Monday Wake Up Call – Page 4

Thoughts About The Israel/Hamas War

The Daily Escape:

Sunrise, Town Cove, Eastham, MA – October 2023 iPhone photo by Wrongo

Wrongo and Ms. Right returned today from another fine stay on Cape Cod. Time with family and friends in a special environment is always fun and refreshing. It almost made us forget that we’re in the midst of a global hysteria surrounding the Israel/Hamas war.

What has happened so far and what may happen soon should be revolting to anyone who can empathize with other humans. Wrongo has a few thoughts for today’s Monday Wake Up Call: First, as terrible as the Israel/Hamas story is, we and the media shouldn’t obsessively focus on it to the exclusion of other important events. There are other problems that we need to keep a focus on.

And while it’s important to stay current, no one should subject themselves to watching the hostage videos that Hamas says they will be broadcasting of the hostages. Watching people suffer won’t make them suffer less. You can’t unsee these things. Moreover, you shouldn’t play into Hamas’ hands.

Second, Biden has been doing a reasonably good job in this crisis. From Dan Pfeiffer:

“Biden has been astride the world stage — speaking with strength, empathy, and moral outrage about the horrendous terrorist attack in Israel. At the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, the Republicans have been involved in an embarrassing spectacle of self-sabotage and narcissistic incompetence.”

Axios reported that on Sunday, Israel resumed supplying water to the southern Gaza Strip after strong pressure from the Biden administration.

But here at home, we still have the problem of Republicans fighting amongst themselves:

“Electing a Speaker is the most basic Congressional function, yet the Republican Caucus seems incapable of doing so. The dysfunction among House Republicans has left the U.S. with only one branch of Congress. Without a Speaker, Congress cannot pass a bill to keep the government open, send military aid to Israel or Ukraine, or even name a post office.”

Third, people often say horrible things in the aftermath of an attack. But shouldn’t political officials be self-censoring? That wasn’t so with Israeli President Isaac Herzog. He said on Friday that all citizens of Gaza are responsible for the attack Hamas perpetrated:

“It is an entire nation out there that is responsible….It is not true this rhetoric about civilians not being aware, not involved. It’s absolutely not true. They could have risen up. They could have fought against that evil regime which took over Gaza in a coup d’état.”

Herzog is asking: Why didn’t the people of Gaza rise up and overthrow Hamas? He implies that if they had, Israel wouldn’t have to attack them. The thought of a politician holding civilians in any country (half of whom aren’t adults) collectively responsible for atrocities committed by a unaccountable minority should be carefully parsed.

And using this as justification for destroying neighborhoods, for cutting off fuel and electricity to an entire population while ordering the mass evacuation of over a million people, seems to Wrongo to be a disproportionate response. There are a few ethicists who follow the Wrongologist Blog. Hopefully they will weigh in on Herzog’s justification for invading Gaza, and the ethics of targeting civilians in war.

From a political viewpoint, if Israel acts in a restrained way and doesn’t respond with overwhelming force, then Israel looks weak both to its citizens and to the Arab world. That’s likely to encourage more attacks, perhaps by other Middle East actors.

If Israel responds with overwhelming force, then lots of Palestinian civilians will die. Israel will be condemned and possibly other Muslim countries will join in an attack on Israel. So, perhaps Hamas’ attack wasn’t to create maximum casualties in Israel, but to trigger this lose/lose set of options for Israel’s response.

Finally, no one has a serious idea on a way to reach across the mammoth void between the Palestinians and the Israelis. Wrongo found a quote that may offer a way to think about a future for the region:

“At the end of 1918, Marshal Foch was in his Luxembourg headquarters examining with his international staff how to deal with Germany and the Germans. He had this thought: “The Germans, we either exterminate them, or we get along with them. Exterminating them is impossible. So, gentlemen, let’s work out how to get along with them.”

That didn’t work in WWI. It hasn’t worked in the Middle East. Yet, people are the same all over the world. They all want family, friends, a dependable job, and a secure place to live. That’s certainly true for both the Palestinians and the Israelis. The question is: What must be sacrificed by either side to achieve it? And is either side capable of making a sacrifice today that will largely benefit their children’s grandchildren?

Time to wake up America! Do we ever take the long view? We seem to have forgotten how to sacrifice today for a better tomorrow. It’s possible that the Gazans are invoking such a sacrifice right now.

This shouldn’t be a foreign idea to Americans, particularly to Christians. Much of Christianity’s beliefs involve sacrifice. For example, Christians believe that Jesus endured the sacrifice of torture, crucifixion and death for their redemption. That sacrifice is remembered in most Christian Sunday services.

There’s a major difference between the sacrifice of Christ and the sacrifice about to be imposed on the men, women and children of Gaza. Christ sacrificed himself for others while Hamas is forcing tens of thousands of Palestinians to endure sacrifice for them. Those tens of thousands aren’t choosing to be sacrificed. It’s doubtful that Israelis want to be sacrificed: They’re just wishing the Palestinians would go away.

To help you wake up, watch and listen to “Zombie” by The Cranberries from 1994. The song was written by the late Delores O’Riordan, about The Troubles in Northern Ireland, the decades-long conflict between nationalists (mainly Irish or Roman Catholic) and unionists (mainly British or Protestant).

The Troubles ended, while the Israel-Palestinian standoff continues.

The song was written in response to the death of two young boys, Tim Parry and Johnathan Ball, who were killed in an IRA bombing when two IRA-improvised explosive devices hidden in trash bins were detonated in Warrington, England. Ball died at the scene:

Is The Palestinian-Israel Problem Solvable?

The Daily Escape:

Early Autumn, Telluride, CO – October 2023 photo by Steven Carr

We wake up this Monday to yet another conflagration in the Middle East. Israel officially declared war Saturday night after Hamas terrorists launched a surprise barrage of thousands of rockets into southern Israel. It is Israel’s first declaration of war since the Yom Kippur War in 1973. On Sunday, another Iran-backed group, Hezbollah, attacked military targets in northern Israel from its positions in southern Lebanon.

