Society – Page 2 – The Wrongologist

Democrats Need New Messaging

The Daily Escape:

Cholla Cactus at sunrise, Joshua Tree NP – November 2023 photo by Michelle Strong

Yesterday’s column described how confusing current polling data is with less than a year to go before the 2024 presidential election. We can easily overdose on polls, but in general, they seem to be pointing toward a very difficult re-election for Biden.

At the risk of contributing to the OD, here’s another example of terrible poll for Biden. It comes from Democratic stalwarts Democracy Corps, run by James Carville and Stanley Greenberg:

“President Biden trails Donald Trump by 5 points in the battleground states and loses at least another point when we include the independent candidates who get 17% of the vote. Biden is trying to win these states where three quarters believe the country is on the wrong track and 48% say, “I will never vote for Biden.”

What to make of all this? Wrongo thinks it’s time to take a different approach to the Democrat’s messaging. Let’s start with a quick look at the NYT’s David Leonhardt’s new book, “Ours Was the Shining Future”. Leonhardt’s most striking contention is based on a study of census and income tax data by the Harvard economist Raj Chetty: Where once the great majority of Americans could hope to earn more than their parents, now only half are likely to. From The Atlantic:

“Of Americans born in 1940, 92% went on to earn more than their parents; among those born in 1980, just 50% did. Over the course of a few decades, the chances of achieving the American dream went from a near-guarantee to a coin flip.”

As we said yesterday, the American Dream is fading. Leonhardt says that the Democrats have largely abandoned fighting for basic economic improvements for the working class. Some of the defining progressive triumphs of the 20th century, from labor victories by unions and Social Security under FDR to the Great Society programs of LBJ, were milestones in securing a voting majority. More from The Atlantic:

“Ronald Reagan took office promising to restore growth by paring back government, slashing taxes on the rich and corporations…gutting business regulations and antitrust enforcement. The idea…was that a rising tide would lift all boats. Instead, inequality soared while living standards stagnated and life expectancy fell behind…peer countries.”

Today, a child born in Norway or the UK has a far better chance of out-earning their parents than one born in the US. More context from The Atlantic: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“From the 1930s until the late ’60s, Democrats dominated national politics. They used their power to pass…progressive legislation that transformed the American economy. But their coalition, which included southern Dixiecrats as well as northern liberals, fractured after…Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Richard Nixon’s “southern strategy” exploited that rift and changed the electoral map. Since then, no Democratic presidential candidate has won a majority of the white vote.”

The Atlantic makes another great point: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“The civil-rights revolution also changed white Americans’ economic attitudes. In 1956, 65% of white people said they believed the government ought to guarantee a job to anyone who wanted one and to provide a minimum standard of living. By 1964, that number had sunk to 35%.”

America’s mid-century economy could have created growth and equality, but racial suppression and racial progress led to where we remain today.

Leonhardt argues that what Thomas Piketty called the “Brahmin left” must stop demonizing working-class people who do not share its views on cultural issues such as abortion, immigration, affirmative action and patriotism. From Leonhardt:

“A less self-righteous and more tolerant left could build what successfully increased access to the American Dream in the past: a broad grass-roots movement focused on core economic issues such as strengthening unions, improving wages and working conditions, raising corporate taxes, and decreasing corporate concentration.”

Can the Dems adapt both their priorities and messaging to meet people where they are today?

The priorities must change first. What would it take to establish the right priorities for the future? Stripping away the wedge issues that confuse and divide us, America’s priorities should be Health, Education, Retirement and Environment (“HERE”). It’s an acronym that sells itself: “Vote Here”.

(hat tip to friend of the blog, Rene S. for the HERE concept.)

Wrongo hears from young family members and others that all of the HERE elements are causing very real concerns. Affordable health care coverage still falls short. Regarding education, college costs barely seem to be worth shouldering the huge debt burdens that come with it.

Most young people think that they have no real way to save for retirement early in their careers when there’s the most bang for the buck. They also feel that Social Security won’t be there for them. From the NYT:

“In a Nationwide Retirement Institute survey, 45% of adults younger than 27 said they didn’t believe they would receive any money from the program.”

Today, only about 10% of Americans working in the private sector participate in a defined-benefit pension plan, while roughly 50% contribute to 401(k)-type, defined-contribution plans.

Finally, people today feel that their elders have created an existential environmental threat that will be tossed into their laps. A problem for which there may not be a solution.

As Leonhardt argues, these HERE problems should have always been priorities for Democrats. But for decades, the Party hasn’t been willing to pay today’s political price for a long term gain in voter loyalty. That is, until Biden started working on them in 2020.

But every media outlet continues to harp on inflation and the national debt. Much of what would be helpful in creating a HERE focus as a priority for Democrats depends at least somewhat on government spending. No one can argue that our national debt is high. It is arguable whether it can safely go higher or if it must be reigned in at current levels.

To help you think about that, we collected $4.5 trillion in taxes in 2022, down half a $trillion vs. what we collected in 2021. Estimates are that the Trump tax cuts cost about $350 billion in lost revenue/year.

Looking at tax collections as a percentage of GDP, it’s less than 17% in the US, well below our historical average of 19.5%. There are arguments to keep taxes low, but if you compare the US percentage to other nations, Germany has a ratio of 24%, while the UK’s is 27% and Australia’s is 30%.

If we raised our tax revenue to 24% of GDP, which is where Germany is now, we would eliminate the US deficit.

There’s a great deal of tension in the electorate between perception and reality. And it’s not caused by partisanship: Democrats and independents are also exhibiting a disconnect, too.

Democrats have to return to being the party of FDR and LBJ. They need to adopt the HERE priorities and build programs around them.

How Can America Handle The Costs Of Elder Care?

