Category: Social Cohesion

What to Do When You’re Called “Pedophile”

The Daily Escape:

Western Rosebud, Red Rock National conservation area, NV – April 2022 photo by David Frederick

We’ve reached a point in our political discourse where Republicans are tossing around lies about their Democratic opponents, including saying the Democrats are pedophiles. And they’re doing it without fear of reprisal from the establishment Democrats.

One Democrat, Michigan state senator Mallory McMorrow was accused by Lana Theis, a Republican state senate colleague, of being a “groomer” of young children in a recent fundraising appeal. Theis also said McMorrow wanted to teach 8-year-olds that they are responsible for slavery. McMorrow didn’t stay silent after the accusations against her. She gave her Republican accuser a rhetorical bloody nose:

Her speech is inspiring. You should definitely watch it. Here’s a quote:

“I am a straight, white, Christian, married, suburban mom who knows that the very notion that learning about slavery or redlining or systemic racism somehow means that children are being taught to feel bad or hate themselves because they are white is absolute nonsense…No child alive today is responsible for slavery. No one in this room is responsible for slavery. But each and every single one of us bears responsibility for writing the next chapter of history….we are not responsible for the past. We also cannot change the past. We can’t pretend that it didn’t happen or deny people their very right to exist.”

The Dem’s typical “that doesn’t deserve a response” is out of date. It doesn’t work on hateful Republican rhetoric. McMorrow shows us how it’s done.

We need to get used to this, because it’s going to be a main talking point for Republicans through the 2022 mid-terms and beyond. In response, it isn’t enough for Democrats to “just go high”. They need to start attacking Republicans for how weird and abnormal they are.

You probably saw the many humorous takes on Tucker Carlson’s weirdo testicle-tanning video. Really, these guys get to accuse others of sexual problems?

And there’s Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) who may actually soon be a convicted pedophile. You remember Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) was implicated in allegations of sexual misconduct against the Ohio State wrestling team’s former team doctor. Or Rep. Lauren Boebert’s (R-CO) then-future husband who was arrested for exposing himself to two young women at a Colorado bowling alley (she was present), and he was later arrested for domestic violence against her while they were dating.

These are the people who are screaming “pedophiles” at Dems.

Wrongo doesn’t often suggest paying attention to James Carville, but on MSNBC over the weekend he said: (brackets by Wrongo)

“[Republicans] have learned over a period of time it doesn’t matter” what they say or do, Carville complained. “[Democrats] are weak and all they’re gonna do is talk bad about each other.”

Carville pointed out how little pushback Democrats made against the pedophilia-obsessed GOP Senators during the Supreme Court Justice confirmation hearings for Ketanji Brown-Jackson.

Charlie Pierce reminds us of how there is a straight line from the McMartin case in 1990 to where we are today. McMartin showed how hysteria over purported sexual abuse of children in schools can grip our society. Despite a complete lack of reputable evidence against the teachers and workers at McMartin Preschool, the McMartin trials took over six years and cost more than $13.5 million without a single guilty verdict resulting from the 208 charges.

Today these accusations are again rampant across the country, only with much more paranoia and way more firearms. America is on the cusp of a revolution, but it’s too early to see exactly what it is coming, or what it will become.

We now live in a world where it’s perfectly acceptable for a politician to demonize those who don’t share their belief system. Someone can take to Twitter or send out a fundraising email and savage a person either to score cheap political points or add a few bucks to their political war chest.

The Republicans are essentially a new Party since its hostile takeover by Trump. Democrats have to look all the way back to FDR for a takeover model. He overthrew the old political order with the New Deal.

We’re seeing a well-organized, well-funded, (and effective in its way), Republican assault on democracy itself: They have willed into existence a Supreme Court supermajority that cares about its social agenda as much as it cares about the “law”. The GOP’s Senate and House ranks are filled with adherents to that same agenda.

Nearly half of America agrees with them because they promise revenge against people they despise. We face a risk in 2024 of Trump winning a filibuster-proof trifecta [House, Senate, White House] with a minority of the national vote.

