A July 12 article for The Federalist website is titled, “How Expanding Medicaid To Able-Bodied Adults Is Stripping Care For Disabled People.”  Penned by Charlie Katebi, it informs us that “When a state expands Medicaid, the federal government covers 95 percent of the cost of treating every able-bodied patient.  However, the federal government only covers 30 to 50 percent of the cost of treating Medicaid’s sicker patient populations.”

In large measure the federal government is a disgrace, and Medicaid ought to be abolished.  This is true even if Katebi’s information is false, and I have no reason to hold that it is.  Medicare, as I’ve written, insolvent by 2026?  When will Medicaid be insolvent?  “Not for a very long time,” a supporter might say.  Oh?  Well, I guess that’s true if only 30 to 50 percent of the care costs for the very sick are being covered.  But perhaps it isn’t true.

Surely the provision of a Universal Basic Income (a phrase I dislike) would be better than this, as long as Medicaid was phased out slowly.  And it would still be necessary to have government inspections of nursing homes and hospice centers.  Anyone who says regarding today’s welfare programs, “It ain’t broke so don’t fix it,” doesn’t know what he’s talking about.  He doesn’t mind insolvency being laid on waste and inefficiency.

Nathalie Chazeaux (Isabelle Huppert) is a philosophy professor married to another philosophy professor (Andre Marcon), and this is yet another film about a husband who blandly leaves his wife for another woman.  Nathalie takes it . . . philosophically, which does not mean she never weeps.  She does, but she also moves on and encounters life’s common problems, challenges, and comforts.  This is what happens in the Mia Hansen-Love picture, Things to Come (L’avenir, 2016), a French opus even more imaginative and subtle than Hansen-Love’s Goodbye, First Love.

It is useful to mention Peter Rainer’s comment that “Huppert never loses sight of the fact that Nathalie’s wounded heart often overrules her steel-trap mind.”  It is also true, however, that Nathalie is not much of a creature of desire, or so it seems, which may be moving her away from the “will” that the philosopher Schopenhauer (referenced in the film) said is the cause of our suffering.  How much suffering does the woman go through?  On the other hand, critic Ella Taylor has a point when she writes that “[Nathalie’s] moving on, but to what?”

Let me indicate one more thing:  Hansen-Love does a meaningful job of capturing Natalie’s state of mind when she is alone and having to endure a relative’s sudden death.  It’s a strong scene.  The solitude makes all the difference.

(In French with English subtitles)

In June, unemployment in the U.S. rose from 3.8 percent to 4 percent.  Did it have anything to do with President Trump’s tariffs on aluminum and steel?  The economy is strong.  It could be stronger, and might have to be—through the removal of tariffs.

Conservative writer Jonah Goldberg is right:  Why are our trade deals so bad if, as Trump says, America is making impressive foreign investments?

I wish our progress against the federal deficit was impressive.  Medicare administrators want you to know that Medicare will be insolvent by 2026.  Social Security?  2034.  Better generate that revenue (and then some).  The more jobs, the better.  America, pay your bills!

Jane Fonda is magnetically terrific in the 1969 They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, losing herself in the role of Gloria, a bitter would-be actress.  She and the other characters are desperate, first of all, to survive during the Great Depression and, second, to have their dreams come true.  Because they must acquire money, they participate in a grueling dance marathon, but in addition they want natural relief through love and intimacy, even loveless sex.  Monstrously cynical, Gloria is also a “loser” who wants to die; and, really, we pity and even respect her when she does die.

Sydney Pollack‘s film, based on a novel by Horace McCoy, is bleak.  And it’s more honest than most movies today (e.g., it doesn’t see its female protagonist as more virtuous than any man you could ever meet).  Granted, the last few minutes of the film are rather flimsy, flowing less than smoothly from the previous material; but we can be very grateful for the set design, costumes, and general ambitiousness.  Pollack, indeed, tried to make a work of art.

Well, I think Gyorgy Ligeti’s Atmospheres is very accessible, despite its lack of melody and, according to Ligeti, “dense canonic structure.”  A short piece, it is frighteningly stratospheric before deliquescing.

Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G is snappy and limpid in its first movement and  incalculably beautiful in its second.  Its third is pleasantly bouncy.  A masterpiece.  Even greater is Bartok’s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, evoking the terrors of the twentieth century.  It is somber, eerie and adventurous.

Also, it never gets sentimental, and neither does the String Quartet No. 1 (“The Kreutzer Sonata”) of Leos Janacek, an opus as controlled as it is capricious.  It’s dark too, though not as dark as Symphony No. 2 by Arvo Part. Menace is everywhere in this not-great but good modern composition, and so is a lovely conclusive quote from Tchaikovsky.

To be continued