I’ve lost a number of subscribers with this piece by calling out Democrats for decades of elitist neglect of the working people of America.
And OC that’s a far cry from being fascist! There’s a reason that I consider the Democratic Party to be easily viable given that we make Mamdani the pattern instead of the feckless corporate centrism that we’ve seen since ‘92 or so.
Anyway, have a read for yourself to see if I went too far in my criticism of the left.
I apologize for being short and pissy in my last post. I'm so tired of this, so tired of ICE, et al, getting away with MURDER, but it's not called that. I'm crying for the young man, a nurse, shot for holding a cell phone. 37 years old, his life just getting started, and .... whoops, I'm sorry, we took his life by mistake, because he had the audacity to be out in the street OF HIS TOWN. I will honor him tonight, with my tears, and Monday, I'll call those 7 Democrats who voted to fund ICE.
As of today, now at least two (1 more) protesters have been shot dead on the spot in Minneapolis. (Has the woman filming disappeared into hands of ICE?) Is this directly commanded by Stephen Miller?
Is it time to shut down the country? Seven Democrats incapable of governing through a crisis, can’t imagine a whole country shutting down by necessity by the PEOPLE themselves, after Congress cedes power to Miller.
I responded to another post while you were freezing your ass (and fingers) off, and ministers were kneeling in prayer in the snow, being arrested, for PRAYING. And NOW, another killing in Minneapolis. THREE shootings, TWO MURDERS, the second, today, Pretti, a 37yo intensive care nurse, U.S. citizen, holding a cell phone, NOT a gun, as ICE AGAIN, erroneously reported. Whoops! This is not about immigration enforcement, but about striking fear into a populace, for using their free speech right. my god, this must be stopped NOW. The 7 Dems who voted for ICE funding, should be replaced with Dems or independents, with conscience and guts.
By the by, I am a retired critical care R.N. Besides losing his life for no reason, ... we NEED good nurses in our country. I'm so pissed at the inattentiveness of those "in charge."
I write from Australia - having a friend across the pond who lives a block away from where you are and these traumatic scenes - yes - the immense fear is being felt by everyone and YESSSS the response from a community level has been amazing - listening to the stories of people aiding each other has truly revealed their resilience and determination to not be torn apart and to in fact find strength together
This is what people mean when they say “fascism doesn’t arrive alone.” It arrives with funding votes, quiet absences, and Democrats who think brutality can be managed instead of stopped. Minnesota isn’t radical here. It’s awake. And anyone still calling this a “messaging problem” is confessing they’ve chosen comfort over courage.
Well, I guess I called at a busy time. The only response I got from a person (not voicemail, where I would be talking to myself) was at Suozzi's office. His receptionist said he had released a statement, which she offered to read to me. I felt a conversation was better. The bottom lines are that ICE is fully funded no matter how Congress voted yesterday, and the Congressman is in some sense always getting feedback from his district in NY. I was asked to assume that the Congressman takes into account the feedback. So when I asked if the Congressman would wind up calculating that "I'm the Congressman, and you're not, so I make the decision," his receptionist proposed that his approach is nowhere near that level of harshness and lack of concern. The bottom line was that the Congressman felt that this issue was not the right one to use to "send a message," especially since the money had already been earmarked. I would have had to talk to the Congressman himself, and the other six, to see if the pressure he calculated not to apply would, in his opinion, have led to any change in approach from the "TACO" White House.
David, I wondered the same thing myself, about whether or not I should accept the story. I accepted it under the circumstance, because I've heard before that the money was already allocated. If you want to know if I'm sure that's true, and I personally know it for a fact, no, I don't.
With the level and extent of fury, I do think many Congressional Democrats will have a reflex to make a vote that they think will "send a message." Of course, even if that's their goal, the message will be ignored. The clown and those who do the thinking for him have a remarkable ability not to care about Americans, the law, and propriety.
I should add that many Democrats were outraged when House Democrats agreed to re-open government a month or two ago. I disagreed with those who complained. At that point, Democrats in a range of places had perhaps unexpectedly won elections, and polls were showing increasing anger at Republicans. (Some of whom have gotten the message, and resigned or declared that they're not running for re-election.) What Democrats did, by agreeing to reopen government, was not continue to demand medical access, in exchange for all other government services being revived. My personal reasoning (I'm a medical doctor) was that the vast majority of Americans don't commonly go to the doctor, or rely on extended ACA benefits. But all of us eat every day. So if the choice was that the government won't make medical access easy, or SNAP benefits stay suspended, and considering that recent elections had already shown a very positive Democratic trend, then I thought closing government to make a point had originally been the right thing to do, and re-opening it to provide essential services was then the right thing to do. As I said, I did not speak to Suozzi, and I don't know if he would have been honest with me, so I just went with the story his receptionist told me. As I also said, it tracked with other things I've read about ICE funding already having been fixed.
