Daily Escape – Page 39 – The Wrongologist

Saturday Wake Up Call – June 4, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Curtis Island Lighthouse, Camden, ME – May 2022 photo by Daniel F. Dishner

Wrongo and Ms. Right are in Pennsylvania for the weekend. A highlight of this trip will be a visit to Longwood Gardens, after which we’ll return home and berate our gardens for their unworthiness. But since we’re in PA, let’s spend a few minutes on their Republican Senatorial primary.

The two leading Republican candidates are using the current debate on gun control as campaign fodder. Former hedge fund CEO David McCormick can be seen in this campaign video shooting a hunting rifle he says he used as a teenager. Next, he picks up a rifle he says he used at the US Military Academy and fires. Then he shoots a semiautomatic assault rifle similar to one he says he used in Iraq.

His competition in the Senate primary, television personality and surgeon Mehmet Oz, has a gun video too. He loads a shotgun and shoots. Then he shoots a semi-automatic pistol. He closes with an AR-15 style rifle. During the clip, he says:

“When people say I don’t support guns? They’re dead wrong,”

These guys have spent millions and months trying to showcase their conservative bona fides to PA’s GOP base voters while attempting to head off skepticism about their elite backgrounds on Wall Street and in Media, respectively. Part of their strategies involved commercials showing them shooting guns. Basically, they are saying to PA voters:

“Hey everyone, I can shoot a gun! Vote for me because I will do nothing to help you in Washington!”

Since we are already reeling from the ongoing and deadly mass shootings, should Republicans glorify the use and ownership of firearms that are weapons of war?

Let’s spend a minute on the current gun culture in America. Despite what Republican politicians say, guns are not a passive defensive tool like a bullet proof vest. They won’t stop a bullet coming at you. Guns are an active, offensive weapon. This active, offensive role of the “virtuous person with a gun” appeals to Republican men who say real men want to actively respond to threats to their property and their families.

The Republicans are pushing to get more guns in schools following the Uvalde shooting. This is the only kind of “do something” action that the Republicans can get behind. It follows the premise that people with guns in school will be able to put down active shooters before they kill kids.

This flies in the face of the facts. That didn’t happen in Uvalde, or in Parkland Memorial in Florida, or in many other places. In the majority of school shootings, the incident ends with unarmed people tackling the shooter. But Republicans will keep saying that armed guards are “deterrents,” even though this isn’t supported by facts. Candidates in both parties have used guns as a campaign prop, but lately, the images have become intentionally provocative in Republican advertising. Their messages convey a cultural and political solidarity more powerfully than most anything else, according to Republican strategists.

Wrongo knows it’s Saturday, our time to chill, but today, it’s time to wake up America! These ads create a dangerous impression that assault-style firearms are casual tools rather than dangerous weapons. They shouldn’t be used to grandstand at Starbucks on the weekend.

To help you wake up, spend a few minutes celebrating the life of Ronnie Hawkins, a rockabilly singer who helped create and launch The Band. He died this week. From Robbie Robertson:

“Ronnie Hawkins brought me down from Canada to the Mississippi delta when I was 16. He recorded two songs I’d written and thought I might be talented….Ron prided himself in always having top notch players in his group. Levon Helm was his drummer in the Hawks and I talked Ron into hiring Rick Danko on bass and vocals, Richard Manuel on piano and vocals and Garth Hudson on organ and sax. Along with Levon and me this became the magic combination.

Ronnie was the godfather. The one who made this all happen. After the Hawks left Ron and went out on our own, we joined up with Bob Dylan. Next the Hawks became “The Band” and the rest is history….All starting out with Ronnie Hawkins.”

There are tons of Ronnie Hawkins videos out there. Here’s one from the 1978 epic “The Last Waltz” a documentary film by Martin Scorsese, capturing The Band’s last performance. Ronnie Hawkins was invited back to participate in covering Bo Diddley’s tune “Who Do You Love?”:

Ronnie Hawkins has the greatest rock & roll quote ever:

“90% of all the money I’ve ever had in my life I spent on women, booze and drugs. The other 10% I just blew.”

