Daily Escape – Page 49 – The Wrongologist

Monday Wake Up Call – Messaging Edition, November 8, 2021

The Daily Escape:

Catskill Mountains and Hudson River from Rhinebeck, NY – October photo by hikingfordonuts

Wrongo on Sunday pointed out that polling shows that only 30% of Americans think the US is on the right track, despite tons of good economic news. The poll was by NBC just before the November elections. It showed that 70% thought the US is moving in the wrong direction. It also showed Biden’s job performance approval rating at 42%, a sharp drop from 49% in August and 53 % in April.

In addition to the great jobs report, the record stock market, and a booming economy, in less than a year, Biden has withdrawn forces from Afghanistan and passed a substantial Infrastructure Bill. These are two Trump priorities that he couldn’t accomplish during his four-year administration.

The Infrastructure Bill is an unambiguous case in which Biden succeeded where Trump failed. You may think that the Afghanistan exit was messy, but both Biden and Trump were on that same page, and now, we’re out with minimal casualties.

So, what’s the disconnect between Biden’s performance and perception of his performance? It’s that Democrats have a huge messaging problem. Don Draper suggested that when you don’t like what’s being said, you should change the conversation.

From Diane Feldman: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“Most people want to feel safe in their communities, have health care when they need it, and have the opportunity for economic advancement for themselves and their children. Wanting those things is not very divisive along political lines nor by race, class, or gender….Voters are more likely to trust someone who articulates the goals and connects the policies to them than someone who argues the details of a particular policy or spending level. While there are differences between Democratic progressives and moderates on policy, most voters really don’t engage with those.”

It’s questionable if the Democrats could have pushed an upbeat, optimistic message in the election while they were also insisting that America urgently needed funding for social policies. That contradiction may be worth them exploring in more depth.

Virginia’s governor-elect Youngkin demonstrated that Republicans who use identity politics without embracing Trump’s extremist rhetoric can be highly competitive, including in solidly Blue states like New Jersey. And it’s worrying that Dems seem to believe that Youngkin was an extremist posing as a suburban dad (he is), who MSNBC’s Joy Reid said incited “white backlash” by exploiting “fake” and “imaginary” fears about the teaching of “critical race theory” (CRT) in public schools.

But that doesn’t explain the inroads Youngkin made in Blue suburbs. Voters usually consider education to be an important issue. They tend to trust Democrats to handle it better than Republicans. But, according to one Virginia poll the week before the election, Youngkin led McAuliffe by 3% among likely voters, but by 15% among K–12 parents.

So, like it or not, parental views about CRT and local control of public education were a real thing to Virginia voters.

Democrats must develop a plan for how they can avoid further political losses when Republicans across the country emulate Youngkin’s strategy. Here’s The Atlantic’s Yascha Mounk: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“For anybody who cares about making sure that Donald Trump does not become the 47th president of the United States, it is crucial that Democrats avoid repeating the mistakes that just put a Republican in Virginia’s governor’s mansion. It is impossible to win elections by telling voters that their concerns are imaginary. If Democrats keep doing so, they will keep losing.”

Democrats are led by a group of geriatrics who no longer are able to communicate. They have no real social media skills or traditional cable media machine (MSNBC isn’t the answer) to create messaging that resonates. Sadly, the traditional media is biased against them. If you doubt that, read the sub-headlines on Saturday’s front page of the NYT:

For the NYT, a Democrat win isn’t really a win. Democrats need to be crafting winning narratives. The only way that will happen is through ongoing, targeted, year-round campaigns. Not simply more speeches by geriatrics from behind podiums.

There are Democrats and Democrat-leaning voters out there. But in Red areas, they are demoralized and are sometimes hiding in plain sight. They think they are alone. Democrats have to show these demoralized Americans they are not alone, assuming the Party expects them to turn out and challenge the looming conservative majority.

Time for Democrats to wake up! Unless the messaging changes, the endgame is that Democratic voters will continue to sort into the most populated states, and Republicans will gain a permanent supermajority in the Senate. If current trends continue, in 2040 half of the US population will live in eight states.

To help them wake up, listen to Gil Scott-Heron’s “Pieces of a Man” from his 1974 album “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”:

Sample Lyric:

I saw my daddy greet the mailman
And I heard the mailman say
“Now don’t you take this letter to heart now, Jimmy
‘Cause they’ve laid off nine others today”
But he didn’t know what he was saying
He could hardly understand
That he was only talking to Pieces of a man

Saturday Soother – November 6, 2021

The Daily Escape:

Bear Canyon, Tucson AZ – October photo by Carla Mitchell

Way back in 2020 (remember 2020?), Democrats campaigned on raising taxes on the rich. It’s still something that polls show a majority of Americans want. But House Dems are now proposing to raise the state and local tax (SALT) deduction, rather than eliminate it. The SALT tax limitation was one of the few responsible measures in the GOP’s 2017 tax-cut bill since it raised revenue mostly from wealthy people.

