Culture Wars – Page 6 – The Wrongologist

Republican Purity: Who’s Good Enough For Them?

The Daily Escape:

Walker River, NV – February 2023 photo by TheOsideBish

According to the GOP, your organization has to toe the line or else you could be banished or investigated. CNBC is reporting that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) are set to banish the US Chamber of Commerce from Capitol Hill for endorsing Democrats in some 2020 and 2022 House races.

CNBC quotes Mark Bednar, a spokesman for McCarthy:

“The priorities of the US Chamber of Commerce have not aligned with the priorities of House Republicans or the interests of their own members, and they should not expect a meeting with Speaker McCarthy as long as that’s the case…”

CNBC says Scalise also won’t meet with them either, quoting his spokeswoman Lauren Fine: (brackets by Wrongo)

“[the Chamber headquarters in] Washington has radically shifted away from the pro-business philosophy of most local Chambers across America….unless the Chamber gets back to their traditional pro-business roots, they should not expect to have any engagement with Majority Leader Scalise’s office.”

This all started in 2020, when the Chamber endorsed 23 House Democrats in swing districts, a sharp break from the past practice of endorsing a nearly exclusive slate of Republicans, with one or two Democrats thrown on the list for a patina of bipartisan perception. And Republicans failed to regain the majority. The Chamber then reportedly endorsed 23 House Republican candidates and just four Democrats during the 2022 election. But that hasn’t made them “pure” enough for Kevin McCarthy, despite the Chamber providing $3 million to Mehmet Oz in his losing effort for a Senate seat in Pennsylvania.

Wrongo met often with the US Chamber of Commerce during his days at the big bank. They are far from being anti-GOP. On Monday, Tim Doyle, a spokesman for the Chamber, told CNBC:

“The Chamber’s priorities include lower taxes, reduced spending, fighting over regulation and numerous other issues, and we are aligned with House Republicans on many of the issues that are important to American businesses of all sizes,”

That sounds to Wrongo like it’s aligned with the Republicans. Doyle did go on to say:

“We do disagree with those who believe the Chamber should become a single-party partisan organization….”

The Intercept is reporting that the new House Republican majority wants to investigate the Chamber over its commitment to ESG regulations. ESG stands for environmental, social, and governance, key criteria that can impact company market valuations and its behavior. But ESG has become a red line for Conservatives, who argue that companies that follow it are failing to live up to their fiduciary duty to maximize profits for investors.

Apparently, Republicans in the House are also questioning the Chamber’s own conduct, including reportedly allowing former Chamber CEO Thomas Donohue to use the organization’s corporate jet for personal trips.

Look, the Chamber can be pretty terrible. They’re planning to sue the Securities and Exchange Commission if it goes forward with a climate change-related disclosure rule. But forcing them to only give money to Republicans is a new low, even for these nihilists.

Separately, Florida’s Governor DeSantis is set to take over Disney’s special Reedy Creek tax district in order to force the company to cough up $1 billion. Wrongo reported on DeSantis’ fight with Disney in April 2022 here and here. Targeting Disney became a thing after the company spoke out about Florida’s “don’t say gay” law.

Back in April, DeSantis pushed lawmakers to dissolve the Reedy Creek Improvement District, which for 55 years effectively gave Disney control of the land around its Florida properties. Republicans complied, and the district was scheduled to sunset on June 1, 2023.

But on Monday, Republican lawmakers unveiled a bill to turn over control of Disney’s special taxing district to a five-member board to be chosen by DeSantis. The proposal also comes with a rebrand; Reedy Creek would become the “Central Florida Tourism Oversight District.”

This gives DeSantis a new form of control over Disney, the state’s largest employer. And the opportunity for extorting collecting an additional $1 billion from a company that is on the DeSantis enemies list (which will ultimately be paid by the park’s patrons) is totally on brand for DeSantis.

Anyone else getting really tired of Republicans telling us we can’t say certain words, we can’t read certain books, we can’t teach certain things, we can’t talk about certain history, or we can’t donate to a few Democrats?

What’s Conservative about any of that?

Monday Wake Up Call – February 6, 2023

The Daily Escape:

Sea smoke, South Portland, ME looking towards Portland Head light – February 2023 photo by Benjamin Williamson Photography

On Saturday, Wrongo and Ms. Right went to a dinner party with friends and two generations of family. The after dinner talk turned to how quite a few of the kids and grandkids weren’t planning on having children.

