Itâs 21 years since the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. As Michael de Adder says:
Twenty one years on, America is more at war with itself than with any foreign terrorists, despite having troops deployed in 80 countries. Our society and our democracy are threatened from within in a way that Osama bin Laden could never have managed. And where are we today? Cartoonist Mike Luckovich has a thought:
If ever so briefly after that fateful day. Today we face threats that might end our democracy:
Weâve nearly lost our social cohesion
We arenât dealing with income inequality
Weâre seeing racism grow
We see clear threats to the right to vote, or whether our votes will even count if we cast them
In these 21 years, Republicans have moved from being the Party of national security to the Party of grievance and anger. As Elliot Ackerman wrote last year in Foreign Affairs:
âFrom Caesarâs Rome to Napoleonâs France, history shows that when a republic couples a large standing military with dysfunctional domestic politics, democracy doesnât last long. The US today meets both conditions.â
MAGA asks the wrong question:
When you have no policies, this is what you get:
Letâs close today with a song by Mary Chapin Carpenter that she wrote back on the first anniversary of 9/11. Carpenter was inspired by an interview with Jim Horch, an ironworker who was among the early responders at the WTC site. Hereâs part of what Horch said:
âMy responsibility at the site was to try to remove big pieces of steel. The building fell so hard there wasnât even concrete. It was dustâŠ.I started to feel the presence of spiritsâŠnot very long after I was there. The energy that was there was absolutely incredible andâŠit was more than just the people that I was working withâŠit was energy left behindâŠ.One day when I was working, I felt this energy and it felt lost and it wanted to go home but it didnât know how to go home and it came to me to go to Grand Central Station. When I got off the subway, I walked into the Great Room. Into where the constellation is in the ceiling. And I walked around the perimeter andâŠout of the building. I didnât feel the energy anymore. I could feel it leave.â
And hereâs Carpenterâs âGrand Central Stationâ:
Wrongo isnât a monarchist. Despite having lived in the UK in the 1970s, most of what he knows about the British royal family comes from watching âThe Crownâ. Wrongo remembers watching Queen Elizabethâs 1953 coronation in his parentsâ living room on a 10â black & white Dumont TV, one of the first in our neighborhood. We were all impressed with the pomp and circumstance but truly had little frame of reference for the event.
Royalty hasnât ever been an American tradition. But here in the most exceptional USA, we maintain a love of nepotism and low taxes, so our American betters are easily able to perpetuate their wealth and power, just like the royals.
As we should have expected, in the hours following the death of Queen Elizabeth II, a tsunami of little known royal factoids emerged. Some of them rank as too much information. Wrongoâs favorite so far is that the Queen hired an Orthodox Jewish mohel to circumcise baby Prince Charles. Apparently, the mohel was Rabbi Jacob Snowman (1871-1959). Â [hat tip to blog reader Monty B.]
Looking forward, Wrongo isnât a fan of the new UK prime minister Liz Truss. But sheâs getting more than she bargained for, since the first two months of her prime ministership will be dominated by the Queenâs funeral and the mediaâs interest in parsing the new Kingâs every word and deed.
Truss now has the added challenge of being the prime minister who ushers out the second Elizabethan era and begins a new Caroline era (so named after Charles I). She will be doing it in the midst of an economic recession, a major energy crisis, and galloping inflation.
According to a poll taken by YouGov, only 12% of UK respondents think she will make a âgoodâ or a âgreatâ prime minister. And 34% of respondents think she will be worse than Theresa May.
Fortunately for Truss, the nation will be focusing instead on Charles III, the man who has been preparing to be King for all of his life. According to YouGov, Charles has a 42% popularity rating with his subjects, while his son William is more popular at 66%.
For years, many believed that Charles would actually predecease his mother. That led some wag on twitter to come up with the gag headline: âQueen Elizabeth Beats Prince Charles To Death.â
Charlesâ wife Camilla is now whatâs called the Queen Consort. The title Queen Consort means sheâs a non-sovereign queen. It’s the title then-prince Charles agreed Camilla would not receive when Elizabeth II gave them permission to marry. But he eventually received her agreement to it a few years ago.
All along, Wrongo thought that a Queen Consort is where you go to hear: Bohemian Rhapsody, We will rock you, Another one bites the dust, We are the champions, Fat bottomed girls, etc.
But if they have Moet & Chandon in a pretty cabinet? Count me in!
Thatâs enough royal gazing. Itâs time for our Saturday Soother, where we try to escape from the news and gather ourselves for the week to come. Here on the Fields of Wrong, we had a much-needed heavy rainstorm to help our plants and grass survive the current drought. Unfortunately with the weather, we lost a very large limb from a Bradford Pear tree. Nothing would do but to chainsaw it into manageable pieces and take them into the deep woods to rest.
