Moon Express, a private commercial space firm in Florida, has just received permission from the United States government to land a robot on the moon in 2017.

According to Quartz, “Never before has any company sought or received approval to do business beyond earth orbit.”

Space notes that the company’s application went to the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration and then “made its way through the U.S. State Department, the U.S. Department of Defense, NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Federal Communications Commission,” a process that occurred from early April to late July.

With approval, Moon Express is on track to compete for Google’s Lunar X Prize of $25 million, to be awarded to the first company that lands a probe on the moon than can travel across the surface and transmit data back to Earth. The company’s most serious competitor may be a commercial space company in Israel, which is also plotting a 2017 launch and has a contract with Elon Musk’s Space X, but over a dozen other companies are challengers.

Moon Express showed great interest in harvesting resources from the moon, which is already legal for U.S. firms. “In the immediate future, we envision bringing precious resources, metals and moon rocks back to Earth,” Chairman Naveen Jain said. He further stated, “To me, the moon is really like international waters, but if you obtain resources, you do get to own the resources.”

According to CNBC,

The moon is a treasure chest that has vast amounts of iron ore, water, rare Earth minerals and precious metals, as well as carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen and helium-3, a gas that can be used in future fusion reactors to provide nuclear power without radioactive waste. Experts concur that the value of these resources are in the trillions of dollars.

The moon can also serve as a fuel depot station for interplanetary space exploration. It has massive amounts of ice (H₂O) trapped on the lunar poles that can be used for rocket fuel.

But the venture will also help develop new space technologies and be the first step toward private tourism to the moon. Jain spoke to CNN of when tourism could become a reality: “If I was a betting man, I’d say it’ll be sometime between 10 and 15 years.”

Moon Express’ mission will cost an estimated $25 million. Decades ago, when probes first landed on the moon, it cost $100 billion.

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Free market healthcare is immoral because under such a system the medical needs of people — yourself, your loved ones, your fellow citizens — are an affront to the profits of insurance companies and medical providers. This leads to the mistreatment and death of innocent people. When their financial interests do not align with your health needs, private powers choose the former. Healthcare is a matter of life and death, so let us explore the problems and solutions.

Before 2010, the year Obamacare took effect, nearly 50 million Americans were uninsured; in 2017 nearly 30 million remained uninsured.

Before the Affordable Care Act, private insurance companies denied coverage to citizens with pre-existing conditions or charged them and the elderly more. Covering someone already ill wasn’t profitable. 650,000 Americans were denied insurance from 2007 to 2009 by the top 4 firms alone.[1] That’s one in seven applicants; 213,000 were insured customers who had their coverage rescinded. California state investigators found PacifiCare improperly denied 30% of claims between 2005 and 2007, with 130,000 claims processing violations.[2]

The lists of medical reasons for denial are long. One company had 400 diagnoses that could get you denied, including diabetes, heart disease, and pregnancy (“Please keep up the good work with the marketing reps of not trying to sign up pregnant women,” as an internal email from a medical management director at Amerigroup Corp. put it; insurers habitually overcharge women for care).[3] Across the board there are over 1,000 conditions, from breast cancer to lymphoma, that could leave you uninsured.[4] A quarter of Americans have some form of pre-existing condition.[5]

Yes, even those who were not denied initially could become victims when they grew ill. As a retired Cigna senior executive put it, insurance companies “look carefully to see if a sick policyholder may have omitted a minor illness, a pre-existing condition, when applying for coverage, and then they use that as justification to cancel the policy, even if the enrollee has never missed a premium payment… Dumping a small number of enrollees can have a big effect on the bottom line.”[6] When consumers are dropped they are left to cover the bill, usually thousands or tens of thousands of dollars, sometimes reaching six figures. Parvin Mottaghi of Los Angeles was stuck with a $100,000 bill when Blue Shield refused to cover her heart surgery they had previously approved.[7] Brittany Cloyd of Kentucky went to the emergency room in pain from what turned out to be ovarian cysts. Her insurance company, Anthem, sent her the $12,600 hospital bill because it decided her medical problem wasn’t “severe enough” for an E.R. visit. This is their policy, not an aberration, and discourages people from seeking help.

