why i'm voting this year

We knew they were snakes when we let them in (to the House, the Senate, the White House, the Executive Office Building....).

On September 06, 2026, I posted on a social media platform:

The White House was proud, proud, proud last Friday (September 4, 2026) to launch a video game on the WhiteHouse.gov website in which players control a white man rounding up, Black, Asian, and Latino men and putting them in orange jumpsuits.

Do you have any further questions about whether this White House is in the hands of racists?

Do you have any further questions about the members of Congress who continue supporting this ugliness?

Vote. Bring your friends.

Sources

https://www.whitehouse.gov/arcade/

https://www.foxnews.com/.../white-house-classic-arcade...

There followed a brief exchange with a high school classmate:

Classmate: Sooooo....would it make you feel any better if a black, brown or yellow guy was rounding up white guys???

me: [Classmate], your comment seems like an adventure in missing — or perhaps ignoring — the obvious.

 Classmate: Actually I haven't missed or ignored anything,, but if it makes you feel any better, here's another possibility....have a black guy round up the black guys, a white guy round up the white guys, a brown guy round up the brown guys, and a yellow guy round up the yellow guys.....even better still better....cut an index card into 4 pieces, and on one write ”black", on another write "white", on another write ”yellow", and on the last one write "brown".....put them in a hat, someone pulls one out.....and that's the color of the guy that rounds up the illegals....there....I fixed it....

Several weeks pass, during which I am a) unusually busy (a sorry excuse, I know) and b) overthinking my reply.... 

Then:

me: Hey [Classmate]. Apologies for being slow to respond … Life happened while I was making other plans.

You wrote:

“Actually I haven't missed or ignored anything,, but if it makes you feel any better, here's another possibility....have a black guy round up the black guys, a white guy round up the white guys, a brown guy round up the brown guys, and a yellow guy round up the yellow guys.....even better still better....cut an index card into 4 pieces, and on one write "black", on another write "white", on another write "yellow", and on the last one write "brown".....put them in a hat, someone pulls one out.....and that's the color of the guy that rounds up the illegals....there....I fixed it….”

I don’t think you fixed anything at all. And I think you missed or ignored a lot. 

Nobody should be *rounding up* anybody. That’s Blackshirt/Gestapo/Secret Police/Red Guard/Klan shite. We don’t do that under U.S. law. 

I’m not saying we’ve never rounded people up or otherwise harmed classes of people; just that, when we have, it’s been our public shame … to the point that many of those episodes and epochs have names:

Enslavement … The Witch Trials … The Fugitive Slave Acts … The Indian Removal Act … The Trail of Tears The Ku Klux Klan … The Colfax Massacre … The Indian Religious Crimes Code … The Chinese Exclusion Act … The Dawes Act … The Wilmington Coup … The Red Summer … The Tulsa Race Massacre … The Rosewood Massacre… The Tuskegee Experiment … Sundown Town Lynchings … Japanese-American Internment … Redlining … The Lavender Scare….

I reckon some actions in the present day will come to be named and shamed as well. 

(With apologies for an overabundance of sincerity,) I want no part of those actions and I mean to stop them by voting and supporting the lawful work of elected and appointed officials dedicated to restoring normal Constitutional order across the U.S. government … I don’t agree to shameful, discriminatory, extrajudicial or predatory acts committed under color of law in my name, nor in the name of the nation I love too much to let backslide if there’s anything I can do to prevent it.

I *am* a bit unaccustomed to writing something so earnest in response to someone about whom I know very little apart from a few social media posts; someone I haven't seen in half-a-century ... who may be winding me up ... or playing the devil's advocate ... or who knows....

Still, I'm feeling these feels and thinking these thoughts with genuine intensity. Together, we've been tacking a course for two-and-a-half centuries, from monarchy towards the more perfect union of these United States. That's not nothing. This election, and the national and statewide elections I expect to vote in every two years for rest of my life, I'm voting for liberty and justice for all ... no snakes; no exceptions. 

I know I'm not alone ... I know we have friends everywhere ... I know we remember how to do what needs doing ... I know it's all down to will embodied in action.

trumpublicans grasping at straw men

It doesn't take a genius to understand what the Trump administration is attempting to accomplish by publicly escalating highly suspect investigations, subpoenas, and indictments and attempted indictments less than a week before midterm elections they are on the brink of losing.

