Banana Republic – The Wrongologist

Saturday Soother – April 22, 2023

The Daily Escape:

Rainbow, Blue Ridge Parkway, VA – April 2023 photo by Tim Lewis

American carnage is real, my friend. Just not in the way that Trump stated in his inaugural rant. The American carnage Wrongo speaks of is the gun attacks made on others by angry or fearful lone American gunmen. From Charlie Sykes at The Bulwark:

“Ringing the wrong doorbell, making a wrong turn, getting in the wrong car, and an errant basketball. A wounded teenager, a dead young woman, cheerleaders in critical condition, and a 6-year-old girl and her father shot.”

The Indiana man who shot a 16-year-old boy for knocking on his door is described by his grandson as a conspiracy theorist and avid consumer of right-wing media: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“I feel like a lot of people of that generation are caught up in this 24 hour news cycle of fear and paranoia perpetuated by some…news stations. And he was fully into that, sitting and watching Fox News all day, every day blaring in his living room…..that doesn’t necessarily lead people to be racist, but it reinforces and galvanizes racist people. And their beliefs.”

Right wing propaganda is about fear. And some people bathe in it for hours a day. So, while the rest of us enjoy walks in the park or a trip to the market, they’re terrified of every swarthy stranger at the Publix or Home Depot.

Add this level of fear to the implicit permission given gun owners by “stand your ground” laws, and you have the elements of an environment of violence. Vox provides background:

“Some of these shootings took place in states with so-called “stand your ground” laws, which offer expansive legal protections for people who use deadly force against others out of self-defense….and experts have noted that the laws can bolster a “shoot first, ask later” mentality.”

More: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“Under such laws — which exist in some form in 38 states — people can use lethal force if they reasonably believe their life is under threat, and they don’t have to take steps to retreat or avoid the confrontation first. That’s a stark change from prior laws….In the past, the “castle doctrine,” which has been adopted by most states, allowed people to use deadly force if a person entered their home.

Stand your ground laws take that idea one step further, with some making such allowances no matter where a person is, whether that’s a public place, their vehicle or their office.”

Add pervasive fear and permission to stand your ground to the proliferation of guns in America (aided by the Supreme Court’s expansive reading of the Second Amendment) and the US has come undone. From Umair Haque: (emphasis by Haque)

“Did you know that America isn’t just the most violent nation in the industrialized world — but an off the charts extreme outlier? Iceland is the world’s most peaceful society. Canada is the world’s 12th most peaceful society. America is the… 129th.”

That’s 129 out of 163 countries tracked. Further evidence is in the recent TSA statistics about intercepting guns about to be carried on to planes:

“Officers with the Transportation Security Administration confiscated more than 1,500 guns at airport security checkpoints in the US during the first quarter of the year, more than 93% of which were loaded. The 1,508 firearms equate to an average of 16.8 intercepted each day during the first three months of the year…”

The gun gives its owner the power of life and death. No training needed. The power of God right there in your hand. It’s very attractive to a certain type of person. And we cultivate that type of personality in America.

We have no safety nets, no social bonds, no norms of decency. That means we ask each other to bear the unbearable.

We don’t invest enough in safety nets, insurance, public goods, healthcare, education, and, in most states, gun laws. According to Haque, it’s all justified by politicians saying, “I can bear the unbearable — why can’t they?” But we can’t do that forever. Someone will snap, and the frustration of bearing the unbearable pours out as rage that’s visited on whomever is nearest, or easiest to hurt. That’s American Exceptionalism at work. America’s extreme violence, caused in large part by the twisted ideology that asks Americans to bear unbearable things.

Enough about guns and people snapping. It’s time for our Saturday Soother! Here on the Fields of Wrong, our crabapple trees are in bloom. They’re being visited by both birds and bees, each looking for high calorie snacks. The bees for the flowers, the birds for the buds. Our spring clean-up is lagging, so there’s still much to do.

But first, let’s relax for a few minutes. Grab a comfy chair near a big window and watch and listen to Valentina Lisitsa, a Ukrainian-American pianist, play “Rustle of Spring”, a solo piano piece written by Norwegian composer Christian Sinding in 1896:

If you are interested in amazing piano technique, watch Lisitsa perform Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2.

