To the Editor:
Donald Trump convincingly won the 2024 election by adding a substantial number of Black and Hispanic voters to his MAGA base. Polls indicate that these voters cast their ballot on pocketbook issues, believing that Trump was better suited to managing the economy than Harris. The mystery is how did a large segment of the working-class come to accept that an inept, arrogant plutocrat would manage the economy in their interest? To understand the issue, we need to go beyond the discussion of campaign strategies or individual characteristics to an analysis of the four-decade-long influence of the economic ideology known as neoliberalism.
Neoliberalism is a radical extension of classical economics that focuses on free markets and laissez faire. Neoliberals associate liberty with markets, promoting policies that provide for economic freedom. Neoliberals believe that markets work best when consumers and competitors are unconstrained. Unrestricted competition in markets makes them self-regulating and efficient. Thus, government regulation that limits choice is not only a restriction of liberty but also destroys market efficiency. Writing in the 60s, Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of economists became the primary advocates of economic liberalism. As well as advocating for free markets, they championed the idea that the sole purpose of business was to ensure maximum returns to owners or stockholders. They supported deregulation of markets, privatization of industries and free trade policies.
Neoliberal economic theory made the transition from the academy to policy in the ’80s under Thatcher of Great Britain and Ronald Reagan in the U.S. The Clinton administration moved Democrats toward neoliberalism in the ’90s, eliminating many financial constraints on Wall Street and advocating for the adoption of NAFTA. Neoliberal ideology became firmly established in the policies of both political parties and have remained in the ascendency.
Free trade policies such as tariff reductions, broad-based free trade treaties and the admission of China to the World Trade Organization juiced global trade. Global exchange was supercharged by new communication technologies and the introduction of containerized shipping which drastically reduced transportation costs. The economic benefits of deregulation and free trade were substantial. Lower prices and increased variety stimulated demand for goods and services resulting in GDP growth in many countries. Large banks and financial institutions prospered as investment opportunities expanded globally. Tech workers found themselves in high demand to provide services and innovation to expanding industries. For many, the era of globalization was a time of prosperity. Prosperity was not universal, however, and globalization was to have severe blowback effects.
The relentless logic of global capitalism, characterized by unconstrained competition and the drive for maximum returns, ensured that along with winners, there would be losers. Among the biggest losers were blue collar workers in the American heartland who lost millions of jobs to foreign competitors as multinational corporations looked to exploit the efficiencies of global supply chains and low labor costs in less developed countries. Proponents of globalization promised retraining for laid off workers and economic development programs for devastated communities but few of these proposals were implemented. With their jobs gone, communities in chaos, and feeling abandoned by their government, resentment grew among the displaced working class in the Heartland. The 2008 Great Recession amplified the resentment. The recession was caused by excessive speculation in the housing market by financial institutions newly freed of regulation. Billions of dollars in Government bailouts were paid to the Wall Street financiers who caused the problem, but no relief was provided to the average citizen many of whom had lost their homes, incomes and retirement funds. The feeling that government elites of both parties were more concerned with the interests of the wealthy rather than the difficulties of the working class became pervasive. Economic data supports this narrative. Real wages have essentially remained static since the ’80s. Wealth inequality has risen substantially since the ’80s to the extent that the top one percent now has more wealth than the bottom ninety percent. Such a level of inequality is not sustainable in a stable society.
Ideas have consequences. Although no Trump voter entered the election booth thinking about the Chicago School economists, their vote was cast in a context determined by four decades of neoliberal policies. Their ideas have created a class of super wealthy capitalists while contributing to privation and distress within the working class. An economic ideology focused on efficiency and growth has instead produced dangerous division and class conflict between wealthy elites and disadvantaged workers. It has also facilitated the ascendancy of a dangerous demagogue who threatens the very existence of democracy.
Robert D. Russell, Ph.D.
Harrisburg, Pa.
Robert:
This letter could not be more relevant. Nor could it be more badly needed.
This is the kind of information that corporate news organizations bust their asses every day to ignore and obscure.
It’s a great day for us when we have the opportunity to present it so clearly.
