David Piper

[Former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 @FmrRepMTG]

On Lindsey Graham.

Stay with me on this.

The worst kept secret in Washington DC came out today because 3 brave men came out and told the truth and it doesn’t matter if it is after he’s dead.

Brave?

Yes brave.

Why are they brave?

They had to go on camera and tell intimate details of their personal lives.

To the world.

That is extremely difficult to do. Yes it’s brave. And Stressful. They walked into the public square opening themselves to the opinions of the entire world.

No matter your opinion on the issue, they took a courageous leap in coming forward.

If you are critical, would you go on camera and tell your secrets to the entire world?

I would bet a lot of money you wouldn’t.

Ok but there is more to this.

Because this is the world I saw up close in Washington.

I saw behind the curtain and saw ALL the wizards.

Everyone in the highest levels of power in Washington DC are keeping secrets that would destroy their entire lives.

And that’s exactly why they have power.

Not because they are so smart or qualified or the best choice for leadership.

I mean really, if you think our best and brightest are in charge then do some critical thinking and look at the pathetic state of our debt, our dollar, and how our government is run, and the outcome that affects your life.

Their secrets are the only reason these people rise to the top.

Because their secrets are not secrets.

We all knew Lindsey Graham was gay. Everyone did.

Their secrets are levers of control. Keeps them in line. Makes them a team player. And will make them fight the hardest on issues that don’t make sense in order to keep their secrets just that. Secrets.

So everyone is arguing about how this is old news, why now? Or arguing about being gay, and gay issues. Or arguing because that’s what everyone does on the internet, just argue with each other and with bots about issues they don’t have the real truth on, but throw out their strongest opinion anyways.

I’m here to tell you the granular issue you need to dial in on and block out the rest of the noise.

Three gay men just bravely pulled back the curtain and tried to teach you all the most important lesson America needs to learn.

It’s this.

America’s most powerful leaders keep secrets that comprise them in the most dangerous ways for the security, safety, and prosperity of our nation.

That’s the whole point.

I tried my hardest to fight the entire system on both sides of the aisle and couldn’t beat it because YOU ALL keep voting these people back into office and back into power.

By the way, I always cosponsored the Term Limit bill and no matter who is in charge, Pelosi, McCarthy, or Johnson, Dem or Rep, that bill never ever got even close to getting a vote on the House floor.

So the question for you, The American People, is are you able to learn the lesson and if so, what exactly are YOU going to do about it?

Ask yourself, what are you voting for? Donating to? Volunteering for?

And are you really satisfied with the outcome election cycle after election cycle?

[David Senra @davidsenra]

"Capitalism created the possibility of the win win win. It used to be a zero sum game where somebody won, somebody else lost.

The biggest mistake people make they still think we're in a zero sum world. They're obsessed with some billionaires because Bernie Sanders thinks that @JeffBezos and @elonmusk somehow stole the money from the people.

They don't understand that it's this prosperity machine that's creating more, not just for those billionaires, but for everything that they're touching. They're creating value for their customers, they're creating value for their employees. Their suppliers are flourishing, their investors are seeing their capital go up. It can be reinvested and compound.

All philanthropy ultimately comes from business. That's where the profits are.

Where does all the taxes come from? It ultimately comes from business as well.

This is the engine that's lifting humanity out. The entrepreneurs are the drivers of that engine. Somebody like Elon Musk, he gets a very, very, very tiny sliver of the value that he creates for the whole world."

— @iamjohnmackey

[David Piper @dpipeii]

@MrsCMFrancis Africa

[David Piper @dpipeii]

@SenRickScott Senator, we want permanent standard time. Health is more important than money. Educate yourself.

[Haley Strack @StrackHaley]

San Francisco officials are giving $1.8 million to immigration defense lawyers after ICE arrested a Salvadorian national with a criminal history of *checks notes* manslaughter and domestic violence.

[Katharine Birbalsingh @Miss_Snuffy]

Black woman works hard, contributes, employs people, and then has to argue with white guilty people to say that the looters are wrong.

White guilt is destroying the West.

We need to wake up and realise this.

