[RE]

Moms care costs $7500/month, I think the bill for the year I just sent to the accountant for tax considerations was like $88k for the year.

$7500 is mid-upper range for AC living, which generally house Private Pay clients and will only take a minimum required number of Medicaid patients.  Medicaid reimbursement rates vary from state to state, but are generally around $4000.  After that, the AC living place takes the residents Social Security and Pension checks, leaving the resident just $100/mo expense money.  Avg SS check is around $1700, and here in AK many get much less than that, natives who held few jobs at low pay and did subsistence living,women who were housewives and live on survivor benefits, etc.  They often get only $500-1000.  The cheapest places run about $5500.  They are all Medicaid.  On some patiets with low SS, they get less than $5500.  People who have big checks, they make more.  Even if you get the max SS of $3500 or so, you still only get to keep $100 of it.  You must have assets of less than $2000 total in stocks, bonds, real estate, cars etc.  All that has to be spent down before Medicaid will kick in.  These places are the worst ones.

Private Pay AC is better.  For rich people who can afford to pay $88K/yr to keep mom or dad in one of these places or they have insurance that will cover it, life in a warehouse for the old, crippled and dying is better.  It's like the difference between a Federal Penitentiary for White collar criminals and Rikers Island in NYC.  Prison life is much more comfy and less dangerous.

The experience of walking in to one of these places is nothing like it is for a person who still has all his marbles living 24/7 with brain dead zombies walking around, periodically falling and breaking things, getting agitated daily and yelling profanity at staff and other patients, and priodically getting hold of pens, eating utensils, scissors or aything else they find they can brandish as a weapon.  Everything not nailed down will be picked up and dropped somewhere else you can't find it.  Cell phones go out with the garnage.  Lamps get knocked over, so do big screen TVs.  Even when yu're not being threatened, it's soul destroying to live with these folks in the same space.  Why do you think relatives pay $88000 to send them there?  Because they can't stand living with them at home, and they're related to them.  I don't know these folks at all, and I have enough problems of my own.  To be sharing living space with 3 zombies is not my idea of decent care.  Maybe for them, they are brain dead, but not for me.

The food also sounds better where you have your mom incarcerated.  This does vary, and I'm critical because I am used to eating only the highest quality meat and vegetables.  Here it's actually edible about half the time for me.  In the AC home I was trapped in for 7 months, I survived on Peanut Butter sandwiches and cheese and crackers and never ate a meal after the first week.  It was disgusting, worse than cafeteria food in NYC Pubic Schools which I wouldn't eat as akd.  I brown bagged my lunches.

My current SNIF costs more than double what you pay, $16,500/mo, it's all picked up by Medicare and Medicaid splitting the bill, and they take my entire SS an Union Pension checks and leave me $200/mo
pocket money, which barely buys me my daily cokes and brownie bites I like.  In indepndent living, I pay all my own bills, medicaid pays a PCA to come 4 hours a day and after eveything is paid for including the best steaks or king crap in the 3 Bears Meat & Fish dept to eat, I still have $1500/mo for discretionary purchases.  However, so far I haven't been called up on one of the waiting lists to move out.  Hopefully this summer.

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[RE]

Dementia runs in the family (from grandfather side, got him, and 2 of his 4 kids, 3rd didn't last long enough to see if he had it), so my question right now is how to find a reasonable exit should it become apparent I'm headed that way. Quality of life has always been more important than quantity in IMHO.

"Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming "Wow! What a Ride!"
― Hunter S. Thompson, The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967

I have similar sentiments, and even still having all (well most) of my marbles still working, when I was really in pain all the time with no end in sight I definitely would have gone for euthanasia.  Unfortunately, painless assisted suicide is not legal here, and unless you have a terminal disease like stage 4 cancer, not even legal in Oregon, where Dr. Kevorkian's followers still will help you take a painless and  maybe even fun last trip to the Great Beyond dosing you up with a cocktail of Heroin and pharmaceutical Sandoz quality LSD that Timmy Leary got back in "65 to test on his Harvard student guinea pigs.  My crew of psychologists didn't experiment on my brain with acid, but there was lots of unethical research I was a lab rat for on and off for about 10 years before I finally pulled the plug on it.  The CIA still has the good stuff of course, and recently it was approved by the FDA to treat anxiety.  Supposedly just one dose can relieve you of anxiety indefinitely, which I find hard to believe.  If 1 pill cures you, where's the profit for Sandoz in that?

