Look at the upper right side of this page and you will note the self-described affiliation of our group “The Last Refuge”. That name specifically chosen because we broke away from political identity framed around arguments of personality; frustrated because no one was focused on the real hands behind the networks. We have been fighting “The Big Club” for years.

President Trump is the first political entity in our lifetime that not only comprehends the faces of the false arguments (the personalities of false choice), but more importantly sees the architects behind the Potemkin villages represented by those faces. When it comes to domestic economic policies, the architects are the BIG CLUB.

So, what is “The Big Club“?

..What “Deep State” is to intelligence, military intervention and foreign policy – The “BIG CLUB” is to matters of domestic economics…

Politicians do not write laws. Paul Ryan, Nancy Pelosi, Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer do not sit in their offices writing out scripts of laws and legislation; no politician does. Politicians are the faces who sell legislation that unseen hands create. The Big Club are the hands that create the legislation.

As such, it makes no sense to argue about the salesmanship of Ted Cruz or Elizabeth Warren when neither Cruz nor Warren are creating the legislative constructs they are selling.

Indeed, it makes much more sense to focus the attention on the unseen hands that are never discussed – These are the roots of the issues, the politicians are merely the expendable and interchangeable sales force.

The Big Club are massive and complex networks of lobbying groups who actually write legislation. What follows, depending on their own evaluation of importance therein, are payments to the politicians to go and sell their construct.

The amount of payment varies depending on how valuable the construct is to the interests of the Club. Big legislative constructs that provide the Club large income increases are worth more than smaller ones.

This is the accurate background framework to consider ObamaCare.

Within The BIG CLUB there are, essentially, two larger factions with interest: Big Labor and Wall Street (big crony-business). There are other factions like Big Green (Al Gore) etc. However, for the sake of ObamaCare the two that matter are “Big Labor” (AFL-CIO, SEIU, AFSCME, UFCW etc), and Wall Street (U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Tom Donohue).

The Big Club has paid for ObamaCare’s construct, and they are not going to allow their sales force to walk away from it. From their position, this is a massive ‘multi-multi-hundreds-of-millions’ expenditure that has already taken place.

Tom Donohue (U.S. CoC) already lost hundreds of millions when his construct (his team actually did the writing) of TPP was lost due to Donald Trump. Donohue’s TPP loss followed the loss of Comprehensive Immigration Reform (2014 Dave Brat), and his loss of Common Core Education standards, again with Donald Trump.

Donohue spent hundreds of millions on Gang of Eight, Common Core, TPP and ObamaCare.

Donohue paid off AFL-CIO’s Richard Trumka to get him to stop being public about his opposition of TPP. The quid-pro-quo was transparently most evident when Trumka endorsed candidate Hillary Clinton who was supporting Donohue’s TPP.

Having lost TPP, Go8 and Common Core, there is no way Tom Donohue is going to accept losing his biggest investment to date, ObamaCare.

♦ Big Labor support ObamaCare for a few reasons. #1 it granted fiscal stability to their retirement programs which were failing with the increased costs of providing healthcare coverage. #2 it creates additional profit margin space within union companies for more lucrative compensation contracts. And #3 ideologically it was constructed to eventually end up with a single-payer system. All three points are great for Big Labor.

♦ Wall Street supports ObamaCare because it: #1 removes the cost of providing healthcare from the cost of producing products in the U.S. [However, you’ll note the consumer price of manufactured goods never actually decreases, instead the savings go to the profit margin.] #2 allows the manufacturing cost equity to streamline globalization efforts.

Both primary factions within the BIG CLUB stood to gain substantially if they could shift the cost of healthcare from their individual ledgers into the personal checkbooks of the U.S. consumer. Hence, they looked at the lobbying cost of ObamaCare as a long-term legislative investment with a massive upside.

After the GOPe wing of the UniParty was voted into the majority in both houses (2014), the Big Club sales people (politicians) needed to give the illusion of “repeal” or “removal”, but not actually do anything which would remove it. So long as Obama was in office the optical games were easy; with Clinton later in office the games would be no longer needed.

Big Club spends to make sure Clinton wins the Presidency.

#NeverTrump making sense now?

Rut Roh.

Now, fast forward to 2017 and President Trump is in office on a promise to repeal and replace ObamaCare.

Oh snap, NOW what is the Big Club going to do?

Stall for time…. Quick construct plan to deal with the unexpected. Stall, block cabinet and down-stream confirmations… Activate astroturf to provide Sales Force cover… Paul Ryan lies to Sean Hannity… etc.

More things reconciling now?

Meanwhile, President Trump understands exactly what they are doing.

President-Elect Trump met with Richard Trumka and outlined larger administration pro-jobs objective assurances.

Once in office, President Trump works around Donohue and goes to the manufacturing and business community directly.

Now Trump is highlighting how deregulation, tax policy and other pro-growth America-First objectives will more than compensate them for any ObamaCare recall.

The battle/negotiation you see in the media is the visible stuff going on amid the Big Club’s sales people, the politicians. However, the REAL ObamaCare removal negotiation is going on behind the scenes where the Trump Administration is taking on The Big Club directly…

Once you see the strings, it’s almost impossible to watch the marionettes and not see them.

However, that doesn’t mean the puppet show has to be less enjoyable….

….Specifically because we have President Trump, it is entirely possible to simultaneously watch the show, and yet still look up toward the scaffolding and see the shadows of the hands controlling them.

Lobbying Ban – Executive Order