James A. Robichaux

@jamesrobichaux

I am working to purge the dishonest and destructive mythologies of Monetarism and taxpayerism from people's brains. You can read my essays on those subjects here:

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James A. Robichaux@jamesrobichaux· 24d

Let's also remember that most Zionists are not Jews. Joe Walsh is not Jewish. The Clintons are not Jewish. The Bidens are not Jewish. The Bushes are not Jewish. House Speaker Mike Johnson is not Jewish. x.com/WalshFreedom...

James A. Robichaux@jamesrobichaux· 24d

As has been said many times before, the only people who conflate Zionism and being Jewish are actual antisemites and Zionists themselves, who need antisemitism - both real and imagined - to exist in order to justify the depravity that Zionism requires. 🧵 x.com/caitoz/statu...

a Twitter post from Caitlin Johnstone that quotes a tweet from Joe Walsh quoting a tweet from Mehdi Hasan.

@caitoz

If you keep feeding the public the lie that they need to choose between supporting genocide and hating Jews, people are going pick hate Jews, because they don't want to support genocide. When that happens, the blame will rest on all you pricks who circulated this lie.

Quote

Joe Walsh
@WalshFreedom
·
Jul 17

Nope my friend. If you hate the state of Israel, you hate Jews. If you are pledged to the destruction of the state of Israel, you hate Jews. If you do not believe the state of Israel has a right to exist, you hate Jews. Have a nice weekend. x.com/mehdirhasan/st…

9:46 AM · Jul 18, 2026

James A. Robichaux@jamesrobichaux· 26d

Yeah, since then, they have let you in, with you having become one of them! 🙂 How did that happen?

Bari Weiss
@bariweiss
·
Feb 22, 2018
I know I should be over it, but the speed at which the organized conservative movement became the ideological home of Marion Le Pen, Seb Gorka, Nigel Farage, Dinesh D'Souza and their ilk remains shocking to me.

Steve Schmidt
@SteveSchmidtSES
·
Feb 22, 2018
I think about this constantly. It is beyond shocking to me. The utter capitulation to it and the absolute abandonment of any principle. Sometimes I feel like a sucker who got conned by the shady salesman . I actually believed in a lot of what we were supposed to believe in

Bari Weiss
@bariweiss
I think maybe the most shocking and terrifying part was how little resistance there was on the part of people who were supposed to be the gatekeepers.
6:19 PM · Feb 22, 2018

James A. Robichaux@jamesrobichaux· 29d

There are plenty of reasons that, while I am staunchly in favor of universal healthcare, tackling wealth inequality, mass mobilizing against climate change, etc, I never once "felt the Bern".

James A. Robichaux
·
July 15, 2021
·
He is making it seem like wealthy people's money is what makes all of these great things possible. 😡

Gross.

U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders

July 15, 2021
·
At a time of massive wealth and income inequality and when half our people are living paycheck to paycheck, what this reconciliation bill will finally do is address the needs of our working families by asking the wealthy and large corporations to pay their fair share of taxes. In many ways, it is the most consequential piece of legislation for working families since the Great Depression.

This legislation will aggressively reduce childhood poverty by extending the Child Tax Credit to deliver direct monthly payments of up to $300 per child to working families.

It will guarantee that no family pays over 7 percent of their income for child care. It will, finally, provide paid family and medical leave for working people.

It will make higher education affordable by allowing everyone to attend community college tuition-free.

It will take on the greed of the pharmaceutical industry and the reality that our people pay the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs by having Medicare negotiate prescription drug prices with drug companies.

It will ensure our seniors can live in dignity by expanding Medicare to cover eyeglasses, hearing aids, and dental care.

It will take on the existential threat of climate change by creating millions of good-paying jobs transforming our energy systems away from fossil fuels and toward renewable energy.

Finally, it is my hope that this legislation will restore the American people’s faith in their government by proving that it works for them, not just the wealthy and powerful and their lobbyists.

James A. Robichaux@jamesrobichaux· Jul 14

I would like to know what @anatosaurus.bsky.social thinks of this, including whether it matters that there is an adjective in front of the word "politics" at the end. x.com/joewrote/sta...

James A. Robichaux@jamesrobichaux· Jul 11

If you never criticize the Democratic Party even from an anti-GOP direction, then nobody who actually cares about stopping fascism can ever know when they are getting it wrong. It's just a zero-accountability worldview held by so many partisan Democrats that is ultimately self-defeating.