The Daily Escape:

The start of US Highway 6, outside of Bishop, CA – September 2023 photo by Steve Wolfe

(There will be no Saturday Soother this week. Wrongo is on the road.)

Millions of older Americans from the Silent Generation and the Baby Boomers are facing a dilemma as they “age in place.” They must figure out how to pay for increasingly complex medical care. The NYT quotes Richard W. Johnson, director of the program on retirement policy at the Urban Institute:

“People are exposed to the possibility of depleting almost all their wealth….”

The prospect of dying broke is an imminent threat for the Boomers. About 10,000 of them turn 65 every day between now and 2030. They’re expecting to live into their 80s and 90s at the same time as the price tag for long-term care (LTC) is exploding. Currently LTC expense is outpacing inflation and approaching a half-trillion dollars a year, according to federal researchers.

By 2050, the population of Americans 65 and older is projected to increase by more than 50% to 86 million. The number of people 85 or older will nearly triple to 19 million. The Times has a chart of how many of those who need long-term care will die broke:

Some older Americans have prepared for this possible future by purchasing LTC insurance back when it was still affordable. Since then they’ve paid the monthly premiums, even as those premiums continued to rise. But this isn’t the norm. Many adults have no plan at all or assume that Medicare, which kicks in at age 65, will cover their health costs. But Medicare doesn’t cover the kind of long-term daily care, whether in the home or in a full-time nursing facility, that millions of elderly Americans require.

For that, you either pay out-of-pocket or you spend down your assets until you have less than $2,000 in assets in order to qualify for Medicaid. Remember that Medicaid provides health care, including home health care, to more than 80 million low-income Americans.

And even if you qualify, the waiting list for home care assistance for those on Medicaid tops 800,000 people and has an average wait time of more than three years.

Here is a snapshot of how long-term care is paid for in the US:

Governments provide 71.4% of the total. The largest non-government source is people who pay out-of-pocket, and private insurance is becoming increasingly expensive. More from the NYT:

“The boomer generation is jogging and cycling into retirement, equipped with hip and knee replacements that have slowed their aging. And they are loath to enter the institutional setting of a nursing home. But they face major expenses for the in-between years: falling along a spectrum between good health and needing round-the-clock care in a nursing home.”

That has led them to enter assisted-living centers run by for-profit companies and private equity funds. The NYT says that about 850,000 people aged 65 or older now live in these facilities and when in them, they are largely ineligible for federal funds. Some facilities provide only basics like help getting dressed and taking medication while others offer luxury amenities like day trips, gourmet meals, and spas.

In either case, the bills can be staggering. More:

“Half of the nation’s assisted-living facilities cost at least $54,000 a year, according to Genworth, a long-term care insurer. That rises substantially in many metropolitan areas with lofty real estate prices. Specialized settings, like locked memory care units for those with dementia, can cost twice as much.”

Home care is costly, too. According to Genworth, agencies charge about $27 an hour for a home health aide. Hiring someone who spends six or seven hours a day cleaning and helping an older person get out of bed or take medications can add up to $60,000 a year.

It’s worse for people with dementia because they need more services. The number who are developing dementia has soared, as have their needs. Five million to seven million Americans over age 65 have dementia, and that’s expected to grow to nearly 12 million by 2040.

The financial threat posed by dementia also weighs heavily on adult children who in many cases become guardians of aged parents. The Times included this chart:

The reality is that families go broke either caring for, or finding care for their loved ones. The alternative: Women in the family give up their lives and jobs to care for their family members instead, which worsens the gender wage gap.

The NYT article makes it clear that older Americans receive far less government support than their peers in other countries. The “why” question is easily answered: It’s a combination of the concerted effort for any public support to be demonized as “welfare”. It’s also partly the result of our failed experiment with long term care insurance. The politicians’ idea was that “the market” would take care of it, so government help for retirees could be limited to Medicaid-paid nursing homes.

But, the LTC insurance industry has largely imploded. Insurers had little experience with the product and grossly overestimated the lapse rates. If a policyholder stops paying, the insurer gets to keep the money and use it to provide services to everyone remaining in the pool. The surprise was that very few people stopped paying. A second miscalculation was that people who held these policies were living longer than forecasted. Longer life equaled higher and larger payouts (insurers also benefit when customers die before they’ve used up all the policy benefits).

A final factor is the rising levels of dementia described above.

And since demand for support outside of family members exceeds the supply of beds, nursing homes and assisted living facilities that aren’t terrible want residents to join during the independent living phase (which requires very little care, so those fees subsidize intensive nursing home care). Many of these facilities require a $400,000-$500,000 buy-in, which may not be refundable at death, even if the resident is current on their monthly fees.

There’s got to be a better way. Medicaid can’t be the only option to pay for LTC. Congress needs to establish a better system for middle-class Americans to finance LTC.

How we handle the growing costs of long-term care is just another reminder that we get LITTLE for our tax dollars beyond a giant military. Americans are responsible for their own medical care, childcare, college tuition, retirement and nursing home care. Some or all of which are provided in other rich countries.

This is a loudly ticking time bomb, and the demographics of the problem won’t change for decades. And yet, the Republicans seem bent on making it worse. They’re actively trying to bring about their dream of privatizing Social Security and Medicare.

Wake up America! We have real problems to solve.

Why People Say The Economy Is Terrible When It Isn’t

The Daily Escape:

Sunset, Thumpertown Beach, Eastham, MA – November 2023 iPhone photo by friend of the blog, KO.

We keep looking for good news that will buoy Biden’s polling numbers, and on Tuesday we learned that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) was flat in October. From Axios:

“Overall prices rose 3.2% in the 12 months through October, slowing from the 3.7% in September and well-below the peak levels reached last year. Core CPI rose 4%, compared to 4.1% the prior month.”