We tossed around ideas about why they were unlikely to procreate, and somethings stood out. First, they see climate change as an existential threat that society is unwilling to solve, even though the technology already exists. Why bring a kid into that?

Second, society seems broken. Our group meant that we face simultaneous crises, layered on top of each other. This situation involving simultaneous global challenges, for which we have few solutions, is called Polycrisis.

And a crisis in one global system can spill over into other global systems. They interact with each another so that each new crisis worsens the overall harm. The Polycrisis environment weakens every individual’s sense of security and their place in the world.

One impact that seems related to the simultaneous climate, health, economic and geopolitical challenges are the effects on children. The needs for special education and special services for the very young has never been greater in America. It’s forcing big changes in public school budgets across the country.

No one is really sure why this is happening.

Wrongo isn’t proposing a solution, just suggesting we need to think more about how the problems of declining birth rates, coupled with the growing issues our young children are facing, might be interrelated.

Noah Smith an economist, has an interesting newsletter about how we define community:

“In the past, our communities were primarily horizontal — they were simply the people we lived close to….Increasingly, though, new technology has enabled us to construct communities that I’ve decided to call vertical — groups of people united by identities, interests, and values rather than by physical proximity.”

Smith says that in the past few decades, Americans became disengaged from their local communities, hunkering down in their houses, and failing to interact with the people around them. That led to a well-documented decline in Americans’ participation in civic organizations, local clubs, etc. Our neighbors can also be stifling and/or repressive because they impose uncomfortable community norms on us.

We’ve always had Smith’s vertical communities: “the Jewish community”, “the LGBT community”, and many others. But in the past, an identity grouping wasn’t a true community. We all have identities that connect us with faraway people — other Irishmen, other Taylor Swift fans.

Prior to the internet, we couldn’t have much contact with them. These loose vertical communities weren’t efficient ways to exchange ideas. Before email, text and streaming video, getting the word out was very slow, and our horizontal communities would decide whether what we wanted to share was worthwhile.

Now, we’re no longer isolated. The internet brought us a world of human interaction: social media feeds, chat apps, and so on. Suddenly we’re surrounded by people through their words, their pictures, and their videos.

Now we organize much of our human interaction around virtual vertical communities. Former occasional connections became Facebook groups, subreddits and personal networks on Twitter. And like our small towns back in the day, vertical communities use social ostracism to punish those who deviate from consensus norms.

But vertical communities can’t provide things like public education, national defense, courts of law, property rights, product standards, and infrastructure that we all depend on.

These require a government to administer them. And governments are organized horizontally; mostly defined by lines on maps. But what if we socialize, cooperate, and fall in love with the people from our vertical community? What if we grow apart from the people next door and the relationship is irreparable?

We see this every day in America when citizens go to a PTA meeting and discover a bunch of strangers saying things that they despise.

Wrongo isn’t saying that vertical communities are another enemy. But they can and do exacerbate the polycrisis by making truth harder to see. And by making effective action more difficult.

If you doubt this, remember how powerful the anti-vaxx vertical was at the height of the Covid pandemic. Today’s vertical communities are strong enough to keep our government from getting much of anything done. How can we work together with neighbors when we share few common bonds?

America today is a predatory society. We predate on politics, ideas, values, and culture. Biden’s trying to change this, but can he succeed? How many of us are trying to help? Changing a society that’s this broken, one that’s moving deeper into vertical communities will be a very heavy lift.

Time to wake up America! What can we do to maintain what Lincoln in his first inaugural address said:

“We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.”

To help you wake up, listen and watch the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s 2022 cover of Bob Dylan’s “I Shall Be Released” with Larkin Poe (Rebecca Lovell and Megan Lovell) on vocals and a fabulous slide guitar solo:

Sample of Lyrics:

Standing next to me in this lonely crowd
Is a man who swears he’s not to blame
All day long I hear him shout so loud
Just crying out that he was framed

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – February 5, 2023

Everybody was talking about the Chinese balloon: It’s spying on us, and if Biden had balls he’d shoot it down. Well, on Saturday, Biden did just that. The Airforce shot it down in the Atlantic off of the Carolina coast. Wrongo is sure that our military will recover the important parts of the balloon. Once we take a look at the technology that the Chinese are using, we’ll know why the balloon was sent over the US, and confirm whether it is a device for spying or not.

