Archive for the ‘culture’ Category

DaTechguy Off DaRadio No Frills Podcast: Clueless in Seattle Edition 3 PM EST

Posted: June 12, 2020 by datechguy in Always look at the bright side of Trump, business, crime, culture, economy, education, News/opinion, politics
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the Datechguy off DaRadio No Frills Podcast ( a Laptop & a Mike) unrehearsed, unpredictable and unacceptable to the left, starts at 3 PM Right after Rush.

Today’s Topics

  1. Mayor Jenny Durkin and Governor Jay Inslee production of #CluelessInSeattle coming soon to a blue city near you.
  2. The cost of #DefundThePolice / #AbolishThePolice explained to grievance studies majors.
  3. Paulo from Brazil a contrast

And maybe we’ll take on some breaking news as it breaks if I think of it.

It all starts at 3 PM EST. You can watch the livestream here.

Hope you like it.

BTW if you want to know who Paulo is and see the video I shot today of him it’s here

Here is the same house two years ago when he started

FYI The purpose of the podcast is to increase traffic and to raise an extra $180 a month for some bills so if you like what you see, like the video, subscribe to the Youtube channel and if you really like it, consider hitting DaTipJar to get us to that $180 this month. Of course if you want to buy dafamily a Wizard of Oz Pinball machine from Jersey Jack Pinball company I won’t say no.

Society without Police: Insurance Jargon, the BLM Surcharge

Posted: June 11, 2020 by datechguy in culture, News/opinion
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Vicar the Reverend Morrison: It’s about this letter you sent me regarding my insurance claim.

Mr. Devious: Oh, yeah, yeah – well, you see, it’s just that we’re not…as yet…totally satisfied with the grounds of your claim.

Vicar the Reverend Morrison: But it says something about filling my mouth in with cement.

Devious: Oh well, that’s just insurance jargon, you know.

Monty Python’s Flying Circus The Buzz Aldrin Show 1970

The latest in a series of post concerning the removal or the de-funding of police departments and the unintended and/or unconsidered consequences thereof.

One of the hidden costs in every product you buy is the cost of insurance.

Every product you buy online, every time you go to a local store, every time you buy a gallon of gas at the pump or eat at a restaurant (although you likely haven’t done that lately) part of the price you are paying for an item or service include that cost that the shipper, the business owner, the manufacturer paid for insurance.

The insurance business is a lot like the casino business in the sense that it’s all about the odds. In life insurance you look at the numbers concerning life expectancy adjusting for factors such as smoking, flying disease and set your rates accordingly (it’s no coincidence that as life expediency went up near the end of last century ads for life insurance without a medical exam for those 50-80 were everywhere). In collision insurance you calculate the number of fender benders you are likely to have to pay out and base your rates on those odds.

When it comes to business property there are many things to consider. How likely is a robbery, how likely a broken window, how likely a fire, how likely a package will be stolen from a stoop after delivery. All of that is figured into the price a business must pay for doing business.

Now take that batch of risks, and add to that the risk of doing business in a city with either no police or a de-funded police department.

How do you factor that into your price?

Well if you are a small business or retailer you might will find the cost of such an increase prohibitive and not even bother to try. What about the big guys?

Well if you are a business like Wal-Mart you can lean on a mayor to make sure she gives you preferential tax treatment or incentives to stay:

“Mayor Lightfoot said she was on a conference call with Walmart and other major retailers that had stores looted or heavily damaged during the unrest in Chicago. She said she pleaded with them to not abandon Chicago.”

Or you might decide it isn’t worth it at all to reopen and move:

Some may shrug at Wyrobek’s declaration and say that it’s just 50 jobs, but Wyrobek isn’t likely to be alone. He just has the distinction of being the first to go public with his decision to leave, and the reasons for doing so. How many business owners in Minneapolis might decide that the risk of a repeat is just too high, and that the track record of city leadership represents a bad risk?

For that matter, some businesses might not have the ability to reopen in place even if rebuilt. Insurance losses in the riots will go over $500 million, and customers in Minneapolis will have higher rates as a result of the suddenly-exposed risk of doing business in the city. For some businesses, that might be too much of a hurdle for reinvesting in the city.

But move or stay the cost of either that lost tax revenue or extra insurance will be passed on to you. But it goes deeper than that.

Let’s say you don’t go to stores, What happens if you are in Chicago or Minneapolis and decide to go all in on Amazon?

Well we’ve already talked about the return of the shotgun driver carrying a real shotgun but lets go one step further.

If the police are unlikely to respond to a truck or UPS truck getting hit how much less likely are they going to worry about porch pirates?

Now if you don’t get your package you might call amazon and they may say that their responsibility ended when it ended when it was delivered or they might consent to replace it, in fact the cost of such a replacement is likely factored into the, but what happens if you live in a city that has no police and / or defunded police and the cost of such replacements become prohibitive?

Well I suspect you will see and extra charge for such cities call it a black lives matter surcharge, assessed to cover packages lost in those cities because nobody is afraid of getting in trouble for taking them.

But let’s go one step further. Let’s say that BLM decides that such a charge is “racist” and that penalizing residents of such cities over it is also racist. In this politically correct world a business might not want to be tagged so.

