WHAT DOES A ONE-HORSE TOWN DO WHEN THE ONE HORSE DIES?By David G Hanger
May 09, 2020
Likewise, all you sea pilots and your quarter million to $400K a year salaries, goobering as you constantly have been over your Dear Leader and the $15,000 to $20,000 a year he has saved you on your taxes. See you in the unemployment line as you now goober all over yourselves. National statistics indicate that 50% of all small businesses in the United States will fail within the next six months. For Ketchikan that number will probably be much higher. WHAT MAKES SUCH OTHERWISE DECENT MEN AS DR. ANTHONY FAUCI AND DAN ORTIZ SUCH TERRIBLE LEADERS? Is it because they are small men, intimidated by bullies like Herr Trumpff? They do not seem to be eunuchs like Dr. Robert Redfield of the CDC who not only lost his stones somewhere along the way but is also minus most of his spine. In the face of ignorance, alas, none of these individuals has the balls to call an idiot an idiot, or to resign in force in the face of ignorance, lies, and deceit. That rather defines cowardice, I think. I warned Dan six years ago and more what will happen sooner or later if you try to finance state government with Permanent Fund earnings. Somewhere along the line there will be no earnings, and we have in fact arrived at that point. He could have at least howled about how much the oil companies were stealing from Alaska. Now the howls will be howls of real pain. If you happen to have any real job prospect down south, get the hell out of here now. If you have family down south who will take you in, get the hell out of here now. Latest on the cruise ships is hardly positive. Norwegian appears to be toast, collateralizing their vessels, etc., for a bit of cash flow. I find it difficult to believe the Norwegians will be bailing out cruise lines, albeit they could afford to do it. There is no logic to doing so. All of the cruise lines should be bankrupt within months. The Congress of the United States was quite specific it was not interested in bailing out cruise lines; but the CEO of Carnival is a Trumpista boot licker, so regulators have been fired or displaced and substantial sums have been back-doored to this jerk; illegally, but no surprise there. I doubt it will be anywhere near enough to sustain an industry which in short order is about to be intensively investigated by governments all over the world (Australia is already reviewing criminal charges), but we will see. In the meantime Carnival’s Trumpista CEO will be enjoying big bonuses at Federal expense (your expense, too, by the way), while you are standing in line at bankruptcy court, and your spouse is in the food bank line. Be thrilled; be more thrilled every day. Estimates vary amongst the folks in the business locally who don’t have their heads in the clouds, or someplace even darker, but the optimists figure the tourist industry in truncated form might get trucking again in three years or so; others think more like five years. When are you planning on going to a restaurant again? Let alone a petrie dish for viruses like a cruise ship is. It will be a slow burn for many reasons, not the least of which is a whole lot of people are about to go broke, and a whole lot of people who never thought that could happen to them are going to go broke, too. Recent reports also inform us that many state retirement funds are about to go bankrupt, and there is no reason to assume Alaska is going to get an exclusion on that. If you have money that you can access in an Alaska state retirement account, I recommend getting it out now. You have a chance thereby to put it in a place that might be safer. But where is that place? The stock market right now should be sitting somewhere around 10,000, maybe less. More than 33 million Americans have become unemployed in the last six weeks, and to them bones and crumbs have been tossed. Rather than ‘mom and pops’ small business relief money has all already been absorbed by everyone but real small businesses. Your Dear Leader has ordered that agriculture payments be made first, which may seem rational since we need to eat, but in fact is a designed scam co-sponsored by the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture to milk the Treasury for billions in payments to non-productive farms. If you want to learn about that, all you have to do is catch last Sunday’s 60 MINUTES starring Arkansas’s “Loophole.” Give him a call and make millions. What you are seeing in Texas right now is just a precursor of what will be happening in many places before long. Food bank lines miles long. Get ready; start preparing now. Do what your Dear Leader is totally incapable of doing, and plan ahead. Texas is a neo-feudalistic society both socially and economically, so when the plug is pulled even those with pretense to middle class status discover their impoverishment minus a paycheck or two. They got there first thereby, that’s all. But for the stock market we have already the accumulated wealth of no less than three generations yet born pumped in as liquidity. And the Fed assures they are ready with all their tools to pump