The Associated Press called both the House and the Senate for the Democrats after the midterms. You already know what some Republicans are afraid of. The Democrats are going to open the border. So here comes the same fight again. Open it. Close it. Deport more people. How many times can politicians have this argument without asking why so many people feel they have to leave home in the first place?

I want to start there. Why do people leave the place they grew up, sometimes leaving their families behind, to go to the United States or Europe? And why do some of them end up working in the very countries whose companies made money off the places they left?

Who made it harder to stay?

Think about a family that used to live off its land. A foreign company takes control of that land and starts growing crops for export. The company has a business. The family has lost the means to feed itself. And if the only work nearby is on that same land, now the family has to accept whatever wage the new owner is offering or go somewhere else to find work. The company gets the land and a supply of cheap labor. What does the family get?

That’s one way capitalism makes one part of the world richer while making it harder to live in another. Companies that control the land, the factories and the contracts get to decide what gets produced and where the money goes. The people doing the work get told they should be grateful there’s a job at all.

And then there’s war. When powerful countries use military force to protect their grip on resources and markets, that’s imperialism. The people who stand to profit can be an ocean away. It’s regular working-class families whose homes get destroyed. Some people leave because they can’t feed their families. Others are running for their lives. By the time either reaches a border, somebody else has already made decisions about whether they can afford to stay home or whether there’s even a home left to stay in.

The boss gets paid again

Some people say Democrats in America and liberals in Europe want to let more people in because it’s the compassionate thing to do. But have you ever thought about who else wants those workers to come? The corporations. The business owners. They want cheap labor. When a politician talks about compassion, I want to know what happens to that worker after they get hired.

Say two people work the same line at a meatpacking plant. The boss tells both to stay late. One can say no and risk losing the job. The other has to think about whether the boss might report them to immigration authorities. Now imagine asking for a raise under those conditions. Or asking for your own damn paycheck when the boss shorted you. The boss knows that one of those workers has more to lose. That gives the boss room to pay less, demand more, or get away with things another worker could fight.

That’s how capital gets paid twice. It makes money off the land, resources and labor back home, even as it helps take away people’s reasons or means to stay. Then it makes money off some of those same people after they move, when they’re in a worse position to say no. The company that took the land and the company that hires the worker can have completely different owners. Capital finds a way to make money at both ends.

What politicians want you to fight over

The right tells the worker who’s angry about low wages to look at the immigrant on the next shift. Look at the person who sets your wage. Who gets to threaten one worker with a replacement and the other with immigration enforcement? Who comes out ahead when those two workers spend their time fighting over which one belongs in the country?

Opening a safe route can save somebody’s life. Closing it can send them back into danger. And after all the shouting about the border, the family still doesn’t have its land back, the home destroyed by war still has to be rebuilt, and the boss still gets to set the terms at work.

This is why I’m talking about capitalism and imperialism when politicians want to talk about open borders, closed borders and deportations. As long as the whole fight is about who gets to cross, the people who made money pushing families off their land and the people making money off their labor now can both go right back to business.

At the end of the day, capital wins.

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Donald Trump knows the war with Iran helped cost Republicans the midterm elections. He knows fuel prices went up. And he says he would make the same decision again.

After Democrats won control of the House and Senate, Vice President JD Vance put it bluntly: “The reason we lost is the war.”

Trump acknowledged that the war played a part in the defeat. But he defended his decision, saying he would do it again because Iran could not be allowed to have a nuclear weapon.

The people who voted in this election have spent months paying more for gas and diesel while trying to cover rent, groceries, healthcare, and everything else. Now they know that even after seeing the cost, the president says he would start the war again.

Trump Made the Decision. You Paid for It.

On February 28, when the United States and Israel began striking Iran, regular gasoline averaged about $2.98 a gallon across the United States, according to AAA.

By November 4, the day after the election, it was about $4.12. Diesel was about $6.27 a gallon, compared with roughly $3.69 a year earlier.

For someone buying 15 gallons of gasoline, the increase from $2.98 to $4.12 means paying about $17 more for a fill-up. That might not sound like much to the people sitting in the White House. For someone driving to work every day, it adds up.

A large share of the world’s oil and refined products normally travels through the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway near Iran. The war has disrupted shipping in the region and raised fears about oil supplies. When crude oil becomes more expensive, those costs can reach the gas station.

And diesel doesn’t just affect people who drive diesel vehicles. Farms, trucks, and businesses rely on it to produce and move goods. When their fuel costs rise, they have to absorb those costs or try to pass them on.

The war was not the only issue in the election. People were already angry about the cost of living, and candidates and local issues mattered too. But Trump and Vance have both acknowledged that the war hurt Republicans.

Trump chose to attack Iran. Millions of people who had no say in that decision have had to live with the consequences.

Republicans Are Looking at Hegseth. Trump Is Still Defending the War.

After the election, some Republicans started pointing the finger at Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

According to CNN, Republican lawmakers have privately blamed Hegseth for encouraging Trump to attack Iran, selling the idea that America could win quickly, and failing to prepare a clear way out.