Proposed Israeli Judicial Overhaul Threatens Civil War

The Daily Escape:

St. Augustine Beach, FL – 2015 photo by Wrongo

(New columns will be light and variable for the next 10 days as Wrongo and Ms. Right are off to our annual family reunion in Florida. New writing will begin in earnest sometime after April 12. As always, keep your tray tables in their upright and locked position and your arms inside the blog at all times.)

Are you following what’s going on in Israel? It’s been an important story, but it now seems to be getting bigger. From the NYT:

“Civil unrest broke out in…Israel Sunday night after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fired Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for criticizing the government’s judicial overhaul, which Gallant said is causing turmoil in the military and threatens Israel’s security.”

Here’s what Minister Gallant said that got him fired: (brackets by Wrongo)

“The rift within our society is widening and penetrating the Israel Defense Forces….[the schisms have caused]…a clear and immediate and tangible danger to the security of the state — I shall not be a party to this.”

By some media accounts, 600,000 people came out to protest across the country, which would mean that 6.5% of Israel’s population was on the streets.

The judicial overhaul was designed to give the government greater control over the selection of Supreme Court justices and to limit the court’s authority over Parliament. It would give Netanyahu power to handpick the judges presiding over his corruption trial (he’s charged in three cases and faces potential prison time).

The proposed overhaul has pitted liberal and secular Jewish Israelis against more right-wing and religiously conservative citizens. The firing of the Defense Minister also prompted Israel’s largest workers’ union to call a general strike, while leading universities closed down, and Israel’s consul-general in New York resigned. Flights from Tel Aviv’s airport were grounded.

The near-rebellion has caused Netanyahu to announce a suspension of the proposed legislation. From the WaPo:

“Out of national responsibility, from a desire to prevent the nation from being torn apart, I am calling to suspend the legislation….When there is a possibility to prevent a civil war through negotiations, I will give a time-out for negotiations.”

That wasn’t enough for the leaders of the months-long protests against Netanyahu’s push to remake Israel’s judicial system. They called for demonstrations to continue since Netanyahu announced that he was suspending, but still planned to pass the legislation.

The Movement for Quality Government called on the leaders of Netanyahu’s political opposition to continue fighting, saying:

“The coup d’état laws must be shelved completely….Not paused, not halted. Shelved. The suspension of the legislation looks like a cheap political exercise designed entirely to wait for a good time to bring the blitz of anti-democratic legislation back into our lives.”

Wrongo generally doesn’t agree with Tom Friedman, but he’s right about this:

“Netanyahu and his coalition thought they could pull off a quick judicial coup, disguised as a legal “reform,” that would enable them to exploit the narrowest of election victories — roughly 30,000 votes out of some 4.7 million — to allow Netanyahu & Co. to govern without having to worry about the only source of restraint on politicians in Israel’s system: its independent judiciary and Supreme Court.”

More from Friedman on the multi-front wars that Netanyahu has undertaken since being reinstalled as Israel’s Prime Minister:

“Netanyahu’s extremist coalition is now taking on the Palestinians and Iran militarily while ignoring the wishes and values of its most important ally, the US government; its most important diaspora community, American Jews; and its most important source of economic growth, foreign investors.

And it’s doing all of that while dividing the Israeli people to the brink of a civil war.”

Civil war in Israel? Even Netanyahu mentioned the possibility in his offer to suspend the effort to pass the judicial overhaul.

Meanwhile Haaretz reported that Israel’s far-right party Otzma Yehudit said that they have struck a deal to allow Netanyahu to delay the judicial overhaul until after the Knesset recess in return for the establishment of a national guard under the control of the Party’s leader, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.

Netanyahu caved to Ben-Gvir after the ultra-nationalist minister had threatened to resign over Netanyahu’s announcement to shelve the legislation. The idea of a national guard under Ben-Gvir isn’t new. Early versions of the proposal included siphoning off Border Police officers to the national guard, as well as the recruitment of 10,000 volunteers.

This would be a highly inflammatory step given that Ben-Gvir has, in the past, called for the police to use live ammunition on rock-throwing protesters. Haaretz reports that Ben-Gvir told Netanyahu that he would vote against the state budget if it does not include funds for establishing a new national guard. From Haaretz:

“Israel’s oldest human rights organization, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, responded immediately by describing the proposed national guard as “a private, armed militia that would be directly under Ben-Gvir’s control.”

