Playlist – Page 23 – The Wrongologist

Reform the Supreme Court

The Daily Escape:

Valley of Fire SP, NV – January 2022 photo by Robert E. Ford

Glad to see January go, with it being the anniversary of the Jan. 6 coup attempt and all that came after it. What isn’t going away is the slow and continuing fracture of America’s social cohesion. We also remember that it was FIVE years ago that Trump was inaugurated. That was a sorry time, since it made it clear that he would get to appoint several Supreme Court justices.

The partisan rancor brought to Supreme Court appointments has become another fault line in our social cohesion. That’s due in part to changes in Supreme Court.

One recent trend in these appointments is how much younger appointees are: The typical tenure for Supreme Court justices in the 19th and early 20th centuries was around 15 years. But as the lifespan of American adults has lengthened over the past century, so has tenure on the Court. Since 1975, the average justice has retired from the court after serving 27 years. Breyer, who was sworn in on Aug. 3, 1994, matches the average perfectly. Soon it will be longer than 30 years.

Another issue is the hubris of elderly Justices. Justices Brennan and Marshall, both about 70 years old at the time, decided not to retire when Jimmy Carter was president, thinking he wasn’t liberal enough to appoint their replacements. They decided to wait for a more left-leaning Democratic president that they presumed would come next.

Liberals got lucky when Brennan retired in 1990,and David Souter replaced him. They weren’t as lucky when Marshall was replaced by Clarence Thomas in 1992. Thomas, the first GOP Justice was selected explicitly for his race and youth (he was 43) and still sits on the Court today, 30 years later.

The same scenario played out less than two years ago with Justice Ginsburg. She refused to retire during Obama’s presidency (after a direct appeal from Obama in 2013) when he correctly feared losing the Senate in 2014. She died in 2020 and was immediately replaced by the 48-year-old Conservative Justice Barrett.

Another trend is Judicial Supremacy. Once Justices realized that their power was almost completely unchecked under the Constitution, it wasn’t a big leap to find them ruling according to personal preference.

The Framers never foresaw how formidable the judiciary would become. Once the Supreme Court successfully claimed the right of judicial review — the power to strike down laws it deemed unconstitutional — it went from being the weakest branch to the strongest. Today, virtually every important political controversy eventually comes before the Court.

The public’s opinion about the Court has never been lower. A Gallup poll last September (just before the Texas abortion cases) found that just 40% of Americans say they approved of the Court’s job. This represents a new low in Gallup’s polling, which dates back to 2000.

The chart below shows the results of a new ABC News / Ipsos Poll asking if the Supreme Court’s rulings are partisan:

(Hat tip: Jobsanger) The poll was conducted January 28-29, 2022 and has a ± 4.9% point margin of error.

It’s clear that a plurality of Americans no longer trust the Court with their lives, or with the direction of the country. That’s what makes selecting a Supreme Court nominee such a high-stakes game.

If Supreme Court vacancies were more frequent and regular, confirmation battles would be much less likely to turn into political Armageddon every time. We should be asking whether life tenure for Supreme Court justices still is legitimate, regardless of which Party controls Congress or the White House.

The Framers of the Constitution feared that the judiciary would be the weakest of the federal government’s branches and the most susceptible to political pressure. They therefore sought to bolster the Court’s independence by ensuring justices could stay on the bench for as long as they wished.

But the only alternative to a bad Court decision today is for 2/3rds of both Houses of Congress followed by 3/4ths of all States to change it by Constitutional Amendment. A nearly impossible and time-consuming process.

Instead, we should enact term limits for the Supremes. With nine Justices, one Justice’s position should expire every two years (essentially giving each an 18 year term). After serving on the Court they could fulfill their lifetime appointment by continuing to serve as “Justices Emeritus” on one of the regional Courts of Appeal.

This isn’t a partisan idea. Many Republicans endorse term limits. Among those who have endorsed it is Justice Stephen Breyer. Numerous polls in recent years show widespread support across Party lines for limiting Supreme Court justices’ terms. Everyone can tell that life tenure on the Supreme Court isn’t working. It’s time we replaced it with something better. America’s social cohesion depends on it.

Speaking of social cohesion, spend a few minutes watching this affecting commercial for Heineken. It celebrates communication, listening, and getting to know others who have different viewpoints:

Monday Wake Up Call – January 31, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Mount Saint Nicholas, Glacier NP, MT – January 2022 photo by Jack Bell Photography

Anyone else thinking that our national party bus is about to stall out in the slow lane on America’s Boulevard of Broken Dreams?

Here’s an under-the-radar story: In 2020, the Trump administration hatched a plan to gradually transition traditional Medicare over to private firms. It’s called Direct Contracting (DC) and is operated by Direct Contracting Entities (DCEs). Currently, there are 53 of them in Phase One of an experimental program operated by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).

