Playlist – Page 8 – The Wrongologist

Poetry Banned in Florida

The Daily Escape:

Storm, Outer Banks, NC – May 2023 photo by OBXbeachbum

You may remember that 18 days after the Jan 6th attack, a 22-year-old poet named Amanda Gorman stood on the steps of the Capitol. She addressed the nation’s fresh wounds and its uncertain future:

“A nation that isn’t broken, but simply unfinished.” What a beautiful sentiment.

But those exact words offended a Miami Lakes, Florida serial book banner named Daily Salinas. Salinas alleged that “The Hills We Climb “ included references of critical race theory, indirect hate messages, gender ideology and indoctrination, according to school district records obtained by the Florida Freedom to Read Project. The Daily Beast reports that Salinas is an avid supporter of Ron DeSantis. She worked as a volunteer on his “Education Agenda Tour” in August 2022.

You can read Gorman’s full poem here. A video of Amanda Gorman reciting her poem at the 2020 Inauguration is here. Gorman reacted, saying in a Facebook post:

“Unnecessary #bookbans like these are on the rise, and we must fight back…”

A review by the WaPo of complaints in 153 school districts across the country for the 2021-2022 school year found that a:

“…majority of the 1,000-plus book challenges analyzed by The Post were filed by just 11 people.”

The WaPo says that each of these people brought 10 or more challenges against books in their school district; one man filed 92 challenges:

“Together, these serial filers constituted 6% of all book challengers — but were responsible for 60% of all filings….In some cases…these serial filers relied on a network of volunteers gathered together under the aegis of conservative parents’ groups such as Moms for Liberty.”

Not surprisingly, Daily Salinas is one of them. Miami Against Fascism alleges in a tweet thread that Salinas is associated with Moms for Liberty Miami-Dade county as well as with the Proud Boys and County Citizens Defending Freedom USA (CCDF), and a Christian nationalist group. From the LA Times:

“When asked if she was aware of professional reviews of the National Youth Poet Laureate’s poem, Salinas wrote, “I don’t need it.” And when asked to list the author, she wrote Oprah Winfrey. (Winfrey wrote the forward for the book version of the poem published in March 2021.)”

Here’s the form that Salinas filled out:

Look again at pgs. 12-13 from Gorman’s poem above. If you can detect a hate message, let Wrongo know. And saying that poetry will indoctrinate students? We should be so lucky. Gorman reacted in a tweet:

“I’m gutted…They ban my book from young readers, confuse me with Oprah, fail to specify what parts of my poetry they object to, refuse to read any reviews, and offer no alternatives,”

This is the Florida of Ron DeSantis. And this is the America he wants to create. DeSantis’s campaign merchandise touts that he will “Make America Florida.” Here are some stats that show how well DeSantis is governing Florida: Florida is 34th in fatal overdoses, 26th in teen birth rates, and 31st in infant mortality. FL ranks dead last in providing long-term care for older adults. Florida ranks 48th in teacher pay, 45th in per-pupil spending. Despite having a fairly high cost-of-living index (23^rd), Florida ranks dead last in providing unemployment benefits, giving recipients just $236 a week for just 12 weeks.

Most Americans would rather their states remain free from the fascist landscape that DeSantis has given Florida.

BTW: the Bible includes: Rape, incest, torture, slavery, bestiality. But apparently, it isn’t subject to the same standards that Daily Salinas uses, despite on the surface, being one nasty book.

We can’t let today go by without thinking about Tina Turner. She was one of the most important recording artists in American history. It’s pretty hard to describe how incredible and important she was for so many decades. In my twenties, Ms. Right and I got to see Ike and Tina Turner (and the Ikettes) live at Fillmore East in January 1970.

Later in her life (and ours) it was just Tina. One thing was consistent: Tina Turner blew the lid off of any joint where she performed. You can’t say that about many acts, but Tina could do just that. Sadly, the soundtrack to Wrongo’s life is growing fainter with time. Tina Turner’s passing adds to the growing list of performers from the past 70 years that Wrongo admired.

Take a few minutes to watch and listen to Tina and Mick Jagger perform “State Of Shock / It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll” in front of 100,000 people at Live Aid in 1985 at the JFK Stadium in Philadelphia:

Let’s hope Ike is burning in Hell.

Monday Wake Up Call – May 22, 2023

The Daily Escape:

Mountain Laurel with waterfall, Panther Creek trail, Chattahoochee NF, GA – May 2023 photo by Paula Johns

The Republican drumbeat to impose restrictions on women’s sexuality are growing ever louder. We’ve seen the Republicans pass laws to do exactly that in states where they have the legislative power to do so, regardless of local public opinion.

This Republican war on abortion, mifepristone, and contraception says that female bodily autonomy is a problem for most of the GOP (with some exceptions). It is pursued by Republican politicians from the lowliest state legislator to the Party’s representatives on the Supreme Court.

Some say that the Republican Party isn’t anti-woman, but the actions of Republican-led states and legislatures provide the best guide to what the Republican Party wants to do, and the best insight into the society it hopes to build. When Republicans call for a return to traditional values in family life, they mean returning to a legal and cultural place where women no longer have the freedom to leave bad marriages, the freedom to choose to have some or no children, or the freedom to obtain professional employment.

