What Is Wrong With Us? – Even that's Odd

All Political

May 14, 2026

Gonna Party Like It’s 1999

A new US party structure, by way of Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and the Nordics. Three things need to change if we want a country that actually moves instead of just performing motion for the cameras: The first two are arguments for another day. This one is about the third — because the two-party…
May 11, 2026

US Against Them : Enough is Enough

The third song in the Enough Is Enough campaign. It’s not red vs. blue. It’s about the people on top who need us fighting each other so we don’t notice them.
May 11, 2026

BrokeCon By Design: The Complete 25-Part Series

A 25-part series on how American life got rigged against the bottom 90% — system by system, with receipts.
May 6, 2026

Do Unto Others: The Complete 5-Part Series

A 5-part series on transactional empathy, asymmetric hypocrisy, and what democracy requires that we’re no longer providing. Start here.
May 6, 2026

Divided We Fall: The Complete 10-Part Series

A 10-part series on the culture war as a business model — and what the data actually shows on the issues it sells you. Start here.
May 6, 2026

Passing the Buck: The Complete 15-Part Series

A 15-part series on how costs got shifted off corporations and government and onto individual workers — and what it would take to reverse it. Start here.
May 3, 2026

Union Strong: The Only Thing Standing Between Us and the Bottom

I’m not a union guy in the way you might picture a union guy. I’ve complained about unions. I’ve worked around them because the budget demanded it. I’ve watched strong-arm tactics that embarrassed everyone involved. I’ve sat in a production office calculating how much cheaper everything would be if we just went non-union. And I…
April 26, 2026

The Upside Down

We are living in the Stranger Things Upside Down. Same country, wrong version of it. I used to think Trump Derangement Syndrome existed on both sides. People so blinded by their feelings about one man that they couldn’t think straight. I had some sympathy for that framing. I don’t anymore. Because at some point the…
April 19, 2026

PARTY OF ONE : ENOUGH IS ENOUGH SONG 3

Here’s something nobody in either party wants you to think about too hard: they cash the same checks. Not the same voters. Not the same rhetoric. Not the same culture war. But the same donors, the same bundlers, the same checks written before the election and collected after. The red team and the blue team…
April 15, 2026

LIVING THE DREAM: ENOUGH IS ENOUGH SONG 2

We say it like it’s a fact. Greatest country on earth. Number one. Living the dream. But when you actually look at the data — the rankings, the numbers, the verified receipts — the scoreboard tells a different story. Living the Dream is the second Enough Is Enough protest song.
April 13, 2026

Strait of Hormuz: The Board Game Edition

Like most people, I’ve been watching this story with a mix of disbelief and exhaustion that is quickly becoming the default setting for following American foreign policy. I want to be upfront: I’m not a foreign policy expert. I don’t pretend to understand all the moving parts, and I’m genuinely open to the possibility that…
April 8, 2026

Drowning in It: The Ignored Trash Problem

There’s a moment every six weeks or so that snaps me back to reality. I load up the car, drive to our local transfer station, hand Dan a coupon, and drop off a single 44-gallon bag of trash. One bag every four to six weeks. And I think — okay, we’re doing our part. We…
April 7, 2026

The Peace President Needs to Fund His Wars Instead of our Health and Child Care. So Democrats Talk About Crayons?

Sort of an Opinion piece but not really, it’s just this country is batshit off the rails. You seriously could not make up how out of touch these people are. WTF Is Wrong With Us? No Seriously… Let me set the full scene, because context is everything here. IHere is everything you need to know…
April 2, 2026

Passing the Buck: Why We Make Less But Pay More Part 15: How We Get There

Building the Power to Win We’ve shown you the problem. We’ve named who profits. We’ve proven it doesn’t have to be this way. Now comes the hard part: How do we actually fix this? This won’t be easy. This won’t be quick. And anyone promising simple solutions is lying to you. But it is possible.…
March 31, 2026

Angry Old Extremely Religious Christian White Man Yelling from His Porch Syndrome

Why You Can’t Debate Someone Who Just Wants to Watch You Lose Let me tell you what finally broke my brain. The Epstein files dropped. Years of QAnon. Years of “protect the children.” Years of Democrats running secret pedophile rings in pizza restaurant basements. The entire moral foundation of a movement — the thing they…
March 29, 2026

Passing the Buck: Why We Make Less But Pay More Part 14: What We Could Have Instead

It Works Elsewhere For 13 parts, we’ve shown you how broken the American system is. How costs have been shifted onto workers. How the math doesn’t work. How both parties protect corporate interests. Now we need to show you something crucial: It doesn’t have to be this way. Other developed countries face the same global…
March 28, 2026

Are We About to Come Full Circle on Who We Trust?

