On Politics, Corruption, And Two Little Words
by Karl Denninger
2016-08-07
The recent "reported turmoil" with Trump's campaign is one of the most laughter-inducing things I've seen the media "report" over the last several years, along with one of the most-corrupt.
Let's deal with the corrupt first.
The "dust-up" began with Trump going after Khan after, I remind you, he spent his entire speech at the DNC attacking Trump.
When you get up on a national stage and inject yourself into the political process you are fair game and so is everyone you bring with you.
This is especially true when you are lying through your teeth and have a dubious history -- including recent history.
Specifically, Khan is an attorney who has previously written in a law journal on the "purity" of the Quran and Sunnah.
It is due to this that Khan writes, “to Muslims, the Quran being the very word of God, it is the absolute authority from which springs the very conception of legality and every legal obligation.”
Every legal obligation?
There it is, folks. Oh sure, CNN has said that he "doesn't" support Sharia law, but his own words say otherwise. If every legal obligation arises from the Queeran, then no obligation in conflict with it is lawful in his mind. This is in direct conflict with our secular government; The Constitution, not Sharia, is the supreme law of the land -- and attempting to change that by any means other than amendment (good luck) is an act being taken by an enemy of the nation.
Is that bad enough? Well, actually, no, that's not the end of it. There are allegations that he has ties to Muslim Brotherhood and..... drum roll please... Saudi Arabia. If true that makes things even worse, but it doesn't have to be true; Khan has by his own words disavowed the legitimacy of our Constitutional Republic!
But let's get right down to brass tacks -- why would he want to attack Trump?
Well that one's easy: He runs a law firm that specializes in, among other things, E-2 and EB-5 Visa programs that allow overseas investors buy into US companies and essentially buy US citizenship and green cards. They are widely-regarded as massively abused and rife with fraud by a number of academic and political critics (myself included.) His presumed clientele for same is largely comprised of wealthy (oil-rich) muslims from nations that are implicated in fomenting or sheltering islamic terrorism.
Trump would likely slam the door on such immigration -- and with good cause. Gee, that wouldn't be bad for (his) business, would it?
Did the media note any of this or call him on the apparent rank hypocrisy? Nope.
Not.
One.
Word.
Oh, and once this started getting around on the Internet? His website, kmkhanlaw.com, was blanked -- presumably to try to prevent that from becoming the story.
But the Internet Wayback Machine (which archives sites) had copies, and what did it say?
Areas of Practice
* Complex Litigation Electronic Discovery
* HIPAA Compliance & Audit
* E2 Treaty Investors, EB5 Investments & Related Immigration Service
I hate it when "nothing you say or do on the Internet ever really disappears" happens.....
By the way, that required all of about 30 seconds of effort to find too. Would it really have been that hard for some media outlet -- if there were any in the country including Fox who aren't in the tank for Clinton -- to look into this and report on it?
Now let me be clear: Khan's son, who died serving our nation, is a hero. He wrote a blank check to Uncle Sam for any amount up to and including his life, and he got cashiered.
But just as I do not implicate a son in the deeds of his father I do not implicate a father or mother in the deeds of his or her son! Neither is entitled, either under the law or otherwise, to bear the cross or enjoy the accolades of the other especially when they insert themselves voluntarily into the political process. Indeed perhaps Khan's son went into the military to assuage his own guilt at being the son of a man who was rampantly abusing the US legal system or even arguably laying forth a claim that Sharia was superior to the US Constitution!
As soon as Khan attempted to trade on the death of a man who clearly believed none of the above on the stage of the DNC his blatant, raw and outrageous hypocrisy, along with that of his wife who played the "religious submissive wife" role on stage (but has been photographed in common American-style street clothes and thus it can be reasonably concluded that too was a ruse) became fair game.