Now Hegseth could face an impeachment vote as soon as next week. Republican Congressman Thomas Massie says he plans to push for a vote when the House returns. Massie has been trying to impeach Hegseth since before the election, accusing him of continuing the war without congressional authorization.

Hegseth should answer for his role. If he pushed for the war and helped carry it out without proper authorization, hold him accountable.

But let’s remember who is president. Trump made the decision to attack Iran. He is still defending that decision, and he says he would do it again.

Trump has publicly praised Hegseth and said he is doing a very good job. At the same time, CBS News and The Wall Street Journal report that Trump has asked advisers whether Hegseth should stay in his job.

Republicans can argue about Hegseth’s future. But if he leaves and the war continues, what exactly has changed for the people paying for it?

Democrats Won. Will They End the War?

Democrats campaigned against the war and its effect on the cost of living. They won majorities in both chambers of Congress and will take control in January.

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer says Democrats will end the war and has pointed to Congress’s power over federal spending.

Democrats have already taken some action. Senate Democrats blocked the advancement of a major defense authorization bill while protesting the Iran war. That matters.

But before the election, House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries was asked directly whether Democrats would use Congress’s power over spending to force an end to the war. He said lawmakers needed to consider every available legislative means, but he did not commit to withholding funds.

Now Democrats will have to show what their promise means. Will they put a specific restriction on war funding forward? Will they hold a vote and make members of Congress explain where they stand? What will they do when Trump refuses to cooperate?

Winning Congress does not give Democrats an instant switch to end the war. Trump can veto legislation, and any plan will face political and practical obstacles. But Democrats will control the agenda in both chambers. They can put a plan in front of the public and fight for it.

For years, Americans have watched Democrats and Republicans use different language while supporting wars overseas. In this case, Democrats campaigned against the war. Now voters get to see how far they are willing to go to stop it.

Put People’s Lives First

Trump made his position clear. He knows the war has a cost, and he says he would do it again.

Democrats asked voters for power while promising to end the war and address the cost of living. They won. Now they need to put those promises into action.

People don’t need another speech about affordability while the war continues and their bills keep coming. They need representatives who are willing to challenge the decision to keep fighting and focus on the lives of the people who elected them.

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First remember how Texas school finance is supposed to work. Property-wealthy districts like Plano ISD, independent School District, send money into the state’s recapture system, the one people call Robin Hood, to help poorer and more rural districts cover buildings, buses, special education, the unglamorous basics.

Now look at Plano. Dallas Stars owner Tom Gaglardi, reported net worth about $5.5 billion, wants a new arena when the team’s American Airlines Center lease runs toward 2031. The City of Plano has talked about putting roughly $700 million into a Willow Bend arena project. Plano ISD has agreed to put up to $250 million more into a tax increment reinvestment zone, or TIRZ, over about 18 years. That is nearly $1 billion of public commitment aimed at a private hockey franchise.

So the arrangement flipped. The same district that was supposed to feed the shared pot is helping route future tax growth into a development zone whose centerpiece is a billionaire’s sports deal.

That is not smart growth. That is a class preference with a financing costume.

The soft fix that sounds reasonable

They do not say, “Give Gaglardi a billion dollars.” They say growth. They say Willow Bend needs a second life. They say visitors will pay. They say the school district is investing in the tax base, not raiding today’s classrooms.

And then they put Proposition A on the November 3, 2026 ballot. Prop A authorizes venue taxes so the city can finance its share: up to 5% on short-term car rentals, up to 2% more on hotel rooms, up to $3 per vehicle for event parking, up to 10% on tickets, and up to $5,000 per game on major-league teams that play there. The ballot language even opens with “THIS IS A TAX INCREASE.”

Each piece feels small on purpose. A hotel tax here. A parking fee there. A TIRZ that only captures “future” increment. Nobody has to vote for a line that says “transfer from poor schools to hockey.” If you live in Plano, the mall is struggling and the arena sounds like status, so mouths stay closed while the paperwork moves.

We’re not touching classroom money

They say classrooms are untouched. Fine. You do not have to cut a teacher line today to rob poorer districts of tomorrow’s shared money. Call the diversion investment and the theft disappears in the paperwork.

Plano ISD is property-wealthy. In the normal setup, more local property wealth means more money owed into the Robin Hood pot. A TIRZ lets the district steer a share of future tax increment into the city’s arena zone instead. Officials project about $438 million in benefits against the contribution, or a net of about $188 million. Those numbers are projections, not ownership of the upside.

Classroom budgets are not the only place working people get robbed. The shared pot for poorer kids still loses the future flow. The costume just keeps today’s chalk budget looking clean.

Who owns the building. Who owns the cash.

Roughly $700 million from the city side. Up to $250 million from the school district’s TIRZ. Prop A taxes to thicken the public stack. Nearly $1 billion pointed at one project.

