12/10/24: Romania Elections Cancelled Over Misinformation, Gambling Next Opioid Crisis, Shooter Manifesto Reveals US Healthcare Rage

annul the first round of the presidential vote. To let me just read you a little bit of this, so I make sure I have the specifics right here, it says top Romanian court on Friday and nulled the first round of the country's presidential election days after allegations emerged that Russia ran a coordinated online campaign what does that sound familiar to to promote the far right outsider who

won the first round. The Consctitiational Court's unpresdented decision, which is final, came after the president declassified intelligence on Wednesday that alleged Russia had organized thousands of social media accounts to promote Colin georg Escu across platforms such as TikTok and telegram. The court, without naming George Escu, said that one of the thirteen candidates in the November twenty fourth first round had improperly received preferential treatment on social media,

distorting the outcome of the vote. George Escu denounced the verdict as an officialized coup and an attack on democracy, as did the second place finisher, reformist Alna Lasconi of the center right Save Romania Union Party. So, obviously, Soder raised a lot of alarms among Cloch watchers here because the contours of the allegations are very similar to the Russia Gate allegations back in twenty sixteen of this you know,

coordinated Russian influence campaign. The current president released these intelligence reports that indicated and didn't even come to the conclusion that these TikTok accounts and whatever had changed the election result.

Didn't even directly reach the conclusion, just sort of alleged and hinted in that direction that it was Russia that had created these accounts and was running them and you know, conducting this malign influence campaign and then they use this as justification to completely annul the results of this election. Also worth noting here, so you know, the politics of this guy, George Esco or not my politics. He's a

far right politician. He was the only candidate that was sort of aggressively against Romania support for Ukrainian military aid, and you know, was sort of adversarial visa VI NATO was more kind of pro rustion aligned in terms of his rhetoric. And this is a big deal because Romania has been an important military partner in that region and there's a huge NATO base that is being planned for

Romania as well. So this was a problem not just for you know, the people who are currently in power in Romania, it was also a problem for US and our other NATO allies because it's signaled potentially, you know, Romania could be going in a different direction and not be a reliable NATO ally and you know the seat of this giant military base that's being planned.

the Financial Time. Let's put this up there on the screen, the absolute vast majority, this thing is just oh, Romania's Romania's western partners are worried about a key ally turning towards Moscow, as Bucharest is a NATO and an EU member that has so far supported Western efforts to back Ukraine in its defense against Russian aggression. And here's the thing.

He did not even Georgie Escu did not deny or he denied saying that he wants to take Ukraine or Romania out of the US military Alliance and he said, quote, he wants to renegotiate the terms of its membership. Okay, so what Donald Trump's has said stuff like that too. There's absolutely nothing wrong with it, and yet you know, he wins what is it twenty two? Sorry. The largest share of the vote was won by the center left party, followed by the nationalists, so he won.

were breathing big sigh of relief about this result. But it you know, now the first round of the presidential vote has been an old They're probably going to redo the vote sometime in the spring and we'll see what happens there. But you know, I mean, this would be like if in the US in twenty sixteen, after there was Russian influence in our campaign, which we all know, I mean, we run multi billion dollar campaigns here, like the idea that the weird memes that they were putting

on Facebook was determined as preposterous. But anyway, if that had been used to actually overturn the election, or imagine imagine this time, because Twitter is you know, run by Elon Musk, who put a quarter of a billion dollars into Donald Trump's campaign. If that was used to overturn

the results of this election. And you can see how this could be used in both directions, right, because then in twenty twenty they could have said, hey, you know, the censoring of the Hunt Biden laptop story that renders this election illegitimate and it should be overturned. And so you can see how, you know, this would be the road to how and the road to completely you know,

just disregarding the will of the people. And you know, to my knowledge, in spite of our State Department's rhetoric about how much they are committed to democracy blah blah blah, I don't think that they've objected to any of these doings in Romania.

it through their democratic process. So if it's a democratic will of the people to elect somebody who wants to end aid to Ukraine, then so be it. And you know, the funny thing is this may seem like fringe issues and stuff to us because Ukraine is just one of a number of things. But if you Romania is actually a big deal, right, guess like, not only you're a NATO,

this is a country which you're very close to. You've got some of your population who can probably recall some of the USSR times and others and their own dark history as well. And so you're overturning this election basically based upon the will of the European Union and of NATO.

