Darkness is conservatives’ ally
Medicare open enrollment is October 15 – December 7 each year. Expect to see even more ads for Medicare Advantage programs between now and December 7. Private industry providers tease you relentlessly with “bonus” coverage, money back in your Social Security check, etc., that plain-vanilla Medicare supplement plans don’t. “Free dental and vision! Gym memberships!… No monthly premiums!” Sound too good to be true?
How do they do it? VOLUME, naturally. But insurance industry whistleblower Wendell Potter warns that it’s because the only “advantage” to these HMO-style networked plans is for the insurers.
But why, if they sound so good, someone asked when Potter addressed a pre-pandemic audience here. Potter replied it’s because insurers know what you’ll buy.
Caveat emptor.
Shifting gears.
Conservatives want to see public education demolished. Not just to get their hands on the hundreds of billions in tax money funding it annually. Not just so religious conservatives can restrict what students learn. But to prevent the general public from developing critical thinking skills — bullshit detectors.
Former Trump education secretary Betsy DeVos, promoter of school “choice,” voucher programs and charter schools, is married to former Amway CEO Dick DeVos. Amway is a multilevel marketing operation. Need I say more?
I need.
Conservative activist Leonard A. Leo, the Federalist Society influencer who’s devoted years to elevating ultra-conservatives like Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court, has another, less-visible pet project. Leo has built “an opaque, sprawling network” funded with dark money to underwrite it (New York Times):
An investigation by The New York Times of Mr. Leo’s activities reveals new details of how he has built that network, with relatively little public attention, into one of the best-funded and most sophisticated operations in American politics, giving him extraordinary influence as he pushes a broad array of hot-button conservative causes and seeks to counter what he sees as an increasing leftward tilt in society.
The network represents a dramatic expansion of tactics and focus for Mr. Leo, who spent nearly three decades working mostly behind the scenes to pull the judiciary to the right as an executive at the Federalist Society. His success in that effort, and expansion into other polarizing fights, is rapidly making him a leading target of criticism from the left.
His philosophy is defined by a belief that the federal government should play a smaller role in public life and religious values a larger one, and that institutions and individuals should be challenged for embracing what he sees as subversive liberal positions.
With the credibility he’s built in promoting conservative judges, wealthy conservative donors are willing to back Leo’s new project. Between mid-2015 and 2021, his group spent “nearly $504 million on policy and political fights, including grants to about 150 allied groups,” the Times investigation found. Prime targets are environmental, social and governance policies and companies that strike any “woke” poses.
His expanded effort focuses on a variety of causes, including restricting abortion rights in the states; ending affirmative action; defending religious groups accused of discriminating against L.G.B.T.Q. people; opposing what he sees as liberal policies being espoused by corporations and schools; electing Republicans; and fighting Democratic efforts to slow climate change, increase the transparency of money in politics and expand voting access.
“The idea behind the network and the enterprise we built is to roll back liberal dominance in many important sectors of American life,” Mr. Leo said in an interview last month. “I had a couple of decades or more of experience rolling back liberal dominance in the legal culture, and I thought it was time to take the lessons learned from that and see whether there was a way to roll back liberal dominance in other areas of American cultural, policy and political life.”
A Senate proposal to shine a light into such dark money corners failed on a procedural vote every Republican voted against. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell referenced Leo’s network afterward, saying, “That sounds like transforming society, which is not easy. But look, I have a lot of confidence in his judgment and his convictions.”
Liberal efforts at transforming society : bad. Conservative efforts : good.
It takes a well-developed bullshit detector these days to perceive the gears turning behind the scenes. Conservative transformers prefer you numbed enough to buy whatever Donald Trump is selling. It means you’re not likely to see through more subtle Medicare privatization efforts and school “choice” promotions. Or behind the curtain of anodyne-sounding organizations intent on rolling back the social advances of the 20th century (and now the 21st) to the McKinley era. It is why billionaire conservatives are so protective of dark money and as averse to sunlight as vampires.
Hello darkness, my old friend.
● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●
Request a copy of For The Win, 4th Edition, my free, countywide get-out-the-vote planning guide for county committees at ForTheWin.us