We can no longer afford to “go high”. Everyone knows the stakes.

What will Democrats do to win?

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Texas Wingnuttery

The Daily Escape:

Easter morning at Lake Tapps, with Mt. Rainer in background, Pierce County, WA – April 2022 photo by Motojw Photography. This picture was cropped by Wrongo to fit the blog’s page. View the original photo here.

Two examples of Texas wingnuttery, and it’s only Tuesday. First, the WaPo has an article showing how Conservative groups are teaming up with politicians to remove books and to change membership of local library boards:

“In early November, an email dropped into the inbox of Judge Ron Cunningham, the silver-haired head chair of the governing body of Llano County in Texas’s picturesque Hill Country. The subject line read ‘Pornographic Filth at the Llano Public Libraries.’”

The author was Bonnie Wallace, a local church volunteer who had attached an Excel spreadsheet with 60 books she found objectionable, including those about transgender teens, sex education and race, including “Between the World and Me,” by author and journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates.

Not long after, the county’s chief librarian sent the list to Suzette Baker, head of one of the library’s three branches:

“She told me to look at pulling the books off the shelf and possibly putting them behind the counter. I told them that was censorship,”

In January, commissioners voted to dissolve the existing library board and created a reconstituted board of mostly political appointees, including many of the citizens who had complained about books. They named Ms. Wallace the vice chair of a new library board stacked with conservative appointees some of whom didn’t even have library cards.

Later, Baker was fired, and Llano joined a growing number of communities across America where conservatives have mounted challenges to books and other content they deem to be inappropriate.

A movement that started by influencing school boards has now expanded to public libraries. They accounted for 37% of book challenges last year, according to the American Library Association. Conservative activists in several states, including Texas, Montana and Louisiana have joined forces with like-minded officials to dissolve libraries’ governing bodies, rewrite or delete censorship protections, and remove books outside of official challenge procedures.

No one is forced to go to a public library. If someone goes to a public library, nobody is forcing that person to read a book while there, or to take a book out of the public library. It’s called a “public” library for a reason. The library serves all of the public, not just a small interest group (or individual) who feels they have the right to decide what all citizens should or shouldn’t read.

The issue is denial of public access.

Second, the NYT reports that a Texas state legislator warned Citigroup that he would introduce a bill to prevent the bank from underwriting municipal bonds in the state unless it rescinded its policy covering travel expenses for employees who go outside their state to seek an abortion. This Texas politician is attempting to dictate a national anti-abortion policy:

“Citigroup stated in a filing on Tuesday that it would provide travel benefits to employees seeking abortions outside their state, “in response to changes in reproductive health care laws in certain states.” Last year, Texas enacted a law that bans abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy. The law took effect in September.”

It’s important to remember Enron, a now-defunct Texas corporation known for its massive accounting fraud, used to threaten banks with withdrawing all of their business if the bank’s analysts gave accurate opinions about Enron’s stock. It appears that remains a model for Republican governance.

Lots of high tech companies have diversity programs and progressive employee policies. Many have extensive operations in Texas. It’s going to take some time but Texas will suffer disinvestment as companies move elsewhere.

Because Texas is becoming Taliban country.

Here’s a long quote from Oliver Cromwell, speaking to the Rump Parliament on April 20, 1653, the day he dissolved it. He could easily be speaking to today’s Republican Party:

“It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonored by your contempt of all virtue and defiled by your practice of every vice; ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government; ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money.

Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not possess? Ye have no more religion than my horse; gold is your God; which of you have not barter’d your conscience for bribes? Is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of the Commonwealth?

Ye sordid prostitutes have you not defil’d this sacred place, and turn’d the Lord’s temple into a den of thieves, by your immoral principles and wicked practices? Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation; you were deputed here by the people to get grievances redress’d, are yourselves gone! So! Take away that shining bauble there and lock up the doors.

In the name of God, go!”