James A. Robichaux@jamesrobichaux· Jul 9

The article claims that Platner's campaign is attracting loads of antisemites, which is a big claim, but there is no substantiation for this charge, not even in the form of a hyperlink commonly found in the rest of the article. What is the evidence that the Platner campaign attracted antisemites?

James A. Robichaux@jamesrobichaux· Jul 8

Yeah, it's not until the second sentence that you realize that, by "Gaza people", she does not mean Gazans. This is what this super bigoted hypocrite Rachel Bitecofer actually believes. She is the worst kind of fascist, one that presents herself as anti-fascist. x.com/im_PULSE/sta...

Idrees Ahmad
@im_PULSE
Leaving aside this lady's history of racist tweets, I am intrigued by her use of "Gaza people". By that she means people who take genocide very seriously. In her mind, and in the mind of centrist Democrats, this is some kind of a deviance. And this is why the centre is collapsing
Quote
Rachel Bitecofer 🗽🦆
@RachelBitecofer
·
Jul 5

Commentary account
I’m starting to hate the Gaza people with the passion of a thousand suns.

Y’all get that the average Palestinian would cheer your death??
2:21 PM · Jul 7, 2026

James A. Robichaux@jamesrobichaux· Jul 7

Ten years ago today, a former member of Congress tried to start a race war, with the apparent goal of strengthening white supremacy, and with using a murder of police officers as a pretext. Today, he is anti-Trumper, but he is a shameless, dishonest Zionist, still a racist.

Joe Walsh on Twitter:

"3 Dallas Cops killed, 7 wounded.
This is now war. Watch out Obama.
Watch out black lives matter punks. Real American is coming after you."

7 July 2016

James A. Robichaux@jamesrobichaux· Jul 7

I didn't think that I would be revisiting this argument less than a month later! 🤨 www.facebook.com/permalink.ph...

There probably actually is a good liberal and-or socialist case against Graham Platner.

It's just that I haven't seen anyone make it, though I have seen one person make a proto-argument for what I have in mind.

Yes, this is a possible liberal case against Platner even for the general election, and I think that it's the only anti-fascist case against him that has any merit.

You could make the case that Platner being elected would cause so much harm to the progressive and-or liberal and-or socialist cause(s) that it would even be better in the long term to allow Susan Collins to retain that Senate seat.

Of course, to make this case, you'd really have to ... explain why having Susan Collins, who has supported practically every evil thing that Donald Trump and Republicans have done, remain in the Senate to likely do more such evil things somehow is even worse than the effects of the branding issues that Platner's elevation would bring.

Such a case would have merit.

I think that the fact that no one is making this case means something! 🙂

James A. Robichaux@jamesrobichaux· Jul 7

Right, and that ties into what the author said about how HCR's success depends upon not challenging her readers. I once mentioned on Facebook about her silence on Gaza, and I got swarmed with a hundred comments trashing me without addressing what I actually said. All but maybe two were White.

The popular success of figures like Richardson and Snyder rests on the fact they are presenting a narrative that rarely challenges their audience—which is largely white, middle-class, well-educated, and progressive. It is an audience made up of people for whom, up until now, the American project has worked out very well. What many of these people want to hear is that the rise of Trump and the MAGA movement is an aberration, a fixable malfunction. The audience for Richardson and Snyder, whether on podcasts, Substack, or Threads, want to believe that the current president and his supporters are not heirs to their American legacy but have instead twisted the truth about this nation’s history for their own malign ends. In this context, not only are their detractors the real inheritors of the nation’s Founders, but there is a clear path to escaping this fraught moment: accepting the truth about the nation and following where it leads us.

James A. Robichaux@jamesrobichaux· Jul 5

Also, you might appreciate this! x.com/kareemispost...

kareem 🪴 🦧
@kareemisposting
America 250 being a huge flop (in contrast with what I understand about the bicentennial) is maybe the surest sign that the social bonds in this country have significantly deteriorated, maybe irreparably. No one cares about this at all anymore. Pack it up.
11:28 AM · Jul 4, 2026
·

James A. Robichaux@jamesrobichaux· Jul 4

“I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.” ― James Baldwin Happy Independence Day to all. 💜

James A. Robichaux@jamesrobichaux· Jun 27

The only thing that I wish Winningham would have done differently here is put "taxpayer" and "deficit" and "pay for" in quotes to demonstrate that they are artifices, contrivances that exist to promote Monetarism but that cease to have any applicability outside of that framework.