Under the program, the DCEs receive a fixed amount of money annually to cover care for each traditional Medicare enrollee whose primary care doctor (or group) has signed up with that DCE. The DCEs must pay for all of the care of those people assigned to them. To date, the CMS has auto-assigned hundreds of thousands of people to DCEs.

Since no one on Medicare has voluntarily signed up to work with a DCE, it’s unlikely they know of, nor understand what’s happening. And the CMS doesn’t require DCEs to tell people that they have the right to opt-out.

The idea behind DCEs is to shift a portion of the financial risk of the elderly’s medical care away from traditional Medicare by capping the payments to a third party that’s responsible to pay for it. This is the latest in many efforts by CMS and Congress to control the rising costs of healthcare.

Wrongo and Ms. Right have recently noticed a blizzard of direct mail offers to convert our traditional Medicare to an all-in insurance program. It’s probable that some of these are from DCEs.

The anticipated advantage of the DCE experiment is that Medicare’s out-of-pocket costs will be capped. The DCEs contract with CMS is for an agreed-upon annual payment. They have to pay for care and also make a profit based on that fixed revenue amount from the government. In addition to the normal profits from providing services, DCEs can keep as much as 40% of the money they don’t spend on care.

But there’s no such thing as a free lunch, and it seems to Wrongo that this creates yet another financial incentive to deny otherwise necessary treatments. It’s possible that the DCEs could pay doctors to steer patients away from specialty care. This means that someone enrolled in a DCE has reason to worry that their primary care doctor might limit their access to more costly care.

Direct contracting is supposed to be a pilot program, yet Medicare has no plans to limit the number of people it enrolls in these new plans. Instead, Medicare has announced plans to enroll 100% of traditional Medicare members into DCE-like programs by 2030.

Congress did not authorize the wholesale overhaul of traditional Medicare, so why is this happening? And so far, the Biden administration appears to be willing to continue playing Trump’s cards.

Many of the DCEs are owned by Private Equity (PE) firms. It doesn’t take a chess master to see that the PE firms will ultimately sell out to the insurance industry. And it wouldn’t be a big leap from that to fully privatize Medicare.

Time to wake up America! Did we elect Biden to privatize Medicare? The word “privatize” should scare the hell out of Americans. But unfortunately they’ve been fooled into believing that by some magic miracle of economics, it’s to their benefit.

To help you wake up, today we spend a few minutes with Neil Young. Wrongo appreciates Neil Young saying he wanted his music removed from Spotify if Joe Rogan is allowed to continue spewing his anti-Vaxx trash there.

This was an easy business decision for Spotify. They picked the popular podcaster Rogan with the $100 million-plus exclusive deal, over the cranky 76-year-old rocker whose last gold album was nearly two decades ago. Someone who hasn’t been on the Billboard charts since 1982.

Joni Mitchell and Dave Grohl have now said they will follow Young in leaving Spotify.

Let’s watch and listen to Neil Young playing “Hey Hey, My My” at Farm Aid in Champaign, Illinois on September, 1985. Young is a co-founder and board member of Farm Aid, along with Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp:

Neil won’t burn out or fade away.

Sample Lyric:
Out of the blue
and into the black
You pay for this,
but they give you that
And once you’re gone,
you can’t come back
When you’re out of the blue
and into the black.

“You pay for this, and they give you that”. Listen up Medicare!

Saturday Soother – January 29, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Dawn, Zabriskie Point with Panamint Range in background, Death Valley CA – January 2022 photo by Rick Berk Photography

Various thoughts on a snowy Saturday in Connecticut.

First, in a turnaround from recent polls, a Marquette Law School nationwide survey of adults finds that Biden leads both Florida Gov. DeSantis and former President Trump in hypothetical 2024 matchups:

“In a head-to-head matchup, DeSantis is supported by 33%, while Biden is supported by 41%. A substantial 18% say they would support someone else, and 8% say they would not vote.

In a Trump versus Biden rematch, Trump receives 33% to Biden’s 43%, with 16% preferring someone else and 6% saying they would not vote.”

The survey was conducted between Jan. 10-21, 2022. It surveyed 1000 adults nationwide and has a margin of error of +/-4 percentage points. There are always a few outlier polls. Could this be accurate?

Second, even before Justice Breyer announced his retirement, Republicans already had their usual hissy fit over Biden’s decision to name a Black woman to the Supreme Court, implying that she would be an “affirmative action” hire. Republicans on Twitter are prejudging any Black woman nominee as inherently inferior and underqualified.

Ilya Shapiro, a conservative lawyer who will soon teach at Georgetown Law, made it clear that he thinks being Black and a woman means the person is innately unqualified for the Supreme Court. In a since-deleted tweet, he lamented that since his preferred candidate for the job “doesn’t fit into the latest intersectionality hierarchy so we’ll get a lesser black woman.”