Oh, and by the way, banning immigration for certain classes of people is Constitutional. Go ask Jimmy Carter who did exactly that during the Iranian Hostage "incident", and I bet you can figure out what class he banned too. Let me help you:
Fourth, the Secretary of Treasury (State) and the Attorney General will invalidate all visas issued to Iranian citizens for future entry into the United States, effective today. We will not reissue visas, nor will we issue new visas, except for compelling and proven humanitarian reasons or where the national interest of our own country requires. This directive will be interpreted very strictly.
Should you believe this was an abstract issue to me it most-certainly was not; I had a very close personal friend who is Iranian at the time this occurred. If he had left the United States for any reason during that time he could not have re-entered and he had (quite-valid!) concern that he might be forced to leave. Let me remind you that as a young man at that time had he been forced to return to Iran the odds were extremely high (essentially 100%) he would have been conscripted into the military and a huge percentage of such conscripts were killed in action during the Iran-Iraq war which was, I also remind you, raging at that time. There are those who say this ban and what Trump has proposed are not similar; I say bee-ess. Trump has said he intends to stop said immigration until the nation is capable of properly vetting those who come into the country for malicious intent. Carter imposed this ban on persons who he had no rational belief might hold personal malicious intent as a means of pressuring the Iranian government into releasing unaffiliated hostages! If anything Carter was the one who acted with improper motive as there was nothing a young Iranian coming here to study could do to change his or her government's course of conduct and said sanction had exactly zero economic or political impact within the government of Iran! But the fact of the matter is that both Carter's action, and Trump's proposed action, are Constitutional and within the proper exercise of Executive Department power.
In short what's outrageous is not that Trump punched back after being attacked by a slithering snake on the DNC stage who was lying through his teeth it is that both the media and Republicans have come to the snake's defense instead of excoriating both the DNC and Hillary personally for putting such a self-interested and obvious potato sack full of crap up on stage to run an intentionally-false narrative for the cameras.
All are nothing more than a den of viperous bastards.
And isn't that, really, when you get down to it, the real issue here? Isn't that the issue across the political and legal spectrum in this country right now?
How about Buffett? IMHO that fat rat ought to be in prison. If you recall his so-called "investment" during the depths of the panic in 2008/09, more than $26 billion worth, received nearly a quarter of a trillion dollars in support from the government between TARP and FDIC debt-backing! To put this in perspective some three quarters of said debt had that guarantee, without which it was likely worthless.
Even better he traded the very bailout for which he lobbied. How is this sort of thing legal and not a violation of insider-trading laws? Gee, is it any surprise he wants Hillary in office?
Speaking of which think about all the others who are crapping in their pants about Trump possibly winning in one form or another, whether Democrat or Republican. Ask yourself this question: How many of them have woken up in a cold sweat in the middle of a nightmare -- the FBI kicking down their door and leading them away in handcuffs on charges for which the Statute of Limitations has not yet run.
Let's be real about all of this: The only reason Hillary Clinton wants so badly to be President is that it will insulate her, Bill and Chelsea from anything they have done with their phony-baloney "foundation" -- acts that might otherwise lead to indictments, trials and prison.
And the likely reason the Washington Establishment, including those attached to it like Buffett and even so-called "Republicans" are "endorsing" Hillary is that should their shenanigans be looked into at any level of detail they are likely on the hook too for various acts and thus any non-establishment President is not only a threat to their ability to continue to rip you off in some fashion it's also a threat to their being able to continue walking around outside of a prison yard!
I've been asked to help some government folks with one small part of these issues of corruption, scheme and scam. I've agreed to do so. Why? Because while I refuse to give blanket accolades or even respect to "cops" of any stripe based solely on their costume that doesn't mean that specific and individual law enforcement officials are not "good guys" or that they never do good work. Of course some of them do and if I can help in putting some bad guys where they belong then, given that I seem to have a lot more time on my hands these days, why not?
As for why all this is important let's cut the crap folks and look at the economic facts -- the clear and present danger that such presents to our financial and economic stability as a nation.