Jan. 6 Committee To Hold Public Hearings

The Daily Escape:

Sunset, Seal Rock, OR – May 2022 photo by Mitch Schreiber

The House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol will hold six public hearings starting on June 9 and running for two weeks. TPM reports that some sessions will be aired during prime time, and others during the day. The televised hearings aim to give us a more complete story of what happened the day of the Capitol riot and what led up to it. They should dominate the national conversation right up to November’s midterm elections.

Six hearings. The Senate Watergate committee held 51 public hearings, over six months. And they began hearings within a year of the June 1972 arrests for the Watergate burglary. The Senate created the committee in February of that year; the hearings began in May. President Nixon resigned on Aug. 8, 1974.

Are these hearings similar to Watergate? Margret Sullivan in the WaPo doesn’t think so:

“The nation that came together to force a corrupt president from office and send many of his co-conspirator aides to prison is a nation that no longer exists.”

She goes on to say that the Select Committee’s June hearings won’t be all that visible:

“I’m willing to believe that the hearings will be dramatic. They might even change some people’s minds. But the amount of public attention they get will be minuscule compared with what happened when the folksy Sen. Sam Ervin (D-NC) presided over the Senate Watergate Committee.”

Martin Longman compares today with Watergate: (brackets by Wrongo)

“…more than two years elapsed between the discovery of the [Watergate] break-in and Nixon’s fall from grace. It has now been almost a year and a half since the failed coup attempt of January 6, 2021. We’re a bit behind schedule because the televised Watergate hearings began a mere 11 months after the initial arrests were made.”

Another difference was that in 1972, people went to the polls less than five months after the Watergate burglary was discovered. And Nixon was reelected in a landslide over George McGovern. This time around, it’s 18 months after the Jan. 6 event, and we still haven’t had national elections.

When people went back to the polls in November 1974 after Nixon had been run out of office, the Democrats netted four US Senate seats and 49 seats in the House. This time around, before they vote, people should have a very clear idea of what led up to Jan. 6, as well as what happened on the fateful day.

We need to remember that Watergate showed us that evidence of criminality wasn’t enough to turn the public decisively against a presidential contender. The criminality must be proven and demonstrated in a high-profile way in order to overcome the more general political considerations of the electorate.

Nixon’s lies were eventually exposed and the Republicans paid a hefty price. But only after the public Watergate hearings.

This means that there’s a lot of pressure on the Jan. 6 Committee. And their job is harder because most Americans no longer watch television. It’s likely that a small percentage of voters will watch the hearings, while a substantially higher percentage will see the most explosive parts in viral clips on the internet.

Finally, our political environment has changed for the worse in the past 48 years. While most Republicans defended Nixon at the start of the Watergate investigations, they accepted the legitimacy of the investigatory committee, and ultimately, turned against Nixon when the facts were clear.

This time, Republicans are attacking the committee as illegitimate and partisan. That means the evidence won’t be broadly accepted in their Party. In 1974, there came a time when Republicans would no longer defend Nixon.

If the current Select Committee does its job well, accusations that it is partisan will not be meaningful either to Independents, or to 10%-20% of Republicans who see the Jan. 6 coup attempt for what it was.

The stakes are high: The crimes of Jan. 6 are more serious than the Watergate crimes. An effort to overturn an election is more serious than an effort to cheat during an election. And most importantly, Trump, unlike Nixon, could run for president again (Nixon had already been elected twice).

While the Committee will eventually publish a report laying out their findings, they should immediately recommend that the DOJ pursue criminal cases and provide the DOJ with all relevant evidence.

As with Watergate, indictments should be doing the talking about the Jan. 6 crimes. In January, AG Merrick Garland said that the department “remains committed to holding all Jan. 6 perpetrators, at any level, accountable under law.” Remember that the DOJ has a policy of not bringing indictments prior to an election, so time is of the essence for America’s phantom AG.

It’s critical to act now. The American people need a clear picture of what happened and who is responsible.

That will give us a stark choice in the mid-term elections.