Shapiro is the same guy who wrote in 2009 that Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination “confirmed that identity politics matter… more than merit,” showing that this is who he’s always been. Wrongo is appalled that my alma mater just gave this guy a job.

George Washington University’s Jonathan Turley tweeted that Biden’s pick will cause uncomfortable moments on the Court because:

“…when the justices will hear arguments on the use of race in [college] admissions, one member will have been selected initially through an exclusionary criteria of race and sex.”

He thinks it will cause uncomfortable moments for the White majority on the Court. This is from the same crowd that was fine with the White Catholic Amy Coney Barrett, who had never before been on the bench or even argued an appeal, being on the court.

Third, more about yesterday’s discussion on education, in which we said that the Right-wing is using the slogan of “parental control” to rationalize imposing changes in school curricula and libraries. A school board in Tennessee voted unanimously to ban “Maus,” a Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel about the Holocaust from being taught in its classrooms because board members said the book contains material that was inappropriate for eighth grade students. Members also objected to a cartoon that featured a drawing of a “naked” mouse.

Wrongo has read “Maus” and recommends it to readers of all ages.

And there’s this gem from Indiana: HB 1362 mandates that teachers adopt a posture of impartiality in any conversation about controversial historical events. It goes on to state that in the run-up to a general election, students must be taught that: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“Socialism, Marxism, communism, totalitarianism, or similar political systems are incompatible with and in conflict with the principles of freedom upon which the United States was founded. In addition, students must be instructed that if any of these political systems were to replace the current form of government, the government of the United States would be overthrown and existing freedoms under the Constitution of the United States would no longer exist. As such, socialism, Marxism, communism, totalitarianism, or similar political systems are detrimental to the people of the United States.”

We’re now seeing a deadly combination against public education: parents plus legislators following the marching orders of a Right-wing media complex that spews disinformation.

Time for us to kick back and enjoy our Saturday Soother.

If you live in the Northeast, you’re not going to be driving or working outside today, what with the 50+ mph winds and the 1-2+ ft of snow. So start by brewing up a cup of Pearl District Blend ($17.00/12 oz.) from Portland, Oregon’s Cycletown Coffee Roasters.

Now grab a seat by a window and listen to Giuseppe Verdi’s “Va, pensiero“, also known as the “Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves“, from his 1842 opera “Nabucco”. It recollects the period of Babylonian captivity in Jerusalem in 586 BCE. Here it’s performed outdoors in front of a large audience in Naples, Italy by the orchestras of the Theater of San Carlo, and the National Academy of Sainta Cecilia, in July 2009. It’s not totally on point for Thursday’s International Holocaust Remembrance Day, but it’s beautiful:

Should the Mainstream Media Stay Neutral?

The Daily Escape:

Sunrise with sea smoke, Curtis Island Lighthouse, Camden ME – January 2022 photo by Daniel F Dishner. Sea smoke forms on Penobscot Bay when the air temperature is colder than the water temperature.

On Tuesday, Wrongo took aim at the New York Times for it’s confusing editorial that misstated how to use an economic tool, and then went on to use that tool incorrectly.

The media, including the NYT, have become a source of both misinformation and disinformation. We really have two media, the mainstream one and the right-wing one. Although most of the disinformation is centered in the right-wing media, it’s becoming less clear to Wrongo that, at present, the mainstream media can (or will) help to defend our democracy.

If you doubt that, look at the November Marist College poll which found, by 42% to 41%, that American adults see the Democratic Party as a greater threat to democracy than the GOP.

The broader results were that 81% of Americans believed there is a “serious threat” to our democracy, including 89% of Republicans, 80% of independents, and 79% of Democrats. That was the poll’s headline. But buried in the cross-tabs was the answer to which Party presents the bigger threat – the 42% to 41% split.

This is mostly the result of our media that defaults to sensationalism rather than trying to explain complex issues. One group slavishly supports a GOP that is full of cranks, bigots, conspiracy theorists, and careerist politicians with flamethrowers. They’re also the media that say things like “intolerance of racism is worse than racism”.

The other side makes a pretense of non-partisanship while echoing many right-wing talking points.

We’ve learned over the past few years that the right-wing media has more control over setting the national agenda than the mainstream press does. The idea that the Party that’s trying to protect and expand voting rights is wrecking democracy isn’t just a misconception—it’s the result of an orchestrated assault on reality. And nearly half of Americans believe it.

In early December, Dana Milbank wrote in the WaPo about how the media has treated Biden as badly as – or worse than – Trump. Milbank had a data analytics company examine more than 200,000 mainstream news articles about both the Trump and Biden presidencies. Milbank wrote that: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“During 2020, when the Trump administration’s response to and dishonesty about the pandemic led to hundreds of thousands of deaths, when he refused to denounce white supremacists at a debate and launched serial assaults on democracy, he got slightly more favorable coverage in the mainstream media than Biden has received since August.”

