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This was it. This was the week that America admitted America is going fascist – which is to say has gone fascist, i.e. has had its government seized by fascists with broad fascist support for imposing fascism which it is now doing with zeal, i.e. has an acute case of fulminant fascism.

I've been watching this bear down on us for a half a century, so it's slightly dizzying to finally have everybody else come into alignment. One of the basic exigencies of my life has been moving through the world being reasonably certain of a bunch of things that I knew the vast majority of my fellows thought were insane to believe. Over the last ten years, more and more people have been noticing, "what are we doing in this handbasket and where is it going?" but – as evidenced by the behavior of the DNC over the last year – it's taken the secret police gunning Americans down in the streets (since I started writing this: and throwing flashbang grenades at or into (reports vary) passing cars carrying little kids) for the greater liberal mass to come around.

Obviously, it would have been nicer for the realization It Could Happen Here to have not required It Happening Here to be the conclusive rebuttal of their pathological skepticism. But one of my favorite sayings is, "There's three kinds. The one that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves," (Will Rogers) and this is why. Clearly America needed to piss on the electric fence for itself. I try to be philosophical about it.

I just felt, if only for myself and posterity, I should note this long-in-coming nation-wide realization has finally been attained.

I'm not getting too carried away, though. It's hard to be too jubilant when the problem that brought us here is still very much with us, by which I don't mean the fascism itself, I mean the terrible mentality on "my" "side" that causes that pathological skepticism and other catastrophic thinking faults that brought us to this pass and lead to the fascists getting away, quite literally, with murder.

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This is part of Understanding Health Insurance

Introduction
A Health Plan is a Contract
The Three-Stage Model ⇐ You are here

The Three-Stage Model

When you have health insurance, you have a contract (health plan) with the insurance company that says that for the duration (the plan year) of the contract, you will pay them the agreed upon monthly fee every month (the premium), in exchange for them paying for your health care... some.

How much is "some"? Well, that depends.

To understand what it depends on, you have to understand the three-stage model that health plans are organized around.

This three-stage model is never described as such. It is implicit in the standard terms (jargon) of the health insurance industry, and it is never made explicit. There is no industry term (jargon) for the model itself. There are no terms (jargon) for the three stages. But health insurance becomes vastly easier to understand if you think about it in terms of the three-stage model that is hiding in just about every health plan's terms (agreements).

( Read more: 12,170 (sic!) riveting words about health insurance in the US] )

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Hey Americans (and other people stuck in the American healthcare system)! Shopping for a health plan on your state marketplace? Boy, do I have some information for you that you should have and probably don't. There's been an important legal change affecting your choices that has gotten almost no press.

Effective with plan year 2026 all bronze level and catastrophic plans are statutorily now HDHPs and thus HSA compatible. You may get and self-fund an HSA if you have any bronze or catastrophic plan, as well as any plan of any level designated a HDHP.

2025 Dec 9: IRS.gov: "Treasury, IRS provide guidance on new tax benefits for health savings account participants under the One, Big, Beautiful Bill"

Bronze and Catastrophic Plans Treated as HDHPs: As of Jan. 1, 2026, bronze and catastrophic plans available through an Exchange are considered HSA-compatible, regardless of whether the plans satisfy the general definition of an HDHP. This expands the ability of people enrolled in these plans to contribute to HSAs, which they generally have not been able to do in the past. Notice 2026-05 clarifies that bronze and catastrophic plans do not have to be purchased through an Exchange to qualify for the new relief.

If you are shopping plans right now (or thought you were done), you should probably be aware of this. Especially if you are planning on getting a bronze plan, a catastrophic plan, or any plan with the acronym "HSA" in the name or otherwise designated "HSA compatible".

The Trump administration doing this is tacit admission that all bronze plans have become such bad deals that they're the economic equivalent of what used to be considered a HDHP back when that concept was invented, and so should come with legal permission to protect yourself from them with an HSA.

Effective immediately, you should consider a bronze plan half an insurance plan.

( Read more [3,340 words] )

This post brought to you by the 221 readers who funded my writing it – thank you all so much! You can see who they are at my Patreon page. If you're not one of them, and would be willing to chip in so I can write more things like this, please do so there.

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This is part of Understanding Health Insurance

Introduction
A Health Plan is a Contract ⇐ You are here
The Three-Stage Model

Health Insurance is a Contract

What we call health insurance is a contract. When you get health insurance, you (or somebody on your behalf) are agreeing to a contract with a health insurance company – a contract where they agree to do certain things for you in exchange for money. So a health insurance plan is a contract between the insurance company and the customer (you).

For simplicity, I will use the term health plan to mean the actual contract – the specific health insurance product – you get from a health insurance company. (It sounds less weird than saying "an insurance" and is shorter to type than "a health insurance plan".)

One of the things this clarifies is that one health insurance company can have a bunch of different contracts (health plans) to sell. This is the same as how you may have more than one internet company that could sell you an internet connection to your home, and each of those internet companies might have several different package deals they offer with different prices and terms. In exactly that way, there are multiple different health insurance companies, and they each can sell multiple different health plans with different prices and terms.

( Read more... [7,130 words] )

This post brought to you by the 220 readers who funded my writing it – thank you all so much! You can see who they are at my Patreon page. If you're not one of them, and would be willing to chip in so I can write more things like this, please do so there.