We need to view the balloon saga in the larger context of our relationship with China. John Dean has a good observation:

“I’m starting to see China as an enemy. I type those words, of course, on my Chinese-made HP laptop. I watched news reports of the balloon on my Chinese-made TV. The chair I’m sitting in may even be Chinese. The only thing I’ve bought recently that isn’t Chinese, I’m sad to say, is the Chinese food I had for dinner last night, but I could be wrong.”

Our current relationship with China is complicated by our dependence on them for much of our manufacturing. They also are a huge export market for US commodities. As China has flexed its muscles, they have become an economic and geopolitical competitor with the US. Our relationship with them will become much more difficult in the coming years as we wrestle to contain them geopolitically in Asia, while blunting their advances in the rest of the world.

Dean points out that our trade with China has provided them with the resources it is using to build its military force. We need to wake up and wean ourselves off of Chinese goods. Otherwise, we’re paying for two militaries, ours, and theirs. On to cartoons.

One plan for the Chinese balloon:

The new DeSantis school library:

Revised College Board AP course seems fine:

Economy’s too good for GOP:

Sad truth:

Monday Wake Up Call – January 30, 2023

The Daily Escape:

Late afternoon, Mt. Baker, WA – January 2023 photo by jsmooth

Let’s take on a few key questions raised by the death of Tyre Nichols at the hands of the Memphis police. Wrongo’s primary question is: “Is the life of a police officer worth more than the life of any other citizen?”

Police in the US are trained to see every interaction with the citizens that they are sworn to “protect and serve” as a potentially life-threatening situation. Their primary concern is to go home at the end of their shift, healthy and in one piece.

That level of fear encourages aggression. All police have heard stories of other officers shot as they approached a car, So they often are as tense as a solider in a warzone. And in an America that’s drowning in guns, that fear is well-placed.

When there’s a confrontation with a suspect, police culture focuses the cop on making the suspect comply with the cop’s initial order. And police culture tilts toward the use of physical force when compliance isn’t immediate.

Police culture is based in male bonding, and in an “us vs. them” mentality. Police culture brings with it a code of silence to protect even wrongdoers. Finally, police culture is reinforced by local police unions that are led by mostly older white men, who oppose any progressive change.

A second question is: “Where should we assign blame for continued police violence?” Sherrilyn Ifill’s newsletter has useful context. She asks if the failure of white people to effectively confront and contain the violence by white cops against Black people should be considered as a failure of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, as some pundits suggested this week.

She disagrees. You can read her piece here.

The BLM movement helped white Americans understand what systemic racism meant. It showed America how it impacted people’s lives through violence by police throughout the US. But to ask a Black political movement to change police culture which tilts conservative, White and military, places the burden on the wrong political organization. The correct place for managing this change is local city governments and their citizens. They need to take on the task of creating true civilian control over their local police forces.

The fact that the five officers charged in Nichols’s murder are Black complicates discussion of the role of race in policing. We’re used to cases involving White officers and Black victims. But this case makes it clear that there’s a larger issue at work: an entrenched police culture of aggression and dehumanization of Black people. It is as much the system and its tactics that fosters violence, as it is the racial identity of the officers involved in the brutality.

The NYT quotes Professor Jody Armour, a University of Southern California law professor:

“It’s not just a Black and white issue, but a Black and blue one. And when you put on that blue uniform, it often becomes the primary identity that drowns out any other identities that might compete with it.”

After the George Floyd killing by cops in 2020, Americans realized that police violence was a national and possibly an intractable problem. Various US states approved nearly 300 police reform bills after Floyd’s murder, creating civilian oversight of police, more anti-bias training, stricter use-of-force limits, and alternatives to arrests in cases involving people with mental illnesses, according to a recent analysis by the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism.

But as the NYT’s Charles Blow says, America caught Covid and then simply walked away before the work was done:

“Too many liberal politicians showed us that their commitment to legislation, and even language, to protect Black lives from police violence was polling dependent….They ran scared of being labeled woke or of supporting a “defund the police” ideology.”

“Police unions also learned a lesson: that they could survive the most intense and coordinated denunciation of their practices they had ever faced and still dodge federal legislation to address the violence that happens on their watch.”

We like to say, “this isn’t who we are.” The evidence, though, is that this is exactly who we are.

Time to wake up America! Let’s ask why police lives should be worth more to our community than the lives of those they are sworn to protect.

To help you wake up, listen to the late Tom Verlaine of the band Television who died last week. Television’s first two albums, “Marquee Moon”, and “Adventure” were critical successes but didn’t sell. “Marquee Moon” is considered one of the defining releases of the punk era.