Remember that Milbank’s review covered articles and mentions in the mainstream press. Milbank concludes by saying:

“We need a skeptical, independent press. But how about being partisans for democracy? The country is in an existential struggle between self-governance and an authoritarian alternative. And we in the news media, collectively, have given equal, if not slightly more favorable, treatment to the authoritarians.”

Does the mainstream media have the power to try to counter this? The big question is how will the mainstream press cover the 2022 mid-terms and 2024 presidential campaign?

People want to be light and breezy, but Wrongo‘s brand is accuracy. Things have been really bleak for many years. And Wrongo has become short-tempered with those in the media who continue to deny just how deep the hole has become.

After the 2020 election, America had a chance to recover from the anti-establishment efforts of Trump’s administration. It was clear that Biden wouldn’t be able to do all that much, because of the slender Democratic majorities in both Houses.

It was a gamble for Biden and the Democrats to wrap every promise into one big bill that would set us on a course for changing the “economic paradigm”. In the end, that was a failure. Governing isn’t simple, especially with such narrow majorities.

And that’s where Democrats are now, paying a heavy price for overpromising and Biden’s naive expectations that he would work magic with Republicans getting some of them to vote for his agenda.

Biden and the Dems could still rebound. Passing a smaller, more focused version of Build Back Better, along with an easing of inflation, and a return to something like normal on the virus front could bring a fall comeback wave.

But it will also take a mainstream media that understands and accepts its role with a resolve at least equal to that of the right-wing media.

Let’s close with a palate cleanser. Biden has an uphill fight. He should take inspiration from The Temptations doing “I’m Gonna Make You Love Me” live on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1969. Eddie Kendricks’ falsetto was the best:

The Sullivan Show aired on CBS from 1948-1971. For 23 years it aired a wide variety of popular culture.

Monday Wake Up Call – NATO edition, January 24, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Landscape Arch, Arches NP, UT – January 2022 photo by Peter Ferenz

Let’s talk about the elephant in the room in the standoff between Russia and Ukraine: NATO. Back in the early 1990s, Clinton wanted to have it both ways with his Russian counterpart, Boris Yeltsin. He wanted to expand NATO while at the same time, partnering with Russia.

Yeltsin wasn’t having any of that. He accused Clinton at a summit of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, (CSCE) that the US was “trying to split [the] continent again” through NATO expansion. Putin believes that today.

NATO’s expansion, either in the form of full members (or in increased military activities), has now been the policy of five US presidents: Clinton, GW Bush, Obama, Trump, and now, Biden. So, a couple of questions:

Did NATO’s expansion to the east of a reunified Germany increase the security in Europe and reduce the risk of a major war in Europe?
Did NATO’s expansion in membership increase the safety and security of the American people?

The answer to both is a no. NATO expansion post 1990 hasn’t helped the original European allies and has done nothing to improve the security of the US. Arguably, we’re worse off today than in 1990.

Today there are true splits within NATO. Germany, its most important country, isn’t on the same page about Russia. From Der Spiegel:

“The US wants to impose harsh sanctions on Russia if it invades Ukraine. But the German government is putting on the brakes out of fears over the economic consequences and what punitive measures could mean for energy supplies for a country that gets much of its gas from Moscow.”

Germany’s conflicted about Ukraine. Der Spiegel reports that last week, the US CIA director William Burns held a meeting in Bonn with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. Burns told him that if Russia attacks Ukraine, Berlin must take a clear stand.

Biden also wanted to meet with Scholz in Washington. It would have been an opportunity for them to closely coordinate steps in dealing with Russia, but Scholz refused to go and meet him. We have a problem when Russia is building up to the biggest European military threat since the end of the Cold War, and the German Chancellor is unable to clear his schedule to meet with the American president.

Having declined the Washington visit, Biden dispatched Secretary of State Blinken to Berlin, and like the CIA director, his message was – Germany must participate in tough financial and economic sanctions if Putin strikes.

Despite the European ambivalence, Russia’s move to surround Ukraine with troops may be a strategic error. Europe has wanted to become a kind of giant economic Switzerland, independent but neutral. Today, it’s trying to come to grips with the fact that Russia wants to push NATO as far back as it can by recovering former Soviet territory.

Russia making NATO into a target seems to have revivified NATO a bit. It was more or less in slumber before Putin’s move against Ukraine and his demands of NATO and the US. Europe, the US, and NATO are walking a tightrope now, since there’s a fine line between diplomacy and “appeasement”.

