Special Note: Don’t Look Now, But…

I told you recently to expect a $30-$50 beat down in the price of gold in this timeframe. Drop under $1,300, yada, yada… If you look at the chart above, which was showing gold at Kitco being quoted as down $35.70, I think I get to take a bow about here… <eom>

Obamacare & Shutdown: Our Country is Crazy….So?

There are two general schools of thought when it comes to markets:  One is that markets are perfect and that they reflect all known information at every instant, and thus, properly discount everything including the future down to a gnat’s behind.  Nice theory.

The second view is that markets are fundamentally irrational and that while some dribs and drabs about the future make be known, for the most part people are greedy, secretive, self-centered, ego maniacs who will do anything to make an additional nickel in markets including bankrupting companies, ripping out pension benefits, and coming up with incredibly complex algorithms in order to “front-run” trades by everyone they can.  The notion that individual market participants can in any way be considered rational is thus easily put to rest with a thoughtful read of financial headlines.

Now…the topper on all this (and we may see it, at least at this morning’s open) is that the rational markets crowd believes that while yes, there may be a few rotten apples (like former presidential bundlers who can misplace a billion, or a trading commission which can’t find gold manipulation although they seem intent on aluminum, on average the markets are still rational.

This morning’s first framing question is, therefore, how many crazy people can you put into a room full of people before you can quantify the whole room as “A bunch of crazy [irrational] people?”

Not that the stock market participants stand alone, mind you.  We have the foreign exchange traders, the commodity players, the Fed…just about anyone whose hands touch money seem to come down with  a touch of insanity.  It’s as though touching money makes folks crazy.

Take the US House, for example, please.

The House last night voted to send the Senate a bill which would force the federal budget mess into conference committee.  This was talked about back in April, but now with Obamacare up, guess what?  Both parties are using every dirty trick in the book to blame one another and it’s just a fine debacle.

Worse (or at least more evidence of money also impairing the capacity for reasonable thought) while the democorps were whining about how the Statue of Liberty would close today, the republicorps were busily pointing out that the Obamacare program should at least treat all people the same, whether they happen to work for a small employers, or themselves, which really are being treated differently that participants who work for corporations, in which case there’s an additional year of grace before being mandated to take part in what Justice Roberts correctly reminds us is really a tax.

Since I was up half the night watching CSPAN coverage on this, it occurs to me this morning that the democorps lied, at least insofar as the government shutdown is not complete.  Oh, and yes, banks will still be open, so despite 800,000 federal employees sitting home twiddling theirs, the world will continue.

Even during the shutdown, those at the top of the personnel heap will get (look surprised, please?  Just pretend…) special treatment including overtime and comp pay.

The republicorps, on the other hand, are sticking by their guns, and so the likelihood is high that this could stretch out for a while.  The House conference move will be sent over to a Senate where Harry Reid says there will be no “negotiating with a gun at our head.”

Latest rabid headlines out this morning point out that members of Congress and their staffs, will be able to get abortion coverage, even though such costs are largely taxpayer sponsored.

And on this, the markets, which were somehow goosed into closing down only 128 on the Dow yesterday, are poised weakly rally today at the open.

Let me add this all up for you:

The House is crazy (Passing a continuing resolution which is a dead duck from the get-go.) 

The Senate is crazy, not agreeing to evenly apply the healthcare tax to ALL Americans, not making up arbitrary tax classes between Big Corporate employees (cattle/chattel/worker bees) and small-fry regular folks.

Wall St. is crazy for not being able to spot insanity, although this can, one supposes, be overlooked, since they already have contracts with the crazy House and Senate to look the other way on some things and favorable tax (like not at all) on others.

Out of the block, therefore, we have Obamacare online and available, the House and Senate being slipshod and political, and the stock market about to show us what a fine job of being irrational they can put on.

In short, it is with a nod to Stephen King’s Dreamcatcher, SSDD.  (Same shit, different day.)

More after this…

Sandbox and Oil Notes

If you think the current spectacle in Washington is something now, just drop by in about 10-years when the momentary respite from Peak Oil shows up, after getting furloughed by the current rash of oil and gas fracking projects which are causing most people to lose sight of the larger (resource constrained) picture.

To keep this part of the big picture in focus, we keep a very close eye on developments surrounding the kingdom of Saudi Arabia and  note that:

“Saudi cleric warns driving could damage woman’s ovaries” is getting huge play.  Still, women would like to be able to drive in the kingdom.

