Domestic Policy – Page 18 – The Wrongologist

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.

Our Curious Job Market

The Daily Escape:

Cranberry harvest, Carver, MA – October 2021 photo by Sarah Stiles Cabe

Robert Reich commented to Newsweek about the unexpectedly low US employment figures, that American workers are engaged in, “the equivalent of a general strike.”

He was referencing Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) numbers that showed US employment increased 194,000 in September, nearly 300,000 jobs shy of estimates. Despite a record level of job openings and 7.7 million out of work, many employers report difficulty filling positions. From Reich:

“In reality, there’s a living wage shortage, a hazard pay shortage, a childcare shortage, a paid sick leave shortage, and a health care shortage – and American workers are demanding an end to all these shortages. Or they won’t return to work.”

So, the question is: are Americans saying “take your shit job and shove it” to corporate America?

Reich may have a point, but the current employment situation is both good and bad, and it’s a lot less political than he thinks it is. The numbers make clear that ending unemployment benefits wasn’t as effective in generating new employment as conservative politicians said it would be.

The inability to find childcare, or concerns about the safety of the available jobs, and the possibility that people saved some amount of their former emergency benefits and it’s providing them with a cushion, are all possibly contributing to the current jobs situation.

There are other factors at work. The data also show a record number of people voluntarily quitting their jobs (meaning they are not eligible for unemployment benefits). The number of quits (to work for another company offering higher wages and benefits, change careers, or stay home and take care of the kids) spiked by 242,000 people to a record of 4.27 million in August, up 19% from August 2019.

A historically high number of quits suggests a tight and competitive labor market that’s encouraging workers to switch jobs. The highest quit rate was in leisure and hospitality (6.4%), a sector that includes accommodation and food services (6.8%), retail (4.7%), and professional and business services (3.4%):

In total, 892,000 workers in accommodation and food services quit in August, equal to 6.8% of all workers in that sector. Quits are usually high in this sector. In August 2019, during that pre-Covid tight labor market, 5.1% quit.

The Labor Department also reported that there were 10.4 million job openings in August, up by 46% from August 2019. A high number of job openings pushes employers to offer higher wages, better benefits, signing bonuses, and similar enticements to help bring qualified people on board.

Despite what Robert Reich says, workers now seem to have some pricing power. When they leave a job for better wages and working conditions at another company, they create a headache for their old employer who now has to find a new employee by also offering a better deal.

But it all doesn’t quite add up. On the one hand, there are tons of jobs going begging. On the other hand, the labor force participation rate is well below pre-pandemic levels. In September, the civilian non-institutional population in the US was 261.8 million. That includes all people 16 and older who did not live in an institution, such as a prison, nursing home or long-term care facility.

Of that civilian non-institutional population, 161.3 million were participating in the labor force, meaning they either had a job or were actively seeking one during the last month. This resulted in a labor force participation rate of 61.6% in September, down slightly from the 61.7% in the prior two months, but 0.2 points higher than the 61.4% when Biden took office.

The number of Americans counted as not in the labor force, meaning they didn’t have a job and were not looking for one, rose in September to 100.4 million, up 338,000 from August.

If the job market is so good, why are so many people staying on the sidelines? That’s not consistent with a tight labor market, so there has to be something missing from the data. We do know that a big chunk of employees have taken early retirement. The number of retirees shot up by around 3.6 million during the pandemic, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. At the usual pace, that figure would have been around 1.5 million.

Are people just working off the books more now? Is it people who can’t get/afford childcare? Or is it simply a mismatch of skills and jobs? We don’t need as many people staffing tourist jobs, but we need more people working at the docks and driving trucks?

Whatever is going on, there are millions of people doing it.

DOD Could Save $1 Trillion Without Changing US Security

The Daily Escape:

Sea Street Beach East Dennis MA – October 2021 photo by Ulla Wise

Rather than adding to the current vibe of general despair, a new report from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) offers a number of interesting perspectives on how the US defense budget could sustain a $1 trillion cut over the course of 10 years.

