Thanks, Xavier. It's maddening that the fraud they complain about is miniscule. I used to be a case manager, and the last I read about benefits fraud, it was something around 3%. And most of the Medicaid fraud is committed by health providers and capital equipment rental companies. It's not the patients who are committing it.
I’m new to your work. I appreciate your analysis and clarity. I especially appreciate how you expose and explain our bias and own your own when you feel it. Thank-you.
I’m really glad you found your way here, Cheryl, and that this one landed the way I hoped. 🙏🏾
I’m swimming in the same water and breath in the same air as everybody else, so owning my own bias feels like the only honest way to talk about anyone else’s. Hope you’ll stick around and keep pushing back or adding layers when you see something I miss.
I am on the free list and will stay there, not because I don't want to support you, I do, and not because I could not afford a bit, I could, but because I am not an American but an 82 year old Canadian who simply can't afford to send money to American causes without it coming at the cost of either donations to Canadian ones, or perhaps to myself given the uncertainties in life.
Those uncertainties have been made all the worse by your president. His actions negatively affect my own monetary resources, albeit not as much as it would had fate led me to have been born just a short distance to the south, on other side of Lake Ontario, about thirty or so miles south of where I was born.
I am on a lot of free American lists from what I think of as the Resistance Movement. I did pay to join Heather Cox Richardson's list because she is an historian, and gives me a context I need.
I also subscribed to WAPO, before I realized who owned it and why that is a problem.
I am still employed...I irregularly make money as an artist who paints wild birds, a niche market to be sure, but also by doing writing and research for the animal protection and environmental movement.
I also get a lot of NYT and Guardian articles sent to me, plus a lot of stuff of interest from various sources. And yes, I am, I hope, on to these biases we constantly see in legacy media.
Bias is a condition that fails to recognize itself, but can be recognized if we make the effort. I find that most people don't. And as one who loves to learn and to teach I find I am constantly being told that because of my advanced age I just don't understand the shortness of the contemporary (meaning young-to-middle-aged) attention span.
They're right, which is why I'm so glad YOU found me. I'll keep writing letters trying to help Americans realize there is a better way., democratic socialism....government for the people. We don't have as much of it up here as I'd like, but we have some, and it has created significant advantages of which I find most Americans are not aware (and too many Canadians take for granted).
So keep writing; we all must do what we can do! It is Americans like you who give me hope for a future I won't inhabit, but is still important to me.
As someone else of "advanced age" - its probably just as well we do NOT understand the younger's shortness attention span!
I sure do hope you, as a Canadian, are right to believe we have a future without this idiotic administration and the ignoramus sitting in the Gold Room! What is being done to our air, water, wildlife & their habitat, our entire environment is beyond critical.
I envy you your Prime Minister Carney who actually is experienced and intelligent, even seems to have a sense of humor!
Some day - hopefully soon - there may be an individual like that in our White House - sure do hope so.
Fabulous analysis. For me, any story called "welfare fraud" is ALWAYS propaganda, even if there is actual fraud involved. Because the real fraud in this country is on such a more massive scale and is perpetrated by the same kind of people seeding the "welfare" fraud stories.
Thank you Xavier, I also am new to your writings, but have been reading comments you have posted on Prof Reich’s page. You have a profound insight into situations that I have agreed with you. As a former police officer who have a perceptive and analytical approach to a situation, same a in my profession as an RN who was s now retired but continue to stay abreast of new information. We are always delving deeper to obtain the cause and effect of a situation and to analyze the why, what, and how. Again thanks for your perspectives and I look forward to following your posts.
Thank you for being a medical professional who cares about people and truth, and I bet U really R 'N angel, Ms/Mr Fourtwothree - and I'm, frankly, just a talker... (well also a grateful reader who feels fortunate to have become a member of this community)! Have fun and stay safe...
This post should be required reading in every civics and psychology class.
