The List

 Thurston High School.

Columbine High School.

Heritage High School.

Deming Middle School.

Fort Gibson Middle School.

Buell Elementary School.

Lake Worth Middle School.

University of Arkansas.

Junipero Serra High School.

Santana High School.

Bishop Neumann High School.

Pacific Lutheran University.

Granite Hills High School.

Lew Wallace High School.

Martin Luther King, Jr. High School.

Appalachian School of Law.

Washington High School.

Conception Abbey.

Benjamin Tasker Middle School.

University of Arizona.

Lincoln High School.

John McDonogh High School.

Red Lion Area Junior High School.

Case Western Reserve University.

Rocori High School.

Ballou High School.

Randallstown High School.

Bowen High School.

Red Lake Senior High School.

Harlan Community Academy High School.

Campbell County High School.

Milwee Middle School.

Roseburg High School.

Pine Middle School.

Essex Elementary School.

Duquesne University.

Platte Canyon High School.

Weston High School.

West Nickel Mines School.

Joplin Memorial Middle School.

Henry Foss High School.

Compton Centennial High School.

Virginia Tech.

Success Tech Academy.

Miami Carol City Senior High School.

Hamilton High School.

Louisiana Technical College.

Mitchell High School.

E.O. Green Junior High School.

Northern Illinois University.

Lakota Middle School.

Knoxville Central High School.

Willoughby South High School.

Henry Ford High School.

University of Central Arkansas.

Dillard High School.

Dunbar High School.

Hampton University.

Harvard College.

Larose-Cut Off Middle School.

International Studies Academy.

Skyline College.

Discovery Middle School.

University of Alabama.

DeKalb School.

Deer Creek Middle School.

Ohio State University.

Mumford High School.

University of Texas.

Kelly Elementary School.

Marinette High School.

Aurora Central High School.

Millard South High School.

Martinsville West Middle School.

Worthing High School.

Millard South High School.

Highlands Intermediate School.

Cape Fear High School.

Chardon High School.

Episcopal School of Jacksonville.

Oikos University.

Hamilton High School.

Perry Hall School.

Normal Community High School.

University of South Alabama.

Banner Academy South.

University of Southern California.

Sandy Hook Elementary School.

Apostolic Revival Center Christian School.

Taft Union High School.

Osborn High School.

Stevens Institute of Business and Arts.

Hazard Community and Technical College.

Chicago State University.

Lone Star College-North.

Cesar Chavez High School.

Price Middle School.

University of Central Florida.

New River Community College.

Grambling State University.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Ossie Ware Mitchell Middle School.

Ronald E. McNair Discovery Academy.

North Panola High School.

Carver High School.

Agape Christian Academy.

Sparks Middle School.

North Carolina A&T State University.

Stephenson High School.

Brashear High School.

West Orange High School.

Arapahoe High School.

Edison High School.

Liberty Technology Magnet High School.

Hillhouse High School.

Berrendo Middle School.

Purdue University.

South Carolina State University.

Los Angeles Valley College.

Charles F. Brush High School.

University of Southern California.

Georgia Regents University.

Academy of Knowledge Preschool.

Benjamin Banneker High School.

D. H. Conley High School.

East English Village Preparatory Academy.

Paine College.

Georgia Gwinnett College.

John F. Kennedy High School.

Seattle Pacific University.

Reynolds High School.

Indiana State University.

Albemarle High School.

Fern Creek Traditional High School.

Langston Hughes High School.

Marysville Pilchuck High School.

Florida State University.

Miami Carol City High School.

Rogers State University.

Rosemary Anderson High School.

Wisconsin Lutheran High School.

Frederick High School.

Tenaya Middle School.

Bethune-Cookman University.

Pershing Elementary School.

Wayne Community College.

J.B. Martin Middle School.

Southwestern Classical Academy.

Savannah State University.

Harrisburg High School.

Umpqua Community College.

Northern Arizona University.

Texas Southern University.

Tennessee State University.

Winston-Salem State University.

Mojave High School.

Lawrence Central High School.

Franklin High School.

Muskegon Heights High School.

Independence High School.

Madison High School.

Antigo High School.

University of California-Los Angeles.

Jeremiah Burke High School.

Alpine High School.

Townville Elementary School.

Vigor High School.

Linden McKinley STEM Academy.

June Jordan High School for Equity.

Union Middle School.

Mueller Park Junior High School.

West Liberty-Salem High School.

University of Washington.

