Category Archives: Economics

A Group of Election Pundits Walked Into a Bar ….

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And they began to debate the Republican debate and, just like the real debate, they agreed on almost nothing of importance.

After reading several “expert” analyses of the debate, it’s clear the “experts” are as uncertain as the candidates. Not surprising, I suppose, given that this was the first debate and Trump, the most prominent criminal in American political history, decided to debate from another location where he could not be called to account for his endless lies, incompetence, and criminality.

Speaking of which, most of the Republican “contenders” did agree on one thing: if Trump wins the nomination, they’ll support him against Joe Biden. There is little doubt that if George Washington and Abraham Lincoln were to rise from their graves and run as a Democratic ticket, the Republican contenders would support Trump for president over them. Trump’s hold on these people tells you all you need to know about this collection of losers. They will say nothing to offend the MAGA crowd that, perfectly happy with a fascist criminal like Trump, will determine the Republican nomination. Even Mike Pence, who has “boldly” observed the obvious – that Trump had demanded he raise Trump’s ambition over the Constitution — raised his hand when asked if he would support Trump as the nominee.

Profiles in courage, these are not.

One of the more substantive treatments of the debate was produced by Vox.com, seen in full at https://tinyurl.com/2bw44t8y. The author noted that the early part of the debate was a simulacrum of a Republican-style debate from yesteryear in which issues like abortion bans (they all want to control women’s bodies and health decisions, the reality of climate change (they all agree with Trump that it’s a hoax), urban crime (we need more guns), K-12 education (education is for libtards – ban the books!), immigration (furriners, keep ‘em out), the Russia-Ukraine war (appease Putin with Ukraine’s territory – communism bad, Putin OK), and the rise of China (COVID, the gift that keeps on giving).

The Vox view was that an absent Donald Trump still won the debate. The moderators, despite their Fox “News” credentials, also came in as losers (they always lose control of “debates,” apparently even when Trump is absent–remarkable).

How any of these folks expect to win much support from the MAGA crowd, or indeed any remaining “Republicans,” if they’re not willing to say anything bad about the MAGA love child remains a complete mystery. Is this just some kind of “show” designed to fool people into thinking the Republican Party is legitimate and has real options in its ranks to the fascism promoted by Trump? It’s a mystery. Seriously, why bother going through the motions when anyone there with a plausible case to make (?) is terrified of speaking ill of the poll leader?

As noted in the USAToday report, https://tinyurl.com/34bt8suy, Vivek Ramaswamy, the other billionaire candidate (do we need another billionaire president??), called Trump “the best president of the 21st century.” One positive thought about Ramaswamy: if he became president, the aliens hanging out at Area 51 would break out and immediately head back into outer space, never to return to what will remain of Earth after its habitable phase ends at the hands of climate change (I know, I know, climate change is the Democrats new hoax – Trump said so and therefore it must be true, nothing to worry about, move along).

A clear example of what we could expect in the way of logical thinking from a President Ramaswamy may be found in this quote:

Your claim that Donald Trump is motivated by vengeance and grievance would be a lot more credible if your entire campaign were not based on vengeance and grievance against Donald Trump.

Think about that for a moment: Trump can’t be “motivated by vengeance and grievance” because their campaigns are based on “vengeance and grievance against him.”

But then, of course, the great moralist Mike Pence scolded the only woman on the stage regarding a national abortion ban by offering this beauty: “consensus is the opposite of leadership.” What he meant to say was “when I’m president, I won’t care what people think; I’ll tell you female hussies what to do and you’ll do it or else.”

All in all, it was a rough night for rationality. And history, as always in Republican circles, took a back seat to ideology. While there was minority support for continuing to help Ukraine resist Russian aggression, there was much sentiment for the old “America First” claptrap: appease Russia with a big piece of Ukraine and hope the Russian Bear’s appetite for conquest is sated. Isolationism in another wrapper. It has never worked but, hey, Republicans need to have something to say, so ….

What’s left of the Republican Party thus has only this to offer: a multiply-indicted criminal lunatic or one of a cast of confused, ignorant wannabes who haven’t got the courage of their, or anyone’s, convictions to challenge the lunatic. Elect one of these beauties and it’s game over.

Governor DeSantis – Herald for a Second Dark Age

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Way back when, a herald was a man (of course) who made public pronouncements, often on behalf of a king. He was the “bringer of news,” as it were. Also, way back when, we had the Dark Ages, a term apparently disfavored now, but still in use to signify a period of intellectual and cultural decay in the Middle Ages (roughly the 5th through 10th centuries). Then came the Renaissance and Scientific Revolutions leading to the Enlightenment, roughly the 17th & 18th Centuries, characterized as including,

a range of ideas centered on the value of human happiness, the pursuit of knowledge obtained by means of reason and the evidence of the senses, and ideals such as natural law, liberty, progress, toleration, fraternity, constitutional government, and separation of church and state.

Western Europe and the United States (born in 1789 with ratification of the Constitution) were in the ascendancy and eventually the U.S. became one of the world’s so-called superpowers. In the U.S. freedom of expression, intellectual disputation and many other forces of democracy and personal freedom flourished on and off, at least compared with what came before and what was going on in most other countries.

Democracy as practiced here and in most other countries that have it (not many) is a rough and tumble messy affair. Many people have disparate ideas about what constitutes the good life, moral behavior and just about everything else. But underlying all the chaos was, we have believed, the underlying agreement that it was ok to have disparate ideas as long as everyone was treated with some measure of tolerance and respect. It was, in short, okay to disagree.

And, to seal the deal, the U.S. Constitution makes clear in the very first Amendment after initial adoption that “freedom of speech” is among the five most prized freedoms we have in this country: (the full five are freedom of speech, press, petition, assembly, and religion).

The governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, nicknamed DeathSantis because his policies during the COVID pandemic almost certainly led to the unnecessary deaths of many thousands of Floridians, sees things differently now that he wants to be president of the United States. His path to glory lies through the delusional mass of Trump acolytes, and DeSantis is fine with catering to their every fear and bigotry if it paves his path to power.