From the WSJ:

“Thousands of rockets were fired into Israel early Saturday to begin what Hamas called ‘Operation Al-Aqsa Storm,’ Mohammed Deif, Hamas’s secretive military chief, said”.

The WSJ also reported that Deif blamed an Israeli “desecration” of the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, located on the site known as the Noble Sanctuary to Muslims and the Temple Mount to Jews. It is the most sacred site for Jews, among the holiest for Muslims and one of the most fought-over pieces of land in the world.

But there’s more to Deif’s assertion than has been reported in the US press. The New Arab reports that on October 5:

“More than 800 Israeli settlers stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem on Thursday morning under the protection of Israeli forces.”

We know that the Hamas attacks on Israel began two days later on October 7. From the WaPo:

“The events of the weekend come in the context of 75 years of Israeli occupation of the Palestinians. For Palestinians and supporters across the Middle East who poured into the streets in Tehran, Beirut, Istanbul and Sanaa, Yemen, to celebrate the Hamas attack, the violence was a response to decades of Israeli restrictions, harassment and violence against Palestinians living under Israeli control.”

Even if the Palestinians lose again, which is almost certain, they’ve won. They were able to achieve complete surprise against the Israeli Defense Force (IDF). They overran IDF positions and dragged away IDF soldiers. Video has shown Palestinians driving IDF vehicles. Hundreds of rockets were able to overwhelm Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile system. The vaunted Israeli intelligence agency apparently didn’t catch wind of an operation that must have taken months to plan, possibly involving hundreds if not thousands of people.

And Netanyahu, whose main claim to fame is that he’s kept Israel safe, is overseeing the country’s worst military debacle in decades. And against Hamas, who has been seen as largely ineffective.

And the one thing that’s already clear is that Israel, (assuming it wins this fight, which is probable), will exact a terrible price from the Palestinians.

Israel is never far from another election. Each of the recent governments they have elected have been coalitions among far-right parties. In one sense the Hamas attack gives the Israeli hardliners a win. And if they get more powerful, the Israelis will grab more land, they will “cleanse” the land they grab, and as a country, become more theocratic.

So yes, Hamas has scored a short term victory. Let’s see how it plays out two years from now.

In paging through comments on the attack on multiple news services, is appears that it’s impossible to simultaneously condemn Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, while also pointing out that Hamas’ attack on Israel is indefensible. Partisanship prevents a reasoned view.

But the performative knee jerk support by partisans on both sides seems misplaced just now. Two things can be true: The Israeli government and the settlers have been cruel and provocative. They have contributed to the dispossession of the Palestinians; and Hamas is a corrupt anti-democratic institution that does very little for its citizens, and whose attack on Israeli civilians is unjustified and lacks a moral foundation.

Here in America, the Right supports Israel without question. This weekend some were even saying that Biden is funding Hamas, an outright lie. Many Democrats see Israel as a religious-based apartheid power. But few in the US see the Palestinians as freedom fighters.

Time to wake up America! While it may feel good to call the Palestinians simply another group of Islamic terrorists, that provides zero clarity or a solution to the conflict itself. The Palestinians deserve human rights and a say in how they live.

Israel deserves peace and security.

These objectives must shape any discussion of a cease fire. Unfortunately, as elsewhere in the Middle East, air strikes, rocket attacks and the killing of civilians drowns out dialogue.

America is staring down some major shit with short and longer term global consequences. But some treat it as just another day in the neighborhood. This is a good time to remember that when you throw a stone in the pond, the ripples reach all the way to the shore.

Kevin Shows His Little Spine

The Daily Escape:

Lone Cypress, 17 Mile Drive, Monterey, CA – September 2023 photo by Leila Shehab Photography

“Until we know we are wrong, being wrong feels exactly like being right.” — David McRaney

Wrongo’s Wake Up Call came on Saturday evening when Kevin McCarthy asked House Democrats to bail him out again:

“Congress passed a bill today to fund the federal agencies at FY2023 levels until Nov. 17. The legislation reauthorizes the FAA and the national flood insurance program through the end of this year. There’s $16 billion for disaster relief accounts, too.”

From Politico:

“McCarthy’s move marked an abrupt shift after spending most of the year trying to placate all corners of his party — including a dozen-plus hardliners who have made it next to impossible for him to maneuver anything onto the floor. After the vote, McCarthy all but taunted his critics to come after his gavel if they wanted to.”

Wrongo said here that:

“You’re unlikely to win if you decide to place a bet on McCarthy getting a dose of moral courage and standing up to his Party.“

Well, Wrongo was um, wrong. The 45-day bridge funding passed with more Democratic than GOP votes. That’s a repeat of the debt vote last spring that also angered McCarthy’s opponents.

The Auto Strike

The Daily Escape:

Trail Ridge Road, Rocky Mountain NP, CO – September 2023 photo by Rick Priebe

On Friday, The UAW union expanded its strike against GM and Stellantis, two of the Big Three automakers, ramping up pressure on the companies to reach deals on new contracts. The union walked off the job at parts distribution centers of both manufacturers but spared Ford, saying the company had done more to meet its demands. From the NYT:

“Our pressure on Ford is starting to pay off,”

But there was no indication a deal with Ford was imminent. More:

“Stellantis workers walked out at 20 of the company’s parts distribution centers Friday, while G.M. workers went on strike at 18 centers.”

Ford Canada reached a deal last week with the union that represents its Canadian workers. It may offer a clue to the US outcome: The deal provides for pay increases worth up to 25% over three years, as well as bonuses, improved retirement benefits and measures to protect employees as Ford retools factories for electric vehicles. The union, Unifor, is negotiating separately with GM and Stellantis in Canada.

