The Assassin

Of late I have called myself an Assassin, a Serial Killer, a Mass Murderer or I just have OCD or perhaps I am all of the above. The below article discusses the current plague which of Biblical references means the assault of animals upon the planet that brings disease and mayhem. Well these do, to plant life and particularly trees, and right now as I have been ranting of late over the issues regarding climate change (and frankly it seems that it is about me but then again it always starts that way for everyone) I want to add this pest to the list – The Lantern Fly.

I feel compelled to take my killing to new heights, trying to kill two at a time under each foot. I chase them as the fly up and out and have asked building maintenance crews to aid me by loaning me their brooms to act as fly swatters or in one case one has a water pump and as he squirts them which slightly disables them to react quickly I start stomping away. I have yet resorted walking with a fly swatter but have seen others do so and it may be added to my repertoire. I have joked with my Acupuncturist that I will need her extra needles so like all serial killers I can pin my trophies of my kill to a wall board and then promptly apologized for my Asian Hate as they are, well, Asian. Damn China first Covid now this. With that I share the story of another equally obsessed, I am not alone and now they must die. Oh oh its happening I can see a mini series on Netflix coming.

On the hunt with New York’s spotted lanternfly squishers: ‘I came to kill’

A spotted lanternfly is seen on the roof of an apartment in New York this week. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Local officials have instructed residents to destroy the insects – and some New Yorkers are taking it very seriously

Naaman Zhou in New York The Guardian 15 Aug 2022

Michael Thomas, a maintenance worker, was inspecting the base of 3 World Trade Center in late June of last year when he started to notice groups of heart-shaped bugs, three or four at a time, “crawling up on the walls” of the thousand-foot skyscraper in lower Manhattan. He went to sweep them up, hoping to keep them from entering through the revolving doors, or flying into the lobby. Then, he said, “they just started to multiply”.

What Thomas saw were spotted lanternflies, a visually arresting, fast-spreading invasive species – that New Yorkers are under strict instructions to kill. In the age of overlapping viral outbreaks (Covid, monkeypox, the return, in some places, of polio), this kind of clear government communication is a gift. The New York state department of agriculture is very direct: “If you see a Spotted Lanternfly in New York City, kill it immediately by stepping on it or crushing it.”

Some insects have powerful defences. The ironclad beetle has a thick shell, stronger than an entomologist’s pin; bees sting. Not so the spotted lanternfly. It flies slowly, it does not bite, and even when startled, it often only has the energy for one jump. It is as soft as a butterfly, but less friable than a moth. (“Whenever I tried to kill them, they would just hop. They hop like bunnies,” Thomas said. “I would just go outside and I would just start stomping.”)

I would just go outside and I would just start stomping

Michael Thomas

The lanternfly is harmless to humans, but is a prodigious killer of some crops and plants, including hops, grapes, apples and blueberries. It drinks sap out of tree trunks, weakening them, and its waste product, a sticky, high-glucose fluid known as honeydew, coats leaves and blocks photosynthesis. Since it was first detected in Pennsylvania, in 2014, it has spread to 11 other states, as far as North Carolina and Indiana. A 2020 study found the insects had the potential to cause $324m of economic damage, and the loss of 2,800 jobs, every year in Pennsylvania alone.

This year, the bugs have been spotted near Wall Street, along 42nd Street, on the Upper East Side, near the UN headquarters, and in big clumps on trees in the Bronx, Brooklyn and Staten Island. The URL of a recent CBS News article gave away the urgency: “spotted-lanternfly-is-back-immediately-kill-them”. The Pennsylvania department of agriculture’s hotline to report them is 1-888-4BADFLY.

As a result, a kind of late-summer fury has descended on New York City. “I saw a leash of four-year old kids with an adult at each end on 28 Liberty [Street] yesterday just running around and stomping them,” one person commented on Reddit. “Was kind of cute.” Back at 3 World Trade Center on Wednesday, Jaeso Rich, an office worker at Spotify, stepped out during his break to crush some. The day before, someone had explained to him what the bugs do. Now, the corner behind him was splattered with lanternflies. He’d killed 20 already. “I didn’t know up until yesterday that they were supposed to be killed,” he said. “But when I came today, I came to kill them. I came to protect the environment”.

Last weekend, Jonathan Nunez, another lanternfly hunter, was in Coney Island trying to do the same. Nunez, an ex-marine, is an animal lover. At home, he has three rescued sugar gliders (a kind of possum), three rescued ferrets (he has saved seven total), and two turtles.

On a bright, clear day, as those around him headed to the amusement park or the beach, Nunez and his three sons – Jayden, Joshua and Jerry, all in the back seat – drove to Coney Island Creek Park, a stretch of urban scrub that Nunez called “one of the heaviest locations” he goes to. Joshua, 13, carried a bright yellow net.

In their original habitat in China, spotted lanternfly numbers are kept low by parasitic wasps. They lay eggs in young lanternflies, which are in turn are eaten from within once the baby wasps hatch. On Coney Island, Nunez uses his hands. “Sometimes I just slap them,” he said. “They’re slow. You literally put your hand 45 degrees? They’ll die.” He estimates that he kills 200 to 400 lanternflies a week.

At a particularly infested tree, festooned with fifty to eighty lanternflies, Nunez paused. “A blowtorch would kill them instantly, but you’d damage the tree,” he mused. “Chemicals would kill them instantly, but you damage the tree, damage the soil, damage the environment.”

Instead, he sprayed the bugs with a solution of water and vinegar (it supposedly blocks their respiratory openings) and the family resumed stomping. “Stomp ’em out with your Timbs, man!” Joshua said to his older brother, Jayden. “Stomp ’em out, stomp ’em out,” Nunez said, like a mantra. He was slapping tired lanternflies against the bark of the tree. He held one up in his hand, said “this is how I execute,” and pulled off its head. He put the body in a plastic tub to feed to his turtles and pets. (“Sugar gliders need protein, so insects are part of their regimen.”) In the middle of the melee, a bright green leafhopper landed on Nunez. “This is actually what we are not trying to kill,” he said. It sat for a moment on his finger, then flew away.

You know it kills me, because I do really like bugs. And they’re not ugly bugs

Jonathan Nunez

Despite his proficiency, Nunez is clear that what he does “is not the answer”. In his spare time, he studies the lanternfly online. He wanted to be an entomologist or a vet, before the military got in the way. “You know, it kills me, because I do really like bugs,” he said. “And they’re not ugly bugs.”

The answer, he said, was “ecological stabilization”. The key would be to find a natural predator to eat the lanternflies. He claimed he has observed starlings starting to hunt them. “I think they’re learning. I hope this is the end of it,” he said. “We like beer and grapes. I want my kids to be able to know what grapes taste like.”

After an hour and a half, Nunez and his sons packed up. He said he would buy the boys slushies and enjoy the rest of their weekend. The sun had started to shift, but there were many lanternflies in the other trees, high in the branches. “I can’t even reach these,” Nunez said. New ones had settled on to the trunk he’d cleared. There were lanternflies climbing up the sides of a public artwork in the middle of a community garden. Jared shouted, “They think it’s something to suck on!”

“They’re in the street!” Jayden yelled.

At one point, Jonathan said “Ooh, monarch!” and pointed out an orange butterfly to his kids. They paused to watch it go by.

Haste Makes Waste

The decision to do this lockdown/quarantine was done without thought, careful planning and analysis and largely some half assed duplication of Wuhan that is a city within an oppressive country that in its own way mishandled and was somewhat deceptive as to the extent of the virus spread and danger to the larger world’s health. In turn WHO failed to grasp the demands of what this meant despite a history of similar virus outbreaks in the last decade, H1N1, SARS, Zika and of course Ebola.  There were already vaccines in development and tossed aside a decade ago as not profitable and of course then we have the United States own issues with bureaucracy, the CDC and the Trump Administration that I will go to the grave believing that they saw this as a great opportunity for political gain, not fully grasping the reality of what this virus was and its aggressive persistence.  So in the haste to figure this shit out the lack of centralized competent professionals and guidance the States had to rely on their own to contain the spread and manage the chaos from the demands it would cause on the health system.  So whoever came up with the lockdown was the person who saw this in Wuhan and said, you do it too.  There was no debate, no discussion and no actual analysis done to show how this would work, for how long it would need to be done and what that it would do to the bigger picture across the board.   And lockdown it was. The histrionic daily broadcast with the lottery readings were done to somehow raise fear and encourage compliance, no Scientists were working in tandem in fact many of the models used were competing if not contradictory further adding to the confusion. Then we have the contradictions and confusion by the White House and the two Doctors whose handprints are all over some of the most egregious decisions that enabled further chaos.

Many did not agree and they were dismissed as contrarians, curmudgeons or crazy as each day another restriction, another executive order, another retraction, contradiction were added to the never ending list.  No mask, mask, no parks, open parks, curfew, no curfew, cut bus transport and then cut the amount allowed, testing, tracking and tracing, only limited to those who met a narrow criteria to then opening the floodgates to have testing.  Then the stage phased opening that was quickly retracted when other states started to have case count rises. Schools open then not and on and on and on.

I never understood any of it.  I took the personal responsibility plan which was keep the fuck out of closed in spaces, wear gloves when out (it stops you from touching your face as a great reminder), wearing masks, limiting time in grocery stores, public transport and monitoring my health daily.  As for washing hands I always did so why did I need to do it more often and longer, who knows but it is about personal hygiene that I suspect has long been an issue and is why we have had many food borne illness outbreaks of late.  Again we are nasty filthy people clearly.