The CBO report says that national defense programs could absorb a well-structured $1 trillion cut while still protecting the homeland and America’s allies from foreign adversaries.

From Responsible Statecraft:

“The new report outlines three different options for cutting the Pentagon budget by $1 trillion over the next decade — a 14 percent reduction. Doing so would still leave the department with $6.3 trillion in taxpayer dollars over the next ten years, in inflation-adjusted 2022 dollars.”

The report’s mandate was to look at how to adjust the size and focus of US military under smaller federal budgets. It created three broad options to illustrate the range of strategies that the United States could pursue under a budget that would be cut gradually by a total of $1 trillion, or 14%, between 2022 and 2031. They developed the options using their Interactive Force Structure Tool.

Here are the CBO’s three options for military force reduction:

Maintain the existing national security strategy but with fewer personnel.
Change the existing national security strategy to focus more on countering adversaries with international allies and coalitions.
Change the existing national security strategy to focus more on protecting America’s access to sea, land, and air and space.

In all three options, the CBO slashed full-time active forces, while leaving the less expensive reserves at their current levels. While acknowledging that “none of the plans are without risk,” they concluded that the Pentagon could reduce spending without sacrificing our security.

According to the report, in all three of CBO’s options, units would be staffed, trained, and equipped at the same levels as they are today, but there would be fewer units, or different combinations of units. The CBO chose to retain fully staffed units because, while personnel are expensive, partially staffed units would not be able to execute their missions. That would make the US more of a paper tiger than we are currently.

The CBO report also put the potential cut in historical perspective. While significant, a $1 trillion cut (14%) over a decade would be far smaller than the cuts America’s military spending in 1988 to 1997 (30%), and the 25% cut we had in 2010-2015. A 14% cut from fiscal years 2022 to 2031 would also still leave annual defense spending at more than it was at any point from 1948 through 2002.

Lindsay Koshgarian, program director at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) said:

“The US military budget is now higher than it was at the peak of the Vietnam War, the Korean War, or the Cold War….We are spending far too much on the Pentagon, and too little on everything else…”

A $1 trillion saving isn’t chump change. Those funds could be used to prevent future pandemics, address climate change, or reduce economic injustice. None of those are small matters. And they are all matters of political priorities.

No self-respecting Republican war hawk would have anything to do with cutting the military’s budget. And with the exception of a handful of left leaning Democrats, every other Democrat will shrink from the idea of reducing the military budget. It’s too risky politically.

We actually need Congress to solve three problems: Our revenue problem, our social spending/cost inflation problem, and our defense spending problem.

The CBO idea tackles the defense spending, but we need to consider taxes and revenue along with spending. We need to raise taxes on corporations and the wealthiest individuals while cutting that defense spending.

Turning to social spending, if you ask Americans what spending they want to cut, they will never say that we ought to ravage people’s retirement security. And 90+% of entitlement spending goes to the elderly, the disabled, or people who worked at least 1,000 hours in the past year. The big savings should come from reducing the growth in the cost of medical services.

Taking $1 trillion from Pentagon spending would be a great start, but we have other work to do.

Saturday Soother – October 9, 2021

The Daily Escape:

Truro, MA – August 2021 photo by Tom Baratz

(Wrongo and Ms. Right have temporarily relocated the house of Wrong to Truro, MA for two weeks.)

With all of the talk about debt limits and infrastructure, America hasn’t focused on Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-TX) delaying the nomination of 59 would-be US ambassadors. He’s said he’ll block dozens more. From the NYT:

“Democrats call Mr. Cruz’s actions an abuse of the nomination process and the latest example of Washington’s eroding political norms. They also say he is endangering national security at a time when only about a quarter of key national security positions have been filled.”

Cruz has put sand in the gears of the nominating process by objecting to the Senate’s traditional practice of confirming uncontroversial nominees by “unanimous consent.” His delaying tactic means that each nominee requires hours of Senate floor time while other major priorities, including Biden’s domestic spending agenda, compete for the Senate’s attention.

