Is there any point in noting these same issues again and again? Yes. Because they are evidence of the decline of the US, which most Americans are not noticing, and I think this is important, not so much as this is because where I’ve grown up and lived my life, as for the intellectual issue about how great nations can decline. Many Americans seems not to care. We’re living in history. To ignore it would be irresponsible.
- More on the absurd plan to use Medicaid recipients to pick vegetables;
- Paul Krugman on how disasters like the Texas floods *should* to politicized — that’s what politics is for; accountability;
- Again, immigrants are not parasites, as conservatives think;
- How private prisons are reaping billions;
- The Atlantic on how America has never seen corruption like this.
Washington Post, opinion by Philip Bump, 10 Jul 2025: Want Medicaid coverage? Go pick some vegetables., subtitled “The unworkable plan to replace deported farmworkers with non-working Medicaid recipients.”
Before we assess the feasibility of that idea (spoiler: it is not feasible) or its accuracy (spoiler: it is not accurate), it’s useful to point out that this whole idea of Medicaid recipients somehow mooching off the system is bizarre. Medicaid isn’t a welfare program, it’s a health insurance program. The money being spent on Medicaid recipients isn’t money going to dudes loafing on their couches; it’s money going to doctors treating those dudes for medical conditions.
With a chart showing how Republicans are relatively misinformed on this point, compared to the general population.
Also, 1 in 5 Medicaid recipients identify as “MAGA Republicans.’ Several cool maps, including one showing harvested cropland mostly in the Midwest, while unemployed adult Medicaid recipients are most in (central valley and far north) California.
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Paul Krugman, 10 Jul 2025: Should We Politicize the Texas Flood? Absolutely, subtitled “When it comes to disasters, accountability delayed is accountability denied”
As I’ve said, this is what politics is *for*. To solve problems. To ameliorate future ones.
Whenever natural disaster — like the flash flood that just killed large numbers of people, many of them children, in Texas — strikes, we can count on a quick response from officials, both federal and state, who arguably could or should have done something to avert or minimize the disaster. Namely, there will be self-righteous denunciations of anyone trying to assign responsibility: “Now is not the time to politicize this tragedy.”
In fact, now is exactly the time to put officials on the spot and ask how much responsibility they bear for the horror. Because the reality of America today is that if we don’t make an issue of how this happened within the next few days, nothing will be learned and nothing will change.
OK, you could make a case for putting off hard questions if you believed two things. First, you would have to believe that the relevant officials are well-intentioned and open-minded, that they will make a good faith effort to learn from the disaster. Second, you would have to believe that the news media will stay on the story, as opposed to quickly dropping it in favor of more pressing topics like Zohran Mamdani’s college application.
And you might believe these two things if you’ve spent the past 40 years in suspended animation.
The reality is that the people now on the spot are right-wing hard-liners, who are the opposite of open-minded. Their mindset was perfectly captured by Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, who denounced efforts to politicize the disaster, then suggested that the problem may be that we have too many federal bureaucrats.
It also more or less goes without saying that there’s massive hypocrisy involved. Trump officials are reacting with rage to any suggestion that their policies may have contributed to the Texas disaster, but Trump was quick to make completely false attacks on the Biden administration’s responses to natural disasters on its watch.
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The Bulwark, Jonathan V. Last, 10 Jul 2025: The ‘Parasites’ and the ‘Good Immigrants’, subtitled “Meet more of the worst people in the world.”
Conservatives think immigrants are parasites. This is not true.
First off, the net economic impact of illegal immigrants is positive. Even immigration restrictionists admit that while illegal immigrants consume slightly more in government services than they pay in taxes, those costs are swamped by the economic activity they generate.
Here’s a paper by immigration super-restrictionist Steven Camarota. He claims that undocumented immigrants consume $42b in annual welfare spending against $30b in annual federal tax payments. You can question his numbers if you like—he’s trying to make the best case for getting rid of undocumented immigrants.
But Camarota then admits, “Illegal immigrants do add perhaps $321 billion to the nation’s GDP, but this is not a measure of their tax contributions or the benefits they create for the U.S.-born. Almost all the increase in economic activity goes to the illegal immigrants themselves in the form of wages.”
You can see him trying to wiggle out at the end, as if the wages these workers earn don’t count, since they accrue to the immigrants themselves. But that $321b then gets spent in the economy, consuming goods and services, creating jobs, and generating more taxable activity.
And keep in mind, these numbers are from the guy who is desperate to paint undocumented immigrants as a net negative. If you go to more neutral sources, the economic effects of even illegal immigration look even more positive.
Why is that? Because the illegal population is disproportionately working-age and disproportionately employed.
In other words: The opposite of “takers” and “parasites.”
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Government smaller, privatize everything, and everything will cost more. Because the government is not in the business of making money, but private organizations are. Why don’t small-government conservatives realize this? In a large population, there are many functions to manage the interactions of some 350 million people. And they’re going to be done by someone.
JMG, 10 Jul 2025: Private Prisons To Reap Billions In New ICE Contracts
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The Atlantic, Casey Michel, 10 Jul 2025: America Has Never Seen Corruption Like This, subtitled “Trump’s Qatari jet was just the beginning.”
Because MAGA doesn’t actually believe in law and order. Anything Fearless Leader does is just fine. And they don’t realize what they’re doing.
Virtually every week, the Trump family seems to find a new way to profit from the presidency. The Trump Organization has brokered a growing catalog of real-estate projects with autocratic regimes, including a Trump tower in Saudi Arabia, a Trump hotel in Oman, and a Trump golf club in Vietnam. “We’re the hottest brand in the world right now,” Eric Trump recently proclaimed. In May, Qatar gave the White House a $400 million jet—a gift that looked a lot like a bribe but that Trump had no qualms accepting.
Much more at the link.
