Month: May 2020

by William Skink

One of the most disappointing developments in how we as a society are responding to the pandemic and subsequent patchwork of local lockdowns is the near total silence for those who used to worry about losing civil liberties.

At the Off-Guardian this point is superbly made:

“That is today’s political reality in a nutshell — and I’m afraid the situation is much worse than merely ironic. I think it represents a colossal error by which civil libertarians and their normal political allies are abandoning their most valued principles at precisely the moment they’re most urgently needed…

It’s exactly that kind of silence — from a whole range of liberals and progressives — that makes me worry that the COVID-19 epidemic could end up as a graveyard for the American left, an awful tale of a misread civil rights crisis and a tragically lost political opportunity…

But it seems to me that this posture badly misreads the nature of the crisis we’re in. The genuine medical concerns raised by the coronavirus outbreak do not obviate basic issues of civil rights and the limits of government authority — and those are questions all of us, especially on the left, ignore at our peril…

But we also have to stand up for the needs of millions of devastated working people — who are, after all, at the heart of the constituency the left likes to claim for itself — and for principles of personal freedom that are now under the most powerful domestic assault I have witnessed in my lifetime.

If we don’t wake up soon, I’m afraid we may find that we have abandoned a vital field of action (one that should have been our natural environment) to the demagogues and right-wing extremists who are certain to rush into the vacuum we leave behind. Do we really want to let that happen?”

What say you liberals and progressives?

Over at Counterpunch, which has been mostly useless during this pandemic, Brad Evans has a piece today, titled This is Not a Conspiracy, It is a Terrifying Opportunity. Here’s an excerpt (emphasis mine):

Viruses don’t wage war. Humans do. Whilst we should therefore be concerned for the health of the vulnerable, we should also be terrified by the prospect that the whole world has become a giant experimental playground for pharmaceutical companies, who can now override any medical ethics on the basis that cures needs to be found, now and into the future. We should also be terrified by the great acceleration in surveillance tracking, which is revealing a techno-pharma-militarism without rival. We should also be terrified by the eviscerating of all the viable centres for educative and cultured critique, which could hold this system of power to account for its actions. We should also be terrified by armed militia emboldened in places like the United States, looking like some monstrous white supremacist adaptation of the village people thrown into a Mad Max plot, while presenting themselves as libertarians. We should also be terrified by the fact that anybody who now criticises the techno-pharma-militaristic matrix is thrown into the same camp as the Alt-right, often by puritanical liberals who are just as pious and self-flagellating than any orthodox religion we have seen. And we should also be terrified by the claim that technology is the only thing that might save us.

At this point Americans don’t stand a chance of maintaining any semblance of our civil liberties. The ones who used to stand up for civil liberties are too busy convincing us to elect a serial sexual abuser, or mocking right-wingers who don’t want to put masks on their faces, but want to keep women from controlling their own bodies.

Speaking of the latter, isn’t it interesting how liberals and progressives are essentially making the same case right wingers make against abortion? The main difference is one side is saying you MUST do things, like wear a mask, to protect the vulnerable, while the other side is saying you MUST NOT do things, like choosing to kill your vulnerable fetus.

Meanwhile, our sociopath rulers have robbed us blind and are preparing us for all kinds of dystopian plans that have little to do with actually dealing with a pandemic. Just a few days ago Cuomo announced New York would partner with the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation to “reimagine” education in the state. This article is from Reuters, not Alex Jones:

New York will work with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to “reimagine” the state’s school system as part of broader reforms in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, Governor Andrew Cuomo told a daily briefing on Tuesday.
…
He outlined plans to work with the foundation of Microsoft Corp co-founder Gates to improve New York’s education system, which includes the largest public system in the country in New York City, with more than one million students.

While he did not provide specifics, Cuomo suggested a fundamental rethink of the classroom was on the table.

“The old model of everybody goes and sits in a classroom and the teacher is in front of that classroom, and teaches that class, and you do that all across the city, all across the state, all these buildings, all these physical classrooms – why with all the technology you have?” Cuomo asked.

While Cuomo “did not provide specifics”, a different Reuters article from 8 years ago gives you an idea of the crazed tech these sociopaths are dreaming up:

DENVER (Reuters) – The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which has poured more than $4 billion into efforts to transform public education in the U.S., is pushing to develop an “engagement pedometer.” Biometric devices wrapped around the wrists of students would identify which classroom moments excite and interest them — and which fall flat.

The foundation has given $1.4 million in grants to several university researchers to begin testing the devices in middle-school classrooms this fall.

The biometric bracelets, produced by a Massachusetts startup company, Affectiva Inc, send a small current across the skin and then measure subtle changes in electrical charges as the sympathetic nervous system responds to stimuli. The wireless devices have been used in pilot tests to gauge consumers’ emotional response to advertising.

Gates officials hope the devices, known as Q Sensors, can become a common classroom tool, enabling teachers to see, in real time, which kids are tuned in and which are zoned out.

