Playlist – Page 5 – The Wrongologist

Kevin Shows His Little Spine

The Daily Escape:

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

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

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

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

From Politico:

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

Wrongo said here that:

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

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

In her series Marjory’s World, photographer Rebecca Reeve creates portals from the domestic into the wilderness. She uses household drapery that she purchases from local Goodwill and Salvation Army stores to evoke the feeling of looking out of a room.

This photo was taken in the Everglades in Florida in 2012.

Reeve’s series, Marjory’s World is named after Marjory Stoneman Douglas who was an American journalist, author and conservationist. She was an advocate of the Everglades and defended against the efforts to drain and reclaim it for development. Her most influential book was “The Everglades: River of Grass” written in 1947, the year that the Everglades was made a National Park.

In 1990, when she was 100 years old, her name was given to the high school in Parkland, FL where in 2018, a mass shooting took place leaving 17 dead and 17 more wounded in less than six minutes. Stoneman Douglas died at 108 on May 14, 1998.

(hat tip to Adam Tooze for introducing Reeve to Wrongo)

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) died on Friday at 90, leaving a complicated legacy. Having lived in California for more than 10 years, Wrongo and Ms. Right had the opportunity to vote for her. In her early years in the Senate, Feinstein was known for trying to find common ground with Republicans. Feinstein in her later years overstayed her welcome in the Senate.

But her real legacy was Chairing the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s (SSCI) Torture Report in 2014. Feinstein’s tenure as SSCI Chair ensured there was a documented account of the torture done during the GW Bush administration which was serious enough that the CIA actually “lost” its sole copy of the 6,000+ page report. And she defied Obama by releasing the unclassified summary of the torture perpetrated during the War on Terror. For that alone, her legacy deserves respect.

She also championed the assault weapons ban that became law under Clinton, which was later allowed to expire by Bush. For history buffs, she became mayor of San Francisco after the murder of mayor George Moscone and supervisor Harvey Milk. She found Moscone shot in his office and tried to revive him. After Moscone’s death, Feinstein succeeded him as Acting Mayor of San Francisco. She was also a strong leader for SFO during the AIDS crisis when Reagan couldn’t care less.

But let’s also talk today about a politician whose legacy will be forever tarnished, House Speaker Kevin (My Kevin) McCarthy. On Friday, the Republican-controlled House voted down a last-ditch measure to temporarily avert a government shutdown, 198-232 with all Democrats against it, along with 21 Republicans.

The Continuing Resolution (CR) would have kept the government funded for 30 days while cutting funding by 30% for all agencies except the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security and Veterans Affairs, something no Democrat would ever accept.

Most GOP “no” votes were by right-wingers who objected to the very idea of a CR. While it failed, 198 House Republicans voted for this bill sourced from God Knows Where (GKW). The Thesaurus says one synonym for GKW is “alien”. And a few synonyms for alien are: Contrary, Estranged, Opposed and Inappropriate. These all seem right to Wrongo.

These Republicans do not belong in our government.

You may remember that back in June, House Republicans and McCarthy agreed at the eleventh hour to raise the federal debt limit to avoid the government defaulting on its loans for the first time in history. As part of that agreement, McCarthy and Biden agreed to spending caps on funding bills for the next two years that aimed to avoid this kind of impasse until after the next presidential election.

But McCarthy welshed on that deal, under pressure from a number of MAGA Republicans in his caucus who are refusing to fund the government and are calling for deeper spending cuts.

Meanwhile, McCarthy is “leading” one of the slimmest Congressional majorities in decades. He faces a choice of either showing moral courage by introducing a funding bill with the backing of House Dems, or letting the Shutdown run for several weeks or months.

Another day, another new McCarthy plan. Indeed, this whole dance makes for very bad politics for the GOP considering that 77% of US voters say that they don’t want the government to close.

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

Here in the Northeast, we’ve been dumped on by even more rain leading into the weekend, which isn’t expected to taper off until late this afternoon. Despite that, we’ve taken the Bluebird nesting boxes down, cleaned them out and stored them until next spring.