Let the buyer beware. What Trumpublicans are selling isn't actually there — as we've seen and are still seeing in the wake of their outrageously impossible promises two years ago .... (e.g. the running total on the war of choice against Iran topped $47,000,000,000 this month and they have no plan to pay for that apart from the voodoo economics that matches their voodoo foreign policy that matches their voodoo domestic policy).

Their closing message in the final days of the midterm campaigns appears to be 'Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain.' Oh, and, alternatively: "We'll sue you into silence if necessary, and arrest you if you resist us." So, you know: Democracy.

It would all be funny if it wasn't all dangerous, even deadly, to America and our allies.

Let's get this done.

throw the bums out . robert reich

Sunday, Robert Reich wrote, "Something very dramatic is occurring." Every word of this belongs to him — I think this seems (very) important — read it yourself:

Multiple polls show Trump’s approval at record lows, but I think what’s happening runs deeper than this. Something very dramatic is occurring.

Many people who consider themselves non-political or independent — or moderate Republican or who even voted for Trump in November 2024 — can’t avoid seeing what’s come so clearly into the open. And they’re finding it disgusting and terrifying.

They’ve watched Trump order the National Guard into cities over the objections of mayors and governors. They’ve watched Trump’s ICE agents drag people out of their beds in the middle of the night, zip-tie them and their children, and haul them away.

They’re watching the Justice Department argue that if the Democrat wins in Alaska’s Senate race, she shouldn’t be certified. They’re seeing Trump threaten to revoke the citizenship of Representative Ilhan Omar.

They see Trump direct the IRS, FBI, and Justice Department against liberal groups that oppose him. They’ve watched him push broadcasters to take off the air comedians who criticize him — Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel. They’ve watched him establish immunity from IRS investigations of himself and his family. 

They’ve heard him say that Canada — Canada — is an enemy of the United States. That Putin — Putin — wasn’t the aggressor in the war in Ukraine. They’ve heard him defend Vivek Ramaswamy’s (the Republican nominee for governor of Ohio) disgusting ad featuring the estranged mother of Ramaswamy’s Democratic opponent, Amy Acton, calling her daughter a liar. (Acton hasn’t spoken to her mother since she was 12, when she was removed from her mother’s custody after her stepfather was arrested and charged with raping her.)

They’ve watched him decide, on his own, to take America into another endless war in the Middle East that’s driven up prices at the pump so high that many Americans can’t make ends meet. 

All across America, millions of people who have avoided politics are shaken by what they’ve seen and heard. 

It’s no longer Democrat versus Republican or left versus right. It’s now democracy versus dictatorship. Right versus wrong.

It’s no longer a war on undocumented immigrants. It’s now a war on Americans.

It’s no longer just a matter of repudiating Trump. It’s now a matter of stoppinghim — containing him.

Across the land, average Americans are realizing that they too could be dragged out of their homes in the middle of the night by Trump’s ICE agents, or tear-gassed and arrested by Trump’s National Guard, or targeted by Trump’s prosecutors, or shot by Trump’s military. 

They too could be impoverished by his brainless, arbitrary tariffs and wars. 

They too could be made unsafe, their children vulnerable to measles or other diseases, their health insurance unaffordable, their neighborhoods taken over by data centers —because the person in charge doesn’t give a fig about them. He’s in it for himself. 

Trump has shown that all of us are endangered by him. 

It is impossible not to see. Trump and his Republican sycophants are doing all of this in the open. 

Most Americans abhor what they see, because what they see is abhorrent.

This is how the great sleeping giant of America awakens, roars, and puts an end to it. 

This is how America throws the bums out. 

Nine days from now.

Robert Reich is Professor, writer, former Secretary of Labor, author of The System, The Common Good, Saving Capitalism, Aftershock, Supercapitalism, The Work of Nations. He is Co-creator of "Inequality for All" and "Saving Capitalism" and Co-founder of Inequality Media.

Source 

https://substack.com/home/post/p-221410820 

social reckoning in the 2026 elections

Yesterday, October 17, 2026, Meta — parent of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Threads — knocked the No Kings organizing page off of Instagram (another of its platforms) at the height of No Kings' work to communicate what was going on and what was coming up at 3,000 early voting events across the U.S.

The take-down by Meta went on for hours. By the time the account was fully up and running again, the majority of No Kings rallies had ended.