[@jason @Jason]

Let me explain reality… if you have but sixty seconds:

They were targeting Elon

They were targeting him with fake charges because the socialist-industrial complex is terrified that he would expose their long grift.

They came after him for the Model 3 and Elon’s claims around its potential.

That potential was realized, and it became, along with the Model Y, the best-selling electric vehicle ever created.

These were fake charges to try to stop somebody from building the best category-defining product.

Let that sink in: that's how evil these motherfuckers are.

The loooooong grift has been exposed: socialist grifters are stealing our tax dollars to fund fringe lunacy, NGOs and government programs without oversight or audits.

They’re parasites incapable of creating any product or service that has to compete in the open market.

Elon creates a couple of cutting-edge products each year, and half of them succeed.

Some of them actually change the world. Some of them fail brutally.

It's called capitalism. It's called creation.

This is what moves the human condition forward: trying things.

Trying really hard things.

Socialists come for the people building valuable products and services — that’s the tell

Keep your eye out for the people who've created nothing and risked nothing, but who are attacking the people who risk everything to create Something.

That's the tell.

[Guillaume Herblot 🎖️ @Guigz75116]

On se demande où on a « foiré » en France. La réponse est assez simple, le point de bascule c’est 1981.
Pas 2002, pas 2017, pas Macron. 1981.

L’arrivée de Mitterrand. Le moment où la France a décidé, en toute lucidité, de se tirer une balle dans le pied en se convainquant que c’était du progrès social.

Avant 1981, la France était encore un pays qui produisait, qui exportait, qui avait une industrie, des entreprises qui osaient investir et des gens qui croyaient encore vaguement au travail. Après 1981, on a nationalisé à tour de bras, on a augmenté les impôts comme si l’argent des autres était une ressource infinie, on est passé aux 39 heures, on a baissé l’âge de la retraite, et on a expliqué aux Français que la richesse se créait en redistribuant celle des autres.

Résultat ? Capital qui fuit, franc dévalué, inflation, et le fameux « tournant de la rigueur » de 1983 qui n’a jamais vraiment corrigé le cap idéologique de fond.

Depuis, on a perfectionné le modèle : État toujours plus gros, charges toujours plus lourdes, culture du droit acquis plutôt que du mérite, école qui a progressivement abandonné l’exigence au nom de l’égalité des chances, et une immigration de plus en plus déconnectée de toute logique d’intégration réelle.

On a remplacé « travailler et produire » par « revendiquer et bloquer ». Et aujourd’hui, on s’étonne que la France soit devenue le pays des 35 heures, des grèves perpétuelles, de la dette à 110 %, du chômage des jeunes endémique et d’une classe moyenne qui se fait asphyxier.

Le plus beau, c’est la mauvaise foi. Quarante-cinq ans plus tard, on continue de dire que « ce n’est pas la gauche », que « c’est le néolibéralisme », que « c’est l’Europe », que « c’est la mondialisation ».
Non. C’est le moment précis où une majorité de Français a choisi de croire qu’on pouvait vivre durablement au-dessus de ses moyens en faisant payer les autres, et que ça s’appellerait « justice sociale ».

1981 n’a pas tout cassé en un jour. Mais c’est là qu’on a choisi le chemin.
Et depuis, on court de plus en plus vite au bord du précipice en se demandant pourquoi on n’arrive plus.🤔🤭

[Brivael Le Pogam @brivael]

On my way to the office this morning, I passed a group of young people protesting, a Palestinian flag draped over their shoulders.

And I asked myself a question I can't shake: why does this generation always fall into the same trap? No matter the history. No matter the context. Even the ones from wealthy families, who went to the best schools, who were dealt every good card. Always the same trap.

I don't think it's stupidity. I think it's a mechanism. And a mechanism can be taken apart, piece by piece.

A. The observation: everything the state touches becomes unaffordable.

Look at economist Mark Perry's famous chart, the one people call "the chart of the century." It tracks US prices since 2000.

At the top, what explodes: hospital services, college tuition, textbooks, childcare, housing. Increases of +100%, +150%, up to +250%, far above general inflation.

At the bottom, what collapses: TVs, software, phones, toys, clothing. A TV today costs a fraction of what it did in 2000, for an infinitely better product.

