Category: Playlist

Monday Wake Up Call – July 19, 2021

The Daily Escape:

Morning Glory Geyser, Yellowstone NP, WY – 2021 photo by Edwin Buske Photography. The geyser used to be blue, not green. Tourists throwing things into it have changed it’s color. The debris affected water circulation and lowered the geyser’s temperature. That caused a bloom of orange and yellow bacteria.

The Republicans won’t stop fighting Critical Race Theory (CRT), which examines the history of institutional racism in America. From Roll Call:

“…on Monday, GOP Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) sent a request to the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee asking the panel to prohibit funding for instruction in critical race theory for service members in its fiscal 2022 defense spending bill. He argued that service members “should not have to be subjected to discriminatory intersectional exercises that try to politicize our military.”

It’s worth remembering that The Former Guy issued an executive order in September 2020 that restricted the federal government and its contractors from teaching CRT. And that Biden rescinded that order on the day of his inauguration.

This represents a widening of the Republicans’ war on CRT. In recent weeks Republicans have passed legislation in Florida, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Iowa, Idaho and Texas, placing significant restrictions on what can be taught in public school classrooms and, in some cases, in public universities.

We’ve seen this before. The CRT insanity is reminiscent of 2010 when Fox News and the GOP went berserk condemning the so-called Ground Zero Mosque being built in New York City.

Today, it’s the same thing all over again with CRT. Eric Boehlert via his indispensable “Press Run”:

“When Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis moved to ban critical race theory from classrooms in the Sunshine State, the Miami Herald reported, ‘Superintendents across the state have said they do not teach critical race theory in their schools’. But that did not stop the State Board [of Education] from considering the rule to ban it.”

It’s the same everywhere: Republicans are saying they must make moves to protect students from CRT. But Republicans can’t find examples of it actually being taught in high schools. Once again, we’re seeing conservatives pushing a concocted claim and the entire Republican Party playing along.

Let’s not mince words about what Republicans are doing. They’re passing laws that amount to speech codes. They’re trying to control public education by banning the free expression of ideas. Education is by its nature political. To try and “cleanse” it from politics will give us citizens who lack civic knowledge and the civic responsibility that comes with it.

Censoring information makes informed choice impossible. It takes away the opportunity for people to learn and become mature and caring citizens.

When Christians were trying to add “Intelligent Design” into public school science curricula as an alternative theory to evolution, they often said schools should “teach the controversy“, implying an equivalence between the two. That failed, not because Creationism was debunked, but because it didn’t belong in the same category of knowledge as science.

At the time, nobody argued that Intelligent Design should be banned, just that it be discussed in its appropriate context: In comparative religion, not in biology class.

We can learn from the Christians this time though. If we frame America’s origin story as “teaching the controversy“, it might well be the best approach. It’s the only one that retains the nuance, contradictions, and complications necessary to provide an understanding of America and the experiences of its peoples.

There will always be disagreement about our nation’s history. We should welcome that debate in our public schools. It would be a violation of our shared vision of America as a nation of free and open debate if we resort to using state governments to wall off that discussion.

It’s impossible to create a neutral, non-controversial curriculum because real education aims to develop critical thinking. Critical thinking requires us to understand controversial viewpoints on the one hand, and the arguments for and against them on the other.

People have the right to get the education that they want for their kids, but that doesn’t mean legislating CRT out of existence. Instead, why don’t we teach kids how to spot and critique propaganda?

Time to wake up America! We can’t let one political party control our curricula. To help you wake up listen to Nina Simone perform “Backlash Blues” live at the Montreux Jazz Festival, 1976. The lyric of this song is the poem, “Backlash Blues” by Langston Hughes:

Resentment over the pace of the civil rights movement in the 1960s came to be known as white backlash, and it’s still with us today.

Lyric:

Mr. Backlash, Mr. Backlash

Just who do you think I am

You raise my taxes, freeze my wages

And send my son to Vietnam

You give me second class houses

And second class schools

Do you think that alla colored folks

Are just second class fools?

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Saturday Soother – July 17, 2021

The Daily Escape:

Ruby Beach Overlook,  Olympic NP, WA – 2021 photo by Erwin Buske

COVID-19 cases in the US have soared 121% in the past two weeks. Hospitalizations have jumped 26%.  and deaths are up by 9%. Infections have more than doubled in 22 states, DC, and Puerto Rico in the past 14 days. The counties with the biggest jump in new cases are overwhelmingly in Texas, Missouri, Arkansas, Georgia, and Louisiana. The delta variant is alive and well, and on the move!

We should now be calling it the plague of the unvaccinated.

