On Saturday, August 12, I ventured behind enemy lines in Charlottesville on special assignment from the Daily Stormer. What I found was a weird mix of black racism, white self-delusion, degeneracy and cuckoldry the likes of which, frankly, the world has never seen before.

I am new to photo journalism, and not particularly well suited to it, so I apologize for poor angles and composition and for missing so much of what was going on around me. The “intolerance will not be tolerated” banner could be the basis for great memes about these people’s complete lack of any sense of irony.

After having aided in the logistics of securing transportation for our people leaving MacIntyre Park, I returned to the Lee Square vicinity around 2PM. A couple blocks down the street I found Justice Park to be occupied by a heavily armed group. The fact that the police standing nearby were not trying to get them to disperse was clear indication that they were NOT one of the Alt-right pro-white groups. A journalists I spoke to later told me that he had interviewed people from the group and that they were Three Percenters. I have no way of verifying this. But I do think that to have any group show up armed with AR-15 semiautomatic rifles makes it more likely that other groups will escalate their arsenals at the next event, which could lead to a bloodbath.

At one point the group started chasing someone and calling him “Murderer.” This was just three blocks north of where the fatal car crash took place and only minutes after.

I then started feeling very unwelcome in the little park with the heavily armed people who ordered me to put away my phone. Isolated, I hardly felt it was the time or place to argue what right they had to infringe on my constitutional rights, so I move a couple blocks south, which was the scene of the car crash.

I saw a older black woman stretched out in a bus shelter. I had not yet heard about the car crash, so I just assumed that she was overcome by the heat, but she must of been one of the injured from the car crash. A white clergyman with a “Black Lives Matter” button pinned to his robe was trying to call the medics.

One point of interest was that the white BLM protesters were periodically harassed by ghetto blacks who didn’t seem to understand or care what the sides were in this conflict. Just after I shot the above video a colored gentleman informed the mostly white Black Lives Matter supporters that he had spent 13 years as a Marine sniper in Iraq and was pissed at all of us for this shit. For the benefit of the hard of hearing and retarded among us (and I fear the latter group was particularly over-represented), he repeated this public service announcement several times at the top of his lungs.

Below you can see the polices line blocking the crash scene at Water and 2nd Streets:

And here are the Black Lives Matter crackers defiantly calling for the overthrow of the constitutionally elected American government. No wonder Governor McAullife said they had no place in his state. Wait, this just in… It was actually the people wanted to peacefully assemble after having received a permit from the city and were then violently attacked who the governor demanded leave. The people demanding a communist revolution are welcome.

I then walked around the block. Multiple times blacks from the adjoining culturally enriched housing project (hereafter referred to as “the local gentry”) drove by in cars or marched past on foot shouting threats like “Fuckin’ bitch cracker, I’m coming back for you.” One white women responded approvingly with a black power fist salute. New levels of cuckoldry previously believed unattainable have been achieved.

Meanwhile, up the street, the local gentry treated a line of state troopers to a traditional tribal dance and taunt.

Sexually marginalized communities were well-represented, and they came with a message.

And of course what assembly of diversity could be complete without G-d’s chosen.

Hey Woodstock, close your time/space portal, do ya mind?

Apparently in all the commotion the barn door at the University of Virginia’s School of Animal Husbandry was left ajar, much to the bemusement of the local gentry.

This is presumably the helicopter that crashed.

And here is a Communist lady calling for revolution at Charlottesville Counter-demonstration. Her oratory about a fucking fascist regime in the White House that’s unleashing white supremacy is truly inspiring.

I would like to joke that a fun day was had by all, but of course it wasn’t. Three people are dead and dozens were injured. A big hunk of the powers that be (Governor McAullife, the Zio-media, etc.) have made it clear in no uncertain terms that white people do NOT have the right to peaceably to assemble or to petition the government for a redress of grievances, as is guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution. We do not have right to voice ethnic interests, unlike every other racial or ethnic group in this country. And what future do they plan for this country? Well, just look at the pictures above.

At least Donald Trump refuses to single us out for condemnation. We will have to see how this all plays out.

Tami “Freeze The Gooks” Barker

Well, she’s in the news again. I’m talking, of course, about Tami Barker, the evil white Nazi who canceled the reservation of a poor Asian girl at the last minute on learning of her skin color then left the girl to freeze in the snow. (At least that’s the story you got from the mainstream media.)

I wrote about this Nazi a few months ago when we only knew her as “Tami.” But this week, the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) issued a press release announcing that it negotiated a settlement after pestering the former host (yes, ex-host—AirBnB canceled Ms. Barker’s hosting status back when the mainstream media first reported on the incident). Anyway, the DFEH doesn’t have the authority to force an alleged offender to comply, but it has the resources to make a real nuisance of itself. Tami Barker eventually agreed to (a) pay out $5000 in damages, (b) issue a personal apology, (c) participate in community service, and (d) take a course in Asian American studies.

Fair play, right? You can’t go tossing Asian people out in snowstorms just because you’re white without eventually expecting you’ll be forced to crack open a book and learn about Ellison Onizuka.

Sure, there was another side to this story. Seems like there’s always another side, lurking in the background. Few probably remember as it was hiding behind headlines and callouts claiming that Barker “named Trump as reason to refuse Asian American guest” (untruth, courtesy of New York Daily News) or “left guest stranded because of her race” (fake news, courtesy of Washington Post).

But if you chipped past the hype and let the facts be your guide, you were left with something like this: Asian America law clerk named Dyne Suh makes AirBnB reservation for weekend cabin at Big Bear Ski Resort. She asks host Tami Barker if she can bring some friends. Tami says, yes, but it’ll cost more. Dyne Suh does not finalize reservations, but leaves it until day of check in when she and her friends are just down the road. Dyne Suh then texts Tami to say she’s 15 minutes away and now a party of four people and two dogs. Hard to know what was said next as this is the part Dyne Suh chose not to reveal, but there’s a $50 number in the air. Tami cancels reservation. Only after she’s lost her booking for the weekend does Tami text out a couple things that will later be used as evidence of her Nazi leanings.

Three things you should remember about the Dyne Suh-Tami Barker incident:

1. Dyne Suh had studied at UCLA School of Law and now works as a law clerk. Would you not think that if Dyne Suh had a case she would have filed it through the courts? Much better payout. Instead, Dyne Suh chose to cry on camera for a KTLA reporter and provide pre-selected excerpts of her text conversation so that the world could see how this racist Trump supporter left her stranded in the snow. This basically guaranteed that AirBnB would step up to the plate and foot the bill for Dyne Suh’s hotel. Next Dyne Suh conspired to sick the DFEH on Ms. Barker. The DFEH is actually working with AirBnB to address racial profiling issues. But odd for a legal gal not to go the civil suit route if this really was a cut and dry case of race discrimination.

2. Tami Barker never said “I don’t want you because you’re Asian” or words to that effect. AirBnB is a transparent platform. All members must upload verified photos and hosts are provided with full names of guests upon confirmation of reservation. Seems like Tami Barker might already have guessed Dyne Suh’s ethnicity prior to cancellation. Meanwhile, the screenshots that Dyne Suh released to illustrate Tami’s allegedly offensive remarks also illustrate that they came AFTER the deal fell through. A frustrated Tami Barker, who’d probably seen this last-minute haggling pattern before, typed out, “One word says it all. Asian”. But as soon as Dyne Suh communicated how offended she was that she, as a flag-waving Asian American, might be confused with a sneaky bucktoothed Asian Asian, Tami Barker walked it back: act like an American then and cut the BOGO crap.

3. Dyne Suh brought an extra two friends and two dogs…yet they were talking about $50 a night. Even if this wasn’t the busiest weekend in Big Bear, fifty bucks a night just for one person seems kind of a low starting point for a California ski resort. You’d pay more most nights in the middle of the California desert. If I was a proud AirBnB lodge host and I got a last minute message from a confirmed guest who now wanted to squeeze in two more pals and a couple of pets for fifty dollars, I’d probably blow my top, too. Of course, this is the part of the text conversation that Dyne Suh doesn’t reveal, so we’re supposed to assume the cancellation was based on race, Trump, and Nazis (yes, Tami talked of such things, but that came later). By the way, what was Dyne Suh’s plan for when the four humans were out on the slopes? Were the dogs going to ski too? Or were they going to be locked in the cabin pooping on Tami’s floors and tearing up her upholstery?

