Destroying all good government from the inside out

Via Kottke, Jess Piper explains how the Magats are destroying good government from the inside out. She uses the plight of Medicare expansion in Missouri as an example: 

Missouri GOP lawmakers opposed Medicaid and Medicaid Expansion. While they couldn’t keep folks from obtaining health insurance by blocking the program outright, they could keep people from qualifying by not answering the phones. And, when people are able to stay on the phone for hours, and finally reach someone to help, that worker is so overwhelmed that application delays still go on for months.

It’s not a new tactic. Defund an agency. Claim the agency doesn’t work. Privatize the agency.

That is the plan with Social Security. And Medicaid. And Medicare. And the Department of Education. And the FAA. And so many more.

We knew this administration would do this and we fight it at the federal level like we’ve fought back at the state level.

It’s a crystal-clear distillation of what is happening. The Magats are gutting nearly every aspect of the federal government from the inside out so that all of the services it used to provide, the tasks it used to accomplish to keep our economy and society healthy and running smoothly, will stop working. No worries! A private company will take over and we will transfer billions of tax dollars into the hands of new and existing oligarchs! Yay!

Or: No worries! We don’t need the EPA (or forest service, or NOAA, or whatever) anymore. It was a failure anyway, and stood in the way of profit for private industry, so we’ll just kill it dead. No problem!

Piper suggests that Missourians understand how to fight this because they’ve already lived through it, but how has that fight at the state level worked out? Not that well when the Magats control all levers of power. The gist of her post is that armchair activism — phone calls, letters, posts on social media — aren’t going to work to stop this. The fight has to be in the streets. 

Why aren’t we out there?

Opposition Opposes

Why don’t elected Democrats just read Josh Marshall and do what he says?

Half the articles I read now are about the Democrats’ horrible position and broken brand. Indeed, the loudest voices arguing something to the contrary of the above are saying that what the Democrats really need to be doing is taking stock of what happened in 2024 and/or repairing their brand. This is wrong, both as a matter of priorities and repair. There is only one issue today in American politics: President Trump’s hacksaw attack on the American Republic. Even if you describe it more favorably, no one questions that. The only available position is opposing it. Championing it is taken. If Democrats aren’t aggressively opposing it, they become irrelevant to the vast majority of voters who don’t actively support President Trump. The central part of a party’s “brand,” to the extent there is such a thing, is whether it is able to defend the people or priorities it champions. If it’s priorities are unpopular it loses doubly: it alienates supporters and it suffers loses since unpopular policies are inherently difficult to defend. DOGE’s spree is packed with 80/20 issues favoring Democrats. It’s open political territory and the only territory available. It may be an overstated critique that Democrats got off track by focusing on priorities that didn’t resonate for ordinary working Americans. But if that’s your theory the current moment is the one you would create in a lab to get back on that track.

 

More to the point I don’t think Democrats should be caring about the Democratic brand right now. Bloody MAGA’s nose, force turnovers and the brand will take care of itself. 

Emphasis added. 

Travel Tips to remember

I don’t remember where I got the link to this list of 50 Years of Travel Tips — it might have been on Kottke.org or something he linked to — but it’s got some great ones! Highlights:

Don’t balk at the spendy price of admission for a museum or performance. It will be a tiny fraction of your trip’s total cost and you invested too much and have come too far to let those relative minor fees stop you from seeing what you came to see.

 

The most significant criteria to use when selecting travel companions is: do they complain or not, even when complaints are justified? No complaining! Complaints are for the debriefing afterwards when travel is over.

 

Sketchy travel plans and travel to sketchy places are ok. Take a chance. If things fall apart, your vacation has just turned into an adventure. Perfection is for watches. Trips should be imperfect. There are no stories if nothing goes amiss. 

 

You can get an inexpensive and authentic meal near a famous tourist spot simply by walking at least five blocks away from the epicenter. 

 

If you are starting out and have seen little of the world, you can double the time you spend traveling by heading to the places it is cheapest to travel. If you stay at the budget end, you can travel twice as long for half price. Check out The Cheapest Destination Blog. In my experience, these off-beat destinations are usually worth visiting.

 

The best souvenirs from a trip are your memories of the trip so find a way to memorialize them; keep a journal, send updates to a friend, take a sketchbook, post some observations, make a photo book. 

 

When asking someone for a restaurant recommendation, don’t ask them where is a good place you should eat; ask them where they eat. Where did they eat the last time they ate out?

The authors also have a newsletter with regular travel tips and brief discussions of travel topics: Nomadico. Unfortunately, they host it on Substack, but there’s an RSS feed so that’s something.