This reminds me that, basically, they are just gangs . Shawn Ryan did a podcast with a guy who had who had worked in a gang unit - I think his name is Scott Blake off the top of my head. (Watch the clips because the full podcast is over five hours.) He was explaining the difference between traditional and non-traditional gangs. Traditional is your established gangs with a national presence - more akin to crime families. Think Blood and Crips Non -traditional tend to be more like Bob's Boys - neighborhood gangs made up of younger teenagers. Kind of a JV before they are old enough to move up to the big time. The biggest delineator is that the traditional gangs are rules based, and they will join forces from time to time if the common interest/enemy is shared. (He said what scared him more was the non-traditional because it was a no rules environment populated with people who were too young to understand the consequences of their actions and thus could be very dangerous.)
We tend to think of gang culture as something that comes from being poor and I think that is a partial narrative that has been sold to us over the years to keep us from noticing. We tend to view the Cabal as rich and exotic, but in reality, they aren't any different - they have their rules and symbolism, etc. and are ruthless and self interested- perhaps even more so.
This guy was a divisional CEO. Andrew Witty is the real big guy over United Healthcare Group. Thompson became the divisional CEO in 2021 and had previously run the Mexicare/Medicaid division until 2021.
Saw one little potentially interesting tidbit that a fund based in CT called Parsifal Caputal Management LP bought over 36K of shares in Q3 making UHG their 15th largest holding. They apparently have five clients and AUM of $2.2B. Owned by a Lucas Warford and David Zorub.
I handle the quarterly payroll tax for my job. The guy who had the job before me screwed up and used a previous year's form one quarter so I refiled it on the correct form and included a letter explaining what had happened. Money was paid, just the wrong form. It was sent in several months ago. Got a letter yesterday that they acknowledged it was received but they need at least another 60 days to review. I just shook my head. What do you people DO??
Can't wait for this stupid shit to go away.
Cancer fucks with your head, even if you beat it. (My dad had cancer when he was 41 - he is 80 now. Half his life ago, and the fear still pops up from time to time.) I watched him on Election Night - when it was clear we had won, he got a little emotional and said he needed this so badly. Mentioned the cancer, his mom passing. Guy has been through a lot.
Do a search of PPP loans and see how much they got - they get a half billion from Medicaid alone each year, yet during CV applied and got for millions in PPP loans as basically franchises. Meanwhile real small businesses were hanging on by a hair or destroyed.
I can't remember where I heard it, but maybe a month ago, there was a statistic about bloat in education. Roughly since 2000, there has been a 5% increase in student population, which Is basically flat when you consider the gain in overall population. The increase in the number of teachers is 10%. And that kind of makes sense given many districts enacted smaller classroom sizes. (Does this mean 'better'? That is up for debate, but what I was considering was the explanation for the gains.) But when you look at the increase in administrative staff, the increase is 40%.
There is going to be a lot of howling, but what I would like to see is a chart of student performance year by year from the time the Department of Education was introduced of student performance - meaning the percentage of kids at grade level - and the percentage of non-teaching staff. Because I will bet there is a statistical correlation between the increase in bloat with the decrease in student performance - and this doesn't even take into account grade inflation. I want to see them try to defend a poor record. It should probably go back 10-20 years prior to that as well.
In the 70s, I remember my dad running down the street one morning in his pajamas with the metal can a la Oscar the Grouch chasing the truck when he forgot to put it out. There used to be several guys on one track- those guys were strong.
I caught an old episode of Eight is Enough not too long ago and two of the kids were taking out the garbage and I thought 'oh yeah' because that is when you just tossed everything into one can. Although I do remember my mom used to have a paper bag for what we now recycle and she would burn it in the fireplace. That is heresy now.
Feasting on your biases is a perfect description. Will be stealing that