The Obama administration is, to put it bluntly, pissing off the Saudis by trying to jawbone rather than tire-iron the Iranians and the Syrians.

Then there’s this report about how tourism involves a million Saudis.

And, in what may be the oddest (or perhaps prescient) move of all: Young Saudi men are mounting their cars on piles of rocks in strange new art trend.”

New Flu Story

You ever get one of those “Hmmm…why are they doing THAT?” kind of feelings?  Here’s a press release from Health and Human Services under the headline “HHS boosts national capacity to produce pandemic flu vaccines.”

To boost the nation’s ability to manufacture influenza vaccine quickly in a pandemic, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services today established a fill and finish manufacturing network, which will cover the final steps in the vaccine manufacturing process.

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Coping: Tuesday at the Wujo – Remedial Jim School

(Amarillo, TX) Back to the front lines of Science then, as we try to figure out the strange and unusual stuff that goes on in Life…like this from reader Jim…

Hey George,

I’m a long time reader, enjoy your columns and appreciate the informative links. I wanted to share a Wujo moment I had about a week or so, ago.

I had been fighting with our ailing clothes dryer, testing out all of the usual culprits for this particular problem with my multimeter but to no avail. After a few too many trips to the launder-mat and some verbal persuasion, the little lady convinced me to have a repair guy come check it out (turns out, according to the repair guy, I was on track with my troubleshooting and there’s little chance your average Joe would have ever found what was a very “uncommon” problem).

Back on point: I have an auxiliary gas line that runs from the main line, UNDERGROUND, out to the garage and to the dryer. There is a valve fitting at the connection to the main gas line which I believe is probably very old and not so common.

I have searched for pictures of, or any type of reference to this particular type of valve and have not been able to find any. I should also add that it is inconspicuously located between some bushes and the east wall of the house.

Point being, it is not obvious where it is or what it is if you do find it.

So after a while, I hear the repair guy knocking on the back door, calling my name.

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Here’s How “Head & Shoulders” Works

With the Dow set to collapse down a hundred or more, think of this as a sore shoulder at that.

No, this is NOT a discussion of a shampoo, but a lot of the bulls are about to get a little cleaning when the markets open this morning because of how things lined up in the pre-open.

Even if you don’t subscribe to out www.peoplenomics.com newsletter. there is one chart which we discussed this weekend which you might want to take note of because it’s looking like a powerful head and shoulders formation.

The first bump in the Dow on a weekly chart on the left is called (cleverly) the left shoulder.  This happened back on May 13th.

The larger bump in the middle is the “head” (July 29)  while there’s  fair to middling chance that we will fall off the right shoulder as soon as the market opens this morning.

That red line is a moving average trend line and if we were to plug the futures price of the Dow in, it would be below that trend.,  But more on this for Peoplenomics readers on Wednesday because there is about, I expect, to be all kinds of crap hitting the market in a major way this week.

Want the shopping list?

  • Congress, which is acting like partisan idiots (no a new act, mind you) is about to let the US government go into shutdown over the budget.  This scares the hell out of global markets and Asia was bleeding red all night and there are serious cuts and contusions in European markets this morning, also, as a result.  What comes around goes around I figure.
  • The REAL scary word is deflation because that means the global financial system is imploding and anyone with half a nickel’s worth of gray matter will wake up any old time now and ask really pertinent questions.  “How come if ya’ll corp-types got all the free money on earth and no barriers to trade, we still are getting the second depression, huh?”  Smoke, mirrors, lies, and bullshit never seem to go out of style.

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Coping: A Man’s Home Is His Castle…No! Really! It Is!

(Near Weston, CO)  OK, you’ve heard the term before “A Man’s Home Is His Castle!”  All sounds good, but the courts have continued to water it down (the legal notion of home as a as one’s inviolable castle) , yada, yada, yada…but what happens someone actually starts to dream about building their own castle – for real –  with all the modern accoutrements including wireless, solar, highly insulated panels, and all the rest of it?

We  found out Sunday as we arrived at the home of long-time readers Shirley and Mike Bean who started off to use their life’s masterpiece as a bed & breakfast, but for now, it’s theirs to share with a just friends.

So, how would a modern-day castle work?  Who would design such a thing? 

