Pill City

vice |  When the Baltimore riots erupted in April 2015 after Freddie Gray's death in police custody, James "Brick" Feeney and Willie "Wax" Harris*, two tech-savvy teenagers with ties to Maryland's Black Guerrilla Family (BGF), saw opportunity. Using the chaos as cover, they managed to steal at least a million doses of prescription drugs and heroin from city pharmacies and rival dealers. But even if their caper was essentially an old-school, smash-and-grab-style theft, the teens had plans to sell the drugs in a more sophisticated manner: via the Dark Web, where pills went for upward of $100 each.

Leaning on location-based technology and encrypted messaging software, Brick envisioned their operation as an "Uber of drug dealing."

As the looted drugs were shipped up and down the East Coast, a spike in opiate overdoses in African American communities raised eyebrows, and the DEA and FBI eventually took notice. In his forthcoming book Pill City: How Two Honor Roll Students Foiled the Feds and Built a Drug Empire, veteran crime reporter Kevin Deutsch profiles the the teens' massively profitable scheme, which he contends had (distant) ties to El Chapo's Sinaloa cartel. 

Deutsch enjoyed incredible access to the two teens and some 300 other dealers, addicts, gang bangers, police, and drug-treatment specialists for the book. A reporter who prefers to work with his "feet on the ground," Deutsch saw the vicious effects of America's opioid epidemic in an urban setting. VICE talked to the journalist about how he wrapped his head around the technology in play, how opiates were never just a middle-class white problem, and where Brick and Wax are at now.

Hunger Games Society in Baltimore

stockboardasset |  In the 1990s it was COPS. Now it’s Worldstar Hiphop, Facebook Live, and Liveleak broadcasting a constant stream of no-budget sadism-as-entertainment to satiate the curious and the bloodthirsty in real time, direct from the deepest corners of the most depraved, impoverished districts. And while we, the spectators, marvel in awe and disgust at the fights and robberies and suicides and murders that we watch live onscreen, we forget that we, too, are denizens of a similarly curated and managed ghetto environment: the digital one.

Whereas the actual, physical ghettos are the product of 1960s utopian ideas about government spending being the answer to social ills gone awry, the digital ghettos are also an inverted utopia, albeit one crafted by the rogue programmers of the 1970s and 1980s. These programmers imagined a world where personal computers and the emerging internet would literally connect the world; where ideology would wither away as the postmodern World Wide Web would force all of us to confront a myriad of foreign ideas and foreign people, all from the comfort of your home office.

These technologies have not connected us, or at least not in the ways that these computing pioneers imagined. We, too, have been hyperfragmented and atomized into our own digital ideological echo chambers. The 21st century collapse of the nuclear family that we discussed earlier was perhaps intended to redefine one’s sense of self in relation to society as a whole rather than in relation to one’s immediate or extended family (you know, the whole “It takes a village” nonsense that people liked to talk about a couple of decades ago). But what we’re seeing now is a sort of fragmentation of the self, facilitated by these digital technologies, where there is a disconnect between one’s online self and one’s physical self-a sort of “social schizophrenia” that threatens to destroy the very societies that these technologies were supposed to solidify.

Now back to the districts: what the Capitol fears most is an uprising of the district that bleeds into the Capitol. We call this The Fourth Turning: S​ummer of Rage and the Tot​al Eclipse of the Deep St​ate. Provincial wars are fine, as long as they are kept far away from the ruling elite. Periodically, though, rival factions governing the Capitol enlist mercenaries from the districts to cause trouble at the doorstep. We see this regularly with the astroturf Black Lives Matter, Occupy Wall Street, and other seemingly ‘grassroots’ franchise protest movements erupt in American cities every few years-these dispossessed citizens of the district, unemployed or underemployed with little to no job prospects, saddled with debt, and very little to lose or gain are shipped around from city to city, given some protest signs, and proceed to yell, fight, burn buildings, and disrupt traffic.

A genuine uprising would be terrifying to the ruling elite, because it would be a refusal to participate at all in a society that exploits you solely by your participation in it. Non-participation is much quieter than the manufactured type, and doesn’t lend itself as well to dramatic photo ops. It’s impact, however, would be much more significant.

Jay-Z's No Prophet, Just Old, and No, No Respect...,

theguardian |  After a consortium led by Jay-Z bought Tidal (previously known as WiMP) in January 2015, it had a star-studded launch where many of the biggest pop acts on the planet pledged to give it exclusive material first. That amounted, initially, to a Madonna video that soon appeared on YouTube. After that came Rihanna’s Anti, in January 2016, which ended up being released early by mistake, then 1m copies were given away to appease fans while Tidal blamed Universal Music Group for the error. UMG countered by saying it was actually Tidal’s fault. The album eventually ended up on other streaming services. 

The release of Kanye West’s The Life Of Pablo did no better. Despite West’s assurances that it would never be on Apple, a matter of a few weeks after its Tidal debut it was available on … Apple. And Spotify. And everywhere else. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, to lose one exclusive may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose two or more looks like carelessness. 