To add to what Xplisset has incisively described, I would add that the individual who recently shot 2 secret service agents in DC, who was a refugee from Afghanistan, has come to mean that all Afghani immigrants, and indeed all "migrants from third world countries," are dangerous and should not come into the country. Pause ... just how totally insane is this kind of "logic?" In fact, immigrants have been shown to commit fewer crimes than American citizens. When you look at terrorist acts in the USA, the greatest threat over the past decade, per research, comes from White Supremacists. (This fact is true historically, except for the 9-11 terrorist attack, which caused mass death and skewed the numbers. And I would point out that for many months during the Covid pandemic, the virus was causing more deaths than 9-11 every single day.)
I did a lot of research into cognitive psychology when I wrote my doctoral dissertation, and from that I came away with the realization that my own brain is wired to stereotype and generalize about Others Not Like Me, based on personalized narratives that do not represent statistical reality. All human brains are.
Once you realize this unfortunate reality, two things follow:
* You are not a bad person just because you own these biases. You were born this way, with the specific biases trained into you, as Xplisset has so aptly described.
* You ARE ENTIRELY responsible for learning about the biases built into your brain, and to learn how to counter them in yourselves, your families, friends, and children. Good citizenship and basic moral values demand it.
So yet another ACTING US Attorney - that alone should make clear they are again playing the blame game as usual. Instead of finding the actual guilty parties - its just another way to put the blame on "others" - that is, others who arent white, rich and powerful.
Nice work again, X, in pointing out the overlapping mindset of the two opinion pieces. WaPo's unsigned "editorial board" opinion can be dismissed outright as an example of corporate gaslighting, but I'm curious about the NYT guy, Ernesto Londono. He's a Colombian immigrant, here in the US since 1999. I don't recall seeing much of his writing before, but that may be because I've stopped taking NYT seriously (except for The Athletic, which I enjoy). What is Londono's angle?
Thanks, Xavier. It's maddening that the fraud they complain about is miniscule. I used to be a case manager, and the last I read about benefits fraud, it was something around 3%. And most of the Medicaid fraud is committed by health providers and capital equipment rental companies. It's not the patients who are committing it.
For me, fraud still brings to mind Rick Scott and HCA
I’m new to your work. I appreciate your analysis and clarity. I especially appreciate how you expose and explain our bias and own your own when you feel it. Thank-you.
I’m really glad you found your way here, Cheryl, and that this one landed the way I hoped. 🙏🏾
I’m swimming in the same water and breath in the same air as everybody else, so owning my own bias feels like the only honest way to talk about anyone else’s. Hope you’ll stick around and keep pushing back or adding layers when you see something I miss.
I am on the free list and will stay there, not because I don't want to support you, I do, and not because I could not afford a bit, I could, but because I am not an American but an 82 year old Canadian who simply can't afford to send money to American causes without it coming at the cost of either donations to Canadian ones, or perhaps to myself given the uncertainties in life.
Those uncertainties have been made all the worse by your president. His actions negatively affect my own monetary resources, albeit not as much as it would had fate led me to have been born just a short distance to the south, on other side of Lake Ontario, about thirty or so miles south of where I was born.
I am on a lot of free American lists from what I think of as the Resistance Movement. I did pay to join Heather Cox Richardson's list because she is an historian, and gives me a context I need.
I also subscribed to WAPO, before I realized who owned it and why that is a problem.
I am still employed...I irregularly make money as an artist who paints wild birds, a niche market to be sure, but also by doing writing and research for the animal protection and environmental movement.
I also get a lot of NYT and Guardian articles sent to me, plus a lot of stuff of interest from various sources. And yes, I am, I hope, on to these biases we constantly see in legacy media.
Bias is a condition that fails to recognize itself, but can be recognized if we make the effort. I find that most people don't. And as one who loves to learn and to teach I find I am constantly being told that because of my advanced age I just don't understand the shortness of the contemporary (meaning young-to-middle-aged) attention span.