Wrongo lives in a state where the federal limitation of $10k on SALT taxes leaves him paying additional federal taxes. But most Americans are not impacted by the current limit on SALT deductions. Increasing it would primarily benefit America’s high income earners plus some middle class urban and suburban homeowners.

The WaPo was unhappy with the Dems new proposal:

“House Democrats released Wednesday a new draft of their big social spending and climate bill — tucked inside of which was a massive new payoff to wealthy people. The Democrats’ bill is supposed to make the nation fairer and more competitive. This cynical, wasteful policy should have no place in it.”

A handful of Democrats from Blue states say they will oppose Biden’s major social spending bill if it fails to include SALT cap “relief.” Once again, the fault lines within the Democratic Party are visible. Pelosi is in a bind. Refuse the demands for repeal of the SALT cap, and Dems won’t have the votes to pass either Biden’s big bill or the infrastructure bill. And since they already have a problem finding new revenue to offset the costs of their programs, so this will make that job a little harder. More from WaPo:

“Under the House plan, the amount of state and local taxes people can deduct would rise from $10,000 to $72,500. This gives high-income people a $23,000 tax break. The Tax Foundation, a think tank, estimates that 70% of the tax change would flow to the people making $250,000 or more. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget reckons that the plan would cost $300 billion, which would make it the third-most costly item in the bill — far more than it would devote to major anti-poverty programs.”

No one who owes $72,500 in state and local taxes is middle-income, but the SALT deduction does help many in the middle class, at least in the Blue states. Since most Blue states are also high tax states, not having a limitation literally saves $ thousands in taxes for some in the middle class. It had been that way for decades until the GOP capped it in 2017 and gave that money to the rich by lowering their taxes.

Finally capping the SALT hurts the resale possibilities for some otherwise modest homes in high tax areas. They’re not going to appeal to a purchaser when the mortgage payment is about the same as the tax payment every month. When a new buyer can’t completely deduct all of their property tax and local income taxes, it can make even a modest home look like a bad financial decision.

Sens. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) unveiled an alternative plan that would keep the SALT cap, but exempt people who make less than $400,000 per year. That seems like a good idea. The House can repeal the SALT cap for those earning under $400,000 bringing it in line with the rest of Biden’s tax plan. This would help some in the middle class, although passing the Biden tax reform is still necessary.

It’s Saturday, and therefore, time for us to put away our concerns about what happened in Virginia or whether Manchin is simply a time-waster. And let’s calm ourselves as we kick off the weekend. It’s time for our Saturday Soother.

Here in CT, it was 29° Friday morning, making it three mornings of frost in a row. Our snowblower is coming back from the repair shop, and most plants are beginning their winter dormancy. At the Mansion of Wrong, we’ve finished repairs to our bluestone walkway.

With a cold, clear weekend on tap, we all should bundle up and sit in a comfy chair by a window. Today, let’s start with a hot steaming cup of Toasted Coconut coffee ($18.99/12oz) from BD Provisions in New Milford CT.

And after another tough week, let’s watch and listen to Sting perform “If It’s Love” from his 2021 album “The Bridge.” This song will put you in a good mood. And the dancers are wonderful. Watch it!

Democrats Fail

The Daily Escape:

Black Oak trees in Shastice Park, CA with Mount Shasta in background – October 2021 photo via Northern California Hiking Trails

Every political writer thinks that Tuesday’s elections reinforced their preconceived view of what the Democratic Party needs. The Dems spilled gallons of metaphorical blood by blindly walking into a political propeller on Election Day.

Wrongo wants to add his two cents to the story, so he turns to a Republican for perspective. Charlie Sykes says:

“The Republican Party — populated with cranks, crooks, clowns, bigots and deranged conspiracy theorists — has spent five years alienating women, minorities and young voters….So, now, Democrats need to ask themselves this rather urgent question: Why can’t we beat these guys?”

A few words about the Virginia gubernatorial election, won by Republican Glenn Youngkin. All the talk about white suburban women being the new Democratic Party base isn’t true in Virginia. A year ago, Joe Biden won Virginia by 10 points. Four years ago, Democrat Ralph Northan won the governorship by nine. Last night, Terry McAuliffe, the Democratic former governor, lost it by two points.

Youngkin won because he convinced enough Joe Biden voters to switch sides. The Virginia suburbs have a large college-educated population. These voters moved strongly to the Democrats both times Trump ran. This time, Youngkin won enough of them without sacrificing votes from Trump’s base.

