strong profits

"while insurers have enjoyed strong profits in recent years, they say the cost of the pandemic could be overwhelming...without help lowering their costs by having the government pay for the most expensive hospital stays, mr.lee warned that insurers are likely to double their additional costs from the virus. if their costs go up 20 percent, mr. lee says rates could jump as much as 40 percent in 2021."

welcome to capitalism...and private costs turned into public debt by a cadre of greedy "entrepreneurs" and what will no doubt be their compliant whores in congress...this is nothing short of overt blackmail and/or extortion in the name of "profit" which is what happens when greed seizes control of the extractive levers...clearly insurance is no longer a service paid for by the insured, but rather an investment for profit takers who maintain wealth by shirking responsibilities at every available opportunity while whining ceaselessly about "additional costs"...what happened to profit as reward for risk? gone...vanished into the bowels of the imperial senate as it kowtows to its owners...why face risk when you can simply subsidize avarice through legislation? there may indeed be a serious pandemic going on and there may indeed be an extensive increase in costs to everyone...not just insurers...who are clearly taking advantage of a climate of fear to line there pockets with profits from health care which is already an obscenely costly experience for the ailing...i cannot say "fuck these people" enough...and that includes the ideologues who would defend this as a "function of the market" ( that's right economists...you unrepentant justifiers of greed and sub-set of whores nearly as slimy as politicians...that's you )...just another example of coronavirus as growth opportunity...

while many "non-essential" lower end retailers have simply locked their doors those on the upper end of the retail spectrum are putting up the plywood...one supposes in anticipation of mob action by the rabble who, in a state of misplaced rage and confusion are surely going to go after high end goods as the economy implodes rather than say...food...and other more pressing necessities...a crisis will highlight what is important and what can easily be let go of and i, for one, can think of little that would be of less use to the starving as a fucking coach purse...the elite think highly of themselves ( look at the megalomaniac in chief ) and they assume that we all value what they value...this may be error...there are more valuable things than material goods ( even though wee all must consume materially to survive )...you could hope that these "interesting times " might bring that into focus...one wonders.

$1200 from $2000000000000 = ?

snooping around the media i find a lot of contradictory information...which, when dealing with congress and the media is no real surprise...especially when there is this much cash to be had...

the on-line front page of the n y times reversed itself...one supposes as the news broke and that seems reasonable...however deeper into the stories around town...

either trumpy and the fruit of his loins do not...

or do get a slab of the public pie...all up in the air.. i am however, tempted to think that some of this lucre ( boodle to put a more realistic name to it ) will find its way to trump family coffers...let me indulge in some speculative ( stress that since information is woefully incomplete and my thoughts are that the legislation on this "deal" will be book length legalese generally designed to be impenetrable ) public math...according to the most recent figures i can find there are 138,300,000 u s taxpayers...giving each $1200 would burn up $165,960,000,000 leaving $1,834,040,000,000...$100,000,000,000 for hospitals leaves, $1,734,040,000,000...$500,000,000,000 for "big business" ( and here we may find trumpy ) leaves $1,234,040,000,000 and that less the $377,000,000,000 for "small business" loans renders the amount down to $847,000,000,000 for which i can find no direct application...now for supposition...people earning $79,000 to $98,999 will get less than $1200 and those making $99,000+ get zip...that might pare down that $165.9 billion except there is an additional $500 for each child in the $0 to $79,000 range so that figure can stand and it may take a chunk out of that $847 billion remainder...so might aid for states and their failing income because of this...new york i am told is getting $3.1 billion...so figure around $150 billion to states out of that $847 billion remainder...$699 billion left after that...kids count data center's latest number for children under eighteen in the u s is 74,399,342...multiply that by the $500 figure and you get $36,699,671,000...subtract that from $699 billion and i find a figure of $662,003,329,000 in funds unaccounted for..maybe the states get more...maybe corporations...maybe the kleptocrat in chief...maybe kickbacks to congress form their business associates...maybe lawyers get a cut...maybe it goes back to the treasury...maybe my math is fucked..i am inclined to think with that much cash at hand there will be "accounting errors" and money will vanish...because humans behave like humans and we have thousands of generations of evolution telling us to get "more"...that was a selective advantage when the next meal's timing was iffy...it has since degraded into various forma of addiction and denial...greed being one of the many...feeding at the public trough has been a political fact of life since, at least, the imperial senate of rome...the one here is no less imperial and with no less an appetite...as for the $1200...i'm saving mine...they will take it back somehow.