The US and NATO countries all have entrenched maximalist military hawks who will attack any politician that surrenders an inch to Russia in the current situation. That’s an understandable position. In the last decade, Russia broke up Georgia, it ended the revolution against Assad in Syria, while securing its naval base there. It annexed Crimea albeit with local popular support, sent troops to Libya and Africa, supported Armenia against Azerbaijan, and recently “preserved” the non-elected government of Kazakhstan.

Can/should this be allowed go on forever? Is this the right time to push back hard?

There is no military solution that will keep Russia out of Ukraine. When Wrongo was a member of the NATO forces, the accepted strategy was that US and European troops on the ground were a “tripwire”. It was clear that the Soviet Union had vastly superior military assets amassed on Europe’s border. And Europe’s border was at that time, East Germany. Berlin was just 300 miles from Bonn, a day’s trip.

The counter to the Soviet’s military superiority was NATO’s potential use of tactical nuclear weapons. We could stop their ground forces reasonably effectively before they could get to Germany’s capital. The basic NATO position was to fight long enough with conventional forces to make the possibility of nuclear escalation plausible.

Today the situation is similar. Russia has vastly superior military assets amassed on Europe’s border, but the distances are greater: From Smolensk on Russia’s western border to Warsaw in Poland is about 500 miles, and it’s 1,075 miles from Smolensk to Bonn, Germany.

That breathing room explains Clinton’s flawed reasoning for NATO expansion. But, since the West has said that it will no longer use tactical nuclear weapons, it has limited options if it faces a limited invasion of say, Ukraine, a non-NATO member.

This leaves the US with trying to find a diplomatic solution, one which doesn’t look like appeasement, one that the many NATO members will also find acceptable. Having to compromise will mean finally admitting that we are part of a multipolar world.

Is Washington ready to go there yet? Very doubtful. Our path is fraught with danger as we careen from crisis to crisis. Something has to change or we’ll misplay a hand and be back where we were in 1939.

It’s time for NATO, Europe, and the US to wake up! It’s hard to see a sensible compromise that doesn’t look like appeasement, but it’s their job to find it for the rest of us.

To help them wake up, listen to John Mellencamp and Bruce Springsteen perform “Wasted Days”, from Mellencamp’s “Strictly a One-Eyed Jack” album, released this week, it’s one of the three songs featuring Springsteen:

Sample lyric:

How much sorrow is there left to climb
How many promises are worth a dime
Who on earth is worth our time?

Think about that NATO!

Saturday Soother – Biden’s First Year, January 22, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Winter sunrise, Monument Valley, Four Corners – January 2022 photo by Lothar Gold

Wrongo is rooting for Biden and for the Democrats to grab victory from the jaws of defeat in the November 2022 mid-terms. He also has a few thoughts about Biden’s first year as president. Dickens said it best in The Tale of Two Cities in 1859:

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness…”

This seems to apply today. The best is how the economy is performing. GDP is up while unemployment is down dramatically. Six million new jobs have been created. Wrongo repeats what he said earlier this week:

“A year ago, forecasters expected unemployment to be nearly 6% in the fourth quarter of 2020. Instead, it fell to 3.9% in December….Wages are high, new businesses are forming at record rates, and poverty has fallen below its prepandemic levels. Since March 2020, Americans have saved at least $2 trillion more than expected…the median household’s checking account balance was 50% higher in July 2021 than before the pandemic.”

On Biden’s watch, we’ve given 532 million doses of Covid vaccine to Americans.

The worst of times includes too little progress in four areas: First, our inability to put the Coronavirus pandemic behind us. Second, our inability to do anything about the looming threats to our elections that partisan vote-counting in many Republican-controlled states implies. Third, the continuing fracturing of our social cohesion, and fourth, our inability to face up to the climate crisis.

These are not solely Biden’s failures. These failures are shared by Republicans, along with the rest of the Democratic Party leadership who seem to have forgotten what the job of being a politician is. If you doubt that, consider what Paul Begala said on MSNBC:

“…the problem for the Democrats…is not that they have bad leaders. They have bad followers”,

Begala is Dem royalty from an earlier time, even if he’s no longer powerful today. Doesn’t this show that the rot is throughout their leadership? Matt Taibbi wrote: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“Democrats are now in their second straight year of losing significant ground with all minority groups. There are major defections among Asian and Hispanic voters, and even Trump’s six-point gain among black men last year is beginning to look like a thing (Biden’s approval rating with black voters has dropped from 78% to 57%).”

So, does all that add up to the age of foolishness or the season of darkness? Opinions differ. More from Taibbi, who says given America’s demographics, Dems had a glidepath to a permanent majority:

“If Democrats had just figured a way to deliver a few things for ordinary people over the years, they would never have lost again….if that were its real goal, the formula was obvious. Single-payer health care, bulk negotiation of drug prices, antitrust action against Too Big To Fail banks or Silicon Valley’s surveillance monopolists — really anything that demonstrates a willingness to prioritize voters over the takeover artists and CEOs who fund the party would have given them enduring credibility.”