Thus, we have the spectacle of DeSantis opposing the use of Advance Placement courses that cover topics he, on behalf of the STATE, finds objectionable. The topics in question? Well, of course, it was the new AP African American studies course.

The state education department, based on its view of preliminary documents, declared in January that the African American studies course “lacks educational value.”  [https://wapo.st/3nihZ92]

Of course, Florida’s governor doesn’t want Florida’s students to learn about African American history. He’d rather put Florida students at a competitive disadvantage against other states’ kids in the highly competitive arena of college education. Keep ‘em ignorant and in Florida. That’s the ticket.

But to prove it’s not just about bigotry, DeSantis suggested at a press conference that he had problems with allAP classes in Florida schools. These long-standing programs cover many subjects, including math, science, social sciences, humanities, languages and more. In fact, some AP courses were being offered a hundred years ago when I was in high school. Who knew what terrible consequences would result from having educated students, steeped in history and the rest?

The Washington Post reports that more than 199,000 Florida students enrolled in AP classes in 2020-21. Some 366,000 AP tests were given in Florida in 2021, more than in any other state except Texas (527,000) and California (683,000). Florida’s students must think these courses are valuable.

But, no worries, the state government under DeSantis will straighten them out:

The state Department of Education contends that the class is “inexplicably contrary to Florida law.” A new education law championed by DeSantis requires lessons on race be taught in “an objective manner” and “not used to indoctrinate or persuade students to a particular point of view.” Some education advocates and teachers say the law is so broadly framed that it is having a chilling effect on the teaching of Black history.

The state Education Department, under the governor’s thumb, listed “concerns” in the curriculum, including topics covering “Intersectionality and Activism,” “Black Feminist Literary Theory” and “Black Queer Studies.”

“Now who would say that an important part of Black history is queer theory?” DeSantis said at a news conference this week. “That is somebody pushing an agenda on our kids.”

There are indications that the College Board is considering modifications to the AP curricula to mollify DeSantis. A Florida Department of Education spokesman was quoted to claim that “Critical Race Theory, Black Queer Studies, Intersectionality, and other topics … violate our law.” What law that is remains something of a mystery, but it seems clear that the current government of Florida wants to keep its students ignorant of subjects that are mainstream issues in America today. Ignorance, the saying claims, is bliss.

This article from January 2023 recounts much of the controversy. https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/01/25/desantis-african-american-studies-black-history/

Here are a collection of articles discussing the DeSantis fascist impact:

Florida teachers strip classroom shelves of books in response to DeSantis ban https://tinyurl.com/bderbwmk

Florida GOP Senate advances bill to revoke Disney’s special tax status https://tinyurl.com/mtn7xv8j

DeSantis takes on Disney in a culture war with national implications https://tinyurl.com/4f3m35j5

DeSantis signs bill requiring survey of Florida students, professors on their political views https://tinyurl.com/4fkm9tvu

‘Goes beyond ignorance’ Historians slam DeSantis’ claims about American slavery https://www.alternet.org/2022/09/ron-desantis-2658332899

OpinionBeware, DeSantis is as much a threat to America as Trump  https://tinyurl.com/5n8xb29y

DeSantis pushes to permanently ban Covid-19 mandates in Florida https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/18/politics/desantis-covid-policy-florida/index.html

Florida, Missouri tell Justice Department voting monitors to stay outside polling places https://tinyurl.com/zjxn2cj2

Disney World halts vaccine requirement for workers after Florida restricts employer mandates https://tinyurl.com/bs7a6fbk

University of Florida bars faculty members from testifying in voting rights lawsuit against DeSantis administration https://tinyurl.com/bdhncjus

Ron DeSantis Is Getting His Mask Advice From A Psychiatrist Pushing Ivermectin https://tinyurl.com/mr3mhsu4

In Florida, DeSantis cut jobless aid just as virus began terrifying new wave https://tinyurl.com/2mrd9vm4

In push against ‘indoctrination,’ DeSantis mandates surveys of Florida college students’ beliefs https://tinyurl.com/2eypzdp4

DeSantis says he will pardon Floridians charged with violating pandemic rules: ‘They’ve been treated poorly’ https://tinyurl.com/4rrfzy4b

YouTube removes video of DeSantis coronavirus roundtable https://tinyurl.com/2rnh4jak

Coronavirus ravaged Florida, as Ron DeSantis sidelined scientists and followed Trump https://tinyurl.com/2p977ps6

The College Board Strips Down Its A.P. Curriculum for African American Studies https://tinyurl.com/2kfsakw8

The essence of the DeSantis phenomenon is that he is trying to out-Trump Trump to siphon Trump’s most deranged supporters and get himself elected president. It’s a fool’s errand, but DeSantis is determined. In the process, Florida will be a place where ignorance is valued over knowledge and, ironically, “political correctness” right-wing style will become essential to electoral success. At least unless and until the people of Florida wake up to the reality of how their national standing is going to be undermined by the arrival of the new Dark Ages in their state.

Why Are Doctors Not Allowed to Practice Everywhere?

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For reasons I don’t recall, I subscribe to the JAMA Network, which is a monthly medical journal published by the American Medical Association with a large variety of articles about the biomedical sciences. I’m reasonably sure my interest was driven by the pandemic. In any case, much of the contents are beyond my ability to understand. But every so often, I find something compelling either about some disease or, in the present case, about the manner and method by which medicine is practiced in our peculiar collection of regions we call “states.”

The present issue is how we have collectively prevented doctors from counseling patients across state lines into states where they are not “admitted to practice.”

As a retired lawyer, I certainly understand the reason we limit, with a notable exception, unadmitted lawyers from the practice of law in states in which they have not passed the state bar exam. That reason is that the laws of each state often vary significantly, particularly regarding the details of procedure but also in many substantive areas such as estate law. It would be problematic to permit lawyers with no knowledge of those laws and procedures to regularly give advice to clients in those states.

There is, as stated, a notable exception, which is that out-of-state lawyers may appear in trials and some other court proceedings if they associate with “local counsel,” an attorney who is admitted to practice in that jurisdiction. The “foreign” attorney may do all the work, but “local counsel” must sign off on it as assurance to the court that the foreign attorney is complying with local law and procedure.