But we have to find time for our Saturday Soother, where we forget about the mess Republicans are making of their “impeachment inquiry”, you know the one with zero evidence. Instead we must focus on building up our mental resolve to wander through the government shutdown without injury.

To help you build resolve, let’s start by grabbing a comfy chair by a south facing window. Now watch and listen to U2’s take on Kevin McCarthy’s problem. Here is U2’s remastered video of “Stuck In A Moment You Can’t Get Out Of” from their 2000 album “All That You Can’t Leave Behind”. The song was written by Bono for his friend, lead singer of INXS, Michael Hutchence, who committed suicide in 1997:

Let’s hope that McCarthy doesn’t engage in any self-harm, except for losing the Speakership.

Sample Lyric:

I never thought you were a fool
But darling, look at you (Ooh)
You gotta stand up straight,
Carry your own weight
These tears are going nowhere (baby)

You’ve got to get yourself together
You’ve got stuck in a moment
And now you can’t get out of it
Don’t say that later will be better
Now you’re stuck in a moment
And you can’t get out of it

The Auto Strike

The Daily Escape:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Biden said in a post on Xitter:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sample lyric:

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

More Fresh Hell In Washington DC

The Daily Escape:

Sunrise, Linville Gorge Wilderness, NC – September 2023 photo by Thomas Mabry

Today is the Autumn Equinox, bringing its shortened days and cooler nights. It reminds us that we’re running out of time to avoid a government shutdown, because the GOP can’t stop fighting among themselves. Republicans no longer represent a serious national political Party.

From the Hill:

“House Republicans abandoned plans to take up a stopgap funding measure this week after members of the fractious GOP conference warned there would not be enough votes to pass a continuing resolution to avert a partial government shutdown next month.

Party leaders informed members that…the House would recess subject to the call of the chair. Lawmakers were advised to keep their plans flexible, and that “ample notice” would be provided for any votes they planned to schedule on Friday or over the weekend.

Members weren’t being officially sent home for the weekend because House leaders lacked the votes to adopt a motion to adjourn…”

Here’s a quote from House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY): (brackets by Wrongo)

“…[in] 2018-2019, they shut the government down for 35 days. When the shutdown began, Trump was president, Republicans controlled the House and the Senate… They shut themselves down. That’s how much it’s in their DNA”

It’s actually worse than that. Since 1995, there have been 5 major government shutdowns. The GOP controlled the House for all 5 of them. Anyone other than Wrongo see a trend here?

Politico says that members of the Problem Solvers Caucus is working with Speaker McCarthy on a deal:

“Small groups of centrist Democrats are holding secret talks with several of McCarthy’s close GOP allies about a last-ditch deal to fund the government, according to more than a half-dozen people familiar with the discussions.”

“Lawmakers involved in the talks — who mostly belong to the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus, the Republican Governance Group or the centrist New Democrat Coalition — have labored to keep their work quiet. Many Republicans involved are incredibly worried about revealing their backup plan, wanting to wait until every other tool in McCarthy’s arsenal has failed.

That moment may not be until next week, just ahead of the Sept. 30 shutdown deadline.”

Any solution to the impasse has to be bipartisan, given the intransigence of a handful of wacko Conservatives. As Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) said about the conservative holdouts: (brackets by Wrongo)

“So why negotiate with these five or 10 people who [constantly] move the goalposts?”

Or as Andy Borowitz put it:

“Zelensky Offers to Broker Peace Deal Between Kevin McCarthy and House Republicans”

Moving on, Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) was indicted on federal bribery charges by the DOJ on Friday morning:

“…federal prosecutors alleging the New Jersey Democrat accepted cash, gold and other benefits in exchange for using his office to enrich three businessmen and aid the Egyptian government. The charges, brought by the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office, mark the second time New Jersey’s senior senator has faced public corruption allegations. An earlier criminal case eight years ago fell apart.”