Bottom line: Seems that Tami could well have had the same reaction had Dyne Suh been some blonde white chick? Of course, were that the case, we would never have heard about it because a Diane Smith wouldn’t have been able to cry racism

Unfortunately for Tami Barker, she didn’t realize when she decided to remark on a certain pattern she’d detected that she was moving into an area where free speech was no longer free. It’s now several thousands of dollars. Said DFEH Chief Counsel Jon Ichinaga: “There is a monetary cost to discriminating in California…a $4,000 minimum penalty.”

Thanks, Jon. I guess the lesson for nazi AirBnB hosts like Tami must be “don’t accept reservations of Asian people in the first place”, right?

“Total Discrimination! They said I couldn’t check in with my dogs… but white people get to bring their dinner!”

Translation: “You say you’re 15 minutes away, you want another couple to stay with you for one-fifth the normal price, plus I take care of your dogs all weekend? No problem. Only…wait…[eyes narrow]…are you Asian?”

Last week, a major censorship controversy erupted when Facebook began deleting all posts containing the iconic photograph of the Vietnamese “Napalm Girl” on the ground that it violated the company’s ban on “child nudity.” Facebook even deleted a post from the prime minister of Norway, who posted the photograph in protest of the censorship. As outrage spread, Facebook ultimately reversed itself — acknowledging “the history and global importance of this image in documenting a particular moment in time” — but this episode illustrated many of the dangers I’ve previously highlighted in having private tech companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Google become the arbiters of what we can and cannot see.

Having just resolved that censorship effort, Facebook seems to be vigorously courting another. The Associated Press reports today from Jerusalem that “the Israeli government and Facebook have agreed to work together to determine how to tackle incitement on the social media network.” These meetings are taking place “as the government pushes ahead with legislative steps meant to force social networks to rein in content that Israel says incites violence.” In other words, Israel is about to legislatively force Facebook to censor content deemed by Israeli officials to be improper, and Facebook appears eager to appease those threats by working directly with the Israeli government to determine what content should be censored.

The joint Facebook-Israel censorship efforts, needless to say, will be directed at Arabs, Muslims, and Palestinians who oppose Israeli occupation. The AP article makes that clear: “Israel has argued that a wave of violence with the Palestinians over the past year has been fueled by incitement, much of it spread on social media sites.” As Alex Kane reported in The Intercept in June, Israel has begun actively surveilling Palestinians for the content of their Facebook posts and even arresting some for clear political speech. Israel’s obsession with controlling Palestinians’ use of social media is motivated by the way it has enabled political organizing by occupation opponents; as Kane wrote: “A demonstration against the Israeli occupation can be organized in a matter of hours, while the monitoring of Palestinians is made easier by the large digital footprint they leave on their laptops and mobile phones.”

David Filo & Jerry Yang, Yahoo! Founders.

Given Julia Ioffe’s history with the Alt-Right, it would be fun to invoke inflammatory rhetoric, or even a fun meme, to describe this event. Out of respect for Professor Cohen and the issues that arise from his being praised by this website, I will leave all that to your imagination.

This 27-minute clip has it all. As you would expect, Cohen argued that the U.S. is responsible for the bad relationship between us and Russia, that there is no evidence regarding Russian hacking, that the U.S. has been backing the wrong side in Syria (including ISIS), and that most of what the media says (including specifically Julia Ioffe) is factually incorrect. But wait, there’s much much more. He calls Muslim birthrates in Russia a real problem, and speaking to a Jewish audience he refers to “your father’s and grandfather’s terrorism,” giving the example of Jewish terrorism against the British in Palestine.

This video is well worth listening to (and watching at 22:42), but for those unwilling or unable (and also for the sake of search engines) I have listed some of the highlights below.

Why do Jews have short necks? Because they are always making the gesture in the thumbnail image, according to Professor Cohen.

This is from a discussion panel at the American Jewish Committee Global Forum on or around June 23, 2017. The panelists include Stephen Cohen, Professor Emeritus, NYU and Princeton; Julia Ioffe, Staff Writer, The Atlantic; and Andrew Weiss, Vice President for Studies, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Moderated by Jason Isaacson, AJC Associate Executive Director for Policy.

Stephen Cohen’s highlights include:

• Calls Jew-rank on the other panelists as a Cohen. “I think it’s important to remember which of us is the Cohen up here and who prevails in tribal authority. And I may evoke that as we go on.”
• Recalling his bar mitzvah says he didn’t want to get bar mitzvahed, didn’t know anyone who as bar mitzvahed, was the only Jew in his Kentucky town, the synagogue had no Rabbi, and had to be conned into it in deference to the distance traveled by the Rabbi.
• US is 80% wrong for bad relationship between us and Russia.
• There is almost nothing to Russiagate.
• Brings up the Jackson Vanik amendment, specifically linked it to Jewish emigration from the USSR.
• Referred to a remarkable if very short-lived “detente” with Julia Ioffe. “I was going to say if Julia Ioffe and Stephen Cohen can have a detante, then certainly Trump and Putin can sort it out.”
• Said that Weiss and Ioffe’s view on Russia was “empirically, conceptually, fundamentally wrong.”
• What we call the deep state has been trying to squash detente since last year: 51 state department officials signed letter protesting Obama’s agreement for limited cooperation in Syria, then the Defense Dept sabotaged it by killing 80 Syrian soldiers in “accidental” (my quotes) bombing. CIA has been leaking like crazy since July 2017.
• Says all three past detentes were carried out by Republican presidents, and notes that Casper Weinberger quit over Reagan-Gorbachev detente. (Misspoke, called him Secretary of State.)
• Says “Today’s terrorism is not your father or your grandfather’s terrorism.” Then brings up two examples: assassination of Czars and Jewish terrorism against the British.
• Says that for three years Obama said he was fighting ISIS, yet ISIS did nothing but gained territory during that period.
• Says that instead they were aiding anyone who was opposed to Assad, including terrorists themselves.
• Points out that Turkey was buying oil from ISIS with the full knowledge of US.
• Says that Muslims in Russia breed faster than Russians, and that’s part of the problem.
• Says we need Russian intelligence and we need a Syrian state to fight ISIS.
• Says 85% of what Ioffe and Andrew Weiss say is not factually correct.
• Calls out Andrew Weiss for saying Russia hacked our election without producing any evidence.
• Says we’ve been “meddling” in Russia’s elections and political process.
• Tells Jew joke: “Anyone know why Jews have such short necks?” (You have to see it at 22:42)

And much much more.

I spend a lot of time thinking about the situation facing white people in America and around the world. It’s pretty dire. We built up societies utilizing technology and social structures that allowed our people to lead pretty comfortable and potentially meaningful lives, at least compared to any other time or place in history. There was a certain amount of outside contribution to the technology and social structures, but for the most part they were developed by white people. Some will say that whites exploited others in the development of our societies, and there is some truth in that, but whites also contributed hugely to the betterment of the lives of people all over the world. On balance, we have no reason to apologize.

Other societies have tried to adopt our technology and social structures, but only a small handful in east Asia have really been successful. For the residents of the rest of these countries, the ticket to a better life often seems to be transplanting themselves to a white country. Many individual immigrants do well for themselves and may be seen as contributing to their new countries, but as groups the immigrants tend to be tremendous burdens, and ungrateful ones at that.

In the most recent Stormfront Radio show, I proposed three future scenarios.

1. A continuation of Jewish rule, resulting in the eventual replacement of whites as the majority population in our countries, which will decay into dysfunctional societies where whites are a mistreated minority (modern South Africa comes to mind).
2. The triumph of Trumpism, where the constitutional order will be maintained and Jewish power will be pushed back enough to halt large-scale immigration and at least considerably slow down and limit the transformation of our demographics and culture (something along the lines of Putin’s Russia), or
3. A hard fascist backlash where whites abandon Constitutional constraints and their traditional social morality and place the top priority on ethnic survival (as Hitler’s Germany unsuccessfully attempted).