Turning then to the issue of “foreign” doctors “practicing medicine” by, in modern times, counseling patients using technologies like Zoom for “televisits,” I have wondered for some time why the states restrict this activity. Laws and procedures differ from state to state, but is the science on which medical practice is based different from state to state? I am not aware that it is.

Yet, as reported in Jama Network, https://tinyurl.com/5dab4tcm, Providing Responsible Health Care for Out-of-State Patients:

while exceptions may have been made here and there during the pandemic, the states have returned to their prior position of barring “foreign” doctors from remotely advising patients:

…physicians have increasingly been told by lawyers and compliance officers that calling patients located in another state is a legal gray area and introduces a risk of sanctions. States have accelerated this concern. The New Jersey Attorney General’s Office recently warned out-of-state physicians that, without a New Jersey medical license, “any practice by way of telemedicine, will constitute the unlicensed practice of your profession, and may subject you to administrative and criminal action” (email communication, March 31, 2023). These restrictions are impeding other communications as well. When Virginia ended its temporary pandemic regulations around physician licensure, Johns Hopkins had to inform more than 1000 patients they were no longer eligible to utilize telehealth appointments with its providers.

Physicians given this advice are understandably frustrated because these restraints disrupt and reduce the quality of the care they provide. This is especially true for specialty physicians who serve a broad geographic area and physicians whose practice is near a state border. For example, many states lack any pediatric subspecialists and the majority of the population must travel more than 100 miles.

Notwithstanding the negative consequences for patients who may have a long-standing successful relationship with a doctor in another state where the patient, for example, once lived, state laws say such relationships must end. The law of Texas is typical:

Any “person who is physically located in another jurisdiction but who, through the use of any medium, including an electronic medium, performs an act that is part of a patient care service initiated in this state…that would affect the diagnosis or treatment of the patient, is considered to be engaged in the practice of medicine.

I didn’t know this, but the JAMA article notes that many telemedicine visits are now accomplished by persistent and/or desperate patients who “sit in cars or coffee shops on smartphones, searching for good WiFi and sharing tips about the best parking lots that are just across the state border.”

 These constraints severely inconvenience patients, especially those with serious illness, physical disabilities, or lower income and limited resources; threaten patient privacy; encourage discontinuity of care; and might force private health care conversations to take place in ineffective and public settings.

Have we lost our collective minds?

Not only is this bad for patients, but it places doctors in a precarious legal situation in which the “best” solution for them is simply to “fire the patient.” Every doctor these days carries medical malpractice insurance. Is continuing to advise an out-of-state patient malpractice under those policies? Or is the opposite true, that failing to continue giving needed advice is malpractice? What about the not-unusual situation where the patient cannot reach a local doctor and seeks out his former doctor in the prior state of residence? Should that doctor respond? Not respond? It’s a Hobson’s choice.

The authors of the JAMA article propose several common-sense solutions that, for example, allow for “any follow-up care after a relationship has been appropriately established through in-person or virtual means.” A “bigger” solution would be federal preemption of the field that would override state laws. Examples include expansion of the principles in the Sports Medicine Licensure Clarity Act in which reasonable exceptions for licensure are created to cover clinicians who travel with a sports team to another state and provide care, even if they are not licensed in the state in which the sporting event occurs.

Interestingly, the authors note that:

the delivery of medical care could be defined as being rendered where the physician is located, although that could potentially upend our existing system and impact state licensure authority. Although congressional action would mean the federal government supersedes, or preempts, existing state regulations, the advantage of either federal legislative approach is uniformity and clarity, rather than requiring physicians to navigate through 50 different approaches to the issue.

Indeed, such action would likely face a gauntlet of opposition from local doctors wanting to preserve their “monopoly” on access to local patients, present and future. Therein lies, I believe, the root of this problem. If someone can convince me that medical practice should vary from state to state in the manner of local law, I will confess error. Until then, I will assign “blame” for the present shameful situation on doctor protecting their turf.

If it was medically acceptable to do interstate televisits during the pandemic, then it must be true that there is no medical problem in the post-pandemic period to allow interstate doctor-patient communications as they choose.

This situation cries out for a federal solution. I understand that some states limit medical services such as assistance in death (known as Death with Dignity) which is forbidden in Virginia but allowed in many other states. A federal solution would leave responsibility for knowing such local restrictions to the doctors in question. Beyond that, let them practice their magnificent craft unimpeded by artificial state boundaries and licensure rules designed to protect doctors’ incomes rather than promote the welfare of all patients.

Another Major News Entity That Needs Editors

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The Internet has brought us many new and useful tools, but one of the glaring downsides is that it has undermined journalism in multiple ways. One response of the media has apparently been to either eliminate editing or significantly diminish its role in vetting articles before they are posted. Examples continue to multiple.

The latest glaring example comes from ABCNews.com that published a story about two US Navy sailors accused to spying for China. https://abcnews.go.com/US/2-us-navy-sailors-arrested-allegedly-spying-china/story?id=101990144  While the content of the story is important and interesting, there is no obvious reason why it had to be rushed to “print” without competent checking of the writing.

Examples:

  • Jinchao “Patrick” Wei, a 22-year-old petty officer 2nd class, was arrested Wednesday and charged with espionage — more specifically, conspiracy to and committing the communication of defense information to aid a foreign government.

Conspiracy to committing?  Conspiracy to the communication?

  • Petty Officer Wenheng Zhao, of Monterey Park, California, was also arrested Wednesday, by FBI and NCIS agents, and is charged with conspiracy and receipt of a bribe by a public official, officials said, according to Zhao’s indictment.

“According to Zhao’s indictment” does not belong at the end of the sentence. It should be placed at the beginning.

  • Zhao, 26, worked at the Naval Base Ventura County in Port Hueneme and had an active U.S. security clearance who had access to classified information, officials said.

As written, that sentence says that it was the “security clearance,” as a “who” rather than a “what,” that “had access to classified information.” I am reasonably certain that the sentence was intended to say that Zhao had the security clearance that gave him access to classified information.

