Trump's old pal now hates him â and can bring him down
Dear Marjorie Taylor Greene,
Thank you for standing up against unnecessary war, advocating for Epsteinâs victims, and for defending the spiritual side of Christianity against Trumpâs recent blasphemy.
Our mutual friend Congressman Ro Khanna (who you worked with on the Epstein legislation) reached out to you a few months ago about dropping by on my radio/TV program to have a friendly conversation; I havenât heard back, but figured Iâd reach out this way to suggest some things we could discuss.
Youâre one of the few high-profile Republicans whoâs not only disagreed with Trump on policy but has also clearly seen through his con-man façade of competence and, frankly, sanity. Well done! But letâs go a bit farther and talk policy, including a few areas where we may even agreeâŚ
Healthcare
America spends about twice as much as any other developed country in the world on healthcare, yet we have a lower lifespan and poorer outcomes than any other similar nation. We spend about $14,885 per person per year, while the average among other developed countries is about $5,967 (according to the OECD). Even Mexico, President Sheinbaum announced this week, will have comprehensive free national healthcare (including drugs) within 2 years.
Some of your Republican colleagues will say our poor outcomes are because we have âtoo many Black peopleâ (referencing Prudentialâs Frederick Hoffmanâs old âgenetically inferior Blacksâ story that dominated healthcare and insurance policy in the 1910-1965 era covered in detail in my book on the Hidden History of American Healthcare). Iâve had several conservatives reference that old canard when theyâve come on my show. But thatâs just a racist myth, and the proof is that these numbers hold for poor whites, too; just look at the numbers in overwhelmingly white West Virginia, for example.
As a conservative, Iâd guess youâd be outraged by the billions of our healthcare dollars that are being shoveled into the money bins of the insurance and hospital giants. Your colleague Senator Rick Scott, for example, ran a hospital chain convicted of the largest Medicare fraud in American history at the time and walked away from it with hundreds of millions in his money bin; it financed his run for governor and senator from Florida. âDollar Billâ McGuire, the first CEO of United Healthcare, left with over $1.5 billion from his gig (although he had to return a few hundred million to avoid going to jail for fraud).
The Medicare Advantage scam is costing Americans billions a year and that profit all goes directly to the stockholders and executives of massive insurance companies. And now Trump is inserting for-profit insurance companies into real Medicare in 6 states as an âexperimentâ and Dr. Oz is talking about replacing real Medicare with Advantage plans as the default when people turn 65. Millions of dollars are going into the pockets of politicians of both parties (but mostly Republicans) who support this fleecing of the American people.
If America just did what every other developed country in the world has done, weâd preserve a fortune and save an estimated 68,000 lives and a half-trillion-dollars a year. And, as any EU citizen can tell you, the service will be better! That seems like something a conservative could get behind?
Education
America is the only country in the developed world where a person goes deeply into debt to get an education; an advanced degree can create a debt that takes decades to pay off, and is preventing young people from getting married, buying a home, starting a family, and discouraging would-be entrepreneurs like yourself from starting a small business.
When we gave returning GIs from WWII free college, almost 8 million young men and women not only got free tuition from the 1944 GI Bill but also received a stipend to pay for room, board, and books, as about half of Europeâs countries do today. And the result â the return on our governmentâs investment in those 8 million educations â was substantial.
The best book on that time and subject is Edward Humesâ Over Here: How the GI Bill Transformed the American Dream, summarized by Mary Paulsell for the Columbia Daily Tribune:
â[That] groundbreaking legislation gave our nation 14 Nobel Prize winners, three Supreme Court justices, three presidents, 12 senators, 24 Pulitzer Prize winners, 238,000 teachers, 91,000 scientists, 67,000 doctors, 450,000 engineers, 240,000 accountants, 17,000 journalists, 22,000 dentists and millions of lawyers, nurses, artists, actors, writers, pilots and entrepreneurs.â
When people have an education, they not only raise the competence and vitality of a nation; they also earn more money, which stimulates the economy. Because they earn more, they pay more in taxes, which helps pay back the government for the cost of that education.
