Thom Hartmann asks a question that we should all ask? Why is there so much poverty in a land of plenty? Why is there such disparity in access to medical care? Why do working class people vote to elect a billionaire who is surrounded by other billionaires? Why did they think he had their best interests at heart when he has no heart?
Thom begins:
Welcome to America’s sickest reality show — where families turn to crowdfunding for cancer treatments while billionaires hoard obscene wealth. In no other developed nation do sick children depend on charity to survive, but here, it’s just another episode of our rigged system…
Consider the ubiquitous ad for the company that buys life insurance policies. The senior citizen in the ad says something to the effect of, “We learned that we could sell our policy when a friend did so to pay their medical bills.”
Wait a minute: we live in the richest country in the world, with the richest billionaires in the world, and we have people who must sell their life insurance policies — depriving their middle-class kids of an inheritance — because somebody got sick?
That sure isn’t happening in most European countries, Canada, Costa Rica, Japan, Taiwan, or South Korea.
While every year over a half-million American families are wiped out so badly by medical debt that they must file for bankruptcy and often become homeless, the number of sickness-caused bankruptcies in all those countries combined is zero.
Another ad is for a company that sells “reverse mortgages” that let people strip equity out of their homes to cover living and medical expenses. Tom Sellick is a nice guy and all, but are there really that many seniors who are now destitute and thus must wipe out their largest store of wealth just to retire? And how much worse will this get as Elon Musk guts the Social Security administration?
Then there’s the ad for the Shriner’s hospital for children. One of the kids in the ad says to the camera that she was able to walk “because of people like you!” Here in American we must resort to crowdfunding medical care for children with deformities and birth defects? What the hell?
Why aren’t we all funding cancer cures and help for disabled for kids with our tax dollars? With, at the very least, the tax dollars of America’s billionaires?
Oh, yeah, that’s right: billionaires in America pretty much don’t pay income taxes any more, and haven’t since Reagan.
That ad is often followed by one for colostrum, a milk product that is supposed to help the immune system, with the ad’s pitch-lady saying something like, “There are over 90,000 chemicals in our environment that haven’t been tested for toxicity…”
And, damn, she’s right.
Open the link and finish the article if you want to learn more.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The Reagan administration ushered in the era of the “raw deal” for working families in this country. There was an ideological shift of adopting neoliberalism and trick down economics. It also marked the beginning of the decline of the middle class. The influence of money through lobbying and Citizens United, has made it fairly impossible for significant social benefits like a public option for health care or government sponsored child care, which are the norm in most affluent countries, to ever make to the floor of Congress.
Cagey Dr. OZ seemed to know how to give the right responses at his hearing for his appointment to lead Medicare and Medicaid. He promised rein in abuses in Medicare Advantage. I really do not not believe he has changed his profiteering stripes. He knows that the new scam that is not on too many people’s radar is ACO Reach. We do not have enough scamming data on this program yet, but I believe it will yield the same overpriced results in time as it includes many of the Big Insurance culprits that already cheated us in MA. It is actually more insidious than MA. It is corporate privatization of Medicare from within this government sponsored program.
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Kinda reminds me of those good old days of the Middle Ages when the Monarchies & Clergies lived in comfort & luxury while the peasants starved & suffered. They were told that it must be God’s will & doing that they had nothing, while those in power were protected & granted their wealth by God. Somehow, millions of modern day peasants just accept their lot in life based on promises by their religious leaders of an Afterlife, and promises by Fox Propaganda, along with Right-wing political leaders, that once we get rid of all those “others”, their lives will then get better. It’s an old formula that has worked for hundreds of years, so why not continue with a winning formula to keep those masses in check. Yeah–America is the Greatest Country in the World.
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Why care about research when you are rich and powerful and can always get the very best medical care and medications, as when the malignant narcissist had COVID and he received treatment that no one else could get? See: “Covid and Trump: The president’s healthcare v the average American’s” https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-54441263
Tough luck plebs! Much like with climate change, no doubt they probably think: why should I worry about it if I’m not going to be effected by it? Or who cares about everyone else (even if they are my progeny) and why should I be concerned about what happens to the planet if I’m not going to be here then, while today I can become even richer by raping the earth. For them, it’s ALL about me! Me!! ME!!! And that is disgustingly self-centered, plus grossly pathological.
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See also “Slamming the Climate Change Door” here: https://www.dcreport.org/2025/03/19/slamming-the-climate-change-door/
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BILLIONAIRES LIVING IN CONSTANT FEAR
America’s billionaires who are so willing to allow Trump to become king of America should look closely at their billionaire counterparts in Russia:
Like Russia’s Putin whom Trump so admires and wants to emulate, Trump has made it very clear that anyone who opposes or even criticises him is his enemy and will be punished.
In Russia, the billionaires know what happens to any billionaire who merely falls out of favor with Putin, regardless of not even criticizing him: The billionaire falls out the window…literally.
So, just how much are those Russian billionaires actually enjoying their lives of luxury when they live in constant fear that something that they inadvertently said or did or didn’t do will lead them to an open window in a tall building?
Living in constant fear isn’t enjoyable. It makes life hell.
And that is where American billionaires are heading. That’s what Russian billionaires learned the hard way, as did the billionaires who supported Hitler’s rise to power in Germany.
If American billionaires think that the pesky regulations of a republic are troublesome, they don’t know about the living hell of constant fear — and the open window — that lies ahead for them.
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Thank you to Thom Hartmann for this SO spot-on post.
It crosses my mind frequently. Not so much crowdfunding per se– it’s an appeal to folks who have only a bit to spare, and when it succeeds, it’s heart-warming. But of course it’s a symptom of the failure of our safety nets (especially our backwards, only-OECD-nation for-profit healthcare). What boggles my mind is when I hear JQPublic lauding Gates or some other multi-billionaire for social do-gooding (on the rare occasions they choose to do good). As if US society could survive on the largesse of billionaires.
This is hardly our only symptom of a wealthy society whose rich-poor gap approaches banana republic status. [At present our gini coefficient is right between Haiti’s and Djibouti’s]. The bee in my bonnet on that score right now is sports betting. Culturally speaking, betting is just a notch above drug-peddling. And it’s legal/ socially sanctioned! I remember as a young woman in the late 1970’s (having spent a salubrious summer in MX where radio waves were drenched with lottery solicitations) being alarmed at the sudden growth of legal betting/ lotteries/ casinos in my own blue state, thinking: OMG, we’re going to be just like MX!
However, I think Hartmann is taking a historical shortcut by blaming this all on Citizens-United decision. Just like repealing Glass-Steagall, it was simply putting the official imprimatur on a phenomenon long in the works. Money—like water—runs downhill and deluges everything in its path. The vast shift in wealth from middle/ working classes to upper echelons happened in the wake of govt policy decisions made mainly 1979-1989. Offshoring mfg, deregulating financial & corporate sectors, union-busting, tax cuts/ loopholes for the wealthy. Just one stat illustrates this: the longstanding # of US billionaires [7-12] quadrupled 1985-1989 to 50, and by early-‘90s had doubled again to 99. Today we have over 756 of them.
When you have a glut of wealth at the top, a large proportion goes to lobbying govt/ underwriting election campaigns to keep the wealth-building policies coming.
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