The Wrongologist – Page 129 – Geopolitics, Power and Political Economy

Tax Abatements Are Killing School Budgets

The Daily Escape:

Egmont National Park, NZ – photo by vicarious_NZ

A new report shows that US public schools in 28 states lost at least $1.8 billion in tax revenues last year as a result of tax incentives granted to corporations. The study analyzed the financial reports of 5,600 of the nation’s 13,500 independent public school districts.

Good Jobs First examined the first full year of reporting under a new accounting standard for school districts, adopted by the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB), the body that sets accounting rules for all states and most localities. The new rule, GASB Statement No. 77 on Tax Abatement Disclosures, requires most state and local governments to report annually on the amount of revenue they’ve lost to corporate tax abatements.

This is extremely important, since most local schools are very dependent on revenue from property taxes, but they rarely have influence over corporate tax abatements granted by their towns, and/or the cities or counties where they are located.

And local voters have had no way to see how much they are forced to pay in additional taxes that were lost to enrich the pockets of corporate employers.

Good Jobs found that the 10 most affected states could have hired more than 28,000 new teachers if they were able to use the lost revenues. Or, they could have avoided higher home property taxes, or provided their teachers with better resources, or higher pay.

States and cities have long used abatements and other tax incentives to lure companies, or to keep them from leaving, and/or to encourage them to expand locally. Often, those companies make their choice of location based on the quality of local schools and colleges.

These abatement deals are made by local politicians and are meant to boost local economic development. Their proponents say the lost tax revenue is worth it, because they grow the local economy. But it is difficult to know whether the benefits outweigh the burdens.

And until GASB 77, it has been impossible to see just how much a school system may have lost because of a company’s tax break. The new rule is especially helpful in understanding local schools finances, because it requires the reporting of revenue losses even if they are suffered passively by the school system as the result of decisions made by another body of government.

Of the five districts that lost the most, three are in Louisiana. Together, they lost more than $158 million, or $2,500 for each student enrolled. The School District of Philadelphia, which only last year regained local control from the state after climbing out of a deep fiscal crisis, lost the second most revenue at $62 million.

Overall, nearly 250 school districts lost at least $1 million each, and in four districts, tax abatements reduced classroom resources by more than $50 million.

But most school districts have not yet complied with Rule 77, which was implemented in 2015. Good Jobs First estimates that another $500 million of subsidies and abatements are currently unreported.

Most of us believe that our governments are supposed to govern in the interests of the “general welfare,” that when voters put people in positions of power, based on the legitimacy of our electoral process, is the limit of our responsibility as voters.

We accept that somebody has to say what the rules are, and then enforce them.

But in our neoliberal economic times, voters have to remember that our governments often act as wholly owned subsidiaries of the 1%. It takes suspension of belief to accept that our republic, ruled as it is by an oligarchy, is working for the general welfare of all of our citizens.

Why do we think that, our “governments”, all of which are subject to capture and ownership by the few, are going to somehow provide decency, comity, or fairness to all of us?

We need to abandon the article of faith that the free market, one without government oversight, promotes the best economic outcome for all of us.

Today’s inequality says the opposite.

We need a new vision of the role of government. But it isn’t really a “new” vision. It is simply a return to insisting on the “promotion of the General Welfare for all” as the paramount object of government.

Here’s another thought from Gordon Wood, in his book, Creation of the American Republic:

In a republic each individual gives up all private interest that is not consistent with the general good, the interest of the whole body. For the republican patriots of 1776 the commonweal was all encompassing—a transcendent object with a unique moral worth that made partial considerations fade into insignificance.

The last outcome that American revolutionaries wanted was to be ruled by oligarchs. But, here we are.

We need to reform our capitalism.

We’re Too Short to be on This Ride

The Daily Escape:

Lion’s Head, Capetown South Africa, viewed from Tabletop Mountain – 2012 photo by Wrongo

A WaPo report said that Donald Trump discussed giving Janet Yellen another term as head of the Federal Reserve, but was concerned that she was too short. He thought that at 5 feet, 3 inches, she just wasn’t tall enough to get the job done.

Wrongo thinks Yellen’s performance was about the same as her predecessor, Ben Bernanke, and her successor, Jerome Powell. Shouldn’t the real question be: Do we know what’s wrong with our economy, and do we have people in place with enough strength and/or courage to fix it? They can also be short, as long as they have ability and vision.

And it isn’t only in the US: (brackets by Wrongo)

Income inequality has increased in nearly all regions of the world over the past four decades, according to the World Inequality Report 2018. Since 1980, the global top 1% of earners have…[garnered] twice as much of the global growth as have the poorest 50%.