That said, Beyoncé’s Lemonade remains a streaming exclusive on Tidal over a year after its release. But the knock-on effect was to send fans to pirate sites as well as CD retailers and iTunes to spend their money there rather than taking the carrot and joining Tidal. The fact that Lemonade, according to IFPI numbers, sold 2.5m copies globally last year to become the biggest album in the world would suggest that it was downloads and CDs that accounted for the bulk of that. The “album equivalent streams” of Lemonade on Tidal will have barely touched the sides here. 

Universal, smarting from the Frank Ocean debacle last August – in which Apple Music got an exclusive for the contract-fulfilling album Endless and then, the next day, Ocean put out Blonde himself – reportedly imposed an embargo on exclusives. Warner Music Group and most indie labels were always against them. That leaves Sony, which has hinted exclusives will be considered on a case-by-case basis, the unspoken subtext being they have fallen in line with all the other labels. 

There will be the occasional outlier, such as the totally autonomous Chance the Rapper’s two-week exclusive with Apple Music for his album Coloring Book in May 2016, for which he claims he was paid $500,000; but everyone else is increasingly of the belief that exclusives dangerously impede the reach of an album and, as such, only annoy fans at a time where loyalty can no longer be presumed and has to be earned again with every new release.

Jay-Z has an allegiance to his own service and one of its biggest investors, hence this Tidal–Sprint deal; but it feels like a message beamed in from a different place and a different time. In an age of digital ubiquity, exclusives are an anachronistic bet on a roulette wheel where the only pockets are marked as either “invisibility” or “irrelevance”.

The Real Cause of the Opioid Epidemic

charleshughsmith |  We also know that the proximate cause of this epidemic is Big Pharma, which promised non-addictive painkillers that lasted for 12 hours but delivered addictive painkillers that did not last 12 hours.

The unsavory truth was reported by the Los Angeles Times last May (2016) in a scathing investigative series: 'You Want a Description of Hell?' Oxycontin's 12-hour problem.

There are plenty of other participants who share responsibility for the public health and law-enforcement disaster: physicians who all too readily passed out prescriptions for powerful synthetic opioids like aspirin; the government agencies that approved the synthetic heroin as "safe" (heh) and paid for their distribution via Medicaid, the Veterans Administration, etc., and the patients who all too willingly accepted the false promises of synthetic opioids.

But what's missing from the public conversation is the underlying cause of the epidemic: a structural scarcity of paid work and positive social roles for vast swaths of America's workforce.

We all know what paid work means: jobs. Positive social roles include jobs--supporting oneself and one's family provides purpose, meaning, identity and a source of pride, all atrributes of positive social roles--but the concept extends beyond work to any role in which the participant feels needed and that offers dignity: this includes volunteer, guardian, mentor, coach, etc., many of which are unpaid.

A significant essay in the March/April issue of Foreign Affairs describes The Dignity Deficit: Reclaiming Americans' Sense of Purpose (subscription or registration required)

At its core, to be treated with dignity means being considered worthy of respect. Certain situations bring out a clear, conscious sense of our own dignity: when we receive praise or promotions at work, when we see our children succeed, when we see a volunteer effort pay off and change our neighborhood for the better. We feel a sense of dignity when our own lives produce value for ourselves and others. Put simply, to feel dignified, one must be needed by others.

Giving people welfare, cheap prescriptions for opioids and Universal Basic Income (UBI) does not make them feel needed--it makes them feel superfluous and worthless.

Addiction An Irresistable Business Opportunity - Same As It Ever Was....,

CounterPunch |  In Ohio a heroin (and other opioids) epidemic, and attendant overdoses, has stretched the city budget because Paramedics respond and administer Narcan (Naxalone) to revive the patient. And Narcan is expensive. City Councilman Dan Pickard offered the solution of cutting off paramedic responses after two visits. In other words, let the OD victim die. Besides Pickard’s fundamental stupidity, the glaring question that goes unasked is why has the price of Naxalone tripled in the last year? Well, because there is a heroin epidemic, and an Oxycontin epidemic. That is capitalism.

One of the by products of the spike in Narcan usage (its even sold over the counter in some cities, without prescription) is a kind of Overdose-porn; cell phone videos of addicts passing out and in respiratory arrest being given Narcan and having those symptoms reversed. I see a reality TV show in the future. Of course Narcan also triggers severe withdrawl symptoms in anyone with an opioid addiction. I remember friends being given Narcan and immediately running out to find some junk to stop the pain. There is such an obvious disregard for addicts in this society that it almost feels pointless to repeat the same statistics yet again. The War on Drugs is much like The War on Terror. It is a business opportunity for western Capital.

Interestingly, 76% of Americans think addicts should be a medical problem and not a criminal one. However, compassion is NOT a business opportunity, ergo compassion is not part of the lexicon of the ruling class.

Cops Weaponizing Narcan to Torture and Stigmatize Addicts

dailybeast |  M______ Charles M_____ turned 26 in jail on March 2, a week after his arrest for misdemeanor heroin possession. But his entire life may as well boil down to an inglorious 30 seconds of tightly edited video, played on local news channels, that shows him nearly dying.

