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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – May 14, 2023

The Debt Ceiling fiscal cliff is looming. And since there’s offline negotiations going on as in the past, Biden will eventually offer a compromise on spending. It will include some things that Democrats care about, and that will make his base angry. Meanwhile, the few remaining establishment Republicans will be happy to take the deal, while the Freedom Caucus (now the mainstream of the GOP) will be outraged that the deal on the table isn’t what they originally asked for.

They’d rather blow up America’s credit standing if Biden fails to agree to roll back his legislative successes. That will put us back to square one with days to go before default.

If you remember the Debt Ceiling debates in 2013, the Freedom Caucus was willing to shut down the government, put the US credit rating in the dumper and possibly default. In 2013, Obama refused to negotiate with them over the debt ceiling, saying that the previous cuts that had been made through in the “sequester” in 2011 were plenty of compromise.

Both sides extended the Debt Ceiling in small increments over many months before they finally passed a clean bill in 2014. While the media said it was a loss for Republicans, the GOP won the presidency and both houses in 2016. So fasten your seat belts. What probably will happen is that either Kevin McCarthy will let the country default, or he’ll put some kind of deal on the table that will pass with bipartisan votes.

If it’s the latter, one or more of the now mainstream GOP will make a motion to vacate the Speaker’s chair and McCarthy will follow John Boehner out the door. On to cartoons.

The state of the union:

The real situation:

Santos indicted:

Trump loses in Court:

Trump supporters need bigger tee shirts:

Wishes for Mother’s Day:

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – April 9, 2023

Wrongo and Ms. Right are in Charleston, SC. We will be heading back to CT on Monday. While this is time dedicated to family, the past week produced so much news that it seemed necessary to at least comment on some of it. But first, happy Easter to those who celebrate.

Let’s start with Mifepristone, one of two key drugs used for medicated abortion. On “good” Friday, a federal judge in Amarillo, TX decided that it should be banned. This happened despite 20 years of data showing it’s safe and effective. Mifepristone has a lower rate of complications than Tylenol. The judge’s opinion is equal parts junk science and religious screed. You can read the particulars of the case elsewhere. It’s clear that religious extremists are continuing their assault on the status of American women as equal citizens under the law.

Clarence Thomas. Thomas released a statement saying that he did not disclose the lavish gifts he received from right-wing megadonor Harlan Crow on the advice of “colleagues and others in the judiciary.” For more than 25 years, Thomas received free travel by jet and luxury accommodations (including stays on a yacht) that exceeded his salary by a significant percentage. Heather Cox Richardson pointed out that:

“Thomas said that he and his wife Ginni had been dear friends of the Crows for over 25 years, but he joined the court over 30 years ago…”

Whatever the explicit rules were, when someone is receiving economic benefits that exceed your salary, that benefit is corrupt.

Finally, Tennessee. This isn’t the first time the Right has denied elected representatives their seat, and it won’t be the last. Whenever they have the power, they’ll try it. It happened in Nashville last Thursday when the Republicans expelled two Black lawmakers, Justin Pierson and Justin Jones, for staging a protest for gun safety legislation on the floor of the Tennessee House. The punitive action for an act of protest marks just the third time since the Civil War era that the Tennessee House has expelled a lawmaker from its ranks.

This is another installment in the long-running series, “Black People Are Doing It Wrong”. Because there is no acceptable way for a Black person to express displeasure over anything in society. They just make White people too scared. Even a Black man kneeling down makes Whitey terrified. On to cartoons.

In another universe:

Tennessee operates a state park honoring Civil War soldier and KKK founder, Nathan Bedford Forrest, to this very day:

Congress pretends guns aren’t the problem:

Easter Bunny gives Trump a few eggs:

The Thomas Rules:

More from Clarence:

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Reform the Supreme Court, Part II

The Daily Escape:

Winter at Bryce Canyon NP, UT – January 2023 photo by Michael Andrew Just

The Supreme Court (SCOTUS) has a legitimacy crisis. Put simply, many people no longer think the Supreme Court can be trusted to uphold Constitutional rights or follow judicial norms. This is the result of the Conservative supermajority, driven by its partisan agenda that is increasingly hostile to precedent and separation of powers.

The Conservative supermajority threatens that it will not observe Constitutional guardrails. As an example, our democracy depends on citizens having a meaningful right to vote. Right now, that’s in jeopardy because the Court has upheld voter suppression laws and has provided for partisan gerrymandering to continue.