Insurance giants must “satisfy Wall Street investors,” to quote the Cigna senior executive.

The average family doesn’t understand how Wall Street’s dictates determine whether they will be offered coverage, whether they can keep it, and how much they’ll be charged for it. But, in fact, Wall Street plays a powerful role. The top priority of for-profit companies is to drive up the value of their stock. Stocks fluctuate based on companies’ quarterly reports, which are discussed every three months in conference calls with investors and analysts…

To win the favor of powerful analysts, for-profit insurers must prove that they made more money during the previous quarter than a year earlier and that the portion of the premium going to medical costs is falling. Even very profitable companies can see sharp declines in stock prices moments after admitting they’ve failed to trim medical costs. I have seen an insurer’s stock price fall 20 percent or more in a single day after executives disclosed that the company had to spend a slightly higher percentage of premiums on medical claims during the quarter than it did during a previous period…

To help meet Wall Street’s relentless profit expectations, insurers routinely dump policyholders who are less profitable or who get sick.[8]

He further explained what most of us already suspected—that benefit documents are intentionally incomprehensible. “Insurers know that policyholders are so baffled by those notices they usually just ignore them or throw them away. And that’s exactly the point. If they were more understandable, more consumers might realize that they are being ripped off.” This executive, Wendell Potter, quit after Cigna refused to cover a teenager with leukemia in need of a liver transplant. She died. Her name was Nataline.

Employees earned high marks and were given bonuses for dropping sick policyholders.[9] For example, the Los Angeles Times reported: “Health Net Inc. avoided paying $35.5 million in medical expenses by rescinding about 1,600 policies between 2000 and 2006. During that period, it paid its senior analyst in charge of cancellations more than $20,000 in bonuses based in part on her meeting or exceeding annual targets for revoking policies.”[10] Countless other tactics put profits over people: insurers capping the amount they will pay on your medical needs yearly or over the course of your life, unwarranted rate hikes, raising premiums so high as to intentionally force businesses to abandon healthcare for workers, scheming with healthcare providers to jack up prices, marketing scams, defrauding the government, etc.[11]

Insurance giants overrule the treatments determined by doctors to be best for their patients. After her doctor prescribed a medication to battle her inflammatory disease, 18-year-old Chanel Bunce of Seattle was told by her provider that the cost would not be covered because the treatment was “experimental.” Without the medication, Bunce died three weeks later. This is not an isolated incident. In surveys the percentage of doctors who feel insurance companies inhibit them from providing the best care to patients is 90% or more.[12]

Somewhere between 22,000 and 45,000 died each year from lack of medical insurance in the 2000s.[13] Uninsured people sacrifice visits to the doctor, prescription drugs, and other forms of treatment because they cannot afford them, and thus make health problems worse or never discover them until it is too late. Children without insurance were 60% more likely to die after hospitalization than those with insurance.[14] As more people gain insurance, deaths are reduced. Obamacare was modeled after a Republican-led program in Massachusetts where every 830 adults who gained insurance translated to one fewer deaths.[15] Obamacare determined colonoscopies should be free; the number of Americans undergoing colonoscopies rose, increasing early colorectal cancer detection, saving thousands of lives.[16] It should not be surprising lack of insurance is a death sentence, considering how much treatment costs without it, from hundreds a month to treat diabetes (and $5,000-$7,000 for an insulin pump) to over $100,000 for just the first year of treating brain cancer.[17] Those who don’t perish are ruined financially. In 2013, an estimated 645,000 bankruptcies were linked to massive medical bills.[18] At the beginning of 2016, 20% of insured Americans were having difficulty paying their medical bills.[19] 63 million insured people say they have had to sacrifice needed care due to cost.[20]

