You shouldnât be cruising the interwebs today, but in case you are, here is some music of the season.
Here is âThe First Nowellâ performed in 2010 by at the King’s College, Cambridge by the choir and the congregation. Although the spelling seems jarring, this is the correct spelling of the English version of the French NoĂ«l. The words and music both come from the English West Country. The arrangement is by Sir David Willcocks:
Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.
Next, here are the Piano Guys with âO Come, O Come Emmanuelâ. The text comes from a 7-verse poem that dates back to the 8th century:
Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.
Finally, here are the Avett Brothers doing George Harrisonâs âGive Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth)â. Harrison was probably the most spiritual rock musician. This isnât a Christmas song, but it represents the spirit of the season better than most. This was recorded on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert on Inauguration Day, January 20, 2017.
Weâve rarely needed peace on earth more than we have since then:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opLtaR8jaNQ
Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.
Wrongo and Ms. Right want to again thank you for reading. We wish everyone a merry and bright few days.
Nine. Just nine countries voted against the UN General Assemblyâs resolution on Jerusalem, demanding that the US rescind its declaration that Jerusalem should be Israelâs capital. That included us. Our major allies like Britain, France, Germany and Japan voted for the resolution, though some allies, like Australia and Canada, abstained. The overall vote tally was 128 to 9, with 35 abstentions, for the resolution. From the Guardian:
Nine states â including the United States and Israel âvoted against the resolution. The other countries which supported Washington were Togo, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Marshall Islands, Guatemala and Honduras.
Along the way, the world was treated to Nikki Haley telling UN diplomats that she would be taking down the names of those who failed to vote with the US. It may surprise you to know that the Russians call Haley the âWaffle House Bumpkinâ. Trump went further, saying:
All of these nations that take our money and then they vote against us at the Security Council or they vote against us…at the Assembly…They take hundreds of millions of dollars and even billions of dollars and then they vote against us…Well, weâre watching those votes…Let them vote against us; weâll save a lot. We donât care.
Iraq, Afghanistan, Jordan, Turkey and Egypt voted for the resolution. Do you think that means that they don’t need the money badly enough to roll over when ordered? Or is something larger at stake?
Stewart M. Patrick, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said:
I think this was a…self-inflicted wound and really unnecessary, clumsy diplomacy on the part of the United States…More than that, I think it symbolizes the self-defeating notion that for the United States, âitâs my way or the highway.â
Since the Inauguration, we practice foreign policy, kindergarten-style. Taking names and threatening our allies will not make Trump and/or Haley successful statesmen. And no, this isnât an example of “The Art of the Deal“: There will be no deal when one country tries to bully the entire world.
There has been lots of right wingnut talk about the US “getting out of the UNâ, and it isnât beyond the realm of the possible with the current administration.
It is truly painful to watch America in decline, both at home, and abroad. And a time when US global leadership is more necessary than it has been since the end of the Cold War. Come on, Trump, give us back the US we love and the US the world needs.
Will he do it? Can he?
Well, itâs Saturday, and if you haven’t finished your participation in Making America Great by maxing out your credit cards, you need a really big soother. Today, we continue with Christmas music.
So brew a hot steaming cup of Red Rooster Coffeeâs Holiday Blend, ($14.99/lb.) with its notes of crĂšme brulee, caramel, and gingersnap cookie.
Now get in a chair where you can see your (hopefully) fully-decorated tree and turn on the tree lights, settle back and listen to âL’Adieu des Bergersâ (the Shepherdâs Farewell) by Hector Berlioz.
Nature tells us that while we were talking breathlessly about Trumpâs tax cuts, on Tuesday, the US government lifted ban on risky pathogen research:
The National Institutes of Health will again fund research that makes viruses more dangerous. The US government has lifted its controversial ban on funding experiments that make certain pathogens more deadly or transmissible.
The research that will now get government funding involves three viruses: Influenza, SARS, and MERS, viruses that could kill millions if they mutated in a way that let the germs spread quickly among people.
More from Nature:
The NIH announcement ends a moratorium on what is called gain-of-function research that began in October 2014. Back then, some researchers argued that the agencyâs ban…was too broad. The 21 projects halted by the policy included studies of seasonal flu and efforts to develop vaccines.