Without the pain though, I'm sufficiently entertained living disabled, I keep my mind occupied writing about collapse and beating the CNAs who know how to play some chess when they want to play or improve themselves.  I can't play as well as when I was 15, probably I was better when I was 10, but I still have enough functioning neurons and synaptic connection to beat most people at the game.  When I start losing, that will be a sign it's time to hang up my spurs and take the Hunter Thompson Ticket to the Great Beyond.  Despite my physical disabilities though, Alzheimers is not likely for me, parrents and grandparents lived to their 80s and died either from heart problems or emphysema from smoking. So far my lungs and ticker test OK, so  probably have 15-20 years left rolling around my room and common area of an independent senior living building, or a SNIF if I really can't handle not having 24/7 help.  I may even get to see SHTF Day arrive, when they will no dout legalize euthanasia for cripples and old folks.  This time, I hope I get the top quality Acid, Colombian Flake, and Afghanistan Poppies for my last ride.  Wash it all down with a bottle of 50 year old Glenlivet single malt scotch whiskey and free my soul from this decrepit and used up old meat package to wander the multiverse in search of another planet with a life form I can park myself in for another incarnation of RE exploring the physical world around another time.  Death is not the end, it's only the beginning for souls that can hold themselves together when freed from the meat package they are encased in for its lifetime.  My soul holds together well, although hanging out for the next 15 years with zombies may kill it for good.  I'll try to avoid that.

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[RE]

Don't say I never put up pro-EV articles!  Here's a real Ra-Ra-Sis-Boom-Ba EV cheerleader piece of propaganda telling us that the public wants EVs now and without them millions of people will die and the Chinese are going to zoom in and capture the market because FSoA based auto companies are dragging their feet...etc, etc, etc.

Now, a lot of this article is true, except for the part about EVs actually being able to stop millions of people from dying as a result of pollution.  Even IF we managed a full transition to EVs by 2035, they wouldn't al bee being charged up by non-carbon emitting power generation.  We're not gonna build enough nukes to do that by 2035.

Also, despite all the charging stations Tesla has built, there are still huge swaths of the country where finding a charging station is almost as hard as finding an honest politician, and the contention that everybody wants one is somewhat undrrmined by the fact Hertz just dumped 20,000 Teslas because nobody wanted to rent them.  They won't rent them, but they'll buy them?  Well, I suppose if it's mandated they'll have to.

Anyhow, as the clock ticks down here in the waning days of the Age of Oil, the discourse is getting a little shrill. By 2035 they'll be firing RPGs at each other.

https://electrek.co/2024/03/23/big-auto-is-begging-governments-to-let-them-go-bankrupt-as-chinese-evs-loom/

Big Auto is begging governments to let them go bankrupt as Chinese EVs loom

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[RE]

Well, I don't think I can hold an "I told you so" victory party yet, but my prediction of an eventual Tesla bankruptcy is inching ever closer. In conjunction with his recent failure in the social media world, the Musk Magic is beginning to lose its luster.

Besides seeing The Donald broke and in an Orange Jumpsuit doing the Perp Walk, there's nothing I'd rather see more before I buy my Ticket to the Great Beyond than Elon in Bankruptcy Court.    A boy can dream, right?

https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/07/business/tesla-ev-sales-slowdown-stock/index.html

What's wrong with Tesla?

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[K-Dog]

Well, I don't think I can hold an "I told you so" victory party yet, but my prediction of an eventual Tesla bankruptcy is inching ever closer. In conjunction with his recent failure in the social media world, the Musk Magic is beginning to lose its luster.

Besides seeing The Donald broke and in an Orange Jumpsuit doing the Perp Walk, there's nothing I'd rather see more before I buy my Ticket to the Great Beyond than Elon in Bankruptcy Court.    A boy can dream, right?

https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/07/business/tesla-ev-sales-slowdown-stock/index.html

What's wrong with Tesla?

RE

You can dream all you want but both Bezos and Musk are threads in the Deep state fabric. 

I contend their success has been at least in part because they are supposed to succeed. Do we forget Bezos paid no sales tax for years??  Amazon Web services provides a dashboard to control and monitor web sites.  Every time an Amazon Web Server is spun up big brother is there watching.

It has been years since it happened.  In the right corner of my voronoi map of websites on the other page of this website is a link to John Trudel.  It is there for a reason.  This reason.

John Trudell was a poet, recording artist, actor and speaker whose international following reflects the universal language of his words, work and message.  John was also a member of AIM (American Indian Movement).  The spokesperson for the Indians of All Tribes' takeover of Alcatraz which began in 1969.

During most of the 1970s, he served as the chairman of the American Indian Movement.

The FBI was at war with AIM at Wounded Knee.  The Wounded Knee Occupation, (Second Wounded Knee Occupation), began on February 27, 1973, when approximately 200 Oglala  Sioux) and followers of the American Indian Movement (AIM) seized and occupied the town of Wounded Knee, South Dakota.

The FBI burned Johns family to death and whoever took remote control of the Netflix documentary I was watching kept jumping the 'bouncing ball' back to the part where Johns family is burned to death.

