The Mason Missile, March 26, 2025

Greetings, Americans! Recently I had to go to the VA Medical Center in Philadelphia for some chest pains; it turned out I had a blocked artery. I was transferred to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania (HUP) (https://www.pennmedicine.org/) and I received open heart surgery. I’m still in recovery mode, but I’m progressing beautifully with my healing; I thank the doctors, nurses, and other staff at the VA and HUP for saving my life. All of this could have cost me a fortune, but it was all covered by Medicare Plans A and B—programs that Donald whatshisface, partnering with E-load, uh, Elon Musk, are hell-bent to destroy, along with Social Security, Medicaid, and the VA. This is all in the name of “cutting the federal deficit. Oh, really? In every Republican administration going back to Reagan, after they howl about the deficit during the campaign, they INCREASE the deficit, and talk about it like it’s no big thing, if they talk about it at all. Dick Cheney, Vice-President for George W. Bush, even said as much, “Deficits don’t matter.” (https://www.chicagotribune.com/2004/01/12/oneill-says-cheney-told-him-deficits-dont-matter/) If the Republicans were serious, they wouldn’t have passed the massive tax cuts in 2017; and promises, as always, were, “People will have more household income, it’ll create jobs, and the cuts will pay for themselves.” How long have I heard this? Yet none of these tax cuts for billionaires and mega-corporations have brought back any laid-off workers, or put one brick on top of another. This can’t last forever; it’s only continuing the gap between workers and employers, and working people need to pay their bills and their mortgages, put gas in the car, and buy groceries. It MIGHT reach a point where workers can’t pay for their necessities, and there’s the danger, like NOW, the corporate handmaidens of the plutocracy would get their hands on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and veterans’ benefits, money from and for people who workers several decades, and desire a healthy, comfortable retirement. (https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-tax/the-2017-trump-tax-law-was-skewed-to-the-rich-expensive-and-failed-to-deliver) These corporate oligarchs, like Musk and the others, aren’t any wiser or brilliant or far-seeing than the rest of us; they simply have a remarkable load of money for which to buy things, because they can. With Musk, it has been Tesla, SpaceX, and X (nee Twitter); for Jeff Bezos, it was Amazon, the Washington Post, Whole Foods, and MGM Studios. Other people developed these firms, and the technology that goes into them. Like SOOO many billionaires, Musk and Bezos got rich off the labor and brain-work of others. I always look forward to signs of resistance against the Trump-Musk regime, either in the courts, in town halls with people confronting their Congress-members, piling into the streets in demonstrations. That’s what we need more of—more in-your-face street heat, to make sure our voices are heard. I always wonder, “Is our message getting through, do our mis-leaders know how angry we are at how they’re attacking us, and we won’t take it? Are they so locked in their mental bunkers that they think we’ll just sit back and take it, that we don’t matter?” And I hear the term, “We’ll go down fighting,” as if we’ve lost beforehand. The stakes are too damn high to give up on resisting the Trump-Must-Project 2025 agenda of crushing the working class. It’s good for US as we hit the bricks, speak up for ourselves, and know that we’re not alone, that we’re not powerless, and we CAN affect some positive change. There are great videos out of massive demonstration and marches in Turkey, Serbia, Hungary, and Georgia (the former Soviet republic) of people calling for the end of their corrupt, autocratic regimes. Let them be an example for us, and let’s be an example to the world of a people dedicated to freedom and justice. Stay safe, stay strong, and stay together! Slava Ukraini! Am Yisrael Chai! Fuck Trump! Fuck Musk! America will be free! Bye!