Notices by Erin Conroy (chargrille@progressives.social), page 3

The small core part of me that has hope and love is genuinely excited to be a part of healthier communities. I guess there is some freedom in this massive loss, in that we really just have to get on with that. I hope more people will recognize that there is such terrible danger in "reconciling" yourself to working with fascists. Because there is no working together, & there is no reconciliation in fascism. Fascist power RESTS on continual provocation of conflict/scapegoating - or it can't grow.

https://longreads.com/2018/12/04/the-case-for-letting-malibu-burn/

"By declaring Malibu a federal disaster area & offering blaze victims tax relief as well as preferential low-interest loans, the Eisenhower administration established a precedent for the public subsidization of firebelt suburbs. Each new conflagration [saw] reconstruction on a larger… more exclusive scale…renters displaced…by wealthy pyrophiles encouraged by artificially cheap fire insurance, socialized disaster relief…For people of color…it was absolutely off-limits"

This moment is interesting to me.

It's a little like a scan that uses contrast dye to help clarify internal function of body systems. Some people are willing to show their immoral beliefs that help our sick system function: i.e., that some of us (most!) are marked for violence, & in their eyes, our deaths are pre-approved, unremarkable.

But a few big men are special, set aside as privileged from violence. Their deaths are un-acceptable, to be noisily declared unfair. Worthy of social insurance

For some people, literally anything is accepted to justify or excuse their murder, & offer a helping hand to their killer: a hoodie is suspicious, Skittles could have looked like a gun to the right-wing murderer.

For others, literally nothing is accepted to excuse their murder: e.g., profiting personally from a position of power & responsibility which the CEO used to intentionally cause his company's paying customers to die.

OK.

It's useful to have diagnostic tests.

So, I guess what I’m saying is: Whatever is motivating the armchair moralizer scolds, it isn’t nonviolence.

And, one thing that you & I can do, right now, is to really look at the people who are making excuses for the vast majority of the killing. In this case, any fair reading of reality demonstrates that the United CEO, and his collaborators are killing way more of us. They make choices to kill their own paying customers, so that they make themselves & their families into multimillionaires.

We are responsible for the media diet we’re consuming. Imo this dye test shows who’s clogging our arteries.

"UnitedHealth Shares Fell After DOJ Probe Became Public: Chair sold stock before investigation was revealed"

UHC was notified of DOJ's antitrust probe in early Oct 2023
Oct 13: Q3 report
Oct 16, unusual sales made by high-level UH executives
Oct 17, UH Chair sold an unusually large number of shares for $46m profit

Feb 15, CEO Thompson made a large sale - his only one, ever - right before news of FBI's probe of UHC made public on Feb 27 sharp losses
UHC down 15% since, vs DJIA's 8% rise.

DOJ probe was "reviewing whether #UnitedHealth’s acquisitions have consolidated its position in some markets in a way that violates antitrust laws…[DOJ] has reportedly been looking at potential monopolies in the managed-care industry since at least mid-2023."

"Typically a company’s general counsel would declare a blackout period barring trading in light of a sensitive investigation, according to John C. Coffee Jr., a corporate governance expert at Columbia Law School.

UHC didn't do that.

But I guess none of these multi-millionaire FBI suspects were Black children wearing hoodies or carrying Skittles, so even though they actually deserve to have their potentially criminal activities scrutinized in the public eye for months on end, we will probably instead be treated to endlessly empathetic media junk-food treatments by wealthy white pundits who focus on the suffering of their family members.

From NYT piece this morning: "The family also owned the radio station WCBM, which airs politically conservative programs…cousin, Nino Mangione, is a [GOP politician & chaired Trump election fund]…

“It is just such a… prominent family within Baltimore County,”

…high school at the prestigious Gilman School in Baltimore…valedictorian of his graduating class…

particularly smart — perhaps the smartest [at Gilman] social, friendly & never particularly political"

The other thing that deserves emphasis - though I don't know whether the manifesto writer was aware or not - is that the #UnitedHealth CEO was being investigated by the FBI both for UHC monopoly/antitrust violations, & his own apparent stock market fraud/insider trading in response to that FBI probe. Personal profit.

$102m in offloaded stock by UHC c-suite when such trades ought to have been frozen.

https://www.crainsnewyork.com/health-care/unitedhealth-chair-execs-sold-102m-stock-doj-probe-became-public

"US has the #1 most expensive healthcare system in the world, yet we rank roughly #42 in life expectancy. United is the [?] largest company in the US by market cap, behind only Apple, Google, Walmart…grown & grown, but [h]as our life expectancy? No the reality is, these [?] have simply gotten too powerful, & they continue to abuse our country for immense profit…many have illuminated the corruption & greed…not an issue of awareness at this point, but clearly power games”
https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/luigis-manifesto

It deserves emphasis that the writer of the manifesto was raised in a wealthy family whose Italian immigrant founder (his grandfather) made his fortune off of managed care facilities, then real estate, country clubs, & conservative radio. His sister is a doctor. Their family has an obstetrics wing in a Baltimore hospital named after them, because they've given so much $. He volunteered at his family's nursing home. He's familiar with this business. His cousin headed Trump's MD election fund.

@dcdeejay

I think this is a big piece of the solution, yes! Absolutely!

@ProPublica
Also, we need to support the individuals like Kelly HAyes who are doing the work necessary to support anti-fascist coalition-building. The kind of work that strengthens us for future wins.

That includes artists, by the way. How are we going to sustain our values, dreams, & culture? Artists do this work.
https://organizingmythoughts.org/beyond-the-blame-fighting-for-each-other-in-the-face-of-fascism/

But it's only part of the solution.

We still very, very, very much need *vetted* sources of information, & repeat players. This is the function that journalists are *supposed* to perform.

They are not supposed to be oracles. They are not supposed to be the bookies of democracy, setting the odds & influencing how people place their bets. Nate Silver is the antithesis of journalism.

We DESPERATELY NEED nonprofit journalism - & we HAVE it!! SUPPORT IT WITH YOUR $!!

@ProPublica for one

Getting people to do new stuff is hard.

You have to make it cool (interesting), cool (hyped), or fun, or easy, or cheap, or ...

or as many of these as possible.

often it will be hard or lonely or boring or a little dumb in the beginning for the trailblazers - but that can change fast. IMO Mastodon is already interesting, cheap, & easy.

Twitter was boring & dumb in the beginning, imo. Now it's dangerous, with pockets of value (COVID, disability rights). How do we get those people over here?

Of course there are the people who WANT to be disinformed & you can't fix that.

BUT, I worry that we can't fix any of this unless we figure out a way to replace the defective sources of information, with better ones, that people actually use. Mastodon *could* be part of the solution.

I don't have the answers. Obviously the winds of $ are against us but history shows building those networks has happened before.

It's our billionaire-bought, right-wing-infected, (dis)information ecosystems that are the problem.

#H5N1

"And the federal agency [USDA] that was supposed to help thwart the virus instead has allowed for an unspoken “don’t test, don’t tell” policy among dairy farmers."

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/inside-the-bungled-bird-flu-response