Cruz has had help from some of his Republican colleagues. Only 12 State Department nominees have been cleared for a full Senate vote by the committee, because Republicans on the committee have assisted in the foot-dragging.

Cruz says that he’s doing this to protest Biden’s stand in favor of Nord Stream 2, a gas pipeline project from Russia to Germany. In May, Biden waived congressionally imposed sanctions on the project. Nord Stream 1 got started in 1997. Nord Stream 2 was finished last month. There has been criticism of both projects since the 1990s because they provide Russia with some leverage over European energy security, while also circumventing Ukraine, which operates a competing pipeline for Russian gas.

But the project helps Germany, and Biden decided to prioritize our relations with Germany.

Cruz isn’t alone. Noted Republican weenie Sen. Josh Hawley, (R- MO), is vowing to block all national security nominees over the Biden administration’s handling of Afghanistan. He wants Secretary of State Blinken, Secretary of Defense Austin, and national security adviser Jake Sullivan to resign.

Cruz also delayed the debt limit deal negotiated between the Dems and the Republicans this week. A deal emerged on Thursday in which Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) agreed to support a short-term debt extension, giving Democrats time to pass a full extension in December.

The Parties had planned to let the fix go through with a simple majority vote, but Cruz overturned that arrangement by insisting on a filibuster, meaning that the deal needed to find 60 votes for cloture in the Senate. That caused McConnell to find ten Senate Republicans to vote for it. In the end, 11 Republicans voted for cloture, and then the Dems passed it on a party-line vote.

But EVERYBODY knows that ending the filibuster would be wrong because the filibuster ensures bipartisanship.

There isn’t a clearer example of how the Senate filibuster has become a tool, not to protect the minority, but simply to sow chaos. Today, it is used to stop Biden’s appointments, or to slow down his legislative priorities. Historically, it was used to block civil rights legislation.

Never before has the filibuster been used so cavalierly.

Democrats have discussed filibuster carveouts for the debt ceiling and voting rights. McConnell’s agreement to allow Republican votes for cloture on the debt ceiling was largely a message to Democratic Sens. Manchin and Sinema, showing that the system still works. He’s saying to them that they can count on McConnell and the Republicans when the Democrats can’t muster the votes they need if the vote is in the national interest. So they shouldn’t vote for a filibuster carve-out.

The clever McConnell has made Schumer’s job over the next few months even more difficult.

The weekend is upon us, so it’s time for our Saturday Soother. Tomorrow, we will be enjoying the Wellfleet Art & Oyster Crawl, where you walk between art galleries that offer wine and oysters to the an increasingly tipsy crowd of potential buyers of local art.

For you, take a few minutes to leave the machinations of Cruz, McConnell, and Schumer behind. Grab a seat by a window and listen to Yo-Yo Ma and Kathryn Stott play “Over the Rainbow” from 2020’s “Songs of Comfort and Hope“.

The album was inspired by the series of recorded-at-home musical offerings that Ma began sharing in the first days of the COVID-19 lockdown in the US:

While this performance is instrumental, here’s a sample of the lyrics:

When all the clouds darken up the skyway
There’s a rainbow highway to be found
Leading from your windowpane
To a place behind the sun
Just a step beyond the rain

Somewhere, over the rainbow
Way up high
There’s a land that I heard of
Once in a lullaby

Biden Invites Sinema and Manchin to Talks

The Daily Escape:

Sunset, Cape Disappointment, WA – September 2021 photo by Rick Berk Photography. The lighthouse was built in 1856 and was the first in the Pacific Northwest.

In politics as in business, there’s theater, and then there’s the real work. Biden outlined his goal of raising taxes on the wealthy to strengthen the middle class and boost the economy in remarks on Thursday afternoon at the White House.

On Wednesday, Biden met with Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WVA) and Kristen Sinema (D-AZ), looking to find a path forward on the infrastructure bill, along with the big social spending package and Machin’s voting rights bill.