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Preface: I had hoped to get this out in a more timely manner, but was hindered by technical difficulties with my arms, which have now been resolved. This is a serial about health insurance in the US from the consumer's point of view, of potential use for people still dealing with open enrollment, which we are coming up on the end of imminently. For everyone else dealing with the US health insurance system, such as it is, perhaps it will be useful to you in the future.

Understanding Health Insurance:
Introduction

Health insurance in the US is hard to understand. It just is. If you find it confusing and bewildering, as well as infuriating, it's not just you.

I think that one of the reasons it's hard to understand has to do with how definitions work.

Part of the reason why health insurance is so confusing is all the insurance industry jargon that is used. Unfortunately, there's no way around that jargon. We all are stuck having to learn what all these strange terms mean. So helpful people try to explain that jargon. They try to help by giving definitions.

But definitions are like leaves: you need a trunk and some branches to hang them on, or they just swirl around in bewildering clouds and eventually settle in indecipherable piles.

There are several big ideas that provide the trunk and branches of understanding health insurance. If you have those ideas, the jargon becomes a lot easier to understand, and then insurance itself becomes a lot easier to understand.

So in this series, I am going to explain some of those big ideas, and then use them to explain how health insurance is organized.

This unorthodox introduction to health insurance is for beginners to health insurance in the US, and anyone who still feels like a beginner after bouncing off the bureaucratic nightmare that is our so-called health care system in the US. It's for anyone who is new to being an health insurance shopper in the US, or feels their understanding is uncertain. Maybe you just got your first job and are being asked to pick a health plan from several offered. Maybe you have always had insurance from an employer and are shopping on your state marketplace for the first time. Maybe you have always gotten insurance through your parents and spouse, and had no say in it, but do now. This introduction assumes you are coming in cold, a complete beginner knowing nothing about health insurance or what any of the health insurance industry jargon even is.

Please note! This series is mostly about commercial insurance products: the kinds that you buy with money. Included in that are the kind of health insurance people buy for themselves on the state ACA marketplaces and also the kind of health insurance people get from their employers as a "bene". It may (I am honestly not sure) also include Medicare Advantage plans.

The things this series explains do not necessarily also describe Medicaid or bare Medicare, or Tricare or any other government run insurance program, though if you are on such an insurance plan this may still be helpful to you. Typically government-run plans have fewer moving parts with fewer choices, so fewer jargon terms even matter to them. Similarly, this may be less useful for subsidized plans on the state ACA marketplaces. It depends on the state. Some states do things differently for differently subsidized plans.

But all these different kinds of government-provided health insurance still use some insurance industry jargon for commercial insurance, if only to tell you what they don't have or do. So this post may be useful to you because understanding how insurance typically works may still prove helpful in understanding what the government is up to. Understanding what the assumptions are of regular commercial insurance will hopefully clarify the terms even government plans use to describe themselves. Just realize that if you have a plan the government in some sense is running, things may be different – including maybe very different – for you.

On to the first important idea: Health Insurance is a Contract.

Understanding Health Insurance

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Hey, Americans and people living in the US going through open enrollment on the state ACA marketplaces who haven't yet enrolled in a plan for 2026!

Just about every state in the union and DC (but not Idaho) proudly touts an end date to open enrollment sometime in January. This year for most states it ends January 15th, but in CA, NJ, NY, RI, and DC, it's January 31st, and here in Massachusetts, it's January 23rd. (Idaho's is December 15th.) [Source]

That sure sounds like the deadline is sometime in January.

No, it kinda isn't.

( tl;dr: Just assume if you want insurance to start Jan 1, the deadlines are to enroll by Dec 8 and to pay for the first month by Dec 15. Important deets within. [950 words] )

This post brought to you by the 220 readers who funded my writing it – thank you all so much! You can see who they are at my Patreon page. If you're not one of them, and would be willing to chip in so I can write more things like this, please do so there.

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Hey, Americans and other people stuck in the American healthcare system. It's open enrollment on the state exchanges, and possibly through your employer, so I wanted to give you a little heads up about preventive care and shopping for a health insurance plan.

I've noticed from time to time various health insurance companies advertising themselves to consumers by boasting that their health plans focus on covering preventive care. Maybe they lay a spiel on you about how they believe in keeping you healthy rather than trying to fix problems after they happen. Maybe they point out in big letters "PREVENTIVE CARE 100% FREE" or "NO CO-PAYS FOR PREVENTIVE CARE".

When you come across a health insurance product advertised this way, promoted for its coverage of preventive health, I propose you should think of that as a bad thing.

Why? Do I think preventive medicine is a bad thing? Yes, actually, but that's a topic for another post. For purposes of this post, no, preventive medicine is great.

It's just that it's illegal for them not to cover preventive care 100% with no copays or other cost-sharing.

Yeah, thanks to the Obamacare law, the ACA, it's literally illegal for a health plan to be sold on the exchanges if it doesn't cover preventive care 100% with no cost-sharing, and while there are rare exceptions, it's also basically illegal for an employer to offer a health plan that doesn't cover preventive care.

They can't not, and neither can any of their competitors.