The answer is Mike made his mark in mechanical and solar engineering in Hawaii (back when the islands had just poked out of the Pacific, right?) and he did OK in engineering, playing the markets and real estate such that he was pretty much able to check out from “civilized life” in the land of prefabs and coups(condos) and tiny homes and decided to really “roll his own” – a spectacular one-off Castle in the Pines at 7,700 feet in the mountains.

So what does a modern castle look like when you come in the front door?  Here’s the entryway into the Great Room:

Upstairs, the kitchen as everything (yes, big gas stove for gourmet cooking and there’s an icemaker in the fridge, I mean what’s a castle without a martini?) and looking up from the Great Room (where this morning’s report is coming to you from) it looked like this last night just before dinnertime.  That’s Elaine and Shirley looking down from the dining hall which is one level up with a panorama down into the great room…

The ladies ( I prefer wenches of the castle) deliver drinks  downstairs to the men of the House and when done,  up we go to the dining hall, and a feast on Burgundy elk, harvested in season on the property.

Now, this is not a remodel.  This is a serious ground-up effort that’s 6,500 square feet.

Interestingly, we have something in common in our fascination with the castle era and lifestyle.  We’ve both been members of the Social for Creative Anachronism, and like Elaine (oops!  Lady Elaine) and me, they also dropped out. (I could never figure out the org chart of the SCA and apparently I’m not the only one.

So here’s more of what the local Renaissance Faire types are missing out on:

So, this morning I have to sit back look at the pile of crap that needs doing in Texas, wander around the castle rooms….and ask myself….”So if the world ends tomorrow, do I have anything anywhere near this cool (less the boiling pots of oil up on the parapets) to make our stand in East Texas?”

No…not even.

What’s the coolest thing about the home?  Besides eye treats in every possible place?  The answer I think is the people who built it.  How many people do you know who have set their eyes on a big, serious dream and then set about building it and seeing it through to completion?

We’ve been fortunate enough to meet two such couples on this trip and – if you live in a small apartment or condo – it’s especially encouraging that people can still find a patch of ground and built a dream with their own hands from the ground up. 

It’s not common, but it is seriously cool and an inspiration to anyone who’s ever picked up a tool with the idea of creating a “life’s work.”

Government: Buying Friends?

With plenty of people asking about the role of government, and especially given the cozy, soft-ball questions from the mainstream media, you can’t imagine how happy I was to see a good-sized report on the growth of government public relations efforts over the past 20-years, or so.

This one isn’t a particularly easy matter of public policy (though the Statesman article makes it clear that maybe the pendulum has over done it…a lot) but having tried to deal with government in the early 1970’s – just as the government PR move was coming along – I can see two sides to the story.

On the one hand, public officials can literally be hounded too death by reporters at all hours of the day and night.  And most don’t have the luxury of personal protection other than a key contact in the local police department in event of issues.

But the other side of it is that PR types can – and do – serve as gate keepers.  And that means less access and more “soft-ball” questions.

Where the role of PR morphs into propaganda orchestration is when gag orders come down for Department Heads from an “executive.”  I remember the days when a county official, like the county engineer for example, could talk openly with any reporter who wandered along.

But not these days, at least to the degree as previously.  A county executive, mayor, governor, or even president, can quash and squash reporter inquiries.  This gives the executive even more power than they really need as well as it gives them a way to slip untold numbers of stories under the rug if they don’t seem to pass PR muster.

Ultimately, if comes down to the executive level tightening up their reins on control and the co-opted major media who go along with this crap get more access at the expense of the little guy.

Makes you wonder how many people remember Ben Franklin was at one time part of the alternative media?

Fukushima Fears Slowly Growing

While we actually looked at a home on a golf course during our Seattle area visit last week, we ‘re both in no particular hurry to sock away a few profits from our life in Texas and then turn around and invest it in an area which is downwind and down-current, from Fukushima.

Reader John sent an email this weekend which edgesd up to the point:

I have been looking over responses to the latest information. The official responses are now admitting localized trouble, ie FDA banning of seafood from most of Japan. But they are adamant that dilution will prevent any effect on CONUS.  As you know from reading EneNews and other sources, there are educated opinions to the contrary.

If we use the “follow the money” method, it might be construed that both sides have something to gain from their statements.

So another method of reasoning is necessary. I propose that, although the ongoing catastrophe is enough to make us stop eating seafood, it is not enough to make us emigrants. But criticality of the reactor 4 cooling pool rods could easily cause us to take a one-month vacation to the dry side of the state.