We can’t thank you enough.
The Editor
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Gazette Exclusive: New New Testament!
To the Editor:
Jesus has some new teachings, believe it or not. Amazingly, they align with President-elect Donald Trump’s political views!
This is exciting! This is headline news!
Not many people are aware of this, I realize. After all, people are very busy, their attention distracted as they rush around to get their Christmas shopping done early.
Jesus used to be like, “Love your neighbor, love your enemy, ya-da, ya-da, ya-da.” But now Jesus is like, “You can’t love everyone. Some people are morally reprehensible criminals, you know, like illegal aliens who illegally crossed the border to get into the United States illegally.”
That’s a verbatim quote, by the way. I took careful notes during my recent encounter with the Lord.
Understandably, this “good news” may come as a surprise to some folks, especially to those who have a tender heart for the poor and the downtrodden. It may also come as a surprise that, according to Jesus, we are to put America first, rather than put God first.
Momentarily confused about these new teachings which turn the old teachings on their head, I then asked the Lord for some clarification, timidly uttering to the wise teacher, “Shouldn’t we treat people humanely, whether they’re in the U.S. legally or illegally?” Instantly a frown of disapproval appeared on the Lord’s face.
“Absolutely not,” Jesus sternly replied, “we can’t afford to be kind to illegals, because it would cost U.S. taxpayers too much money.” Jesus then went on to say it was “a black and white issue, there can be no woke, b.s., liberal compromise.”
I must admit, this was enlightening news to me. In fact, it was quite revolutionary to my previous way of thinking.
Finally adding with a raised voice, Jesus said, “We need a crackdown on illegals like the world has never seen before, because when someone enters this country illegally it’s a felony, so no compassion is deserved, and no humane treatment is necessary!” Jesus was firm, resolute, and emphatic about this, just like Trump, whom he considers a political saint.
This conversation took place inside the Somersworth, N.H. Walmart. Jesus, who was clean-shaven and had short hair, was was wearing Adidas sneakers, blue jeans, a plain, white t-shirt, and a faded, red “TRUMP 2020” hat.
I am grateful to know these new teachings, and I just thought others would want to know these new teachings, too. People deserve to know the absolute truth.
Now you know. Now you can rejoice.
We Americans should be proud to soon have a president in the Oval Office who is so Christ-like in his selfless attitude, spiritual outlook, stable-genius temperament, noble character, and authoritarian aspirations! Have a quintuple-blessed day!
Respectfully,
Alex J. Boros
Rochester, N.H.
Alex:
We can’t thank you enough. It is humbling to be chosen by you to receive this new Gospel—although, to be sure, as the Nation’s Oldest Newspaper,™ we’re at a loss to suggest a more appropriate conduit.
It must be said, though, that this is a fairly ironic choice. The godless, heathenish tendencies of our current management are a matter of public record, and unlikely to change.
Despite our robust spiritual skepticism, we have admired—on those occasions when His followers chose to live by them—the values of the old-style Jesus.
If these new teachings succeed in trumping the old ones, our antipathy towards organized religion will only be reinforced.
The Editor
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Can We Do What Koreans Did?
Dear Editor:
For anyone concerned about how fragile a democracy can be, the recent attempted coup in South Korea should present a clear warning to Americans. In South Korea, president Yoon Suk Yeol was legally elected in 2022. Since then the legislature has conducted a number of corruption investigations of his allies and his wife. As a result, Yoon declared martial law, taking over the media, enlisting the military to support his coup, and banning any political activities. Fortunately, the Korean people reacted against this coup. Even as the military attempted to prevent members of the legislature from entering the National Assembly to overturn Yoon’s coup, crowds helped them enter the Assembly and restore their democracy.
The United States is about to enter a time when the survival of our Republic is facing its most serious threat. Donald Trump has made clear that in a second term, he would govern differently than any president in our history. He has hinted at suspending the Constitution, building deportation camps, weaponizing the Department of Justice and the FBI, and the mass firing of career civil servants. He reportedly plans to invoke the Insurrection Act, which would allow him to use the military as a domestic police force, on his first day in office (Brennan Center for Justice, November 28, 2023). And let us not forget Trump using Stalin’s words calling the press: “Truly the enemy of the people.”