Democrats will use budget reconciliation for the social spending bill, bypassing Republican opposition. It allows them to win Senate passage with 51 votes, with VP Harris casting the tie breaking vote, rather than the 60 votes that would otherwise be required.

But that means Manchin and Sinema need to vote for the big bill, something they have said they won’t do. No one who was in the room when the talks took place came out and said that a deal was pending. But there’s still time for that to emerge.

The House Ways and Means Committee unveiled a tax proposal this week to pay for the $3.5 trillion package, which includes Democrats’ plans for universal pre-K, expanding Medicare, child and elder care, and the environment. The committee approved its portions of the big bill in a near party-line vote Wednesday, which included the new tax provisions.

Predictably, the WSJ’s editorial board weighed in on the proposed tax plan, saying:

“…this bill looks like a House Democratic suicide note.”

More from the WSJ: (Emphasis by Wrongo)

“If Americans are successful, Democrats want to tax more of their income. The top individual tax rate will rise to 39.6% from 37%, as Mr. Biden promised. But wait: The higher tax rate will kick in at a mere $400,000 for individuals and $450,000 for married couples. That’s down from $523,600 and $628,300 under current law.”

A mere $450,000. They trot out their “pity the poor rich” trope any time the possibility that tax rates might be raised shows up. Let’s unpack this:

The 98th percentile of household income is $387,116 and the 99th is $531,020,

This opens the possibility that there will be some families that are below the 99th percentile of household income and above the 98^ththreshold. Under the new law, they would be forced to pay about $700 more in taxes than they do now. That’s assuming the Democrats’ latest effort at socialism in America is enacted. This paltry tax increase might cut into the nanny’s Christmas bonus. Why are Democrats so cruel?

Americans Die Earlier Than Europeans

The Daily Escape:

The Barber Pole, Vermillion Cliffs National Monument, AZ – May 2021 photo by Dave Coppedge

Derek Thompson in The Atlantic says that America has a death problem:

“According to a new working paper released by the National Bureau of Economic Research, Americans now die earlier than their European counterparts, no matter what age you’re looking at.”

Covid deaths are excluded from the study.

Before the 1990s, average life expectancy in the US was not much different than it was in Germany, the United Kingdom, or France. But since the 1990s, American life spans leveled off, and then fell behind those in similarly wealthy European countries.

We started hearing about America’s declining longevity when Anne Case’s and Angus Deaton’s 2015 study showed that White mortality in the US was rising. They called the new trend “deaths of despair”, caused by increased deaths by suicide, drug overdose and liver disease associated with alcohol.

Now, the bad trend has spread to all Americans:

“Compared with Europeans, American babies are more likely to die before they turn 5, American teens are more likely to die before they turn 20, and American adults are more likely to die before they turn 65. At every age, living in the United States carries a higher risk of mortality.”

The study collected data on American life spans by ethnicity and by income at the county level, and compared the data to those of European countries, locality by locality, allowing for direct comparisons. It explodes the myth about America having the best medical outcomes.

A Not-So-Soothing Saturday – September 11, 2021

The Daily Escape:

Remembrance of an Idealized WTC. (This is a 2015 screen grab from The Economist)

On this 20^th anniversary of the 9/11 disaster, let’s take a short look back, and a longer look forward.

Wrongo and Ms. Right lived 2 blocks from the WTC in the early 1980s. We were urban pioneers, living and working in the Wall Street area. That part of town didn’t have supermarkets, and few stores were open after 5pm.

Occasionally, we would have dinner at Windows on the World, the restaurant at the top of the North Tower. In fact, one of our children had her sweet-sixteen dinner there, with all of New York at her feet. Back then, I visited the Towers often, seeing friends and colleagues who worked there.