Among the good news was that last month, prices for gasoline and used cars and trucks fell outright, helping cool over inflation. Meanwhile, shelter costs rose at a much slower pace last month, possibly signaling that inflation could be ending in the next few months.

That gave investors reason to pile back into the stock market, since it may be a sign that the Fed won’t continue to raise interest rates.

But as always, analysis of the economic news could show why Biden polls so badly on the economy, and in particular why he hasn’t consolidated support among younger voters. Let’s take a different look at how some important economic indicators have performed under Biden.

From the Bonddad Blog:

“Below is a graph in which I compare average hourly earnings (nominal, not real) for non-supervisory workers (in red) vs. house prices (dark blue) and mortgage payments (light blue).”

It is important to note that Bonddad has set all of the values to 100 as of January 2021 so that we’re looking only at what has happened during Biden’s Administration. Bonddad compares the changes in average hourly earnings to the rate of fixed price mortgages and the price of homes. These are nominal rates:

Average wages have increased 16% since Biden took office, but existing house prices have increased by 32%, and monthly mortgage payments for new buyers have increased 279% (!), from roughly 3% to roughly 8%. Housing is close to unaffordable for many in America.

Turning to cars, new car prices have increased by 20%, and used car prices by 23%, compared to that 16% for wages. And new car loan payments (dotted line below) have increased almost 70% (from about 5% to 8.3%):

Houses and cars are the two biggest purchases that most average people make. And sorry to say, affording them has gotten much harder since Biden took office.

Finally, let’s look at the cost of two things people see every day: groceries and gas. First, grocery prices are up 29% since Biden took office in January 2021 (again, vs. 16% for average wages):

And gas prices, although they have come back down recently, are still up 55% since January 2021:

Looking at the economic data this way, would you be more likely to vote for or against Biden? This is a big Biden problem with voters who live paycheck to paycheck.

It’s hard to overstate the importance of viewing the Biden economic performance like Bonddad does above. Much of the blame for these specific price increases belongs to corporations who took advantage of the breakdown in the global supply chain to raise their prices. Some belongs to the Biden administration’s pumping money into the economy.

Bonddad provides a ton of perspective regarding how the Democrats shouldn’t be talking to voters about how fantastic the economy has become under Biden. Dems can’t simply talk about the aggregate economic numbers, since many will not fully believe them.

At the risk of piling on, Wrongo recently saw this October Experian survey which asked:

“I suffer or have suffered from financial trauma”

A staggering 68% of US adults replied that they had. You can view the survey here. The stress was felt more strongly by younger generations, namely Gen Z adults and millennials, with 73% of Gen Z’ers and 77% of millennials experiencing negative thoughts and/or anxiety about money.

The idea of “financial trauma” goes beyond mere stress. America’s seeing multiple social crises afflict it. Friendships are cratering, loneliness is soaring, deaths of despair are skyrocketing. Half of American young people say they feel “persistently hopeless.”

Now tie this to how the majority of voters are saying that America is on the wrong track. The prevailing attitude in America is that our systems are rigged against working people. If you work hard, play by the rules, try to be an honest, decent and productive person, but the reward is that you get financially, socially, emotionally traumatized, well, maybe you’d be pessimistic, too.

The result is that most Americans feel they are living precarious lives. When asked, they say they need north of $230K to feel “comfortable” while the average yearly income for a full-time worker is about $75,000 today. That means feeling stable and secure is completely out of reach for the vast majority of Americans.

Most of this happened over time and surely wasn’t caused by Biden, or the Democrats. And little of it can be fixed by him.

There’s some good news in the fact that history shows us that voters generally focus on how the economy has performed during the last 6 to 9 months before the election. In 2012, the economy improved a lot, and when the unemployment rate finally fell below 8% one month before the election, it helped Obama to get reelected.

On the flip side, the economy was weakening as we closed in on the presidential election in 2016. GDP growth and wage and job gains were weak. Strong stock market gains were a positive. Adding the pluses and minuses suggested that the economy was weak, and the insurgent Trump won the election.

Better news on inflation in 2024, particularly for groceries and gas, will mean Biden’s polling on the economy will be much better.

Hot Takes On the Election

The Daily Escape:

Brant Point Light, Nantucket, MA – November 2023 photo by Ken Grille Photography

Let’s look at the election: You probably know that the Dems had a very good night. If polls and pundits didn’t exist, the narrative would be about how Republicans are in total disarray after six consecutive years of election losses and embarrassing nonperformance. That’s reality.

Add this from Rick Wilson:

“Joe Biden is old. Own it. I’ll take old and accomplished over old and evil every time. I don’t pity Joe Biden because he’s old. I honor him for still doing the work that has broken younger and stronger men…..For me, he is still the candidate.

He is still the man we need as President, taking on the fight to preserve America at home and abroad and taking on the world with faint-hearted support from his own party and an avalanche of vitriol from the GOP…”

You don’t need Wrongo to tell you who won/lost on Tuesday, but here’s some context: Democrats have won more votes in 7 of the last 8 Presidential elections than the GOP, the best popular vote run of any political party in US history.

In the last 4 Presidential elections, Democrats have averaged 51% of the vote, their best showing over 4 elections since FDR.
Democrats only received more than 50.1% of the vote ONCE from 1948 all the way to 2004. That was in 1964, the year after JFK’s assassination.
That Dems have been above 51% in 3 of our last 4 presidential elections is pretty remarkable.
In the 2008 race, Obama managed 52.9%
In 2012 Obama got 51.1%
And in 2020 Biden received 51.3%

The flaw is that with the Electoral College, where you win is more important than how many you win by.