I cannot think of a better example to justify so much of the European far right hatred which is now basically pan European at this point of exactly these institutions which claim to act in the name of democracy and are obviously committed to anything.

in size? The new base will give Romania an increased role in natosecurity architecture, a position of greater strength in the Black Sea, which the militarily dominated by Russia. Will be able to host ten thousand soldiers in civilians by twenty thirty. So that's why we have such an interest in what is going on in this election, and also because of Romania already being an important ally in terms of our position in the Ukrainian War. But I mean,

obviously the hypocrisy is clear, and it's very troubling. And so the first, first controversial decision was the outgoing president deciding to release these intelligence reports which fueled all of this speculation and concern about Russian meddling in their politics. And then following on the heels of that was the Top Court in an unappealable decision using those intelligence reports

as the basis for annulling the presidential election results. So there you go, all right, Sager, be much anticipated anti online sports gambling monologue. Let's have it.

and normalization of online sports gambling. The mass legalization and normalization of sports gambling has the potential to rival the opioid epidemic in the United States its destruction of the American family unit, and yet today almost all lawmakers are lockstep in their support of it. The roots of online sports gambling boom in the United States trace back to a twenty eighteen Supreme Court decision after a petition was filed by the State of New Jersey challenging something known

as the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act, or PASPA. PASPA, passed in nineteen ninety two, effectively restricted all legal sports gambling action to the state of Nevada, and now this is stuck in New Jersey's cross. In two thousand and nine, especially after the Great Recession, they needed a way to bail out Atlantic City casinos, so on their behalf, they brought the suit against the law, where it would be

eventually resolved in their favor in twenty eighteen. Now, in the nine years where New Jersey brought the suit against PASPA, something important also happened, the absolute explosion of something called daily fantasy sports. Daily fantasy sports was effectively a loophole allowing people to place wagers on fantasy sports leagues in daily payouts, something that many Americans were already doing in their spare time. It aligned perfectly with the rise of

the smartphone. Companies like DraftKings and FanDuel began their entry into the market under this guise. So it was at this time where the roots of the epidemic were laid. Wagers were already being placed in mass by millions of Americans, and the normalization of gambling on the phone was planned. Perhaps most importantly, though, these companies began to hone their strategies, which include insane levels of marketing focused on a one specific message, it's a game of skill and you can

hit it big. Now, in a sense they are correct, but there's a lot more subtexts removed, which I will return to later. Suffice to say this, they were already tanned, rested, and ready for the Supreme Court decision which opened the floodgates. On May fourteenth, twenty eighteen, the Supreme Court struck down PASPA. Within a month, the state of Delaware began accepting single

game wagers, which would be seen as tamed today. By the end of the month, seven states had legalized sports gambling, and by today, as I speak, thirty nine states, including the District of Columbia, have now ha it legalized. Now, it's important to note when I say legalized, it doesn't

mean that it's a free for all. What it really means is that a few mega companies like DraftKings, FanDuel, Prize Picks, and others have effectively rolled up the legal sports betting market by getting separate states to grant them preferential licenses to run action in their state. This is important because the quasi monopolistic way that sports gambling runs on a state by state basis means that it is

not a fair marketplace. And two, it means that their excesses and sins are multiplied to absolutely stupendous profit and fundamentally are altering the way that American sports leagues will operate for decades to come. So let's take some time to ruminate on gambling itself and the attitudes of the United States towards it over the years. It's fair to say the US has undergone an extraordinary transition from effectively a nation of prudish Christians to much more secular libertarians