I live in south Florida, in the Miami area. I don't live on Long Island. So I couldn't challenge him if I wanted to.
Wow, not to be unkind, but it may be the inevitable result of what I write next. The staggering implications of what you’re saying is that lots of people more educated and alot smarter than me don’t understand the metastatic effect of the price of medical care on EVERYTHING U.S. residents do and everything U.S. residents buy. EVERYTHING. EVERYONE. Not just people affected by ACA subsidies. Let me guess, like the schooling of other highly trained professionals, medical school teaches prospective doctors nothing about how to run a business? In my town this year, our library taxes increased sharply, bizarrely, because… upcoming medical insurance premiums for library employees cost 133% of what premiums cost last year, all other factors affecting the cost being equal. Do you know the funds businesses and corporations lay out for employees’ salaries are about 65%/35%-dollars to paychecks vs. dollars to ”health” insurance company premiums? I’m sure I don’t have to point out that a company which spends $49000 per payroll into paychecks, and $26000 for those same employees for ”health” insurance premiums, could put more into the PAYCHECKS and less into premiums, without affecting the business’s bottom line.* Imagine how much more money every individual American employee might have? But health insurance companies are bankrupting the entire United States instead, if they think that money they are taking is an inexhaustible source of revenue. Everybody would have more spending money, the employees, the business, or both. Little businesses understandably can’t afford premiums. Their employees and independent contractors must rely on ACA subsidies because the premiums are so disproportionate to employee income. Not because they’re ”poor people” relying on handouts. It’s because health insurance companies are putting over on Americans the most colossal fraud that has ever happened, in the 250 history of the United States.
I just assumed everyone in Congress knew this, and was relying on Americans to not know. Am I right?
Bernadeen, you are absolutely right, but not complete. I have had this discussion many times over the course of many years. And it's too long a discussion to complete here. So let me ask you to keep in mind the two most fundamental FACTS: 1) we spend far more on the American medical industry than real countries spend on actual health care, and 2) our results are about the worst of any civilized country. It would be easy to dismiss the cost problem as due simply to overcharging, which is rampant. But that doesn't explain our poor results. The American medical industry is its own disease. The point I was making with David Hurwitz is that if we're going to stress out Americans' food access in order to provide criminally overpriced, and inadequate, medical access, we can't equate the two. As I said to David, essentially none of us need very frequent medical access. All of us need food access, and we need it every day. Under the current "government," we have a caricature of the problems.
As for whether or not medical students learn how to run a business, no, they don't. They figure it out themselves later, depending on what their goals are. And if their goal is to amass money, they'll run their business with an eye toward that goal. We don't have many doctors whose goal is to get patients better quickly and at the lowest expense. We used to have more of them like that, but I will also tell you that the commonest cause of personal bankruptcy in this country is now, and always has been, an inability to pay medical bills.
We don't have "health care" in this country. We have a medical industry the job of which is to move money from wherever it is to providers, other vendors, and insurance companies.
Your reasoning is good but I think it was a mistake for Democrats to agree to reopen the federal government back in November.
Because a majority of Americans, especially the base of the Democratic Party, wanted Democrats to continue fighting for the extended ACA subsidies, even though only about 22 million or so Americans actually benefited from the extended subsidies.
Also, I fear that the Democrats’ cave-in is going to cause more suffering for the American people over the long term, because any capitulation to Trump, much like with all bullies and tyrants, may have only emboldened him to further abuse his power.
The time for Democrats to cave in this instance, IMHO, would have been when public opinion polls showed that a majority of Americans wanted them to. That way you hold out for as long as possible and, in doing so, inflict maximum political damage on the Trump regime and Republicans in Congress for needlessly stripping 22 million Americans of their health care.
Sometimes the right thing to do is to stand on principle, especially when it is also the popular thing to do.