And ownership: the city would own and operate the building. The Stars are set to take the money that actually matters, games, concerts, sponsorships, naming rights. So the public puts up the capital and the risk. The private franchise keeps the harvest. A “visitor pays” tax does not change who owns the naming rights.

What the ruling class will fund

Feeding kids gets called communism. Feeding a billionaire a hockey arena gets called investment.

The same political class that calls school lunch communism can always find nearly a billion dollars when the beneficiary owns a team. Public money for private sports is not a local quirk. It is how this system ranks whose needs count as serious and whose needs count as ideology.

Capitalism sells that ranking as common sense. Ordinary people wait for buses, teachers, and lunch. Billionaires get arenas with a financing costume and a ballot that admits THIS IS A TAX INCREASE.

So if you live in Plano, Prop A is on the ballot today. If you don’t, watch anyway. A wealthy school district helps route money that should have served poorer students into a deal that fattens a private sports business, then tells you the classrooms are untouched. That is not a glitch in Texas school finance. That is the system working as designed for the people who already have too much.

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CoreCivic, a private prison company, gave $500,000 to the Trump-Vance inaugural committee. Then in August 2026, the Department of Homeland Security paid CoreCivic $495,639,588 for an empty prison in Appleton, Minnesota, so ICE could use it. And CoreCivic still expects to run it.

So the sale is not the whole story. The company gets paid once for the building, then every day to keep people inside it. I think you have to read them together.

The price nobody in Washington wants to explain

On May 7, 2025, CoreCivic emailed Minnesota’s Department of Corrections and offered to sell the Prairie Correctional Facility to the state for $75 million, including the upgrades needed to reopen it. Minnesota said no. About a year later, the federal government paid roughly 6.5 times that price for the same prison, a closed prison in a town of under 1,400.

CoreCivic says the two numbers measure different things, and that the federal price came from an appraisal based on replacement cost and ICE renovations. Fine. But the public facts still sit side by side. The company was willing to sell for $75 million, and U.S. tax money paid $495.6 million. The difference is about $420 million.

And Appleton was not a one-off. The same day, CoreCivic announced the sale of its Kansas facility to DHS for $238 million, and a month earlier sold two California facilities for about $1.5 billion. That is 4 prisons to the federal government this year for more than $2.2 billion.

Paid for the building, then paid to fill it

The sale is only the first payment. CoreCivic has a 5-year contract to operate the Appleton facility for ICE, and expects about $75 million a year at full capacity. That contract pays a fixed monthly amount plus a daily amount for each person detained.

So first CoreCivic sells the building to the federal treasury at a huge price. Then every occupied bed becomes a daily revenue line. Empty beds pay less. Full beds pay more. A company paid per detainee has a direct financial reason to want the beds full, and nobody has to say that out loud for the incentive to work.

Therefore this is not one outrageous purchase. Privatized detention turns people into a recurring daily-pay business. Sell the cage. Then get paid to keep it full.

And a 1,600-bed facility the federal government owns and pays to operate creates pressure to keep detaining people, because empty beds look like waste and full beds look like results. The people in those beds are immigrant workers, and they and their families pay with their freedom and their income.

In September, the Government Accountability Office reported that ICE’s facility purchases have “the potential to result in waste” because ICE “has not assessed the long-term affordability of owning these facilities.”

Half a million for the inauguration

Federal records reported by KARE 11 show CoreCivic gave $500,000 to the Trump-Vance inaugural committee. Then DHS bought CoreCivic’s empty Minnesota prison for nearly 1,000 times that amount.

No court has found a bribe or a quid pro quo, and I’m not claiming one has. But what is public is enough: the donation, the timing, the $495.6 million sale, and the operating contract that keeps paying. That is a web of interests. A private prison company gives money to the political project that promises mass detention, and then that project buys the company’s prisons and pays it to run them.

So if you call this corruption, I think that is a fair political judgment about how money and power work in Washington, not a criminal charge. CoreCivic and its shareholders take the sale money and the operating revenue. American taxpayers pay for the purchase and the contract, and immigrants swept up in the enforcement push pay the rest.

A waste of our time

On October 29, KARE 11 published its investigation. The next day, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was in St. Cloud, Minnesota, at a press event about the administration’s war on fraud. A KARE 11 reporter asked him to explain the $420 million gap.

I don’t know anything about that. What we are here to do is to prosecute criminal fraud, and any question like that, that deflects away from it, I think is a waste of our time.

Scott Bessent, St. Cloud, Oct 30, 2026

That answer tells you how this administration defines fraud. Feeding Our Future became a national symbol of waste over stolen federal child-nutrition money, and KARE 11 reported that the Appleton price gap alone is larger than the estimated loss in that case. Yet a Cabinet official at a fraud event called the question a waste of time.

That is arrogance, and a pattern: aggressive enforcement against targets the government wants to punish, and no accountability for deals that benefit its donors and allies.