a load of public spiritedness

"all the news that's fit to print"

i am not much of a television viewer and i gave up on television news well be for i deserted the medium in 2012...that doesn't mean i have isolated myself from "the news"...or that i don't try to access a variety of outlets and viewpoints in an effort to find some notion of what is actually going on...admittedly i do tend to focus on the times here and the reasons are simple...firstly the times is "the paper of record" and has an influence on how ( and what ) news is reported beyond its readership...and secondly because of its exuberant elitism...which it denies editorially but exposes in both its advertising and its reportage...this week the times has been buried under the covid-19 "pandemic"...it simply cannot escape it any more than the rest of the media can...it is inescapable unless you shut down the electronics and go for a walk or find a book to read ( even though i am rereading william mcneill's "plagues and peoples"...a fair read about the impact of disease on human history...however it is the concept of macroparasitism he relates that is the most interesting, and valuable, part of the book )...being informed is necessary...particularly relative to this disease...still...it can overwhelm and panic people...balance is as necessary as information...

and the sunday times is assaying to deliver public spirited information today in a "special section" that landed on my deck with the rest of the paper this morning...it is informational...

with some pandemic history a la mcneill ( although mcneill goes much farther back in human history and on a much broader scope )...showing that fear and widespread disease are probably symbiotic...

and helpful tutorials on how to wash your hands and clean "often touched surfaces"...after this point in the "special" section...

lapses, in my estimation, into subjective territory with suggestions for recipes that sound repulsive and some suggested viewing i believe i will skip...mostly because i hold their film reviews in the same mistrust that bitter experience has taught me to ignore their book reviews...

on the last page of the section the interests of the elite bore through as the times councils us not to takeout money out of 401ks or "the market" with a sub-text of "for god's sake there's been enough panic that has cost the wealthy trillions of dollars, let's not add to their misery by further reducing 'the market's' value"...

the front page becomes downright disingenuous...why would a conservative push to make private loss a public debt be "unlikely"? it is a tactic as old as the imperial senate of rome and feeding at the public trough is a sure way to enhance gain wealth and status...ask congress...and if the hoi polloi have no cash the consumerist system cannot extract it...cash as elitist self-defense...we can live with the epithet "class traitor" as long as there is money in it...

finally...overshadowed as it is by the dire news abroad, the "T" style magazine "design" issue came with the paper today...and even an issue ostensibly about "design" in things like architecture and furniture cannot help but belabor me with a section of hideous "women's fashion"...that's $10288 worth of clothing in that photo...pardon me...your elitism is showing.

living in end times

"All master-workmen in manufactures, especially such as belonged to ornament and the less necessary parts of the people's dress, clothes, and furniture for houses, such as riband-weavers and other weavers, gold and silver lace makers, and gold and silver wire drawers, sempstresses, milliners, shoemakers, hatmakers, and glovemakers; also upholsterers, joiners, cabinet-makers, looking-glass makers, and innumerable trades which depend upon such as these;—I say, the master-workmen in such stopped their work, dismissed their journeymen and workmen, and all their dependents." daniel defoe. a journal of the plague year.

do i believe this is the "end time"? no ( betting some do though ) however apple, nordstrom's kohl's, j c penney, neiman marcus, bergdorf goodman, sak's fifth avenue, macy's might...they are all retailers that have closed over covid-19...ostensibly for the safety of their customers and work forces...however i have to ask just how much shopping traffic they were experiencing prior to their closures and if a reverse cash flow ( read labor costs ) and "lackluster sales" had them hemorrhaging profits at an unacceptable level...one assumes their stock values had already taken a hit and revenue loss was the icing on the cake of closure...

the shoppers have fled elsewhere in what can only be termed as overreaction through media hysteria...the one thing that stands out is that the idea of "necessary" would seem to have shifted from cosmetics and new shoes to paper and cleaning products...perspective has changed and on surmises the retailers are 1) not happy about it and, 2) fervently hope it is a temporary shift in frame of reference...they certainly don't want their core consumerist worshipers to even begin to realize that shopping and material goods are not all they have been led to believe ( and shoppers do have doubts..."buyers remorse" sound familiar to anyone? )...if the shift becomes permanenet...

this kind of thing may continue and that would have a serious impact on the hegemons' wealth and that would make them very unhappy...a paradigm shift due to a virus would be something i would think, at least, possible...changing the hegemonic culture form inside is nearly impossible...the institutions are not monolithic but they are deeply ingrained and structured to resist change ( this, by the way , is why there is an electoral college...the framers were nothing if not of the elite..and no one inimical to their interests was going to hold the office of president )...they probably would not collapse of their own weight without an external shove to show how shaky they had become in the face of their denial of a multitude of realities ( climate change say ) and the diminishing returns of BAU ( have a shufti at joseph tainter's "the collapse of complex societies" for a primer on diminishing returns )...this could be the sort of shove that makes people reassess what they view as "necessary" and begin to question why they consume what they do...and find that it is mostly habit not need that drives it...along with the operant conditioning provided by the media..we could do without a lot of the stuff we have...but "the system" couldn't do without us wanting/buying/having it...i have no desire to see people expire of this virus...however they are...and no one..not even "the system" has any sort of clear idea where this is going...the president is no help...congress is considering throwing money at people to keep them consuming...i am laid off for two weeks ( see plague blog for my assessment of that ) so there is time to ponder what could happen..trying to ferret out reality from the news is a challenge that may take some thought.