This morning, letâs remember that Queen Elizabeth II created the UKâs modern national myth of a beloved monarch, helped by her longevity and dedication to service. She died in a remote corner of Scotland, a place she loved.
So, grab a mug of hot Bengal Spice tea and your wireless ear buds. Now take a seat in the sun and listen to âThe Banks of Green Willowâ by the little-known George Butterworth. It is a fine example of the English pastoral idiom, appropriate for a Queen who loved the English countryside.
Butterworth and Ralph Vaughan Williams were close friends, and you may hear similarities in their music. Butterworth was killed in 1916 in WWI during the Battle of the Somme; he was just 31.
Here it is played by the  Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Grant Llewellyn. Itâs the second time weâve featured this piece. This is music that leads to private thoughts, something we all need right now:
The WaPo has a stunning exclusive story about Trump and the top secret files found in Mar-a-Lago. Apparently, he had been keeping them in the White House residence long before they were moved to Florida, and while in office, he took them on foreign trips: (emphasis and brackets by Wrongo)
âThe Archives battle to secure records from Trump began while he was still president, according to records reviewed by The Post. Gary M. Stern, the [National Archives] agencyâs top lawyer, began asking the former presidentâs attorneys to return two dozen boxes in the residency of the White House before he left. In an email Stern wrote to others, Trumpâs counsel, Pat Cipollone, agreed with him. But Trump did not return them.â
This paints a troubling picture. First, these boxes had been kept in the residence of the White House for some time. The WaPo quotes Stephanie Grisham, Trumpâs former director of communications:
âAny documents that made it to the White House residence were these boxes Trump carried around with him….Usually the body man would have brought them upstairs for Trump….They would get handed off to the residence and just disappear.â
Second, Grisham goes on to say that boxes of documents even went with Trump on foreign travel, following him to hotel rooms around the world â including countries  that are considered foreign adversaries. More:
âThere was no rhyme or reason â it was classified documents on top of newspapers on top of papers people printed out of things they wanted him to read. The boxes were never organized….Heâd want to get work done on long trips so heâd just rummage through the boxes. That was our filing system.â
Wrongo thinks Republicans will say that Trump took the documents when he traveled to satisfy his voracious appetite for reading. Thereâs not much about Trump that could shock America at this point, except perhaps him going to jail for something related to reading.
And do you think he did his own packing for those trips? Clearly there were staffers who ignored their signed acknowledgment of the criminal penalties for mishandling documents and brought them along because Trump said he wanted them.
Itâs clear that many people were aware that Trump liked to keep top secret compartmentalized information nearby. They must have been acutely aware of the danger that might come with that. Has anyone checked to see if there might be more secret documents at his Bedminster, NJ, or New York places?
Sadly, that isnât the only unbelievable story about Trumpâs security breaches today. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is reporting about a woman, fluent in several languages who people at Mar-a-Lago knew as Anna de Rothschild, mingled with Trump and his supporters. She also attended a golf outing with Trump and Sen. Lindsey Graham.
She wasnât a Rothschild; she was a fake. Apparently, she invented this other Anna. From the Post-Gazette:
âBut the 33-year-old woman was not a member of the famous banking family and is now a subject of a widening FBI investigation that has delved into her past financial activities and the events that led her to the former presidentâs home.â
More:
âA year before the FBIâs spectacular raid of the former presidentâs seaside home, the woman whose real name is Inna Yashchyshyn, a Russian-speaking immigrant from Ukraine, made several trips into the estate posing as a member of the famous [Rothschild] family while making inroads with some of the former presidentâs key supporters.â
One suspects that if we knew the entire truth, it would reveal another unthinkable security breach. The ability of Ms. Yashchyshyn (who is the daughter of an Illinois truck driver) to bypass Trumpâs security should make the National Security establishment very, very nervous, what with all of those secret documents hardly under lock and key.
And Wrongo thought they let only âthe best peopleâ into Mar-a-Lago.
Time to wake up America! Read what Wrongo said here about the potential damage done when the US government has to assume that secret operations have been compromised by mishandling of top secret information. Taken together, these two stories demonstrate clearly why the DOJ and the National Archives were so worried about classified documents stored insecurely by Trump.