The UAW is asking for a 37% wage increase over four years, improved retiree benefits and shorter work hours. They also want an end to a tiered wage system that starts new hires at much lower wages than the top UAW pay of $32 an hour. Importantly, more than 18,000 UAW members are now on strike.

Some context: UAW workers made significant sacrifices to help keep the big three afloat, amidst the financial crisis in 2009. They made those sacrifices based in part on the promise that the Big Three would eventually renew their compensation and benefits, which the Big Three never did. There were no cost of living adjustments, despite the Big Three going from losing money to record profitability (and tens of $ billions in stock buybacks).

And this week, Biden will join the strike in an extraordinary move of support. From CNN:

“Biden will travel to Michigan on Tuesday and walk the picket line with members of the United Auto Workers union, he announced Friday…”

Biden said in a post on Xitter:

“Tuesday, I’ll go to Michigan to join the picket line and stand in solidarity with the men and women of UAW as they fight for a fair share of the value they helped create. It’s time for a win-win agreement that keeps American auto manufacturing thriving with well-paid UAW jobs,”,

This presidential appearance on a picket line is a historic first. It is also an opportunity to score political points, since it comes one day before Trump is scheduled to deliver a speech to an audience of current and former union members in Detroit. In July, Trump asked the UAW to endorse him, so both politicians are working hard to gain traction with the union.

The UAW was angered by Biden’s pumping tax money into nonunion electric vehicle suppliers, and has withheld its endorsement, even as most other labor unions have rushed to back Mr. Biden’s re-election.

Back to some context for the UAW strike: The WSJ reports that:

“The Detroit companies’ labor costs, including wages and benefits, are estimated at an average of $66 an hour…”

That compares with $45 at Tesla, which isn’t unionized.

Hopefully, the UAW strike will yield fair results for the workers, given the enormous profits the companies are making, the generous salaries the industry’s execs are reaping, and the sacrifices labor made to keep the lights on when the industry was on life support in 2008.

This may well be the union’s last big strike when you consider that nearly half of all the cars built in the US are manufactured in 31 foreign-owned plants. None of these facilities are unionized, and their workers are generally paid less than those at union plants.

The move to EVs will be also be a sea-change reality for auto labor. There is likely to be a 40% reduction in the labor required to build the new engineless cars. Electric motors are much simpler than internal combustion engines. It is estimated that in less than 10 years, two-thirds of all new cars will be electric.

While the impact on labor throughout the supply chain will be dramatic, plenty of internal combustion engines will remain in use, even if not in production. That will provide stability for auto maintenance and repair workers for decades to come.

Nonetheless, the writing is on the wall. Workers with computer skills and AI capability will replace many traditional lunch-pail workers at plants assembling automobiles.

Time to wake up America! Not so long ago, the thought of a UAW strike was traumatizing because of the enormous workforce the union represented. A half-century ago, the UAW represented 1.5 million auto workers (1.5%) out of a total American workforce of just under 100 million workers. Today, UAW membership at GM, Ford, and Stellantis is about 150,000 employees (less than one percent) out of a total American workforce of 160 million workers.

Imagine if today’s number is reduced by 40%, or 60,000 workers! This means that the UAW loses its ability to represent its workers effectively by 2033!

To help you wake up, watch and listen to Green Day perform their hit “Wake Me Up When September Ends” from their 2004 album “American Idiot” at England’s Reading Festival in 2013. Frontman Billie Joe Armstrong wrote the song about the death of his father when he was 10 years old. But it has come to express loss of all kinds. Gotta love those English crowds:

You realize that the country is growing older, that Biden is growing older, the song is growing older, Green Day is growing older, and the union movement in the US is growing older too.

Regardless of how much time has passed, this song hits just as hard as it did when it was introduced 19 years ago.

Sample lyric:

Summer has come and passed
The innocent can never last
Wake me up when September ends

Can Biden’s Union Roots Help Him In 2024?

The Daily Escape:

Red Mountain, San Juan Mountains, CO – September 2023 photo by Daniel Forster Photography

The “the biggest auto strike in generations” got under way last week, with 150,000 US autoworkers, including employees at Ford, Stellantis and General Motors walking off the job after contract negotiations failed to reach a deal. This strike, coupled with the likely government shutdown at the end of the month, will precipitate a very dangerous moment for the Biden administration.

From The Guardian:

“The United Auto Workers (UAW) union says workers have never been fully compensated for the sacrifices they made after the 2008-09 financial crisis, when they agreed to a raft of cuts to save the industry. The carmakers received huge bailouts and soon returned to record profits.”

The WaPo had a good article asking workers why they are striking. Most cited inflation and fairness:

“We’re not making enough money” said Petrun Williams, a 58 year-old Ford repairman. “People should be able to buy their own houses, but right now it’s not possible.”

This is going to be a difficult problem to tackle, because GM, Ford, and Stellantis are wildly inefficient giant bureaucracies with cost structures optimized to make $75,000 trucks, and their move into Electric Vehicles will take a lot of money and time before it pays off.

But the Biden administration isn’t necessarily helping: (Brackets by Wrongo)

“…Biden…is in a tough spot with the United Auto Workers….Through its industrial policies,…[Biden]…is giving away billions to automakers through production tax credits and loans, while supporting the transition to electric vehicles through consumer rebates and funds for charging infrastructure. Biden has promised that those incentives will lead not only to carbon emissions reductions but also good-paying union jobs.”

But the UAW leadership isn’t buying it. As the UAW goes on strike, their members don’t necessarily support Biden, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they support Trump either. Politico asked striking members if Biden had done enough to prevent the strike. They talked to Garry Quirk, the president of the local UAW union in Kokomo, IA:

“I don’t know what he’s done…Ask him. I don’t think he knows what he’s done. Seriously. I’m not trying to be mean.”