David, I completely accept being disagreed with. It's one of those "agree to disagree" situations. I eat every day. You probably do, too. Although even the most esteemed pollsters say polls are unreliable, we can suppose that "a majority of Americans" wanted the shutdown to continue. We have no information as to who those Americans were, and I'm not "generous with other people's money" (agree to something that disadvantages someone who's not me).
The ACA was already faulty, and even people supposedly covered didn't really have medical access: they had deductibles and co-pays they couldn't afford, because the payment system was left in the hands of private insurance companies. That was one of Obama's mistakes.
IF it's true that ICE is funded no matter what Dems did (Dems were outnumbered in Congress, so they were always going to lose), then our biggest problem is that we do not have an active "Second Amendment," and we cannot stop federal over-reach. Seven more Dem votes was still a minority, and we still lost. And as I said, the clown doesn't care what Congress, Dems, or anyone thinks.
Excellent points, Dr. Fred. But, then what is your strategy to combat this fascist onslaught by the Trump regime? I’m open to any ideas by you or anyone else.
It's very hard to say. At this point, I don't understand why Congress doesn't impeach and convict.
The only other strategem that comes to mind, considering the Republican majority at this moment, is to agitate for a fully reinstated and functional "Second Amendment." The Founding Fathers were thinking of the past when they passed it, and no one saw the clown coming. Now we need it, and this is the reason. Although the time it would take to arm and train militias is no doubt not less than the time between now and November, and then January. So I think the clown gets checked either way.
I’m tired of the democrats not being able to fight trump. Of course I would never vote republican but I don’t know anymore that I can vote for a weak democratic party either 🤷🏻♀️ we are alone in this one.
Thx for keeping us informed. It’s one thing to reading about mass atrocities in history, but it doesn’t capture the horror of witnessing so many people/corporations who put money & power over basic decency. For everyone pushing back against this, stay strong!
I’ve lost a number of subscribers with this piece by calling out Democrats for decades of elitist neglect of the working people of America.
And OC that’s a far cry from being fascist! There’s a reason that I consider the Democratic Party to be easily viable given that we make Mamdani the pattern instead of the feckless corporate centrism that we’ve seen since ‘92 or so.
Anyway, have a read for yourself to see if I went too far in my criticism of the left.
https://open.substack.com/pub/noelkeith/p/tranquil-piece-of-mind-v-4-no-5-multigenerationa?r=4c7psw&utm_medium=ios&shareImageVariant=title
That isn’t the truth
I will call these democrats
Thank you so much !!!!
I apologize for being short and pissy in my last post. I'm so tired of this, so tired of ICE, et al, getting away with MURDER, but it's not called that. I'm crying for the young man, a nurse, shot for holding a cell phone. 37 years old, his life just getting started, and .... whoops, I'm sorry, we took his life by mistake, because he had the audacity to be out in the street OF HIS TOWN. I will honor him tonight, with my tears, and Monday, I'll call those 7 Democrats who voted to fund ICE.
As of today, now at least two (1 more) protesters have been shot dead on the spot in Minneapolis. (Has the woman filming disappeared into hands of ICE?) Is this directly commanded by Stephen Miller?
Is it time to shut down the country? Seven Democrats incapable of governing through a crisis, can’t imagine a whole country shutting down by necessity by the PEOPLE themselves, after Congress cedes power to Miller.
I responded to another post while you were freezing your ass (and fingers) off, and ministers were kneeling in prayer in the snow, being arrested, for PRAYING. And NOW, another killing in Minneapolis. THREE shootings, TWO MURDERS, the second, today, Pretti, a 37yo intensive care nurse, U.S. citizen, holding a cell phone, NOT a gun, as ICE AGAIN, erroneously reported. Whoops! This is not about immigration enforcement, but about striking fear into a populace, for using their free speech right. my god, this must be stopped NOW. The 7 Dems who voted for ICE funding, should be replaced with Dems or independents, with conscience and guts.
By the by, I am a retired critical care R.N. Besides losing his life for no reason, ... we NEED good nurses in our country. I'm so pissed at the inattentiveness of those "in charge."
Must stop voting for AIPAC fuckppets
yup
There is a special help for those agents that are using those poor children. Who are these monsters?
I write from Australia - having a friend across the pond who lives a block away from where you are and these traumatic scenes - yes - the immense fear is being felt by everyone and YESSSS the response from a community level has been amazing - listening to the stories of people aiding each other has truly revealed their resilience and determination to not be torn apart and to in fact find strength together
Thank you for being there and bringing us updates on the ground!