And the irony of Netanyahu treating ordinary Israelis like, well, Palestinians, can’t be lost on anyone right now. Biden should make it clear that it stands by a democratic Israel, not the one being fashioned by Bibi and his coalition partners.

Ohio’s Airborne Toxic Event

The Daily Escape:

Roan Mountain, NC – February 2023 photo by Spencer Carter. Roan Mountain has the largest naturally growing gardens of Catawba rhododendrons in the world.

Back on February 3, a Norfolk Southern (NS) train carrying hazardous materials derailed near the town of East Palestine, Ohio. Federal investigators say a mechanical issue with a rail car axle caused the derailment. After several days of underreporting, we now know what happened.

Here are some facts: The derailment included 50 cars, 20 of which carried toxic materials, 14 of those contained vinyl chloride. The subsequent fire burned for three days. Then there was a “controlled release” of poisonous gas. And finally, effects of the poison were felt on locals, their animals, and local waterways.

The axle problem is important since it is the cause of all the hardship in East Palestine. Trains use steel wheels on steel rails because they produce 85+ % less friction than rubber truck tires do on roads. The contact point of a wheel on the rail is about the size of a dime. Compared to trucks, trains are cheaper (4 cents vs 20 cents per ton-mile in the US), and more sustainable: One ton of freight can be moved over 470 miles on a single gallon of diesel fuel.

But sustaining that economic advantage requires the railroads to maintain all that steel in good working order. Otherwise if things go wrong with a train that’s 4.5 miles long, they can go very, very wrong. And reporting seems to indicate that NS didn’t maintain its steel wheels correctly.

Also, the derailed NS train was not classified as a “high-hazard flammable train,” despite its hazardous and flammable cargo. Such a classification would have lowered its speed and affected its route. From Lever News:

“Though the company’s 150-car train in Ohio reportedly burst into 100-foot flames upon derailing — and was transporting materials that triggered a fireball when they were released and incinerated — it was not being regulated as a “high-hazard flammable train,” federal officials told The Lever.”

Apparently when current transportation safety rules were first created, a federal agency sided with industry lobbyists and limited regulations governing the rail transport of hazardous compounds. That decision effectively exempted many trains hauling dangerous materials including the NS train in Ohio, from the “high-hazard” classification and its more stringent safety requirements.

Generally, workers want safety and the bosses want money. Safety requires additional time, more workers, and money. Deregulation contributes to the lack of safety. Using vinyl chloride in a chemistry lab requires safety equipment. Tank cars containing thousands of gallons of it should require more than the government apparently thinks is safe.

Wrongo always looks at the politics in these sorts of industrial disasters because they are usually caused by the economics created by politics.

Given how dangerous these chemicals are, and given how they are used and transported, we have to expect accidents like this to happen. But the government should be able to tell us whether the current accident rate is higher or lower than expected, and if higher, what should be done to correct the problem.

We trust the bureaucrats that make the rules to balance safe operations against the risk of an airborne toxic event like this. Wrongo’s brief look into this one incident doesn’t evidence that kind of trust. It appears that the bureaucrats who make the rules on railroad safety were influenced by the industry and wrote a rule that puts the economics for the railroad industry ahead of public safety.

These issues exist everywhere in the relationship between industry and government. There’s always pressure by the industry on the bureaucrats to deregulate. In a man-made disaster, that can place greater burdens on the communities, like just happened in East Palestine.

This is what the Michael Lewis’s book “The Fifth Risk” is about: People who go to school, get extensive training and then work in obscure corners of the government. Lewis talks about how important these people are, and how for decades they’ve been denigrated, vilified, and ignored, largely by Republicans.

This is another area in which the GOP is awful in a completely lopsided way to Democrats.

The existence of corporations who can impose risks on the rest of us is what happens when there is unequal political power. We need a state with a strong regulatory system to protect us. The state must build regulatory regimes for chemical spills that shift the risks back onto those who create them.

NS in this case, has said that they will be fully responsible for the damages caused in East Palestine.

That’s encouraging, but how does that little town with a population of less than 5,000, or even the state of Ohio hold NS to their word?

Reform The Supreme Court

The Daily Escape:

Gold Creek Valley, WA – December 2022 photo by Erwin Buske Photography

“A body of men holding themselves accountable to nobody ought not be trusted by anybody.” – Thomas Paine

Welcome to 2023! It seems like a good time to think again about what’s worth fighting for. Paine valued freedom and despised oppression. In 2023, we could substitute the US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) for Paine’s original targets, which were Britain and King George III.