in the span of just a few decades. This is evident in current social attitudes, from everything on abortion, gay marriage, to marijuana and now sports gambling. Gambling itself was traditionally viewed as a sinful, backwards activity that was actually discouraged by the state for centuries. Now, the compromise that we got to was one that I actually think is quite simpsensible. People will always gamble. Let's not make it too easy. You can do it, but you have to go to

a physical casino. There are governing bodies like the Nevada Gaming Commission which make sure that these games are run fairly, and in general, that attitude was to confine it to as small places as possible that are accessible who are committed, but who did not want to make it part of everyday life. Quite sensible, in my opinion, should be applied to all vices. We understand they exist, but it shouldn't

be too easy to indulge, from cigarettes to alcohol. And this has been a attitude in America now for decades. But then everything changed and now all of a sudden, sports gambling is not just legal, but it's available everywhere, at the click of a button on your smartphone that's always in your pocket, two hundreds of millions of Americans,

and the results are in. They're astonishing. Since twenty eighteen, US customers have placed approximately half a trillion dollars in bets at legal sports books and climbing, turning a nation that had rare access to sports gambling into the largest gambling marketplace on Earth. This has transformed the finances of every Americans in a way that has not happened in generations. My friend Charles Lehman summed up three separate large scale studies.

The top line findings are this, for every one dollar waged on sports bet, household savings is depleted by two dollars. Legalized online gambling has increased the risk of household bankruptcy in a state by twenty five to thirty percent and worst of all, legalized sports gambling has massively increased the

rates of domestic violence, specifically against spouses of those who lose. Unsurprisingly, all of these effects are felt by the most economically precarious households, and the financial effects are concentrated amongst young men. Fair to say, it's been a disaster. So let's go through the arguments for why, even though all of this is really bad, we should overlook it. First is philosophical argument. This is what living in a free society looks like.

That's just because some people can't control themselves, we shouldn't ruin the fund for everyone. I understand that argument, I agree with it partially, but I would say this the US is recognized always that we can respect freedom of choice while also recognizing them when something is bad and trying to reduce said behavior for the societal benefit of all citizens. We should We have arrived at this with

a sensible attitude. For example, towards cigarettes, we know civiretes are bad, so we tax them, we restrict their place of sale, don't allow cigarette companies to advertise on television. We have developed good social norms around not wanting people to smoke. Nonetheless, something like twenty percent of Americans still smoke, but it's down from a record of like forty or fifty percent decades ago, and new uptake in smoking continues

to reduce. Now. Compare cigarettes to online gambling. Draftkinks, FanDuel bet MGM prize picks are allowed to flood the airwaves with a single message. All you have to do is use your skill and your genius and you can become a winner. I will explain soon how this is a complete lie. But second is this and what I want people to understand. It is impossible for these companies to run a fair operation that does not rely on exploiting

gambling addicts and to still make a profit. A new study by the Southern Methodist University tracks seven hundred thousand online sports betters for five years. They found less than five percent of users ever with grardy profit. The remainder of the users either broke even or lost money covering the winnings of those five But worst is this three percent of all betters who lost the most accounted for fifty percent total revenue of these online sports betting companies.

In other words, less than five percent of people actually realize any profit. The rest were losers, and the big losers lost so much they made up fifty percent of total revenue. Now couple this with the dirty secret of online sports betting. If you are one of the less than five percent who win, you're lucky if you're allowed to gamble for even a few months on these apps.

Once you start to win consistently, these gambling companies are fully within their rights to limit your bet size to amounts to less than ten or even one dollar, meaning that if you're any good, they are allowed to restrict your action and their potential exposure. So this is an outrageously good business, isn't it. You can promise people they can get rich. If they actually do, you cut them off.

