of disability appeals when I worked for a court. It was eye opening.
They Call Me Noni
@Baud: Wood in the batter??
Suzanne
@Geminid: I think people underestimate a lot of aspects of FFOTUS, including some of his hires. This Administration has been incredibly effective at achieving some of their goals. And by that, of course, I mean destroying things and terrorizing people.
He’s definitely stupid and aging, but he’s shown a long history of getting people to do what he wants and I have seen no slowdown in that.
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone 😊 😊 😊
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
Princess Leia
If someone has a disability that arises in childhood or young adulthood and haven’t worked 10 quarters are they ineligible for any Social Security support? Or say mid twenties onset of schizophrenia, if they’ve only worked 25 quartera, are they completely out of luck?
rikyrah
Bad that this happened. Glad now is Enrollment time for some companies. It’s slapping people in the face- the numbers in Black and White.
They know, this time, last year, what they were paying, and what they are going to be charged now. The numbers are the numbers.
Another Scott
@Baud: Stuart Palmer in Oz is a retired prof. He’s been all over the very big problems in university management there for a while. And housing. And energy policy. And the nuclear subs agreement. And puns. And … (He also skewers the Oz press with their infatuation with the mushroom lady and similar things.)
He keeps an eye on stuff in the US and elsewhere as well.
He’s a small gem who is worth a click and a follow.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Barbara
@Princess Leia: There is an age based sliding scale. But you do have to work at least the minimum to qualify.
Baud
@Another Scott:
Followed. Thanks.
Suzanne
@Ohio Mom:
Cruel, and complicated. Designed to humiliate and continue a cycle of downward mobility. It is monstrous.
Another Scott
@Ohio Mom: +1
People who aren’t in it don’t realize how much waste and cruelty is intentionally built into this system. Similarly with filing private insurance claims, etc., etc.
Vote For Democrats – They’re working to reduce daily stress and aggravation! The other guys intentionally make things worse!!
Hang in there.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Suzanne: I agree. I think its partly wish fulfillment.
Scout211
. . .
Judges today are our guardrails.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Barbara: The sad thing is that not only do they think they will be the exception and keep those benefits, unlike the ‘undeserving’, but they are about to find out just how much their friends and neighbors don’t actually think they deserve those benefits.
This is really what most rural voters want. It will hollow out their communities even more, but it is what they want. We can’t save them from themselves. I deeply feel for the people who will suffer from this and didn’t vote for it. But the rest? Nah.
Suzanne
@Scout211: Those guardrails are taking some heavy impacts right now. I was watching footage of the fire at the judge’s house in South Carolina yesterday. Mindblowing. I’m so glad she and her husband appear to be okay.
She had apparently recently ruled against the FFOTUS Admin. MAGAs don’t seem to hold the same low opinion of political violence when it isn’t Charlie Kirk.
prostratedragon
@columbusqueen:
The Ballad of Narayama
Scout211
Reports stated that some of the family members had injuries because they had to jump out of windows. They had their kids and grandkids with them.
Yes, it is shaky, but the guardrails are still there.
prostratedragon
@Suzanne: In the matter of seizing State voter data.
lowtechcyclist
@p.a.:
However it looks, standing in one place for long periods of time is hard. It’s not a thing that people on disability can do. And fuck Ray Kroc if he’s still alive, and dump a bucket of piss on his grave if he’s not.
Another Scott
@prostratedragon: Some voter roll data is public, for good reasons. It varies by state.
As always these days, 47 and his monsters and enablers are trying to take a public good and break it or use it for nefarious purposes. And we need to fight that.
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Geminid
I saw this item in Oil Price Magazine:
Norway has electrified its ferry fleet and leads the world in adoption of electric cars. These advances were made possible through capital investments from the nation’s $1.9 trillion sovereign wealth fund.
Norwegian aviation authorities hope to get the island flight program up and running by the end of the decade using battery powered planes. They tested one last month as reported by the NYT.
A longer-term goal is converting most of the flights between mainland cities to electric planes. These planes will be larger than those used for the island routes, and will likely be powered by hydrogen fuel cells
Jeffro
Republicans, Democrats, Independents…you KNOW this is vile and wrong to abuse our nation’s military like this:
trump to our nation’s generals and admirals, Oct 3: “…the cities that are run by the radical left Democrats…we’re going to straighten them out one by one. And this is going to be a major part for some of the people in this room. That’s a war too. It’s a war from within”.
trump to our nation’s naval cadets, Oct 5: “we have to take care of this little gnat that’s on our shoulder called the Democrats”.