I had to watch it three times.  Did this freak me out?  Yes it did.

Did I know who was doing it?  I did, and the gang stalking that started immediately afterwards confirmed it all.  At least one of the gang stalkers worked for the TSA.  He scored some overtime watching me.  Told to buy a pair of jet-black pants and to put on a bleached white shirt.  I know this because it turns out we both know someone else.  The owner of a coffee shop I was being harassed at.  The cover was blown.  The owner and the government gang stalker went to high school together.

I was being gang stalked because I had learned some things about American troll farms the general public is not supposed to know about. 

The instructions were to use my phone and arrive where I was going before I arrived.  The instruction simple, to let me know I was watched and that there was nothing I could do to disseminate the information I had learned.  I tried to get my information out, only to find that conventional media is trained by the FBI to never talk to anyone without an EMAIL chain.  Since my email was already monitored with problem emails being returned to me in multiple copies (3 each), email was not an option. 

When we talk about the men in black in the Diner I like to add 'in white shirts'.  Because that is how the dozen agents who stalked me were dressed.

Americans live in a tyranny so pleasant the do not know they are without any freedom or power.  Like fish who do not know about water.

After 46 years of imprisonment, it's time to free Leonard Peltier  Leonard Peltier has been imprisoned in the United States for over 46 years, some of which were spent in solitary confinement, serving two life sentences for murder despite concerns over the fairness of his trial. He has always maintained his innocence.

On June 26, 1975, FBI Agents Jack Coler and Ronald Williams were murdered at Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in the southwest corner of South Dakota.

The Pine Ridge Indian Reservation is located in the southwest corner of South Dakota. Wounded Knee, South Dakota is approximately 18 miles from the Village of Pine Ridge on the reservation. The incident involving the FBI at Wounded Knee occurred about two years prior to the murders of Agents Jack R. Coler and Ronald A. Williams. There is no concrete connection between the two. However, the Indian factionalism that resulted from Wounded Knee possibly contributed to an atmosphere of tension that existed on the Pine Ridge Reservation.

[RE]

Oh, I don't expect bankruptcy to actually impoverish Muskrat, corporate BK doesn't touch his personal wealth, and even if that was somehow attached, I'm sure he has plenty of money stashed in offshore numbered accounts in the Cayman Islands and Switzerland.  It's mainly the symbolism involved.  His reputation as an "influencer" is already tarnished, and that's a good start.

Far as AIM goes, the standoff with the FBI and the persecution of Russell Means and Leonard Peltier are concerned, I'm well aware of all that stuff, even going back to my years in Pirate Radio, when I talked about it on my Talk Show, where I played mainly protest songs from the 60s by Phil Ochs, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez et al.

Has Elon's success been partly engineered by the Deep State?  It's possible, I wouldn't be surprised if it was anyhow.  Doubtful that could ever be proved though, it's another bit of conspiracy theory.  What occured at Wounded Knee however is a matter of public record, including the trial of the AIM leadership which was a total sham.

One thing also true is you'll never find a tech Billionaire who is truly left wing in his politics, because to get that rich you have to be a capitalist.  You might find one among the ranks of trust fund babies with inherited wealth, but even that I doubt.  You'll find some like Bezos ex-wife who support social programs that have some left wing goals, but they're not anti-capitalist.  They just assuage their guilt by setting up philanthropic organizations so they can claim they help the poor.  It's a nice tax dodge also.

The main point is the symbolism of icons of capitalism like The Donald and Muskrat failing publicly at the thingthey claim to be geniuses at, which is making money.  Neither of these guys really makes money, they're actually the world's biggest debtors.  The debts are of course all held corporately as commercial paper, so those BKs don't touch their personal wealth.  The Donalds problems are that besides the fact his corporate debt is a big house of cards, he's also liable for criminal penalties for fraud and tax evasion.  That couls bankrupt him personally as well, and all he'd have left is money stashed in offshore accounts.  Musk doesn't have those kind of legal problems as of yet.  Tesla however is swimming in debt.  the only thing keeping them afloat is they are TBTF.  That may not be enough though if the stock price keeps dropping and they don't sell enough carz.

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[K-Dog]

Leonard Peltier and the history of the American Indian Movement | Rattling the Bars

A history of the AIM.

Of 570 treaties the spokeswoman says, 570 treaties were broken.  Resulting in a trip to Washington (1968), an occupation and the birth of AIM.

An escalation of tensions where some 'good old boys' in the FBI went fucking too far.  Sixty four murders of Native Americans at Pine Ridge.  A reign of terror and a shootout.  Three more dead two in the FBI.

Leonard is set up and made an example of.