The NIH eventually allowed 10 of these studies to proceed, but three projects using the MERS virus and eight dealing with flu remained ineligible for US government grants, until now.
Biologists say they need to alter these viruses in the lab to understand what genetic changes matter in starting pandemics, allowing them to understand the risks, and get prepared. But some of their past efforts to tinker with viruses have made other scientists uneasy.
In 2011, scientists revealed that they had deliberately made forms of a deadly bird flu that could spread easily among ferrets, a stand-in for people in flu studies. Critics argued that the knowledge gained wasn’t worth the danger of creating a super flu that might escape the lab. In early 2012, virologists agreed to put a voluntary moratorium on their bird flu work that was supposed to last only 60 days, but ended up lasting more than a year.
Now, these scientists will once again get federal money to conduct âgain-of-functionâ research on pathogens such as influenza viruses. But the agency also said that researchersâ grant applications will undergo greater scrutiny than in the past. NIH Director Francis Collins said the goal is to standardize:
A rigorous process that we really want to be sure weâre doing right…
Nature quotes Marc Lipsitch, an epidemiologist at the Harvard School of Public Health, who says that gain-of-function studies:
Have done almost nothing to improve our preparedness for pandemics â yet they risked creating an accidental pandemic…
He argues that such experiments should not take place at all. But if the government is going to fund them, there needs to be the extra level of review that NIH seems prepared to implement.
Really, what could go wrong? We still donât know precisely how weaponized anthrax that was used to attack several news media offices and two Democratic Senators, killing five people and infecting 17 others, escaped from the government’s bio-defense labs at Fort Detrick in Maryland, one week after the 9/11 attack.
OTOH, basic scientific research is a public good. Samuel Stanley, the president of NYâs Stony Brook University told NPR:
Basic research on these agents by laboratories that have shown they can do this work safely is key to global security…
Weâve got to trust that the NIH will select scientists and labs that have rigorous containment procedures and manage the process to insure that what could become the worldâs most dangerous bio-weapons remain safely locked away.
On to more Christmas music! Letâs listen and watch the Royal Choral Society perform the âHallelujah Chorusâ from Handel’s Messiah. The Royal Choral Society has performed Handel’s Messiah on Good Friday at the Royal Albert Hall every year since 1876. We seem to like it at Christmas. This performance is from April, 2012:
This music lifts your heart up and can help wipe away the hate in the world.
Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.
The Asia Times reports that China has told Syria that it is ready to play a major role in helping to rebuild after the war:
The worldâs second biggest economy has already pledged US$2 billion for reconstruction work at the aptly-named First Trade Fair on Syrian Reconstruction Projects in Beijing.
The Asia Times quotes Dr. Gideon Elazar, a post-doctoral fellow at Ben-Gurion University: (link in the quote added by Wrongo)
One factor motivating the countryâs involvement is the One Belt-One Road Initiative â a planned attempt to establish and control a modern day Silk Road connecting China, the Middle East and Europe. This might mark a shift in the geo-strategic reality of the region…
Beijing sees a huge opportunity on the horizon now that Syria is edging towards peace after its brutal war. More than 30 Chinese companies are reported to have visited Syria this year. The main topic of discussions with provincial governors was infrastructure projects.
Syriaâs ambassador to China, Imad Mustafa, explained that Beijingâs projected role was a direct result of its aid to Assadâs regime:
China, Russia and Iran have provided substantial support to Syria during the military conflict…Therefore, it is these three countries that should play a major role in the reconstruction of Syria.
The ultimate costs of reconstruction are staggering. After seven years of war, Syriaâs economy lies in tatters with about US$226 billion in cumulative losses from 2011 until 2016. Data from the World Bank in July showed that amount was about four times Syriaâs GDP in 2010.
Dr. Elazar pointed to an important strategic consideration:
It is likely that China is hoping to turn Syria into an important terminus of its economic web, perhaps centered around the Mediterranean ports of Latakia and Tartus.
Remember that Latakia and Tartus have hosted huge Russian facilities for years, and have been greatly reinforced militarily since Russiaâs involvement in the Syrian War.