And every one of us knows full well where this is going, too – unless YOU do something about it, today.
#CallCongress (202) 224-3121
Tell your Congressman (R or D or I) that this is completely unacceptable from a commander-in-chief.
No more partisan speeches to our nation’s soldiers and sailors.
No more abusing their service by putting them in the middle of politics.
NO MORE
jonas
@TONYG: What are you talking about? Plenty of cutting edge, high-tech companies offering excellent pay and benefits are just chomping at the bit to hire a 55-year old former roofer with a GED, bad knees, chronic pain, and untreated PTSD from the Gulf War.
Comer’s comments are just so untethered from reality as to beggar belief. “Just get up off the couch and go get a benefitted white-collar job.” And Democrats are the “out of touch elitists”.
jonas
@Jeffro: Can you imagine if Obama, Biden, or Harris had addressed cadets or military officers and told them their duty is to destroy Republicans? Impeachment proceedings would have been underway 3 seconds later.
Jeffro
@jonas: it’s an issue worth raising, over and over again
It costs a MAGAt nothing to call his or her member of Congress and demand that this stop, now, using that very example
We’re not asking you to impeach him, MAGAts…but we are asking that you do something to stop this obvious abuses.
It’s an abuse of our military, plain and simple. They should NOT be put in the middle of partisan politics.
Suzanne
@jonas: We just got an announcement this morning that we have hired a new receptionist in one of our offices. She’s got 20 years of admin and client-facing experience, including a decade in our industry. This is typical — these jobs take a lot more experience and skill than outsiders often assume. They are not going to inexperienced people.
I have also noted here before that many, many people in the construction industry have degrees. Pretty much every project manager, estimator, superintendent. Even the junior level. The idea that people don’t need disability because they can just go get a white-collar job is…. insane.
ETA: And she’s a notary.
bjacques
When some MAGAt rants about illegal immigrants getting health benefits (or transgender surgery), how about tossing in “how do you like $20 billion of your tax money going to bail out Argentina?”
trnc
Obviously, the SS beneficiary benefits personally from having an income as they become less or un-employable. Less obviously, the benefit of SS to society is freeing up job positions. Making more people have to compete for jobs unnecessarily is short sighted, especially when you’re working hard to unemploy people at the same time.
Soprano2
I don’t know what they think the end game of this is, because his tariffs and dismantling of USAID have destroyed their export markets. Is the U.S. government going to pay them to produce crops at a loss every year? This is one exhibit of the fact that they don’t vote for him because of economics.
Mel
@Baud: This takes “added fillers” to an entirely new level.
Baud
@Jeffro:
@jonas:
A large part of the American public is addicted to hating us.
They can’t be outraged when we are the victims.
marklar
@bjacques: ““how do you like $20 billion of your tax money going to bail out Argentina?”
Friendly amendment…”how do you like $20 billion of your tax money going to bail out Argentina so that they can sell their soybeans to China, requiring an additional $10 billion of your tax dollars to bail out big agriculture?”
Soprano2
@Suzanne: I agree. People already know that it’s hard to get disability benefits, you’re almost always turned down the first time and have to hire an attorney to actually get them. They aren’t going to be thrilled at the thought of making it even harder.
Another data point on the economy and employment – my manager put out an ad for a server last week. He said he got 500 applicants! Two years ago, that would have been 10. That tells you something about the job market even in a place where unemployment is relatively low.
jonas
@Suzanne: You’re absolutely right. The admins where I work are super-smart, organized and experienced and we’re lucky to have them. My response to people who go on about why homeless people don’t just get jobs or why so-and-so is on disability is, ok, smartass. *You* hire them for your business. Good luck with that. Seriously. Tell these asshole senators and reps to set an example by hiring a random, unemployed worker from their state — rather than some Ivy League grad who was in the same frat as them — as a staffer. It’d be an interesting experiment.
Belafon
@Baud: bsky suffers from the same issue that a lot of places do: people whose lives are comfortable enough that they live pretty much only online have major opinions about how impure Democrats are.