To help you wake up, watch, and listen to Larkin Poe, a Nashville-based sister group, (featured once before on the Wrongologist) perform a new song âGeorgia Off My Mindâ from their album, âBlood Harmonyâ coming out in November:
Republicans are outraged this week about Bidenâs cancellation of student loan debt! Americans now owe a total of more than $1.6 trillion for higher education. From the WaPo: (emphasis by Wrongo)
âThe result is one of the most significant changes to American higher education policy in decades â and a new cornerstone of the presidentâs economic legacy. Bidenâs decision will dramatically change the financial circumstances of tens of millions of Americans, fully erasing the student loans of roughly 20 million people.â
Student debt played a minor role in American life through the 1960s when Wrongo accrued his $5k of college debt while attending Georgetown. But it increased during the Reagan administration. It then shot up after the 2007-2009 Great Recession as states made huge cuts to funding for their college systems.
But the argument that âtuition has gone up because public support for higher education has declinedâ isnât the only one. While itâs valid for some institutions, it doesnât explain the âarms raceâ among colleges and universities to add student amenities and layers of administrative staff over the past 10 years.
Over the last decade, revenue at independent (non-religious) private colleges and universities in the US has increased by 148% on an inflation-adjusted (real) per student basis. At religiously affiliated private colleges and universities revenue has increased by 87% in real per-student terms over the last 10 years.
Meanwhile, at public institutions, revenue has increased by just 23.4% on the same basis. However, this is still 36% greater than per capita GDP growth over the same 10 years.
The headline is that our elite educational institutions have gotten obscenely wealthy. And many of our second tier institutions chased after them, causing education budgets everywhere to explode.
Itâs become another example of Americaâs new gilded age.
Opinions differ about the ethics of loan forgiveness for student debt, and thatâs understandable. The general thrust of the Republican railing about the educational loan forgiveness is about how unfair it is when one group of Americans is getting a benefit at the cost of other Americans.
This tweet from former Trump White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders is on point for most of the GOP:
“Joe Biden wants those who didnât go to school, didnât take out loans, or already paid off their loans to pay off $300 billion of other peopleâs debts…..Itâs socialism, itâs un-American, and only makes his record-setting inflation worse.”
But it isnât socialism when our government bails out one group at the expense of another; it happens all the time. No Republican complained about the Trump tax cuts which were directed at Americaâs wealthy and its corporations. No Republican complained about the bank bailout in 2008. No Republican objected when Trump gave $16 billion to farmers hurt by the Trump tariffs.
Second, despite what the GOP is saying, the $300 billion in loan forgiveness isnât inflationary. Itâs true that itâs money that student borrowers wonât be paying back. But because of the student debt moratorium, they had already stopped payments in 2020, so thereâs no change going forward. They simply wonât have to restart making payments on that $10,000 of debt.
It isnât clear that there will be much impact to inflation or the Consumer Price Index. Since they werenât making payments, itâs likely they were already spending those funds that might have gone to loan repayments. So no new spending.
We can have a debate about how much higher education should cost per student. We live in a society that is a whole lot wealthier than it was 40 years ago, but many of our students do not come from those few wealthy families.
The political calculus of Bidenâs decision will be seen in November. The WaPo reported that a majority of Americans support limited debt forgiveness. Bidenâs pollster, John Anzalone said:
âThis is a motivator for young people….Itâs a huge issue for young people â the support levels for them are in the high 60s.â
Letâs hope they turn out to vote on November 8.
Now, itâs time for our Saturday Soother, where we decompress from another week of body blows to America and find a few moments to gather ourselves for the week to come.
Here on the Fields of Wrong, we had a day of very satisfying brush clearing although weâre still waiting for rain.
Go get a big mug of decaf cold brew coffee and grab a chair in the shade. Now listen to Schubertâs âImpromptu in G flat Op. 90 No. 3â, written in 1827, and played here in 2012 by Olga Jegunova at the Bishopsgate Institute in London:
Schubert really understood how to capture emotion in his music.
Thereâs trouble in the Republican Party. Theyâve believed the pundits who said that the GOP had a lock on the November mid-terms, but with terrible Senate candidates, along with the Dobbs decision and Bidenâs legislative comeback, things are getting very tight. From the WaPo: (brackets by Wrongo)
âRepublican Senate hopefuls are getting crushed on airwaves across the country while their national campaign fund is pulling ads and running low on cash….In a highly unusual move, the National Republican Senatorial Committee [NRSC] this week canceled bookings worth about $10 million, including in the critical states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Arizona.â
Sounds serious. The NRSC has had a record fundraising year, bringing in $173 million so far this election cycle. But theyâve burned through much of it. The NRSCâs cash on hand was just $28.4 million at the end of June.
Republican spending has been augmented by Mitch McConnellâs super PAC, which announced a $28 million rescue effort in Ohio, where Republican candidate JD Vance has raised only $1 million in the second quarter and has spent less than $400,000 on ads.