Is It Possible We All May Share The Same Reality Again Thanks To AI I was driving to yet another baseball tournament Saturday morning, half-awake, NPR on in the background, when a story about AI disinformation in the Iran conflict completely hijacked my brain for the next forty-five minutes. The segment was trying to walk…
March 26, 2026

Passing the Buck: Why We Pay More But Make Less Part 13: How We Got Here

50 Years of Deliberate Policy The system we’ve documented in Parts 1-12 didn’t happen by accident. It wasn’t natural market forces. It wasn’t inevitable. It was built. Deliberately. Over 50 years. By people with names. Who passed specific laws. Made specific court decisions. Implemented specific policies. Let’s trace exactly how it happened. 1971: The Corporate…
March 24, 2026

Is the Iran War America’s Biggest Self-Own of Self -Owns?

How to Punch Yourself in the Face. Three and a half weeks in. That’s where we are. Twenty-four days of US and Israeli strikes on Iran, oil at $112 a barrel, 13 American soldiers dead, the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed, and the administration scrambling to lift sanctions on the very country we’re bombing just…
March 23, 2026

Passing the Buck: Why We Pay More But Make Less Part 12: The Bipartisan Consensus

Both Parties Protect the System In Part 11, we showed you who profits from cost-shifting. Now we need to explain why this system persists regardless of which party controls Congress or the White House. The uncomfortable truth: Both parties protect corporate interests. Both parties enabled the cost shifts. Both parties take corporate money. This isn’t…
March 22, 2026

Passing the Buck: Why We Pay More But Make Less Part 11: Who Profits?

Following the Money We’ve shown you the costs. We’ve shown you they don’t add up. Now let’s follow the money. Emma from Part 10 pays out $71,564 per year in shifted costs—92.9% of her gross income. That money doesn’t disappear. It goes somewhere. Let’s trace every dollar Emma spends and see who collects it. Emma’s…
March 20, 2026

WTF Is Up With MTG?

From QAnon True Believer to Stateswoman Cosplay — A Complete Profile Something strange happened to Marjorie Taylor Greene. The most reliably unhinged member of Congress — a woman who stalked a teenage shooting survivor through the Capitol, endorsed satanic murder conspiracy theories online, and appeared to call for the execution of Democratic politicians — suddenly…
March 19, 2026

Passing the Buck: Why We Pay More But Make LessPart 10: The Compound Effect

When All the Costs Add Up We’ve spent nine parts examining individual cost categories. Banking fees. Credit card debt. Forced car ownership. Food monopolies. Phone and internet. Insurance. Fees everywhere. Each part showed how one sector shifted costs onto working Americans while profits soared. Now let’s see what happens when you add them all together.…
March 18, 2026

What’s Wrong With the Democrats. What’s Wrong With the Republicans. It Doesn’t Matter.

Neither One Will Deliver for You.Here it is — the full body copy exactly as it was saved to the draft: Let me start with something that should be obvious but somehow never gets said out loud. Neither party won the last election. The other party just lost it more. That distinction sounds like splitting…
March 17, 2026

How an Angry Old MacDonald Became a Protest Song

It started with a question: What is actually wrong with this country, and why do we seem so far apart? The division felt real. The anger felt real. But when you actually looked at the polling data, something didn’t add up. Americans agree on almost everything that matters. Healthcare. Wages. Campaign finance reform. Taxing the…
March 17, 2026

Passing the Buck: Why We Pay More But Make Less Part 9: Death, Taxes, and Everything In Between

The Fee Economy Lisa decided to track every fee she paid for one month. Not the big stuff—rent, car payment, insurance. Just the fees. The extra charges. The convenience fees. The service charges. The processing fees. All those little costs that companies tack on for doing business. She’s 29, works as a marketing coordinator in…
March 16, 2026

