Rule 9 concerns the need for a powerful narrative for the media and public when fighting Trump. We're failing: we need to hear the REAL stories of how the CFPB, Medicaid, and USAID have helped people.
1974 — '76, I lived in the small village of Fanaye Dieri in the Senegal River Valley during a time of famine, pestilence, and drought doing agricultural development and famine-relief work. Because of the drought, then in its 7th year, the crops had mostly failed. Had it not been for food supplied by the UN, the EU, Saudi Arabia, and, mostly, the United States, there would have been no food in Fanaye and the people would have had to leave. But USAID food kept us alive. I suppose I'm one of the few people who were born & raised in the USA who has subsisted for two years on a diet of food mostly supplied by USAID, so maybe my story will be of use.
Shortly after I arrived in the village a big tuck came & unloaded dozens of burlap bags bearing USAID logo and the words “From the People of the United States of America,” that contained sorghum & field corn on the cob. It was animal feed in the US, but it kept us alive. The people were very grateful to have it.
[Aside: Sometimes you hear people going on about how food aid like this is stolen by corrupt officials and things like that, but I can attest that in the village of Fanaye the distribution was orderly, according to the town census. After I had been in Fanaye for about a year I spent about 2 weeks on a small convoy of trucks delivering food from the UN's UNICEF program, and that also was properly administered.]
Having sworn an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, I did my best to represent our country. Near the end of my stay I overheard a man explaining Peace Corps to a visitor:"Ehbay nyam ko yimbay nyam, ehbay hahl ko yimbay hahl"
"They eat what the people eat; they speak [the language] the people speak." I don't want to overstate my accomplishments but I am proud of the work that I did there on behalf of the American people — and it wasn't always easy. But I know for a fact that not only did the food from the USA help keep the people of Fanaye (and elsewhere across the 4,000 mile expanse of the Sahel) alive, which is obviously a good thing in itself, it also predisposed the people of Senegal to think well of the US. A compassionate and worthwhile project any way you look at it. May the vandals destroying USAID burn in Hell for all eternity. Amen.
To get an appreciation of what it was like to live in a place where food from USAID meant the difference between staying in your home and leaving everything behind to try to find someplace where you and your children wouldn’t starve to death, I humbly suggest reading this essay, by far the most popular of the ~85 I’ve posted on substack to date.
My mom was 80 years old and drowning in debt. Collections were calling at all hours day and night-she was incredibly stressed out and helpless. Fortunately I had a gym friend who worked for CFPB (I had never heard of it). Friend took mom’s case on and cleared her credit history and stopped all harassment. It was a lifesaver for my mom. I had never been so proud of our government.
Just before Trump came into office (again), I received a check for several hundred dollars from the CFPB from a class action lawsuit against a fraudulent credit repair service. It came at a good moment, since I live on a very small social security check each month. Having become disabled 25 years ago, I've been on SSD until I was retired. I'm on Medicare and Medicaid as well. If I lose my social security benefit or my health coverage, I will very likely (in the first event) lose everything, including my home, become homeless and would not survive. My senior cats would also end up being euthanized. If the Treasury payments get screwed up, I'm dead. I also have student loan debt (over $100k) from the 90's that was just approved for discharge. I hope Elon doesn't rescind that. Truthfully, I hope he ends up in jail for the grossly illegal and destructive stuff he's doing. The felon prez can accompany him.
The CFPB has been one of (if not the most) effective agencies for ordinary people because it actually returns money to the people who were harmed instead of just taking money from the entities causing harm. Civil (and even criminal) penalties do not actually discourage or prevent large corporations or the obscenely rich from continuing the behavior that lets them continue to extract money and harm people.
The basic principle is that someone who profits from harming another is unjust enrichment. The basic remedy for unjust enrichment is restitution. I think we should use restitution more.
It's often difficult to match the restitution made with the harm done because of the scale of the harms being inflicted by wrongdoers and because the amount of restitution is often much less than the actual harm done.
If the large corporations and obscenely rich had to actually disgorge everything they gained for the practices they engage in plus repay all of the collateral damage they caused plus pay punitive damages for unlawful behavior plus pay civil and/or criminal penalties they might not do so much of it because the cost would not just be an incidental.