Still, Dems continue to outperform expectations. In 2022, the so-called “red wave” year, Democrats gained ground from 2020 in 7 key states: AZ, CO, GA, MI, MN, NH, PA. They picked up 4 state legislative chambers, 2 governorships, and 1 US Senate seat, although they lost the US House.

In 2023, the Dems have outperformed again. From winning big in about 40 special elections earlier this year to winning contested elections on Tuesday in KY, VA, NH, PA and OH, we’ve seen very encouraging results. The Dems also added a new Congressperson in RI, and far Right school board candidates got defeated all over the country.

Also, Democrats elected mayors in five cities in Indiana. And Democrats picked up seats in the New Jersey legislature.

In Texas, the legislature has now defeated Gov. Abbott’s school voucher plan three times this year after building an alliance between Democrats and conservative rural House members who represent small school districts. The Dems adopted “Vouchers Kill Friday Night Lights” as a slogan in those places. In addition, Prop 9, to give retired public school teachers a pay raise, passed yesterday by 86% to 14%, the largest margin of any of the propositions. That shows real enthusiasm in Texas for public schools.

Wrongo is looking forward to how the NYT and CNN can explain that this is actually bad news for Biden. The WaPo, however, has already beaten the Times on the “it’s bad news for Biden” beat: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“As for how much solace this night provides a year before the 2024 election? There’s a real question about whether Republicans just don’t turn out when Trump isn’t on the ballot. Beshear was an incumbent. Virginia leans blue. And even if Democrats as a whole are well-poised, that doesn’t necessarily mean Biden, with his various liabilities, will be able to take advantage.”

But looking at the big picture, does it make sense after everything we’ve seen in this week’s elections that Trump is going to have his best election ever in 2024 by doing better than any Republican since GHW Bush in 1988?

What series of events do the pollsters think will cause that to happen? Can the GOP in a presidential election year get the turnout they’d need to cause that to happen? Wouldn’t that mean polls and pundits have to forecast yet another red wave like they forecasted in 2022, which didn’t materialize then, but will for certain materialize now?

Or are we supposed to think that 2024 is going to see a huge wave of pro-Trump “young” voters along with pro-Trump “black” voters who just didn’t show up in this week’s election?

Right now, nothing is at stake, and nothing will be at stake politically until 11 months from now. At that point, people who are polled today will have to make a choice. Until then they are free to be annoyed at Biden or anyone else. But when the implications of casting their ballots are clear, it will be a different story.

But until then, don’t expect the media to abandon its hyping of the “Biden in trouble” narrative.

The pundits are quick to report and slow to learn.

What Is It With These Freaking Polls?

The Daily Escape:

Yellow Ocotillo in bloom, Anza-Borrego SP, CA – November 2023 photo by Paulette Donnellon

Today is Election Day in the US. If you are eligible to vote, you should get to your local polling place and do your duty as an American. Wrongo and Ms. Right live in Litchfield County, CT. The county skews right, having voted for the Republican in the last three presidential elections while going for Obama in 2008, but not in 2012. Litchfield was the only Connecticut county to vote for Mitt Romney in 2012.

Tomorrow, we’re electing a mayor, town council, school board, zoning board and several other offices. Like in most off-year elections, turnout in our town is expected to be much smaller than in presidential years. Wrongo always wonders why turnout is low, when the stakes for what happens in your town are so high, regardless of whenever it’s an off-year election. Wrongo and Ms. Right plan to split our tickets.

By Wednesday morning, we’ll know which state elections across the country look like they are a bellwether for the 2024 election which is just under a year away. Will Virginia’s Republicans take full control of the state legislature and clear a path for Gov. Youngkin to enact his far-right proposals on abortion and education?

In Ohio, voters will decide whether to approve Issue 1 and Issue 2. Issue 1 would enshrine the right to an abortion and other reproductive health care in the state constitution. Issue 2 would legalize marijuana for adults over 21.

2023 has been a very good year for Democrats, and we need to close strong. So, by Wednesday, we’ll know more than we do today.

Despite that, this week, the NYT is out with a poll predicting a future they can’t possibly know. Their poll shows Trump leading Biden in five critical swing states:

“President Biden is trailing Donald J. Trump in five of the six most important battleground states one year before the 2024 election, suffering from enormous doubts about his age and deep dissatisfaction over his handling of the economy and a host of other issues….Across the six battlegrounds — all of which Mr. Biden carried in 2020 — the president trails by an average of 48 to 44 percent.”

According to Simon Rosenberg, Republican presidential candidates have only topped 48% and won the popular vote once since 1988 (Bush 2004 re-election). Trump received 46.1% and 46.8% of the vote in his two elections. Polls finding Trump in the high 40s or with large leads over Biden place him in territory he has never achieved with voters.

If Wrongo hasn’t convinced you, remember that the NYT poll was of 3,662 registered voters. It was conducted by telephone using live operators from Oct. 22-Nov. 3. Picture it: People answering a phone call from an unknown caller. Do you know anyone under 50 who answers a call from numbers they don’t recognize? Apparently, the NYT has admitted that they overweighted Republicans and later attempted to “smooth” the results statistically.

After all the smoothing, the margin of sampling error for each state is from 4.4 to 4.8 percentage points. In other words, the overall results that show Trump waxing Biden are within the margin of error.

Voters also told the NYT:

56% have a somewhat unfavorable or somewhat unfavorable view of Trump.
Asked who would be better for “democracy,” voters give Biden a 48%-45% edge.
51% say that following the 2020 election, Trump “threatened democracy.”
54% believe Trump has committed “serious federal crimes.”
52% say they do not think he will be convicted of any crimes.
- Yet if he is convicted and sentenced to prison, then suddenly Biden goes to 49%, vs. Trump at 39%.
Asked if it would be “bad for the country” if Biden or Trump won:
- Biden would be bad for the country: 44%
- Trump would be bad for the country: 46%
Again: The net voting preference in this poll is Trump 48%, Biden 44%. With a 4.45-4.8% margin of error.