Quirk wasn’t freelancing: Fain and the union haven’t yet endorsed Biden’s reelection, throwing into doubt Biden’s standing in autoworker-heavy communities. But Politico reported that Biden had spoken that day with UAW president Shawn Fain and auto company CEOs. The chair of Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers said this week that Biden had been very much engaged.

But his efforts didn’t resonate with union member Denny Butler:

“Historically, man, if you didn’t vote Democrat years ago, and you were in the union, sometimes you got your ass kicked…I’m telling you what, the Democratic Party is not what it was 20, 30 years ago.”

So this is another Politico story about Obama voters becoming Trump voters and not looking back.

What Biden is fighting is the sense that the Democratic Party has not been truly on the side of union workers for a long time. It is true that today the Democrats are more on the side of unions. Neoliberalism is not nearly as powerful in the Democratic Party as it was during Obama’s time, or earlier.

But perceptions can be sticky. Clinton, Carter, and Obama (especially in the first term) all promoted corporate policies over the unions. Workers got screwed as factories closed, and no one offered much to workers beyond retraining programs that they didn’t want, and for the most part, didn’t lead to better jobs.

If you said that Republicans (including Mitt Romney) were no better, you’re correct. But today’s Republican Party offers a way to channel anger and resentment. Union members can opt for the GOP path even if the GOP doesn’t have the union’s interests in mind.

Despite Obama (and Biden) saving autoworker jobs through the 2009 auto bailout, they did little to hold the auto companies accountable. They allowed the expansion of two-tiered wage rates that the union is still fighting during the current strike.

The perception is that the UAW shrank and sacrificed, while the auto industry leadership got richer. Biden absolutely cares about unions, but he’s fighting against decades of belief that the Democrats aren’t what they used to be.

And no matter what Biden does, it’s going to be hard to get by that perception. There’s a mixture of anger and nostalgia that sticks in the minds of people who don’t really pay attention to the details of politics. Let’s take a look at the price of cars over the last ten years:

The Big Three automakers reported $21 billion in profits in just the first six months of 2023. Despite these enormous gains, the companies have cried poverty in response to union demands for wage increases that would make up for decades of pay stagnation. Worse, during the last year, the Big Three automakers have authorized $5 billion in stock buybacks, effectively giving those dollars to shareholders instead of to autoworkers.

The Economist had an excellent observation (paywalled):

“Late last year I took a trip…in a shiny new vehicle, Ford’s electric F-150. The car is in some ways an avatar for today’s Democratic Party. Joe Biden’s administration likes things that are made in America by union labor. It also wants to speed up the transition away from fossil fuels. The F-150 car ticks both boxes. It is also a high-end item that markets itself as a vehicle for working Americans.”

“That’s a bit like the Democratic Party too…with each passing election Democrats lose votes among actual working-class Americans and gain them with college-educated ones (some of whom can actually afford a $75,000 truck).”

“When we talked to a…UAW…representative near Detroit, it became clear the unionized workers are lukewarm on the green transition. Electric vehicles are less labor-intensive than cars powered by internal combustion, which is bad for the UAW members. In fact that is one reason why the union went on strike today. College-educated liberals, on the other hand, like electric vehicles a lot.”

Apparently union members see the problem much more clearly than the Biden Administration.

There could be a settlement reached between the unions and the companies at any moment, but it feels like this will be a protracted situation: If the UAW workers get the 40% pay increase they are asking for, they probably would learn to accept electric vehicles. Don’t hold your breath.

Biden’s relationship with America’s unions is deep and personal, but the next few months are really about his political strategy. And they’re an example of how the Democrats are always trying to balance competing aims.

Time to wake up America! Will Biden continue pursuing his environmental policies and risk losing even more support among working-class Americans? Or will he pump the brakes on environmentalism and alienate upscale Democrats? Biden won only 33% of white, non-college voters in 2020, so maybe that’s where his opportunity to expand his base in 2024 lies. But does Biden really have a path to take back more non-college voters?

To help you wake up, watch and listen to a recent version of the union anthem “Solidarity Forever”, written by Ralph Chaplin in 1915. Although it was written for the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), the AFL–CIO have adopted the song as their own. Here it is sung in the Wisconsin capitol building in September 2011, by demonstrators who opposed then Governor Scott Walker’s “Wisconsin Budget Repair bill.”

The bill proposed to alleviate the state’s budget shortfall by taking away the ability of public sector unions to bargain collectively over pensions and health care, as well as ending automatic union dues collection by the state. Walker stated that without the cuts, thousands of state workers would have to be laid off. After two days of arrests for “holding signs” on the first floor of the Wisconsin State Capitol, the Solidarity Sing Along took to the rotunda in joyful defiance:

The law passed and remains in effect today.

Remembering 9/11

The Daily Escape:

This mass includes parts of five floors of the North Tower of NYC’s World Trade Center that compacted on 9/11/2001 during the building’s collapse. iPhone photo by Wrongo taken at the 9/11 Memorial Museum, September 2016.

The above is among Wrongo’s favorite pieces at the 9/11 Memorial Museum. It is a charred and pitted lump of fused concrete, melted steel, carbonized furniture and other, less recognizable elements. It weighs between 12 and 15 tons and is four feet high. If you ever thought that humans who were in the Twin Towers when they collapsed might have survived, consider this pancake.

The 9/11 Memorial’s email today asked this question:

“Did you know that over 100 million Americans have been born since September 11, 2001?”

Although Wrongo has a grandson who was born later that week and who’s now turning 22, Wrongo had no idea that roughly 30% of Americans have no memory of this event that profoundly shaped America in the past 22 years.

What do those of us who do remember 9/11 want to tell those who can’t remember it? Maybe that there’s too much fear in America, and all of that fear is grinding us down. The visible scars of 9/11 are gone, but more than ever, America lives in persistent fear.