Wrongo and Ms. Right lived in a loft in lower Manhattan in the very late 1970s – early 1980s. Wrongo occasionally went to CBGBs, then the mecca of punk rock. Once, we had the Dead Boys entertain at a party at our lakeside weekend place. It’s tough to think that the icons of early punk music are now in their 70s.

There aren’t many videos of Television performing live. But here they are doing “Foxhole” from their album “Adventure”, at the UK’s Old Grey Whistle Test in 1978:

The band included Verlaine, Richard Lloyd, and Fred Smith on guitar, with Billy Ficca on drums.

Sample Lyrics:

You show me the war but the war’s such a bore.
In the line of duty, in the line of fire
A heartless heart is my proper attire.

Saturday Soother – January 14, 2023

The Daily Escape:

A view from Shenandoah NP near Keezletown, VA – January 1, 2023 photo by One Man’s Outdoor Journey

Wrongo and Ms. Right live far enough out in the country that we have no city water, sewer, or gas lines. But the cooktop in our recently remodeled kitchen runs on propane while our ovens are electric. We have a well and septic. Our hot water is made by propane as well.

So what are we supposed to make of this week’s controversy over the Biden administration’s Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) possibly banning future sales of natural gas stoves and cooktops? The reason for this is that burning gas stoves put their partially burned fuel, including nitrogen dioxide (NO²) in the air, which causes asthma. And older stoves with pilot lights instead of electric igniters also push NO²into the air.

On Monday, Bloomberg reported that the CPSC was considering new regulations around gas stoves, given growing concerns over indoor pollutants. Commissioner Richard Trumka Jr. said:

“Any option is on the table….Products that can’t be made safe can be banned.”

The proposal by the CPSC followed a December study by scientists finding that gas ranges that burn natural gas account for almost 13% of childhood-asthma cases in the US. Advocates have long argued against gas stoves, saying the pollution they emit makes them inferior to other options, such as electric or induction ranges. But the asthma statistic breathed new life into the debate.

OK, Wrongo knows the difference between propane and natural gas, but when he first heard about the debate, it was unclear whether his gas of choice was also a health problem and had to die.

Bloomberg neglected to say that any CPSC regulations, like other proposed state and local-level bans of gas stoves, only applies to new construction. But that didn’t keep Republicans from evoking visions of a 2023 filled with government agents busting down doors and ripping out stoves. That tentative regulation conversation about how to best mitigate the health hazards of gas stoves morphed into a Right Wing campaign to convince Real Americans that the Government is coming for their gas stoves:

Rep. Ronny Jackson, (R-TX) tweeted:

“If the maniacs in the White House come for my stove, they can pry it from my cold dead hands,”

From Sen. Tom Cotton,(R-AK):

“Democrats are coming for your kitchen appliances,”

From Rep. Byron Donalds, (R-FL):

“Get your hands off our gas stoves!!!!”

From Rep. Jim Jordan,(R-OH):

“God. Guns. Gas stoves.”

God, Guns, and Gas stoves! All because one appointee in the administration discussed it. But this controversy isn’t about facts; like always, it’s about feelings. Over 30 years ago, the Clean Energy Act was easily renewed on a bipartisan basis. Since then, the environment has become part of the culture wars.

The reflex to position gas stoves as the last redoubt of traditional American life threatened by big government, is just stereotypical of the American Right wing. It’s difficult to see the fight about gas stoves as something that will move the needle since gas is far more common in cities and blue states. So, let the Republicans keep on cooking up the outrage du jour. It’s doubtful that the voters will be eating it up.

Remember their past freak-outs, like when former Rep. Michele Bachmann tried to build a political career around preserving incandescent light bulbs? Another useless freak-out.

In retrospect, it’s honestly shocking we were able in 1975 to ban leaded gasoline in America, although there were lots of dissenters at the time. And now, since we’ve gotten all their guns, it only makes sense that Democrats go after their gas stoves.

Let’s leave these partisan debates in the kitchen where they belong and embrace our Saturday Soother, that special time when we stop thinking about Biden’s secret document stash, or why Jim Jordan dresses like a gym teacher, and spend a few minutes contemplating nearly nothing.