On Feb. 18 a closed-circuit surveillance camera captured him shooting heroin, then falling out of his seat on a crowded city bus in Philly suburb, Upper Darby. The video cuts to a police officer hovering over the unconscious man and applying a dose of the powerful overdose antidote naloxone.

Naloxone (sold under the brand name Narcan) has been the subject of increasing media attention since the Food and Drug Administration approved a nasal spray version of the drug in last November to reverse the effects of opioid overdose, namely severe respiratory depression that can be fatal if left untreated. Narcan works by reversing those symptoms. A number of police departments now outfit their officers with it, and changes to state laws have made the drug legal for sale over the counter in some pharmacies. In 2014, Pennsylvania passed a law that made naloxone available through a standing prescription to laypeople, including drug addicts themselves and their families.

The video footage of M_____’s overdose concludes with him back on his feet and being escorted off the bus by police paramedics—a seemingly happy ending to a nearly fatal tragedy.

But M_____’s story is anything but happy. And it’s far from over.

After saving his life, the police arrested him for the tiny amount of heroin (four baggies) they found on him. While M_____ suffered the first pangs of opioid withdrawal in a jail cell (imagine severe flu combined with anxiety and depression) the police humiliated him by tweeting a link to the video provided by the transit authority.

It went viral.

Baltimore Having to Ration Opioid Overdose Remedy

washingtontimes |  Citing the deadly opioid crisis, Baltimore officials made it easier on Thursday to acquire an overdose-reversing drug over the counter, saying the antidote should be as prevalent as possible to prevent more deaths.

City Health Commissioner Leana Wen waived training requirements for acquiring and using naloxone, a fast-acting medication that’s become a vital and ubiquitous tool in fighting the nation’s heroin and prescription painkiller crisis.

Dr. Wen said the training only took a few minutes — naloxone can be administered as a nasal spray or injected into the muscle, like an EpiPen. But the associated paperwork was cumbersome, so she implemented a recent state law allowing her to scrap the training altogether.

“Any resident can go into any of our pharmacies in Baltimore City and immediately get the medication for saving someone’s life,” she said.

City residents on Medicaid can acquire two doses of naloxone for $1 — it’s free if they don’t have the money — while those on private insurance typically face co-pays of $10 to $40.

Baltimore estimates that 20,000 residents use heroin and thousands more abuse prescription opioids. There were 481 fatal overdoses in the city during the first nine months of 2016, according to preliminary data, and deaths related to fentanyl have risen twentyfold in recent years, the health department said.

Cost of Being Rescued From Opioid Overdose Tripled...,

scientificamerican |  First came Martin Shkreli, the brash young pharmaceutical entrepreneur who raised the price for an AIDS treatment by 5,000 percent. Then, Heather Bresch, the CEO of Mylan, who oversaw the price hike for its signature Epi-Pen to more than $600 for a twin-pack, though its active ingredient costs pennies by comparison.

Now a small Virginia company called Kaleo is joining their ranks. It makes an injector device that is suddenly in demand because of the nation’s epidemic use of opioids, a class of drugs that includes heavy painkillers and heroin.

Called Evzio, it is used to deliver naloxone, a life-saving antidote to overdoses of opioids. More than 33,000 people are believed to have died from such overdoses in 2015. And as demand for Kaleo’s product has grown, the privately held firm has raised its twin-pack price to $4,500, from $690 in 2014.

Founded by twin brothers Eric and Evan Edwards, 36, the company first sought to develop an Epi-Pen competitor, thanks to their own food allergies.

Now, they’ve taken that model and marketed it for a major public health crisis. It’s another auto-injector that delivers an inexpensive medicine.

One difference, though, is that Evzio talks users through the process as they inject naloxone. The company says the talking device is worth the price because it can guide anyone to jab an overdose victim correctly, leave the needle in for the right amount of time and potentially save his or her life.

According to Food and Drug Administration estimates, the Kaleo product, which won federal approval in 2014, accounted for nearly 20 percent of the naloxone dispensed through retail outlets between 2015 and 2016, and for nearly half of all naloxone products prescribed to patients between ages 40 and 64—the group that comprises the bulk of naloxone users.

Rule of Nothing

mishtalk  |  Total capitulation by Governor Bruce Rauner is in the works. The taxoholics wore him down.

In the emergency session, Rauner has agreed to hike the personal income tax rate to 4.95% from the current 3.75%. The corporate income tax rate will rise to 7% from the current 5.25% rate.

For what? Nothing. Reforms are nonexistent.

Another Deadline Come and Gone

Illinois failed to approve a budget today and thus heads into its third fiscal year without one.

A vote has been scheduled for Sunday.

I do not expect your opinion will matter, but in the slim chance I am wrong, Please Email Your Representative voicing displeasure of the tax hike.

The preceding link will find your rep based on your address.

Rule of Nothing

A zombified Rauer has capitulated in every way but the final signing.

Tax hikes have been agreed to with no reforms in return.

The Rule of Nothing is clearly in play.

Rule of Nothing
In any given political situation, the best outcome one can reasonably expect generally happens when politicians do nothing.
Implied corollary#1: When politicians attempt to fix any problem, they are highly likely to make matters worse.
Corollary #2: Politicians almost never do nothing. It’s why we have a messed up healthcare system, education system, public pension system, etc..

