'Man of the Year' or man of their wallets?

— Elon Musk’s Billion-Dollar Bargain: Buying the White House, One Regulation at a Time. Elon Musk’s purchase of the government is already starting to pay returns. The largest part of the Muskrat’s fortune comes from Tesla, which he bought from its inventors years ago and was turned into a major enterprise by Barack Obama. (You may remember the headline from 2009: “The Obama Administration will lend Tesla Motors $465 million to build an electric sedan and the battery packs needed to propel it. It’s one of three loans totaling almost $8 billion that the Department of Energy awarded today to spur the development of fuel-efficient vehicles, Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced today.”)

And, since 40 of the 45 fatal crashes that have happend in cars with autopilot systems have involved Teslas, Musk has been on a crusade against the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which compiles and publishes those statistics. Now it appears that Musk’s $277 million investment in purchasing the White House for Donald Trump is about to pay off big, as Reuters reports: “The Trump transition team wants the incoming administration to drop a car-crash reporting requirement opposed by Elon Musk’s Tesla, according to a document seen by Reuters, a move that could cripple the government’s ability to investigate and regulate the safety of vehicles with automated-driving systems.”

This, of course, is only one of many early indicators that we’re about to experience the most corrupt administration in the history of America and, perhaps, the most corrupt administration in the history of all functional democracies (if you could still call the US that) anywhere in the world.

— Man of the Year or Man of Their Wallets? Speaking of investments paying off, remember when the Koch brothers put up $650 million to help an allegedly rightwing tech billionaire buy TIME magazine? Yeah, that happened in 2017, and here comes Donald Trump on the magazine’s cover as Man of the Year. It seems that rightwing billionaires are buying everything in America that’s not nailed down, particularly if it can be used to bribe and fluff public officials or influence public opinion and elections…

— The Billionaire Death Grip on America’s Healthcare System. Even after years of anti-single-payer propaganda from libertarian billionaires and the health insurance industry murderers, fully 62% of Americans think it’s the government’s responsibility to make sure everybody has health coverage. The poll was conducted by Gallup after the execution of United HealthCare’s CEO and represents a huge leap in public sentiment since the last time this issue was broached in 2013.

Surveys back then showed only 43% of Americans wanted a government system, that being during the Obamacare era when the country was drenched in Tea Party money and agitprop. But just hang on for a few months; the insurance companies’ ad agencies and front men are waiting for things to cool out before they roll out their feelgood ads and PR, but it’ll be coming as surely as the sun will rise tomorrow.

It’s a safe bet Trump will do nothing about this and America will continue to be, for at least the next four years, the only developed country in the world that spends 17% of GDP on healthcare (the average of developed countries is 9.2%). After all, as Lever News reports, just since the introduction of the Obamacare corporate welfare program the health insurance industry has seized over $371 billion in profits.

Americans suffer some of the worst health outcomes and shortest lifespans in the developed world, at the same time insurance and hospital CEOs and executives live in massive mansions with live-in chefs and butlers, travel on private jets, and sip champagne while laughing about the Republican base’s rubes and suckers.

— The Corporate Death Toll? When will America begin to hold corporations and their executives and shareholders accountable for murders they intentionally commit, often on a mass scale? Qasim Rashid Esq., in his excellent Let’s Address This Substack newsletter, wonders out loud how much longer Americans will tolerate corporations intentionally killing us for profit. From the Sacklers and Purdue Pharma killing, literally, hundreds of thousands of Americans with Oxycontin, to United HealthCare letting unknown tens or hundreds of thousands die or suffer in sickness and pain, to Johnson & Johnson knowingly causing cancer deaths among women and babies by selling asbestos-contaminated talcum powder, corporate executives have made knowing and intentional decisions to put their own profits and lifestyle above the lives of average Americans. And that doesn’t even begin to get at the tobacco industry or the asbestos industry that killed my father. Corporations have killed millions of us and our friends and relatives over the past century, yet not a single CEO, senior executive, or shareholder has ever gone to prison for it.

And, of course, the “corporate persons,” as Republicans on our Supreme Court so hilariously refer to companies, are never given the corporate death penalty. This has been a big story in America all the way back to the 1970s when we learned that Ford executives decided it was cheaper to pay off death claims than to fix their Pinto gas-tanks that turned the cars into fireballs. When will Americans have had enough? Will it take more corporate CEOs suffering at the hands of vigilantes? Will our billionaire-owned corporate media ever cover these stories in this frame?

It feels like we may be close to some sort of turning point, in large part thanks to Luigi Mangione, but ever since 1976 when five Republicans on the Supreme Court first ruled that corporate money given to politicians was merely “free speech,” every time this conversation comes up it gets immediately shut down. Now might be a good time to raise the issue with your members of Congress: the switchboard number is 202-224-3121.

— Big Brother Trump. Trump secretly spied on House Democrats and journalists and got away with it. Will he do it again? You betcha! It took him four long years and he doesn’t plan to prosecute anybody over it (of course), but our fearless Attorney General Merrick Garland just released a Department of Justice watchdog report showing that Trump’s FBI under Barr and Wray illegally obtained phone and email records of two House Democrats and dozens of congressional staffers, as well as several reporters. Given that they’ve now gotten off scott-free, expect Trump’s next DOJ to start snooping on Democrats and outspoken journalists (like me) on steroids. This is what routinely happens, after all, in authoritarian nations like Trump’s role models, Hungary and Russia. What’s next? Will his enemies start falling out of 10th story windows?

— The final betrayal of disgusting traitors Joe Manchin and Kirsten Sinema. Good riddance to these two scumballs who put money and their own political advancement above the good of our nation and its working people. President Biden reappointed a Democrat to the National Labor Relations Board, which would have given the agency a Democratic majority during the first two years of Trump’s administration. The appointment needed confirmation, and only 49 Republicans showed up to vote against it, meaning Vice President Harris could have broken a tie and made the appointment happen. But, of course, the big money that owns the GOP reached out to Manchin and Sinema and they dutifully showed up to vote with the Republicans. Now Trump gets to make the appointment and will have a Senate majority to rubber-stamp it. These two also killed Democratic efforts that had already passed the House to gut Citizens United and guarantee all Americans the right to vote. And now this. F*cking traitors.

— Geeky science: Unlock Your Brainpower. Here’s a simple step (pun intended) that you can take to improve your memory and cognition. A major new study from University College London has found that a simple 30-minute brisk walk can produce as much as a measurable 5% improvement in episodic and working memory the following day. The study was done on older adults (50-83) and its results were solid and consistent. If you’re not walking a half-hour every day, start now!

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