The political class in DC is very concerned about inflation, including many Democrats. So much so that they are unwilling to pass Bidenâs âBuild Back Betterâ social infrastructure bill because it will add to our current inflation. Specifically, Sen. Manchin objects to the extension of the child tax credit that is expiring this month.
Itâs time to remind these people of what real inflation looks like. Back in 1980, when then-Chair of the Federal Reserve Paul Volcker raised interest rates high enough to throw the US into a recession and end inflation, inflation had averaged 6.9% for the previous 11 years. Letâs also remind Sen. Manchin that this yearâs annualized rate of inflation went above the long-term average of around 3% in April. Weâve averaged 6.81% for the year, not for 11 years.
The Senate wrapped up its work for the year, with Democrats punting the Build Back Better and the voting rights bills into 2022. The Senate adjourned early Saturday morning after a voting marathon including confirming 50 of Bidenâs nominees. On to cartoons.
The answer is to elect more Democratic Senators:
Letâs see the Senate break at least one tooth on voting rights:
Only the social programs have to pay for themselves:
San Miguel Peaks, Uncompahgre National Forest, CO – November 2021 photo by Tad Bowman
Wrongoâs column on how we need to rehabilitate our Constitution drew several comments saying that it was a foolâs game to even try to change it, given our political dysfunction.
One reader, David P. asked how we might accomplish such a heavy lift. It is only possible if people get more involved in the political process. That got Wrongo thinking about why so few individuals really actively participate in the political process today. From Ezra Klein:
âObsessively following the daily political news feels like an act of politics, or at least an act of civics. But what if, for many of us, itâs a replacement for politics â and one thatâs actually hurting the country?â
Klein interviewed Eitan Hersh of Tufts University on his podcast. Hersh talked about âpolitical hobbyismâ, by which he means following politics as a form of entertainment and/or an expression of self-identity. He differentiates it from the actual work of politics.
Hershâs research shows that a lot of people who believe they are politically engaged are really only passively following it. He also thinks that their following it passively has played a key role in making our politics worse.
For Hersh, the real work in our politics involves some sort of local engagement and/or organizing. His point is that voting and contributing money have their place, but these are fundamentally low engagement activities, especially if youâre not wealthy enough to impact policy.
According to Hersh, if you contribute money to a candidate because that candidate said something that made you feel good, thatâs less real political engagement than it is a kind of consumerism: (emphasis by Wrongo)
âA lot of whatâs happening in small-dollar donations….youâre watching a…politician grandstand and make some speech. And because they grandstand in a way that you liked, you react by giving a $5 donation….So, whatâs really going on is you have no goals except to reward a politician for saying something that feels great in the moment. I think that makes politics worse rather than better. And you are doing it more for yourself â for your own kind of emotional…ends â rather than to move politics in a direction….â
More from Hersh: (brackets by Wrongo)
âIf you look at the number of people who are spending time on politics, thereâs about a third of the country that says theyâre spending about two hours a day in news consumption….Almost none of [this time]…letâs say 2%, is real community or volunteer engagement. The rest is mostly news consumption and sharing, talking, and debating online.â
Hersh makes the point that the people who spend the most time on any political engagement are White men, particularly college-educated White men. They know more facts, but they are not the group thatâs working with their Parties on organized politics. That would be women. Racial minorities, particularly Blacks, but also to some extent Latinos, spend less overall time on following the news, but more of their time is spent in actual political activities.
Wrongo does precisely what Hersh says is indulgent consumerist behavior. He reads about politics and writes this silly blog. He contributes to candidates he likes/admires. Wrongo also volunteers on a couple of committees in his town, but heâs invisible in local politics.
Reader David P. does much more. Once a week he goes to an office of his local Democratic Party and makes canvass calls. His is a life-long arc of true political engagement. Working on campaigns, attending rallies, and yes, donating money, and commenting on blogs.
It shouldnât surprise anyone that Wrongo thinks that offering opinions and informing the public via blogs is important. Blogs that are done well inform people, and they spread information. Thatâs the mission, because god knows, people are totally misinformed by both politicians, and the mainstream media.
In âThe Cause, The American Revolution and its Discontents, 1773-1783â by Joseph Ellis, he says that before the revolution, colonists didnât think of themselves as Americans. They described their fight for independence as âThe Causeâ. An ambiguous term that covered diverse ideas and multiple viewpoints. Unlike in England at the time, even working class colonists were literate. And they were fully engaged in the process through word and deed.