Then you employ all company resources towards extracting as much as humanly possible from gambling addicts to make up fifty percent of your revenue. In other words, if these gambling companies were forced to allow fair play and then follow their own guidelines around restricting addicts, something they are legally required to do, they would go bankrupt and this entire

farce would fall apart. Take the story of a New Jersey man knowing known to us as Mdalo nineteen ninety in twenty twenty, this man never placed a betness life. By twenty twenty four, he had lost approximately one million dollars despite making an income of one hundred and seventy five thousand dollars per year. He drained his wife's investments, He maxed out their credit cards, He drained his young children's savings accounts, and sold the gifts that they were

given for Cress's Christmas and their baptisms. Now that's really easy to say, Yeah, it's his fault, screw him. But according to his wife's lawsuit, this user was contacted on a daily basis by draft gigs VIP hosts. They facilitated his access to gambling products despite knowing it was impossible for him to be able to support the amount of money that he was placing on wagers with his W

two income. Their own policies, as dictated by the state, require them to have gamblers placing large sums prove their ability to furnish funds by providing them a W two statement or bank statements. According to his wife quote, they knew he would not be able to continue to gamble large sums of money if they required verification, and they also knew the source of the money was quote illegitimate.

A modest amount of due diligence required by their own policies would have shown he did not have the ability to wager literally four times his literal W two salary. Throughout this entire time, again on a daily basis, DraftKings threw so called free promotions at him, whiskey glasses, VIP tickets and more. Now they do not do this out of the goodness of their heart. As I said earlier, people like this man constitute only three percent of gamblers,

but make up fifty percent of revenue. In fact, some people have caught on a new number of pro sports betters are mimicking the behavior of people like Imdalo nineteen ninety. They log into their accounts in the middle of the night to make it seem like they cannot sleep without checking their bets. Why because it flags to the algorithm that they are gambling addicts. It means that the company is more likely to shower you with so called free

promotional money and to continue your addiction chain. This is fundamentally different than alcohol or cigarette companies. Cigarette companies are not allowed to advertise period, let alone literally sponsor major sporting events. Furthermore, cigarette companies are not allowed to identify their so called super smokers and shower them in free and addictive cigarettes to encourage their addiction, same with alcohol

companies or any other vice. In this case, the statistics show us that the profit margins and the very business model of these companies rely on so called problem gamblers to prop up the revenue of the entire company. And now let me teck it take it even a step further, because now imagine if cigarette companies had a super addictive special cigarette and that cigarette was the one that they are marketing the most, pushing and making the most money on.

That is the case of online sportsbooks who are pushing a particular type of bet called a parlay bet. Most of you probably know what it is, but it's simple. A parlay bet is a contingent bet where several discrete events have to happen for you to win. Parlay bets unsurprisingly have the biggest payouts and on surprisingly they have the biggest loss rate for gamblers. Why because they're unlikely, and yet this exact bet, the parlay bet, is the one and most pushed, most marketed, and most used by

online sports betters. The largest online sportsbook in the United States, FanDuel has amassed forty six percent market share in the United States, specifically by marketing massively profitable single game parlay bets, which are gigantically profitable for the company. We don't have exact data, we do know this from the state of Illinois. Sixty percent of all wagers in the state wagered online

are parlay bets. We also know that the online sportsbook know that they will win with such regularity they build it into their profit forecast before for the customers even officially lose, and they remain the single most profitable bet to the company. So again, bringing it back to a cigarette comparison, you target the most addicted and you sell them the worst thing for them. The system is built on a simple premise band winners milk losers for all

their worth. All of you who are placing small wagers for fun is great, But the thing is it's only enabled by crippling addicts. Already, Gambler's Anonymous is reporting massive spikes in the number of young betters calling their hotline coming to their meetings. Some children as young as fourteen have found their ways to bet their parents' phones are full atticts. This will only continue, which brings me back

to the comparison I made at the top. It took nearly a decade to reckon with Purdue Pharma and the OxyContin crisis. It created an entire generation of previously not known heroin addicts, but the signs a few years were all there. And now we've unleased in addiction with one of these the highest rates of people taking their own lives and made it easily accessible to hundreds of millions