J&J’s Texas Two-Step

The Daily Escape:

Wallowa Lake near Joseph, OR – May 2022 photo by Danny J Goff

From Judd Legum:

“Nearly 40,000 lawsuits have been filed against Johnson & Johnson (J&J), alleging that the company’s baby powder causes cancer. The lawsuits claim that customers became sick with mesothelioma or ovarian cancer after being exposed to asbestos contained in talcum powder.”

In July 2018, a Missouri jury awarded $4.7 billion in damages to 22 women who said they contracted ovarian cancer from J&J baby powder. According to judge Rex Burlison, J&J:

“…knew of the presence of asbestos in products that they knowingly targeted for sale to mothers and babies, knew of the damage their products caused, and misrepresented the safety of these products for decades.”

Obviously J&J appealed, and an appeals court reduced the verdict to $2 billion. J&J wasn’t satisfied and further appealed the verdict, ultimately to the US Supreme Court. In June 2021, however, the Supremes refused to hear the case, letting the $2 billion award stand.

J&J had no interest in bankruptcy, but came up with another strategy to protect most of its assets from the current and any future judgements. In July 2021, the company launched “Project Pluto,” in which J&J would create a new subsidiary, LTL Management, which would “own” the liability for the baby powder litigation. It also would receive about $2 billion in cash. LTL would then declare bankruptcy.

It’s Not Just The Guns, It’s The Ammo

The Daily Escape:

Antarctica – May, 2022 photo by Jason Row Photography

Wrongo shot the AR-15 at Fort Ord, CA while in the military in 1966. Back then, the US Army had its Combat Developments Experimentation Command, known as CDEC, there. Fort Ord is now closed, but its location on Monterey Bay in California, made it a beautiful place to spend a weekend, if not military training.

In the 1960s, Fort Ord was the home of the 4th Replacement Training Center, with upward of 50,000 soldiers preparing for their upcoming tour of Vietnam. As part of our training, we participated in the night fire tests of the AR-15. Those tests simulated the conditions that small squads faced in combat. The idea was to compare the performance of the AR-15 against the M-14, the incumbent weapon.

The Army adopted the lighter AR-15 in a model they called the M-16. James Fallows, writing in 1988 in The Atlantic, said this about the weapon:

“By the middle of 1967, when the M-16 had been in combat for about a year and a half, a sufficient number of soldiers had written to their parents about their unreliable equipment and a sufficient number of parents had sent those letters to their congressmen to attract the attention of the House Armed Services Committee, which formed an investigating subcommittee.”

The subcommittee examined the problems caused by the M-16, and Fallows’ article is worth reading to see how badly the Army procurement process failed the US soldier in Vietnam. The Army made several changes to the AR-15 as it became the M-16. All of them served to make the weapon unreliable in combat conditions and less useful as a weapon of war.

But Wrongo wants to focus on the M-16’s high velocity bullet. From Fallows:

“Nearly a century before American troops were ordered into Vietnam, weapons designers had made a discovery in the science of ‘wound ballistics.’ The discovery was that a small, fast-traveling bullet often did a great deal more damage than a larger round when fired into….a human body…”

On Sunday, 60 Minutes re-broadcast a story on the lethality of the AR-15. The focus was on how the gun’s high velocity rounds cause devastating and often lethal wounds that first responders and emergency rooms have great difficulty repairing.

The Intercept brings this back to the Uvalde shooting: (Brackets by Wrongo)

“Many circumstances of this week’s elementary school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, are incomprehensible….The [wound] damage was so severe that agonized parents had to give DNA samples to identify their children.”

Imagine. The request pointed to the obvious: Many of the children who had been killed were so grievously injured that it was impossible to identify their bodies. And that DNA identification process took hours.

Much of the damage was because in addition to the killer using the AR-15, a weapon of war, he also used hollow point bullets, one of the most physically destructive forms of ammunition. Hollow-point bullets open upon impact thereby causing more damage to their targets:

Source: Guns and Ammo

They can easily be purchased throughout the US, but the rest of the world thinks the use of expanding rounds on the battlefield is a war crime. The International Criminal Court bars their use, and they are prohibited by a declaration of the Hague Convention (which of course, the US has never ratified).