Most Americans today are literate, but what will it take to get them off the couch? What will it take to get Democrats to put themselves on the line for an idea, or for a candidate?
We say, âhow can we lose to these guys?â When we see that Republicans have left our Americaâs democratic values behind, when we know that they actively intend to undermine the integrity of our elections.
How dangerous does the threat to our democracy have to be for people to get involved?
Or have we so totally surrendered to reading social media on our phones that weâre no longer capable of putting ourselves on the line for what we say we believe in?
Mexican Hat Rock, Mexican Hat UT – 2021 photo by Jacky and Rick
The media keeps talking about inflation, saying that itâs bound to hurt the economy any time now. They mean that inflation will make workers ask for higher wages. That will force companies to pay workers more, and thus, lower corporate profits.
Sounds like a problem, but as Bloomberg reports, the fattest corporate profits since 1950 are debunking inflation stories spun by CEOs. US corporations enjoyed the widest profit margins in more than 70 years during the second and third quarters of 2021. US corporate profits before adjustments rose to a record high of $3.14 trillion in the third quarter of 2021. From Bloomberg:
âOn earnings calls, plenty of executives complained about the squeeze from rising costs of labor as well as materials. But overall, profits were up 37% from a year earlier, according to data out last week from the Commerce Department.â
Nearly two thirds of publicly traded US corporations have reported higher profit margins this year compared to 2020. One hundred of the largest have booked profit margins at least 50% higher than last yearâs levels.
Bloomberg reports that businesses have been paying more to their employees too, with total compensation up 12% in the last quarter vs. a year earlier. Itâs not that every worker got a raise. A significant part of the increase was due to millions of Americans simply returning to work. But many got raises too. To date, hourly earnings broadly kept up with the fast-rising cost of living. And in some low-pay industries like leisure and hospitality theyâve outpaced it, although not by enough for those firms to get fully staffed.
The new data on corporate earnings suggest businesses are comfortably passing on their higher costs. In recent months, a number of US companies including Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble, Chipotle, and Dollar Tree have announced price hikes, claiming that the increases were necessary because of higher wages and material costs.
But the Bloomberg data say that these corporate kings are using price hikes to pass their sky-high CEO pay and marginal increases in material and labor costs to consumers, in order to keep padding their already historically strong profit margins.
Still, politicians are calling for Fed Chair Jerome Powellâs head. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK) wrote in the WSJ that Powell doesnât deserve another term because he caused inflation. Powellâs policies have contributed to US inflation, but thereâs zero evidence that US inflation is a problem today.
For months, corporate executives and right-wing politicians have been parroting the claim that inflation in the US is due to Bidenâs social spending policies. But the new data show that inflation is going up largely because corporations are driving it.
Remember, corporate profits are up by 37% while inflation amounted to about 6.2% in the same period. In other words, as the economy reopened and prices for goods went up, and corporations used the situation to raise prices a lot.
In fact, the FTC just announced it voted 4-0 to investigate the relationship between competition and supply chain problems. The FTC sent letters to nine dominant firms in supply, retail, and wholesale, mandating they respond within 45 days to a host of questions, as well as give internal documents on various topics.
This matters. Inflation and shortages arenât neutral forces. The twin problems seem to be *helping* big business improve their profit margins. Itâs important to ask why they are happening and who has an incentive to keep them going.
Even Morgan Stanley is now asking corporations to hit the brakes on accumulating profits. Their research division released a report highlighting the gap between corporate profits and worker wages. From the report:
“Real wages…still have to grow by 7.3% in excess of productivity growth to make up the gap….If this catch-up takes place over the next 5 years, unit profits will fall 33% from current levelsâŚThis would move the corporate profit share back to its 1990s average on a pre-tax basis and leave it just marginally above on a post-tax basis.”
Imagine. An investment bank telling corporations that they really should be making less profit. Things must be really going to get much worse than we think.
Letâs launch into our weekend, starting with a Saturday Soother. Try to forget about whether a government shutdown will hurt you or Biden, or whether the Supreme Court is now filled with ideological hacks.
Instead, grab a seat by a window and listen to âThe Girl with the Flaxen Hairâ by Claude Debussy. The Art Nouveau period was obsessed with women’s hair. Debussy was immersed in that world. Itâs played here by the LA-based, Sakura cello quintet. Wrongo is a sucker for cello, and there are five of them! This was originally written for piano, and is transposed here for cello:
Floyd Lamb Park, Las Vegas NY- November 2021 photo by Marcia Steen
The biggest, baddest news of the week was that Kyle Rittenhouse was found innocent on all charges in the Kenosha murders.