But shutting doors, designating businesses as essential or not, with little planning or involvement as to why and finding alternative ways for these businesses to remain open or coming up with everything from what we currently have, curbside delivery to appointments with limited entry numbers.  This would have enabled many small vendors to accommodate this and in turn make the decisions themselves what they should and could do.  But nope the reality was this was about the lack of available testing, no clear plan for the long haul and of course the crush of hospital patients so they took over conference centers, brought in ships and tents and simply setting up a centralized communication and access to patient data and needs to move those in critical care to those not in need  to one facility over another never happened.  The lack of clear organization and well established channels to track and trace the origin of the virus spread further leant to the confusion and does to this day.   Not one Governor or Mayor clearly communicated with each other and in the case of New York literally negated each other, personal vendettas, scores and other issues were settled over the lack of actual facts and numbers plagued (pun intended) state after state with many health care leaders of States since leaving their jobs at the same rate and level as Police Chiefs.

We have no real idea of the true numbers of Covid patients, deaths and of course overall Covid positivity in any community.  We only know of them if they are tested, if they are in turn treated and the overall outcome if it is death. We have no way of knowing if they contracted the disease, from whom, how long from exposure to actually displaying symptoms to how long they carried the virus from day one to day 14.  As that seems to be the time frame but that has little to do with those who don’t have the virus and why they would quarantine for any time frame other than 72 hours when they should be tested to see if they are in fact positive but asymptomatic.  The reality being that if they are pos and then the average run is 14 days that would mean in actuality only 11 days of quarantine following that as that includes the three days prior.  But nope the endless cycle of news had one day it was waiting in a bush to catch you, another in lurked inside for hours to it can travel 16 feet. It is one fucking amazing virus.  It is blood borne, aka in the body fluids and transmits like a virus in the air under close contact where air droplets or breath are extensively exchanged for a long period. That was 30 minutes it now seems to have been cut in half with no reasoning or explanation as to why.  Now we have the single case in Hong Kong of one who has contracted Covid again.  This should be fun as the daily does it or doesn’t it game the media played for months announcing cures, treatments, histrionic fear stories.  Yes we are heading into the second wave.

I am not bothering to discuss the endless “cures” and “treatments” as that list is endless, but again the excessive need to ventilate was a panic button switch that likely ended lives sooner than necessary and that the medical community has admitted; Yet,  I have read of lung transplants and of course other drugs and treatments that have led to serious issues as having to lose limbs in which to survive that course of action.   Really are you using these people as guinea pigs as that it was it seems.   So far no single orderly process and protocol has been established so this is just throw the shit against the wall see what sticks plan.  The long term issues and problems from the health industries sheer idiocy and panic mode will lead to many many more significant health problems for decades to come. Never underestimate the incompetency of the medical industrial complex.

But what is the most egregious of it all was the sheer idiocy of the local Governments both States and Municipalities to do this shit on their own with their own posse of morons who have since left their jobs and in their wake a mass of shit.  The Wall Street Journal did an excellent article about this issue that closing it all down, not actually attempting to find a structured way of quarantining the most at risk, being aggressive with testing ALL those in work places that were the essential front liners regardless of them being in China, knowing someone in China, touching China or even eating Chinese food would have been the first thing to do. By limiting the access to testing you opened the door to spreading the virus as it did untethered and unbothered by the man made caveats to finding the disease.  The lack of coordination between the private and public sector to come up with a manageable plan regarding their workforce and how to stop or reduce the spread by altering commute times, RIFF’s that would be covered by Unemployment while trying to again to reduce pressure on public transportation and means of travel that contribute to the spread.  Immediately stopping mass gatherings but allowing facilities to cut their occupancy rates to allow them to remain functioning but with clear mandates and enabling them to work on ventilation and other issues relating to spreading a virus, such as hygiene theater and mask requirements.  And of course rapid testing.  Funny how that with months closed that no one tried a temporary school concept during this time, such as staggered days, offsite learning and  the other ways mentioned above to educate the kids, but nope, wait til the start of the school year to fuck that one up.

One of the many issues the Journal discusses is how the lockdown was an overtly blunt and economically costly too.. They are near to impossible to do long enough to actually stamp out a virus and in turn the confusion about what ultimately it was to accomplish. The words “mitigation” “suppression” and “containment” were used interchangeably and in fact they are all three different concepts.  The favorite was and still is “flatten the curve” and that really only applied to hospitals and their admissions not the virus spread itself.  If you were to lockdown the country to actually mitigate a virus we would still very much be in Stage 1 right now.  But as we have seen across the country the bending, and flattening has been largely non-existent if not impossible.  And despite the rise in numbers in California a slight decline has begun by simply limiting public gatherings and indoor contacts.    Surgeries and other “non essential” health care has resumed and of course the mask mandate has been in existence now since July.  Funny that being outdoors rather than indoors the current state of health and human services director of California, Dr. Ghaly,  has noted. And he and other epidemiologists and economists have also noted this, as we all have learned a great deal since April which was a month into lockdown.  You know like discouraging masks and yet here were are finding out just how effective they are. So it is now these esteemed intellects  are now realizing that and perhaps it was not a necessary to close and cease all business.  So this proves that in fact had they had time to actually look to other countries and discuss with them their plans, Iceland, New Zealand, South Korea, the United States might be in better shape.  But nope the idea of States doing this on their own may in fact  have lead to more deaths, rising hospitalizations and of course a shattered economy.  Good plan.

To quote James Stock, a Harvard University economist who, with a Harvard epidimiologist, Michael Mina, realized that you can avoid a surge in deaths without a deeply damaging lockdown by simply being disciplined.  Simple policy mandates, simple communication and coordination and yes clear leadership would have offset much of this.  But nope we had to play Good Trump Bad Trump. Again I believe that while Trump is inept much of his staff and the CDC are equally inept and our local Governments are not much better they just play better on TV.   This lockdown bullshit was never part of the pandemic playbook and it was not used in the 1918-19 flu epidemic nor in the one in 1957. It was copied from the Communist playbook, hmm interesting. And even when Italy did it there were few in the European Union that agreed with that and it was only again until the modeling capabilities of another player, the Oxford University, further elevated the fear factor in Britain did Johnson then go into lockdown; however, he had handled it in the beginning like Trump so this is not surprising and his medical committee is one that is secretive in the best of times making Igor and the Bride seem  chatty and honest.  Uh those two are about as ethical as the rest of their community of pols.  We should, coulda, followed SE Asia but the CDC botched the testing kits, the rollout and as a result limited the testing and countless infections went undetected for months.  So we pay the price.  And while we trashed or tried to with regards to Sweden, their death mortality rate rose as it would with a highly infectious disease but not to the point requiring the lockdown and in turn their economy is less damaged. Shocking, I know. Not really. And their current death rates and infections are on par with the rest of Europe so while herd immunity may have been an ideal they were willing to comply and cooperate with a change of behavior. Again that requires a massive amounts of personal discipline.  That is not America nor Americans in the least.  But we are paranoid motherfuckers that much is certain. Just watching the RNC proves my point, scared shitless of black people but a killer virus fuck that we got this. Yeah ask Herman Cain about that.

Head Scratcher

If I am having a cocktail I may watch portions of the Trumpaganda talks on the nightly news but most often I do not.  There is not a time during any of it I scratch my head and think, “What if I have head lice? Who will treat it and will it infect my home that I clean 10 times a day?”  Then I take a drink.  I am now a raging alcoholic which may also be another problem to treat along with the OCD and my mental health break I plan on taking.

Let’s first examine how this shit happened:

First:  The CDC and the Trump fuckwits failed to do their duty in a timely and effective manner.

Second:   Jared Kushner and his shadow cabinet.

Third:  Endless Trump fuckups, here and here and here again.  Or how about Dr. Trump. Or just Baby Trump.

Fourth:  Airlines that want bailout money also did not help with this.

Lastly: The big fucking Kahuna!  Nearly half a million flew here post Wuhan even after restrictions were set in place. See above as to how that and why that happened.

The bulk of the passengers, who were of multiple nationalities, arrived in January, at airports in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Seattle, Newark and Detroit. Thousands of them flew directly from Wuhan, the center of the coronavirus outbreak, as American public health officials were only beginning to assess the risks to the United States.

Now look at those cities and see a pattern emerging?  I do and I am an idiot okay not that but I am losing my mind.

Flights continued this past week, the data show, with passengers traveling from Beijing to Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York, under rules that exempt Americans and some others from the clampdown that took effect on Feb. 2. In all, 279 flights from China have arrived in the United States since then, and screening procedures have been uneven, interviews show.as many as 25 percent of people infected with the virus may never show symptoms. Many infectious-disease experts suspect that the virus had been spreading undetected for weeks after the first American case was confirmed, in Washington State, on Jan. 20, and that it had continued to be introduced. In fact, no one knows when the virus first arrived in the United States.

Okay so now the paranoia will spread faster than the virus and when I theorized that civil unrest would be the next phase directed this time to those of Asian descent, well this should do it.

 About 60 percent of travelers on direct flights from China in February were not American citizens, according to the most recently available government data. Most of the flights were operated by Chinese airlines after American carriers halted theirs. 

I think this is when the idiots who kept telling me to SHUT IT DOWN might apply it to this.

Now instead of directing their ire at Crazy Dopy Grandpa and his ship of fools that a vessel right now docked off Pennsylvania Avenue which is clearly infected with some kind of crazy, the Trumptards will of course misdirect their anger to the people of Asian descent.   Statues are so 2019 and this is a new decade bitches and this hate has to find a new home.

Again we are all under house arrest regardless of our health. Some of us me by carriers, some of us may be utterly immune and in turn have no way of knowing. The insanity of this as we come out of it in June we will have about three months before its time for what? FLU SEASON.  Oh this is fucking priceless.  As by then we will not have a proven vaccine and the hysteria of trying to get said annual shot (which I do regardless as every year that shot is based on the prior years outbreak so its basically kinds sorta useless, but hey) will become a money maker as we fight for it like toilet paper.  Then we start again with the protocol which means for me, gloves and mask on pubic transport, hand sanitizer and the rest,  as I learned from school kids that I don’t want their shit and now I really don’t so yay for me on that social and physical distancing.  I cannot believe how that will allow me to work and not ever have to have any contact other than writing the shit on the board and not speaking! PRAISE BE on this Palm Sunday!