What the beds are for

Look, when the government hands a public job to a company that runs it for profit, the profit has to come from somewhere. In a prison it comes from people in beds. So CoreCivic doesn’t need anyone to promise it more detainees, because the contract already pays more for every one. And as long as locking people up is somebody’s revenue line, there will always be someone in Washington with a reason to want more of it. Appleton is not the scandal. It’s the business model, with the price finally out in public.

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Albuquerque, 2023. DEA agents stop a vehicle with a child inside and seize roughly 6,000 to 7,000 fentanyl pills and a gun. According to one of those agents, federal prosecutors scolded them for intervening.

That is the account Special Agent David Howell gave CBS News in an October 29 interview. He says he spent three years warning managers that the agency was allowing dangerous quantities of fentanyl to reach the streets while investigators pursued bigger cases.

The Associated Press reported that agents repeatedly monitored shipments without seizing them between 2023 and 2025. The Albuquerque Journal reported Howell’s allegation, backed by two former agents, that one unseized delivery contained more than 1.8 million pills on March 25, 2025.

The DEA tells the public that “One Pill Can Kill.”

Then it owes the public an explanation for every decision to let those pills keep moving.

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Look at what speaking up can cost someone.

Wu Kai was an influencer who exposed an alleged scam boss in Cambodia two years ago. Someone overseas then put a one-million-yuan bounty on him, paying people to abduct him.

In November 2024, several men pretending to be police officers kidnapped Wu Kai. They beat and tortured him, then left him unconscious on a remote mountainside, where he died.

They Smeared Him After His Death

According to a friend quoted in the report, after Wu Kai was killed, someone transferred 11,000 yuan to his Alipay account, then circulated the payment screenshot to spread the lie that he had been arrested for extortion.

So they didn’t just kill him. They used a money transfer to smear his name and cover up his death.

According to the report, the main attacker has been sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve. Thirteen others involved have also received prison sentences. The man Wu Kai had been exposing has also been arrested.

But the person who put up the bounty is still out there.

The Price of Speaking Up

Now think about Epstein. His network reached into politics, finance, and entertainment, right into the ruling class.

And people keep asking: “Why don’t more victims speak up? Why don’t more whistleblowers come forward and name names?”

People can want to do the right thing and still be terrified. Speaking up means putting your life on the line. And sometimes your family’s lives, too.

If a scam organization can pay people to abduct and kill someone who exposes them, imagine confronting people with money, political connections, and access to powerful institutions.

They can threaten your livelihood, drag your name through the mud, and make your family pay the price.

So why are people demanding courage from victims instead of demanding accountability from those with power?

Who Protects the Powerful?

Yes, investigate everyone who committed these heinous crimes with Epstein. Prosecute them. Punish them.

But look at the system that gave him access, credibility, and protection. The Epstein class has power inside that system. Therefore, accountability has to reach beyond individual criminals to the institutions that enabled them.

Demanding courage from victims is easy. Making powerful people afraid of the consequences is the real test.

Stay grumpy. Stay angry. Stay defiant.

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People go to rehab because they want their lives back. Federal prosecutors say a California treatment network supplied some of those people with drugs so the business could keep collecting insurance money.

Nathan Young, 39, and his father, David Young, 71, face federal charges over a network of purported addiction treatment facilities. Between 2020 and 2026, prosecutors allege, the network submitted more than $1.6 billion in fraudulent claims and received over $210 million. The accusations include providing illegal drugs to maintain addiction, fabricating treatment, and recycling patients through facilities. The case has not yet gone to trial.

That is a hell of a recovery plan.

Keep the beds full

According to the Justice Department, recruiters known as “body brokers” targeted people experiencing homelessness, poverty, and addiction. Free flights, hous…

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My position on AI is simple: I support its development. If technology can increase productivity and free people from repetitive, exhausting, or dangerous work, that should be a good thing.

If people could spend less time doing mechanical tasks and more time creating, doing research, making art, being with their families, or simply enjoying life, I would welcome that. Surely human life should involve more than going to work, paying bills, and doing it all again tomorrow.

But getting from today to that future raises a question: if AI replaces your job before society has made arrangements for you to live without it, how do you survive?

On October 23, China released a national policy document addressing AI development and employment. It calls for reducing the impact of job displacement, assessing employment risks, and preparing response plans. The government is putting technological development and workers’ livelihoods into the same policy discussion.

For readers who want the full details, I’…

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A scam factory needs an address. It needs computers, an internet connection and somebody who can keep the operation running. And once money starts coming in, there are ways to collect a share without ever sending a fraudulent message.

In Cambodia, Al Jazeera investigated alleged scam kingpin Deng Pibing and his Long Bay tourism project.

Cambodian authorities responded in October 2026 that they had discovered suspected scam buildings there in February. They said the groups had fled, suspects had been detained and the site sealed. They also said Deng was under investigation and had left Cambodia in late May. Those dates matter: a documentary broadcast in October does not establish that every scene was filmed that month.

But the case opens a question worth following beyond one development: who supplied the premises, who controlled access, and who earned money while the operation lasted?

In the first article, I followed people whose savings were stolen and people imprisoned behind the keyboar…

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Four days after his father died, CY lost $500,000.

