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  • at least $880 billion in cuts largely to Medicaid to help cover the cost of $4.5 trillion in tax breaks.

    Don’t forget the purpose. They’re not cutting spending to “balance the budget.” It’s to pay for a fraction of the tax cuts they’re giving to the parasite class.

    • I think from now on we should only use the term "parasite class" when talking about the elites, the 1%, the billionaires, the wealthy, the rich, the landlords. Make it a habit, maybe even trendy. Parasite class. I like it.

      • I've always thought of them as parasites. Like...

        An economy is a big system of trading money for services, round and round, do stuff trade money, do other stuff trade money.

        But we're like, "how come stuff is getting more expensive and we're making less money?"

        Because there's a problem in the system. There's a fat fucking leech... or a few hundred, amassing money, and the system further empowers those with money, giving them more control over the system. It's a very broken positive feedback loop upon itself.

        It's like a boat that's sprung leaks. It doesn't matter how much money you print or who you vote for if you don't plug the leaks from the system and prevent the fuckers from stabbing more holes in it, you need to simultaneously plug the holes, make sure nobody else is drowning, and slit the throats of the people doing it and get rid of them.

        The boat is going down and they're stabbing as many big holes as they can, as fast as they can. There will come a point VERY soon where it won't matter if they stop or not, this ship is gonna sink, and I'm afraid that we're seriously almost there. The United States won't last at all if they keep doing this for another year.

        We've been sick right now, fighting cancer for a long time, but it's metastasized into all branches of the government and a lot of the people, who now directly do the bidding of the parasites.

        So, I was thinking about this earlier, actually, and I was trying to conceptualize the differences in vibe between the problems that liberals and conservatives disagree with, and then the other types that reek of billionaire leeches. There are some minor differences that we have with normal conservatives: religion, family structures, traditions and such. But when capitalist leeches really take hold like this, it's an entirely different vibe of problems that society faces. You can tell when poor conservatives are starting to hurt from them too.

        It's really obvious if you think about it at all: when your political or socioeconomic beliefs no longer serve you, but serve the billionaires, it's SO obvious who's pulling the strings - if you're miserable (and it isn't just through empathy for others' problems), it's likely that you've reached the point in society, or rather, the point is society has reached YOU where it's starting to be shitty.

        I'm a believer that the vast majority of us want to do things and be productive somewhat, and self help and try to be happy and healthy. So, when the prices of goods and services and housing are out of your reach for whatever reason, that is a problem with society. It's really not complicated at all.

        Right now, we live in an insanely convoluted bandaid patchwork boat, because generations of assholes have been stabbing fucking holes in it and instead of guillotining the fuck out of the correct people and values in society, we've mistakenly corrupted what chances we've had at fixing them, and let it fester and grow. Now, it's super established to the point where the entire government is killing itself just so that the leeches can continue to grow. It's quite literally brain cancer of society.

        This country is on a fast track to being a living zombie while the parasites eat the brain and fully destroy the immune system. They don't know any better, it's just what they are.

        Another perspective is that maybe we'll get pulled into a truly sci-fi dystopia, where some mega-corporations explicitly own us all. Sure, the human system will have grown massive on a universal scale (if it doesn't destroy itself in the process). But it'll be a far cry from what we are capable of under a better system, one that actually harnesses each and every one of our potential to form our self revolving universe around ourselves, intelligently, rather than slaverly.

        Building things like the pyramids and skyscrapers is amazing. But imagine what could be accomplished with better resource management and a more egalitarian allocation of resources. A world where every person is well maintained and is given the ability of enlightenment and a full self awareness. That's the world I wanna live in, not this shitty future, full of oligarchs and oblivious, ruthless human greed.

        Maybe we do deserve world war three. But I know that the only way we're going to learn anything is through actual elevation of education systems, and not through pain, suffering, and war.

    • the tax cuts in 2017, saved the billionaires around 1.7-2.4trillion, this is double that. plus the continuing pillaging by trump.

  • How conveniently timed, right after Trump's EO to supposedly reduce medicine costs. Definitely no distractions or collusion there.

    • Whaaat, the EO that the stable genius claimed will save "TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS"?

      “It really does seem the plan is to ask manufacturers to voluntarily lower their prices to some point, which is not known,” Sachs said. “If they do not lower their prices to the desired point, HHS shall take other actions with a very long timeline, some of which could potentially, years in the future, lower drug prices"

      That executive order?

      You think he would write a toothless, narrowly-focused, bullshit executive order as, what?

      A distraction?

      From the massive cut to medicaid? That he and his entire party promised a thousand times over they would never do? That will absolutely, directly, fuck over not just Americans on medicaid - but all Americans? Everywhere?

      If you didn't know, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is far more than just an insurance provider! It's a critical part of our healthcare system.

      As most nursing homes rely almost exclusively on CMS funding, they also have to obey CMS rules if they want to get paid. Rules which - in a lot of states - are basically the only thing keeping grandma alive!

      The piss-poor quality of elder care in this country can and will plummet even further if CMS was ever reduced in scope and funding. That would be horrifying and evil.

      Can you imagine, a sitting president willfully dismantling a load-bearing pillar of our society like that? And lying about it? In writing?

      Were you aware that much of our problems in US healthcare - in one way or another - tie back to CMS not being allowed to negotiate drug prices at all? At least until recently in 2022, when democrats pushed a bill that at least allowed some drug prices to be negotiated?

      Which is why an executive order would ever be necessary - because CMS, the single largest American insurance provider, is legally not allowed to negotiate most of its drug prices, and instead just has to take what it gets?

      And you think a sitting President would do that? Write a bullshit executive order as a distraction? Set up a faux protest from major pharmaceutical companies, who have a vested interest in privatizing as much of the healthcare industry as possible?

      Pharmaceutical companies who will loudly complain about the executive order on maybe-potentially-in-the-future reduced drug prices, but for some reason keep funneling money into the Republican warchest?

      All while he further hamstrings the literal life support system for senior citizens in America? Claim he's saving us trillions of dollars, while quietly pulling the plug on our most vulnerable neighbors?

      You think he would pretend it's for our sake, even though the downstream effects of forcing people off health insurance inevitably leads to abandonment of all routine, preventative care? An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, you know!

      All those poor patients will then get debilitating mountains of illness where there should have been easily treatable mole hlls, the total cost to the healthcare system will skyrocket, local family health and preventative care services will suffer and bankrupt due to a sudden lack of insured customers, and chronically underfunded hospital systems in low income areas will collapse as they increasingly pay the costs of keeping their community alive!

      And you think a sitting president would do that? Throw out a bullshit distraction while he pulls the trigger on a decades-long effort to collapse all public funding for healthcare? Send our rural and urban healthcare systems into a tailspin? Open up the floor for private equity to finish cannibalizing whatever's left, all for higher stock prices and earning reports?

      Surely that could never happen in a civilized society.

    • it actually wont, he tried this in his first term as a distraciton.

  • 100s of years ago, your ancestors boarded boats to come to America for a better life.

    Are you so indolent and pampered that you'll whinge and complain in America until you die?

    Leave, GI, your country is abandoning you. Take your skills and education and emigrate to a country that treats you with respect, GI.

104 comments