Jamelle Bouie had an op-ed in Sunday’s NYT about state GOPs efforts to gain cultural control over life in America. He outlined the “Republican Four Freedoms”, which are decidedly different from FDRs:

There is the freedom to control — to restrict the bodily autonomy of women and repress the existence of anyone who does not conform to traditional gender roles.

There is the freedom to exploit — to allow the owners of business and capital to weaken labor and take advantage of workers as they see fit.

There is the freedom to censor — to suppress ideas that challenge and threaten the ideologies of the ruling class.

And there is the freedom to menace — to carry weapons wherever you please, to brandish them in public, to turn the right of self-defense into a right to threaten other people.

And the Right continues to try to move the limits of control even further. Rolling Stone reports that:

“Republicans across the country are now reconsidering no-fault divorce. There isn’t a huge mystery behind the campaign: Like the crusades against abortion and contraception, making it more difficult to leave an unhappy marriage is about control.”

If you think that’s strange, more than two-thirds of all heterosexual divorces in the US are initiated by women. All 50 states and DC have no-fault divorce laws on the books — laws that allow either party to walk away from an unhappy marriage without having to prove abuse, infidelity, or other misconduct in court.

It took more than four decades to end fault-based divorce in America: California was the first state to eliminate it, in 1969; New York didn’t come around until 2010. But Mississippi and South Dakota still only allow no-fault divorce if both parties agree to dissolve the marriage.

Researchers who tracked the emergence of no-fault divorce laws state by state over that period found that the passage of no-fault divorce resulted in a 20% decline in suicide for married women in the first decade, and about a 40% decline since the first law passed in 1967. There also were dramatic drops in the rates of domestic violence, and spousal homicide of women.

Texas and other states are looking at legislation to end no-fault divorce. More from Rolling Stone:

“A…proposal is presently being workshopped by the Republican Party of Louisiana. The Nebraska GOP has affirmed its belief that no-fault divorce should only be accessible to couples without children.”

“At the Republican National Convention in 2016 — the last time the party platform was overhauled — delegates considered adding language declaring, “Children are made to be loved by both natural parents united in marriage. Legal structures such as No Fault Divorce, which divides families and empowers the state, should be replaced by a Fault-based Divorce.”

It’s kinda awful that Republican males seem to think that the only way to retain their partner is to legally trap them in the marriage. The GOP effort to end no-fault divorce is becoming a key piece of their agenda.

Time to wake up America! The GOP has been captured by religious radicals and wingnut social conservatives who would be happy if they could return the country to the way society was in the 1940s.

To help you wake up, watch and listen to Gloria Gaynor perform her hit “I Will Survive”, the ultimate breakup song. Did you ever notice at weddings, whenever this is played, all the women get up and dance?

Saturday Soother – May 20, 2023

The Daily Escape:

Daffodils, Laurel Ridge, Litchfield CT – May 2023 photo by Dave King

The oil industry enjoys special economic status in the US. That is demonstrated by the tax breaks and outright subsidies we give them. Hannah Dunlevy notes that:

“In 2020, the explicit and implicit fossil fuel subsidies cost the United States $662 billion, around $2,006 per capita. Cutting just two tax breaks for the fossil fuel industry — the intangible drilling costs subsidy and the percentage depletion tax break — could generate $17.9 billion in government revenue over ten years, according to Congress’s non-partisan Joint Committee on Taxation.”

Biden’s fiscal year 2024 budget proposed cutting some of tax subsidies for oil and gas companies, which would save the US $31 billion over ten years. It will probably not survive the current Debt Ceiling and budget discussions.

One hidden subsidy that the oil industry enjoys is when wells are no longer productive – they are idled. If it’s no longer profitable to return idled wells to production, they need to be plugged. And the cost of plugging a well can be $100,000 or more.

The problem is that when wells start to decline, they are sold by Big Oil to smaller producers. When the well is sold, the plugging and cleanup liability passes to the new buyer. And often, the new buyer simply walks away from the uneconomic well, creating what the industry calls “orphaned wells”. But if a company doesn’t plug its wells before walking away, the cleanup costs will ultimately fall to taxpayers and current operators.

This has already happened with thousands of wells in California and may happen to millions more across the country. Pro Publica reports that there are more than two million unplugged oil wells scattered across the US. California is just the tip of the iceberg.

Petroleum reservoir engineer Dwayne Purvis laid out the reality at a recent conference. His research shows that more than 90% of the country’s unplugged wells are either idle or minimally producing and unlikely to make a comeback.

California is the canary in a coal mine. Shell and ExxonMobil recently agreed to sell more than 23,000 California wells which they owned through a joint venture, to a German asset management group IKAV for an estimated $4 billion. This means that a subsidiary of IKAV now owns about a quarter of California’s oil and gas production, largely in Kern and Ventura counties.

This ownership shift moves the subsequent environmental liability from Big Oil powerhouses to firms with smaller capitalization, increasing the risk that aging wells will be left orphaned, unplugged and leaking oil, brine and methane. For California and other states, this could repeat what was seen in coal mining, which led to taxpayers bearing all of the cleanup costs.

The oil industry has created layers of LLCs that are used to screen Big Oil from the dirty end of the oil business, like responsibility for cleaning up the messes that they make. And these firms can easily declare bankruptcy rather than pay for cleaning up orphan or idle wells.

ProPublica reports on an analysis by Carbon Tracker Initiative, a financial think tank that used the California regulators’ draft methodology for calculating the costs associated with plugging oil and gas wells and decommissioning them along with their related infrastructure.