Passing the Buck: Why We Pay More But Make Less Part 8: Insurance

Mandatory Purchase, Shrinking Coverage David is 38, lives in Tampa, Florida. He’s a physical therapist making $68,000 a year. He’s healthy, doesn’t smoke, exercises regularly, hasn’t had a car accident in 12 years. He’s the kind of customer insurance companies claim to want. Here’s what insurance costs him every year: Health insurance: $4,800/year Auto insurance:…
March 15, 2026

Passing the Buck: Why We Pay More But Make Less Part 7: Phone and Internet

The Monopoly You Can’t Escape Rachel lives in suburban Atlanta. She works from home as a customer service rep for a health insurance company. Her job requires reliable high-speed internet—it’s not optional. She’s on video calls, accessing patient records, processing claims in real-time. When she moved into her apartment, she called to set up internet…
March 14, 2026

Passing the Buck: Why We Pay More But Make Less Part 6: Food Monopolies

Paying More While Farmers Make Less Let’s follow a gallon of milk from farm to your refrigerator. At the dairy farm in Wisconsin: Tom has been dairy farming for 30 years. He has 150 cows. He wakes up at 4:30 AM every day—no weekends, no holidays. Cows need milking twice a day, every day. His…
March 13, 2026

The Metric System Makes Sense to Everyone: American Misguided Exceptionalism and a $327 Million Spacecraft.

When I was a kid, we started learning the metric system in school. There was an actual plan. America was going to join the rest of the world and switch from the imperial system — you know, the one built on the length of some king’s foot — to a logical, base-ten system that scientists,…
March 5, 2026

Passing the Buck: Why We Pay More But Make LessPart 5: The Auto Trap

Forced to Buy What You Can’t Afford Jennifer lives in Phoenix, Arizona. She’s a single mom with two kids, works as a pharmacy technician, makes $42,000 a year. Her shift starts at 7 AM at a CVS 8.5 miles from her apartment. She doesn’t own a car by choice. She owns a car because there…
March 2, 2026

Passing the Buck: Why We Pay More But Make Less. Part 4: Credit Cards

The Debt Trap Jason is a high school teacher in Arizona. He makes $48,000 a year, which is about what teachers make there. He’s 32, married, has a two-year-old daughter. His wife works part-time as a medical records clerk, bringing in another $22,000. Combined household income: $70,000. They’re not living extravagantly. They rent a two-bedroom…
February 26, 2026

Passing the Buck: Why We Make Less But Pay More. Part 3: Banking Fees

The Poverty Tax Maria works two jobs. Monday through Friday, she’s a home health aide making $15/hour. Weekends, she works retail at Target for $16/hour. Between both jobs, she brings home about $2,400/month after taxes. It’s not much, but she manages. Carefully. On Friday, she deposited her paycheck from the home health agency—$680 for the…
February 25, 2026

Passing the Buck: Why We Make Less But Pay More. Part 2: The Baseline Shift

Part 2: The Baseline Shift How “Basic Survival” Got Redefined as Luxury In 1970, Robert worked as a machinist at a manufacturing plant in Ohio. He made $9,400 a year—roughly the median income at the time. His wife, Linda, stayed home with their two kids. On that single income, they: Robert wasn’t exceptional. He wasn’t…
February 22, 2026

Passing the Buck: Why We Make Less But Pay More. Part 1: The Impossible Math

Part 1: The Impossible Math When Median Income Meets Real Costs, America Fails Meet Sarah. She’s 34 years old, works as a registered nurse at a regional hospital, and makes $77,000 a year. That’s well above the median individual income in America ($59,228). She’s single, no kids, lives in a modest one-bedroom apartment in a…
February 18, 2026

Americans Agree on Almost Everything—We Just Don’t Realize It

I Fact-Checked a Viral Infographic About What Americans Actually Agree On. Here’s What I Found. This infographic popped up on social media (which I know is evil but I use it to promote my ecom site) claiming Americans have overwhelming consensus on most major issues — Majority agreement across the board. Gun control, healthcare, abortion,…
February 3, 2026

Do Unto Others Part 5: What This Means for Democracy

When Shared Reality Dissolves, Only Power Remains Introduction: The Foundation Is Cracking Democracy rests on three pillars that most Americans take for granted: Over the course of this series, we’ve documented how all three pillars are systematically eroding. Part 1 showed empathy has become transactional – Melissa Hortman gets “I don’t know who she was,”…
February 1, 2026

