The New Gilded Age and the Big Ugly Bill

While Bezos parties in Venice with his billionaire and celebrity friends millions of Americans are set to lose their healthcare and food benefits and both parties are missing the point

What is happening?

I agree with Steve Bannon.

Those are five words I thought I would never write in my entire life, yet, here we are. Last week he sat down with Kristen Welker to discuss a lot of things, which I won’t watch. However, this part is worth noting.

He is absolutely right. For the last decade modern American “populism” has centered on the MAGA movement and Trump. He has convinced millions of Americans that he is the working man’s champion. Sadly, this has translated into a focus on not having to use pronouns or having “wokeness” forced on them.

Not saving them money or understanding the challenges in there lives.

Mamdani instead worked hard to understand the city he desired to lead. He talked to hundreds of people where they live. He listened and consistently heard about a crisis of affordability. The inability to even live in the city they were born and raised in or chose to call home. Rising rents. Skyrocketing daily costs. Impossible food costs. All while government services were cut or failed.

His message was one of understanding what average people are struggling with. That’s populism focused on affordability.

You can see leaders of both parties absolutely losing their minds from different aspects of his win. From Hakeem Jeffries condemning his open hostility to Israel’s actions and Republicans all stepping up to out racist each other or call him a “Commie.”

I won’t dive into all of that. My friend John Della Volpe has an excellent analysis on how Mamdani won the New York City Democratic Primary and how both parties are getting it wrong.

I can’t recommend this piece enough.

Mamdani Won. And Both Parties Are Freaking Out.

I want to discuss this moment in the light of this past week. While people all try to project why Mamdani won, they are missing what is really happening in this country. I believe we are facing a breaking point like nothing I’ve experienced in my life time. The gap between haves and have nots has never been more glaring. Those elites are on the precipice of being handed our government by the Republican Congress, and the people who will pay for it are the little people.

I call this the new Gilded Age but a lot has changed in over a hundred years.

Posting through the looting

It’s funny when people think of “looting” they always picture inner city people ransacking stores and frantically carrying out whatever they can get their hands on. That’s not it anymore.

Now it’s the world’s richest man eliminating the federal agencies that oversee his companies. It’s billionaire owners of news organizations simply ignoring news stories.

It’s Amazon’s owner buying half of Venice for his $56 million wedding and all his rich friends partying away on Instagram, the celebrity news, and everywhere else.

This is the new Gilded Age and the Robber Barons of 2025. Partying while the rest of the world burns. Instagramming their way through the theft.

Yacht’s the size of aircraft carriers with smaller yachts attached to them? Hell yeah!

Buying up huge swaths of land for your private compound the size of a major city? Do it!

Buying Congress to pass laws giving you more tax breaks while you party with your mostly surgically rebuilt wife. Let’s go!

You see the Robber Barons of old did their partying behind closed doors. They didn’t have to worry about social media or even photographs. They could build their lavish estates and most Americans had no idea. The poors went about their little unimportant lives as the rich men counted their money.

But today it’s much more accessible. This weekend the owner of Amazon was splashed across the internet with his smug grin, right onto the same smartphones that the Amazon drivers delivering his packages are carrying. The drivers who have to urinate in bottles in un-air conditioned trucks during their 12 hour shifts, monitored by cameras to make sure they don’t waste time.

Today the Robber Barons LOVE that we see them. They love that we envy them. They love shoving it in our faces that they are better, richer, and untouchable.

Until they aren’t.

History tells us how this story ends. We will get to that.

Let’s check on the people living in the real world.

Meanwhile back in the United States

You see against the backdrop of Bezos’ lavish wedding is the increasingly fervent effort by Congressional Republicans and Donald Trump to jam through the most destructive bill in a century. The Big Ugly Bill is a nuclear bomb to struggling Americans and a golden gift to the oligarchs.

The numbers are absolutely shocking in this bill. Here are some provisions from multiple sources:

• Cuts $1.3 trillion in food assistance and health coverage while giving the wealthy that exact amount in tax breaks

• Rips away health care from 16 million Americans through over $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid, Medicare, and the Affordable Care Act — including the largest cut to Medicaid in American history

• Puts over 300 rural hospitals at risk of shutting down, ripping away critical, lifesaving care from hundreds of rural communities across the country

• Puts roughly 5 million Americans — about 1 in 8 SNAP participants — at risk of losing food assistance

• Adds $3.25 trillion to the national debt, while revenues fall by $4.47 trillion

• Forces 1 in 4 nursing homes to close their doors

• Puts 1.75 million construction jobs at risk — with unions warning, “this stands to be the biggest job-killing bill in the history of the country”

• Puts 2 million clean energy jobs at risk

• The Senate's bill went even further than the version the House passed, despite complaints from some Republicans. They also added a tax incentive for coal production.