With nine months until the 2022 mid-terms, what can ol’ Joe and the even older Democratic Party leadership do to turn things around? The truth is that they’re most likely incapable of turning the tanker that is the Democratic Party onto a new, true course that will return them to majorities in the House and Senate.

Wrongo has covered what they should do. He has little optimism that they are up to the task.

Time to pivot to our Saturday Soother, where we let go of questions like “Will Russia invade Ukraine?” or “Will Ivanka testify?” and focus on a weekend of professional football playoffs or the Australian Tennis Open. Here, we’re gonna watch the TV return of “Billions”. We’re also taking down the last of our Christmas decorations and hoping for the return to normalcy that Biden promised us a year ago.

Time to grab a seat by the window and listen to Gregorio Allegri’s “Miserere mei, Deus” (Have mercy on me, O God), performed in 2018 by the Tenebrae Choir conducted by Nigel Short at St. Bartholomew the Great Church, London. We all need a little mercy now, and this is beautiful:

This was composed in the 1630s for use on Holy Wednesday and Good Friday of Holy Week. Pope Urban VIII loved the piece and forbade its performance anywhere outside of the Sistine Chapel.

For over 100 years, ‘Miserere mei, Deus” was performed exclusively there. In 1770, Mozart who was 14, heard it, and transcribed it from memory. The following year, Mozart gave the sheet music to historian and biographer, Dr. Charles Burney. Burney published it in London, which resulted in the papacy lifting the ban.

Democrats Must Go on Offense

The Daily Escape:

Oregon City Bridge, OR with Willamette Falls in background – January 2022 photo by Sanman Photography

Gallup says that the Dems are losing the battle for hearts and minds. Their most recent poll shows a dramatic shift over the course of 2021, from a nine-percentage-point Democratic advantage in the first quarter to a five-point Republican edge in the fourth quarter. Here’s a chart showing the bad news:

Monday Wake Up Call – Remembering MLK, Jr.

The Daily Escape:

After an ice storm, Taos NM – January 2022 photo by Bob Benson

“Freedom without consequences is a myth. Our actions always have consequences. The question is: who will bear them?” – Seth Godin

The year 1968 was pivotal. In addition to the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., it brought the Tet Offensive, student protests across the country, the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, the student and police riots at the Chicago Democratic Convention, Black Power salutes at the Olympics, and the triumph of Richard Nixon’s Southern strategy.

MLK, along with others in our churches and a few courageous politicians, came together to support the Big Idea that Separate was not Equal. MLK gave a voice to that Big Idea. His presence, power and persuasiveness drove our political process to an outcome in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that was completely unthinkable in 1954 when Brown vs. Board of Education was decided by the Supreme Court.

Wrongo participated in the Civil Rights movement from 1958 to 1962. He left active participation in the movement believing good ideas and a morally sound position would change our politics. He was wrong.

Legislation has recently passed in eight states that will restrict what students can be taught about our past. This is an effort to segregate certain subjects from our common history. These Republican states want to diminish or exclude the stories that speak to slavery, to Jim Crow, and to other moments in which America’s deepest shortcomings around the subject of race in America are told.

Wrongo wishes that this represented a minority of the Republican Party. But when Biden spoke in Atlanta, he said:

“I ask every elected official in America: How do you want to be remembered? Do you want to be on the side of Dr. King or George Wallace? Do you want to be on the side of John Lewis or Bull Connor? Do you want to be on the side of Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis?”

Dr. King had said that stripping the right to vote from Black southerners laid the groundwork for laws that further disadvantaged poor people, even across racial lines. Then as now, Southern legislatures justified limiting the franchise to vote with specious claims about electoral shenanigans.

Biden’s words set Republican teeth on edge. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said that Biden:

“…called millions of Americans his domestic enemies…and that if you disagree with him, you’re George Wallace….If you don’t pass the laws he wants, you’re Bull Connor, and if you oppose giving Democrats untrammeled, one-party control of the country, well you’re Jefferson Davis.”

Fox News contributor Ari Fleischer tweeted:

“Now he says disagreeing w/him on voting laws means you’re a segregationist, like George Wallace or Bull Connor. How low can he go?”

The linkage between trying not to teach America’s true history with the censorious outrage shown by Republicans over Biden’s comments is clear. Biden said America needed to be on the side of voting rights.

That was Dr. King’s great struggle, and his great success.

But Republicans want to whitewash that history. They also condemn Biden’s efforts to tie today back to our undemocratic past. As Jelani Cobb says this week in the New Yorker:

“This holiday honoring Martin Luther King, Jr., sees a nation embroiled in conflicts that would have looked numbingly familiar to him. As school curricula and online discourse threaten to narrow our understanding of both past and future, it’s more important than ever to take stock of our history and its consequences….

