Category: Playlist

Monday Wake Up Call – May 9, 2022

The Daily Escape:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Saturday Soother – May 7, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Griffith Observatory, LA, CA – April 2022 photo by Mike Holzel

You undoubtedly missed it, but on Wednesday, Biden gave a short speech on the budget deficit and the national debt. You can watch a video of his talk here. You didn’t see it because it received virtually no coverage in the media. From Robert Hubbell:

“….let’s engage in a thought experiment: Ask yourself, ‘By what amount has the deficit increased during Biden’s tenure—rounded to the nearest $1 trillion?’”

It’s a trick question. During Biden’s first year in office, the deficit decreased by $350 billion and is on track to decrease by an additional $1.5 trillion by the end of this fiscal year (9/30/22). It will be the largest single yearly decline in American history. Biden also said that this quarter, for the first time since 2016, the Treasury Department is planning to pay down a small portion of the national debt.

Biden pointed out that the deficit increased for each year of the Trump administration, both before and after the pandemic. Let’s remember that the main driver for deficits during Trump’s administration was the Republican 2017 tax cut for corporations and millionaires. The Trump tax cuts didn’t add any additional revenue, and without any offsetting savings, deficit spending went way up.

After Biden finished speaking, he took a few questions from the press. He was immediately asked about Russian sanctions and the leaked draft of the Supreme Court’s abortion opinion. Biden responded by saying:

“No one asked about deficits, huh?….You want to make sure this doesn’t get covered.”

Why isn’t good economic news covered by the media? Most members of the media seem to be uncomfortable with it. Biden shares responsibility for getting the good news out as well. He should speak to the American people directly, not just indirectly through the press in the middle of the day.

Maybe Ukraine’s Zelensky could be a role model. He speaks directly to his people every day. Had Biden announced paying down the debt and cutting the deficit while seated at the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, people would know that it was a big deal.

He should also speak about the location and targeting information we gathered about Russia’s cruiser and then shared with Ukraine:

“Intelligence shared by the US helped Ukraine sink the Russian cruiser Moskva, US officials told NBC News, confirming an American role in perhaps the most embarrassing blow to Vladimir Putin’s troubled invasion of Ukraine….The US…was not involved in the decision to strike.”

Despite America’s chicken hawk pundits’ finger-wagging, releasing this information hurts Russia’s already badly-run war effort. It shows Putin’s bad decision-making, poor command structure, and with it a likely collapse of morale. Going public also helps other NATO members see the differences with Trump’s four years of doing everything he could to sow distrust in the alliance.

There is a big country outside of DC desperate for good news. And therein lies the central problem for Democrats. Biden delivered this speech just before a meeting with Olympic athletes. Wrongo bets that this is the last we will hear from Biden on this accomplishment.

Just like FDR used his “fireside chats” to brief Americans on what his administration was doing, Biden should speak directly to the American people when necessary on matters of significant importance to the nation. He needs to discuss his accomplishments at every opportunity—and not just from the East Room of the White House.

Better messaging has to come from the top. If it does, voter support will follow. Oh, and by the way, we had another very good jobs report on Friday. The unemployment rate is 3.6%, and 428,000 new jobs were created last month according to the BLS. But the media only report about inflation.

It’s a continuation of Biden’s record job creation. In his first year in office, there were 6.6 million jobs added to the economy, 60% more than the next highest total, which was 3.9 million under Jimmy Carter. Wait, you thought Trump was the biggest job creator in history just because he said so? Wrong!

You might say that Putin is losing his domestic disinformation war while Biden is losing his domestic information war.

Time to turn off the news for a few minutes, and center ourselves for another rock ‘em, sock ‘em week ahead. It’s time for our Saturday Soother!

Here on the fields of Wrong, our crab apple trees’ blossoms will open over the weekend. It appears that we may not have bluebirds in our nest boxes for the first time in 10 years. A juvenile Cooper’s Hawk is using a box as his perch to survey our mix of woods and open grassland. That has driven many birds away.

So, grab a seat by a south-facing window and listen to Beethoven’s “Triple Concerto in C Major, Op. 56 No. 2” Largo, and Attacca, performed in 2019 by Anne-Sophie Mutter, Daniel Barenboim, and Yo-Yo Ma, accompanied by the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra at Philharmonie Berlin:

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Saturday Soother – April 30, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Cactus bloom, Tanque Verde, AZ – April 2022 photo by Bel Meader

Since last fall we’ve seen headlines about the need for parental control of public school curricula. It’s been a huge political weapon for Republican governors like DeSantis in Florida and Youngkin in Virginia. The argument is that the way race, gender and history are taught in public school classrooms is outside of the cultural mainstream in America.