Look at what separates the two groups. It isn't technology. It isn't complexity. It's one variable: how much the state is involved.

At the top, sectors that are subsidized, regulated, shielded from competition, where the state funds demand and blocks supply. At the bottom, sectors where companies fight every single morning to serve you better and cheaper.

B. The mechanism: why it's systematic.

When the state subsidizes demand without freeing supply, prices rise. Every time. Guaranteed student loans, and universities raise tuition. Housing aid plus blocked building permits, and rents skyrocket. Administered healthcare, and bureaucracy eats the budget before it ever reaches the patient.

In France it's even more vicious, because the price doesn't disappear: it hides. You never see the hospital bill, you pay it through payroll contributions. You never see the cost of school, you pay it through taxes. Public spending at 57% of GDP, one of the heaviest tax burdens in the world, more than €3.4 trillion in debt. And the result? Overflowing ERs, falling PISA scores, young people who can't afford to live in the city where they work.

The market didn't fail in these sectors. It was never allowed in.

C. Suffering demands a culprit.

A 22-year-old lives all of this in their bones. They can't find a place to live. Their degree either buries them in debt or opens no doors. The future feels blocked. That suffering is real, and I don't deny it for a second.

But human beings can't stand suffering without a culprit. They need a face. A scapegoat.

And this is where everything is decided: who taught them how to read the world?

D. Whoever tells the story picks the villain.

Schools are public. Universities are public. Culture runs on grants. Film goes through funding committees. Public broadcasting shapes the narratives. The people handing down the interpretive framework are, overwhelmingly, paid by the very system that creates the problem.

Do you really think that system is going to name itself as the culprit?

No. It names the capitalist. The boss. The landlord. "The rich." The multinational. The commercial West. Same role, same casting, every time.

E. One lens, a thousand causes.

And this brings me back to that flag. A generation taught to read every situation through a single lens, oppressor on one side, rich, Western, capitalist, oppressed on the other, will apply that lens everywhere. To housing. To climate. To conflicts on the other side of the world. The cause changes, the lens stays. That's why the trap is always the same: it's not the cause that draws them in, it's the way of thinking that was installed in them.

F. The perfect inversion.

Here's the irony. Capitalism is the force that drove down the price of almost everything it touched. The state is the force that blew up the price of almost everything it captured. And young people blame the first for the crimes of the second.

It's like blaming the firefighter for the fire because you saw him at the scene.

G. The ballot box confirms it.

In the US, a few weeks out from the midterms, a large share of urban young voters is getting ready to vote Democrat for more state, more spending, more regulation. New York elected a self-described socialist mayor, carried by young voters, on promises of rent freezes and city-run grocery stores. Rent freezes, the policy that has made housing scarcer everywhere it's been tried. The cure that worsens the disease.

In France, it's the same play in two acts. Part of the youth votes for the radical left, which promises more state. Another part votes for the center, which promises to "manage" the state well, and has dug the debt deeper than ever. Two different ballots, one shared assumption: the problem is the market, the solution is the state.

H. The way out.

These young people aren't stupid. They're right to be angry. They're just aiming at the wrong target.

The day they understand that their rent, their tuition and their hospital are expensive precisely because the state runs them, their anger will change direction. They'll stop protesting against those who create. They'll start protesting against those who capture.

That day, the greatest intellectual scam of our time will be over.

[Krzysztof Szczawinski 🇵🇱 @Kristof_Poland]

Dear Americans,

Look at the images coming out of France these days. Burning streets, cars and buildings, blockades, a country where everyone is fed up and nobody can take it anymore. They look like a civil war.

What you are seeing is not a crisis. It is a result. The result of at least forty-five years of bad decisions – and of lying about them.

Yes, immigration plays a big part. But immigration can be managed in many ways. France chose socialism. Socialism and the lie: the French have been lying to themselves for forty-five years. Now they are paying. You cannot lie to reality. You always pay in the end.

Here is the mechanism – watch it carefully, because it is on your ballot.

In the 1970s, France worked. It was run by engineers and builders – Concorde, the TGV, the nuclear plants. A country where even an immigrant’s son could find his place and rise.