The person encouraging him to invest called herself Jessica. She had contacted him on WhatsApp, and he initially thought she was a former colleague. She messaged him daily for a month. When she learned his father was dying, she offered a cryptocurrency opportunity that could help cover funeral costs.

CY had a background in finance and accounting. He tested the platform with smaller amounts. It looked convincing.

After that first enormous loss, Jessica encouraged him to put in more to recover it. He took out a $200,000 loan and borrowed another $100,000 from his brother-in-law. By the end, he had lost $1.2 million, including 30 years of savings and his daughter’s education fund. ABC7 reported his story in 2022, identifying him by his initials.

I want you to remember the funeral costs. These people foun…

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I’ve spent roughly 14 years working in Vancouver real estate, including working with developers and for a development company. So when people talk about the housing crisis, I have a few things to say.

First, I agree with something that might surprise some people: government regulations are a major part of the problem.

But I also think blaming everything on government red tape while pretending developers and investors have nothing to do with rising prices is ridiculous.

I’ve seen how this industry works. The problem is more complicated than either side wants to admit.

And if we’re serious about making housing affordable for working people, we need to look at the entire picture.

I appreciate everyone who reads and supports my work. This is a one-person operation, and if you’d like to support it a little further, please consider subscribing or becoming a paid subscriber. Thank you.

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Yes, Government Red Tape Is a Real Problem

Let’s start with zoning laws and development permits.

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Foreign billionaires should not control the channels through which a country argues, organizes and chooses its government.

They sell you freedom of speech. What you get is permission to speak inside a system they own.

You can write the post. They decide how it travels. They set the moderation rules, design the recommendations and control the machinery connecting you to an audience. Then they present themselves as champions of your freedom.

Brazil’s election shows why that sales pitch deserves a much harder look.

I appreciate all your support. This is a one-man operation, and if you’d like to support my work a little further, please consider subscribing or becoming a paid subscriber. Thank you.

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Freedom, with the distribution controlled

Lula is fighting for reelection against Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, Jair Bolsonaro’s son. Flávio finished the first round ahead, roughly 47% to 45%. A Datafolha poll published October 15 put their runoff support at 51% to 49% of valid votes, within the two-point margin of error. The runoff is October 25.

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Trump’s new White House press secretary lived and worked in Beijing for about two years. You might expect her observations about China to include something about manufacturing, infrastructure, or how the country actually operates.

Instead, Katie Zacharia recalled questioning China’s rise because “they don’t even have proper toilets.”

That is an extraordinary amount of confidence to place in a bathroom review.

Apparently, the exam disappeared too

In the same interview, Zacharia explained her legal background by saying, “There’s no Chinese bar.”

China has a national legal qualification examination. Chinese nationality is a requirement to take it. Her own eligibility and the existence of the examination are two entirely different questions. Someone who worked at a Chinese law firm should be able to explain that distinction.

She subsequently confirmed that she failed the California bar exam and never retook it. Trump had introduced her as an attorney when announcing her appointment. She defended calling herself a lawyer by pointing to her law degree, international transaction experience, and advice she said she received from legal professionals.

Failing an exam happens. Following that up with a confident declaration that another country has no equivalent examination is what makes this such excellent comedy.

Apply the integration standard

I also want to apply that familiar demand about immigrants integrating into their host society.

Fine. Apply it to Americans abroad too.

If you move to China, work there, and benefit from the opportunities available there, how much responsibility do you have to understand the place before dismissing it?

Two years abroad gives you experience. What you learn depends on your curiosity, your willingness to listen, and whether you treat unfamiliar things as something to understand or something beneath you.

Katie, was the problem really China’s future? Or did you encounter a squat toilet and decide the entire country had reached its developmental limit?

She passed the audition

Zacharia offered another revealing detail: she described her television appearances as an audition for Trump. She tracked his priorities and went on television to discuss them, hoping he would notice and recruit her.

That tells me more about this appointment than the failed exam does.

The person behind the White House podium has to explain an administration’s decisions under scrutiny. Yet the audition she described was about catching one man’s attention by delivering the messages he wanted amplified.

You know what? I’m just gonna say it. America needs more people like Katie. Live in China for two years, come back talking about toilets, fail the bar exam, and land behind the White House podium.

That’s how you make America great again. Just get more people like Katie into the White House.

Keep going, Donald. The rest of the world is watching. Some of us are even taking notes.

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But when it’s time to pay your claim? Suddenly, they treat you worse than a fucking animal. You’re just a number on a spreadsheet.

That’s what went through my head watching this woman describe losing coverage for medication she says is helping her. She’s already dealing with an illness. Now she has to worry about how she’ll afford treatment, too.

And there’s a much bigger problem behind that fear.

KFF’s analysis of federal data found that Medicare Advantage insurers fully or partially denied 4.1 million requests for prior authorization in 2024. That means patients’ providers were asking insurers to approve care before it could be covered. Only 11.5% of those denials were appealed. Among the denials that were appealed, 80.7% were fully or partially overturned.