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – April 17, 2022

It’s Easter Sunday for those who celebrate it. For Wrongo, it’s the final push to finish our taxes that are due on Monday. This time of year is always a painful reminder that roughly a quarter of the fruits of our labor go to Washington and Hartford. And if you need help? Well, that ship has sailed. The IRS is currently answering only 1 in 5 phone calls.

As Helene Olen says in the WaPo:

“This isn’t incompetence…It’s the result of a…decades-long and mostly successful campaign by…Republicans…to demean and defund the IRS. As a result, the…agency is severely understaffed and working with outdated technology. Which means hundreds of billions of dollars in taxes are uncollected…”

More from Olen:

“Yet many Republicans don’t want to fix it. They are pushing back against President Biden’s plan — part of his Build Back Better agenda — to give the IRS $80 billion over the next decade to improve its operations.”

Also, an interesting fact from the UK’s Financial Times about the inventiveness of the Ukrainian soldiers:

“The Russian attempt to take Kyiv was defeated by a combination of factors including geography, the attackers’ blundering, Ukrainian ingenuity, and modern arms….Moscow’s forces were thwarted, too, by pieces of foam mat — the Ukrainians call them karemats — costing as little as ÂŁ1.50. The mats prevent Russian thermal imaging drones from detecting human heat “

Apparently the Ukrainian troops held the karemats over their heads, allowing them to move undetected at night, so soldiers armed with anti-tank weapons could sneak up on the Russians, fire their rockets and then slip away. Karemats are used throughout Ukraine and Russia.

An equivalent Pentagon human body heat cloaking system would cost $100k per. On to cartoons.

Is the tax game rigged? You betcha:

Ukraine also sank Russia’s Black Sea flagship, Moskva:

The NRA was joined by Marjorie Taylor Greene in spouting craziness about NYC:

Jared Kushner gets paid for services rendered, and the elephant wants you to look away:

GOP says Right to Choose isn’t limited:

Bunny is accepted while kids are not:

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Saturday Soother – April 16, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Water Lilies, Balboa Park, San Diego CA – April 2022 photo by Sharyl Edmiston Mitchell. Like Monet but in focus.

Three items for your review this Saturday. First, the watchdog group American Oversight published emails that revealed Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, asked Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to join a weekly coalition meeting of conservatives with ties to a group she founded called Groundswell.

She suggested that DeSantis’ office would be familiar with her because her husband had been in contact with the governor “on various things as of late.” That was in February.

DeSantis has two policy items that are likely to go before the Court: Florida’s Congressional redistricting map (drawn under DeSantis’s supervision) and Florida’s ban on abortions after 15 weeks. Could these be among the “various things” that DeSantis and Clarence Thomas discussed?

We may never know because the Supreme Court has no enforceable code of ethics and no mechanism for reporting ex parte communications between justices and politicians or lobbyists. We’re headed backwards in America: Our sadness is that a minority, aided by the Supreme Court will now define what America really is.

Second, A 26-year-old black Grand Rapids, Michigan man was administered the death penalty by a cop for a minor traffic violation after he resisted arrest. Patrick Lyoya was a Congolese refugee who came to the US fleeing violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2014. Wrongo will not present one or more of the gratuitous violence porn videos of the incident that are all over the internet.

Here’s a chart showing just how many more people are killed by cops in America vs. those killed in other wealthy countries:

Note that cops in other developed countries don’t kill very many people. For a cop to kill somebody in Western Europe or Japan, it is extraordinarily rare. In comparison, three people are killed by cops every day here in the land of the free.

On the other hand, there are 300 million guns out in the wild in the US. That’s surely making police more trigger-happy than cops in the rest of the civilized world. While that’s true, US police work isn’t nearly as dangerous as the police unions want you to believe, since death by Covid was the leading cause of police death for the second year in a row.

The typical take on this will be “You won’t die if you don’t run from the police.” That’s reasonable in the abstract, But should failure to comply with established Best Practices for America’s Docile Citizenry be a death sentence? That’s an authoritarian mindset.

There may be situations where it is legitimate to shoot a fleeing suspect to prevent the actual threat of death or severe bodily injury; but this was not one of those cases. Police now have the mentality that their primary goal is achieving compliance with their orders in every situation, and whatever they need to do to achieve that is ok. They’re wrong, it isn’t ok.