As bad as that is, there’s some good news to start the weekend. First, the House succeeded on Friday in their months-long quest to pass Bidenâs social spending bill. It still faces a serious challenge in the Senate before it can become law.
Second, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) reported that the US is the only G7 country to surpass its pre-pandemic economic growth. Employment is up. Wages are up. Goldman Sachs predicts by the end of next year the US unemployment rate will drop to a 50-year low, thanks to continuing red-hot demand for workers. Retail sales surged 1.7% in the month of October. American consumers spent $638 billion in October, a 16% increase from last year.
Meanwhile, slowly but surely, the supply chain bottlenecks that have plagued our economy for over a year appear to be easing. Imports through the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach are up 16% from 2018, and in the first two weeks of November, those two ports cleared about a third of the containers sitting on their docks.
The Baltic Dry Index (BDI), a measure of global shipping rates and an inflation indicator, has plummeted 50% since peaking Oct. 7, another good sign for consumers. And the global chip shortage that was crippling the auto industry? GM said that the week of Nov. 1 was the first time since February that none of its North American assembly plants were offline due to a lack of chips.
All of this good news is going to waste because of the mediaâs hot takes on how bad Biden is doing. From Eric Boehlert:
âFor weeks this fall, the Beltway press joined forces with the GOP to tell a hysterical tale about the state of the US economy. It was an alternate version of reality, where the stagnant, faltering economy was being driven to the precipice by runaway inflation, which stood poised to demolish middle-class savings across the board. All while an ineffective president stood by and watched cash-strapped households suffer.â
Boehlert says that recent press coverage suggests the economy is an albatross around Bidenâs political neck, while in reality, itâs booming.
Biden got elected to bring a return to normalcy. Since thereâs no normalcy in sight, his poll numbers (along with Democrats generally) have plummeted. David Brooks in the NYT addresses Joe Bidenâs efforts at meeting the needs of people in âleft behindâ places of the country that did not vote for him: (parenthesis by Wrongo)
âIf (noted economist) Larry Summers thinks lifting wages at the bottom will cause inflation…so be it. The trade-off is worth it to prevent a national rupture.â
Democrats have to get beyond the victory laps when they pass a bill, and let America know what the bills are for. Propaganda is a tool that shouldnât be used to yammer on about defunding the police. Hereâs Wrongoâs list of what Dems should say theyâre for:
The Bill of Rights
One person, one vote
A world-class ideology-free education for all American kids
Jobs for more Americans
Universal health insurance
No more foreign interventions
More police funding and more police accountability
Reduce carbon emissions
Zero potholes
That last one is facetious, but itâs political gold in Wrongoâs town, and is funded in the recent infrastructure bill.
The Democratsâ gamble is whether their efforts and their successes will be rewarded politically less than a year from now, in November 2022. Remember that despite what the pundits say, passing the items on Bidenâs platform shouldnât be primarily to woo swing voters. Theyâre to shore up enthusiasm among your base, something that Dems didnât have in the recent elections in Virginia and New Jersey.
Right now, things look grim. If you let your mind wander to what might happen if thereâs a Republican House and Senate in January 2023, you should be happy not sad, that the Dems arenât repealing the filibuster.
Letâs take a break and try for some normalcy in our weekend. Wrongo recommends that you start by not watching the Sunday pundit shows. Here on the fields of Wrong, weâre still engaging in our fall clean-up, trying to take advantage of the few warmer days to work outside. Also, thereâs some menu planning for Thanksgiving underway.
So, settle into your Saturday Soother, where we leave the chaos behind for a few moments. Letâs start by grabbing a chair near a large window, and listening to the Prague Cello Quartet play an atmospheric version of the theme from âThe Phantom of the Operaâ:
Pueblo Bonito, Chaco Canyon, NM â November 2021 photo by James C. Wilson. Itâs difficult to hire stone masons this good today.