Menendez wasn’t alone in the indictment; his wife Nadine Arslanian was also included on the bribery charges.

Can Biden’s Union Roots Help Him In 2024?

The Daily Escape:

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

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

From The Guardian:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Economist had an excellent observation (paywalled):

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The law passed and remains in effect today.

Romney Exits

The Daily Escape:

Northern Lights, Malletts Bay, Lake Champlain, Colchester, VT – September 2023 photo by Adam Silverman Photography

By now, everyone’s heard that Mitt Romney (R-UT) isn’t going to run for a second term in the Senate. From the WaPo:

“Romney, 76, said his decision not to run again was heavily influenced by his belief that a second term, which would take him into his 80s, probably would be less productive and less satisfying than the current term has been.”

He used the opportunity to say that Biden and Trump were too old to be the presidential candidates of their Parties, and they, like him, should stand aside and let the next generation of politicians take center stage.

But the big news was generated from a few quotes Romney made to McKay Coppins, who’s book about Romney is coming out in October. Coppins has a teaser article in The Atlantic in which Romney lets loose his ire against Trump (who Romney carefully cultivated in 2016 and 2017, when he was angling to be Secretary of State):

“So many Republican Senators privately expressed their support for Romney’s public criticism of Trump that the Utahan began keeping count, telling staffers he’d had more than a dozen nearly identical exchanges. He recalled one senior lawmaker complaining to him: “[Trump] has none of the qualities you would want in a president, and all of the qualities you wouldn’t.”

Romney told Coppins:

“Almost without exception, they shared my view of the president.”

This has earned Romney accolades from the media and from a few Democrats. Karen Tumulty in the WaPo credits Romney with “paving the way for national health-care reform…” This ignores the fact that Romney ran for president in 2012 promising to repeal Obamacare.

Yet, after reading The Atlantic article, the media used terms like “noble,” “principled,” and “courageous.” But there is nothing courageous about saying the right thing only when you’re on your way out the door.

Wrongo has had issues with Romney since his run for the presidency in 2012. In May of 2012, Wrongo wrote:

“Over the past few days, Mitt Myth Romney has taken credit for GM being alive and Osama Bin Laden being dead.”

On the auto bailout Wrongo had previously reported what Romney actually said about the auto industry bailout: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“On February 12, 2012, Romney said: “Three years ago, in the midst of an economic crisis, a newly elected President Barack Obama stepped in with a bailout for the auto industry. The indisputable good news is that Chrysler and General Motors are still in business. The equally indisputable bad news is that all the defects in President Obama’s management of the American economy are evident in what he did.”

/snip/

“The president tells us that without his intervention things in Detroit would be worse. I believe that without his intervention things there would be better.”

Romney lied or changed his positions throughout his 2012 campaign against Obama. America is better off because he only received 206 votes in the Electoral College to Obama’s 332. He always was a plutocrat who’s political philosophy is basically trickle-down economics, low taxes and traditional religious cultural values.

There is room for those views in our politics, but Romney, who was the only Republican who twice voted to impeach Trump, could have done more to rally his fellow Senators to confront Mr. 91 counts. But, he’s gone from being the Republican nominee for president to being forced to leave politics just a decade later.

You may say “Thank God for Brave Men like Mitt Romney”, men with strong spines willing to stand up for what they believe and then march forward right out of the room!

Enough for this week, it’s time to let go of whatever is happening to Hunter Biden and his impeachable dad, and center ourselves for the government shutdown that’s coming at the end of the month. It’s time for our Saturday Soother!

Here in northwestern Connecticut, we’re seeing nights in the high 40° as summer draws to a close. Despite the threats from Hurricane Lee, let’s spend our Saturday Soother outside, sitting on the deck. To help you let go of the many insults of your week, listen to “Winter” (“Invierno”) from Astor Piazzolla’s “Four Seasons of Buenos Aires” (“Las Cuatro Estaciones Porteñas”). Piazzolla was an Argentine composer who is credited with developing the nuevo tango.