This is not the first time Meta has interfered with the free flow of voter information. On Friday, October 16, 2026, Reuters reported that Meta employees have acknowledged that Instagram accounts for Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva were hindered by ‌restrictions during the election this year, and the platform recommended social media accounts of his challenger.

Back in the U.S. at 3:29p Eastern on October 17, Ezra Levin said: "Meta told us in their response email that they made a bad call."

U.S. Senator Chris Murphy called the disruption "Outrageous," posting over a screenshot of the empty No Kings Coalition "Vote Early" page: "Put this on the January investigation list."

Social reckoning indeed....

Sources

https://www.facebook.com/leagueofwomenvoters/posts/pfbid0SN3PPpWmnV4GuPqxxWWo6uXdvwtvBi2a7pMfvwM61RUCVfb4P38yrDWihzLB7Q5Dl?rdid=8uYxnuiaxydAqHjk#

https://bsky.app/profile/ezralevin.bsky.social/post/3my3uu5lf3k2u

https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/meta-employees-said-lulas-accounts-were-hindered-during-brazil-election-folha-2026-10-16/

https://bsky.app/profile/ezralevin.bsky.social/post/3my43atjmnc2p

https://bsky.app/profile/chrismurphyct.bsky.social/post/3my45bppr5k2n

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/october-17-2026

knowing what we know now....

When I wrote this on October 15, 2024, I was not wrong . The extralegal, extrajudicial assault on our friends and neighbor is an assault on democracy itself ... an assault on humanity itself.

The next right thing we can do is voting to fill the U.S. Congress with elected Democrats and Independents — beginning with early voting this week, and ending big on November 03 — to do what the Constitution and the United States Code demand. 

We saw this coming. We won't see it end unless we end it. 

Vote Liberty + Justice for All

I’ve mostly stopped telling people what to believe and how to behave — about politics, religion … most everything.

That doesn’t mean I don’t have pretty clear ideas about what *I* believe and how *I* behave. And it doesn't mean I don't speak my mind on what matters to me ... to neighbors who disagree; and especially to neighbors who agree but haven't yet said it out loud.

So — acknowledging to the best of my ability the unearned privileges I wake up with every day just because I'm an old, straight, white guy — I wanna say it matters to me that there is presently no coalition of elected Republicans in the U.S. who will stop the sitting Executive Branch from doing the worst of what they intend to do, or any damn thing they happen think of trying to see if they can get away with it.

That means we have to turn them out — the ones running for reelection on November 03, 2026. Otherwise, recent history strongly supports the likelihood that they will support the removal of human blessings and liberties every one of us wants for ourselves and everyone we care about.

Elected Republicans have agreed to roll back access to high quality, affordable healthcare in general — to the point that the worst-off citizens in the US are made progressively sicker and poorer by high-cost, low quality healthcare where they live. The only way to stop this is to send those elected officials back to the private sector.

Elected Republicans are working to revise voting districts and extend extraordinary executive powers to partisan elected officials and appointees until they can consistently override the will of voters — so they can override *your* vote, perhaps — in order to assure the election of Republicans and the passing of Republican-backed initiatives and referenda, no matter what. If you don't llke that, you’ll have to go to the polls to send them home.

Elected Republicans have failed to stop the sitting U.S. president attacking the rule of law. They have allowed this administration to harm the most vulnerable ... gut the U.S. Treasury ... violate Constitutional and legals norms ... harass domestic opponents - real and imagined - under color of law, conduct unilateral war, murder noncombatants, kidnap, kill, and disappear people without due process....

They won't stop any of these assaults unless we stop them from coming to the office — and send them to look for new jobs.

In more normal times, I’ve always voted *for* one candidate rather than voting *against* another. These are not normal times.

If you don't know where to start the housecleaning, pick something you can reach that's dirty, and clean it up or throw it out. Here's a simple test: If the candidate won't say the presidential election of 2020 was won by Joe Biden, they're not going to stop Donald Trump from the harm he'll attempt in 2027.

Idea: Let’s elect candidates next month who won’t deliberately harm people we love or respect (or both).

If you don't have a better idea, consider voting for the Blue candidates just because they're running against those Republicans … not because you agree at every point, but because you agree on this important point: We won't stand by (like pretty much every Republican in Congress) while the prevailing flank of the Republican Party intentionally harms our friends, family members, and fellow citizens, and so hacks away at the roots of democracy.