McConnellâs super PAC also moved up by three weeks its spending in Pennsylvania, adding another $9.5 million, for a total of $34 million. The Democratic Senate candidate John Fetterman, is building a lead over the Republican candidate, Mehmet Oz.
Many of this yearâs Republican Senate candidates havenât run for office before and have had to deal with nasty and expensive primaries that crushed their favorability ratings. A string of recent polls show Republican candidates in many battleground states trailing, or in toss-up races with well-funded Democratic opponents. From Charlie Pierce: (parenthesis by Wrongo)
âThereâs a pretty good chunk of evidence that the Republican Party is currently very nervous about its chances in this yearâs elections for the US Senate. When a partyâs C47 flies over your state and dumps a massive payload of cash-like ordnance…(you know youâre in trouble).â
The Republicans suddenly have to start using money theyâd earmarked for propping up people like Vance, as life support for the campaign of North Carolinaâs Senate candidate Ted Budd, whoâs in a dead-heat election with Cheri Beasley. Buddâs public statements on a violent insurrection are likely to cause any thinking Republican voter to stay home.
Republicans have climbed back into a familiar box. In 2010, the Republicans blew a chance to take the Senate because they couldnât resist nominating terrible candidates. For example, Sharron Angle in Nevada suggested that a teenage victim of rape shouldnât get an abortion but make a âlemon situation into lemonade.â Christine OâDonnell in Delaware finally had to say she wasnât a witch.
Besides Vance, Republicans this year couldnât stop themselves from nominating Herschel Walker in Georgia. They also are defending the indefensible incumbent Ron Johnson in Wisconsin, who in a Marquette University Law School poll, is seven points behind the Democrat Mandela Barnes.
While the odds of Democrats holding the Senate are improving, it is still more than possible that some or all of these Republican candidates could be sitting in the Senate next January. Itâs certainly possible that big money Republicans will ride to the rescue of their terrible candidates.
And thatâs the point. For the GOP, the worse the candidate, the more the Partyâs true believers embrace them. That’s how they prove theyâre true believers. Eventually, (hopefully already?) this will reach the point of diminishing returns.
Are we there yet? Can we get there before our democracy crashes and burns is the real question.
Time to wake up America! Itâs our job to deliver more than 50 seats in the Senate to the Democrats! There are 35 US Senate seats up for election in 2022, of which 14 are held by Democrats and 21 by Republicans. Democrats need to hold serve, and win two-four more!
We have an opening with the GOP choosing shitty candidates and spending their ad money frivolously. But it means Democrats must turn out in large numbers in all of these elections, from Warnock in Georgia to Fetterman in PA, to Barnes in Wisconsin. And donât forget Mark Kelly in AZ, and Catherine Cortez Masto in NV.
To help you wake up, watch, and listen to âLily Was Hereâ performed by saxophonist Candy Dulfer and the Eurythmicsâ Dave Stewart. Written by Stewart, it was the title track to a 1989 Dutch film called âDe KassiĂšre, (The Cashier).â Here it is performed live by Stewart and Dulfer in 1989:
Dulfer was born in the Netherlands. Sheâs the daughter of saxophonist Hans Dulfer and started to play the soprano saxophone at age six. Sheâs very very good.
Stormy view from House Mountain, Sedona, AZ – August 2022 photo by Ed Mitchell
Tens of thousands of teacher openings are unfilled as students head back to American classrooms. Thatâs prompting states and school districts to try everything they can to address the teacher shortage.
Except increase their pay. The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) has tracked teacher compensation for 18 years. Hereâs the headline:
â…teachers are paid less (in weekly wages and total compensation) than their nonteacher college-educated counterparts, and the situation has worsened considerably over time.â
EPI tracks what they call the relative teacher wage penalty, the relative wages and total compensation of teachers compared to other college graduates. Here are the EPIâs findings:
Inflation-adjusted average weekly wages of teachers have been relatively flat since 1996. The average weekly wages of public school teachers (adjusted for inflation) increased just $29 from 1996 to 2021, while inflation-adjusted weekly wages of other college graduates rose from $1,564 to $2,009 âa $445 increase.
The relative teacher wage penalty reached a record high in 2021. It was 23.5% in 2021, up from 6.1% in 1996. The penalty was worse for men than for women. The penalty for men rose from 18.6% to 35.2%.
The great portfolio of teachersâ benefits used to be a selling point, but it hasnât been enough to offset the growing wage penalty. The teacher total compensation penalty was 14.2% in 2021 (a 23.5% wage penalty offset by a 9.3% benefits advantage).
The relative teacher wage penalty exceeds 20% in 28 states. Teacher weekly wage penalties estimated for each state range from 3.4% in Rhode Island to 35.9% in Colorado. In 28 states, teachers are paid less than 80 cents on the dollar earned by similar college-educated workers.