Also, the Conservative supermajority has taken away a woman’s control over her body. It has also taken direct aim at the tradition of separation of church and state.

SCOTUS ignores its own internal check of stare decisis by writing sweeping decisions seemingly intended to foreshadow future decisions that could further endanger American liberty as we know it.

So, it’s time to reform the Court by building better checks and balances. The power to make these changes sits primarily with Congress. So if reform is to happen, reformers are going to have to control both Houses of Congress.

Let’s talk about some of the options for reform.

I. Expanding the Court

This means increasing the number of justices. The number of justices isn’t set by the Constitution, so Congress can change it at any time, and has done so seven times. The first Supreme Court had only six justices.

Given that Congress can and has altered the size of the Court, it could do that again. One idea is to add two justices in every presidential term. Alicia Bannon of the Brennan Center for Justice wrote an analysis looking at this idea. Basically, it would mean every president gets to appoint two justices, regardless of how many justices wind up serving on the court.

One potential issue is that SCOTUS could regularly have an even number of justices, which isn’t unprecedented, but it makes the possibility of split decisions more likely. There’s also the possibility that it could make presidential elections even more of a proxy vote for Supreme Court justices.

The challenges are that this change would require 60 votes in the Senate to overcome a filibuster. And since Republicans control the House, it’s unlikely to happen soon.

II. Ending life tenure

The big upside to this proposal is that it is much less dependent on justices either retiring or dying. It could also help slow the increasing push to nominate younger justices who could serve on the court for longer.

Prior to 1970, Supreme Court Justices served an average term of 14.9 years. Post 1970, they’ve served an average term of 26.1 years. But the five most recently appointed Supreme Court Justices to leave the court served an average of 27.5 years.

Today, most countries in the world have limited judicial tenure, either through mandatory retirement ages or fixed terms. In the US, only one state supreme court (RI) allows for life tenure.

Properly implemented, term limits could give each president the opportunity to appoint the same number of Supreme Court justices each term. Thus, reducing partisan gamesmanship around individual confirmations while making the Court more representative.

One suggestion from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences calls for an 18-year term with regular appointments made every two years to replace outgoing justices. This would not only limit life tenure, but it would also guarantee every president a stable number of two appointments, assuring a reliable translation of voters’ political will into the federal judiciary.

III. Limiting the Court’s jurisdiction

Congress can limit the kinds of cases that can be appealed to the Supreme Court. Along with the ability to define the jurisdictions of lower courts, this “jurisdiction stripping” can be used to curtail the power of the Court overall. This also might force certain aspects of the law back to the political branches of government.

This happened recently under the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which tried to strip Guantanamo Bay detainees of the ability to appeal cases in federal courts. This could only become law if passed by both Houses of Congress and signed by the president.

IV. Create a binding code of ethics

The Supreme Court is the least accountable part of our government; it does not even have a binding code of ethics. We should institute a binding code of ethics, including rules to prevent conflicts of interest. We should adopt transparency measures, including live-streaming of oral arguments and decisions.

Of the above, term limits should be enacted, and a code of ethics should be established. Those are realistic goals. When the Constitution was adopted, the average life expectancy was 36 years, not today’s 80 years.

We need to forge a new consensus about SCOTUS. That requires us to do the political work of negotiating and renegotiating what the Court should look like, and how it should operate.

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Releasing Trump’s Taxes

The Daily Escape:

Surfing Santa via Pinterest

After more than 3½ years of pursuit, Rep. Richie Neal (D-MA), Chair of the House Ways and Means Committee finally was given access to Donald Trump’s tax returns. Trump had refused to provide them and sued to prevent the IRS from giving them to Congress.

But after a federal district court waited 2 ½ years before opining and a subsequently, a federal appeals court ruled in favor of the Committee, the Supreme Court declined to block the release of the returns to the panel last month. The Committee debated over whether to release Trump’s returns to the public and decided by a Party-line vote to do so.

The NYT tells us about the big takeaway from the release:

“The Internal Revenue Service failed to audit former President Donald J. Trump during his first two years in office despite a program that makes the auditing of sitting presidents mandatory, a House committee revealed on Tuesday after an extraordinary vote to make public six years of his tax returns.”

