Category: Uncategorized

State Farm pleads poverty. No way. It has $100BN in the Bank

SAN FRANCISCO

Lee Heidhues 2.8.2025

The Wall Street Journal buried the lede in its recent feature about the home insurance industry in California concentrating on the financial losses incurred by State Farm, “the nation’s largest home- and auto-insurance company, with more than 90 million customers nationwide.”

To mitigate these losses State Farm has cancelled thousands of home insurance policies in California. In a move to protect its bottom line.

Percentage of insurance policies State Farm
said last year it would not renew, by ZIP Code – The range is <5 percent in the lighter colors to > 50 percent in the darker colors

The reality is quite different as a deep dive into the WSJ piece clearly indicates. The truth about State Farm’s financial solvency can be found. It is buried deep in the investigative report.

Excerpted from The Wall Street Journal 2.6.2025

State Farm, the nation’s largest home- and auto-insurance company, with more than 90 million customers nationwide and a million home policies in California, has a strong credit rating and a surplus of well over $100 billion.

The California unit, by contrast, was heavily in the red even before the latest fires. Over the past nine years, it has spent $1.26 for every dollar collected in premiums, resulting in over $5 billion in underwriting losses, the insurer said last Monday. 

Consumer advocates said they believe State Farm may be exploiting the separation between the California subsidiary and the parent company to make the unit appear distressed and alone—rather than part of an extremely healthy national insurer—and so bolster its rate demands. 

A burning house in Pacific Palisades last month.

“Chicken Little in Bloomington will tell you that the sky is falling,” said Douglas Heller, director of insurance at the Consumer Federation of America, a consumer-advocacy group, referring to the insurer’s national headquarters in Illinois.  

A State Farm spokesman said the company “strongly disagrees” with any suggestion of financial engineering. 

“Chicken Little in Bloomington will tell you that the sky is falling.”

State Farm reorganized in 1998 to silo its subsidiary that sells home-insurance in California—called State Farm General Insurance. The company created a similar structure for its Florida home-insurance subsidiary, which operates in risky, hurricane-prone coastal areas. The Florida subsidiary threatened to leave that state in 2009 before dropping tens of thousands of policyholders in hurricane-prone areas. State Farm is a mutual company, owned by its policyholders, which uses a series of subsidiaries to sell insurance and investment products.

Meanwhile, industry representatives have argued in favor of the rate increases in California, saying consumers would suffer if the company collapsed. “This is a very serious situation. We want the market leader to stay,” said Rex Frazier, president of the Personal Insurance Federation of California, which represents State Farm and other insurers. “How much more serious does it have to get before people will approve the rate increase needed?”

Regulators have pushed back on State Farm’s previous demand for a 30% increase. Among their questions to the insurer, according to state filings: Given its claims of financial distress, does it plan to cut bonuses for executives? Or commissions for agents? State Farm responded no to both queries, according to the filings. 

https://www.wsj.com/business/state-farm-california-pulled-plug-fires-c702fff8?st=jNGJVW&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

Top photo: A State Farm storefront was destroyed by fires in Altadena, Calif., last month. Photo: Michael Nigro/Bloomberg News

The Elon Musk – Donald Trump Nazi American Coup d’etat – 2025

SAN FRANCISCO

Lee Heidhues 2.7.2025

Quick and brutal like Germany in 1933. Nazis Donald Trump and Elon Musk have their Reichstag fire. It’s happened and nobody has taken notice as the 250 year old democracy in America is burned to the ground.

The Nazi Felon President Trump may not like it.

The latest Elon Musk cover photo in Time tells an inconvenient truth about the presidency. Time Magazine which just two months ago The Nazi Trump was feted as Person of the Year for 2024.

The truth is fellow traveler Elon Musk has gleefully implemented The Nazi President’s coup d’etat in America with barely a whimper from devastated, somnolent and out maneuvered Democrats.

This is the condition of America in 2025.

An American Nazi takeover. So fast and effective.

The Reichstag fire (German: Reichstagsbrand, pronounced [ˈʁaɪçstaːksˌbʁant] ⓘ) was an arson attack on the Reichstag building, home of the German parliament in Berlin, on Monday, 27 February 1933, precisely four weeks after Adolf Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor of Germany. Marinus van der Lubbe, a Dutch council communist, was the culprit; the Nazis attributed the fire to a group of Communist agitators, used it as a pretext to claim that Communists were plotting against the German government, and induced President Paul von Hindenburg to issue the Reichstag Fire Decree suspending civil liberties, and pursue a “ruthless confrontation” with the Communists.[1] This made the fire pivotal in the establishment of Nazi Germany. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichstag_fire

That’s why Elon Musk wants more than America to succumb to his Nazi ideology. He is campaigning for extremist the Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) in the February 23rd national election.