indeterminacy

"We had no such thing as printed newspapers in those days to spread rumours and reports of things, and to improve them by the invention of men, as I have lived to see practised since." daniel defoe. "a journal of the plague year"

you can see fear in the faces of people..it is palpable...and the media have done yeoman's work in instilling it...probably even when they are trying to be factual rather than craft a product for a core viewership that then consumes whatever their advertisers are hawking...mostly because the facts are scary and there seems to be a facet of the population that likes to be frightened...if not, why all the slasher/crime garbage in film and that sump of a media, television...i am not a pundit or an astrologer or a prognosticator...i do have questions and have to wonder what this distortion will do to the political landscape...the president is trying to mitigate his inability to refrain from saying whatever pops into his head in an unfiltered manner by sending his past comments down the memory hole...this is unsurprising...how many people are going to swallow that and, if disbelief is widespread will that make a political difference...or more of a political difference than passing out $850 billion ( most of which will go to corporate structures ) including, from what i have read, $50 billion for disbursement to the hoi polloi which may render trumpy's obfuscation irrelevant in many eyes...and you have to wonder how long the system can run on simple belief before the facts insist on a massive "correction"...according to the treasury department the outstanding public debt in terms of principle and interest is running at $23,475,000,000,000 and change...which is 107% of the gdp...a debtor nation no matter how you break down the numbers...so $850 billion more is coals to newcastle since it is all running on the belief that somehow this can all be paid for when it is patently obvious it will not...or, at least, not without pauperizing the nation...the national debt clock says my personal share is $72,584...unfortunate...perhaps disabusing me of the notion that since i have no credit card debt and own the home free and clear ( aside from property taxes..non-payment of which can result in the seizure of my hard won home...seems even after paying off the mortgage i am renting from the county...the extraction goes on and on ) i am debt free...seems a chimera...a myth...like the rest of the beliefs we hold fostered by the hegemonic culture...covid-19 is exposing some of the liabilities and shortcomings of the "system"...one wonders how long they can continue to throw money at it ( in supremely un-republican fashion )...and this doesn't even consider what impact climate change may have on other disease gradients...what if ebola gets loose here? how many pandemics can the nation ( or the species ) survive in its "normal" form...in lock-downs and mandatory isolations/quarantines you can already perceive a creeping authoritarianism based on a utilitarian concept of the "greatest good for the greatest number"...where does the creeping stop? is this an altruistic government seeing to the needs/welfare of its people or the reichstag fire? i don't know...i am concerned...it would be a good cover story and "president for life" is not an unrealistic inference...fear distorts thought...renders it unsound...and we are chock full of that right now...i am on the first day of an enforced vacation because of it...covid-19 has reached this county...the future, in terms of politics, economics, and life itself seems up for grabs...how much responsibility for that can i realistically lay at the doorstep of the times and its media "colleagues"? and how much credit goes to "pangolin,it's what's for dinner" embedded in someone else's culture? it is all indeterminate to any specific degree since all seem to be participating...so i will keep washing my hands and wondering exactly how long this will go on and if "normal" is ever coming back.

centralized bureaucratic conspiracy theories

the puking buddah insisted we air this one as soon as we found out about it...

seems that xi "dada" jinping ( that dada means, i am told, something like "big daddy"...perhaps self-bestowed as he grows his maoist cult of personality...or it could just be a surrealist hint ) and his ministry of situational facts/ethics have contrived a reasonable explanation for the corona virus outbreak that does not have anything to do with the unregulated sale of wildlife-for-dinner in wuhan province...

the n y times is reporting they are blaming the u s military...conspiracy theory as foreign relations program...

this qualifies the chinese government apparatus as fully subject to the human foible of not accepting responsibility for anything that isn't a glowing success...unlike religious fundamentalists they cannot blame "god's will" for their fuck ups so they are forced to resort to less metaphysical excuses for failure...naturally after the drubbing they have received globally they have to shift blame elsewhere to protect xi's teflon image...this presents a problem for trumpy in his late nigh chats with dada...he cannot accept blame either..it's an election year...there will need to be revisions or blanket denials in this...keep a weather eye on the media as they cover this breaking story...there are bound to be twists.

