Subsidized Time: Tine's corporate-year revenue scheme to pay for the Reconfiguration

pivotal · ~YW (2002), onset of Subsidized Time; dating clash — see notes

• When: ~onset of Subsidized Time (YW = 2002); the ONANtiad stages it at the "how to pay for it" Cabinet meeting after the Reconfiguration
• What: With the Reconfiguration a "logistical coup" but "staggeringly multi-zeroed" in cost, Tine turns to revenue ("Now it's time to think about how to pay for it"). Framing the crisis as the "Democratic Triple Bind" (voters demand programs, resist taxes, markets demand a balanced budget), he engineers the solution that becomes Subsidized Time: selling corporate sponsorship of the calendar year itself (the Sino-temporal / Chinese-zodiac-placemat scheme). Per the ONANtiad's dark legend (scene 087), "Subsidized Time was conceived on the back of a chintzy Chinese-zodiac paper placemat, by R. Tine," in the Vienna VA Szechuan steakhouse — Luria's felt hand on his knee in the telling. This makes Tine the architect not only of the map but of the novel's whole calendar.