Ignorance is going to ruin this country. Look at what so many conservatives believe: The coronavirus vaccine is either harmful, useless, or a government plot to control our bodies; that the 2020 election was rigged and the Former Guy won; and that the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol was mostly a stroll by tourists through the building. Here’s conservative Fox News person Tomi Lahren tweeting about Covid:

Like most anti-Covid conservatives, she didn’t bother to check the facts. Perhaps she thinks that just stating what she believes makes it true. She’s wrong.

Yes, Covid has “a high survival rate for most people,” but that doesn’t mean what Lahren thinks it means. The attitude of conservatives, that Covid is only a little worse than a bad case of the flu, ignores the reality that more than 624,000 Americans have died from it so far.

Lahren contends that, “Lawlessness and thuggery in our streets” doesn’t have a high survival rate. She’s wrong again. There were 462 murders in New York City last year, but 30,000 New Yorkers died from Covid.

Despite what conservatives would have us believe, taking or not taking a Covid vaccine isn’t about personal freedom. It’s not about a tyrannical Big Government forcing people to accept an awful fate. In a world where nearly 99% of new Covid deaths are occurring among the unvaccinated, it doesn’t take a PhD to figure out what the unvaccinated should be doing.

It turns out that confidence in science is split heavily along party lines, according to a Friday Gallup poll. The survey found that Democrats are very confident in science, with 79% saying they have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence, compared to just 45% percent of Republicans who said the same.

This also has to do with the Christian Right, which has been hostile to science ever since the Scopes trial. It’s fine if they don’t believe in evolution. But it’s a big problem when we’re trying to put Covid in the rear view. Science is true whether you believe in it or not, and their ignorance is lethal.

Conservatives like Tomi Lahren, go through life angry and suspicious of most things. It’s their brand to be anti-government and anti-science. It’s on brand for them to assume the worst of others. To the contrary, the bottom line is simple: We have a tool that can lead us out of the pandemic, but some people are too arrogant, ignorant, or suspicious to use it.

What makes this so terrible is that there are many, many times in our history when Americans have pulled together to defeat a common threat. But we no longer trust each other enough to pull together for the common good.

Americans really should be better than this. We used to be.

Time to forget about dickheads like Lahren. Time to leave voting rights, infrastructure bills and fires in the West behind. It’s time to take a beat and have a Saturday Soother! In northwest Connecticut, we’re recovering from unusual amounts of rain, precisely when it is really needed elsewhere in the country. This weekend brings trimming of the crabapple trees, attending to our tomato plants and spraying weed killer on the fields of Wrong.

But before all of that starts, let’s kick back and brew a cup of Baby Dragons coffee ($28/12 oz.) from San Diego’s Nostalgia Coffee Roasters. A review says that you should taste the resonant, long, flavor-laden finish with notes of lychee and chocolate.

Now, put on your wireless headphones, take a seat by a window, and listen to Frederic Chopin’s “Fantaisie Impromptu in C sharp minor”, Op. 66. This piece was written in 1834, but was first published posthumously in 1855, despite Chopin’s wishes that none of his unpublished works ever be published. We’re lucky his wishes weren’t followed!

Here, it’s played by Anastasia Huppmann, a Russian-born Austrian concert pianist, live in Vienna:

Watch her absolutely amazing technique! You will recognize the melody of the Fantaisie-Impromptu‘s middle section as the music in the popular song “I’m Always Chasing Rainbows“.

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Monday Wake Up Call – July 12, 2021

The Daily Escape:

Old Orchard Beach, ME – June 2021 photo by Eric Storm Photo

America has a growing vaccination gap. In one part of America, dominated by states that Biden won in November, most adults got their shots and daily life is rapidly returning to normal. But in the other, states that are overwhelmingly Trump country, fewer adults are vaccinated. The chart below from NPR breaks down the distance between us politically. Many blue states have vaccinated more than 70% of their populations, while no red state has vaccinated even 65% of theirs:

This shows the huge political divide we have around Covid. The top 22 states (including DC) with the highest adult vaccination rates all went to Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election. And surveys have shown Trump supporters are the least likely to say they have been vaccinated or plan to be.

Alternatively, some of the least vaccinated states are the most pro-Trump. Trump won 17 of the 18 states with the lowest adult vaccination rates. Demographically, these states have higher proportions of Whites without college degrees, while a Gallup poll found that 57% of Republicans say the pandemic is over, compared with just 4% of Democrats.

At CPAC (the Conservative Political Action Conference) held last weekend in Dallas, TX, this anti-Covid vaccine ideology was on display. When the nihilistic shithead Alex Berenson noted that the government is falling short of its Covid vaccine goals, the crowd applauded. Their hypocrisy is breathtaking: When the vaccine first came out, Republicans wanted to call it the “Trump Vaccine”. But since he lost, they want nothing to do with it.

If you’re actively trying to stop a program that saves lives, and you’re doing it purely for political self-interest, what should you be called? We’re talking about lives that could potentially be saved or lost right now, not something that’s simply a projection: We’re talking about 200 Americans dying a day, every day, right now.