Soprano2
@Suzanne: Hospitals and schools seem to be the major employers in many rural areas, and the R’s want to shut down both. This is another exhibit of the fact that they don’t vote for R’s because of the economy.
Belafon
@Suzanne:
Often the school system is, but Republican states are taking money from those schools to give it to the rich in the form of vouchers.
Soprano2
@Suzanne: It’s because they’re so terrified that one undeserving person will accidentally get something they don’t deserve or haven’t earned. Also, they want to make people hate government, and that’s a good way to do it.
Thor Heyerdahl
Belafon
@Ohio Mom: They do at Aldi.
David Collier-Brown
@Geminid:
British Columbia, which also has tons of islands, is doing the same thing. This is from last year: globalnews.ca/news/10567635/canada-first-ever-commercial-electric-flight-bc/
NotMax
First Monday in October.
At the Supreme Court, carpeting vacuumed, windows washed, woodwork and brass polished, fresh beer kegs installed in Kavanaugh’s office.
Peale
@Baud: The fact that there are 4 million pounds of chicken corn dogs to recall – and this is just a fraction of all the chicken corn dogs out there – is amazing, actually. Especially since I don’t think I’ve ever had one. Some subset of people is eating an awful lot of corn dogs but trying to be “healthy”.
Eyeroller
@Another Scott: Many universities have a need for administrators drawn from the faculty who serve for terms of a few years and it’s hard to get people to do it, and often those who want to do it are the ones you don’t really want to be doing it because the rest refuse. Did this guy ever do a stint at that? There are plenty of problems with university administration, but faculty rarely have a perspective on what they actually are.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
Couple of ways democrats could be pushing back on some of the abuses…
OMB places a time value of money of 7% per year. So if I were say Katy Hochul I’d be charging Russ Vogt interest on my State’s withheld transit funding. That’s $18 billion according to news reports, which works out to about $1.2 billion for the year, about $1 billion per month, or about a quarter billion per week.
Also if he illegally fires a bunch of federal workers they’re likely to be reinstated at some point in the future and owed back pay and other compensation. So Congressional Democrats should make it clear they’re going after the parties responsible to recoup as much of that money on behalf of the American taxpayer as they can. Make Russ fear he’ll never have two pennies to rub together for the rest of his miserable life. Russ likes to talk shit so return the favor.
Professor Bigfoot
@Another Scott: Thanks, Other Scott— now followed.
PS— OFTEN enjoy and nod right along with your comments. Carry on!
Soprano2
@rikyrah: Yesterday I looked at the update for next year on hubby’s Medicare Advantage plan. Almost everything is going up. The big red siren for me is that for Tier 3 drugs now he will pay a percentage rather than a flat co-pay. They say the updated tiers won’t be available until October 15th. I’m going to look up his drugs, and then talk to an insurance agent I know who looked at his plan a couple of years ago and said it was pretty good. I’m wondering if he can do better now. One of the prescription calcium supplements he takes is almost $1,000 for a 90 day supply (he doesn’t pay that much, but his pharmacy always puts the “retail price” on the paperwork).
Eyeroller
@Suzanne: It’s a cliche but it’s true — it’s much easier to destroy than to build. One doesn’t really need to be smart or talented to destroy things, just ruthless and determined. It’s particularly effective if you have powerful allies in the groups who are supposed to be resisting the destruction.
princess leia
@Barbara:
Thanks for clarifying!
Soprano2
@lowtechcyclist: True that. I hated marching in place a lot more than just marching when I was in marching band in high school. It’s harder to march in place than to march forward.
Eolirin
@Princess Leia: SSI exists for that. But it’s heavily asset limited so you can never save money unless it’s in sheltered trust or ABLE account.
Another Scott
@Soprano2: Yup.
I’ve been keeping an eye on EV leases.
Electrek.co – From $0 a month: 5 of the best EV lease deals in September
Edmunds’ current list (including non-EVs).
(GMC pickup for $279 a month.)
Hyundai Ioniq 5 or 6 for $199 a month.
Of course, one always has to look carefully at the fine print.
But car companies don’t do deals like these when times are good for them…
Hang in there.
Best wishes,
Scott.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Soprano2: $10 billion is small potatoes. That’s like an insult to the farmers.