I bet all the terminated and staff that quick the Trumpland ship of fools look back not in anger but relief.  Now I have to have a drink its been too long.

In the Dark of Night

We are not in the light, out of the weeds, in the clear or any other expression that marks a place of hope or optimism.  Nowhere near it.

In the meantime as people try to navigate waters that are way to deep lets look at all the stories that have come out of this.

First up the failure of our Government to follow a protocol that they had in place during the Obama Administration in response to Ebola. **I urge everyone to read that article** Again this indicates the resistance by Trump and his bizarre group of cronies and loyalists who seem to have not a fucking clue on how to do well anything. On that note I have now reconsidered loathing Rex Tillerson thanks to revelations about how he tried to stand up to the dozing Grandpa.

Next up the Cruise line who seemed to be confused as to how to handle this crisis was like a floating Titanic down to buffets and music.  What I found fascinating was the idiots who actually booked trips during the early stage of the virus as it was a deal.  I have so many comments about this story that it may require a separate blog.  But it does bring laughs when you hear Trump suggest that vacant cruise ships would be excellent hospitals.  

And we have the hidden agenda. Kentucky is working to suppress voting rights  and with that I have another expression:  No time like the present!  But they are not alone as Trump has some other interesting policies that are quietly being shoved up Mitch McConnell’s ass.  Funny he is the Senator from Kentucky as is Rand Paul the asshole who well does what he does best, be an asshole.  But he was not alone in wanting to see the aid bill shut down, Lindsay Graham, John McCain’s former work wife is another but he is now the First Lady so it all worked out there.   But that has not stopped Congressional members  from exploiting this for their special kind of crazy – from making mad money to exploiting fear. 

Meanwhile in Tennessee the Plumber in pursuit of religion and freedom merging with state continues to dismiss critics/science and safety to keep those Churches open.   Pray for the soul mine to take as that will be a hotbed in the next week.  To my former friends – well voting is your friend now.  Maybe that is why Kenny Roger threw in his hand as he had enough of gambling.

More lies, sex and videotape as we find further stories behind the Life Care facility that was ground zero in Washington State.  Again regulations and guidelines put in place during the Obama years (clearly even then insufficient) would be relaxed.   Well Dozy Grandpa needs to check in clearly as well that might end all of this sooner versus later.  Here is my idea we empty the nursing homes put them on the cruise ships and use the nursing homes and hospitals.  SOLVED!

Of course Dozy Grandpa is suggesting unproven medicine or drugs to treat the virus which again is up there with take three aspirins and call me in the morning and other wonderful advice that Physicians have given over the years.  Again this is not the only medical mystery, ever watch that show on Discovery?  And that seems to be still a standard when anyone calls anyone to find out anything about symptoms and other issues about health let alone the virus. Hello? Are you there? Hello?

Spain is on full blown military lockdown and this will be next here folks.  And the ability to actually tell the truth makes this I bet a real plus for Dozy Grandpa who hates the media, so that should be up next.  China has already revoked and evicted some US Media from the country.  And Dozy Grandpa’s daily press briefings are nothing more than propaganda and I simply refuse to watch them, although the exchanges by the two Physicians are producing some great memes.  

So now what? Well shelter in place and eat yourself to be a fat unhealthy fuck (I mean you have all that food you hoarded), or just phone fuck or you can go out for now and work out. Can I just say that will be the two cohorts that survive this.. fat fucks or hot fucks.  Man the eye candy I saw on the piers yesterday made me throw my neck out from double taking.  Can I say that I need a massage and would you mind less social distancing hottie jogger?

And today I am staying in and only going for a short walk to drop off my Voting by Mail application well in time for the Jersey vote on May 12th.  This was utterly unpublicized and must be done at least 7 days before the election. Sorry but I will vote from my socially distant isolation home jail regardless of the virus.  And yes, I am exhausted from donning costumes to go for a walk or to shop, to get my mail or just to dump garbage. Yes I do and I hope this is a next challenge on Drag Race and Project Runway, designing a pandemic outfit.  But it is exhausting just watching insanity in front of stores and in places that are still open for essential business (two men asked my coffee shop Barista where the chairs were to sit.. they are clearly not from the world I live in or are just really fucking stupid, I go with the latter) as it exhausts me the same way the virus would if I knew I had it.  Again how would I? I might be a carrier and asymptomatic, I could be clean and if so with careful precaution still remain alive or could I still contract it if I have some type of exposure once and then now another opportunity when this time the dice rolled red. Again if you are sick and pre-symptomatic that opens another door as how would I know if I did contact someone and who/when/where? Again who is in charge of that? No one so if some asshole was out at Walgreens and go sick three days later and I was there buying all the rest of the cold medicine and toilet paper how  IN THE FUCK WOULD I KNOW?   Again we have couples where one is infected and another is not and so forth.  And again they must quarantine for 14 days and then what go out and get it again or not.  So in other words never leave the house. For how fucking long runs 45 days to never.

This is so fucking confusing that again I have no idea what will keep me healthy other than not leaving my house.  Well again I could be bringing into my home with all the food delivery and all the rest.  To be ideal this has to last 18 months or longer based on population and density.  And again comparing China to say England does what?   Well it means nothing as the English are predicting 10 times the number of deaths that occurred in Hunan  based on their data predictions due to the way the English travel and work and live.  Basically it is a guessing game.  Okay then.   Good times folks good times.  

What’s Going On?

Yesterday I walked the Hudson Pier for about two hours and used a public toilet, twice.  Using rubber gloves, washing hands and sitting quietly and watching the water and ferry’s pull out and in with their few passengers commuting in and out of NYC.  I came home on one with one passenger and her bike whom shared with me this was the first time out of her apartment in a week since this began. She had been to Trader Joe’s the other white persons version of Whole Foods and found the shelves empty and was shocked.  I said again this is about lack of clear leadership, reassurance and well civility in a time of need.

And for the record I have watched the poor also hoard as they descend upon BJ’s Wholesale Club and Costco with carts overflowing with water and paper products making me wonder what the fuck they are doing with that and for what purpose.  Meanwhile I walked up to my local bodega bought my usual environmentally friendly paper towel and toilet roll pack as always I do every two weeks.  Where am storing this shit exactly? If I am trapped in my house I don’t need it cluttered with that. And for the record during my sitting on the bench I read the Wall Street Journal about food and well shocking, I know not really, there is no shortage.   With restaurants closing down there is now a redirection needed of the supply chain and there is more than ample food available to move from farm to table (that is for you white folks and sustainable folks) but there is no shortage of food.

Fuck that GG I am going out and getting all the frozen pizza and smoothie mix as I wait to die.  Glad to see you are mixing it up a little with some fruit thrown in there that way you won’t get blocked up and waste all that toilet paper you got stashed.

Again what this crisis has shown is that we have a two tier economy, the have and the have nots. The reality is I don’t want to go to the store nor do I want to have all my food delivered. The behavior in the store is disturbing to watch, it is a type of petri dish on its own, I feel for the clerks and in turn I used to love to be inspired by shopping to plan my menu and fly on a whim, which is why I love farmers markets but now it is as if I am on a subway at rush hour.  Again I can afford delivery but picking my own avocado is a plus and the two limes I threw in on my Whole Foods list were the size of dimes and I just know I could do better but hey the flowers were perfect and again I am not going to go to Nunnery lifestyle during this.

I spent the better part of three years living in social isolation and its why I moved here to Jersey City to partake in the arts, to wander streets that I loved visiting in Manhattan to now finally having the opportunity to  know them.  That all came to a halt last week.  I have spent the better part of four months since moving here traveling back and forth to Nashville to finish my dental treatment which today is non-essential. Apparently no one in Government has lived without teeth, trust me they are essential to health and well being.  You know building immunity and strength thorough healthy eating.  Just like optical care and physical therapy and massage,  that again done with consenting adults and through protective measures and some accounting for personal responsibility might be possible but nope this is not about that this is about who can be the biggest dick.   Literally there are few rational voices and even the respectable Dr who eye rolls and face palms behind Trump is doing little to reassure people, he is just not the dude for this nor the woman who is also a Corvid czar as she keeps blaming Millennials and frankly while I agree on that I just cannot blame them for this.  Again the millennials are the dumbest motherfuckers I have met.  Watch Leslie Jones special on Netflix and she assesses that quite accurately.  Again one of my Concierge’s is so uniformed and so arrogant that he had no idea that Miami had shut down beaches and were following the same protocol as here and California.  His story was that airfare was 53 bucks so who cares.  He is beyond the pale as one of the many who I find annoying and pretend to like but cannot wait to evoke my new vow of silence when this is over.  Plus I will go in and out through the garage if I can to avoid this as it is all too much for me again making me wish I had found a private apartment but then who would receive all my packages that I now need delivered? Shit white people problems!

Now again we know the virus which is now the “Chinese” virus began months ago and that in fact since Trump naps during security briefings was unaware of this and nothing was done. Well there you go. And we now have entered into full blown hysteria with little rational thought or understanding about disease, disease transmission and other cultural variants which may have contributed to the spread of this virus.  Again this is about some of that as well as the reality that why disease prevention is one of the most important variants in this so washing hands and cleaning  places of business should be business as usual and apparently we learned that may not be so. Good to know as I will actually keep these pre-cautionary measures in the future.  But here is a little side note about China and the culture of spitting.  Interesting as that is thing that having lived in San Francisco for a decade was aware of  and was horrified when I saw it and then it was explained to me.  Still not a fan it and again I think that well that might need to be as a potential problem going forward.  As for highly religious folks, Southern folks with your hugging and that whole big family bullshit also may be a problem.  Love that you live with granny but seriously at one point are you not respecting boundaries regarding health and well being?  Same with shoving a family member in a some Nursing home, clear respect there.   What a cruise not available?   Never been prouder of being a WASP in my life as I have now.  Maybe there is no correlation but fuck it I am already realizing how tough I am since this began and well again I hate being wrong.  As killing off old people and white men faster than women may be a blessing in disguise.  **wink wink**

 So changing behavior and respect might be a good start and by that I mean having clear boundaries, respecting yourself and others as one should and not having a crisis in which to take on that behavior.  And in turn this bullshit where we care about one another I have not seen one example of that so far.  NOT ONE.  So fuck you.