The EPI has a chart showing the relative erosion of teacher wages vs. other college graduates since 1980:
The EPI focuses on “weekly wages” to avoid the comparisons of length of the work year (i.e., the âsummers offâ issue for teachers).
Add to this the general decline in working conditions for teachers, and many who are eligible for retirement are leaving. Republicans in particular are politicizing education. Some are pushing the idea of “parental rights.” That is happening in Florida, Texas and in other states. Itâs clear that in some school districts parents want the right to censor whatâs being taught. Some Conservatives are pushing for a camera in every classroom across America. Tucker Carlson called for cameras in classrooms to âoversee the people teaching your children, forming their minds.â
This comes under the guise of âtransparency in the classroomâ, parents keeping an eye on teachers, so they wonât teach the dreaded Critical Race Theory (or groom kids to become trans, or gay). Teachers naturally bristle at the idea of video auditing.
Forcing teacher compliance with imposed politicized curricula wonât make these jobs any more desirable.
Some states are relaxing licensing requirements to make it easier for people to fill some of those unfilled jobs. Florida, which has about 8,000 open teaching positions, is allowing military veterans without a bachelorâs degree and no prior teaching experience to apply for a temporary five-year teaching certificate while they finish their bachelor’s degrees.
The biggest issues to solve are better public school funding, which can help end the teacher wage penalty. That requires towns to raise taxes. Second, the politicization of education is changing the amount of parental control in the day-to-day operations in some school districts. Thatâs making teaching an even lower-status job than it is now.
According to the BLS, there are currently 300,000 fewer teachers nationwide compared to before the pandemic. Part of this is job satisfaction. A survey from the American Federation of Teachers found that 74% of teachers were dissatisfied with their job, up from 41% two years ago.
If teachers and staff are underpaid, under-resourced and are now being second-guessed in the classroom, they’re not going to stay. So replacing them will become an even bigger problem.
Enough of this weekâs problems, itâs time for our Saturday Soother! Letâs put Trumpâs secrets and Liz Cheneyâs political prospects on pause. Weâre facing moderate drought conditions here in CT, so lawn mowing has ceased, and our grass is brown and crunchy.
But, itâs time to empty our minds, so that we can begin filling them up again on Monday. Start by grabbing a cold glass of lemonade and a seat in the shade.
Now, watch and listen to Antonin Dvorakâs â4 miniaturesâ, for 2 Violins and Viola, played here by the Musicians of Lenox Hill at Temple Israel of the City of New York in  April 2019:
Monsoon season, Sonoran Desert, Tucson, AZ –Â August 2022 photo by Rene Martinez
The November mid-term election is 12 weeks away. Some Republicans who do not accept our countryâs democratic tenets are focusing on getting elected in the battleground states in an effort to energize a future coup. From the WaPo:
â…in the six critical battlegrounds that ultimately decided the 2020 presidential contest, where Trump most fiercely contested the results…..Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, at least 54 winners out of 87 contests â more than 62% of nominees â have embraced the former presidentâs false claims.â
As an aside, reporters must stop using the term âelection deniersâ. It doesnât convey what these Republicans believe. They know Trump lost, but they tried to steal the 2020 election anyway.
And theyâre promising to steal the next one. These people call the government their “enemy”. Now, theyâre calling for violence against the FBI. They say our elections canât possibly be fair, yet theyâre doing all they can to make them less fair.
There are many tools in the GOP tool kit to help a state create election-related chaos. They could decertify voting machines or block the electronic counting of ballots. They could empower their legislatures to determine how many of a presidential candidateâs votes are actually counted.
The GOP says that our local electoral processes and voting machines are highly suspect. In 2020 we saw Republican efforts to find voter fraud in several states, all of which failed. Still, in 2022, the GOP persists in saying there are voting machines that flipped votes in 2020 from Trump to Biden.
The gold standard for voting in America is hand-marked paper ballots. They leave a paper trail that is hard to challenge. Today states (including Connecticut where Wrongo votes) use digital scanners to read those hand-marked ballots. The machine tabulators can be checked before voting for accuracy and ballots can be re-scanned in random precincts afterwards to verify totals, along with hand counts.
Verified Voting a non-partisan firm that promotes the responsible use of technology in elections, rates the integrity of voting machines at the county level throughout the US. They have an interactive US map that allows anyone to check the quality of the voting machines in their county. Hereâs a screenshot image of that interactive map:
You should go to the interactive map for greater detail. The green portion of the map represents the 69.2% of US registered voters that use highly reliable hand-marked paper ballots. The yellow portion of the map represents the 23.4% of our registered voters that use mostly reliable Ballot Marking Devices (BMD), with marked pre-printed ballots; some print summaries of voter selections, often with those selections encoded in barcodes or QR codes. Together, these account for 92.6% of Americaâs registered voters.