Illinois Self-Inflicted Junk Status

zerohedge |  S&P warned one month ago will likely result in a humiliating and unprecedented downgrade of the 5th most populous US state to junk status. 

Then came the begging. 

According to Bloomberg, on Friday Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, a Democrat who controls much of the legislative agenda, pleaded with rating companies to "temporarily withhold judgment” as lawmakers negotiate. “Much work remains to be done,” the Democrat said on the floor of the House Friday, before the chamber adjourned for the day. “We’ll get the job done.”

Meanwhile, the state remains without a spending plan, its tax receipts and outlays mostly on "autopilot", leaving it with a record $15 billion of unpaid bills as it spent over $6 billion more than it brought in over the past year, and with $800 million in interest on the unpaid bills alone. The impasse has devastated social-service providers, shuttering services for the homeless, disabled and poor. The lack of state aid has wrecked havoc on universities, putting their accreditation at risk.

However, in a "shocking" development, just hours remaining before the midnight deadline to pass the Illinois budget, and Illinois' imminent loss of its investment grade rating, federal judge Joan Lefkow in Chicago ordered Illinois to come up with hundreds of millions of dollars it owes in Medicaid payments that state officials say the government doesn’t have, the Chicago Tribune reported. 

Judge Lefkow ordered the state to make $586 million in monthly payments (from the current $160 million) as well as another $2 billion toward a $3 billion backlog of payments - a $167 million increase in monthly outlays - the state owes to managed care organizations that process payments to providers.

While it is no secret that as part of its collapse into the financial abyss, Illinois has accumulated $15 billion in unpaid bills, the state's Medicaid recipients had had enough, and went to court asking a judge to order the state to speed up its payments. On Friday, the court ruled in their favor. The problem, of course, is that Illinois can no more afford to pay the outstanding Medicaid bills, than it can to pay any of its $14,711,351,943.90 in overdue bills as of June 30.

The backlog of unpaid claims the state owes to managed-care companies directly, as well as to the doctors, hospitals, clinics and other organizations “is crippling these providers and thereby dramatically reducing the Medicaid recipients’ access to health care,” Lefkow said in her ruling 

* * *

Friday’s court ruling, which meant that the near-insolvent state must pay an additional $593 million per month, may have been the straw that finally broke the Illinois camel's back. 

“Friday’s ruling by the U.S. District Court takes the state’s finances from horrific to catastrophic,” Comptroller Susana Mendoza, a Democrat, said in an emailed statement after the ruling. 

As a result of the court decision, “payments to the state’s pension funds; state payroll including legislator pay; General State Aid to schools and payments to local governments -- in some combination -- will likely have to be cut.” 

First It Was An Opioid Epidemic, Now It's A Terrorist Attack

WaPo |  There is an ongoing terrorist attack happening in Ohio. It has nothing to do with the Islamic State or political anarchists. The weapons in this case come in the form of heroin and other opioids, and the terrorists are the pushers who spread the deadly poison.

From the Columbus Dispatch this spring: “At least 4,149 Ohioans died from unintentional drug overdoses in 2016, a 36 percent leap from just the previous year, when Ohio had by far the most overdose deaths in the nation. . . . Many coroners said that 2017’s overdose fatalities are outpacing 2016’s.”

Consider that number — 4,149 overdose deaths in Ohio in one year, more than the number who died on 9/11. 

The worst of the state’s opioid problems are here in southern Ohio. The Highland County coroner provided our newspaper, the Times-Gazette, with a recap of cases from 2016 showing at least 16 overdose deaths in this small rural county. He also pointed to 50 deaths during the year from other causes where drug use or a history of drug use were present.

Even non-fatal overdoses are taxing local resources. During the first three weeks of May, emergency responders answered calls to at least 18 overdoses around the county, almost three times as many as during the same period a year ago. The public information officer for the local fire and emergency medical services department called it “the new normal.”

This is all happening around little Hillsboro, a town often compared with television’s idyllic Mayberry. With the FBI reporting that most heroin enters the United States from Mexico, and local officials saying that it then makes its way here through metropolitan drug rings, it’s no wonder that few people in Hillsboro think President Trump’s border security plans are extreme.

Like other forms of terrorism, the opioid attack will have a generational impact, in this case in a foster-care crisis being left in its wake.

Drugs, Mental Illness, Terrorism...,

thenews |  Terrorism, drugs-for-arms and money laundering are intrinsically linked and pose a considerable threat to global peace and security. They destabilise the political and financial stability of many nation-states. They were accelerated in the wake of 9/11. Militants and extremists have a nexus with criminal networks involved in dealing drugs and arms.

Evidence available with intelligence agencies confirms that from Al-Qaeda to Daesh the real challenge involves the free flow of legal and illegal funds. Until today, the international community has failed to sever their financial lifeline.

It is an open secret how the drug trade in post-Taliban Afghanistan was institutionalised through the puppet regime in Kabul and the patronising attitude of war lords in many provinces of the country. Once opium started being processed at a mass scale into morphine and heroin in Afghanistan, it brought tonnes of money for commanders on the ground.