 âIf Americans are feeling glum, they sure are engaging in some retail therapy.ââWSJâs âHeard on the Streetâ columnist Justin Lahart
Weâre in a period of unclear signals. Every poll says that Americans believe inflation is high and the economy is bad. But unemployment is low, GDP growth is high, and people are buying things like crazy:
âThe Commerce Department…reported that sales at stores, restaurants and online rose 1.7% in October from a month earlier, better than the 1.5% economists expected. Additionally, estimates of August and September retail sales were revised upwards. Sales were broadly higher across most categories, with gains at department stores, electronics and appliance stores and online retailers in particular…â
This led economists to revise their fourth-quarter GDP estimates higher. JPMorgan Chase now forecasts GDP will grow at a 5% annual rate in the fourth quarter, versus its previous 4% estimate. The news wasnât all terrific, as restaurant and bar sales were flat in October versus a month earlier. That might be an indication of cooler weather keeping diners at home as outdoor seating arrangements became less comfortable.
How to explain whatâs going on? People have some savings. Some people have higher wages, and both seem to be having a greater influence on how much people are willing to spend than price increases are having on how they feel about Bidenâs job performance.
Claudia Sahm argues that some of the savings are due to government checks, and it was worth it:
â2021 began with economists arguing about $1,400 stimulus checks. Americans got them, but they got higher inflation too. Even so, the checks were very good policy.â
She compares the governmentâs reaction in the Covid crisis to their reaction during the Great Recession. This time, Congress went big:
âIn 2008, Congress enacted one round of stimulus checks, totaling about $110 billion. During the first year of Covid, it sent out three rounds at close to $1 trillion dollars. A family of four got $11,400, which is about 20% of median family income.â
Hereâs a chart showing the difference between the two policy approaches. Sahm plotted the value of the payments against the trend of personal income during both recessions:
The three rounds of stimulus checks provided relief to the families whose lives Covid disrupted and it helped bolster the economic recovery by creating jobs. The Covid relief paid the bills. Stimulus helped bring back paychecks.
Most people spend most of the money they make. With smaller take-home money during the crisis, many Americans made a dramatic cut in their spending. And big cutbacks in spending in an economy driven by consumers, led to big layoffs. So, the policy decision to put money in peopleâs bank accounts was key to keeping the Covid recession as short-lived as possible.
Clearly, the fast recovery came with a cost. Inflation is higher today than it has been in 31 years. But donât let the inflation doom-sayers fool you: consumer spending, even after taking inflation into account, has been increasing even as millions are out of work.
New Deal Democrat shows us that total activity through the big Southern California ports is breaking records, and yet as we know, they still canât keep up with the increased import demand:
Despite increased container handling capacity, this explains a great part of the current supply chain bottleneck since the global supply chain is incapable of handling a sudden jump in consumer demand. It partially explains why goods shortages and price pressures have mounted. That, in turn, is pushing up prices. The NYT quoted Aneta Markowska, chief financial economist for Jefferies, an investment bank:
âItâs the demand in the first place thatâs causing prices to move higher…There is a supply shortage, but itâs not because of bottlenecks. Itâs because weâve had this big shock to aggregate demand and supply canât respond quickly enough.â
There are still plenty of logistics bottlenecks. Yes, weâre buying much more stuff, and paying more for it. But households were sitting on a collective $2.5 trillion in savings built up during the pandemic. And millions of jobs have come back, so spend they will.
The Covid recession was a sharp and steep one, the deepest since the Great Depression. But the speed of recovery has been very fast, due in large part to the policy decision to put checks in peopleâs pockets.
This time, government worked for us.
Letâs have a Thursday tune. Everyone has heard 1981âs “Under Pressure” a masterpiece by Queen and David Bowie. It was covered by Fall Out Boy as part of ABC’s Queen Family Singalong on Nov 4. Lead vocalist Patrick Stump tries to sound like both Freddie Mercury and Bowie. Read the words and youâll understand why Wrongo offers it today:
âA recent Gallup release confirmed that Democrats now have about as many liberals in the party as moderates or conservatives. That liberalism has been mostly driven by increasing liberalism among white Democrats which has spiked upward 20 points since the early 2000s. White Democrats are now a solidly liberal constituency. Not so black and Hispanic Democrats who are overwhelmingly moderate or conservative.â
The contrast is particularly striking among Whites who are college graduates and working class (non-college) nonwhites. The Gallup data show that two-thirds of White college grads are liberal while 70% of Black working class and two-thirds of Hispanic working class Democrats are moderate or conservative.
This takes on additional relevance because in 2020, 63% of voters did not have college degrees, and 74% of voters came from households making less than $100,000 a year. This should make it painfully obvious that, if issues and rhetoric that appeal mostly to college-educated White liberals are promoted, Democrats could see serious attrition among Democrat working class nonwhites who dislike those issues and rhetoric.