Do Unto Others Part 4: Flooding the Zone

Part 4 of Do Unto Others, a 5-part series. Read the complete series → When Lies Work Better Than Truth After documenting transactional empathy (Part 1), Stage 2 moral reasoning (Part 2), and asymmetric hypocrisy (Part 3), one question remains: How does this actually work in practice? The answer is documented. It’s called the “firehose…
January 31, 2026

Do Unto Others Part 3: Both Sides Are Hypocrites

Part 3 of Do Unto Others, a 5-part series. Read the complete series → But the Hypocrisy Differs in Depth and Kind After two parts documenting transactional empathy and Stage 2 moral reasoning, a predictable objection arises: “Both sides do it.” This is true. Both parties exhibit hypocrisy. Both say one thing and do another.…
January 30, 2026

Do Unto Others Part 2: “My Own Morality”

Part 2 of Do Unto Others, a 5-part series. Read the complete series → When the Only Limit Is Yourself On January 8, 2026, President Trump sat down with The New York Times. Asked about constraints on his power, he gave an answer that deserves examination: “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My…
January 29, 2026

Term Limits: Why This Popular Idea Could Make Things Worse (And Who’s Really Pushing It)

I Used to Think This Was a Great Idea I’ll be honest: I was sympathetic to term limits. Like most Americans, I’m exhausted by career politicians who seem completely out of touch. The frustration is real: So term limits sound great, right? Fresh blood, new ideas, less corruption! But then I thought: With how things…
January 29, 2026

VOTING REFORM: Analyzing Every Voting System We Could Find. Here’s What Might Actually Work to Break the Two-Party Stranglehold.

We’re All Trapped Voting AGAINST Candidates Instead of FOR Anyone When’s the last time you actually wanted to vote for someone? For most of us, voting has become damage control. We’re not voting FOR our candidate—we’re voting AGAINST the one that scares us more. About 70% of Americans think the country is heading in the wrong direction.…
January 29, 2026

Do Unto Others Part 1: When Empathy Becomes Transactional

Part 1 of Do Unto Others, a 5-part series. Read the complete series → Who Deserves Sympathy? The Politics of Victimhood A Note Before We Begin If this feels like an attack on Trump, I need to address that upfront. I tried to write this like an outside observer would—documenting what happened without partisan spin.…
January 29, 2026

Divided We Fall Part 10: The Freedom Fraud: Crime, Corporations, and Schools

When “Freedom” Means Government Control American conservatives claim to champion freedom. Small government. Individual liberty. Free markets. Get government out of our lives. Don’t tread on me. But look at what’s actually happening in Republican-controlled states: Governments telling businesses who they can hire and how they can operate. Governments dictating what teachers can teach and…
January 28, 2026

The Argument over ICE and Alex Pretti is bait. Don’t take it.

Before you react to this, before you decide whether you agree or disagree with me, I want you to understand what’s happening to you right now, psychologically. Research shows that the conformist instinct in your brain happens automatically. You’re literally unaware of it. You think your political beliefs accurately reflect reality, but they’re actually being…
January 28, 2026

Divided We Fall Part 9: Cancel Culture and “Woke”: Who’s Really Being Silenced?

What the Data Shows About Who Gets Canceled and Why Everyone claims they’re being canceled. Conservatives say they can’t speak freely without facing mob attacks. Progressives say they face consequences for standing up for justice. College professors say students are too sensitive. Students say professors refuse to update outdated views. Comedians say they can’t make…
January 27, 2026

Divided We Fall Part 8: Voter Fraud: Solving a Problem?

What the Data Actually Shows About Fraud and Election Integrity After the 2020 election, allegations of widespread voter fraud dominated conservative media and Republican politics. Dozens of lawsuits were filed. Investigations were launched. Audits were conducted. Millions of dollars were spent searching for evidence of fraud that would explain Donald Trump’s loss. What did they…
January 26, 2026

Divided We Fall Part 7: Climate Change: The Profit Model of Denial

What Fossil Fuel Companies Knew—And When They Knew It For eventhatsodd.com – What Is Wrong With Us? In 1977, a senior scientist at Exxon named James Black briefed company executives on carbon dioxide and climate. His message was clear: burning fossil fuels was increasing CO2 in the atmosphere, this would cause global warming, and the…
January 25, 2026