Wrongo and Ms. Right were fortunate to attend a concert last week which featured Vivaldi’s Four Seasons followed by Piazzolla’s Four Seasons of Buenos Aires. Piazzolla’s classical work often features tango like rhythms. Here is his “Winter” played by Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam, NL in 2014. The soloist is the conductor Liviu Prunaru:

Remembering 9/11

The Daily Escape:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hell, we don’t trust our government!

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

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

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

Here’s a 9/11 tune: The October 20, 2001 “Concert for New York” can’t be beat. It was a highly visible and early part of NYC’s healing process.

One of the many highlights of that 4+ hour show was Billy Joel’s medley of “Miami 2017 (seen the lights go out on Broadway)” and his “New York State of Mind”. Joel wrote “Miami 2017” in 1975, at the height of the NYC fiscal crisis. It describes an apocalyptic fantasy of a ruined NY that got a new, emotional second life after 9/11, when he performed it during the Concert for New York:

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

Musk Is A Putin Pawn

The Daily Escape:

Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, AZ – September 2023 photo by Bob Miller

Back in the 1950s, lefties were often called “fellow travelers” with Communists or the Soviet Union by Republicans.

Here’s a thought experiment: Elon Musk owns Starlink. He helped Ukraine take on the Russians using his constellation of satellites and transmit/receive terminals on the ground. When SpaceX started providing Starlink internet service to Ukraine after Russia’s invasion, it created a lifeline for the country when its communications systems had largely been knocked out.

Musk got great PR for helping America’s plucky little friend in their war against the Russian invaders. But as the war ground on, Kyiv began to fear that Musk was becoming increasingly ambivalent toward assisting them. Then, just as they are on the verge of a decisive blow that might shape the direction of the war, he turned off the network, thereby saving the Russian fleet from a Ukrainian sneak attack. From the WaPo:

“The armed submarine drones were poised to attack the Russian fleet….[but] the drones lost connectivity and washed ashore harmlessly.”

Ukrainian and American officials instantly scrambled to get service restored, appealing to Musk directly. After it was too late to continue the mission, Musk eventually agreed. His reasoning for torpedoing Ukraine’s torpedo mission has been well-reported over the past few days. According to the WaPo, Musk had second thoughts:

“How am I in this war? Musk asked….Starlink was not meant to be involved in wars. It was so people can watch Netflix and chill and get online for school and do peaceful things, not drone strikes.”

Later, when the Sevastopol operation was to begin, Musk remembers this:

“There was an emergency request from government authorities to activate Starlink all the way to Sevastopol. The obvious intent being to sink most of the Russian fleet at anchor….If I had agreed to their request, then SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation.”

Musk says he was afraid of being responsible for a Russian nuclear escalation. Moscow had publicly stoked such fears throughout the Ukraine war, but Western intelligence agencies say there’s no sign they were or are serious. There is zero evidence that tactical nuclear weapons were being prepped for use.

Nothing like what Musk feared happened.

From Timothy Snyder:

“The voiced concern is that Russia could “escalate.” This argument is a triumph of Russian propaganda. None of Ukraine’s strikes across borders has done anything except reduce Russian capacity. None has led Russia to do things it was not already doing. The notion of “escalation” in this setting is a misunderstanding. In trying to undo Russian logistics, Ukraine is trying to end the war.”

It’s curious that according to Ronan Farrow in a New Yorker article, around this time, Musk held conversations with Vladimir Putin (Musk denies speaking to Putin) – which seems to have had an effect on Musk’s change of position regarding Ukraine.

So this is the thought experiment: Is Musk naïve, or has he become a fellow traveler with Putin? He seems to have not only bought Moscow’s propaganda about nuclear escalation but acted on it. In either case, his “I was for helping Ukraine before I was against it” is a moral failure, and it’s a crime of providing material assistance to ours and Ukraine’s enemy.

He’s a fellow traveler.