of Americans. If anything, this trend is accelerating. Literally, just a few days ago, the state of Missouri legalized sports gambling, now the fortieth state to do so. And so when people come back to this in a decade and we have millions of gambling addicts, high rates of domestic violence, alcoholism, and we need to figure out what to do, let me offer this modest proposal. The solution is staring us all on the face more of what we used to do. Paspa was correct about one thing. It is not fair

that Nevada is the only monopoly on sports gambling. So instead adapta model what the UK used to have. Sports betting is legal and available in person at parlors which are widely accessible. People can access it, but it requires physically having to go to a location with cash. This introduces the same level of friction that all other vices are governed by in the US. Second, betting organizations must be subject to fairness rules. If they advertise anyone can win,

then everyone must be allowed to win they can. It cannot be allowed to limit sharp sports betters and must have a truly free marketplace. Three, we must have heavy oversight on the ongoing fusion between professional sports and gambling companies. You can call this nanty state intervention if you want, but here's the truth. The NFL, the National Football League itself, it only exists because of multiple acts of Congress and preferential treatment from the US government. Sports and the NFL

are important to the American character. Gambling corruption scandals are already beginning to question the very integrity of the game itself. Leagues have become physically intertwined with multi billion dollar gambling behemits. Is a recipe for corruption and disaster. So I will end with a warning that I gave many years ago. Sometimes private industry can be just as much of a threat to your freedom as liberty to your freedom and

liberty as the government itself. And in this case, I think it is quite clear the damage gambling companies have wrought and will continue to do to America's families poses a direct threat to our country. Clearyde it will only get worse. But I hope I could help all of you at least think about what I believe is going to be a major problem of our time. So what do you think, Chrys Would I convince you?

When police arrested him at a Pennsylvania McDonald's, he was in possession of a manifesto that read, in part quote, I do apologize for any strife or trauma, but it had to be done. These parasites had it coming even louder than this message, though, was the public response to

the cold blooded, broad daylight murder of a CEO. From TikTok to Facebook to the Ben Shapiro Comments Section, Americans of all political ideologies and backgrounds came together to express their utter incomplete disgusted at a healthcare system that they experience as violent, which treats their lives as just as disposable as Mangioni treated Brian Thompson's life. They're discussed by the way, it's well founded. Here in the US, we don't really have a healthcare system. We have a profit

maximizing price gouging system. Your health is at best incidental. Among wealthy nations, we spend more per capita than any other nation by a long shot, we should have the best healthcare on the planet and the healthiest population. But of course the reality is out of these same wealthy nations, we also have the lowest life expectancy. The UK is the second worst, and their citizens live on average nearly half a decade longer than we do. We are having

entire years of our lives stolen from us now. Sometimes the problems with having a system built around profit instead of around health can feel kind of abstract. But recent New York Times investigation into methadone clinics dug deep into the way that these sick inc can play out in the real world. These clinics are a sort of microcosm of the way that profit motive perverts every corner of

our healthcare system. So here is that backstory. Kadia Healthcare is a large hospital chain started by a former financier that has aggressively moved into the addiction recovery space in recent years, after purchasing a for profit chain of one hundred and sixty five methodone clinics from the private equity firm Bane Capital. Between the financia founder and the private equity connection, I'm sure you already feel really great about

the care that these chains provide. Now, at these methodone clinics, recovering opioid addicts can receive a daily dose of the narcotic methodome to help curb their cravings for more damaging opioids like heroin and fentanyl. These clinics are, of course, heavily regulated by state and federal authorities, but part of the times, a Kadia uses all kinds of lies and tricks to skirt the rules and to juice their profits.