Our canary indicating permanent relocation is the evacuation of WA or CONUS by those American experts watching Fukushima. But how do we keep a close eye on them?

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Peoplenomics: How Transparent Economics Would Really Work

(Elko. NV) Thursday morning’s UrbanSurvival report (*available here) rather cynically lambasted the whole US government reporting system for p[resenting the public with mindless statistical gobbledygook which is almost impossible to sort out in any kind of meaningful way. So I thought it would be instructive this morning to look at how we could rewrite economic reports so that the general public could get something useful out of them. However, before we go into this, we begin with our trudge through the headlines to see if the world survived another night. Which it would have to (logically) in order to be posing rhetorical questions like this, but we’ll do it anyway while the coffee kicks in.

A Couple of Fearless Forecasts

The main forecast of this morning are pretty simple, really.  For one, I expect sometime either today, or next week, Gold will wake up to a $40 (or so) beat-down which seems to happen often enough at the end of the month.  But this morning, in a fine reversal, gold is trying to break to the upside…

Still, within a week, I figure we could see gold back under $1,300….

And since that will mean international “hot money” will need less US paper to buy the Dow, it should result in the bottom give out from under the Dow and the S&P which are edging down toward their 50-day moving averages, although at glacial speed.

Still, today’s line in the sand is 1,701 and change on the S&P – last Friday’s close, and a mark less than that could spell further market downside next week.  We shall see.

So for this morning, Mr. Cheerful is swilling decaf and looking at the just-released Personal Consumption and Expenditures report wondering how long before “the music stops” in the worldwide financial game of musical chairs…

“Personal income increased $57.2 billion, or 0.4 percent, and disposable personal income (DPI) increased $56.2 billion, or 0.5 percent, in August, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Personal consumption expenditures (PCE) increased $34.5 billion, or 0.3 percent. In July, personal income increased $21.2 billion, or 0.2 percent, DPI increased $32.7 billion, or 0.3 percent, and PCE increased $18.3 billion, or 0.2 percent, based on revised estimates. Real disposable personal income increased 0.3 percent in August, compared with an increase of 0.2 percent in July. Real PCE increased 0.2 percent, compared with an increase of 0.1 percent.

Personal outlays — PCE, personal interest payments, and personal current transfer payments — increased $38.4 billion in August, compared with an increase of $22.2 billion in July. PCE increased $34.5 billion, compared with an increase of $18.3 billion. Personal saving — DPI less personal outlays — was $580.7 billion in August, compared with $562.8 billion in July. The personal saving rate — personal saving as a percentage of disposable personal income — was 4.6 percent in August, compared with 4.5 percent in July.

Go on, see if you know anyone who actually saved 4.6% of their income in August…send in examples please, because NO ONE I know is stacking cash at this kind of rate.

The Dow futures were down a  bit when I looked but whether the 50 is crossed by the S&P toward the close is the one thing that really could matter today.

Bond Bombshell

Go ahead, try saying it out loud a few times – this is one of those “conditioned response tests” which shows rats may be considerably smarter than humans.  I’ve been sitting here in the client’s guest house this morning muttering this for a couple of hours now and “blond bombshell” keeps getting in the way or, the word just turn into verbal mush. 

Fortunately, my application to be a speech pathologist was turned down, so I had to stay in the business track, which gets us (eventually – but I could go off even further into the weeds if you want) to this note from our Jakarta Bureau Chief:

Hiya chief!

Thought this article would grab your attention.  Aren’t you expecting the world to end in October, led to Perdition by the bond markets? 

Couldn’t hurt to listen to Paul Craig Roberts again…he sounds like you. 

The question remains: Is the rupiah falling or the dollar rising?  Is this a currency war? 

Peace, love and happy motoring!

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Coping: Friday at the Wujo

OK, the first serious problem for us to snipe at this morning is far more serious than the problem of “Subaru’s everywhere” that we seem to have gone through a cloud of earlier this week. 

this problem involves something which hinted at a couple of times previously:  the blurring of the boundary between the waking state (such as that is, among only partially awakened society) and the the lucid dream state.

An email from reader Tim sums it up…

George,

We are having déjà vu and dreams about people just to b contacted by those people at the time of the dream (voicemail or email). People having dreams about us then contacting us and mentioning things they saw in the dream that are true but they could not possibly know. I don’t know what is going on but it’s starting to seem scary.