  • His indictment states he had access to material classified as secret, as did Wei, who was born in China and became a U.S. citizen in 2022 as he was allegedly also sending information to his handler.

I’m not sure what to say about that sentence. The concluding phrase, “as he was allegedly also sending information to his handler,” is lost in space. With slight changes, it probably belongs after “secret.” The sentence would be improved by creating two sentences from it, one about the indictment and one about Wei’s background. Sigh.

  • “The alleged conduct also represents a violation of the solemn obligation of members of our military to defend our country to safeguard our secrets and to protect their fellow service members.”

What happened to the punctuation? Properly written, that sentence would read this way: “”The alleged conduct also represents a violation of the solemn obligation of members of our military to defend our country, to safeguard our secrets, and to protect their fellow service members.”

  • It was not immediately clear if either Wei or Zhao had retained attorneys who could comment on their behalf.”

I admit I am nitpicking a bit here, but wouldn’t that sentence read better this way: “It was not clear whether Wei or Zhao had retained attorneys who could comment on their behalf.” OR, even better, “It was not clear whether Wei or Zhao had retained an attorney who could comment on his behalf.”

  • Wei is alleged to have passed along imagery of the USS Essex, provided the locations of various Navy ships and provided dozens of technical and manual for systems aboard his ship and other Navy ships.

Open your blue books and answer this question: How many manual or manuals was Wei claimed to have shared?

  • “The case against Mr. Zhao is part of a larger national strategy to combat criminal efforts from nation state actors to steal our nation sensitive military information,” Estrada said.

Obviously, “nation” should have been “nation’s,” the singular possessive form. I suppose it’s possible that Estrada misspoke and said only “nation” but, if so, the authors should have inserted “[sic]” after the word to indicate their awareness of the mistake.

There are other problems with the piece but eight is enough to make the point. A final note: the article lists five contributors to the piece. Remarkably, none of the five apparently saw or raised any of the issues I have identified. If they did, they were ignored, which may be worse

Lest I be accused of picking on ABC, I hasten to assure you that problems like these are evident throughout Internet-published journalism.

Examples: click-bait titles are rampant.

Blue Jays Acquire Angels’ Star Shohei Ohtani In Blockbuster Trade Proposal That Would Instantly Shake Up The MLB

Maybe I’m being unfair, but I believe that headline in https://www.totalprosports.com/mlb/shohei-ohtani-angels-blue-jays-trade-rumor/ was written to lead the reader to believe that the Los Angeles Angels had agreed to trade Shohei Ohtani to the Blue Jays, which is about as likely as my being recruited as a pitcher for the Los Angeles Dodgers. In fact, the article makes clear that the acquisition of Ohtani was merely a proposal from the Blue Jays.

Another example of failed/missing proofreading:

The bomb squad “determined that the small grenade was insert,” according to a sheriff’s office update. [Miami Herald, July 11]

I have many more examples but, frankly, they are buried in my emails. In preparing to write this post, I realized that I have more than 9,150 emails in my Inbox. Many are routine items (“Your Amazon order has shipped”) and there are hundreds, possibly thousands, related to Donald Trump and his many crimes against the Constitution, the law, and humanity. One of these days I “plan” to find time to review them all and either act on them or delete them. One fine day.

Meanwhile, c’mon ABC and the rest. Do better.

An Appalling Failure of a Great City

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I just posted New York City is Back! https://shiningseausa.com/2023/06/03/new-york-city-is-back/ And it is.

But I remain astonished and appalled that New York City, whose history is bound so closely to the subway system used by millions of people to get around the vast city every year, has failed to address the problem of access for the elderly and physically limited traveler in any meaningful way after all these years.

The passenger-use data tells an interesting story – the subway system consists of more than 6,455 cars that collectively traveled about 331,000,000 miles in 2021 through 472 stations on 665 miles of track. https://tinyurl.com/muksdukt Too big to comprehend but not too big to fail. In 2021, the first year of post-pandemic recovery, about 760,000,000 people rode the rails. While that is an amazing figure, it is less than half the volume that rode in 2016 (nearly 1.8 billion)!

I was forcefully reminded of this on our Memorial Day weekend trip, when, already worn out, we approached the 30thStreet Station in Astoria to find an elevated platform. The only observable means of getting to the train platform was to climb not one but two flights of stairs. I did it but I cannot imagine that many people my age or with other physical limitations could do so.

The 30th Street Station in Astoria is not the only such problem site. Only 98 of the 472 stations (covering all boroughs but not counting the Staten Island Railway) are ADA-accessible. https://new.mta.info/document/25961 Many stations counted as ADA-accessible meet that test in only one direction, or only for some subway lines or only at some times of day.

I understand that adding escalators and elevators would be very costly and, given the physical constraints, could result in reducing stairwell access in some cases. Given the substantial reduction in ridership since 2016, there is no better time to fix this problem than now. I am astounded that the people of New York City put up with this situation for so long and that New York politicians have been able to escape accountability for their failure to require the MTA to act.

I have read that a Judge Approves MTA Deal to Make Subways 95% ADA-Compliant by 2055 as part of a class action settlement [https://tinyurl.com/yc5398d2] but, seriously, by 2055? No doubt this was a victory of sorts, but that deadline, even if met, is 32 years away. The number of New York City residents with some form of disability is close to one million and more than 15 percent are 65 or over. It is unconscionable that their transportation needs have been ignored for so long and still are.

PayPal Updated

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I recently reported on this blog an issue involving  the use of PayPal to perpetrate sophisticated scams.  https://bit.ly/3Eldbp6

Since that post, two things have occurred. An article in the UK’s Telegraph reported that PayPal was joining other large tech companies and firing 2,000 staff. https://bit.ly/3IE0A33 Second, I checked my PayPal account again and discovered that the bogus charge and fake American Express security phone line are still listed in my account. This is so many weeks after I reported the problem and was assured that PayPal was hard at work fixing it.

I must wonder how many other phony transactions are showing up on PayPal accounts with bogus phone numbers to call to cancel the transactions. Why is it still possible for foreign actors to post false information in individual PayPal accounts and have them remain for weeks or longer?