Last year Medicare and Medicaid had an unbridled explosion in expense, as I've documented previously and which is a continuing pattern, not a one-year or two-year aberration. This year, thus far through May, it has continued with the two programs up 8.93% in spending against this time last year. And no, it's not just about people getting older; Medicaid block grants are up 5.5% this year so far.
Let me remind you that federal receipts (income to the government, which the rest of us call "taxes"
this year are up only 1.68%.
That's a growth rate of spending on these two programs that is 5.3x that of tax receipts.
These two programs are 32.5% of the total expenditures of the government thus far this year; 1/3rd, almost exactly. Social Security increased 3.2% over last year; and while that exceeds the tax revenue increases as well it is not Social Security that will blow up the government and the economy, it is the medical scam system.
Folks, at a nearly 9% rate of increase (last year's full-year increase was 9.25%, or statistically identical) within the next four to five years the federal budget will collapse.
It will collapse because Medicare and Medicaid will grow to require $1,830 billion ($1.8 trillion) or an increase of more than $500 billion annually within the next four years while tax receipts will only accelerate at present rates by less than half that amount. Social Security will consume a huge chunk of that revenue acceleration all on its own.
This will blow a roughly $400 billion and exponentially accelerating deficit hole in the budget; a 10 year projection will show that hole to be not a $400 billion deficit hole but closer to $2 trillion annually.
That is, within 10 years Medicare and Medicaid will require more than $3 trillion annually out of $3.8 trillion in projected federal revenue. Adding in Social Security will exceed all federal revenue. There is no possible way to fiscally survive this event and within the next President's term it will be evident to everyone in the market for both government and private securities along with all business executives that this outcome is inevitable.
The market and economy will collapse when, not if, recognition of this fact occurs -- not when the actual wall is hit.
What's worse is that as I have pointed out for the last several years insurance companies are finally coming clean on how badly they're getting monkey-pounded on their bond ladders. Put that out another 4-5 years with "ultra-low" interest rates and you're looking at a very real risk of a mass annuity-carrying insurance company collapse into the maw of the government's funding problems.
There is exactly one way to address this that can work, and that is to investigate and prosecute each and every aspect of the medical and insurance system that violates any part of 15 United States Code (Sherman, Clayton and Robinson-Patman) or any part of consumer-protection law, including those laws requiring posted prices and both a requirement to provide and adherence to quoted prices before service is rendered.
Doing so would not be "free". It would collapse medical costs in this country by as much as 80%. It would also instantly remove 15% of GDP, which would be formally recognized as an economic depression and millions of jobs would disappear.
However, that aspect of GDP would be rapidly reallocated to other sectors of the economy and those jobs would follow. The adjustment would be brutal and immediate, but it would bring a 15% improvement in every American's purchasing power, an immediate and permanent elimination of the Federal Deficit, real interest rates would go up, over time the resulting surplus and debt paydown would bring even more improvement to every American's purchasing power and it would reduce business operating costs by up to 20% which would make the United States the most-competitive nation among the developed economies when it comes to cost-of-doing business, even if there was no other tax relief or other policy change.
Good luck getting politicians -- or the DOJ for that matter -- on board with this. When you are 20% of the economy your ability to threaten and bribe politicians is literally off-the-charts and without the Rule of Law constraining behavior that is exactly what has and will continue to happen right up until the lights go out.
Staving off fiscal and economic collapse, which is otherwise inevitable, is just part of the general issue our nation faces. The foundation of all of this and more is far more simple and pervasive: Nobody ever goes to jail if they are politically or corporately connected at a sufficiently high level no matter what laws they violate and in fact they are rarely even arrested!
You want me to be "outraged" at Trump responding to someone who attacked him while running an intentionally false narrative and for both political and personal financial purpose?
Oh hell no. Not while this den of thieves generally known as the US political, financial and medical system continues to thrive on fraud, theft and outrage.