Does this picture fit together with the NYT’s overall results?

It’s useful to remember that Congressional polling is encouraging for Democrats. The current Economist/YouGov tracker has Congressional favorables/unfavorables for Congressional Democrats at 44%/51% (-7%) while Congressional Republicans are at 35%/59% (-25%).

And a new poll from Navigator Research shows that in battleground House districts, it found terrible numbers for Congressional Republicans:

If this data holds: 1) Democrats will be the clear favorites to win the House and 2) The declining GOP Congressional brand could drag Trump down along with the overall GOP brand in the Presidential battleground states. And this poll was taken before voters learned how extreme the Republican’s new Speaker is!

Dan Pfeiffer has a nice article; “How to Respond to the Very Bad NYT Poll.” If you are worried about the poll, Pfeiffer adds detail:

“Perhaps the simplest explanation of Biden’s political challenges is that he has done a lot of good, popular things, and almost no one knows about them. Navigator tested a series of messages about Biden’s various accomplishments, including allowing Medicare to negotiate for lower drug costs, the bipartisan law to rebuild roads and bridges, and efforts to create more manufacturing jobs in the US

Guess what? All of this stuff is super popular.”

“Medicare negotiating drug prices is supported by 77% of Americans, including 64% of Republicans. The bipartisan infrastructure law has the support of 73% of Americans and a majority of Republicans. Every accomplishment tested in this poll had majority support. It’s hard to overstate how impressive that is in a deeply divided, highly polarized country at a time when the President’s approval ratings are in the low 40s.”

According to the NYT poll, a majority of Americans heard little or nothing about these accomplishments, so there’s a yawning knowledge gap. But the poll also shows that when people are told about what Biden has done, his approval rating goes up.

The NYT poll reminds us that everyday people like you and me can have an outsized impact if they focus on letting friends and family know about Biden’s accomplishments. That is so much more valuable than worrying about polls a year in advance.

It’s time for a rare Tuesday Wake Up Call. Wake up America! We will be dealing with polls that skew reality, and with negative press from now to next November. To help you wake up, listen to Rachel Platten perform her big hit, “Fight Song”, live on New Years Eve in 2016:

This is to help heal you from the bad polling news. Now, get up off the floor and do what you have to do.

Sample Lyric:

And all those things I didn’t say
Were wrecking balls inside my brain
I will scream them loud tonight
Can you hear my voice this time?

[Chorus]
This is my fight song
Take back my life song
Prove I’m alright song
My power’s turned on
Starting right now, I’ll be strong
I’ll play my fight song (Hey)
And I don’t really care if nobody else believes
‘Cause I’ve still got a lot of fight left in me

We Can’t Give Up Hope

The Daily Escape:

First snow, Great Balsam Mountains, Canton, NC – October 2023 photo by Brandon Montgomery

“To hope is to risk frustration. Therefore, make up your mind to risk frustration.” – Thomas Merton

Everyone’s talking about Hamas, the Gaza hospital and Jim Jordan. Wrongo is certain to write more about those issues, but today, let’s talk about two polls that seem to be telling us a lot about what Americans are feeling right now.

First, the survey by Pew Research “Americans’ Dismal Views of the Nation’s Politics” confirms that millions of Americans are feeling so exhausted and depressed by American politics that they are disengaging from it just when its important to fully engage. Some highlights:

65% of respondents describe themselves as “exhausted” when thinking about politics.
55% say they are “angry” about American politics.
Only 4% say politics makes them feel hopeful.
Pew also asked people to describe American politics in one word. The second most common description was “corrupt”—behind the first-place finisher, “divisive.”

Here’s the tag cloud from Pew:

Notice that there aren’t any positive words that made the cut from the responses. From Robert Hubbell:

“It is no wonder that people want to disengage and look away. Exhaustion is the point of MAGA extremism.”

Hubbell goes on to point out that Republicans turn every issue into an attack:

“Impeach Trump? We’ll impeach Joe Biden, Merrick Garland, Jack Smith, Alejandro Mayorkas, and Christopher Wray.

Indict Trump? We’ll indict Hunter Biden, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, and Joe Biden.

Protect Americans from a deadly virus? We’ll undermine trust in science.

Fight human-caused climate change? We will make it illegal to discuss climate change in the classroom.”

These responses are part of a mind game designed to make Democrats and Independents give up and go away. But his great idea is this:

“We have one job: To endure, to abide, to keep the faith until this moment of reactionary extremism subsides. If we can do that, we will leave to our heirs a healthier, stronger democracy.”

John Dean Also wrote about this:

“…I was thinking about how Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008. The first thing that came to mind was his iconic poster with his image and the word “HOPE.” That differentiated Obama from his Democratic party competitors…and his Republican rival, John McCain. Obama embraced hope and the future, and he won.”

Some people attribute the negative messages offered by current candidates to the fact that today’s world is troubled. But as Dean points out, the world was also deeply troubled in 2008 and only Obama was offering hope. He won two terms.

Homeschoolers Want Your Tax Dollars

The Daily Escape:

Rich Mountain Fire Tower, Marshall, NC – August 2023 photo by Michael Morris. This photo has a painterly quality to it.

Americans’ interest in homeschooling has soared in recent years. Migrating from mainstream education to homeschooling tracks with the rising fears among parents that schools are failing their children.

For parents frustrated with their child’s public school education, the pandemic provided another reason to give homeschooling a try. Homeschooling has become a significant element in education in the US. According to the National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI), there are 3.7 million homeschooled students in the US, about 6.7% of the school-age children in K-12. The popularity of homeschooling is growing rapidly, with an annual growth rate of 10.1% between 2016 and 2021.

