Tim Kleczynski

Solopreneur and Proud Father of Two Teenage Boys

[Porter Stansberry @porterstansb]

In 1990, 38% of the world's population lived on less than $2 a day. Last year that figure was 8.5%. In 1990, one child in 11 died before turning five. Now it's one in 27. And, I expect in the next decade, it will become one in 500.

But how? How did the environment for humans improve so rapidly? Your schools will teach you it was the miracle of government. Government, they will claim, gave us widespread public health and a decent standard of living. Lol. It was not government aid. It was not a treaty. Or the U.N. Or anything that Obama! promised.

None of this happened because G.W. Bush did save us from weapons of mass destruction.

None of that matter at all.

What created this unprecedented prosperity was property rights. Property rights translate into prices. And prices convey critical information, for free, across vast and disperse markets -- a form of distributed communication networks. That efficiency, of knowing what's needed and what's in surplus, turns into capital. And that capital has enabled hundreds of millions of people to keep more of the output of their labor, enriching billions of people.

Thus, when I read Gretchen Morgenson (see below), I don't feel contempt. I feel something much worse. This is a person who knows better. This is the kind of person, who, if they're not standing up for property rights... oh man. You've got to be kidding me. When thought leaders like this don't understand or recognize the most important truths of economics... what hope is there for our civilization? My critics will condemn me. But that isn't an exaggeration. Our thought leaders are abandoning capitalism, because they simply do not understand it. That's how bad our education system has become.

So, let's look at the facts.

Cerberus Capital Management bought Caritas Christi out of the Boston archdiocese in 2010 and named it Steward. Cerberus pulled out roughly $800 million and left in 2020. Bankruptcy came in May 2024.

Morgenson blames capitalism -- property rights and "greed."

But, look at what Cerberus actually bought.

Massachusetts publishes payer data on every hospital in the state. In fiscal 2023, St. Elizabeth's Medical Center in Brighton drew 49% of its patient revenue from Medicare and another 18% from Medicaid. The state classified it a High Public Payer hospital, a designation reserved for hospitals collecting at least 63% of gross patient revenue from the government. Saint Anne's in Fall River ran 72.7% public. All of the hospitals in this deal follow the same model: steal from taxpayers.

Cerberus did not buy a business. It bought the right to tax. It simply called doing so healthcare.

Can you blame them? American medicine is a $5.3 trillion enterprise that consumes 18% of national output. Medicare and Medicaid writes 39% of those checks. Can you imagine how much fraud is baked into those numbers?!?

Is this capitalism? The money is collected through coercion (taxes). It is spent through committees that should be called "five year planning commissions." Every price in our health care system is set administratively. Every dollar of revenue arrives through a fee negotiated in Washington.

Why would anyone ever expect any positive outcome from any part of such of system? There is no way any intelligent journalist, acting in good faith, could reach these conclusions.

And here's what's worse. She doesn't even recognize that what enables the entire charade is paper money.

Cerberus borrowed against those hospitals during years when the Federal Reserve pinned the overnight rate between zero and 0.25%, from December 2008 to December 2015 and again from March 2020 to March 2022. There are no private lender who would ever finance loans at these rates. Who did? The twelve people on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. Whose money were they lending? Not theirs, of course: yours.

If you don't understand this farce yet, then look to the tax code. Until 2022 a company could deduct interest against 30% of EBITDA, struck before depreciation, which handed asset-heavy borrowers a tax shelter no equity investor normally gets.

So who profited?

The buyout fund she demonizes manages almost none of its own capital. In 2024, The California Public Employees' Retirement System raised its private equity target to 17% of the fund. Private equity manages government pensions.

Why? Because legislatures promised those pensions and refused to tax anybody to fund them, so the shortfall has to be conjured out of an asset class that works. How does it work? By profiting from graft that the government creates.

Government revenue. Government-administered prices. Government-suppressed interest rates. A government-written subsidy for leverage. Government pension money supplying the equity, chasing a return a legislature invented.

And ... she knows all of this.

But Morgenson ignores all of these facts and, instead, indicts the "free market" -- a market that doesn't exist anywhere in America in healthcare.

Like they say: it's turtles all the way down.

So, why doesn't she write the truth? She knows the truth.

In 2011 Morgenstern and Joshua Rosner published Reckless Endangerment. They followed the housing collapse to its origin: the affordable-housing mandate, Fannie Mae, and James A. Johnson, who ran a congressionally chartered enterprise like a ward machine -- and bankrupted the world.

So... why this incredibly banal book, now? Because villains are easy to sell.