After the show, suddenly the image of Dr. Seuss’s “Thidwick the Big-Hearted Moose” came to mind.

When a small beetle asked the moose if he could hitch a ride on his antlers, Thidwick said “sure,” as the beetle’s presence was too insignificant to adversely impact his activities. But the beetle invited a spider, who invited a bird, who built a nest and brought his wife, who invited a woodpecker who drilled holes that became homes for squirrels, and so on and so forth until an entire menagerie burdened his antlers to the point that his ability to survive was put to the test.

Of course, at any point along the way, Thidwick could have refused and gotten rid of the pests, but he was afraid of being called a bad host. He continued to tolerate them, and even recognized their property rights in his antlers because they had become homes to his pests. This really seems reminiscent of the chain immigration that 1965 immigration act made possible. Quite clairvoyant, as Thidwick was written in 1948.

Towards the end of the book, Thidwick is faced with the seasonal scarcity of moose moss on the north side of the lake and decides to swim across the lake to where his food source will be in greater supply. The pests object, because they feel at home on the north side of the lake and seem oblivious to the fact that their livelihoods are dependent on the well being of their host moose. They propose settling the question democratically. By now their numbers have been bolstered by a bobcat, a turtle, three mice, a fox, a bear, and 362 bees, and Thidwick is defeated in a landslide.

Thidwick seems resigned to accepting his eventual demise by starvation when a more immediate existential threat presents itself: hunters. Suddenly Thidwick goes hard fascist and saves himself without concern for the pests. He quickly remembers he can shed his antlers and swims off to the other side of the lake, leaving his antler-dwelling pests to face the hunters alone. Thidwick lives happily ever after with other moose.

What happens to his multi-cultural freeloaders?

“His old horns today are where you knew they would be. His guests are still on them, all stuffed, as they should be.”

Yes, Thidwick, and Dr. Seuss by extension, let them all get killed. A happy ending? That was the intention.

So was Dr. Seuss full on Nazi? Contrary to what many think, he (his real name was Theodore Seuss Geisel) was ethnic German and not Jewish. On the other hand, he wrote plenty of books that had a liberal message regarding integration, the Holocaust, Hitler and whatnot. But really, who cares what Dr. Seuss thought. The point is that we are a moose with a bunch of pests living in our antlers. What do we do about it?

We don’t need to wait till the very last minute to deal with our burden. Thidwick could have refused to allow the pests to board his antlers. He could have demanded that those who misbehave leave. He could have demanded they pay their fair share of rent. If you look at the antlers as a metaphor for the Constitutional society, there were things Thidwick could have done short of abandoning his antlers, an option that would still remain in his back pocket as a last resort. But he did nothing until faced with immediate doom.

Getting back to my three scenarios, I hear many calling for fascism now. Given that countless people in “polite society” are open communists of one sort or another, I see nothing wrong with de-stigmatizing fascism. But realistically our people are a long, long way from embracing fascism. Trumpism, on the other hand, with its roots in the elimination of political correctness, could open the way for an awakening that would overturn Jewish domination of our society. Free from Jewish domination, solutions to our problems possibly could be found without resorting to the violence and dislocation that would likely accompany an abandonment of the Constitutional order. This depends to a large extent on what we do. If one thing has become clear in the past five months, it is that Trump provides us with political space, but not political leadership. The fate of Trumpism is in our hands, not his.

If Trumpism fails, we still have scenario three in our back pocket, and potentially could have laid considerable groundwork for an new society.

But scenario three is fraught with danger. It didn’t turn out so well for Hitler and Germany.

New Orleans was the most populous city of the Confederacy. Dozens of streets and buildings bear the names of Confederate heroes. Four monuments – Confederate President Jefferson Davis, General Robert E. Lee, General PGT Beauregard and the Liberty Monument – have been seen by millions of tourists and are loved by the people of New Orleans and Louisiana. These monuments have been targeted by the Leftist Democrat Mayor of New Orleans Mitch Landrieu, for removal, and he’s using a largely Jewish and Black community (Marxist) group called “Take’m Down NOLA” to incite local leftists to show up to city council meetings to push this agenda.

After local White residents lost two lawsuits attempting to stop the destruction of the monuments, the city has moved forward with removal starting with the Liberty Monument, erected in 1891 to commemorate the Battle of Liberty place on September 14, 1874.

The Liberty monument was saved in the early 90’s by David Duke and his supporters, who took the city to court and won a Federal court injunction against the city for attempting to remove it.

Nonetheless, the Federal Court order that David Duke won 25 years ago was ignored by the current judge who bundled all the monuments together and it was the first to be removed and destroyed, two weeks ago in the middle of the night by local firemen wearing bulletproof vests, while police swat snipers looked on. Note: The firefighters & their cohorts in crime wore face masks, while the public is forbidden to.

The battle has now moved to the smaller of the remaining monuments – Jefferson Davis. Though this monument is located in a predominantly Black neighborhood, locals could care less about removing the monument. About 30-40 monument defenders have been keeping an around the clock vigil, which has brought out the bunch of degenerate college sluts, beta males, dykes, fags and of course, Jews. Unfortunately, there’s a local hipster bar next to the monument, and as it gets later, these degenerate pieces of human garbage start their chants of “Fuck of Nazis.” Earlier this week they even started coming across the street to confront monument supporters.

On Tuesday, one monument supporter after being acosted, beat the shit out of an Antifa type in front of the cops (who were Black). A few Nationalists showed up wearing camouflage fatigues with their faces covered like Antifa (wearing masks is illegal in Louisiana). A White Antifa guy got in one of their faces and was told that if he touched him again, he’d knock him the fuck out. The Antifa fag tested him and got knocked out cold for a good two minutes. A rabble rousing kike, who admitted he was a gay Jew called the cops, but when the cops arrived, they almost arrested the Antifa fag. After that, the Jew left. Good times!

On Wednesday, both CNN and BBC showed up. A brave women who stood with David Duke when he was defending the Andrew Jackson statue last year, came out with her beautiful adopted daughter from Russia. Both of them were getting right in the faces of Antifa – it was beautiful.

Later Wednesday night, a local Jew showed up dressed in a suit looking like an Orthodox rabbi. He started taking pictures of all the monument supporters while calling them “cowards” and “hillbillies.” He got in the face of one of our people and got his camera knocked back. Of course, the kike started immediately screaming “If you touch me again … I’m warning you.” The guy told him that if he came by him again, he’d knock him the fuck out. So he moved to the other side of the monument and started harassing some elderly women. As we all know, the Jew cries out in pain as he hits you.

On Friday night, an insane Jewish woman, who was actually a monument supporter, had a small Israeli flag next to her when the same rabble rousing, Orthodox-looking Jew showed up again wearing the exact same outfit. But this time he brought with him a young White girl, probably from the bar next door. Then the craziest thing happened. The White girl saw the Israeli flag and asked, “Is that an Israeli flag? You know you Jews don’t want to keep the monument up, your just trying to make our people think Jews are on our side when you Jews are why our race is under attack.” The Jewish women said, “Yes, I want the monument up.” Then the girl said, “You lying dirty, fucking Jew. Next time the holocaust is going to be real and we’re going to get every fucking last one of you.” She then started screaming “Fucking Jew” and “that flag represents everything that’s evil in the world!” The Orthodox Jew just stood there and looked like he was going to faint. My mouth dropped! Well, well Jews! Looks like everyone wants to settle some scores.

Though there have been several fights ending in Antifa idiots getting beaten down, most of the opposition was disorganized. Saturday night this changed, when degenerate sluts and a hand full of idiots (and even a Korean born Antifa) showed up with a huge banner reading “Take Them All Down” on three tall PVC poles. The banner was tall enough to block the flag supporters from being seen by people riding the street cars and driving by on their way to JazzFest, a yearly local music event. Some of our guys drove their trucks behind the banner and stood on the roofs with Confederate flags over the banner. One legit Antifa showed up with one of their flags dressed like a fashion skinhead from the 90’s with two obviously gay “bodyguards.” Tensions were high and the only reason a full riot didn’t break out was due to many cucked conservative types begging everyone to tone it down and claiming they had inside info that the police were waiting around the corner for a fight so they could arrest everyone.