So where are the US and Western Europe in all of this? The Diplomat reports that we are outside looking in:
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said that the international community should attach importance to and actively support the reconstruction of Syria…
This is code, since the US and Western Europe have said that their help would only begin when Syria made a political transition away from Bashir al-Assad towards the so-called opposition (paid for by the Saudis). Since Assad is supported by Russia, China and Iran, we are once again out of step with the reality on the ground.
So, letâs review: The US and its Middle East allies provoked a civil war in Syria to take down Assad (who is no doubt, a very bad guy). To do so, we decided to ally with al-Qaeda (Remember? The guys responsible for 9/11?). In the subsequent dust up, the USâs âmoderateâ allies got beaten militarily. It was an unambiguous defeat by the alliance of Assad, Russia and Iran. The US-backed Syrian Kurds now seem likely to move away from us and make a deal with Assad to keep some form of Kurdish self-government within Syria.
And now the Chinese, the Russians and Iranians will profit from the rebuilding, helping Syria regain its strategic location as a key hub for trans-Asian trade. And Syria will be firmly within the Iranian/Russian/Chinese orbit.
So a few questions: Who in America takes responsibility for enabling this war and then losing it? And while losing it, greatly strengthening our rivals? Will we fire anyone?
And why is our supposedly free press not asking these obvious questions?
Let Wrongo answer for you: For the past month, the administration and the foreign policy establishment have been making the rounds saying that the US and the Coalition were responsible for defeating ISIS, that Russia and Iran (along with the Syrians) had little to do with the outcome.
The spin is that there was no defeat â it was a victory, so thankfully, no one is responsible for âlosingâ!
Letâs get in a better mood for Christmas and the holiday season. Here is the ever-reliable Mormon Tabernacle performing âHark! The Herald Angels Singâ from December, 2012:
Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.
The WSJâs Weekend Edition had an article about the cultural and economic split between small towns and big towns in America. In âOne Nation, Divisibleâ, Michael Phillips follows a young woman, Caity Cronkhite, who left rural Indiana for San Francisco. Caity recalls:
All growing up, if we were too smart or too successful or too anything, there was always someone ready to say, âDonât be so proud of yourselfâ…
Caity was smart. She bucked the system to graduate from high school a year early, but the school would not let her be named valedictorian, because she had skipped a grade. She left town, got a scholarship to Carnegie-Mellon, graduated and became a technical writer for SalesForce.com.
Still, she remained attached to her home town. She wrote an online 5000+ word essay about Kingman IN. It brought thousands of hateful responses from Kingman, including:
So keep your elitistsâ rear ends in your little office cubicles while we handle the tough, physical things that keep you and your perfect friends alive…
That anger about town vs. city brought to mind Merle Haggardâs 1969 tune, âOkie from Muskogeeâ. Haggard and the band were on a bus outside of Muskogee when a band member joked that the citizens in Muskogee probably didn’t smoke marijuana. In about 20 minutes, Haggard had the song. The band played it the next night at the Fort Bragg, NC officers club. And after the verse:
We don’t burn our draft cards down on Main Street,
We like living right and being free.
The officers stood and gave huge applause. They had to play the song four times to get offstage. The song later went to number one on the Billboard country music charts. At the time, Reuters reported: (emphasis by Wrongo)
Haggard has tapped, perhaps for the first time in popular music, into a vast reservoir of resentment against the long-haired young and their underground society.
So in 2017, a young woman worries about being accepted in her small home town after finding success while living in San Francisco. While 48 years earlier, âOkieâ was telling small town America to have pride, and that it was ok to be for the Vietnam War, and against student protesters.
These two events made Wrongo think about the roots of todayâs fractious sociopolitical divide in America.
People in small towns have to fit in, the place is too small to look different, or subscribe to ideas that are outside the main stream in their townâs culture. If they do, the local hierarchy has ways of enforcing conformance with the dominant ethos. People insist that you should fit in. They think that everybody should fit in, and they donât understand why there are places in America that donât operate that way.
Haggardâs hit brought small-town America self-identification and pride. And it galvanized the âusâ vs. âthemâ attitudes in small-town USA that were opposed to the growing counter-culture of the 1960âs, and the student opposition to the Vietnam War.