It’s called the Mandatory Presidential Audit Program, but the IRS never even got around to looking at Trump’s. It was only after the Committee asked about Trump’s returns in 2019 that the IRS finally opened an investigation of Trump’s 2016 returns, even though it had been tasked by that time with auditing him from 2015 through 2018.

That he wasn’t audited is strange, to put it mildly. Getting his returns has validated the Committee’s stated premise for opening the case. The Committee is now recommending that the Mandatory Audit Program, which has been in place since the Carter administration, be codified into law.

While not auditing the president, the IRS was quite busy auditing the returns of the FBI’s James Comey and Andrew McCabe, two enemies of Trump instead.

The Republican objection to releasing Trump’s returns was based on the idea that even public servants have a right to privacy about their financial matters. Wrongo has some sympathy for that, but the tax returns of all top government officials should be made public by law.

Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX) warned that releasing Trump’s tax returns could lead to the release of tax returns of Supreme Court Justices:

Are you trying to hurt the Democrats, Kevin? Shouldn’t we routinely audit every senior government employee? Shouldn’t those audits be public? And especially the Supreme Court Justices, for whom ethics seem to be optional.

There’s also the threat that Republicans who will control of the House in January, will release the tax returns of Democrats. Wrongo thinks they should release any elected official’s return. After all, a government employee is paid by your taxes, so you have some right to transparency.

The difference is that Trump refused to release his, while most politicians release theirs after they are nominated for office.

For those Democrats who are now saying that it was a mistake to release them because of the Republicans’ possible retaliation, the last 30 years have been about Republicans going after Democrats with investigations and inventing scandals out of thin air for partisan political reasons. They will continue to do this irrespective of whether Trump’s tax returns were released.

Some media are reporting that Republicans are saying:

“….the Democrats don’t want to go down the road of releasing tax returns because where will it stop? with releasing tax returns of ordinary citizens?”

This is hyperbole. The media should ask Republicans who say this:

“Why are you so concerned about the House releasing the tax returns of ordinary citizens? Your Party will control the House. Are you concerned that your fellow Republicans would release tax returns of ordinary citizens?”

Next thing you know they’ll be asking for official college transcripts! Or, certified birth certificates. Oh, wait, they’ve already done that.

Because the Committee released Trump’s tax returns, we now know is that the IRS did not even begin its mandatory audits of Trump’s taxes until 2019 and hasn’t completed any of them.

Let’s close today with a tune for Hanukkah which this year is at almost the same time as the Christmas holidays. Let’s watch and listen to the Maccabeats perform “Latke Recipe” to the tune “Shut Up And Dance” originally performed by Walk the Moon. It’s fun, and who doesn’t like latkes?:

 

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Saturday Soother – December 17, 2022

The Daily Escape:

18th Annual Las Vegas Santa Run – Saturday, Dec. 3, 2022.  Source: L.E. Baskow/Las Vegas Review-Journal @Left_Eye_Image

Lost in the back and forth of the year-end Congressional sausage-making was the unwelcome news that the deal to protect dreamers and to reform our immigrant asylum system has died.

From Greg Sargent in the WaPo:

“For a fleeting moment this month, a deal to protect 2 million “dreamers”…appeared within reach. Two senators with a history of bipartisan compromises were earnestly haggling over details…. The talks were endorsed by influential right-leaning opinion-makers, and even encouraged by the conservative Border Patrol union.”

The two Senators are Sens. Thom Tillis (R-NC) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ). Back to the WaPo:

“What happened? Tillis and Sinema were negotiating over bill text, much of which had been written, as late as Wednesday night. But Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) informed Sinema and Tillis that he wouldn’t allow it to be attached to the end-of-year spending omnibus bill, effectively killing it…”

Passing it was always a long shot. It looks as if the Republicans want immigration as a political issue more than they want a solution.

If you follow what’s going on at the southern border, you know that using Title 42, to allow police and border officers to expedite the expulsion of illegal immigrants is ending. A federal judge ordered the Biden administration to stop using it by Dec. 21, stating that it was “arbitrary and capricious.”

Immigrants are now crossing the border in large numbers, expecting that it will soon be impossible for US Border Patrol to simply send them back without reliance on Title 42. More from Sargent:

“The framework would have created new processing centers that would detain incoming asylum seekers — with increased legal and health services — until screenings could determine whether they have a “credible fear” of persecution if they were returned home. Those who passed would get a final hearing much faster than under the status quo, due to major investments in legal processing. Those who failed would be expelled promptly.”