Existing measures of student engagement, such as videotaping classes for expert review or simply asking kids what they liked in a lesson, “only get us so far,” said Debbie Robinson, a spokeswoman for the Gates Foundation. To truly improve teaching and learning, she said, “we need universal, valid, reliable and practical instruments” such as the biosensors.

Um, yeah, how about no fucking way. Thanks but no thanks, Billy. Don’t you have some Epstein pedophile money to donated to MIT?

While Bill Gates wants to measure the arousal of all children in all the classrooms around the world, maybe it would be a good time to remind readers that Gates can’t even ensure employees at his OWN HOUSE aren’t child abusers downloading child porn:

A Seattle man previously employed as an engineer at Bill and Melinda Gates’ home, who was caught with a 6,000-image child pornography collection, won’t see prison time for that offense.

Charged in late December, Rick Allen Jones admitted he’d been collecting child rape videos and photos for a decade before police intervened.

Jones quietly pleaded guilty to related charges on Friday and was sentenced to 90 days in King County Jail, as well as two years of probation. Jones is now required to register as a sex offender and to stay away from children unless certain conditions are met.

If you have the stomach to travel deeper down the dystopian rabbit hole where science fiction is quickly becoming our new normal, The Last American Vagabond continues doing phenomenal work, offering this horrifying glimpse into how DARPA is going to save you from Covid-19.

Have a great weekend!

by William Skink

Please don’t listen to anyone who is skeptical about vaccines. These skeptics are very dangerous people. They don’t trust the government. They hate science. And they even sometimes become doctors and get elected to health boards.

If there is any evidence of vaccines harming people, just ignore it. If there is any evidence of the federal government not being a loving, caring protector of its citizenry, put your fingers in your ears and repeat after me: la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la.

No one would ever put profit ahead of helping people. No one would ever use technology to control people.

Tomorrow’s vaccines will be super cool. They will feature nano-tech, which totally sounds awesome. Darpa will show us the way:

…Darpa wants researchers to use nanoparticles – tiny, autonomous drug delivery systems that can carry molecules of medication anywhere in the body, and get them right into a targeted cell. Darpa would like to see nanoparticles loaded with “small interfering RNA (siRNA)” – a class of molecules that can target and shut down specific genes. If siRNA could be reprogrammed “on-the-fly” and applied to different pathogens, then the nanoparticles could be loaded up with the right siRNA molecules and sent directly to cells responsible for the infection.

Isn’t science great? Isn’t our government amazing? Personally, I can’t wait for the injectable nano-platforms to roll out. This tech, when combined with AI, will transform our lives.

Are you ready to be saved?

by William Skink

Is Missoula teflon? I mean, we’ve had a market crash, a pandemic, and an unprecedented shut-down of economic activity, yet the median price for buying a home remains insanely high, as reported by MTPR:

“We had a peak median sales price, once again, of $315,000 for homes in Missoula. That represented an 8.6 percent median price increase in just one year.”

Through most of this year’s first quarter there were no indications those trends would change anytime soon. Then COVID-19 hit.

“We don’t really know fully how this is going to completely impact the market,” Wahlberg says. “What we are noticing, especially in the month of April, sales volume is going down.”

It is going to be interesting to see how housing in Missoula will be impacted by the economic depression we are entering. One question worth pondering is this: what is the lag time between a collapsing economic system and the ability of the state to assess property value?

Property value in Missoula and across the country has sky-rocketed during the past decade, thanks to Federal Reserve manipulation propping up our ponzi-scheme economy.

It’s important to note the economy was beginning to collapse before this pandemic hit. It’s also important to recall that before the pandemic, businesses were shuttering in Missoula due to the strain of taxes. This will only continue, as evidenced by the closing of the Montana Distillery. Here’s a breakdown of the property value/tax burden:

According to the Montana Department of Revenue, the property located at 629 Woody Street had a market value of $529,800 in 2018. The value increased in 2019 to $752,250 after it was reassessed by the state.

As a result of the new market value, the property’s taxable value increased from $10,013 in 2018 to $14,217 in 2019. The property is listed under Boxer Associates LLC.

Businesses that can’t afford taxes will close, then the city/county/state won’t get a dime. That’s a reality that many small businesses will be facing. If states and municipalities are increasingly starved of tax revenue, where are they going to look for help? Cutting services or raising property taxes? And when people can’t afford increasing taxes amidst an economic depression, what are they going to do? Pop a tent by the river?

Amidst all this economic uncertainty, the politicized reopening of Montana continues, with state emissaries like Lord Checota making the media rounds. Here is some reopening messaging from our Lord, brought to you by Gomer Kidston at the Current:

“Montana is probably the only state in the United States to reach all four of the criteria that Johns Hopkins lays out as a responsible community time to open,” Top Hat owner Nick Checota said. “Given that we meet all those criteria from an institution like Johns Hopkins who is generally viewed as kind of the premier infectious diseases institution, I got comfortable.”

Isn’t it good that our benevolent Lord is once again feeling comfortable to take your money?