Americans always gather into relatively small groups. People in cities have misconceptions about small town life, just like rural Americans have them about cities.
The nature of todayâs politics, and the nature of group identity in America pushes us into sparring camps. You can call it your âtribeâ, your âpeopleâ, or your âteamâ, but groups in small-town America have a well-defined sense of identity. It is different from the identity politics in big-city America, where there are hundreds of examples of people of many different groups. Large metropolitan areas are much more diverse, but they are also knitted together by a transcendent identity with place.
Ms. Cronkhiteâs parents planned on selling the farm and retiring, but Caity wasnât ready to let it all go:
If I ever have kids, theyâre never going to understand this huge part of me…I want there to be a reminder of where I come from and who I am.
Her parents sold her about 10 acres for the per-acre price her father had paid in 1972. Caity plans to build a small house. She said:
Iâm still a rural American.
But she doesnât plan on moving back just now. Fewer and fewer of us are rural Americans, and while those societies shrink, no dominant identity is replacing it.
But the sometimes-toxic sociology of small groups, or Merle Haggardâs sentiments, canât be allowed to destroy what America has in common. In fact, appropriation of culture and patriotism by one tribe is a threat to our common good. Thus when Haggard says:
We still wave Old Glory down at the courthouse,
Heâs misappropriating, since every town has always flown Old Glory at the courthouse, and wouldnât dream of taking it down.
Time to wake up America! Fight the appropriation of our symbols and ideals. To help you wake up, here is Merle Haggard with âOkie from Muskogeeâ:
His concern is about the declining US birth rate. The Boston Globe reports that:
Ten years ago, the typical American woman had about 2.1 children. Today, it is about 1.77, representing a collapse in fertility on par with the declines in other countries that yielded Japanâs rapidly graying population in the 1990s, or Canadaâs massive present-day demand for immigrants.
From Ryanâs news conference: (parenthesis by Wrongo)
People â this is going to be the new economic challenge for America. People…I did my part, (Ryan has three kids) but we need to have higher birth rates in this country. Meaning, baby boomers are retiring, and we have fewer people following them in the work force…We have something like a 90% increase in the retirement population in America, but only a 19% increase in the working population in America…
It is true that birth rates in the US have declined, but thatâs not necessarily bad news. For example, birth rates for teenagers hit a record low last year. Also, Wrongo recently described McKinseyâs report on jobs lost to automation that showed 75 million jobs are at risk in the US by 2030.
Perhaps we already have too many workers for the jobs revolution that is occurring all around us.
And thereâs an obvious solution to the problem that Ryan ignores: Allowing more immigrants into the country, either to fill the jobs being vacated by retiring baby boomers, or as necessary to meet tomorrowâs job requirements. But Ryan shows that heâs all in with Trumpâs hard line anti-immigration positions.
Should American women become brood mares? This isnât a new concept. The fear of being outnumbered by racial and ethnic minorities is the driving force behind todayâs alt-right, and the view was around in earlier white nationalist movements. HuffPo interviewed Kelly J. Baker, author of âGospel According to the Klanâ. Baker says that the need to ensure that white women were having more white babies was a key part of the Ku Klux Klanâs platform during its resurgence in the 1920s: (emphasis by Wrongo)
Baker said that the 1920s Klan was ânervousâ about the possibility of widespread birth control for white women…To push back against the rising availability of effective birth control, the Klan told white women that having as many white children as possible is your job and it matters for your family and your race and for America.
And now, Ryan makes this a mainstream GOP idea. For all of the political empowerment of women in todayâs headlines, the Ryan argument lands in the same place as todayâs alt-right, and yesterdayâs KKK.
Ryan and the GOP want to see more babies, but they wonât support young kids with health insurance through the Childrenâs Health Insurance Program (CHIP). Quartz reports that next month, 600,000 American children will lose their CHIP coverage. CHIP has been instrumental in ensuring health care coverage of children in US families that arenât poor enough to qualify for Medicaid, but cannot afford any other form of insurance.
Republicans talk a lot about the cost of healthcare. The cost of not providing healthcare to children in an America with failing schools is impossible to calculate. It is very high, it lasts lifetimes and possibly, generations.
Yet, Ryan is saying that American women need to have more babies to Make America Great Again.