The cost categories included plugging wells, dismantling surface infrastructure and decontaminating polluted drilling sites. That would cost California about $13.2 billion. Adding inflation and the price of decommissioning miles of pipeline could bring the total cleanup bill to $21.5 billion.

Meanwhile, Purvis estimates that California oil and gas production will earn only about $6.3 billion in future profits over the remaining course of operations; nowhere near sufficient to pay for the cleanup, even if those profits could be captured by the state.

That’s just California. These costs are what economists call “Externalities”. An externality is an indirect cost (or benefit) to a party (taxpayers) that arises as an effect of another party’s (Oil Companies) economic activity. The problem is that the price of their product doesn’t include the externalities. That means there is a gap between the profit of these corporations and the aggregate loss to society as a whole.

Republicans have a tried and true solution for this problem. Taxpayers pay the bills. We’re back to the “privatize profit, socialize the losses” game that corporations have played forever. Maybe the correct terminology should be socialism for the rich.

They prefer to call it keeping government off the backs of job creators.

Time to let go of California’s messy problem and find a few minutes to center ourselves before next week which will bring either financial Armageddon, or a diminished Biden. At the Fields of Wrong, we had a freeze last Wednesday that caused us to cover the newly planted vegetables and bring the Meyer Lemon tree indoors. Spring in Connecticut can always show up with a backtracking nod towards winter.

But on this rainy Saturday, grab a chair by a big window and listen to Debussy’s “Nuages” (‘Clouds’) from his “Trois Nocturnes”. Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra made the first American recording of Debussy’s “Three Nocturnes” for a 1950 LP.

Here is the first “Nocturne”, a musical impression of slow-moving clouds:

Monday Wake Up Call – May 15, 2023

The Daily Escape:

Scarlet Tanager, Manomet Observatory, MA – May 2023 photo by Ken Grille Photography

Today, Wrongo is going to be a grumpy old mossback. It rarely suits his politics or his outlook on life, but the WaPo is reporting that automakers are removing AM radio from their new models:

“Automakers, such as BMW, Volkswagen, Mazda and Tesla, are removing AM radios from new electric vehicles because electric engines can interfere with the sound of AM stations. And Ford, one of the nation’s top-three auto sellers, is taking a bigger step, eliminating AM from all of its vehicles, electric or gas-operated.”

“Now, although 82 million Americans still listen to AM stations each month, according to the National Association of Broadcasters, the AM audience has been aging for decades. Ford says its data, pulled from internet-connected vehicles, shows that less than 5% of in-car listening is to AM stations.”

Wrongo remembers car radios before FM, and long before SiriusXM, listening to Wolfman Jack at night, beaming his show from the US–Mexico border. Or hearing Alan Freed talk about the “submarine races” in NYC. Later, living in London, he would listen to pirate radio instead of the BBC.

At night, rotating the AM dial to bring in stations like KDKA in Pittsburgh or WWVA in Wheeling, West Virginia was an art. It required that you avoid the interference of other stations or the snap and crackle of lightning. While driving in the car, the AM signal could also be corrupted by the hum of overhead power lines.

Now that less-than-ideal experience will soon be only a memory. But as always in America, there’s a political argument to be made about AM radio leaving a few high priced cars. More from WaPo:

“The removal of AM radio from cars — where about half of AM listening takes place — has sparked bipartisan protests. Some Democrats are fighting to save stations that often are the only live source of local information during extreme weather, as well as outlets that target immigrant audiences. Some Republicans…claim the elimination of AM radio is aimed at diminishing the reach of conservative talk radio, an AM mainstay….Eight of the country’s 10 most popular radio talk shows are conservative.”

But the auto makers aren’t abolishing AM radio; they’re just not offering it in their new cars. AM will persist on the dial in most of America.

As usual, the issue in America is profits. Eliminating AM is all about the numbers. From WaPo:

“Of the $11 billion in advertising revenue that radio pulled in last year, about $2 billion came into AM stations, according to BIA Advisory Services, which conducts research for broadcasters. And some of the country’s most lucrative radio stations are still on AM, mostly all-news or news and talk stations in big cities such as New York, Chicago, Atlanta and Los Angeles.”

BIA Advisory says that about 40% of AM stations have news, talk or sports formats; 11% are oriented to specific ethnic groups; and another 11% have a religious format. About a third of AM outlets play music, including Mexican and Spanish music. But they also report that the AM audience is getting smaller and older. The in-car streaming technology has grown exponentially, as has the trend away from music and toward podcasts and other spoken-word formats.

WaPo also quotes Pierre Bouvard from Cumulus Media, which owns more than 400 (mostly AM) stations:

“Radio is still the soundtrack of the American worker….It’s what people listen to on the way to work. And Ford owners are massive users of AM radio — 1 out of 5 AM listeners are Ford owners, so Ford is missing something here.”

But people can stream AM broadcasts into their cars if they must have AM programming.

The demographics of in-car listening aren’t fully understood. A new study by Edison Research found that young people often prefer AM and FM broadcast radio because it’s free. Edison says that overall, AM and FM radio still account for 60% of all in-car listening. SiriusXM satellite radio makes up 16%, followed by drivers’ own music from their phones at 7%, with podcasts and music videos at 4% each.