in as much as needed, as the FDIC insurance of the stock market, to maintain liquidity. How many lives are those 401Ks worth? In the meantime bones and crumbs for the workers, the small businesses, the citizens of good old USA. For the Trumpistas in the inner circle massive graft, stealing, and cronyism. (And that is just to start.) For the government worker and the retiree, false hope. The stock market will go south. “Brrrr-rump-te-dum, Brrr-rumpt-te-dum, da, da, da, hiyo, Silver, and away,” in his guise as fearless leader, in his own reality TV show all about, you know, ....him; your Dear Leader starring as that intrepid war leader, Herr Kapitan Copout, in the Extreme Narcissists Fraternity’s production of CAPTAIN COP- OUT, THE PERFECT PLO brings you 80,000 dead in less than seven weeks, but not to worry because it is all just a hoax anyway. So party hearty; yesterday only 2400 died. It’s just like the flu anyway. Don’t need those masks. Yesterday 2400 died, 1600 to 1800 a day on average for the past two weeks, considerably more before then. Three thousand a day projected by June 1; quite probable. It’s all a hoax, don’t worry. During World War II Americans died at the average rate of 232 a day; the Civil War, as I recall, is about 243 a day. Two thousand dead a day, ah, that’s nothing. The dead far outnumber the combat dead of World War I, but it’s nothing. It is blatantly a hoax, did not your Dear Leader say so? PLO, by the way, is military parlance for Permanent Latrine Orderly, and no one has dignified the position better with their lack of competence and anything resembling leadership skills. The Coronavirus (see, I just mentioned the word for the first time) has been conquered. Captain Cop- Out has resolved the issue by censoring the information, by limiting testing capacity to virtual non- existence save for the chosen few, so that now Covid19 is going to disappear because the state governments in on the fix, along with your Dear Leader, are not going to be providing updated information as to casualties. And the simple way to ensure we don’t have many cases of Covid19 is to stop testing for it. Damn. Brilliant. Just think what would have happened had we done that instead two months ago. I do not ever want to hear a Republican call themselves Pro-Life again, that is so phony. When your kids get sick next time, call a politician. As Cuomo said, how much is a single life worth? Not much to you people. It’s dollars and doughnuts instead. So perchance Covid19 has come and gone locally, let us hope never to return. (Viruses are real sneaky, though, dumb asses; be wary) Got a lot of folks yet with their heads in the sand locally, but here is the reality: We are all about to re-learn why we signed that petition to recall Governor Crude, and that in spades. All that CARES money will be consumed in the Anchorage/Fairbanks corridor. There will be very little for the rest of the state. The State otherwise is basically broke already. I will actually be real surprised if we ever see the ferry boats go again (I hope I am wrong.). There is no money or other relief of consequence to be had from the State. (One of the first things we should do locally is tear up the remaining asphalt from the Coast Guard base to Saxman, and convert it to a dirt road. It is a road to an Indian village, and the Alaska Department of Transportation obviously harbors considerable racist animus because they have repeatedly lied about this project. The asphalt thereby saved can be used to fill the other potholes before the rest of the roads turn to pure crap.) There are no cruise ships this year, and it is anyone’s guess about next year, but the idea of a fast rebound economically is nuts. Covid19 is likely to be around through 2021, and while any Trumpista might be willing to let a cruise ship sail U.S. waters, Canada and a whole lot of other places might have a very different attitude on the subject for quite a while. There will not be a quick rebound. Local government workers need to be laid off in copious quantity. The backbone of the middle class locally is going to get porous and spongy, and this one is going to get real tough because thus starts the snowball. But be reactive and try to tax your way out of it somehow, and you will go down with an anvil around your neck. Sales tax revenues are going to verge on the non-existent comparatively. What are you going to do, tax seniors on fixed incomes to death? Hammer the property owners with the ‘for sale’ signs in their front yard and three months down on their mortgage? Good luck with that. Ketchikan is in the deepest doo-doo imaginable, and the people of this town are too selfish for me to believe there is much hope to stabilize the community. How are you going to feed every one next winter? How are you going to keep them warm? Where will the money come from? Where the will? Be thrilled; be more thrilled every day. And good luck with that. David G Hanger
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Received May 08, 2020 - Published May 09, 2020 Related Viewpoint:
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