A new national poll by NPR and Ipsos shows that those concerns are held only by a minority of America’s parents, while the majority express satisfaction with their children’s schools and what is being taught in them. The poll’s findings show that fewer than 20% of parents seem to be concerned about the culture wars, but they seem to be driving 100% of the conversation about K-12 education in America.

The poll surveyed 1,007 parents of school-aged children. Parents answered questions about the impact of the pandemic on their children, academically and socially, and about their schools’ performance:

“This year’s responses showed positive trends as the nation continues to recover from the worst of the pandemic. Compared to 2021, a growing margin of parents say their child is “ahead” when it comes to math, reading, social skills, and mental health and well-being. Fewer parents say their child is “behind” in those areas. In fact, in 2022, almost half of parents, 47%, agree with the statement: “the pandemic has not disrupted my child’s education.” That’s up from 38% in 2021…”

However, that view is at odds with that of most education researchers, who see big disruptions in indicators like test scores, college attendance, and preschool enrollment. The Ipsos poll shows that parental satisfaction also included culture war topics. In the poll:

  • 76% of respondents agree that “my child’s school does a good job keeping me informed about the curriculum, including potentially controversial topics.”
  • 88% of respondents agree with the statement “my child’s teacher(s) have done the best they could, given the circumstances around the pandemic.”
  • 82% agree “my child’s school has handled the pandemic well.”

Mallory Newall of Ipsos points out that:

“It really is a pretty vocal minority that is hyper-focused on parental rights and decisions around curriculum…. Just 18% of parents say their child’s school taught about gender and sexuality in a way that clashed with their family’s values; just 19% say the same about race and racism; and just 14% feel that way about US history.”

Newall also said that there was a lack of partisanship in the responses:

“The most partisan issue in our poll was gender and sexuality, but still only a minority expressed any concerns. Republicans are closely divided: 26% say schools are not teaching about gender and sexuality in a way that matches their family’s values, while 22% say schools are (the remainder don’t know or say schools aren’t addressing those topics).

The problem of course is that the vocal, 20+% of American parents are seeking total victory in the culture war. Republican-aligned groups like No Left Turn In Education and Parents Defending Education have continuously pushed these issues into the spotlight. And it’s working.

Ralph Wilson, a researcher who studies how partisan donors back the culture war, says these groups imply that they represent a silent majority of conservative-leaning parents. But that’s not necessarily the case:

“It’s definitely an incredibly small minority that’s being amplified with this large, well-funded infrastructure to appear larger and to appear to have more well-founded concerns than they do.”

The Ipsos poll found that about a third of parents say they “don’t know” how their child’s school addresses sexuality, gender identity, racism, or patriotism. Only 24% of parents believe they have too little say over what is taught or what books are in the library at their kid’s school.

That’s enough! Let’s leave the culture wars behind for the weekend. It’s time for our Saturday Soother, where we gather ourselves for the week ahead. In northwest Connecticut, we can’t escape cold weather, so our remaining yard work must wait for warmer nights before planting can start.

Instead, pour a mug of your favorite spice tea, grab a seat by a big window, and listen to “The Banks of Green Willow” by the little-known George Butterworth, who was part of the English pastoral idiom. 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 under Grant Llewellyn:

And the pastoral images are nice!

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Monday Wake Up Call – April 25, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Dory, Jodrey State Fish Pier, Gloucester Harbor, Gloucester, MA – April 2022 photo by Juergen Roth Photography

Utah is in the news, first for the death of Orrin Hatch. He was the longest-serving Republican and the sixth longest-serving Senator in the history of the Senate. Hatch decided not to run for reelection in 2018, clearing the way for Mitt Romney to be elected in 2018.

Hatch blocked labor law reforms and fair housing bills. He voted against the Equal Rights Amendment, he proposed a Constitutional amendment to make abortion illegal. He helped draft the USA Patriot Act and supported the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Hatch also opposed the Affordable Care Act and backed Trump’s anti-immigrant initiatives and Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Accords on climate change.

For his superb work in making the nation worse, Trump presented Hatch with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2018.