The problem in matching restitution to the actual harm done is really one of scale. I would like to see them forced to pay for all of the work needed to actually determine the total amount of financial harm plus the cost of collateral damages for every single member of a class of people harmed and pay that back as restitution. Every person harmed by corporate wrongdoing should be made completely whole to the maximum extent possible no matter how much time and effort the wrongdoer has to pay for to make the people harmed whole.
The cost of doing this would likely be larger than what they gained by wrongdoing. Couple that with significant penalties and do it consistently might change behavior.
Basically change remedies from a minor cost of doing business to something that makes wrongful conduct prohibitively expensive.
One of the most powerful things that people sit up and notice is when things start to happen to them and their friends and neighbors OR to people they know or who are like them. Then they go - if this is happening to them then how soon will it be that it is going to happen to me. Stories have always had a powerful influence on people. People who do not want others to care push hard to convince others to doubt or deny reality, but when it is happening to you.......Stories matter!!!
I will be emailing you as my story is long. I have an adult brother with Down syndrome who now has middle stage Alzheimer’s disease. My husband is 100% VA disabled due to Agent Orange, I’m a retired nurse on Social Security & Medicare. It will be devastating if our benefits are cut.
I am caregiving 1.5 daughters; one able to work maximum part time and other with schizophrenia and agoraphobia collecting SSI. Both collect Medicaid and SNAP. Back story required moving from California to Illinois to afford doing this. The affordable house cost another $40k repairs in two years. Necessary ones; drains/water pipes/furnace/doors/windows/insulation. Creditors just last month lowered my available credit to exactly what I owe. I left retirement and returned to work part time last May and after Trump was elected I requested full time hours. THAT takes me OUT of caregiving effectively at home. Now caregiving equals preserving all I achieved to protect my two partially and fully disabled daughters. All I achieved is directly related with utilizing aforementioned social programs AND care court and Medicaid funded in patient rehab. My daughter’s antipsychotic injection is $6000. She gets it every 3-mos. And my other daughter’s medication is costly too. And I’ll be needing cataract surgery this summer. I am concerned.
Just a thought...if/when you're ready for stories about how Dept. of Education has helped, so many people have special needs children who might be willing to provide stories. I'm a preschool special education teacher and am happy to help provide any insights if that would be helpful to you.
A comment I made at the contrarian website led here. I don't know these people (the University of Illinois is very large), but maybe you could contact them. The Soybean Innovation lab, supported by USAID
YES! Who is being hurt and how? Personal in-your-neighborhood stories can really bring it home and help wake people up! For example, has anyone failed to receive their monthly social security deposit/check? I got mine this month but have fears going forward with Musk & minions’ sticky fingers all over things! Watching Musk absolutely BLATHER in the oval office yesterday only highlights his madness and will to destruction for its own sake.(and please highlight Greg Casar, the Chairman of the Progressive Caucus. He is one hell of a leader and needs wide exposure!)
You nailed it. The Democratic Party has not shown it is capable of developing messages for the mainstream. From surrendering the symbolism of the flag for MAGA branding to fracturing efforts by creating “ a lid for every pot” we are no longer in the kettle together. Stop dividing to get to the lowest common denominator. Instead, add up to find the human sum. Use words, video and audio— go wide across many platforms.
Thank you for your insights! Regrettably, the tech bros phenomenon is deeper than just the POTUS. There's another playbook the Clown Cartel is following, in addition to Project 2025. DOGE is executing Curtis Yarvin's strategy to retire all government employees (RAGE). This could lead us into a monarchy with an emperor and a CEO. - kaf
1974 — '76, I lived in the small village of Fanaye Dieri in the Senegal River Valley during a time of famine, pestilence, and drought doing agricultural development and famine-relief work. Because of the drought, then in its 7th year, the crops had mostly failed. Had it not been for food supplied by the UN, the EU, Saudi Arabia, and, mostly, the United States, there would have been no food in Fanaye and the people would have had to leave. But USAID food kept us alive. I suppose I'm one of the few people who were born & raised in the USA who has subsisted for two years on a diet of food mostly supplied by USAID, so maybe my story will be of use.
Shortly after I arrived in the village a big tuck came & unloaded dozens of burlap bags bearing USAID logo and the words “From the People of the United States of America,” that contained sorghum & field corn on the cob. It was animal feed in the US, but it kept us alive. The people were very grateful to have it.