They're right, which is why I'm so glad YOU found me. I'll keep writing letters trying to help Americans realize there is a better way., democratic socialism....government for the people. We don't have as much of it up here as I'd like, but we have some, and it has created significant advantages of which I find most Americans are not aware (and too many Canadians take for granted).
So keep writing; we all must do what we can do! It is Americans like you who give me hope for a future I won't inhabit, but is still important to me.
As someone else of "advanced age" - its probably just as well we do NOT understand the younger's shortness attention span!
I sure do hope you, as a Canadian, are right to believe we have a future without this idiotic administration and the ignoramus sitting in the Gold Room! What is being done to our air, water, wildlife & their habitat, our entire environment is beyond critical.
I envy you your Prime Minister Carney who actually is experienced and intelligent, even seems to have a sense of humor!
Some day - hopefully soon - there may be an individual like that in our White House - sure do hope so.
Fabulous analysis. For me, any story called "welfare fraud" is ALWAYS propaganda, even if there is actual fraud involved. Because the real fraud in this country is on such a more massive scale and is perpetrated by the same kind of people seeding the "welfare" fraud stories.
Thank you Xavier, I also am new to your writings, but have been reading comments you have posted on Prof Reich’s page. You have a profound insight into situations that I have agreed with you. As a former police officer who have a perceptive and analytical approach to a situation, same a in my profession as an RN who was s now retired but continue to stay abreast of new information. We are always delving deeper to obtain the cause and effect of a situation and to analyze the why, what, and how. Again thanks for your perspectives and I look forward to following your posts.
Thank you for being a medical professional who cares about people and truth, and I bet U really R 'N angel, Ms/Mr Fourtwothree - and I'm, frankly, just a talker... (well also a grateful reader who feels fortunate to have become a member of this community)! Have fun and stay safe...
This post should be required reading in every civics and psychology class.
To add to what Xplisset has incisively described, I would add that the individual who recently shot 2 secret service agents in DC, who was a refugee from Afghanistan, has come to mean that all Afghani immigrants, and indeed all "migrants from third world countries," are dangerous and should not come into the country. Pause ... just how totally insane is this kind of "logic?" In fact, immigrants have been shown to commit fewer crimes than American citizens. When you look at terrorist acts in the USA, the greatest threat over the past decade, per research, comes from White Supremacists. (This fact is true historically, except for the 9-11 terrorist attack, which caused mass death and skewed the numbers. And I would point out that for many months during the Covid pandemic, the virus was causing more deaths than 9-11 every single day.)
I did a lot of research into cognitive psychology when I wrote my doctoral dissertation, and from that I came away with the realization that my own brain is wired to stereotype and generalize about Others Not Like Me, based on personalized narratives that do not represent statistical reality. All human brains are.
Once you realize this unfortunate reality, two things follow:
* You are not a bad person just because you own these biases. You were born this way, with the specific biases trained into you, as Xplisset has so aptly described.
* You ARE ENTIRELY responsible for learning about the biases built into your brain, and to learn how to counter them in yourselves, your families, friends, and children. Good citizenship and basic moral values demand it.
Well said…thank you
So yet another ACTING US Attorney - that alone should make clear they are again playing the blame game as usual. Instead of finding the actual guilty parties - its just another way to put the blame on "others" - that is, others who arent white, rich and powerful.
Good questionsXP
Thanks! I appreciate your analytical style. You really give us something to think about and demonstrate how to delve analytically into what we read.
So once all the black and brown immigrants are deported who are they gonna blame all the fraud and corruption on?
Nice work again, X, in pointing out the overlapping mindset of the two opinion pieces. WaPo's unsigned "editorial board" opinion can be dismissed outright as an example of corporate gaslighting, but I'm curious about the NYT guy, Ernesto Londono. He's a Colombian immigrant, here in the US since 1999. I don't recall seeing much of his writing before, but that may be because I've stopped taking NYT seriously (except for The Athletic, which I enjoy). What is Londono's angle?