The US military has authorized hollow-point ammo. Civilian ammosexual proponents of the hollow-point ammo argue that the bullet reduces harm to nearby civilians, since it’s less likely to pass through its intended target or to ricochet. They also say that it’s useful in hunting big game, so the animal can be killed in one hit. Just like it works in 10 year-old grammar school students.

Saturday Soother – May 28, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Memorial Day, Arlington National Cemetery – May 2013 photo by William Coyle

Welcome to America’s Memorial Day weekend, when we remember those in the military who died in service to the country. But this year, we must also honor those who have died from mass murder by gun right here at home.

We need a three-day weekend. We need a break from the slowly unveiling and depressing news out about how shamefully the police of Uvalde, TX reacted to the killer. We also need a break from listening to the tepid responses by both political Parties.

The Republicans are saying the same as always: The country should not have stricter gun control. Why do Republicans refuse to act? Beyond the fact that many believe stricter gun control would not prevent such mass shootings, recent polling data reveal that there’s less political pressure on them than you might have thought.

Let’s examine the public mindset on the gun control debate as shown in Gallup’s polling conducted in October 2021 and January 2022. Both polls found a slight decrease in support for stricter gun laws compared with the prior year’s measures. Here are the top line results:

Last October, 52% of Americans indicated they wanted stricter gun control, while 46% either thought laws should be kept the same (35%) or made less strict (11%). The headline is that Americans’ support for stricter gun control fell five percentage points from October 2020 to the lowest since 2014.

That decline was driven by a 15-point plunge among independents, while Democrats’ desire for more restrictive gun laws ticked up six points to 91%. Republicans’ views were essentially unchanged, at 24%, (after dropping 14 points in 2020).

Of course, these numbers can be hard to understand when polls also indicate that north of 80% of Americans want universal background checks for guns, which Democrats have been pushing for in Congress and which most Republicans won’t go along with.

Why? There’s no sign that the polling on background checks holds up when its on the ballot. CNN’s report (March 2021) showed that ballot measures for background checks have appeared on ballots in California, Maine, Nevada, and Washington.

In all four, the pro-gun control side’s vote margin was worse than the Democrats’ baseline in the same state. In 2016, Clinton won California by 30 points, while gun control won by 27 points. In Maine, Clinton won by 3 points, while gun control lost by 4 points. In Nevada, Clinton won by 2 points, while gun control passed by a single point. Lastly, Washington passed its gun control law by a little less than 19 points in 2018, while Washington state’s House Democratic candidates won by a bigger margin in the same year.

The question is: Why would Republicans feel political pressure to support more gun control, when something that polls as well as universal background checks doesn’t draw as much support as the Democratic presidential candidate?

And here are a few more depressing thoughts. First, before the assault weapons ban went into effect in 1994, there were about 400,000 AR-15 style rifles in America. Today, there are 20 million.

Second, it’s doubtful that you were aware that there is an active group of school principals who have survived a school shooting. It’s called the Principal Recovery Network, a support group of sorts that mobilizes to help principals in the immediate aftermath of a school shooting. Frank DeAngelis, the former principal of Columbine High School says:

“It’s like that club that no one wants to belong to,”

They provide support for a principal who’s having his/her worst professional day. In every scenario, the goal is to help a principal in crisis. This is America: We put all this energy into dealing with the aftermath of a preventable trauma, and that now includes therapy for principals. We’re in this dark place because we will not open our eyes.

And for the 21st time since a mass shooting in Isla Vista, Calif. in 2014, the satirical site The Onion republished its saddest headline:

“No Way To Prevent This,” Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens

The best way to stop a bad guy from getting a gun is prevention.

Time for our long weekend Saturday Soother. The blog may be taking some time off, so don’t expect to see another column before Tuesday.

In view of the Memorial Day observance, and to remember those who died in Texas, listen to Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings”, played in the original version by the Dover Quartet. Barber finished the arrangement in 1936. In January 1938, Barber sent an orchestrated version of the Adagio for Strings to Arturo Toscanini. The conductor returned the score without comment, which annoyed Barber.