Meanwhile there are still 692 million human beings living on less than $2.15 a day, and not one of them will be lifted out of poverty by a Senate hearing. Or a government pension -- lol.

Gretchen, you already wrote the real book about the incredible danger of governments to our well being.

Start over.

The plunderers are all in Washington.

[Tim Kleczynski @TimKleczynski]

@DearS_o_n After almost 60 years, my revision would be: "No one cares about or will love you unconditionally. You are on your own journey to discover Truth, Virtue, Love, Respect, Trust, and whatever else you Value."

[Tim Kleczynski @TimKleczynski]

@DearS_o_n After almost 60 years, my revision would be: "No one cares about or will love you unconditionally. You are on your own journey to discover Truth, Virtue, Love, Respect, Trust, and whatever else you Value."

[Growing Up Retro @GrowingUpRetro]

I'd love to go back for just one more day.

[Mike Bales 🫡🇺🇸 @MikeBales]

Penalties for Illegal Entry:
• Singapore: 6 months in prison
• Russia: 2 years in a labor camp
• India: 8 years in prison
• Pakistan: 10 years in prison
• North Korea: Death penalty

USA:
Free housing, healthcare, education, food, transportation, phones, cash…

[Daniel Buck, “Youngest Old Man in Ed Reform” @MrDanielBuck]

I think a lot of troubles in education boil down to the fact that we deny that some kids are simply smarter than others but throw them all into the same room, give them exactly the same instruction, and wonder why some outperform...

[Sama Hoole @SamaHoole]

1979: fasting glucose over 140 makes you diabetic.
1997: lowered to 126.
Millions of new diabetics. Same blood.

1997: prediabetes starts at 110.
2003: lowered to 100.
A third of American adults, created by a footnote.

1984: high blood pressure is 160/95.
2017: lowered to 130/80.
American hypertension goes from 32 per cent of adults to 46. Thirty-one million new patients in a morning.

2001: the cholesterol target is 130.
2004: lowered to 100, and to 70 for the high risk.
Statin eligibility expands by millions.

Eight of the nine men who wrote that 2004 update were on the payroll of companies selling statins. They disclosed it only when forced.

1994: a WHO panel invents osteopenia. Bone that is not thin enough to break, given a name and a prescription. Half of older women qualify.

Nobody got sicker on any of those dates. A committee sat down and a number moved.

The threshold drops, the market widens, and the drug is already licensed and sitting in the warehouse.

Your grandfather was healthy at 145/92. You are ill at 132/81.

Nothing about the body has changed. Only the paperwork, and who profits from it.

[Camus @newstart_2024]

The more you optimize for happiness in childhood, the more you actually wire for anxiety in adulthood.

Dr. Becky Kennedy is right. Every time we rush to fix a kid’s upset, new toy, new plan, new distraction, we teach them hard feelings are emergencies that must end immediately. By adulthood the nervous system only knows two settings: full-on distress or full-off. No dimmer switch left.

That gap turns ordinary disappointment into panic. The feeling itself becomes the threat because it was never allowed to stay long enough to become familiar.

I want kids to know the dark is survivable, that they don’t have to scramble for the light the second it appears. That’s how the resilience muscle actually grows.

[Amity @amitylee13]

🇺🇸 Massie 2028! 🇺🇸

[Chris Rossini @ChrisRossini]

For those who need a refresher.

More money was spent to remove Massie from Congress than any other person IN AMERICAN HISTORY.

The big money came from Zionist billionaires.

They can't have even 1 person who puts America over Israel.

Not a single person.

Why?

Because 1 person with courage can change everything.

[Spencer Pratt @spencerpratt]

Isn’t it weird how unsubsidized consumer goods like TVs, appliances, clothes, all get cheaper and cheaper…while anything government puts its hands on, healthcare, housing, food, tuition, cars, utilities…just gets more and more unaffordable?

Oh well. Probably nothing.

[Thomas Massie @RepThomasMassie]

The U.S. sends $2 billion to the Kingdom of Jordan each year. Their King spent $100 million on luxury properties in Malibu, DC, & London. I offered an amendment to end the welfare. Thank the 5 who voted w/me. @RepChipRoy @RepNancyMace @RepBrecheen @RepEricBurlison @Rep_Davidson

[michael costa @mcostavancouver]

@martyrmade The obvious question is wtf is the US doing with bases in Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, Iraq, Jordan, UAE, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey.

[S★ @xxyllinn]

I don’t want to "download the app" to pay for parking. I don’t want to "create an account" to see a menu. I don’t want to "provide feedback" on a 30-second interaction. I just want to exist in the physical world without a digital leash.