These protests are happening every night and we need as many people as possible to come at support our comrades in this fight.

For those who can’t help us in the streets, we have compiled a list of the Antifa protesters so everyone can see the type of people we’re dealing with.

Update: Since this article we written, approx 150 Antifa showed up on May 1st and attacked those guarding the monument. These defenders were mostly elderly people who weren’t prepared for this type of confrontation. As of 9:30pm cst the Marxists have taken over the monument. We will update everyone when we get more details.

In the meantime, meet some of the local New Orleans Antifa.

And more pictures just for the fun of it:

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. left, with US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in Moscow on Wednesday. Tillerson is on a fool’s errand. Is he the right man for the job?

Things are coming to a head. Tillerson is in Moscow. He has spent time in Moscow in the past doing business as head of Exxon Mobile. He knows Putin, and to know Putin is to respect Putin. While it had been reported that he would only meet with Foreign Minister Lavrov and not President Putin, he did meet with President Putin. All hope is not lost.

CNN:

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, as a diplomatic rift between the two nations deepens over a chemical attack in Syria.

The meeting is taking place at the Kremlin along with Tillerson’s counterpart, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, the US State Department and Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed.

The talks come after Lavrov issued Tillerson a warning Wednesday against any further US strikes on the Syrian regime.

…

The two top diplomats had sat down together earlier in the day to work through the fallout of last week’s chemical attack in northwestern Syria, which plunged the old Cold War enemies to a new low.

…

Putin said in an interview with state-run MIR television earlier Wednesday that relations with the US had deteriorated.

“The working level of confidence in Russian-American relations, especially at the military level, under the administration of Donald Trump, has not improved, but rather worsened.”

A White House memo to the press last week mentioned a meeting between Putin and Tillerson had been scheduled, but the Kremlin appeared to have rolled back on the talks as the Syria rift worsened.

Putin has traditionally met with the US Secretary of State on their visits to Moscow. And Tillerson and Putin are no strangers — Putin in 2013 awarded the Order of Friendship to Tillerson when he was CEO of ExxonMobil, the highest honor Russia gives to foreigners.

For the Kremlin to have previously announced that Putin would not meet with Tillerson was a snub designed to send a message. The fact that he is now meeting with Tillerson means that he has a very blunt message to send to President Trump that must arrive unfiltered and undiluted. Trump better listen.

Putin is OUR GUY now.

Lavrov gave Tillerson an icy welcome Wednesday, diving straight into Moscow’s grievances with Washington in what would usually be warm opening remarks.

Russia “saw some very troubling actions regarding the attack on Syria,” he said, according to an official Russian interpreter.

“We believe it is fundamentally important not to let these actions happen again.”

The White House on Tuesday accused Russia and Syria of carrying out a confusion campaign over who was responsible for the chemical attack. Russian President Vladimir Putin has made comparisons between the US response and its 2003 intervention in Iraq, calling it a “tedious” story.

The deaths have been widely blamed on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, but Russia has denied the regime carried out the attack.

Notice that fake news CNN used the passive voice “have been widely blamed” as a way of avoiding presenting a single shred of evidence that Assad has any responsibility for the “gassing of babies,” which would make absolutely no sense unless he woke up one day and said to himself “I have been struggling to save my country from vicious terrorist invaders for the past six years and am now on the verge of victory. Maybe I should just let ISIS and Israel take over the country after all…”

As laughable as it seems, the “U.S. intelligence community” is basing its advice to Trump on ISIS Twitter and on YouTube videos uploaded by anti-Assad terrorists.

Lavrov also complained about the mixed messages coming out of Washington on the Trump administration’s policy on Syria, with the US envoy to the UN, Nikki Haley, making clear Assad should have no future in Syria as Tillerson took a softer line.

Nimrata Randhawa has no future in America.

“I will be frank that we had a lot of questions regarding a lot of very ambiguous as well as contradictory ideas on a whole plethora of bilateral and international agenda coming from Washington,” Lavrov said.

He hit back at remarks Tillerson made a day earlier that Russia would have to decide whether it was with the US and the West in standing up against Assad, or against them, describing the comments as “wrong choices.”

…

It was a hostile start to the long-awaited meeting, which began with the two men entering a conference room making very little eye contact.

…

Washington has said that Russia and Syria are trying to “confuse the world community about who is responsible for using chemical weapons against the Syrian people in this and earlier attacks.”Russia claims the Syrian regime is being unfairly blamed for the chemical attack, and on Wednesday Putin said that the attack was “simply staging” and a provocation, in his interview with MIR.

Putin suggested on Monday that forces within Syria were plotting more chemical attacks, including near Damascus, that they intended to pin on the Syrian regime.

Moscow earlier claimed that the deaths had been caused when a Syrian regime airstrike hit a chemical weapons stockpile held by terrorist groups.

It is so obvious that Trump is being Jewed into a war for Israel and its ISIS proxy. Even a substantial number of the American sheeple can see this, despite saturation propaganda by CNN and the rest of the Zio media. Nobody knows what is going through Trump’s mind. Let’s just hope that OUR GUY Putin can get Tillerson to take the message of sanity back to Trump.

Following the chemical attack, US President Donald Trump ordered a Tomahawk missile strike against the Shayrat airfield in Syria, from where the US says the aircraft took off to launch the attack.

The US claims the strike destroyed 20% of Syria’s operational aircraft, a figure disputed by Russia’s Defense Ministry.

But the White House has also caused a great deal of confusion — the US position on Syria is still woefully unclear, as Trump has made no comprehensive statement on Syria since last week’s missile attack. He has made some comments to Fox News on Syria, saying he did not plan for the US to be drawn fully into the Syrian war.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer has said that the Trump administration would respond if the Assad regime used barrel bombs against his own people, something that has been a regular occurrence in the six-year civil war. Aides later clarified that this “did not signal a change in administration policy.”

Haley, the UN envoy, said removing Assad from power was a priority, whereas Tillerson said he merely “hoped” the Syrian people would choose to oust Assad and reiterated that defeating ISIS was the US’ first priority in Syria.

US Defense Secretary James Mattis has said that while defeating ISIS was first priority, further use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime would not be tolerated and could warrant additional military action.

“If they use chemical weapons, they are going to pay a very, very stiff price,” Mattis told reporters during his first Pentagon briefing as secretary.

The fact is that the Trump Administration does not have a policy. It has a power struggle, and right now the same Zionist neocon Jews, who were the biggest Never Trumpers during the election, seem to have the upper hands.

Heads must roll.

But whose?

If Bannon is out, that would likely mean a complete derailment of the Trump Train. Hopefully Tillerson will bring back a persuasive message from OUR GUY.

Like a lot of us, I am not at all happy about this airstrike. But I am not ready to throw in the towel. My narrow area of expertise, such that it is, has to do with story—what makes a narrative work and what detracts from it, which character traits and plot twists will serve the storyline, how to tell the best possible tale so that it comes to life and resonates.

Typically, when folks around me were talking politics, my role would be that of the listener. If I spoke, it would be to ask a question. But that changed with this last election cycle and particularly in the wake of Trump’s inauguration. I’m sure most will understand why.

Since the start of his presidency, Trump’s biggest, most immediate, and most formidable enemy has been the mainstream media. Every day has been a red-hot battle of two differing narratives—the story that Trump is pushing vs. the one that the MSM is broadcasting.

There are lots of statesmen that can spin a good yarn. That’s an essential part of a successful politician’s bag of tricks. But the key word is “spin”. Few in Washington have ever been able to do much more than that. The MSM as it exists today has never stood opposite a president that could hold a candle to their Hollywood story-crafting skills the way that Trump can.

This is one of the reasons that the mainstream media hates Trump so much: he does more than spin—he’s a politician who can write his own scripts. The immigration problem wasn’t a thing until Trump came along. Skewed trade treaties weren’t talked about before Trump made them an issue. The Russians were the bad guys by default until Trump came along with some inspired counter casting and people began to realize it didn’t have to be.