Toscanini later sent word that he was planning to perform the piece and had returned it simply because he had already memorized it! It was performed for the first time by Toscanini in November, 1938. Here, for the third time on the blog, is the quartet version of “Adagio for Strings”:

Free Speech Is About To Get Tested

The Daily Escape:

Lupine bloom, Beeks Bight, Folsom Lake, CA – May 2022 photo by Kaptured in Kamera

We’re back from France where we had fantastic weather, wonderful food and wine, and a break from the loud drumbeat of dystopian American news. One issue that Wrongo followed from afar was the continuing assault on free speech by America’s Right Wing.

From Dan Pfeiffer:

“It seems like every week, Republicans propose, pass, or enact another outrageous, authoritarian, retrograde policy. Book bans, abortion bans, efforts to turn back the clock on marriage equality and contraception. Each is a fleeting political firestorm and then it’s on to the next….amidst this parade of retrograde lawmaking, there is a pattern…”

Despite claiming to be for small government, the Republicans want to dictate the terms of speech in America.

Consider Florida where Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis had passed legislation taking away the rights of Facebook, Twitter, and others to ban people from their platforms:

“The US Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit on Monday ruled it is unconstitutional for Florida to bar social media companies from banning politicians, in a major victory for tech companies….the court rejected many of the legal arguments that conservative states have been using to justify laws governing the content moderation policies of major tech companies after years of accusations that the tech companies are biased against their political viewpoints.”

The 11^th Circuit court found that tech companies’ moderation decisions are protected by the First Amendment, which prohibits the government from regulating free speech. Interestingly, this comes after a different decision on the same issue by the Texas 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, that allowed a Texas law banning companies from discriminating against people based on their politics to remain in effect.

We now have completely opposite decisions by the 11^th Circuit and the 5^th Circuit courts on the issue of whether corporations must follow the Constitution’s First Amendment. This will invariably lead to the Supreme Court weighing in on whether private social media companies’ content moderation decisions are protected by the First Amendment. From the WaPo:

“Some lawmakers pushing for laws governing online content moderation and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas have argued that tech companies should be regulated as “common carriers,” businesses like phone companies that are subject to government regulation because of the essential services they provide.”

But Florida’s court rejected those arguments, arguing states can’t force such restrictions on private company social media platforms. While the phone companies cannot stop callers or calls that may be objectionable, or even illegal, social media companies have different rights. From the Court’s ruling:

“Neither law nor logic recognizes government authority to strip an entity of its First Amendment rights merely by labeling it a common carrier…”

The “Terms of Service” (TOS) agreements between social media platform companies and their users are a contract. When someone agrees to the TOS, they are saying that they will abide by it. Violating the TOS, whether by Trump, Musk, or some random ideologue, is a violation of contract law.

When the TOS is violated and the violator is suspended or barred from the platform, it doesn’t demonstrate bias, or a restriction in free speech. It demonstrates equal treatment. The TOS isn’t there only to restrain Conservatives, despite their protests of discrimination.

Florida passes a “don’t say gay” bill to police free speech by public educators in schools. They then pass the law to prevent private companies from policing speech on their platforms. This irony is lost on those who claim they’re against federal or state overreach unless it’s their Party that’s doing the overreaching.

The First Amendment says the government cannot punish you for speech (with some exceptions). The same Amendment also protects free association—meaning that it’s perfectly legal for private organizations to exercise their freedom of association even while excluding some speech.

Networks like Facebook and Twitter exert a lot of power over the flow of information. They are a primary method of news and expression for millions. That means they must be broadly inclusive and promote healthy discourse. Their business model includes wanting to attract as many users as possible. From Nicholas Grossmann: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“The big social networks—Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter—aim to be the online mainstream, appealing to a wide variety of users and the businesses that sell to them. That requires stopping behavior that isn’t illegal, but makes the platform inhospitable, such as hate speech.”

The large private social networks have a responsibility not to let the doctrine of free speech make them give a right of way to bad actors. There is zero reason to cede the concept of free speech to the trolls who are trying to drive people they hate off private social media platforms.

Now we wait to see what Alito, Thomas and the other Conservative Supremes have to say about the limits of Free Speech.