Here is what I have said repeatedly.  If you are willing to forego civil rights during a crisis as in 9/11 and pass surveillance laws and have Cops basically know and track you and the Government which has had that right for over a decade why are you not now? Surprise they can and could but nope now its guess, you figure it out, track your movements, wrap yourself in saran wrap and never leave your house only to get supplies to then not know who you are encountering or whose delivering all those Amazon rolls of toilet paper to your door but then later hear that another case has been diagnosed.  Hey thanks for that info and that tells me what and who and where and when. So you see why for many this does not provide a sense of urgency and import.  So yes I want to let go of my personal freedoms in this case are  you?

That said out of the darkness comes a voice of wisdom and it is a woman, a Doctor and she is sane. Read her words and realize that sense and sensibility exist just not in the White House.  It is about respect.  Yes that little word that we in America long forgot and dismiss as weakness.  Well fuck you it appears we are the strongest.  So go hoard your food assholes and know that you are just that an ASSHOLE so go wipe your ass with your toilet paper stashed in your closet and then stay in there for all I care.  I am going to walk and live but with caution and care.  I like personal distancing frankly it enables me to be away from ASSHOLES.  And on that note on my walk I saw a sticker attached to a sign it said:  Fear is more contagious and dangerous and utterly one you can control.  

‘If coronavirus doesn’t get us, starvation will’: A growing number of Americans say they can’t afford to stock up on groceries

The Washington Post
By Abha Bhattarai
March 20, 2020

She was running out of food, but Patricia Brown had to wait.

She waited until the third Wednesday of the month, the day her Social Security check landed in the bank, before she got into her Nissan and drove to the local supermarket in search of a few basics: spaghetti, ground beef and distilled water for her sleep apnea machine.

But by the time she’d arrived, all of those items were gone. It had been over a week since the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had urged Americans like her — older, with chronic health conditions — to “stock up” and stay home because of the deepening coronavirus crisis, which was upending every aspect of daily life and shutting down entire cities. The president even went on TV to urge people to avoid gatherings of more than 10.

But like millions of Americans on fixed incomes, who rely on social security, disability checks or food stamps to buy necessities each month, Brown doesn’t have much of a choice. It is nearly impossible, she says, to stock up on food, medication or other necessities beyond what she would normally buy.

“Of course I would’ve liked to buy groceries sooner,” said Brown, 69, a retired courtroom clerk in Burlington, N.C. “But I’m only getting checks once a month. Once that’s gone, I’m broke until the next one comes.”

As layoffs skyrocket, the holes in America’s safety net are becoming apparent

Across the country, already-struggling Americans are being urged to buy more at one time and embrace social distancing to help slow the outbreak’s spread. At the same time, supermarkets are getting picked over, as panic-stricken consumers snap up rice, pasta, beans and canned vegetables — the kind of inexpensive staples that Brown has learned to stretch into a month’s worth of meals.

White House officials are considering various emergency measures to help Americans, including sending $1,000 checks directly to workers in coming weeks. But while that money may provide temporary relief — and enough cash to pay for groceries and other expenses short-term, many say it would not provide long-term security at a time when jobs are drying up and the economy teeters toward recession.

More than 37 million Americans — or about 1 in 9 people — struggled to put food on the table in 2018, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That number could soon double as the outbreak wreaks havoc on workers around the country, said Katie Fitzgerald, chief operating officer of Feeding America, a nonprofit that oversees 200 food banks. Already, companies like Marriott International, MGM Resorts and Caesars have signaled plans to shed thousands of jobs as hotels, restaurants and retail shops suspend or curtail business to wait out the worst of the pandemic. On Thursday, jobless claims jumped 33 percent to 281,000, and economists say that number could jump eightfold this coming week.

Food banks, she said, are seeing anywhere from two to four times the number of people they typically serve. Thousands are queuing up at drive-up food pantries in Texas, Virginia, Michigan and beyond.

“This pandemic is changing the face of food insecurity in America,” she said. “It’s an incredible challenge: At the same time that demand is spiking and people are in need, food is becoming very difficult to get.”

Food banks are seeing volunteers disappear and supplies evaporate as coronavirus fears mount

Brown drove to her local Aldi on Wednesday morning. She put on a pair of disposable gloves and piled her cart with two cases of dried ramen, two boxes of rice, frozen flounder, and canned chicken, green beans and corn. “I wanted fresh tuna but it was too expensive — $8 or something,” she said. Instead, she picked the 95-cent version in a can and splurged on a $2.29 tin of pink salmon. She spent $109 in all.

A ‘humbling experience’

More than 1 in 5 U.S. families receives some form of government assistance every month, a number that could grow rapidly in coming weeks as retailers, restaurants and hotels lay off thousands of service workers who already live paycheck to paycheck. The average Social Security payment is about $1,500 a month, while disability checks average less than $1,300. For many people, that has to cover all other expenses — housing, utilities — on top of groceries.

Since the first U.S. case of covid-19 was reported in late January, nearly 1 in 5 U.S. workers have been laid off or had their hours reduced because of the coronavirus, according to a recent poll by NPR, PBS NewsHour and Marist. Economists say more than 1 million Americans are expected to lose their jobs by the end of March, creating an entirely new category of Americans who are suddenly struggling to make ends meet.

Things were going well for David Anthony. He had a steady job at a warehouse that specializes in commercial sinks and shelving. He operated a forklift and made $13.30 an hour.

But he got laid off two weeks ago as the outbreak obliterated demand. A temp agency placed him at a factory that made pancake batter mix, but two days later, he got a pink slip there, too.

“I’m trying to find employment, but everything — and I mean everything — is being shut down because of this virus,” Anthony, 39, said.

He and his wife and children, ages 2 and 4, are living at an EconoLodge in Effingham, Ill., where they pay $291 a week. Most of their meals — consisting mostly of canned potatoes, green beans and SpaghettiOs purchased with food stamps — are cooked on an electric skillet or slow cooker in their motel room.

“Talk about a humbling experience,” he said. “Now we’re buying food as we go because shelter has become our main priority.”

Anthony’s wife, he said, was making $9.25 an hour cleaning motel rooms. But bookings have dried up, creating more uncertainty.

The family has cut back on meat and fresh produce. Now Anthony, who has weathered periods of homelessness since he was 17, is wondering whether his family will soon be out of a place to live.

“All my kids’ lives, they’ve had a roof over their heads,” he said. “But now we’re worried: Will we have to go back to homeless camping? We still have our three-bedroom tent.”

“Forget stocking up,” Brandy Eggleston, 27, said. The best she and her family can do right now is try to survive.

Her household in Durham, N.C. — which includes her mother and stepfather, both on disability — doesn’t have consistent running water. But every supermarket in town is sold out of bottled water.

“We don’t have a car, so it’s hard to even get to the store,” she said. That requires asking a friend for a ride or paying Uber $13 for the five-mile trip. “And by the time we get to the store, everything is already picked over.”

As was the case Wednesday. The shelves at Walmart were nearly empty. She spent $34 on fish sticks, tangerines, frozen pancakes and syrup.

The companies that feed America brace for labor shortages and worry about restocking stores as coronavirus pandemic intensifies

“We’re on a very, very fixed income,” she said. “With everything that’s going on, that’s made it even harder to buy the things we need to.”

That’s also true in the Chicago suburbs, where the food pantries Sandra Lotz relies on have been stripped bare. The 60-year-old, who spent decades as a medical transcriptionist, had to stop working because of spinal stenosis and multiple myeloma, a form of bone and blood cancer.
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Now she has two weeks to go before her $1,200 disability check arrives, and no money for groceries.

“We’ve been without food for four days,” she said. “People are panicking. I’m disabled with no vehicle and don’t know what to do.”

Lotz, who supports her two adult children, recently went to the supermarket with $2, hoping to pick up a loaf of bread or a box of pasta for a few days’ worth of meals. But the shelves were largely bare.

“It was like the apocalypse was coming,” she said. “I needed cheap bread — you know, the kind that tastes like sawdust — and all they had was $4 and $5 loaves of Pepperidge Farm. If coronavirus doesn’t get us, starvation will.”

Call Jake Tapper

For a man in the news business he is one ignorant twat.   His exchange with Dr. Sanjay Gupta regarding people walking, running and how dare they, holding hands on the Embarcadero in San Francisco mid lockdown was histrionics at best, paranoia at worst.

Let’s examine some of the bullshit being spouted by old Jakey boy:

Tapper was the first to react to the images from San Francisco, visibly unsettled by the waterfront’s level of activity. Meanwhile, Gupta chuckled wryly and shook his head in apparent disbelief.
“First of all, we see a whole bunch of people here who are not distancing,” Tapper said. “They’re holding hands and walking down the street. Normally I’d say bravo, but this is actually kind of enraging.
“My dad is turning 80 this month, you know?” Tapper said. “People out there who are millennials or younger and thinking, ‘Well, if you’re 80 years old, it only affects people who are in their 70s and 80s,’ which isn’t true, although obviously the people in their 60s, 70s and 80s are most vulnerable to it. What are you saying? That my 80-year-old dad, therefore, is fair game?
“Who the hell are you to be walking around just giving this to old people and you just flippantly dismiss it?” the anchor later asked.