Start by brewing up a big mug of Wilton Benitez Orange Bourbon ($19.00/8 oz.) from Wisconsin’s JBC Coffee Roasters. Apparently the coffee cherries for this variant turn orange when they ripen rather than the typical red and tend to be even more fruity than their red counterparts. The roaster says it is super creamy with flavors of candied ginger, pineapple, and cream soda.

Now grab a seat by a south-facing window to watch and listen to “Fandango” from the Guitar Quintet in D-major, G.448 by Boccherini, performed live in 2015 at the Schubertiade in Hohenems, Austria. Boccherini was an Italian composer and cellist who died in 1805. A fandango is a Spanish dance:

Monday Wake Up Call – January 9, 2023

The Daily Escape:

Kennebunk, ME – January 2023 photo by Eric Storm Photography

Buried in the McCarthy debacle last week was some good news on the abortion front. From the NYT:

“For the first time, retail pharmacies, from corner drugstores to major chains like CVS and Walgreens, will be allowed to offer abortion pills in the United States under a regulatory change made Tuesday by the Food and Drug Administration.”

The online magazine STAT asked an interesting question: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“When the Food and Drug Administration lifted some — but not all — of its restrictions on an abortion pill this week, it raised questions about why these rules were there in the first place. Mifepristone, the drug in question, has been used by over 3.7 million Americans to end early pregnancies since its approval in 2000, is more than 97% effective, tends to have only mild side effects such as cramping, with severe ones occurring in fewer than 0.5% of patients. So why was it on a list of prescription drugs requiring extra precautions and red tape, alongside opioid painkillers?”

Monday Wake Up Call – November 28, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Thanksgiving Day, Brewster, MA – November 2022 photo by Anne Marie

There was plenty of news over Thanksgiving that Wrongo was itching to talk about, but instead, he decided to take a complete break. Here’s something that’s been on his mind.

Despite all of the self-congratulating by Democrats, the Cook Political Report shows that Republicans received some 3.5 million more votes than Democrats in the midterms. Republicans received 54.13 million votes compared to the Democrats’ 50.79 million votes. Republicans did better in 2022 than they did in the 2018 midterms by 3 million votes, while Democrats got 10.3 million fewer votes than 2018, when they won control of the House by 235–199. Much of this is turnout.

Despite this context, the narrative is that America rejected the far Right by defeating election denier candidates. And most Trumpist candidates were defeated by significant margins. Democrats shouldn’t rest on their laurels or assume “the Trump fever has broken”. It hasn’t. America comes out of the midterms with voters evenly divided between the Parties.

Now, there are only four swing states left: Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and Wisconsin. These four only account for 43 Electoral Votes. Stanley Greenberg, a Democratic pollster points to the striking “continuity among the elections” since Trump emerged as a national political figure:

“We’ve now gone through 2016, ’18, ‘20 and ‘22 – and all looked pretty much alike….And it has locked in the coalitions.”

So we’re not only evenly divided, but we’re also deeply divided politically.

Looking at the Electoral College, the midterms offered some optimism to Democrats when 2024 comes around. The five states that decided the last presidential race did so by flipping from Trump in 2016 to Biden in 2020. Those five (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin) moved more toward the Democrats in 2022.

The Dems won six of the eight Senate and governor races across these states, and Dems could notch a seventh victory if Sen. Raphael Warnock defeats Herschel Walker in a Georgia run-off next month.

But Republicans made Ohio, Iowa, and Florida Redder. Each now appears securely in the GOP’s column for 2024 (and most likely beyond). And the Dem’s perennial hope of turning Texas Blue still looks like it’s another 10 years away after Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s double-digit victory against Beto O’Rourke. Republicans again won all of Texas’ statewide offices, continuing a Dem shutout that stretches back to the 1990s.

It appears that the offsetting and hardening partisan strengths of each Party could again give the power to decide the presidency to a few hundred thousand voters, in a very few close counties in a few very balanced states.

CNN’s Ron Brownstein says that a 2024 presidential race with just Wisconsin, Nevada, Georgia, and Arizona as true battlegrounds would probably begin with Democrats favored in states holding 260 Electoral College votes (including Washington, DC) and Republicans in states with 235. That means Democrats would need to win just one of Arizona (11 votes), Georgia (16), or Wisconsin (10) to reach an Electoral College majority. But that’s far from a certainty.

This division will make for tons of political stress over the next two years. Each Party understands that our nation’s future is now controlled by the choices of a tiny minority of people living in a few contested political districts: White-collar suburbs of Atlanta and Phoenix, working-class Latino neighborhoods in and around Las Vegas, and the mid-sized communities in Wisconsin’s so-called BOW counties (Brown County, Outagamie County and Winnebago County).