On 9/11/2001, Wrongo was in Maine, visiting a company he had just acquired. Like in Manhattan, we watched a beautiful blue sky as the terrible breaking news turned into harsh reality. We spent the next week vainly trying to work, while mostly sitting in a nearby restaurant with a huge TV wall that was tuned in to all terrorism, all the time.

We had a grandson born in New Jersey on 9/14. I drove to the hospital from Augusta, Maine, while Ms. Right drove east from State College, PA. He’s turning 20.

Today, it gets progressively harder to remember what the US used to be like before 9/11. We forget what it was like to be able to arrive at the airport 20 minutes before a flight. What it was like to walk into a building without going through a metal detector.

Most important, it’s hard to remember what it was like to believe that the US’s version of democracy would remain ascendant for all time. Some context for our 20-year War on Terror comes from Spencer Ackerman’s 2021 book, “Reign of Terror”:

“In response to 9/11, America had invaded and occupied two countries, bombed four others for years, killed at least 801,000 people — a full total may never be known — terrified millions more, tortured hundreds, detained thousands, reserved unto itself the right to create a global surveillance dragnet, disposed of its veterans with cruel indifference, called an entire global religion criminal or treated it that way, made migration into a crime and declared most of its actions to be either legal or constitutional. It created at least 21 million refugees and spent as much as $6 trillion on its operations.”

Quite the achievement, no? We responded in a primitive, unthinking way and unearthed a weakness in our national character that continues to haunt us today. Among 9/11’s legacies are not just mass surveillance and drone strikes, but also the rise of right-wing extremism. More from Ackerman:

“When terrorism was white….America sympathized with principled objections against unleashing the coercive, punitive, and violent powers of the state….When terrorism was white, the prospect of criminalizing a large swath of Americans was unthinkable…”

He’s thinking about the Oklahoma City bombing. Then things changed:

“The result…was a vague definition of an enemy that consisted of thousands of Muslims, perhaps millions, but not all Muslims — though definitely, exclusively, Muslims.”

It’s important to remember that GW Bush insisted that Muslims weren’t the enemy at one moment and then described the War on Terror as a “crusade” the next.

Many authors say there’s a direct line between 9/11 and the rise of right-wing extremism in the US. For example, the Ground Zero Mosque enraged Republicans. The buildings, a few blocks from the WTC, were damaged on 9/11. In 2009, the NYT reported on plans to replace some of the buildings with a mosque and Islamic cultural center. Republicans were still angry enough to complain that the new building was a “victory mosque”.

It is one thing to oppose radical Islamist terrorism. But when Republican politicians redefined the enemy not as violent jihadists but Muslims in general, they also redefined their Party as one welcoming xenophobic rhetoric and candidates.

From Cynthia Miller-Idress:

“…al Qaeda terrorists and their ilk seemed to have stepped out of a far-right fever dream. Almost overnight, the US…abounded with precisely the fears that the far right had been trying to stoke for decades…far-right groups saw an opportunity and grabbed it, quickly and easily adapting their messages to the new landscape. A well-resourced Islamophobia industry sprang into action, using a variety of scare tactics to generate hysteria about the looming threat.”

Will Saletan of Slate connects this to our botched Covid response:

“When al-Qaida struck America on 9/11, Republicans completely reoriented our government to confront terrorism….Republicans instituted new measures to track and halt the spread of terrorism at home. They upgraded domestic surveillance and tightened screening at airports and other public places.

Today, in the face of a far more deadly enemy, Republicans have done the opposite. They’ve belittled the coronavirus pandemic, scorned vigilance, defended reckless individualism, and obstructed efforts to protect the public.”

Their campaign of obstruction and propaganda has contributed to millions of unnecessary infections.

In this respect, Covid was a test of that Party’s character. It challenged Republicans to decide whether they’ve moved from being a party of national security, to a party of grievance and animosity. We now know the answer to that question.

Elliot Ackerman (no relation) in Foreign Affairs observes:

“From Caesar’s Rome to Napoleon’s France, history shows that when a republic couples a large standing military with dysfunctional domestic politics, democracy doesn’t last long. The US today meets both conditions.”