If this makes a difference to you, several manufacturers including Mitsubishi, Nissan, Subaru, Toyota, Honda, Hyundai, Kia and Jaguar Land Rover, said they have no plans to eliminate AM.

Time to wake up America! Nobody is shutting down AM radio stations! If you need AM in your new car, you’ll just have to shop for a car that offers it. Wrongo has nostalgia for the old days of AM radio, but the one AM station he listens to in the car can easily be streamed through Apple Air Play.

Let’s not create another faux cultural war issue over whether your new Tesla must have an AM dial. To help you wake up listen to Meatloaf performing “Paradise By The Dashboard Light” with Ellen Foley. It’s from his 1977 album “Bat out of Hell”:

Props to Mike and Marie S. who did the absolutely best karaoke version of this tune!

Saturday Soother – May 13, 2023

The Daily Escape:

Sunset, Monument Valley, AZ – April 2023 panoramic photo by Rich Vintage Photography

The ripples from Trump’s appearance on CNN continue. Politico reports that: (brackets by Wrongo)

“Nearly under his breath….Trump said that he and…Putin “used to talk about” Moscow’s intention to launch [an] invasion in Ukraine.”

What’s Trump talking about? The invasion happened in February 2022, more than a year after Trump left office. In fact, Russia didn’t even begin massing troops on the Ukraine border until March 2021 while Trump was already at Mar-a-Lago. Russia’s troops were partially withdrawn by June 2021, although the military infrastructure was left in place. The second build-up began in October 2021, lasting until the invasion in February 2022.

Politico says that Trump mumbled at some point, that he and Putin discussed Russia’s intention to launch a second, larger incursion of Ukraine. Was Trump talking to Putin about a possible invasion of Ukraine after Trump left office? If so, what are the chances that Trump shared his news with Biden?

Today, let’s spend a bit more time on one of the reasons why we must rebuild our energy grid. Wolf Richter of Wolf Street writes that in 2022, electric vehicles (EVs) made their first visible dent in US gasoline consumption: (parenthesis by Wrongo)

“Gasoline consumption in the US dipped by 0.4% in 2022…(vs.2021) to 369 million gallons per day…. below where it had been in 2002, and down by 5.7% from 2019, and by 5.9% from the peak in 2018, according to data from the Energy Department…”

Wolf reminds us that employment grew in 2022 by 4.8 million. And miles driven by all passenger and commercial vehicles, including those powered by diesel, ticked up nearly 1% to 3.17 trillion miles in 2022, according to the Federal Highway Administration:

Miles driven still haven’t recovered to 2019 levels (-2.8%). That’s probably due at least in part to reduced commuting during the Covid Work From Home times. Now, many office workers are either working from home entirely, or are going into the office on some days and working at home on others.

So the data show that the economy grew and people drove more miles, but they bought less gasoline:

The above chart shows the impact of the various recessions on gasoline consumption. The deep dip in 2020, and the 2021 recovery only brought gas consumption back to 2002 levels. Then they fell off again in 2022.

The question is why wasn’t there a further recovery in gas consumption from 2021 to 2022? One factor is the rising fuel economy of American vehicles. This started many years ago, and it continues today. But Richter says that the growth in ownership of EVs has dented US gasoline consumption:

“EV sales in 2022 grew to a share of about 7% of total new vehicle sales in the US. In California, EV sales in 2022 accounted for 17% of total sales. These numbers are starting to show up at the gas station as a decline in gasoline sales.”

Still a 7% share of market is small and for now, the impact on gasoline sales is also small in the US.

Another way to look at this is that while gas consumption declined, electricity sold to end-users in the US broke out of 15 years of stagnation and set a new record. The chart below shows that electric utilities have been a no-growth business for more than a decade, but now the volume of electricity sold is suddenly spiking:

Wrongo isn’t sure if these trends will continue, but continued growth in the number of EVs on America’s roads seems undeniable. EVs have lower energy costs and lower maintenance costs. That economic reality seems guaranteed to be sustained in the coming decades. The battery cost curve will continue to decline and the rare metals required in EV batteries are beginning to be helped by both new supply and changing battery chemistry.

Still, Wrongo isn’t a fan of EVs. Perhaps when EV charging stations become ubiquitous, he will reconsider. And there will be a place for the ICE engine for a very long time.

That’s enough for this week. It’s time for our Saturday Soother, where we disconnect from the crisis du jour and spend a few relaxing moments before charging headfirst into whatever next week brings. Here at the Mansion of Wrong, we’re off to the garden store to find vegetable plants for our puny garden.

It looks like a beautiful weekend in the northeast, so grab a chair outside and watch and listen to Manuel De Falla’s Danza from “La Vida Breve” (Life is Short or The Brief Life). It is from Falla’s 1905 opera. Here it is performed live at the ancient Roman Theatre in Cartagena Spain, by Paola Requena and Isabel Martínez who perform as the Carmesí Guitar Duo:

Tuesday Wake Up Call – May 9, 2023

The Daily Escape:

Wild Azaleas at sunrise, Blue Ridge Mountains, VA – May 7, 2023 photo by Susan Anton

Wrongo and Ms. Right spent most of the weekend in NYC where we saw two Broadway plays, “New York, New York” and “Fat Ham”.

