‘modern disaster capitalism’

“Every­body ready to google
Who did Trump put in charge of FEMA?
and find out it’s like
El De­barge or a dog”
—Gin and Tacos

“Please only se­ri­ous re­spons­es:
Jared Kush­n­er re­port­ed­ly looked to a
Face­book group to crowd­source ideas
to stop the coro­n­avirus”
—Aaron Holmes, Busi­ness In­sid­er, 13 March 2020

“Pence is in charge of the coro­n­avirus re­sponse be­cause he’s a dis­as­ter cap­i­tal­ist. He cut his teeth man­ag­ing the erad­i­ca­tion of pub­lic schools in New Or­leans af­ter Hur­ri­cane Ka­t­ri­na, and was heav­i­ly in­volved in oth­er as­pects of pri­va­tiz­ing and cor­po­ratis­ing re­build­ing.

“When I vol­un­teered there months af­ter the hur­ri­cane, our jobs were sup­posed to be re­build­ing homes. The or­ga­ni­za­tion we’d vol­un­teered with could­n’t do that. The city had de­clared that homes with veg­e­ta­tion above a cer­tain height would be fined. Of course, a hur­ri­cane brings in rich mud and soil. Plants shoot up swift­ly af­ter­wards.

“You had a city full of peo­ple dis­placed, not get­ting their mail be­cause they’d evac­u­at­ed in an emer­gency, be­ing fined month­ly with­out even know­ing it. When the fines ex­ceed­ed the val­ue of the prop­er­ty (as as­sessed by the city), the city got to seize it. Peo­ple came back not even know­ing their homes had been seized due to fines no one had told them about.

“So in­stead of re­build­ing homes, the peo­ple in charge of vol­un­teer­ing were track­ing down con­tact in­for­ma­tion for peo­ple, and the vol­un­teers our­selves were go­ing to homes sim­ply to cut down trees and shoots so the home­own­ers would­n’t get need­less­ly fined.

“This ap­proach and so many oth­ers were de­signed to chase peo­ple liv­ing in poor­er sec­tions of the city out. The more prop­er­ty the city seized, the more they could gen­tri­fy a neigh­bor­hood, sell it off to de­vel­op­ers. The goal was not to help the peo­ple un­der threat, or to help them bridge the long-term im­pacts of the emer­gency. The goal was to see them es­sen­tial­ly erad­i­cat­ed in or­der to cre­ate room for cor­po­rate op­por­tu­ni­ty.

“Mike Pence is one of the pri­ma­ry de­sign­ers of mod­ern dis­as­ter cap­i­tal­ism. His his­to­ry is­n’t one of tak­ing care of peo­ple. His his­to­ry is that of find­ing fi­nan­cial op­por­tu­ni­ty for the rich in the midst of dis­as­ter. His his­to­ry is iden­ti­fy­ing mas­sive pol­i­cy shifts that can be made dur­ing large-scale shock, when peo­ple are too con­cerned with sur­vival to fight it.

“Luck­i­ly, we have a state sys­tem. We have gov­er­nors to whom the White House is an­swer­able. We have state leg­is­la­tures to whom gov­er­nors are an­swer­able. If your state does­n’t have a plan or is drag­ging its heels in re­sponse, get on the phone and change that. Gov­er­nors of­fices are not used to re­ceiv­ing pub­lic pres­sure to the ex­tent that leg­isla­tive of­fices are. Gov­er­nors can over­ride many fed­er­al short­com­ings and place de­mands on fed­er­al of­fices re­gard­less of what the White House says. They can ac­cept test­ing the ad­min­is­tra­tion won’t. They can im­ple­ment mit­i­ga­tion the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment won’t pass.

“The White House’s goal will not be to help peo­ple. It will be to cap­i­tal­ize on dis­as­ter. Want to stop the spread of coro­n­avirus? Want to en­sure prop­er test­ing? Want to lim­it the ex­tent hos­pi­tals will be over­whelmed? Want to nip dis­as­ter cap­i­tal­ism in the bud for once? Want to help the peo­ple who will be most im­pact­ed by this? Learn your gov­er­nor’s phone num­ber, and the num­bers of your rep­re­sen­ta­tive and sen­a­tor in the state house.

“Many of us will be stuck at home with more free time. May as well use it for some­thing pro­duc­tive, and noth­ing is more pro­duc­tive than mak­ing elect­ed of­fi­cials do the jobs they asked us to give them.

—Gabriel Valdez, Face­book

 

But fear not,

Trump is on the case and will find a way for your land­lord to write the cost of evict­ing you off his tax­es. Solved!

The Trump Ad­min­is­tra­tion Will Move Ahead With Their Plan To Kick Peo­ple Off Of Food Stamps De­spite Coro­n­avirus Out­breakhttps://t.co/NBCiSDowWH pic.twitter.com/cCDfaSjK9z

— Paul McLeod (@pdmcleod) March 12, 2020

 

The Trump era has shown un­equiv­o­cal­ly what Re­pub­li­cans are.

When Mc­Connell and Sen­ate Re­pub­li­cans were try­ing to pass tax cuts for the rich, they worked through the night, bent the rules, and rammed it through.

When the coun­try is fac­ing a pan­dem­ic that threat­ens the lives of mil­lions, they’re not even in town.

— Robert Re­ich (@RBReich) March 14, 2020

The

weird thing is

if Covid–19

was the plan­et

fu­mi­gat­ing

us pests off

I’d feel sor­ta ok

about dy­ing

from it.

Like,

“ok I get it.”

 

This right here:

Some­one should save all of these stu­pid tweets from elect­ed of­fi­cials.

They won’t age well. https://t.co/8svqqZYCTm

— The Hoarse Whis­per­er (@HoarseWisperer) March 15, 2020

In a Sev­en. Minute. Pre­pared. Speech. Read. From. A. Teleprompter. https://t.co/6yjpMcmM0F

— George Con­way (@gtconway3d) March 12, 2020

 

We are all right now ex­pe­ri­enc­ing what hap­pens when self­ish Lib­er­tar­i­an Re­pub­li­cans with their self-cen­tered “tax­a­tion is theft” (while liv­ing in far flung sub­urbs sub­si­dized by the rest of us) horse­shit force the rest of us to live by their nar­cis­sism.

Again, make ZERO mis­take: Self­ish MAGA Amer­i­ca did this.

 

“If you think it’s un­eth­i­cal to price gouge hand san­i­tiz­er when peo­ple need it most, you bet­ter sit down be­fore I tell you about in­sulin prices”
—Gin and Tacos

 

This sto­ry in Die Welt is ab­solute­ly in­cred­i­ble.

Ap­par­ent­ly Don­ald Trump’s ad­min­is­tra­tion tried to hire Ger­man sci­en­tists who are work­ing on a #COVIDー19 vac­cine and of­fered them a lot of mon­ey so it would be ex­clu­sive to the US https://t.co/Y3Crw63xD4

— She­hab Khan (@ShehabKhan) March 15, 2020

 

Here’s a song for this mo­ment in time.

 

—ja­son malm­berg

Flom­mist Ja­son Malm­berg is a sim­ple man who be­lieves in brown liquor and small dogs. He also makes art some­times. Copy­right © 2020 Ja­son Malm­berg. Pic­tured up top: George Grosz, John the Mur­der­er (cropped), 1918, shown for very his­tor­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance.

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