Unfortunately most Americans think that what happened in South Korea cannot happen here. That sort of thinking defies history. After all, we thought that a January 6th could never happen, either. The real question is, if the worst were to happen here, and Trump follows through on his rhetoric, how will the military, the Congress, the Cabinet, the courts and the people themselves respond? Would they react as the Koreans did to preserve their democracy? Or will they simply passively accept their fate? The Koreans have been through this kind of democracy-killing experience before in the 1980’s, know what it is like to live under a dictatorship, and responded heroically to stop it from happening again. Fortunately, we Americans have never had that experience to guide us in responding to such an event. Hopefully we will never experience what South Korea just experienced, but, then again, we cannot take our democracy for granted. To do so might see its demise.
Rich DiPentima
Portsmouth, N.H.
Rich:
Republicans will, of course, deny that the incoming Chief Executive would do anything like what you are suggesting. That is hardly reassuring, though. Those few party members who tried to defy the will of their Gilded Calf have long since been purged. Those remaining scramble to profess their loyalty. Nothing any of them say should be assumed to be true.
Their slavish fealty has only become stronger—and more nauseating—during his four years out of power. Just to make things worse, as is their wont, on July 1st, the Supreme Court put the president above the law, reversing the result of the American Revolution.
So, at high noon on January 20th, our first monarch will take the throne. Will the people let him keep it? Only time will tell.
Irony seems to be everywhere these days. For decades, the U.S. backed a succession of repressive regimes in South Korea. Now they’ve had a more-or-less democratic government for a while, and they seem willing to go to some lengths to keep it. Meanwhile we’re flailing in a greased chute to serfdom. Perhaps if we find ourselves under martial law, South Koreans will forgive our past sins and give us some pointers.
The Editor
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What Are The Chances?
Dear Editor:
Historic treasure Aleppo is being bombed by Russia and Syrian President Assad’s forces. Beirut, Lebanon, is being bombed by Israel using American-made 2000-pound bombs, killing targeted Hezbollah but also civilians. Gazans still, if surviving, barely live. Historic treasure Kiev, too, being bombed by Russia. Sudan is in horrific straits. Refugees are on the road. Graves are being dug. How can we possibly, here, sing “Jingle Bells,” and write out “Merry Christmas”? We should weep.
I looked through my UNICEF catalog and chose cards carefully. I found these greetings: “Wonder and joy to your little corner of the world,” with a red fox illustration. I found “Let the light of Hanukkah fill you with joy!” I must wait for a distant year to use this one, some better year. Luckily, some groups drawing attention to human and animal needs send me blank cards, for donation—best for this year.
On “Giving Tuesday” I called NHPR with my donation for “chances” in their raffle. To many fellow Earth inhabitants, a “chance” is about getting safe. A “chance” is about happening upon a family’s food when it’s scarce or zero. A “chance” is about children’s schooling not cut off by war, bombing of schools and roads. Children having their limbs. “Chance” is about clean water and sanitation. Heat in winter. Close to home, where do New Hampshire’s tenting homeless get their water? How cold are their winter hours? My wish this year: thoughtful understanding that the deprivations of other places approach us, unstable government coming in January, a choice made not by N.H.’s majority, thank goodness, but by our country’s majority, lies and disinformation successfully doing trickery. This holiday season I wish for resilience for all.
Lynn Rudmin Chong
Sanbornton, N.H.
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About Medicare Advantage
To the Editors,
A recent article in the New Hampshire Gazette* asserts that Medicare Advantage programs neither lower costs nor improve healthcare outcomes for seniors, and that they are failed experiments to privatize Medicare. Yet a different point of view suggests otherwise.
Medicare Advantage programs are attractive to seniors, because they provide coverage for basic healthcare needs that Medicare does not. This does improve healthcare for seniors, and does lower costs for those procedures and services that the Medicare Advantage programs provide and Medicare does not. If seniors had to pay out-of-pocket for these procedures and services, the cost in most instances would greatly exceed anything additional paid out by individual seniors to private insurers for their Medicare Advantage coverages, as individuals are not charged for procedures and services at the same rates as Medicare and Medicare Advantage programs are.