I can only repeat my warning to everyone with a PayPal account. Beware.

Final Thoughts (Maybe) About the Republican “Performance” in the SOTU

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The New York Times published an interesting piece about the Republicans’ unprecedented outbursts during President Biden’s State of the Union address: Heckling of Biden Reflects a New, Coarser Normal for House G.O.P., https://nyti.ms/3Xq479c While it bore similarities to my own comments in The Barbarians Are Inside the Gate, it was a bit too abstract for my taste and replete with “both sides” implications, a now all-too-common trait of main stream media.

But what struck me most were the comments that gleefully recalled the moment when then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi ripped up Trump’s speech following one of his SOU addresses to Congress. In essence, those comments claimed that the obscene heckling of President Biden was justified by Pelosi’s previous conduct. What’s good for the goose, and all that. Hypocrisy, they say. You can’t have it both ways, they say.

I confess I didn’t read all the 666 comments the Times allowed before closing comments (a curious number, I note in passing – assess as you will), but of those I did read, not one noted the obvious difference between Pelosi’s demonstration of hostility to the then pretend president and the yelling and disruption that occurred during Biden’s speech.

I refer to the obvious fact that when Pelosi tore up Trump’s speech, Trump’s speech was over. He was finished talking. Should Pelosi have waited until Trump departed or until she was in the hall outside or called a press conference later to show her contempt? Maybe. But there is a fundamental difference between her post-speech demonstration and the multiple interruptions and crass behavior during the speech by members of the Republican Party. Her action did not disrupt Trump’s remarks, no matter how distasteful they were to her. The Republicans, on the other hand, did everything they could to disrupt and disorient the President. And they failed.

My final (maybe) observation: the writers at the New York Times, Washington Post and other newspapers that still claim to some degree of objectivity in matters political should stop calling these Republican Party louts “conservatives.” There is nothing “conservative” about most of them. They don’t just want less government; they want no government.

Just two days ago, Ted Cruz, officially the U.S. Senator from Texas, tweeted: “Abolish the IRS.” https://bit.ly/3Ih6PtCCruz is not the only Republican to advocate that. You may also recall that many other leading Republicans have advocated abolishing the Department of Education and other federal agencies, including Betsy DeVos, Trump’s Secretary of Education. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) introduced a bill in early 2021 with co-sponsors including (unsurprisingly) Reps. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) and Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), to do that very thing.

To be clear, I for one believe the United States Tax Code is a monstrosity. One fine day, I plan to write about it in some detail. But the idea that we can in one swoop “simplify the Code” and then eliminate the IRS while still effectively collecting enough revenue to pay for the U.S. Miliary, among many other federal services that help assure this country’s safety and prosperity, is blatantly stupid.

The National Taxpayer Advocate did a Microsoft Word count of the tax statutes and implementing IRS regulations in 2012 and came up with roughly 4 million words. At roughly 450 words per page, that works out to around 9,000 pages. The National Taxpayer Advocate also noted that the tax code changed 4,680 times from 2001 to 2012, an average of once per day.  https://bit.ly/3DYxWa8

That was ten years ago. Most likely the Code is substantially larger today. Much of it is designed, by Republican and Democratic administrations alike, to foster or discourage various forms of economic and other behavior. Changing it to a simpler system whose focus is mainly, if not solely, to fund the government is highly desirable in my view but it’s not something that can be done overnight in a sudden “simplification.” Advocates for that approach are not “conservatives. They are either anarchists or … well, this is a family blog, so I won’t go further.

Suffice to say, the complexities of the Code and its pervasive influence on the conduct of American businesses is such as only a prolonged and careful reexamination has any chance of success. But the Code’s very complexity and influence has spawned entire industries of tax lawyers, tax-specialist accountants, software companies and tax preparers, all of whom have a vested interest in keeping the complexity. And then there are the giant corporations that benefit from manipulating their operations and accounting to pay less tax than the might in another system.

To return to the main point, the Republican Party has become the Party of Grievance. Their appeal to the good old days, when white people ran everything and most things were thought to be cheaper and readily available at all times, those days are gone. Permanently. The Republican Party is the Party of the Past, a past that never really was and that was unsustainable. You may be able to turn back the clock, but you cannot undo time. It moves forward whether your clock, or your mind, keeps up or not. To believe in the past that the Republican Party is selling is to believe in a mirage, a false idol that leads you to your destruction.

The Republicans can yell and scream until the dogs come home. They have nothing constructive to offer the American people or the country. Joe Biden was too gracious, too composed and, in boxing them in on Medicare and Social Security, too clever for the screamers. They won’t learn anything from it. They’re out there every day justifying what they did because Nancy Pelosi hurt their feelings. Grievance and more grievance – the Republican Party’s true platform.

Let’s Hear It For the Women

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Any society that stagnates or retrogresses is unlikely to survive in a digitally unified world. Societies that are moving backward toward what is perceived as “better times back then” are almost certainly doomed in the long run. Cultural and ethnic diversification is a force that may be delayed for a while, even reversed, but not indefinitely. As it happens, one of the moving forces in this country, perhaps the only one that can save it in the long run, is the women. The women who marched for women’s rights, the women who went to work doing “men’s labor” during the last world war. Many of them never went back, mentally, to the “role that women are supposed to occupy.” While some men have not adapted to the new reality of equality, they face an unhappy and unproductive future. The tide of history cannot be stopped. The love affair of white men with male dominance is a mirage. Loss of status hurts. Get over it. Move on. Think of how exciting it is to know intelligent, thoughtful women who believe in themselves and what they can contribute. There is no going back.

Yesterday established that women will not be suppressed. Voters in all five states where there were ballot measures on abortion rights, the right of women to control their own bodies and health decisions, opted for freedom for women. The women have spoken, Republicans. Good for them. Good for all of us.

A Special Place in Hell

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On August 16, 2022, a United States Senator representing Florida published an “open letter” to “American Job Seeker.” The letter purports to address grievances about the planned hiring of 87,000 new employees for the Internal Revenue Service. In keeping with Scott’s general method of operation, the letter is replete with lies, distortions, and deflections. A U.S. Senator addressing the legislation he’s complaining about should know better. I believe he does and that his mendacity is deliberate. Donald Trump will be happy with him, though, so in Senator RIck Scott’s mind, he is fine with lying, distorting, and deflecting. Let’s have a closer look.