Itâs hard to build a majority if youâre focused on a minority of the electorate. The internal conflict between Democrats, displayed by the Gallup poll mentioned above by Teixeira, pits the Partyâs progressives against its moderates, its college-educated against its working class.
Like the modern Democrats, the Whigs cobbled together their party in the late 1830s out of an assortment of constituencies, many of whom had little in common. The Whig Party was formed to counter President Andrew Jackson and the Jacksonian Democrats. They were one of the two major political parties in the US from the late 1830s through the early 1850s and managed to elect two presidents: William Henry Harrison and Zachary Taylor.
By the mid-1850s, the Whigs were divided by the issue of slavery, particularly as the country had to decide whether new states would be admitted as slave or non-slave states. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 overturned the Missouri Compromise and allowed each territory to decide for itself whether it would be a slave or free state. Anti-slavery Whigs then spun off to found the Republican Party in 1854.
Is the modern Democratic Party on the precipice of becoming the new Whigs? The Whigs were a coalition of bankers, lawyers, and the Eastern mercantile class. In the South, Whigs worked to put a moral face on slavery. This allowed the Whigs to cultivate political distance from what was becoming a party of southern Democrats happy to extend slavery in new states, and a northern base of what we call âblue collarâ (white) workers.
The Whigs couldnât continue bridging the ideological distance between the Northern industrial states section of the party and the Southern agribusiness/slavery Whigs. Faced with this dilemma, the party broke apart.
Candidates who prioritized bread-and-butter issues (jobs, health care, the economy), and presented them in plainspoken, universalist rhetoric, performed significantly better than those who had other priorities or used other language. That preference was even more pronounced in rural and small-town areas, where Democrats have struggled in recent years.
Candidates who named elites as a major cause of Americaâs problems, invoked anger at the status quo, and celebrated the working class were well received among working-class voters.
Potential Democratic working-class voters did not shy away from candidates who strongly opposed racism. But candidates who framed that opposition in identity-focused language fared significantly worse than candidates who embraced either populist or mainstream language.
The survey proposed multiple sound bites spoken by potential candidates to survey respondents to rank. The most popular sound bite was the âprogressive populistâ one:
âThis country belongs to all of us, not just the super-rich. But for years, politicians in Washington have turned their backs on people who work for a living. We need tough leaders who wonât give in to the millionaires and the lobbyists, but will fight for good jobs, good wages, and guaranteed health care for every single American.â
This has implications for the 2022 mid-terms. Keep Trump off the table unless, by some miracle, the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attempted coup refers charges to the DOJ and the DOJ acts on it. Another key finding was that those surveyed felt Democrats run too far left on certain priorities:
This is also key for building Democratsâ messaging in 2022. You can read the full report here.
Democrats need to think about what it will take to do two things simultaneously: How to stay together as a Party, and how to retain majorities in the House and Senate.
It wonât be simple, but everything depends on it.
Catskill Mountains and Hudson River from Rhinebeck, NY â October photo by hikingfordonuts
Wrongo on Sunday pointed out that polling shows that only 30% of Americans think the US is on the right track, despite tons of good economic news. The poll was by NBC just before the November elections. It showed that 70% thought the US is moving in the wrong direction. It also showed Bidenâs job performance approval rating at 42%, a sharp drop from 49% in August and 53 % in April.
In addition to the great jobs report, the record stock market, and a booming economy, in less than a year, Biden has withdrawn forces from Afghanistan and passed a substantial Infrastructure Bill. These are two Trump priorities that he couldnât accomplish during his four-year administration.
The Infrastructure Bill is an unambiguous case in which Biden succeeded where Trump failed. You may think that the Afghanistan exit was messy, but both Biden and Trump were on that same page, and now, weâre out with minimal casualties.
So, whatâs the disconnect between Bidenâs performance and perception of his performance? Itâs that Democrats have a huge messaging problem. Don Draper suggested that when you donât like whatâs being said, you should change the conversation.
âMost people want to feel safe in their communities, have health care when they need it, and have the opportunity for economic advancement for themselves and their children. Wanting those things is not very divisive along political lines nor by race, class, or gender….Voters are more likely to trust someone who articulates the goals and connects the policies to them than someone who argues the details of a particular policy or spending level. While there are differences between Democratic progressives and moderates on policy, most voters really donât engage with those.â
It’s questionable if the Democrats could have pushed an upbeat, optimistic message in the election while they were also insisting that America urgently needed funding for social policies. That contradiction may be worth them exploring in more depth.