While some conservatives claim all Americans have access to healthcare because hospitals have emergency rooms, this is absurd on its face. Even though you can get emergency surgery or medicine without insurance at the E.R., you cannot get chemotherapy, nor preventative care and tests that can detect illnesses and disorders early on, saving lives. (In other parts of the world, people die outside emergency rooms because they have no money or insurance.) E.R. visits leave people with massive bills, anywhere from $100-$12,600 more than Medicare recipients pay. Further, unless we switch to a model where taxes cover insurance for all, we will struggle to preserve the necessary and moral U.S. law that no one can be turned away from an E.R. because he or she is uninsured. Emergency rooms will continue to shut down, overcrowding all the others, because they are underfunded. The U.S. lost a quarter of its emergency rooms between 1990 and 2011 because the patients had no money and no insurance provider hospitals could bill.[21]

And getting to the E.R.? Ambulance rides cost thousands, sometimes nearing five figures. If you have insurance, your provider will cover part of it — if you’re lucky.

While the Affordable Care Act created a marketplace (the “exchange”) where more people could find affordable healthcare plans and get government subsidies to cover some costs, this funneled money into the hands of abusive private powers, only worsened by the legal requirement that citizens purchase their insurance. While the Act did help millions gain access to affordable healthcare and protected people with pre-existing conditions from rejection and consumers from rescission, the problems with the law were immense: insurance companies hiked their premium rates, reduced benefits, or even pulled out the exchange if they lost money, states (mostly Republican) opted out of the Medicare expansion (leaving many Americans not poor enough for Medicare but too poor to afford insurance through the exchange), businesses slashed worker hours and kept employee totals low to avoid having to provide insurance to workers, etc. And naturally insurance companies still sought ways to avoid paying for the medical needs of their customers despite Obamacare reforms, even ignoring the law entirely.[22] This is why even if a free market healthcare system could somehow lower costs of high quality insurance so far everyone could afford it (doubtful, consider America’s dire poverty and capitalism’s worsening monopolization eliminating competition in the medical insurance industry and others), people would still be sacrificed on the altar of profit.

Clearly, under the current system the desires of insurance companies and healthcare providers for profit are antithetical to the medical needs of human beings. Wouldn’t a system in which people didn’t need health insurance be preferable? Where people could visit their doctors and if they needed a procedure or medicine they couldn’t afford the government would cover it? Where insurance companies died out because they were no longer needed? Isn’t circumventing the profit motive the ethical thing to do, to save lives?

Virtually all other advanced nations have enjoyed nationalized medicine for decades, systems that offer true universal coverage in which taxes cover everyone’s medical needs. In Germany (a nation that has been improving its universal system for 125 years[23]), even guest workers can see a doctor and receive free treatment, as my cousin experienced. You walk in, walk out, and the State covers the cost of your care.

This does not mean the State must own the hospitals and pay the doctors and other workers, as in Britain. The workers—the doctors, nurses, and janitors—should own the hospitals and clinics. Opponents of universal healthcare in the U.S. often point to the conditions and abuses in VA hospitals, which are indeed a problem, but what’s needed is not more government-run hospitals like those of the VA but rather an expansion of Medicare, wherein the government foots citizen bills at private medical institutions. Medicare and Medicaid, which cover medical costs of the poor and the elderly, are very popular programs that, if funded properly, are very effective. Critics don’t always understand that there is more than one universal healthcare model. There’s the Beveridge Model, in which the government owns and runs hospitals (Britain, Spain, Hong Kong, and others). The Bismark Model entails private insurance funds that employers and employees pay into, like in the U.S., but insurers are strictly non-profit and must cover everyone no matter what (Germany, Japan, Switzerland, etc.). With a National Health Insurance Model, the government operates an insurance pool funded by taxes and pays the healthcare bills of citizens (Canada, South Korea, Taiwan, and so forth). In some single-payer countries, like Denmark, Sweden, and Finland, everything is done locally, with taxes for healthcare going to cities and counties, not the federal government. Sweden’s system is decentralized, controlled by town councils, using private doctors and competition to keep down costs.

To reiterate, State ownership of hospitals and clinics is in no way a requirement of universal healthcare. It is a simple matter of a doctor’s office sending a bill to the State and the State writing a check. Clinics and hospitals continue to compete to provide the best services and highest quality care to keep people coming through the doors.