And we know that heâs asking for more white babies.
OK, itâs Saturday, and we need a break from toxic politics, and maybe from obsessing about shopping for gifts. Hanukkah began this week, so Wrongo looked for a soothing piece of music that was inspired by the celebration of the Festival of Lights. Here is âHanukkah Overture for String Orchestra and Clarinetâ by Adam Shugar.
The Fuego Volcano in Guatemala erupts under the Milky Way, Antigua, Guatemala â photo by Albert Dros
While we were all focused on the Alabama senate election, on Tuesday, Donald Trump signed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), a bill that sets spending limits for the US military in the coming fiscal year.
Buried in the bill is a discussion of climate change. The NDAA contains a provision making clear that âthe sense of Congressâ is that:
Climate change is a direct threat to the national security of the United States.
The provision cites statements from Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, former defense secretary Robert Gates, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr. and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI).
This creates an interesting moment for Trump, who signed the bill knowing this was in its language. He did not add a signing statement disavowing the provision, so heâs placing the climate change provisions of the NDAA directly opposite his stance on climate change, and his disavowal of the Paris Agreement.
By signing the bill, Trump also ordered a report on âvulnerabilities to military installationsâ that climate change could cause in the next 20Â years. More from the bill:
As global temperatures rise, droughts and famines can lead to more failed states, which are breeding grounds of extremist and terrorist organizations…In the Marshall Islands, an Air Force radar installation built on an atoll at a cost of $1 billion, is projected to be underwater within two decades. A three-foot rise in sea levels will threaten the operations of more than 128 United States military sites, and it is possible that many of these at-risk bases could be submerged in the coming years…
Lawfare reports that the billâs climate change provision is as important for what it doesnât require as for what it does. The bill doesnât require that Gen. Mattis develop a policy to solve the problems that it acknowledges climate change poses. Instead, it merely requires that he provide an explanation of its âeffects.â
This was Congressâs way of dealing with an earlier contentious debate about including the climate provision at all. The amendment to deny its inclusion failed by 185-234. Also, the military is not the agency responsible for regulating carbon emissions, so the impact of its requirements on policy may be small.
While the requirement that Mattis produce a report on the âmitigationsâ that will ensure âresiliencyâ could be construed as creating a policy response, the fact remains that there is no explicit direction that he implement any of the mitigations on which heâll be reporting.
More from Lawfare: (brackets and emphasis by the Wrongologist)
According to the Congressional Research Service, as of 2012, the Department of Defense was âthe largest organizational user of petroleum in the world.â…And the thousands of [military] aircraft…accounted for 22% of all jet fuel used by the US as of 2008.
The bill includes money to buy 30 more planes than the military asked for (24 reliable old F/A-18s instead of 14, and 90 of the newer lemon, the F-35, instead of 70). The US Navy asked for one new Littoral Combat Ship. The NDAA budgets for three.
Translation: $Billions for the aerospace and ship-building government contractors. This year, the Defense expenditures tab will come to about $2,160 for every man, woman and child in the US.
Feel like youâre getting your moneyâs worth?
A quick note about Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nominee Sister Rosetta Tharpe. Most havenât heard of her, but she was an innovator on the electric guitar. She preferred to play a Gibson SG, and she was among the first to use heavy distortion. In 1947, Sister Rosetta put the then 14-year-old Little Richard on stage. Johnny Cash said that she was his favorite singer, and biggest inspiration. When she plays, you understand where Chuck Berry got his big guitar ideas. Here is Sister Rosetta Tharpe doing âThatâs Allâ from 1964âs âLive in Paris âalbum:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9bX5mzdihs
Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.
Fall in Sugar Hollow 2017, near Charlottesville, VA
Wrongo doesn’t have much Christmas spirit this year. Maybe the fractured state of US politics has something to do with his grumpiness. But, it’s Saturday, and we need something positive as we face the start of the gift-buying and gift-giving season, so let’s focus on Iceland: (editing and brackets by the Wrongologist)
Icelanders have a beautiful tradition of giving books to each other on Christmas Eve and then spending the night reading. This custom is so deeply ingrained in the culture that it is… [called] the Jolabokaflod, or “Christmas Book Flood,” when the majority of books in Iceland are sold between September and December in preparation for Christmas giving.