Virginiaâs governor-elect Youngkin demonstrated that Republicans who use identity politics without embracing Trumpâs extremist rhetoric can be highly competitive, including in solidly Blue states like New Jersey. And itâs worrying that Dems seem to believe that Youngkin was an extremist posing as a suburban dad (he is), who MSNBC’s Joy Reid said incited âwhite backlashâ by exploiting âfakeâ and âimaginaryâ fears about the teaching of âcritical race theoryâ (CRT) in public schools.
But that doesnât explain the inroads Youngkin made in Blue suburbs. Voters usually consider education to be an important issue. They tend to trust Democrats to handle it better than Republicans. But, according to one Virginia poll the week before the election, Youngkin led McAuliffe by 3% among likely voters, but by 15% among Kâ12 parents.
So, like it or not, parental views about CRT and local control of public education were a real thing to Virginia voters.
Democrats must develop a plan for how they can avoid further political losses when Republicans across the country emulate Youngkinâs strategy. Hereâs The Atlanticâs Yascha Mounk: (emphasis by Wrongo)
âFor anybody who cares about making sure that Donald Trump does not become the 47th president of the United States, it is crucial that Democrats avoid repeating the mistakes that just put a Republican in Virginiaâs governorâs mansion. It is impossible to win elections by telling voters that their concerns are imaginary. If Democrats keep doing so, they will keep losing.â
Democrats are led by a group of geriatrics who no longer are able to communicate. They have no real social media skills or traditional cable media machine (MSNBC isnât the answer) to create messaging that resonates. Sadly, the traditional media is biased against them. If you doubt that, read the sub-headlines on Saturdayâs front page of the NYT:
For the NYT, a Democrat win isnât really a win. Democrats need to be crafting winning narratives. The only way that will happen is through ongoing, targeted, year-round campaigns. Not simply more speeches by geriatrics from behind podiums.
There are Democrats and Democrat-leaning voters out there. But in Red areas, they are demoralized and are sometimes hiding in plain sight. They think they are alone. Democrats have to show these demoralized Americans they are not alone, assuming the Party expects them to turn out and challenge the looming conservative majority.
Time for Democrats to wake up! Unless the messaging changes, the endgame is that Democratic voters will continue to sort into the most populated states, and Republicans will gain a permanent supermajority in the Senate. If current trends continue, in 2040 half of the US population will live in eight states.
To help them wake up, listen to Gil Scott-Heronâs âPieces of a Manâ from his 1974 album âThe Revolution Will Not Be Televisedâ:
Sample Lyric:
I saw my daddy greet the mailman
And I heard the mailman say
“Now don’t you take this letter to heart now, Jimmy
âCause they’ve laid off nine others today”
But he didn’t know what he was saying
He could hardly understand
That he was only talking to Pieces of a man
A Halloween prayer â photographer unknown. Fear is everywhere in the world. Is there reason for hope?
In comments on Wrongoâs post, âClimate Change Summit, Part IIâ, blog reader Gloria R. asked for some suggestions about how older people could help with climate change, given that the outcome will only be clear after the elderly are long gone.
Good question. In some ways, climate despair is a new kind of climate denial, blunting the momentum for action, just when we need it most. Despair can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
But young people arenât feeling hopeless. The first truly global social movements dedicated to climate action and climate justice have gained in size and strength, beginning with Greta Thunbergâs Fridays for the Future and spreading to the Sunrise Movement in America and to climate justice movements around the world.
First suggestion: These movements are long on enthusiasm and short of money. Maybe geezers could fund them?
Second, capital continues to leave fossil fuel investments. According to a recent study. this shifting of financial assets could potentially stop the fossil fuel companies from giving lip service to climate change, particularly if they lose political power. Maybe geezers could direct their financial advisors to move their investment $$ away from these big emitters?
Third, state and local governments set building codes and local energy-use regulations. They also set zoning and land use rules. So, maybe geezers could get political on a local level and work to make what we tend to call the âliving laboratories for democracyâ (state and local governments) havens of better climate policies and practices?
Fourth, some of us donât have funds to back up our ideals. One thing geezers can do that is costless is to send a letter to their kids about what they did to make sure the future isnât an environmental wasteland. Thatâs the premise behind DearTomorrow, a project thatâs archiving letters about climate change written by people to their future children, selves, or family. The idea is to foster personal engagement with the problems and solutions to climate change. DearTomorrow asks letter writers to focus on positive themes and why they have hope for future generations. Writing a letter to their future self or loved ones makes it personal.