And these are the supposed “pro-life” people, the people who would never support a Democrat, because they care so much about “life”. The data, and the “pro-life” people’s actions at events like CPAC show that “life” isn’t really the point.

Time to wake up America! With Covid, Europe is always only a few weeks ahead of us. Here’s the growth in infections there:

Cases in these countries are spiking due to the delta variant, and it’s already here. Experts think it accounts for more than 50% of US Covid cases, and we are likely to see similar spike in cases.

It has already partially learned to evade our Covid vaccines, at least to some degree. But the fear is that the next variant might be able to outsmart the vaccine, causing deadly problems even for parts of the country that have high vaccination rates.

These GOP political grifters who whip up anti-vaccination sentiment could bring about another pandemic. While the current variants are relatively susceptible to the vaccines. the more the virus spreads, the more opportunities there are for a vaccine-resistant variant to take hold.

Thanks Republicans. To help America wake up, listen to The Foxymorons 2015 tune, “Spinning On A Needle”. Just the name “Foxymorons” sounds like it should be required for all Republicans.

It should make you want to listen regardless of what they sound like:

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Saturday Soother – July 10, 2021

The Daily Escape:

Sunset at White Sands NP, NM – 2021 photo by Guyin6300dollarsuit.

Gabriel Zucman and Gus Wezerek had an opinion piece in the NYT about the divergence between personal and corporate tax rates:

“In the decades after World War II, close to 50% of American companies’ earnings went to state and federal taxes. Economically, it was a golden period. Middle-class incomes grew at roughly the same rate as those of the richest Americans.

But as globalization gave companies the ability to choose where they recorded profits, Congress scrambled to keep their business by lowering corporate taxes. In 2018, American companies were taxed at an average effective rate of less than 14%, by our calculations.”

For the past 30 years, corporate tax breaks have helped business owners amass huge amounts of money, much of which is kept offshore. Their gain has been the loss for middle-class Americans, who have footed the bill, as Congress has supported our federal budgets by raising taxes on wages:

This chart shows the result of Republican policies. Corporate taxes are at an all-time low, while many profitable corporations pay no tax at all, and workers’ taxes on wages have risen. This has caused a huge and still growing gap in income and wealth between the rich who lead America’s corporations and the rest of us.

Let’s spend a minute on some tax arcana. There used to be a tax regulation that kept income out of tax havens. It is called unitary taxation, a method of allocating corporate profit to a particular state (or country) where that corporation has a taxable presence. It attributes the corporation’s total worldwide profit (or loss) to each jurisdiction, based on factors such as the proportion of sales, assets, or payroll in that jurisdiction.

If this were in effect, it would slow the parking of profits in tax havens by multinationals. California and other states used to use unitary taxation. It was the subject of two US Supreme Court cases: Mobil Oil v. Vermont and Exxon v. Wisconsin, both decided in 1980 in favor of the unitary tax principle. In other words, in favor of the states.

In 1983, the US Supreme Court again ruled in favor of unitary taxation but this time on a worldwide basis in their Container Corporation vs. Franchise Tax Board decision.

That’s when St. Ronnie pressured California and other states to adopt a restricted version known as the water’s edge method that excludes the profits of foreign affiliates from a state’s pre-apportionment tax base. This allowed profit-shifting to tax haven affiliates to mushroom to what we see today.

Biden is trying to end the race to the bottom on corporate tax rates. But even if Congress approves the 15% global minimum corporate tax, it won’t be sufficient to close the growing economic gap between America’s corporations and its workers. Taxing multinationals at 15% would still leave them facing a lower rate than the average American pays in state and federal income tax.

What’s really needed is a 25% percent minimum corporate tax. That would bring in about $200 billion in additional revenue annually. Over 10 years, that would be enough to pay for nationwide high-speed internet, free community college and universal preschool for 3- and 4-year-olds.

All are worthy uses of tax dollars, but it’s doubtful that all Senate Democrats, much less enough Senate Republicans would support a 25% floor for corporations.

A Republican Congress took a shot at reforming the hiding of offshore profits with their 2017 Tax Cut and Jobs Act, which failed. Data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis suggest profits booked in foreign tax havens have not declined since the law was passed.

In 2018, US corporations reported more profit in Ireland than in Mexico, China, Germany and France combined. For example, in 2018, Facebook made $15 billion in profit in Ireland, about $10 million for each of its Irish employees, while Bristol Myers Squibb’s reported profit in Ireland worked out to about $7.5 million per employee.

For decades, Congress tried unsuccessfully to play catch-up as business owners and a handful of tax havens have driven our tax policy. The result is that we’re a nation where working-class Americans are left with underfunded public schools while the wealthiest Americans are boarding rocket ships in some ego-fueled game.