( So any health plan that's bragging on covering preventive care?.... Read more [2,270 words] )

This post brought to you by the 220 readers who funded my writing it – thank you all so much! You can see who they are at my Patreon page. If you're not one of them, and would be willing to chip in so I can write more things like this, please do so there.

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Content Advisory: US government classified and controlled unclassified info leaked to news outlets, within.

[Previously: The Essequibo (Buddy-ta-na-na, We Are Somebody, Oh): Part 1]

Now, when looking at these strikes being carried out in the Caribbean, shockingly, I think there's not been a ton of coverage on this. CNN, for one, their Pentagon reporters, have been some of the only ones consistently covering what's happening in Venezuela. CNN and the New York Times right now, I would say, are the two that are kind of all over this and have been for a while. I don't know why it's getting so little coverage elsewhere, but it is. So, normally I would like to look at these, uh, these reports and source them from multiple different outlets and we just don't have that because there's so limited coverage around US military operations in SOUTHCOM right now.

— Preston Stewart [PrestonStewart on YT], 2025 Oct 15, "American Bombers Send A Message To Venezuela"

[...] I know that the people of the United States are attentive observers and the people of the United States are very aware of what is being attempted against Venezuela is armed aggression to impose regime change.

— Nicolás Maduro, 2025 Oct 3, via Times of India via AP via VTV, "Venezuela Deploys Army & Tanks After Another Deadly U.S Attack, Fighter Jet action"

I am still desperately trying to pull together Part 2 of this series, but in the meanwhile, more things keep happening. I keep checking in with my focus group, aka, Mr. Bostoniensis, about what he is seeing in the news, because my own algorithms are, uh, rather peculiarly trained at this point, and the answer seems "rock all", so I thought I'd post a news round-up of some of the developments over the last couple of weeks. (Holy crap it's been two weeks.)

October 2nd

( It comes out that the Trump administration has literalized the 'War on Drugs'. [CW: 'controlled but unclassified'] )

( US terminates diplomatic relations with Venezuela )

October 3rd

( Fourth US strike on a boat in Venezuelan waters is announced by Trump admin )

October 6th

( Venezuela announces it foiled a false-flag plot against the US Embassy in Venezuela )

October 8th

( Democrats in Senate try to limit Trump's war powers but fail )

October 9th

( The Venezuelan opposition leader wins the Nobel Peace prize )

( Venezuela requests emergency intervention from the UN Security Council )

( The US asks Grenada, 100 miles off Venezuela's coast, to allow US military installation )

October 10th

( The Nobel Peace Prize winner dedicates the prize to Trump, confusing a lot of people who haven't been keeping score )

( It comes out that Maduro had been trying to negotiate his way out of US demands for his outster by offering up 'a dominant stake in Venezuela's oil' )

( UN Security Council has emergency meeting per Venezuela's request )

October 13th

( Maduro closes Venezuela's embassies in Norway and Australia )

( Venezuelan activist and political consultant in exile in Colombia were shot )

October 14th

( US bombs fifth boat off Venezuela, six killed )

( US announces Admiral in charge of US SOUTHCOM visiting Antigua and Barbuda and Grenada )

Which brings us to today. (Well, it was today when I started writing this.)

October 15th

( Trump has authorized covert CIA operations in Venezuela [CW: 'highly classified'] )

( Three US Air Force B-52 bombers buzzed Venezuela for four hours; Venezeula scrambles an F-16 in response )

( It comes out that the boat of Colombians bombed in September was not bombed by mistake, but was deliberate )

( Nobel Laureate Machado exhorts Trump to rescue Venezuela from Maduro )

( Trump is musing aloud to the press about airstrikes on Venezuela )

This post brought to you by the 220 readers who funded my writing it – thank you all so much! You can see who they are at my Patreon page. If you're not one
of them, and would be willing to chip in so I can write more things like this, please do so there.

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The Essequibo River is the queen of rivers all!
    Buddy-ta-na-na, we are somebody, oh!
The Essequibo River is the queen of rivers all!
    Buddy-ta-na-na, we are somebody, oh!

    Somebody, oh, Johnny! Somebody, oh!
    Buddy-ta-na-na, we are somebody, oh!

– Sea shanty, presumed Guyanese

Let us appreciate that the only reason – the only reason – I know about what I am about to share with you is because of that whole music history thing of mine. It's not even my history. My main beat is 16th century dance music (± half a century). But dance music is working music, and as such I consider all the forms of work music to be its cousin, and so I have, of an occasion, wandered into the New England Folk Festival's sea-shanty sing. Many people go through life understanding the world around them through the perspective of a philosophical stance, a religious conviction, a grand explanatory theory, fitting the things they encounter into these frameworks; I do not know if I should be embarrased or not, but for me, so often it's just song cues.

So when I saw the word "Essequibo" go by in the web-equivalent of page six of the international news, I was all like, "Oh! I know that word!" recognizing a song cue when I see one. "It's a river. I wonder where it is?"

And I clicked the link.

That was twenty-one months ago.

Ever since, I have been on a different and ever-increasingly diverging timeline from the one just about everyone else is on.

In December of 2023, Nicolas Maduro, president of Venezuela, tried to kick off World War Three.

He hasn't stopped trying. He's had to take breaks to steal elections and deal with some climate catastrophe and things like that. But mostly ever since – arguably since September of 2023 – Maduro has been escalating.

