Let them eat cake

I purposely did not say yesterday that things couldn’t get any weirder, and I’m glad. Because a couple of twits from the inner circle of kleptocracy just raised the tone-deafness stakes.

First, Lara—wife of Qusay—had this message for the 800,000 federal workers being held for ransom by her increasingly unhinged father-in-law. “It’s not fair to you, and we all get that, but this is so much bigger than any one person. It is a little bit of pain, but it’s going to be for the future of our country, and their children and their grandchildren and generations after them will thank them for their sacrifice right now.”

The image of this gilt bimbo dismissing the very real hardship of everyone who’s gone without a paycheck since before Christmas as “a little bit of pain” is just beyond the beyond. But then Wilbur Ross, the grifting commerce secretary, stepped into the ring.

Like his master, Ross’ ego is tied up with being perceived as a billionaire but he’s been outed by Forbes as a mere millionaire. Also like the Kleptocrat, the equity manager was supposed to have divested himself of his financial interests, but so far nah. Also, he has remarkably robust connections with Russian oligarchs.

Also—like everyone in the Cabinet—despite his unquestionable wealth, he doesn’t seem to ever have enough. Forbes reported last August that while running his private equity fund, Ross consistently stole money from his client accounts, to the cumulative total of $120M. He settled lawsuits, and paid a multi-million dollar fine to the SEC in 2016. But here’s the absolute corker: his employees revealed that Ross used to take handfuls of Sweet’N Low packets from a nearby restaurant.

Thus the measure of the man.

So with that background, let’s cut to the tape.

Yes, the necrotic gargoyle is not only utterly without empathy for actual humans, but he’s completely clueless about how finances work; he likens borrowing against the expectation of getting paid at some point in the future to a “government-guaranteed loan”. He concedes that the workers will “have to pay a little bit of interest”, but he shrugs that off. Because of course he thinks the little people ought to float the government while he and his ilk continue their grifts.

But wait, there’s more. Because Ross went on to dismiss concerns about the hundreds of thousands of feds who are furloughed or being forced to work without pay. They’ll get paid eventually… But even if they never do, 800,000 people is “a third of a percent of our GDP, so it’s not like it’s a gigantic number overall.”

Here’s what Paul Krugman had to say about that:

Because of course it’s not just the actual government employees who are screwed, it’s all those contractors (and their employers), as well. And they won’t get back pay out of it. Plus, there’s the knock-on effect on all the companies—shops, restaurants, healthcare providers—whose business from the feds and contractors are drying up. And all the scientific research that’s been halted for lack of funds. We’re now being told that our much-vaunted miracle economy may wind up with zero growth this quarter.

(Then there's White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow referring to the people forced to come to work without getting paid as "volunteering". And White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett declaring that all 800,000 furloughed/"volunteering" workers are really getting a vacation.)

But Lara, Wilbur and their grotesque ilk will no doubt shrug that off. Extending their Ancien Régime mindset, it's après nous le déluge.

Oughta be a law...

As you are all too well aware, we are living in interes utterly bizarre times. I was alive in the 60s, and it still wasn’t as batshit crazy as what we’re seeing now.

For today’s example, I’m going to step away from the lunacy emanating directly from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and give you a bill proposed in the Arizona state legislature by a whackadoodle named Gail Griffin (RWNJ). Her House Bill 2444 w-wou (sorry, laughing too hard) would require (hahahaha)…

Well, first of all it’s the “Obscene and Criminal Blocking Software” law. And it requires all “product[s] that make content accessible on the Internet” bought in the great, regressive state of Arizona to block by default access to porn. (Think about that. By default.) And if you want to unblock your, er, device to view “obscene material”, you have to pay $20. To some state entity TBD.

And your $20 and all the $20 of your porn-fan brethren will go to fund the Kleptocrat’s wall along the southern border. Imagining the Tea Partiers who infest Arizona forking out any amount of money to unblock their “obscene material” is just hysterical.