Time for a post-tropical storm Elsa break! Just when you think all is lost, you discover it isn’t. For the first time, Queen Elizabeth has decided that you can now have a picnic on the front lawn of Buckingham Palace. Don’t get too excited, there are rules: No knives to slice your cheese, no dogs, no prosecco. Besides, 78,000 people are already on the waiting list:

Now take a moment, and listen to Czech composer Bedƙich Smetana’s String Quartet No.1 In E Minor “From My Life“, the Largo movement by the Amadeus Quartet, recorded in 2013:

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Saturday Soother – Fourth of July Weekend Edition, July 3, 2021

The Daily Escape:

People in the Sun – 1963 painting by Edward Hopper. Notice that they are not dressed for summer.

(The Wrongologist will be taking a break for the July 4th weekend. Regular ranting will resume on Tuesday, July 6.)

As we head into the 4th of July weekend, let’s remember that in a remarkable coincidence, both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, the only signers of the Declaration of Independence who later served as presidents of the US, died on the same day, July 4, 1826. That was the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration. Four years later, James Monroe, also a president and founder of our country, but not a signatory of the Declaration, became the third president in a row to die on July 4th in 1831.

For many, Jefferson and Adams dying on the same day seemed too coincidental. After all, the chances of two people dying on the same day is 1 in 365, but dying on a significant date that was the historic anniversary of an event for which they had intimate involvement? That seemed suspicious.

Some suggested a conspiracy among both physicians and family members to help the patients make it to the 4th. Margaret P. Battin observed in a 2005 Bulletin of the Historic Society article, that Adams’ granddaughter reported their doctor gave her grandfather an experimental medicine which he said could either prolong his life by as much as two weeks, or bring it to a close within 24 hours. Others wondered if something more sinister had been afoot. In a letter, John Randolph mused that Adams’ death was “Euthanasia”, adding “They have killed Mr. Jefferson, too, on the same day.”

Americans love conspiracy theories. Today, none more so than the ongoing belief that Trump won the 2020 election. Or that Democrats are Marxists, or pedophiles. Or that Obama was from Kenya.

In 2021 America, politicians always seek to amplify their differences with the other side, regularly accusing their rivals of deliberately trying to harm the country. And these conspiracies have trickled down to the rest of us, so much so that we’ve become a country at war with ourselves.

People speak with complete contempt about others. Some express contempt for the president, and the entire US government. What we hear routinely today is a level of contempt that in the past, we have reserved for enemies in a time of war. But now, we’re continually contemptuous of our fellow citizens. Contempt is particularly toxic because it implies that the attacker has a position of moral superiority, and through that, has the agency to attack another, possibly even physically.

So, on our most patriotic day, put down that hot dog, and ask the question: How do we unify a secure, wealthy country that is playing a zero-sum political game?

Our true patriots are those very few who are fighting to preserve our voting rights.

They’re the people who are adding new jobs in our jobs-short economy.

They’re the military who return time and again to the front lines, enduring the unendurable. They’re the families of those military personnel.

They’re people who serve on school boards, zoning boards and town councils, who get mostly only a psychic return for their efforts, compared to national politicians who are working hard to become millionairess – assuming they weren’t millionaires when they were elected.

They’re average Americans who see the decline of our institutions and infrastructure, wondering where to turn if we are to reverse all of these bad trends.

Is anyone ever “High as a kite on the 4th of July” with patriotic feeling anymore?

Since it’s Saturday, and the start of our national summer holiday, let’s hit pause for a few days before jumping in to the second half of the year. Let’s spend these days enjoying the end of lockdowns, and the revving up of our economy. Here in northwest Connecticut, on the 4th, we’re looking forward to going to our first indoor performance, an afternoon concert by the Shanghai Quartet at the wonderful Music Mountain in Falls Village, CT.

But to start the weekend, we all should listen to Ray Charles’ “America the Beautiful“. His version of the song is spiritual, emotional, soul stirring and amazingly timeless. Here, Ray is performing it live on the Dick Cavett Show in September 1972.

 

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Monday Wake Up Call – June 28, 2021

The Daily Escape:

Sunset, Thumpertown Beach, Eastham, Cape Cod MA – June 2021 iPhone photo by Wrongo

Today’s new Republican talking point is that the main reason violent crime is on the rise is that Democrats have “stigmatized one of the most honorable professions in America.”

How is it that the Party that wants to drown the government in a bathtub, that worships guns, and believes Americans must be armed against their government, holds on to its brand as the Party of “law and order”?

Murder is up all over America. The GOP wants to blame “defund the police”, the Black Lives Matter movement, and whatever Antifa is. Toss in the horror of Critical Race Theory, and in a way, they’re trying out another “Willie Horton” political argument on the rest of us. (hat tip to WaMo)

For those who don’t remember, GHW Bush exploited Willie Horton’s 1986 rape of a woman in Maryland that occurred while Horton skipped out of his furlough. He raped and stabbed her.