Terry McAuliffe is a terrible candidate. He walks into the room dragging the whiff of campaigns by both Clintons, but without any of Bill Clinton’s charm or political skill. McAuliffe tried to nationalize a local campaign, trying to run against Trump instead of Youngkin. Youngkin, by contrast, made a point of sticking strictly to in-state issues. Youngkin also came across as the nicer guy.

Youngkin had been the co-CEO of the Carlyle Group, a huge private equity firm with deep DC political ties. If this had been a real campaign, McAuliffe would have attacked Youngkin as a capitalist who wouldn’t do a thing for the middle class. But since McAuliffe is an investor in a Carlyle fund, he didn’t.

Welcome to today’s Democrats!

The Democratic Party’s basic issue is that it’s out of touch with average people. As an example, we’re in a time of growing pro-labor sentiment, but the leadership of the Democratic Party says little to the working class. The switch has been flipped. Now many Democrats are rich, and blue collar workers are Republicans. Getting them back will take years, if ever.

Also, each time the Democrats have a victory based in political change, they move back to the center, alienating those to whom they gave hope. So why should that part of their base continue to show up and vote?

American politics is polarized by cultural issues. Outside of marginal economic questions, Democrats have taken the big economic issues off the table. They’re at a disadvantage, because Republican cultural issues have broader appeal, while the Democrat cultural issues appeal to mostly the college-educated, who are a minority of voters. That means whenever Dems get in power, they can’t really change the policies that the monied and corporate classes want.

Wrongo thinks that it was good that the Dems lost in Virginia. Virginia, now led by Republicans, will also try to pass the same social warrior cultural programs as other Red states. The meanness and tone-deafness of those programs will horrify suburban Virginians. And they will swing back in 2024.

Still, senior national Democratic leadership needs an overhaul. They’re old and incompetent. How difficult is it to establish whether bringing in the big guns for a local election is going to be positive or negative for a campaign? The power of money in elections means that the first priority for any race is a candidate with the ability to raise money. This is why we see McAuliffe a second time, and not someone better.

That’s corruption, as Elizabeth Warren defined it in 2020. Add the callous way Democrats react:

They speak of the opposition as stupid, or brain-dead. As deplorables, or as clinging to their guns and religion.
Their radicalization of wedge issues like “Defund the Police”, or Supreme Court Packing reveal them to be intellectually lazy.

McAuliffe said about angry parents attending school board meetings: “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” That lost him the election because Dems never came up with a counter message.

The Republican’s success with defining control of education as a wedge issue could turn out to be a winning message in 2022.

When a Party won’t pick charismatic candidates and can’t focus on the issues that people are crying out for them to answer, voters react to both the poor messaging and leadership by going back to slogans, grievances, sports-like dynamics, and elevating trivial issues.

In other words, the Virginia campaign.

Democrats must shake up their leadership if they are to re-take the now-lost inroads they made in suburban (and female) Republican voters in 2020. They’ll need to talk in simple terms.

They’re not telling the story of how white working parents need food stamps to supplement their income. They’re not telling the story of how a family in rural America sends their kids to a school that can’t teach them how to use a computer.

There’s work to be done.

Schumer and Pelosi should report to HR for their new assignments.

Can Our Democracy Survive Trumpism?

The Daily Escape:

Bishop Creek, Eastern Sierras, CA – October 2021 photo by Scott McReynolds

CNN’s Brian Stelter asked on Sunday:

“We know what Trump will do….So what will the rest of us do?”

He’s talking about the continuing slow rolling coup inspired by the Big Lie, that’s rolling across America. Stelter presented a scenario about how Trumpism might dim our democracy between now and 2024. His perspective as a media reporter informs his view about how FOX news is reacting to the competition from OAN (One America News). He says that FOX is now simply feeding red meat to its viewers rather than reporting the news.

The result? Paranoia deepens, and Trump’s Big Lie becomes gospel to Republicans. External reality retreats into the background for the Red Hats. More from Stelter:

“There’s a clear difference between the people who pay for news…and want to know what is true, versus people who pay for views….of what they want to be true…”

Wrongo has been banging on about the state of journalism for the last few days, and not sorry, we’re doing it again.

After the attempted coup on Jan. 6, the prospect of political violence threatening a peaceful transfer of power has become a reality that America must face before it’s too late. Trumpists are dreaming publicly of violence, while a new poll by PRRI (margin of error of 2.1%), shows some scary data:

67% of all Americans disagree that the election was stolen.
But 68% of Republicans overall, and 82% of respondents who trust Fox News more than any other news outlet, say they believe the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.
That figure climbs to 97% for those who trust OAN and Newsmax more than any other news outlet.
18% of all Americans think resorting to violence may be necessary to save the nation. PRRI’s question was: “Because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country.”
The scary part is that 30% of Republicans agreed, while just 11% of Democrats agreed.