You wouldn't know it from recent media coverage of what the US is doing off the coast of Venezuela. At no point has any news coverage of the US military deployment to that part of the world mentioned anything about the explosive geopolitical context there. A geopolitical context, that when it has been reported on, is referred to in terms like "a pressure cooker" and "spiraling".

The US government itself has said nothing that alludes to it in any way. The US government has its story and it's sticking to it: this is about drugs.

As you may be aware, the US government is claiming to have sunk three Venezuelan boats using the US military. The first of these sinkings was on September 1st.

To hear the media tell it, the US just up and decided to start summarily executing people on boats in the Caribbean that it feels were drug-runners on Sep 1st.

No mention is made of what happened on Aug 31st.

On August 31, the day before the first US military attack on a Venezuelan vessel, at around 14:00 local time, somebody opened fire on election officials delivering ballot and ballot boxes in the country Venezuela is threatening to invade.

And they did it from the Venezuelan side of the river that is the border between the two countries.

That country is an American ally. An extremely close American ally. An ally that is of enormous importance to the US.

And which is a thirtieth the size of Venezuela by population, and which has an army less than one twentieth as large.

You would be forgiven for not knowing that Venezuela has been threatening to and apparently also materially preparing to invade another country, because while it's a fact that gets reported in the news, it is never reported in the same news as American actions involving or mentioning Venezuela.

Venezuela, which is a close ally of Russia.

You may have heard about how twenty-one months ago, in December of 2023, there was an election in Venezuela which Maduro claimed was a landslide win for him. There was a lot of coverage in English-speaking news about that election and how it was an obvious fraud, and the candidate who won the opposition party's primary wasn't on the ballot, and so on and so forth.

You probably didn't hear that in that very same election, there was a referendum. If you did hear it reported, you might have encountered it being dismissed in the media as a kind of political stunt of Maduro's, to get people to show up to the polls or to energize his base. It couldn't possibly be (the reasoning went) that he meant it. Surely it was just political theater.

The referendum questions put, on Dec 3, 2023, to the voters of Venezuela were about whether or not they supported establishing a new Venezuelan state.

Inside the borders of the country of Guyana.

2023 Dec 4: The Guardian: "Venezuela referendum result: voters back bid to claim sovereignty over large swath of Guyana".

Why?

Eleven billion gallons of light, sweet crude: the highest quality of oil that commands the highest price.

(I can hear all of Gen X breathe, "Oh of course.")

It is under the floor of the Caribbean in an area known as the Stabroek Block.

The Stabroek Block is off the coast of an area known as the Essequibo.

It takes its name from the Essequibo River, which borders it on one side, and it constitutes approximately two-thirds of the land area of the country of Guyana.

Whoever owns the Essequibo owns the Stabroek Block and whoever owns the Stabroek owns those 11B gallons of easily-accessed, high-value oil.

Image from BBC, originally in "Essequibo: Venezuela moves to claim Guyana-controlled region", 2023 Dec 6

As far as almost everyone outside of Venezuela has been concerned, for the last hundred years Guyana has owned the Essequibo.

Venezuela disagrees. ( Read more [5,760 words] )

This post brought to you by the 219 readers who funded my writing it – thank you all so much! You can see who they are at my Patreon page. If you're not one of them, and would be willing to chip in so I can write more things like this, please do so there.

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Hey, quick temperature check. I've been reading a lot of media I don't expect my readership to read, and now I'm a little disoriented to who knows what.

Poll #33668 Geopolitics awareness check

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: Just the Poll Creator, participants: 123

What country do you currently live in?

What is your age?

12-19
2 (1.6%)

20-29
5 (4.1%)

30-39
19 (15.6%)

40-49
33 (27.0%)

50-59
40 (32.8%)

60-69
15 (12.3%)

70-79
8 (6.6%)

80+
0 (0.0%)

To the best of your knowledge, if the US were to go to war tomorrow, against what country would it most likely be?

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Hey, Americans! Look sharp, the Trump Administration is trying to play a head game on you about Covid vaccines, and it's apparently working, because I see nobody talking about this in the news or on social media.

There's a lot of complexity and chaos right now about what is available to whom and how to get it. Things are changing fast, especially on the state level. I hope to discuss it in another post, but there's one thing in particular I want to clarify for you.

As you've probably heard, week and a half ago, the FDA changed the authorization for the Covid vaccines, in a way which curtails access. The thing that people are hearing is that for people under 65 years old the Covid vaccines are not authorized with some exceptions.

That's technically correct, but badly misleading. A lot of people hear "not authorized" and stop really listening to the rest of the sentence. They hear "with some exceptions" and assume they're not likely to be one such, and won't qualify to get it, and tune right out.

To be cynical for a moment, you're meant to assume that.

But it turns out you're one of the exceptions. Probably. How can I know that?

The actual language from the FDA authorization just issued ( Read more [2,750 words] )

This post brought to you by the 218 readers who funded my writing it – thank you all so much! You can see who they are at my Patreon page. If you're not one of them, and would be willing to chip in so I can write more things like this, please do so there.

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With all the eager discussion of the possibility of Trump dying in office, I am in the delicate and unfortunate position of not actually being in favor of it.