Home schooling is legal in all 50 states, with the highest number of homeschoolers in North Carolina, Florida, and Georgia. About 10% of states have strict laws regulating homeschooling: New York, Vermont, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania. Another 18 states have no to low regulation, while 11 states provide complete freedom to parents regarding homeschooling. In New Jersey, parents do not have to let anyone know about their decision to homeschool their children. They don’t even have to produce any kind of proof at any time, explaining that their kids were homeschooled. Here’s a view of homeschooling regulation in the US:

Source: HSLDA

In many states, there is little oversight of homeschooling. And for many, what regulations do exist were adopted in the 1980s, when homeschooling was almost exclusively provided by a family member at home. Now, with the number of homeschool students soaring, much of the educating is now being provided by third parties.

The WaPo reports that there is an emergence of “microschools” provided by for-profit companies, such as Prenda which provide online courses and syllabi to the microschools. Last year, Prenda served about 2,000 students across several states by connecting homeschool families with microschools that host students, often but not exclusively in homes. The local educator is called a “guide” for students who study math and reading online while depending on the “guide” for other subjects. Families pay Prenda $2,199 per year, plus additional fees set by the guides, which can range from $2,800 to $8,000 per child although there is often a multi-child discount.

Many similar options to Prenda are transforming home schooling in America. More from WaPo:

“Demand is surging: Hundreds of thousands of children have begun homeschooling in the last three years, an unprecedented spike that generated a huge new market. In New Hampshire, for instance, the number of homeschoolers doubled during the pandemic, and even today it remains 40% above pre-covid totals.”

“For many years, homeschooling has conjured images of parents and children working together at the kitchen table. The new world of homeschooling often looks very different: pods, co-ops, microschools and hybrid schools, often outside the home, as well as real-time and recorded virtual instruction. For a growing number of students, education now exists somewhere on a continuum between school and home, in person and online, professional and amateur.”

Still more:

“Microschools sometimes provide all-day supervision, allowing parents to work full time while sending their children to “home school.” Hybrid schools let students split their days between school and home. Co-ops, once entirely parent run, might employ a professional educator.”

All of this is adding to the conundrum of how K-12 education is financed in the US. The WaPo says that about a dozen states allow families to use taxpayer funds for home-school expenses. Education Savings Accounts, or ESAs, direct thousands of dollars to families that opt out of public school, whether the destination is a private school or their own homes.

Nonprofits, including school-choice advocates, are directing millions of dollars in charitable giving toward homeschool organizations, linking two powerful but traditionally separate movements into one interest group that seeks to move taxpayer money away from the local public school system into private hands.

In the past, homeschoolers and school-choice activists didn’t see themselves as aligned. The latter group wanted taxpayer money to pay for charter, private and religious schools, whereas homeschoolers looked to limit any government involvement.

But since the pandemic, they found themselves in common cause. Historically, homeschool advocates have been wary of any government money or involvement, for fear it would lead to rules and regulations.

But many school-choice advocates incorporate support for homeschoolers into their advocacy work, including for school vouchers that give these families tax dollars to pay education costs. Where they used to be a defensive constituency, today they have become partners.

And venture capitalists have invested tens of millions of dollars in new businesses to serve what they see as a growing, and potentially huge market. One entrant is Outschool, an online marketplace for classes, which has raised $255 million since 2015. This year, Outschool has delivered 500,000 live learning sessions to more than 150,000 students globally.

WaPo says Prenda has raised about $45 million. Primer, another microschool company formed to serve homeschoolers, has raised about $19 million, though its campuses are becoming more like tiny private schools, an example of the fuzzy line between traditional and home schooling. WaPo spoke to Michael Moe, founder of GSV, a venture capital firm in the Silicon Valley, who has invested in several education technology start-ups: (brackets by Wrongo)

“The mega trend of [school] choice is wildly important to us…All these shifts create opportunities for companies providing solutions that allow parents and communities to take more control of the learning.”

That’s “venture capitalspeak” for more privatizing of the commons in search of higher financial returns.

Vouchers that once paid only for tuition at private and parochial school can now, in some places, be used for homeschoolers. Most sweeping are Education Savings Accounts, or ESAs, which allow families to claim state tax dollars to use at their own discretion for any education expense.

This increasingly means taxpayer money is following the student out of the public school. It flows to whatever a family chooses. That can include things like Prenda’s fees, online classes or home-school curriculum, as well as tuition at private schools.

In Detroit, a program called Engaged Detroit , is a cooperative that’s part of a network specifically to serve Black families looking for schooling options in response to the pandemic. Among Engaged Detroit’s backers is the VELA Education Fund, which has made more than 2,400 grants totaling more than $28 million since 2019. VELA’s primary funders are longtime advocates for school choice: the Walton Family Foundation and the Charles Koch foundation, Stand Together.

There are pluses and minuses to homeschooling. There are situations where it’s appropriate to homeschool, but the loose oversight and lack of expertise might mean that some homeschooled kids are going to be at risk. When parents say they don’t trust the trained/educated teachers in their public school, but instead want their kids to get the viewpoints of only one or two specific people, the kids are entering a small world. Later in life, they’ll have to adjust to a larger reality.

Wrongo is fully aware of the weaknesses of our public school systems. It’s possible that SOME of these small private schools that they say are “home schools”, are teaching those kids better than some public schools do. So Wrongo is ok if kids learn there. But there should be no problem with requiring these kids to take end-of-year minimum standards tests, proving that they learned the base-level material in each subject.

Without some testing, society has no idea if these kids learned anything. The lack of oversight, particularly in those situations where taxpayer money was diverted to homeschooling, seems well—Wrong.

