The Greatest Threat - part the sixth

Well... that didn't last long. The Greatest Threat is burying the actual data so that the pols and the populace don't know what the pols are doing. And, most importantly, whether the pols' fiat is good or bad for the populace. And, most importantly, not just the minority that made the fiat happen. Not too surprisingly, one area of general concern is what the results are for the push for abortion bans following the Gang of Six's cockamamie decree to overturn Roe.

New reporting documents that the data is being suppressed!! Who wooda thunk it!! The Evangelical Reactionary Radical Right Wingnuts would never lie about such a thing, would they??

In fact, we found that in a few states, political leaders who backed the bans have stood in the way of measuring their consequences.

We can expect, as dead as a Lame Duck is, that wannaBePresident Huey Long 2024^© will order that all data assembled, created, or distributed by the Damn Gummint must first be approved by the (soon to be created) Office of Data Integrity. You Betcha.

Where never is heard a discouraging word, and the skies are not clouded all day.

And... as one might expect, the quintessence of data suppression is... wait for it... Texas!

When Texas delayed publishing its maternal mortality report in 2022, an election year, then-committee member Nakeenya Wilson, a community advocate, spoke out, saying "withholding data that does not make us look good is dishonorably burying those women."

The next session, Texas lawmakers passed a bill changing the requirements for the position that Wilson held, effectively removing her from the committee. State officials appointed Dr. Ingrid Skop, a Texas OB-GYN who is the vice president of a prominent anti-abortion organization.

The sub-GED crowd should relish their time in the sun. I predict that the Red States will experience significant Brain Drain to the Blue States in less than a generation. Smart people won't stand for this shit.

Fun With Cars

What's that line? "Fun fun fun 'til her daddy takes the T-bird away" Not for the first time, these essays have told the tale of the Evangelical Reactionary Radical Right Wingnuts claiming that global warming/climate change/Mother Nature's having Her revenge is all a Hoax from the Woke Blue People? And that, the Private Sector, aka the home insurance companies, are the instrument not the Damn Gummint. Of course, not the Damn Gummint because the Evangelical Reactionary Radical Right Wingnuts control enough of it from DC down to the Shitburg Town Councils of the Red States to block any efforts to at least slow down the process. In no way is The Insurance Industrial Complex^™ going to wait. They're taking her daddy's house insurance away with vigor. The science is not complete to answer the vital question: have we run past the point of no return. The Musk Ox and his wimins may have to get a move on to Mars to re-populate another planet.

Well, here's yet another report on the inevitable. The Insurance Industrial Complex^™ doesn't believe in the Bible or the Torah or the Koran, just Greenbacks. And when the flow of Greenbacks starts to reverse course, it responds with a vengeance. As well it might.

The Treasury Department under President Biden laid the groundwork to gather data about climate change's effects on the insurance market, then backed off in the face of pressure from states and insurers, as my colleague Emily Flitter reported this year. But the incoming Trump administration could be pressured to intervene, especially since some of the highest premium increases are in states that he carried in November.

Ah, yes. And, most importantly, fiddle a way to put the financial onus on Blue States. We can never forget The Prime Directive.

Here is the map.

Ya don't get away with messing with the Insurance Industrial Complex^™'s rice bowl.

Buyer's Remorse?

Well... all those sub-GED shitkickers are about to get a barge pole up their butt (partial paywalled). They'll likely follow Garfield 2.0's command and blame Sleepy Joe for the betrayal. Or may be not so much. May be they'll figure out they were duped.

Agricultural producers could face worse losses than any other economic sector from Trump's plans to impose sweeping tariffs on imports and to undertake what he frequently has called "the largest domestic deportation operation" of undocumented immigrants "in American history." Hospitals and other health providers in rural areas could face the greatest strain from proposals Trump has embraced to slash spending on Medicaid, which provides coverage to a greater share of adults in smaller communities than in large metropolitan areas. And small-town public schools would likely be destabilized even more than urban school districts if Trump succeeds in his pledge to expand "school choice" by providing parents with vouchers to send their kids to private schools.