This is what people mean when they say “fascism doesn’t arrive alone.” It arrives with funding votes, quiet absences, and Democrats who think brutality can be managed instead of stopped. Minnesota isn’t radical here. It’s awake. And anyone still calling this a “messaging problem” is confessing they’ve chosen comfort over courage.
Well, I guess I called at a busy time. The only response I got from a person (not voicemail, where I would be talking to myself) was at Suozzi's office. His receptionist said he had released a statement, which she offered to read to me. I felt a conversation was better. The bottom lines are that ICE is fully funded no matter how Congress voted yesterday, and the Congressman is in some sense always getting feedback from his district in NY. I was asked to assume that the Congressman takes into account the feedback. So when I asked if the Congressman would wind up calculating that "I'm the Congressman, and you're not, so I make the decision," his receptionist proposed that his approach is nowhere near that level of harshness and lack of concern. The bottom line was that the Congressman felt that this issue was not the right one to use to "send a message," especially since the money had already been earmarked. I would have had to talk to the Congressman himself, and the other six, to see if the pressure he calculated not to apply would, in his opinion, have led to any change in approach from the "TACO" White House.
Fred,
I hope you don’t buy that bullshit. Is there anyone challenging him in the 2026 NY Democratic primary election for Congress?
Maybe you should; your primary is not until June 23. You seem intelligent and decent enough.
“The Island” is not that right-wing.
David, I wondered the same thing myself, about whether or not I should accept the story. I accepted it under the circumstance, because I've heard before that the money was already allocated. If you want to know if I'm sure that's true, and I personally know it for a fact, no, I don't.
With the level and extent of fury, I do think many Congressional Democrats will have a reflex to make a vote that they think will "send a message." Of course, even if that's their goal, the message will be ignored. The clown and those who do the thinking for him have a remarkable ability not to care about Americans, the law, and propriety.
I should add that many Democrats were outraged when House Democrats agreed to re-open government a month or two ago. I disagreed with those who complained. At that point, Democrats in a range of places had perhaps unexpectedly won elections, and polls were showing increasing anger at Republicans. (Some of whom have gotten the message, and resigned or declared that they're not running for re-election.) What Democrats did, by agreeing to reopen government, was not continue to demand medical access, in exchange for all other government services being revived. My personal reasoning (I'm a medical doctor) was that the vast majority of Americans don't commonly go to the doctor, or rely on extended ACA benefits. But all of us eat every day. So if the choice was that the government won't make medical access easy, or SNAP benefits stay suspended, and considering that recent elections had already shown a very positive Democratic trend, then I thought closing government to make a point had originally been the right thing to do, and re-opening it to provide essential services was then the right thing to do. As I said, I did not speak to Suozzi, and I don't know if he would have been honest with me, so I just went with the story his receptionist told me. As I also said, it tracked with other things I've read about ICE funding already having been fixed.
I live in south Florida, in the Miami area. I don't live on Long Island. So I couldn't challenge him if I wanted to.
Wow, not to be unkind, but it may be the inevitable result of what I write next. The staggering implications of what you’re saying is that lots of people more educated and alot smarter than me don’t understand the metastatic effect of the price of medical care on EVERYTHING U.S. residents do and everything U.S. residents buy. EVERYTHING. EVERYONE. Not just people affected by ACA subsidies. Let me guess, like the schooling of other highly trained professionals, medical school teaches prospective doctors nothing about how to run a business? In my town this year, our library taxes increased sharply, bizarrely, because… upcoming medical insurance premiums for library employees cost 133% of what premiums cost last year, all other factors affecting the cost being equal. Do you know the funds businesses and corporations lay out for employees’ salaries are about 65%/35%-dollars to paychecks vs. dollars to ”health” insurance company premiums? I’m sure I don’t have to point out that a company which spends $49000 per payroll into paychecks, and $26000 for those same employees for ”health” insurance premiums, could put more into the PAYCHECKS and less into premiums, without affecting the business’s bottom line.* Imagine how much more money every individual American employee might have? But health insurance companies are bankrupting the entire United States instead, if they think that money they are taking is an inexhaustible source of revenue. Everybody would have more spending money, the employees, the business, or both. Little businesses understandably can’t afford premiums. Their employees and independent contractors must rely on ACA subsidies because the premiums are so disproportionate to employee income. Not because they’re ”poor people” relying on handouts. It’s because health insurance companies are putting over on Americans the most colossal fraud that has ever happened, in the 250 history of the United States.
