Monopoly Money?

We've heard this song before. Once again Trump is promising to send people money. 

The latest, $500 to people supposedly overcharged on "Obamacare" user fees during, you guessed it, the Biden administration. The first thing I asked myself when I heard this was "What's an Obamacare User Fee?". I briefly had subsidized insurance through the ACA Marketplace in 2016 and was never charged a fee. Mainly because there wasn't one, not on individuals anyway. Insurance companies were charged a fee based on a percentage of the premiums that were collected. The fees were supposed to be used to defray the costs of running the program. Theoretically the costs of these fees could (and probably were) passed on to consumers in the form of higher premiums, but I doubt any detailed forensic accounting has been done to determine how much each individual was overcharged, if it all. 

"Obamacare", The ACA, despite popular misconceptions, is not a health plan, is not an insurance plan, but is a matrix of connected laws regulating the health and health insurance industries. You can't but "Obamacare Insurance". Some insurance companies offer individual health insurance to individuals through a government-regulated "marketplace". Premiums are subsidized based on reported income. When filing their federal income tax return, an adjustment is made based on the reported income's deviation from the reported income. The purpose of the promised $500 checks is twofold: (1) To serve as a bribe to wavering voters and (2) To undermine the effectiveness of the ACA — an ongoing Republican and Trumpist goal. The second point ties into the announcement last week that a half million people would lose their ACA subsidized insurance due to murky claims of fraud (by insurance brokers, not individuals) with no public accounting of how this figure was arrived at. 

This isn't the first promise of free money that Trump promised to distribute. The $5,000 "DOGE Dividend" never materialized. Despite promises of the inaccurately named "Department of Government Efficiency" to root out waste, corruption, and fraud, it managed to achieve little more than chaos. It illegally eliminated programs and fired thousands of government employees. It's money saving efforts, when not completely fictional, were miniscule. We never got those checks.

Next was the "Trump Dividend" ostensibly a $2,000 rebate (or $5,000, depending on his mood) that supposedly represented all the extra billions (sometimes trillions) of dollars that the Treasury was raking in due to Trump's tariff hallucinations. The Supreme Court ruled that some of his tariffs were illegal and companies that paid them received refunds. But not individuals. Now we get another promise of free money — this time predicated upon the assumption that Republicans retain control of Congress — $5,000 to every adult. As much as my household could use another $10,000, I'd rather see the Republicans lose power in November. 

What's the authority for these dividends and rebates? The stimulus checks that went out at the end of the first Trump and in the Biden administration were debated and eventually approved by Congress. The Tariff Divided was debated by Congress, but went nowhere. Trump gets to claim he's for giving us money while blaming Congress for not doing it. 

Aside from authority, where is this money coming from? As of the end of August the annual deficit was close to $2 Trillion, with one month left to be calculated in the fiscal year 2026. Here's the annual deficits through the Trump and Biden years in trillions of dollars. 

• 2016 0.59
• 2017 0.67
• 2018 0.78
• 2019 0.98
• 2020 3.13 (Covid)
• 2021 2.77 (Covid)
• 2022 1.38
• 2023 1.70
• 2024 1.83
• 2025 1.78

A deficit means that we're spending more than we take in. Interest payments make up around half of that annual deficit. If we're in such dire shape fiscally, why not divert some of that we vacuumed up in tariffs and saved through DOGE into reducing the deficit. Maybe because it's not as much as we were told and the almost $2 trillion shortfall already takes into account these supposed tariff trillions and DOGE savings. 

What a bunch of bullshit.

Billy Bob And The Winning Team

“Billy Bob in f**king Red Cloud, Nebraska, who lives next door to the f**king Trump store as you pull into town and is waving the Trump flag … all he knows is he’s like on the winning team...He’s been so effective at taking Billy Bob and his wife Mary Jane or Mary Jo and telling them, look we’re winning. You’re on the winning team. And that’s all they care about, because their lives probably suck so f**king...”

This is a recording purportedly by Independent Senate candidate Dan Osborn. Sure, it sounds bad. It sounds like it's another "basket of deplorables" moment. But is it? Where's the lie? 

Politics these days isn't about who has the better ideas, about who is better prepared to lead, who better represents their constituents, it's about which team is "winning". That's right. The debate over who is best suited to lead is about as nuanced as which college football team you root for on Saturday. And just as a true football fan will support their team no matter what, partisan "fans" will vote for their "team" no matter what. It doesn't matter how wide the gap between campaign promises and reality is, how bad their personal circumstances are, the partisan "fans" will ignore the evidence of their own eyes and convince themselves that they are "winning" even when, by any objective measurement, they are losing. 

When voters treat politics like a sports competition, partisan identification becomes part of one's personality, similar to religious faith and just as immune to being talked out of it. Partisans will believe any horrible thing that they're told about the other team and reflexively disbelieve anything negative about their guys. This is why political ads lack any substance and are usually little more than mud slinging. 

This is why I don't find this quote, allegedly by Osborn, to be shocking at all. He's going down he same road that many of us go down when we identify Trumpism as a cult. Prices are going up, and with gas and diesel prices likely to keep going up, it's going to get worse. Tariffs are screwing Nebraska's farmers even more than the rest of us. We're in a war that is causing prices to escalate even further. Amid all of this, Billy Bob and Mary Jo, who railed against the inflation that spiked during the Biden administration, who insisted that high gas prices (and eggs too I guess) were the reason they were voting for Trump, who cheered his declaration that he wouldn't start any wars, are now making excuses for all the failures. They have changed their priorities because Trump told them to. They have redefined "winning" to mean whatever Trump says it is. And will change what they think is important the next time Trump does. 