The red portion of the map represents the 7.4% of American voters who use a less-reliable direct recording electronic (DRE) voting system. DREs allow voters to record their selections directly into computer memory.
Despite what Republicans think, most of America can vote with total confidence that their voting machines are accurate, and that their votes will be counted accurately. So relax Republicans, election fraud just isnât very possible in the US.
But there are plenty of other shenanigans that can be pulled at the local and state level. And thatâs a concern given what the GOP is focusing on for the November mid-terms. They could take away voting rights by canceling voter registrations. They can close polling places or gerrymander more districts. The WaPo has a chart showing how close the GOP is to controlling the voting process in the six battleground states:
By weakening trust in our election system, Republicans are paving the way for America to become a one-party state led by an authoritarian strongman. They intend to take away the single and best power the people have, our vote. These Republicans aren’t election deniers, theyâre anti-democracy. If they are elected, they will end democracy as we know it.
Time to wake up America! We canât leave the vote-counting to people who wonât count all of our votes! America has a long tradition of subverting the voting process and denying millions of people the right to vote, and these Republicans want to take us right back to those days in our past. To stop that, they must be beaten in Novemberâs mid-terms.
To help you wake up, watch, and listen to âQueen Beeâ played by Taj Mahal and friends in this Playing For Change video, that features Ben Harper, Rosanne Cash, and many others from around the world.
The tune is from Taj Mahalâs 1997 album, âSeñor Bluesâ, which won a Grammy. Itâs an album that Wrongo highly recommends:
âJ.D. Power published its latest report this past weekend. The 2022 U.S. Initial Quality Study (IQS) took the time to highlight the issues currently afflicting the industry. However, they also called out âpremiumâ car companies for their extensive quality issues.â
According to Forbes, Kia, Buick and Hyundai topped this yearâs dependability rankings. Volvo, Ram, and Land Rover ranked at the bottom. J.D. Powerâs research showed that many European brands struggled with technology at the 90-day mark of a new vehicleâs ownership.
Apparently, J.D. Power saw the highest number of vehicle problems reported in their 36-year history, with an 11% increase in problems per 100 vehicles, compared with 2021. The report also stated that while vehicle quality has declined across the board since the pandemic, pricier models had more quality issues than more affordable cars.
Oil Price says that the increase in problems is caused by cars having more âbells and whistlesâ than in the past. And, these high-end features require increasingly rare components. As an example, Wrongo didnât know that BMW now offers its heated seat function on a subscription basis.
Another thing that can go wrong when your ass is cold.
Oil Price quotes J.D. Powerâs Director of Global Automotive, David Amodeo:
â…automakers continue to launch vehicles that are more and more technologically complex in an era in which there have been many shortages of critical components to support them.â
Big picture, the question is whether there is a market for simpler, more reliable cars. The success of Dacia in Europe seems to indicate that the answer is yes. Dacia is owned by Renault; their cars are a mix of well proven hand-me-down components mated to modern compact gas engines. Their simplicity and toughness is appreciated in France and their residual value stays high.
But this is an unlikely market in the US.
Without being a Luddite, is anyone capable of backing up a car using only the rear view mirror? Did the high-definition backup camera become necessary because American drivers became incompetent?
And what about: Automatic headlights? Power windows? Power locks? Remote (vs. mechanical) keys? LCD touch screen dashboards? Automatic climate control? Cell phone integration? All of these improvements mean that your new car contains about 1,400 microchips.
Some microprocessors have been added to meet US regulations, like engine control to reduce emissions. Then there are things that make assembling the cars easier. For example, electric windows are now controlled by a circuit board, so that the manufacturer doesnât have to run 10+ wires to the driver side door.
Still, Wrongo thinks that most car electronics are a true value-add. Think air bags, or blind-spot mirror warning, and radar-assisted cruise control. These things add to the cost of the car and as weâre discovering, add to the risk of parts shortages.
The chip shortage isnât going away. The auto manufacturers have contracted for their chips and sub-components on a long-term basis. They arenât interested in taking a financial hit by changing their engineering designs for cars that are currently being sold. Their Asian suppliers are under long-term contracts, a cancellation could poison those relationships, and the suppliers would be very difficult to replace.
OTOH, some suppliers are pushing the auto manufacturers to move to more modern chips. But the current chip shortage is mainly of more basic units used in power windows and seat heaters, not the high-end microprocessors used in the most expensive cars.
So let your inner Luddite fly. Get an old, analog, manual transmission car. If you can find one.