In other Utah news, Democrats want to defeat Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) badly enough in November to nominate non-Democrat Evan McMullin instead of one of their own. From KSL.com:

“The Utah Democratic Party made an extraordinary decision on Saturday. A majority of delegates decided to not put forth a Democratic candidate to face off with Republican Sen. Mike Lee and instead back independent candidate Evan McMullin.”

At Utah’s state Democratic Convention, McMullin received 57% of the votes to 43% for his Democratic Party opponent Kael Weston.

McMullin ran an unsuccessful independent presidential campaign against Trump in 2016. He was a CIA operations officer from 2001 to 2010. He holds an MBA from Wharton and worked as an investment banker. He’s a (former?) Republican who was a senior adviser on national security issues for the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. He also served as a chief policy director for the House Republican Conference in the US House of Representatives from January 2015 through July 2016.

Backing McMullin has big implications for Utah’s Democrats. Having finally accepted that Utah Dems have been at least comatose if not dead for years, they’re not bothering to field their own Senate candidate. More from KSL.com:

“It’s an unprecedented measure for Utah’s Democrats, who grappled between party loyalty or backing an outsider to increase the likelihood of defeating a Republican in November. The Democrats were motivated by the prospect of unseating Sen. Mike Lee, who is running for his third term this year…”

After the vote, the losing Democrat Weston said:

“Of course, you want to be the candidate that walks out with a unanimous degree of support, but I knew this was always going to be an important conversation to have and I think with a great team, and a lot of supporters who drove from all across the state, it was a real conversation….Today was a crossroads and a certain path was taken. It’s a path that has not been taken before.”

Weston also said he’s more concerned about ensuring Utah has a:

“healthy political marketplace, and that’s not going to be possible if we don’t have Democrats on the ballot…”

Seems like the wound-licking will last for a while. McMullin said after the vote:

“Democrats are putting country over party….This is our democracy and, yes, it can be messy at times as we saw today, but it’s sure a heck of a lot better than the alternative.”

That sounds pretty mealy-mouth to Wrongo.

In 2022 we are facing some hard truths. Democrats at least in this Red state have decided that it’s time to do whatever it takes to stop sitting Republican seditionists like Mike Lee. It’s also a tacit admission that the Democratic Party brand is toxic in many Red states. So some Democrats are acting on the idea that coalition-building may not be such a bad strategy. They’re thinking that combining Democrats with Independents and a few never-Trumpers adds up to a huge chunk of real estate.

Maybe enough to win.

Time to wake up Democrats! Your Party is fractured and isn’t going to be healed by November. Since the states are often called the “laboratories of democracy”, maybe a few experiments in coalition-building with the center-right will tell us something more than simply being waxed in another Republican wave election like in 2010.

To help Democrats wake up, listen to Carlos Santana & Eric Clapton play “Jin Go Lo Ba” at the 2004 Crossroad Guitar Festival held at Cotton Bowl in Dallas, TX:

Trust Wrongo, you won’t spend a better eight minutes today.

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Saturday Soother – April 23, 2022

The Daily Escape:

North Landing River, near Virginia Beach, VA – April 2022 photo by Erik Moore

Our media ecosystem is overwhelming us. Some of the information is accurate, some is bogus, and much is intentionally misleading. And that’s a deliberate strategy. While it didn’t originate with Steve Bannon, he perfected it with his thought that:

“…the Democrats don’t matter….The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.”

This is why the ongoing cultural war works so well for Republicans. There’s always some petty war going on between the Parties that’s stoked by the media. And it’s almost always about cultural issues since Republicans really don’t have a policy platform, and don’t want to go against large corporate America. When you go against corporations, you lose the money needed to get elected.

But we should see the big corporations as our common enemy. Time Magazine has an article about how overtime pay has disappeared:

“If it feels like you’re working longer hours for less money than your parents or grandparents did, it’s because you probably are. Adjusted for inflation, average hourly wages have actually fallen since the early 1970s, while average hours worked have steadily climbed. American workers are increasingly underpaid, overworked, and overwhelmed.”

One reason is the loss of overtime pay:

“If you’re under the age of 45, you may have no idea that overtime pay is even a thing. But…middle-class workers used to get a lot of it….That means that [for] every hour you work over 40 hours a week you work for free, contributing…a giant pool of free labor that modern employers have come to expect and exploit. Profits are up, real wages are down, and income inequality has soared to its highest level since the Gilded Age.”

Overtime pay was one of the great New Deal reforms. It was a core provision of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The FLSA set the minimum wage at one-half the median wage and the overtime threshold at three times the minimum—an amount equal to 1.5 times the median wage.