First, Scott decries the “labor participation rate” that he says the Biden administration has caused “to drop to historic lows.” That is a gross distortion at best and a bald-faced lie at worst.

The labor participation rate is the percentage of the population that is either working or actively looking for work. A casual look at Labor Department data would have shown Scott that the rate has remained within a percentage point or so of the level during Trump’s administration. https://bit.ly/3SZT71u Except, of course, for the big dip in 2020 caused by, you will recall, Trump’s grotesque mishandling of the pandemic. In July 2022 the rate was only .3 below the level when Biden was inaugurated. Oh, by the way, Florida, Scott’s state, ranks among the lowest states in LPR. Also, by the way, the national unemployment rate was 3.5% in July 2022, exactly where it was in February 2020, just before the pandemic struck. By most standards that unemployment rate is considered “full employment.”

Scott then says, “I write to you today to offer a few things for you to consider as you continue your job search.” Ah, job hunting advice from a professional politician from Florida, a man whom Wikipedia describes this way:

During his tenure as chief executive, the company [Columbia/HCA, then the largest private for-profit healthcare company] defrauded Medicare, Medicaid and other federal programs. The Department of Justice ultimately fined the company $1.7 billion in what was at the time the largest health care fraud settlement in U.S. history.

Scott has two messages: (1) expansion of the IRS workforce is a threat to Americans and when Republicans get control of Congress in the fall elections, they will remove the funding for these jobs; therefore, don’t waste your time applying; (2) the original job posting indicated the new IRS employees would be armed and one of their “major duties” was to be prepared to kill your neighbors and friends.

That deliberately misinformed and childish hysteria is plainly designed to frighten ordinary Americans. Scott goes on to refer to an “IRS super-police force” that will not only audit your taxes (that you are required by law to pay — remember, Scott is in the party of “law and order”) but directly suggests a mob of armed government employees will kill you if you don’t pay up.

This is the face of the modern Republican Party that uses the rhetoric of government running wild to frighten Americans into believing that a utopian and authoritarian solution is their only safeguard. The reality is quite different.

Lower taxes are, first, a lie. Republicans only lower taxes for the very wealthy. Ordinary Americans see little of the oft-promised tax cuts. Trump’s oft-toted big tax cut went almost entirely to the wealthy and increased the federal deficit by a huge amount. While promising to eviscerate the government, Republicans also promise stronger borders, a more powerful military, and more efficiency – all for less money! The Republican Party is the modern version of the snake oil salesman – buy my elixir and enjoy good health for life! Nothing to it. Something for nothing.

Let’s look more closely at Scott’s hysterical claims. He uses transparent techniques. All caps on “$80 BILLION.” He then compares the resulting IRS work force to the combined employment of four familiar federal agencies: Pentagon, FBI, Customs and Border Protection, and the State Department.  If his original claim of doubling the size of the IRS was accurate, then this might be true even if totally pointless. But it is not. The IRS is not going to hire 87,000 new employees in one year. So, Scott’s workforce comparisons are just more distortions/lies.

The more important question is: what will the new employees be doing that is good for America? Senator Scott doesn’t want you to know about that. Here’s why.

The IRS’s budget has been cut by nearly 20 percent since 2010, impacting the agency’s ability to staff up and modernize half-century-old technology. In 2010, the IRS had about 94,000 employees. That number dipped to about 78,000 employees in 2021. Some of the agency’s computers still run on COBOL, a programming language that dates back to the 1960s. Since 2010, the agency’s enforcement staff has declined by 30 percent, according to IRS officials, and audit rates for the wealthiest taxpayers have seen the biggest declines because of years of underfunding. [https://bit.ly/3K8AzIp]

So, if you’re fine with wealthy tax cheats getting away with under-paying taxes, you’ll appreciate Senator Scott’s gross deception. Otherwise, well, you’ll recognize that you can’t run the government on thoughts and prayers Republicans like to send when your school children are slaughtered with AR-15’s they refuse to restrain.

Speaking of that, Senator Scott also wants you believe that the IRS auditors are going to shoot you. Another lie. Fewer than 3% of IRS employees are Special Agents who carry weapons. Why do they? Because they are law enforcement personnel in the IRS Criminal Investigation unit. They investigate criminal tax violations and other financial crimes such as money laundering, bank secrecy, national security, and national defense matters.

While we’re still on violence, Senator Scott should know that anti-government, anti-worker statements have inspired violent attacks on federal employees in the past. There are now reports of one Republican candidate advocating shooting federal employees, including IRS employees, “on sight.” When you add these incitements to violence against federal employees carrying out Congressionally mandated duties to Republican indifference to the slaughter of school children with automatic weapons they refuse to regulate, you have the perfect storm of a political party advocating violence against its opponents and the government.

Senator Scott’s letter is a dangerous collection of gross distortions and outright lies. This man cannot be trusted. Florida should send him packing (no pun) as soon as possible.

The Root of All Evil

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A Biblical quotation worked its way into the popular vernacular a long time ago: the love of money is the root of all evil. The quote is often abbreviated to “money is the root of all evil.”  I have no idea whether the attribution to Apostle Paul is correct, but I also don’t care. I don’t believe either version of it is true.

The love of money, like the love of many other things, both physical and otherwise, can certainly lead to problematic outcomes. But the opposite of love can equally lead to problematic outcomes. There are just too many problematic outcomes to assign all the blame on love of money or just on money. When I think about this, I am reminded of the wonderful Robert Frost poem, Fire and Ice:

Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.

From what I’ve tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire.

But if it had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate

To say that for destruction ice

Is also great

And would suffice.

In my view, ignorance is the real root of all evil. Donald Trump once said, “I love the poorly educated!” He knew something that had apparently escaped the notice of even experienced political analysts. It’s not that the “poorly educated” are unintelligent. Many of them are quite intelligent and can perform many tasks effectively. They can be successful in many lines of commerce and in life generally.