Ellis Winningham
June 27, 2021
·
Progressives:

You cannot win this fight playing by the rules of neoliberalism. The notions that national governments have no money of their own and must tax to fund their spending, and that the national debt is a future burden which will require huge tax increases to service are not unassailable laws that both sides must accept; they are not rules set in stone which neither the right or the left can violate; they are not truths - in fact, they are lies.

Progressives must adopt an economic narrative that is the exact opposite of so-called mainstream “common knowledge”.

If anyone says that the governments have no money of their own and there is only taxpayer money, then progressives must insist that taxpayers do not fund national governments; national governments fund taxpayers.

If anyone says that the national debt is unsustainable, then progressives must counter with the statement that there is no unsustainable level of public debt for sovereign currency-issuing national governments.

If anyone says that we must find cuts to pay for this or that, progressives must reply that finding cuts to pay for national government spending is obsolete unless real resource constraints force us to eliminate one thing to do another.

If anyone says that national government budget deficits crowd out private investment, progressives must state boldly that banks are not intermediaries, there is no such thing as finite savings, and that a national government budget deficit is the private sector’s income.

Progressives must outright refuse to play by the rules of neoliberalism.

Progressives everywhere must cease disseminating the false neoliberal doctrine of taxpayer-funded currency-issuing national governments because it is economic terrorism.

James A. Robichaux@jamesrobichaux· Jun 27

Either way, socially, we feel a debt of gratitude to the person from whom the public resource is perceived to have *net* come.

James A. Robichaux@jamesrobichaux· Jun 27

STOP PLAYING THIS GAME. Monetarism is a conservative-libertarian mythology and moral framework.

James A. Robichaux
·
June 27, 2021
·
"How will you pay for Freedom Of Speech?"
"How will you pay for women's suffrage?"
"How will you pay for the abolition of chattel slavery?"
Yes, it's Stockholm Syndrome indeed, and it's cringey, embarrassing, and off-putting to potential allies among the impressionable young people for whom various political factions are competing.
STOP DOING IT. 😡

Ellis Winningham
June 27, 2021
·
"How will you pay for universal health care?"
Translation:
"Hello. I have Stockholm Syndrome."

James A. Robichaux@jamesrobichaux· Jun 27

No bsky.app/profile/shuf...

‪Jaime Harrison‬
‪@jaimeharrison.bsky.social‬
· 1mo
🧵 Folks, I’m tired… and I know a whole lot of us are tired.

Our party isn’t perfect. Our leaders aren’t perfect. But there are people right now putting everything they have into standing up in this moment. Constructive criticism matters. Accountability matters.

‪Jaime Harrison‬
‪@jaimeharrison.bsky.social‬
· 1mo
But if all you do is attack the Democratic Party while Black leaders are being targeted, Black voting rights are being dismantled, Black political power is under assault, and HBCUs are under attack, then don’t expect me to treat you any differently than I treat Trump and his MAGA acolytes.

‪Jaime Harrison‬
‪@jaimeharrison.bsky.social‬
· 1mo
You are coming after one of the last major institutions capable of protecting my community. At that point, you are not an ally. You are the opposition, and you’ll be treated as such.

Shuffle
‪@shuffleosint.bsky.social‬

Follow
OK so the party has learned why it failed in the past and made appropriate changes right? Right??
2:28 PM · May 6, 2026

James A. Robichaux@jamesrobichaux· Jun 26

Yes, and, beyond everything else here, I have long found it galling that it’s not plainly obvious to all people who think of themselves as progressive or anti-fascist that taxing Bad Thing A to perpetually fund Good Thing X creates a perpetual need for Bad Thing A.

The Safe Radical

This is why the proposal fits so neatly with the broader pattern that has surrounded Sanders for years. He is not the destroyer of establishment myths. He is one of their more useful managers.

He gives angry people the emotional language of revolt while leaving untouched the deepest institutional lies: that the federal government is financially constrained like a household, that public goods must be paid for out of private riches, and that concentrated capital can remain in command so long as the public gets a partial rebate.

That is the role of a pressure-relief valve. Popular anger gets harvested, dramatized, and redirected into policy designs that preserve the central architecture of power.

The AI fund follows that script perfectly. It offers symbolic confrontation with billionaires while reinforcing the basic establishment story about money and leaving private capital at the commanding heights of the economy.

Whether the explanation is stupidity or fraud matters less than many people think. The practical result is identical. The public remains trapped inside a false fiscal narrative, and the establishment remains protected by a politician who sounds radical while thinking in the safest and most conventional terms available.

James A. Robichaux@jamesrobichaux· Jun 25

uuummmm uuuummmm uuuummmm 😒

PalMedia
@PalMediaOrg
To choose or not to choose

A vote for Trump is a vote for the destruction of Palestine.

The stakes couldn't be higher.
Quote
George Conway ⚖️🇺🇸
@gtconway3d
·
Jun 24, 2020
No one is compelled to work for, speak for, defend, explain, rationalize, or excuse this president and his incompetence, derangement, and racism. Whether to do any of that, or not, is a choice. And it’s a moral choice, a crucial one, both for individuals and the nation.
11:12 AM · Jun 29, 2020

James A. Robichaux@jamesrobichaux· Jun 17

Holy mother of hog excrement, this is, in a myriad of ways, a profoundly ridiculous and harmful thing to say. 🤬 She is both making a totally false "we can't afford it" austerity argument and validating Trump's exclusionary rhetoric. Shame on you, @amyklobuchar.com.

Amy Klobuchar
@amyklobuchar
·
Jun 16
With $300 billion, we could end homelessness, fund cancer research for 40 years, and give every child free pre-K for over 7 years. Instead, Trump is sending it to Iran. This is not America First. Not even close.

James A. Robichaux@jamesrobichaux· Jun 16

This fascist Travis Cimino occasionally comments on my Facebook page and did so a little while ago in the Facebook post of this essay. www.facebook.com/permalink.ph... In his rude and dishonest disagreement, he helped to demonstrate the point that I was making.

Travis Cimino:

This is so condescendingly stupid. Of course it's MY MONEY, and of course I get a say in how MY MONEY is spent.

And ideally, I'd like as little of MY MONEY spent by someone else as possible.

Sitting there dressing it up as 'the state should take from you because by existing you agreed to it'

1. Tells me you can't convince people your policy the taxpayer has to pay for works or is beneficial to them

2. Tells me you're shit with your own money and life so you need to pay Daddy Government to step in and manage your life for you
Both are pathetic no matter how many college words you use 🙄

58m

Author
James A. Robichaux:

Yeah, I didn't say that the state should take from you because by existing you agreed to it, but, anyway, thank you for coming here to help demonstrate *my* point to the stubborn liberal and progressive people who continue to validate *your* dishonest and harmful framework.

<meme that shows an NFL referee with the phrase "ILLEGAL USE OF STRAWMAN">

James A. Robichaux@jamesrobichaux· Jun 16

In both that essay and the first one that I shared in these replies, I cursorily describe the correct way to think about the costs of public spending. Notice the absence of any "taxpayer" thinking here!

James A. Robichaux@jamesrobichaux· Jun 16

The "taxpayer" is this figure that somehow sits outside of - and preceding - society but on whom society somehow depends for funding, never mind that the "taxpayer" does not CREATE the currency; it's an abuser's logic, the "provider" who reminds the people whom he abuses that they depend on him.

"and then you look at how [taxpayer identity has] been deployed, and how it has been deployed really since the 19th Century, and since before that, but definitely since the 19th Century, has been in the service of exclusion. It's been in the service of keeping out people of color, keeping out women."

"Making claims to resources and entitlements on the basis of being a 'taxpayer' for most of US history has meant making claims that other people should not get resources, benefits, entitlements, and protections."

- Dr Camille Walsh, author of RACIAL TAXATION

James A. Robichaux@jamesrobichaux· Jun 16

Much of it seems to stem from the atrocious Barter Theory of the origins of money (and currency, because, in this framework, there is no significant distinction between the two), which posits the individual as preceding the community and, therefore, x.com/RelearningEc...

James A. Robichaux@jamesrobichaux· Jun 16

The first thing that comes to my mind when I see this is all of the centrists who say that we need to let go of the transgender issue in order to win elections to do things like protect abortion rights.

Erin Ekins (she/her)
@QueerlyAutistic
·
Mar 17
Many of us have been yelling for years that the venn diagram between anti-trans bigots and anti-abortion zealots is a circle.
Quote
PinkNews
@PinkNews
·
Mar 17
Former EHRC chair joins 'gender-critical' peers targeting abortion rights https://thepinknews.com/2026/03/17/ehrc-chair-abortion-rights/?utm_content=1773749712&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter
Erin Ekins (she/her)
@QueerlyAutistic
·
Mar 17
This is not a 'haha we told you', this is a 'please start listening and paying attention because we needed you to several years ago, but you didn't'.
Erin Ekins (she/her)
@QueerlyAutistic
·
Mar 17
The 'gender critical' transphobes are fundamentally attached to the same bio-essentialist misogyny that fuels anti-abortion rhetoric, and they are also fundamentally against people having the right to autonomy over their own bodies. These are the same people.
Erin Ekins (she/her)
@QueerlyAutistic
The legal attacks on kids accessing gender affirming healthcare in the UK were absolutely about forcing trans kids away from transitioning, but they were also designed to undermine Gillick competence so that kids' access to abortion/contraception could be targeted next.

James A. Robichaux@jamesrobichaux· Jun 14

This is why talking about what immigrants "contribute" as a way of arguing against draconian treatment of people always was ableist; it only feeds into the eugenics of Trumpism.

Corey Robin

June 13, 2025
·
New York Times just reporting this tonight:
"The Trump administration has abruptly shifted the focus of its mass deportation campaign, telling Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to largely pause raids and arrests in the agricultural industry, hotels and restaurants, according to an internal email and three U.S. officials with knowledge of the guidance.
The decision suggested that the scale of President Trump’s mass deportation campaign — an issue that is at the heart of his presidency — is hurting industries and constituencies that he does not want to lose.
The new guidance comes after protests in Los Angeles against the Trump administration’s immigration raids, including at farms and businesses. It also came as Mr. Trump made a rare concession this week that his crackdown was hurting American farmers and hospitality businesses.
The guidance was sent on Thursday in an email by a senior ICE official, Tatum King, to regional leaders of the ICE department that generally carries out criminal investigations, including work site operations, known as Homeland Security Investigations."

James A. Robichaux@jamesrobichaux· Jun 13

Yes. What makes me most pessimistic is not per se what conservative people believe. What makes me feel pessimistic the most is the masses of so-called "progressive" who are harmfully oblivious to the gigantic problems inherent to revenue-contingent public finance. 😥

James A. Robichaux@jamesrobichaux· Jun 12

I am so absolutely sick of seeing idiotic, self-defeating, smarmy framing like this. 😡 Widespread bullheaded Commodity Orientation To Money thinking among self-imagined "progressives" and "socialist" makes me think that we are absolutely doomed. 😞 www.facebook.com/commondreams...

Common Dreams

2h
·
“The money that Trump wants to burn on war should instead be spent on the needs of the American people, including restoring funding for healthcare, food, housing, and climate action,” said one critic. See less
While Slashing Food Aid and Healthcare, GOP Advances Trillion-Dollar Military Budget | Common Dreams
commondreams.org
While Slashing Food Aid and Healthcare, GOP Advances Trillion-Dollar Military Budget | Common Dreams

James A. Robichaux@jamesrobichaux· Jun 12

This is a good point from @amandamarcotte.bsky.social, and I would add that this definitely would be used against all varieties of progressive and socialist Christians. www.salon.com/2026/06/10/p...

Being brave or patriotic doesn’t matter to Christian nationalists. The ultimate goal is to exclude all non-Christian people from being full American citizens. What Hegseth accidentally did, however, is reveal that a whole lot of self-proclaimed Christians are also on the chopping block. Once the principle of religious discrimination against non-Christians is established in American law, the next step was always going to be reclassifying huge swathes of Christians as non-Christians, so they can be marginalized, too.

James A. Robichaux@jamesrobichaux· Jun 11

😅 Yes, and this is not even a pro-Platner message. This a message that the vote-scolds and genocide apologists need to follow their own advice and that, if they don't, well, then they are (further) exposed as the hollow enablers who they are.