Time to wake up America! We are docile sheep heading back to the barn, the place where we will be shorn of our democracy, just as surely as wool is shorn from the sheep. The smoking guns are all around us, and yet, we seem hopelessly divided about what we should do to change course.

To help you wake up, let’s listen to Wrongo’s favorite MLK song, “Southern” by OMD from their 1986 album “The Pacific Age“. On April 3, 1968, in Memphis, King delivered his last speech, which we remember as his “I’ve been to the mountaintop” speech. He was assassinated the next day. OMD samples some of the content of that speech in “Southern”:

Although everyone knows the “I’ve been to the mountaintop” part of the speech, Wrongo thinks our focus should be on the following:

I want young men and young women, who are not alive today
But who will come into this world, with new privileges
And new opportunities
I want them to know and see that these new privileges and opportunities
Did not come without somebody suffering and sacrificing
For freedom is never given to anybody

Why focus on that part of the speech? One day down the road, and it will not be long, young people will have forgotten what MLK meant to America, or how whatever remains of their civil rights, came to be.

Or, how the 13th Amendment ending slavery came about, and why, 100 years later in 1965, the Voting Rights Act was passed, or how 48 years later, in June, 2013, the Roberts Court eviscerated it.

So, take the time to teach a child about why MLK is so important.

Saturday Soother – January 15, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Mount Pierce, with Mt. Washington in background, NH – photo by Eric Duma

On Tuesday, Democrat Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick won an election to fill the seat in Florida’s vacant 20th Congressional District. She will replace the late Rep. Alcee L. Hastings (D) who died last April after losing his fight with pancreatic cancer.

Cherfilus-McCormick, a 42-year old health-care company CEO, easily defeated Republican nominee Jason Mariner. The WaPo reports that Mariner had talked openly during the campaign about his past convictions for theft and cocaine possession and his time in jail. Bless his heart!

It wasn’t expected to be a competitive contest since Democrats heavily outnumber Republicans in the district. Biden won Florida’s 20th in 2020 with 77% of the vote, while Cherfilus-McCormick won the special election with 79%.

The CBS affiliate in Miami reports that Mariner is now refusing to concede his 60-point loss and is demanding an investigation into “election fraud”:

“Now they called the race, I did not win, so they say, but that does not mean…that we lost,”

He had filed a lawsuit before the polls even closed alleging there were problems with the ballots in Palm Beach and Broward Counties.

While we know that winning candidates can take office even without a concession, Republicans are turning into the Party of sore losers. When the 2022 mid-terms roll around, it is abundantly clear that few Republicans will concede in their races.

This makes a lie of what some Democrats (and a few Republicans) have said about the looming problems with vote counting; that if the winning margins are big enough, elections can’t be stolen. Margins are rarely as large as Cherfilus-McCormick’s, and her opponent isn’t conceding.

The entire point of the GOP’s continuing election lies is to undermine the legitimacy of wins by Democratic candidates. We’ll soon see whether contested mid-term elections won by Democrats will be judged as fraudulent in the many Republican-controlled states.

The broader Republican Party understands that there’s no such thing as a bad Conservative. Until they aren’t. At which point they call them liberals. As Rick Perlstein famously observed, in Conservative circles, “Conservatism never fails. It is only failed.”

When Congresswoman Cherfilus-McCormick takes office, Democrats will again hold 10 more House seats than Republicans. There is currently one vacancy in the House, the empty California seat formerly held by Congressman Devin Nunes (R).

Let’s move on from this week’s sad news that we will not see Democrats break the filibuster to pass either the For the People Act or the somewhat more modest Freedom to Vote Act. it’s time for our Saturday Soother!

Here in the Northeast, we’re expecting snow on Martin Luther King Jr. day, although we still have a respectable amount of snow on the Fields of Wrong. Today we’re hosting another gathering of family who were unable to visit when Wrongo inconveniently got Covid on Christmas Eve.

So the time is right to have a Saturday Soother before the house fills up. Let’s start by brewing up a vente cup of Panama Washed Process Gesha ($50/6 oz. That tells you inflation is really out of control!) from Jersey City, NJ’s own Modcup roasters.

Now grab a seat by the fireplace and remember Ronnie Spector, who died this week. Spector and the Ronettes were (along with the Shirelles) the essential 1960s girl groups. In 1963, the Ronettes joined forces with Wall of Sound producer, the odious Phil Spector, by cold-calling him.

The Ronettes went on to have nine top-ten hits working with Spector. Ronnie and Phil married in 1968. During the marriage, Spector was violent and abusive, subjecting her to physical and emotional threats, and locking her up in their home. She finally managed to escape, barefoot and with just the clothes on her back.

