Brian Haupt

international development program design, new and improved, now without the term "beneficiary" and other assorted put downs

[Brian Haupt @bdhaupt]

@StillthinkingSK @mattyglesias but the DC government didn’t do! it just said it was done and dc public schools could open as normal. they were wrong, or just lied

[Knowing Better @KnowingBetterYT]

State Department throws away over a century of established soft power.

If you take your ball and go home, the neighborhood kids aren't going to sit around and sulk. They're going to find a new ball and not let you play when you try to come back.

Probably a Chinese ball.

[Edward Ongweso Jr @bigblackjacobin]

lmao LET HIM COOK

[Aaron Regunberg @AaronRegunberg]

I decided to rewatch the first Gladiator to get ready for Gladiator II, and man, I had forgotten the moral depravity of this film. The movie basically celebrates Maximus’s killing of Commodus in the end. Like, come on, that’s a human being — a brother, an uncle, a son.

[Basel Musharbash @musharbash_b]

I've never seen a more complete misunderstanding of what inflates healthcare costs in America. Where do you even start responding when the guy is very confident that the whole problem is . . . that American doctors are just uniquely mean and greedy?

I guess the Vox boys will say anything to avoid blaming consolidation, monopolization, and private equity looting.

[Brian Haupt @bdhaupt]

@micah_erfan why do democrats continue to lose?

1. parrot insurance industry talking points that patients should assume risks of medical fraud and not insurers, contravening the stated point of insurance
2. blame “leftists” for poor policy outcomes stemming from their own decisions

[Matt Stoller @matthewstoller]

The failure of the media to reflect the total popular rage at the health insurance industry - including the virtual dancing on this guy's grave - is one reason the press is dying.

[Emma Vigeland @EmmaVigeland]

Maybe going after privatized healthcare would be a good move for Democrats electorally, idk!!!

[Chris Hedges @ChrisLynnHedges]

We do not yet know the motive for the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. But it would not surprise me if the killer stalked Thompson because UnitedHealthcare had denied medical coverage, or forced a family or an individual into bankruptcy, after the company failed to cover a serious illness. Insurers reject about 1 in 7 claims for treatment, often by deciding the treatment is not “medically necessary.”

Among 10 high-income nations, the United States spends the most on health care but has the worst health outcomes. Americans die four years earlier than their counterparts in other industrialized nations.

There are more than 200 million Americans who rely on private health insurance, but once they become seriously ill, they are often tossed aside, left with crippling medical bills and unable to receive adequate treatment. Exorbitant medical bills account for about 40 percent bankruptcies. Many of those driven into bankruptcy because of medical bills had medical insurance.

The revenue of six largest insurers  -- Anthem, Centene, Cigna, AVS/Aetna, Humana and UnitedHealth -- have more than quadrupled from 2010 to $1.1 trillion. Combined revenues of the 3 biggest -- United, CVS/Aetna and Cigna -- have quintupled.

These corporations, in moral terms, are legally permitted to hold sick children hostage while their parents bankrupt themselves to save their sons or daughters. That many die, at the very least premature deaths, because of these policies is indisputable. 

Nothing absolves the killer of Thompson, but nothing absolves those who run for-profit health care corporations that embrace a business model that destroys and terminates lives in the name of profit.

[moe tkacik @moetkacik]

UnitedHealth CEO Brian Thompson was just 50 years old at the time of his murder, which is a lot more tragic when you know that his life expectancy as a member of the Top 1% was 88, or 15 years longer than the life expectancy of the average American male https://t.co/VU5Xoi7cqD

[Jacobin @jacobin]

Radical abolitionist John Brown was executed on this day in 1859 for trying to spark a revolution to free millions held in bondage.

“I have only a short time to live, only one death to die, and I will die fighting for this cause.”

[jeremy scahill @jeremyscahill]

REVEALED: Israeli Settler Company Specializing in West Bank Outposts Now at Work in Northern Gaza

https://t.co/QRuTNxdIXg

@ytirawi reports for @DropSiteNews

[Rafael Shimunov 🍉 🕎 @rafaelshimunov]

Reading the book after failing the class.

[Sinn Féin @sinnfeinireland]

Mary Lou McDonald TD elected in Dublin central

[Brian Haupt @bdhaupt]

@DefiyantlyFree if you would read the text directly next to the chart you are referencing you would learn the money is for operation enduring sentinel, which is a program to “contain terrorist threats emanating from Afghanistan and protect the homeland by maintaining pressure on those threats”

[Brian Haupt @bdhaupt]

@elonmusk uh the document that guy linked quite clearly explains the $48B is used for operation enduring sentinel to maintain pressure on terrorist threats that could attack the us

[Hamilton Nolan @hamiltonnolan]

RICH IDIOT: [govt agency] doesn’t do [thing]
WORLD: actually they’ve been doing that for years
RICH IDIOT: well, I’m glad they’re swinging into action

- repeat 1000x for the next four years

[Jeet Heer @HeerJeet]

The current president, Democrat, came to marriage equality late (in 2012) succumbing to the pressure of a social movement, he has a history of advocating cutting social security and (like the party's presidential nominee in 2016 and like Yglesias himself) supported the Iraq War. It wasn't the Democrats who won on these policies, it the mobilization of social movements against reactionary elite figures like Biden (and, frankly, Yglesias).

[Lee Fang @lhfang]

There’s a huge issue re debanking. We saw anti-Covid mandate truckers losing access to bank accounts over activism, pro-Palestinian orgs losing access to Venmo, etc. But now predatory lenders & scammers are conflating consumer protection w/ “debanking” to call for deregulation.