Alternative for Germany (German: Alternative für Deutschland, AfD, German pronunciation: [aːʔɛfˈdiː] ⓘ) is a far-right[4] and right-wing populist[5][6] political party in Germany. The AfD is Eurosceptic,[7] and opposes immigration into Germany, especially Muslim immigration.[8] The name of the party reflects its resistance to (uncontested by mainstream parties) policies of Angela Merkel with her insistence on Alternativlosigkeit (lit. ’alternative-less-ness’, a German version of “there is no alternative“).[9] The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, has classified the party as a “suspected extremist” organization.[10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_for_Germany

Elon Musk. Soul mates with the German far right party and its standard bearer for Chancellor Alice Weidel

January 6, 2021. Nazi Trump got his coup d’etat four years later

Liz Heidhues soon to achieve the penultimate Kung Fu Black Belt

SAN FRANCISCO

Lee Heidhues 2.4.2025

It was a stormy Tuesday in February and a sunny day of accomplishment for Liz Heidhues in San Francisco.

Liz achieved her Red Belt in martial arts at the Tat Wong Kung Fu Academy in the city’s Richmond District. Where she has been sharpening her mind and body training in the ancient martial arts. An intellectual and physical pursuit Liz undertook after the first of her two ‘citizen’s arrests’ and incarcerations in April 2018. Both were discharged by the San Francisco Superior Court.

From her beginning at Tat Wong Kung Fu Academy Liz Heidhues has fully engaged in the martial arts – 2019 photo

Despite living under a state of constant fear and duress Liz relentlessly perseveres in achieving her goal.

Liz has been a member of Tat Wong’s exclusive Black Belt Club several years.

Master Chow awarded Liz her Red Belt today.

Master Chow and Grandmaster Tat Mau Wong, the founder of Tat Wong Academy with schools all over the world, mentor and provide spiritual guidance to Liz for the last psychologically stressful seven years.

Master Chow gives Kung Fu Red Belt awardee Liz the thumbs up – 2.4.2025

Despite life-disrupting trauma being inflicted on this San Francisco native, Liz will always fight for her rights. She’s a warrior.

She’s learned from the martial arts instructors how to hold her head up high and battle adversity with guts and integrity.

Conductor Jonathon Heyward leads the Seattle Symphony in “Mars” from Holst’s The Planets at Benaroya Hall. #ListenBoldly

Top photo: Liz’s martial arts belts proudly displayed on her kitchen table. The Black Belt is next.

“There are signs it is beginning to rot from within” Margaret Atwood

SAN FRANCISCO

Lee Heidhues 2.1.2025

Anti-AfD protesters carry banners which read ‘No place for fascism!’

Now and Then in Germany….America is Now Back in the Day of Then

DID I WEEP? 

YES:  TEARS CAME OUT OF MY TWO VISIBLE EYES, MY MOIST WEEPING HUMAN EYES. 

BUT I HAD A THIRD EYE, IN THE MIDDLE OF MY FOREHEAD. 

I COULD FEEL IT:  IT WAS COLD, LIKE A STONE.  IT DID NOT WEEP:  IT SAW.  AND BEHIND IT SOMEONE WAS THINKING:

 I WILL GET YOU BACK FOR THIS.  I DON’T CARE HOW LONG IT TAKES OR HOW MUCH SHIT I HAVE TO EAT IN THE MEANTIME, BUT I WILL DO IT.

Margaret Atwood – “The Testaments”  (2019) – Page 149

Margaret Atwood – “The Testaments”  (2019) – Page 149. One of my favorite books about the perils of unchecked fascism.

“Sister Morphine was my Frankenstein.” Marianne Faithfull
The Crow keeps a watchful eye on The Zone of Interest.
Despite the perils of fascism blogger Lee and Liz persevere and spend happy times together – Lunch at Asian Box Cafe – Asian Art Museum – 1/31/2025

Marianne Faithfull one of the ‘Parachute Women’ off to the sweet hereafter

‘Parachute Women’ The Rolling Stones ongoing sexual odyssey

SAN FRANCISCO

Lee Heidhues 1.30.2025

It was just days ago that I wrote about the ‘Parachute Women’ in the lives of the Rolling Stones. Today Marianne Faithfull, perhaps the most famous of the ‘Parachute Women’, has died at age 78 and with her death an icon of the 1960’s and beyond passes into cultural history.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marianne_Faithfull

Marianne Faithfull and Mick Jagger – circa late 1960’s

The Stones and Marianne Faithfull collaborated musically and romantically. Perhaps the most famous collaboration is the 1969 song ‘Sister Morphine’‘

Marianne Faithfull’s 1969 version of Sister Morphine which the Rolling Stones sang in their 1971 Sticky Fingers album

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sister_Morphine

“Sister Morphine” is a song written by Marianne Faithfull, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. Faithfull released the original version of the song as the B-side to her Decca Records single “Something Better” on 21 February 1969. A different version was released two years later by the Rolling Stones for their 1971 album Sticky Fingers.