We distrust Russia. We worry about inflation. We worry that our budget deficit will bankrupt us. We fear for our kids’ safety while they’re in school. We worry that if we lose our job we won’t find another one. Some of us worry that we’ll never find the job we’re looking for. Some of us think the rest of us are Communists. The Lefties think the Righties are fascists, and we’re still afraid that ISIS will attack us on our streets. We fear the mob outside our gates trying to get in. We fear the immigrants already inside the gates.We think most of the news we see is fake. Many of us distrust our public school teachers.

Hell, we don’t trust our government!

Succumbing to so much fear has enabled the growth of internal threats that could end our democracy:

We’re so angry that we’ve lost much of our social cohesion
We aren’t willing to deal with income inequality
We’re seeing overt racism grow before our eyes
We see clear threats to the right to vote, or whether our votes will even count if we cast them

So today’s wakeup call is for America, particularly for those Americans born after 9/11. Don’t forget the heroes and the victims of 9/11, but please, learn to stop letting fear drive you as much as it drives those of us who are old enough to remember 9/11.

Here’s 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 9/11, when he performed it during the Concert for New York:

Check out the audience reaction to Joel’s songs. That doesn’t look like fear. That’s where we all need to be today in 2023. It isn’t hyperbole to say that the city began its psychological recovery that night in Madison Square Garden. Please visit the 9/11 Memorial and Museum if you haven’t been there yet.

Labor Day Thoughts

The Daily Escape:

Hatch Chili festival, Hatch, NM – September 2023 photo by Eddie Gomez

“If we weren’t all crazy, we’d all…go…insane…” – RIP Jimmy Buffett

Wrongo was sad to learn that singer-songwriter Jimmy Buffett died on Labor Day weekend. Wrongo isn’t a Parrothead, yet like most people, he will sing along whenever “Come Monday”, “Margaritaville”, or “Son of a Son of a Sailor” pops up on the car radio.

Labor Day kind of means the end of summer, and back to school for kids and their parents. Having Monday off is great. But what exactly are we celebrating? One answer is that knowledge workers have won the tug-of-war over work from home (WFH).

The NYT’s Sunday Business section has an article “All That Empty Office Space Belongs to Someone”. They ask the question: “What happens if the nearly 100 million square feet of workplace real estate stays empty”? They’re only talking about NYC real estate. The article quotes a real estate executive Eric Gural, whose family company, GFP Real Estate, owns and manages more than 55 properties and 13 million square feet, or about 2% of the city’s office real estate, about what happens next:

“Rents will be lower. Occupancy will be lower. We won’t be as profitable. The worst part about that is that it might affect some of the philanthropy we do.”

That’s kinda tone deaf. Why would a worker want to rush back to the office so Gural’s family can keep up with their philanthropy?

Among Wrongo’s six kids, most spend at least a few days in the office each week. Some are in the office every day. The problem generally isn’t that everyone hates the office. Mostly they hate how office work has changed during the past 20 years: Open floor plans, with people squeezed together into pods.

Then there’s the commute. Few office workers can afford to live in NYC or even a subway ride away. The average one-way commute in New York takes 40.8 minutes. That’s far longer than the US average of 26.4 minutes. That average time means that many, many commuters to NYC are in a car, train or bus for much longer than 41 minutes each way.

This means that people had a major lifestyle change when they started to WFH. No more getting up with the birds to sit on a train for an hour or more, and then stand on a 90° subway platform BEFORE they even get to their desk!

WFH also was family positive since most kids had remote schooling, which the WFH parents could supervise. At the same time, childcare also cratered. So the pinch on parents to be in attendance 24/7 for their young kids was clearly helped by WFH.

Nothing will solve the commute problems for those who live outside of Manhattan, not even giving everyone a private office. Maybe if companies offered to pay for commuting costs and childcare, people would come back. How about it, corporate America?

Another big labor issue is how long it has taken for women to return to the workforce. In the years leading up to the pandemic, women’s labor force participation rates were rising faster than that of men. Several factors were driving it, in particular the female-dominated industries, such as health care and caregiving were among the fastest-growing industries. Also, women’s educational attainment has risen substantially.

That ended during the pandemic. But CNN has reported that the labor force participation rate for women in their prime working age hit an all-time high in June of 77.8%. Prime working age is defined as 25-54. It was the third consecutive month that women between the ages of 25 and 54 have set a record high for labor force participation.

Women are doing much better in the labor market, and clearly, the pandemic’s “she-cession” is over. Yet, barriers remain: Notably, they’re still making far less than men. In 2022, women in the US earned about 82 cents for every dollar a man earned, according to a Pew Research Center report released in March. That’s a big leap from the 65 cents that women earned in 1982. But it’s barely moved from the 80 cents they were earning in 2002, and certainly hasn’t kept up with inflation.

The WFH movement helped women as well: Home-based work allowed for more flexibility in hours, and that helped improve access to childcare with schedules that allowed for easier drop-offs and pick-ups.

We should remember what else Labor Day is about. If you enjoy not having to work weekends, or having a 40-hour work week, or having sick days and paid time off, you can thank labor leaders. Thousands of Americans have marched, protested and participated in strikes in order to create fairer, more equitable labor laws and workplaces — and many are still doing that today.

So have a cookout. Go to the big box stores and spend because it helps the economy.

Here’s your Monday Wake Up Call, America! The challenge during the next year is whether the currently hot jobs market will cool off sooner than inflation. It seems likely that the Fed will be able to cool inflation without plunging the economy into a recession. If so, the jobs market will continue to offer average Americans a shot at a better life.

To help you wake up, let’s celebrate Jimmy Buffett’s life. From the Rolling Stone in 2018:

“WHILE PRESIDENT TRUMP took shots at Democrats in conservative Pensacola, Florida on Saturday, Jimmy Buffett hurled musical insults at Republicans in West Palm Beach during a Democratic campaign rally for US Sen. Bill Nelson and gubernatorial candidate and Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum.