But both the minimum wage and the overtime rules began to change in 1975, and rising income inequality since 1975 is responsible for a $50 trillion upward redistribution of wealth and income from the bottom 90% households to those in the top 1%. Here’s a chart showing the impact of losing overtime. Productivity goes up, but is completely decoupled from income:

Source: chartr

The Economic Policy Institute has a tool called “Company Wage Tracker” that allows you to select any big corporation and see what percentage of their employees make below a certain wage. For example, it shows that 51% of Walmart employees earn below $15/hr.

The NYT wrote about Mary Gundel, a manager at a Dollar General store in Tampa, FL who was fired for speaking out about the chain’s policies regarding overtime and short-staffing:

“The store used to have about 198 hours a week to allocate to a staff of about seven people….But by the end of last month, she had only about 130 hours to allocate….With not as many hours to give to her staff, Ms. Gundel often had to operate the store on her own for long stretches, typically working six days and up to 60 hours a week with no overtime pay.”

Ms. Gundel was working 60 hours a week and making $51,000 a year. That means she’s making only a little more than the minimum wage. Dollar General is one of the most profitable retail chains in the country.

Prices are going up everywhere across America, and corporations are making proportionately more income. This is what the Democrats should be focusing on, standing up for workers, doing what is right as opposed to groping for answers to the Republican’s culture war issues.

There’s plenty that’s wrong in America. But what’s wrong doesn’t see the light of day alongside all of the pissing contests about Critical Race Theory, or predator grooming or LGBTQ issues. These are ginned-up to make sure you won’t pay attention to what’s really going on.

Something seems to be brewing. We’re seeing halting attempts at unionization at Starbucks and Amazon. Those employees want a better life; they want to have a seat at the table about the future of the company.

We need to remember that without the “essential workers” the country grinds to a halt. We need to support those who try to organize. We need to wrest some economic power away from politicians and big businesses. And finally, some faceless people who are sick of being wronged are trying to do just that.

Enough for another week. It’s time to let go of the news. It’s time for our Saturday Soother. On the Fields of Wrong we’re preparing our vegetable garden, although it will be a few weeks before it’s warm enough for the plants to survive. We had an overnight temperature of 32° earlier this week.

Now, grab a seat by a large window and listen to violin soloist Soojin Han play Chopin’s “Nocturne No.20 in C# minor” in August 2019. She’s playing on a 1666 Stradivarius:

It sounds beautiful.

Chopin composed the piece in 1830, but it was published in 1875, 26 years after his death. It was featured in the movie “The Pianist” in 2002.

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What to Do When You’re Called “Pedophile”

The Daily Escape:

Western Rosebud, Red Rock National conservation area, NV – April 2022 photo by David Frederick

We’ve reached a point in our political discourse where Republicans are tossing around lies about their Democratic opponents, including saying the Democrats are pedophiles. And they’re doing it without fear of reprisal from the establishment Democrats.

One Democrat, Michigan state senator Mallory McMorrow was accused by Lana Theis, a Republican state senate colleague, of being a “groomer” of young children in a recent fundraising appeal. Theis also said McMorrow wanted to teach 8-year-olds that they are responsible for slavery. McMorrow didn’t stay silent after the accusations against her. She gave her Republican accuser a rhetorical bloody nose:

Her speech is inspiring. You should definitely watch it. Here’s a quote:

“I am a straight, white, Christian, married, suburban mom who knows that the very notion that learning about slavery or redlining or systemic racism somehow means that children are being taught to feel bad or hate themselves because they are white is absolute nonsense…No child alive today is responsible for slavery. No one in this room is responsible for slavery. But each and every single one of us bears responsibility for writing the next chapter of history….we are not responsible for the past. We also cannot change the past. We can’t pretend that it didn’t happen or deny people their very right to exist.”

The Dem’s typical “that doesn’t deserve a response” is out of date. It doesn’t work on hateful Republican rhetoric. McMorrow shows us how it’s done.

We need to get used to this, because it’s going to be a main talking point for Republicans through the 2022 mid-terms and beyond. In response, it isn’t enough for Democrats to “just go high”. They need to start attacking Republicans for how weird and abnormal they are.

You probably saw the many humorous takes on Tucker Carlson’s weirdo testicle-tanning video. Really, these guys get to accuse others of sexual problems?