King City High School.

North Park Elementary School.

North Lake College.

Freeman High School.

Mattoon High School.

Rancho Tehama Elementary School.

Aztec High School.

Wake Forest University.

Italy High School.

NET Charter High School.

Marshall County High School.

Sal Castro Middle School.

Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School

Great Mills High School

Central Michigan University

Huffman High School

Frederick Douglass High School

Forest High School

Highland High School

Dixon High School

Santa Fe High School

Noblesville West Middle School

University of North Carolina Charlotte

STEM School Highlands Ranch

Edgewood High School

Palm Beach Central High School

Providence Career & Technical Academy

Fairley High School (school bus)

Canyon Springs High School

Dennis Intermediate School

Florida International University

Central Elementary School

Cascade Middle School

Davidson High School

Prairie View A & M University

Altascocita High School

Central Academy of Excellence

Cleveland High School

Robert E. Lee High School

Cheyenne South High School

Grambling State University

Blountsville Elementary School

Holmes County, Mississippi (school bus)

Prescott High School

College of the Mainland

Wynbrooke Elementary School

UNC Charlotte

Riverview Florida (school bus)

Second Chance High School

Carman-Ainsworth High School

Williwaw Elementary School

Monroe Clark Middle School

Central Catholic High School

Jeanette High School

Eastern Hills High School

DeAnza High School

Ridgway High School

Reginald F. Lewis High School

Saugus High School

Pleasantville High School

Waukesha South High School

Oshkosh High School

Catholic Academy of New Haven

Bellaire High School

North Crowley High School

McAuliffe Elementary School

South Oak Cliff High School

Texas A&M University-Commerce

Sonora High School

Western Illinois University

Oxford High School

Robb Elementary School

Why do I blame the Republican Party? Because the Republican Party is to blame

 Why do I blame the Republican Party? Because the Republican Party is to blame

“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” James Baldwin

Here’s what we’re not going to do.

We are not going to indulge the lazy rationalizations, false equivalence, cheap gaslighting and other forms of rhetorical chicanery that have become so common to political discourse in this era. Our country is in crisis, and we owe it better. The warning is for those who claimed offense at the following observation, made in this space a few days back: “What Americans have lost — to be painfully accurate, what Republicans have trashed in pursuit of power — is the willingness and ability to share a common national identity.” It would seem to be self-evident truth. But not everyone agrees.

“Constantly blaming Republicans,” griped one respondent.

 “You ONLY blame the Republicans,” complained another.

 “You exclusively blame Republicans,” grumbled yet another.

 Well, there’s a reason the Republicans get the blame for destroying any sense of common American narrative. It’s because — pay close attention here — they deserve the blame for destroying any sense of common American narrative. 

Sorry, but Hunter Biden’s laptop didn’t do that. Black Lives Matter didn’t do that. Whatever thing Fox “News” last told its audience to fear did not do that.

The Republican Party did it by a campaign of demonizing dissent, shredding norms and boundaries, embracing a politics of white resentment and fear and, perhaps most corrosively, delegitimizing the very idea of knowable fact, so that an ordinary birth certificate becomes an object of suspicion, an ordinary election a seedbed of distrust and the sacking of the U.S. Capitol an innocent visit by tourists.

 Is it mere partisanship to hold the party accountable for this? Or are we not talking about something bigger and more foundational than political gamesmanship? Note how many of the GOP’s ardent defenders — George F. Will, Rep. Adam Kinzinger, Kathleen Parker, Rep. Liz Cheney, Sen. Mitt Romney, Jonah Goldberg — have become, to various degrees, estranged from it in recent years. None of those worthies may be credibly accused of being anti-Republican. 

But what they are is conscientious enough that they cannot deny self-evident truth when it is right before them. Some of us prefer to peddle misguided both-sidesism, to spew non-responsive non-sequiturs or stick metaphorical fingers in metaphorical ears going “la la la la la la la” until the truth safely passes them by. 

Meantime, one party steers the ship of state toward jagged rocks. 

Political scientists Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein once observed that, “The Republican Party has become an insurgent outlier — ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.”

They wrote that in a 2012 book called “It’s Even Worse Than It Looks.” Ten years later, it’s even worse than that. 

It’s important to be clear on that, not to “blame” the GOP but because James Baldwin was right. You cannot fix what you will not face. And what America needs to face is the simple, chilling fact that the Republican Party is a clear and present danger. 

Confronting that does not make you a partisan. It makes you a patriot.