Third, old US Senators have got to retire. We currently have the oldest Senate in US history. From the WaPo:

“Twenty-three members of the Senate are in their 70s; only one is under 40. According to the Congressional Research Service, the average age of senators at the beginning of this year was 64.3 years — the oldest in history.”

And this part of the story is both sad and unnerving at the same time:

“Colleagues worry Dianne Feinstein is now mentally unfit to serve, citing recent interactions.”

The article quotes other Senators on her failing mental acuity. Feinstein’s term runs until January 2025.

With all that’s wrong, it’s time to leave the news of the week behind and focus on centering ourselves so we can try to handle next week’s horrors. It’s time for our Saturday Soother.

Spring has sprung on the fields of Wrong. The forsythia and daffodils are blooming. We’ve mulched all plants and trees; the lawns have been dethatched and seeded. It’s still too early to put out the garden furniture, but our plans to create a pollinator garden are proceeding.

To help you center yourself, start by brewing up a big mug of Dark Matter coffee ($17.00/12 oz.) made by San Diego’s own West Bean coffee roasters.

Now grab a comfy chair by a south-facing window and since this weekend is important to three of our great religions, settle back and listen to Mozart’s “Ave Verum Corpus”. Mozart composed this motet in D major in 1791 during the last year of his life to celebrate the feast of Corpus Christi.

Here it is performed by The Choir of King’s College, Cambridge directed by Daniel Hyde. It is from the BBC’s “Easter from King’s 2022” broadcast on BBC Two today:

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Saturday Soother – April 9, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Perhaps the most important selfie ever? Via POTUS

A few items for today. First, the Senate confirmed Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court on Thursday, making her the first-ever Black woman and former public defender to serve on the nation’s highest court. Every Democrat voted for her, plus three Republicans: Sens. Lisa Murkowski (AK), Susan Collins (ME) and Mitt Romney (UT). When the vote was over, the Senate chamber erupted with applause, but not by most Republicans.

Here’s a video of the many Republican Senators walking out amid applause for the new Associate Justice:

It was a bad moment for the White Nationalists of the GOP. Is it Wrongo, or has the Republican Party turned itself into a fountain of sexual innuendo and legal intrusion into our lives? Robert Reich agrees:

“…it’s part of their culture war, and culture wars sell with voters (and the media) eager for conflict and titillation. A culture war over sex sells even better. It lets Republicans imply that Democrats are somehow on the side of sexual “deviants” who endanger the “natural order…a culture war over sex allows Republicans to sound faux populist without having to talk about the real sources of populist anger — corporate-induced inflation at a time of record corporate profits, profiteering and price gouging….[and] stagnant wages…and by focusing on pedophilia, gender identity, gay people, and abortion, Republicans don’t have to talk about Trump and January 6.

Hate, whether against Justice Jackson or aspects of American culture, is like a hard drug. It’s destructive to the users and to everyone around them. And they will always need bigger hits of it.

Second, Tim Snyder posted about the Russian policy guiding its war in Ukraine: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“Russia has just issued a genocide handbook for its war on Ukraine.  The Russian official press agency “RIA Novosti” published last Sunday an explicit program for the complete elimination of the Ukrainian nation as such.  It is still available for viewing, and has now been translated…into English.”

Snyder says that since the war began, “denazification” in Russian usage simply means the destruction of the Ukrainian state and nation.  A “Nazi,” as the genocide manual explains, is simply a human being who self-identifies as Ukrainian. According to the handbook, the establishment of a Ukrainian state thirty years ago was the “Nazification of Ukraine”.

The genocide handbook explains that the Russian policy of “denazification” is not directed against Nazis in the sense that the word is normally used. The handbook grants, with no hesitation, that there is no evidence that Nazism, as generally understood, is important in Ukraine. It operates within the special Russian definition of “Nazi”: A Nazi is a Ukrainian who refuses to admit to being a Russian.