[RE]

It's not hard to see where Muskrat is going with his "Robotaxi".  He wants to turn automobiles from an Ownership model to a Service model where people pay by the use to ride around in cars he owns.  In other words, a renta-car company with computerized drivers, dispatchers and desk personnel.  Uber without the drivers.  Just like Microsoft turned software from a program you bought on a disk and could use as you wanted to a service you get from the Cloud and have to pay annual fees for.  They own it, you rent it.  Classic capitalist thinking.

Although fewer people all the time can afford to buy a car and most cars sit empty and unused most of the time so it's very inefficient, people who can affordto travel around willy nilly want their OWN cars to drive around.  People who cannot afford their own cars will not be able to afford the per ride robotaxi cost Muskrat will need to charge to make his idea profitable.

He keeps digging himself a deeper hole.

https://www.investors.com/news/tesla-stock-a-buy-or-a-sell-in-2024/

Is Tesla Stock A Buy Or A Sell As Tesla Bull Claims Robotaxi Is 'Not The Answer'?

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[K-Dog]

Muskrat the innovator who built cars to mimic ICE cars in every way.  An innovator in no way.

What could have been.

[RE]

Repairing EV batts sounds like a great side hustle to do out of your garage if you're good with electrics.  How much do you think you'd need to spend on tools and diagnostics equipment to set up shop?  Guesses anybody?

https://qz.com/evs-are-dying-fast-and-the-repair-industry-is-lagging-1851450290

Electric cars are dying fast and the repair industry is lagging

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[TDoS]

Repairing EV batts sounds like a great side hustle to do out of your garage if you're good with electrics.  How much do you think you'd need to spend on tools and diagnostics equipment to set up shop?  Guesses anybody?

Electric cars are dying fast and the repair industry is lagging

RE

238k miles on 2 of them and nothing has broken on either yet. Shocks...I wore out 2 sets of shocks on the higher mileage one. So maybe the repair industry is dying because not all EVs are built poorly?

[RE]

238k miles on 2 of them and nothing has broken on either yet. Shocks...I wore out 2 sets of shocks on the higher mileage one. So maybe the repair industry is dying because not all EVs are built poorly?

To die it would have had to live first.  Since the problem is the length of the waiting list to get a repair of the batts done, obviously there aren't enough technicians doing these repairs.  Insufficient supply results in waiting lists.  See the affordable housing problem and the medical industry, they both have the same problem.

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[TDoS]

238k miles on 2 of them and nothing has broken on either yet. Shocks...I wore out 2 sets of shocks on the higher mileage one. So maybe the repair industry is dying because not all EVs are built poorly?

To die it would have had to live first.

Feel free to email the author if all you've got nowadays is being pedantic. I understand how to go with the flow, and if the concept is dying, I'll stick with flow.

Since the problem is the length of the waiting list to get a repair of the batts done, obviously there aren't enough technicians doing these repairs.

Or people are buying cars with really shitty batteries, or not caring for them properly? SOC in my high mileage EV is probably 80% of new, and 10 years old now. The lower mileage one is about 90%, and is 9 years old. Both or either batteries will probably outlive me.

I will be happy to engage in detailed conversations with anyone here with experience with these types of larger EV batteries of course, their care and feeding, tips and tricks on how to make them last and not need to be replaced and repaired within a decade and 100k miles of use. 

[RE]

This time it's not the Chinese who are toast, it's their competition in the EV market.  According to this review of the recent Chinese auto show, they have cheaper prices and a superior product.  The only problem is so far almost none of them are available for purchase in the FSoA.  Even WITH the ridiculously high tariffs, they're still a better buy than the crap coming from Tesla and Detroit carmakers.

Rght now the problem is there are TOO MANY of them, and they're not all gonna last. Quite a few will close up shop as the market consolidates.  Trying to get one repaired here in the FSoA would probably be impossible.  So for the time being, if you have one shipped over here, you're pretty much on your own.

https://insideevs.com/features/719015/china-is-ahead-of-west/

I Went To China And Drove A Dozen Electric Cars. Western Automakers Are Cooked

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[TDoS]

Even WITH the ridiculously high tariffs, they're still a better buy than the crap coming from Tesla and Detroit carmakers.
RE

Just got EV#1 out of the garage, crap built by Detroit automakers. A decade old now, I'll admit it has needed a couple sets of rear shocks, but 175k miles now and I'm thinking....get it out to make sure it still runs like the top, or quiver in fear and put it back in the garage?

Dunno....you use your electric far more often than I do...endless running around whereas mine is more occasional. 1000 miles here, 1000 miles there. Maybe I should just keep driving the other electric, it has fewer miles on it, is 1 year newer, and hasn't had the horrors of crap shocks needing replaced yet. Plus, it is built in Japan, so, no Detroit involvement there.