Let Them Eat Crumbs

Attribution: No Trickle Down by Bill Day, FloridaPolitics.com

Share

Author: patd

“But I don’t want to go among mad people," Alice remarked. "Oh, you can’t help that," said the Cat: "we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad." "How do you know I’m mad?" said Alice. "You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn’t have come here.” ― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

28 thoughts on “Let Them Eat Crumbs”

  1. from Barrons via https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/how-the-tax-bill-would-hurt-america-s-most-vulnerable/ar-AA1EHOAq?ocid=BingNewsSerp

    The Farina family was relieved when their matriarch, Gloria, qualified for Medicaid in 2023 after a grueling application process. The support allows Gloria, 91, to remain at her assisted-living facility near Atlantic City, N.J., where she receives excellent care.
    Gloria and her family worry that proposed Medicaid cuts could force her out of the place she has called home since 2017. Most of her Social Security check and a tiny pension go to the facility; the family kicks in $400 to $500 a month and can’t afford much more.
    “We’ve worked all our lives for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid,” says her son Lou, 65, of West Bradford, Pa. If Gloria had to move in with him or one of his two brothers, they couldn’t provide the same care. “It seems insurmountable from a financial perspective,” he says.
    Millions of Americans may be in a similar predicament. Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security—the fabric of America’s social safety net—are under scrutiny for cost savings by the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress. If some of the Republican proposals go through, critics say, they would undermine core government programs that provide health and financial security to much of the country.
    Medicaid, covering one in five Americans—or more than 70 million people—is the largest near-term target. On Sunday night, House Republicans unveiled $880 billion of proposed cuts primarily from energy and health programs over the next decade, mostly coming from Medicaid.
    Social Security and Medicare are also being targeted as President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans look for fraud and waste, cut back on services, and seek other ways to save billions from the programs.
    Trump has repeatedly promised not to touch benefits for Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. But there may be no way for Republicans to pass their ambitious tax-cutting agenda and leave the three programs unscathed. Combined, they account for nearly half of the federal budget, or around $3 trillion in the 2025 fiscal year. That figure is expected to reach about $5.8 trillion by 2035—accounting for about 55% of the federal budget and 13% of the country’s economic output, which is estimated at $44.3 trillion. Few would argue that measures aren’t needed to slow spending growth, but advocates say there are straightforward—if politically unpopular—ways to do that without compromising benefits.
    Even if benefits aren’t explicitly cut in the budget bill moving through Congress, the programs face “backdoor” cuts that would impose higher costs on retirees and other vulnerable citizens, according to critics like Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.).
    While the programs will survive in some form, belt-tightening is already happening.
    Staffing reductions are working their way through the Social Security Administration, slowing customer service. The administration is also looking for cost savings in broader health spending, including to the federal agency that oversees Meals on Wheels and Medicare enrollment counseling, and funding for the National Institutes of Health, which affects Alzheimer’s and other research.
    Some retirees feel their financial security is under siege. “I wake up and read the newspaper, and it makes me worried,” says Jim Cohen, an octogenarian who recently rallied outside a Social Security office in Manhattan. “Why attack Social Security? It’s the foundation of what little safety net we have in this country.”
    Here’s a look at what’s ahead for Medicaid, Social Security, and Medicare as Republicans downsize the government.
    Medicaid
    Of all three programs, Medicaid faces the most direct threat to benefits. The program, which is jointly funded by the federal government and the states, has emerged as a sticking point in Republicans’ efforts to pass the budget bill, with some GOP lawmakers balking at cuts that would affect care.
    Sunday night’s draft legislation showed how lawmakers plan to achieve cuts, including new work and reporting requirements for certain adults and freezing the medical provider taxes that states use to help finance their share of the Medicaid program, including long-term care.
    […]
    Social Security
    Problems with Social Security are cropping up as the Department of Government Efficiency moves to slash spending within the program that will pay out $1.6 trillion in 2025 to some 70 million Americans. DOGE has laid off personnel, encouraged early retirements, and announced the closure of regional offices. The agency has walked back policies that would reduce phone service for certain transactions, but staffing cuts are making it harder for callers to get through to someone who can help, advisors and advocates report.
    […]
    Medicare
    In its blitz to remake the federal government, the Trump administration has been largely silent on Medicare. Like Social Security, Medicare, which insures 69 million seniors and younger people with certain disabilities, is a politically tough target.
    But there are backdoor ways to reduce benefits. One would be shifting more beneficiaries to Medicare Advantage. Project 2025, the conservative policy handbook that has guided some Trump administration actions, calls for making Medicare Advantage the default enrollment option.
    Run by private insurers, the program imposes more obstacles to care than traditional Medicare, requiring prior authorizations for many common procedures and referrals for specialists; there are also skimpier networks of physicians and specialists, which affect access to care.
    Pushing people to Medicare Advantage may actually cost the government more than insuring retirees through traditional Medicare. The government doled out a projected $83 billion more to private insurers in 2024 than it would have paid under original, fee-for-service Medicare, according to the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, an independent congressional agency. The Trump administration is also increasing payment rates for services to Advantage insurers, hiking them by a projected 5.06% in 2026.
    [continues]


  3. President Trump feels inadequate when he sees an airplane bigger than Air Force One, U.S. taxpayers will spend more than one billion dollars to retrofit the free plane he’s accepting as a gift from Qatar, and people are scared to fly out of Newark Airport after a slew of dangerous air traffic control mishaps.