Then power changed hands. The builders lost it to the bureaucrats of an oversized state. Those people produce nothing. They distribute, they regulate, they comment. In such a system you don’t rise by building. You rise by talking, positioning yourself, getting your share. Those who build become suspects. Those who distribute become the masters.

And in socialism, nobody really rises. When all that’s left is sharing a cake that no longer grows, everyone resents everyone – often rightly. A country that no longer creates wealth integrates no one. It only distributes resentment.

And all this is before the debt crisis, which is still ahead of France and will make everything ten times harder.

America is still run, more than anywhere on earth, by builders. That is why you have rockets that land themselves and cars that fly. But the distributors are knocking: free this, guaranteed that, a new office to manage it, a new tax to fund it. It starts with kindness. It ends with the cake shrinking and the resentment growing.

So before you vote, ask one question about every candidate: does he build – or distribute?

Keep power with the builders. Let those who build decide. And let those who only talk be quiet.

I’m Polish. We know how bad things can get. And we know how you get out – not in a day. First, stop lying. Then have the courage to tell the truth. Then start building – and never stop, and never again hand power to those who build nothing.

Trust me: it is much easier never to go down that road.

[Ryan Orhan @rynorhn]

Civilizational decline doesn’t always begin with war or economic collapse.

Sometimes it begins when a society loses the confidence to enforce its own laws, protect its public spaces, and defend the institutions that made it prosperous.

The deterioration becomes normal long before anyone admits what’s happening.

[Yogi @Houseofyogi]

El Salvador did it right.

Arrest the bottom 1% of the most troubling population.

And the 99% can live blessed lives.

[Erik Voorhees @ErikVoorhees]

Republics and democracies fall, inevitably, because they enable the masses to vote for benefits from the state.

The charade of "free" stuff pulls, slowly or swiftly, the state into fiscal insolvency. Debt grows faster than the economy, which is mathematically unsustainable.

This process can be slow, or fast, but always occurs.

The best imperfect solution is to keep states both small and decentralized. Small so that the masses have less incentive and capability to draw from it, and decentralized so that failures of a state are localized and minimized rather than global and catastrophic. A well-educated populace that understands the virtue of markets and views the state with utmost skepticism is very helpful, and just as rare.

America until the 1930's did a good job of this. Switzerland today arguably still does.

America and France, and most or all of the others, are headed to the same destination. Voting will not change the game theory of the system (remember how Trump was going to reduce the government and then grew it larger than Biden?).

European and US bond markets will collapse and then these protests will look like child's play.

There is nothing that can be done to prevent it, nothing stops this train, alea iacta est

Optimists should hope and work for the smallest states possible to rise from the ashes of the large ones.

[David Piper @dpipeii]

@DeryaTR_ Get rid of backpack blowers and sweep!

Get rid of excavators and dig with shovels!

[David Piper @dpipeii]

@JoshPateCFB Always true. Those holding the bags make the decisions. Their only concern is more bags.

*This rule applies to everything, not just college football.

[David Piper @dpipeii]

@PeteNakos @Clowfb @Brett_McMurphy @On3 No one ever doubts…money beats common sense.

[David Piper @dpipeii]

@SenRickScott No…we’d like permanent standard time.

Quit just chasing dollars. Look into the health aspects of what you’re proposing.

[𝐃𝐔𝐓𝐂𝐇 @pr0ud_americans]

We already ran this experiment. In January 1974, during the oil embargo, Nixon signed a law that kept daylight time all winter.

Polls started near 80 percent in favor. Then the sun came up after 8 a.m., kids walked to school in the dark, and support crashed to about 42 percent by February. Congress repealed it before the second winter. Ford put standard time back on October 27, 1974.

The House just passed the same idea again, 308–117. Later sunsets, sunrise around 8:20 here in South Jersey. History already filed the complaint.

[Roger Seheult, MD @RogerSeheult]

@SenTomCotton @SaveStandard Permanent ST would be much better.

[Armond Boudreaux @armondboudreaux]

“Somebody… asked me if I believed in Satan. I guess as a boy I did. Come the middle years my belief… had waned somewhat. Now I'm starting to lean back the other way. He explains a lot of things that otherwise dont have no explanation.”

--Cormac McCarthy
No Country for Old Men