While singing his hit ‘Come Monday’ at the ‘Get Out the Vote’ rally, Buffett tweaked its lyrics to make a dig at Trump changing ‘Come Monday’ to ‘Come Tuesday, things will change. Come Tuesday, we’re making a change. It’s been two insane years and it’s time to switch gears.’”

Buffett long supported Democrats. So have a margarita, and toast ol’ Jimmy. Here’s his laid-back cover of CSN&Y’s “Southern Cross”, performed live at the Newport Folk Festival in 2018:

Note the Parrothead regalia in the audience. Anyone else think he looks like Biden?

Henry Kissinger’s Reputation

The Daily Escape:

Sunset, Flaming Gorge Reservoir Recreation Area, UT – August 2023 photo by Doreen Lawrence. The Gorge is the largest reservoir on the Green River.

Welcome to your Monday wakeup call! Wrongo has lived a long life, but he’s still 20 years younger than Henry Kissinger. Kissinger turned 100 in May. When Wrongo was in his late teens, he was protesting against the war in Vietnam. At that point, Kissinger was already a foreign policy advisor to the failed presidential campaigns of Nelson Rockefeller.

He would go on to become Nixon’s national security adviser and Secretary of State, a crucial figure overseeing the conflicts in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, that many say included war crimes. Kissinger was never indicted, but Anthony Bourdain wrote the following about Kissinger in his 2001 book “A Cook’s Tour”:

“Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands. You will never again be able to open a newspaper and read about that treacherous, prevaricating, murderous scumbag sitting down for a nice chat with Charlie Rose or attending some black-tie affair for a new glossy magazine without choking. Witness what Henry did in Cambodia—the fruits of his genius for statesmanship—and you will never understand why he’s not sitting in the dock at The Hague next to Milošević. While Henry continues to nibble nori rolls and remaki at A-list parties, Cambodia, the neutral nation he secretly and illegally bombed, invaded, undermined, and then threw to the dogs, is still trying to raise itself up on its one remaining leg.”

But unlike other possible US war criminals like Reagan and Nixon, Kissinger has never needed to rehabilitate his reputation. As Rebecca Gordon says:

“….despite his murderous rap sheet, the media and political establishment has always fawned over him.”

Kissinger is remembered for his initiative to open diplomatic relations between the US and China in 1972, though full normalization of relations with China would not occur until 1979.

Kissinger’s second innovation was inventing the for-profit third act of a public service career. Before him, former foreign policy principals usually wrote a memoir, gave the occasional foreign policy speech, and maybe became head of a nonprofit.

But Kissinger pioneered a for-profit third act in 1982 when he and Brent Scowcroft founded Kissinger Associates (with the help of a loan from the international banking firm of E.M. Warburg, Pincus) to offer advisory services to corporate clients. Kissinger’s prime selling point was that he had access to the corridors of power, not only in Washington, but in Beijing and Moscow.

Wrongo started out being a fanboy, having read Kissinger’s 1957 book “Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy” while in high school. It criticized the Eisenhower Administration’s “massive retaliation” nuclear doctrine. It also caused much controversy at the time by proposing the use of tactical nuclear weapons on a regular basis to win wars. Once Wrongo was running a tactical nuclear missile base in the mid-1960s, he was no longer a fan.

Wrongo met Kissinger in the mid-1980s at an event hosted by David Rockefeller at his Pocantico Hills estate. HK was walking his dog, a particularly obstreperous Golden Retriever. Wrongo asked “What’s the dog’s name?” Kissinger replied: “Madman”. Could there be a more perfect name for a Kissinger family pet?

Kissinger provided advice, both formal and informal, to every president from Eisenhower to Trump (though apparently, not yet to Biden). His fingers are all over the foreign policies of both major Parties. And in all those years, no “serious” American news outlet ever reminded the world of Kissinger’s long history of bloody intervention in other countries.

In fact, as his hundredth birthday approached, he was fawned over in an interview with PBS NewsHour anchor Judy Woodruff. From Rebecca Gordon:

“Fortunately, other institutions have not been so deferential. In preparation for Kissinger’s 100th, the National Security Archive, a center of investigative journalism, assembled a dossier of some of its most important holdings on his legacy.”

A third thing that Kissinger is associated with is the use of the concept of “Realpolitik” in foreign policy. It means conducting diplomatic policies based primarily on considerations of the reality on the ground, rather than strictly following ideology or moral and ethical premises.

Realpolitik has come to mean something quite different in the US: It is associated not with “what is” but with “what ought to be” on the ground. In Kissinger’s realpolitik, actions are good only when they sustain and advance American strategic power. Any concern for human beings that stand in the way, or for the law and the Constitution, are not legitimate.

Homeschoolers Want Your Tax Dollars

The Daily Escape:

Rich Mountain Fire Tower, Marshall, NC – August 2023 photo by Michael Morris. This photo has a painterly quality to it.

Americans’ interest in homeschooling has soared in recent years. Migrating from mainstream education to homeschooling tracks with the rising fears among parents that schools are failing their children.

For parents frustrated with their child’s public school education, the pandemic provided another reason to give homeschooling a try. Homeschooling has become a significant element in education in the US. According to the National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI), there are 3.7 million homeschooled students in the US, about 6.7% of the school-age children in K-12. The popularity of homeschooling is growing rapidly, with an annual growth rate of 10.1% between 2016 and 2021.

Home schooling is legal in all 50 states, with the highest number of homeschoolers in North Carolina, Florida, and Georgia. About 10% of states have strict laws regulating homeschooling: New York, Vermont, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania. Another 18 states have no to low regulation, while 11 states provide complete freedom to parents regarding homeschooling. In New Jersey, parents do not have to let anyone know about their decision to homeschool their children. They don’t even have to produce any kind of proof at any time, explaining that their kids were homeschooled. Here’s a view of homeschooling regulation in the US:

Source: HSLDA

In many states, there is little oversight of homeschooling. And for many, what regulations do exist were adopted in the 1980s, when homeschooling was almost exclusively provided by a family member at home. Now, with the number of homeschool students soaring, much of the educating is now being provided by third parties.