[Aside: Sometimes you hear people going on about how food aid like this is stolen by corrupt officials and things like that, but I can attest that in the village of Fanaye the distribution was orderly, according to the town census. After I had been in Fanaye for about a year I spent about 2 weeks on a small convoy of trucks delivering food from the UN's UNICEF program, and that also was properly administered.]
Having sworn an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, I did my best to represent our country. Near the end of my stay I overheard a man explaining Peace Corps to a visitor:"Ehbay nyam ko yimbay nyam, ehbay hahl ko yimbay hahl"
"They eat what the people eat; they speak [the language] the people speak." I don't want to overstate my accomplishments but I am proud of the work that I did there on behalf of the American people — and it wasn't always easy. But I know for a fact that not only did the food from the USA help keep the people of Fanaye (and elsewhere across the 4,000 mile expanse of the Sahel) alive, which is obviously a good thing in itself, it also predisposed the people of Senegal to think well of the US. A compassionate and worthwhile project any way you look at it. May the vandals destroying USAID burn in Hell for all eternity. Amen.
To get an appreciation of what it was like to live in a place where food from USAID meant the difference between staying in your home and leaving everything behind to try to find someplace where you and your children wouldn’t starve to death, I humbly suggest reading this essay, by far the most popular of the ~85 I’ve posted on substack to date.
https://open.substack.com/pub/johnsundman/p/the-dark-side-of-the-hut-50-years?r=38b5x&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
https://open.substack.com/pub/johnsundman/p/the-dark-side-of-the-hut-50-years?r=38b5x&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
Thank you for sharing your story and letting us know more about the people being helped by people representing our country.
My mom was 80 years old and drowning in debt. Collections were calling at all hours day and night-she was incredibly stressed out and helpless. Fortunately I had a gym friend who worked for CFPB (I had never heard of it). Friend took mom’s case on and cleared her credit history and stopped all harassment. It was a lifesaver for my mom. I had never been so proud of our government.
Just a quick observation/idea: if #Visa is partnering with X, I won’t be using my Visa cards anymore. I’ll stick to Mastercard, Discover or AmEx.
Do you think Visa will go along with Musk switching everything to digital coins and the Treasury buying bitcoin?
At this point, it seems there are no boundaries and it’s the senseless and lawless Wild West, so who knows 🤷♀️
#meeeeeeeeeto
Just before Trump came into office (again), I received a check for several hundred dollars from the CFPB from a class action lawsuit against a fraudulent credit repair service. It came at a good moment, since I live on a very small social security check each month. Having become disabled 25 years ago, I've been on SSD until I was retired. I'm on Medicare and Medicaid as well. If I lose my social security benefit or my health coverage, I will very likely (in the first event) lose everything, including my home, become homeless and would not survive. My senior cats would also end up being euthanized. If the Treasury payments get screwed up, I'm dead. I also have student loan debt (over $100k) from the 90's that was just approved for discharge. I hope Elon doesn't rescind that. Truthfully, I hope he ends up in jail for the grossly illegal and destructive stuff he's doing. The felon prez can accompany him.
(Since some people decided to follow me on substack because of this comment, I'd like to note that I really don't post on substack since it won't load properly on my little Chromebook but I do post on Medium and posted this today -- https://medium.com/@jennifer.vanbergen/trumps-executive-order-on-presidential-power-to-interpret-laws-0533596cbfe7. Please follow me there.)
The CFPB has been one of (if not the most) effective agencies for ordinary people because it actually returns money to the people who were harmed instead of just taking money from the entities causing harm. Civil (and even criminal) penalties do not actually discourage or prevent large corporations or the obscenely rich from continuing the behavior that lets them continue to extract money and harm people.
The basic principle is that someone who profits from harming another is unjust enrichment. The basic remedy for unjust enrichment is restitution. I think we should use restitution more.
It's often difficult to match the restitution made with the harm done because of the scale of the harms being inflicted by wrongdoers and because the amount of restitution is often much less than the actual harm done.
If the large corporations and obscenely rich had to actually disgorge everything they gained for the practices they engage in plus repay all of the collateral damage they caused plus pay punitive damages for unlawful behavior plus pay civil and/or criminal penalties they might not do so much of it because the cost would not just be an incidental.