As reported by The Times in their piece Fraud and Fakery At the country's largest chain of methodone clinics, Adias Clinics aggressively push quantity over quality. The more patients they take on and the more cups of methodone they hand out, the greater their insurance and federal government reimbursements. Now, I'm sure you can imagine the sort of behavior that this drives. Staff are overloaded, they're underpaid, They have massive caseloads that

they cannot possibly handle. They take on patients who are not even opioid addicts to be able to fill out their quotas. They routinely falsify records in order to meet federal and state guidelines which require that the cup of methadone come with a certain amount of counseling and therapy. One staff member, for example, bragged that if they even said hello to a patient, they counted that as one

of those mandatory therapy sessions. Now, I'll note here an Acadian spokesperson denies these allegations, as they operate in compliance

with all rules and regulations. The Methodone business, though, has proven quite profitable for a Kadia, as the federal government has gotten more serious about dealing with opioid addiction following a drug company fueled addiction crisis, a Kadia has seen their methodone clinic profits spike thirty percent, adding about three million dollars in revenue to the larger hospital chains bottom

line each and every year. Their green fueled business practices do not end with treating patients like cash cows instead of humans. However, according to the Times, they are working to get their money grubbing hands on some of the settlement money secured by states and counties nationwide from those big pharma companies like Purdue pharmaceutical which helped to create

the opioid crisis in the first place. In other words, Acadia is both profiting handsomely off of this epidemic by providing substandard treatment and also trying to bilk the very money that is meant to go to the victims of this epidemic. It is truly sick. This may seem like a long shot, but the effort is already bearing fruit, according to the Times quote. This year, for example, the company successfully lobbied the Kansas legislature to allow for profit

companies to receive grants from that settlement money. Christopher Hunter, Acadian's Acadia's chief executive has told investors that the settlement funds will be quote a really nice tailwind for the company. G can't imagine why people despise these companies and the

people that run them. In addition, they have been busy working the halls of Congress to avoid what would be a deadly threat to their business model, allowing people to avoid methodone clinics altogether and receive their dose from the pharmacy like other medications. Ironically, Katie has been arguing that this bill should be blocked because of how critical it is to combine methodone with their quote individualized care and

quote gold standard suite of services. You know, the very services that The New York Times found this company was often not actually providing and routinely lying about so. At the nation's largest methodone chain, humans are treated like cattle. They are denied therapy that could help them with the recovery. Staffers are overworked and put under intense sales like pressure to deliver numbers. Records are outright falsified and faked in what can only be described as mass fraud. And this

is just one little corner of our profit. First healthcare system. It doesn't serve the patients or society. It serves only the corporate executives and shareholders who are at the top of that chain. Now, if you want to see how this plays out in other corners of the healthcare system, you could start by taking a look at the separate investigation from these same New York Times journalists into Akadia

psychiatric hospitals. In that expos a, you'll learn how they literally trap patients against their will and against the law so that they can maximize insurance pants And if that isn't dark enough for you, Akadia employees have been accused by dozens of patients of assault and neglect. A Utah A Kadia hospital was closed after state regulators investigated dozens of charges of assault and rape. Tennessee regulators found that A Kadia had lied in their medical charts, claiming they

checked on a patient every fifteen minutes. In reality, that patient wasn't found dead for hours had already entered a state of rigor mortis. Now, perhaps not all actors in our healthcare system are as negligent, abusive, and fraudulent as A Kadia is accused of being. However, of abusing patients for profit is in fact exactly what you should expect from the system that we have set up. Every greedy middleman google in the system getting their cut and patients

getting sick and stuck with the bill. New poll from Gallop shows that even before the CEO was slain, Americans were absolutely clamoring for a radical departure from the healthcare status quo. Gallup finds a new post Obamacare high in support for the federal government guaranteeing a right to healthcare coverage.

Only thirty two percent of the country disagrees. And yet, because there is so much money being made, so much cash flowing from those profits into the campaign coffers of DC politicians, health care reform has been all but abandoned as a national issue. We went from Bernie pushing medicare for all, to Biden briefly pretending to fight for a public option, to Kamala crowing about dropping prices for a handful of drugs with savings only going to Medicare recipients.

That's how far we've fallen, and how quickly. If Democrats are actual serious about getting back into power and truly delivering for the nation, they will heed the message that was sent laden clear this week and fight to cut these parasites off once and for all. By making our country more humane, they will save lives, including potentially the lives of the CEO War two and saber Kind.