Let’s close with a 9/11 tune. The October 20, 2001 “Concert for New York” can’t be beat. It was a highly visible and early part of NYC’s healing process.

One of the many highlights of that 4+hour show was Billy Joel’s medley of “Miami 2017 (seen the lights go out on Broadway)” and his “New York State of Mind”. Joel wrote “Miami 2017” in 1975, at the height of the NYC fiscal crisis. It describes an apocalyptic fantasy of a ruined NY that got a new, emotional second life after he performed it during the Concert for New York:

The concert brought a sense of human bonding in a time of duress. It isn’t hyperbole to say that the city began its psychological recovery that night in Madison Square Garden. It’s worth your time.

Don’t Forget the Debt Limit

The Daily Escape:

After Hurricane Ida, Grays Beach, Cape Cod MA – photo by Casey Chmieleki

With all the screaming headlines about Afghanistan, Texas anti-abortion laws and the march of the Delta variant, you probably missed that the US government is running out of money. Reuters explains it:

“Leaders of the Democratic-led Senate and House of Representatives are expected to force votes to lift the $28.4 trillion debt limit in late September. The limit was technically breached on July 31 but is being circumvented by Treasury Department “extraordinary” steps.”

This is an unavoidable political issue for both Parties, because while people dislike the idea of more government debt, they really like the goodies that come along with that debt.

This is happening while the Democrats are jousting with each other, trying to find 50 Dem votes for the bipartisan infrastructure bill, a budget resolution, and a budget reconciliation bill. But they also need to work on increasing the debt limit. From Ed Kilgore:

“The debt limit was suspended in 2019 as part of a two-year budget deal between Congress and the Trump administration intended to postpone major fiscal fights until after the 2020 elections. The deal expired on August 1, 2021, with the effect that the debt ceiling was adjusted upwards to the level of debt as it exists right now.”

Accruing debt above $28.43 trillion requires an increase in, or suspension of, the debt limit. At current levels of expenditure, the government’s checking account, called the Treasury General Account (TGA) at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, will hit zero in mid-October. It can be extended by “extraordinary measures” into November, which is when the US government would begin defaulting on its bills.

The politics of government funding and increasing the debt limit are always a farce, and it’s no different this time. Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has already announced that Democrats cannot expect a single Republican vote for a debt limit measure right now.

That’s a political problem for Democrats, because a debt limit increase or suspension is subject to the Senate filibuster, requiring 60 Senate votes unless there’s some way around — like including it in a filibuster-proof budget reconciliation measure.

McConnell helpfully suggested that Democrats should just include a debt limit increase in the Fiscal Year 2022 budget-reconciliation bill. But that would guarantee Republicans could “blame” Democrats in the 2022 mid-term election for an increase in government debt.

The foul Republican tradition of trying to hold Democrats hostage when an increase in the debt limit is required, only goes back to the odious Newt Gingrich in 1996. We all know how the farce ends: Congress will avoid default at the last possible minute, just as it has done 78 times without fail since 1960, after concessions are extorted from the other side.

It’s a farce because Congress has already appropriated the funds to be spent and to be borrowed. It has told the Administration in detail how to spend those funds. Now Republicans in Congress want to say (again): “Nope, you can’t borrow the money to cover what we told you to spend”.

Republican Congress critters know we must pay our bills, but for myriad cynical reasons ̶ or just plain political incompetence, they keep the issue alive budget year after budget year, and vote after vote.

The debt limit shouldn’t be increased; it should be repealed. The passage of a budget or any other legislation has an implicit expectation that the government will need to raise x and/or spend y. It’s really that simple. Congress should bite the bullet, and never again need to fight about it.

When they debate the debt ceiling, remember the only reason it’s happening is because one half of our government is good at politics but has no ethics, morals, or sense of patriotism, while the other half of our government is breathtakingly bad at politics.

Eventually, it will be obvious that the Republicans are really fighting about increasing taxes on corporations and the ultra-rich.