Hillary Clinton is "just the tip", and this I say to her, along with the media, Paul Ryan, John McCain, the RNC generally and the rest of those who refuse to face reality:
Screw You.
https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=231473
by Karl Denninger
2016-08-07
The recent "reported turmoil" with Trump's campaign is one of the most laughter-inducing things I've seen the media "report" over the last several years, along with one of the most-corrupt.
Let's deal with the corrupt first.
The "dust-up" began with Trump going after Khan after, I remind you, he spent his entire speech at the DNC attacking Trump.
When you get up on a national stage and inject yourself into the political process you are fair game and so is everyone you bring with you.
This is especially true when you are lying through your teeth and have a dubious history -- including recent history.
Specifically, Khan is an attorney who has previously written in a law journal on the "purity" of the Quran and Sunnah.
It is due to this that Khan writes, “to Muslims, the Quran being the very word of God, it is the absolute authority from which springs the very conception of legality and every legal obligation.”
Every legal obligation?
There it is, folks. Oh sure, CNN has said that he "doesn't" support Sharia law, but his own words say otherwise. If every legal obligation arises from the Queeran, then no obligation in conflict with it is lawful in his mind. This is in direct conflict with our secular government; The Constitution, not Sharia, is the supreme law of the land -- and attempting to change that by any means other than amendment (good luck) is an act being taken by an enemy of the nation.
Is that bad enough? Well, actually, no, that's not the end of it. There are allegations that he has ties to Muslim Brotherhood and..... drum roll please... Saudi Arabia. If true that makes things even worse, but it doesn't have to be true; Khan has by his own words disavowed the legitimacy of our Constitutional Republic!
But let's get right down to brass tacks -- why would he want to attack Trump?
Well that one's easy: He runs a law firm that specializes in, among other things, E-2 and EB-5 Visa programs that allow overseas investors buy into US companies and essentially buy US citizenship and green cards. They are widely-regarded as massively abused and rife with fraud by a number of academic and political critics (myself included.) His presumed clientele for same is largely comprised of wealthy (oil-rich) muslims from nations that are implicated in fomenting or sheltering islamic terrorism.
Trump would likely slam the door on such immigration -- and with good cause. Gee, that wouldn't be bad for (his) business, would it?
Did the media note any of this or call him on the apparent rank hypocrisy? Nope.
Not.
One.
Word.
Oh, and once this started getting around on the Internet? His website, kmkhanlaw.com, was blanked -- presumably to try to prevent that from becoming the story.
But the Internet Wayback Machine (which archives sites) had copies, and what did it say?
Areas of Practice
* Complex Litigation Electronic Discovery
* HIPAA Compliance & Audit
* E2 Treaty Investors, EB5 Investments & Related Immigration Service
I hate it when "nothing you say or do on the Internet ever really disappears" happens.....
By the way, that required all of about 30 seconds of effort to find too. Would it really have been that hard for some media outlet -- if there were any in the country including Fox who aren't in the tank for Clinton -- to look into this and report on it?
Now let me be clear: Khan's son, who died serving our nation, is a hero. He wrote a blank check to Uncle Sam for any amount up to and including his life, and he got cashiered.
But just as I do not implicate a son in the deeds of his father I do not implicate a father or mother in the deeds of his or her son! Neither is entitled, either under the law or otherwise, to bear the cross or enjoy the accolades of the other especially when they insert themselves voluntarily into the political process. Indeed perhaps Khan's son went into the military to assuage his own guilt at being the son of a man who was rampantly abusing the US legal system or even arguably laying forth a claim that Sharia was superior to the US Constitution!
As soon as Khan attempted to trade on the death of a man who clearly believed none of the above on the stage of the DNC his blatant, raw and outrageous hypocrisy, along with that of his wife who played the "religious submissive wife" role on stage (but has been photographed in common American-style street clothes and thus it can be reasonably concluded that too was a ruse) became fair game.