Now for the record Jake does not know these people or their relationships or health status nor does he or to my knowledge his father live in San Francisco.  And again while this draconian measure may be overkill there was no lockdown of the city with regards to the shelter in place and if you are healthy should you not exercise in which to maintain said health and holding hands with one’s partner, with consent of course, is exactly your business how?  No one should be having sex right now too right Jake?  Of course in lockdown what else is there to do.  The porn industry is going to clean house, metaphorically, in this situation. And what old people are these people giving their non diagnosed case of Corvid too.  If they are sick why are they out at all?

And exactly how does this affect Jake’s father?  Are any of these people living with him, catering him and why isn’t Jake doing it?  Jake lives in NYC and well then step it up and practice what you preach and never leave your house either, we will be better for it.

And given that Jake is a “journalist” and Dr. Gupta is a Doctor then how come this story from Al Jazeera is not making the rounds.  Oh that is right we can’t panic the population if we do.

In China, life returning to normal as coronavirus outbreak slows

Draconian measures, which appear to have quelled the outbreak in China, are gradually being relaxed.

by Shawn Yuan
Al Jazerra
March 17 2020

Chongqing, China – “Look! What a big fish!” Ding Shijiu exclaimed in joy after catching a carp from the lake where he normally goes fishing.

Sitting under a tree full of spring blossoms on a warm day, Ding is finally able to catch up with old friends over a few fishing sessions – something he has been unable to do since the coronavirus pandemic started to sweep across China in January, prompting a major lockdown of cities and provinces across the country.

“The last two months felt surreal and, trust me, I’m almost 70 years old, and I’ve seen a lot of things,” Yang said while pointing at his friends, unable to contain his excitement of seeing them again.

“But we’re all still alive, and I’m just so happy that the worst has passed.

“This is the first time I came back fishing at this lake since Lunar New Year – I’m very happy,” Yang said with a smile, before trying to reel in another fish.

Like many people in China, Yang has spent nearly all of the last two months at home as the central government imposed unprecedented quarantine measures across the country in a drastic bid to contain COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus. The central province of Hubei and its capital Wuhan, where the virus was thought to have originated, were completely sealed off.

As the number of COVID-19 cases confirmed overseas daily have surpassed those within China, the draconian measures that appear to have quelled the outbreak domestically – particularly outside Hubei – are gradually being relaxed.

Chongqing, Yang’s hometown bordering Hubei, has had more than 500 confirmed cases since the disease started to spill into the municipality. But now, there have been no cases in the city for several days.

The slowdown is not only in Chongqing. Across the country, 13 out of 34 provinces in China have cleared their remaining cases, and approximately 69,000 of 81,000 confirmed cases have been discharged.

Pressure easing

Even in Hubei, where some 10,000 cases remain, the pressure on front-line medical workers has eased. On March 17, the first batch of nearly 4,000 medical workers who were parachuted into Wuhan to help control the outbreak were able to leave.

With so many provinces having downgraded their emergency response levels, China is slowly – and cautiously – returning to normal life.

Classes are gradually resuming after most students spent the last month or so at home and studying online. In provinces classified as “low risk of infection,” including Guizhou, Qinghai, Tibet and Xinjiang, local governments have allowed educational institutions to resume classes this month.

“I couldn’t really focus while taking courses online, and I can’t afford to waste any more time because the college entrance examination is in a few months,” said Ouyang Yanjiang, a student in Guiyang, referring to the highly competitive national exam that determines which college students can attend. “I’m glad that we are going back to school.”

Meanwhile, factories that were ordered to suspend operations are also starting to pick up their assembly lines after what many small business owners who spoke to Al Jazeera described as something akin to a “near-death experience” for their companies.

According to the latest report released by China’s National Bureau of Statistics, in January and February, the peak of the outbreak in the country, the industrial output of the world’s second-largest economy plummeted to the lowest point since 1998, and the unemployment rate soared to more than 6 percent, the highest on record.

The suspension has pushed many businesses to near-bankruptcy, but as the quarantine measures have been loosened, many are preparing for a rebound in production.

Cities that have a high density of manufacturing industry, including Guangzhou and Shenzhen in the south, are organising their employees’ return to work and pushing for the resumption of long-suspended business.

For example, the production line of Woniu, a Guangzhou-based kitchenware factory, came to a halt on January 20 – the day the government confirmed human transmission of the virus.

The head of the factory told Al Jazeera that, with their income near zero for the last two months, they had been on the brink of closing down the facility for good. But on March 9, their proposal to reopen was accepted by the government, and they are now back in business.

“It’s still high pressure to just break even, but at least we are now back to work,” Liu Lufei told Al Jazeera over a chat session on Taobao, the online shopping site under Alibaba. “Dear God, that was a difficult time.”

The harsh toll the outbreak took on people’s lives also appears to be easing.

Chengdu, famous for its hotpots and foodie culture, now has only a dozen cases remaining and the provincial government has said no new ones have been detected over the past three weeks.

That has allowed a gradual reopening of restaurants, although people remain cautious.

In videos shared online, restaurant patrons line up in front of the city’s many hotpot restaurants – wearing masks and keeping a safe distance from each other.

During the peak of the coronavirus outbreak, residents of Chengdu told Al Jazeera that the first thing they planned to do when the emergency ended was to go to a restaurant, “eating hotpots with friends and family”.

For a city whose soul is “hotpot flavoured”, as some playfully describe it, the reopening of Chengdu’s hotpot restaurants gives residents an almost unparalleled reassurance that the worst of the outbreak has indeed passed.

“We are only allowed to accept 50 percent of our restaurant’s maximum capacity for dine-in guests, and that’s the rule for all restaurants in Sichuan (the surrounding province),” Xiao Ma, a waiter at Shudaxia, a famous hotpot restaurant in Chengdu, said. “But in the last few days, we have been hitting that line almost non-stop.”

“People’s taste buds have been pent up for too long,” Ma jokingly said.
Travel gradually being allowed

Apart from dining out, people are also gradually regaining their ability to travel. Many provinces and cities have steadily resumed their public transportation, including inter-provincial long-distance buses that were suspended across the country days after Wuhan was sealed off on January 23.

Even in Hubei, the provincial epidemic prevention and control command has allowed “low and middle risk” areas, such as Xianning and Yichang, to begin operating public transport again

News coverage of the outbreak has also eased. In late January and February, it was difficult to turn on a television or use a mobile phone without constantly being exposed to news about the coronavirus – but with the epicentre shifting to Europe, many entertainment shows are reappearing on Chinese TV.

“Now I’m able to watch something on TV that is not about coronavirus, and that was unimaginable last month,” Zeng Yunru, a Wuhan resident, said. “It’s funny that all of us seemed to have forgotten what our life was like before the virus.”

Barbershops reopening, parks welcoming tourists again, migrant workers making their way back to their jobs – the calamity that disrupted China’s society so completely seems to be receding steadily.

As life begins to return to normalcy, however, experts worry that there is still an underlying risk. There are worries that as soon as the expansive quarantine measures are lifted, China will be a hit by a second wave of infection, especially as the coronavirus is now a global pandemic and imported cases outnumber local ones.

China reported only one new domestic coronavirus case on Monday, in Hubei. Twenty other cases were of travellers arriving from overseas.

“I don’t think anyone is saying the outbreak is over – only the worst seems to be over,” Zeng said when asked about her concerns. “What we can do is still exercising social distancing and slowly driving our lives back to normal.”

There is the reality, curtailing travel, following a protocol and yes that means getting tested, early and getting isolated from others, and still following said protocol for the next few months as we ease back into a level of “control.”

Today I went to Home Depot where they were only allowing 50 customers at a time, the same for BJ’s Wholesale and the panic buying there demonstrated a great deal of largely poor and faces of color stocking up on water, toilet paper and cleaning items.  There is no logic or sense in all of this. I bought my foaming bleach bath cleaner and some other minor hardware and went to Bed Bath and Beyond to get bags for my Miele and in turn saw shelves in utter disarray and more evidence of panic shopping.  Really this is not helping anyone and what is the point?  Are we shutting down the pipeline of transportation?

And here is where a rational head and strong leader would emerge but again watch CNN and the Cuomo brothers debate who Mother loved best, Jake Tapper become histrionic and hysterical scolds and listen to fear mongers as they do little to actually establish calm and reassurance that this is all going to be controlled as long as we have some cooperation and compliance with restrictions that include unnecessary travel, large gatherings, staying home if sick and getting medical care asap and that testing will soon be available on a large scale. But nope. Crickets or as I call that Ethan.  (I name idiotic behaviors after people I know as a private joke)

We again have a disparate cohort of Governors and Mayors jockeying for the biggest dick and in turn coming up with one shitty idea after another that ensures more panic, builds fear and creates the hoarding mentality including buying guns.  Again I have said that this will not end well.

Lie To Me

This is our Culture the presumption, the assumption that everyone is lying so either be with one, be one or be against one. The last one is usually the whistle blower and no one likes a tattle tale right?

I keep asking to people “why would I lie?” when I tell my story of February 8, 2012 and no one can answer that question or in fact any question I pose about that time period in my life.  I assume, presume that for them to actually respond would mean they would have to actually think about something, put in actual effort and process to come up with answers that would not be the usual finger pointing and blame making we love in this country.

I think the Internets are the best place to see what it means to have a “discussion” or “debate” today. It means everyone must “like” be on the same page or somehow have complete and utter agreement or face a dogpile or denigration of character with personal attacks and assaults that are often just the equivalent of throwing shit against a wall with the hope to see what sticks.  Nothing says rational more than calling names to an unknown stranger on the Internet whom you have never met but when they don’t agree with you its game on!

