RFK Jr.‘s bloodbath at HHS: Blowback grows as losses become clearer
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And generally too stupid to realize it. Those who do just don’t care. The power is worth burning our country down.
And it won’t even last.
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I still believe that this is all because the Chicago school of economics. Look at how much things changed once it started infiltrating MBA schools and supply side economics in the late 70's and early 80's. 
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Has always been until it’s not. Shit. Y’all even make China look good
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Josif Stalin is going to send someone round about your calling him an incompetent imbecile.
Famine? What famine? Just a little agricultural adjustment, nothing to see here...
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Intuitively, a government provides services that its population understands are beneficial, or else the services will be rejected as wasteful. Over decades, government services in the west have become more nuanced, sophisticated and certainly numerous. As a result they’re harder to understand as an interacting whole. That shift arguably required more education and rational discourse on the part of the people, in order to appreciate the value of these services and avoid rejecting them without due cause.
Meanwhile, it’s a common refrain that the population is generally not more educated than it was in previous decades, to put it mildly. By all appearances superstition, pseudoscience, magical thinking, paranoia and sundry unrigorous schools of thought have been ascendant for some time.
So it seems to me the balance is now being restored, but not by educating people on the values of complex governments services. No. Instead they are eliminating anything that’s harder to understand and appreciate than a Fox News personality (et al) puts into a sound bite.
Meanwhile, it’s a common refrain that the population is generally not more educated than it was in previous decades, to put it mildly. By all appearances superstition, pseudoscience, magical thinking, paranoia and sundry unrigorous schools of thought have been ascendant for some time.
So it seems to me the balance is now being restored, but not by educating people on the values of complex governments services. No. Instead they are eliminating anything that’s harder to understand and appreciate than a Fox News personality (et al) puts into a sound bite.
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This is exactly what I was ranting about! Anyone who sat out the election or even worse voted for Trump because of Biden's policies towards Gaza chose to assist in the genocide of Gaza. Anyone with just the most cursory and shallow knowledge of Trump and those supporting him, including his voters, predicted accurately last year that Trump would make things worse for Gaza. So congrats, praisedglaze, you have actively supported genocide.
And I'm speaking as someone who has done everything possible, including protesting, to oppose what Biden's administration was doing to the Palestinians.
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You do understand that medical debt represents situations in which no one gets paid, right?
Now, either healthcare CEOs are incredibly stupid, or they really hate making money, or possibly, there are aspects of our medical system that are broken and that benefit no one.
But you know who does benefit from medical bankruptcies and lack of universal coverage? Snake oil salesmen like RFK Jr. The uninsured are their greatest grifts, which is part of why they hate the ACA with so much zealotry.
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People need to read up more on what guys like Musk believe.
Guys like Yarvin have been arguing to tech leaders that libertarianism will never be adopted unless democracy is destroyed first. They are advocates of the RAGE movement - Remove All Government Employees. From this, you can achieve a new monarchy, under which authoritarian corporations operate communities, and if you don't like it you can just leave. They are accelerationists and pretty open racists.
Musk and Vance both list Yarvin as an influence. Trump does not but these views and his own personal biases are not in conflict.
They may market traditional republican ideas in order to garner republican votes, but they are not interested in those ideas. This is the billionaires running out of things to microtransact and simply turn you into serfs.
Guys like Yarvin have been arguing to tech leaders that libertarianism will never be adopted unless democracy is destroyed first. They are advocates of the RAGE movement - Remove All Government Employees. From this, you can achieve a new monarchy, under which authoritarian corporations operate communities, and if you don't like it you can just leave. They are accelerationists and pretty open racists.
Musk and Vance both list Yarvin as an influence. Trump does not but these views and his own personal biases are not in conflict.
They may market traditional republican ideas in order to garner republican votes, but they are not interested in those ideas. This is the billionaires running out of things to microtransact and simply turn you into serfs.
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As an outsider, could you explain more on this comment?
That was the Reagan period. What happened?
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Some of us are way ahead of you. With the (stolen) riches of the empire long gone, the UK's public services have been sliced off through privatisation steadily over the last four decades and now we have a husk of a country. There's barely anything left to sell, all the wealth has vanished into the hands of the usual suspects, and we're left with crumbling services - including the once-great NHS - our rivers and seas are polluted due to lack of regulation, and right-wing populism is on the rise out of misplaced anger.