Since 2004, the controlled democracy in Afghanistan has been playing into the hands of more sophisticated narco-enriched commanders. It is no longer a secret that the Taliban – with whom the US and its allies have always been in negotiation since 2004 – knew how to buy or muscle a vote which would protect their opium interests in every election.

Even Afghanistan’s neighbours have been making profits from the windfall: criminal groups from Central Asia, says the UN, have made profits worth $15.2 billion from the trafficking of opiates in 2015. Tajikistan is, by far, the worst affected by the drug plague owing to a combination of history, poverty and geography.

In the late 1990s, the drug trade was believed to be a source of finance for the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) – a terrorist group which had bases in Afghanistan and Tajikistan. After the war in Afghanistan, the IMU lost most of its influence. But the drugs trade continued with organised criminals taking the place of political or religious activists. In a survey conducted by the Open Society Institute, eight out of 10 of those polled said – hardly surprisingly – that “the main reason to turn to drug trafficking was to make big money”.

Positive Long-Term Growth Outlook for the Opioids Market

medgadget |  Opioids are the most widely prescribed medications to treat moderate to severe chronic pain. These analgesics are used to manage pain in cancer patients and also to treat severe constant pain in patients suffering from terminal illnesses. These are generally administered via subcutaneous, oral and intramuscular routes; other routes of administration include nasal insufflations, patient controlled analgesia, transdermal and oral mucosa routes via lozenges. Opioids can be classified into three major classes namely, strong agonists (fentanyl, oxymorphone, and morphine), mild to moderate agonists (codeine and hydroxycodone), and opioids with mixed receptor reactions (buprenophrine and pentazocine). Although they form one of the most widely used analgesic classes, they cause certain adverse effects such as constipation, nausea, vomiting, sedation, respiratory depression and others. However, the major concern with this drug class is the high level of drug abuse observed worldwide, leading to illegal trade of these drugs worth hundreds of billions of dollars. According to a study published in the Journal of American Medical Association in April 2011, the rate of deaths occurring due to the overdose of prescription opioids has increased substantially in the last decade in the U.S. alone. This study also indicated that high doses of opioid drugs prescribed for pain management possessed increased risk of overdose mortality in the patients.

This report gives readers a comprehensive overview of the Opioids Market: http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/opioids-market.html

The leading molecules in this segment that constituted about 65% of the total opioids market include OxyContin (oxycodone), Nucynta (tapentadol), Rybix and Ultram (tramadol), Exalgo (hydromorphone), Ultiva (remifentanil) and fentanyl.The remaining 35% market revenue was contributed by other generic opioids as well as combination formulations of NSAIDs with opioids.The actual market scenario for this drug class, however, could be different due to the strong product pipeline, with two major entries MoxDuo IR (morphine/oxycodone) and Remoxy (oxycodone) set to hit the market in 2016. The market entry of these two drugs is expected to boost growth of the overall opioids market during the forecast period. The number of patients suffering from chronic pain is on a constant rise globally. Thus, increasing incidence of chronic pain conditions will continue to encourage the use of pain management drugs, thereby driving the opioids market. Doctors usually prescribe medicines in the initial stages of pain, followed by other treatment options. Prescription drugs are easy to use and economical and are expected to support the growth of the opioids market globally.

America Cannot Solve Its Pain and Misery With Addictive Distortions

unz |  All over America, I’ve seen posters warning against drug addictions. In Cheyenne, it’s “METHAMPHETAMINE / Don’t live this tragic story.” A few blocks away, I stepped over used needles on the sidewalk. In Buffalo, it’s an image of a beer bottle and a pill bottle, with “HEROIN addiction starts here…” Appended to it was a homemade sign, “SHOOT YOUR LOCAL HEROIN DEALER.” Also in Buffalo, it’s a photo of a seemingly dead man on the floor, with “Learn how to recognize OPIOID OVERDOSE and SAVE A LIFE.” In Cleveland, it’s a tagged toe in a morgue, with “DEATH BY HEROIN OVERDOSE IN CUYAHOGA COUNTY HAS QUADRUPLED,” and this was in 2014, before the prevalence of fentanyl.

 

In 2016, Philly had 277 murders and 907 fatal drug overdoses. For 2017, murders are up 21% and drug deaths, 33%. What’s your town’s drug toll?

A 33-year-old friend admits to popping street-bought Xanax every now and then to help her sleep. I suspect she’s on various pills, if not heroin, for she’s always broke and borrowing money. She has a spotty memory, sporadic hygiene and pinpoint pupils.

At Friendly, I sat next to my buddy Jeff, who’s in his late 40’s and HIV positive. Each day, Jeff pops a dozen pills, including Klonopin, a benzodiazepine that can trigger paranoid or suicidal thoughts, as well as degrade your memory, judgment and coordination. Mixed with other substances, particularly alcohol, it can slow your breathing or even kill you. Jeff is always drinking.

“Jeff, man, you’re always so outgoing, so gregarious, I can’t imagine you having anxieties!”