Think about what that process demands. You’re sick. You’re exhausted. You may be missing work. Now you and your doctor have to fight through another round of paperwork to get care approved. Even when you win, you’ve spent time and energy getting past a refusal.

Your illness doesn’t pause while somebody processes the appeal. Your rent doesn’t pause either.

In 2023, ProPublica documented UnitedHealthcare trying to deny coverage for Christopher McNaughton’s effective ulcerative colitis treatment. His bills approached $2 million annually.

Your treatment is something you need to keep functioning. On an insurer’s books, it is also an expense. That is a hell of a conflict to build into healthcare.

The company controls the coverage decision. You carry the consequences. A denial can leave you choosing between fighting, paying money you don’t have, or going without. To me, being left without access to treatment you need can feel like being handed a death sentence.

The rich have options. They can pay out of pocket, hire help, and keep fighting. Ordinary people have groceries, mortgages, children, and jobs they can’t afford to lose. How are you supposed to feel safe when keeping your treatment depends on winning another argument over coverage?

You bought insurance because you couldn’t afford to face an illness alone. Now you’re still paying, still sick, and still begging for coverage.

I’m sorry to say, that is cruel. Making a sick person fight for care while they’re already struggling to function feels almost evil.

This is what extreme capitalism looks like when you’re the one who needs the medicine.

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Recently, I’ve seen Chinese and Brazilian users discussing Brazil’s election on Twitter, or X. Some of the exchanges turned into arguments, and I think the disagreement is worth looking at.

Some Brazilian leftists are friendly toward China. They appreciate its socialist orientation and opposition to American dominance. They seemed to expect Chinese users to agree with their other positions too.

Then they started discussing drugs, crime, and LGBTQ issues.

Suddenly, the comrades had a problem.

Chinese commenters expressed support for harsh drug enforcement and socially conservative views. Some Brazilian leftists pushed back. Meanwhile, some right-wing commenters found positions they liked. One repost even joked about starting to feel like a communist.

I found that funny. But it also exposed an assumption: if China is socialist, Chinese people must accept the entire political package somebody associates with the left.

Who decided that?

China did not sign your ideological contract

I see China as a socialist country, or at least a country moving toward socialism. Its socialist orientation emphasizes public ownership, state-led development, and reducing poverty. Its constitution recognizes both the state sector and private businesses.

China also pursues technological development while retaining many conservative cultural attitudes.

You can call that “economically left, culturally conservative.” It helps explain the mismatch. But building advanced technology does not automatically make a country socialist. The question remains who owns, who controls, and who benefits.

Economic positions and cultural positions do not always arrive in one package.

Supporting public ownership does not require tolerating drug traffickers. Wanting safe streets does not automatically make you right-wing. A society organized around ordinary people still has to protect them.

China’s hostility toward narcotics also has a history. Opium is bound up with imperial coercion and national humiliation. China’s narcotics-control white paper invokes that experience. I see it as one reason drug control carries meanings of sovereignty and collective protection.

You cannot understand that history by handing Chinese people a Western political checklist.

Workers have to live with the consequences

I recognize this argument from my own audience.

I talk about socialism, imperialism, and workers getting screwed, and many people agree. Then I support harsh punishment for drug traffickers, including the death penalty in serious cases, and punishment for serious criminals.

Suddenly, some of those same people disagree.

I believe punishing those criminals is part of protecting workers and ordinary people. Get them caught and convicted. Make the organizers and financiers face consequences too.

Why the hell would protecting working people stop at their front door?

A woman finishing a late shift needs to get home safely. A parent needs their child protected from people profiting from addiction. A family living near violent gangs needs protection they can actually count on.

They still have to live there tomorrow.

People with money have more options. They can move away or pay for security. Workers with rent due cannot simply buy an exit.

Housing, healthcare, wages, and safety are all part of material reality. Poverty needs action. Addiction needs treatment. Understanding how someone entered criminal activity does not erase the people they hurt.

Enforcement has to work. The U.S. National Institute of Justice’s research summary finds that the likelihood of being caught generally deters crime more effectively than increasing punishment. I want consequences backed by competent investigations and fair trials, reaching the powerful people behind the business.

The revolution cannot stop at your wardrobe

This is where I think some liberal leftists get badly confused.

They spend so much time discussing universal values and woke culture that class exploitation gets pushed aside. Supporting LGBTQ rights is fine. Those rights do not settle who owns the company, who controls your working day, or whether you can afford a doctor.

Women’s wages, unpaid care work, and discrimination against gay workers are material issues. Those workers need actual power and protection.

I expected at least some of the anti-imperialist, working-class politics associated with Che Guevara and the Cuban revolution: confronting foreign domination and challenging ownership.

But when your socialism amounts to fashionable labels while corporate power goes untouched, you become a recycling depot for the U.S. Democratic Party’s secondhand political garbage.

You wear “communist” like a designer jacket. Edgy. Fashionable. Looks great on your profile. Meanwhile, the shareholders still own the company, the boss still controls your work, and your revolutionary vocabulary has cost them nothing.