Obama was usually a good boy, but the media skewered him when he was bad. Bush was mostly a bad boy, so the media skewered him all the time. Yet when the media tried to skewer Trump, he skewered them back. They still seem to be wondering how he got that power. (Part of the answer, of course, is that while Obama and Bush were studying business and law at Harvard and Yale, Trump was spending time on studio sets, watching and learning.)

There will be much talk over the next few hours and days about what happened, what went wrong, and why Trump did an about-face by calling sixty cruise missiles into service. Was the president tricked? Was he overpowered? Did he make a mistake? Has he been a shill all along? Or was this part of some master plan? These questions will seek to discover the truth of the April 6th event.

But in the long run, more important than the event itself, will be this question: whose narrative—Trump’s or the MSM’s—will most successfully explain and contain it? To get a feel for where the two narratives are likely to go and which might win out, let’s put on our creative writing hats and think like storytellers.

What is the moral of the story that the mainstream media is currently pushing? What is the fundamental thematic argument that CNN and MSMBC and the New York Times are making with every new chapter they introduce? Since the inauguration it’s been something like this: Trump’s a goofball, Trump doesn’t know what he’s doing, he’s in over his head, he doesn’t understand.

(There was a time, of course, prior to Trump’s inauguration when the message might have been he’s pure evil. And there’s also the “sneaky secret spy” one that comes back every now and then that casts Trump as a clandestine Russian operative. But neither play quite as well today as Trump’s a bumbling fool and he’s failing. Hence CNN audiences get to sit through endless loops about Trump’s cabinet and legislation falling apart, Trump being sued for his past incompetence, and Trump being too klutzy to even walk down a flight of stairs without gripping the handrail. Post election SNL sketches depict Trump as the clueless dope who has to Google “ISIS” while a Bannon in black plays the true evil genius who pulls the strings.)

Hence, we can probably expect to find the MSM leaning considerably on terms like “foolhardy” and “ill-conceived” when they describing the cruise missile deployment. We’re also likely to see “experts” called in to explain how Trump’s plan of action was the worst possible course forward, how he’s unwittingly destabilized the entire balance of power, and how the whole situation may well snowball into World War III all because Trump didn’t listen to knowledgable advisors and acted without understanding what he was doing. This would best support and expand upon the established elements in the MSM story.

Syria Strike: The Movie as presented by the mainstream media promises to be a dark and unsettling piece of social criticism, one of those ridiculously sad stories that would also be funny were it not so tragic. The American president, the film will no doubt argue, is in over his head, and our entire species is now in jeopardy because of this. MSM audiences will also experience the dramatic devastation that the missiles have caused. There’s likely to be loss of life, divided families, and tears. It will not matter that the collateral damage was unintentional—it will be heartbreaking while completely unnecessary. If only the commander in chief had been just a bit more competent…

However, Trump will already be working on his own version of that same film property. For clues on what to expect from the Trump production, let’s recall what the message of the Trump narrative is. Since even before the inauguration, it’s been: I’m making things better; I understand the problems and I have a plan; relax, I got this.

So, thinking again like a writer, how best to fit the Syria strike into that narrative? It needs a happy ending. Tragedy along the way is forgiven if there’s a happy ending. To the extent that Trump understands this, he’ll know he has to offer a big positive payoff.

We can start with the cruise missiles, but this can’t take the country or the world into war. It has to end quickly, and when it’s over it has to have been about more than just retribution for some chemical gas attacks. Remember, the future hasn’t happened yet. Trump can write this. He very likely has some idea of where he wants it to go.

So let’s brainstorm. What if it turned out (hypothetically, of course—we’re just spitballing) that rogue elements were hiding out in the airbase? (Needless to say, we can account for Trump not reporting this ahead of time because you don’t telegraph your motives to the enemy.) Now our president has just saved the lives of countless Syrian civilians and when we play the airstrike back it wasn’t really that bad because of these rogue elements. What if it was still a bad airstrike, but the whole thing ends with Putin and Assad and Trump all in a room signing a trilateral cooperative treaty for the establishment of safe zones and a collaborative plan for stabilizing the country?

There are ways that this can work out and Trump’s narrative can resolve itself into a feel-good heroic tale that would beat the MSM product hands down. We may or may not see this happen. But my guess would be that Trump is aware he has to deliver a payoff and is already on the case.

On April 6th, Trump made a decisive move that has changed order of things. It’s a move that you and I may not today understand and a move that even Trump may not have completely thought through, who knows? But it’s worth remembering that Trump, unlike no other president in recent memory, understands narrative and has a keen sense of what works and is the author of his own scripts.

Sometimes it’s easier to set things straight after knocking into them. There’s more resistance when everything’s at rest, but with crisis comes opportunity. By upsetting the balance, Trump has bought a big bucket of criticism in the short term, but he’s also gained a handful of new options that he didn’t have before.

If Trump finds a way to payoff this moment of insecurity and dread by hammering down a stronger and more lasting signal for stability and peace it would be just another example of the same pattern he has exhibited repeatedly since he announced his candidacy. He often seems to lose his footing. From the ground it looks as though he’s kicking away from the very rock he’s attempting to scale. But when the ropes stop swinging and we’ve all caught our breath, it always seems that somehow he’s higher up the mountain.

I’m not promising that it will definitely happen this time. I’m just saying that I’ve watched Trump pull off the very sort of feat I’m describing numerous times. And when he’s come back yet again, it’s hard not to think he had it all planned. Because he never seemed to break a sweat. We did, but he didn’t.

Bottom line: I think that Trump genuinely and intuitively understands narrative and payoff. He’s a proven expert at the old Hollywood third-act turnaround, of seizing victory from the jaws of defeat.

Introduction: Why Obamacare was a failure

Seven years ago there was a broad consensus in America that the our healthcare system was broken. Tens of millions of people were uninsured, countless millions more were underinsured, having insurance that they could hardly use because of high deductibles and other out of pocket expenses. Furthermore, health insurance premiums were rising at much higher than the rate of inflation, and policies were leaving more out of pocket expenses for consumers to pick up. The situation was obviously unsustainable.

While it is true that under Obamacare some people have benefited greatly, and the number of people without insurance has decreased. On the other hand, the ranks of the underinsured has skyrocketed as middle class people have seen their costs increase and are foregoing appointments and procedures in order to avoid hefty out of pocket costs. And the taxpayer is picking up a bill that grows with every year as the system had inadequate cost containment mechanisms. Meanwhile, premiums and deductibles are skyrocketing. A collapse is imminent. All Obamacare did was redistribute the winners and losers in the healthcare game while postponing any real solution by at least seven years. It therefore must be considered a complete failure.

The debate over Obamacare, both before and since it’s passage, has been largely partisan and ideological, with serious policy analysis taking a back seat. During the election campaign, President Trump voiced its determination to repeal and replace Obamacare, although he was short on specifics. He stated that he wants a system that will cover everyone while bringing down costs. House Speaker Paul Ryan revealed a replacement plan that does neither, but will leave President Trump on the hook when the system collapses, which is only a matter of time without a real solution.

But a real solution that meets the President’s objectives if possible. Having formerly worked for a major insurance company and having conducted a major study of the Obamacare system, I have gained a rare perspective and expertise on the nuts and bolts of the Obamacare system. What I will do in this policy proposal is to utilize that experience to analyze the economic and social shortcomings of the present Obamacare system, explain why the ideologically driven market-based alternatives are not the answer, and then finally outline a proposal for a new national system that will optimize economic rationality, social fairness, and political logic.

The economic and social shortcomings of the present Obamacare system

Failure to contain costs

Obamacare was bound to fail first and foremost because it did not include adequate cost containment mechanisms. Costs have been rising in the healthcare sector for a variety of reasons, some of which could be contained better and some which are difficult to contain. Some of the major reasons for rising costs include the aging of the population and advances in medical technology. Older people are statistically more expensive to care for, and new and improved technology tends to add costs, although prices for many inputs like semiconductors have been falling over time and technologies that improve efficiency can also lower costs. Still, many things that have become common place over the past decades, like MRIs and radiation therapy, have added costs that did not used to exist.