Divided We Fall Part 6: Immigration: The Wedge That Doesn’t Have to Be

Facts, Myths, and Solutions Beyond the Culture War For eventhatsodd.com – What Is Wrong With Us? No issue in American politics generates more heat and less light than immigration. Every election cycle, we’re told it’s a crisis. Caravans are invading. Criminals are pouring across the border. Or alternatively, we’re told that opposing illegal immigration is…
January 24, 2026

Divided We Fall Part 5: Public Media: What’s Actually at Stake

Beyond the Bias Debate, Here’s What NPR and PBS Actually Do In April 2023, a coordinated campaign to defund NPR and PBS reached fever pitch. Republican lawmakers introduced legislation to eliminate federal funding for public broadcasting. Conservative media outlets ran wall-to-wall coverage of supposed liberal bias. Social media influencers urged followers to stop donating. Corporate…
January 24, 2026

Divided We Fall Part 4: CRT, DEI, and Trans Rights: Manufactured Crises or Real Concerns?

How Three Issues Became Culture War Flashpoints—And What’s Actually Happening In 2021, Christopher Rufo, a conservative activist, publicly explained his strategy on Twitter: “We have successfully frozen their brand—’critical race theory’—into the public conversation and are steadily driving up negative perceptions. We will eventually turn it toxic, as we put all of the various cultural…
January 23, 2026

Divided We Fall Part 3: Guns: What the Data Shows About Violence and Solutions

Regardless of Where You Stand on the 2nd Amendment, Here’s What Actually Reduces Gun Deaths Gun ownership is deeply woven into American culture. For millions of Americans, guns represent self-reliance, personal protection, and a constitutional right they hold dear. Many families have hunting traditions going back generations. In rural areas where police response times can…
January 22, 2026

Divided We Fall Part 2: Abortion: What Happens After the Laws Change

Regardless of Where You Stand, Here’s What the Data Actually Shows For eventhatsodd.com – What Is Wrong With Us? The abortion debate is deeply personal. People hold strong moral and philosophical beliefs about when life begins and what rights should take precedence. Those beliefs are legitimate and deserve respect, even when we disagree. But regardless…
January 21, 2026

Divided We Fall Part 1: The Culture War

The Manufactured Outrage Economy Every morning, millions of Americans wake up angry. Not about their own lives necessarily, but about something they saw online, something Tucker Carlson said, something AOC tweeted, or some university policy they read about in a viral post. The outrage is real. The threat feels immediate. But the machinery creating and…
January 20, 2026

Let’s Stop Screaming at Each Other: How the Division Machine Keeps Us Fighting While Our Pockets Get Picked

The Name-Calling Trap Libtard. Right-wing nut. Snowflake. MAGA moron. Commie. Fascist. We’ve all heard it. Many of us have said it. And every time we do, someone wins – but it’s not you, and it’s not the person you’re yelling at. Americans have become increasingly polarized by design. When you’re pissed off, it’s hard to see…
January 19, 2026

Mamdani Madness: More of The Same From the System

So Zohran Mamdani was sworn in on January 1st as New York City’s first democratic socialist Muslim mayor, and the outrage machine on both sides has been in full swing. Actor Michael Rapaport has already announced he’s running for mayor in 2029 to “save NYC” from what he’s calling “Zohran the moron.” And I’m sitting…
January 17, 2026

BrokeCon by Design Part 25: The Bottom 90% Agenda – How We Fix This

We started this series with a simple question: What is wrong with us? Why does the richest country in human history rank 44th in life expectancy? Why do we spend twice as much on healthcare as other developed countries but get worse outcomes? Why can’t people afford housing even though we have more vacant homes…
January 17, 2026

BrokeCon by Design Part 24B: Rebuilding Worker Power – Why Unions Are the Key to Everything

We’ve spent 24 parts documenting how the bottom 90% are systematically extracted from: Healthcare, housing, education, prisons, military spending, taxes, monopolies, public service sabotage, media manipulation, environmental destruction, gig economy exploitation, financial system predation, and trade deals that ship jobs overseas. Every system is rigged against workers. Now here’s the question: How do workers fight…
January 17, 2026

BrokeCon by Design Part 24A: The Environmental Extraction – They Profit Today, We All Pay Forever