The literature is clear: Some homeschooled children have attended Ivy League schools and won national spelling bees. Some have also been the victims of child abuse. Some are taught using the classics of ancient Greece, others with Nazi propaganda.

Many parents say home education empowers them to withdraw from schools that fail their children. Or they want to provide instruction that better reflects their personal values. But should the rest of us pay for those individual decisions?

Time to wake up America! Homeschooling may offer certain advantages, but also comes with a set of disadvantages that should also be considered. And it’s clear that those who would privatize K-12 education want to take funding from the public school systems wherever they can.

To help you wake up, listen to Steely Dan’s “My Old School” from their 1973 album “Countdown to Ecstasy”. Steely Dan always used outside musicians, and on the record, they had the late Skunk Baxter on guitar and four (!) saxophones. But Steely Dan didn’t like to tour. Today, we’re going to see a rare video of a Steely Dan live performance on “The Midnight Special” where Skunk had a blistering solo for the song’s finale:

Rural Hospitals Are No Longer Providing Maternity Care

The Daily Escape:

Perseid meteor shower, from Mt. Evans, CO – August 13, 2023 photo by Paul Blais Photography

Welcome to our Saturday Soother, but first, Wrongo intends to spin you up before eventually letting you slow down.

There’s a crisis in rural healthcare in America. Rural hospitals are closing at a rapid rate. Our county (Litchfield) in Connecticut has one of three remaining hospitals that are designated as rural in the state (Sharon Hospital).

A problem for rural hospitals is that many are closing down their labor and delivery services in order to try and remain economically viable. WSHU, a CT-based NPR affiliate, has covered the impact of these closures to Connecticut. They quote Peiyin Hung, a researcher on maternal and rural health at the University of South Carolina:

“My team has been tracking nationwide, hospital-based obstetric unit closures since 2008 up to 2022,…. Almost 300 hospitals closed their OB units.”

WSHU points out that more than 60% of those closures were in rural areas. Why are so many hospital groups moving away from delivering babies in rural locations?

WSHU quotes Dr. Robert Roose, chief medical officer at Johnson Memorial, a hospital in rural Stafford Springs, CT that closed its obstetric unit. He said that it’s a safety issue. Hospitals with fewer than 200 deliveries a year, like Johnson Memorial, are considered low-volume birthing centers:

“There is a clear and critically important correlation between volume and quality of services provided when it pertains to labor and delivery and maternity care…”.

Three years ago, Hartford HealthCare’s Windham Hospital in Willimantic, CT stopped delivering babies, citing the same concern.

Also, malpractice insurance rates go up for low birth-volume hospitals because insurers feel the risk is higher if doctors aren’t getting sufficient practice with birthing. Hung says another problem is the level of reimbursement:

“Medicaid…pays half as much on average [as] private insurance pays for labor and delivery across the country”.

That’s important because about four in 10 of all Connecticut deliveries are covered by Medicaid. Simply put, delivering babies doesn’t pencil out for many rural hospitals.

There are other factors: Rural America’s demographics skew older. Young families in general prefer living in the suburbs or exurban areas. Couple that with America’s lower birth rate and rural hospitals really can’t maintain the birthing volume they need to remain economically viable.

The Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform, (CHQPR) a Pittsburg-based health policy group published “A Crisis in Rural Maternity Care in the United States” which shows the problem:

“Fewer than half (45%) of the rural hospitals in the US currently offer labor and delivery services, and in 9 states, less than one-third do. Over the past decade, more than 200 rural hospitals across the country have stopped delivering babies”.

“Hundreds of additional communities are at risk of losing maternity care because of the financial challenges rural hospitals are facing….More than 1/3 of the rural hospitals that still have labor & delivery services have been losing money on patient services, so their ability to continue delivering maternity care is at risk.”

CHQPR reports that more than half of small rural maternity care hospitals lost money in 2021-22.

They suggest that a primary reason rural hospitals are losing money is that private insurance plans pay them less than what it costs to deliver many of the services they offer patients, not only maternity care. They point out that while rural hospitals are losing money on uninsured patients and Medicaid patients, the losses from private payers have the biggest impact on their overall profit margins.

CHQPR suggests that a potential solution is to require that health insurance payments actually cover the cost of rural maternity care. With more than 40% of births (on average) in rural communities paid for by private health plans, having the private insurers pay more would help keep rural maternity care viable:

“Payment amounts must be higher in communities that have difficulty attracting staff, and payments must also be higher in communities with smaller numbers of births to ensure that revenues cover the fixed costs.”

This means that the fee-for-service model isn’t working in low-volume hospitals. Rural hospitals are only paid when they actually provide a service, but a small hospital has proportionally higher overheads than larger hospitals, since they must be staffed and ready to deliver a baby at all times, even if there are no deliveries at all. Read CHQPR’s report “A Better Way to Pay Rural Hospitals”.

Back to Connecticut, Sharon Hospital has proposed closing its labor and delivery unit. There will be a public hearing to consider the closure later this year. But Sharon is about an hour from its affiliated hospital (Danbury Hospital) that has a fully-staffed labor and delivery facility. Sharon may actually be closer to two other unaffiliated hospitals in New York state than it is to its own parent facility.

It’s now time for our Saturday Soother. Litchfield County is having beautiful weather this weekend. We’re taking advantage of it by going to a live Baroque music concert, and possibly heading off to the annual fair in a local town.

To help you relax and zone out from all of the Trump indictment analysis, grab a chair outside in the shade and watch and listen to “Gortoz a Ran” (I’m Waiting) sung by Denez Prigent and Lisa Gerrard. The language in the song is Breton, spoken in Brittany, France. It is closely related to Cornish and Welsh, and all three are Celtic tongues. When the Angles, Saxons and Jutes invaded Britain in the fifth century (400-500 AD), many of the Britons in Cornwall, Devon, and the West Country fled across the English Channel to France. Because of the influx of Britons, the region became known as Brittany.