Failure to discourage unhealthy behavior

In order to rein in rising costs, a number of things must be done. First is to discourage unhealthy behavior. There has been a deterioration of public health as evidenced by rising rates of obesity and the spread of lifestyle-linked diseases like diabetes. Poor diet and lifestyle choices as well as greater social acceptance of drug use, promiscuity, and male homosexuality add to public health challenges. These factors have contributed significantly to healthcare spending, and while they could be reversed it would take much more than the passage of a new health insurance law to do so. Still, taxing these behaviors where ever possible and earmarking the revenue towards offsetting the resulting health care costs would be a good first step.

Failure to negotiate with big pharma or reign in malpractice abuse

However, there are certain factors in the rise in health care costs that could have been addressed by the ACA but were not. These include prices for prescription drugs that are higher than prices for the same drugs in countries like Canada. Also, there has been abuse of the medical malpractice legal system, and some tort reform is necessary.

Failure to consolidate risk pools

The biggest savings would come from placing as many people as possible in one big risk pool. Currently, there is a plethora of plans that chop of the risk pool into small parts that cannot capitalize on economies of scale, have poor bargaining power vis-a-vis providers, and require great redundancies in administrative expenses by insurance companies and regulatory costs by government.

Failure to get Wall Street out of the picture

The burden of advertising and high executive compensation may be exaggerated by opponents of the private insurance system, but what burden they do inflict certainly outweighs any benefits they might be imagined to provide. Also, given that the United States is spending 1/6 of its GDP on healthcare, the notion that we can afford to have for-profit insurance companies that need to set aside 5% or so of premium revenue for investor dividends is makes no sense. Obamacare actually allows for for-profit insurers to pay out 5% less of their premium revenues than non-profit insurers like the Blues, which must pay 85% of every premium dollar towards patient health care expenditures (medical loss ratio). We cannot afford to let Wall Street take its pound of flesh.

Why the ideologically driven market-based or “Medicare for all” alternatives are not the answer

Market-based solutions

Obamacare has been routinely condemned by Republicans and others on the right as being a “government take-over” of the healthcare system and “socialized medicine.” Neither of these charges are on the mark. “Socialized medicine” actually refers to government-owned and run hospitals and provider outlets, like one finds in the British National Health System or even at the Veterans Administration. Obamacare does not even represent “socialized insurance,” as the insurance obtained through the Health Insurance Marketplace is from private companies, not government entities. In fact, progressive opponents of the ACA back in 2009 and 2010 blasted the ACA as a give-away to the insurance industry and called instead for a single payer “Medicare for all” system, or at least a public option whereby consumers could chose a policy offered by a government entity.

Competition in insurance leads to LESS efficiency, not more

The problem with market-based solutions based on competition in the health insurance industry is that competition does not work the same way in insurance as it does in manufacturing or service industries. In other industries, competition fuels innovations and continual improvements in the production of the product. While the health insurance industry has taken on the aspect of a protection racket in that it negotiates prices with providers who will otherwise charge uninsured consumers ridiculous bills with no basis in the cost of providing the service, the core function of insurance is the spreading of risk throughout a risk pool. This is done through statistical probability. No amount of competition can change the mathematical laws of probability.

Massive redundancies, less bargaining power

Ironically, especially before Obamacare, competition in the health insurance industry is more likely to lead to LESS efficiency and higher costs. Without being capable of improving the spread of risk, which is entirely a matter of statistical probability, the insurers instead strive to manipulate the risk pool itself. This can be done through dividing it up geographically, and before Obamacare to a great extent it was done via the exclusion of people with various pre-existing conditions. The result has been massive and costly redundancy in administration and regulation as each insurer in each state issues countless policies in various parts of the state with different designs for individuals, small groups, and large groups and marketed to emphasize lower premiums, richer benefits, stronger networks, and what not. In addition to unnecessarily inflating premiums, consumers are faced with far more choices than they can possibly wrap their heads around, and are thus LESS likely to wind up with a policy that makes sense for them than if they had just a few choices.

Markets cannot function without price information

Furthermore, there can be no functioning market for health care services because the prices for these services are unknown at the time of purchase. Typically it is only when the bill arrives from the provider that the consumer has any idea of the cost for a particular service. No one could shop for a car without knowing how much the car will cost until a month after it is purchased. Likewise, a rational health insurance market is hard to develop because the value of different policy designs are impossible for the typical consumer to assess. Even when actuarial values (a measure of what percentage of services received by enrollees are paid by the insurer, on average) are known, they are based on standard populations, and for a given individual who may not conform to the population average, policies with the same actuarial value may be completely unequal in their ability to pay for that person’s medical benefits. For instance, for a person who consumers a great deal of healthcare, a policy with a higher deductible but a lower out of pocket maximum would be better than a policy with a low deductible but a high out of pocket maximum, even if their actuarial values are identical. Few consumers have the ability to make a meaning assessment of their policy options.

Medicare for all

This is not to say that Medicare for all is the answer, although it does have a great deal of economic logic. One of the problems of Obamacare has been the social unfairness of it. In addition to the expansion of Medicaid to make it available to most people with incomes under 138% of Federal Poverty Level FPL, Obamacare tax credits and cost sharing subsidies were so generously skewed towards lower income people that many actually find moving from Obamacare to Medicare a hardship. However, the tax credits and especially the cost sharing subsidies fade out rapidly for people with incomes above 200% of FPL, so many people with modest incomes derive little benefit from policies even if they can afford their share of the premiums, while people over 250% of FPL get no help with out of pocket costs, and what tax credits may be available to some of these people (mostly the older ones) suddenly disappear at 400% of FPL. Meanwhile, premiums, deductibles, and other out-of-pocket costs rose sharply, due to the additional Obamacare-mandated benefits and the abolition of pre-existing condition exclusions, and also due to the decades-old trend towards higher costs that Obamacare did not sufficiently address. Tax credits largely kept pace with premium increases for eligible lower income people, but many middle income people have been hit hard.

Wealth transfer from more productive to less productive people

So Obamacare can be looked at as a massive transfer of resources from middle and upper income taxpayers and premium payers to lower income recipients. While this may seem in line with the redistribution priorities held by many progressives, the fact is that many middle-income hard working people are finding it more difficult to afford medical attention than low income people, who may or may not be hard working. Reinforced by the different demographics of these income categories, a great deal of resentment resulted.

Who pays for Medicare for all?

Medicare for all does have an economic logic, in that putting everyone in the same risk pool provides economies of scale in administration, reduces regulatory burdens associated with the current myriad of policies, and gives the single risk pool incredible bargaining power vis-a-vis providers. Still, there are some very practical problems with it. First of all, the existing Medicare system is, at least in principle, largely prepaid. Eligibility for Part A (which covers doctors office visits) is usually based on years of a worker or his or her spouse having paid payroll taxes. Part B (which covers hospitals) is partially funded by a premium of about $130 (typically deducted from a Social Security check) for most people, which is higher than what lower income people pay for their Obamacare policies that cover doctors, hospitals, AND drugs. The rest of Medicare is mostly funded through general tax revenue.

Certainly, it could be extended to everyone, but other people didn’t prepay Part A, and other people don’t have a Social Security check to deduct premiums from. Many might also say that other people who did not spend a career paying taxes are not as deserving of having their insurance underwritten by general tax revenue. Still, theoretically premiums and additional revenue sources could be devised that would be socially fair and would allow the rest of the population to enroll in Medicare. But the problem is that if the numbers are not right the first time, the whole system could become destabilized and seniors could find themselves at more risk than they have experienced in half a century. This makes it risky and politically difficult.

The current Medicare for all bill soaks the rich

HR676 is introduced into every session of Congress by Representative John Conyers. It provides free health care to every person residing in the United States, and prohibits the use of social security numbers in enrollment. Under Obamacare social security numbers were used in an effort to keep illegal aliens out of the system, so the intent of banning their use is clear. It calls for the following funding sources:

(1) from existing sources of government revenues for health care,

(2) by increasing personal income taxes on the top 5% of income earners,

(3) by instituting a progressive excise tax on payroll and self-employment income,

(4) by instituting a tax on unearned income, and

(5) by instituting a tax on stock and bond transactions.