Oh, and by the way, banning immigration for certain classes of people is Constitutional. Go ask Jimmy Carter who did exactly that during the Iranian Hostage "incident", and I bet you can figure out what class he banned too. Let me help you:
Fourth, the Secretary of Treasury (State) and the Attorney General will invalidate all visas issued to Iranian citizens for future entry into the United States, effective today. We will not reissue visas, nor will we issue new visas, except for compelling and proven humanitarian reasons or where the national interest of our own country requires. This directive will be interpreted very strictly.
Should you believe this was an abstract issue to me it most-certainly was not; I had a very close personal friend who is Iranian at the time this occurred. If he had left the United States for any reason during that time he could not have re-entered and he had (quite-valid!) concern that he might be forced to leave. Let me remind you that as a young man at that time had he been forced to return to Iran the odds were extremely high (essentially 100%) he would have been conscripted into the military and a huge percentage of such conscripts were killed in action during the Iran-Iraq war which was, I also remind you, raging at that time. There are those who say this ban and what Trump has proposed are not similar; I say bee-ess. Trump has said he intends to stop said immigration until the nation is capable of properly vetting those who come into the country for malicious intent. Carter imposed this ban on persons who he had no rational belief might hold personal malicious intent as a means of pressuring the Iranian government into releasing unaffiliated hostages! If anything Carter was the one who acted with improper motive as there was nothing a young Iranian coming here to study could do to change his or her government's course of conduct and said sanction had exactly zero economic or political impact within the government of Iran! But the fact of the matter is that both Carter's action, and Trump's proposed action, are Constitutional and within the proper exercise of Executive Department power.
In short what's outrageous is not that Trump punched back after being attacked by a slithering snake on the DNC stage who was lying through his teeth it is that both the media and Republicans have come to the snake's defense instead of excoriating both the DNC and Hillary personally for putting such a self-interested and obvious potato sack full of crap up on stage to run an intentionally-false narrative for the cameras.
All are nothing more than a den of viperous bastards.
And isn't that, really, when you get down to it, the real issue here? Isn't that the issue across the political and legal spectrum in this country right now?
How about Buffett? IMHO that fat rat ought to be in prison. If you recall his so-called "investment" during the depths of the panic in 2008/09, more than $26 billion worth, received nearly a quarter of a trillion dollars in support from the government between TARP and FDIC debt-backing! To put this in perspective some three quarters of said debt had that guarantee, without which it was likely worthless.
Even better he traded the very bailout for which he lobbied. How is this sort of thing legal and not a violation of insider-trading laws? Gee, is it any surprise he wants Hillary in office?
Speaking of which think about all the others who are crapping in their pants about Trump possibly winning in one form or another, whether Democrat or Republican. Ask yourself this question: How many of them have woken up in a cold sweat in the middle of a nightmare -- the FBI kicking down their door and leading them away in handcuffs on charges for which the Statute of Limitations has not yet run.
Let's be real about all of this: The only reason Hillary Clinton wants so badly to be President is that it will insulate her, Bill and Chelsea from anything they have done with their phony-baloney "foundation" -- acts that might otherwise lead to indictments, trials and prison.
And the likely reason the Washington Establishment, including those attached to it like Buffett and even so-called "Republicans" are "endorsing" Hillary is that should their shenanigans be looked into at any level of detail they are likely on the hook too for various acts and thus any non-establishment President is not only a threat to their ability to continue to rip you off in some fashion it's also a threat to their being able to continue walking around outside of a prison yard!
I've been asked to help some government folks with one small part of these issues of corruption, scheme and scam. I've agreed to do so. Why? Because while I refuse to give blanket accolades or even respect to "cops" of any stripe based solely on their costume that doesn't mean that specific and individual law enforcement officials are not "good guys" or that they never do good work. Of course some of them do and if I can help in putting some bad guys where they belong then, given that I seem to have a lot more time on my hands these days, why not?
As for why all this is important let's cut the crap folks and look at the economic facts -- the clear and present danger that such presents to our financial and economic stability as a nation.