And there’s Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) who may actually soon be a convicted pedophile. You remember Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) was implicated in allegations of sexual misconduct against the Ohio State wrestling team’s former team doctor. Or Rep. Lauren Boebert’s (R-CO) then-future husband who was arrested for exposing himself to two young women at a Colorado bowling alley (she was present), and he was later arrested for domestic violence against her while they were dating.

These are the people who are screaming “pedophiles” at Dems.

Wrongo doesn’t often suggest paying attention to James Carville, but on MSNBC over the weekend he said: (brackets by Wrongo)

“[Republicans] have learned over a period of time it doesn’t matter” what they say or do, Carville complained. “[Democrats] are weak and all they’re gonna do is talk bad about each other.”

Carville pointed out how little pushback Democrats made against the pedophilia-obsessed GOP Senators during the Supreme Court Justice confirmation hearings for Ketanji Brown-Jackson.

Charlie Pierce reminds us of how there is a straight line from the McMartin case in 1990 to where we are today. McMartin showed how hysteria over purported sexual abuse of children in schools can grip our society. Despite a complete lack of reputable evidence against the teachers and workers at McMartin Preschool, the McMartin trials took over six years and cost more than $13.5 million without a single guilty verdict resulting from the 208 charges.

Today these accusations are again rampant across the country, only with much more paranoia and way more firearms. America is on the cusp of a revolution, but it’s too early to see exactly what it is coming, or what it will become.

We now live in a world where it’s perfectly acceptable for a politician to demonize those who don’t share their belief system. Someone can take to Twitter or send out a fundraising email and savage a person either to score cheap political points or add a few bucks to their political war chest.

The Republicans are essentially a new Party since its hostile takeover by Trump. Democrats have to look all the way back to FDR for a takeover model. He overthrew the old political order with the New Deal.

We’re seeing a well-organized, well-funded, (and effective in its way), Republican assault on democracy itself: They have willed into existence a Supreme Court supermajority that cares about its social agenda as much as it cares about the “law”. The GOP’s Senate and House ranks are filled with adherents to that same agenda.

Nearly half of America agrees with them because they promise revenge against people they despise. We face a risk in 2024 of Trump winning a filibuster-proof trifecta [House, Senate, White House] with a minority of the national vote.

We can no longer afford to “go high”. Everyone knows the stakes.

What will Democrats do to win?

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Monday Wake Up Call – April 18, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Sunset, Sequoia Lake, CA – April 2022 photo by An Pham

Today is tax day, and Wrongo will get his in on time. But the question of how America deals with its taxing is rightly under scrutiny. Blog reader Ottho H. commented on Wrongo’s Sunday post about the IRS:

“To me it’s an enduring mystery, and a source of anger and disgust, why Congress starves the IRS…. Doubling the IRS budget (by, say, $12B per year) seems like the best and most “sure thing” ROI the gov’t can make….To the extent that the “starve or defund the IRS” movement is due to lobbies and Congressmen out to protect and further enrich the already rich, then at least that should be made more transparent to the public. This is a no-brainer cause that I can get behind.”

The IRS is chronically underfunded. Government data show that millionaires and billionaires are rarely audited, while lower-income families are disproportionately targeted (five times more likely) for enforcement actions. The agency is severely understaffed. It works with outdated technology, meaning that any paper returns must first be transcribed into a computer. It also means hundreds of billions of dollars in taxes go uncollected.

The answer to so many of the IRS’s woes: antiquated tech systems, congested phone lines, threadbare enforcement –  is more funding. It’s one of the few federal agencies that would generate a large and nearly immediate return on investment if it could spend more.

But many Republicans don’t want to fix it. Yesterday’s WaPo article quoted Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL):

“This additional money for the IRS to target all Americans is absolutely wrong…It will target our families, it’s going to target our small businesses, and it’s going to go after them to get them to pay more money.”

And Sen. Todd Young (R-IN) about how new IRS funding would be used:

“We know that most of this $80 billion will be used to enhance the ability of the IRS to target middle Americans…”

The Economist says that the IRS entered this tax season with a backlog of 24 million returns, 20 times worse than normal. At the end of this tax season, it will be nearly two years late in processing many of our returns:

“Spending [at] the agency has declined by nearly 20% since 2010. At the same time, the number of tax returns has increased by 20%. The backbone of the system, a nationwide taxpayer database, is built on top of a 1960s computer language rarely taught in schools.”