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: Yeah my cousin’s husband’s family own a farm in Iowa and one of his siblings has a severely disabled son. They were expecting the government to build a super handicapped accessible addition onto their house and were amazed that the government wouldn’t pay for it. They are Trump supporters but you can’t blame Iowa corn farmers from being surprised that the government won’t give them what they want given all the subsidies they get from Uncle Sam.
@Geminid: The sovereign wealth fund is from their North Sea oil rights so it’s great that they’re electrifying but the funds are coming from fossil fuels. I guess that’s a much better use of those funds that what we’re doing here though which is fuck it lets just keep emitting.
Soprano2
You mean you can’t just hire a 21-year-old with a high school degree, plop them down in front of a phone and a computer, and expect them to immediately do the job? /s/s/s/s/s/ I hate the way so many men (and it’s almost always men) think a job where you answer the phone is easy. I always say to them “Sure, it’s easy to pick up the phone and say “hello”. It’s knowing what to say next that’s hard”. Most of them have never done that job, and if they had to do it for a week they’d be crying hard by the end of it.
frosty
Let me explain: Private healthcare is employer-provided health insurance. Employers are very clever at giving their employees part-time work less than 40 hours so they don’t have to provide health care. Even essential employees. How many hours do you think the “older, disabled, rural, desk-job employees are going to get?”
Also: Where are the desk jobs are there in Rural America? That’s right, in the cities.
martha
@Soprano2: Have you looked at Mark Cuban’s Cost Plus Drugs to see if any of your husband’s prescriptions are available there? You can search for the drugs and see the prices as well.
Honestly, my husband and I pay out of pocket for a few of our prescriptions because the prices are less than our deductible and it’s less hassle than braving CVS.
frosty
Judging from the Cabinet, you’re right. Those desk jobs don’t require and
specializedskills of any kid.Soprano2
@martha: No, I need to check that out, thanks. I like the convenience of having all his prescriptions filled in one place, but if the cost savings was good enough I would switch.
Professor Bigfoot
@Belafon: They do at all the stores I visited in Germany.
Booger
@Soprano2: Pssh. Nobody is paying for servers anymore. Everything is in the cloud, now with AI to boot.
Lyrebird
@Suzanne: yes and also – someone who’s on disability bc of chronic pain and mobility restriction from roof work is NOT likely to be able to take those imaginary jobs anyhow!
(ETA and @p.a.:
brought more good details…)
I once again miss Ozark Hillbilly
Soprano2
@jonas: I get even more detailed. I tell them I own a bar, and I wouldn’t hire someone who has no home address, nowhere to take a shower or brush their teeth, nowhere to wash their clothes, and no way to get to work. How could I employ such a person, especially in a public facing job? I ask them if they would hire such a person. They usually look pretty uncomfortable and change the subject.
Scout211
Sadly, not enough people know this. The myth still lives, at least here, that there are tons of people who get disability payments for alcoholism and they don’t deserve it. When I try to tell them that this is not true, they don’t believe me. I heard this often when I was working in a purple county and now that I live in a red county, it’s even worse. The messaging that “those people” get benefits that they don’t deserve is powerful. Sadly.
Another Scott
@Eyeroller: That’s not his beef.
As I understand it, he’s upset with the government bringing in outside auditors and spending a fortune (and using AI slop in their reports) that punch down on the universities and make them less able to actually do their jobs. And too much of Oz university management that gets in the way and makes things worse. He was in the trenches a long time and sees the real problems.
E.g. he reblooted this and this.
Sure, too often management is a thankless job even when one is trying to do well, and everyone has constraints. But Oz’s university problems seem to go far beyond that.
My take anyway.
FWIW.
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
martha
@Soprano2: I like that your can search for the drugs and see the costs, so you can make a quick decision yeah or nay. They remind you when it’s time for a refill. I think they also deal with insurance, but we haven’t needed that option yet.
Eyeroller
@frosty: We know all this, but right-wingers are convinced to the core that all the people getting Medicaid are lazy minorities who won’t work. They don’t know about or ignore the facts that firstly, private employment does by no means guarantee health coverage, and secondly, a big part of the ACA was intended to extend Medicaid coverage beyond the “poor” and into the lower and even middle middle class. A lot of the public doesn’t even know their “state health exchange” is actually Medicaid–it was intentionally disguised.
p.a.
@Belafon: Aldi is a German company. In Germany there’s Aldi North & Aldi South, one here in the US is Aldi, the other here is Trader Joe’s. I’m too lazy to google which is which.