“That’s because of the Klonopin, dude. Without it, I’d be a mess. Without it, I’d be up all night pissed off, you know, about some stupid argument I had 15 years ago, some fight with a hot dog vendor who gave me ketchup instead of mustard!”

“That’s serious.”

“Here’s what it looks like,” Jeff showed me some innocent white pills in a yellow bottle. “You want one?”

“No, thanks.”

Jeff took one out anyway and gave it to the bartender, 42-years-old Lisa. She stashed it away for later.

Fat Childless Singleton's Fake Virtue Signalling on Obamacare

fmshooter |  On Monday, Huffington Post author Kayla Chadwick posted an article titled “I Don’t Know How To Explain To You That You Should Care About Other People,” which was essentially an emotional plea without any constructive argument on why Americans should pay higher taxes as well as sign up for Obamacare:

If I have to pay a little more with each paycheck to ensure my fellow Americans can access health care? SIGN ME UP.

But if making sure your fellow citizens can afford to eat, get an education, and go to the doctor isn’t enough of a reason to fund those things, I have nothing left to say to you.

Well, since Chadwick has no problem telling Americans to pay more for their healthcare, she should have no problem signing up for an Obamacare plan herself.  It sure appears as if Chadwick is on an employer-sponsored health insurance plan, as I imagine she would be singing quite a different tune if she had to “pay her own way” (with or without subsidies) via the Obamacare exchange.

First, Chadwick can go to the Obamacare exchange to sign up, but of course, only if it is either A) the “open enrollment” period, or B) she incurs a “qualifying life event” that would make her eligible to purchase insurance.  If she’s merely switching carriers… no cigar, you have to wait till the open enrollment period!

Half of America's $3.5 Trillion Healthcare Spend Goes to 5% of Patients

theatlantic |  Last year, America’s total medical costs hit a new record of $3.4 trillion, according to the federal government. That’s about 18 percent of the country’s total GDP, meaning that one out of every six dollars we spent in 2016 went to health care. The national doctor bill dwarfs anything else we spend money on, including food, clothing, housing, or even our mighty military.

If that $3.4 trillion were spread equally throughout the population, the bill would come to some $10,350 for every man, woman and child in the country. But fortunately –for most of us, anyway—the cost of health care is not equally distributed. Rather, a small number of Americans run up most of the expense. The biggest medical costs are concentrated on a fairly small segment of the population—people with one or more chronic illnesses, plus victims of accidents or violent crime. The cost is so concentrated, in fact, that an estimated five percent of the population accounts for 50 percent of total medical costs.

For the purposes of this project, we’re calling these people The Platinum Patients—they’ve also been described as “super-utilizers” or “frequent fliers.”

This concentration of total cost on a small segment of the total population is reflected in another common aspect of medical spending: the concentration of treatment, and cost, in the end of a life span. For most people, the vast majority of all the health care they’ll ever get comes near the hour of death. Hundreds of billions of dollars each year are spent treating Americans who are in the last weeks, or days, of life.

The old Marx Brothers’ joke—“I wouldn’t dare go to the hospital—people die there all the time”—is essentially true. Many people die in the hospital—in many cases, just after they’ve incurred a hugely expensive round of surgery, treatment, and medication. About one-third of Americans undergo operations in the last month of life.

If these issues were subject to hard, cold economic theory, a health-care system would probably distribute spending differently. The large sums it costs to keep a sedated cancer patient with dementia alive in a hospital bed from age 94 to 95 could presumably be directed instead to provide, say, a kidney transplant for a 40-something victim of renal failure, or a young woman who is too depressed to care for her baby. That money could be used for pre-natal care for uninsured mothers, setting the stage for both mother and child to have a healthier and happier life. Or, those funds could be used to provide health insurance at reasonable cost to the 29 million Americans who have no health coverage today.

One famous, or perhaps notorious, advocate of limiting late-in-life medical spending is former Colorado Gov. Richard Lamm, who was given the nickname “Governor Gloom” in the 1980’s for his argument that the elderly have a “duty” to avoid costly care when the end is near. There’s only so much money available for medical care, Lamm noted, so it ought to be used in the most efficient way. In the face of bitter criticism, Lamm stuck to his guns. Just this spring he told the Denver Post: “When I look at the literature, and there are such things as $93,000 prostate operations at some stage of prostate cancer that might give two extra months of life, it is outrageous.”   

The problem with these straightforward economic calculations is that they involve real human beings who have friends and relatives. That 94-year-old cancer patient, after all, may have loving children or grandchildren at the bedside; hardly anybody is willing to let Grandpa die just to save money for the overall health-care system.

Let Addicts Die

WaPo  |  Under a plan by a city council member in Ohio, people who dial 911 seeking help for someone who's overdosing on opioids would start hearing something new from dispatchers: “No.”

In response to the opioid epidemic that swept the nation — including the small city of Middletown, population 50,000 — council member Dan Picard floated an idea that's been called more of “a cry of frustration” than a legitimate solution.

At a council meeting last week, Picard proposed a three-strikes-style policy for people who repeatedly overdose: Too many overdoses and authorities wouldn't send an ambulance to resuscitate them.

