impediment

I was just conversing with an old family friend and she had a charming way of expressing the lack of progress in the world:

Some people are impeding the rotation of the planet.

Nicer than I would put it.

Bernie disappointed

I don't donate to political campaigns... because sooner or later, a politician will always disappoint me. Bernie did when he gave way to Joe Biden in the 2019 Democratic primary. I have 2 theories of why Bernie gave way:

1. Bernie's asshole quotient isn't high enough to attack his opponents as needed to win a political campaign at this level.

or

2. Bernie decided he didn't actually want to be president... possibly his heart condition was a more significant warning call than he signaled to his campaign or supporters.


Regardless, he let down everyone who donated, volunteered or spoke on his behalf.

And now, weeks after Bernie's acquiescence, in the middle of a rampant protests against the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis Police, Bernie has been largely out of sight. Another disappointment... :(

The COVID-19 economy is Alive!

To put this rant in context, we are in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic (recall pandemic means entire planet is affected) caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus. U.S. intelligence services had been warning "POTUS" DJT for months that the growing epidemic in China would become a major problem in the U.S. In those same months, DJT and Republicans raised no alarms to the American public nor did they make any preparations for the oncoming epidemic. In fact, one Republican warned rich donors of a possible economic downturn and he, along with other public servants sold stocks ahead of the recent stock market decline.

It wasn't until March 13th that DJT declared a state of emergency... after tens of people died in Washington State, after hundreds of Americans tested positive, after the lack of testing became an international embarrassment and even now, we do not know the extent of the problem due to lack of infection data... So the Administration was seemingly taking the problem seriously (I can't even talk about the lie filled clownish daily Coronavirus media events staring "POTUS DJT").

But with the past two days, three media statements:

Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick: 

“No one reached out to me and said as a senior citizen, are you willing to take a chance on your survival in exchange for keeping the America that all America loves for your children and grandchildren. "And if that’s the exchange, I’m all in.”

DJT tweeted/said:

WE CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF. AT THE END OF THE 15 DAY PERIOD, WE WILL MAKE A DECISION AS TO WHICH WAY WE WANT TO GO!

“We cannot let the cure be worse than the problem itself”

From Buzzfeed:

President Donald Trump suggested Monday that he may encourage businesses to reopen and encourage people to stop isolating “very soon,” contradicting public health experts who say businesses may need to stay closed and workers stay home for several months to help contain the coronavirus pandemic.

“It’s bad, and obviously the numbers are going to increase with time and then they’re going to start to decrease,” the president said at his daily coronavirus press conference, before quickly pivoting to say, “We’re going to be opening our country up for business because our country was meant to be open and working with others.”

DJT wants the economy 'working' again... because his rich friends and donors are losing money from falling stock prices and most of the Trump brand hotels are closed and losing money from stay-at-home and social-distancing recommendations.

My issue with so called 'getting the economy working again':

1. The economy is working. (Most) Essential goods and services are being produced and delivered on a timely basis. Shortages are due to panic buying and not a supply problem. The shortages of protective equipment for medical staff are the result of larger global production trends - outsourcing all production to cheapest producing countries. This could be addressed by invoking the Defense Production Act to force private industry to make essential goods/services.

2. The stock market is not the economy. Economies exist and function without stock markets so stock prices are a moot point in terms of economic activity.

3. Economies are emergent properties of human interactions. So long as two or more people exist, an economy exist from the exchange between them. Neither epidemic nor pandemic endanger the existence and/or function of economies.

4. People engage in exchange to benefit each other; to improve their lives; to improve their standard of living; to live longer and safer. If stock prices are the reason to justify the end of life-saving social-distancing, then stock markets are endangering people's lives; stock markets are doing the opposite of what economies exist to deliver... stock markets are anti-economic. Stock markets should either be banned from trading during the duration of the emergency or perhaps eliminated altogether for the benefit of humanity. [A standard debate question has long been "Has religion been a benevolent or malevolent influence on mankind?" ... A much more important and relevant question would be "Have stock markets been a benevolent or malevolent influence on mankind?"]

Asshole quotient

I don't expect or want to be friends with my political representative. I want them to have a high asshole quotient and be somewhat ruthless in pursuing my political agenda.