I just assumed everyone in Congress knew this, and was relying on Americans to not know. Am I right?
Bernadeen, you are absolutely right, but not complete. I have had this discussion many times over the course of many years. And it's too long a discussion to complete here. So let me ask you to keep in mind the two most fundamental FACTS: 1) we spend far more on the American medical industry than real countries spend on actual health care, and 2) our results are about the worst of any civilized country. It would be easy to dismiss the cost problem as due simply to overcharging, which is rampant. But that doesn't explain our poor results. The American medical industry is its own disease. The point I was making with David Hurwitz is that if we're going to stress out Americans' food access in order to provide criminally overpriced, and inadequate, medical access, we can't equate the two. As I said to David, essentially none of us need very frequent medical access. All of us need food access, and we need it every day. Under the current "government," we have a caricature of the problems.
As for whether or not medical students learn how to run a business, no, they don't. They figure it out themselves later, depending on what their goals are. And if their goal is to amass money, they'll run their business with an eye toward that goal. We don't have many doctors whose goal is to get patients better quickly and at the lowest expense. We used to have more of them like that, but I will also tell you that the commonest cause of personal bankruptcy in this country is now, and always has been, an inability to pay medical bills.
We don't have "health care" in this country. We have a medical industry the job of which is to move money from wherever it is to providers, other vendors, and insurance companies.
Dr. Fred,
Your reasoning is good but I think it was a mistake for Democrats to agree to reopen the federal government back in November.
Because a majority of Americans, especially the base of the Democratic Party, wanted Democrats to continue fighting for the extended ACA subsidies, even though only about 22 million or so Americans actually benefited from the extended subsidies.
Also, I fear that the Democrats’ cave-in is going to cause more suffering for the American people over the long term, because any capitulation to Trump, much like with all bullies and tyrants, may have only emboldened him to further abuse his power.
The time for Democrats to cave in this instance, IMHO, would have been when public opinion polls showed that a majority of Americans wanted them to. That way you hold out for as long as possible and, in doing so, inflict maximum political damage on the Trump regime and Republicans in Congress for needlessly stripping 22 million Americans of their health care.
Sometimes the right thing to do is to stand on principle, especially when it is also the popular thing to do.
Best,
David
David, I completely accept being disagreed with. It's one of those "agree to disagree" situations. I eat every day. You probably do, too. Although even the most esteemed pollsters say polls are unreliable, we can suppose that "a majority of Americans" wanted the shutdown to continue. We have no information as to who those Americans were, and I'm not "generous with other people's money" (agree to something that disadvantages someone who's not me).
The ACA was already faulty, and even people supposedly covered didn't really have medical access: they had deductibles and co-pays they couldn't afford, because the payment system was left in the hands of private insurance companies. That was one of Obama's mistakes.
IF it's true that ICE is funded no matter what Dems did (Dems were outnumbered in Congress, so they were always going to lose), then our biggest problem is that we do not have an active "Second Amendment," and we cannot stop federal over-reach. Seven more Dem votes was still a minority, and we still lost. And as I said, the clown doesn't care what Congress, Dems, or anyone thinks.
Excellent points, Dr. Fred. But, then what is your strategy to combat this fascist onslaught by the Trump regime? I’m open to any ideas by you or anyone else.
It's very hard to say. At this point, I don't understand why Congress doesn't impeach and convict.
The only other strategem that comes to mind, considering the Republican majority at this moment, is to agitate for a fully reinstated and functional "Second Amendment." The Founding Fathers were thinking of the past when they passed it, and no one saw the clown coming. Now we need it, and this is the reason. Although the time it would take to arm and train militias is no doubt not less than the time between now and November, and then January. So I think the clown gets checked either way.
I have called the phone numbers and got individuals who barely took the time to take my name and phone number. DISAPPOINTING
I’m tired of the democrats not being able to fight trump. Of course I would never vote republican but I don’t know anymore that I can vote for a weak democratic party either 🤷🏻♀️ we are alone in this one.
Thx for keeping us informed. It’s one thing to reading about mass atrocities in history, but it doesn’t capture the horror of witnessing so many people/corporations who put money & power over basic decency. For everyone pushing back against this, stay strong!