Fifth, join Elders Climate Action, a group of grandparents who mobilize elders to address climate change. Theyâre trying to protect the well-being of their grandchildren.
There you go, Gloria (and all geezers), five ideas. There are many, many others.
Finally, the response to the Covid pandemic demonstrated how societies and economies can pivot very quickly in response to a global emergency. The response was far from perfect. The rich countries took care of their own citizens first, and then moved in some cases reluctantly, to help the poor nations. But for the medium-term, we now have a blueprint for the globe working together on a global crisis.
Energy efficiency is moving from the margins toward a new normal in the products we use. Think how commonplace LED light bulbs are today.
The price of solar and wind power has plunged, and thereâs reason to expect that the cost of energy storage, key to an electric power grid reliant on renewable energy, will decline over time.
The supply of clean energy resources is growing faster than new sources of âdirtyâ energy. Now, the potential for electric power generated from clean, steady sources is becoming a reality.
Thatâs Wrongoâs brief take on reasons to be hopeful about our climate future. But thatâs no reason to stop the effort to hold corporations and politicians accountable for making climate change a top priority. On Thursday at a House Oversight Committee hearing, four fossil fuel CEOs refused to declare climate change an âexistential crisisâ, using weasel words to avoid reality. They must be stopped.
Enough for today, itâs time for our Saturday Soother, when we take a brief break from whatever is going on in the Virginia governorâs race and spend a few minutes concentrating on the natural world around us. Here in CT, weâve seen temperatures in the mid-30s. Weâve started leaf blowing. It will go on until at least the first week of December.
Time to bundle up, grab a comfy chair by a window, and listen to Broken Peach perform a live Halloween version of Soft Cellâs âTainted Loveâ in zombie makeup. Broken Peach is a cover band from Spain:
Mt. Princeton, Buena Vista, CO – October 2021 photo by Haji Mahmood
Biden sees the Glasgow Climate Summit as a legacy event that will bring about substantive change. But nobody believes that. Change doesnât occur easily, and in the case of climate change, the forces arrayed against it are overwhelming.
Corporations will not give up profits easily. Individuals will not willingly pay more for goods once companies jack up their prices to maintain margins. Countries will try desperately to avoid being the first to bend the CO2 curve, knowing that their economic growth will slow precipitously.
Sometimes a change in culture has to occur before political change can begin. Think about the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s, or the anti-war movement in the early 1970s. Those great political changes were built on a foundation of cultural change. One came from Black churches, and the other from college students.
Weâre in the middle of a 2-year Covid debacle on top of a 13-year economic debacle. Before the Great Recession, if people werenât making it, they (and everyone else) thought the problem wasnât Americaâs politics or our economic system, but it was mostly about their laziness or lack of skills. Back then, we believed that anyone could make it. Few thought the system was rigged, and there wasnât a widespread push for serious change.
Now, young people are tumbling to the fact the problem isnât them â itâs the system. Think of it as a game of musical chairs, where the people sitting down never stand up when the music plays. From Ian Welsh: (Brackets by Wrongo)
âThey [the young] think, âitâs you, not meâ where âyouâ = society and politics. They may have…student loans, but they know boomers paid….[only] a nominal amount for university. They know they canât afford a home or apartment, not because they donât earn enough, but because wages have effectively gone down, and real home prices have gone up….They know medical care is too expensive and that drugs didnât used to cost nearly this much.â
Young people are beginning to understand that without political change, their lives arenât going to get better. In fact, they will probably get worse. This is true for the climate as well as for the basic inequalities in our society.
We need a political revolution to change these things, but Americaâs political system doesnât like big changes. It does enable smaller cultural and political changes all the time. Our politicians give us intermittent reinforcement: They are amenable and sometimes eager to serve up limited forms of change, but not what most people want, or what the planet needs.
And the longer we rely on todayâs politicians to save us, the farther we will be from the changes we need. Our political system is very resistant to change, as the prolonged debate over Bidenâs social spending bill shows.
And thereâs no political will at any level to change the system.
Still, it has to change, or it will self-destruct. When you are at Wrongoâs advanced age, the temptation is to say, âthe future is hopeless.â But Americaâs youth will soon replace the elders in both political parties. They will not be staying quiet.