Bernie Sanders is not doing well in his second run for the Democratic nominee for president... I wonder if his asshole quotient is too low for the job. With the COVID-19 pandemic, he's had to cut back on rallies which he admits he enjoys holding. But he seems to cringe from hard hitting attacks of his opponents. He may just be too decent a human being to be president... it would be a shame because his policies would improve the lives of many Americans and non-Americans. If he doesn't win, I hope he continues to communicate with the American people; we need to hear his ideas.

minority voting hypothesis

Super Tuesday was this past Tuesday and Bernie had a poorer showing than polling predicted.

3 facts stand out:
-black voters supported Biden over Bernie
-Bernie had higher Latino support than Biden
-young voters did not turn out as Bernie had hoped

Hypothesis:

A larger number of Latinos are immigrants. Children of immigrant families are the window to the outside world. Adults who don't speak the language rely on their children to navigate and understand the culture, customs and politics of foreign country in which they now live. Youth outreach worked for Bernie in the Latino community because Latino youth have more power to inform and influence decision making of the voting adults. 

African American (AA) family dynamics are very different. Highly racial policing have forced AAs into highly defensive parenting meaning exert strong control (most likely discipline) over children... a top down authoritarian family structure. Compared to Latino households, youth in AA homes have very little influence over adult decision making. The effect of AA youth outreach does not tend to penetrate the households.


If true, Bernie needs a strategy that targets adults in minority communities, not just the youth.

Difference between Democrats and Republicans...

... from the perspective of the 2020 elections:

planet earth = terminally ill cancer patient suffering great pain

treatment options from Republicans/Democrats:
Republicans: assisted suicide
establishment Democrats (party organization): non-prescription analgesics and smiles
progressive Democrats: try to push patient into remission... that will buy time to try to find a cure

Data Hacking Elections

Democracy Now has an interview with a Cambridge Analytica whistleblower and others about data hacking of elections on the lines of Cambridge Analytica and Facebook. The cost to democracy and even self autonomy is very high... we are all being manipulated by our information consumption in ways we cannot untangle. It's very much worth viewing.

https://www.democracynow.org/2020/1/7/the_great_hack_cambridge_analytica

Be smarter

A thought exercise for shopping:

The job of any retailer or seller is to persuade or trick or con you (as a consumer) to buy what they are selling. This includes slick advertising full of fake images of fake people.

[Rich people get richer by (1) stealing from their workers - paying them poorly or tax cuts/rebates paid by workers or (2) persuading consumers to buy more and more of the stuff their workers make.]

The job of a responsible consumer is to limit the extent to which sellers trick you into buying stuff you don't need or want or may even be damaging.

... So as a Consumer, be smarter than the seller. Don't be tricked into spending more than you need or want.

The Christian Church may have achieved what Chinese Communism failed

There's a story posted on NPR about the effect of the Christian Church on Western culture, in particular, the de-emphasis of [communal] extended-family structures towards more individualistic structures called: Western Individualism May Have Roots In The Medieval Church's Obsession With Incest.

This reminds me of a story of a friend, an Chinese immigrant. When the Communists were recruiting to their cause in China (they had many of the peasant class but needed the support of the middle class), they would have open air gatherings where the communist 'missionary' would exhort their audience to reject their families and in its stead, put their faith/trust in the government. The medieval church may not have overtly stated their intent to become the center of social and cultural life but that was likely their intent... and the consequence maybe some of the defining features of Western Culture.

Single payer now!

My one personal example illustrates why the U.S. needs single payer health care... I pay over six thousand dollars in health insurance premiums per year for the 'privilege' of shelling out an infinite amount of deductible cost for medical care (which is promised to increase next year). Until my medical needs exceed my 'out-of-pocket' expenses, my insurer (Blue Cross Blue Shield) makes a profit of >6K per year just to keep my name on their 'covered' list. I have a medical issue that I really should investigate, but the prospect of paying out of pocket for doctors visits and diagnostic scans has me putting off care. I will say it again, if I could enroll in a single payer health plan for the current cost of my premium (or even with a significant increase), I would sign up in a new-york-minute. American health insurance is a scam where the insurance providers charge a high 'premium' that is immediately entered into the profit line of their accounting books at the expense of the health and well-being of their victims. This can be fixed.

Legal equivalents

campaign spending : free speech : corporate personhood (Burwell v. Hobby Lobby) :: 
free speech advocacy of gun ownership : NRA : terrorist organization

A form of Reparations?