Now, listen to a 1987 cover of the Ronette’s original “Be My Baby” this time featuring Ronnie Spector alongside The E Street Band’s Clarence Clemons, with backing vocals by Belinda Carlisle, originally of the Go-Go’s, and Grace Slick from the Jefferson Airplane. The song was written by Ellie Greenwich, and was a genuine teen anthem in 1963, it was recorded live at The Latin Quarter, NYC, in February, 1987:

RIP Ronnie!

Monday Wake Up Call – January 10, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Kohler-Andrae State Park, Sheboygan, WI – January 2022 photo by Nick Schroeter Photography

Wrongo rarely delves into religion, but since Pope Francis had comments on the slowing global population growth, Wrongo has thoughts. From the Guardian:

“In a move likely to raise the hackles of millions of cats, dogs and their human cohabitees, Pope Francis has suggested that couples who prefer pets to children are selfish.”

The Pope said that owning a pet instead of having kids meant that:

“…civilization grows old without humanity because we lose the richness of fatherhood and motherhood, and it is the country that suffers”.

Ouch. As someone who has had both children and dogs, Wrongo knows that taking care of a pet is far from selfish. As Bloomberg’s Lara Williams said:

“…the Pope could do better than to rhetorically kick puppies. There are solid economic reasons for the decline of birthrates across the world, and they need addressing.”

This isn’t a new trend. Despite optimistic predictions for a post-pandemic baby boom, last year, the US recorded the lowest rate of population growth since we began gathering data. In the year from July 2020 to July 2021, only 392,665 people were added to the US population. That’s about a tenth of one percent growth. It’s also the first time since 1937 that the population grew by fewer than 1 million people.

Here’s Bloomberg’s graph of our reproductive performance:

Meanwhile, pet ownership has been increasing, especially among younger generations. The American Pet Products Association’s annual survey revealed that millennials are now the biggest cohort of American pet owners. A 2021 AlphaWise survey revealed that 65% of 18-to-34 year-old Americans plan to acquire or add another pet in the next five years, driving a predicted 14% increase in US pet ownership by 2030.

But the falling birth rate is concerning. According to the US Census Bureau the proportion of married couple households with children fell from 40% in 1970 to 20% in 2012. While seven in 10 households included a pet.

So why are people delaying having children? A Morning Consult survey revealed that, no surprise, money is the top reason for millennials being childless, followed by the other key ingredient to starting a family: a willing and appropriate partner. The poll showed that 38% of millennials say that children are too expensive, while 33% of millennials said they hadn’t found a suitable partner.

Millennials face more economic hurdles than the older generations: high levels of student debt, stratospheric real estate prices and career instability all have been exacerbated by the pandemic. The recent rise in inflation also makes the cost of living, and thus the costs of raising a child, more expensive.

Here’s the comparison of the average cost of raising a child versus owning a dog. Pets are way cheaper:

This shows that pets aren’t cheap, but they’re far less expensive than having a child. The lifetime cost of a dog is just 15.6% of the cost of a baby. Cats are cheaper, but that isn’t necessarily a reason to choose to have one in your life.

The cost differential makes it clear why millennials might not feel financially secure enough to bring a child into the world, while the financial costs of adopting a pet is much more achievable. A few things to remember:

Pope Francis took the name of the patron saint of animals
Having children is a choice, it shouldn’t be an obligation
Catholic opposition to birth control and abortion rights hasn’t led to “loving families”

The Pope shouldn’t weigh in on the intensely personal decision about whether to have a child, any more than parents, or family friends should. And the Pope shouldn’t be condemning the childless pet owners of the world as selfish when people are simply struggling to make good life choices.

He, along with politicians, should be committed to doing more to tackle the underlying reasons why the people who might want children feel that they have to delay it.

Time to wake up, Pope Francis! How many times does the Roman Catholic Church need to hear that they should stay out of people’s bedrooms?

To help him wake up, let’s all listen to Billy Bragg perform “Ten Mysterious Photos That Can’t Be Explained‘ from his 2021 album, “The Million Things That Never Happened”. In the 1980’s, Bragg was described by Rolling Stone as “a contemporary, urban British folksinger”. Still true today:

Sample Lyric:

The conspiracy acts
The cyberchondriacs
Gripped by their fevered imagination
They switched the filters off
Too much is not enough
You know that you can overdose on information

But you know that you can’t overdose on The Wrongologist!

The Wrongologist

Geopolitics, Power and Political Economy

Category: Playlist

Saturday Soother – January 29, 2022

Should the Mainstream Media Stay Neutral?

Monday Wake Up Call – NATO edition, January 24, 2022

Saturday Soother – January 15, 2022

Monday Wake Up Call – January 10, 2022