I have seen it on Twitter, Facebook and name any other public message site – from the NY Times comment pages to local message boards.  And we wonder why kids are really having a hard time with bullies today – well apple meet tree.

The last two or three days are awash in stories about corruption and lies in business. We have already had the WalMart Mexico bribes, then there was the accusation by China that Glaxo Smith Kline was bribing officials, and today JP Morgan was hiring the progeny of Chinese officials to get favor and in turn business or we have BHP facing corruption charges over their role in the Beijing Games

Apparently Russia is so corrupt that no one can do business there.  Meanwhile Africa with its own set of problems is basing their entire economy on the tech sector. And that will turn out well I imagine. 

My personal favorite this week was India is trying to reign in their immense corrupt culture with new laws and regulation. And yet India is considered an important trading and business partner with the U.S. The irony is that the tech sector reveres Indian workers and they are the reason for Silicon Valley’s aggressive new political role in immigration reform.  So let me see, their corruption stays at the border when they arrive.  So when one of these international citizens enter customs and they ask “do you have anything to declare?” they can go “I am no longer corrupt” and then it’s checked at the gate like baggage apparently. Really?

To show how everything is not new, I found a column by Eduardo Porter written a year ago.  There is nothing within the piece that does not have relevance today. We are liars who lie. And those who don’t well you are one of the Poors, ironically the ones who are often thought of as the liars who lie the mostest.  Why would we lie? We have nothing to gain from it the rich however have much to lose if they don’t.

The Spreading Scourge of Corporate Corruption

By EDUARDO PORTER
Published: July 10, 2012

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the Libor scandal is how familiar it seems. Sure, for some of the world’s leading banks to try to manipulate one of the most important interest rates in contemporary finance is clearly egregious. But is that worse than packaging billions of dollars worth of dubious mortgages into a bond and having it stamped with a Triple-A rating to sell to some dupe down the road while betting against it? Or how about forging documents on an industrial scale to foreclose fraudulently on countless homeowners?

Top, mortgage abuses contributed to the collapse of the housing market; middle and bottom, after years of dismal job prospects, Americans are losing trust in many institutions, like Congress.

The misconduct of the financial industry no longer surprises most Americans. Only about one in five has much trust in banks, according to Gallup polls, about half the level in 2007. And it’s not just banks that are frowned upon. Trust in big business overall is declining. Sixty-two percent of Americans believe corruption is widespread across corporate America. According to Transparency International, an anticorruption watchdog, nearly three in four Americans believe that corruption has increased over the last three years.

We should be alarmed that corporate wrongdoing has come to be seen as such a routine occurrence. Capitalism cannot function without trust. As the Nobel laureate Kenneth Arrow observed, “Virtually every commercial transaction has within itself an element of trust.”

The parade of financiers accused of misdeeds, booted from the executive suite and even occasionally jailed, is undermining this essential element. Have corporations lost whatever ethical compass they once had? Or does it just look that way because we are paying more attention than we used to?

This is hard to answer because fraud and corruption are impossible to measure precisely. Perpetrators understandably do their best to hide the dirty deeds from public view. And public perceptions of fraud and corruption are often colored by people’s sense of dissatisfaction with their lives.

Last year, the economists Justin Wolfers and Betsey Stevenson from the University of Pennsylvania published a study suggesting that trust in government and business falls when unemployment rises. “Much of the recent decline in confidence — particularly in the financial sector — may simply be a standard response to a cyclical downturn,” they wrote.

And waves of mistrust can spread broadly. After years of dismal employment prospects, Americans are losing trust in a broad range of institutions, including Congress, the Supreme Court, the presidency, public schools, labor unions and the church.

Corporate wrongdoing may be cyclical, too. Fraud is probably more lucrative, as well as easier to hide, amid the general prosperity of economic booms. And the temptation to bend the rules is probably highest toward the end of an economic upswing, when executives must be the most creative to keep the stream of profits rolling in.

The most toxic, no-doc, reverse amortization, liar loans flourished toward the end of the housing bubble. And we typically discover fraud only after the booms have turned to bust. As Warren Buffett famously said, “You only find out who is swimming naked when the tide goes out.”

Company executives are paid to maximize profits, not to behave ethically. Evidence suggests that they behave as corruptly as they can, within whatever constraints are imposed by law and reputation. In 1977, the United States Congress passed the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, to stop the rampant practice of bribing foreign officials. Business by American multinationals in the most corrupt countries dropped. But they didn’t stop bribing. And American companies have been lobbying against the law ever since.

Extrapolating from frauds that were uncovered during and after the dot-com bubble, the economists Luigi Zingales and Adair Morse of the University of Chicago and Alexander Dyck of the University of Toronto estimated conservatively that in any given year a fraud was being committed by 11 to 13 percent of the large companies in the country.

Yet it may be wrong to shrug off the latest boomlet of corporate crimes and misdemeanors as a mere reflection of the business cycle. Americans appear to believe that corruption has become more prevalent over the years. And some indicators suggest they may be right.

In 2001, Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index ranked the United States as the 16th least-corrupt country. By last year, the nation had fallen to 24th place. The World Bank also reports a weakening of corruption controls in the United States since the late 1990s, so that it is falling behind most other developed nations.

The most pointed evidence that breaking the rules has become standard behavior in the corporate world is how routine the wrongdoing seems to its participants. “Dude. I owe you big time!… I’m opening a bottle of Bollinger,” e-mailed one Barclays trader to a colleague for fiddling with the rate and improving the apparent profit of his derivatives book.

It’s difficult to know why corruption may be spreading. But there are a few plausible explanations. From globalization to rising income inequality to the growing role of corporate money in political campaigns, political and economic dynamics may have increased both the scope of corporate wrongdoing and the incentives for business executives to bend, or break, the rules.

Just consider the scale of recent wrongdoing. Libor is one of the most important rates in the economy. It determines the return on the savings of millions of people, as well as the rate they pay on their mortgage and car loans. It is the benchmark for hundreds of trillions of dollars worth of financial contracts.

Bigger markets allow bigger frauds. Bigger companies, with more complex balance sheets, have more places to hide them. And banks, when they get big enough that no government will let them fail, have the biggest incentive of all. A 20-year-old study by the economists Paul Romer and George Akerlof pointed out that the most lucrative strategy for executives at too-big-to-fail banks would be to loot them to pay themselves vast rewards — knowing full well that the government would save them from bankruptcy.

Globalization can encourage corruption, as companies compete tooth and claw for new markets. And the furious rush of corporate cash into the political process — which differs from bribery in that companies pay politicians to change laws rather than bureaucrats to ignore them — is unlikely to foment ethical behavior.

The inexorable rise of income inequality is also likely to encourage fraud, fostering resentment and undermining trust in capitalism’s institutions and rules. Economic research shows that participants in contests in which the winner takes all are much more likely to cheat. And the United States is becoming a winner-takes-all economy.

It’s hard to fathom the broader social implications of corporate wrongdoing. But its most long-lasting impact may be on Americans’ trust in the institutions that underpin the nation’s liberal market democracy.

RE-Building America

As I search out businesses that are Made in America for my focus on Build America, today’s New York Times has an article about the new birth or re-growth of American manufacturing thanks to Government subsidies. Yes those subsidies that seemingly are an issue of debate, discussion and well confusion. I have already blogged about the “interesting” DOE grants to billionaire investment firms over their green energy projects but what about other industries not related to autos or banks?

Well as you can read the Government did provide well needed aid to businesses that actually build economies and jobs, ironically what China has been doing for years.

As you will note that subsidies can come in many forms – yes tax breaks have been the most common and the most exploited with actual little benefit to the community at large – but they also can come via energy costs or working with labor unions to find resolutions that are not adversarial but proactive. I have advocated time and time again that its the mantra of cooperation and collaboration vs competition that will Build America.

Subsidies Aid Rebirth in U.S. Manufacturing
By LOUIS UCHITELLE

ROME, N.Y. — Walking through his high-ceilinged factory here, explaining the production of sheets of copper, M. Brian O’Shaughnessy comes across as a staunch advocate of manufacturing in America. But he invariably adds: “There is nothing made in the United States that has to be made here — that can’t be shipped in from some other country.”

As chairman and principal owner of Revere Copper Products, Mr. O’Shaughnessy runs one of America’s oldest manufacturing companies, started by Paul Revere himself, a fact that exerts considerable pressure. As he put it: “What kind of a message are you sending to the people of the country if you abandon America?”

But spend a day with him, and a more complex picture emerges. He wonders sometimes about the less patriotic alternative of relocating production to Asia or closing the factory entirely on the ground that Revere’s profit margin here is too thin — less than $1 million on $450 million in annual revenue.

“If we simply shut down today,” Mr. O’Shaughnessy said, “I could sell the inventory and the machinery, which could be moved elsewhere in the world, and pay off our debts and walk away with $35 million to $40 million.”

What staves off those alternatives are labor concessions and a substantial government subsidy, something he and others in the United States say is increasingly important to fuel a nascent recovery in manufacturing. The labor concessions at Revere, in a contract endorsed by the United Automobile Workers, are much like those unions are giving to other manufacturers. The subsidy comes from New York State, which supplies, at cost, the electric power that Revere uses to produce copper sheets and slabs. Mr. O’Shaughnessy says it accounts for half of Revere’s profit.

With such support, the key measure of manufacturing’s presence in America is ticking upward. The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis reported in April that manufacturing’s contribution to the gross domestic product rose in 2011 to 12.2 percent from 11.7 percent in 2010 and 11 percent in 2009. The current share is, of course, far less than in the 1950s, when manufacturing reached 28 percent of the economy, and then went into a long, gradual decline. But for the first time since then, the percentage has risen over a three-year period.

“Basically, manufacturers are realizing that the cost structure for making products in America no longer needs to be as unfavorable as it was,” said Jared Bernstein, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington and a former chief economist to Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.