There's been more talk of Reparations since Ta-Nehisi Coates' The Case for Reparations was published. In it, he talks about how redlining was used as a tool to essentially steal wealth from black communities. I wondered if there is a way to help reverse the effects of redlining in these communities... currently home mortgages are tied to the original lender; the mortgage taker cannot transfer a mortgage to another home buyer nor can someone who inherits a house continue to honor the terms of the mortgage to pay off the remaining debt. Lending institutions, on the other hand, can trade mortgages left, right, inside-out and upside down. *So* creating a mortgage that can be transferred to the heirs of a home owner would be a way to increase the intergenerational transfer of wealth and make it easier to build wealth over generations. Not reparations but a way to build value over generations.

What if...

Claus von Stauffenberg and his conspirators had succeeded? Will future historians look back at our time and wish for an equivalent plot? Will there even be future historians or will the policies of today obliterate any viable path to continue the human species and/or culture?

It's hard to be optimistic in the face of so many authoritarian-minded national leaders. A short list that immediately comes to mind includes Brazil’s Bolsonaro, Duterte in the Philippines, India's Modi, Netanyahu in Israel and DJT in the U.S. They all actively repress free speech and expression to advance their own standing and power to benefit those of their class. Scary times ahead...

Retail decline?

I had to take an elderly friend shoe shopping and the reception we received at a local shoe store was unfriendly to say the least. It was a big store, two shoe aisles deep and absolutely no visible benches until the very back corridor (children's shoes) parallel to the entrance... so I picked up a bench and moved it over to the adult area where my elderly friend wanted to try on shoes.

(1) Don't make customers need to ask and search for benches in a shoe store!

Then a clerk came along and started harping about fire regulations, etc.

(2) The polite customer friendly response would be to apologize and move the bench to the end of the *nearest* aisle in keeping with fire regulations to best accommodate the limitations of their elderly, frail customer.

When I pointed out their customer had physical limitations that the store was not accommodating, the response was to submit a complaint online.

(3) Do not disrespect the comments of a live customer to their face! It should be the responsibility of every employee to improve the quality of the product and service of any company they work for. This especially includes passing the face-to-face critiques of customers up the chain of the company.

I was so livid, I've decided to never buy from that brand store again. I seldom buy that brand shoe and now I am much less likely to buy them also... no Skechers for me (my friend too).

BTW, I am not saying I was 'right' in my actions but the clerk was absolutely 'wrong' in the way they interacted with us.

Unpaid caregiving is another sign of the need for a different economic model

TRRN has a story about the cost of unpaid caregiving to both caregivers (who are primarily women) and the economy overall. The guest said:

They often don’t tell their employer because they’re afraid of being essentially fired if they disclose that they’re caring for—You can’t really hide that you’re caring for children, but you can hide that you’re caring for a disabled spouse...

This goes to two points I always return to...

(1) The current definition of economy and economic activity is focused solely on generating profit. This leads economic (essentially all) public and private policy to measure success (and existence) on ability to produce a profit. But the majority of the economy (the workers) don't prioritize profit; their primary reason to work is self-maintenance and well-being. So a far better definition of economies is: self-organizing and self-sustaining systems of production, distribution and consumption of goods and services that promote the well-being of all participants. Such a definition would rule aspects of offensive war-making to be anti-economic (major reduction in status) and personal caregiving services would increase in status; after all, caregiving adds almost immeasurably to human well-being.

(2) The power elite establish and maintain their status by controlling information by a number of means. I've written about state secrecy (so called 'national security interests') and intellectual property. The above quote is another way to control information - self-censorship for the sake of job security. This has also crept a little into cultural embarrassment... needy family members are a sign of weakness so caregiving is not often mentioned. 

The solution to information control is transparency. But the level of transparency necessary to fully open up an economy cannot be driven only by policy. They must also be a massive cultural shift to social and cultural transparency. It's not easy but these are ideas and concepts that must be mulled and allowed to percolate through individual and societal expectations.

Bernie speaks...

Bernie Sanders gave a speech "On How Democratic Socialism Is the Only Way to Defeat Oligarchy." It covers much of what I've written about here and elsewhere. It's worthy of a listen.

What does it take to be a Trump supporter?

DJT is an objectively horrible person and an objectively horrible POTUS. He's a misogynist, racist... autocrat. His failings are so obvious that his supporters must completely lack analytical thinking and all judgement to vote for him.

So I'm wondering how dependent DJT supporters are on the benefits of civilized society? Would DJT supporters be able to grow & raise their own food, educate their children, doctor their ills, organize themselves to produce everything they need for a functioning society?