New York, New York is set at the end of WWII. The story is about a down-on-their-luck cast of characters who have come to NYC to chase their dreams. It has some really strong points: Loved the choreography, the highlight of which is seeing a group tap dancing on the steel girder of an unfinished skyscraper. There’s also a nighttime snowfall in Central Park, and multicolored umbrellas seemingly floating in a rainstorm. The dancing scenes reminded Wrongo of “An American in Paris” which he saw in London and loved.

The scenery, dominated by towering fire escapes is very interesting and evocative of NYC. However, the male lead Jimmy, played by Colton Ryan, doesn’t have a voice that’s up to the role, although he is a versatile musician and has a nice sense of physical comedy. The female lead, Francine, played by Anna Uzele who played Catherine Parr in “Six” has a very good voice and was truly the star of the show.

The play doesn’t meet musical expectations. Despite having songs written by the legendary John Kander (“Cabaret” and “Chicago”) and co-written with Lin Manuel Miranda (you know, “Hamilton” and “In the Heights”). The tunes simply don’t deliver any real emotion to the audience.

It finishes with a rousing big band version of the signature tune that has the audience singing along. Sadly, for Wrongo, that was the highlight of the show.

Fat Ham by comparison, is a winner. It’s a contemporary riff on “Hamlet” set in a backyard somewhere in an unidentified part of the American South. This Black family includes a gay young male college student who is unsettled by his mother’s decision to marry the brother of her recently deceased husband, who was murdered in jail.

Some of the themes in Shakespeare’s play are quickly evident. But the play uses comedy and a few plot twists to challenge the family’s history of violence. In winning the Pulitzer, Fat Ham was described as:

“…a funny, poignant play that deftly transposes ‘Hamlet’ to a family barbecue in the American South to grapple with questions of identity, kinship, responsibility and honesty.”

All of the above. The actors frequently break the fourth wall, letting the audience know how they feel about the drama being acted out on stage. Fat Ham refers to its main character: Juicy is queer, Black, and is taking online classes at the University of Phoenix.

Juicy’s father Pap appears as a ghost just before the cookout celebrating his mother’s marriage to the father’s brother Uncle Rev. Pap tells Juicy that he was killed in prison on the order of Uncle Rev and tells Juicy to kill Uncle Rev in revenge. Like Hamlet, Juicy is moody and sarcastic, but he isn’t particularly committed to murdering Rev. He acts like his father has asked him to do a chore he never plans to get around to.

Ultimately, Rev conveniently chokes to death on a pork rib, so Juicy didn’t have to lift a finger.

The play is about secrets that stay hidden because of guilt or shame. The ones that you keep for fear of ever being found out to be what you think is a more disgusting version of yourself.

It turns out that in the end, everyone acknowledges that several family members in addition to Juicy are gay. They come to terms with their failed expectations of each other as well. Ultimately they’re all liberated from the personal stories that keep them from being happy. The play ends with a splashy finale, including a confetti cannon, with one character channeling Rick James.

Wrongo recommends seeing Fat Ham if you are able to get to NYC.

One quibble is that all of these characters appear to have lived their whole lives with unfulfilled dreams that largely get fulfilled at the very end of the play.

Only on Broadway do we see people who can be released from their personal conflicts so easily.

Time to Wake Up America! We’re already a few days into what promises to be a difficult week. There’s a lot going on, and it can be hard to focus on just one thing. But Wrongo thinks we should be focusing on the Debt Ceiling and whether those bums we’ve elected have any interest in solving the problem.

As the clock ticks down to the moment when the US suffers a politically engineered default on its debt, let’s hope that the President and the Congress can defy partisanship and come up with something.

To help them wake up, here’s “Manic Monday”, written by Prince. It was a hit for the Bangles in 1984. Here they perform live in 2008:

Saturday Soother – May 6, 2023

The Daily Escape:

Mt. Adams sunrise with orchards in bloom, WA – May 2023 photo by Mitch Schreiber Photography

(Wrongo and Ms. Right give a group hug to family member Bob W. His mother has a grave health crisis. We’re thinking of you Bob.)

There’s a book called “A Terrible Country” written in 2018 by Keith Gessen. It’s about life in Russia a few years before Russia became a pariah in Europe. But the title could easily describe the US in 2023. If you doubt that, maybe you aren’t aware of the video of a NYC subway rider choking a homeless man to death last week. The video lasts for four minutes.

The NYT describes the video:

“The homeless man, Jordan Neely, is seen writhing, trying to get free from the arms and legs of the other subway riders who are pinning him down. As the minutes tick by early Monday afternoon on a northbound F train in Manhattan, Mr. Neely visibly weakens as the arm wrapped around his neck stays tight.”

After he stops moving, the riders hold him down for about another 50 seconds. Neely was later pronounced dead at a nearby hospital. Jordan Neely was homeless. He was a Michael Jackson impersonator. Neely’s race (Black) and that of his killer (White) are a depressingly familiar story. What’s different is that his assailant wasn’t a cop and didn’t use a gun.

What’s also familiar is that the assailant has not been charged by the NYPD.

What’s also disturbing is that the subway car held bystanders most of whom remained bystanders, watching a former Marine choke the life out of Neely for (apparently) behaving erratically.

After the fact, we learned that Neely had more than 40 arrests including an open warrant for punching a 67 old woman. No one should portray him as simply a misunderstood soul. But did he deserve to die in that subway car?