On balance, there are more Democrats than Republicans in the U.S.. There are more women than men ... there are more young Americans than old ones (and those young Americans are more likely to have genuine friendships and a lifelong stake in the well-being and human liberties of friends and family members who Republicans will not protect and may very well attack.

If we vote Blue in November, then do it again in 2028 - and every two years for the rest of our lives - if young voters take over the Democratic Party and make it better — more just ... more inclusive ... more equitable ... more humane ... more of everything matters — we will elect visionary leaders who will coalesce around making America *good* [h/t Pepper Henderson].

What else is there but to register and vote as if voting really matters in 2026 — since it really does.

Photo Credit

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/trump-bizarrely-posts-acting-president-034505390.html

You Break It; You Buy It . One Year On

Why does MAGA keep doubling down on harm?

Cutting to the chase one year ago:

"[R]iddle me this....

"15 years after demonstrating the benefits of the Affordable Care Act at the household level and across the U.S. economy, why would Banana Republicans keep doubling down on hurting people they swore to help?

"And why would you let them?"

This post details the damage done to ordinary Americans by the neglect of elected Republicans across the U.S. Damage that was compounded by the Republican majorities in both houses of Congress when they passed and President Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill last year.

And now they're asking for more time to make things even worse, because *they're* not happy till *we're* not happy (and sicker, and poorer, and less secure).

In memorable words I first heard in childhood: "Throw the bums out."

Register . Vote . Tell your friends.

Here’s the thing….

It’s not the only thing … we’ll get to other things … but this is definitely an important thing because it goes straight to our collective capacity to tell facts from fictions and truth from lies. 

It’s about the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, also know as the Affordable Care Act, Obamacare, and ACA.

Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free.

On the merits...

• The Affordable Care Act began to strengthen the overall economy right out of the gate — by expanding the number of Americans with health coverage, by helping to stabilize the growth of health spending, and by improving financial security for millions of Americans in income brackets that plow every paycheck back into the real economy.

The ACA did *not* reduce overall economic growth or increase unemployment

• In fact, a series of Commonwealth Fund reports identified significant private sector job growth, and a slowing of per capita health care spending growth. In real time, the ACA boosted U.S. economic growth in a period when the developed global economy struggled to recover from the Great Recession.

The ACA generated measurable job mobility and entrepreneurial activity

• The ACA banned insurers from denying coverage based on preexisting conditions. Which meant no one needed to stay in a job because they needed the insurance. Which meant they could move to better jobs, however they defined *better*. Which meant more entrepreneurs could start new ventures without the added risk of being uninsured. It also meant people could retire early if they wanted to. Which meant younger workers could advance sooner. All of which added to U.S. productivity and innovation.

By slowing the growth of health care costs, the ACA improved both the business climate and the cost of governance

• Slower insurance premium growth freed up business resources for investment in production and jobs.

• Slower growth in overall health spending contributed to lower federal budget deficits.

• Cost containment helped stabilize state and local government budgets.

Here’s the rub: Americans in states that chose not to participate fully in the ACA missed out on many of these benefits

To be crystal clear, these benefits were *not* withheld from those Americans by the federal government; their legislators and governors decided to refuse them.

• Americans in ACA states saw decreased premiums and more improved coverage that those in others states.

• The knock-on effects of improved minimum standards of coverage and care meant higher premiums in states that opted out than those that fully embraced ACA benefits and protections.

• ACA states added hundreds of thousands of related jobs; the others did not.

• ACA states realized significant reductions in losses from uncompensated care; the others did not.

• Hospitals and clinics in small towns and rural counties were significantly more likely to survive and thrive in ACA states than those who took a pass on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

• Medicaid enrollees in ACA states have benefited from reductions in income inequality, evictions, bankruptcies, and improvements in credit scores that citizens in other states did not.

So riddle me this....

• 15 years after demonstrating the benefits of the Affordable Care Act at the household level and across the U.S. economy, why would Banana Republicans keep doubling down on hurting people they swore to help?

• And why would you let them?