If you read the Current, Gomer Kidston has even more good news for you under the headline Missoula’s building, planning industry sees little signs of pause; optimistic about the future. I especially like how he uses the word “slumber” to describe the state shutting down businesses and imposing social distancing requirements:

As Missoula’s economy emerges from a months-long slumber and businesses establish a new normal, city leaders and those in the building industry are using optimism to define the future.

Development Services this week said it has seen little change in the number of building permits being sought for projects across the city. And work at local planning and engineering firms hasn’t slowed, according to industry insiders.

Aside from redevelopment plans at the Riverfront Triangle in downtown Missoula, including a hotel and events center, most projects are advancing as planned, said Brent Campbell, president and CEO of WGM Group.

“The Drift is the only project that is really on hold right now, but everything else is going full steam ahead,” he said. “We moved our company home seamlessly – technology allowed us to do that. Our productivity is up and demand is there.”

Yep, no problems for WGM group. Or the Farran Group. Or Jackson. Or any other private sector developer that feeds on public money. They’re doing just fine. As long as enough of us suckers keep paying our ever-increasing taxes and ever-increasing cost of living, there is no reason to pause the gentrification of Zootown.

Maybe I’m just being a negative Nancy because I’m out of work and wondering what my own economic opportunities are going to be like in a world where 30 million Americans have lost their job.

I know what my problem is. I’m using the discernible patterns of history to anticipate how centralized power structures exploit crises to consolidate more power.

Instead of that depressing approach, maybe I should try doing what our city leaders are doing and USE OPTIMISM TO DEFINE MY FUTURE!

Yeah, that sounds like a lot more fun. All I need is a few million dollars from the Missoula Redevelopment Agency and I’ll be using optimism every goddamn day.

Stay tuned for the new and approved optimistic William Skink!

by William Skink

I listened to an interesting interview this morning. Ryan Christian at Last American Vagabond spoke with Dr. Andrew Kaufman about Exosomes.

What are they? I will let Dr. Kaufman get into the details, but to warm you up, here’s a poem:

exo me some understanding
what our cells excrete
but please keep it simple ’cause
I ain’t no scientist priest

extracellular vesicles will
make my mind go blank
so be sensitive with my membrane
don’t crush it like a tank

by William Skink

Lord Checota would like you to know he thinks it’s time for you to come to one of his establishments to spend money.

There has been careful deliberation about this. The decision is based on data. Also, owning properties that sit empty day after day really sucks.

From Lord Checota’s plea to buy his chicken and waffles:

In an area of social media and politicized news, it has been difficult to formulate an accurate understanding of the COVID-19 epidemic. As a restaurant owner, I wanted the most accurate information to understand when and how to responsibly and safely reopen our dine-in operations. In our research, it became clear that John Hopkins University is the leading non-partisan institution driving federal and state COVID-19 policy. In particular, JHU has published widely adopted, non-partisan reports outlining a phased approach in reopening state economies.

To make his case our benevolent Lord cites the four pre-opening conditions JHU recommends should be in place before eating chicken and waffles:

The most widely accepted JHU report outlined four conditions that should be achieved prior to reopening a state’s economy to “non-essential businesses” such as restaurants. These four conditions include: 1. the number of new cases has declined for 14 days, 2. diagnostic testing capacity is sufficient to test all people with COVID-19 symptoms, 3. the health care system is able to care for infected patients and 4. sufficient capacity to conduct “contact tracing” for new cases. Based on our assessment, Missoula County has met all four criteria.

I didn’t realize Missoula County has the diagnostic testing capacity to test all people with COVID-19 symptoms. That has certainly not been the case up to this point. I am glad our Lord has the latest information to share with us about this.

I am curious to know more about our “sufficient capacity” to conduct “contract tracing”. How many people have been identified as having had contact with positive cases? How many people are being monitored? How is Missoula County tracing contacts? Is there an app for that? Here is some of that precious data:

Missoula County has successfully implemented a rapid diagnostic testing program that currently has excess capacity. For example, the testing facility at the Fairgrounds has a capacity of 80 tests per day. According to the MCHD, the facility is experiencing approximately 24 requests per day, with a peak day of 32 requests, less than half the current capacity.

Sarcasm aside, I actually agree with Lord Checota’s assessment, even if I have zero empathy for his plight. I doubt our Lord’s plans to suck up 16.5 million in public TIF money for his Big D(rift) is far from his scheming mind as he pleads for Missoulians to dine-in on chicken and waffles.

Personally, I won’t be spending any of my limited resources on a Checota establishment. Plenty of local restaurants have already adapted by shifting to take-out options and were able to remain open during the lock-down. I have enjoyed Bridge Pizza, Notorious P.I.G., Koh Changs and Tagliare on the few occasions we have decided to order out.

These businesses aren’t a part of the Governor’s task force, and they aren’t panhandling the Missoula Redevelopment Agency for public money to build an event center, so I will continue supporting them.

I don’t know how Lord Checota defines our “NEW NORMAL”, but if it was up to me our NEW NORMAL would include a permanent moratorium on subsidizing private development with public money.

Maybe that’s just me.