How Systems Are Rigged Against the Bottom 90% In 1977, Exxon’s own scientists warned executives that burning fossil fuels would cause catastrophic climate change. The company had some of the best climate research in the world. They knew. In 1988, they stopped their climate research program and started funding climate denial instead. Not because the…
January 17, 2026

BrokeCon by Design Part 23: The Efficiency Lie – How Technology Could Make Public Services Better Than Private (And Why They Don’t Want You To Know)

“Government is inefficient.” You’ve heard this your entire life. From politicians, from think tanks, from media, from your uncle at Thanksgiving. “The private sector does it better.” “Government can’t run anything efficiently.” “DMV wait times prove government doesn’t work.” “Only competition and profit motive create efficiency.” This has been repeated so many times, by so…
January 16, 2026

BrokeCon by Design Part 22: Media Consolidation and Capitulation – Why You Don’t Know Any Of This

We’ve spent 21 parts documenting how the bottom 90% are systematically extracted from: • Healthcare monopolies charging you double what other countries pay (Parts 1-6) • Housing financialization pricing you out of homeownership (Part 7) • Student debt trapping you in economic servitude (Part 8) • Employer-based insurance making you afraid to leave your job…
January 15, 2026

BrokeCon by Design Part 20: Corporate Socialism

The Monopoly Scam Everyone Hates (But Both Parties Protect) You know what socialism looks like? It’s when the government picks one company to serve your area, eliminates all competition, and you’re forced to pay whatever they charge. You can’t shop around. You can’t choose. You can’t leave. You take what they give you or go…
January 14, 2026

BrokeCon by Design Part 19: The Corporate Tax Dodge

How Corporations Profit from Our Tax Investment While Avoiding Theirs You’ve heard the story a thousand times: we need to cut corporate taxes to incentivize job creation. Lower the rates, reduce regulations, and watch the jobs flow. The “job creators” need their freedom and their profits, and if we just get out of their way,…
January 13, 2026

BrokeCon by Design Part 18: The Rigged Tax Code

Taxation Without Representation (For the Bottom 90%) Why Billionaires Pay Less Than Teachers, and How We Let Them Write the Rules In 2007, Warren Buffett—then the second-richest person in the world with a net worth of $52 billion—made a bet with his office staff. He offered to pay anyone $1 million if their tax rate…
January 13, 2026

BrokeCon by Design Part 17: The Systemic Theft Of Our Retirement

How Wall Street, Corporations, and Both Political Parties Dismantled Retirement Security for the Bottom 90% Meet Barbara. She worked as an administrative assistant at a manufacturing company for 38 years. In 1985, when she was hired at age 25, her offer letter promised a pension: after 30 years of service, she’d receive 60% of her…
January 12, 2026

BrokeCon by Design Part 16: In Our Greed We Trust

Every June for the better part of two decades, nearly eight hundred people have flown into Grand Rapids, Michigan, for a four-day conference called Acton University. They are not, mostly, the people you would picture. They are seminarians and parish priests, evangelical pastors and Catholic deacons, divinity students, a scattering of business owners, and a…
January 11, 2026

BrokeCon by Design Part 15: In Whose God Do We Trust?

Caring Well In October 2019, the man who ran the Southern Baptist Convention’s public-policy arm sat on stage at a conference his agency had organized about how Christian institutions handle credible allegations of sexual abuse. The conference was called Caring Well. The man was Russell Moore, president since 2013 of the SBC’s Ethics and Religious…
January 10, 2026

BrokeCon by Design Part 14: Rooting For The Wrong Team – How Culture Wars Keep Us Fighting While They Rob Us Blind

Two days after the killing, in the second week of September 2025, an X account with more than half a million followers reposted a screenshot of a private Facebook post written by a woman who had taken a new job earlier that month. The post was about the killing. The account’s followers contacted her employer.…
January 9, 2026

BrokeCon by Design Part 13: U.S. Politics: Not Functioning As Founders Intended—And How We Can Fix It

Two Yeas A senator from Wyoming and a senator from California vote yes on the same bill. Roll call vote. Two yeas. The clerk records them as equivalent. Nobody on the floor notes the difference. Nobody is supposed to. The Wyoming senator represents about 588,000 people — somewhere between the populations of Milwaukee and El…
January 8, 2026

BrokeCon by Design Part 12: The US Political System: The Republican and Democrat Consensus You’re Not Supposed to Notice