• Increases energy bills by hundreds of dollars across the country

• Endangers our communities by making it easier to buy dangerous firearms and silencers

• The bill includes $25 billion for a "Golden Dome" missile defense system, $29 billion for shipbuilding and $15 billion for nuclear deterrence, among other provisions.

• The package includes a $5 trillion increase in the debt ceiling, which is more than the $4 trillion in the House-passed package.

That’s a lot of numbers but let’s put it in plain language. Millions of working poor and disabled Americans are going to have their healthcare and food assistance stripped from them. This isn’t hyperbole. The only way for these numbers to work is for people who are just trying to survive to be stripped of their lifelines.

The Republicans have been emphasizing how reasonable it is to want work requirements for Medicare and Medicaid. In their arguments there are millions of “perfectly healthy” lazy people laying around getting paid by the government.

Unpack that argument for a moment. “Perfectly healthy” people stealing healthcare?

In there telling there are “perfectly healthy” people getting checks to sit around. So we are clear, Medicare and Medicaid aren’t welfare checks. People aren’t getting sent checks. If they NEED healthcare it gets paid to a healthcare provider not the patient. Otherwise if they NEED healthcare they will clog the local Emergency Room and never pay the bill at all.

Another argument is that millions of illegal immigrants are getting Medicaid through their states. While some states like California and New York do offer a form of state run Medicaid for illegal immigrants the numbers by the most generous counting only add up to a million or so. They are cutting off over 17 million in this bill.

The math don’t math.

But, do you know who it adds up for just fine? The hateful, rich, and corrupt.

Some examples of legislating hate, oligarchy, and corruption.

Hate:

• The package would provide Customs and Border Patrol with $46.5 billion to build the border wall and associated infrastructure, like access roads, cameras, lights and sensors.

• The package also includes $2 billion for the Department of Homeland Security and $29.9 billion for Immigration and Custom Enforcement.

Oligarchy:

• Republicans are seeking to permanently extend the tax rates Trump signed into law in 2017, which are set to expire at the end of the year at a projected cost of $4 trillion.

• The bill includes a grab bag of funds for space programs, including $10 billion for Mars mission priorities, $325 million to held de-orbit the International Space Station. All at a projected cost of $10 billion for Mars, $325 million for space station de-orbiting and $85 million for the space shuttle move.

Corruption:

• Ted Cruz managed to get in some $85 million to take the space shuttle from the National Air and Space Museum in the Virginia suburbs of Washington and transport it to a museum in Texas. He’s literally stealing from the premier air technology museum in the country for a tourist attraction in shithole Texas.

But, I’ve got good news. Jewel was wearing Dolce Gabbana in Venice to celebrate love!

Sorry we didn’t have any leftover cake to share

Suck it you poors!

In Republican thinking someday they can be rich too if they just work harder. The Republicans are helpfully adding requirements into food benefits to help make people “richer.” The proposed Senate bill changes the definition of a dependent child for SNAP recipients, specifically impacting work requirements. The Senate bill narrows the definition of a dependent child to those under the age of 10.

Not to be outdone, the House version had 7 years old as the new “dependant child” age.

This means that parents or caregivers of children ages 10 (or 7) and older may be subject to work requirements to maintain their SNAP benefits, according to multiple sources. They would have to work at least 80 hours a month.

What happens when the single parent of a child age 10 or younger is working? Do you just leave them alone to their own devices? What about working at night? No, you have to hire a babysitter. Which costs….money.

But in Republican thinking you’re just a deadbeat.

No Venice for you!

So when Zohran Mamdani comes roaring out of nowhere talking about affordability for average New Yorkers, maybe you shouldn’t act surprised.

What happened the last few times?

I didn’t major in history in college but I did travel the world and know how to use Google and have learned a few things. I know pretty much how this gap between the elites ended in places like France, Russia, and even Iraq.

Here in a America the Gilded Age of the late 17th Century ended with those so called Robber Barons heralding in the great Progressive Era that led to the creation of reforms such as antitrust laws, labor rights, and social welfare programs. Efforts were made to improve working conditions, establish minimum wages, and protect workers' rights.

Let’s not forget this beauty. The 16th Amendment, which established a federal income tax, was passed, reducing the reliance on tariffs and shifting some of the tax burden.

“Reliance on tariffs.” Hmm.

History is a pendulum and we are sitting right at the high end of the swing. Perhaps the popularity of Zohran Mamdani and his promises of affordability and fair living are the messages that people in both parties should be paying attention to instead of diving in front of any criticism of Israel or the term “Democratic Socialist.”

Pendulums tend to run right through the center on their way to the other end.

People out here in the real world aren’t going to wait for the elite to pick their candidates or tell them to shut up much longer.

Perhaps those in power should listen.

Perhaps.