(https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/676, https://www.healthcare-now.org/legislation/hr-676/)

With an underlying assumption that the poor never bear any responsibility for their situation, absolutely nothing is asked of them in return for equal access to a healthcare system that even under the rosiest scenarios will make up a tenth or so of the GDP. A welfare mom could continue to produce children, each with a different father, raising them on junk food and soda pop while spending the bulk of her welfare check on cigarettes and beer. Even so, the benefits of the single risk pool would be so great that for most people this would still probably be an improvement over the status quo. However, the thought of providing something of such great value for free with no questions asked when it is plainly evident that a significant share of the poor are in their situation due to their own dysfunction has prevented HR676 from ever gaining enough support to make it a possibility.

What would be preferable would be some sort of national health insurance system that has a single risk pool for everyone involved but also requires as much as possible for everyone to contribute to the system. Part of the logic of drawing financial resources broadly from the entire population rather than soaking the rich is that if the people who are using the system are also paying for it, then the elite will not be able to take it away from us later. Medicare would remain separate, at least until such time as the new system has proven itself successful and stable. Group and other existing private policies could remain, but a successful national system would certainly reduce or eliminate the economic logic for private policies. And just as Jesus said, the poor shall always be with us. Medicaid would be transformed into a vehicle to help the poor afford their share of the costs in the new system.

Outline for a new system that will optimize economic rationality, social fairness, and political logic.

Healthcare is not a right, it’s a priority

So what would this national system look like? First of all, in order to get passed it has to contain elements of fairness, both to the enrollees and to the people paying for it. Something that looks like an unsustainable, budget-busting welfare program wouldn’t and shouldn’t be passed by Congress. While the claim by many on the left that “healthcare is a right” has an emotional appeal, the provision of healthcare takes up one-sixth of our GDP. In other words, one-sixth of the work that people in America do is to provide healthcare. Nobody can claim the right to have others work for them. Thus, the mantra should be “healthcare is not a right, it’s a priority.”

National Health Insurance is completely incompatible with open borders

The minimum objective is to provide everyone with reasonable access to healthcare while not burdening the productive population with oppressive costs. Everyone with any ability to do so should be expected to help shoulder the costs. And one thing that requires emphasis from the start is that no national health insurance system is possible in a situation of open borders. Large-scale immigration of low-skilled workers with large families is absolutely incompatible with a national health insurance system. The idea of a transfer of wealth from the rich to the poor has been an obstacle to the establishment of a national health insurance system for 70 years now, although any system, including the pre-Obamacare system, is bound to include a certain amount of wealth redistribution. However, the idea of a transfer of wealth from middle-class working families to the Guatemalan or Somali peasantry is a complete nonstarter. Given the already enormous costs associated with the quality of health care we have come to expect and the fact that low income people simply cannot contribute enough to an insurance system to actually cover their costs, no serious person can expect any national health insurance system succeed unless we clamp down on immigration, especially unskilled Third World people.

Two-part system

Mandatory Part A

The best way to set up a national health insurance system would be to divide it into two parts, like Medicare. However, rather than dividing it based on type of services (doctors office/hospital/prescription drugs), the new system should be divided based on how it is funded. Part A should include the most cost efficient and the most necessary elements.

Adopt Medicare fee schedule

The absolutely most cost-effective element would be to extend Medicare medical service pricing to the national health insurance system. Medicare currently establishes a fee schedule for all services and procedures, updated periodically with input from providers. If providers insist that they do not make enough money on Medicare pricing and cannot afford to offer it to all patients, then some reasonable mark up, perhaps 10%, could be added. But just as the wheel does not need to be re-invented, the work of negotiating prices, which is currently so redundant in the health care system, should be left to Medicare. Indeed, as President Trump has often stated, Medicare should also negotiate with prescription drug companies. Everyone residing in the United States legally should be issued a discount card which allows them to receive medical services and prescriptions based on the Medicare fee schedule. This major first step would add virtually nothing to the budget, but would go a long way towards reining in costs.

Preventative coverage

Part A should also include the preventative services currently mandated by Obamacare. These annual physicals, mammograms, immunizations, etc. are relatively low cost and are extremely useful in preventing much more expensive ailments down the road, and are thus among the most cost effective measures. While the provision of these services could well cost a few hundreds of dollars per year per person, it should not cost thousands, and it is certainly not unreasonable to expect even poor people to contribute to some extent towards these costs.

Catastrophic coverage

Finally, Part A should include catastrophic coverage, meaning all costs incurred after some high deductible. Currently, the deductible for Obamacare catastrophic policies is over $7000 for an individual, and twice that for a family. The logic to catastrophic coverage is to at least prevent a middle-class family from falling into bankruptcy due to medical bills. Poor people may not have the ability to raise $7000 to pay for medical bills, but usually have little to lose from bankruptcy.

In essence, Part A would resemble an Obamacare catastrophic policy with some important caveats. First of all, the medical bills from any given procedure that the consumer would be on the hook for would be much smaller than is currently the case because they would be based on Medicare pricing. Also, there would be no networks for these services.

Under Obamacare, catastrophic policies, even for young people, are still rather expensive at well over $100 per month. While most people in a given year do not have enough medical bills to meet the high deductible, those few that do wind up costing enough to keep premiums high for everyone. The key under this plan is that Medicare pricing would lead to fewer people meeting the deductible and lower spending on those that do. As a result, the cost of financing Part A should remain reasonable.

Part A funding

About 35% of the funding for Obamacare comes from taxes on insurance companies or suppliers who can pass on the taxes to healthcare consumers. (See Appendix A.) These higher expenses enable or even require insures to raise premiums, which then require greater subsidies from the government, which then require more tax revenue. This is a death spiral that makes the system unsustainable in the long run.

In MAGAcare, all citizens and legal residents with an eligible visa status would be enrolled in Part A with no premium. The program should be financed by earmarked excise taxes on items that lead to poor health as well as a small but broad sales tax to make sure that every one is contributing at least something.

Unhealthy goods taxes

The first category of taxes, those on unhealthy products and activities, should be set in such a way as to cover the healthcare costs associated with their consumption, but no more. People partaking in unhealthy habits should not expect others to pay the medical bills that result. On the other hand, one only has to think back to Soviet President Gorbachev’s anti-alcoholism campaign to understand the dangers of overtaxing a vice that people use anyway. The Soviet government had become so dependent on alcohol tax revenue that the initial success of Gorbachev’s anti-drinking drive almost wrecked government finances. If accurately set, the products, tobacco for instance, can be combated with public health campaigns without destabilizing the financing of the national health insurance system. Products subject to such taxation should not be limited to tobacco and alcohol, but anything that can have a measurable adverse impact on health, including unhealthy foods and pornography (which would have to be taxed at the production level rather than the consumption level).

Congressman Jason Chaffetz, who is pushing the Ryan plan, recently remarked that poor people should have to choose between insurance and iPhones. Some observers point out that smartphones have become such a necessity nowadays, especially for young people, that it is not reasonable to make the poor choose between insurance and iPhones. Certainly, the point of national insurance is to not to allow people the option of opting out of health insurance, seeing as we live in a society where nobody is turned away from the emergency room. But beer will be taxed, and it is not unreasonable to make the poor choose between smart phones and beer.

Broad consumption tax

Not all health problems are caused by beer, cigarettes, and junk food, so a broad sales tax should be levied to raise enough revenue to cover the rest of Part A. Most states already have a sales tax, although they differ in whether they are levied on all products or exempt necessities such as food and clothing. For ease of administration, the rate of the earmarked sales tax could be adjusted from state to state depending on which products are exempt. For states with no sales tax that do not want to implement one, some equivalent alternative could be found. The exact size of each tax would have to be established by a body with the means to do to, such as the Congressional Budget Office.