The evidence is easy to spot. An American company, Element Electronics, for example, has made flat-screen televisions for years at a factory in China but is now expanding in America. It recently opened a factory near Detroit that is producing the first televisions made in the United States by any company in years.

At General Electric, local tax breaks and a concessionary union contract contributed to G.E.’s decision to manufacture its latest electric water heater in Louisville, Ky. — instead of in China. Similarly, the Otis Elevator Company is moving production to a new factory in Florence, S.C., from a plant in Nogales, Mexico, and Master Lock has switched the manufacture of combination locks back to Milwaukee from China.

At P.A.M.A. Furniture, in Jamestown, N.C., the owning Pennisi family has begun to manufacture upholstered chairs and sofas “from scratch,” according to Anthony Pennisi, a vice president.

Until recently, the Pennisis imported chair frames from Italy and Indonesia, and finished them at the family’s Jamestown factory. Manufacturing everything here is more expensive, Mr. Pennisi said, and he has asked for government help. “I think we are a prime example of a small manufacturer producing a Made-in-America product and trying to survive,” he said.

The thread running through these decisions is an acknowledgment by management and labor that manufacturing needs a little help in the form of local, state and national subsidies for survival in a global economy in which Asian and European producers are routinely subsidized.

“The only manufacturers in America who go without government support are those whose markets are so insignificant that they are not noticed by foreign producers,” said Mr. O’Shaughnessy, who is a co-chairman of the Coalition for a Prosperous America, a lobbying group that seeks to strengthen domestic production.

Apart from subsidies, organized labor’s givebacks in recent years have contributed significantly to what manufacturers call “lean” practices.

At Revere, “lean” means that employment has fallen to 360 from 450 two decades ago. The half-hour lunch break is no longer paid time for the 260 hourly workers. (They earn $19 an hour on average.) Employees pay some of their health insurance premium. And management alters factory routines and tasks without first consulting the union, U.A.W. Local 2367, which for months has turned the other cheek. Partly as a result, the time required to turn a 22,000-pound cake of copper into finished sheets of various thicknesses has been reduced to three days from three weeks.

“The company shows us a newsreel that makes the point that since the year 2000, the United States has lost 56,000 factories and five or six million manufacturing jobs,” said Tom Slocum, chairman of the U.A.W. local’s bargaining committee, “and the message is that, but for the O’Shaughnessys, the factory here could join the 56,000.”

Despite those lost factories, the United States was the world’s largest manufacturer in terms of value added for many years — until China gradually edged into the lead over the last few years. Value added means the value in dollars that is added when a $100 sheet of copper, for example, is cut and shaped into a $150 roof gutter. By that standard, a fully assembled car is worth more than the value of its numerous parts before assembly. Each factory operation adds value, and the measuring gauge speeds along, reaching $1.8 trillion in the United States in 2011.

In China, where the gauge has been rising faster than in the United States, the value added by manufacturing was about $1.9 trillion last year, according to government and private estimates.

That Chinese milestone is reflected in America’s merchandise trade deficit, which has remained stubbornly high, mainly because of the imbalance with China. American multinationals have contributed to the shift, frequently making in Asia what they sell in Asia and, in many cases, in the United States. Revere hasn’t participated, though, even as its customers moved their production of copper products like pots and pans, electrical wiring and roof gutters offshore. Those customers shifted to foreign suppliers.

“We have lost 30 percent of our business this way,” Mr. O’Shaughnessy said. “We had to shrink our staff to stay alive.”

Given his druthers, he would have the United States step up its own mercantilist practices, which means greater government support. A big one, from a manufacturer’s point of view, would be a devaluation of the dollar to lower the cost of exports in foreign currencies.

Mr. O’Shaughnessy, who is a vigorous 69, has ceded management of Revere to a son, Michael, now chief executive. Freed of day-to-day responsibilities, he drove a rented Harley-Davidson last month across the Argentine pampas and the Andes, traveling alone from Buenos Aires to Valparaíso, Chile.

But most of his adventure has been here in Rome, where he became, in the late 1980s, the chief executive of Revere. He was hired after Michael Milken, the takeover king, acquired the company in a hostile leveraged buyout.

Mr. Milken’s organization sold several divisions, including the one that made pots and pans, and soon sold control to Mr. O’Shaughnessy, who borrowed $64 million to make the purchase. He closed a second factory, in Massachusetts, where Paul Revere started the company in 1801.

Mr. O’Shaughnessy’s boast about the potential windfall from closing the remaining factory here is rooted in the belief that conviction and determination, as much as economics, sustains manufacturing in America.

“As manufacturing moves abroad, mostly to China, could Revere follow? Yes,” he says. “Will Revere? Never.” To minimize the risk that his decision will be reversed after he is gone, he is leaving all his shares, he said, to whichever of his three sons is most likely to keep Revere’s production in America.

That son might even someday restore electric power to a huge neon-lighted depiction of Paul Revere on horseback, who, back when the sign was lighted, seemed to gallop across the night sky high above the factory’s roof. Mr. O’Shaughnessy cut the power to save money, and Rome, N.Y., lost a distinguishing spectacle — an animated landmark that drew schoolchildren and tourists and that heralded Rome as a proud manufacturing city

Green Jobs Dying on the Vine?

After Van Jones left the White House no other person has occupied the position of Green Jobs Czar and since that Mr. Jones has organized a new group that focus on restoring the Middle Class through series of ideas – green jobs only a part of that equation.

So what happened to Green Jobs – the President that promised to harness the wind, the sun and the water to generate energy and make our planet cleaner and less dependent upon fossil fuels. Well the message is a mixed one.

Currently the Keystone XL Pipeline project a 1700 to transport tar sands oil from Alberta, Canada to Texas a project Along its route from Alberta to Texas, this pipeline could devastate ecosystems and pollute water sources, and would jeopardize public health. And yet we can’t have high speed light rail.

And today this was just announced: President Barack Obama unexpectedly asked the Environmental Protection Agency on Friday to withdraw a plan to limit smog pollution, handing a big win to business and Republicans who have argued the initiative was a job killer in uncertain times.

And while Obama was indeed supportive of Solar Projects this week brought devastating news to the fragile industry and economy with the bankruptcy and subsequent closing of Solyndra. And in turn defaulting on a federal loan of over 500 Million.

There is no question its failure along with two other US Solar manufacturers this year gives fuel to the fire about providing Government subsidies to risky new green industries. And the current anti bailout divisive climate does nothing to aid in growing any green business. Funny however that when it came to banks and auto makers despite their mismanagement, corruption and greed the ones who did get Government aid came through more profitable than ever. So there is more to the story as to why Solydra was “too small to succeed.” The coincidence that GE (a potential competitor) is on the job committee I am sure had nothing to do with it…..

This from Bloomberg News..

President Barack Obama is standing by his support for renewable energy after Solyndra Inc., a maker of solar panels that received a $535 million U.S. loan guarantee, shut its doors, a White House spokesman said.

Solyndra suspended operations and plans to file for bankruptcy reorganization because it couldn’t compete with larger rivals, the closely held company said in a statement yesterday.

Obama had touted Solyndra as part of the U.S. effort to aid development of alternative energy sources, and its failure was cited by Republican lawmakers who say the subsidies are misguided. It’s the third U.S. solar company to go under in a month, as plunging panel prices and weak global demand drive a wave of industry consolidation.

“While we are disappointed by this particular outcome, we continue to believe the clean-energy jobs race is one that America can, must and will win,” White House spokesman Eric Schultz said today in an e-mailed statement. Obama visited the Fremont, California-based company in May 2010, and said the U.S. was in competition with China and Germany for supremacy in renewable energy.

The Energy Department’s portfolio of dozens of other government-backed investments “continues to perform well and is on pace to create thousands of jobs.”

Solyndra is likely to file for Chapter 11 protection in Delaware on Sept. 7, as it evaluates options including selling itself or licensing its technology, David Miller, a spokesman for the Fremont, California-based company, said in an e-mail. About 1,100 full-time and temporary employees have been dismissed. The company didn’t say how much it owes creditors.

Couldn’t Compete

“Solyndra could not achieve full-scale operations rapidly enough to compete in the near term with the resources of larger foreign manufacturers,” the company said in the statement. Its problems were exacerbated by a global glut of solar panels and slowing demand “that in part resulted from uncertainty in governmental incentive programs in Europe.”

The company may have trouble finding a buyer, said Adam Krop, an analyst at Ardour Capital Partners in New York.

“I don’t see anyone swooping in,” he said in an interview. “I don’t see this technology as very viable in the long-term. I see someone maybe buying the facility.”

Solyndra produces cylindrical panels that convert sunlight into electricity using copper-indium-gallium-diselenide thin- film technology. Standard solar panels are flat.

“Manufacturing and assembly costs associated with a Solyndra module aren’t particularly scalable,” Krop said.

The company has borrowed $527 million of the $535 million covered by the Energy Department loan guarantee, Damien LaVera, a department spokesman, said in an e-mail.

Solyndra plans to include the Energy Department loan guarantee in its bankruptcy filing.

‘Dubious Investment’

Solyndra’s failure calls into question Obama’s renewable energy policies, according to two Republican House members.

“It is clear that Solyndra was a dubious investment,” Representatives Fred Upton of Michigan and Cliff Stearns, of Florida, said in a joint statement yesterday. The company “is just the latest casualty of the Obama administration’s failed stimulus.”

Investments in start-up companies inevitably involve some risk, Dan Leistikow, director of the Energy Department’s Office of Public Affairs, said in an article on the agency’s website. “The changing economics have affected a number of solar manufacturers in recent months, including unfortunately, Solyndra,” he said. “We have always recognized that not every one of the innovative companies supported by our loans and loan guarantees would succeed.”