Picard told The Washington Post that he sympathizes with anyone who has lost someone to drug abuse, but said that responding to an ever-increasing number of overdose calls threatens to bleed his city dry.

“It’s not a proposal to solve the drug problem,” Picard said this week. “My proposal is in regard to the financial survivability of our city. If we’re spending $2 million this year and $4 million next year and $6 million after that, we’re in trouble. We’re going to have to start laying off. We're going to have to raise taxes.”

Why Beauty Matters

gurdjieff |  Because literature for Gurdjieff, as for the Sufis, is inextricable from philosophy, it is appropriate in considering Beelzebub’s Tales to address some fundamental philosophical questions, the answers to which help put Gurdjieff’s writings into perspective. Among the issues to be addressed, one of primary importance is to define what constitutes literature for Gurdjieff, or what, according to his aesthetics, distinguishes literature from non-literature; art from non-art. 

Unraveling this distinction involves comprehending some of Gurdjieff’s fundamental ideas about human beings and their place in the world. We have already proposed that Gurdjieff’s primary philosophical stance is that of Sufism, and his philosophy of art supports this contention.¹ At the core of his aesthetics is the position that no form of artistic expression possesses value in itself; no art is appreciable for its intrinsic value alone. Because of his premises concerning the meaning and purpose of human existence, all “art” for Gurdjieff, and consequently all literature as an art-form, must be functional or didactic. The value of an art work resides in its potentiality to transform or metamorphose the art appreciator. Insofar as a work of literature, a piece of music, a painting, or any other potential art form aids humans in the process of their spiritual evolution, that object or activity earns the designation “art” for Gurdjieff and possesses what he refers to as “soul.”

Gurdjieff’s use of terminology to espouse his aesthetics and other branches of his philosophy frequently involves his supplying old terms with new meanings. Consequently, we are forced when approaching his writings to temporarily abandon old associations of key words used in his discussions. Such is the case with the terms “soul,” “objective” and “subjective,” “conscious” and “unconscious.” “Subjective art,” for example, in Gurdjieff’s terminology, refers to most of what is commonly interpreted as art. Most twentieth-century art in its various forms, according to his standards, would fall into this category. But subjective art is not authentic art for him; it is the result of mechanical, unconscious human activity, and most of humanity is unconscious according to Gurdjieff. For the same reason, he refers to subjective art as “soulless” in that it results from little or no consciousness on the part of the would-be artist. In his introduction to Meetings with Remarkable Men, he asserts that contemporary civilization is unique in history in its massive production of soulless, pseudo art.

On the other hand, “objective art” is authentic art in that it results from deliberate, pre-meditated efforts on the part of a conscious artist. In the act of creation, the true artist avoids or eliminates any input which is subjective or arbitrary, and the impression of such art on those who experience it is always definite. To the degree that objective art is the result of consciousness, it inherently possesses “soul.” As one example of soulful art, Gurdjieff cites the paintings of Leonardo da Vinci; as another he refers to the Taj Mahal. Both constitute objective works of art.

Is Hip-Hop Good For Anyone?

theoccidentalobserver |   It is unfortunate, to say the least, that Black hip-hop scholarship never mentions the elephant in the room: Jewish control of the music industry. If hip-hop is, indeed, ethno-politics set to music, if hip-hop has taken the place of the civil rights movement in the hearts and minds of Black youth, it is impossible to ignore the historic Black-Jewish alliance against WASPs. For much of the twentieth century, that alliance was a constituent element in what Black nationalist Harold Cruse called the “fateful triangular tension among national groups…coming to the fore” in the 60s.[28] It is a truism of American political history that, from the Leo Frank trial and the founding of the NAACP in the early twentieth century down to the Black Lives Matter movement, Jewish intellectual-activists have worked tirelessly to imbue disaffected American Negroes with their own revolutionary spirit.[29]

Cruse was himself a Negro member of the American Communist Party. By that time, Jews had displaced Anglo-Saxons as the vanguard of American Communism. Unlike WASP Communists, the Jews shaped radical politics in accordance with “their own national group social ambitions or individual self-elevation.” Negroes were relegated to the status of a national minority in the party while Jews were free to pick up or drop their Jewish identity as it suited them.[30] This arrangement enabled Jews to become experts on “the Negro problem.” Not surprisingly, Jewish artists, musicians, and radicals then became highly visible players in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s. “As a result,” Cruse observes, “the great brainwashing of Negro radical intellectuals was not achieved by capitalism, or the capitalistic bourgeoisie, but by Jewish intellectuals in the American Communist Party.”[31]

In the contemporary hip-hop community, Jewish leadership has been hidden behind the corporate veil. Tricia Rose vehemently denounces the corrupting influence of corporate control on the hip-hop community but her treatment of the subject obscures the identity of the corporate high command.[32] The music industry is absorbed into a vast impersonal system of “White power,” a matrix whose denizens all routinely swallow the blue pill. The closest we come to identifying those in charge is when Dyson criticizes the “White corporate interests” exploiting Black talent.[33]

Jews are never mentioned in Dyson’s work on hip-hop. Not surprisingly, Dyson has unimpeachable philo-Semitic credentials. Blacks and Jews, he believes, are united in common struggles against oppression in White America. Far be it from him ever to cast Jews as an enemy of Black folk. On his account, Blacks love Jews and Jews love Blacks.[34] Professor Rose also tip-toes around the issue of Jewish influence in the hip-hop community; The Hip Hop Wars has no index entry for Jews. Only in passing does Rose name names. But, when she does identify a few of the corporate heavyweights involved in the hip-hop community, the elephant moves onto center stage.