While the authors cite many examples of waste, corruption, and abuse, and taking advantage of the Medicare billing rules and regulations (such as “upcoding,” for example), many of these examples could (and probably do, and would) occur without Medicare Advantage programs—so is it fair to lay the blame solely on Medicare Advantage programs?
The authors support their position with several examples of abuse of the both the Medicare system itself, as well as the Medicare Advantage programs themselves. They suggest that the policymakers can correct the issues and “guarantee true comprehensive coverage simply by redirecting overpayments to Medicare Advantage [providers] into Medicare.” But in fact, there is no guarantee that the “overpayments” of the sort cited by the authors would not still occur, going instead to individual providers and healthcare organizations. Thus “redirection” does not seem like a solution.
The real issue as I see it, is that if a senior is insured only by Medicare, then all applicable Part C costs are paid for out of the Medicare pool. Only the costs for rendered benefits deplete the Medicare funds. But when a senior is insured by a Medicare Advantage program, all the funds under Part C of Medicare revert to the private insurer’s Medicare Advantage program, regardless of whether or not the senior receives any benefits. This results in depleting the Medicare Trust Fund faster, and while this may seem like a gamble for Medicare Advantage providers, experience has shown, as the authors illuminate, the gamble has been paying off with huge profits.
In my view, the actual solution to this dilemma is for Medicare to correct its built-in faults that allow for the abuses cited, and to expand their benefits to match or exceed coverages offered by the Medicare Advantage programs.
Medicare Advantage programs, while sadly rife with abuses and flawed, do provide additional services to seniors, oftentimes at no additional cost to seniors, and in doing so, do improve the health outcomes for those seniors. They are not a totally failed experiment.
[*] “Medicare ‘Advantage’ by the Numbers,” Emma Curchin, Brandon Novick, Peter Hart – The New Hampshire Gazette – Vol. CCLXIX, No. 6 – Friday, November 29, 2024.
Paul Cully
Dover, N.H.
Paul:
Thank you for providing this detailed critique of this article. We were eager to publish it because, having reached that age when it takes several doctors to keep us going, two of those whom we trust the most have warned us off Medicare Advantage.
This is not to say we think you’re wrong. We wouldn’t dare, given our feeble grasp of how this country’s byzantine health care system allegedly works.
We would be happy to see a debate on the topic take place in these pages. Readers… ?
The Editor
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Uphold Section 3!
Dear Editor:
Section 3 of the 14th Amendment reads: “No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.”
Back in primary season, some state (Colorado, I think) tried to keep Trump off the ballot—citing this section of the Constitution as disqualifying him for office. A court ruled against them, saying that the Amendment only prohibited a traitor from holding any federal office, not from running for one.
Trump is about to hold the position of President again. Now is the time for someone to launch a 14th Amendment challenge to his eligibility to be inaugurated! The Amendment doesn’t talk about conviction for acts of insurrection, only about engagement. If there’s any question about this, I’m sure Jack Smith could do a convincing job of laying out the facts of Trump’s participation. Congress hasn’t “removed his disability.” Section 3 applies.
Someone should stop him before it is too late.
Paul Fischler
Rochester, N.H.
Paul:
Our former President and future monarch, while in office, exhorted a mob to storm the Capitol to halt the peaceful transfer of power out of his own tiny hands. This is indisputable. Everyone saw it happen.
The question is, does that constitute “insurrection or rebellion”? We know what we think the correct answer is: the Pope is, indeed, Catholic, and the bear, provided he is in the woods, behaves as one might expect.
Gather up enough members in a given political party whose allegiance is to that party—which is to say, to those the party deems worthy of serving—rather than the Constitution, and eventually you will have an organized mob willing to deny what their lying eyes have seen.
If that mob is countered only by a milling throng of aimless purse-clutchers, more interested in being seen as civil than in preserving civil and human rights, eventually the mob will get to define the terms of any argument. Call it the Gingrich principal.