Then there is also weird ghost spiritual stuff, don’t think I’ve read anything about that kind of stuff on ure site, im not sure how u feel about that type of stuff, I was a skeptic but now I believe. I hope 2014 is better, it feels like we r going downhill.

Tim

Remember the Russian Mastroyoska dolls (one inside the next, inside the next) that Ii have used as a convenient illustration of the “nested problem” issue?

Here’s the real difficulty that the evolution of mass consciousness on the Internet may bring with it:

Let’s assume the biggest doll – the outer-most one – represents human consciousness.  And let’s further imagine that the “next one in” this nested reality is the one representing lucid dreaming.

Now, let’s go one more inside of that…with me so far?

What IF – and it’s only a thought (and on decaf this morning, so only a half-formed thought on its own, anyway) – there is a controlling “next one inside of that” which is rule of All, Universe, or whatever you want to call it.

What happens when the reality that we are building in the “here and now” becomes  only itself another doll within a doll?

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Incomprehensible GDP Review–Market Dazzle Rally

You will want to have at least two cups of coffee on the burn this morning in order to sort through the monthly Gross Domestic Product data just out from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. 

That’s because in any college finance class, we we all taught to FIRST report some kind of a baseline hard number and then reference all following percentage changes to that hard number.

Well, as we continually complain around here, the way the BEA works, they don’t bother with such economic niceties:  The just launch into a double-triple serving of self-referential percentagizing ( if I can take some indecent liberties with language here) as they assume that you’ve remembered enough quadratics from school that you can solve for X if you really cared to get to the bottom of things.

Real gross domestic product — the output of goods and services produced by labor and property located in the United States — increased at an annual rate of 2.5 percent in the second quarter of 2013 (that is, from the first quarter to the second quarter), according to the “third” estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

In the first quarter, real GDP increased 1.1 percent. The GDP estimate released today is based on more complete source data than were available for the “second” estimate issued last month. In the second estimate, the increase in real GDP was also 2.5 percent.

With the third estimate for the second quarter, the general picture of economic growth remains largely the same (for more information, see “Revisions” on page 3). The increase in real GDP in the second quarter primarily reflected positive contributions from personal consumption expenditures (PCE), exports, nonresidential fixed investment, private inventory investment, and residential fixed investment that were partly offset by a negative contribution from federal government spending. Imports, which are a subtraction in the calculation of GDP, increased.

Well, of course they did!  (WTF?)  As the late Billy May said “But wait!  There’s more!!!”

The acceleration in real GDP in the second quarter primarily reflected upturns in exports and in nonresidential fixed investment, a smaller decrease in federal government spending, and an upturn in state and local government spending that were partly offset by an acceleration in imports and decelerations in private inventory investment and in PCE.

The price index for gross domestic purchases, which measures prices paid by U.S. residents, increased 0.2 percent in the second quarter, 0.1 percentage point less than the second estimate; this index increased 1.2 percent in the first quarter.

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Coping: Limitations to What You Can Prep For

A hell of a mess and a touch of Wujo up in the Denver area?

My sister, Suzi, just got back from a Denver conference and told us at lunch Monday that the Denver area itself is still “open for business: and there were no noticeable impacts on either her conference, or travel.

But not everyone is so lucky as to be right in Denver proper.  Take my buddy Patrick, who lives

Hi George,

Attached is a pic of my house. It has been condemned. I send this in that even having a prepper mind set and concern I was not prepared for this. I did not expect this and was not able to get to my emergency supplies. a lesson learned.

Lyons, CO was hit hard in the floods. My house (above) was ground zero.

I have noticed something about the people in Lyons and other places. Everyone is complaining about their memory. Myself as well.

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Chicago: The "Soft Entrance" of Martial Law?

(Grants Pass, OR) We continue our adventuring around the country this morning with a trip over to the east Bay area and a day of consulting tomorrow. But, on our way, we’ve had plenty of time to see some interesting things in America, including having the luxury of watching the follow-on to the Chicago shootings debate this week and a shocking move on the part of the Secretary of State. But, as usual, before we get into those items, a discussion first about how a few other headlines are rolling… More for Subscribers How to Become a Subscriber Subscriber Help Center

Housing Prices–Still Firm

Just out from Case Shiller/S&P this morning:

New York, September 24, 2013 – Data through July 2013, released today by S&P Dow Jones Indices for its S&P/Case-Shiller1 Home Price Indices, the leading measure of U.S. home prices, showed increases of 1.9% and 1.8% from June for the 10- and 20-City Composites. For at least four months in a row, all 20 cities showed monthly gains. Phoenix posted 22 consecutive months of positive returns. Although home prices in all the cities increased, 15 cities and both Composites saw these monthly rates decelerate in July versus June.