We’ll never know if the war has been extended because the Sevastopol attack was aborted. We do know that since then, thousands of Ukrainians have died, and $ billions of Ukrainian assets have been destroyed.

This is a reminder of how Musk has amassed enormous influence through his dizzying pace of innovation that has left his competitors in the dust. It has also left governments (like our own), tip-toeing in their relationships with SpaceX in particular.

Wrongo thinks that US policymakers were happy to tolerate Musk’s early involvement in Ukraine because it saved money and solved an immediate tactical communications problem. But how wise was that in hindsight? There are reasons why diplomacy and international relations are left to elected governments in the West, and not put in the hands of one tech bro.

Rightwing Republicans have been pushing privatization without regulation for decades. Now that Musk has done just that with satellites and SpaceX, politicians and the mainstream media are shocked to find that the Ultra-Wealthy entrepreneurs don’t really believe in democracy.

Who could have known?

And think about it: Russia under Putin started this war. We’re involved because our national security interests in Europe are under attack by the Russian Federation. That constitutes a war, whether we choose to recognize it or not. Musk’s inaction must be viewed through that lens.

Our forces are not engaging in combat with Russian forces; that’s Russian propaganda. But we have history vs. Russia: We fought against Russian fighter pilots in the Korean war. They had advisors on the ground in Vietnam. We fought a Wagner force in Syria when they attacked our troops.

And Wagner isn’t a rogue mercenary organization. They are an irregular Russian force operating outside the norms of international law.

Musk and quite a few House Republicans need to understand the true nature of this war. We didn’t attack Russia. NATO didn’t attack Russia. And Ukraine didn’t attack Russia. Russia attacked Ukraine with a full scale invasion.

While Putin and his thugs are guilty of aggression, many Americans are guilty of being naïve. They fail to understand what failing in this fight will mean.

Whew! That’s enough for this week, it’s time for our Saturday Soother, where we try to find a place of calm and then gather ourselves for another week of polycrisis without end.

We’re aerating the lawns on the fields of Wrong, but only overseeding a small portion of it, since a 50 lb. bag of quality grass seed costs $225 vs. the $75 it was in the before times. Whip Inflation Now!

We’re likely to have thunderstorms for the next few days. So grab a chair by a large south-facing window and watch and listen to Playing For Change’s version of the Grateful Dead’s “Ripple”. It features the Dead’s drummer Bill Kreutzmann along with a host of performers, including the late Jimmy Buffett and David Crosby. Jerry Garcia lent his slide guitar to CSN’s “Teach Your Children” years ago, and Crosby returns the favor here. Time to listen to some feel-good music.

Robert Hunter wrote this song for the Dead in 1970. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with the Grateful Dead in 1994 and is the only non-performer to be inducted as a member of a band. Hunter was a lyricist:

Labor Day Thoughts

The Daily Escape:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why The Polls Are Wrong

The Daily Escape:

Belle, a water taxi in Camden, ME – September 2023 photo by Daniel F. Dishner

Happy Saturday, hopefully, you are getting a great start to a restful Labor Day weekend! This past week, we had friends from Los Angeles stop by the Mansion of Wrong. We had a few bottles of a delightful wine, and the question that never goes away came up again: “Why is Biden doing so badly in the polls?”

There really isn’t a good answer. The economy is doing fine, much better than the pundits expected it would be in the third quarter of 2023. But as Dan Pfeiffer points out:

“…somehow — against all common sense — the 2024 election between a competent President and an incompetent criminal — will be incredibly close. The Real Clear Politics polling average has Biden up by only 1.4%. Biden won the popular vote in 2020 by 4.5%. Given the strong Republican lean of the Electoral College, a Biden popular vote win of this size would likely mean that Trump ends up with 270 electoral votes.”