You shouldn’t be optimistic about the outcome.

Travels with Wrongo, Part I

The Daily Escape:

Mona Lisa doing the dap, Marché Président Wilson, Paris – May 14, 2022 photo by Wrongo, price is 12 euros.

Wrongo and Ms. Right, along with four traveling companions arrived in Paris on Friday. We’re staying at a boutique hotel (45 rooms) in the 16th arrondissement, a short walk from the Champs-Élysées. The building dates from the Belle Époque, and originally was a single family home. Here’s the view from our room:

Never ones to give into jet lag, after dinner, we visited the Lapin Agile (the agile rabbit) in Montmartre at about 11 pm local time Friday night. The Lapin Agile is a very old cabaret, founded in 1860. It features performers doing drinking songs, risqué songs and the famous chansons de Paris, with the audience laughing and singing along, some like Wrongo, in fractured French. We had their traditional drink, a cherry cognac, which packs quite a punch. The singing was fun, and the crowd largely Parisian with some tourists mixed in.

On Saturday, we went to the Marché Président Wilson, an open air market that’s open on Wednesdays and Saturdays. It’s said to be the largest market in Paris. Here’s a pic:

Boutique hotels have quirks. Like most older hotels in Europe, we have a separate toilet room (WC). It is beyond tiny. Worse, the toilet seat won’t remain in an upright position. Wrongo doesn’t know much about the toilet habits of Frenchmen, but either they have substantially better aim than most Americans, or peeing is a two-handed effort, and probably not in the way Trump would have you believe.

Finally the hotel elevator dates from a former time. It holds two people comfortably if they are friendly. Otherwise it is only for people with a very liberal definition of personal space. Oh and its walls are decorated in Louis Vuitton:

Few in Paris are wearing masks, the streets are packed. And the Charles de Gaulle Airport was full when we arrived at 7 am Friday, despite the gloom and doom about inflation and the terrible global economy.

Time for your musical break from the week. Here is the signature pas de deux from “An American In Paris The Musical”. Wrongo and Ms. Right saw the play in London in 2019, where it is still running today. Back then we were privileged to see it with Robbie Fairchild playing Jerry Mulligan. He had starred in the earlier Broadway version. Here is the original Broadway version with Fairchild and Leanne Cope:

More next week.

Florida State House Changes School Curriculum

The Daily Escape:

Cape Cod evening – 2022 photo by Alan Hoelzle

(This is the last column for this week as Wrongo and Ms. Right are heading to France for ten days. It’s our first international trip since 2019. Posting will be light and dependent upon internet connectivity. Try to behave yourselves and keep your tray tables in the upright and locked position until told otherwise).

Bullies always complain that they’re the victim, not the ones who got the beating. We see this with Putin and Trump.

Another example of that is what Republicans in Florida are doing with public school curricula. Gov. Ron DeSantis says that he’s saving kids from imaginary indoctrination in their schools, but this week he issued a government edict that requires school indoctrination. From the Miami Herald:

“Public school teachers in Florida will soon be required to dedicate at least 45 minutes of instruction on “Victims of Communism Day” to teach students about communist leaders around the world and how people suffered under those regimes.”

DeSantis’ bill makes Florida one of a handful of states adopting the designation. More from the Herald:

“It is, however, the first state to mandate school instruction on that day, as Florida Republicans continue to seize on education policy while placing school curriculum at the forefront of their political priorities ahead of the 2022 midterms….It would require teaching of Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong and Fidel Castro, as well as “poverty, starvation, migration, systemic lethal violence, and suppression of speech” endured under those regimes.”

So kids, we learned today that teaching Florida students about authoritarian fascist slavery in other countries is necessary and mandated. But teaching Florida kids about authoritarian fascist slavery in this country is nothing but divisive critical race theory (CRT) that makes white kids feel bad. It must never, ever be mentioned.

This is a part of the Republican Party’s effort to make public education their top campaign messaging issue in the 2022 Midterms. Despite the reality that all of the education-related “issues” they are focused on are non-existent — like claiming that the teaching of CRT is everywhere, or that teachers who educate students about LGBTQ+ issues are “groomers”.