More from the World Inequality Report: (emphasis by Wrongo)

Such acute economic imbalances can lead to political, economic, and social catastrophes if they are not properly monitored and addressed….Governments need to do more to keep society fair…Public services, taxation, social safety nets – all of these have a role to play.

We’re seeing a slow-rolling social catastrophe in the US. We’re seeing alienation across class, race, age and gender. We’re divided as never before, with the possible exception of the pre-Civil War period.

Aren’t we all too short to be on this ride?

Central banks play an integral part in the global economy, and their performance (including the Fed’s) during the 2008 Great Recession was for the most part, admirable.

But central banks can only use monetary policy to partially solve issues of economic inequality. The most robust solutions lie in fiscal policy. Fiscal policy is how Congress and other elected officials influence the economy using spending, taxation and regulation.

Take student loans. Many of our university students are simply being led to the debt gallows. Currently, 44.5 million student loan borrowers in the US owe a total of $1.5 trillion. Student loans are the fastest growing segment of US household debt, seeing almost 157% growth since the Great Recession.

From Bloomberg:

Student loans are being issued at unprecedented rates as more American students pursue higher education. But the cost of tuition at both private and public institutions is touching all-time highs, while interest rates on student loans are also rising. Students are spending more time working instead of studying. (Some 85% of current students now work paid jobs while enrolled.)

Student loan debt has the highest “over 90 days” delinquency rate of all household debt. More than 10% of student borrowers are at least 90 days delinquent. Mortgages and auto loans have a 1.1% and 4% 90-day delinquency rate, respectively,

And if the student loan can’t be repaid, it isn’t expunged by bankruptcy. In fact, students can’t outlive their debt. The feds can garnish social security payments to repay a student’s outstanding debt.

As young adults struggle to pay back their loans, they’re forced to make financial choices that create a drag on the economy. Student debt has delayed marriages. It has led to a decline in home ownership. Sixteen percent of young workers aged 25 to 35 lived with their parents in 2017, up 4% from 10 years earlier.

We are only beginning to understand the social costs of our politics. We are in the midst of a brewing social disaster. And these are self-inflicted wounds, fixable with different government policies. But, most of today’s politicians are too short to get on that ride.

So, how to solve the simultaneous equations of high poverty rates, income inequality and an impending social disaster?

It won’t be easy, and it starts with politicians admitting that our economy doesn’t work for everyone, and that it must be reformed. Then, we can move beyond the tired rallying cries of “more tax cuts” to a capitalism which incorporates a social consciousness that can get people on the track to better paying, and more secure jobs.

An April 2018 study of survey data from 16 European countries found that economic deprivation increased right-wing populist tendencies. Sam van Noort, a co-author of the report said:

Individuals who “feel economically less well-off” were more likely to be attracted by the far right…and radical right respondents are more likely to be male, subjectively poorer, less educated [and] younger.

This will also happen here, unless the voters have determination, and even the short politicians have courage.

Monday Wake Up Call – December 3, 2018

The Daily Escape:

Boston Public Library – photo by joethommas

The NYT’s David Brooks:

We’re enjoying one of the best economies of our lifetime. The GDP is growing at about 3.5% a year, which is about a point faster than many experts thought possible. We’re in the middle of the second-longest recovery in American history, and if it lasts for another eight months it will be the longest ever.

So everything’s good, no? Not really. More from Brooks: (emphasis by Wrongo)

Researchers with the Gallup-Sharecare Well-Being Index interviewed 160,000 adults in 2017 to ask about their financial security, social relationships, sense of purpose and connectedness to community. Last year turned out to be the worst year for well-being of any since the study began 10 years ago.

And people’s faith in capitalism has declined, especially among the young. Only 45% of those between 18 and 29 see capitalism positively, a lower rate than in 2010.

Brooks’ conclusion? It’s not the economy, we all just need more community connections.

His is another attempt to dress up the now-failing neoliberal economics. Things look good today from some perspectives, but our economy is crushingly cruel from others. Brooks seems to think that millions of Americans are struggling to pay their rent or mortgage, education loans, health care insurance or buy groceries because they have failed to master the art of networking in their neighborhoods.

Alienation is behind the rise of Trumpism, and the rise of populism across the world. In that sense, Brooks is correct, but the leading cause of people’s alienation is economic inequality.

And the leading cause of economic inequality is corporate America’s free rein, supported by their helpmates in Washington. Last week, Wrongo wrote about the exceptional market concentration that has taken place in the US in the past few years. He suggested America needs a revitalized anti-trust initiative. In The Myth of Capitalism, authors Jonathan Tepper and Denise Hearns write:

Capitalism without competition is not capitalism.