The money quote from Snyder:

“As a historian of mass killing, I am hard pressed to think of many examples where states explicitly advertise the genocidal character of their own actions right at the moment those actions become public knowledge….Legally, genocide means both actions that destroy a group in whole or in part, combined with some intention to do so.  Russia has done the deed and confessed to the intention.”

Perhaps then it isn’t a surprise that Russia quit the UN Human Rights Council on Thursday shortly after it was suspended for atrocities in Ukraine. The UN General Assembly voted 93 to 24 to suspend Russia on Thursday, with 58 abstentions. What Snyder has reported deserves a global audience. It seems that throwing Russia out of the UN should be the next step.

Enough of this week’s news. It’s time for our Saturday Soother, a precious few moments when we avoid the political yelling and focus on gathering ourselves for the coming week.

We’ve finally heard the peepers on the Fields of Wrong. The lawns are greening up, buds are on most trees and bushes, and it’s turkey romance season. We have a resident group of seven female and two male turkeys. This week, the males are preening around and spreading their tail feathers while the females run in the opposite direction. We expect that will turn into fraternization next week.

To kick off your Saturday, take a few minutes and brew up a mug of Two Dog coffee ($17.50/lb.) from Clearwater, FL’s Blazing Bean Roasters. Now grab a seat by a window and watch and listen to another arrangement of classical music by the Korean group LAYERS who we have featured before. This time, listen to their take on Bizet’s “Fantasy” from his opera “Carmen”. Here it is arranged for two cellos, violin, and piano:

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MLK’s Assassination

The Daily Escape:

Vermontville, NY with Whiteface Mountain in the background – April 2022 photo by William Adamczak Photography

Just a short note today to say that we shouldn’t forget that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered in Memphis 54 years ago yesterday. On April 4, 1968, Dr. King was fatally shot on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, a site that’s now a museum dedicated to the civil rights champion’s life.

We should also remember that at the time, he was pursuing economic justice, building the Poor People’s Campaign and supporting the striking sanitation workers of Memphis, TN.

When you look at 1968 versus 2022, in a lot of ways we’ve become more like the country we were back in the 1960s. We’ve seen the near-gutting of the Voting Rights Act by the Supreme Court. We also see efforts to end any teaching in schools of the truth about race in America, and about King’s legacy.

We’re being told by Republicans that a highly qualified Black woman isn’t Supreme Court material.

We spend more time celebrating Dr. King’s birth than acknowledging where he was politically when he was killed. Beyond economic justice, perhaps more than any other social-movement leader in American history, King proved capable of looking at different strands of political and social injustice, then tying them together to form a coherent narrative capable of leveraging dissent into concrete policy change.

That’s what we should remember: There’s less than three months between the observance of King’s birthday and his martyrdom. The way each is recognized by politicians reveals the contradictions in his legacy. Politicians of all ideological stripes extol the virtues of racial equality, while most ignore his criticisms of war and poverty.

King’s last book, “Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?” posed a question that resonates more today than it did at the time of its release in 1967: Where do we go from here?

Here’s an idea: Develop a narrative that unites people to win back the country from the MAGAs and their fellow travelers. Take that narrative to your neighbors. Work to get out the vote.

Our democracy is in an existential crisis, and only you (and your narrative) can save it.

That was the lesson of Dr. King’s life.

Let’s close with a musical statement that echoes MLK’s message. Watch and listen to “Keep Your Eyes On The Prize“, a folk song from the American civil rights movement. Although the song was composed as a hymn well before World War I, the lyrics in this version were written by civil rights activist Alice Wine in 1956. It is based on the traditional song, “Gospel Plow”, which is also known as “Hold On”, and “Keep Your Hand On The Plow”.

In this version from 2006, Bruce Springsteen starts on vocals, but when Marc Anthony Thompson (with hat) joins him, it becomes a great soul-stirring anthem:

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Monday Wake Up Call – April 3, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Makapu’u Lookout, Oahu, HI – January 2022 photo by TwoBongs on Tour

Let’s talk about the “Wealth Effect”. It’s the notion that when households become richer as a result of a rise in asset values, such as stock prices or home values, they spend more and stimulate the broader economy. The idea is that consumers feel more financially secure and confident about their wealth, even if their income and costs are the same as before.