Stelter’s apocalypse scenario is that by 2024:

“Neighbors turn on neighbors….Normally easygoing local elections turn into existential battles….Threats of violence become real violence….while MAGA-media apps, broadcasters, and commentators justify stomping all over the Constitution as an attempt to save it.”

Let’s emphasize that this is a worst-case scenario. Stelter says “We know it could happen because it has all happened before. Almost everything I have described has already happened in one form or another.”

Monday Wake Up Call – November 1, 2021

The Daily Escape:

Ricketts Glen State Park, PA – 2014 photo by Zev Steinhardt

We don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow on Election Day. There are a few close races that grab the headlines, like the governor’s race in Virginia. There’s also a gubernatorial election in New Jersey. In addition, two of six special elections to the House of Representatives will also take place on Tuesday.

On Tuesday night, America’s pundits will start making far too much of whatever happens at the polls.

But today, let’s talk about the anti-Biden chant, “Let’s Go Brandon” that is sweeping Red America. The NY Post explains it. And The Post amps up the propaganda, as the article is titled: “4 versions of scathing anti-Biden rap ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ now in iTunes Top 10“.

That makes it sound like America has turned on Biden so badly that he shouldn’t even come back to the country after his Glasgow trip. Throughout the Right Wing press, conservatives are doing their best to ramp up their publicity machine, including all of their bloviators on social media pushing the ‘Brandon’ message, but it doesn’t mean much. From Bob Lefsetz: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“Go to Spotify, ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ is not in the Top 50, as a matter of fact it has almost no impact at all. As of this writing the track has a grand total of 565,434 streams on Spotify….’Freaks’ by Surf Curse, has 364,314 streams A DAY! As of this writing ‘Freaks’ has 287,974,290 streams on Spotify. In other words, the right wing tried to own the libs, and nobody noticed, it had no impact, other than in the echo chamber they reside in.”

Americans could debate whether Biden is doing a good job. But, as Lefsetz says, there is no longer real political debate in America. We have silos on the left and the right, which talk over each other. And the truth doesn’t even matter, so why debate?

If the Republicans are using high tech methods to try and show us that they have a winning political narrative, we need to look beyond the headlines to the actual facts. Lefsetz reminds us:

“BTS fans signed up for tickets to Trump’s Oklahoma rally and changed the outcome, the Trump team thought there was huge demand, they even erected a secondary stage outside, but this wasn’t the case, most of the ticket requests were fake”.

That October 2020 rally’s attendance was poor, and it made Trump look bad. That was our first indication of the power of social media to swing opinion, but that isn’t what happened with the anti-Biden track on iTunes. Lefsetz:

“If someone in the music business starts quoting iTunes numbers, laugh. They’re really stretching for a metric to make their case….there’s always a number to support your case, which means savvy people investigate and dig for the truth.”

What’s going on is a tug of war between people who want facts to stand and those who want to manipulate the facts to say something else. And if you’re a casual news consumer, you might get a completely inaccurate picture of what is going on, especially in an environment where it’s extremely difficult to get people’s attention without deceptive, sensational headlines.

We all thought the internet would propagate truth, but the opposite has happened.

And yet they’re succeeding with the deception tactics. They’re creating a frenzy over Critical Race Theory and trans athletes, two of America’s most over-hyped issues, and yet Greg Youngkin, the Republican gubernatorial candidate in Virginia may ride this made-up crisis to victory.

With the “Let’s Go Brandon” meme, we see again that the anti-Biden’s are avoiding truth (and hard numbers) to try and win. Their game is confusion. Government being good or bad is irrelevant to the Republicans. Their calculation is that if they block and insult and channel it all through their propaganda networks, they’ll win back power again.

Burn it all down to the ground. It’s politics as an ash heap.

Time to wake up America! We don’t want to live in the same nation with idiots who believe “Let’s go Brandon” means “Fuck Joe Biden”. We should be weary of their perpetual mendacity and stupidity.

To help you wake up, listen to Santana and Chris Stapleton do a tune that they wrote jointly, “Joy”. It’s from Santana’s new album, “Blessings & Miracles”. This is a musical collaboration that Wrongo didn’t know he needed:

Sample Lyric:

Joy, rolling like the thunder rumbles
Time to let the teardrops tumble
Listen to the hatred crumble
Now that I have joy, flying on the wings of angels
Rattling the chains untangled
I see me from a different angle
Now I have joy

Saturday Soother – October 30, 2021

The Daily Escape:

A Halloween prayer – photographer unknown. Fear is everywhere in the world. Is there reason for hope?

In comments on Wrongo’s post, “Climate Change Summit, Part II”, blog reader Gloria R. asked for some suggestions about how older people could help with climate change, given that the outcome will only be clear after the elderly are long gone.