Ceding to China

Representative Henry Waxman, a California Democrat, said the U.S. must continue to support renewable energy. Recent bankruptcies of U.S. solar companies are a warning and “we should be doing everything possible to ensure the United States does not cede the renewable energy market to China and other countries,” he said in an e-mailed statement.

SpectraWatt Inc., a solar company backed by units of Intel Corp. (INTC) and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS), filed for bankruptcy protection Aug. 19, and Evergreen Solar Inc. (ESLR) did so Aug. 15.

SpectraWatt of Hopewell Junction, New York, received a $150,000 grant in June 2010 from the National Science Foundation, and a grant of $500,000 in June 2009 from the Energy Department’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

Solyndra canceled in June 2010 plans to raise as much as $300 million in an initial public offering.

Solyndra’s backers include Argonaut Private Equity, GKFF Investment, CMEA Ventures, Redpoint Ventures, Rockport Capital Partners LLC, US Venture Partners, Virgin Green Fund, and Artis Capital Management LP, according to the company’s December 2009 IPO filing.

Despite what is a surplus of technology to China regarding Solar Technology the US is slowing losing ground on the actual production and manufacturing of solar products. Once again not because China is superior on innovation or even cheap labor its the amount of Government funding that is building and sustaining this industry. As this article in today’s New York Times discusses. (Below for your review)

As GE is claiming to be a foreward thinker on alternative energy and Jeffrey Immelt, the CEO who uses China as a noun, adjective, verb and adverb as often as he can is ironically Obama’s current “job czar” no color provided. I wonder if that means GE brings good things to light in China by developing the technology they need to build what in turn they will sell back to us.

Even Solyndra realized that despite their setback the technology itself is valuable. But for job creation the value is lacking

China Benefits as U.S. Solar Industry Withers

Workers install solar panels at a power station in Hami in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China.

By KEITH BRADSHER

Published: September 1, 2011

HONG KONG — The bankruptcies of three American solar power companies in the last month, including Solyndra of California on Wednesday, have left China’s industry with a dominant sales position — almost three-fifths of the world’s production capacity — and rapidly declining costs.

Some American, Japanese and European solar companies still have a technological edge over Chinese rivals, but seldom a cost advantage, according to industry analysts.

Loans at very low rates from state-owned banks in Beijing, cheap or free land from local and provincial governments across China, huge economies of scale and other cost advantages have transformed China from a minor player in the solar power industry just a few years ago into the main producer of an increasingly competitive source of electricity.

“The top-tier Chinese firms are kind of the benchmark now,” said Shayle Kann, a managing director of solar power studies at GTM Research, a renewable energy market analysis firm based in Boston. Pricing of solar equipment is determined by the Chinese industry, he said, “and everyone else prices at a premium or discount to them.”

Besides Solyndra, the other two American manufacturers that filed for bankruptcy in August were Evergreen Solar, of Massachusetts, and SpectraWatt, a New York company. Another company, BP Solar, halted manufacturing at its complex in Frederick, Md., last spring.

Those bankruptcies and closings represent almost one-fifth of the solar panel manufacturing capacity in the United States, according to GTM Research.

Solyndra and Evergreen in particular suffered because they pursued unusual technologies whose competitiveness depended on their using less polysilicon, the main material for solar panels. That has become less important because polysilicon prices have tumbled more than 80 percent in the last three years as output has caught up with demand.

Analysts say that two American companies remain strongly placed. One is First Solar, the largest American manufacturer, which uses a different technology but has its biggest factory in Malaysia. The other, SunPower, is much smaller but is an industry leader in the efficiency with which its panels convert sunlight into electricity, so that they sell at a premium to Chinese panels.

But with Beijing heavily supporting its industry, the Chinese companies are forging ahead.

“There is no question that renewable energy companies in the United States feel pressure from China,” said David B. Sandalow, the assistant secretary for policy and international affairs at the United States Energy Department. “Many of them say it is cheap capital, not cheap labor, that gives Chinese companies the main competitive advantage.”

China’s three biggest solar power companies — Suntech Power, Yingli Green Energy and Trina Solar — have all in the last two weeks announced second-quarter sales increases of 33 to 63 percent from a year earlier.

Yingli and Trina were also profitable in the quarter. Suntech posted a loss, mostly because it broke a longstanding agreement to buy solar wafers — critical components in the manufacturing process — from a Singapore affiliate of MEMC Electronic Materials of Missouri. Suntech aims to make more wafers itself.

Shares in large and small Chinese solar power companies have mostly rallied in the last two weeks on the New York and Hong Kong stock markets, as investors have welcomed their strong quarterly results and the prospect of dwindling competition from Western rivals. Besides the bankruptcies in the United States, solar power companies in Germany, another big producer, have been laying off workers and retrenching.

The recent strength of Chinese stocks “truly reflects the low cost base of the Chinese solar manufacturers, and it is great to see their positioning, particularly relative to their American and European counterparts,” said K. K. Chan, the chief executive of Nature Elements Capital, a Chinese clean energy investment company based in Beijing.

He attributed the Chinese industry’s low costs not to inexpensive labor in China — high-technology solar panel manufacturing is not labor-intensive — but rather to free or subsidized land from local governments, extensive tax breaks and other state assistance.

Solar panel prices have plunged by 30 to 42 percent per kilowatt-hour in the last year as manufacturers have sharply increased capacity, particularly in China. Meanwhile, demand has been somewhat weak in the main markets in the United States and Europe.

Costs for electricity generated by utility-scale solar installations now approach costs for natural gas in some markets, like California’s, when subsidies of as much as 30 percent of the price are included. However, costs remain well above the cost of electricity from coal.

The United States and the European Union have tried to build demand for solar power by subsidizing the buyers of solar panels. But increasingly those subsidies are being used to buy solar panels from China.

The Chinese government has pursued a different policy course. Instead of subsidizing the purchase and use of solar power, China has focused on building the competitiveness of the country’s manufacturers. As a result, China exports 95 percent of the solar panels it produces. The United Steelworkers union filed a legal complaint a year ago with the United States government, asking the Obama administration to investigate China’s clean energy subsidies and other policies and to bring cases against them at the World Trade Organization. The organization’s rules strictly prohibit export subsidies, to prevent countries from buying market share in foreign markets for their producers.

The administration did challenge one Chinese government practice: giving subsidy grants of $6.7 million and $22.5 million to Chinese wind turbine manufacturers that agreed not to buy imported components.

China agreed in June to discontinue the practice, but by then it had already built the world’s largest wind turbine manufacturing industry over the last five years and now has highly competitive Chinese producers for almost every component.

Nkenge L. Harmon, a spokeswoman for the United States trade representative’s office, said on Thursday that the agency’s investigation continued into whether other Chinese green energy policies might violate W.T.O. rules.

Land of the Pharaohs.

The last few weeks the New York Times is “reviewing” current Architecture in the Chinese provinces. As China has become the world’s great incubator of architectural ideas: the place where architects are free to explore some of their most outlandish fantasies.

Many Architects finding their work and funding dried up in response to the economy they are finding welcome arms in China. Many articles also have been dedicated to many ex-pats who are either relocating or just returning from their travels and work in China. Of course they are finding endless funding and opportunity to expand their creativity and visions – and endless laborers working at slave wages. Reminiscent at some level of the day of the Pharaohs who built their Pyramids and visions with abandon to mark their empire.

So what is significant about this immense growth of Architecture in China and what does it mean for China? Building great centers and theatres in anticipation of great business and opportunity or in fact building great centers for ghosts – for if they build it will they come? Well given Asia’s immense growth in wealth the past decade I assume their own Oligarchs will establish new centers of business and opportunity in a nation still finding a blend of what it means to be both Capitalist and Communist in nature.

First was the Vanke Center. The Vanke Center, a vast office, hotel and exhibition complex on the edge of this bustling city of nine million in the Pearl River Delta. The design of Steven Holl,the Vanke Center is a surreal hybrid — part building, part landscape, part infrastructure. It demonstrates what can happen when talented architects are allowed to practice their craft uninhibited by creative restrictions (or, to be fair, by the high labor costs of most developed societies).

The Vanke is undoubtedly a magnificent structure, sustainable and elegant in scope but an 11 acre part located 45 minutes from an urban city in what is a soulless suburban sprawl of the province.

There is no mention of the long term goals of the structure which possesses a large hotel and office space but again in this growing Country that is a matter for later.

The next is the new Guangzhou Opera House designed by Zaha Hadidis. A gorgeous structure that demonstrates China’s undergoing cultural growing pains and whose architectural monuments are mostly being built by unskilled migrant labor, the opera’s construction was racked with problems and the quality of some of it is abysmal. It is also a magnificent example of how a single building can redeem a moribund urban environment.

But as for the poor construction, many of the 75,000 exterior stone panels were so shoddily made that they are already being replaced. Some plasterwork in the lobbies looks as if it was done by an untrained worker who had never picked up a trowel before. (At one point someone obviously tried to cover up a random piece of pipe that sticks out of a lobby wall by slathering it in more plaster.) But to Architecture lovers all of this is not important for again if you build it they will come. They the millions of peasants I am sure who cannot afford the price of a ticket but hey.

The most recent entry is the CCTV Headquarters designed by Rem Koolhaas. The project from the onset has been plagued with problems the initial one being in 2003 he was pilloried by Western journalists for glorifying a propaganda organ of the Chinese government. Subsequent fires, prosecutions for shoddy construction and finally an accusation that the design evoked pornography it has lead the NY Times to declare the CCTV headquarters may be the greatest work of architecture built in this century.

I am glad to know that design is alive and well and the ideas that great buildings can bring great things – think the Chrysler Building in New York City – that define a tremendous growth and push in a Country’s growth – I look back on that as a time of ignorance. Today we know better and to build such structures without truly understanding the importance of true qualified and talented labor NEEDED to build it one might just as well be a Pharaoh in Egypt.