The problem in matching restitution to the actual harm done is really one of scale. I would like to see them forced to pay for all of the work needed to actually determine the total amount of financial harm plus the cost of collateral damages for every single member of a class of people harmed and pay that back as restitution. Every person harmed by corporate wrongdoing should be made completely whole to the maximum extent possible no matter how much time and effort the wrongdoer has to pay for to make the people harmed whole.
The cost of doing this would likely be larger than what they gained by wrongdoing. Couple that with significant penalties and do it consistently might change behavior.
Basically change remedies from a minor cost of doing business to something that makes wrongful conduct prohibitively expensive.
One of the most powerful things that people sit up and notice is when things start to happen to them and their friends and neighbors OR to people they know or who are like them. Then they go - if this is happening to them then how soon will it be that it is going to happen to me. Stories have always had a powerful influence on people. People who do not want others to care push hard to convince others to doubt or deny reality, but when it is happening to you.......Stories matter!!!
I will be emailing you as my story is long. I have an adult brother with Down syndrome who now has middle stage Alzheimer’s disease. My husband is 100% VA disabled due to Agent Orange, I’m a retired nurse on Social Security & Medicare. It will be devastating if our benefits are cut.
I am caregiving 1.5 daughters; one able to work maximum part time and other with schizophrenia and agoraphobia collecting SSI. Both collect Medicaid and SNAP. Back story required moving from California to Illinois to afford doing this. The affordable house cost another $40k repairs in two years. Necessary ones; drains/water pipes/furnace/doors/windows/insulation. Creditors just last month lowered my available credit to exactly what I owe. I left retirement and returned to work part time last May and after Trump was elected I requested full time hours. THAT takes me OUT of caregiving effectively at home. Now caregiving equals preserving all I achieved to protect my two partially and fully disabled daughters. All I achieved is directly related with utilizing aforementioned social programs AND care court and Medicaid funded in patient rehab. My daughter’s antipsychotic injection is $6000. She gets it every 3-mos. And my other daughter’s medication is costly too. And I’ll be needing cataract surgery this summer. I am concerned.
Just a thought...if/when you're ready for stories about how Dept. of Education has helped, so many people have special needs children who might be willing to provide stories. I'm a preschool special education teacher and am happy to help provide any insights if that would be helpful to you.
A comment I made at the contrarian website led here. I don't know these people (the University of Illinois is very large), but maybe you could contact them. The Soybean Innovation lab, supported by USAID
https://www.news-gazette.com/news/local/university-illinois/usaid-supported-soybean-lab-at-ui-hopes-to-convince-feds-to-continue-funding/article_2b28d5e2-e7f7-11ef-a08e-af1d986e9bbd.html
https://www.thegodpodcast.com/p/maga-farmer-to-lose-farm-because?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=2255074&post_id=156978526&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=false&r=1hfuu&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
This USAID toolkit has stories that can be amplified:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1639luGHyKB6fNpXK2WQaEjssJk1uYm3zPlefTO2om1Q/mobilebasic?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
YES! Who is being hurt and how? Personal in-your-neighborhood stories can really bring it home and help wake people up! For example, has anyone failed to receive their monthly social security deposit/check? I got mine this month but have fears going forward with Musk & minions’ sticky fingers all over things! Watching Musk absolutely BLATHER in the oval office yesterday only highlights his madness and will to destruction for its own sake.(and please highlight Greg Casar, the Chairman of the Progressive Caucus. He is one hell of a leader and needs wide exposure!)
This, from my friend...
Thanks to Fturd (Trump) Mom’s meds increased $300 a month this year...
You nailed it. The Democratic Party has not shown it is capable of developing messages for the mainstream. From surrendering the symbolism of the flag for MAGA branding to fracturing efforts by creating “ a lid for every pot” we are no longer in the kettle together. Stop dividing to get to the lowest common denominator. Instead, add up to find the human sum. Use words, video and audio— go wide across many platforms.
Thank you for your insights! Regrettably, the tech bros phenomenon is deeper than just the POTUS. There's another playbook the Clown Cartel is following, in addition to Project 2025. DOGE is executing Curtis Yarvin's strategy to retire all government employees (RAGE). This could lead us into a monarchy with an emperor and a CEO. - kaf
https://threewayfight.org/the-doge-and-the-neoreactionaries/
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10106252662835733&set=a.10100556383744693&type=3&mibextid=wwXIfr