In 1952 dollars, the GI Billâs educational benefit cost the nation $7 billion. The increased economic output over the next 40 years that could be traced directly to that educational cost was $35.6 billion, and the extra taxes received from those higher-wage-earners was $12.8 billion.
In other words, the US government invested $7 billion and got a $48.4 billion return on that investment, about a $7 return for every $1 invested.
In addition, that educated workforce made it possible for America to lead the world in innovation, R&D, and new business development for three generations. We invented the transistor, the integrated circuit, the internet, new generations of miracle drugs, sent men to the moon and reshaped science.
Wouldnât any rational conservative agree with former Republican President Eisenhower and his Vice President Richard Nixon that thatâs a good deal for America? I realize the big banks who make billions in profits from all that student debt regularly pour millions into the coffers of your Republican colleagues, but shouldnât Americaâs interest and and that of hard-working Americans come first?
Taxes
When Ronald Reagan came into office in 1981, two-thirds of Americans were in the middle class and could get and stay there with a single paycheck. Today itâs only 43 percent of us who qualify for that, and, to add insult to injury, it takes two paychecks to get there. In large part thatâs because of Republican âtrickle downâ economics.
When Reagan came into office, the top tax rate on the morbidly rich was 74% and corporations 50%. That encouraged wealthy people to make tax-deductible donations to charity and stop taking money out of their companies after the first three million or so a year (in todayâs dollars) when the top rates began to kick in. Billionaires werenât even a thing, mostly, at the time; now we have a guy whoâs about to become a trillionaire.
CEOs and senior managers often lived in the same neighborhoods as their workers, although their homes were a bit spiffier. Just look at old sitcoms from the â50s and â60s and youâll see what I mean. It also encouraged companies to invest their surplus money into R&D, new products and expansion, and better wages and benefits for their workers (all tax-deductions that helped them avoid paying corporate income taxes). Today, instead, since Reagan legalized stock buybacks (it used to be a felony called âstock price manipulationâ), CEOâs recycle their companiesâ money into buybacks to artificially inflate the value of the stock and thus their bonuses.
When Reagan came into office in 1981, the total national debt was about $800 billion â less than one trillion dollars â and had been going down every year since the end of WWII. If you add up the total value of Reagan tax cuts, the GW Bush tax cuts, and both sets of Trump tax cuts â all heavily weighted toward the obscenely rich â youâll discover that the number is well north of the current $38 trillion of our national debt.
In other words, under those three Republican presidents America borrowed â in your name, my name, and our kidsâ and grandkidsâ names â $38 trillion and handed it all to the Musks and Zuckerbergs and Bezos of our country so these âMasters of the Universeâ could compete to see who could build the largest mega-yacht, shoot themselves highest into outer space on penis-shaped rockets, or build the most elaborately outfitted doomsday bunker.
If we went back to the tax rates we had when Reagan came into office, working class people would see a major tax break, the morbidly rich would have to again pay their fair share, and corporations would once again be incentivized to innovate their products and pay their employees enough to revive the middle class.
Wouldnât a reasonable conservative think thatâs a good deal for America? Eisenhower and Nixon certainly did; even Republican President Jerry Ford agreed and kept the top tax rate at 90%.
There are multiple other issues we could discuss and probably agree on. They include the benefits of:
â Building out public transportation like China, Japan, South Korea, and most of Europe have done;
â Cleaning up our air and water to save lives and slow down these increasingly deadly weather disasters (you do believe in science, right?);
â Protecting our public lands from greedy fossil fuel billionaires;
â Passing Republican James Langfordâs immigration legislation to get undocumented people out of the country without brutality while cleaning up our immigration mess going forward;
â Getting off our addiction to fossil fuels and the Middle East;
â And even the âsmall governmentâ idea of letting queer people and non-Christians simply live their lives in peace and quiet.
We can discuss these things or any issue youâd like; you can also talk directly to my listeners and viewers all across the country. Every week members of Congress come on my show for a full hour to take calls from listeners; youâre welcome to do the same, too, if youâd like. Bernie Sanders did that every week for 11 years. Ro Khanna is one of my regulars and has been for years; he can tell you all about it.
Hoping to hear from you.