I am but am amateur at this political game. I am what they call a support facilitator. I go into other teacher’s classrooms and work directly with students with disabilities. They could include learning disabilities or developmental disabilities. Occasionally, we deal with students with behavioral issues, but the other two kinds represent the bulk of what I do. So, when asked to come up with a national platform for the Democratic party I can only offer my best guess.

My platform is labeled, “let freedom ring.” Beyond the obvious what exactly does this mean? One of the things we have done as a party is cede way too many arguments to the right. I’ve mentioned these before and I won’t belabor them here. What we are in danger of doing is ceding freedom and liberty to them as well. There is nothing remotely freeing about what the Moms for Liberty are proposing. The so-called Freedom Caucus is anything but about freedom. This needs to be highlighted over and over again.

So, how do we do this? Simply put, take the words from their platform and simply use them against them and their group. Take what Moms for Liberty has to offer and completely tear it apart. At the same time you offer an alternative view of freedom and liberty. I think most of us here (with notable exceptions) would agree that it is the real version of freedom and liberty. Hell, you can bust out a dictionary to prove your point. How does your platform differ from those specific groups and from the Republican party in general? How is our platform closer to the vision of actual freedom and liberty?

One of the things I have talked about in the past is the idea of issue framing. I can’t take credit for it. It came from the book “Cracking the Code” by Thom Hartmann. Essentially, the idea is that rooted in every issue is a common story. Conservatives have just been better at this than we have. Get to the root of every one of their stances and you will see this story. It usually is centered on the idea of rugged individualism. You too can succeed if the damn government will just get out of your way and let you do it.

We need our own competing story. Our story has to have the true definitions of freedom and liberty at its core. Sure, live and let live is a simple offshoot of that. The idea that someone can be religious or not is basic. The idea that someone can be gay or not is basic. The idea that someone can live an alternative lifestyle or not is basic. We need to expand this outward. We need to describe how our health care system actually limits freedom. If the vast majority of bankruptcies in this country are caused by medical costs and debt then that system is antithetical to freedom. We need to free people from the anxiety related to crippling medical care costs.

That’s just one example. You essentially take this model and expand it outwards. It means simplifying issues and making it all about freedom. How does our plan make you more free? How does their plan make you less free? Millions of voters simply don’t understand how they become less free if they vote GOP. They think to themselves that they aren’t immigrants, women, people of color, or LGTBQ+, so why does it matter if those people have less freedom? In fact, wouldn’t that mean that I have more? Life is a zero sum game to them. You won’t catch them all, but you have to repeat the notion that less freedom for them means less freedom for all. Keep repeating that over and over again and give them examples. Then, we have a fighting chance.

Yesterday was an interesting day in the World Geography class I support. See, the district made a huge deal about the teaching of controversial topics. It isn’t even so much that we aren’t supposed to do it, but we have to be so careful as to not interject our own opinion into these things. Then, the teacher found a worksheet that described health care costs in the United States and nine other industrialized nations.

The teacher gave me the worksheet and asked me to look at the first question. It looked a little loaded and so we pivoted a little and hedged our bets. We looked more carefully at the whole sheet (including the graph) and there was no way to spin it. All of the questions were loaded. It presented facts that could not be disputed and yet framed the discussion in such a negative way that you wanted to call the policy fight before one side got killed.

See, according to the graph, the United States spends more than 15 percent of its GDP on health care. Naturally, you’d have to read the fine print to know exactly what that all entails. We could naturally assume they are talking both health insurance premiums and out of pocket expenses. The other nine industrialized nations all hovered around ten percent. Sweden was the lowest at 9.3 percent.

We include the usual caveats in a conversation like this. Why did those that make the graph pick those specific countries? Wouldn’t we need to also see what people are getting for that care? The worksheet even asked a question of what we would expect to see in terms of quality of care.

We avoid teaching these things because we are under the impression that we have to show both sides. We are under the impression that both sides actually have equal merit. This is where we’ve landed in terms of political correctness and bending over backwards not to appear to have a liberal agenda. A worksheet clearly shows we are spending too much on health care and we have to somehow tiptoe around that.

There used to be a day when we could all agree on the facts before us. If information presented itself that we spent more on health care per capita then any country in the world then we could all agree we are spending too much on health care. We could all agree that you don’t pal around with white supremacists or sing Vladimir Putin’s praises.