Don't get me wrong. I, too, would enjoy to seeing something very bad happen to Trump. What I'd best like is him getting his just deserts – ideally being arrested, indicted, tried, found guilty, sentenced, having appealed, the appeal failing, appealing again, having that appeal fail, petitioning the POTUS for clemency and it not being granted, him being duly executed by the state as the traitor to the Republic and the Constitution he was proven to be. I'm not generally a big fan of capital punishment, but I am in fact willing to make exceptions; he seems to think he's an exception to a lot of things, and here I would agree with him.

But that's not going to happen, not in this time-line, and it's probably for the best that it doesn't.

Perhaps he will simply keel over dead, and I confess I will take at least a little bitter satisfaction in it.

And it's certainly not that I don't wish us all to be spared even another moment of this Trump presidency. Of course I do.

Alas, as much as I hate to crush the pleasant fantasy of us being redeemed by the deus ex machina of artheriosclerosis finally doing its job and carrying off our oppressor: Vance is worse. Much, much worse.

1.

( It's perhaps understandable that you would not realize this.... Read more [6,770 Words] )

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2025 Jun 7 11:40 am:

benjalvarez1 on Twitter:

WATCH THIS: https://x.com/BenjAlvarez1/status/1931375699786334704

Click through to see the video. You really, really should. Sound is irrelevant.

Text: "Tanks, fighting vehicles and howitzers arrive in Washington, D.C. ahead of next week's military parade. They departed from Texas on June 2." Two minutes and forty seconds.

Allegedly that train is a mile long and is transporting:

• 28 Abrams tanks (M1A2 main battle tank)
• 3 armored recovery vehicles (M88)
• 28 Bradleys (M2A3 infantry fighting vehicle)
• 5 Paladins (M109A7 self-propelled howitzer), and
• 28 Strykers (infantry carrier vehicle)

Source: 2025 Jun 6: @USAMilitaryChannel on YT [not official military channel]: "1-Mile Military Train -Texas to D.C. with Tanks, Armor, and More for Army's 250th Parade". I do not know if that source is reputable or if that inventory is accurate.

USA Today is reporting that "The military vehicles will be joined by 1,800 soldiers". (Source: 2025 Jun 6, USATODAY on YT: "Watch: Tanks, fighting vehicles head to DC for Trump's military parade", CW: face full of Trump, alt: screenshot).

I dunno, maybe it's just me, but I'm thinking that maybe the guy who attempted one coup already bringing a well-armed military force into our capitol city and, crucially, within artillery-range of the Pentagon, is just throwing himself a birthday party, but also maybe not.

ETA: For those of you confused by this, thinking, but doesn't he already control the military? You might want to watch this video about the rise of Xi Jinping.

Now, obviously, Trump would never play a long game like Xi did. But, 1) there are other ways to achieve the same end and 2) he doesn't have to, because his buddies, the Dominionists, did.

Informal poll:

I was just watching an activist's video about media in the US in which she showed a clip of Sen. Elizabeth Warren schooling a news anchor about the relationships of the Presidency, Congress, and the Courts to one another. At one point Warren refers to this as "ConLaw 101" – "ConLaw" being the slang term in colleges for Constitutional law classes and "101" being the idiomatic term for a introductory college class. The activist, in discussing what a shonda it is a CNBC news anchor doesn't seem to have the first idea of how our government is organized, says, disgusted, "this is literally 12th grade Government", i.e. this is what is covered in a 12th grade Government class.

Which tripped over something I've been gnawing on for thirty-five years.

The activist who said this is in Oregon.

I'm from Massachusetts, but was schooled in New Hampshire kindergarten through 9th grade (1976-1986). I then moved across the country to California for my sophomore, junior, and senior years of high school (1986-1989).

In California, I was shocked to discover that civics wasn't apparently taught at all until 12th grade.

I had wondered if I just had an idiosyncratic school district, but I got the impression this was the California standard class progression.

And here we have a person about my age in Oregon (don't know where she was educated) exclaiming that knowing the very most basic rudiments of our federal government's organization is, c'mon, "12th grade" stuff, clearly implying she thinks it's normal for an American citizen to learn this in 12th grade, validating my impression that there are places west of the Rockies where this topic isn't broached until the last year of high school.

I just went and asked Mr Bostoniensis about his civics education. He was wholly educated in Massachusetts. He reports it was covered in his 7th or 8th grade history class, as a natural outgrowth of teaching the history of the American Revolution and the crafting of our then-new form of government. He said that later in high school he got a full-on political science class, but the basics were covered in junior high.

Like I said, I went to school in New Hampshire.

It was covered in second grade. I was, like, 7 or 8 years old.

This was not some sort of honors class or gifted enrichment. My entire second grade class – the kids who sat in the red chairs and everybody – was marched down the hall for what we were told was "social studies", but which had, much to my enormous disappointment and bitterness, no sociological content whatsoever, just boring stories about indistinguishable old dead white dudes with strange white hairstyles who were for some reason important.

Nobody expected 7 and 8-year-olds to retain this, of course. So it was repeated every year until we left elementary school. I remember rolling my eyes some time around 6th grade and wondering if we'd ever make it up to the Civil War. (No.)