No, this does not plunge nations into dictatorship, in the same way Medicaid and Medicare haven’t eroded American democracy or human rights. While universal healthcare will always be at risk of being defunded by politicians, most other concerns are simply rightwing fear-mongering (recall the “death panels” hysteria during the Obamacare debate and other notions of bureaucrats deciding who gets care). While the State can without question be abusive, keeping politicians in line regarding healthcare funding and access is a far easier task for the populace than stopping the abuses of private powers. First, democratic mechanisms give people more control over the State. Second, medical provider abuses are fueled by the profit motive; you’d have to get rid of the latter entirely to make the former history. The notion that consumers will drive abusive insurance giants into the ground by refusing to give them business has no merit, easily dismissed with the question “Why hasn’t it happened yet?” The awful practices have been going on for a long time, why aren’t Cigna and Aetna collapsing due to popular abandonment? The industry is dominated by a handful of multibillion-dollar giants that aren’t going anywhere.

Skeptics warn that healthcare costs for providers—everything a hospital needs to purchase, from software to scalpels—will rise out of control if consumer care is subsidized. Yet manufacturers still need to offer competitive, attractive prices because hospitals still choose whom to purchase from and must remain choosy because their budgets are not unlimited—they still depend on how many people come through the door for help, which determines State funding. This is like how public schools don’t face skyrocketing prices for pencils, paper, desks, computers, and smartboards. Predictably, it is therefore not more expensive to care for people in single-payer systems; it’s actually cheaper. Hospitals in comparable nations with socialized medicine spend far less per patient discharged than U.S. hospitals. The current U.S. system is the world’s most expensive per person—and underperforms in areas like efficiency, equity, and (obviously) access compared to nations that spend less on healthcare.[24] In other areas like quality of care things are about even. Some Americans leave the country for more affordable care. Michael Shopenn’s surgery would have cost $100,000 in the U.S., but he got it done for under $14,000 in Belgium—airfare included.[25] 1.4 million Americans went abroad for medical care in 2016. Cost increases are caused by many different factors in private and public systems alike, but there is no question healthcare in nations such as France are more efficient, more popular, and far less expensive per citizen and as a proportion of the GDP than in the United States.[26] There are many ways universal healthcare can lower costs for hospitals and clinics. For one, research comparing the American and Canadian healthcare systems reveals having one central place where bills are sent saves colossal amounts of money in administrative and overhead costs.[27] It also frees providers from having to spend so much on advertising. Problems can be caught earlier and more expensive solutions avoided when people aren’t afraid to see a doctor due to cost. Preventative care works the same way.

It’s been estimated that universal healthcare would cost the U.S. $1 trillion to $2 trillion a year, not too different from the $3 trillion we Americans spend on healthcare today, in the form of out-of-pocket care and private insurance for individuals and businesses, as well as taxes for Medicare, Medicaid, etc.[28] Converting spending in the private sphere to new taxes for universal healthcare is a trade-off that can save individuals and businesses money. Even a Koch-funded libertarian think tank like the Mercatus Center has calculated that Medicare For All would save $2 trillion over ten years compared to the current state of affairs. That’s less money Americans have to spend. Our cost in taxes to cover everyone is lower than the cost of maintaining the current private-public system where tens of millions are not covered.

If you look at other advanced democracies with universal coverage, some indeed have higher average income tax rates than we do (20%-24% higher in places like Germany, Denmark, and Belgium), but some aren’t all that different. An individual making an average salary in the U.K. has a rate 3% higher than one in the U.S. The Czech Republic has a universal system, but couples with two children pay a tax rate half of what a U.S. couple would pay. South Korea pays a tad less than the U.S. in both areas. Higher income earners in Germany and South Korea take home larger portions of their income than higher income Americans. And nearly every nation in Europe, and around the world, has a lower corporate tax rate than the U.S. While an increase in taxes is necessary for the United States to enact this program (as is a discussion on whom should shoulder the heaviest burden), skyrocketing taxes are not.

And if we are concerned with reducing costs, of course, we could always reserve free healthcare for those making below a certain income level, such as $500,000 a year (this level would have to be high, as some treatments cost hundreds of thousands out of pocket). Overall, the conversation on cost (and rising costs) cannot end without the obvious being stated: the United States is the richest nation in the history of the world. If other countries can survive and thrive while providing medical care to all, so can we.