But now itâs time for our Saturday Soother, where we unplug from the latest Trumpfest (or is it Trumpest?). Letâs shed our anxiety about too many IRS agents and too many anti-Trump FBI agents. Here on the Fields of Wrong, the heat wave has broken. Weâre able to be outside again doing yardwork.
But before starting the yardwork, grab a cold brew coffee and a seat in the shade.
Now, take a few minutes to watch and listen to the StanisĆaw Moniuszko School of Music Orchestra play Vivaldiâs âSummerâ from his “The Four Seasonsâ.
Itâs performed here in 2016 at the Polish National Opera House in Warsaw, with violin soloist Agnieszka UĆciĆska, who now makes her home in Cleveland:
It appears to Wrongo that the entire orchestra is female.
Summer storm passes, Grand Teton NP, WY – August 2022 photo by Hilary Bralove
The Senate came into session at 12 pm Saturday, and after a full 24 hours, it paused the vote-a-rama on Sunday for a new prayer. Those are the Senate rules. Then the Senate promptly resumed its vote-a-rama, which ended about 3:15 pm on Sunday. From the WaPo:
âThe Senate on Sunday approved a sweeping package to combat climate change, lower health-care costs, raise taxes on some billion-dollar corporations and reduce the federal deficit, as Democrats overcame months of political infighting to deliver the centerpiece to President Bidenâs long-stalled economic agenda.â
While most of the Democratâs reconciliation process proceeded according to plan, Senate Republicans successfully stripped a provision capping the price of insulin in the private marketplace from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) by a 57-43 vote, with seven Republicans (Cassidy, Collins, Hawley, Hyde Smith, Kennedy, Murkowski and Sullivan) voting to keep it in. But the seven GOP votes, plus all Democrats, werenât enough to reach the 60-vote threshold necessary to pass.
The cap on insulin prices for only those on Medicare remained in the bill since it complied with the rules on reconciliation. Apparently, the Republicans think that if we give people handouts for having diabetes Americaâs just incentivizing people to get diabetes. Who wants that?
Democrats included a new tax on large companies that currently pay nothing to the US government and added about $80 billion for the Internal Revenue Service to pursue tax cheats. They also approved a 1% tax on companies that buy back their own stock, a practice that many see as detrimental to the economy, that benefits only wealthy shareholders and executives.
After the bill passed, Republicans were predictably outraged. The appropriately-named Sen. Mike Crapo (R-ID) said:
âIt does nothing to bring the economy out of stagnation and recession. But rather, the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 gives us higher taxes, more spending, higher prices â and an army of IRS agents…â
And itâs important to note that while Democrats donât think that Sens. Manchin and Sinema are all that great, donât forget that this watered down bill was opposed by EVERY SINGLE REPUBLICAN.
There is plenty to crow about in the IRA. Does it contain everything on the progressive wish list? No, but Dems should take the win and stop pissing and moaning about what couldnât get by Manchin, Sinema and/or the Senate Parliamentarian, and sell the bill hard to the American people.
If Democrats want to deliver even more, theyâll need to improve their margin in the Senate, and hold the House in the November mid-terms.
Itâs not enough for Democrats to wait for Republicans to shoot themselves in the foot this fall, even though some candidates can be counted upon to try hard to do just that. Democrats need to be shouting about their successes. Just yesterday, Trump said at CPAC: âYou have not good job numbers nowâ, even though the just-published job numbers were awesome! That has to be countered at every opportunity.
This means a wall-to-wall, multi-pronged messaging campaign, reminding Americans every minute that Republicans canât be trusted on the economy. And despite where inflation is today, we need to be saying that gas prices are down nearly $1.00/gallon in the last seven weeks.
Maybe John Stewart should become the Dem’s Minister of Information?
We need to say that most GOP candidates support the Big Lie and the impeached coup plotter, Trump. That theyâre willing to eliminate the right to an abortion in America. On Friday, Indianaâs Republicans passed and Republican Governor Eric Holcomb immediately signed, a bill that prohibits nearly all abortions from the moment of gestation. Several Republican-controlled states will shortly pass similar laws.
People must, as Tom Sullivan says, “campaign like crazy“, while reminding all Americans that the Party of Lincoln no longer will deliver anything that ordinary people want.