Sources

https://www.commonwealthfund.org/.../___media_files...

https://affordablecareactlitigation.com/.../06/8543340.pdf

https://www.commonwealthfund.org/.../economic-employment...

https://www.commonwealthfund.org/.../how-does-medicaid...

https://www.kff.org/.../what-does-the-recent-literature.../

https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/10.1377/hlthaff.2019.00931

https://ajph.aphapublications.org/.../AJPH.2019.305230...

https://journals.sagepub.com/.../10.1177/1077558717725164

https://journals.sagepub.com/.../10.1177/1077558717725164

suffer a witch

"Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." 1

That command pops up — out of the blue, it seems — in Exodus chapter 22, part of a list of _thou-shalt-nots_ that most people mostly ignore most of the time.

I say "out of the blue" because it seems like a non sequitur in a list that ranges from theivery to liability for property damages to bestiality to labor practices to, well, witches. You can read it for yourself.

I say "most people mostly ignore the Exodus 22 list most of the time" simply because now and again, people self-identifying as Bible-believing, have taken to heart individual items on the list. 

Some folks, in obedience to #21, which forbids mistreating or oppressing foreigners, have sought to make that the law of the land — which you'll recall the U.S. has done on and off for 250 years.

And, here and there, when folks have taken it upon themselves to obey #18: — "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" — they've accused, charged, tried, and convicted women and girls of being witches; and not suffered them to live. Sometimes, we know, folks jumped straight from the accusation to the execution ... so... murder. They have the element of speed in common with race lynchings.

I *think* executing people for witchcraft is uncommon these days. But I'm not sure. I mean, historically, we only know the instances when such executions were reported; not any that weren't reported.  And I need not mention (but will) that an ungodly number of women and girls have just *disappeared* over the centuries, including this century, so ... we don't know, do we....

bizarro world

From 15 years ago today . Sept 16, 2011.

bizarro world | the wealthy + the poor in America

Somehow I woke up this morning in an America with people who characterize our wealthiest citizens as beleaguered victims living from paycheck to paycheck and our working poor as lavishly pampered tax dodgers.

I find this bizarre.

To which a friend replied:

"And yet both of these characterizations can be found to be true. Wealthy & middle-class citizens over-spending and tying themselves to every penny of a paycheck, underwater in a mortgage and indebted up to their eyeballs. The working poor doing enough to stay under the gov't threshold and continue to get assistance, while buying new cars, digital cable packages and the latest kicks.

At the same time you have responsible citizens, both rich and poor, living well-within their means, paying off their debt and trying to make a better life for themselves little by little. Unfortunately, these sanest of people aren't sensational enough to write stories about, unless you're someone like Hemingway or McCarthy, who can take the mundane and make it magical.

And such is the nature of our fallen world. Apologies for the comment longer than the post, but it is indeed an interesting thought. Thanks."

And I responded:

"Thanks for your gentlemanly response, Nate. I think you’ve put your finger right on the bruise.

I have some thoughts about the nature of our fallen world, but I believe I’ll hold them for now and just say this: The people at the center of the fair taxation debate this autumn are not the “wealthy & middle-class citizens” to whom your response gravitates at the beginning — the ones who got in trouble by overspending.

The “beleaguered victims” I’m talking about are the top three-tenths of one percent of U.S. taxpayers:

— the wealthiest 235,000 of whom had incomes above $1,000,000.00 in 2009 (Reuters)

— the top 8,300 of whom had incomes in excess of $10,000,000.00 in 2009 (ibid)

— the top 384 of whom took in more than $1,000,000,000.00 in 2009 (Forbes 400 list).

I don’t believe we have to worry about these households. They shouldn’t be punished; they should, each of them, pay a fair share under the law.

As for the working poor…for now, perhaps it is enough to say that the households who filed returns but paid no income taxes in 2009 had an average income of $14.483.00 (Reuters again), and to ask, “How far does $278.51 a week go in your zip code?”

I think fairness mandates that our wealthiest citizens pay effective tax rates equal to those making, say, $55,000.00, the median income for working age households.

Again, thanks for your thoughtful reply. I hope I’ve been equally respectful."

*** 

This conversation hasn't changed much in 15 years....

Beginning in a few weeks, voters can change it by replacing a Congress dominated by people who enable this misdirection with legislators whose eyes are wide open to how we got into the present mess and how we can change courses.

It's seldom been as simple as picking the candidate with a 'D' next to their name on the ballot, but this year, I think it is. Not that all the "D's" are perfect candidates; just that knowingly voting for candidates who will continue in the direction we're presently going strikes me as an unthinkable choice.