From Ed Walker: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“In case after case, SCOTUS has ignored the trial record, made up its own facts, reached out to take cases before a record can be made, ignored precedent, including precedent about rejecting precedent, invented new Constitutional “doctrines”, taking faked-up cases for the sole purpose of striking down actions…and delaying justice through the shadow docket.”

The Shadow Docket is designed to allow the Court to engage in administrative management of its calendar so that the Justices have sufficient time to rule on emergency applications.

On Dec. 27, we saw an example of the Court’s reactionary majority using the Shadow Docket to extend indefinitely a Trump immigration policy known as Title 42. Trump implemented Title 42 to exclude asylum seekers from the US because they might be carriers of coronavirus.

From Vox’s Ian Millhiser:

“That decision…is typical behavior from the Supreme Court — or, at least, is reflective of this Court’s behavior since a Democrat moved into the White House….It’s the latest example of the Court dragging its feet after a GOP-appointed lower court judge overrides the Biden administration’s policy judgments, often letting that one judge decide the nation’s policy for…an entire year.

And that delay may be the best-case scenario for the Biden administration — and for the general principle that unelected judges aren’t supposed to decide the nation’s border policy. “

Millhiser points out that SCOTUS’ response is very different from when Trump was in office. Back then, the Court frequently raced to reinstate Trump’s policies within days.

The Court’s Conservative Six no longer seem to care about the law or precedent. It’s become a policy-making body in service of Conservative’s religious and social agendas. We should expect It to continue down this path until we reform the Court.

Reform is necessary to protect the legislative prerogatives of Congress, and the prerogatives of the Executive. Oh, and to protect the individual liberties guaranteed by the Constitution.

The NYT’s Adam Liptak says that SCOTUS has been rapidly accumulating power at the expense of every other part of the government. He quotes Mark A. Lemley, a Stanford law professor’s article in The Harvard Law Review:

“The Court has taken significant, simultaneous steps to restrict the power of Congress, the administrative state, the states, and the lower federal courts. And it has done so using a variety of (often contradictory) interpretative methodologies. The common denominator across multiple opinions in the last two years is that they concentrate power in one place: the Supreme Court.”

Non-elected activist judges indeed.

We have historically entrusted courts with the task of determining which rights belong to the people, and the extent to which governments at all levels can exercise their Constitutional powers in controlling the people. We know that courts have always lagged behind the consensus of the American People on issues of rights. But before now, change has come, albeit slowly.

That ended with SCOTUS’ decision in Dobbs, where the Conservative Six ruled that women have no right to control their own bodies.

Earlier, they imposed their religious view that coaches are free to dragoon their players into worshiping the God of the coach’s choice, and that religious leaders are free to spread a pandemic, despite public health officials’ warnings.

Neither Congress nor the President have resisted SCOTUS’s power grab. They haven’t even taken the mild step of imposing ethical requirements on the Court. The other two branches have simply watched the Conservative Six operate in their self-declared role of Philosopher Kings. We now have a Supreme Court tinkering with the Separation of Powers, based solely on political and ideological preference.

As if to justify their power without restraint or oversight, Chief Justice John Roberts recently cited the myth of “three separate and co-equal branches of government.” But that isn’t what the Founders and Framers had in mind, and it isn’t what the Constitution says.

In fact, the judiciary was third in line of power and importance in the minds of the Framers of the Constitution. Article III clearly puts the Supreme Court under the control of Congress. Section 2 is unambiguous:

“[T]he supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.”

The founders felt the judiciary was not co-equal. In Federalist 51, James Madison proclaims:

“[I]n republican government the legislative authority, necessarily, predominates.”

In Federalist 78, Alexander Hamilton writes:

“[T]he judiciary is beyond compare the weakest of the three departments of power.”

It’s important to remember that the power to overturn laws passed by Congress and signed by the President was not granted by the Constitution: it was taken by the Court onto itself in 1803 in the case Marbury v Madison.

Soon SCOTUS will rule in Moore v Harper. Moore hinges on a legal proposition known as the “independent state legislature theory.” The theory says that, when it comes to making state laws that apply to federal elections — from drawing congressional district lines, to determining the who-what-when-where of casting a ballot — only the state legislature itself has the power to set the rules.