Now, Wrongo never relies on Real Clear Politics’ average of polls, but they’re not alone in offering up grim polling data, and the one thing Trump beats Biden on in surveys is running the economy, a very scary number :

While the actual economic numbers are good, people mostly look at how much money is in their pockets, asking: “What can I buy, given what I’m earning”? The August jobs report showed continued solid gains in aggregate pay for nonsupervisory workers even after inflation is taken into account. From the Bondad blog:

“Average Hourly Earnings for Production and Nonsupervisory Personnel increased $.06, or +0.2%, to $29.00, a YoY gain of +4.5%….”

YoY is year over year. By comparison, the most recent Consumer Price Index for July was 3.3%. Pay increases have been outpacing overall CPI inflation this year. So wages are creeping up, inflation is almost under control, and there’s no recession on the horizon.

A helpful statistic is that spending on pleasure boats is near previous highs, Axios reports:

“Why it matters: You don’t buy a boat unless you’re feeling fairly confident the economic wind is at your back. So this is a good sign for the economy. The ongoing boat-buying binge — which began during COVID shutdowns — is another strike against the once dominant “looming recession” narrative.”

One million used boats sold in the last 12 months! One guess as to who’s buying all of these boats: It isn’t the antifa-BLM Marxist globalists from big cities and blue states. Florida and Texas are in the top three states in revenues from boating.

And you won’t buy a boat unless you’re fairly confident that the economic wind is at your back. That means despite what people are telling pollsters, people are feeling pretty good about the economy.

Pfeiffer notes that all isn’t lost. As of now, Biden is in better shape politically than Obama was at this juncture. August of 2011 was the first (and only) time Obama’s approval dropped below 40%, and he was losing to a generic Republican. More:

“The primary reason for the statistical tie in the race is that Trump is holding onto more of his 2020 vote than Biden. In a NYT poll, 91% of Trump’s 2020 voters are supporting him again while only 87% percent of Biden’s voters plan to vote for him in 2024.”

“Among Biden’s 2020 voters, only 77% percent of Democrats in the poll have a favorable opinion of Biden, compared to 80% of Republicans for Trump.”

But Pfeiffer says we shouldn’t panic, because convincing people who have already voted for Biden to vote for him again is doable, and easier than convincing a Trumper to vote for Biden. But despite that, given the Reddish tilt to the Electoral College, we should assume that 2024, like the 2020 presidential election, will depend on a number of voters smaller than the number of attendees at a Taylor Swift concert.

A second point we talked about was Biden’s age. There are two referendums that will be a part of the 2024 presidential election. First, on Trump and his 91 counts. Second, on Biden’s age and whether he seems up to the task going forward.

It’s one thing for Biden to tell us about all that his administration has accomplished in 3 years. His results should be pitched to turn his vulnerability as an older person into a perception of wisdom. He needs to convince voters that the country is on a good path and that Biden, our captain, with his age and experience, has steered us to where we’re starting to see success.

Charlie Sykes suggests the pitch should sound like this:

“We’ve done the hard work. We took the punches. We had a plan and now it’s starting to turn around. So the question is, as we come back, who do you want in charge for the next four years?”

And when Republicans spew their litany of racial hatred, and class warfare, Biden should be saying:

“Working folks like you need cheaper prescription drugs, you need to be able to spend more time with your family by getting better wages for your labor…”

Ultimately 2024 will be about voter turnout. Convincing younger voters and those who aren’t fired up about Biden to come out to the polls will decide America’s fate.

Now take a beat and forget about the many crises we face. Let’s focus instead on our Saturday Soother. We’re expecting beautiful weather in the northeast, and much of our time will be spent outside. So join Wrongo in pulling up a comfy chair in the shade and spend a few minutes watching this lovely video of a Loon family swimming on a lake in a thunderstorm. It’s guaranteed to improve your outlook. You may want to bookmark this video to use whenever our politics are driving you nuts:

The Wrongologist

Geopolitics, Power and Political Economy

Category: Playlist

Kevin Shows His Little Spine

What’s “My Kevin” Gonna Do?

The Auto Strike

More Fresh Hell In Washington DC

Romney Exits

Musk Is A Putin Pawn

Labor Day Thoughts

Why The Polls Are Wrong