This concept has been endorsed by two recent former Fed Chairs, Janet Yellen and Ben Bernanke. It’s simply another term for trickle-down economics.

In 2019, after nearly 11 years of the Fed’s policy of adding money to the economy, by “Quantitative Easing” (QE), the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) did a study on the Wealth Effect, to quantify how much richer the rich would have had to become to have x% impact on the overall economy, and how long this boost lasts before it fades.

They found that QE makes 10% of the population a lot richer, producing immense concentration of wealth at the top 1%, and mind-boggling concentrations of wealth at the billionaire level. After which, there were some very muted trickle-down effects on the economy.

Wolf Richter used the Fed’s wealth distribution data to create a chart he calls the Wealth Effect Monitor. The Fed divides the US population into four groups by wealth: The “Top 1%,” the “2% to 9%,” the “next 40%,” and the “bottom 50%” to report on wealth.

Richter divides this data by the number of households in each category, to obtain the average wealth per household in each category. Here’s his chart for the past 21 years:

Note the immense increase in the wealth for the 1% households after the Fed’s latest QE effort that began in March 2020. They have been the primary beneficiaries of the Fed’s policies since 2020.

True to the Wealth Effect’s concepts, the Fed’s policies helped to inflate asset prices, and thus only asset owners benefited: The more assets held, the stronger the benefit. Here’s Richter’s analysis of average wealth (assets minus debts) per household, by category in the 4th quarter, 2021:

  • “Top “1%” household (red): $36.2 million
  • The “2% to 9%” household (yellow): $4.68 million
  • The “next 40%” household (purple): $775,000
  • The “bottom 50%” household (green): $59,000

The Fed doesn’t provide separate data on the 0.01% and the Billionaire class, but they were the biggest beneficiaries of the Fed’s monetary policies. The top 30 US billionaires have a total wealth of $2.12 trillion, sliced into 30 slices for a wealth of $70.8 billion per billionaire, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Compare that to the bottom half of the US population (the “bottom 50%”) who have a combined wealth of just $3.7 trillion, divided into 165 million slices for each individual. The way percentages work, you would think that households in the bottom 50% would have the largest percentage gains since they start from a lower base. But because they own fewer assets, when adjusted by population, they stay mired in last place. From Richter:

“When the wealth of the bottom 50% increases by 5%, they gain about $3,000. And when the average wealth of the top 30 billionaires increases by 5%, they on average gain $3,500,000,000.”

More from Richter:

“In 1990, the wealth disparity between the average top 1% household and the average “bottom 50%” household was $5 million.”

Since March 2020, the wealth disparity between the average top 1% household and the average bottom 50% household has grown by $11.2 million per household.

The bottom 50% of Americans spend all or nearly all their income on housing, transportation, food, healthcare, etc. They hold few stocks and very little real estate. Add that to our current round of inflation, and in order to get by, the bottom 50% are spending nearly all of their income.

They’re the ones paying for the Fed’s policy of enriching asset holders.

We know that average wages and salaries have gone up a lot. Ben Casselman of the NYT says that the wages of low-wage workers have gone up by nearly 12% in the last year; but remember, that’s on a low base. So the worker bees in our economy have a long way to go, while the richest asset holders got vastly wealthier, thanks to the Fed’s policies.

Time to wake up America! The phony trickle-down theory has amazing persistence among US policy makers, despite being amazingly damaging to most of us.

To help you wake up watch an American icon, Taj Mahal perform “Good Morning Ms. Brown” in 2014 while riding in a mule-drawn carriage in the French Quarter in New Orleans:

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – April 3, 2022

The latest monthly jobs report shows 431,000 jobs were added. The report marked the 11th straight month of job gains above 400,000, the longest such stretch of growth in records dating back to 1939. So far in 2022, the economy has created 1.69 million jobs. That’s in just three months. By any fair measure, it’s an extraordinary total.