Marianne Faithfull – December 29, 1946 – January 30, 2025

Axed from Lurie’s team. Kit Lam San Francisco rabble rouser.

Season of the Opportunist. Kit Lam goes on campaign trail for Levi’s scion
‘Power Play’ San Francisco Standard 1.29.2025

SAN FRANCISCO

Lee Heidhues 1.29.2025

The first day of The Year of the Snake is not a happy one for San Francisco political rabble rouser Man Kit Lam.

Kit Lam is out of Mayor Daniel Lurie’s administration after less than a month.

San Francisco Chronicle page one announcing Kit Lam’s “joining” Daniel Lurie’s mayoral campaign. March 12, 2024

Last March it was all smiles as then candidate Levi Strauss & Co. scion Daniel Lurie brought Kit Lam aboard as a liaison to the Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) community.

After Lurie’s victory in the Mayoral election last November, Kit Lam joined the incoming administration. It was a short lived tenure in the Mayor’s office.

His fate with Daniel Lurie is similar to that of his brief tenure with Supervisor Joel Engardio. Kit Lam managed Engardio’s 2022 successful Supervisorial campaign. He then came on as one of Engardio’s legislative aides. He left after a year.

Supervisor Joel Engardio and Kit Lam

At the time Kit Lam left Supervisor Engardio’s employ I was told he had a difficult working relationship with fellow legislative aides in City Hall. Then Mayor London Breed’s office also had a difficult time working with Kit Lam.

In both instances, Kit Lam said publicly he left for “personal reasons” and said he still supported both his former employers.

During 2021 and 2022 Kit Lam was active in the successful campaigns to Recall three School Board members and District Attorney Chesa Boudin.

Man Kit Lam, campaign manager for D4 supervisor candidate Joel Engardio, argues with Rev. Amos Brown of the NAACP at SFUSD Headquarters at 555 Franklin Street in San Francisco, Calif., on June 22, 2022, regarding Lowell High School admissions. | Camille Cohen/The Standard

Prior to entering the electoral arena Kit Lam did investigative work for the San Francisco school board. He was laid off several years ago.

In Hong Kong Kit Lam worked for law enforcement.

Top photo. Jason Kruta and Kit Lam confront each in the San Francisco Richmond District other during the School Board Recall petition campaign in 2021.

San Francisco MSM trumpeted the settlement of Man Kit Lam’s civil law suit against Jason Kruta. The young man who briefly disrupted his successful campaign to recall three Progressive School Board members in February 2022. An act for which Jason Kruta was fired from his job and was criminally prosecuted. A prosecution which was not enough for vengeful Man Kit Lam. He sued Mr. Kruta in San Francisco Civil Superior Court. A lawsuit which concluded in 2023.

Out with the Dragon. In with the Snake. Chinese Year 4723.

SAN FRANCISCO

Liz Heidhues – Guest writer and photographer – 1.28.2025

The Year of the Dragon ends today. The Wood Snake Year begins January 29, 2025, and ends on February 16, 2026. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_(zodiac)

Say goodbye to the the Dragon which has adorned our front door the past year.

Good things may be coming for the Merry Makers of The Chinese New Year celebration, when the Chinese calendar cycles to a new zodiac animal.

A bag of “Peace and Joyz” sweets, apples, a New Year cake and a realistic wooden snake in the blogger’s kitchen.
Sunset neighborhood shoppers check out the oranges and tangerines on Irving Street.
Flowers are desirable for the Chinese home to invite prosperity, growth and good fortune in the upcoming New Year.

But only pain and suffering are in store for those poor animals destined to be the celebrated delicacies for the groaning tables of the Chinese New Year feast.

I wouldn’t want to be a Dungeness crab waiting for a buyer to take me home and boil me alive for their New Year’s dinner.

A shopper inspects the crabs who are in their painful final throes of life before landing on a New Year dinner table

Last Sunday my gaze was riveted by a crowd of happy people hovering around a makeshift stall outside a market in the outer Sunset District of San Francisco.