No, universal healthcare systems are not perfect. They can be meddled with by politicians. They’re expensive. They usually rely on heavier taxes (if nations are wise, on the wealthy). Issues like wait times concern some critics, though this is caused by multiple factors in private and public systems alike, and while the U.S. has shorter wait times in some areas of healthcare (like elective surgery and specialty care), for others it has far longer wait times (such as scheduling a standard appointment with your doctor, a key to catching and fixing ailments early).[29] While there will always be obstacles, we can learn from the mistakes and successes of other nations. The most important success was circumventing a for-profit system that leaves tens of thousands of innocent men, women, and children dead every year from preventable medical problems.

Without question, socialized medicine is the moral thing to do.

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Notes

[1] http://www.cnbc.com/id/39646830

[2] https://khn.org/morning-breakout/dr00050126/

[3] https://www.propublica.org/blog/item/insurers-denied-health-coverage-to-1-in-7-people-citing-pre-existing-condit, https://web.archive.org/web/20170701070032/http://hcfan.3cdn.net/48b73f19dac6bc9fa7_vzm6iijoh.pdf

[4] http://articles.latimes.com/2009/jun/17/business/fi-rescind17

[5] https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-12-12/1-in-4-americans-have-pre-existing-conditions-that-could-hinder-coverage-if-obamacare-repealed

[6] http://abcnews.go.com/Business/Health/story?id=7911195&page=1

[7] https://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-dreier/wellpoint-poster-child-fo_b_294343.html

[8] http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/07102009/potter_testimony.html

[9] http://articles.latimes.com/2007/nov/09/business/fi-insure9; http://articles.latimes.com/2009/jun/17/business/fi-rescind17; Sicko

[10] http://articles.latimes.com/2007/nov/09/business/fi-insure9

[11] http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/07102009/potter_testimony.html, https://web.archive.org/web/20170701070032/http://hcfan.3cdn.net/48b73f19dac6bc9fa7_vzm6iijoh.pdf

[12] https://web.archive.org/web/20170701070032/http://hcfan.3cdn.net/48b73f19dac6bc9fa7_vzm6iijoh.pdf

[13] http://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/31386/411588-Uninsured-and-Dying-Because-of-It.PDF; http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-healthcare-deaths-idUSBRE85J15720120620; http://prescriptions.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/17/harvard-medical-study-links-lack-of-insurance-to-45000-us-deaths-a-year/

[14] http://health.usnews.com/health-news/managing-your-healthcare/policy/articles/2009/10/29/17000-child-deaths-linked-to-lack-of-insurance

[15] https://thinkprogress.org/heres-how-many-people-could-die-every-year-if-obamacare-is-repealed-ae4bf3e100a2

[16] http://www.nbcnews.com/health/cancer/obamacare-saved-thousands-colon-cancer-death-report-finds-n710951

[17] https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/health/medical-costs/how-much-does-chemotherapy-cost/; http://health.costhelper.com/cost-diabetes-care.html

[18] http://www.cnbc.com/id/100840148

[19] http://www.beckershospitalreview.com/finance/even-20-of-insured-americans-face-burdens-of-medical-debt-5-key-survey-findings.html

[20] https://jacobinmag.com/2017/06/trumpcare-obamacare-repeal-single-payer

[21] http://www.nationalnursesunited.org/news/entry/hospitals-eliminate-1-in-4-u.s.-emergency-rooms-since-1990-study-finds/

[22] http://www.thedailybeast.com/my-insurance-company-killed-me-despite-obamacare; https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/2/22/17033588/trump-obamacare-preexisting-conditions

[23] http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92189596

[24] https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/06/us-healthcare-most-expensive-and-worst-performing/372828/

[25] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/07/us/the-growing-popularity-of-having-surgery-overseas.html

[26] http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92419273

[27] Wright, Envisioning Real Utopias, 62

[28] http://decisiondata.org/news/how-much-single-payer-uhc-would-cost-usa/; http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2017/jul/21/how-expensive-would-single-payer-system-be/; https://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Statistics-Trends-and-Reports/NationalHealthExpendData/downloads/highlights.pdf