Good question. In some ways, climate despair is a new kind of climate denial, blunting the momentum for action, just when we need it most. Despair can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

But young people aren’t feeling hopeless. The first truly global social movements dedicated to climate action and climate justice have gained in size and strength, beginning with Greta Thunberg’s Fridays for the Future and spreading to the Sunrise Movement in America and to climate justice movements around the world.

First suggestion: These movements are long on enthusiasm and short of money. Maybe geezers could fund them?

Second, capital continues to leave fossil fuel investments. According to a recent study. this shifting of financial assets could potentially stop the fossil fuel companies from giving lip service to climate change, particularly if they lose political power. Maybe geezers could direct their financial advisors to move their investment $$ away from these big emitters?

Third, state and local governments set building codes and local energy-use regulations. They also set zoning and land use rules. So, maybe geezers could get political on a local level and work to make what we tend to call the “living laboratories for democracy” (state and local governments) havens of better climate policies and practices?

Fourth, some of us don’t have funds to back up our ideals. One thing geezers can do that is costless is to send a letter to their kids about what they did to make sure the future isn’t an environmental wasteland. That’s the premise behind DearTomorrow, a project that’s archiving letters about climate change written by people to their future children, selves, or family. The idea is to foster personal engagement with the problems and solutions to climate change. DearTomorrow asks letter writers to focus on positive themes and why they have hope for future generations. Writing a letter to their future self or loved ones makes it personal.

Fifth, join Elders Climate Action, a group of grandparents who mobilize elders to address climate change. They’re trying to protect the well-being of their grandchildren.

There you go, Gloria (and all geezers), five ideas. There are many, many others.

Finally, the response to the Covid pandemic demonstrated how societies and economies can pivot very quickly in response to a global emergency. The response was far from perfect. The rich countries took care of their own citizens first, and then moved in some cases reluctantly, to help the poor nations. But for the medium-term, we now have a blueprint for the globe working together on a global crisis.

Other reasons for hope:

The global economy is growing faster than global emissions. That means energy efficiency is increasing without any erosion in economic growth. The pandemic slowed this down, but the trend is clear.
Energy efficiency is moving from the margins toward a new normal in the products we use. Think how commonplace LED light bulbs are today.
The price of solar and wind power has plunged, and there’s reason to expect that the cost of energy storage, key to an electric power grid reliant on renewable energy, will decline over time.
The supply of clean energy resources is growing faster than new sources of “dirty” energy. Now, the potential for electric power generated from clean, steady sources is becoming a reality.

That’s Wrongo’s brief take on reasons to be hopeful about our climate future. But that’s no reason to stop the effort to hold corporations and politicians accountable for making climate change a top priority. On Thursday at a House Oversight Committee hearing, four fossil fuel CEOs refused to declare climate change an “existential crisis”, using weasel words to avoid reality. They must be stopped.

Enough for today, it’s time for our Saturday Soother, when we take a brief break from whatever is going on in the Virginia governor’s race and spend a few minutes concentrating on the natural world around us. Here in CT, we’ve seen temperatures in the mid-30s. We’ve started leaf blowing. It will go on until at least the first week of December.

Time to bundle up, grab a comfy chair by a window, and listen to Broken Peach perform a live Halloween version of Soft Cell’s “Tainted Love” in zombie makeup. Broken Peach is a cover band from Spain:

Climate Change Summit, Part II

The Daily Escape:

Mt. Princeton, Buena Vista, CO – October 2021 photo by Haji Mahmood

Biden sees the Glasgow Climate Summit as a legacy event that will bring about substantive change. But nobody believes that. Change doesn’t occur easily, and in the case of climate change, the forces arrayed against it are overwhelming.

Corporations will not give up profits easily. Individuals will not willingly pay more for goods once companies jack up their prices to maintain margins. Countries will try desperately to avoid being the first to bend the CO2 curve, knowing that their economic growth will slow precipitously.

Sometimes a change in culture has to occur before political change can begin. Think about the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s, or the anti-war movement in the early 1970s. Those great political changes were built on a foundation of cultural change. One came from Black churches, and the other from college students.

We’re in the middle of a 2-year Covid debacle on top of a 13-year economic debacle. Before the Great Recession, if people weren’t making it, they (and everyone else) thought the problem wasn’t America’s politics or our economic system, but it was mostly about their laziness or lack of skills. Back then, we believed that anyone could make it. Few thought the system was rigged, and there wasn’t a widespread push for serious change.