No GOP presidential candidate will concede Michigan or Pennsylvania just because of the midterm results. But the magnitude of those 2022 Democratic wins show how difficult it will be for a Republican nominee to take them in 2024 – particularly if the GOP candidate supports further restrictions on abortion.

It’s likely that Democrats will target North Carolina to expand their roster, while Republicans will target Minnesota and New Hampshire. But flipping any state will be difficult, depending upon candidate quality.

This shrinking list of competitive presidential states could increase political tensions for the next two years. Time to wake up America! Think about how your indifference to politics and to voting in our elections has put the country on a knife edge. The threat posed to America by the MAGA extremists remains very real.

It’s going to take tremendous effort in every single election until this dynamic shifts. And that could take a full generation. To help you wake up, watch “People Get Ready”, a Curtis Mayfield tune that foretold the turning tide in the battle for racial equality. It hit the top of the R&B charts after its original 1965 release by The Impressions.

It’s been covered by scores of artists, including Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and here in 2009 by Rod Stewart and Jeff Beck at the El Rey Theater in Los Angeles. Beck’s reaction when Stewart comes on stage is priceless. Stewart served as vocalist for the Jeff Beck Group back in 1969:

Sample Lyrics:

People get ready
There’s a train a-coming
You don’t need no baggage
You just get on board
All you need is faith
To hear the diesels humming
Don’t need no ticket
You just thank the Lord

Monday Wake Up Call – November 21, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Early snow, Rockford, MI – November 2022 photo by Jeane Blazic

We’re going to cover two topics on this Monday. First, Bernard L. Fraga, associate professor of Political Science at Emory University, tweeted the demographics of the Georgia midterm election:

Black turnout was down by 4.5% vs 2018. Hispanic turnout was down 2.5%. Had the Black turnout percentage been at 2018 levels, Warnock probably would have won outright. The difference may have been caused in part by the new voting restrictions in Georgia. Wrongo talked last week about helping Georgians get photo IDs. People better wake up and help get more Black Georgians to the polls on December 6.

But today’s main wake up call is about the Rightwing group, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Wrongo has written about ALEC before, here, here, here and here. ALEC prepares model legislation that conforms to hard Right ideology. They then meet with state legislators all across America to push for adoption of ALEC-written laws at the state level. These are laws that would probably never become law at the federal level.

In the past, some Republican-led states have passed hundreds of pieces of ALEC’s model legislation almost word for word, including on immigration, voter suppression, the environment, guns, and energy policy.

Now, ALEC is pushing states to adopt a new law shielding US businesses from “political boycotts”. If enacted, the proposed legislation, would prevent boycotts by investors, banks, and companies of any other US business. The guts of the Act is that a governmental entity may not enter into a contract with a company for goods or services unless the contract contains a written verification from the company that it:

Does not engage in economic boycotts; and
Will not engage in economic boycotts during the term of the contract.

This comes about amid rising consumer pressure on firms over who they support politically, or who they choose to do business with. Think about the decision by major retail stores to stop selling My Pillow products, or the decision by Adidas to cut Kanye West’s shoe line loose after he made anti-Semitic statements.

From The Guardian:

“The new model legislation requires every “governmental entity”, which covers a wide array of bodies from state government to local police departments and public universities, to include a clause in contracts requiring businesses to pledge they “will not engage in economic boycotts”

For most of us, “free markets” means that businesses are free to make buying and selling decisions based on the information that’s relevant to their economic interests. But to enforce this Act, a state Attorney General can decide that the decision to, for example, divest the stock of an oil and gas company, is an ideological act.

What if it’s just not that good of a stock?

ALEC’s doublethink maintains that for free markets to remain free, it is sometimes necessary to restrict the freedom to make certain decisions based on criteria that an Attorney General can define as “ideological.”

Even if they are based on a sound economic rationale.

We knew all along that for the Right Wing, free doesn’t really mean free. These people are authoritarians who want to harness the powers of government for their own ends. And they’ll do whatever’s convenient to achieve those ends.

The Republican establishment is very much alive. ALEC is the right wing’s corporate gangsters in suits. In this case, it’s billionaires aligned with corrupt Republican politicians. They have purchased state and federal legislators to do their bidding. And it’s been going on for a very long time.

Let’s see what the Supreme Court does when one of these cases gets in front of them.