If you’ve been paying attention, you know that there’s been news nearly every day about Americans being killed over mundane, mostly non-threatening actions, or for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The NYT’s Roxanne Gay:

“We are at something of an impasse. The list of things that can get you killed in public is expanding every single day. Whether it’s mass shootings or police brutality or random acts of violence, it only takes running into one scared man to have the worst and likely last day of your life. We can’t even agree on right and wrong anymore.”

How did the country get this way? Why is there so much fear and paranoia about the “other”? Why do select elements of our society cultivate this fear by marketing it?

Neely’s killing is partly an outcome of the relentless political rhetoric that has contributed to the public’s false beliefs about actual crime levels in America’s cities. And NYC’s Mayor and NY’s Governor wouldn’t even condemn the killer. Elizabeth Bruenig writes in The Atlantic:

“This process, through which mundane uncomfortable situations are transformed into terrifying ordeals by…incidents of random gun violence…is one means by which a healthy community becomes a violent society. Nobody looks forward to encountering people behaving erratically on the subway…but killing a mentally ill man on a train….represents the loss of a peaceful commons, the absence of compassion, and the overwhelming fear we have come to accept in our culture of violence. This is the country we have become.”

Yep, we’ve become a terrible country. Back to Roxanne Gay:

“There is no patience for simple mistakes or room for addressing how bigotry colors even the most innocuous interactions. There is no regard for due process. People who deem themselves judge, jury and executioner walk among us, and we have no real way of knowing when they will turn on us.”

And on Thursday, four of the Proud Boys, among paranoia’s finest, were convicted of committing vigilante justice against our democracy. Let’s leave the final words to Gay, who says we’ve become:

“…a people without empathy, without any respect for the sanctity of life unless it’s our own…”

Or fetuses.

Time for Wrongo to wash up after digging in this cultural dirt. It’s time for our Saturday Soother where we try to forget about whose drones hit the Kremlin, and try to center ourselves before another demanding week begins,

Here at the Mansion of Wrong, Wrongo and Ms. Right are spending the weekend in NYC seeing two musicals.

But as a public service to the rest of you, grab a seat outdoors on what looks like a beautiful day in the northeast. Now watch and listen to Erzsébet Pozsgai play the first movement of “Spring” from the “Four Seasons” by Antonio Vivaldi on solo violin, live in Budapest in 2013:

Monday Wake Up Call – May 1, 2023

The Daily Escape:

The Schooner Surprise, built in 1918, is listed on the National Registry of Historic Places, Camden Harbor, ME – April 2023 photo by Daniel F. Dishner

A few words about Biden, McCarthy and the Debt Ceiling. We all know that the clock is ticking on a US default of our debt sometime in June. There are multiple opinions in DC about who has the leverage in the coming debate between the House GOP, Senate Dems and Biden.

The institutionalist view is that McCarthy and the House GOP have taken the Debt Ceiling hostage and they plan a hostage negotiation with Biden. Some think that McCarthy is doing it badly. Others take the darker view that the Republicans are actually trying to crash the economy so that America blames Biden and returns the GOP to power in 2024.

If you think, based on what we’ve seen so far, that the GOP doesn’t plan to negotiate, that like terrorists, they will kill as many hostages as possible until their terms are 100% met, what they’re doing makes sense.

The NYT reports that McCarthy has been open about the fact that this is not a real bill:

“This bill is to get us to the negotiations….It is not the final provisions, and there’s a number of members who will vote for it going forward…say there are some concerns they have with it. But they want to make sure the negotiation goes forward because we are sitting at $31 trillion of debt.”

For the umpteenth time, we’re watching a game of chicken about raising the debt limit. There are something like 45 days until the Debt Ceiling must be raised. You know the “or else” sentence that follows: Or else, the US will face potentially calamitous economic consequences.

McCarthy’s bill may get the Republicans a seat at the table in the negotiations over raising the debt limit, but Biden’s position remains: “Send a clean debt limit bill, or pound sand.”

Has McCarthy overplayed a bad hand? If he had failed to get anything passed he would have looked completely incompetent. Nevertheless, passing a bill filled with devastating cuts and manifestly unpopular positions that will be difficult to defend except to the Party faithful, it is arguably worse than getting nothing done at all.

If the Dems are smart they will take the GOP’s messaging bill and come up with a message that has broad appeal that can be used to hurt the GOP in swing districts for the next two years. McCarthy’s bill shows that Republicans’ ultimate goal is to gut health care, food stamps and education, and even veterans benefits. The Vote Vets organization is out with a message:

“And now, it is the fringe MAGA party that voted for a budget that would gut health care and support for our Veterans. 217 of them voted for it, and just 4 against. They talk tough when it comes to Military action, but go AWOL when it’s time to take care of those who served.”

This bill isn’t intended to pass. Republicans had an opportunity to aim a productive salvo at swing voters to convince them that GOP majorities can deliver normalcy, and give them some sign that the Party was tacking away from the extremist positions that alienated voters in the last midterm elections.

Instead, their message is that the Party is about owning the libs and slashing aid for veterans and the poor. The GOP can’t even fake being a Party interested in governing anymore. That’s bad news for McCarthy, the man chained to the GOP canoe that’s heading over the falls. As Succession’s the late Logan Roy would say “You are not serious people.”

Instead the GOP’s message to the world is that America’s commitment to paying its debts is contingent on an underlying political negotiation about the size of the budget deficit.