For decades, most economists dismissed antitrust actions as superfluous, so long as consumers were not the victims of price-gouging. Monopoly capitalism is back, and it’s harmful, even if a company’s core product (like Google’s and Facebook’s) is free to consumers. As we wrote last week, there’s excessive corporate concentration in most industries, including air travel, banking, beer, health insurance, cell service, and even in the funeral industry.

All of this has led to a huge and growing inequality gap. That means there is little or no economic security for a large and growing section of the American population. People see their communities stagnating, or dying. They feel hopeless, angry, and yes, alienated.

One consequence is that we’ve seen three years of declining life expectancy, linked to growing drug use and suicides. We seem to be on the edge of a social catastrophe.

But our real worry has to be political. People could become so desperate for change that they are willing to do anything to get it. The worry then, is that few vote and a minority elects a strong man populist leader, simply because he/she tells them what they want to hear. That leader can then go out and wreak havoc on our Constitutional Republic.

After that, anything could happen.

Despite what Brooks thinks, we don’t have a crisis of connections. It’s a crisis of poorly paying jobs, job insecurity, and poverty. When people look at their economic prospects, they despair for their children. Doesn’t it matter that in America, health care, education, and transportation all lag behind other developed countries?

The unbridled ideology of free markets is the enemy. Our problem isn’t that individual entrepreneurs went out and took all the gains for themselves, leaving the rest of us holding the bag. It’s more about how neoliberal economics is used both by government and corporations to justify an anti-tax and anti-trust approach that has led to extreme wealth and income concentration in the top 1% of Americans.

The reality is that the nation’s wealth has become the exclusive property of the already prosperous.

We need to wake up America! We have to stop for a second, and think about how we can dig out of this mess. When America bought in to FDR’s New Deal programs 75 years ago, we entered an era we now think back on nostalgically as “great”.

And it isn’t enough to talk about how we can look to Sweden or Norway as economic models. Both have populations of under 10 million, and our society is far less homogeneous than theirs.

We need a uniquely American solution to this problem. It will involve reforming capitalism, starting with tax reform, and enforcing anti-trust legislation.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – December 2, 2018

Wrongo’s not gonna say much that’s bad about the late George HW Bush today. Wouldn’t be prudent.

What the Hell…here’s a few observations. Bush was an average president who looks better than he should because we compare him to the terrible Republican presidents we’ve experienced since he left office. He was a genuine war hero, and a self-made successful businessman (to the extent that his wealthy family didn’t just hand him a Texas oil business). He was a reasonable head of the CIA.

But to become president, he engaged in race baiting, using the Willie Horton ad against Dukakis. It was openly racist, harking back to old American fears of black men raping white women. Bush can never be forgiven for this.

He brought us Clarence Thomas. Bush could have held the Reagan administration accountable for Iran-Contra. Instead, he chose to pardon everyone. Just before he left office, he pardoned Caspar Weinberger, who was just about to go on trial for his crimes, describing him as a “true American patriot.” He also pardoned Elliott Abrams and Robert McFarlane, basically ending the chance that anyone would be held responsible for Iran-Contra.

His pardons of the Iran-Contra crew allowed them to re-enter public life where they became the backbone for Operation Iraqi Freedom under GW Bush. This is his barely-remembered and negative contribution to today’s political landscape. His Thousand Points of Light idea was a non-offensive push toward nonprofits and individual acts of kindness and charity. Neil Young said it best:

We have 1,000 points of light
For the homeless man
We have a kinder, gentler
Machine gun hand

On to cartoons. The national Christmas tree looks different this year:

Trump tosses pardons for Mueller relief:

Rudy means there’s no collusion between Manafort and Cohen:

G20 meetings saw Putin working with his hands:

GM’s plant closings could create more immigrants:

Saturday Soother – December 1, 2018

The Daily Escape:

Yukon Grizzly before hibernation – 2014 photo by Paul Nicklen

Quite the week. We had barely digested Thanksgiving dinner when we heard about Russia seizing three Ukrainian Navy vessels in the Azov Sea. We learned that Paul Manafort lied to Robert Mueller, and that his lawyer reported everything that occurred between Manafort and Mueller to the White House. Then, we heard that Trump’s former in-house lawyer, Michael Cohen has admitted to lying to Congress, and is now cooperating with Mueller. Who knows what it all means?

But, the big story this week was that we learned that life expectancy in the US fell to 78.6 years, a 0.3 year decline from our peak. From CNN:

Overdose deaths reached a new high in 2017, topping 70,000, while the suicide rate increased by 3.7%, the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics reports.