Now, young people are tumbling to the fact the problem isn’t them – it’s the system. Think of it as a game of musical chairs, where the people sitting down never stand up when the music plays. From Ian Welsh: (Brackets by Wrongo)

“They [the young] think, ‘it’s you, not me’ where ‘you’ = society and politics. They may have…student loans, but they know boomers paid….[only] a nominal amount for university. They know they can’t afford a home or apartment, not because they don’t earn enough, but because wages have effectively gone down, and real home prices have gone up….They know medical care is too expensive and that drugs didn’t used to cost nearly this much.”

Young people are beginning to understand that without political change, their lives aren’t going to get better. In fact, they will probably get worse. This is true for the climate as well as for the basic inequalities in our society.

We need a political revolution to change these things, but America’s political system doesn’t like big changes. It does enable smaller cultural and political changes all the time. Our politicians give us intermittent reinforcement: They are amenable and sometimes eager to serve up limited forms of change, but not what most people want, or what the planet needs.

And the longer we rely on today’s politicians to save us, the farther we will be from the changes we need. Our political system is very resistant to change, as the prolonged debate over Biden’s social spending bill shows.

And there’s no political will at any level to change the system.

Still, it has to change, or it will self-destruct. When you are at Wrongo’s advanced age, the temptation is to say, “the future is hopeless.” But America’s youth will soon replace the elders in both political parties. They will not be staying quiet.

What must happen is a cultural change that a significant portion of the population will buy into. It doesn’t have to be everyone, but it has to be compelling to at least a 10%-20% minority which can then influence the other 80%-90%.

We live in a culture that values greed, power, and control over other people’s lives. So, the new culture must be built on a different set of values. Insisting on a different set of values is something we can all do both individually and collectively.

The Trumpists have attempted this with middle-aged White Americans. Steve Bannon knew that change must first happen culturally, that the culture has to want it, or at least allow it. But so far, the Trumpist appeal seems limited to 30% of the population.

The other 70% are on the sidelines, waiting for a reason to believe in something else.

If you doubt that young people can have an outsized impact, watch “The Children Will Rise Up!” an climate change anthem written by Nandi Bushell, who gained social media fame as a drummer, and Roman Morello, son of Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello. Here these two 10 year-olds perform with cameos by Jack Black and Greta Thunberg:

Sample Lyric:

They let the earth bleed to feed their greed.
Stop polluting politicians poisoning for profit.
While they are killing all the trees, now we all can’t breathe
As the temperature’s a rising, nothing is surviving.

The Climate Summit

The Daily Escape:

Fall colors near Smugglers Notch, VT – October photo by Montanus Photography

Representatives from 200 countries will meet in Glasgow, Scotland later this week to try once again to iron out an approach to heading off the disaster that will occur as global warming continues.

While this is a political gathering, the real focus should and must be on businesses. They are the primary sources of carbon emissions. And they are very concerned about their future should governments agree to serious efforts to limit global warming to 1.5°-2.0°C.

A real commitment would send shock waves through the business models of all corporations.

Corporations don’t like being forced by governments to do much of anything. With climate change, they prefer to make voluntary gestures, just enough to keep governments off their backs. One problem is that many have become more sophisticated in their soft climate denialism, as opposed to the 87-year old Oklahoma Senator who brought a snowball to the floor of the Senate.

If we’re serious about global warming, governments need to force corporations to pay for the damage they do to the planet. That should take at least two forms.

First, a global carbon tax. For big emitters, this would be an immediate threat to profitability. They will fight carbon taxes with all the weapons at their disposal. Reporters have exposed well-funded misinformation campaigns sponsored by them. More about carbon taxes below.

Second, corporations can’t be allowed to walk away from the pollution they create. Bloomberg reports that old oil and gas sites are a climate menace:

“There are hundreds of thousands of…decrepit oil and gas wells across the US, and for a long time few people paid them much mind. That changed over the past decade as scientists discovered the surprisingly large role they play in the climate crisis. Old wells tend to leak, and raw natural gas consists mostly of methane, which has far more planet-warming power than carbon dioxide.”

Bloomberg focuses on one company, Diversified Energy Co., owner of 69,000 wells throughout the US, making them America’s largest well owner. Diversified has alarmed some regulators and environmental advocates:

“State laws require that every well be plugged with cement after it runs dry, an expensive and complicated chore. At the rate Diversified is paying dividends to shareholders, some worry there will be nothing left when those bills come due. If a company can’t meet its plugging obligations, that burden falls to the state…”

Diversified’s business model is partially built on abandoning its played-out wells. If Diversified is allowed to walk, states are likely to be stuck with a $ billions mess. The only way to deal with this and similar problems is to change our bankruptcy laws so that liability for environmental damage isn’t expunged in bankruptcy. That change will require substantial political courage.

Back to a potential carbon tax: The Economist reports: (brackets and parenthesis by Wrongo)

“Even business[es]…realize that the best way to apply pressure is by imposing a global system of carbon taxes, with some form of redistribution to ease the pain on the poorest….The trouble is that only about one-fifth of global emissions is covered by a price on carbon. As a result, the global average price is just $3 per ton of carbon dioxide.

