Donald Trump has announced his new initiative for governmental efficiency. This is a derivative idea pushed most famously by Elon Musk.
It has “Efficiency” right there in the name, but it has two co-chairs? Two? This is "efficiency"?
The two leaders are to be Vivek Ramaswamy ("failed presidential candidate") and Elon Musk ("purchaser of politicians"). I am gonna love seeing Vivek and Elon share leadership. Pass me the popcorn.
I reviewed the new (2025) Medicare Plan D drug plan options a month or so ago, when the information first came out, and I just re-reviewed them all. In 2024, I have a plan that is $3.30/month and the drugs I use are at no additional cost. For 2025, that same plan goes up to $36/month and the drugs now come at an added cost for an annualized total of $908. Yes, the plan goes from about $50/year to $900/year. Naturally, I looked at other plans.
I conclude that I am the product.
If the plan costs nothing and the drugs cost nothing, then my information is being collected to be bought and sold. Yeah, there is HIPAA "to protect me" but I am sure they have clever ways to, uh, comply while still selling information.
The nine plans available to me run between $0 and $2150 (annualized). At that top end, there is no deductible, but it is about $600 more expensive than the next most expensive - and the deductible is about $600. Strange, that.
I assume I will spend the rest of my life on this merry-go-round, chasing low-cost options each year, and getting "collected" by various insurance companies each time I switch.
Democrats are not well-served by a meltdown, a spiral of demoralization that zaps their energy to counter the Trump administration and bounce back in two and four years. Understanding what happened is important because it impacts the future.
He is right. The Competitive Hyperbole is the story of the hour/day/week hogging the headlines and the airwaves but it illuminates nothing. There was no "Trump mandate" and it was a close race, even with the House and Senate races assessed. Trump has a thin, thin margin. Democrats need to point out that There Is No Trump Mandate forcefully & repeatedly. The so-called analysis is just the same old players playing their same old talking points to their same old audiences. Bernie sees it as a failure to court the middle class because, of course he does. Others see it as a failure to boldly support Palestine because, of course they do. And so on. The fact is that Kamala is the second woman presidential candidate to lose and was only the second non-white candidate to run. We are talking about simple sexism and racism in the electorate. Exactly how we fix it - well, I have opinions, but the important thing is to abandon familiar, comfortable arguments and really understand what actually happened.
I do not know who will rise to lead the Democrats. Mr. Jeffries? Ms. AOC? I know it will not be Bernie or a Palestinian advocate, and it cannot be a "bipartisan" throwback. I do know that Democrats must absorb the pain, stop the blame, unify the aim, and get back into the fight.