[29] http://advocacyblog.acponline.org/2010/01/which-countries-have-longest-waits-for.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%25253A+AcpAdvocateBlog+%252528ACP+Advocate+Blog%252529; https://www.commonwealthfund.org/sites/default/files/documents/___media_files_publications_fund_report_2017_may_mossialos_intl_profiles_v5.pdf

On January 19, 2016, President Barack Obama vetoed a resolution from Republicans in Congress that would have reversed Obama’s tightening of clean water rules from 2014, regulations enforced by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Obama wrote in his veto message:

Too many of our waters have been left vulnerable. Pollution from upstream sources ends up in the rivers, lakes, reservoirs, and coastal waters near which most Americans live and on which they depend for their drinking water, recreation, and economic development.

Republicans do not have the votes to overrule the veto.

Last week Speaker of the House and Republican leader Paul Ryan penned an editorial denouncing the regulations.

The new rules expanded the definition of “main waterways” from the 1972 Clean Water Act, as Ryan writes,

…to include all adjacent bodies of water, no matter how small. In other words, streams, drainage ditches and ponds — even those on private property — are now subject to the whims and aggressions of Washington bureaucrats.

Ryan believes the EPA wishes to “micromanage everyone’s use of their own land, including that of farmers and ranchers.” As evidence, he tells of a Wyoming farmer who was fined nearly $40,000 a day for “building a pond on his land to water his horses.” The farmer, in order to build his pond, built a dam on a tributary of a U.S. interstate river, which requires a federal permit, for which the farmer refused to apply after repeated warnings.

Ryan also cites a California farmer “told that he broke the law simply by plowing his land.” While the full story may indeed seem ridiculous, it is likewise complicated, as the EPA accused the farmer of plowing too deep in wetlands, which leads to their destruction, affecting environments elsewhere.

While critics may see the latter farmer’s insistence that “They’re trying to stop farmers. They’re simply trying to chase us off of our land” as incorrect (the EPA wants to stop wheat production so people go hungry? Or get rid of farmers so EPA employees can work the land themselves?), the statement serves Ryan’s point.

According to him, the regulations are only “allegedly” to protect the water supply people use to drink and farm from damage. They are actually meant to be a “power grab” for the sake of power; the EPA just likes to “micromanage” citizens. Ryan does not address any rationale the EPA might provide, such as:

The scientific literature unequivocally demonstrates that streams, individually or cumulatively, exert a strong influence on the integrity of downstream waters. All tributary streams, including perennial, intermittent, and ephemeral streams, are physically, chemically, and biologically connected to downstream rivers via channels and associated alluvial deposits where water and other materials are concentrated, mixed, transformed, and transported.

Liberal critics point out Ryan is responding to the lobbying of large corporations that oppose the tighter restrictions: “The US Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers have joined the ranks of the American Farm Bureau Federation, Dairy Farmers of America, pesticide manufacturers, mining companies, home builders, and the Koch-owned-and-run timber industry, to name but a few.”

Ryan believes in “the states’ primacy in water management.” He concludes:

Water is the foundation of life… Congress will continue to make sure that people who depend upon this indispensable resource are not imperiled by an overzealous federal bureaucracy.

So far, Ryan has remained silent on what many see as the far greater water crisis in Flint, Michigan, a disaster wrought by a state ignoring and resisting federal regulations on decontaminating public water.

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MAY 4, 2016

INAUGURATION REMARKS OF DONALD J. TRUMP

 FRIDAY, JANUARY 20, 2017

WASHINGTON, D.C.

TRANSCRIPT

Thank you all. Chief Justice Roberts, thank you. President Carter, the two President Bushes President Bush Senior, President Bush, President Obama, distinguished guests, my fellow Americans, thank you.

I am truly humbled to be standing here before all of you today, I really am. I want to start today by thanking President Barack Obama for his service to America. He’s done a great job, hasn’t he? A really great job.