Imagine sitting around with the family on Christmas Eve and everyone reading by the fire. That sounds positively subversive in our consumer-driven culture. OTOH, in Iceland, all the restaurants are closed on the 24th and only a few open on the 25th, so the incentive to stay at home is greater than in the US. This might be something that appeals to some of you, in which case Wrongo highly suggests you take a trip to Iceland at Christmas (you might want to consider an iceland car rental if you do decide to go though), but for many of us this whole idea will be alien.
Treehugger points out that Iceland, with a population of only 329,000 people, is an extraordinarily literary country where people love to read and write. And according to the BBC:
The country has more writers, more books published and more books read, per head, than anywhere else in the world…One in 10 Icelanders will publish [a book].
Icelanders receive a free catalog of new books called the Bokatidindi in the fall. They then pore over the new releases and choose which ones they want to buy. Baldur Bjarnason, Icelandic book industry researcher says:
It’s like the firing of the guns at the opening of the race…It’s not like. this is a catalog that gets put in everybody’s mailbox and everybody ignores it. Books get attention here.
And people prefer physical, paper books. Nowadays we’re seeing an increase of these readers and writers coming and wanting to learn how to publish a book, and then they themselves can have a physical book in which they’ve actually written. A bookstore manager told NPR:
The book in Iceland is such an enormous gift, you give a physical book. You don’t give e-books here.
Now, at The Mansion of Wrong, physical books are always on the Christmas gift menu. This year, Wrongo intends to give multiple copies of two books to family:
“American Wolf” by Nate Blakeslee is the biography of a single female wolf in Yellowstone. But the story is told from many sides, including those ranchers who opposed the re-introduction of wolves into the park, the wildlife biologists that worked to help wolves flourish in Yellowstone, and the hunters looking for their next trophy. It shows the best, and the pettiest of our society in a microcosm.
“Spy of the First Person” by Sam Shepard tells Shepard’s story of facing death from ALS. This isn’t for everyone, but Wrongo’s brother died of ALS in 2016, and this first-person account of what an ALS victim goes through has meaning for Wrongo, his sisters, and all who loved Kevin.
Reading on a winter evening is something everyone ought to incorporate into their family’s celebration of Christmas. At the Mansion of Wrong, we celebrate physical books. They are among the few things we collect, that we read, and occasionally re-read, that we pass on to family and friends. Remember: 30 minutes of reading per day equals about 2.2 million words a year. And you could learn a few things!
So, for at least a few minutes we have forgotten politics and toxic personalities. Keep it going by brewing a fresh cup of Redbeard Blue Collar Coffee: ($16.95/lb.). With its “notes of milk chocolate and salted caramel and a smooth body at a medium roast level“, it’s kind of a Christmas blend. Sit by the window and watch the last few leaves fight to remain on the trees, and listen to The Chamber Music Center of NY perform a flash mob of chamber music at the Bank of America Tower:
Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.
The big question is will the tax bill really go through reconciliation, or can Paul Ryan convince House Republicans to vote for it essentially as is? The three factions Ryan has to deal with inside his own party might make a straight agreement a hard sell. Will a successful reconciliation happen? Odds seem to be in its favor. However, things could go sideways. There’s plenty in the bills to anger just enough of the three Republican House factions, and they’re more exposed to a potential 2018 wave election than the Senators. State and local tax deduction are a sticking point, and what about the deficit? It will be an interesting and stressful next few weeks.
Returning to yesterdayâs David Stockmanâs analysis: The standard deduction is doubled in both bills to $24,000 per household, costing $737 billion while changing the tax brackets from seven to four (in the House bill) costs $1.17 trillion.
When all the puts and takes are finished on the personal income tax side, what America gets from 2018-2027 is a $1.20 trillion net reduction in personal income taxes. But, as we showed in yesterdayâs chart, dead people and rich people stand to benefit the most.
So, whatâs left is a tiny $352 billion tax cut for rest of Americaâs 145 million tax filers over the entire next decade. On average, thatâs about $242 per person per year!