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I’m not sure the medical industry (which isn’t a monolith) is happy either. PhRMA is quoted in the article as being unhappy - they won’t get new drugs approved. Hospitals won’t get payments for Medicare, Medicaid, and unfunded patients. Medical equipment manufacturers won’t get new devices approved. Etc. There don’t appear to be any winners here.
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Right, but to be fair, they will have reduced the spending of the government by 0.0000000000001% with these layoffs so...you can see how they are really making some important reductions to spending!
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Very few people. If rich or somewhat rich people think they are going to profit from project 2025, they are deluded.
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The cruelty is the point. Colleagues discovering by email that they’ve been fired, who then have to inform their managers of their fate. K- and T-grants being terminated, setting biomedical research back a generation and leaving grad students and postdocs with no path anywhere. Clinical trials in jeopardy and participants, who entrusted their teams sometimes with their lives, are second-guessing that trust or potentially unable to receive treatments. Even pharma are recognizing that their paths to drug approvals are being blockaded by an FDA cratered of institutional knowledge.
We see that the administration doesn’t care about prevention, it doesn’t care about cures, it doesn’t care about brilliance, it doesn’t care about solutions. It only cares about itself.
We see that the administration doesn’t care about prevention, it doesn’t care about cures, it doesn’t care about brilliance, it doesn’t care about solutions. It only cares about itself.
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To wit: Reagan opened his campaign with the phrase "Government is not the solution to the problem, government is the problem." The party's fundamental purpose for half a century has been to destroy the federal government so private interests can fill the gap. And...now we're here.
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I actually know a few things about the drivers of healthcare costs (and the drivers that increase those costs faster than inflation), and I feel really uncomfortable with any sort of simplistic explanation. There are a lot of historical and structural factors that long predate Reagan and supply side economics.
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Oh, do fuck right off. I can almost guarantee you that 75% or more of the "pearl clutching", gas lighting and messaging around Kamala and Gaza prior to the election was Russian bots (if you're not a bot yourself) and a mis-information campaign having found a chink in the "armor", which then proceeded to hammer the shit out of it and blew the issue way out of proportion.
If you're to soft on Palastinians you're labeled an anti-semite and Jew hater because you "support Hamas murdering Israelis / Jews". It's not an argument you can win. Kamala would have actually been a person who gives a shit about other people and not a self-absorbed narcissist. So, fuck you and the horse you rode in on.
Trump allowed Israel to step up their game and it's gotten even worse for people in Gaza since he got elected, so YOU are, in fact, actively supporting genocide by having voted for Trump. Pretty much anyone with half a brain would have and most likely did tell you this would happen. So, how's that working out for you?
note: "blow the issue way out of proportion" is not trying to make light of the situation. It is a "big" situation and I don't agree with how Israel are and have handled that area for the last 60 - 80 years, but expecting Trump to handle it better? Like..really? Are you stupid?
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Gaza is currently under a full blockade with no food or medical supplies allowed in or out, and we're less in the know about it because of the rapid destruction of our government taking over our news cycle.
I'm mad as hell at Biden and Harris for how they handled Israel and Gaza and the genocide occurring right now. But a better option on that wasn't one of the choices we had, as horrifying as that is. Just a worse option for everything else.
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I’m not sure why anyone is concerned that the health of Americans will decline. Everything that existed in the NIH was propping up a sham medical system. But now all will be well - everyone will (be required to) buy the products sold by RFKJr’s company and will enjoy perfect health.
(I hope /s not required)
(I hope /s not required)
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You should tell that to the richest people in the world parading around on stage with chainsaws in anticipation of the destruction.
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Yep. And there was never a swing back. It took over both parties. Anything else is now considered radical.
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That ignores the decades where the wealthy and far-right crazies have been talking about doing exactly those things. And then over decades they managed to continually push those ideas more and more into mainstream conversation. I'm 46 and I remember hearing about these issues as a teenager in the 90s.
It has been blatantly obvious if you have been paying any attention that these things would likely start happening with this administration.
If you are honestly so poorly informed or simply born-yesterday that you are currently surprised then I have some excellent beach-front property that you may be interested in.