What power have workers gained? What ownership have you challenged?

That is my test. Class exploitation. Ownership. Ordinary people’s material lives.

Brazil has its own labor and anti-dictatorship traditions. I am criticizing the shallow politics in this argument, not pretending a few accounts represent its entire left.

And I have no interest in making Chinese commenters Brazil’s political schoolmasters. China’s experience gives other countries things to study, adapt, challenge, or reject. Brazil needs its own road.

China does not owe anyone obedience to a foreign cultural checklist.

Who owns? Who benefits? Who pays? Keep those questions at the center. Your landlord collects the rent regardless of which cultural argument you win.

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So, there was another mass shooting in the United States. 9 people are dead in Pennsylvania. A 45-year-old government employee killed eight people, including a pregnant woman and two young children. Most of the victims were his own family members.

And just days earlier in Georgia,2people were killed and 35 others injured when gunfire erupted at a homecoming block party.

You know, I’m getting tired of this kind of stuff. I’m getting tired of making videos like this.

In 2024 alone, more than 44,000 Americans died from gun-related injuries, including suicides. That’s about 122 people every single day.

We can talk about gun control. We can talk about culture. We can talk about the firearms industrial complex. We can always talk about this kind of stuff, but nothing, nothing is going to change.

Unfortunately, if you don’t address the root causes, which I believe are the capitalist system and the culture surrounding guns, nothing is going to change until those things change.

This is gonna happen again and again and again.

You know what the depressing part is? I already know that I’m probably gonna make another video like this soon.

You know what we call this kind of post in China? We call it a “period post.” It’s internet slang. It’s something that happens every month. You cannot stop it. It just keeps coming back like clockwork.

That’s what it is.

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Jeff Bezos says politicians blaming greedy landlords for expensive housing probably don’t have a solution. He also has a message for people criticizing billionaires: “Success is not villainy.”
Billionaire Jeff Bezos: 'Success is not villainy' – GeekWire

Fine. I’d like to know who’s paying for that success.

If your rent goes up, you start doing the ugly little calculations. Cheaper groceries? Another shift? Less money for your kids? Somewhere, an investor might look at that same rent payment and see an improving return.

You see money disappearing from your paycheck. They see income from an asset. That’s the class relationship I want to talk about.

In his recent Fox interview, Bezos acknowledged that housing is expensive. He blamed policies that subsidize demand while restricting construction. Build more homes, his argument goes, instead of pointing fingers at landlords.

Building more homes can help bring rents down. When you have more places to choose from, landlords have to work harder to get your money.

But I don’t see how that gives corporate landlords a pass. You can have a housing shortage and companies making competition worse at the same time.

Take RealPage. The Justice Department alleged that its rental software used landlords’ private, competitively sensitive information to recommend rents, with features that limited price cuts and aligned competitors’ pricing. In November 2025, DOJ proposed a settlement requiring changes to those practices.

Think about what that allegation means. Landlords who should be competing for you share information through the same software provider. You might shop around expecting competing offers while their pricing tools help them move together.

More apartments would be useful. So would stopping conduct that undermines competition. We can discuss both without getting confused.

Now, about this word “success.”

I’m talking about corporate landlords and investors who treat rental housing as a portfolio. Their managers answer to people expecting returns. You need somewhere to sleep, raise your children, and get ready for work.

Those interests can overlap. A company can build more homes, maintain them properly, and earn money doing it. But when increasing returns means charging you more, who gets to set the terms?

You can move, apparently. Find another deposit. Pay the movers. Change your commute. Maybe change your children’s school. All very simple when somebody else has to do it.

An investor’s financial success tells me they made money. It doesn’t tell me how, or what it cost the people paying them.

That’s why Bezos’s own interests belong in this conversation. His personal investment company, Bezos Expeditions, participated in funding Arrived, a platform that lets investors buy shares in rental homes. Arrived named it among investors in its 2022 funding announcement.

So a man who has invested in turning rental housing into an investment product is explaining why blaming landlords misses the point. I think his position deserves scrutiny.

My reading is that he’s defending the owners’ place in the system. Government policy can be criticized. The market can be improved. But question the owners’ power, and suddenly the conversation turns to whether you’re unfairly attacking successful people.

Capitalism gave him enormous wealth and influence. He has every reason to defend the arrangements that made that possible. Why should you accept those arrangements as the limits of your political imagination?

He even compared finger-pointing politicians to people in his companies who blame others instead of solving problems. Those people, he said, wouldn’t last long.

Well, you don’t work for him.

You don’t need a complete national housing plan before you’re allowed to question rent hikes or corporate power. A company can make employees work toward the owner’s goals. Politics includes deciding whose goals deserve priority.

Your right to demand accountability doesn’t need to pass a billionaire’s performance review.

And if we’re discussing supply, let’s discuss all of it.

Private developers can build housing. Public institutions and cooperatives can too. Then we get to ask who owns the homes, how rents are set, and what the income is supposed to support.