The IRS is in the process of hiring 10,000 workers to help clear the backlogs, but the biggest challenge is retaining their senior auditors. About a fifth of agency staff are eligible for retirement. Many have already left as a result of Covid, and they were exactly the kind of people needed to maintain the agency’s enforcement efforts.

The Economist says that the IRS audited 0.3% of corporate tax returns filed in 2018, down from 1.6% in 2010. The number this year may be even lower. They quote Charles Rettig, IRS Commissioner, as estimating that the government loses about $1 trillion in tax revenues annually because of cheating.

Even if new funding is appropriated, it will take time to re-build the agency. Money that is appropriated now for that purpose would be spent over the course of the next fiscal year (which ends on 9/30/2023) and the effects of those reforms probably wouldn’t start to show in the statistics until then.

It’s always been easier to destroy than it is to build. Credit the GOP for understanding this truth.

Time for the Republicans in Congress to wake up! No one likes paying taxes. Even for those who recognize that there’s a societal gain when we all pay them, filing our tax returns is a hassle. It’s time we had a better funded agency that could return the enforcement efforts back toward the richest corporations and wealthy individuals first.

To help our Congress Critters wake up, watch and listen to Mavis Staples perform “Love and Trust” from her album “Live in London”, recorded in 2018 at London’s Union Chapel. She’s joined by Jump Bluesman Rick Holmstrom on his Telecaster:

Sample Lyric:

The simplest things can be the hardest to do
Can’t find what you’re looking for even when it’s looking for you
The judge and criminal, the sinner and the priest
Got something in common, bring em all to their knees

[Chorus]
Do what you can, do what you must
Everybody’s trying to find the love and trust
I walk the line, I walk it for us
See me out here tryin’ to find some love and trust
(Love and trust)
(Love and trust)

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Saturday Soother – April 16, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Water Lilies, Balboa Park, San Diego CA – April 2022 photo by Sharyl Edmiston Mitchell. Like Monet but in focus.

Three items for your review this Saturday. First, the watchdog group American Oversight published emails that revealed Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, asked Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to join a weekly coalition meeting of conservatives with ties to a group she founded called Groundswell.

She suggested that DeSantis’ office would be familiar with her because her husband had been in contact with the governor “on various things as of late.” That was in February.

DeSantis has two policy items that are likely to go before the Court: Florida’s Congressional redistricting map (drawn under DeSantis’s supervision) and Florida’s ban on abortions after 15 weeks. Could these be among the “various things” that DeSantis and Clarence Thomas discussed?

We may never know because the Supreme Court has no enforceable code of ethics and no mechanism for reporting ex parte communications between justices and politicians or lobbyists. We’re headed backwards in America: Our sadness is that a minority, aided by the Supreme Court will now define what America really is.

Second, A 26-year-old black Grand Rapids, Michigan man was administered the death penalty by a cop for a minor traffic violation after he resisted arrest. Patrick Lyoya was a Congolese refugee who came to the US fleeing violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2014. Wrongo will not present one or more of the gratuitous violence porn videos of the incident that are all over the internet.

Here’s a chart showing just how many more people are killed by cops in America vs. those killed in other wealthy countries:

Note that cops in other developed countries don’t kill very many people. For a cop to kill somebody in Western Europe or Japan, it is extraordinarily rare. In comparison, three people are killed by cops every day here in the land of the free.

On the other hand, there are 300 million guns out in the wild in the US. That’s surely making police more trigger-happy than cops in the rest of the civilized world. While that’s true, US police work isn’t nearly as dangerous as the police unions want you to believe, since death by Covid was the leading cause of police death for the second year in a row.

The typical take on this will be “You won’t die if you don’t run from the police.” That’s reasonable in the abstract, But should failure to comply with established Best Practices for America’s Docile Citizenry be a death sentence? That’s an authoritarian mindset.

There may be situations where it is legitimate to shoot a fleeing suspect to prevent the actual threat of death or severe bodily injury; but this was not one of those cases. Police now have the mentality that their primary goal is achieving compliance with their orders in every situation, and whatever they need to do to achieve that is ok. They’re wrong, it isn’t ok.

Third, old US Senators have got to retire. We currently have the oldest Senate in US history. From the WaPo:

“Twenty-three members of the Senate are in their 70s; only one is under 40. According to the Congressional Research Service, the average age of senators at the beginning of this year was 64.3 years — the oldest in history.”

And this part of the story is both sad and unnerving at the same time:

“Colleagues worry Dianne Feinstein is now mentally unfit to serve, citing recent interactions.”

