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Est. April 5, 2002
 
           
May 11, 2017 - Issue 698



What The Trump Just Happened!
The President’s War
on the
Poor Just Became Hot



"So much for those who thought
Trump was going to be a populist president.
He didn’t tell you what most dems and
blacks already knew, his population
is small, and rich."


So it begins once again for the country that tosses bricks at other countries and then hides it’s hand behind it’s back. More missiles, more destruction, more needless loss of life, and now the House signing of Trumpcare (HR1628) into law by a vote of 217-213. Nobody's happy about the strike on Syria except the billionaires who planned it, and their puppet, our Dog-Whistler-n-Chief. This essay will let you know the history and that the man who wanted you to think he was an “outsider” is just another Wall Street insider, and you can’t be inside without waging war, on the poor and otherwise. The New York Times sums it up the best:

The House speaker, Paul Ryan, and other Republicans falsely accused Democrats of rushing the Affordable Care Act through Congress. On Thursday, in a display of breathtaking hypocrisy, House Republicans — without holding any hearings or giving the Congressional Budget Office time to do an analysis — passed a bill that would strip at least 24 million Americans of health insurance.

According to Senator Lindsey Graham (SC): “But any bill that has been posted less than 24 hours — going to be debated three or four hours, not scored — needs to be viewed with suspicion,” What Graham is referring to is how the bill passed, without holding any hearings or giving the Congressional Budget Office time to analyze it. Based on a broadcast many of the congressmen failed to analyze the bill themselves, a recent newscast shows them literally speeding past an MSNBC reporter when he asked if they read the bill. Our own Chris Collins (NY) freely admits to not having read it. You're wondering how do you replace something without reading it? Truth be told congressional people through history are notorious for not having read bills they passed or rejected.

Trump and Ryan reportedly used their operatives to strongarm members of the House to pass the bill to what end? Just so Trump can give Obama what for. Punishing people like Laura Packard and millions others for the sin of simply growing old or being sick (which is what health care is for… oh never mind). Many of these elderly are White Americans, I’m waiting for response from the Obamacare death list critics, but I hear crickets. Before Obamacare “nearly 50 million Americans lacked health insurance; more than 16 percent of these individuals were African Americans.” Of course taking the biggest hits are the programs blacks are seen as benefitting from the most, Medicaid ($880 billion) which includes special education programs which will take a $4 billion a year hit. What strikes the biggest fear is the highly-publicized slashing of pre-existing conditions with DC’s resident pussy-grabber eliminating rape among this long list. And just because you work for a living doesn’t mean you deserve health insurance… so says Trump. $300 billion over ten years is in danger of being cut from companies insurance subsidies.

Had Collins and his colleagues read it he would have known the bills strikes the Essential Plan, a measure that already provided $3 billion annually to New York “low-income residents who do not qualify for medicaid.” This was actually an optional program adopted by New York and Minnesota.

So much for those who thought Trump was going to be a populist president. He didn’t tell you what most dems and blacks already knew, his population is small, and rich.

The good news — if there really is any — is Trumpcare is not a done deal yet, it still has to pass

through Senate where a significant number of republicans are opposed to it. 24 million Americans are keeping their fingers crossed. It is just the poor elderly they claim to be concerned about. Senator Ben Cardin (D) indicated in an interview that senate plans to rewrite or write their own bill that will be much less extreme. The prominent force behind the elimination of Obamacare is the disingenuously-named wing of congress calling themselves The House Freedom Caucus. These are 32 far right head-cases just as obsessed with getting rid of the Affordable Health Care Act as President Trump is:

We made a promise to the American people to repeal Obamacare and replace it with policy that brings down costs. While this legislation does not fully repeal Obamacare, it’s an important step in keeping that promise to lower healthcare costs.” says the House Freedom Caucus. What they mean by bring down costs is just a tax cut for Trump’s friends.

The Chicago Defender’s latest issue has a 3-part report called “African Americans and the Health Care Bill.” Under part-3; “5 Things you Need to Know about the Affordable Care Act” they quote the results from a survey, “the share of non-Hispanic black adults ages 18–64 who lacked health insurance coverage fell from 24.9 percent in 2013 to 15.1 percent between January and September 2016.” What we are seeing now is the repealing of this bill just as it was getting warmed up. The truly baffling part is President Obama based his idea of affordable health care on republican ideas, surely as least some of those in Congress who voted against it must have known this.

Much of this has to do with the way the right was trained to be angry at social movements etc., especially since the Richard Nixon years. Under such narrow thinking “the facts” or “needs” didn’t matter. What developed was sort of a concentration of rich white adult spoiled-brat mentality that closed itself off to all counter-information. The official arrival of this came in an earlier repeal in 1987, the Fairness Doctrine was dropped by the Reagan Administration. This marked the beginning of hate-radio, Bob Grant, Rush Limbaugh and an army of like-minded race-soldiers began to literally dominate the airwaves. This is the spirit that still permeates the Republican Party today, resulting in the Trump election and it’s bizarre after-effects.


BlackCommentator.com Columnist, Chris Stevenson, is author of “The MAO Syndrome: A Timeline of Newspaper columns Tracking Hate, Fear, Loathing, Obstinacy, and Stubbornness of many on the right & some on the left who are simply Mad At Obama.” He is also a contributor to the Hampton Institute, his own blog www.thebuffalobullet.com, and a syndicated columnist. Follow him on Twitter, and Facebook. Watch his video commentary Policy & Prejudice for clbTV & Follow his Blogtalk radio interviews on 36OOseconds. Contact Mr. Stevenson and BC.
 

 
 

 

 

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