Soprano2
They believe they are the “truly deserving” who should get everything they want from the government, unlike everyone else who is a leech.
Suzanne
@Soprano2:
Nor can you take a former construction worker or machinist without relevant experience and have them do this job, either.
And it’s because answering the phone and welcoming visitors is about 5% of the actual job. Usually those people are also planning and coordinating in-office events, and they also assist with all of the documentation and tasks that we have….. RFIs, meeting minutes, specifications, submittals, billing, contracts, preparing our work for submission to various agencies. It’s a ton of work. Good admins keep every office functional and are incredibly valuable. These aren’t entry-level jobs where we can just swap people in and out.
bluefoot
“Let’s take people’s insurance, SSDI and let them all starve and die so that billionaires can have more money and power to screw people” should not be a winning strategy, but here we are.
Telling people on SSDI that they need to “get a job”? Even if they could work full time, there are not enough jobs out there right now for the people who are currently looking for work. I’ve had just above entry-level positions where we had 500 applicants in two days, some of which with 15+ years of experience in the industry. And what, 100K government employees will be newly unemployed shortly.
Not that anyone should be surprised that this is the Republican ethos – during COVID they open advocated that the elderly should die so that things could open up. Sociopaths.
oldgold
Judge Karin Immergut, a Trump appointee, has issued a midnight emergency injunction blocking Trump’s boneheaded plan to deploy federalized National Guard troops from California and Texas to Portland to circumvent her earlier order.
Right from the start the DOJ’s piss poor excuse for a lawyer ran rightfully into a buzz saw.
Immergut: You’re an officer of the court. Do you believe this is appropriate way to deal with my order?
Hamilton: I’m not a policy maker.
Immergut: You’re a lawyer?
Eyeroller
@Another Scott: Much of this pressure comes from Boards of Regents or whatever they are called. I think you live in Virginia so you are aware of how governors appoint Board members. This can result in wild swings in expectations for the university. For public universities asshole politicians can control this, whereas for privates it’s asshole rich alums on the boards. Then of course the federal government has a lot of power over funding, not just research funding. Note that the “initiative” “offered” to a list of 9 universities included a demand to freeze tuition for five years.
At the state level, in many states funding per student has not gone down too much in real terms, but the expectations of what a university wlil provide to students has gone up quite a lot in the last few decades, and all that costs money and is unfunded by the state.
A lot of the rest of the pressure comes from donors. Wealthy and uber-wealthy alums want to control the recipients of their largesse. Large donations can actually derail university strategic plans and can also end up costing money over the long term because they’ll fund something but not enough to endow it fully or at all.
And a lot of people, especially faculty, do not understand that most of the endowments are encumbered thanks to the aforementioned wealthy donors.
Marleedog
@They Call Me Noni:
Shouldn’t this be on the baseball thread?⚾
Kathleen
@Princess: I keep hearing that complaint too on the You Tube stuff I used to watch but watch no longer. The Dem health care message strategy has been masterful because it’s cutting through the hatred coming from all of the media (not just right wing). My contempt and hatred (yes, hatred) for pundits on the “left” and “right” and the Rethuglican fascists is at eleventy this morning.
Also, I’m to the point that I’m very suspicious of any pundit or “reporter” who constantly carps on Democrats and what they’re doing “wrong”. I suspect this extreme Democrat Derangement Syndrome is part of a larger propaganda campaign psy op designed to destroy the Democratic Party, the only institution standing between fascism and democracy (except for the courts).
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
trnc
@montanareddog:
I wouldn’t rely on “he said it’s the president’s responsibility” because pointing out the hypocrisy has never gotten us anywhere, but more importantly, it’s not always true. It wasn’t true when Obama was prez, and we don’t need that shit coming back to haunt us.
I think the bigger point is that republicans didn’t include democrats in any negotiations at all, even though we’re half the country, and medical care is too important to everyone for republicans to just blow off.
Ohio Mom
@Princess Leia: They should be eligible for SSI, a Social security program that automatically comes with Medicaid. The monthly benefit this year is not quite $1,000.
There are a couple of caveats: they can have no more than $2,000 in assets (there are ways to shelter assets, such as trusts), and much documentation is required.
The best way to find out details for your loved one is to consult an Elder Care attorney.