In a chapter on hip-hop’s responsibility for sexist and misogynist lyrics and imagery, Rose mentions a rare public appearance by leading figures in the corporate record industry. In their statements “corporate executives such as Universal chairman Doug Morris, Warner chairman and chief executive Edgar Bronfman, Sony chairman Andrew Lack, and Viacom president and CEO Phillipe P. Dauman have defended their role as distributors of intensely sexist content by subsuming sexism under artists’ rights to express themselves freely.” Interestingly, in the same paragraph, Rose urges us to “pull back the veil on the corporate media’s manipulation of Black male and female artists and the impact this has on fans and the direction of Black cultural expression.”[35] Why does she not see fit to mention that the four corporate kingpins she names are all Jews? The ethno-political fact is that Rose leaves the corporate veil intact by ascribing blame for the corruption of the hip-hop community to an abstraction called corporate greed. Rose heads the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America at Brown University.[36] How can she not be aware of the stunning success Jews have had in mixing business with ethno-politics?

After all, a simple Google search on “Jews run hip hop” turns up a wealth of investigative leads for a researcher eager to see how the “triangular tension” between Jews, Negroes, and Anglo-Saxons” has accommodated itself to the new players in American ethno-politics. Black scholars typically ignore the criticisms of Jewish control commonly made by rappers and fans.[37] Traditional Catholics such as E. Michael Jones are also critical of rap music as “one more manifestation of the behavior which goes along with the Jewish revolutionary spirit that took over the Black mind during the course of the 20^thcentury.”[38] The Jewish revolutionary spirit has pioneered the techniques of using sex as an instrument of political control.[39] The hip-hop brand of sexuality is no exception.

Bearing that in mind, it comes as no surprise to learn that hip-hop is deeply involved “with the multibillion dollar pornographic industry. The strip club has long been an integral part of both the music video and business end, but since the start of the new century, there has been a complete cross-over into pornography.” Orlando Patterson describes scenes from these productions as “the most degrading and abusive depictions of women imaginable.”[40] Small wonder, then, that a Google search for “Jews run pornography” yields another treasure trove of investigative leads sure to be left unexplored (for fear of the Jews?) by both Black and White scholars.

The Secret Relationship?

FinalCall |  Some of our greatest icons, such as Sammy Davis Jr., Billie Holiday, “Little” Richard (and the list goes on) lived rich, yet died broke while Jewish managers, accountants, attorneys, business advisors and others fed their families for years off of their largess. Few entertainers in the history of Black America have been able to say that their assets and true net worth were as prominent as their talent and popularity. Sadly, hip-hop is no different. And while hip-hop has produced a handful of millionaires, they are like a teardrop in the Pacific Ocean when compared to the many rappers who, like most Black people, are living “show-to-show” and “check-to-check.”

Over the years I've had many personal acquaintances who were in the hip-hop music industry with hit records, global popularity and a healthy fan base. It always puzzled me the way they struggled financially; worse than some school teachers or sanitation workers. I watched many of them try and maintain the image of the rich and powerful, yet couldn't pay their taxes, child support and in some cases their rent. Popular hip-hop magazine, XXL, recently published an article titled “Hard Times” about fiscal problems rappers face that the hip-hop community doesn't like to talk about. Truth is, most rappers are broke; owing more money to their record labels than they have in their bank accounts. As a matter of fact, most contracts for rappers are just as horrible as those for entertainers in other genres where artists sell millions and receive pennies while the record companies make out like fat rats. Who are the owners of these major record companies? Forgive me if I sound monotonous, but they just happen to be Jewish.

There have been many examples of independent success in hip-hop's music industry such as Master P (No Limit Records), James Prince (Rap-a-Lot Records), Luther Campbell (2 Live Records) and others. However, because none of these outfits had the power to control their own distribution they were eventually left at the mercy of those who did. Who are the owners and controllers of the distribution channels that deliver rap music to the world? You guessed it. They just happen to be Jewish. Cash Money/Young Money Records, a popular imprint from New Orleans who houses artists Lil' Wayne, Drake, Nicki Minaj and others reportedly has one of the last lucrative independent deals in existence, but still do not control their own distribution. So even those Black-owned rap labels who appear to be the front-runners are in a dangerous position.

This opinion editorial is not an effort to weaken the powerful image of our great hip-hop artists. I love hip-hop. I am part of the hip-hop generation. This is why I felt the need to write this article. Hip-hop is leading the youth of the world, but if our artists are under the inordinate control of those who control their careers then where will the youth of the world be led? I'm only trying to, as they say in the streets, “keep it 100.” It's time for rappers to become just as tough and assertive in the boardroom as they are in the recording booth.