In that case if you’re amazon you introduce optional “insurance”. For a small fee if your order is lost or stolen then it will be replaced at no further charge, BUT if you don’t select that option Amazon or any other online retailer might elect to take no responsibility for any package once it’s delivered to that address.

Now I’m sure that our friends on the left might not be pleased about paying this likely new surcharge, but that’s OK, with the higher rates they’ll pay for car insurance, homeowners insurance, renters insurance if they don’t own a home and of course the higher rates on loans as if you live in those cities you’re a bad risk, I’m sure they won’t notice a few more dollars paid for a package from Amazon.

The Black Lives Matter Covid Experiment. The New Tuskegee

Posted: June 8, 2020 by datechguy in crime, culture, News/opinion
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Just about 90 years ago a group of black sharecroppers were told by government physicians that they were being treated for “Bad Blood” but were in fact part of an experiment to study syphilis.

For 40 years until it was exposed in 1972 and stopped but.

By that time, 28 participants had perished from syphilis, 100 more had passed away from related complications, at least 40 spouses had been diagnosed with it and the disease had been passed to 19 children at birth.

In other words these men were used for these people’s purposes.

Now history is repeating itself.

Health professionals have for the last two months been warning about the dangers of Corona Virus, Democrat state governors have been particularly loud about the dangers and slow in reopening. As red states opened blue state pols and blue city pols predicted disaster. But more than that I suspect they feared being blamed if they opened and something went wrong because they just plan didn’t know.

And then came the media to push the George Floyd narrative.

Suddenly the left saw a chance exploit this but they needed mass protests and Democrats far and wide said it was dangerous as did health officials.

But the BLM watned those protests so they happened and insisted that any who opposed them was beyond the pale but how could they justify them given all the warnings?

So it was time for another experiment. The Mayors, the Governors and the Health officials all concluded publicly that these gatherings were OK even as they still insisted that other gatherings were not.

If there is a large surge of Corona Virus cases among the black community and those who protested, if their parents and grandparents die, then they can not only claim that their decisions not to open were wise, but they will blame this not on people congregating, but on their political enemies.

And of course if there is not, then they can continue to open, assuming people feel safe reopening business in communities where the left is thinking of abolishing the police.

Either way Doctors and health professions have now, either out of fear for their jobs or the desire to aid the left politically or both have given advice to the black community contrary to their own beliefs on what is safe and what is not.

Anger doesn’t matter, feelings don’t matter, the bottom line is the Black Community has been used, once again, as experimental guinea pigs to find out more info about a disease that the healthcare community doesn’t have the answers to because there was political gain to it.

Many of us on the right think it was time to open but the Doctors and the Healthcare pros and the Democrats who endorsed these event did not. That’s the point, to the Democrats, the healthcare officials and ironically to BLM, those black lives lives didn’t matter enough to stop them .

History repeats itself.

After the riots, my walk down Chicago’s Magnificent Mile

Posted: June 7, 2020 by John Ruberry in business, crime, culture, economy, News/opinion, politics
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By John Ruberry

Chicago’s largest shopping district, and its best-known, is North Michigan Avenue, which is just north of downtown. It’s known internationally as the Magnificent Mile. 

The Mag Mile is dominated by luxury department stores and boutiques, including Nordstrom’s, Bloomingdale’s, Cartier, Macy’s Tiffany, Burberry’s, Saks Fifth Avenue, Rolex, and many more. 

So naturally it was a target of the Antifa-driven riots of last weekend in Chicago. 

I was on the Mag Mile Thursday. Nearly every building was boarded-up at street level. Not all were looted, I assume. But who knows?

Someone tried to break down the glass doors at Rolex apparently with a sledgehammer, after which another hooligan sprayed “F*ck Trump” on one of the shattered doors. 

Spontaneous protests aren’t attended by sledgehammer wielding thugs carrying cans of spray paint.

Many stores were looted–probably most. 

There’s an American Girl Store on the Mile–it was boarded up. The Disney Store on North Michigan was not the happiest shop in the world–it was sealed off by plywood too.

There was rioting and looting all over Chicago and in the suburbs. On a personal note the area where I live, the inner northern suburbs, was not hit by rioting and looting. 

The George Floyd homicide was an abomination. But I don’t believe there is any justification for the rioting, looting, and the arson, the latter of which didn’t strike the Magnificent Mile. 

The Illinois lockdown is harsh. Dine-in restaurants are still closed–outdoor dining was allowed on May 29, except in Chicago, which had a June 3rd partial re-opening date. Many of the aforementioned retailers had been closed since late March and were looking at a June 3 reopening. 

Then came the riots. 

Chicago and Illinois’ recovery from the Great Recession was a slow one–political mismanagement, corruption, and unfunded pension liabilities saw to that. And those three underlying failures, particularly the pension bomb, have gotten worse since then. 

Chicago and Illinois seem destined for more misery.

I want to add one more thought. Police brass botched the initial response to the downtown and Magnificent Mile riots. The Chicago River draw bridges were not immediately raised, an opportunity to block or at least separate the mob was lost. And Chicago police officers were guarding Chicago’s 18 miles of lakefront parks from walkers, runners, and cyclists, as they have been for over two months, while the riots and arson raged. 

Those cops are still at the lakefront. 

Anger–and stupidity–rules Chicago.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

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