Now, my perspective on this might be a little skewed because I was also getting federal civics at home. My mom was a legal secretary and a con law fangirl. I've theorized that my mother, a wholly secularized Jew, had an atavistic impulse to obsess over a text and hot swapped the Bill of Rights for the Torah. I'm not suggesting that this resulted in my being well educated about the Constitution, only that while I couldn't give two farts for what my mother thinks about most things about me, every time I have to look up which amendment is which I feel faintly guilty like I am disappointing someone.

Upon further discussion with Mr Bostoniensis, it emerged that another source of his education in American governance was in the Boy Scouts, which he left in junior high. I went and looked up the present Boy Scouts offerings for civics and found that for 4th grade Webelos (proto Boy Scouts) it falls under the "My Community Adventure" ("You’ll learn about the different types of voting and how our national government maintains the balance of power.") For full Boy Scouts (ages 11 and up), there is a merit badge "Citizenship in the Nation" which is just straight up studying the Constitution. ("[...] List the three branches of the United States government. Explain: (a) The function of each branch of government, (b) Why it is important to divide powers among different branches, (c) How each branch "checks" and "balances" the others, (d) How citizens can be involved in each branch of government. [...]")

Meanwhile, I discovered this: Schoolhouse Rock's "Three-Ring Government". I, like most people my age, learned all sorts of crucial parts of American governance like the Preamble of the Constitution and How a Bill Becomes a Law through watching Schoolhouse Rock's public service edutainment interstitials on Saturday morning between the cartoons, but apparently this one managed to entirely miss me. (Wikipedia informs me "'Three Ring Government' had its airdate pushed back due to ABC fearing that the Federal Communications Commission, the U.S. Government, and Congress would object to having their functions and responsibilities being compared to a circus and threaten the network's broadcast license renewal.[citation needed]") These videos were absolutely aimed at elementary-aged school children, and interestingly "Three Ring Government" starts with the implication ("Guess I got the idea right here in school//felt like a fool, when they called my name// talking about the government and how it's arranged") that this is something a young kid in school would be expected to know.

So I am interested in the questions of "what age/grade do people think is when these ideas are, or should be, taught?" and "what age/grade are they actually taught, where?"

Because where I'm from this isn't "12th grade government", it's second grade government, and I am not close to being done with being scandalized over the fact apparently large swaths of the US are wrong about this.

My question for you, o readers, is where and when and how you learned the basic principles of how your form of government is organized. For those of you educated in the US, I mean the real basics:

• Congress passes the laws;
• The President enforces and executes the laws;
• The Supreme Court reviews the laws and cancels them if they violate the Constitution.
Extra credit:
• The President gets a veto over the laws passed by Congress.
• Congress can override presidential vetoes.
• Money is allocated by laws, so Congress does it.

Nothing any deeper than that. For those of you not educated in the US, I'm not sure what the equivalent is for your local government, but feel free to make a stab at it.

So please comment with two things:

1) When along your schooling (i.e. your grade or age) were these basics (or local equivalent) about federal government covered (which might be multiple times and/or places), and what state (or state equivalent) you were in at the time?

2) What non-school education you got on this, at what age(s), and where you were?

Concord Hymn
("Hymn: Sung at the Completion of the Concord Monument, April 19, 1836")
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
To the tune of "Old Hundredth" (Louis Bourgeois, 1547)

Performed by the Choir of First Parish Church, Concord, Massachusetts. Elizabeth Norton, Director. Uploaded Oct 1, 2013.

Watch on YouTube

[...]

A hurry of hoofs in a village-street,
A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark,
And beneath from the pebbles, in passing, a spark
Struck out by a steed that flies fearless and fleet:
That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light,
The fate of a nation was riding that night;
And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight,
Kindled the land into flame with its heat.

He has left the village and mounted the steep,
And beneath him, tranquil and broad and deep,
Is the Mystic, meeting the ocean tides;
And under the alders, that skirt its edge,
Now soft on the sand, now loud on the ledge,
Is heard the tramp of his steed as he rides.

It was twelve by the village clock
When he crossed the bridge into Medford town.
He heard the crowing of the cock,
And the barking of the farmer’s dog,
And felt the damp of the river-fog,
That rises when the sun goes down.

It was one by the village clock,
When he galloped into Lexington.
He saw the gilded weathercock
Swim in the moonlight as he passed,
And the meeting-house windows, blank and bare,
Gaze at him with a spectral glare,
As if they already stood aghast
At the bloody work they would look upon.

It was two by the village clock,
When he came to the bridge in Concord town.
He heard the bleating of the flock,
And the twitter of birds among the trees,
And felt the breath of the morning breeze
Blowing over the meadows brown.
And one was safe and asleep in his bed
Who at the bridge would be first to fall,
Who that day would be lying dead,
Pierced by a British musket-ball.

You know the rest. In the books you have read,
How the British Regulars fired and fled,—
How the farmers gave them ball for ball,
From behind each fence and farmyard-wall,
Chasing the red-coats down the lane,
Then crossing the fields to emerge again
Under the trees at the turn of the road,
And only pausing to fire and load.

[...] A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
And a word that shall echo forevermore!
For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
Through all our history, to the last,
In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken and listen to hear
The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,
And the midnight message of Paul Revere.