[But] To meet the ambitions of the Paris agreement, the IMF says the global carbon price needs to rise to $75/ton….For some heavy emitters covered by the European Union’s emissions-trading system, it is already above €60 ($69). In China’s new (limited) scheme, by contrast, it is a pittance. America has no federal (carbon tax) scheme of any kind.”

The first thing governments must do is to go after the big emitters like utilities, oil and gas firms, steel, and cement makers. A high carbon tax will cause price increases and thus force changes in consumer behavior. Tourist locations would see fewer tourists because flights would be more costly. Supermarkets would provide more local foods. Amazon might need to rethink their distribution strategy. Life as we know it for consumers would change, while for big emitters, this would be an “adapt or perish” moment. All the more reason why it won’t happen.

The largest problem will be trying to energize collective governmental action.

Self-interest leads every country to do as little as possible to solve this giant global problem. The only way to move these governments is for their citizens to care enough about the world 50 to 75 years from now. They must be willing to make significant sacrifices today for the sake of the future.

There are 30 US Senators who refuse to acknowledge human-caused climate change. That’s 30% of the Senate. As Greta Thunberg says to those not going to Scotland:

“Hope comes from people, from democracy, from you…It’s up to you and me…No one else will do it for us.”

Thunberg is saying that saving the planet will take better politicians. She’s correct. The necessary changes require a global political movement. That means there’s zero reason to be optimistic about the trajectory of global warming.

And like in our domestic politics, it’s another reason why we shouldn’t have 80-year olds in charge of our future.

Monday Wake Up Call – October 25, 2021

The Daily Escape:

Anza-Borrego Desert SP, Borrego Springs CA – October 2021 photo by Anthony Pilny.

According to Politico, Joe Biden hosted Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WVA) in Delaware on Sunday, where Biden was spending the weekend. They’re trying to find common ground on the Biden social spending plan. Senate Majority Leader Schumer also attended.

As of now, nothing has been released about the substance of the meeting, or whether they’ve made any progress towards bringing a revised bill forward in the Senate.

The meeting comes at a critical time for Biden, who is seeking to clinch a deal with both Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) on his social spending plan this week. And it has to happen soon. Democrats have to pass something, or they risk being as dysfunctional as the press says they are.

The Progressive Caucus had a plan: the social spending bill passes the Senate via Reconciliation, and then the infrastructure bill passes in the House. Both pass in lock step. Now, if both stay linked, both could easily fail. Is the House Progressive Caucus prepared to sink the infrastructure bill? We’ll soon find out.

The Democratic House and Senate caucuses have been largely behind the president’s agenda, but that’s been obscured by Manchin’s and Sinema’s foot dragging. The cruel fact is that without substantive movement by both Senators, they could be on the verge of killing Biden’s signature programs.

Why Manchin is doing this is easy to see. He is the only Democrat holding statewide office in West Virginia, as well as the only Democrat in West Virginia’s congressional delegation. He won reelection in 2018 by just 19,400 votes. According to FiveThirtyEight, Manchin has voted with Biden 100% of the time up to May 2021, but now his constituents are pressuring him to leave the Democrats, and he’s feeling the heat.

Sinema also has a strong Democratic voting record. However, there isn’t a reliable view of what would bring Krysten Sinema to vote for the social spending bill, although she did vote to bring the Freedom to Vote Act forward for debate. Arizona is in the midst of demographic change that may insure a durable Democratic majority, but Sinema doesn’t appear to be near the center of where the Arizona Democrats are heading.

The Democrats’ problem with these two Senators also highlights that zero Republicans are willing to defect from Mitch McConnell’s anti-Biden position. It has been at least a decade since there was a credible possibility of Republicans crossing the aisle in these circumstances.

Fifty seats +1 in the Senate was never going to be a position of political strength for Democrats, and they’re lucky to have avoided being in the minority in both Houses after the 2020 elections. Biden needs both Senators to stop obstructing, and to stand with the Party, although Sinema may be a one-term Senator, she will hold the seat until January 2025.

In the past, Manchin and Sinema would have gotten some extra money or projects for their states, the bill would have passed, and we would have moved on to talking about something else. But it’s been clear from the start that isn’t Manchin’s and Sinema’s game.

Manchin is wealthy. He’ll be 77 at the end of his current term. Fear of an investigation into his coal holdings might motivate him to think differently about his vote. Sinema is new to politics, and seems not to be looking towards her re-election, but to a future on the corporate gravy train.

Given Manchin’s and Sinema’s intransigence, there may be no political endgame available for Biden. Without a compromise, they could cost Biden a second term.