indeterminancy

"all inferences from experience suppose, as their foundation, that the future will resemble the past...if there be any suspicion that the course of nature may change, and that the past may be no rule for the future, all experience becomes useless, and can give rise to no inference or conclusion" david hume. enquiry concerning human understanding_____________________________________humans are creatures of habit and their certainties are rooted in past experience...which works a lot of the time...

recent events are pointing out, to me at least, that human cognition isn't all it's cracked up to be and that variables we cannot see...

are waiting to blind-side us no matter how carefully we plan and how we set about creating a paradigm...

which fools us into thinking it can allow us to extend our event horizon further and further into the future without unnecessary risk..."planning for the future" they call it...well...the future is nothing if not indeterminate...this should be wholly clear at this point...i have been blogging about covid-19 elsewhere on blogger and, while i do not subscribe to the croakings of "hoax" by right-wing pundits and the doofus in the white house, i am not prepared to panic just yet...what i am seeing is how disruptive fear is and what strange things behaviors it evokes in people...from panic to hoarding to self flagellation in the face of a vengeful jehova...and all because habitual certainties and beliefs are suddenly disrupted by variables that were not perceived or expected...our comfort zone has been invaded by fear which may or may not be justified...we will see...i am prepared to be open minded about it and i am adjusting my own behaviors some in response...i am not panicked just yet but i am washing my hands more because i don't feel 1) especially stupid and, 2) like tempting fate...i am fascinated by the responses of the media and particularly the economy...if this can so unsettle "the market" it should be a heads-up about the shaky foundations of all the abstractions we take as givens...hume may have a valid point there...

and since we have dragged the medias into this ( you didn't actually think you would escape this, did you? )...i just fucking love the way the elitists at the new york times like to tell me how i should live my life...they never fail me.

pardon me, but your elitism is showing

it is sunday and the new york times has delivered the "men's fashion" edition of its style magazine to my front deck...always a treat to get one...a wonderful morning of entertainment, enlightenment, and a close look at how i should perceive myself...at least through the eyes of the editors and "contributors"..they would know best, correct?

they are doing their very best to convince me that this is something i should be wearing around town to both delight my neighbors with my elegant sense of style and to shame them over their seeming lack of understanding of haute couture...hardly...looks like someone has been watching "black adder" to me...you can keep this in the display window...

there is an obvious need to bring men's fashion cost into line with that of the women's side of the equation...so this faceless drone is wearing $13600 worth of clothing i would hesitate to donate to the salvation army much less wear...keep the unsustainablility coming is what this says to me...

"for four decades, the american playwright richard greenberg has dedicated himself to chronicling, and gently tweaking, urban elites..." is this a freudian slip or is the true nature of the times elitism just shining though the denial? the whole "not an elitist newspaper" stance is lame bullshit...they are liberals...i will grant you that..and like all liberals they think they know better than me how i should think and behave...this too is lame bullshit...i am going to begin work on composting horse manure out back...this is at least utilitarian...clearly the times is not.

negative is the new positive

that the puking buddha and i loathe a politician is a given for anyone who has paid the least attention...they are unreconstructed slime to an individual at any level at any time anywhere on the planet ( with the exception of pepe mujica...there are no absolutes )...it is unsurprising then that there is nothing that resembles a positive facet of the current presidential zoo parade...

the early primaries are destined to leave me with a choice between sanders and biden...not that that choice actually matters...trump is the presumptive republican nominee so voting in that primary when it rolls a round in my state would be coals to newcastle...and by the time the democratic primary is held ( same day..election day is election day ) the issue among the democrats may already be decided ( and in the general election my state will go to trump and so, because of the "winner-take-all" disposition of electoral college votes i am effectively disenfranchised by the system...which is the whole point of the constitution and why there is an electoral college...to limit the "will of the people" and ensure elite control...the constitution is the counter-revolution...read the federalist papers )...

there is a growing consensus among democrats and the punditry that sanders has to be stopped...the stache here is leading the pundit brigade over at the times and he is vocal and pretty much a dingus in human form... https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/03/opinion/super-tuesday-democrats-unite.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage cut and paste the link to have a look at his column...he is planning a coup and he wants us all to abide with his subversion...plotting to win "fair and square" so all those sanders supporters are "on the team" in november...find me something positive in this...you cannot...one wishes for the days of "hinky dink" kenna and "bathouse john" over in the first ward when political corruption was at least more open and honest...freidman wants the future candidate decided behind closed doors...the "smoke filled room" will never vanish from politics...the real decisions are not in the hands of "the people"...and the times and the punditry and the system are all fine with that.