The proposed Tillis/Sinema bill was designed to disincentivize exactly what the Republicans keep yelling about: Migrants who arrive seeking asylum, who then disappear into the interior and fail to show up for hearings. More from Sargent:

“What’s deeply frustrating about this moment is that the fundamental principles underlying reform were real and workable. Many Republicans recognize the absurdity of banishing the dreamers….And on asylum, these reforms represented a good-faith effort to come up with a solution that both sides could accept.”

The bill would have discouraged the exact sort of abuses that the Republicans constantly call the “border crisis” while retaining  the US commitment to provide a fair hearing to all who seek refuge here.

Now, the border infrastructure that intercepts and processes migrants will be strained past the breaking point once Title 42 is lifted. But solving the problem doesn’t provide a political payoff to Republicans, who want to keep the “border crisis” hot as a 2024 campaign issue.

The Sinema/Tillis plan was a worthwhile effort. But there weren’t even 10 Republicans willing to break the filibuster. This is why, according to Gallup, more Americans say government is our biggest problem. And they’re saying so for the seventh time in the past 10 years. “Government” is a broad category of dissatisfaction that includes the President, Congress, Party politics and of course, gridlock.

There will be no end to gridlock unless and until bi-partisan efforts are rewarded. So, not in Wrongo’s lifetime.

But now’s the time to let go of the hot steaming mess that is our politics. Grab a few moments of calm and distance before we turn to a weekend of sourcing more Christmas presents and wearing our ugliest seasonal sweaters to family parties. It’s time for our Saturday Soother.

Here on the Fields of Wrong, we still have patchy snow on the ground, although the much-hyped winter storm that made it to the Northeast after wreaking havoc elsewhere seemingly has missed us entirely.

Let’s kick back and brew up a hot steaming mug of Ethiopia Uchoro Nansebo Washed ($27/12oz.) coffee from Floyd, VA’s (pop. 432), Red Rooster Coffee. The roaster says it is surprisingly savory and creamy with notes of apple cider, lemon-lime, and stewed peaches.

Now grab a comfy chair by a window and listen to Michael BublĂŠ perform “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” with Hannah Waddingham (Rebecca Welton on Ted Lasso). Her singing is a revelation. It’s hard to believe she could make BublĂŠ look and sound like a guy in the chorus. It’s from his 10th Anniversary “Christmas in the City” show:

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We Kill More People With Cars

The Daily Escape:

Sunrise, with Mt. Hood in background, Vancouver, WA – November 2022 photo by Sanman Photography

The NYT has an article showing how the US tolerates a high number of auto-related deaths:

“The US has diverged over the past decade from other comparably developed countries, where traffic fatalities have been falling….In 2020, as car travel plummeted around the world, traffic fatalities broadly fell as well. But in the US, the opposite happened. Travel declined, and deaths still went up. Preliminary federal data suggests road fatalities rose again in 2021.”

They helpfully include a chart that shows America’s relative ranking vs. other developed countries since the start of the pandemic in 2020:

(chart is truncated for viewing purposes)

More from the NYT:

“Safety advocates and government officials lament that so many deaths are…tolerated in America as an unavoidable cost of mass mobility. But…Americans die….in rising numbers even as roads around the world grow safer.”

In 2021, nearly 43,000 people died on American roads. The recent rise in fatalities has been highest among those the government classifies as most vulnerable — cyclists, motorcyclists, pedestrians, even though miles traveled have fallen:

The NYT says that the explanation for America’s road safety record lies with a transportation system designed to move cars quickly, not to move people safely. They quote Jennifer Homendy, chair of the National Transportation Safety Board:

“Motor vehicles are first, highways are first, and everything else is an afterthought…”

To fix this means we must solve both infrastructural and cultural problems at the same time.

This year in our northwestern Connecticut town, we’re seeing an average of 3 accidents per day compared with 2.2 per day last year. Our population is growing, but certainly not as fast as our accident rate.

The explanation for the increases both locally and nationally isn’t simple to explain.

  • Vehicles have grown significantly bigger and thus deadlier when they hit people.
  • Some states curb the ability of local governments to set lower speed limits.
  • The five-star federal safety rating that consumers can look for when buying a car today doesn’t take into consideration what that car might do to pedestrians.
  • As cars grew safer for the people inside of them, we didn’t prioritize the safety of people outside of them.

The average car sold in the US is larger, taller, and heavier than in other developed countries. Many of these SUVs and trucks can weigh up to 9,000 pounds, like the latest Rivian and the electric Hummer. Their batteries alone weigh 3,000 pounds, the weight of the average car in the 1990s!

The larger size offsets the advancements in safety technology. Add in growing distracted driving: texting, work calls, difficult to navigate infotainment systems that lack physical buttons. And deaths are up in America.

In the 1990s, per capita roadway fatalities across developed countries were significantly higher than they are today. Back then, the US had fewer than South Korea, New Zealand, and Belgium. But other countries started to take pedestrian and cyclist injuries seriously in the 2000s. They made them a priority in both vehicle design and street design in a way that the US has never committed to.

In America, we prioritize straighter, smoother roads. We prioritize traveling long distances by car as fast as possible. Our culture and our infrastructure are designed to allow us to go faster on better roads. That has made us number one in road vehicle-caused deaths since the pandemic.

More American Exceptionalism! And given our exceptionalism in firearm fatalities, it’s hard to see how or why Americans would be willing to stop being exceptional in vehicle deaths either.

Biden’s infrastructure bill, passed last year, takes baby steps toward changing this. There’s more federal money for pedestrian and cycling infrastructure. And states are now required to analyze fatalities and serious injuries among “vulnerable road users” (people outside of cars) to identify the most dangerous traffic corridors and the potential ways to fix them.

States where vulnerable road users make up at least 15% of fatalities must spend at least 15% of their federal safety funds on improvements prioritizing those vulnerable users. Today, 32 states, plus Puerto Rico and DC, will have to meet this mandate.

Here in our CT town, Wrongo serves on the Municipal Roads Committee. We talk endlessly about how, once a road is repaired, speeds immediately go up. It took several years and much public disagreement to build a roundabout as a traffic calming measure on one accident-prone road.

In Europe, you see plenty of “traffic calming” measures. Chicanes, roundabouts, and narrower lanes bring vehicle-pedestrian fatalities down, in part by making drivers pay more attention. Therefore, driving becomes a bit more nerve-wracking, and people go slower.

Making that happen here would require Americans and politicians to buy into the idea that streets aren’t exclusively for cars.

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Saturday Soother – October 15, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Lobster boats at dusk, Lubec Harbor, Lubec, ME – October 2022 photo by Rick Berk Photography

Wrong and Ms. Right are chilling on Cape Cod. We took time out from doing nothing to watch the Jan. 6 Committee’s most likely final hearing on Thursday. You know by now that the Committee voted unanimously to subpoena Trump. You also know that he will never appear.

The Committee has to wrap up its work and publish it before the next Congress is sworn in, January 2023. And the most important thing that they can do is to make a criminal referral to the DOJ for Trump and a few of his fellow travelers like Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, John Eastman, and Jeffrey Clark. The Committee also must share the entirety of their investigative record with the DOJ as soon as possible.

If they delay until the new Congress is sworn, and if it’s controlled by Republicans, the new Speaker will dissolve the Committee and refuse to cooperate with the DOJ.

But let’s move on and talk a little about the price of chicken. It’s going up bigly, but rotisserie chickens at Costco are still $4.99, as they have been for more than 20 years.

Chicken is our most popular meat: Americans consume 99 pounds per capita, way more than beef (56 lbs.), pork (52 lbs. ) or fish (19 lbs.). That’s 20 whole chickens per person, per year. The Hustle reports that about 10% of the chicken we eat are rotisserie cooked, and that Costco sells around 12% of all rotisserie chickens in the US. They began selling a 3 lb. cooked chicken for $4.99 in 2000. And 22 years later, the bird still costs $4.99. Adjusted for inflation, the Costco rotisserie chicken should be selling for $8.31, but they’re keeping the price low because nobody walks into Costco and comes out with just one chicken.

Costco says that they are losing a ton of profit on cheap chicken. In 2015, the CEO estimated that the lost profit was around $40 million. They have worked to control costs by opening their own chicken processing facility in Nebraska in 2019. That one facility produces 43% of Costco’s rotisserie chicken requirements. Costco reports that it saves them 35¢/chicken. And their rotisserie chickens have their own Facebook page with 19k followers.

Want to save on your food bills? Eat more Costco chicken.

It’s time for us to spend a few minutes decompressing from another week of crummy news. That means it’s time for our Saturday Soother. As Wrongo writes this, he’s looking at an Atlantic Ocean tidal inlet. The weather for the past week has been fantastic, but we’ve had very high winds and lots of rain to start this weekend.

Still, the shore birds are congregating on a small sand bar that’s visible at low tide in front of our rental house. They are often joined by a solitary man who motors over in a small skiff and spends an hour bent over at the waist with a clamming rake, hunting for shellfish treasures. He seems reasonably successful, returning every day at low tide to toss a bunch of clams into a plastic bucket, hop back in the skiff and motor away.

Wrongo couldn’t bend over at the waist and rake for an hour without needing spine surgery.

As you cruise into the weekend, start by brewing up a mug of Kenya Nyeri Hill coffee ($12.50/12 oz.) from Road Map Coffee works, in Lexington in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. The roaster says that it has a chocolaty finish with notes of red currant and tangerine zest.

Now grab a seat on the deck and listen and watch “Kol Nidrei” by Max Bruch. Bruch wrote it in 1880. It is an Adagio based on two Hebrew Melodies for Cello and Orchestra, consisting of a series of variations on two themes of Jewish origin. Many mistakenly believed that Bruch was Jewish because he wrote this piece, but he was not. From Bruch:

“Even though I am a Protestant, as an artist I deeply felt the outstanding beauty of these melodies and therefore I gladly spread them through my arrangement…”

Here it is played in 2018 by the Frankfurt Radio Symphony under the direction of Paavo Järvi. The cello soloist is Mischa Maisky, who was born in Ukraine:

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VA Post Office Closed Because of Segregation Exhibit

The Daily Escape:

Drone view of Cape Kiwanda SP near Pacific City, OR – August 2022 photo by headstandphotography

This story is another example of what’s wrong in our nation. It describes the increasing politicization inside our federal bureaucracy. The US Postal Service (USPS) has closed a post office located in the Montpelier VA Railroad Depot because of an exhibit the USPS called “unacceptable”.

The exhibit was about racial segregation.

The post office opened there in 1912; the exhibit has been there since 2010. According to the Roanoke Times, USPS spokesman Philip Bogenberger emailed on Aug. 9, saying:

“While we attempted to address the issue with the property owner, that effort was unsuccessful, and it was decided that the proper course of action was to suspend the facility and provide service to our customers from nearby postal retail units,”

The property owner is the Montpelier Foundation. The display is on a panel on one exterior wall of the depot and on panels inside the 1912 station. The post office has its own entrance, separate from the rooms in which the display is shown. Among other things, the exhibit depicts the depot’s waiting room during Virginia’s racially segregated era.

Here’s a photo of the now closed Post Office:

And here’s a (blurry) photo of the offensive exhibit:

The train station was built in 1910 by the industrialist William duPont. He had moved there in 1900 to live with his family in Madison’s’ historic mansion. Because the US was racially segregated, duPont built the station with separate waiting rooms for Blacks and Whites. The post office opened in the building in 1912 and it has been a post office ever since.

In 2010, the Montpelier Foundation created the exhibit. It tells of African American life in Virginia’s Orange County and the nation during segregation, as well as the train station’s history with the duPonts.

Adding to the current controversy, Elizabeth Chew, Montpelier’s interim president and CEO, said that despite what the USPS spokesperson said:

“The US Postal Service did not contact the current CEO or chief of staff, nor did it contact the previous CEO or chief of staff.”

In order to close a post office, the USPS is required to make a determination in writing, and then make it available to the customers served by that post office. It may not close it until at least 60 days afterward.

The overall question of why close this particular post office after more than 100 years, and without proper procedures, has gotten Rep. Abigail Spanberger, (D-VA) involved. She wrote Gerald Roane, the USPS’s Virginia district manager, inquiring about the abrupt discontinuation of service for Orange County residents:

“…I am concerned by this abrupt discontinuation of mail service that has prevented those we serve from receiving the important items they rely on…I am also extremely frustrated by the lack of transparency, forewarning regarding the closure, and information following the closure that my constituents and local officials have received.”

Spanberger is right to ask: “who decided this, and why”? This was an historical exhibit, not a political statement. It’s important to be reminded of that repressive time so that it is never repeated. It seems that this is cancel culture of a bureaucratic kind that doesn’t want our little ones to feel guilt or shame for the racist and segregationist actions of their parents, grandparents, and ancestors.

In our federal bureaucracy, new policies are first vetted by subject matter experts, usually lower level staffers with deep knowledge of the area. Ideas that pass muster are then elevated to managers who are familiar with the proposed policy’s broader implications. Finally, proposals go to that thin layer of political appointees who are there to assure that any policy meets the goals of the administration.

Ultimately, agency heads or cabinet secretaries make the final call. So in this case, who are the ones trying to hide racism and segregation from the rest of us? Were they waiting for today’s atmosphere of outrage and victimhood to right a grievous wrong of exposing this chapter of local history?

How deeply in our federal bureaucracy have these Republican termites buried themselves?

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Uvalde, Texas

The Daily Escape:

Hocking Hills Region SP, OH – May 2022 photo by Victoria Williams

There’s nothing more to say about how wrong it is when school kids are killed. There was a time when we might have thought that a mass shooting at an elementary school would have been the final straw. Randomly gunning down children in front of their classmates who had to witness the carnage, the horror endured by the families of the victims should have been enough to shock America’s collective conscience into action on guns.

But it wasn’t. The killers have kept going into schools and have continued to have their twisted say. And so have the members of the Senate, who will not lift a finger to try and end gun violence in America.

This is the deadliest school shooting since Sandy Hook in Newtown, Connecticut. Wrongo wrote about Newtown back in 2012 when this blog was young, saying that the Second Amendment Absolutists:

“…need to balance for us the permanent loss of so much potential with the impatience of a waiting period, a background check, or the loss of the ability to fire more rounds per minute.”

So far, there have been 199 mass shootings this year (defined as three people shot, excluding the shooter), and the year is only 21 weeks old. We talk about the Second Amendment, but what would the founders say if they understood the extent to which it has so crippled our ability to deal with home-grown gun carnage?  From Hal Gershowitz:

“Two hundred and thirty-one years ago, the founders who gathered in Philadelphia to write our Constitution were all wary of the dangers of a standing army. They all knew that standing armies in Europe…were used by ruling monarchies to repress their people. Nations…that maintained standing armies used them primarily to keep their people in check. The founders all embraced the idea of a citizenries’ right to bear arms and their right to establish militias as a bulwark against a standing federal army that might repress them.”

Gershowitz reminds us that gun ownership hasn’t changed:

“According to the first US census conducted in 1790, there were just under 680,000 families or households in the new country. Almost every household owned a musket, so the country was well-armed and well-protected should the newly formed American republic go rogue.”

He says that at the time of the Constitutional convention in 1791, The US only had a standing army of about 800 men and probably about the same number of muskets. Thus, the armed households of the country far outnumbered the armed army of the new republic. Just like today.

Yet the Supreme Court endorses Second Amendment Absolutism. Their Conservative supermajority is about to dramatically expand the scope of the Second Amendment and prohibit us from protecting our communities by enacting gun safety laws through the democratic process.

Today in our town in Northwestern Connecticut, there were feverish calls by parents to arm our teachers, and station police permanently in our schools. The urge to protect kids is understandable, but it doesn’t square with the facts. Perry Stein of the WaPo reported that two Uvalde Texas police officers and a school resource officer were present and fired at the shooter, but it did not stop him from entering the building.

So what can be done? Among the most basic purposes of government is to protect its citizens. Most people accept this even though it causes inconvenience and some loss of personal freedom.

You can’t take your bottle of water, your giant hairspray can (or your handgun) through security at the airport. It’s inconvenient and an abridgement of your rights, but the greater good requires that abridgement to protect all passengers against the threat of a terrorist, whether foreign or domestic.

We could change our gun laws. Start by looking at Canada, which requires a 28-day waiting period to buy a handgun, and it imposes a clever safeguard: gun buyers should have the support of two people vouching for them. While this could be done on the state level, if any other state has very liberal gun purchase laws, your state will remain awash in guns. We need a national law, and a national law requires Senate action.

But the Senate won’t act on gun control. This should give you some perspective:

History says that we have a Second Amendment to protect us from a renegade standing army, one that has never existed in America. Today, Second Amendment Absolutism has left us without any effective means to control, regulate and, yes, “infringe” upon the acquisition of handguns, long guns, and semi-automatic machine guns in America, where we now have more than 400 million in the hands of the well-armed citizenry.

The Senate will only change if we elect Senators with moral courage!

Let’s close with a tune by the Drive-By Truckers “Thoughts and Prayers”:

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Travels With Wrongo, Saturday Soother Style – May 21, 2022

The Daily Escape:

View of the town of Sancerre and surrounding vineyards – May, 2022 photo by Wrongo

Our visit to France is coming to an end. It has been a nice change of pace from our life in Northwestern Connecticut. More below about France after another rant about the state of American politics. Here, we’ve seen very little about the baby formula debacle in the US. At this distance, the reasons why Abbott shut down its formula manufacturing facility seem a little unclear.

The WSJ reports that the shortage happened after Abbott voluntarily recalled some products and closed a plant in Sturgis, MI where Similac and other brands were made. The FDA investigated consumer complaints related to four infants who were hospitalized, (two of whom died) apparently after using Abbott’s formula.

Abbott controls about 42% of the US baby formula market.

The FDA said the offending bacteria was detected in Abbott’s plant, but not in their products. That raised concerns by the Agency that the formula carried a risk of contamination. Abbott said there was no conclusive evidence linking Abbott’s formulas to the infant illnesses. A charitable view is that the FDA failed to weigh risks against the real-world consequences of abruptly cutting off this very significant source of infant nutrition.

This brings us to today. It will take six to eight weeks before Abbott’s formula again starts showing up on store shelves, meaning the shortage could last months. The Biden administration wanted to ease the domestic shortage of formula by giving the FDA funds to expedite a solution. On Wednesday, most House Republicans voted against the FDA funding bill on a near-party line vote of 231 to 192. Twelve Republicans joined the Democrats in backing the bill. Another example of the fact that the Dems are the party of let’s try, while the GOP is the party of no we won’t.

Nearly all Republicans voted in favor of another bill allowing foreign formula into the US. (They aren’t required to meet FDA standards). The combined effect of the Republican effort with these two votes is to impede a solution in the US while introducing unapproved baby formula into the domestic supply chain.

Barney Frank’s comment that for Republicans, life begins at conception and ends at birth, has never seemed truer than today, given the gutting of Roe v Wade and their refusal to support funding more baby formula. On to the travelogue.

First, the promised review of Auberge des Templiers, the Michelin one-star restaurant we were lucky to dine at on Wednesday. In summary, it was fantastic. We had six courses, all bite sized, including the main. All had unique presentations, a few were reimagined versions of traditional French specialties. Here’s a photo of our amuse bouche:

This was a soft-boiled egg served in a nest of straw. Note how the eggshell was so perfectly cut: it is difficult to imagine how that’s done. On top of the egg was an emulsion based on some of the straw in the “nest”. It was inventive and delicious, as were all of the courses. Not recommended for meat and potatoes types.

Yesterday we visited Sancerre, known for its wines made from the Sauvignon Blanc grape. The vineyards surrounding the town are on fairly steep slopes. One wine from Henry Bourgeois is called “La Cote des Monts Damnes”, which translates into “that damn hill” since the workers say it every time they are on its 40° slopes. Sounds like backbreaking work. France doesn’t allow immigrant labor from outside the EU, so wages for this hard work are reasonably good.

Wrongo sampled a bottle from 2020. It was fruity and soft, with a long finish. Very nice!

It’s clearly unseasonably dry in this part of France. Walking among the vines, the ground is dry and cracked. But it’s forbidden by law to artificially water vineyards in France. That places great pressure on winemakers to manage their crop while maintaining quality.

Today we’re off to visit a wine barrel maker. It may surprise you to learn that they make barrels to the specifications of individual wine makers. They are also making barrels in different shapes to test the impact of those shapes on wine quality over 5-10 years’ time. It seems that they plan to remain in business for a while.

Let’s close with a Saturday musical interlude blending France and the US. Listen to Pink Martini an America group featuring China Forbes, sing “Sympathique (Je ne veux pas travailler)” in Stuttgart, Germany in 2010. The song is from their first album, and was nominated for best song of the year at France’s Victoires de la Musique, the French equivalent to the Grammys:

Luckily, the video has English subtitles, but the chorus is well-known:

I don’t want to work
I don’t want to lunch
I want only to forget
And then I smoke

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