Bush used this to trigger voters’ conscious and unconscious racial biases about African American men in his 1988 presidential election run against Michael Dukakis, who was governor of Massachusetts, the state Horton fled after his early release.

No one really knows why murders are up, but surely, it’s a multi-factor problem. Last week, Derek Chauvin was sentenced to 22.5 years for murdering George Floyd. That’s about 10 years above the usual sentence recommended by law. But Chauvin’s sentencing doesn’t begin to solve America’s problem with policing.

And it won’t do anything for America’s murder rate.

A few things are certain. The NYT reported on a survey of almost 200 police departments nationwide that indicated retirements were up 45% while resignations rose by 18% in the last year, compared with the previous 12 months. From the NYT:

“New York City saw 2,600 officers retire in 2020 compared with 1,509 the year before. Resignations in Seattle increased to 123 from 34 and retirements to 96 from 43. Minneapolis, which had 912 uniformed officers in May 2019, is now down to 699.”

This is happening while most cities are contending with a rise in shootings and homicides. It raises in Wrongo’s mind a certain aroma of White fragility among police specifically, and Republicans generally.

The idea that Republicans are now wringing their hands and cops are quitting the job because activists carry signs that say defund the police, seems a disproportionate response to what the police continue to do to minorities.

These topics are far too complicated for one column, but let’s touch on a few high-level concerns: Killings are a direct result of the prevalence of guns in our country. We know that in most countries, police are under significantly less stress because they are don’t fear that every encounter will be with someone with a gun. From the NYT:

“…officers said they were asked to handle too much; they were constantly thrown at tangled societal problems like mental health breakdowns or drug overdoses, they said, for which they were ill-equipped — then blamed when things went wrong.”

This leads to the deliberately misunderstood (by Republicans) “defund” concept, which wants to redeploy some public spending on better services and better outcomes for citizens. It does that by providing additional resources that remove cops from situations that they are neither well-trained for, nor well-suited to address.

Second, law enforcement culture must change. The militarization of America’s police forces must be reversed. The power of police unions to influence police department culture must end.

Third, Democrats are running a big risk by not also focusing on the public safety issues of minority voters. Too many five-year-olds have been shot on their front stoops this year, and their grandmas who vote know that.

Axios reports that the Democratic messaging group Future Majority has identified areas where Republicans hold a political advantage. Republicans outperformed Democrats on jobs and the economy, gun rights, and “keeping you and your family safe.” In addition, of the issues polled, “defunding the police,” “open borders” and “reparations for slavery” were by far the biggest turnoffs for independents and voters in general.

The question for Democrats is how to balance changing police culture while seeing that people are protected? There’s a growing cop shortage, and Democrats are scrambling to develop a more complete response on crime.

So far this year, 21,099 Americans have been killed by a gun, including 11,550 suicides. Another 18,596 people have been wounded. Of that number, 720 children and teens under age 18 have been killed by guns, and another 1,852 have been wounded. And there have been 298 mass shootings resulting in 334 deaths and 1,244 injuries.

It’s time for action Democrats! Stop letting the GOP define your policies for you. To help you wake up, listen to Bananarama’s “Cruel Summer”. The video is a time capsule of 1980s NYC. If you remember, in 1980, people said: The future will be awesome! In 2021 Republicans are saying: I want to go back to the 80s:

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Saturday Soother – June 26, 2021

The Daily Escape:

Low tide, Thumpertown Beach, Cape Cod MA – July 4, 2018 iPhone photo by Wrongo

After Biden and a bipartisan group of US lawmakers announced a deal on infrastructure, it soon became clear that Democrats would only support it if it was passed alongside a big reconciliation bill, something that Wrongo suggested was the only way to play infrastructure with the Republicans.

The American Society of Civil Engineers says that we need to spend $2.59 trillion in the next decade on pure, traditional infrastructure. According to a fact sheet released by the White House, Part 1 includes just $579 billion in new infrastructure spending over the course of five years, with $309 billion going to transportation and $109 billion earmarked for roads, bridges, and other projects.

That means there needs to be two bills: one, a “hard infrastructure” bill along the lines of the framework agreed on Thursday, and the second, a “broadly defined infrastructure” bill containing the other provisions Biden originally wanted in his big infrastructure bill.

If a bipartisan Part 1 appeases enough moderates of both parties sufficiently to get them not to raise hell over a reconciliation Part 2, then Biden will be acknowledged as better at politics than the pundits.

OTOH, McConnell says Biden can have Part 1 only if he doesn’t ask for Part 2. That sets up the possibility that Democrats must choose between something that’s admittedly terrible, or nothing. Biden says he won’t sign the first unless he is also given the second one to sign, while Pelosi says the first bill won’t pass the House until the reconciliation bill passes the Senate.