Once again, the Evangelical Reactionary Radical Right Wingnuts seek to govern not on real policy 'for the people', but culture war. "I didn't get no big city woke book larnin, and I'll be damned if my kids know more than I do. Book larnin never did me no good, anyway and it'll just turn my kids agin me and mine. Schools that just teach the larnin of the Bible, now that'd be good." How much of modern economy came from the shitkickers? Less than zero. Fun fact: bin Laden ran 9/11 with satellite phones. Ya need the modernest tech to take The People back to the 7th century. Or the 1st. Ya should only live as long as God says you should. We don't need no hospitals. And so forth.

Now, the question is: is Brownstein right? Will the MAGAnauts feel the harsh lash of the whip? Likely not. If for no other reason that Garfield 2.0 and his cabal will make sure that the negative impact of these various decisions don't happen in Red Counties. The tariff scam being first among many. Garfield 2.0 can exempt industries/companies as he wishes, and he will. Last time he gave away on the order of $60 billion to his beloved farmers to offset the tariffs. I don't think he's forgotten that bit. Will he and his worry about being shamed by the obvious fact that he'll be targeting Blue states? Not a bit; that's the point. Will the Blue states rise up and throw the bastards out in '26? One can only hope.

On the whole, the whole point of this retribution is to make the Blue States pay for opposing him. There's no reason to doubt he's had second thoughts. Or any thought at all, of course. Reptiles have such meager brains.

Thought For The Day - 11 December 2024

Well... further proof that the USofA would be better off if it had had an FBI director with stones swinging in his BVDs rather than cotton candy.

Two For The Show

Once again, a two-fer from the NYT. First, how the Brits are facing The Greatest Threat, although not due, according to the report, nefarious action by the Damn Gummint. In sum: without accurate data, government administration turns into: 'it is just my opinion that counts'.

An essential ingredient in economic policymaking, from interest rates to government spending, is reliable data. But government officials, economists and other number crunchers in Britain are expressing deepening concern over a long-running issue with a data set used to understand a crucial area: the country's jobs market.

Well... no shit, Sherlock. At least the Brits are taking the situation seriously, rather than creating the mess on purpose to just destroy governance. Not the same as Garfield 2.0's clear intent.

And, second, we have more support for the private sector taking climate change seriously. After all, climate change is affecting profit, that All American Ideal.

Historically, officials at Fannie and Freddie have banked on their mortgage portfolio's being diversified across so many markets that even when delinquencies and defaults spike after disasters, they wouldn't cause significant losses.

What was the mantra leading up to The Great Recession, fueled by ARMS and CDS via Blythe Masters? Oh yeah, the whole country can't go into housing collapse. How did that assumption work out?

"We cannot change the fact that in Florida we have hurricanes, so we shouldn't be penalized for it," Mr. Diaz said, noting that high insurance costs were already pushing prospective buyers to less popular submarkets. œ"This is why we have the federal government."

Ah, now the MAGAnaut ox is being gored. "Uncle Sugar has to rescue us!!!"

I Have it on Good Authority

Way back in the dark ages, I spent some years working for Optimed Medical Systems, which purveyed a medical prior authorization system written in Progress (not at all relational) database and language suite. This was the early 1990s. The point being, of course, that computerized PA moats have been around for decades. In fact, the OMS software was sorta, kinda an implementation of the Milliman & Robertson books in use for some time. The only thing that's really changed today is that the Medical Industrial Complex has leveraged lots more compute and data than was available 30 years ago. And things are so much better now for the unhealthy.

In 1998 (using 1996 data), this is what the Annals of Surgery thought of M&R Guidelines

Many of the M&R guidelines were found to be at wide variance from the actual length of stay of patients treated for these diseases in North Carolina. For many patients, the M&R guidelines are not applicable. Applying them in an uninformed way--in other words, discharging patients from the hospital too early--may hurt some patients.

Yeah, patients are so much better off with PA moats. "Stop cutting!! The gas passer's time is up!" The Medical Industrial Complex now has a smorgasbord of choice for denying healthcare.

Thought For The Day - 6 December 2024

Yeah, I guess it's true that Bidenomics is a complete failure.

US job growth surged in November, adding 227,000 jobs

Of course, Garfield 2.0 will fuck it up. And place the blame on Sleepy Joe. Remember what I've said about The Greatest Threat? Garfield 2.0 will order BLS/Census to 'revise' down, steeply, the employment data for 2024 (at least). And order same to only produce rosy data while he's still around. I guarantee it. The Gang of Six^© has said he can order anyone in the Damn Gummint to do what he says.