We are still about 1.6 million jobs below the number of employees in the workforce in February 2020 just before the pandemic hit. At the current average rate for the past six months, it will take three more months to get back to that level.

Leisure and hospitality jobs, which were the hardest-hit during the pandemic, rose by 112,000, but are still 1.5 million below their pre-pandemic peak. They comprise most of the jobs that are still missing in the economy.

Wage growth, which averaged 5.9% in the 2nd half of 2021, was up again, now showing a 6.7% year over year gain. Aside from April 2020, this is the highest wage growth in 40 years. And aside from three months in 2019 and 2020, the unemployment rate was the lowest (or equal to the lowest) in over 50 years.

The blemish is inflation. Most likely, inflation-adjusted wages have risen by 1% or less in the last year. On to cartoons.

A brief history of recent misspeaks:

Biden tries a different way to get Putin:

Florida’s Governor DeSantis says the mouse is the real enemy of kids:

This Thomas’s dinner conversation is straight-up ok:

Fox hires Caitlyn Jenner, but there were unforeseen issues:

Free Brittney:

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Saturday Soother – March 26, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Crocus in bloom, Holliston, MA – March 2022 photo by Karen Randall

Let’s take a look at three stories that didn’t get their due this week. First, from the LA Times, about gang infiltration of the LA County Sherriff’s department:

“The top watchdog for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department has identified more than 40 alleged members of gang-like groups of deputies that operate out of two sheriff’s stations…..Inspector General Max Huntsman said his office has compiled a partial list that includes 11 deputies who allegedly belong to the Banditos, which operate out of the East L.A. sheriff’s station, and 30 alleged Executioners from the Compton sheriff’s station.”

Huntsman told the LA Times that about a third of the 41 deputies on his list had admitted that they had gang tattoos or belonged to the groups. Allegations aren’t proof but apparently, there is a long history of allegations like this one surrounding the LA Sherriff’s department.

Also consider this article in the WaPo about police wrongdoing:

“The Post documented nearly 40,000 payments involving allegations of police misconduct in 25 departments, totaling over $3 billion. Departments usually deny wrongdoing when resolving claims.”

They found that more than 1,200 officers in the departments surveyed had caused problems resulting in at least five payments each by their municipalities. More than 200 had 10 or more payments for actions that resulted in lawsuits. New York City leads the way with more than 5,000 officers named in two or more claims, accounting for 45% of the money the city spent on misconduct cases. There are 36,000 officers in the NYPD. That’s 13.8%.

Settlements rarely involve an admission of guilt or a finding of wrongdoing. City officials and attorneys representing police departments say settling claims is often more cost-efficient than fighting them in court. Since there’s no formal list of bad actors, there’s little reason to hold these officers accountable.

Law enforcement throughout America gives itself a black eye whenever stories like these are written.

Second, the NYT reported that several of the Republican Senators who suggested that Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson had given uncommonly lenient sentences to felons convicted of child sex abuse crimes had all previously voted to confirm judges who had given out similar prison terms below prosecutor recommendations, the very problem they had with Judge Jackson:

“But Mr. Hawley, Mr. Graham, Mr. Cotton and Mr. Cruz all voted to confirm judges nominated by President Donald J. Trump to appeals courts even though those nominees had given out sentences lighter than prosecutor recommendations in cases involving images of child sex abuse.”

You can read the article for the examples.

Hypocrisy is fuel for politicians, so maybe we shouldn’t be surprised. We know that Sen. Graham had voted only a year ago to confirm Judge Jackson, despite the sentencing decisions she had made as a district judge, the same ones that he now objects to.

Third, Bloomberg reported that private equity money is again pouring into residential real estate markets. They cite Phoenix, AZ as a prime example: (brackets by Wrongo)

“The median home [in Phoenix] was worth about $285,000 at the beginning of the pandemic; it was valued at $435,000 two years later.”