On the other hand, the “poorly educated” may be susceptible to believing misinformation/false information because they have not been exposed to the discipline of education and have not undertaken to study on their own. But they are not alone in that, so being poorly educated is neither explanation nor excuse, despite Trump’s claimed admiration for them. During the height of the pandemic, we saw nurses and doctors embrace conspiracy theories, promote quack remedies for COVID and resist vaccination. And many members of Congress who support insane conspiracy theories and engage in traitorous and illegal activities are highly educated.

The problem is more complicated than the simple explanation that the “poorly educated” mistakenly thought Trump as president would be good for them. In trying to understand this, I have read numerous books, articles, theories, and studies. Most recently I discovered Strangers in Their Own Land, by Arlie Russell Hochschild, professor emeritum of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of many notable books. The book was a 2016 Finalist for the National Book Award. This work is based on her personal research conducted in post-Katrina, post-Deepwater Horizon coastal Louisiana. The date of publication, 2016, was just before Trump was elected president and all that ensued. The book nevertheless seems wholly predictive of everything that followed.

Hochschild defined her mission at the outset as an effort to explore feelings, the “emotion in politics.” Strangers at 15. Some of those feelings were disturbing – she notes that “reminders of the racial divide were everywhere.” Strangers at 20. She did not draw much on that fact of coastal Louisiana life but indirectly seemed to acknowledge its abiding and broad influence on political life there.

Strangers focuses on what Hochschild calls the Great Paradox, stated roughly as the massive disconnect between the economic and life interests of the local people and their devotion to the Tea Party which was in full flower in the period covered. The locals were adamantly opposed to regulation, especially federal regulation, that might help restore the opportunity to continue the livelihoods they had pursued for generations in fishing/hunting/farming the abundant natural resources of coastal Louisiana.

One of the Tea Party’s darlings was Bobby Jindal. As Hochschild notes at the end of the book, Louisiana was left a “shambles” after eight years of Tea Party-style leadership by Governor Jindal. Yet his support among locals never waned. They bought into the capitalism mythology completely. Such devotion also led to support for Republican congressman David Vitter who opposed all federal environmental intervention, voted to terminate the Environmental Protection Agency and more. Strangers at 48.

The author said she was struck by what political candidates avoided in their pitches to voters: “that the state ranks 49th out of 50 on an index of human development, that Louisiana is the second poorest state, that 44 percent of its budget comes from the federal government – the Great Paradox.” Strangers at 59. People with little to begin with worried more about what others were getting (“non-working, non-deserving people”) than about destruction of the environment or years lost to bad health conditions.  Somehow this was seen as a loss of “honor” and that was more important than more tangible issues. Strangers at 60-61.

They knew that Big Oil and Big Chemical had undeniably wrecked the local environment, but they adhered to the mythology that the companies also brought jobs and other economic benefits that could not be secured under any form of regulation. They concluded that the honorable thing was to muddle through, accepting their fate while continuing to assert their” principles.”

Hochschild notes three paths by which Tea Party believers arrived at their profound dislike for the federal government:

their religious faith (the government curtailed the church, they felt),

hatred of taxes (which they saw as too high and too progressive), and

the government’s impact on their loss of honor …. [Strangers at 35]

They bought into the belief that taxes went to lazy welfare cheats and “government workers in cushy jobs.” Id. They thought climate change was bogus science. They resented what they perceived to be bias against the “little guy,” meaning mainly the little white guy, and interference with the role of God in overseeing humanity. Strangers at 52. Those are easy myths for resentful people to embrace without having to make the effort to understand complex systems and ideas. Indeed, for many, the outcome was in the hands of their God and humans thus had little responsibility for outcomes.

In portents of things to come, Hochschild notes that at the Republican Women of Southwest Louisiana meeting,

I heard a great deal about freedom in the sense of freedom to – to talk on your cellphone as you drove a car, to pick up a drive-in daiquiri with straw on the side, to walk about with a loaded gun. But there was almost no talk about freedom from such things as gun violence, car accidents, or toxic pollution. [Strangers at 71]

The perplexing reality is that people living with more pollution are more likely to believe in less regulation and more likely to be Republicans. Strangers at 79. This mental orientation set them up for manipulation and exploitation.

The initial tip to the problem of the book’s analysis comes at the beginning. Hochschild observes that the reason for population shifts in the United States had changed: people moved less to find better jobs, housing or (she didn’t mention this) education but rather to align more closely with people of similar political views. The sharpening of political division is, she says, attributable to the ‘right moving right.’ Strangers at 6-7. She recounts the dire economic conditions afflicting the southern states, Louisiana being among the worst of the worst:

Given such an array of challenges, one might expect people to welcome federal help. In truth, a very large proportion of the yearly budgets of red states – in the case of Louisiana, 44 percent – do come from federal funds. $2,400 is given by the federal government per Louisianan per year.

But Mike S_____ doesn’t welcome that federal money and doubts the science of climate change. “I’ll worry about global warming in fifty years,” he says. Mike loves his state, and he loves the outdoor life. But instead of looking to government, like others in the Tea Party, he turns to the free market. [Strangers at 9]

He turns to the same “free market” exploited by Big Oil and others to wreak havoc on the state that Mike purported to love so much. Thus, again, the Great Paradox.

The other major theme in the book is the Deep Story, the myths by which social groups, or tribes, are developed and sustained. Strangers at 135. Here perhaps is the core principle at work. In coastal Louisiana the Tea Party promoted, and locals accepted, the idea that undeserving people were cutting into the line ahead of hard-working “true Americans.” While their perceptions of race are complex, older whites interviewed by Hochschild saw Blacks especially as a problematic class afflicted by special issues not shared by most white people.

Economic class distinctions tracked race and distinguished between “makers” and “takers,” with the latter being the “line-cutters” supported by the federal government, those people unfairly getting ahead of everyone else. This grievance was at the root of many white Louisianans’ attitudes unrelated to the reality of local social and economic standing. Strangers at Ch. 9, and at 157-159.