They are the ones who know all the ins and outs of Social Security requirements and can set up shelters for assets — you don’t want your loved one’s parents to die in a few years and leave them more than $2,000 in unsheltered assets, they will get kicked off SSI.
The first consultation with an Elder Care attorney is like interviewing contractors for kitchen reno. Just like the contractor listens to your wants and tells you what is possible given your constraints, and gives you an estimate, all for free, so does the attorney.
They will say something like, you will need this type of trust and that will cost $X, but there is no obligation to go with them, you can interview more than one attorney and chose among them.
Ohio Son started on SSI at age 18, then when Ohio Dad retired, he moved to SSDI as an adult disabled child. I don’t know if that will work the same way for your loved one, Social Security is extremely complex and byzantine, with many different programs.
Good luck!
Kathleen
@Baud: Or ignored and mocked the “working class” (subtext “white”).
Princess
@Suzanne: I don’t even think he’s stupid. He’s uncurious and focused entirely on self but he gets way too much of what he wants from other people to be truly stupid. He’s been extraordinarily effective for himself and for others. Underestimating Trump has been a problem for us.
Iron City
@They Call Me Noni: That’s what you get for eating corn dogs. Funnel cakes are better, less wood and ground finer.
Princess
@marklar: I do think that 20 billion dollars of their money going to bail out Argentina is a useful pressure point with a certain kind of independent and even Republican. The “I don’t like Trump but I hate taxes and he’s effective though crude” kind. Even if they like him beating on Black and brown people. , they won’t like this.
Shakti
@columbusqueen: I have nothing but sympathy and empathy. I am so sorry this is happening.
@TONYG: They don’t care. Call it stupidity, call it highly motivated reasoning that feeds denial.
@Suzanne: It’s less about the job than the type of person that think does it. B/c they also think a lot of low wage retail work is easy and not a real job, but venture capitalist is. Or that certain types of jobs are ‘working class’ but others aren’t:
The kicker is that they wouldn’t consider one of my jobs to be real work, a desk job even, even though I woke up with back pain from running around all day, and adjusted testing machines all day, and actually needed special shoes not to be in pain. I was the only person at my level in my section over the age of 30 who didn’t have major back issues. And carpal tunnel system really would fuck up your ability to do many jobs.
And a lot of desk jobs ads had/have requirements like “must be able to lift 50 lb” inexplicably. I never knew if it’s once. Or multiple times. I’m guessing it’s a way to screen out disabled people. Or people who have less upper body strength. Hmm. The process of physically lifting bags for use in the water softener is a major effort for me at 3 or 4 (40 lb bags).
Splitting Image
@Soprano2:
Their political philosophy is based on Calvinism, not anything that could be thought of as economic thought. Government programs, like heaven, belong to the Elect. Guess who decides who are the Elect?
Lyrebird
@Soprano2:
hospitals, schools, …and prisons!!
Thanks for your great example, too.
Ohio Mom
@Belafon: That must be the European influence of Aldi’s being a German company.
Eyeroller
@Princess: There are different kinds of what we might call intelligence. I am certain that Trump is extremely stupid intellectually. But he is ruthless and cunning and without shame. Those go a long way to getting what one wants.
frosty
When I started my last job at the engineering consulting company in 1999 we had admin assistants. By the time I left we had none. Funny, everything you listed there ended up as the project manager’s job… and actually most of it already was when I started.
Suzanne
@Eyeroller: FFOTUS also has a very base, lizard-brain skill for emotional manipulation and “the image”. The tactics of sales, PR, marketing, celebrity. We have long thought that people would see through this. Many do not.
Just putting his name on those stimulus checks was the kind of brazen imagecraft that we think couldn’t possibly work.
gene108
@Baud:
I have heard this explained as the principle difference between liberals and conservatives.
Liberals would rather a 100 people get benefits they might not qualify for rather than deny benefits to those who qualify.
Conservatives would rather make sure no one got benefits to keep any unqualified recipients from receiving benefits.
This can be applied very broadly. Liberals would rather a guilty person escape justice, than see innocent people go to jail. Conservatives would rather have innocent people go to jail, rather than one guilty person escape punishment.
I think it is a very good indicator of where people are regarding the liberal vs. conservative axis.
Soapdish
When it comes to rural America I always think of a quote I saw at LGM:
“That it was a self-inflicted wound makes it no less tragic or deplorable, but also no less self-inflicted.”