We all would be better off if this bullshit ended, and Congress got on with real work.

Back-to-School Brings Increased Covid Threat to Kids

The Daily Escape:

Sunset and sunflowers, central UT – August 2021 photo by Jon Hafen

Schools are back in session and once again, it’s in person, after a confusing on-or-off, virtual or physical experience last year. Almost 5 million children have been diagnosed with COVID-19 since the pandemic began.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) reports that about 204,000 kids tested positive for Covid last week. And for the week ending August 26, children accounted for 22.4% of reported weekly cases. Covid cases are rising nearly everywhere in America, and our schools aren’t exempt. From USA Today:

“At least 1,000 schools across 35 states have closed for in-person learning because of COVID-19 since the beginning of the school year, according to Burbio, a New York-based data service that is tracking K-12 school reopening trends.”

This increasing number of school closures comes amid a battle over mask mandates in schools and the surge in pediatric Covid cases. Did it occur to you that the people bitching about mask mandates and refusing to get the vaccine are THE SAME ONES who are up to a million about exiting Afghanistan?

Republicans are saying that Biden has botched the Covid response. But we know that many Republican governors are actively pursuing policies that are increasing infections. Some of them are preventing schools from adopting mask policies. Dr. Eric Feigl Ding, an epidemiologist, tweeted this:

Moreover, the CDC says that hospitalization rates were 10 times higher among unvaccinated than among fully vaccinated adolescents, and increased 4 times as fast in August in states with low vs. high vaccination rates:

Would Republican politicians willingly sabotage their state’s Covid vaccine program for political gain? Before you say, “that’s ridiculous”, look at this note sent to people in Manatee County FL:

This was put out by a local MAGA group, whose leaders have been trained by national organizers on how to disrupt school board meetings.

Wrongo thinks that masks are a convenient target of opportunity for America’s angry and outraged. Being an angry, outraged White person pays big political dividends. Chances are that if you’re an angry American, you’re White and middle class. You are backed by an enormous right-wing media ecosystem that’s egging you on. You are part of a political party ready to overturn our current system of government on your behalf.

Many in law enforcement will police you selectively. You can disrupt school board meetings, scream at children in masks, and probably not even get your ass thrown out of the meeting. The maskholes are ascendant.

And so, America’s war with ourselves continues.

The CDC’s masking recommendation for vaccinated adults changes with local transmission rates. If high, all people should mask indoors. If low, there’s no need. But the CDC hasn’t set similar metrics for children and masks in schools.

So, should kids under 12 stay masked until they have an approved vaccine? What if that takes years? What if it’s approved soon, but only 35% of them get vaccinated, just like among the 12–15-year-olds who have had access to vaccines for months?

It’s possible that even by the end of the school year, most children will still be unvaccinated. Should the masks come off then, or remain in place indefinitely? Any school board that sets a mask mandate should also be setting in place a mask off plan. Otherwise, their angry and distrustful citizens will gain even more power.

Consider that in the UK, the government doesn’t require masks for children in schools. It isn’t clear whether they will advise that kids should get vaccinated. Britain has experts just like we do, and they’re looking at the same scientific data. They care about children’s health the same way we do, and yet, they have come to different policy decisions.

Should we, as the UK does, accept that there will be more cases in children, recognizing that disease severity for the vast majority of kids is low? Should we accept that there will be a not-insignificant number of Covid-related deaths among our kids, along with some who have long-term health compromises, and move our focus to vaccinating, not masking our kids?

At this point, the people who are anti-vaccine, anti-mask and/or who deny the deadly seriousness of Covid have demonstrated that they cannot be reasoned with. They love that they can be ignorant assholes, while still having plenty of political muscle.

Time and energy are as limited as ICU beds. Time and energy should be reserved for people who have at least some common sense and common decency, not wasted on the angry and outraged.

OK, but what about the kids?