I saw a vendor selling live Dungeness crabs, many with legs broken off, to a throng of captivated shoppers.

The shoppers were poking and dangling the crustaceans by a claw up in the air, to inspect whether one of the sentient creatures would be suitable for purchase.

Pulling the crab to its final destination.

Afterwards, they would toss the poor thing back into the box from which it had been plucked — upside down on the heap of its brethren crustaceans stacked like logs — to thrash futilely about, as it tried to right itself and crawl away to escape a cruel death.

The unnecessary pain and suffering the human species inflicts on the animals it kills and eats is enough to stop a thinking person in their tracks.

Screenshot
Sunset neighborhood residents of all ages and types on Irving Street.

I looked at the oblivious faces of the shoppers around me.

Chinese New Year celebrants on their way home with their completed shopping.

I had to force myself to turn my attention back to the purpose for which I had cycled from the Richmond District, through Golden Gate Park, and to the Outer Sunset District for.

I had cycled to Irving Street to find a cardboard cut-out to adorn my front door.

The Snakes hangs atop the store next to a beautiful lantern.

Every Chinese New Year’s, I put the lunar animal associated with the new lunar year on my door to invite good luck and happiness into my home where I have lived 41 years. This time I needed to put the Snake out. To my chagrin, I discovered I was lacking the Snake in the extensive collection of Chinese New Year’s cardboard cut-outs I have saved.

I possessed all the other astrological signs of the Chinese lunar calendar, from the Rat to two versions of the Pig.

Blogger Liz’s stash of Chinese Lunar New Year animals. Carefully collected, embellished and stored over the years.

But I was missing the deepest thinker and the enigma of the Chinese zodiac cycle. The sixth sign in the lunar cycle of the 12 animal signs. The Snake.

I scoured all the stores I knew within hiking and biking distance of our home and finally found a decent facsimile of a Snake. It was hanging in the 22nd Ave and Irving housewares store where I buy my bamboo steamers and toilet bowl brushes.

A housewares store with a cornucopia of merchandise. During New Year’s the traditional red envelopes, fully stacked in this store, are a big attraction.

But this Snake had a happy and cherub-like face that I had never seen on the supernatural reptile that Western culture considers evil and cunning.

I had to buy embellishments to add to this angelic-looking Snake to give it the aura that we all attach to snakes.

When I asked the owner of the Richmond District’s Clement St store, where I have shopped for over two decades to buy my Chinese New Year’s decorations, why was it so hard to find a snake, she said to me: “People don’t like the Snake. They’re afraid of snakes. They won’t buy them. So I sell different kinds of things instead.”

After admiring the Snake and the other purchases I had made on Irving St, while wandering up and down its stretch crowded with shops catering to Chinese culture, palm trees, cars, and shoppers in search of Red Envelopes, I realized it had grown dark.

Oranges and tangerines- round and golden in color-symbolize fullness and wealth for prosperity in the New Year.
Sword lilies set the stage for prosperity on the journey through the New Year.

I packed the things I’d gotten into my pannier and rode my 30-year old bicycle back to a dark and deserted Golden Gate Park.

It was peaceful and quiet there after the noise and bustle of Irving Street.

City dwellers had surrendered the space to the dark, a serene and philosophical time when all the people and cars pack up and go home, leaving this natural space to its wildlife and a few unhoused denizens to enjoy.

A quiet scene in Golden Gate Park nestled between the Sunset and Richmond districts of San Francisco. Photo – Lee Heidhues

Top photo. The Snake is a supernatural animal able to wriggle out of its skin to exchange it for a new one as time marches on.

DeepSeek is “AI’s 2025 equal to Russia’s 1957 Sputnik moment” 

SAN FRANCISCO

Lee Heidhues 1.27.2025

DeepSeek https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeepSeek topples American AI tech stocks causing a meltdown in the financial markets.

When I was growing up the Russians launched the Sputnik satellite and upended America. Which until that time thought of itself as being a leader in outer space technology.

Today’s toppling of AI stocks is the 2025 version of how America on October 5th, 1957 was impacted forever when it learned the Russians jumped ahead in what was then called the “Space race.”

FIRST SOVIET SATELLITE, 1957.
‘The New York Times’ frontpage, 5 October 1957, announcing the launch of “Sputnik I”, the Soviet Union’s first earth satellite.

Now it’s the Chinese and their Entrepreneurship which is causing an uproar in the political and financial markets.

DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liang_Wenfeng has suddenly found himself catapulted to the top of the global multi billion dollar AI news cycle

Liang Wenfeng at right has found himself catapulted to the top of the global multi billion dollar AI news cycle

Excerpted from The New York Times 1.27.2025

DeepSeek is “AI’s Sputnik moment,” Marc Andreessen, a tech venture capitalist, posted on social media on Sunday.

How could a company that few people had heard of have such an effect?

Tech stocks tumbled. Giant companies like Meta and Nvidia faced a barrage of questions about their future. Tech executives took to social media to proclaim their fears.

And it was all because of a little-known Chinese artificial intelligence start-up called DeepSeek.

DeepSeek caused waves all over the world on Monday as one of its accomplishments — that it had created a very powerful A.I. model with far less money than many A.I. experts thought possible — raised a host of questions, including whether U.S. companies were even competitive in A.I. anymore.

Brazil condemns Nazi Felon Trump Deportees arrived handcuffed

SAN FRANCISCO

Lee Heidhues 1.26.2028

It’s just the beginning. Humans in chains. That’s the Nazi felon Donald Trump way.

This photo provided by the U.S. Dept. of Defense, U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agents guide undocumented immigrants onboard a C-17 Globemaster III at the Tucson International Airport, Ariz., Thursday, Jan. 23, 2025. (Senior Airman Devlin Bishop/Dept. of Defense via AP)

The Nazi felon American President Donald Trump has done more to destroy people’s dignity and human rights than any President in my lifetime.

You won’t read in the mainstream media that Nazi felon Trump is deporting men, women and children to their native countries in handcuffs. The Brazilian government is calling out this wanton human rights abuse.

The inhumane treatment of Brazilian citizens by the US will sour relations between the felon Trump administration and Brazilian President Lula’s government

Earlier the Colombian government harshly condemned Nazi felon Trump for carrying deportees in military cargo planes. And refused permission for the American planes to land in Colombia.

The conduct of Nazi felon Trump has shamed America throughout the world. His obscene performance is reminiscent of Germany beginning in January 1933.

Excerpted from Deutsche Welle 1.26.2025

The use of handcuffs on migrants is considered controversial in Brazil. Even former conservative Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, a Trump supporter, has called for an end to the practice.

Brazil’s government decried the US after dozens of deportees arrived on a plane in handcuffs. The Brazilian justice minister called it a “blatant disrespect” of their rights.

Brazil strongly condemned the US on Saturday after dozens of deportees arrived to the country in handcuffs.

A plane carrying 88 Brazilian passengers, 16 US security agents, and eight crew members, was originally scheduled to arrive in Belo Horizonte in the state of Minas Gerais, but had to make an emergency landing in the city of Manaus due to a technical error, said a statement by the Brazilian government.

The smirking Nazi felon Donald Trump

Brazilian federal police received the plane at the instructions of Justice Minister Ricardo Lewandowski and intervened, asking US agents to remove handcuffs from the deportees.

Lewandowski told President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva it was a “blatant disrespect” of their fundamental rights, according to a statement by the Brazilian Ministry of Justice and Public Security.
 
“Upon learning of the situation, President Lula ordered that a Brazilian Air Force (FAB) aircraft be mobilized to transport the Brazilians to their final destination, in order to ensure that they could complete their journey with dignity and safety,” the ministry’s statement said.

https://www.dw.com/en/brazil-condemns-us-after-deportees-arrive-handcuffed-in-plane/a-71411774

‘Parachute Women’ The Rolling Stones ongoing sexual odyssey

SAN FRANCISCO

Lee Heidhues 1.25.2025

It may only be rock and roll. And I Iike it.

I need a break from the Felon Trump.

What better way than to write about some good old rock and roll. Taking a walk this evening I stopped at a Little Lit Library near my house and found the book ‘Parachute Women’ by Elizabeth Winder. The 2023 tell all about the Rolling Stones wives and companions is a play on their song from the 1968 Beggars Banquet album.

The Stones did a memorable performance of the song in London as part of the ‘Rock and Roll Circus’ in 1968. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rolling_Stones_Rock_and_Roll_Circus_(album) Listen to the lyrics as Mick Jagger rattles off a number of cities as he riffs through Parachute Woman.

Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithfull

The well received book goes into documentary style tabloid detail about the Stones well chronicled personal lives.

The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus is the fifth release of the Rolling Stones music by former manager Allen Klein‘s ABKCO Records (who gained control of the band’s Decca/London material in 1970) after the band’s departure from Decca and Klein. Released in 1996, The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus is a live album that captures the taping of their ill-fated 1968 TV special, which was not broadcast until almost three decades later.

https://storiesla.com/item/lUy-ceNRsMXAyspstxoBzg/lists/7RTDeXp-ph8/