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Soprano2: Yup. My cousin’s husband was baffled – he’s like all you do is talk about shrinking the government and then you want it to add an addition onto your house for you? Like can you not see the hypocrisy in that?
He used to be a republican but isn’t anymore – they own a farm in VT but the main source of income is both he and my cousin are MDs so the farm is just a side project.
My other cousin in State College used to be a republican too but round about GWB he changed. He’s still very critical of Democratic messaging and prone to talking about them from a right wing-ish lens. He thought Kamala ran a lackluster campaign and his wife said she didn’t really ever know what Kamala stood for. But they all voted for her because they all know Trump is awful. But it is an issue for Democrats that they can’t seem to lock down educated former Republicans or find messaging that resonates with them. Part of the barrier is certainly some vestigial racial stereotyping – they assume any discussion of government benefits means more handouts to people who don’t want to work (which codes primarily as those people), though my cousin in PA used to moonlight as an auto mechanic and he says all the full timers have someone in the family living off government benefits and the resentment comes from their own family members getting to sit around at home all day while they have to work at the auto shop. But I think they also figure if it’s like that in my WHITE family just think what those inner city black people are getting away with
But if we could find a way to draw those people fully in to the party it would help us, though really where we seem to be bleeding support is from working class people of all stripes and that seems to be how a lot of electorates everywhere are sorting – uneducated are sorting into conservative parties and educated to liberal but if that keeps happening the liberals will be outnumbered everywhere.
gene108
@Suzanne:
We underestimated how pissed off white people are at the changing demographics of this country, their loss of relative power versus other groups, and electing and re-electing a black man to their White House.
Trump pulled what little intellectual veneer Republicans had been trying to package, and showed going hard on racism still wins elections with Republican voters.
RaflW
It occurred to me just now, as the headlong rush to a ruined constitution, a trashed economy and a failed healthcare system all loom: There’s been a fair amount of talk among some reasonably smart and not-clout-chasing folks that Trump is moving too fast on consolidating his powers. That eg. Stephen Miller seems frenzied in his escalating attacks on judges, and we’ll see how the T. Admin reacts to last night’s case blocking the Guard from invading Oregon on Trump’s order.
Couple all that with this: Trump gives a long campaign rally speech to the 800 military top brass, sounding pretty much just Grandpa Walnuts crazy at times (to stone-faced reply, thankfully). He then disappears from public view for a week. And then gives a speech to the Navy Midshipmen where he uses wrong words, looks both juiced out of his gourd (speculation was amphetamines) and like hell ,healthwise.
My new speculation, which I suppose isn’t even new but feels more locked together: The headlong rush, the incompetent speed is because Trump is in much worse health than generally understood. And the top advisors know that no one else, certainly not Vance, can push through what is now being done in Trump’s name. So they have to go for it now, despite many historians and polysci folks saying it’s nuts to consolidate an authoritarian regime while so much is unpopular and before all the power bases are secure.
Again, maybe others here will just be like “yup.” But it seems like potentially a very interesting time ahead if it really is the case that Trump is in seriously ill health. There is no other Republican on the horizon who has the popularity, notoriety, and mythos around them to sustain what is being built right now. It’s a house of cards as it is. JD Vance, Stephen Miller and Russ Vought cannot sustain it if Trump falters and fades from view.
Baud
Some things are too hot to touch.
Shakti
@Soprano2: @frosty:
I’m trying to imagine doing all of that project management work while being constantly interrupted — and that famed multitasking.
Or even any kind of phone medium or heavy job without the project management.
And this is without having ADHD, which a lot of these people think is just a fake disease of hyperactive boys. Male family members who’ve seen how fast I have to move and how much I have do at the same time, could not ever. They get visibly anxious at how fast I do things — because it’s the actual pace of the workplace.
Love that how it seems to be unofficially folded into a lot of job without being listed. Surprise! You’re doing outbound calls!
Suzanne
@gene108: Yea, agree. We underestimated their anger. Some of which is racist and sexist and reactionary, some of which is actually similar to many of our frustrations with capitalism. But that anger needed an outlet, and FFOTUS tapped into that very well. As I said: he’s got a keen sense of how to do that effectively.
