Because there remains an unanswered question: what small cut some other folks are going to get.

The only way to answer that is with an auction. Just like in the above analogy, the only way to determine your eBay fees is to actually have an eBay auction.

And they did have an auction, but the presiding judge didn’t like the auction rules. They can change the rules and thus change the cut, but the winners won’t change.

The Sandy Hook plaintiffs are owed $975 million. They are supporting the Onion’s bid by pledging as much of that as necessary to beat the opposing bid (remember, they have rights to most of the auction proceeds).

An analogy: you put something on eBay, and then decide you want to keep the item for yourself. You can easily outbid anyone else, because in the end you are (mostly) paying yourself. The only question is how much eBay’s tiny cut will be.

Well, Sandy Hook plaintiffs are basically putting Infowars on eBay but determined to win the auction. The winner of the auction is a foregone conclusion, so the only question is what small cut some other folks are going to get.

Nobody wants to spend much money on it. That’s why the Onion will win the auction, they can use $965 million of Alex Jones’s own debt, courtesy the Sandy Hook families, to pay for it.

Attacking someone who’s attacking other people is usually called defending.

Same thing said by cops every time they shoot someone.

This is the first step to failing twice.

FUAC might get another chance to bid, but so will the Onion. And the Onion will outbid FUAC, because they have up to $965 million available if necessary.

painting themselves as the oppressed

I don’t think that’s what Marx meant, and by extension that’s not what this piece means either.

Marx’s opening lines roughly amount to “We’re taking over this place, the oldtimers know it and fear us, so it’s time to start making our demands known.” It’s a call to assume power, not a plea for sympathy.

He is trying to. I don’t think he will succeed.

They didn’t publish the Communist Manifesto. They published a parody with the opposite meaning.

It doesn’t really prove anything.

Marx:

A spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Pope and Tsar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police-spies… Two things result from this fact: I. Communism is already acknowledged by all European powers to be itself a power. II. It is high time that Communists should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the Spectre of Communism with a manifesto of the party itself.

Lindsay:

A rising spirit is haunting America: the spirit of a true Christian Right. Moreover, all the existing powers of the American Regime since the end of the Second World War have aligned themselves against it and its re-emergence from the shadows of American civic life, politics, and religion—the Marxist Left and its neo-Marxist “Woke” descendant, the liberal establishment, the neoconservatives, and their police and intelligence apparatuses. There are two consequences of this unholy alliance. First, the Christian Right itself is recognized by all these forces to be a power and thus a threat. Second, it is time for this arranged order to end and for a New Christian Right to emerge and stake its rightful claim on twenty-first century American politics.

They are business partners with Jones, they aren’t actually owned by Jones.

Handwriting analysts try to figure out if something was written by forger who carefully studied their victim. This is not that.

You don’t need an expert to prove that the manifesto was written by someone who never knew Mangione.

They found a handwritten manifesto on him. It would be very easy to prove that it’s not his handwriting, if it actually were planted.

Sure, it’s possible someone present at the murder could identify him. But it’s not necessary. He wouldn’t be the first person found guilty based on video footage.

That’s all circumstantial evidence.

But then again, circumstantial evidence simply means “not eyewitness evidence”. It does not mean “unreliable evidence”, and people are convicted all the time based on circumstantial evidence.

Apparently not.

They didn’t use GoFundMe.

They had to use GiveSendGo, which is basically GoFundMe for fascists.

GoFundMe also removed fundraisers for Rittenhouse’s legal defense.

The ban was only lifted after he was acquitted.

incentivizing the company to do what it can to make ALL COSTS go up, and raise premiums to match

Sure, but the problem is that they can’t control ALL costs, only their own.

If another insurance company manages to reduce their own costs (e.g. by paying anesthesiologists less), then that company will have an opportunity to lower premiums instead of raise them. And since insurance customers are extremely price sensitive, those companies that are trying to get to premiums to $1000 will see their customers switch to the one that keeps premiums at $100 or better yet $80.

All the insurance companies know this, which is why they are all trying to reduce own costs rather than raise them.

they spend 80% of all premium revenue on care

True. Actually, large insurance companies need to spend 85%.

an incentive for insurance companies to pay higher costs for care so they can make more profit

That doesn’t make sense. Insurance companies have to pay health care providers for care. The more care costs, the less money is left for insurance companies. In fact, if health care costs are too high then the insurance company can go bankrupt.

That said, the converse is not true: insurance companies don’t directly profit by cutting health care spending. That’s because they need to use 80% or 85% of their revenue on care. However, cutting health care spending (by delay, denial, etc) allows insurance companies to lower their premiums.

And since people often want the cheapest possible insurance, lower premiums means more customers, which means more total revenue, which ultimately does mean higher profits.

Of course, the key assumption here is that customers will accept worse care if it means lower premiums. This is one of the few industries where you literally get what you pay for.

Oops, I read “generic medicine” as “genetic medicine”. I thought you were suggesting that hospitals start competing with pharma over new mRNA designs!

Yeah, you don’t need a clinical trial to make generic medicine. But you do need special facilities, which most hospitals probably would be unwilling to pay for.

Neither UHC nor Anthem have anywhere near a 90 billion dollar net profit.

GTFO with that. Lmao