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Scary Devil Monastery
Ars Scholae Palatinae
Oh, yeah, all those independents voting for Trump going "I didn't vote for this!!!"
To which the only answer is "Yes you did. He was damn open about it, too. At the end of the day it doesn't matter why you did. The economy, nationalism, restoration of pride, or just to get all that gay and trans stuff turned down a notch. You voted for a malicious clown quite open about the people he kept heckling and wanted to hurt.
No one gives a damn about your reasons. You joined what you joined. You gave your consent and moral support.
And now you and everyone else will have to deal with your ill-conceived wish on the Monkey's paw!"
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The damage Trump and Musk have done in just two months will take decades to recover from, if ever. By the time the next election rolls around there will be nothing left of this country.
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Yes, healthcare and education are both the canonical examples of Baumols Cost Disease. Basically, as other parts of the economy benefit from productivity gains, and help keep the overall inflation rate in check, industries that are not well situated for productivity gains experience labor costs that grow faster than inflation. It's hard for a university to compete for an engineering PhD when a company like Apple can generate $2M-$10M a year in profit off of that employee thanks to constant productivity gains in software distribution, manufacturing, retail and the like, but the university is still having to cover that PhDs salary with 4 classes of 40 students each because students aren't interested in modes of learning that allow that faculty member to reach more students and better divide up that cost. So, faculty salaries skyrocket on a per-student basis, driving up tuition.
Same dynamic in healthcare. We've radically expanded the number of things people can be treated for, so there's more healthcare per person being delivered, but you're still constrained to one doctor or nurse per patient at a time. Productivity gains in healthcare are hard to come by, except to process patients faster and discharge them faster, and everyone hates that.
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1°) These guys are very few people indeed.
2°) Even them, i am not sure they will come out of this nonsense unscathed
3°) We said they were very rich, not that they were very smart
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My boy, you have no idea how rich people make money. Every criticial government service which is cut gets replaced by a private one that can charge whatever it wants because it is critical.
Yeah, the millionaire investors are going to get fucked in the market ride, but the billionaire owners are gonna make bank. Note, the tariffs primarily affect incumbent businesses. There's a whole new landscape being created for people to sell you weather forecasts and fake measles cures.
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Scary Devil Monastery
Ars Scholae Palatinae
Sadly (well, not that sadly) the news out of the US this last decade has kept disappointing european libertarians. It's almost as if libertarianism is a rancid crock of shit unfit even to grift with in any population with a minimum of civic and/or economic knowledge.
So naturally european libertarians are coming out swinging in the defense of Trumpy in the hopes that the US dismantling its government will lead to that long promised land of infinite growth and opportunity.
Just to note that we have our own morons. Not as many as the US perhaps, but a few prize examples exist which could hold their own in any contest of stupidity against the best yokels the US has to offer.
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Observed quite a long time ago now:
Note, do not confuse what Musk and Trump seek with what GOP voters seek. They are after radically different things, in much the same way that authoritarians sell the masses on communism or socialism in order to seize power and then deliver none of what was promised.
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Massive tech layoffs are a cyclical event. This is not. These jobs were not like tech jobs, they paid less but the tradeoff was supposed to be job security. We've literally kept our deficit down by underpaying civil servants in exchange for the promise of professional treatment.
And then we pulled a backsies. On the people responsible for keeping government programs running.
The nearest America has faced to this sort of destruction was the War of 1812.
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You don't get just HOW bad I'm referring to.
And I say all this, because looking at it from afar, it's been really really REALLY bad already. Like, you can't be fucking serious??? bad, just by watching or reading 5 minutes of Trump excrement every fucking day .
But apparently, that's not nearly enough. So yeah, it has to go EXTRAORDINARILY bad.
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No they weren't. Because Congress didn't authorize reductions in spending, these are not layoffs. These people are being fired for cause, essentially saying they are incompetent or insubordinate. There is no opportunity to be rehired under those conditions. The administration is doing that because it's the only way they have authority to remove these workers, and that's why court after court keeps telling them they have to put those people back in their jobs because there is nothing in their employment record indicating that they were on track to be fired.
My question to you is, why are you lying to us? What are you hoping to achieve by doing that?
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