Modern republicans and libertarians forget that society and culture is in itself 'socialism'. Economic 'socialism' is about shared economic ownership but in the larger context, socialism is about some shared aspect; for example, insurance is socialism in the sense of shared risk. Culture is shared experience and context. The spread and integration of new technology is the socializing of innovation. In other words, innovators/inventors benefit the society at large. The most telling examples are modern medical technologies that saves lives.

Would DJT's supporters exist without socialized innovations? Does the socialism of cultural norms protect them from the outcomes of their poor judgement? Without seat belt laws, drunk driving limits, built in safety features, vaccination rules, etc., what proportion of DTJ's supporters would Darwin Award themselves out of existence?

I'm not a Democrat but the cruelty of Trump Republicans is goes beyond pale.

Monoculture of nation-states

Barack Obama held a town hall in Berlin recently. [As an aside, his intelligence and oration are such a refreshing contrast to POTUS DJT.] Part of his answer to a question was (~20:10):

[in a democracy]... you never get 100% of what you want...

So far as it goes, this is true. But there also seems to be the presumption that what the consensus agrees to is the 'right' or 'best' answer... what if it's not? The political consensus on nuclear weapons had the U.S. build and stockpile thousands of nuclear warheads, enough to push the entire planet into nuclear winter several times over. And the slow pace of political solutions to climate change would see the likely decimation of the human population due to wars, famines and disease brought about by climate disruption before a 'political' solution is considered.

This reminds me much of the dangers of agricultural monoculturing, when corporate commercial farming grows only the most productive/mechanization friendly strain of any single crop and through their neglect, lose the genetic diversity of less 'useful' strains. Small farms will grow other strains for other reasons (flavor, growth conditions, resistance, etc.). Monoculturing only preserves the information of one strain while the vast information in other strains are lost. Nation-states are similar in that the ideas and memes of the powerful become dominant and other ideas are muted to the point of loss. The lack of diversity in ideas and approaches also means little to no opportunity to test social solutions. Smaller units of governance means more units of governance which increases diversity and diversity/flexibility of thinking is the source of innovation. Small units of governance are flexible in contrast to the rigidity of large nation-states.

Wasteful capitalism

Stuart Varney of Fox Business Network (sorry) and his guest John Lonski were railing about a Fox News Poll where 34% of respondents think the rich do not pay enough taxes.

At some point Lonski said:

".....if you start taxing this wealth...may have the unwanted effect of reducing the incentive of people that are very talented and very rich to go ahead, expand their businesses, and make jobs and drive the economy higher."

My snarky comment:

But those very talented poor people... they're just pigeon poop on the sidewalk. There's no benefit to incentivizing them to work hard to improve their lives and the lives of their families and neighbors.

But I really want to emphasize how wasteful the American economy and culture really is. Amy Goodman interviewed Albert Woodfox a former political prisoner who spent over 43 years in solitary confinement in American jails. Watch and admire the dignity, grace, astonishing strength of this man. During his youth in the United States of America, it was more important to control this young man by locking him up than growing his strengths and talents; talents that could have advanced the nation economically and culturally. We are jailing young people in the prime of their life. Then our current 'Secretary of Education' Betsy DeVos actually claims American schoolchildren may benefit from less investment in their education. 

Now contrast the lack of investment in American youth to little gossip blurbs about Kim Kardashian's kid's lavish birthday party or Beyonce's kid at a fashion show. This encapsulates the problem with the current economy. It's a system that allows the largely poor population go hungry, uneducated and often imprisoned while the rich indulge in luxuries that add no meaningful value to their lives. And rich people are rich because they lie, steal and cheat the wages of the working poor.

So back to tour treatment of young people, I'm reminded of the slogan of the United Negro College Fund: A mind is a terrible thing to waste... we are and have wasted the minds of generations of Americans. We can do better.

Do robots serve us or do we serve the robots?

Amy Goodman interviewed Shoshana Zuboff who wrote: “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power”. Her premise is that the frontier of capitalistic innovation is capitalizing prediction of individual (and likely) group behavior. These themes have explored in science fiction and coming to fruition in reality. We need to decide if we serve the interests of our (collective human) creations or do the controllers of these creations control our destinies?

Part 2 of this interview emphasizes the role of information control/secrecy in these developments... a theme I've been writing about for years.