Republicans believe they can win the political standoff by making Biden and Democrats look petty by refusing a basic negotiation.
Democrats also seem to be betting that Senate Republicans will step in as more mature political actors and defuse this situation.

The NYT quotes Sen. Chuck Schumer, (D-NY) and majority leader:

“Discussion of spending cuts belongs in talks about the budget, not for bargaining chips on the debt ceiling….The speaker should drop the brinkmanship, drop the hostage taking, come to the table with Democrats to pass a clean bill to avoid default.”

Time to wake up America! This kabuki play will run through at least mid-June. It’s a DC big boy fight. And we the little people, will have no say until November 2024 when we can escort the GOP flame throwers out of the House. To help you wake up, watch Crowded House perform “Don’t Dream It’s Over” from their first (of three) farewell tours, played at the Sydney Opera House in November 1996:

One of the greatest songs of the 80s and it still hits hard today.

Sample Lyrics:

There is freedom within, there is freedom without
Try to catch a deluge in a paper cup
There’s a battle ahead, many battles are lost
But you’ll never see the end of the road
While you’re traveling with me

Saturday Soother – April 29, 2023

The Daily Escape:

Crab Apple tree, Fields of Wrong, CT – May 10, 2013 photo by Wrongo. This year, the trees are in full bloom two weeks earlier. The petals will be long gone by May 10, 2023. Climate change?

The new Democratic governor of Arizona, Katie Hobbs, appears to be on the wrong foot with her take on food safety. The NYT reports that she vetoed a bill that would have allowed Arizona’s informal network of home cooks to sell perishable food legally:

“Though the state promotes itself as a low-tax, low-regulation haven for private enterprise, it does not allow the sale of perishable foods made at home. So for years, a thriving economy of working-class, mostly Latina home cooks has operated underground, selling tacos, tres leches cakes and chile-dusted corn illegally from living rooms and outside laundromats and soccer games.”

Earlier in April, Republicans who control the state legislature came together with Democrats in a moment of bipartisan accord to pass a bill that would let Arizona’s home cooks register with the state to legally sell perishable foods like salsas and tamales.

And Hobbs vetoed it. Naturally, there was a backlash. Why would the new governor alienate Arizona’s large Latino population? Even a few Democrats have criticized her for killing what is widely being called the “tamale bill.” More: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“They said her move was a slap in the face of Latino constituents who voted for Ms. Hobbs, and whose support was crucial in a politically fractured state that is about 32% Latino. Critics said her veto would hurt the working-class immigrants that Ms. Hobbs had championed during her campaign.”

We can debate the merits of Arizona’s food safety laws. You might say, “I’ve seen my kitchen, and I’m against it.”

But when we debate the merits, it ought to be in the context of a) the minimal acceptable standard for public safety, and b) what the people want. Arizona’s informal food network is very popular. People aren’t stupid: They know that eating food purchased from the trunk of a car or from a roadside stand carries a risk of a possible night on the toilet, yet no one complains. And if something happens the city or town can always trace it and shut someone down.

BTW: You haven’t lived until you’ve bought tamales from the trunk of a nice lady’s car in a Home Depot parking lot.

The Arizona food safety reform bill appealed to both Parties: Republicans could stand up for fewer regulations, while Dems could show that they understood and supported the working class. This is particularly relevant in Arizona, where working people have a long tradition of making money through selling food informally.

So, what was Hobbs thinking? The selling of home-cooked food is primarily practiced by people of color or immigrants. Banning sale of their cooking could be seen as institutional racism, something we might expect in Arizona, but from a Democratic governor?

Maybe roadside vendors could display a warning sign saying that the Office of Food Inspection isn’t inspecting their garage BBQs, or their kitchens, or their basement bakeries, so you’re on your own. Besides, the Feds allow Big Food to put pink slime in our ground beef.

Enough about Katie Hobbs, someone who we were thrilled to see beat Kari Lake last November.

It’s time to forget about politics and whatever Ron DeSantis was doing in Israel. Focus instead on finding some relaxing time before the week starts all over again. Here on the fields of Wrong, the spring cleanup continues, along with our working to convince a pair of house finches that building a nest under the walkway to our door is – well, wrong. Wrongo expects to prevail as he has in prior years.

But now, it’s time for our Saturday Soother!

Let’s start by brewing up a hot steaming mug of Ethiopia Basha Bekele coffee ($23/12oz.) from Virginia’s Roadmap CoffeeWorks, an award-winning artisan roasting company based in Lexington, VA. It is said to be chocolaty and fruit-toned in the very long and satisfying finish. Who doesn’t like a long finish?

Since there’s rain in Litchfield County today, grab a chair by a large window. Now watch and listen to “Simple Gifts” from Aaron Copland’s “Appalachian Spring” conducted by Leonard Bernstein. In 1942, Martha Graham commissioned Copland to write a ballet with “an American theme”. It premiered at the Library of Congress on October 30, 1944, with Graham dancing the lead role.

In 1945, Copland was commissioned by conductor Artur Rodziński to rearrange the ballet as an orchestral suite. “Simple Gifts” was a Shaker Hymn that Copland brought to life. He called the piece “Ballet for Martha”, and Graham gave it the title “Appalachian Spring”, after a line in a poem by Hart Crane:

“Tis’ a Gift to be Simple“….indeed.

Late Stage Capitalism

The Daily Escape:

A 20 feet x 9 feet sign placed in Times Square, NYC in Sept. 2013. Created by Steve Lambert.