When the courts do hospitals' dirty work - Libby Watson

 

When the courts do hospitals' dirty work

Libby Watson

The story that drove me most insane in the last week was a USA Today piece about Hertz’s practice of filing police reports for cars that are not stolen, more information about which emerged in the proceedings of an ongoing lawsuit this week. Sometimes the cars are simply lost, or ‘missing’ in the system because someone extended a reservation by phone. This practice of filing police reports—which it does an average of 3,365 times per year, or about nine a day—has led to the 230 plaintiffs currently seeking justice in the lawsuit spending 2,742 collective days in jail. People interviewed by the paper have lost jobs or homes because of these false charges. This is not a healthcare story, but it does highlight an inescapable fact of American life that is horribly relevant to healthcare: The profitable partnership of massive corporations and the criminal justice system, holding hands to stamp on the faces of the poor.  

The story reminded me immediately of two others. First, this New York Times story from 2018, which revealed how huge corporations like Walmart “employ aggressive legal tactics and take advantage of loosely written state laws” to demand money from people they accused of shoplifting, even if those accusations were false. Those retailers often “do not have to return the money they collect if the cases are ultimately dismissed or the people are cleared.” In one instance, a woman accused of stealing $25 worth of CDs alleged that “two police officers ‘threw’ her on a couch, handcuffed her and took her to jail.” The charges were later dropped, but not until after Walmart’s lawyers demanded money from her and threatened her with a lawsuit. 

 Second, in 2019, ProPublica wrote about the practice of jailing people who fail to appear in court for medical debt cases, which became especially profitable for one collection attorney in Kansas. The story provided harrowing examples, like the cancer patient who was “hauled away from home in her pajamas in front of her three children; too weak to climb the stairs to the women’s area of the jail, she spent the night in a men’s mental health unit where an inmate smeared feces on the wall.” Not long before that piece came out, a story from Kaiser Health News detailed the University of Virginia’s practice of taking patients to court for unpaid medical bills, for as little as $13.91. Together, these pieces tell a powerful tale about how hospitals can use the justice system to threaten and extract payment from patients—all possible because we make patients ultimately responsible for the individual costs of their healthcare. The charges the patients owe money for are, of course, completely arbitrary and wildly inflated, but they don’t have to justify the fees to sue the patient over them. 

These are stories from three different sectors of the American economy—car rentals, retail, and healthcare—but they have an important aspect in common. In all of these stories, huge, profitable institutions are able to use the full might of the state, with all the consequences this has for their victims’ lives, to obtain mostly meaningless amounts of money—to them, that is. To the people whose lives they’re ruining, these sums can be life-changing, or life-ruining. The cops and the courts act on behalf of the corporation, no matter how egregiously wrong or aggressive they might be, to insure them against any little loss of profit. 

I write about healthcare, not criminal justice or American history, so I don’t feel like I can adequately diagnose or explain how the American justice system got so eager to help corporations like this. I can’t explain why a judge in Virginia might have told a woman in her 70s, who arrived at hospital “bleeding and in pain” from uterine cancer, that her payment agreement with the hospital was not too vague to be enforced, because she always had “the ability to decline the surgery” that led to her $23,849 bill. I guess she could have gathered up her bloody clothes and tottered along to the next hospital, which would have had exactly the same clause “you owe us whatever we say you do” in its contract and might have charged her twice as much anyway (neither could have told her the cost beforehand, of course). I can’t explain how the debt collector in Coffeyville lives with himself. I can’t explain why Walmart goes to such lengths to pursue people for such stupidly small amounts of money, which must itself cost them a lot in legal fees.

I can’t explain any of it, but I do know that all over this country, there are frightening and arbitrary schemes put in place by corporations to ensnare regular people, extract their little bits of money, and toss them aside, into jail or financial ruin, or both. The criminal justice system opens its arms and welcomes the worst fucking snakes in America and happily lets them use it, with its gun-toting cops itching to humiliate people and its horrific, dangerous jails, to chop up the meager finances of the poor and turn them into snake food.

And I know that there are many, many hospitals that are no better in this way than Hertz or Walmart.

Thousands and thousands of lawsuits are filed by hospitals against their patients every year; some kept doing it during the pandemic, including New York’s Northwell Health. According to Axios, the Mayo Clinic Saint Mary’s Campus sought $4 million in 904 lawsuits against patients between January 2018 and July 2020; the Mayo Clinic’s total revenue just in 2019 was $13.82 billion. Those lawsuits over two and a half years represent 0.02 percent of the organization’s revenue in one of those years. 0.02 percent of a normal person’s yearly income is like what you might spend on lunch. Could they perhaps have foregone their lunch to not ruin 904 people’s lives? 