Moore is an opportunity for the court to reject radicalism, but SCOTUS may upend our democracy with their decision.

SCOTUS has legalized bribery of politicians (Citizens United) and ignored potentially seditious behavior by its own members and their families. Not to mention exceeding its Constitutional authority by inserting itself into political issues, now with startling regularity.

It’s time to reign in the Supremes before they reign over us.

Monday Wake Up Call – December 5, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Park Avenue, Arches NP, UT – November 2022 photo by Joe Witkowski

Last Tuesday, the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) heard arguments in United States v. Texas, a case that asks some big questions about immigration policy and the relationship between government agencies and the states. From Vox:

“The case involves a memo that Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas issued in September 2021, instructing ICE agents to prioritize undocumented immigrants who “pose a threat to national security, public safety, and border security and thus threaten America’s well-being” when making arrests or otherwise enforcing immigration law.”

Texas and Louisiana challenged DHS’ ability to prioritize certain groups for deportation. The states argued that the executive branch doesn’t have the authority to pick and choose which groups to prioritize. A Texas federal judge, Drew Tipton, agreed with Louisiana and Texas, and stayed the ability of the DHS to prioritize certain groups of immigrants.

In July, the Supremes agreed to hear an appeal by the US government of the case, while permitting Tipton’s order to remain in effect. Vox maintains that the ruling by the Texas federal judge is questionable:

“A federal statute explicitly states that the homeland security secretary “shall be responsible” for “establishing national immigration enforcement policies and priorities,” and the department issued similar memos setting enforcement priorities in 2005, 2010, 2011, 2014, and 2017.”

The case has already been heard by SCOTUS. We won’t know what their decision is until sometime next summer, but the case raises questions that we all should ponder.

First, do Louisiana and Texas have standing to bring the case? To prove you have standing is to show that you have a right to bring your lawsuit and that you have had real, and direct harm. The two states have to show that they are being adversely affected directly by this policy. The data presented so far by the states isn’t of high quality.

Second, SCOTUS needs to address whether the DHS followed the rules under the Administrative Procedures Act. The Administrative Procedures Act establishes procedures that federal administrative agencies like DHS use for rule-making. And the states are saying that the Biden administration didn’t follow all the rules in adopting this policy deciding which immigrants to deport.

The key rule is about “prosecutorial discretion.” It’s one of the fundamental rules about how police and prosecutors operate at all levels of government. More from Vox:

“Suppose that there are a rash of home break-ins in Washington, DC….Police precinct commanders, the city’s police chief, or even the…mayor may respond…by ordering DC cops to spend more time patrolling Columbia Heights — even though that means that crimes in other neighborhoods might go uninvestigated or unsolved.”

It isn’t practical or useful for judges to monitor every decision made by every law enforcement department at every level of government. Vox says that SCOTUS has repeatedly warned judges against doing just that.

Third is whether the federal courts below SCOTUS have the power to vacate a rule that affects the rest of the states. Or whether SCOTUS is the only court that is permitted to stop a government policy nationwide.

The states contend that the DHS in this case has a mandatory duty to apprehend non-citizens. They’re arguing that the use of “shall” in the law means that these provisions are mandatory.

The Congress may have passed a law that creates a mandatory duty, but that same Congress hasn’t funded the DHS to the extent that performing such a mandatory duty is remotely possible.

The implications of the SCOTUS ruling are potentially huge. If any state can challenge any federal policy that they disagree with, it has ramifications beyond immigration law. An adverse decision for the government in this case would open the door to chaos if states are allowed to sue to overturn laws that they disagree with.

Think about it: If this stands, a Republican state attorney general’s office can handpick judges who they know will strike down (in this case) a Biden administration policy; and once the policy is declared invalid, the state knows that SCOTUS will play along with these partisan judges’ decisions for at least the year it takes for the decision to get up to the Supreme Court.

Time to wake up America! Wrongo has said it many times: Elections have consequences, particularly when Trump got to appoint three Supremes in four years. To help you wake up, take a listen to Bruce Springsteen performing “Nightshift” live on the Tonight Show. “Nightshift” is a 1985 song by the Commodores. Springsteen has covered it on his 2022 album, “Only the Strong Survive”:

Monday Wake Up Call – October 3, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Baxter Lake, Baxter State Park, ME – September 2022 photo by Laura Zamfirescu Photography

“We moved to a better neighborhood”. That’s the story of millions of Americans whose lives tracked toward success. In a way, that IS the American Dream, to escape from where you are to someplace better, safer, more upscale.