– From "Paul Revere's Ride"
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
1860, published January, 1861

I excerpted as I did so the reader could encounter it with fresh eyes.

While there are enough inaccuracies in the poem – written almost a hundred years after the fact – to render it more fancy than fact, this did actually happen.

Two hundred and fifty years ago. Tonight.

Heads up: Last night, this was a whole lot of Americans' introduction to the Abundance movement.

I kinda don't want to spoil it for you, because it's kind of a great moment. I don't know I've seen an audience shocked in quite that way.

I'm not saying this will be hugely relevant in the near-term, or even medium term. But I expect you're going to hearing about it in liberal/leftist circles, because it's a new enough idea that it's pretty arresting. Watching the video below, it's striking how difficult Colbert – a whip-smart guy – initially finds it to grasp what Klein is getting at.

2025 Mar 12: The Late Show with Stephen Colbert [YT]: "Musk And Trump Are Trying To Break The Government So Billionaires Can Take It Over - Ezra Klein" Actual content starts around 0:51.

Watch on YouTube

Quote:

[1:01] Colbert: You've got a new book right here, you coauthored with The Atlantic writer Derek Thompson called, Abundance. In it you say both parties have created scarcity in housing, energy, and scientific discovery. Okay, walk me through that. How did we get there and why are both parties responsible for that scarcity?

Klein: We've got this simple story of American politics which [is]: you've got a left, democratic party that likes government, trusts it, believes in it, does big things with it, and a right that hates it. That's noooot quite right. Both parties have divided souls on the government. The right loves the big national security state. Lkes surveillance, likes a police state. The left has complicated relationship with actually letting government act. You think about high-speed rail in California, you think about the Second Avenue subway in New York City, think about the Big Dig in Boston, you think about the shortage of housing in a bunch of the places where liberals govern.

At some point you gotta say: something is wrong in the places where people who in theory believe in government run the government. We don't have enough homes, enough energy, enough public infrastructure. People are leaving those places to go to red states where life is cheaper and that's a problem we've got to confront and fix.

Colbert: Okay. [Colbert then tries to paraphrase what he's hearing and gets it badly wrong. Klein graciously doesn't directly contradict him.]

[2:47] Klein: I'll tighten it even more than that: One side likes government but doesn't make it work, the other tries to make government fail. Those are the two parties.

[pause; audience murmurs, titters]

[2:55] Colbert: Okay... is there something behind door number three?

Klein: Well, there's this book.

As it happens, I've been aware of Klein's fascination with the Abundance movement (he didn't invent it) for a little while now, so have had a chance to figure out what it is.

It's an anti-regulation movement in liberalism, that is not incompatible with more leftist positions, especially sidewalk socialism.

As such, I find it very intriguing. I have extremely complex feelings and thoughts about regulations, being simultaneously the most ardent fan of them I know and also pretty critical of them.

Perhaps it is unfairly reductionist for me to describe the Abundance movement as anti-regulation, though that's its primary pragmatic focus. I think it's also got some laudible underlying moral principles: that a measure of the goodness o governance is in the improvement of the lives of the greater mass of people in that society, and one of the areas of life that must be improved is in access to basic, core resources like housing and transportation and work. I think this is a bracing confrontation to how the American liberal establishment has been comporting itself, and could prove a shot in the arm to it. If, you know, it survives current events.

I also think there's a deeper level, too, that I approve of: this is an attempt to confront a left (and I absolutely include leftists in this, not just liberals) that has a serious problem with self-congratulation and delusional levels of cluelessness with some of its fatal faults.

And, yes, this comes back to class. To quote his podcast episode on this, "You cannot be the party of working families when the places you govern are places working families cannot afford to live."

This anti-regulation thrust also fits well with neoliberalism, though. I don't think the right move for socialists here is to wait and see if Abundantism becomes a neoliberal buzzword, but to grab it for themselves before the neoliberals get to hosey it.

Here's his podcast episode where he fleshes his argument out a bit, from which that quote comes:

2025 Mar 9: The Ezra Klein Show [YT]: "There Is a Liberal Answer to Elon Musk"

This is his earlier podcast and interview, which is how the Abundance movement first crossed my desk:

[Edit: whups, forgot to actually paste in the cite:

2024 Nov 22: The Ezra Klein Show [YT]: "In This House, We’re Angry When Government Fails" Ezra Klein interviewing Steven Teles and Jennifer Pahlka.

]

In it he mentioned his book by that title, but also one of his guests, Jennifer Pahlka, mentions, "...groups like the Abundance Network..." which was how I found the rabbit hole. Their website is https://www.abundancenetwork.com/. Pahlka is an interesting figure. Maybe more about her anon.

In any event, Abundantists (yes, that's my coinage) tend to use "abundance" as an Improper Noun, which is both confusing, because it's a term widely use in the religious right especially re Prosperity Gospel, and also delightful, for the same reason. This is, if nothing else, your alert there are secular liberals appropriating the term from the right, so when you encounter it in the wild, you're not confused about what's going.

I recently discovered that Mr. Bostoniensis had been tragically unacquainted with r/LeopardsAteMyFace on Reddit, so I got to bring it to his attention. Perhaps you are also unacquainted with it, so I thought I'd mention.