Cops and judges arrested and jailed people who had not stolen a car to help out Hertz. They humiliated people who had not stolen stuff to help out Walmart. They jailed cancer patients for being unable to afford the made-up price a hospital charged them to stay alive, to help out the hospital. (I didn’t even mention the judges who sign off on landlords’ arrest warrants for unpaid rent.) The reverse of this—for ordinary people to use the legal system to obtain justice from large corporations—is absurdly difficult, thanks to neat things like arbitration clauses and ‘needing money to get a lawyer.’

The truth of American inequality is not just that some people have a lot of money and a lot more have very little, in some sad natural accident. The rich are rich because other people are poor. The wealthy elite extracts their riches from the poor through schemes like this, or underpaying workers, or pure wage theft. It’s a transfer, and the logic of capitalism and ever-increasing profits dictates that they must always use every possible avenue to expand this transfer. And sitting right there is the criminal justice system, already primed to oppress the powerless and vulnerable, with the legal authority to take people’s money. It’s a loaded gun, literally.

Maybe you expect this of Walmart. But hospitals? If a hospital is just as willing to engage in this behavior as Big Evil Corp., and the legal system is willing to enforce the complete fiction that hospital prices are real, we don’t really have a healthcare system—and we certainly don’t have justice, let alone a right to healthcare. We just have another type of greedy fuckers making money however they can, who just happen to sell healthcare instead of cars.

Josh Steich on Voter Education

 Josh Steich on voters: 
Voters have always been "vibe based" rather than deeply engaged, policy literate rational actors. And the folks (older homeowners) who have traditionally been the most deeply engaged are the ones who tend to advocate for policies that end up benefiting them while screwing the rest of us.

There are two ways to fight this (and both are probably needed): First, the most popular liberal establishment answer, and the most popular among college-educated folks overrepresented in political discourse, is to do better civic education and work on getting normies more politically literate. It's the "the answer to bad speech is more speech" option, and counts on most people engaging with politics the way that educated liberals generally do: through a mix of research, debate and mainstream credible sources.

Second, to work on better vibes for liberals, progressives and Dems. The general complaint from the right that Obama voters just thought he was cool and didn't really think much about his policies? That's probably correct, at least to a significant extent. It's probably true about Biden too. And Trump voters are almost comically politically illiterate, and entirely voting based on negative partisanship vibes. This is something that Republicans excel at — partly because they have to, because when you describe their policies accurately, they're really unpopular! Only something like 15% of the public wants abortion laws like Texas, and even most Republican voters want to see higher taxes on the rich. So it's all based on provoking an emotional, fear based response, where scary Democrats are going to eat your babies.

It's really hard for mainstream liberals and progressives to answer that, because they try to get back by grounding the discussion in rational debate — basically like trying to reason with shitposters. It can be even worse on the left, because a lot of people with status on the left got that status by being able to argue more forcefully with people who generally agree with them — that's the wrong skill for convincing people who don't agree, and leads to what I think of as "Fugazi politics." Fugazi is a great punk band who intentionally staked out a career whose goal wasn't to be financially successful, but to be purists about their music. Which, again, is pretty great. But that can make their fans really snobbish about music like Taylor Swift, who is widely loved by all sorts of people. If you want to win elections, you want to win over the Taylor Swift fans, not the Fugazi fans, because there just aren't enough Fugazi fans and there never will be.

And maintaining political power — which is the goal, in order to get preferred policies passed — means winning over people who will never really want to be engaged, never be interested in wrestling with whether this abstruse zoning rule will have a downstream effect on housing, etc. It means getting them engaged because of vibes. Because it's cool, it's fun, whatever.

The good news is that the best way to do this is for you, reader, to talk to your friends and family NOW about how you're voting for Dems in the fall. Not as a fight, not as an argument, but just, like, a thing you're doing because you're a normal person, and it's a normal thing to do. Don't make people feel attacked, don't make them feel scared or angry, shrug off any bullshit and just be public about voting for Dems. You gotta start now, though, because this shit TAKES LOTS OF TIME AND REPETITION. Save the arguments for people who you already agree with, make them about the best way to get policies you both agree with, etc.