Monday Wake Up Call – August 16, 2021

The Daily Escape:

Bear Sculpture, Kent CT – August 2021 iPhone photo by Wrongo

ProPublica reported that: “Secret IRS Files Reveal How Much the Ultrawealthy Gained by Shaping Trump’s Big, Beautiful Tax Cut”. The article shows how billionaire business owners deployed lobbyists to make sure Trump’s 2017 tax bill was tailored to their benefit: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“In the first year after Trump signed the legislation, just 82 ultrawealthy households collectively walked away with more than $1 billion in total savings….Republican and Democratic tycoons alike saw their tax bills chopped by tens of millions, among them: media magnate and former Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg; the Bechtel family…and the heirs of the late Houston pipeline billionaire Dan Duncan.”

Trump’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was the biggest rewrite of the tax code in decades. It is arguably the most consequential legislative achievement by any one-term president. It was crafted in secret, with lobbyist input, and then rushed through the legislative process.

ProPublica says that as the draft of the bill made its way through Congress, lawmakers and hired lobbyist friendly to billionaires were able to shape the bill’s language to accommodate special interests. The final version of the bill led to a vast redistribution of wealth to the pockets of a few wealthy families.

This siphoned away billions in tax revenue from the nation’s coffers. Here’s a chart of the tax savings of the big winners:

This gets a little technical. Corporate taxes are paid by what are known as C corporations, including large firms like AT&T or Amazon. But most businesses in the US aren’t C corporations, they’re what are called pass-through corporations. The name comes from the fact that when one of these businesses makes money, the profits are not subject to corporate taxes. Instead, the profits “pass through” directly to the owners, who pay taxes on the profits on their personal returns.

Pass-throughs include the full gamut of American business, from small barbershops to law firms to, in the case of Uline, #2 on the list above, a packaging distributor with thousands of employees.

Republicans touted the Trump tax cut as boosting “small business” and/or “Main Street,” and it’s true that many small businesses got a modest tax break. But a recent study by the Treasury Department found that the top 1% of Americans by income have reaped nearly 60% of the billions in tax savings created by the provision. And most of that amount went to the top 0.1%.

That’s because most of the pass-through profits in the country flow to the wealthy owners of a limited group of large companies. The tax break is due to expire after 2025, and Democrats in Congress want to end the provision early.

Senate Finance Chair Ron Wyden, (D-OR), has proposed legislation that would end the tax cut early for the ultrawealthy. He wants to end the gravy train for anyone making over $500,000 per year. It would be extended to the business owners below that threshold. Wyden’s proposal would make the policy both fairer and less complex, while also raising $ billions for priorities like childcare, education, and health care.

Time to wake up America! The current complaints by Republicans about the Biden efforts to rebuild the economy say that we shouldn’t have the nice things Biden has promised. They now (again) complain about the federal deficit. They continue to sit on their hands about raising taxes on their donors, despite those same donors reaping most of the benefits not only from the Trump tax cut, but from the surge of the national economy since it bottomed while Trump was managing the pandemic.

To help you wake up, watch and listen to “Patria Y Vida” (homeland and life) the song that has defined this summer’s uprising in Cuba. The title is a take-off on the slogan used by Fidel Castro, “Patria O Muerte” (homeland or death) for 62 years, since the start of the Cuban revolution.

This song of summer is also a deep protest song:

This is a rough time in Cuba. Trump’s sanctions policy sharply restricted the foreign remittances on which many Cubans rely. Then came the pandemic, which decimated the tourism industry. Cuba’s GDP has dropped roughly 11% since 2019.

In response to a recurring chorus saying, “It’s over now,” the singers call to Cuban officials and tell them: “Your time is done, the silence has been broken…we’re not afraid, the trickery is over now, 62 years of doing damage to our country.”

They add, “Let’s start to build what we’ve dreamed of; of what they destroyed by their own hand.”

The Wrongologist

Geopolitics, Power and Political Economy

Category: Domestic Policy

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Monday Wake Up Call – August 16, 2021