Time to wake up America! The hard right in America is unbelievably well-funded. ALEC is just one of the many ways that they are undermining what true “freedom” means.

To help you wake up, listen to Little Feat, that is, the Lowell George-led version of Little Feat, (not the several incarnations of newer bands using that name that have been working since Lowell died in 1979).

Here Lowell George does “Dixie Chicken”, recorded at London’s Rainbow Theater on August 3 & 4, 1977. It’s from the live album, “Waiting for Columbus”. If you don’t know this album, you should buy the 2002 Deluxe Edition CD. You will never be sorry. Don’t buy the version on Amazon, it only has 20 songs; the actual deluxe CD has 27.

WFC was recorded in London and in Washington DC. There were 4 dates in London and 3 in DC. Here it is:

That’s Bill Payne on the piano solo. Little Feat combines jazz, honkytonk, swing, ragtime and Dixie into one great song. Enjoy!

Thursday Before The Midterms

The Daily Escape:

Candlewood Lake, New Milford, CT – October 2022 photo by Julia Turk

Thoughts on the Thursday before the midterms:

Wrongo is hoping to give thanks for whatever November brings, but he’s increasingly concerned about the midterms.
Memes about hammers are making the rounds. Let’s start with whether Paul Pelosi’s attacker was a good or a bad guy with a hammer. Wrongo guesses that depends on your political viewpoint. Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-NY) retweeted this photo that mocks Paul Pelosi for having his head bashed in with a hammer by a MAGA radical:

Tenney won her seat in 2020 by around 100 votes. She took office a month after Jan. 6, so she didn’t vote on certifying the election results. She has now vacated her redistricted seat in the 22^nd district to run in the neighboring 24^th instead.

She is what Republicans have become. It’s true that victims of political violence can be found among both US political Parties, but as David Frum says in The Atlantic:

“…if both Republicans and Democrats, left and right, suffer political violence, the same cannot be said of those who celebrate political violence. That’s not a “both sides” affair in 2020s America.”

You don’t see Democratic candidates carrying assault rifles in their campaign ads. Republican candidates, on the other hand, are now more likely to pose with AR-15s than they are with their wives and kids. More from Frum:

“You don’t see Democratic House members wielding weapons in videos and threatening to shoot candidates who want to cut capital-gains taxes or slow the growth of Medicare. Democratic candidates for Senate do not post video fantasies of hunting and executing political rivals, or of using a firearm to discipline their children’s romantic partners. It’s not because of the Democratic members that Speaker Nancy Pelosi installed metal detectors to bar firearms from the floor of the House…”

Max Boot in the WaPo:

“The New America think tank found last year that, since Sept. 11, 2001, far-right terrorists had killed 122 people in the US, compared with only one killed by far-leftists. A study from the Center for Strategic and International Studies last year found that, since 2015, right-wing extremists had been involved in 267 plots or attacks, compared with 66 for left-wing extremists. A Washington Post-University of Maryland survey released in January found that 40% of Republicans said violence against the government can be justified, compared with only 23% of Democrats.”

Political violence in America is driven primarily by the far Right, not the far Left. And the far Right is now the mainstream of the Republican Party. It’s hard to see how this ends well. Maybe we should be calling them the Wrong Wing. You can’t call them the Right Wing because they are completely wrong on every issue.

With so few days to go until the midterms, Wrongo has closed his wallet for all candidates. On our local TV stations, the same ads run constantly, and seem to have little impact. Few of them are any good anyway. Most repeat some version of their national Party line.

It may be too little too late, but the esteemed Rachel Bitecofer who we’ve featured often, was participating on a podcast hosted by Jill Wine-Banks. Wine-Banks asked about better messaging for Democrats. And without hesitation, Bitecofer said:

“If Republicans win, you lose . . . .”

Doesn’t that ring true? “If Republicans win, you lose.” If that had been the Democrats’ slogan for the midterms, it would have led to some great talking points:

Who do you want in Congress — someone who doesn’t want to extend the child tax credit or someone who does?
Someone who doesn’t want to provide paid family and medical leave, or someone who does?
Someone who doesn’t want to protect Social Security and Medicare, or someone who does?
Someone who doesn’t want a $15 hourly minimum wage, or someone who does?
Someone who doesn’t want to deliver affordable, quality childcare, or someone who does?
Someone who’s against healthcare for all, or someone who’s for it?