Watch the floor of either chamber on a December afternoon when the National Defense Authorization Act comes up for a vote. The bill is 1,800 pages long and nobody has read all of it. The members who will speak against it are mostly junior, mostly from safe districts, and mostly not on Armed Services. The…
January 8, 2026

BrokeCon by Design Part 11: The Military-Industrial Complex: $968 Billion in Wealth Extraction

There’s a food pantry on a base near you. There’s a food pantry on most of them. Operation Homefront, the Armed Services YMCA, the local Feeding America affiliate, sometimes the chaplain’s office running a closet out of a side room. The volunteers know which weeks are bad — paydays, PCS moves, deployment gaps that didn’t…
January 8, 2026

BrokeCon by Design Part 10: The Incarceration Industry: How We Built a System That Profits From Failure

You Don’t Get Out Say you did eighteen months. Drug offense, low-level, the kind that gets you four years in some states and twenty in others depending on which side of which line you were on when the cops showed up. You served your time. Today is the day you get out. Now find an…
January 7, 2026

BrokeCon by Design Part 9: Immobility Nightmare: How Three Failed Systems Killed the American Dream

The Door Is Already Locked Say you’re thirty-two. You have an idea for a business. Maybe a good one, maybe not, but you want to find out. So you sit down and run the numbers. The first thing that kills it is the healthcare math. Your employer pays most of your premium right now. Walk…
January 6, 2026

BrokeCon by Design Part 8: The Education and Childcare Cliff: $1.8 Trillion in Debt + The Childcare Crisis That Starts It All

The story we still tell about student debt is wrong. It’s not a young person’s problem. The fastest-growing segment of borrowers is over 60, and roughly 452,000 of them are in default and receiving Social Security checks — checks that can be garnished by up to 15%, leaving a $750 monthly floor that was set…
January 5, 2026

BrokeCon by Design Part 7: The Housing Trap: How Zoning Laws and Investment Firms Stole the American Dream

This is Part 7 in our series on systems rigged against regular people. Part 1: Rankings | Part 2: Language | Part 3: Follow the Money | Part 4-6: Healthcare Series The median first-time homebuyer in the 1980s was 29 years old. In 2025 it’s 40 — a record high (NAR 2025 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers). In 1985 a home…
January 3, 2026

BrokeCon by Design Part 6B: How Universal Healthcare Would Save American Business (And Why Some Fight It Anyway)

Part 6A laid out the three honest paths to fixing this — Medicare for All, a public option, or a Swiss-style regulated multi-payer — and closed by pointing out who else is paying for the current setup besides you and your family: American business. This is that post. For about twenty-five years I worked at…
January 3, 2026

BrokeCon by Design Part 6A: Healthcare Solutions That Actually Work (And Why We’re Told They Won’t)

This is Part 6A in BrokeCon by Design, a series on how American systems are rigged against regular people. Part 1: USA! USA! USA! | Part 2: The Words That Stop You From Thinking | Part 3: Follow the Money | Part 4: The Healthcare Trap | Part 5: Employer-Based Health Insurance: Modern Serfdom Part…
January 3, 2026

BrokeCon by Design Part 5: Employer-Based Health Insurance: Modern Serfdom

This is Part 5 in BrokeCon by Design, a series on how American systems are rigged against regular people. Part 1: USA! USA! USA! | Part 2: The Words That Stop You From Thinking | Part 3: Follow the Money | Part 4: The Healthcare Trap: What Congress Gets vs. What You Get Imagine your…
January 3, 2026

BrokeCon by Design Part 4: The Healthcare Trap: What Congress Gets vs. What You Get (And Why That Matters)

This is Part 4 of BrokeCon by Design. Part 1: USA! USA! USA! | Part 2: The Words That Stop You From Thinking | Part 3: Follow the Money Back in Part 3 we ran the receipts: Americans pay around $13,500 per person for healthcare and rank 36th in the world on life expectancy. First…
January 3, 2026

“Make America Great Again” sounds obvious. So why is it so hard to define?

“Make America Great Again” is one of those phrases that feels like a statement of common sense. Who doesn’t want the country to be “great”? But MAGA isn’t just a campaign line. It’s a whole movement. People get labeled “MAGA” (or “MAGA enough”). There are hats, shirts, flags, slogans, and a strong sense of in-group…

Category: What Is Wrong With Us?