When we began this campaign no one believed this was possible. I heard thousands and thousands of people say, from sea to shining sea, that, “Oh, Donald Trump, he can’t get elected. They won’t take him seriously, his campaign is a joke.” Yet they forgot what makes America great. They forgot what the Founding Fathers knew. America has faced challenges over and over again. And each time, America — the greatest and most powerful nation in the world — met those challenges. It’s a beautiful thing.

The mainstream media called me a demagogue, and all these other horrible things. They said, “He hates so and so” or “He wants to shred the Constitution.” Those are foolish people. One website said you’d rather have Satan than Donald Trump as president. Ivanka said the website was Weekend Collective. I said, “Weekend Collective?” I’ve never heard of these things.

America met the challenges of the Nazis. We beat the Communists. The world was a mess, a complete and total disaster. And we saved it. Now if we could do those things…[pause for emphasis]…how could we not meet these other challenges? But I worked very hard and did it.

America has a lot of challenges, we all know this. Terrorists who want to kill us. Too many jobs going to China and Mexico. Bad trade deals, the worst I’ve seen. Too many middle class families can’t make ends meet. Our debt is in crisis a disaster. Hundreds of thousands of veterans waiting for care at hospitals. We’ve got corporate patrons who run the parties. And these politicians care only about begging for money from special interests so they can get reelected. Unbelievable challenges.

But if we work together, we can make America great again, I guarantee it.

The question is how? How do we make America great again? A lot of people have wondered that throughout American history, a lot of people. And a lot of people joined my campaign because I promised a lot of things, ridiculous things. Making Mexico pay for a wall? All my people said, “That’s crazy, that’s crazy.” Well, I said, “It’ll get the votes. Republican voters will love it, believe me.”

I said, “Let’s ban all the Muslims from entering the United States until we figure things out,” and my wife asked me, she said, “You don’t even believe that. You wouldn’t actually do it.” And I said, “You have to tell the people what they want to hear.” And that’s the way it is the truth, isn’t it? That’s what politicians do to get elected. Who says Donald J. Trump is the first one to do this? Who’s the first one to do this?

And the most remarkable thing happened. I saw all my rivals trying to one-up me, The Donald Donald Trump. You can’t one-up Donald Trump. Ben Carson is saying all these things, “Oh, the Muslim shouldn’t be president.” Ted Cruz is saying, “Let’s patrol Muslim neighborhoods” and all these ridiculous things. Why did they do it? They were trying to [pause and make fist] snatch away some votes.

Look, I’m really, really rich. I have successful businesses, many successful businesses. And successful businesses make a product people want to buy. I’ve had thousands and thousands of products, but I never imagined I’d be making myself one. I’m the product so many conservatives wanted. These other products, the Cruzes and the Carsons and the Jebs — the weakest product, believe me — are knockoffs. They’re inferior products, believe me.

I’m standing at this podium today because I told Republican voters what they wanted to hear. The people who hate Muslims, I told them we’d have to monitor all the mosques and keep out the Muslims and take out terrorist families. To the people who fear blacks, I tweeted a graphic about how blacks are killing white people in droves. To the Americans who think immigrants are stealing our jobs and bringing crime, I said, “OK, we’ll build a beautiful wall to keep out the rapists.”

“And why is it taking you two days to denounce David Duke?” my advisors were asking. I said, “A lot of my supporters also like David Duke.” They called me “ultimate savior” and “glorious leader” and put “heil” before my name. Can you believe that?

Nobody gets on national television and mocks a disabled guy and does all these things without good reason, believe me. Would Donald Trump of a few years ago have done that? Nobody says an American soldier isn’t a war hero if he gets captured. And you know, you can’t just tell OPEC, “You’re not going to raise that f*cking price.” Nobody promises to pay the legal fees of people who attack other people. I’m a human being, I hate seeing people get hurt, I really do. But I had to encourage it — it’s what violent voters wanted to hear. They loved it, and hit the button by my name when it was time.

How do we make America great again? Well, Ted Cruz called me a “progressive Democrat.” I wouldn’t go that far, that’s too far. But the things I’ve said in the past I still believe. The economy does better under Democrats. Healthcare should be a right for everybody. Assault weapons should be illegal. There’s not going to be a big gorgeous wall, we’re not censoring the Internet or banning all the Muslims. These things are ridiculous. I don’t know how anyone took them seriously.