  4. Nazis killed millions of doctors, actors, authors, people from all the arts, business leaders, and everyone they tagged Juden.
    The Trump regime have killed off the science and research divisions and have starved children in Africa and support genocide guru Netanyahu as he blocks food trucking into Gaza. In Gaza, people can only eat a small bit once a day while a never-ending line of trucks is blockaded in sight of the starving people. Then later in the day, Israel bombs hospitals claiming Hamas is in the basement, while no evidence is in the wreckage.
    Trump pledges allegiance to Israel with huge military gifts but says Iran can never have a nuclear arsenal.
    Peaceniks like me say let’s destroy all nuclear warheads , therefore blowing up this perpetual Sword of Damocles. We are considered wackos.
    And so, thousands of scientists and researchers are in a state of high anxiety, off the payroll, wondering if they will be called back eventually or abandon their callings and look for work elsewhere.
    An old farmer from my childhood days in DeKalb County used to sit around on lunch breaks on hay baling days, lamenting on the youth of the day, wailing “Oh, its a shame, the way it is today.”
    Now I am the old man.
    O—it’s a shame, that we are caught up in this jackpot.

  5. https://www.agingcare.com/articles/filial-responsibility-and-medicaid-197746.htm

    “Filial responsibility” laws (also known as filial support laws or filial piety laws) hold that the adult child (or children) of an impoverished parent has the legal obligation to pay for the necessities of the parent who cannot do so for themselves. The courts need not divide the liability evenly between the children but may simply consider who is more able to pay this debt.

    These laws have not been relied upon for many years because they were less important after Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid were enacted to offer a safety net to seniors. However, such laws have recently been used to attempt to force children to reimburse care providers for their elderly parents’ nursing home bills.

    There are currently 26 states (and Puerto Rico) with some type of filial responsibility laws on the books. *Another source lists 29 states.

    *The MAGAts are going to be surprised when mamaw & papaw need financial help.

    Most folks are not able to provide the same care in their own home, as provided in a 24-hour, skilled nursing facility.

  6. Macron made a speech inviting scientists and academics to to move to France.

  7. https://www.newsweek.com/russian-schools-training-children-shoot-guns-2019554

    In the 2024 through 2025 academic year, one of the propaganda modules included in Russian education is “Military Training. Fundamentals of Military Knowledge,” which prepares children for war. Students in grades eight through 10 will also be sent to training camps, according to analysis by news outlet Agentstvo.

    The stipulation that children aged approximately 14 to 17 attend training camp also comes with a fine that parents who refuse to send them must pay under the charge of “discrediting” the army, according to the Russian outlet Meduza.

    Roman Sheremeta, an economics professor at Case Western Reserve University, Ohio, wrote: “The next generation of russians may be even worse than the current generation. It is a brainwashing machine on steroids. We are witnessing development of a mass psychosis. Here is a recent video from the Teacher’s Day that was celebrated on October 5 in Bryansk, Russia. The younger generation of ruzzians is ready to become the new generation of murderers.

    “It is not just the video that worries me, but Russia’s government actually launched a military-focused curriculum in schools as a part of a broader strategy to prepare the next generation for ‘national defense.’ The program seeks to create a more militarized and security focused society. The new youth strategy which was approved by the government in August 2024 aims to prepare pre-conscription age teenagers mentally and physically for military service. This has very strong similarities with what happened in Nazi Germany before the WW2 [World War II].”

    *Moving eastward might not be a good idea, though. Vlad will not stop at Ukraine. He wants to gather all of the Soviet satellites under one banner.

  9. Back in 1930, preSocial Security, life expectancy in the U.S. was just under fifty-nine years. The following decades saw research, environmental, workplace, and dietary changes move that to a smidge under seventy-nine years, before dropping, in 2020.
    Much of what krasnov, the front end dummy, and the 2025 christian-fascists are destroying is what made America a leader in life longevity. We have been dropping behind due to dragging by the c-f fear mongers. Now it is a free fall as they have everything just right to do it alone.

  11. BB – The chaos and despair play into evangelical end-times thinking. Destruction means their lord is coming back, or they will be swept up in the rapture because they are better than everyone else, or whatever they’ve been spoonfed from birth. It’s the same reason they like authoritarianism. They don’t know how to function outside of a rigidly-structured system.

  12. Anyone wanna start guessing when the false flag event will occur so they can corral everyone? Where? What will it be?

    I think it will happen a week or so before Adolf’s party for waste/fraud/abuse in June.
    Might be power grids being taken down in rotation around the country.

    You never hear anything about the drones (or lights) in the skies over New Jersey anymore. Stopped after the election.

  14. Jamie, if you’re checking in, I’d like to ride River Thames at Pimlico. 🐎

  16. Bluebird in the garden this morning.

    A peacock (hen) in the backyard at noon; she hopped into the hayfield and disappeared.

    Craig – I planted bok choy!

  19. Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida signed a bill into law on Thursday that bans the addition of fluoride to public water supplies, making Florida the second state to prohibit the widespread public health practice.

    https://www.nytimes.com/?

  22. Guess…

    Woke up to a striping error this morning! City staff has been in contact with JeffCo to coordinate repair by the striping vendor. This will be repaired as soon as possible!

    Look for this photo on the next “You Had One Job” reel …

  25. Been on 65 South since they paved it in the ‘ham.

    Most of Virginia and parts of Canada would be stumped.

Comments are closed.