Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce are getting married on July 4th (to spite Trump and his plans for a celebration focused on him).

I don’t know any of Taylor Swift’s songs. I couldn’t hum a tune or repeat a lyric. But I am a fan.

Taylor Swift scheduled her wedding to Travis Kelce intentionally, I think, to upstage Trump’s “big beautiful” July 4th celebration that he disgracefully bills as “the most spectacular TRUMP RALLY of them all.” It’s the 250th anniversary of the founding of our nation. If anything, Trump should be ashamed that a person like him is president during this milestone, not taking credit for it.

The July 4th wedding is to be held at Madison Square Garden in New York city. Taylor Swift is an iconic pop star. Travis Kelce is a football star for the Kansas City Chiefs. (I actually like his brother, Jason, better because he played center for the Eagles. I played on the line in high school and am from outside of Philly.)

I guess I’ve let Trump get to me as of late. Maybe the Swift-Kelce wedding is just my magical thinking but it’s also my antidote.

Trump’s a sinister joke, a stain on America’s history. He should be impeached and then locked up for his graft and corruption. Children should learn about Trump’s sacrifice of our world standing as a cautionary tale . . . if we recover from his bigotry, hatred and damage to the environment.

Americans deserve and need much better.

We are entitled to healthcare.

We are moving backwards. Three million fewer Americans are insured through the ACA marketplace in Feb 2026 than were insured a year prior. Trump falsely claims the decline is the result of his rooting out fraud.

He’s lying.

Fewer Americans are insured because of the increased cost of health insurance. Trump can take credit for orchestrating the decrease in subsidies to pay health insurance that has driven up premiums. He did it to fund tax cuts for the wealthy.

When the cost of insurance goes up, the people who keep it are those who need it most. Trump’s payoffs to his friends concentrate the less healthy and more costly in our insurance plans. Not only is there personal suffering but the ACA marketplace becomes less viable as an economic matter. The least healthy require the most care. More care equals more expense. More expense drives up insurance costs. Higher costs make the ACA marketplace less viable.

We need universal healthcare.

Medicare for All. “M4A,” for short, is recognition that in a civilized society healthcare should be a right, not a privilege. Having us all in a plan also works as a matter of economics. It spreads the costs rather than concentrating the plan on elders and people who are the most unwell. It’s everyone. The healthy, the sick, the young and the old.

Some states are trying to go it alone. Folks in Maine are working on a petition drive to force the Maine legislature to adopt a state level M4A plan. Maine’s constitution provides for petitioned articles to force the legislature to craft legislation. NH’s constitution does not.

I understand the sentiment but don’t see how a state small in population like Maine can go it alone. Perhaps the Maine legislature will figure it out and then reach out to the other New England states to form a New England M4A. At least Maine is trying. But they need more folks, a lot more.

Maura Sullivan’s “Medicare for All WHO WANT IT” is a fraud and a deceit.

This is why Medicare for All WHO WANT IT is such baloney. This is the Pete Buttigieg plan. It is what Maura Sullivan, candidate for Congress, is spouting. Well, she kind of drops her voice when she says the “who want it” part.

Just think, a Medicare plan for all who are sick or can’t afford a better plan on the one hand and better plans for the well heeled on the other. What could possibly go wrong?

Stefany Shaheen engages in “Bernie Washing.”

Candidate Stefany Shaheen isn’t any better with her word salad response to a straightforward question that asked about her support for M4A. To be clear, her answer was not “yes.” But why does she mention Sen. Sanders’ lesser, partial approaches to healthcare equity? It’s called “Bernie washing.”

If you’re a candidate running on your name, you don’t commit to anything. You run as a cypher, a non-entity who appears to be anything and everything at the same time. Rather than provide answers, you call in James Carville to vouch for you.

We need universal childcare.

America deserves affordable childcare.

Childcare costs are beyond reason. Fees for early learning and daycare programs are like paying another college tuition, in addition to your mortgage, while paying off your own college debt. I get this is a middle income problem because working class families often go without, but don’t we want the middle of America to be successful, too?

We invest in America with a Billionaire’s Tax.

The problem is where to get the money to pay for childcare programs (and M4A and other programs that Americans want and deserve).

Wait, I know.

Bernie Sanders has a billionaire’s tax that he’s proposed with Congressman Ro Khanna. It’s a 5 percent tax on the wealth controlled by America’s billionaire class. According to Forbes wealth data, America had 813 billionaires at the end of 2024 with $6.72 trillion in wealth. It’s more now.

The Sanders/Khanna billionaire’s tax would generate $350 billion a year that America could invest in America, not in yachts and swampy reflecting pools or in buying political influence. Sen. Liz Warren has a similar plan that kicks in when a taxpayer’s wealth hits only $50 million. It’s 2 percent on $50 million to $1 billion and then an added surcharge of 1 percent for the billionaires. It produces slightly less than Sanders’ plan.

What else could we do with the revenue from a billionaire’s tax?

We could make seniors confident they can afford their “golden years?” The revenue from a billionaire’s tax could float Social Security. We could also lift the cap on Social Security wage contributions so that folks with high incomes contribute the same share of their salaries to sustain Social Security as the carpenter, the nurse and the teacher.

Revenue from a billionaire’s tax could make two year community college programs tuition free for anyone who wants to attend. Community colleges train the trades and provide academic jump starts on four year degree programs. We can also help pay down the tuitions at land grant universities like UNH, U Maine and U Mass and create honest and reliable tuition debt relief programs for graduates who work in the public sector.

It’s also a tax on crypto and AI data centers.

Here’s another way to think about it.

Consider the Sanders/Khanna and Warren billionaire tax plans as a way to tax data centers and crypto mining operations that will benefit the very wealthy. Perhaps spend some of the money on strengthening utility grids and supporting renewable power because we can’t leave the stinking mess that Trump has created to our kids and our grandkids.

None of these programs are new or novel thinking. Medicare was started in 1965, Social Security in 1935. We have childcare credits now, they’re just too meagre. Tax the rich? The top marginal tax rate which was imposed on our highest wage earners exceeded 90 percent from 1944 through 1963.

We just need to convince our leaders to do what’s right; a mighty undertaking but worthy of your efforts this 250th anniversary of the birth of America.

Happy 4th.