In yesterday’s column about Bed Bath and Beyond’s (BBBY) bankruptcy, Wrongo used the term “Late Stage Capitalism” to describe some of the factors that led to the firm’s demise. Several readers asked what Wrongo meant.

First, some history. A German economist named Werner Sombart seems to have been the first to use the term “Late Capitalism” around the turn of the 20th century. A Marxist theorist named Ernest Mandel popularized it in the 1960s. For Mandel, “late capitalism” described the economic period that started with the end of World War II and ended in the early 1970s, a time that saw the rise of multinational corporations, mass communication, and international finance.

In America the terms “Late Capitalism” and “Late Stage Capitalism” are used interchangeably. Late-stage capitalism is characterized by greed, corruption, and a focus on profits over people.

The current crisis of capitalism’s legitimacy stems from business pursuing the aberrant form of capitalism known as shareholder capitalism, which began in the 1970s. It causes firms to seek maximizing shareholder value as reflected in the current share price, at the expense of all other stakeholders and society.

Some of the problems with late-stage capitalism include wealth inequality, environmental destruction, and financialization. Financialization refers to the increase in size and importance of a country’s financial sector relative to its overall economy. In the US, the size of the financial sector as a percentage of GDP grew from 2.8% in 1950 to 21% in 2019. The financial services industry, with its emphasis on short-term profits, has played a major role in the decline of manufacturing in the US. Financialization has created “unproductive” capitalism. According to economist Michael Roberts: (brackets by Wrongo)

“…financialization is now mainly used as a term to categorize a completely new stage in capitalism, in which profits mainly come not from…production, but from financial [engineering]

Today, capitalism is no longer the heart of a free market. Algorithms run the stock and foreign exchange markets. Large players in these markets operate freely with the expectation that they will eventually be caught. They then pay off the DOJ or SEC, chalking up the fines to the cost of doing business.

Lobbyists on Capitol Hill curry favor with politicians. Companies then receive substantial tax breaks and move their ever larger profits to offshore tax havens. The revolving door between Wall Street and the banking sector allows former Federal Reserve Chairs to charge speaking fees of $500,000 and earn seats on the boards of the algorithmic trading firms. The Pentagon continues to benefit from budgetary increases while the profits of Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and other defense contractors continue to swell.

Late stage capitalism helped create the current distortion of wealth. From the wealthy one percent living in multiple homes and flying private, to the plight of the working poor in America. In a 2020 survey by Edelman, a marketing and public relations firm, 57% of people worldwide said that:

“capitalism as it exists today does more harm than good in the world”

When you have money, capitalism is your wing man. It opens doors to business leaders and helps develop political influence, all with the goal of amassing more wealth and power.

Late stage capitalism has allowed oligopolies and the oligarchs that run them, to rig the system in their favor. They’ve won Supreme Court cases, such as Citizens United v. FEC (2010), that give corporations the same speech rights as people, allowing them to spend millions on political ads to elect compliant politicians.

In recent years, capitalism’s shortcomings have become more apparent: Prioritizing short-term profits has sometimes meant that the long-term well-being of society and the environment has lost out. Indeed, if you judge by measures such as inequality and environmental damage, as economists Michael Jacobs and Mariana Mazzucato wrote in their book “Rethinking Capitalism”:

“…the performance of Western capitalism in recent decades has been deeply problematic…”

There’s also no denying that this strain of capitalism has led to increased economic growth worldwide, while lifting a significant number of people out of poverty. At the same time, its tenets of lowering taxes and deregulating business has done little to support investment in public services, such as crumbling public infrastructure, improving education and mitigating health risks.

Watch Paul Tudor Jones, a successful hedge fund manager describe why we need to rethink capitalism:

He’s concerned about capitalism’s laser focus on profits. He says that it’s:

“….threatening the very underpinnings of society.”

More people are aware of the term “late, or late-stage capitalism,” due to the growing wealth gap. People now have access to information that exposes the defects of capitalism, and the effects of political and elitist interference in the monetary policy of a country. There is a popular Reddit community devoted to it.

And calling something “late” implies the potential for significant change or revolution, A “late” period always comes near the end of something. Calling it “Late capitalism” says:

“…This is a stage we’re going to come out of at some point…”

Perhaps we’re on the cusp of society dictating that capitalism provide us with a more equitable way of life. Or maybe the wealth gap will continue to grow, and the corporations will continue to seize more power.

Whenever late-stage capitalism eventually comes to an end, you can be sure of one thing – it won’t be a soft landing.

Sources and reading list:

https://wrongologist.com/2023/04/bed-bath-and-beyond-another-retailer-bites-the-dust/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werner_Sombart

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/05/late-capitalism/524943/

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/financialization.asp

https://www.linkedin.com/in/prof-michael-r-roberts/

https://www.fec.gov/legal-resources/court-cases/citizens-united-v-fec/

https://www.wiley.com/en-gb/Rethinking+Capitalism%3A+Economics+and+Policy+for+Sustainable+and+Inclusive+Growth-p-9781119120957

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210525-why-the-next-stage-of-capitalism-is-coming

https://www.edelman.com/sites/g/files/aatuss191/files/2020-01/2020%20Edelman%20Trust%20Barometer%20Global%20Report.pdf

https://www.reddit.com/r/LateStageCapitalism/