Couldn’t $1.4 trillion been better spent on refurbishment of our infrastructure rather than in giveaways to corporations? Do corporations really need more government aid at a time when they are recording near-record profits, and hold huge cash reserves that they are not spending on hiring, wage increases or investment in the USA?
Itâs long past time for America to wake up!! Whether you support the tax bill or hate it, itâs also past time to clean out the sewer that is Congress. It will take about six years of organizing, finding progressive candidates, and GETTING OUT THE VOTE, to deliver mostly new faces in DC.
We must break up the “old thugs club” that Congress has become. To help us wake up and start on political renewal, letâs listen to George Harrisonâs âTaxmanâ. This was the Beatlesâ musical complaint about how much they were paying in taxes in the UK. “Mr. Wilson” and “Mr. Heath” are mentioned in the lyrics. They are former British Prime Ministers Harold Wilson and Edward Heath, who contributed to writing English tax laws that at one point had a 95% marginal tax rate.
There are no high-def video recordings of the tune available online by the Beatles (it was released in 1966 on âRevolverâ), so here is Joe Bonamassa performing “Taxman” live at Liverpool’s Cavern Club, in June 2016. Itâs his bluesy take on the Beatlesâ pop sensibilities:
Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.
Coyote, Housatonic River – Litchfield County, CT â photo by JH Clery
At the risk of sounding like the discredited Democrat John Edwards, we do live in two Americas. The top rungs of the ladder are living a good life, benefiting from the nine-year rebound from the Great Recession. The other 90% havenât done well at all. Check out this chart of median household income:
The chart shows median (not average) household income for the US, adjusted for inflation. Unlike average income, median income is not distorted by the enormous gains made by the one-percenters during the past decade.
The chart shows that for a household in the center of the US income distribution, 1999 was the best year ever. The housing bubble brought median household income almost back to its 1999 level in 2007, but not quite. Today, median household income (adjusted for inflation) is slightly lower than it was in 1989, in the first year of the George H.W. Bush administration.
How can this be? The economy is growing, and the US should have a squeaky-tight job market, since unemployment is at a 17-year low at 4.1%, a jobless figure that is near the definition of full employment. Weâve had seven straight years of job growth; job searches lasting 15 weeks or longer are now only 1.5% of the work force, down from 2% a year ago.
But wage growth is anemic. According to the law of supply and demand, employers should be sharply bidding up wages in order to capture increasingly scarce workers. But they aren’t. In October, they raised wages just a bit more than inflation, at an annual rate of 2.4%, down from September’s rate of 2.8%.
This is what imperial decay looks like to the middle class. Keep spending your seed corn tilting at windmills in the Middle East, and pretty soon some in the middle class are dumpster diving.
And consider this: Only a little more than half of America has a retirement account, such as a 401(k) or Individual Retirement Account, according to the Federal Reserve. And the typical household with a retirement account had a balance of $60,000 last year, but there are big variations. Among the top 10% of households by income, the typical amount of savings was $403,000. Middle-income households had a median of $25,000.
Everyone who isnât in the top 10% knows just how bad things are, and those below the top 20% feel it every day.
But what can they do about it? They work, many working multiple jobs. They get home exhausted. Theyâre too poor to run for office in a rigged plutocracy. So they go to bed and get up and go to work again in the morning, either depressed and angry, or simply depressed.
Thatâs about all they can do, except to vote for politicians who have no intention of working to change their economic situation.
Each resulting government is worse than the last. Not to mention at this point in terms of power over peopleâs lives, even the government is dwarfed by the power of multinational corporations.
Itâs long past time to wake up America! Weâve got to stop the hostile takeover of the middle class by plutocrats and corporations, but how to do it? We all have to get off the couch and work for local candidates who will be the bench strength of progressive politics down the road. We also must work to insure that our voting rights are not further eroded by polls that close early, or by efforts to prune the rolls of people who havenât voted in a few years. This is particularly heinous when less than 55% of eligible people vote even in our presidential elections.
To help us wake up, here is the 1970’s British group XTC with their tune âWake Upâ:
Takeaway Lyric:
You put your cleanest dirty shirt on
Then you stagger down to meet the dawn
You take a ride upon a bus, it’s just a fuss
You know it keeps you born
You get to know a morning face
You get to join the human race
You get to know the world has passed you by