Were Osborn's remarks crude? Sure they were, but they were honest. 

I thought that was what MAGA valued in a politician.

The President of Peace

Trump campaigned on keeping us out of "forever wars" and was a harsh critic of our involvement in foreign conflicts. I agreed with him  — one of the few areas where I thought he got it right. One of the recurring problems with American military adventurism is mission creep. We go in with a stated goal: overthrow a dictator who we see as a threat (Iraq) or his harboring factions that attacked us (Afghanistan — even tough Bin Laden turned out to be hiding in Pakistan, our ostensible ally), achieve that goal relatively quickly, and then stumble around without a clear plan on what to do next. We ended up spending 10 years in Iraq and 20 years in Afghanistan propping up corrupt and ineffective governments. Iraq has become a virtual ally of Iran and the government we overthrew in 2001 is back in power in Afghanistan. 

Trump, jealous that President Obama was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize, wanted one of his own. He has been lobbying public opinion and the government of Norway since he was re-elected, inserting himself in conflicts around the world, claiming that he has ended eight wars — spoiler alert — he has not! He has even created an organization called the Board of Peace, although it appears to be just another grift, collecting billions while accomplishing nothing. So we could all be forgiven for thinking that, despite all the other harmful things Trump is doing and will do, getting us into another war wasn't among them. 

Surprise!

Let's not delude ourselves about Iran. They are not the good guys. They are a theocracy. There are elections for civil officials, but the real power is held by the religious leaders and the paramilitary Revolutionary Guards. (And guess what? They're republic! It's right in the name" The Islamic Republic of Iran. What makes them a republic? The fact that they're not a monarchy. Which they were when they were our allies.) They assert dictatorial control over their own people and do not hesitate to throw them in prison or shoot them in the streets for protesting. Sure, that's terrible, but it's hardly unique. I'd venture to say that a significant percentage of nations abuse their own people in a similar fashion. Our own ally, Israel, arguably treats its Palestinian population much worse. An early justification for attacking Iran was regime change: overthrowing its leadership and encouraging the people to rise up and take over the government. Why is it our business and if it is, why aren't we doing the same to North Korea? We don't hear too much about that these days. 

Iran doesn't confine its depredations just to its own territory. They bankroll a network of allies in neighboring countries; Hamas in the Occupied Territories, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, as well as militias in Iraq and Syria. Our military fought against some of these proxies in Iraq. They stir up trouble in every country where they have a presence. An argument could be made that their actions destabilize the region, but our allies in the region seem perfectly capable of defending themselves. Why is it our job to personally fix the problem? I don't think it is, but it's probably the strongest argument for any kind of intervention.

Finally there's the issue that gets talked about the most: the possibility of Iran building its own nuclear weapons. Iran maintains that it doesn't want to build nuclear weapons. Maybe they're lying, but what if they did? Do we imagine that they would initiate mutually assured destruction by using a nuclear weapon against Israel or Saudi Arabia? How do we treat problem nations who have nuclear weapons versus those who don't? Libya was bombed, their dictator killed and the country left in an ungovernable shambles after they gave up their nuclear ambitions. North Korea, on the other hand, has nuclear weapons, demonstrates their ability to use them, and is belligerent toward adversaries. Why? Because they have nuclear weapons. Why wouldn't Iran want that level of security? 

Previous presidents, ones who actually listened to their advisors, knew that war with Iran was a hopeless endeavor. Whatever perceived threats exist today have existed for 50 years. The best course of action was diplomacy, which is what was accomplished during the Obama Administration. Iran agreed to abandon any nuclear ambitions (which they may not have even had) in exchange for a loosening of sanctions and the release of frozen funds. China, Russia, Germany, The United Kingdom and the European Union in addition to the United States and Iran were signatories to the agreement. There was no sign that Iran was reneging in the agreement. Trump, in his first term, unilaterally reneged on it however, reinstating economic sanctions. It is quite probable that any action that Iran took to move toward building nuclear weapons can be traced to Trump's breaking the agreement. 

So, the possibility of an Iranian nuke, which it was unlikely to use became an emergency that had to be addressed by assassinating its Supreme Leader and others in leadership positions as well as extensive bombing of the country's infrastructure. This is where having advisors who weren't yes-men would have been handy. Or having a president who made decisions based on facts and intelligence rather than gut feelings. Why shock and awe didn't work is that Iran's leaders just don't give a damn how much their people suffer in a war and are so fanatical that they just keep on hitting back. They're like the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, biting away as his arms and legs are sliced off. And of course it didn't take the world's largest army to close the Strait of Hormuz, strangling the world's oil supply (and now the Houthis are cutting off the Mandab Strait on the other side of the Arabian peninsula). After all this, we have accomplished nothing and have caused energy prices to spike. 

A discussion of Trump's actions wouldn't be complete without reference to the cultish behavior of his supporters. The very people who were up in arms about inflation and high gas prices during Biden's presidency and claimed that was why they were voting for Trump were now leading the cheers for this unnecessary war and saying that high gas prices were worth it in order to keep a nuke out of the hands of our enemy, Iran. Oh yeah, they were against war back then too. 

But hey, Trump is definitely focussed on the right priorities: destroying the Kennedy Center if he can't have his name on it, building a ballroom and an arch, and kicking reporters out of the White House.