Last year Medicare and Medicaid had an unbridled explosion in expense, as I've documented previously and which is a continuing pattern, not a one-year or two-year aberration. This year, thus far through May, it has continued with the two programs up 8.93% in spending against this time last year. And no, it's not just about people getting older; Medicaid block grants are up 5.5% this year so far.
Let me remind you that federal receipts (income to the government, which the rest of us call "taxes"
this year are up only 1.68%. That's a growth rate of spending on these two programs that is 5.3x that of tax receipts.
These two programs are 32.5% of the total expenditures of the government thus far this year; 1/3rd, almost exactly. Social Security increased 3.2% over last year; and while that exceeds the tax revenue increases as well it is not Social Security that will blow up the government and the economy, it is the medical scam system.
Folks, at a nearly 9% rate of increase (last year's full-year increase was 9.25%, or statistically identical) within the next four to five years the federal budget will collapse.
It will collapse because Medicare and Medicaid will grow to require $1,830 billion ($1.8 trillion) or an increase of more than $500 billion annually within the next four years while tax receipts will only accelerate at present rates by less than half that amount. Social Security will consume a huge chunk of that revenue acceleration all on its own.
This will blow a roughly $400 billion and exponentially accelerating deficit hole in the budget; a 10 year projection will show that hole to be not a $400 billion deficit hole but closer to $2 trillion annually.
That is, within 10 years Medicare and Medicaid will require more than $3 trillion annually out of $3.8 trillion in projected federal revenue. Adding in Social Security will exceed all federal revenue. There is no possible way to fiscally survive this event and within the next President's term it will be evident to everyone in the market for both government and private securities along with all business executives that this outcome is inevitable.
The market and economy will collapse when, not if, recognition of this fact occurs -- not when the actual wall is hit.
What's worse is that as I have pointed out for the last several years insurance companies are finally coming clean on how badly they're getting monkey-pounded on their bond ladders. Put that out another 4-5 years with "ultra-low" interest rates and you're looking at a very real risk of a mass annuity-carrying insurance company collapse into the maw of the government's funding problems.
There is exactly one way to address this that can work, and that is to investigate and prosecute each and every aspect of the medical and insurance system that violates any part of 15 United States Code (Sherman, Clayton and Robinson-Patman) or any part of consumer-protection law, including those laws requiring posted prices and both a requirement to provide and adherence to quoted prices before service is rendered.
Doing so would not be "free". It would collapse medical costs in this country by as much as 80%. It would also instantly remove 15% of GDP, which would be formally recognized as an economic depression and millions of jobs would disappear.
However, that aspect of GDP would be rapidly reallocated to other sectors of the economy and those jobs would follow. The adjustment would be brutal and immediate, but it would bring a 15% improvement in every American's purchasing power, an immediate and permanent elimination of the Federal Deficit, real interest rates would go up, over time the resulting surplus and debt paydown would bring even more improvement to every American's purchasing power and it would reduce business operating costs by up to 20% which would make the United States the most-competitive nation among the developed economies when it comes to cost-of-doing business, even if there was no other tax relief or other policy change.
Good luck getting politicians -- or the DOJ for that matter -- on board with this. When you are 20% of the economy your ability to threaten and bribe politicians is literally off-the-charts and without the Rule of Law constraining behavior that is exactly what has and will continue to happen right up until the lights go out.
Staving off fiscal and economic collapse, which is otherwise inevitable, is just part of the general issue our nation faces. The foundation of all of this and more is far more simple and pervasive: Nobody ever goes to jail if they are politically or corporately connected at a sufficiently high level no matter what laws they violate and in fact they are rarely even arrested!
You want me to be "outraged" at Trump responding to someone who attacked him while running an intentionally false narrative and for both political and personal financial purpose?
Oh hell no. Not while this den of thieves generally known as the US political, financial and medical system continues to thrive on fraud, theft and outrage.
Hillary Clinton is "just the tip", and this I say to her, along with the media, Paul Ryan, John McCain, the RNC generally and the rest of those who refuse to face reality:
Screw You.
https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=231473