That’s a 53% increase. This is also true in NJ, where Wrongo’s son just got an all-cash offer from an investment group for his home, sight unseen, at 11% higher than the closest offer from a retail home buyer who needed a mortgage.

This is turning first-time home buyers into long-term renters, with real-world consequences.

Home equity represents a huge portion of individual wealth in the US, especially for moderate-income families that have few other opportunities to use borrowed money to purchase assets that can increase in value over time. Price appreciation lets owners accrue wealth which can be tapped later on when they have a large or unexpected expense.

Wall Street’s spin is that there just aren’t enough rentals for families who want to live in good neighborhoods but can’t afford a down payment. So they’re providing a necessary economic service. You be the judge.

Enough of this drama! It’s time to find a way to let go of the tragedy in Ukraine and the clown show surrounding Judge Jackson for a bit. It’s time for our Saturday Soother.

Here on the fields of Wrong, it’s time to take down the deer fencing and put up the bluebird nest boxes. We also need to watch what we can of college basketball’s March Madness.

To help you get ready for the weekend, grab a chair by a large window and listen to Mozart’s “Turkish March” played here on bamboo instruments. It was performed in 2015 by Dong Quang Vinh on a bamboo flute along with the Bamboo Ensemble Suc Song Moi, in Haiphong, Vietnam:

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Which States Have the Highest Homicide Rates?

The Daily Escape:

Moonrise over Salt Run, St. Augustine FL – March 2022 photo by Bob Willis

Republicans can’t stop talking about how the murder rate in America has grown. It’s true that the homicide rates are up, although they remain well below their historic highs of the 1990s. There were more than 21,500 murders in 2020, the latest year for which we have data. The national murder rate in 2020 was about 6.5 per 100,000 people, about 40% below what it was in the 1990s.

With the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, the trope about a liberal soft-on-crime plot against America returned. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said:

“We are in the middle of a violent crime wave including soaring rates of homicides and carjackings….Amid all this, the soft-on-crime brigade is squarely in Judge Jackson’s corner.”

Would you be surprised to learn that McConnell’s home state of Kentucky has the third-highest homicide rate per capita in the US? In fact, eight of the 10 states with the highest homicide rates in 2020 voted that year for Trump. The truth is that Red states (those run by Republicans) have a bigger problem with murder than do the Blue states; their murder rate is higher.

Jonathan Capehart says in the WaPo: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“This startling data is revealed in a new report from centrist think tank Third Way. Mississippi leads the way with a 2020 homicide rate of 20.5 per 100,000 residents…the five states with the highest murder rates, all Trump-voting states, had rates at least 240% higher than New York’s murder rate and at least 150% higher than California’s.”

Here’s a chart from the WaPo:

The per capita homicide rates above are per 100,000 people. Remember that the national average is 6.5 per hundred thousand people. Beyond the top 10 states, the report looked at the 2020 murder rates in the 25 states that voted for Donald Trump and compared it with the murder rates in the 25 states that voted for Joe Biden.

The news was the same. The murder rate in Trump states (8.20/100k) was 40% higher than the 5.78/100k murder rate in Biden states. These facts really hurt the Republican narrative of “crime-is-out-of-control” in cities like Los Angeles, New York City, Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, Portland, Baltimore, and Minneapolis, all of which have a bad rap among our Red state friends.

When you dig into the report by city, Jacksonville FL, a city with a Republican mayor, had 128 more murders in 2020 than San Francisco, a city led by a Democrat. Despite having comparable populations, few would say that San Francisco is a safer city than Jacksonville.

The narrative by the Right (and supported by the media) about crime and murder is both convenient and wrong. Many on the Right attribute the homicide increase to Democratic policies, specifically about police reform. The fact is that murder rates are actually higher in Republican states that haven’t even flirted with ideas like defund the police.

The eight of the ten Red states in the top ten are not only Trump-voting states, but they have been bastions of GOP policy for the last 25 years. The true conclusion from the data is that Republicans do a far better job of blaming others for high murder rates than they actually do to reduce murder rates.

Sorry Mitch, the increase in murders is not a liberal cities problem. It’s a national problem.

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