Most of the images in the video are of Scotland, England, Wales, and Brittany. Lisa Gerrard isn’t singing in any language; she’s just vocalizing. The Uilleann pipes, an Irish instrument, are heard at 3:50:

Lyrics: English Translation

I was waiting, waiting for a long time
In the dark shadow of grey towers
In the dark shadow of grey towers

In the dark shadow of rain towers
You will see me waiting forever
You will see me waiting forever

One day it will come back
Over the lands, over the seas

The blue wind will return
And take back with it my wounded heart

I will be pulled away by its breath
Far away in the stream, wherever it wishes

Wherever it wishes, far away from this world
Between the sea and the stars

The song describes waiting, possibly forever: Aren’t we all waiting? What are we waiting for? For whom are we waiting? Happy Saturday!

Four Indictments, 91 Counts

The Daily Escape:

Sunrise at Laite Beach, Camden, ME – August 2023 photo by Daniel F. Dishner

There’s plenty of good reporting and bad punditry out of Georgia. So Wrongo, as in the past, will limit what is said about it here. From the NYT’s Peter Baker: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“…most Americans made up their minds about Mr. Trump long before prosecutors like Fani T. Willis or Jack Smith weighed in, polls have shown. He is, depending on the perspective, a serial lawbreaker finally being brought to justice or a victim of persecution by partisans intent on keeping him out of office.”

Republicans will continue to rationalize Trump’s criminal behavior. Their main talking point today is that the Democratic Party is part of a giant deep state cabal working to take down Trump. It is the Dems, not the Donald who are guilty of election interference. And what about the Biden Family Crime Syndicate?

The courts are finally treating Trump as the career criminal he’s always been. And many pundits are shaking their heads, saying that the shock to the American political system is going to be extreme because Republicans are angry.

What the pundits and the wingnuts don’t understand is that the rest of us are angry too. We’re livid that this cancer of a person has evaded justice after what he did post-the 2020 election. We’re enraged that his goons desecrated the Capitol. Finally, we nearly stroked out once we realized that after trying to overthrow our duly elected government, Trump and cronies seemed to get away with it.

And we plan to vote in historic numbers.

Republicans think they are the only side that feels passionately about Jan 6, but that is a huge mistake. Many Americans are angry that justice hasn’t been done. One foundational tenet of the MAGA movement is its southern anti-DC attitude. But Trump has in essence been saying to Georgians that they screwed up. That Georgians held a fraudulent election. It seems highly unlikely that framing will play well with a Fulton County jury. (Although it will only take one MAGA jury member to create a mistrial.)

A few other thoughts: The sooner journalists stop pretending that Republicans care about holding other Republicans accountable, the quicker we can move on to saving our democracy. Most mainstream journalists miss the moment because of their inbred need to show both sides of an argument. It was Jonathan Foster formerly of Sheffield University who said:

“If one person says it’s raining and another says it’s not, a journalist’s job isn’t to report that disagreement, but rather to look out the window.”

America’s journalists should heed Foster’s advice.

Finally, the importance of the Georgia case is that Trump can never pardon himself if he’s found guilty in Georgia. In fact, Georgia’s governor doesn’t have that authority. From the Atlanta Journal Constitution: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“Unlike the federal cases, which could be dismissed by a future Republican president, Georgia’s pardon process is in the hands of an independent board, not the governor. Under the state’s rules, a person needs to wait five years after they serve any prison sentences before they can be considered for a pardon.”

What kind of person holds on to a lie and builds a scaffold of dishonesty around it? At any point in Trump’s Big Lie, from voter fraud to conspiracy, Trump could have said, “I lost fair and square, and I’ll get him next time”. Many in his Party in Georgia did just that. But Trump pushed on. The Senate could have convicted him at a time when the Capitol was in a damaged hulk. That also could have spared the country where we are today. But most Senate Republicans couldn’t find the courage.

Another tragedy is the enduring distrust of and lost faith in those America’s institutions that still function, if tenuously, today. Whether Trump wins or loses these cases, or whether he wins the White House again, this damage will take decades to undo.

We have zero control over what happens next in the various courtrooms. We have no influence over the juries who will weigh the evidence. Whatever the result, it will be divisive. But we won’t heal unless we lance the boil. Yes that means Wrongo is saying that Trump is a festering abscess poisoning our nation.

We need open, transparent trials, with public records of all witnesses and evidence. No one should argue for pardoning Trump because they’re afraid of his insurrectionist allies.

Trump and America deserve REAL trials, with REAL sentences. And we can move forward from there.

We were wrong to pardon Nixon. We let other Republicans (like Reagan and Bush Sr.) slide based on a wrong-headed sense of respect for the office, setting a bad precedent. It encouraged later Republican presidents to think they could rely on magnanimity when none was deserved.

Nail the crooks, starting with Trump.

Cartoons + Memorial Day Weekend

(There won’t be a Monday Wake Up column this week. Wrongo will return on Wednesday, May 31.)

Memorial Day, Arlington National Cemetery – 2013 photo by William Coyle

Monday will be Memorial Day, when we honor the sacrifice of those who died fighting in America’s wars. We mourn those we knew, and we pause briefly to remember those we never knew. The American public’s job is to say, “thank you for your service”. Saying it has become a reflex, like “bless you” when someone sneezes. Our default position is to thank, but not to think. For most of us, America’s foreign wars are a kind of elevator music. Always present, but we barely notice it.

Maybe we watch our town’s parade, or shop at the mall. There’s likely to be a cookout. It isn’t about love of country. It’s about sad Facebook emojis, Memorial Day mattress sales, and burgers on Monday. On to cartoons.

The old man remembers the soldier: