Post a Comment On: Doug Ross @ Journal

By Karl Denninger

It's very hard for me to give a **** these days.In fact, it's becoming nearly impossible.  The reasons are many, with the most-serious being your refusal to give a ****.
[Image]You don't give a **** that the entire medical industry rips everyone off to the tune of 200, 300, 400, 500% or more of what virtually everything should cost.  This is why you "need" health insurance.  It is why we "need" Medicare.  The practices of this "industry" in virtually every other line of business would result in the people involved going to prison for decades, yet you tolerate this daily despite the fact that it is the largest cause of bankruptcy in the United States.  You cannot take your car in for an oil change or have the furnace guy come and fix your heating system in your home without being quoted a price before work begins, and were two gas stations to collude on prices the owners of both would be charged with felonies.You don't give a **** that pharmaceutical companies literally price drugs at a half-million dollars a year -- and if you need it, you'll need it effectively forever.  There are so few people who have that sort of money that this kind of pricing is by definition theft, as the only way to "afford' such a drug is to steal the money from someone else (through legal means or otherwise.)  What's worse is that you let them get away with having most of the development cost of these "wonder drugs" be born through publicly-funded research; it's not even their money at risk (for the most part) when such a new drug is tested, it's yours and mine.  We then wonder why so-called "health insurance" is as expensive as it is and why the stock of firms in that business such as Aetna (NYSE: AET) are up more than 500% since 2009, roughly doubling in the two years since the Obamacare "mandates, er, taxes" kicked in and stock in company that makes the drug in this example (ALXN) is up 1,000% since 2009.  You, on the other hand, will be flirting with bankruptcy (if not rendered penniless, insurance or no) if you get sick.You don't give a **** that the US Supreme Court in two separate decisions on the same underlying issue re-wrote Obamacare in ways that severely implicate your fundamental and Constitutional Rights.  When Obamacare was found "Constitutional" originally it occurred through re-writing the law to find that the "penalty" was actually a tax, but in doing so it was re-written as a direct tax that is not apportioned nor is it a tax on income, which means it is explicitly unconstitutional. You didn't care enough about that to demand that this crap stop, and thus opened the door to the second and more-recent decision which simply cemented the first: Words (and the Constitution) don't matter if they fail to meet a desired political outcome! (Roberts actually said in that opinion that to uphold the law as written "would destabilize the individual insurance market"; in other words the federal spending must flow irrespective of what Congress actually did and Congress cannot be left to fix it, IF it was a mistake.)  The result of this second decision was that people cheered the screwing that the aforementioned medical industry has been dishing out for the last four decades instead of immediately taking to the streets and demanding the arrest and prosecution of everyone involved in that part of the so-called "economy" and both blatantly unconstitutional acts of the court.You don't give a **** that over the last year $790 billion was literally stolen from you in value due to deficit spending (6/30/2014 to 6/29/2015) and that over the last fiscal year (September 30 2013 -> September 30 2014) an approximate trillion (that is, $1,000 billion) was similarly stolen.  To put a number on this that is 4.5% of the economy over the last 12 months and approximately 6% over the previous fiscal year.  From the first of 2008 to today that theft has totaled $8,924 billion dollars and is the reason that actual economic expansion over the last four years in real terms has not run about 3.5% a year, it's approximately 1.1%!  Anyone who steals that much damn well ought to be in prison no matter how many people conspire together to do it.  Yet not only are you unwilling to demand that the people involved go to prison you keep ratifying and approving their theft by returning them to office and cheering them on at political rallies!You don't give a **** about the fact that all of the above mean that on a compounded basis roughly half of your purchasing power has been robbed from you since 2000 and this will, inevitably, collapse the very programs you claim a right to such as Social Security and Medicare (say much less private pensions.) Were the medical situation, in particular, to be resolved it would (1) eliminate federal deficit spending, (2) resolve most if not all of the state and city government budgetary problems and (3) remove close to 1/5th of the spending you currently do from your personal budget.  That's the math, folks.  In other words your willful and intentional refusal to give a **** on a collective basis means that you are intentionally allowing a course of conduct by our governments and certain private actors that mathematically must cause the collapse of the very programs you claim to have a right to.  You can make all the claims you want but you can't make the impossible occur, and what's worse is that you're intentionally destroying the economic future of your children -- not just your own future.You don't give a **** that arithmetic says that the debt and GDP accumulation path this nation is on must end in disaster; it cannot be otherwise, and further we are beyond the point where accumulating more debt provides even a temporary gain; it instead comes with immediate pain.  Yet you continue to permit, even insist on continued deficit spending by our government despite the fact that you cannot bargain with math nor is it subject to political will.  You are not only screwing yourself you are screwing every young person in this country -- including your own children who will live long enough to have to deal with the collapse you are actively causing, even if you're in your 80s and will probably die before it gets you.You don't give a **** that the fundamental right found by the Supreme Court to marriage was in the same breath turned into a mere privilege subject to license, so long as everyone is similarly constrained by said license.  The breathtaking breadth of that decision, the turning of your fundamental right to choose who you are intimate with into a licensed privilege so long as everyone has to pay the same tax and subject themselves to the same terms, for anyone with more than two firing neurons in their head, should have led to immediate protests and a full-on strike by every producing American.  Instead people turned their Facebook profile picture "rainbow colored" in support of it.  In short you cheered the single largest arrogation of power by the government in American history.You don't give a **** about the fact that Ross Perot warned during the 1996 Presidential campaign that NAFTA and related "free trade" bills would eviscerate American employment, costing literal millions of good-paying manufacturing jobs.  He was later proved right; you could certainly be excused for not believing his prediction (after all, he was just a rich bastard shooting off his mouth, right?) but there is no excuse for refusing to believe proved facts over the next three decades.  The fact is that our trade deficit has grown with every nation we've entered into one of these "agreements" with; that is, every one of them has cost more than than it has benefited the United States. Yet we're still allowing not only NAFTA to continue but we then granted China "most-favored nation" status and a tariff-free environment for them while China demands local content and tariffs on goods and services we export back their direction, they steal anything not nailed down (and much that is) and, to top it off, we are now "debating" extending the same abusive trade deals to over a dozen other nations, nearly all of which are poor "emerging markets" much like China was when we gave that status to them.  ARE YOU NUTS?You don't give a **** that those who are not citizens can and do vote and the Supreme Court has ruled that states cannot put a stop to it.  The single most-important asset a citizen of a nation has is to determine the political path of the nation; we express that through ballots and our representatives.  If those who are not citizens can cast ballots, given that many elections are narrowly-decided, we have ceded the right of political decision-making to non-citizens.  Since the citizens of this nation have sat for this crap up until now and continue to do so we have collectively decided that we no longer live in a Constitutional Republic.  Why in the hell would you expect anyone else give a **** about anything if you won't do whatever is necessary to prevent non-citizens from determining the political path this nation takes?You don't give a **** about the outrageous armed robbery practiced daily by our so-called "law enforcement" agencies. Ferguson is hardly the only place this has become a national pasttime; the entire State of California is another example where a simple and routine $25 traffic ticket is instantly turned into a $300 citation through "assessments" and "surcharges."  Of course if you don't have $300 it then becomes a suspended license, loss of your job (when you can't get to work) or an arrest (if you drive anyway so you don't starve.)  For those who claim it's not "armed robbery" exactly what do you think that gun is doing on the cop's hip?  This is tolerated nationally and can quite-literally begin with nothing more-serious than a parking violation -- oh, and that citation might be trumped up too (and frequently is with "meter maids" that will write on a meter that is not yet expired.)  Four million residents (17% of the state's adult population!) in California have a suspended license for this reason right now; that's nearly one in five!  Exactly why is this sort of literal and outrageous armed robbery not cause for an immediate cessation of all work by Californians complete with picketing around the state house and senate, never mind the governor's mansion, until it is stopped and these outrageous "surcharges" and penalties canceled?  I've not even bothered with the "pull people over and steal their money" games yet; that's just another of many additional examples of the very same act of armed robbery.You don't give a **** about false oaths, particularly those to "Defend and preserve The Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic."  The list of persons who have taken such oaths and then acted directly in contravention of them is too long to list.  No, this is not advocating war or civil unrest but it sure does include advocating not associating with or helping people who have shot off their mouth in public in this regard that they have such a duty, or who currently hold public office, yet directly violate said claimed duty whether actively or simply by sitting on their ass.  Or, as I've put it many times to such folks (earning many dirty looks in the process): "If you have a duty to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, when do you intend to start doing so?"So here's my question to you: If you refuse to give a **** about any of the above why should I?
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