It is now completely clear that the entire US political system is corrupt and sclerotic, broken from top to bottom, and it has been for decades. Political reform needs to happen, but the crux of the current problem is that the Democratic Party’s leadership must change also. If that were to happen, a Trumpist wave could end democracy as we know it long before a new Democratic Party leadership could secure a working majority.

It’s time to wake up Democrats! Take a small win now, and then work to reform the Party. Losing seats in the 2022 Mid-terms can’t be an option.

To help you wake up, listen to Maria Muldaur sing a brand new tune, “Vaccinated and I’m Ready for Love”, released this month:

Muldaur is an American folk-blues singer probably best known for her 1974 hit song “Midnight at the Oasis“. This is bluesy and fun!

Saturday Soother – October 23, 2021

The Daily Escape:

Sunset, Ryder Beach, Truro, Cape Cod, MA – October 2021 iPhone photo by Wrongo.

A few words about the failure of the Protect the Vote Act to get to the Senate floor: Wrongo doesn’t understand why people are so worried about this. We all understood that Manchin and Sinema needed time to go through their attempt at bipartisanship, to find 10 Republicans who believed in voting. These Senators tried, but it didn’t work out. That’s not surprising, and it’s not like we lost a lot of time – once summer comes and we get to August, we’ll…wait – what? Nobody told me it’s October! OMG, Dems fail again.

On to an underreported story. From Military.com:

“More than 9,000 Afghan refugees who had been living in temporary housing on military bases in the US since the fall of Kabul…have been resettled in local communities, many with the aid of a makeshift army of veterans groups, military family organizations and immigration agencies.”

A US official told Military.com that 5,800 of the 9,000 Afghans were resettled nationwide with the support of these non-governmental groups. Another 3,200 Afghans resettled are mostly US citizens, lawful permanent residents and Special Immigrant Visa holders who aided the American military in Afghanistan, or who already had close ties in the US and did not need outside support.

All of the 9,000 Afghans who left the bases went through security vetting by the Departments of Homeland Security and Defense, the FBI, the National Counterterrorism Center and other intelligence government agencies, and were required to receive COVID-19 and other vaccinations before being resettled.

That’s a decent start, but the total population of Afghan refugees on military bases inside the US is still around 55,000. The US Transportation Command has resumed flying refugees that were being held at transit points in the Middle East and Europe to America after measles infections ran through the population.

That means around 64,000 Afghan refugees of the estimated 124,000 that were originally evacuated from Afghanistan are on our shores. CNN reported that in a letter by Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin to Sen. James Inhofe, (R-OK) about 44% of the Afghan refugees housed at US military bases are children. He also reported that 7% were US citizens, 5% were lawful permanent residents, and 3% “held some sort of US visa.” Apparently, 85% were “Afghans eligible for a SIV or P1 or P2 refugee status and their family members,” the letter states, referring to Special Immigrant visas and refugee programs.

The military, and particularly veterans who served in Afghanistan, have largely been supportive of the resettling of refugees. A survey, called Pulse Check: Supporting Afghanistan Allies, conducted by Blue Star Families from Sept. 3 to Sept. 7 showed that about 78% of veterans who served in Afghanistan agreed that the US has a duty to help those fleeing the Taliban. In addition, 46% of the veterans who shared that belief had already participated in some form of assistance effort.

A nonprofit called Welcome.US was formed to coordinate with the government and fund the efforts of veterans groups and private immigration agencies, state and local governments, and business organizations to provide resettlement support. Former Presidents Obama, GW Bush, and Clinton – along with their former first ladies, are serving as honorary co-chairs for Welcome.US. Some 25 other veterans service organizations have joined with Welcome.US, including Blue Star Families, Team Rubicon, the Independence Fund, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors, and the Wounded Warrior Project.

Despite the anti-immigrant strain in our country, it seems that this is a rare moment of unity. A poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds 72% of Americans say they favor the US granting refugee status to people who worked with the US or Afghan governments during the war in Afghanistan if they pass security checks.

Even with all of our political divisions, only about 9% of Americans say they are opposed.

Let’s hope that if the government can find homes for these 125,000 Afghans, they will also find homes for homeless vets and other Americans.

Time for our Saturday Soother, where we forget about Krysten Sinema playing eleventy-deminsion political chess and think about a fall season without pumpkin spice. In other words, it’s time to grab a seat by a window and watch the leaves fall while we listen to a reborn jazz version of “Autumn Leaves” played by Breeze, a Korean group with violin, cello, piano and drums. The original song is by Yves Montand:

Very nice performance.

The Wrongologist

Geopolitics, Power and Political Economy

Category: Daily Escape

Saturday Soother – November 6, 2021

Democrats Fail

Saturday Soother – October 30, 2021

The Climate Summit