Over the last 12 months, prices rose 12.3% and 12.4% as measured by the 10- and 20-City Composites. The year-over-year returns show a brighter outlook with 13 cities posting improvement in July versus June values. Las Vegas increased the most from +24.9% in June to an impressive +27.5% in July.

The chart above depicts the annual returns of the 10-City Composite and the 20-City Composite Home Price Indices. In July 2013, the 10- and 20-City Composites posted annual increases of 12.3% and 12.4%, respectively.

“Home prices gains are holding their 12% annual rate of gain established by the two Composite indices in April,” says David M. Blitzer, Chairman of the Index Committee at S&P Dow Jones Indices. “The Southwest continues to lead the housing recovery.

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Waiting on Housing Data

A quick reader reminder that we will update with the Case-Shiller/S&P Housing Index about 8:15 Central when the data comes out,  A leveling off of sales may be anticipated, I think, because at some point the “easy money” VC folks (that’d be the vulture capitalists) will run out of free money to buy up money from bank REO departments.  Oh, and we here the rental revenue isn’t so free and easy, after all.

That worry may be somewhat premature, since the Fed blew its chance to begin the inevitable drug abuse withdrawal from the coke of “free money”.  And, to be sure, there is some evidence the Fed may be right.

When I looked this morning, the dollar was running about 0.7411 to the Euro, which means although there was some drop down in the few days after the Fed meeting, what we’re seeing is a persistently high dollar and the effect of this is what, class?

Obviously, anything denominated in paper (housing, gold, oil, etc) should be dropping in a nicely synchronized deflationary way.

So yes, oil was back down to the $104 and change level, gold ought to fall down below the psychologically important $1,300 range, and housing?  Well check back in a few minutes for that.

The key moving pieces of the big, globalist, clockworks of capitalism, are continuing to show a weak Europe, a troubled European Central Bank and it all adds up to the serious investors greatest nightmare: A Muddle Through which, because of low beta/volatility makes investing about as much fun as watching paint dry.

More after this:

Prepper Note in Passing…

By the way, since we’ve been writing about the prepper space since before it was a space or niche, I wanted to point out how little emphasis is placed by most prepper sites on useful home equipment like sewing machines.  The way I figure it, people can (and have) lived without air conditions, but sewing machines, even running on a small inverter and car battery, or old lawnmower engine and scrounged up alternator, could still be one of the most useful tools out there, especially if you’ve got an assortment of old sheets, used denim, and even scraps of leather and so forth.  So when I put an ad up like one that suggests you consider a sewing machine, it’s not like we haven’t put some thought into it, and yes, Elaine’s good a good sewing machine and has made a lot of clothes, including women’s suits and so forth.

OK, back to passing headlines…

Kenya Mall Inaction

Even as we continue to hear about how Americans are involved in the Islamic militant attack on a shopping mall in Kenya, we continue to be appalled at the lack of response by the Obama administration.

I bet it would be different if Kenya has an air defense system linked with Syria and controlled pipeline rights of way, huh?  Not that the Kenyan government can’t handle it, but the precedents are out there is the administration was willing to play more than a TS chit on this.  (Definition #4 if you’re young)

Principles or Money?

We note the reports this morning that while Texas senator Ted Cruz is looking to filibuster as efforts to defund Obamacare, which has turned into a corporatists and congress versus we the people economic class warfare too, that Cruz is running into opposition from his own party.

Why, if I weren’t traveling today, I’d be running out the details of those opposing defunding to see ifs there was a correlation between campaign contributions for the next election cycle and Big Money from the beneficiaries of this change in healthscare,

No, I’m not claiming there is a correlation.  I just wouldn’t be particularly surprised  by it.

Oh, and on the class warfare angle, I’m sure there’s a more watered-down way to characterize the special dispensation/delays for big corporations to comply with the AHCA, but none seem to be coming to mind just yet.

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