Time to wake up America! Weâre at war politically and ideologically with Republicans. The only way to win is to keep defeating them at local, state, and federal levels until they stop trying to force their radical ways on the rest of us. To help you wake up, watch, and listen to the interesting but short-lived group, 4 Non Blondes play their big hit from 1992, âWhat’s Upâ:
Sample Lyric:
25 years and my life is still
Tryin’ to get up that great big hill of hope
For a destination
I realized quickly when I knew I should
That the world was made up of this brotherhood of man
For whatever that means
And so I cry sometimes when I’m lying in bed
Just to get it all out what’s in my head
And I, I am feeling a little peculiar
El Morro National Monument, NM – monsoon rains have turned the brown landscape green – July 2022 photo by Kirk Shoemaker
We need to talk about Taiwan. China said that they wouldnât tolerate a visit to Taiwan by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), and that there would be severe consequences if she failed to heed Chinaâs warning. But she ignored China, and went anyway.
China then launched a comprehensive set of war games, showing clearly how they might invade and take over Taiwan militarily at some point in the future. China then announced it sanctioned Pelosi and her family. Now, according to the BBC, China has said all dialogue between US and Chinese defense officials would be cancelled, while co-operation on returning illegal immigrants, climate change, and on investigating international crime would be suspended.
You know the broad outline of the issues: China viewed Pelosiâs visit as a challenge to its claims of sovereignty over Taiwan, even though Taiwan is self-ruled, and sees itself as distinct from the mainland.
As China has become a global leader, their abilities and ambitions have shifted. A 1997 trip to Taiwan by then US House Speaker Newt Gingrich, was met with little opposition, while the Speaker Pelosi visit has been met with missiles. This is a complicated issue. China doesnât control Taiwan; it doesnât issue travel visas for it, either. In April, a group of US Senators visited Taiwan. At the time, Chinaâs Foreign Ministry condemned the visit in a series of tweets and press statements, but nothing more.
The US has wanted to keep Taiwan in its orbit at least since the 1950âs when General Douglas MacArthur, then the Supreme Commander of allied powers in Japan, sent a top secret âMemorandum on Formosaâ to President Truman (Back then, Formosa was the name of Taiwan). To contain communism, MacArthur insisted that Truman consider the strategically located Formosa (Taiwan) as a counterbalance to the Soviet and Chinese regional expansion:
âFormosa in the hands of the Communists can be compared to an unsinkable aircraft carrier….â
He argued that Taiwan should instead be an unsinkable US aircraft carrier, projecting American power in the Pacific. As China grew in power and importance, the US adopted a policy of strategic ambiguity with respect to the two countries, wanting good relations with both and wanting to finesse the question of political control of Taiwan.
But lately, the US has been slowly walking away from the doctrine of strategic ambiguity, increasingly signaling to China that it considers Taiwan a core US interest in North Asia. That’s why the Chinese reacted so strongly to a high level politician like Pelosi visiting Taiwan.
Itâs also true that the South China Sea and the Taiwan Straits are among the worldâs busiest seaways, and that’s where China’s military exercises are now taking place:
Source: Bloomberg. The dots are vessels, the polygons are Chinaâs military drill areas
âThere are moments in international relations when you need to keep your eyes on the prize. Today that prize is crystal clear: We must ensure that Ukraine is able, at a minimum, to blunt â and, at a maximum, reverse â Vladimir Putinâs unprovoked invasion…â
Biden had held a series of tough meetings with Xi, trying to keep Beijing out of the Ukraine conflict. Friedman says that Biden told President Xi that if China entered the war in Ukraine on Russiaâs side, Beijing would be risking access to its two most important export markets â the US and the EU. More from Friedman:
âBy all indications…China has responded by not providing military aid to Putin â at a time when the US and NATO have been giving Ukraine intelligence support and a significant number of advanced weapons that have done serious damage to the military of Russia, Chinaâs ostensible ally.â
So why mess with Bidenâs Ukraine power play, Nancy? Thatâs Friedmanâs question. OTOH, everyone knows that the minute we bend a knee to China is when we lose our ability to defend Taiwan and hold on to the unsinkable aircraft carrier.
China hasnât proven itself capable of dealing with Taiwan except through threats since Chiang Kai-Shek left the mainland and took over in Taiwan in 1950. If China wants to control Taiwan without a fight, it has to stop threatening to rape her if she doesnât want to date. Every Chinese threat increases Taiwanâs separate national identity, and decreases the chance of a peaceful Chinese takeover.
Time to leave geopolitics behind, itâs time for our Saturday Soother, where we focus on clearing our minds for the week to come. Here on the fields of Wrong, we have a crew rebuilding a stone wall by the road that was hit by a large truck a few years ago.
Letâs start by finding that one last can of nitro cold brew in the back of the refrigerator and grab a seat by a large window. Now put on your wireless headphones and listen to âDanse Bacchanaleâ by Camille Saint-SaĂ«ns from his opera âSamson et Dalilaâ, played here by the Orquesta SinfĂłnica Juvenil de Caracas, Venezuela in 2010:
This is played at a very quick tempo, and with passion!