As with everything in DC, the usual caveats apply: So. Much. Can. Go. Wrong. The two-track Senate strategy (one bill bipartisan, another through reconciliation) requires extraordinary political deftness, possibly a bridge too far for the craptacular Senate Majority Leader Schumer.

A few words about Part 1 from Common Dreams:

  • Rather than pushing for taxes targeting rich individuals and corporations, a White House fact sheet on the bipartisan package outlines other potential financing sources, from unused Coronavirus funds to reinstating Superfund fees for chemicals.
  • The proposal also relies on public-private partnerships, (P3s), private activity bonds, and asset recycling for infrastructure investment.

When politicians say “asset recycling” they mean the sale or lease of public assets to the private sector so the government can put that money toward new investments. But the devil is in the details, and how we fund new infrastructure can’t be through privatizing our existing infrastructure.

America won’t get a redo once its public infrastructure is privatized.

In some places public/private partnerships can be tolerable. Think rail policy where Amtrak’s funding is contingent on some sort of matching grants for private freight service improvement. This can be better justified as both are connected as part of the same rail network and improvements can be easily tracked.

But elsewhere, it can’t, especially in power and telecom, where P3s only serve to prevent public services from being offered. This sounds like how Philadelphia and other cities sold off infrastructure like parking garages and parking meters. The city derived no recurring income, while private companies collected the monies.

From Benjamin Studebaker:

“In most democracies, a working legislative majority allows the government to pass legislation. In the United States, things don’t work this way….As our problems slowly mount, neither the Democrats or the Republicans are able to experiment with policy solutions. The policies that do get passed are the result of fraught compromises. It’s never clear who is responsible for the policies that issue from the federal government, and every time anything goes wrong every part of the US government passes the buck to every other part.”

The failure to make essential investments in the basic infrastructure of the country is not consistent with having a functioning state. Either the filibuster must go, or the primary system must go. The primary system is here to stay because it is equated with democracy itself in the US. Therefore, sooner or later, the filibuster will go.

So, rather than teasing Americans with the promise of a new Roosevelt administration (in aviator shades), it looks like we’re in for another round of gridlock.

That’s enough politics for this Saturday. It’s time for our Saturday Soother. Wrongo and Ms. Right are spending a few days on Cape Cod, which is always enjoyable. So, before going off to watch another beautiful sunset, let’s take a few minutes to relax and listen to the Second movement (largo) of Dvoƙák’s “From the New World“, performed here in 1985 by the Vienna Philharmonic, directed by the late Herbert von Karajan:

 

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Monday Wake Up Call, Bipartisan Kabuki Play Edition – June 21, 2021

The Daily Escape:

North Umpqua River, Glide OR – 2021 photo by Bobbie Shots Photography

We’re hearing a lot of talk about a bipartisan infrastructure plan. The plan would spend about $1 trillion over the next eight years. But that’s only about half of what Biden had asked for and won’t accomplish anywhere near all that he wanted. But half is better than nothing, and if the plan were fair, Wrongo would support it.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) made headlines on Sunday by saying he’s the latest Republican Senator to support the bipartisan infrastructure deal in the Senate. On Fox News, he said:

“I think the difference between this negotiation and the earlier negotiation is that we are willing to add more new money to infrastructure in this package and I am hopeful that the White House and Joe Biden stay involved, we can get there,”

He also said that the “bipartisan” support will disappear if Democrats signal that they intend to follow it up with a second infrastructure package passed via reconciliation.

But is there any reason to believe he, or other Republicans involved in these negotiations are acting in good faith? Or is this another game like what happened with Obama’s Affordable Care Act negotiations? Will Republicans simply try to run out the clock on the legislative calendar and then ultimately vote no on the final bill?

The bipartisan proposal is led by Sens. Rob Portman (R-OH) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.). It costs about $973 billion over five years or $1.2 trillion over eight. The plan would have $579 billion in new spending. That makes the bill’s total new investment about one-fourth the size of  Biden’s initial proposal. Graham joined the group, including 10 Democrats and 10 other Republicans, as its 21st member.

But as always in DC, the devil is in the details.  Their plan uses public infrastructure funds for “public private partnerships” in the form of thousands of new toll roads. It uses money already earmarked for COVID relief funds, rather than paying with more progressive taxation. It imposes new taxes and surcharges on electric vehicles, a disincentive when we should be doing our best to phase out fossil fuels. But more about that below.

OTOH, there are worthwhile elements of their funding methodology. They are suggesting ramped-up IRS enforcement to pay for a portion of the spending. In a NYT op-ed last Wednesday, five former Treasury Secretaries Timothy Geithner, Jacob Lew, Henry Paulson, Robert Rubin and Larry Summers all agreed that the country should strengthen its tax system by collecting uncollected taxes.