The title comes from a tweet from Twitter user @cavalorn (2015 Oct 16):

"'I never thought leopards would eat MY face,' sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party."

It went viral and has since become an idiom for voters who vote for what was always obviously going to be their own destruction out of the blithe and very wrong self-assurance that somehow they would be exempt from the destruction they were voting for.

r/LeopardsAteMyFace was founded in 2017 not long after the first Trump inauguration to capture stories of, for instance, people who found themselves or their loved ones getting deported after having voting for Trump. It's now gleefully collating news stories and social media posts documenting Trump supporters bewailing getting fired from their federal government jobs by DOGE, their farms facing bankruptcy due to US AID payments being cut off, their entire industries getting slagged by tariffs, losing money in their stock market investments, and so forth.

As such it's a fine source of schadenfreude, and also suggests that the light is just beginning to dawn on some Trump supporters that maybe, just maybe, they have made a terrible mistake.

Now, I don't suggest you read too much into it, because, for one thing, it may not matter very much if even a sizable percentage of them do turn on him, and for another I doubt these examples are very representative.

But the schadenfreude is choice.

2025 Mar 6: Jezebel: "MAGA Turns on Amy Coney Barrett for Siding With Starving Children" (by Kylie Cheung):

Appealing to the consciences of conservative Supreme Court justices isn’t going to save us in the even more unhinged era of Trump 2.0. But even a broken clock is right twice a day—and on Wednesday, conservative Supreme Court Justices Amy Coney Barrett and John Roberts sided with the three liberal justices to reject the Trump administration’s plea to withhold billions of dollars in foreign aid. And now, all hell is breaking loose in MAGA world.

In February, District Judge Amir Ali ruled that the Trump administration must pay the $2 billion in lifesaving foreign aid already promised under existing USAID contracts, issuing a February 26 deadline. [...] The Trump administration appealed Ali’s ruling to the Supreme Court, which paused Ali’s deadline to review Trump’s arguments. Then, on Wednesday, in a 5-4 ruling, the Supreme Court determined that the Trump administration must comply with Ali’s ruling, directing the district judge to issue clear instructions on Trump’s obligations and the timing for his administration to disburse the aid.

[...] Trump supporters are now displeased with the two treacherous conservative justices, and their ire has fallen particularly hard on Coney Barrett. This is probably because Trump appointed her, but the specific lines of attack from MAGA influencers suggest all the typical right-wing misogyny is also at play here.

“Amy Coney Barrett was a DEI appointee,” white nationalist influencer Laura Loomer tweeted on Wednesday, alongside a photo of Coney Barrett and her family, including her adoptive children who are Black. The racist subtext couldn’t have been more obvious, given everything we know about Loomer’s rabidly bigoted beliefs.

Mike Cernovich, the far-right Pizzagate conspiracy theorist and alleged sexual assailant, wrote of Coney Barrett, “She is evil, chosen solely because she checked identity politics boxes. Another DEI hire. It always ends badly.” [...]

[...] fellow viral MAGA star Jack Posobiec [is] now attacking Coney Barrett with cartoonishly sexist labels by referring to her as a “DEI hire."

Another far-right influencer, Paul A. Szypula, called Barrett’s decision to side with the liberal justices “disgraceful.” He also called her “a bad SCOTUS nominee.” Charlie Kirk replied, “Looking that way.”

[...] Coney Barrett overturned Roe v. Wade and nearly all of her rulings have made our lives immeasurably worse over the last five years. I guess, at least this one time, she and Roberts decided to draw the line at the U.S. violating existing foreign aid contracts to appease the bored, right-wing tech billionaire currently amusing himself by destroying our government.

Sibylla Bostoniensis

If you wanna know the future, simply look into the past

Well, we're finally here [me, pols]

Understanding Health Insurance: The Three-Stage Model [healthcare, US, Patreon]

The Three-Stage Model

Choosing Health Insurance: HSAs: FYI re bronze, catastrophic plans [healthcare, US, Patreon]

Understanding Health Insurance: A Health Plan is a Contract [US, healthcare, Patreon]

Health Insurance is a Contract

Understanding Health Insurance: Introduction [healthcare, US, Patreon]

Understanding Health Insurance:
Introduction

Choosing Health Insurance: Two Unobvious Marketplace Deadlines [US, healthcare, Patreon]

Choosing Health Insurance: Preventive Care [US, healthcare, Patreon]

Venezuela and the US: the Last Two Weeks [cur ev, war, Patreon]

October 2nd

October 3rd

October 6th

October 8th

October 9th

October 10th

October 13th

October 14th

October 15th

The Essequibo (Buddy-ta-na-na, We Are Somebody, Oh): Pt 1 [cur ev, war, Patreon]

Poll: Sense of geopolitical awareness [pols, US, war]

At Least One Underlying Condition [Covid, US, Patreon]

Vance is Worse [pols, US, Ω, Patreon]

Tanks, armored vehicles, howitzers delivered to DC [curr ev, US]

Civics education? [gov, civics]

Concord Hymn [em, hist, US]

Livestream: Battles of Lexington and Concord Re-enactment [hist, US]

The Eighteenth of April [hist, US, poetry]

The Abundance Movement [pols, US]

Leopards eating faces [pols]

"Amy Coney Barrett was a DEI appointee" [pols]

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January 2026

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