That version of the American Dream dovetails with our 21^st century desire to be isolated from other people. We order dinner from Doordash. We buy housewares from Amazon. We buy automobiles online to avoid talking to the manager at the dealer.

Many of Wrongo’s grandkids say that they hate people, meaning that they only wish to speak with their friends, and not to anyone who might be their customer.

So is alone in a better neighborhood now the American Dream? What about billionaires? They already live in the best neighborhoods. They have battalions of staff insulating them from the rest of us. Have you ever had a meeting with a multi-billionaire? It isn’t an easy thing to do. Over the years, Wrongo has worked for two of them, and they were perfectly fine individuals. But they were completely insulated.

And they made their money the old-fashioned way, inheriting it from their Robber Barron parents.

Today’s mega-rich have mostly found ways to extract value from consumers and businesses via software. Take a look at Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index. It’s a list dominated by people who have made money from the digital technology revolution.

And what are they doing with all this wealth? Many are quietly plotting their own survival against the world’s demise. Wrongo heard an interview with Douglas Rushkoff, author of “Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires”. Rushkoff is Professor at City University of NY, also a founder of the Laboratory for Digital Humanism, and a fellow at the Institute for the Future.

Rushkoff explained that billionaires worried about the end of the world know their money will likely be of little value. They’re thinking about political instability, social breakdown, and environmental catastrophe. A number of the world’s richest people are preparing for these events by building bunkers in New Zealand and in other remote locations. From Rushkoff:

“Most of these guys that we think are going to save us are actually wishing for the apocalypse. This is not just something that they fear. It’s something that at this point they’re ready to bring on.”

The book came from a meeting between Rushkoff and five billionaires at a desert resort. The topic? How to survive the catastrophe they know is coming. More from Rushkoff:

“And they spent the rest of the hour asking me really to…test their survival strategies…Do we go underground? Do I get an island?….What about space? And we ended up spending the majority of the hour on the single question, How do I maintain control of my security force after my money is worthless?…..because they’ve all got this money, they’ve…contracted Navy SEALs to come out to their compounds. But then they’re thinking, well, what do we do if our money’s worthless, then why are the Navy SEALs not just going to kill us and take all the stuff?”

Remember the back-yard bomb shelters of the 1950s: With that threat, how big would you want your bomb shelter to be? How luxurious and well-guarded? If the world were destroyed, you would try to live in that shelter full-time. Same thing with these billionaires.

Think about it: They want to use 21st century technology to revive a 13th century social order and impose it on the land and people who live around their protected fortresses. Missing from the plans of tech billionaires? Ideas to stop authoritarianism, decrease inequality, heal social divides, or slow climate change. Rushkoff explains:

“Even if we call them genius technologists, most of them were plucked from college when they were freshmen….They came up with some idea in their dorm room before they’d taken history, or economics, or ethics, or philosophy classes, and so they lack the wisdom needed to oversee their own perverse amounts of wealth.”

So maybe we shouldn’t rely on these guys to protect our future. In fact, Rushkoff says that these people who have the most power to change our current trajectory have no interest in doing so.

At this point in human history, making money is all that matters. In capitalist societies your worth is directly correlated to how much money you have. Everybody understands this. Billionaires are the most prominent symptom, but they aren’t the disease. Capitalism is the disease.

Time to wake up America! There is absolutely zero downside to relieving these people of a big slice of their wealth and putting it toward rehabbing our society. To help you wake up, watch, and listen to Carlos and Cindy Blackman Santana lead a Playing for Change global group of musicians in “Oye Como Va”:

The Great Resignation

The Daily Escape

Sunrise, Alpine AZ – November 2021 photo by Ed Kendall. Alpine is at 8,200’ elevation.

From Krugman:

“You’re probably aware that the US is experiencing what many call the Great Resignation — a significant fall in the number of people willing to accept jobs, at least at pre-Covid wages. Four million fewer Americans are employed than were on the eve of the pandemic, yet the rate at which workers are quitting their jobs — usually a good indicator of labor market tightness — has hit a record, and the scramble of employers to find workers has led to rapid wage increases.”

People see the “now hiring” signs everywhere. They assumed that generous unemployment benefits were discouraging workers from accepting jobs. But the enhanced benefits went away with no visible change in the US labor force participation. So, what’s going on?