The Treasury’s Office of Tax Analysis estimates that this could generate $700 billion over the next 10 years. But the former Treasury Secretaries say that is a modest estimate, citing former IRS commissioners who say it could be as large as $1.6 trillion.

The taxes on electric vehicles can be justified, since drivers of EVs do not pay gas taxes that fund highway maintenance, even though they use roads and highways just like gas-powered cars. But an EV tax must be paired with investments in electric charging stations or else the net effect would be to slow America’s transition off fossil fuels.

We’re watching as, Eric Levitz says, a staring contest between moderates and liberals. Liberals can’t pass anything without Manchin and Sinema’s votes. Moderates won’t get federal dollars for their states without the liberal’s cooperation. Both factions are waiting for the other to blink, while Republicans are happily trying to keep the stare down going: The longer it lasts, the less time Democrats will have to pass new laws before midterm season begins.

The Republicans are bragging that the plan doesn’t raise taxes. That’s not exactly true. They mean the plan doesn’t raise taxes on corporations or the rich. They don’t seem to mind that the plan would take money out of the pockets of working- and middle-class people.

The legislative calendar is a scarce resource. The Senate has only six more workweeks before summer’s end. Time to wake up Democrats! Biden can support this $1 trillion bill, but he must also keep pressing forward with a reconciliation bill to address other infrastructure priorities.

To help you wake up listen to the great Pink Martini perform their song, “Hang on Little Tomato“. Here it’s performed live in Portland, Oregon in December 2005, featuring vocalist China Forbes.

The song was inspired by an ad for Hunt’s Ketchup in a 1964 issue of Life magazine telling a green tomato to stay on the vine and ripen. It’s been popular lately as a song of hope:

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Saturday Soother – June 19, 2021

The Daily Escape:

View of Lake Champlain from Hog Island, VT – photo by Kim Brown

A few items that were lost in the noise this week: First, the House voted 268-161 to repeal the 2002 AUMF, the Iraq War Authorization for Use of Military Force. The 2002 AUMF allows military action to defend the national security of the US against the continuing threat posed by Iraq. The other AUMF, the 2001 AUMF, issued to allow the president to order the invasion of Afghanistan, remains in effect.

The rationale for repealing these AUMFs is that the power to declare war properly belongs with Congress. Congress’s delegating a blank check to the president via the AUMF’s to make war promoted the indefinite, Middle East military engagements that turned Onion headlines about sons patrolling the same routes in Afghanistan as their fathers into a horrible reality.

Congress has been negligent in reclaiming their power. And while there’s a case for the kind of open-ended military actions of the 21st Century, that case should be made in Congress, where the strategy can be deliberated, and if approved, funded by Congress, our ultimate authority for both war-making and war-funding.

The 2002 AUMF repeal now goes to the Senate and if passed, to Biden, who has suggested he would sign a repeal.

Even if the repeal passes the Senate, the standard Republican line on AUMF repeal is that a replacement resolution must be passed at the same time. That will possibly kill the repeal. And depending on how it is written, it could defeat its entire purpose.

Second, this week, Lina Khan, the author of “Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox” was confirmed by the Senate (with 19 Republican votes) as Federal Trade Commissioner. A 32-year-old, British-born woman of Pakistani heritage is now Chair of the FTC, facing down the most powerful corporations in American history, backed by the full power of the US government.

Khan inherits an antitrust lawsuit against Facebook, which seeks to break up the company over allegations that it copied or acquired and killed its rivals. The lawsuit is a test of Washington’s ability to check Silicon Valley’s power amid a broader debate about changing tech regulations. Kahn will be running an agency that lawmakers and experts for years have warned is under-resourced and lacking technical expertise.

Our existing antitrust laws are robust, but they have been weakened by business-friendly judges and clearly aren’t optimized for our digital world. A bipartisan group in Congress introduced a series of bills that would outlaw many of the allegedly anticompetitive tactics that tech companies used to solidify their dominance. But as with all reforms, it’s unclear whether they’ll pass.

Ms. Khan will be getting more resources. Biden has proposed an 11% funding increase for the FTC, boosting its spending from $351 million to $390 million. The president’s proposal will also allow the FTC to increase its headcount to 1,250, its largest staff since it was eviscerated in the early 1980s.

She enters the FTC with a 3-to-2 Democratic board majority, but it’s unclear how long that will last. Rohit Chopra (D) is awaiting his confirmation to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. If he leaves, it could be difficult for Biden to build the bipartisan support needed to install another commissioner.

Finally, it was disconcerting to hear Putin, in his post-summit news conference, play back Republican disinformation. From the WaPo’s Dana Milbank:

“For the past few years, Republicans in Congress have echoed Russian propaganda. On Wednesday, in Geneva, Vladimir Putin returned the favor: He echoed Republican propaganda.”