Vienna has roughly 220,000 municipal apartments and 200,000 subsidized homes. Housing organized around affordability already exists at a substantial scale.

It still needs land, financing, construction, and maintenance. But those costs can be paid under rules that prioritize stable housing instead of ever-higher investor returns.

For me, that’s where socialist politics gets concrete. Who controls the land and the buildings? Can people have secure homes without satisfying somebody else’s investment targets?

If you can’t afford the rent investors want, you still need somewhere to live tonight.

Bezos can defend his class. We can insist on secure, affordable housing. His interests don’t automatically become ours. I judge housing policy by whether you can afford a home and have enough money left to live.

If your investment succeeds because somebody else’s family has to cut back on food, rest, and time together, spare me the lecture about respecting success.

Show me who paid for it.

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You register to vote. You want cheaper healthcare, affordable housing, or a government that gives a damn about your paycheck.

Then you find out ICE has collected tens of millions of voter records.

Why the hell does an agency that detains and deports people need that much information about voters?

That question deserves an answer. “Election integrity” is a slogan. It does not explain why an immigration agency is collecting huge voter datasets, investigating registration groups, and discussing undercover operations against them.

I appreciate everyone who reads and supports my work. This is a one-person operation, so please consider subscribing to my Substack. And if you’re feeling a little generous, becoming a paid subscriber would go a long way in helping me keep this going. Thank you so much.

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Millions of records. What exactly are they looking for?

Internal documents obtained by Democracy Forward through an information-disclosure lawsuit describe the operation.

ICE’s investigative branch received approximately 50.6 million voter records from the Justice Department. Another 48.4 million came from outside sources associated with Heather Honey, an administration official who promoted false claims about the 2020 election. The datasets may overlap.

Those numbers tell you how much information the agency collected. They tell you nothing about how many people broke the law.

ICE also reviewed at least 82 Pennsylvania nonprofits and examined dozens of organizations in New Jersey. One New Jersey review found no derogatory information on the groups examined.

Investigators discussed sending undercover agents into organizations suspected of facilitating unlawful registration. The records describe plans; they do not establish that those deployments happened.

Look at the reach: enormous voter datasets, community organizations, and proposed secret investigations. The administration owes the public evidence that justifies that reach.

Peter Thiel’s company enters the picture

Palantir, co-founded by billionaire Peter Thiel, built a tool called ELITE for ICE. It helps agents identify and locate people targeted for immigration enforcement on a map.

A July internal report said voter information from six states was awaiting entry into ELITE by Palantir. The import remains unconfirmed, and a source familiar with the matter told Democracy Docket that the information was not integrated.

The plan itself is outrageous. Why consider putting voter information into software built to locate immigration enforcement targets?

Registering to vote should not turn a citizen’s information into raw material for an expanding immigration investigation.

And Thiel deserves a place in this story. In 2009, he wrote: “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.”

A billionaire openly questions democracy. The company he co-founded builds tools for a government collecting millions of voter records.

Apparently, his discomfort with democracy poses no difficulty when the government needs software.

The responsibility belongs to both sides of that relationship: officials who decide how to use state power, and the private company supplying the tools. The public deserves to know who handles the data and who answers when something goes wrong.

Elections start before the ballot box

People hear “election interference” and picture somebody changing votes.

Political participation also depends on whether people can register, organize, and get help without fear.

That is why investigations into voter-registration groups matter. These organizations help people navigate forms and deadlines. For somebody working long shifts, raising children, or struggling with paperwork, that help can make participation possible.

A government investigation can mean legal bills, staff time, and worried volunteers. If organizations must spend scarce resources defending themselves, they have less available for the people they serve.

When volunteers wonder whether helping somebody register will attract federal scrutiny, the government has introduced fear into ordinary civic work.

An investigation can apply pressure long before a courtroom reaches a verdict.

And that pressure lands differently across class lines. A billionaire has lawyers on call. A small nonprofit has a budget to stretch. A worker has a shift to get back to.

Rights become harder to exercise when using them costs money and time ordinary people cannot spare.

The slow roll into authoritarianism

This is how a government can move toward authoritarianism while elections remain on the calendar.

It expands the information it collects. It broadens the organizations it investigates. It considers more intrusive tactics. Each expansion arrives with a reassuring label: security, integrity, protection.

Meanwhile, the people in power gain more ability to scrutinize the people participating in politics.

The Trump administration has a direct political stake in these elections. Its use of enforcement power around political participation deserves particularly tough scrutiny.

“Protecting elections” cannot be a blank check for the incumbent government to widen its reach.

And the administration’s incompetence offers no comfort. A ridiculous politician still commands agencies with investigators, databases, and the power to turn a person’s life upside down.

You can laugh at the performance and still recognize the danger.

Make them answer

Why were these records collected? Who can use them? What information gets added? How are mistakes corrected? What happens to an organization’s information when investigators find nothing?

Trump’s administration should answer those questions. Palantir should explain its role.

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