Back to Krugman: (brackets by Wrongo)

“…[the] Great Resignation, it turns out, is largely an American phenomenon. European nations have been much more successful than we have at getting people back to work. In France, in particular, employment and labor force participation are now well above prepandemic levels.”

Barry Ritholtz says that there’s a massive transformation underway in America’s labor markets. When we look at the total Quits Rate for all Nonfarm payroll workers since the Great Financial Crisis (GFC) ended in 2009, the trend in the “quits rate” has steadily moved higher for all workers and really accelerated this year:

The red trend line shows that the rate that people are quitting has now returned to its level in 2016, and except during the pandemic, it has continued to rise.

If you look at only the Quits Rate for Professional & Business Services, those white-collar workers who did okay during the pandemic, their trend isn’t the same as the overall quits:

There’s been virtually no difference in the rate of professional quits since 2008. That’s telling us that the Great Resignation is taking place in the lower half of the employment wage scale, entry-level jobs, and the tiers just above them.

This has deep ramifications for the American economy.

Companies who rely on cheap labor are having hiring problems. Those companies that pay the minimum wage (or slightly higher) are having a hard time finding workers. Part of this is the failure of the Federal government to raise the minimum wage, which has been the same since 2009. That hasn’t kept up with inflation, or the growth in corporate profits.

Instead of gradually raising the minimum wage over time nationally, putting it on a path towards $15 or higher, we’ve allowed wage pressure to build for years. Then, during the pandemic, we experienced an 18 month period when low-wage workers reconsidered their careers. The dam broke, and we’re seeing both a sudden spike in wages and a shortage of workers.

Along the way, some labor has upskilled, gotten certified, degreed, and found new fields to work in. Now we have millions of people launching small businesses, striving to make it to the middle class, and towards self-determination. From the WSJ:

“The pandemic has unleashed a historic burst in entrepreneurship and self-employment. Hundreds of thousands of Americans are striking out on their own as consultants, retailers and small-business owners.”

The number of unincorporated self-employed workers has risen by 500,000 since the start of the pandemic, to 9.44 million. Except for a few months this summer, that’s the highest total since 2008. It amounts to an increase of 6% in the self-employed, while overall US employment total remains nearly 3% lower than before the pandemic.

So far this year, these entrepreneurs applied for federal tax-identification numbers to register 4.54 million new businesses, up 56% from the same period of 2019. That is the largest number on record since 2004. And two-thirds are for businesses that aren’t expected to hire employees.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – June 14, 2020

Cut it out, root and branch:

Is “Defund the Police” a gift, or a curse for the GOP?

Irony is lost on the police:

The fight continues:

Wrongo is somewhat conflicted about the statues. OTOH, the Confederacy only lasted for five years. It isn’t Ireland where families lived and died fighting for their freedom from England for centuries. The band Nirvana lasted two years longer than the Confederacy. People who say they’re proud of five years of an ancestor’s life really are just white supremacists. They should stop pretending there’s something else they like.

Everyone is for police accountability:

Turns out, we really had quite a lot to lose:

Monday Wake Up Call – June 8, 2020

The Daily Escape:

Banksy – June, 2020

Banksy is a well-known British graffiti artist whose identity is secret. But he’s become well-known, gaining attention for his politically charged works. The above appeared in an Instagram post where Banksy says:

“At first I thought I should just shut up and listen to black people about this issue. But why would I do that? It’s not their problem, it’s mine. People of colour are being failed by the system. The white system. Like a broken pipe flooding the apartment of the people living downstairs. The faulty system is making their life a misery, but it’s not their job to fix it. They can’t, no one will let them in the apartment upstairs. This is a white problem. And if white people don’t fix it, someone will have to come upstairs and kick the door in.”

Well said. We all should know where the responsibility lies for fixing the problems of racism.

Let’s hope that Americans understand the threat and the opportunity posed by this moment. Racism and the indiscriminate use of violence by police are burning the fabric of our society. How the fire is put out is entirely in our hands.

And the demonstrations continued over the weekend, mostly peacefully, at least as Wrongo writes this. These rallies have quickly become the focal point of a nationwide movement against systemic racism, and for police reform. They’re becoming better organized, and are unlikely to end soon.