The WaPo reports that there is an emergence of “microschools” provided by for-profit companies, such as Prenda which provide online courses and syllabi to the microschools. Last year, Prenda served about 2,000 students across several states by connecting homeschool families with microschools that host students, often but not exclusively in homes. The local educator is called a “guide” for students who study math and reading online while depending on the “guide” for other subjects. Families pay Prenda $2,199 per year, plus additional fees set by the guides, which can range from $2,800 to $8,000 per child although there is often a multi-child discount.

Many similar options to Prenda are transforming home schooling in America. More from WaPo:

“Demand is surging: Hundreds of thousands of children have begun homeschooling in the last three years, an unprecedented spike that generated a huge new market. In New Hampshire, for instance, the number of homeschoolers doubled during the pandemic, and even today it remains 40% above pre-covid totals.”

“For many years, homeschooling has conjured images of parents and children working together at the kitchen table. The new world of homeschooling often looks very different: pods, co-ops, microschools and hybrid schools, often outside the home, as well as real-time and recorded virtual instruction. For a growing number of students, education now exists somewhere on a continuum between school and home, in person and online, professional and amateur.”

Still more:

“Microschools sometimes provide all-day supervision, allowing parents to work full time while sending their children to “home school.” Hybrid schools let students split their days between school and home. Co-ops, once entirely parent run, might employ a professional educator.”

All of this is adding to the conundrum of how K-12 education is financed in the US. The WaPo says that about a dozen states allow families to use taxpayer funds for home-school expenses. Education Savings Accounts, or ESAs, direct thousands of dollars to families that opt out of public school, whether the destination is a private school or their own homes.

Nonprofits, including school-choice advocates, are directing millions of dollars in charitable giving toward homeschool organizations, linking two powerful but traditionally separate movements into one interest group that seeks to move taxpayer money away from the local public school system into private hands.

In the past, homeschoolers and school-choice activists didn’t see themselves as aligned. The latter group wanted taxpayer money to pay for charter, private and religious schools, whereas homeschoolers looked to limit any government involvement.

But since the pandemic, they found themselves in common cause. Historically, homeschool advocates have been wary of any government money or involvement, for fear it would lead to rules and regulations.

But many school-choice advocates incorporate support for homeschoolers into their advocacy work, including for school vouchers that give these families tax dollars to pay education costs. Where they used to be a defensive constituency, today they have become partners.

And venture capitalists have invested tens of millions of dollars in new businesses to serve what they see as a growing, and potentially huge market. One entrant is Outschool, an online marketplace for classes, which has raised $255 million since 2015. This year, Outschool has delivered 500,000 live learning sessions to more than 150,000 students globally.

WaPo says Prenda has raised about $45 million. Primer, another microschool company formed to serve homeschoolers, has raised about $19 million, though its campuses are becoming more like tiny private schools, an example of the fuzzy line between traditional and home schooling. WaPo spoke to Michael Moe, founder of GSV, a venture capital firm in the Silicon Valley, who has invested in several education technology start-ups: (brackets by Wrongo)

“The mega trend of [school] choice is wildly important to us…All these shifts create opportunities for companies providing solutions that allow parents and communities to take more control of the learning.”

That’s “venture capitalspeak” for more privatizing of the commons in search of higher financial returns.

Vouchers that once paid only for tuition at private and parochial school can now, in some places, be used for homeschoolers. Most sweeping are Education Savings Accounts, or ESAs, which allow families to claim state tax dollars to use at their own discretion for any education expense.

This increasingly means taxpayer money is following the student out of the public school. It flows to whatever a family chooses. That can include things like Prenda’s fees, online classes or home-school curriculum, as well as tuition at private schools.

In Detroit, a program called Engaged Detroit , is a cooperative that’s part of a network specifically to serve Black families looking for schooling options in response to the pandemic. Among Engaged Detroit’s backers is the VELA Education Fund, which has made more than 2,400 grants totaling more than $28 million since 2019. VELA’s primary funders are longtime advocates for school choice: the Walton Family Foundation and the Charles Koch foundation, Stand Together.

There are pluses and minuses to homeschooling. There are situations where it’s appropriate to homeschool, but the loose oversight and lack of expertise might mean that some homeschooled kids are going to be at risk. When parents say they don’t trust the trained/educated teachers in their public school, but instead want their kids to get the viewpoints of only one or two specific people, the kids are entering a small world. Later in life, they’ll have to adjust to a larger reality.

Wrongo is fully aware of the weaknesses of our public school systems. It’s possible that SOME of these small private schools that they say are “home schools”, are teaching those kids better than some public schools do. So Wrongo is ok if kids learn there. But there should be no problem with requiring these kids to take end-of-year minimum standards tests, proving that they learned the base-level material in each subject.

Without some testing, society has no idea if these kids learned anything. The lack of oversight, particularly in those situations where taxpayer money was diverted to homeschooling, seems well—Wrong.

The literature is clear: Some homeschooled children have attended Ivy League schools and won national spelling bees. Some have also been the victims of child abuse. Some are taught using the classics of ancient Greece, others with Nazi propaganda.

Many parents say home education empowers them to withdraw from schools that fail their children. Or they want to provide instruction that better reflects their personal values. But should the rest of us pay for those individual decisions?

Time to wake up America! Homeschooling may offer certain advantages, but also comes with a set of disadvantages that should also be considered. And it’s clear that those who would privatize K-12 education want to take funding from the public school systems wherever they can.