“If Republicans win, you lose” has been true in every election since 1932. So, it’s better late than never to use it as a messaging tool.

We haven’t posted cartoons in a while. Here are a couple to get you in the mood for voting:

Voting is like driving: If you want to go backwards, you select R. To go forward, you select D.

Are Americans Fatigued By Politics?

The Daily Escape:

Early fall, Andover, ME – October 2022 photo by Eric Storm Photo

A lethal combination for democracy in America may be that not only do we field very weak candidates who hardly know how government works, but Americans are also woefully ignorant about our government.

The Annenberg Public Policy Center released its annual Civics Knowledge Survey in September. It focuses on the public’s understanding of the US Constitution. Here are some of its 2022 findings:

Less than half (47%) of US adults could name all three branches of government (executive, legislative, judicial), down from 56% in 2021. Here’s a chart of their findings on the branches of government:

A quarter couldn’t name any branch!

When asked to name the protections specified in the First Amendment, the number of respondents who could identify them had declined:

Freedom of speech was cited by 63%, down from 74% in 2021.
Freedom of religion was named by 24%, down from 56% in 2021.
Freedom of the press was named by 20%, down from 50% in 2021.
Right of assembly was named by 16%, down from 30% in 2021.
Right to petition the government was named by 6%, down from 20% in 2021.

Note how dramatically these results have shifted in just one year.

Over half (51%) said (incorrectly) that Facebook is required to let all Americans express themselves freely on its platform under the First Amendment. The First Amendment applies to the government not to private companies.

Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center said:

“When it comes to civics, knowledge is power….It’s troubling that so few know what rights we’re guaranteed by the First Amendment. We are unlikely to cherish, protect, and exercise rights if we don’t know that we have them.”

The precipitous decline in the First Amendment responses has Wrongo questioning whether the survey was performed accurately.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Annenberg found that having taken a high school civics class continues to be associated with correct answers to civics knowledge questions. In 2022, nearly two-thirds (65%) of respondents with at least some high school education said they had taken a civics course in high school that focused on the Constitution or judicial system, about the same as in previous years. More than a third of those with at least some college education (36%) said they had taken a college course that focused on the US system of government and the Constitution, significantly fewer than in 2021.

Yet, according to the Center for American Progress, only nine states and the District of Columbia require one year of US government or civics, while 30 states require a half year and the other 11 states have no civics requirement. This may explain why Americans are so weak on how their government operates.

Can we link Annenberg’s results about poor civic knowledge with this Gallup poll showing that Americans’ views of the two major US political parties remain more negative than positive? It also shows that the Republican Party’s favorability is now better than the Democratic Party’s:

The GOP’s favorable rating has edged up by four percentage points to 44%, while the Democratic Party’s rating slipped by the same amount, to 39%. With our political gridlock, along with high inflation and economic uncertainty, it’s understandable that neither Party gets high marks. But why did the Republicans’ position improve over last year? Is it that Biden’s poor ratings are dragging the Democratic Party down?

In October, 2021, Biden’s approval numbers stood at 45%. Today, he’s at 42.1%. That means he’s dropped 3 percentage points while the Party has dropped 4%. It definitely looks like he’s a drag on the whole Party. Since Annenberg tells us that only 47% of us can name all three branches of government, maybe we can conclude that Americans are getting their negative opinions about the two Parties from cable news.

Does anything explain the results of these two polls? Blog reader David P. offered a different view of Wrongo’s column on “Democracy Fatigue” in a comment. He says:

“Democracy Fatigue may be a misnomer. “Politics Fatigue” is closer to what I see around me and struggle to fight off in myself. The amount of money, airtime, phone messages, snail mail, etc. seems disproportional to discernible progress. News about scandal, verbal embarrassments and tactical mishaps outweighs discussion of policy alternatives or actual policy achievements.”

Has America just become too numbed by the news media “flooding the zone” with scare headlines about crisis after crisis to care much about something real – like the threat Republicans pose to our democracy?

Maybe our democracy is in peril not just because of poor civics knowledge. It’s always been a joke how badly people do when asked about the workings of government.

Maybe it’s that we’ve just tuned out. If so, goodbye democracy.

The Wrongologist

Geopolitics, Power and Political Economy

Category: Culture Wars

Republican Purity: Who’s Good Enough For Them?

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – February 5, 2023

Monday Wake Up Call – January 30, 2023

Saturday Soother – January 14, 2023

Monday Wake Up Call – November 21, 2022