I’m like any product Americans buy, believe me. I’m like palm readers Sketchers toning shoes. Remember those? You bought these shoes you’re really excited about, think they’ll pump up your ass, but eventually you realize they’re not all that different than your other shoes. It was just made to look great through false advertising. I don’t think I’ll be all that different than past presidents, believe me.

Some people will say, “What you did was wrong.” Well, Donald Trump isn’t perfect, nobody’s perfect. You know, sometimes I say silly things about women or the blacks. But there was nothing illegal about what I did. You can sue Sketchers, like a lot of people did, and a lot of people got money from it, but you can’t sue me for being who conservatives wanted. You can’t sue a politician for flip-flopping. And at the end of the day, what’s more wrong? The millions and millions of people who wanted someone strong, someone crude, actually wanted a bigot, wanted an authoritarian…[super long pause for emphasis]…or the one guy who gave them what they wanted?

Now enough of that. Let’s get to work. Lots of smart ways to make America great again. God bless you, and God bless America.

END

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Disclaimer [added after the agent of a certain actor contacted the writer]: This article is satire, you twits. I’m not actually Paul Rudd. I’m Evil Asshole Paul Rudd, a fictional character. Keep sharing the article — or don’t, I couldn’t care less — but stop telling people it’s the real Paul Rudd. You’re gonna get my white ass sued.

Oh, hey.

It’s me, Evil Asshole Paul Rudd.

Here to explain obvious things to dipshits and dingbats. I lived in Kansas City growing up, and Jesus there are a lot of those scurrying around here. And around the world. But mostly here.

It’s why I ghosted you fuckers hard on social media. Yeah, I used to have a Twitter. Facebook, too. But they’re gone now. Tired of you blowing up my DMs. If you want to know the answers to basic ass questions like “What State is Kansas City in?” you’ll have to come here for them.

There are two Kansas Cities, OK? God, it’s sad to have to explain this. There’s a Kansas City, Missouri, and a Kansas City, Kansas, OK?

I’ll repeat it slowly so as not to confuse you: two…cities. Not one city in two states. That’s impossible, dumbass. Read the Constitution.

Now I’m going to throw a curveball your way. Most of the time, anyone who lives anywhere near Kansas City just tells people from other cities that they are from Kansas City. As an outsider, when you hear “I’m from Kansas City,” don’t assume that means Kansas. Or Missouri. Don’t assume anything, OK? I’m from Lenexa, Kansas, but when people in Los Angeles hear that, they think Slap-the-Udder is all there is to do there on a Saturday night. It’s suburbia, motherfuckers!

So yeah, sometimes it’s treated like one city in two states. Nothing wrong with that. As long as you understand it technically isn’t.

If you’re from out of town, your proper response to every statement resembling “I’m from Kansas City” is “Oh, Kansas side or Missouri side?” Whomever you’re speaking to will be blown the fuck away. Guaranteed.

All that’s left to educate you on is which is better. Now, before we start busting out the rulers for size comparisons (must…resist…shuttlecock…pun), both Kansas Cities are pretty great if we’re including the greater metro area. In other words, not just comparing Kansas City, Kansas, and Kansas City, Missouri, but including Lenexa and everywhere else. Lot of nice places to live, work, and go to school on the Greater-Kansas City-in-Kansas side, and a lot of amazing attractions on the Greater-Kansas City-in-Missouri side like downtown, the plaza, the Royals stadium, the Chiefs stadiums, and murder.

Now, all those cool things are in Kansas City, Missouri, itself, not just Greater-Kansas City-in-Missouri. So looking at just Kansas City, Kansas, and Kansas City, Missouri, Kansas City, Kansas, gets utterly destroyed. All it’s got is a cool soccer stadium and a water park that doubles as a guillotine.

If you live in Greater-Kansas City-in-Kansas you don’t want to live in Kansas City, Kansas, but if you live in Greater-Kansas City-in-Missouri it’s chill to live in Kansas City, Missouri.

Christ, this is confusing.

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