To help you wake up, listen to Steely Dan’s “My Old School” from their 1973 album “Countdown to Ecstasy”. Steely Dan always used outside musicians, and on the record, they had the late Skunk Baxter on guitar and four (!) saxophones. But Steely Dan didn’t like to tour. Today, we’re going to see a rare video of a Steely Dan live performance on “The Midnight Special” where Skunk had a blistering solo for the song’s finale:

The Problems With Childcare

The Daily Escape:

Sunset with Cosmos flowers, Blue Ridge Mountains, Franklin, NC – August 2023 photo by Amy Barr

Monday’s Wake Up Call is that we’re in the middle of a childcare crisis, one that dates back to WWII. Daycare costs too much, daycare workers don’t earn enough, and many daycares don’t make money and are going out of business.

Today, anyone who has tried shopping for day care knows that it’s a tough marketplace. Care.com, an online platform where people can hire housekeepers, pet caretakers, nannies, and more, publishes a yearly Cost of Care Report to help US families understand the cost of childcare. Their June 2023 report found that on average, US parents spend 27% of their household income on childcare expenses:

“Households with children make up 40% of the total US population. And with a national family median household income of $91K, child care costs for the typical American family are even more staggering:

– 45% of families earning less than $100K annually will spend more than $18,000 on childcare in 2023, amounting to 18% of their household income (HHI).

-43% of families earning less than $75K will spend more than $18,000, amounting to 24% of their HHI.

-39% of families earning less than $50K per year will spend more than $18,000, amounting to a whopping 36% of their HHI.”

And increasingly, economists are saying that more women would be working if childcare was available. From Axios:

“In a research note about Friday’s jobs report, the chief economist at consulting firm RSM US did something surprising: Instead of talking about rate hikes or soft landings, he made the case for universal child care.”

Axios quotes RSM’s Joe Brusuelas:

“Childcare for kids under the age of 5 is increasingly an issue for more mainstream economists who are concerned about the prospect of long-term labor shortages in the US. Universal childcare is the most realistic way to help expand the labor force at a time when the economy needs workers the most,”

“The US needs more workers, and there are more women sitting on the sidelines of the labor market than men.

-Right now, close to 86% of working-age men are employed compared with 75% of women. That’s a record for women, but it’s also far below the rates for men — there’s room to grow.

-Substantial childcare investments, like those proposed in the now defunct Build Back Better bill, could increase mothers’ employment by 7 percentage points, with bigger jumps for low-income families, according to estimates in an NBER paper published last year.”

The underlying problem is the economics of childcare. First, it’s difficult to get information about childcare costs either online or over the phone: Daycares often only share their prices after you have visited their facilities. And many daycares have waitlists stretching from six months to a year.

Economists say that long waitlists are a classic sign that something’s wrong with that particular marketplace. In this case, waitlists indicate that daycare prices are too low. But parents say that the price for daycare is actually too high. NPR reports that the median price in daycare for an infant in a large county in the U.S. is $17,000 a year. Also, more than 60% of families can’t afford the full cost of quality day care.

Meanwhile, daycare owners can barely afford to stay open. NPR interviewed a daycare provider in Iowa who said that salaries are 83% of their monthly budget:

“Five percent goes to their loan payment. 4% is operating expenses, cleaning supplies, snow removal, play kitchens, things like that. Three percent is utilities. Another 3% goes to groceries….And 2% is for their insurance and their building insurance and worker’s comp.”

Along with labor, that equals 100%, meaning the center makes no profit. It’s probable that the daycare owner’s pay is in the 83% labor total, but still it means zero profit. The Iowa daycare pays its staff between $12 to $15 an hour, while the local Chick-Fil-A advertises $16.75/hour to start. The Iowa daycare has a census of 72 kids, which requires 25 staff.

Daycares are required by law to hire a ratio of staff/per child, a higher number than other low-wage industries, like fast foods need. In fast food, labor is about 25% of the total costs, and the volume of sales is in the tens of thousands, not the 72 kids that a wage increase would effect in the Iowa daycare.

Since labor costs are such a high percentage of total costs in daycare, increasing wages means prices paid by families of children in daycare have to rise drastically to cover the higher costs. Wrongo did a back of the envelope calculation for the Iowa center. If their base pay was $12/hour and it was raised to $15, the average monthly charge for one of the 72 children already in daycare would increase by $360/month, or about 47%!

The broken system is made worse in the US because we don’t have long maternity and paternity leaves.

Funding for childcare that was put in place during the pandemic is set to run out in September. Once we hit that “childcare cliff,” 3.2 million children will lose federal funding. More centers will either have to raise prices, cut staff or shut their doors.

Universal childcare has a tortured history in the US. During World War II, women replaced men in the domestic workforce. But who would take care of the children? The US government answered by enacting the Lanham Act, the first and only universal child care program in American history. An estimated 550,000 to 600,000 children received care through these facilities, which cost parents 50 to 75 cents per child, per day. The program ended in 1946.

Nixon vetoed a universal childcare bill in 1971 that would have created federally-funded public childcare centers across the US because Conservatives argued that the bill was communist and that it would be the end of the American family. A group called Iowans for Moral Education asked “Whose Children? Yours or the State’s?”

Time to wake up America! If you don’t want society to help take care of kids, you’re an asshole no matter what reason you give for being against funding. These kids didn’t ask to be here and they have done nothing to deserve not having societal support. If you think you can make America great again by making it harder to take care of kids, you’re wrong.

To help you wake up, watch and listen to a scene from the 2003 film “Daddy Daycare”. In this scene, Charlie (Eddie Murphy) and Kim (Regina King) try to find a good preschool for their son Ben, but it turns out to be impossible. Life’s still like this 20 years later:

The Wrongologist

Geopolitics, Power and Political Economy

Category: Monday Wake Up Call

Is The Palestinian-Israel Problem Solvable?

Kevin Shows His Little Spine

The Auto Strike

Labor Day Thoughts

Henry Kissinger’s Reputation