The article quotes other Senators on her failing mental acuity. Feinstein’s term runs until January 2025.

With all that’s wrong, it’s time to leave the news of the week behind and focus on centering ourselves so we can try to handle next week’s horrors. It’s time for our Saturday Soother.

Spring has sprung on the fields of Wrong. The forsythia and daffodils are blooming. We’ve mulched all plants and trees; the lawns have been dethatched and seeded. It’s still too early to put out the garden furniture, but our plans to create a pollinator garden are proceeding.

To help you center yourself, start by brewing up a big mug of Dark Matter coffee ($17.00/12 oz.) made by San Diego’s own West Bean coffee roasters.

Now grab a comfy chair by a south-facing window and since this weekend is important to three of our great religions, settle back and listen to Mozart’s “Ave Verum Corpus”. Mozart composed this motet in D major in 1791 during the last year of his life to celebrate the feast of Corpus Christi.

Here it is performed by The Choir of King’s College, Cambridge directed by Daniel Hyde. It is from the BBC’s “Easter from King’s 2022” broadcast on BBC Two today:

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Monday Wake Up Call – April 11, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Cactus flowers – April 2022 photo by Renee Phillips

The Right-wing Washington Times quotes Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) saying on CNN’s “State of the Union”, that Congress is mulling whether to issue a criminal referral to the Justice Department against Donald Trump for “unlawfully” seeking to obstruct certification of the 2020 election.

Cheney said that the Jan. 6 House Select Committee has uncovered significant evidence that Trump and aides had acted improperly:

“It’s absolutely clear that what President Trump was dealing with, what the number of people around him were doing, that they knew it was unlawful [and] they did it anyway….I think what we have seen is a massive, well-organized and well-planned effort that used multiple tools to try to overturn an election.”

But talk is cheap. At a dinner last week, Wrongo was asked if he thought anything would come of the work by the committee. He wasn’t encouraging.

We can infer from Rep. Cheney’s comments that the House panel may have sufficient evidence to make a criminal referral of Trump (or some of his advisors) to the Department of Justice (DOJ). But recent reporting seems to indicate that some Committee members may not have the will to pull the trigger. From the NYT:

“The leaders of the House committee investigating the Capitol attack have grown divided over whether to make a criminal referral to the Justice Department of former President Donald J. Trump, even though they have concluded that they have enough evidence to do so…”

The question seems to be whether the Committee’s work would somehow hurt the DOJ’s ongoing investigative work:

“The debate centers on whether making a referral — a largely symbolic act — would backfire by politically tainting the Justice Department’s expanding investigation into the Jan. 6 assault and what led up to it.”

Can anyone imagine Republicans having what they thought to be sufficient evidence of a crime acting conflicted about delivering a criminal referral to the DOJ? Say about Hunter Biden or Hillary Clinton, because it might saddle the DOJ’s criminal case with partisan baggage? That’s unimaginable.

For Democrats, this is another failure of political analysis. Even if there had been no Select Committee, and the DOJ decided to prosecute Trump or some of his enablers for Jan.6, the political firestorm would  be consequential, and unending.

Wrongo believes in following process and in patience, but soon, the politics of the mid-terms and the looming 2024 presidential election must also be considered. If the Republicans take control of the House, the Select Committee will be disbanded. In that event, it must wrap up its work right after the November elections.

If you’re hoping that the Democrats will hold the House, then a referral to the DOJ needs to happen right now, regardless of whether that fact has any impact on the deliberations inside the DOJ.

We already know what is the worst thing that can happen. It’s that Democrats lose both the House and Senate in November. Having the Select Committee stay silent now as an act of political expediency simply shows voters that Democrats do not have what it takes to lead in the 21st Century.

Voters need to see Democrats willing to fight for justice. No one gets excited about voting for the conflicted or the meek.

This is the third time that we’re trying to hold a thoroughly criminal man and his corrupt regime accountable for the harm they have inflicted on America. The DC Dems’ efforts are a combination of Lucy pulls the football out from under Charlie Brown meets “Groundhog Day”. We’ve seen this over and over and over again.

It is now time for Merrick Garland and the DOJ to prevent a seismic collapse of our civil society and our democracy.