Milbank notes that the Russians have adopted the talking points of right-wing media about January 6. Putin mentioned that the January 6 insurrectionists are not looters or thieves:

“Many of the suspects, have been hit with very harsh charges…. Why is that?”

Putin read some more from the Republican playbook:

“As for who is killing whom or are throwing whom in jail, people came to the US Congress with political demands….Over 400 people had criminal charges placed on them. They face prison sentences. 
 They’re being called domestic terrorists.”

It’s surprising how awful Republican talking points sound when spoken by Putin.

On to the weekend, and our Saturday Soother! We will be continuing our yard work on the Fields of Wrong. You know you live in the wilds when Ms. Right can find bear poop 20 feet from our front door. Interestingly, it smelled like the bear had dined on fish. That’s probably enough outdoors reality for this week!

Let’s start our Juneteenth and Fathers’ Day weekend by listening to Harold Darke’s “Fantasy in E Major”. It is arranged here for string orchestra by Clive Jenkins because Drake’s arrangement is lost. It’s played by the Chamber Ensemble of London, conducted by Peter Fisher:

The video is beautiful because it includes paintings by English landscape artist, James Lynch. They’re lovely. Enjoy!

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Monday Wake Up Call – June 7, 2021

The Daily Escape:

Sunset, Paines Creek Beach, Cape Cod MA – May 2021 photo by Kristen Wilkinson Photography

People worldwide are finally waking up to the tax mischief of multinational corporations. When Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen announced earlier this year that it was time to end the “race to the bottom” and implement a global minimum tax for corporations, few took her seriously.

But now we could be on the cusp of a once-in-a-generation moment that would benefit funding of our public services immensely.

On Saturday at the G7 meeting, the members agreed to back a new global minimum tax rate of 15% for companies to pay on income, regardless of where they are based. The deal is focused on two main changes: reallocating taxes towards countries where economic activity takes place, rather than where these firms choose to book their profits, along with setting a minimum tax rate.

If enacted, the agreement would stop large multinational companies from locating in tax havens, which will force them to pay more taxes. This is clearly revolutionary. The winners would be large economies where multinationals sell a lot, but where they book little taxable profit, thanks to tax loopholes that allow them to siphon off income into low-tax jurisdictions.

This has become a larger problem since the rise of the digital giants like Apple and Google, companies with mostly intangible assets. The most obvious losers will be the tax haven countries that, more than half a century ago, started taking advantage of globalization by drastically lowering their tax rates.

The most sophisticated firms, those with battalions of tax lawyers and accountants, have for years employed tax loopholes in individual countries’ tax laws to minimize their total tax liability. While not all tax loopholes deal with international sales, they are a prime method that the biggest firms use to avoid income taxes.

The NYT cites a report from the EU Tax Observatory which estimated that a 15% minimum tax would yield an additional $58 billion in tax revenue per year.

Between 2011 and 2020, Amazon, Facebook, Alphabet (the owner of Google), Netflix, Apple, and Microsoft paid roughly $219 billion in income taxes, which amounted to just 3.6% of their more than $6 trillion in total revenue, according to the Fair Tax Foundation.

Had these six firms paid the prevailing tax rates in the countries in which they operate, they would have given global tax authorities over $149 billion more than they did over the past decade.

But tax reform isn’t a sure thing. Next month, the G7 must sell the concept to finance ministers from the broader G20 group of nations. If that is successful, officials hope that a final deal can be signed by the Group of 20 leaders when they meet next in October. Ireland, which has a tax rate of 12.5%, has come out against the global minimum tax. China has been quiet, but is considered unlikely to buy in.

G7 finance officials think that if enough advanced economies sign on, other countries will be compelled to follow suit. They plan to exert political pressure on Ireland to join the agreement.

The Biden administration has been eager to reach an agreement because a global minimum tax is an ingredient in its plans to raise the US corporate tax rate to 28% from the current 21%, to help shave the deficit. While Republicans and corporations think that increasing taxes would make American companies less competitive, getting other countries to go along with a minimum tax rate on overseas profits would minimize the home field disadvantage to American companies.

Time to wake up, America! We need our Congress, along with world leaders, to step up and enact this new tax policy. Changes to the tax code requires approval from both Houses of Congress, so this may never happen.

To help you wake up, listen to a cover of Bob Dylan’s “Everything Is Broken” by RL Burnside, with an all-star supporting cast including Buddy Guy with the first guitar solo, Derek Trucks with the second guitar solo and James Cotton on solo harmonica.

You may not be aware that Rolling Stone has a list of their top 80 Dylan covers . Here’s Burnside’s blues take on Dylan:

Sample lyric:

Broken hands on broken ploughs,

Broken treaties, broken vows,

Broken pipes, broken tools,

People bending broken rules.

Hound dog howling, bull frog croaking,

Everything is broken.

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