The trouble, of course, is that feelings aren’t resolvable with normal political levers. Dems used to have a fair amount of these voters. But lots of these people want to feel their anger is seen and reflected more than they actually want good outcomes. Which brings us to…. this shitshow.
princess leia
@Eolirin:
Oh, Thank you- It is complicated, isn’t it?
JML
@Eyeroller: preach.
Corporate America has off-loaded all of the training programs on colleges and universities (who bought it hook, line & sinker; think about how often you see school brag about how their students graduate “ready to work”) and it’s added substantially to the cost of attendance, because schools have to constantly re-tool their course and equipment needs to meet industry standards.
There are also substantially increased student support needs to get students through successfully (still trying to get “mental health” classified as a basic need, would make it a lot easier to get grant funding) and if you don’t have those services, you will lose students.
Public higher ed also has a massive infrastructure problem, and states have utterly failed to keep up with the maintenance tails for their schools…and don’t even provide anything in terms of resources to take down outdated buildings and shrink the physical footprint. This one is a huge crusher: my system has a $2B deferred maintenance tail; they’ll ask for $150M in HEAPR funding (Historic Education Asset Preservation & Replacement), knowing they need $300M and then be lucky to get $80M. For a system with 37 campuses scattered across the state.
The fiscal cliff is a brutal one, combined with the demographic problem. The MAGA crowd, of course, thinks that the reason there aren’t the same enrollments as 30 years ago is because the schools are “too woke”.
satby
@Suzanne: my daughter-in-law-law is a very good admin with now 15+ years experience, and she makes almost 6 figures a year. Admittedly high end of the pay scale. They hired as assistant for her.
Suzanne
@satby: That doesn’t surprise me at all. Many of the offices I’ve worked in have had senior-level admins who make that much, maybe more. It’s a good career path. What it is not, though, is an easy job where you can put someone with no relevant skills or experience.
satby
@Ohio Mom: it’s because Germans study everything: The real reason Aldi cashiers sit
Ohio Mom
@princess leia: That is why you need an attorney. Though the speciality might be titled Elder Law, not Elder Care. I don’t seem to have every cylinder in sync this morning.
And where does one get names of attorneys, from your peers at your local NAMI chapter. People with chronically mentally ill loved ones trying to navigate the best they can will be your best allies and sources of information.
Princess
@Baud: I guess we know they’re not in the Epstein files.
Another Scott
@gene108:
I think their actions indicate that we shouldn’t confuse their statements for their actual motivations. It’s not one vs many or stopping fraud.
They don’t want to pay unemployment insurance taxes at all, so they scream about “feather-bedders” who don’t want to work and make the benefit levels too low, and too hard to get, for actual people to claim and not end up out on the street.
They don’t want to pay FICA taxes at all, so they scream about “waste, fraud, and abuse” and similarly make benefits difficult to get, subject to delays, and too stingy for people to actually live on.
They don’t want to pay income or estate taxes at all, so scream about “jackbooted thugs” while they gut IRS enforcement and demonize who might actually enforce the tax laws against them.
They don’t want to pay livable wages, so they want to keep unemployment high. And when workers get a tiny bit of market power, then they want the government to step in to crush union organizing. And the MotUs want preferential treatment for their latest rent-seeking tech bubble with the goal of putting drivers and delivery folks (“full self-driving”) and masses of white collar people out of work (“AI”).
Oh, and since the federal government can’t collect enough tax revenue, that obviously means that we have to slash programs and taxes.
I know you know this. We all know this.
It’s infuriating to me that so many others take their default stories as their actual motivations. But that’s the world of politics we have to operate in in the USA.
Something something never give a known liar the benefit of the doubt.
Grr…
[ /rant ]
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
WTFGhost
@Suzanne: It’s not just health care. Because I’m in my late fifties, I had a better chance of winning disability for my invisible disabilities, which recently have left me screaming in agony for days at a time. “There’s always money to be saved through cruelty” seems to be Trump’s primary governing policy.
The Unmitigated Gaul
@Baud: Great Norm Ornstein quote on DSR: “The Right says the Federal Government gives everything to THEM – and we’re paying for it.”
Jager
Off topic, my sis just sent me family pictures from her sister-in-law’s funeral. Teri was a US Air Force Nurse during the Vietnam War. On display at her funeral was Captain Teri Ann’s Vietnam Veteran’s plaque. Nice to see. Teri followed her mom into nursing and was my good brother-in-law’s twin sister.