It’s also time for Congressional Democrats to wake up! There is nothing to be gained by failing to deliver a tsunami of criminal referrals to the DOJ. To help them wake up, here’s the masterful slide guitar player Roy Rogers (not THAT Roy Rogers) doing his version of “Terraplane Blues”. “Terraplane Blues” was written and recorded in 1936 by legendary bluesman Robert Johnson. Back then, the Terraplane was a brand of car built by the Hudson Motor Car Company between 1932 and 1938. They were inexpensive, yet powerful vehicles.

In the Terraplane Blues, Johnson uses the Terraplane Car as a metaphor for sex. His car won’t start, and Johnson suspects that his girlfriend let another man drive it when he was gone. Here’s Roy Rogers playing at the Sierra Nevada Brewery Big Room in 2001:

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Saturday Soother – April 9, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Perhaps the most important selfie ever? Via POTUS

A few items for today. First, the Senate confirmed Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court on Thursday, making her the first-ever Black woman and former public defender to serve on the nation’s highest court. Every Democrat voted for her, plus three Republicans: Sens. Lisa Murkowski (AK), Susan Collins (ME) and Mitt Romney (UT). When the vote was over, the Senate chamber erupted with applause, but not by most Republicans.

Here’s a video of the many Republican Senators walking out amid applause for the new Associate Justice:

It was a bad moment for the White Nationalists of the GOP. Is it Wrongo, or has the Republican Party turned itself into a fountain of sexual innuendo and legal intrusion into our lives? Robert Reich agrees:

“…it’s part of their culture war, and culture wars sell with voters (and the media) eager for conflict and titillation. A culture war over sex sells even better. It lets Republicans imply that Democrats are somehow on the side of sexual “deviants” who endanger the “natural order…a culture war over sex allows Republicans to sound faux populist without having to talk about the real sources of populist anger — corporate-induced inflation at a time of record corporate profits, profiteering and price gouging….[and] stagnant wages…and by focusing on pedophilia, gender identity, gay people, and abortion, Republicans don’t have to talk about Trump and January 6.

Hate, whether against Justice Jackson or aspects of American culture, is like a hard drug. It’s destructive to the users and to everyone around them. And they will always need bigger hits of it.

Second, Tim Snyder posted about the Russian policy guiding its war in Ukraine: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“Russia has just issued a genocide handbook for its war on Ukraine.  The Russian official press agency “RIA Novosti” published last Sunday an explicit program for the complete elimination of the Ukrainian nation as such.  It is still available for viewing, and has now been translated…into English.”

Snyder says that since the war began, “denazification” in Russian usage simply means the destruction of the Ukrainian state and nation.  A “Nazi,” as the genocide manual explains, is simply a human being who self-identifies as Ukrainian. According to the handbook, the establishment of a Ukrainian state thirty years ago was the “Nazification of Ukraine”.

The genocide handbook explains that the Russian policy of “denazification” is not directed against Nazis in the sense that the word is normally used. The handbook grants, with no hesitation, that there is no evidence that Nazism, as generally understood, is important in Ukraine. It operates within the special Russian definition of “Nazi”: A Nazi is a Ukrainian who refuses to admit to being a Russian.

The money quote from Snyder:

“As a historian of mass killing, I am hard pressed to think of many examples where states explicitly advertise the genocidal character of their own actions right at the moment those actions become public knowledge….Legally, genocide means both actions that destroy a group in whole or in part, combined with some intention to do so.  Russia has done the deed and confessed to the intention.”

Perhaps then it isn’t a surprise that Russia quit the UN Human Rights Council on Thursday shortly after it was suspended for atrocities in Ukraine. The UN General Assembly voted 93 to 24 to suspend Russia on Thursday, with 58 abstentions. What Snyder has reported deserves a global audience. It seems that throwing Russia out of the UN should be the next step.

Enough of this week’s news. It’s time for our Saturday Soother, a precious few moments when we avoid the political yelling and focus on gathering ourselves for the coming week.

We’ve finally heard the peepers on the Fields of Wrong. The lawns are greening up, buds are on most trees and bushes, and it’s turkey romance season. We have a resident group of seven female and two male turkeys. This week, the males are preening around and spreading their tail feathers while the females run in the opposite direction. We expect that will turn into fraternization next week.

To kick off your Saturday, take a few minutes and brew up a mug of Two Dog coffee ($17.50/lb.) from Clearwater, FL’s Blazing Bean Roasters. Now grab a seat by a window and watch and listen to another arrangement of classical music by the Korean group LAYERS who we have featured before. This time, listen to their take on Bizet’s “Fantasy” from his opera “Carmen”. Here it is arranged for two cellos, violin, and piano:

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