What must happen is a cultural change that a significant portion of the population will buy into. It doesnât have to be everyone, but it has to be compelling to at least a 10%-20% minority which can then influence the other 80%-90%.
We live in a culture that values greed, power, and control over other peopleâs lives. So, the new culture must be built on a different set of values. Insisting on a different set of values is something we can all do both individually and collectively.
The Trumpists have attempted this with middle-aged White Americans. Steve Bannon knew that change must first happen culturally, that the culture has to want it, or at least allow it. But so far, the Trumpist appeal seems limited to 30% of the population.
The other 70% are on the sidelines, waiting for a reason to believe in something else.
If you doubt that young people can have an outsized impact, watch âThe Children Will Rise Up!â an climate change anthem written by Nandi Bushell, who gained social media fame as a drummer, and Roman Morello, son of Rage Against the Machineâs Tom Morello. Here these two 10 year-olds perform with cameos by Jack Black and Greta Thunberg:
Sample Lyric:
They let the earth bleed to feed their greed.
Stop polluting politicians poisoning for profit.
While they are killing all the trees, now we all can’t breathe
As the temperature’s a rising, nothing is surviving.
Sea Street Beach East Dennis MA – October 2021 photo by Ulla Wise
Rather than adding to the current vibe of general despair, a new report from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) offers a number of interesting perspectives on how the US defense budget could sustain a $1 trillion cut over the course of 10 years.
The CBO report says that national defense programs could absorb a well-structured $1 trillion cut while still protecting the homeland and Americaâs allies from foreign adversaries.
âThe new report outlines three different options for cutting the Pentagon budget by $1 trillion over the next decade â a 14 percent reduction. Doing so would still leave the department with $6.3 trillion in taxpayer dollars over the next ten years, in inflation-adjusted 2022 dollars.â
The reportâs mandate was to look at how to adjust the size and focus of US military under smaller federal budgets. It created three broad options to illustrate the range of strategies that the United States could pursue under a budget that would be cut gradually by a total of $1 trillion, or 14%, between 2022 and 2031. They developed the options using their Interactive Force Structure Tool.
Here are the CBOâs three options for military force reduction:
Maintain the existing national security strategy but with fewer personnel.
Change the existing national security strategy to focus more on countering adversaries with international allies and coalitions.
Change the existing national security strategy to focus more on protecting Americaâs access to sea, land, and air and space.
In all three options, the CBO slashed full-time active forces, while leaving the less expensive reserves at their current levels. While acknowledging that “none of the plans are without risk,” they concluded that the Pentagon could reduce spending without sacrificing our security.
According to the report, in all three of CBO’s options, units would be staffed, trained, and equipped at the same levels as they are today, but there would be fewer units, or different combinations of units. The CBO chose to retain fully staffed units because, while personnel are expensive, partially staffed units would not be able to execute their missions. That would make the US more of a paper tiger than we are currently.
The CBO report also put the potential cut in historical perspective. While significant, a $1 trillion cut (14%) over a decade would be far smaller than the cuts Americaâs military spending in 1988 to 1997 (30%), and the 25% cut we had in 2010-2015. A 14% cut from fiscal years 2022 to 2031 would also still leave annual defense spending at more than it was at any point from 1948 through 2002.
Lindsay Koshgarian, program director at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) said:
“The US military budget is now higher than it was at the peak of the Vietnam War, the Korean War, or the Cold War….We are spending far too much on the Pentagon, and too little on everything else…”
A $1 trillion saving isnât chump change. Those funds could be used to prevent future pandemics, address climate change, or reduce economic injustice. None of those are small matters. And they are all matters of political priorities.
No self-respecting Republican war hawk would have anything to do with cutting the militaryâs budget. And with the exception of a handful of left leaning Democrats, every other Democrat will shrink from the idea of reducing the military budget. Itâs too risky politically.
We actually need Congress to solve three problems: Our revenue problem, our social spending/cost inflation problem, and our defense spending problem.
The CBO idea tackles the defense spending, but we need to consider taxes and revenue along with spending. We need to raise taxes on corporations and the wealthiest individuals while cutting that defense spending.
Turning to social spending, if you ask Americans what spending they want to cut, they will never say that we ought to ravage peopleâs retirement security. And 90+% of entitlement spending goes to the elderly, the disabled, or people who worked at least 1,000 hours in the past year. The big savings should come from reducing the growth in the cost of medical services.
Taking $1 trillion from Pentagon spending would be a great start, but we have other work to do.