Despite noting the data showing that “the higher the exposure to environmental pollution the less worried the individual was about it” [Strangers at 253], Hochschild concludes that the continuation of the Great Paradox is not the result of ignorance. [Id.] But that view is remarkable because it’s not supported by most of the data cited in the book. One of dozens of examples is the belief that 40 percent of all U.S. workers are employed by the federal government. The actual figure at the time was 1.9 percent. Strangers at 161.

Such ignorance of economic reality was at the root of many local people’s vigorous resistance to all forms of regulation. Such interventions could have helped to restore the balance of nature and, along with it, the jobs and environment they claimed to cherish. Yet, by and large, they wanted none of it. Hochschild was aware of this because data in Appendix C to the book was often interspersed in the text to illustrate how the real facts refuted the central myths on which the resistance depended. Peoples’ explanations of their views were rife with classical political myths and massively wrong factual beliefs.

Locals that Hochschild interviewed appeared to believe that a woman’s role was to be completely subordinate to her husband. Strangers at 174. This attitude is consistent with the analysis of “what makes a Republican” in George Lakoff’s 1996 Moral Politics that, controversially, applies principles of cognitive science to politics. As summarized in Wikipedia:

Lakoff argues that the differences in opinions between liberals and conservatives follow from the fact that they subscribe with different strength to two different central metaphors about the relationship of the state to its citizens. Both, he claims, see governance through metaphors of the family.

Conspiratorial thinking was also rampant among Hochschild’s subjects. Few people believed science had made the case for global warming. Strangers at e.g., 183. They did not understand what the lives of the seriously poor were like, rejected much historical truth, adopted phantasmagorical solutions dependent upon the “free market” and adopted what has come to be known more recently as “replacement theory.” Strangers at Ch. 14.

In the end, it seemed to me that the author was profoundly fooled by the mannered façade she experienced in her research with the locals whose “good-hearted acceptance” of her, their “great personal warmth and famous Southern hospitality,” misled her to conclude that

in human terms, the [empathy] wall can easily come down. And issue by issue, there is possibility for practical cooperation. [Strangers at 233]

There is nothing in the buildup to the end of the book or in the data set out throughout it that would support such a conclusion. And, of course, the history under Trump’s presidency is the most profound refutation of the “we can all just get along” thesis. The author’s starry-eyed belief in future harmony and progress was, I believe, a grievous error by a researcher whose approach to her study was primarily based on just talking with locals, eating meals with them, and looking at the surrounding conditions that determine their lives and livelihoods.

The book confirms my suspicions in its treatment of the rise of Trump as a political power.

Three elements had come together. Since 1980, virtually all those I talked with felt on shaky economic ground, a fact that made them brace at the very idea of “redistribution.” The also felt culturally marginalized: their views about abortion, gay marriage, gender roles, race, guns, and the Confederate flag all were held up to ridicule in the national media as backward. And they felt part of a demographic decline; “there are fewer and fewer white Christians like us….”        [Strangers at 221]

Economically, culturally, demographically, politically, you are suddenly a stranger in your own land. The whole context of Louisiana – its companies, its government, its church and media – reinforces that deep story. [Strangersat 222]

Trump, consciously or otherwise, fed this sense of disaffection and loss.

His supporters have been in mourning for a lost way of life Many have become discouraged, others depressed. They yearn to feel pride but instead have felt shame. Their land no longer feels their own. Joined together with others like themselves, they now feel hopeful, joyous, elated … in a state of rapture… no longer strangers in their own land. [Strangers at 225]

Rapture indeed. This degree of magical thinking is beyond imagining: a Pew Research Center 2010 study reported that “41 percent of all Americans believe the Second Coming “probably” or “definitely” will happen by the year 2050.” Strangers at 125. Hochschild labels them “victims without a language of victimhood.” Strangers at 131, a missing element that Donald Trump readily supplied.

My overall conclusion about this book is that the people it discusses suffer from a central fatal flaw: they mistakenly believed that the land belonged to them in the sense that the whole of it was their natural right. Anything that challenged that idea was alien, undermining their sense of “our land.” This, I think, is about as un-American a concept as you will find. It ignores history, economic reality, and the nature of democracy. The root concept that “this land is ours then, now and always,” meaning us God-fearing white people who have an entitlement that others are unjustly trying to steal, fundamentally misunderstands the nature of the country, its origins, and its development.

This issue may be connected to education, but I suspect it’s much deeper than that. The possessory and superiority components of these cultural beliefs leave these people vulnerable to the “it’s ok to hate” message from a demagogue like Donald Trump who lacks any core value system of principles except greed. These people have less to fear from interlopers than from their own ignorance.

The problem, however, is that someone so ignorant is usually unaware of his ignorance and simply feels put upon by the forces of change. He just wants what he thought he had before, notwithstanding that the oil-based economy was a complete fraud on coastal Louisiana society, wrecking the environment while failing to deliver the economic benefits that locals were sure existed. It’s also often true that the ignorant are unwilling to learn; they lack empathy and see others’ gains mainly as their losses.

I don’t want to be told I’m a bad person if I don’t feel sorry for that [sick African child on TV with Christiane Amanpour]” Strangers at 128.

But even those who fancy ourselves as “not ignorant” are capable of delusional thinking. I have confessed multiple times to having fundamentally misunderstood the degree of disfunction in the country. I thought the election of Barack Obama was a sign that, overall, the country had changed. That was wrong.

The essential proof is that despite his record of lies, incompetence and corruption, Trump received 74 million votes in 2020. Joe Biden received many more, of course, but the thinnest of margins remains in both houses of Congress. People with short term concerns about things like inflation, and no or limited understanding of its causes, may drive the country back into an abyss from which democracy may not re-emerge. It can happen here. Only the voters can prevent it.

I heard recently from a reliable source that many young people, in their 20’s and 30’s, may not feel they are much affected by what is happening in politics. That absence of perceived impact often makes them indifferent to the outcome of critical issues. If that is true, we are in even more trouble than I imagined.

Republicans are highly motivated by their grievances and can be expected to turn out in large numbers in the 2022 mid-terms. If Democrats stay home, it’s game over. You have been warned.