There may once have been a legal way to “stop him,” but it surely seems too late now. We bought the ticket. Hang on, because the ride is about to begin.
The Editor
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Democracy in Syria Unlikely
Dear Editor,
“Face the Nation” recently asked whether Syria might become the first real Arab Muslim democracy in the Middle East today (December 8, 2024).
Probably not. Not even “democratic” Israel today is anywhere near an authentic democracy, nor is the United States, though our people regularly claim to have the same republican form of government the Founders originally set up.
Military and political leaders of the Syrian rebels will hang their hats on a form of government that will allow ambitious individuals to corner extraordinary power and wealth for themselves and to minimize those benefits for the people.
There will be no Mahatma Gandhi who will teach real self-determination to a classroom of all the people. There will be no George Washington who will voluntarily give up power after a relatively short term of office. But maybe there will be less chemical warfare directed against next-door neighbors.
Kimball Shinkoskey
Woods Cross, Utah
Kimball:
Hang on a minute. You predict that Syrian rebels will “allow ambitious individuals to corner extraordinary power and wealth for themselves and to minimize those benefits for the people.”
Are they secretly Republicans?
The Editor
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Business Über Alles
To the Editor,
Being a regular reader of Mr. Ehrhart’s column, any other than the response—restraint, albeit perhaps strained—he reported with respect to the woman who sat next to him at the memorial service would have surprised me (The New Hampshire Gazette, Friday, November 29, 2024). I respect his civility even as I share his dismay at the outcome of the November 5th election.
The only hope for what passes as conservatism today is an ignorant populace, and it has just demonstrated the magnitude of its ignorance. It’s perhaps not quite as bad as slightly more than half those who voted, inasmuch as some percentage voted not so much for ignorance as greed.
But its ignorance is what begets statements like “Now we’ll have some businessmen in charge,” and that has spawned the unfortunate transition from government by public servants to government by media personalities and businessmen.
The history of private enterprise, or “business,” is replete with exploitation, of children, women, and immigrants, disregard for workers and consumers as well as the environment, and rapacious greed. Unchecked, “business” has murdered workers whose labor produces that from which it profits, blatantly with private armies and casually through unsafe working conditions, as well as consumers sold addictive and dangerous products.
Some of business’s more reprehensible practices have been reigned in through the creation of government regulatory agencies (let’s hope they survive). The business of government is not the business of “business” (maximize profits at any cost, society and the environment be damned), but rather the welfare of citizens. To suggest that government be run like a business is ludicrous: letting private enterprise into (taxpayer funded) Medicare has cost the government dearly in fraudulent overcharges; efficiency as relates to business is an illusion, banks and Wall Street financial institutions that precipitated the last financial crisis having survived thanks to government largesse at the expense of taxpayers (some might call that socialism); and as is becoming increasingly apparent, the costs of what economists term “externalities” like pollution and environmental degradation are borne not by the businesses that incur them but again by citizens, through taxes and deteriorating living conditions.
That government, for a number of reasons, is less than ideally suited to managing the day-to-day operations of a nation’s businesses was amply demonstrated by the erstwhile Soviet Union. That a businessman (one, it should be noted, who has presided over successive business failures) is wholly unsuited to the responsibilities entailed in serving the public interest, including the preservation of a livable habitat for said public, will be more than amply demonstrated by the forthcoming administration.
If you feel the earth moving under your feet, it’s less likely an earthquake than the Earth shuddering in anticipation of the next four years.
John Simon
Portsmouth, N.H.
John:
Businessmen realized long ago that they could bulldoze the media. After all, most media are businesses—they share DNA. They claimed the government had no right to encroach on the prerogatives of “the business community.” Their imagined efficiencies were presumed to be so great that they could produce both lower prices for consumers and a profit for the shareholders. Decades of repetition drove this simplistic fallacy into the public mind—government regulation and oversight are futile, and can only make things worse.
That’s a neat and self-serving fiction. Government is actually the citizenry’s last line of defense against the corporate urge to dominate and wring every last nickel out of the public.
The Editor