Normally, local school boards would be left to decide what is taught in the schools under their control, including curriculum, and health and safety standards. But under Republican radicals like DeSantis, the local community isn’t able to do that, because it might interfere with his goal of becoming America’s next Trump.

The irony of dictating school policy from the capital isn’t lost on anyone. It proves that DeSantis understands the basic concept that got the very regimes he hates going in an authoritarian direction in first place. They play up the victimhood — I’m the one being oppressed! — and then get their voting base, those who carry grudges against the Other, to go along with it.

The only “critical race theory” that DeSantis cares about is the race he’s running in to be president one day.

Since Wrongo is leaving you without any musical interludes for a week or more, let’s have a travel-appropriate tune to help propel you forward into the news jungle.

Listen, and watch for sure, Dierks Bentley do his 2014 song ”Drunk On A Plane”. If only airplane rides were really like this! The video won Music Video of the Year at the 2014 CMA Awards:

Which States Are The Best for Working Moms?

The Daily Escape:

Sunrise, Columbia Hills, WA – May 2022 photo by Mitch Schreiber Photography

Each year, WalletHub ranks the best and worst states for working mothers. Below is an overview of their methodology and findings: Women make up nearly half of the US workforce, and nearly 68% of moms with children under age 18 were working in 2021. That share of the workforce declined during Covid, dropping around 1.3% between Q3 2019 and Q3 2021 (compared to 1.1% for men).

We know that women face an uphill battle in the workplace, with their average hourly wage being just 84% of what men make. They face other non-financial problems as well. Parental leave policies and other childcare support systems vary by state, but the quality of infrastructure — from cost-effective day care to public schools, is far from uniform.

WalletHub compares state performance across 17 metrics to rank the best & worst states. They compared the 50 states and the District of Columbia across three key dimensions: 1) Childcare, 2) Professional Opportunities and 3) Work-Life Balance:

“We evaluated those dimensions using 17 relevant metrics…with their corresponding weights. Each metric was graded on a 100-point scale, with a score of 100 representing the most favorable conditions for working moms. We then determined each state and the District’s weighted average across all metrics to calculate its overall score and used the resulting scores to rank-order our sample.”

WalletHub’s weighted average for the three categories was as follows: Childcare = 40 possible points, Professional Opportunities = 30 possible points, and Work-Life Balance = 30 possible points, totaling 100 points available per state. That translates into the overall total score below. Here are the top 10 US states for working mothers with individual state rankings by category:

It’s very telling that America’s best score was 62.99 out of 100, meaning that all states have a long way to go to make us a nation that supports women and mothers. Wrongo is happy to note that Connecticut is #1 in job opportunities for women. Here are the bottom 10 states:

Note that only California of the bottom 10 states is an urban (and blue) state. It gets killed in the rankings because of its terrible performance on childcare. If you are interested in how your state ranked, you can see an interactive map of all the states here. WalletHub also compared the top and bottom five states across a few of their metrics. Here’s what those rankings show:

According to a recent report, more than 2.3 million American women have dropped out of the labor force since the start of the pandemic. Solving the problems that keep these women out of the workforce should be a focus for all of the states.

This is particularly true for service and front-line workers whose work scheduling can be unpredictable and for many jobs, there is limited flexibility. Companies should do more. They can create more flexible work environments, allowing parents to take short-term time off. They can strive to eliminate schedule unpredictability for hourly workers. Companies can also work to change their culture to better recognize work-life balance.

The biggest hypocrisy of the anti-abortion movement and the Supreme Court’s apparent decision on abortion is that the Justices and the Republicans are willing to go to the mat to protect the unborn, but that commitment mysteriously vanishes once a child exits the womb.

In many cases, these same zealots are actively hostile to programs that would benefit children.

Parenthood is humankind’s most important job; but there’s no internship, no training program, no handbook. You dive into it and are expected to figure things out on your own. It’s true that parents should bear the responsibility and costs of raising a child, but, government intervention should be available, depending on local conditions and income levels. Some parents simply need help.