Thousands gathered on Capitol Hill on Saturday to join a protest organized by Freedom Fighters DC. It drew one of the largest crowds since protests began there:

Source: Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call

Sen. Angus King (I-ME) joined the protesters outside the Dirksen Senate Office Building. Roll Call reported that: (brackets by Wrongo)

“…he [Sen. King] drew connections between the current uprisings and his experience at the 1963 March on Washington. He was a 19-year-old student at Dartmouth College and was on hand for Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have A Dream” speech at the march on Aug. 28, 1963.”

At the time, Wrongo was also a 19-year-old student, studying at Georgetown in DC. Sen. King says that this is a “full circle moment” for him, and Wrongo agrees. It’s a full circle moment for America. We appear to be on the verge of something big, politically.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging — Protesting and Looting Edition — May 31, 2020

Last Monday night in Minneapolis, 46-year old George Floyd was arrested. Police officer Derek Chauvin handcuffed him and pinned him to the ground, crushing his throat. Floyd died an hour later.

What happened next has played out time and time again in American cities after high-profile cases of police brutality. Vigils and protests were organized in Minneapolis and around the US to demand police accountability. Google the name of any large city in the US along with “police brutality” and your search will return many pages of results.

But while Minneapolis investigators waited to charge Chauvin, unrest boiled over. News reports soon carried images of property destruction and police in riot gear. This has now morphed into the Minnesota governor calling out the National Guard.

Wrongo can’t claim to understand race issues in America, but he thinks that we should take a minute to re-read Dr. King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”. In his letter, MLK identified “the great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom” not as the KKK, or the South’s White Citizens Councils. He said it was white moderates, people who:

Are more devoted to order than justice
Prefer the absence of tension to the presence of justice
Say they agree with your goals, but not your methods for achieving them
Constantly urge patience in the struggle, saying you should wait for a more convenient time

If you have watched the news for the past 40 years, you know that the Moderate is one stumbling block to universal justice. The Moderate’s tools are things like Non-Disclosure Agreements, loyalty to the team, and to the power of the hierarchy. Moderates may not be at the top of the power pyramid, but as long as Moderates can kiss up and kick down, they’ll hang in there, waiting for a better time to think about bringing justice to all Americans.

When it comes to violence in our cities, as Elie Mystal says in The Nation, it’s hard to name a city in America where the police aren’t working for white people. The police know it. And deep down, white people know exactly whom the police are supposed to protect and serve, and they know it’s not black and brown people.

Disagree? Go to any white suburb in America. Cops aren’t wandering the streets, people aren’t being arrested and neighbors aren’t being sent to prison. It’s easy for most of us to think that the George Floyd’s of America are simply a tragic cost of doing business, that a looted Target is evidence of the need for more policing.

We can hold more than one thought in our heads. People should be free to demonstrate, and that sometimes leads to rioting. Both are forms of protest. Wrongo doesn’t condone looting. But it’s also a form of protest. If you argue it’s not, then refresh your memory about the Boston Tea Party, when white protesters dressed up as minorities and looted to make a point about taxes.

If you are upset about protests, and were also pissed off at Colin Kaepernick taking a knee, you are probably a Moderate. People first need to be able to identify racism when they see it before they can understand the racial issues underpinning what happened in Minneapolis this weekend.

If you woke up today angry, confused, or frustrated about the direction our country is heading: VOTE!

Wrongo has looked hard for fun cartoons, without success. Here’s the best of the week. Sadly, her hope can only be aspirational:

How times have changed:

From 2016. All you need to know about demonstrating in America:

For Sunday, we include a rarely heard protest song written in 1966 by Malvina Reynolds (1900-1977). She wrote “Little Boxes” and many other songs. She wrote “It Isn’t Nice” as an answer to those who value order above justice. Here, “It Isn’t Nice” is sung by Barbara Dane and the Chambers Brothers:

Sample lyric:

It isn’t nice to block the doorway,
It isn’t nice to go to jail,
There are nicer ways to do it,
But the nice ways always fail.
It isn’t nice, it isn’t nice,
You told us once, you told us twice,
But if that is Freedom’s price,
We don’t mind.

It isn’t nice to carry banners
Or to sit in on the floor,
Or to shout our cry of Freedom
At the hotel and the store.
It isn’t nice, it isn’t nice,
You told us once, you told us twice,
But if that is Freedom’s price,
We don’t mind.

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

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