Politics used to be about accepting reality and then suggesting ways to make it better. If we want to stop a Russian mad man do we simply clamp down on him with more sanctions or do we actually physically intervene? We acknowledge that racism exists. We acknowledge that there are cases of racial bias in the judicial system and other systems. We endeavor to find ways to remove those biases.

In terms of health care, we acknowledge we are spending too much and too many families are financially ruined because someone got sick. Of course, acknowledging that also forces us to acknowledge our own greed. We would acknowledge that we are the only industrialized nation without universal coverage. We would have to acknowledge that drug prices are higher here and insurance companies make a bigger profit here.

We used to acknowledge that mad men shouldn’t have access to automatic weapons that can kill people by the dozens. We used to acknowledge that consumers deserved basic protections from predatory lenders or those that would swindle them. The debate came in how we protect people. It came in how we best serve their interests. It came in just how involved the government needed to be in providing these solutions. No one ever argued that these were good things. At least they didn’t until now.

Last week marked one of those moments everyone dreads every year. You combine three things that no teacher likes. First, the Astros were in the playoffs and we were stuck here at school. Secondly, it was faculty meeting day. Those are always fun as you test out the combination of stuff that no one needs to hear, stuff that could be conveyed in an email, and stuff that people will confuse and ask several ridiculous questions about.

Yet, it was the third reason why this moment was a special kind of hell. It was the benefits meeting we have every year. In this case, “benefits” is a fancy, ubiquitous word that actually means health care insurance. If you saw the specifics you wouldn’t see much of a benefit.

See, the district has its own plan. Sure, Aetna runs it, but they have put all of the employees into a pool and the insurance rates are based purely on how much we spent the year before. Obviously, the district isn’t trying to make money off of us, but Aetna sure is. Since people spent more money last year (gee, why would that happen) they hiked our rates 25 percent. I’ve never been so happy not to be a part of that insurance plan.

It was impossible not to somehow extrapolate this situation outward. Citizens over 65 get the benefit of Medicare. It is a government insurance program that is designed to break even. Millions of Americans are part of a pool that is also based on average costs across the pool. Older (or more experienced) Americans are more apt to get sick and need expensive medical procedures. Yet, somehow they end up spending less per month than teachers in our district. Keep in mind that district makes a contribution to “defray” the costs of the insurance.

It’s up against this backdrop that we bring up the concept of Medicare for all. The process is actually simpler than people might imagine. It isn’t free health care. We know the program works because we have been using it for years. The caveat is that it might actually become cheaper. You are currently basing rates on the amount of risk and that risk is greater for people 65 and over. If you expanded it to include everyone you’d include healthy children, young adults, and relatively healthier middle aged Americans.

It comes with other advantages as well. One of the reasons why rates are so high is that we are footing the bill for everyone that cannot afford care. It’s a similar concept to Wal-Mart building in the cost of theft into their inventory. They will pass the costs onto the consumer. If everyone is covered then there’s no reason to jack up the costs.

It means that you don’t have to worry about whether your doctor is in network or out of network. They are all in the network. You don’t have to worry about changing jobs or possibly going to work for yourself. Companies save millions as they can defer all of the money spent on “benefits” into actual benefits. What would honestly happen if they folded over the district’s contribution to our insurance into our salary?

Who is against this? Obviously the insurance industry is against it. They make between a 20 to 30 percent markup for running the system. Decisions are based on profit margins and stockholder considerations. You talk about your death panels. One considers sustainability of the whole system. The other considers whether Daddy Warbucks will get a dividend this year.

This is basic math and basic common sense. Yet, we are told how complicated it is. We are told that it’s socialism. We are told that the only industrialized country in the world that still has for profit health care insurance is somehow the system that makes sense. If you dare question that they’ll be calling you a radical, a liberal, or fanatical criminal.

Like the sign says —

You know how our legislature spent the entire session fretting over who uses which bathroom and calling ICE when they see someone who looks Hispanic?

That’s because this is not considered a problem in Texas.

Lawmakers in Texas largely failed to take any significant action to address the state’s skyrocketing rate of pregnancy-related deaths just months after researchers found it to be the highest in not only the U.S., but the developed world.

If Texas was a country, we’d be undeveloped.

Hey, when you practically eliminate access to abortion,  defund Planned Parenthood, and cut funding for Medicaid, what the fool tarnation do you expect?

Thanks to everybody for the heads up.