No, I swear I am not making this up. You can read the whole farkochte thing here. Her definitions of “specified anatomical areas” alone are worth the wading through all the all-caps.

Griffin apparently isn’t the first legislator to display her complete and utter ignorance of how The Interwebz works; other porn-blocking nonsense has been attempted in Kentucky, Alabama, Utah, Rhode Island, South Carolina and Virginia—all proud bastions of ignorance. (Well, I don’t know what’s up with Rhode Island.) But she seems the first to tie porn to the wall. Publicly, at least.

Okay, but today’s post is not so much about Griffin’s idiocy as it is about Twitter’s response. Because this thread is smashing. I started taking screen caps to give you an idea:

But you should really just go here and start scrolling. Just don't be drinking anything while you do that.

Auto parts

Yesterday I was catching up with a colleague; the topic of auto repairs came up and I told him about my turbocrash. (I did get the car back late Monday, thanks be to God.) Turns out he had some woes of his own last week.

Thursday afternoon he was driving home when the check engine light started flashing and the motor ran really rough. He limped the two blocks home and did what pretty much anyone would do these days: he consulted Google to diagnose the problem. Evidently it was a bad lead from one of the spark plugs, which could be replaced fairly easily; just follow the YouTube video.

“The part only costs $50,” he said. “So I called around. No one had it in stock.”

I started laughing. “Well, sure. If they had it in stock, it would cost $300.”

He grimaced and went on with his narrative.

He called an Acura dealer, who said they had one, and he asked them to hold it; he’d stop by Saturday morning to pick it up. Fine; they could do that. Saturday morning he showed up for the whatever-the-part-was.

Turns out I was off by $70. The Acura dealer price was $230.

(He got it and installed it. And he ordered another one for extra, over the Internet. For $75.)

Visualizing...

Lest you think that only no-name amateur-hour numbskulls engage in cold-calling come-on spam (like the one I reported on last week), I assure you that actual employees of legitimate companies do it, too.

For example, here’s one I got from Tableau Software, clearly courtesy of LinkedIn:

Now, in fact, my company does deploy Tableau’s data visualization application, but I have no need for it. Moreover, I’m not in IT, nor does my LinkedIn profile in any way imply that I do. So for the life of me I cannot imagine what Adam w/Tableau thought his email would accomplish. From his LinkedIn profile (with a lot of sales jobs), it appears he sent this a month or two after he moved to Tableau. Maybe he sent the same, sadly incoherent email to lots of my colleagues in hopes of upping the number of user licenses.

I dunno, but this kind of thing is not a good look for a company that’s supposed to be a leader in business intelligence.

Gratitude Monday: #StandWithBennett

We live in strange times; indeed we do. And I confess that I’m struggling today to find anything in my life or the world in general to truly appreciate.

But it’s the day the United States has assigned to honor Martin Luther King, Jr., which reminds me of the mission of historically black colleges and universities (HBCU)—institutions that educated the sons and daughters (and their sons and daughters, down to this day) of men and women brought to this country as slaves. For generations, they’ve enriched our nation by providing that education that would otherwise have been denied citizens on account of the color of their skin.

A couple of weeks ago I learned that one of these schools—one of only two serving black women—is in danger of losing accreditation because of finances. Bennett College, a small liberal arts college in Greensboro, S.C., was founded in 1873, and became single-sex in 1926. Its students are known as Bennett Belles, and (from what I’ve read) display extraordinary sisterhood. They have until 1 February to raise $5M.

I heard the story on NPR, found the page on their website where you can donate and whipped out my AMEX numbers. I’m an alumna of another women’s college; I felt I owed it to them. My contribution is small, but I’m hoping that others have given as well, that they’ll reach their goal and that they’ll find a way to continue their mission into the next century.

So this is what I’m grateful for today—that I was able to play a small part in helping keep Bennett College going. If you’re able, I hope you’ll do the same.