At a time when Republicans and the Supreme Court seem to be willing to discount the value of women in our society, it’s important that we battle their views on the economic front as well as on the political front.

Monday Wake Up Call – May 9, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Sunset, Lynden, WA – May 2022 photo by Randy Small Photography

A final thought about our radical Supreme Court: They should give up their black robes. White robes would be much more appropriate.

But for today, let’s talk about the Victory Day celebrations in Russia. This year marks the 77th anniversary of the end of World War II, and Russia observes it every year with military parades and patriotic messages.

Wrongo is publishing this before we learn exactly how Putin will mark the celebration. Certain pundits think that Putin will use the occasion to escalate his war in Ukraine.

UPI reported that in remarks Putin made to commemorate Victory Day, he blasted what he described as “Nazi filth” in Ukraine. He also sent congratulatory messages to the Russian-appointed figureheads of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of eastern Ukraine, which together make up the Donbas region, for “fighting shoulder to shoulder for the liberation of their native land.”

That certainly doesn’t sound like he’s backing down on his currently stalemated war.

Others think that Putin is more likely to make the political choice to declare victory, or partial victory in the “special military operation”. They think that Putin will postpone any decision regarding mobilizing more troops, which could be politically difficult. Pat Lang, a former US intelligence officer, worries about Russia using a tactical nuclear weapon against the steel plant in Mariupol, a frightening possibility for the world.

Despite the speculation, let’s spend a few moments thinking about how the Ukraine war might end.

“Tell me how this ends” is what General Petraeus famously asked in 2003 at the outset of the Iraq War. It lasted until 2011, and then morphed into the war on ISIS, that lasted until 2017.

Since the Russian war hasn’t resulted in a clear victory, certain US and British officials are talking more openly about a “victory” in Ukraine, meaning that the West decisively degrades the Russian military’s capability. Also, there’s some talk about regime change in Moscow.

A more likely scenario is that we’ll see an extended standoff between Ukraine and Russia, without an agreed end to the war, but where neither side wishes to continue active combat. In this case, Western sanctions would continue. Russian forces would occupy all or most of the Donbass region and control a land corridor linking Crimea with the Donbass and Russia.

This outcome would have few rules of engagement, since most of the guardrails that would be part of a negotiated settlement wouldn’t exist. The US and Europe would face years of instability and the constant threat of a military miscalculation causing a spillover in Europe. A forever war in Ukraine also runs the risk of eroding support for Kyiv in the US. America isn’t emotionally able to endure another grinding military conflict, even with no troops on the ground.

Finally, there may be a negotiated settlement. But what is the compromise that all parties can live with?

Zelensky has indicated that Ukraine might agree to be a neutral country; but only on condition of stringent security guarantees, the terms of which both the US and Russia might find objectionable.

Ukraine has understandably ruled out territorial concessions, but Putin would almost certainly not agree to any settlement in which Russia were forced to leave the Donbass and Mariupol. And separatist groups there would be unhappy living under Kyiv’s rule after years of war. Also, it’s hard to see Putin compromising unless the US and Europe ease economic sanctions as part of a settlement. Removing sanctions without a Ukraine “victory” might be a difficult political pill for Biden in particular, to swallow.

We like to think that all wars end, and eventually, they do. Remember that may not happen quickly or completely. The surrender of the Confederate Army at Appomattox didn’t settle hostilities, or political and cultural tensions in the US. It didn’t resolve the related racial prejudices and political differences, which still linger today.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that in the Ukraine war, there may not be a discrete moment marking the war’s end for many years. A protracted war would be a favorable outcome for Moscow. It would certainly be a terrible outcome for Ukraine, which is already devastated as a country.

Time to wake up, America! What’s our strategy in Ukraine? Are we even following a strategy in the Ukraine war? To help you wake up, listen to Jon Batiste perform McCartney’s “Blackbird” on The Late Show in 2016:

Note Batiste’s overture on piano which McCartney originally wrote for guitar, was inspired by Johann Sebastian Bach’s Bourrée in E minor, a well-known lute piece.

The Wrongologist

Geopolitics, Power and Political Economy

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