Optional Part B

Insurance companies could act as agents, not underwriters

Part B of the system would be voluntary and in principle would require a premium. It would be modeled on the Medicare supplement plans (Medigap plans) that have been sold to Medicare beneficiaries for decades. The Medigap plan policy designs are established by the government, and currently there are 10 plans available. The companies that sell them cannot alter the designs. However, whereas the Medigap plans are sold and underwritten by private health insurance companies, the proposed Part B plans would not be underwritten by private companies. The insurance companies could act as agents of the government to sign people up for the plans and receive a commission for doing so (thus avoiding the need to set up a new bureaucracy to oversee enrollment), but the premiums would be paid to the national system and the national system would pay providers. All the plans, regardless of which company enrolled the consumer, would have a single risk pool.

Single risk pool, multiple choices

The logic is to eliminate the motivation for cherry picking and chopping up the risk pool in order to maximize profits. The larger the risk pool the greater the economies of scale in terms of administration. Also, by having the government design a limited number of plans, the states would be relieved of the considerable burden of regulating the myriad of plan designs submitted each year by the dozens of insurers that operate in their states. It would also eliminate entire bureaucracies within the insurance companies that design the plans and guide them through the regulatory process. It would eliminate legions of insurance coding and billing employees at providers and insurers. This would represent an enormous savings to the system. Of course, a large number of people would lose their jobs, but they would not lose their insurance. And since their work was part of the waste of the old system, it would be no more of a burden (and a temporary one at that) to pay them to look and train for other work as to keep them in their current jobs.

Under the current system people often are confronted with more choices than they can possibly wrap their heads around, making it impossible for them to make a truly informed and rational decision. It would be a benefit to the consumer to have a limited number of genuine choices that make sense for people in different situations. Many employers who currently provide insurance would want to offer to pay for one of the plans, and they could be incentivized to do so in order to maximize enrollment.

No pre-existing condition exclusions, no enrollment periods

These Part B plans would be guaranteed issue, meaning that no one can be denied due to health conditions. Also, enrollment would be open all year long, although people who go without Part B coverage would face a penalty when they do decide to enroll. The moral hazard of going without insurance until services are needed and only then enrolling has until now required companies to restrict enrollment periods or impose medical underwriting. However, because everyone will have Part A catastrophic coverage, the financial risk of this moral hazard will be greatly limited and can be covered by the levying of a surcharge on premiums for a period of time, a period of time in which the consumer would be “locked in” they way they are with a cell-phone contract, with legal or tax penalties should they stop paying premiums before the end of the surcharge period.

Special plans for low-income people

These plans would likely be priced based on age and geography, although this is ultimately a political decision. Many low income people would still find the plans unaffordable. A residual Medicaid system, utilizing some but not all of existing fiscal resources devoted to the program, could provide assistance to low income people seeking to enroll in these plans or in a special plan eligible only to qualified low-income people. Aside from that, the Medicaid system will become unnecessary, and the rest of its funding sources could go towards subsidizing Part B for everyone. The current tax deduction for health insurance premiums could be maintained or modified to lessen the burden for middle-income people.

Like Medigap policies, these Part B policies would have no networks.

Possible limited network plans

In the 1990’s the health insurance companies successfully lobbied the government to outsource the administration of Medicare to them in the form of Medicare Advantage policies. Unlike Medigap, where the patient shows the doctor’s office two cards – one from traditional government-run Medicare and the other from the Medigap insurance carrier, with the doctor billing Medicare for what it will pay and the Medigap company for the remainder of the bill – with Medicare Advantage the government provides the insurance company with a monthly payment, which is usually augmented by a premium from the consumer, and then all transactions with providers go through the insurance company and not the government, although the patient typically faces a copay or some other charge. Medicare Advantage plans often restrict patients to a network of providers, with which the company presumably can negotiate lower prices.

Insurance companies claim to be able to administer medical benefits so efficiently that they can add prescription drugs, vision, dental and certain other benefits, sometimes without even charging the patient a premium. In fact, there is some evidence that the government is actually overpaying the insurance companies, and this is what allows them to add the extra benefits.

Ideally, the national health insurance system would operate just with Part A and Part B as described above. However, that mostly leaves the politically powerful insurance companies out of the picture, which is something they are sure to resist. If politically necessary, something similar to Medicare Advantage plans could be allowed whereby consumers would have the choice to enroll in plans with insurance companies that would be largely paid for by the government, Medicare Advantage-style, with some additional premium from the consumer also being possible. These could include, or even be limited to, special plans for low-income people similar to current D-SNP plans available to Medicare-Medicaid dual eligibles. If the companies can successfully utilize networks of providers to hold down costs, then this could become an alternative especially from lower income people and medical assistance recipients. However, care must be taken to make sure that the government does not overpay insurers for these policies, which have the adverse effect of chopping up the risk pool.

Conclusion

Currently some 16% of the American GDP goes towards healthcare, which is more than double practically any other country. Even government spending on healthcare (Medicaid, Medicare, CHIP, VA, Indian Affairs, Tricare, etc.) is much greater than almost any country with nationalized health insurance. By moving to the national health insurance system described in this paper, the United States will realize enormous savings. (https://data.oecd.org/healthres/health-spending.htm)

Even if we could just half-way close the gap between us and the number two country in terms of per capital spending on health care (Luxemburg), it would represent a savings to the economy of some $250bn per year. If we could achieve parity with countries like Japan, France, and Canada, we would cut our healthcare expenditures in half.

This national healthcare proposal would save enormous amounts of money through the following means:

• Eliminating unneeded or redundant work within insurance companies, provider offices, and state regulatory organs.

• Encouraging preventive care that reduces more costly future problems.

• Creating a giant risk pool that capitalizes on economies of scale, bargaining power vis-a-vis providers, and the elimination of administrative expenses by insurance companies and regulatory costs by government.

• Containing costs through reliance on the Medicare fee schedule and government negotiation of drug prices.

It would meet the main objectives of healthcare access advocates by:

• Guaranteeing that everyone has preventative care, catastrophic coverage, and reasonable prices.

• Being affordable for middle- and lower-income people.

• Establishing lower prices for health care services that are known in advance.

• Eliminating medical underwriting and pre-existing condition exclusions while containing moral hazard.

It would address the concerns of fiscal conservatives by:

• Not establishing a large new bureaucracy

• Making sure that everyone, including low income people with poor life style choices, will be contributing to the system

• Financing the system through earmarked sales taxes and premiums with limited subsidies and tax write-offs, thus reducing dependence on existing revenue sources

It would address the concerns of social conservatives by:

• Minimizing the wealth redistribution aspect of the health insurance system.

• Encourages personal responsibility, healthy living, and giving no one a free ride.

• Not being accessible to undocumented aliens

This system was devised with economic and social rationality foremost in mind, with consideration given to political realities. It represents the best last chance to move to the kind of national health insurance systems that all other advanced economies have adopted. Without such a move, it is just a matter of time (and likely not a very long time) before the entire health care system falls apart. Such a collapse would have a devastating impact on the economy as a whole, on social cohesion, and even the integrity of the American state.

Appendix A

$60 billion from an annual fee on health insurance providers

$32 billion from a 40% tax on health insurance policies which cost more than $10,200 for an individual or $27,500 for a family, per year

$27 billion from an annual fee on manufacturers and importers of branded drugs

$20 billion from a 2.3% tax on manufacturers and importers of certain medical devices

(http://alignamerica.com/node/62)

The student government at the University of Wisconsin has passed a resolution introduced by a black student that would allow blacks to attend the public university without paying tuition, room and board, or any fees, because of slavery ‘n sh*t.® Black applicants would not have to take the SAT or ACT standardized tests because they are an instrument of white supremacy. Ex-convicts would also get free everything.

Rather than being assessed on academic merit, blacks would get special credit for coming from a black neighborhood. Anyone who watched the Milwaukee riots last year surely thought “those kids shouldn’t be rioting in the streets. They should be rioting on campus, like in Berkeley!”

This is part of a growing trend to offer blacks a whole new level of free stuff because affirmative action for blacks has not been enough to close the intellectual achievement gap between blacks and whites. After all, universities aren’t about education. They are about diversity and inclusion.

Fox News:

The student government at the University of Wisconsin-Madison said on Wednesday that black students should be offered free tuition and housing because blacks were legally barred from education during slavery and university remains out of reach for black students today.