[Connor Boyack 📚 @cboyack]

“Human beings are born with different capacities. If they are free, they are not equal. And if they are equal, they are not free.”

―Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

[Mr. Nobody @MmisterNobody]

One of the strangest parts of growing older is mourning a time that no longer exists.

You begin to feel a deep homesickness for a version of your life that’s gone forever, a place you can never return to.

It’s a quiet, unspoken kind of longing that no one ever prepares you for.

Anyone else feel this?

[Michael Strong @flowidealism]

People hear "liberal arts" and picture a useless degree.

The phrase actually refers to the arts that make you free: free from the assumptions of your own time and place, and free to think a thought your neighbors have not pre-approved.

That freedom is not an elite luxury. It is the closest thing we have to intellectual self-defense, and we have almost stopped teaching it.

[Tim Kleczynski @TimKleczynski]

Dilbert would be proud!

[��� @XCzsnx]

Boss gave me a company credit card and nobody's noticed I still have it six months after quitting.

Found it in my wallet last week. Thought about cutting it up. Decided to test if it still worked first.

Bought coffee. Went through.

Checked the account online using my old login. Still active. Nobody deactivated anything when I left.

Transaction showed up under my name like I still worked there.

My roommate saw the statement.

Roommate: You're still buying coffee on the company card?

Me: Accidentally.

Roommate: How do you accidentally commit fraud?

Me: I forgot I had it.

Roommate: For six months?

Me: I don't use that wallet often.

Roommate: You need to return it.

Me: I know.

Didn't return it. Kept testing it.

Lunch. Gas. Groceries. Everything processed. Nothing flagged.

Started getting curious how long this could go. Monthly statements kept coming to my old work email that also never got deactivated.

Limit was five thousand dollars. I'd spent maybe three hundred.

My friend said I was playing a dangerous game.

Friend: They'll notice eventually.

Me: It's been half a year.

Friend: Doesn't mean they won't audit.

Me: You think they audit?

Friend: Every company audits.

They didn't audit.

Month seven, bought a new monitor. Four hundred dollars. Approved instantly.

Statement came. My name still listed as "Marketing Associate" even though I quit and they hired someone new.

Started wondering if I existed in two places. Quit in real life, still employed in their system.

Called the office pretending to need HR records.

HR: Employee ID?

Me: 4847.

HR: Marcus Webb. Still shows active.

Me: I quit in March.

HR: (typing) Not seeing termination paperwork.

Me: I sent an email to my manager.

HR: Did he submit the forms?

Me: I assumed so.

HR: Let me check with him.

She called back twenty minutes later.

HR: Your manager left the company in April. Looks like he never processed your resignation.

Me: So I've been employed this whole time?

HR: Technically yes.

Me: Am I getting paid?

HR: (long pause) Oh no.

Turns out they'd been depositing paychecks into an account I closed three years ago. Bank rejected them. Nobody followed up.

Six months of paychecks sitting in accounting limbo.

HR: We need to issue these payments and back-date your termination.

Me: Or?

HR: Or what?

Me: What if I just came back?

HR: You want your job back?

Me: Do I still have it?

HR: According to our system, you never left.

Talked to the new department head. Different guy. Never met him.

Him: Marcus? Heard you were remote.

Me: Something like that.

Him: You've been away for six months though.

Me: Medical leave.

Him: We don't have documentation.

Me: Previous manager mishandled it.

Him: (frustrated) He mishandled everything. Can you start Monday?

Started Monday. Same job, same desk, same login credentials that never expired.

Coworkers asked where I'd been.

Me: Extended leave.

Them: For what?

Me: Personal reasons.

They stopped asking.

Got my six months of back pay last week. Nineteen thousand after taxes.

Roommate: You accidentally took a six-month paid vacation?

Me: Nobody told me I couldn't.

Roommate: That's insane.

Me: That's corporate inefficiency.

Still have the credit card. It's legitimate now.

Bought coffee this morning. Completely legal this time.

Tastes exactly the same as fraudulent coffee.

Slightly less exciting though.

[Porter Stansberry @porterstansb]

If we're going to war with Iran -- to "finish the job," that should require Congressional approval. And, if we do, someone had better explain to the American people why we give two fucks about that part of the world. Iran can't threaten our sovereignty or our way of life: we're the world's largest producer of hydrocarbons. We have total military dominance over the entire world. We have zero to gain with yet another war in the Middle East. And we have much to lose -- trillions.

Someone, anyone... provide some real leadership. Insist on the Constitution being followed. Only Congress can declare war.

https://t.co/xT0wnhDwOp via @WSJopinion