We are witnessing social decay in America. This is consistent with what Angus Deaton and Ann Case called “deaths of despair” in 2017. The WSJ has a detailed breakdown, and also points out how other countries are continuing to show progress:

Data the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released on Thursday show life expectancy fell by one-tenth of a percent, to 78.6 years, pushed down by the sharpest annual increase in suicides in nearly a decade and a continued rise in deaths from powerful opioid drugs like fentanyl. Influenza, pneumonia and diabetes also factored into last year’s increase.

From Yves Smith:

Americans take antidepressants at a higher rate than any country in the world. The average job tenure is a mere 4.4 years. In my youth, if you changed jobs in less than seven or eight years, you were seen as an opportunist or probably poor performer. The near impossibility of getting a new job if you are over 40 and the fact that outside hot fields, young people can also find it hard to get work commensurate with their education and experience, means that those who do have jobs can be and are exploited by their employers.

The 2017 data paint a dark picture of health and well-being in the US, reflecting the effects of addiction and despair, particularly among young and middle-aged adults. In addition, diseases are plaguing people with limited access to health care.

In the late part of the last century, and the early years of this century, there was a steady decline in heart-disease deaths. That offset a rising number of deaths from drugs and suicide. Now, we’re not seeing those heart-related declines, while drug and suicide deaths occur earlier in life, accounting for more years of life lost.

The worst aspect is that it never had to be this way. These drug and suicide deaths are “collateral damage” caused by the social and economic changes in America since the 1970s.

And we made most of those changes by choice.

Wrongo is reminded that last month, he learned that something similar had happened in Russia under Gorbachev. Under Perestroika, millions of Russians lost jobs. The government’s budget deficits grew. The death rate exceeded the birth rate. Nearly 700,000 children were abandoned by parents who couldn’t afford to take care of them. The average lifespan of men dropped to 59 years.

Are we in a slow motion disaster that could be similar to what Russia went through back in the 1990s?

We’ve become hardened. These American deaths are largely anonymous. When AIDS was ravishing the gay community in the 1980s, people were able to appreciate the huge number of deaths by seeing, or adding to, the AIDS Memorial Quilt, which eventually weighed more than 50 tons.

There is no equivalent recognition for these deaths of despair.

A traitorous American ruling class has sold out its middle and lower classes. If you doubt that, think about Wal-Mart. The Walton’s fortune was made by acting as an agent of Chinese manufacturers, in direct competition with US manufacturers. Doesn’t that seem like treason?

Relax, there’s nothing you can do about all of this today, the first day of December. Time to get what solace you can from a few minutes having a coffee, and a listen to a piece of soothing music.

Start by brewing a cup of Kona Mele Extra Fancy coffee from Hula Daddy Kona Coffee ($64.94/lb.). It has an aroma of dark chocolate, fruit and flowers. And shipping is free.

Now settle back and listen to a few minutes of George Winston’s “December”. Here are Part 1: Snow, Part 2: Midnight, and Part 3: Minstrels:

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

Capitalism Must Be Reformed

The Daily Escape:

Mt. Fuji, Japan at sunset – November, 2018 photo by miles360x

From the Economist:

In 2016, a survey found that more than half of young Americans no longer support capitalism.

One reason that young people have lost faith in capitalism is the exceptional market concentration that has taken place in the US in the past few years. US firms have gotten bigger, often by acquiring their competition. This is true across many markets. Vox reports that: (parenthesis by Wrongo)

Four companies…control 97% of the dry cat food sector: Nestlé, J.M. Smucker, Supermarket Brand, and Mars. According to the report, Nestlé has a 57% (share of)…the industry, owning brands such as Purina, Fancy Feast, Felix, and Friskies. Altria, Reynolds American, and Imperial have a 92% market share of the cigarette and tobacco manufacturing industry. Anheuser-Busch InBev, MillerCoors, and Constellation have a 75% share of the beer industry. Hillenbrand and Matthews have a 76% share of the coffin and casket manufacturing industry.

On November 26^th, the Open Markets Institute, an anti-monopoly think tank, released a data set showing the market share of the largest companies in each industry. Pulling the data together was a challenge, because the FTC halted the collection and publication of industry concentration data in 1981, during the time of Ronald Regan. Now, David Leonhardt of the NYT has turned it into a table:

As you can see, big companies are much more dominant than they were just 15 years ago. More from Leonhardt:

The new corporate behemoths have been very good for their executives and largest shareholders — and bad for almost everyone else. Sooner or later, the companies tend to raise prices. They hold down wages, because where else are workers going to go? They use their resources to sway government policy. Many of our economic ills — like income stagnation and a decline in entrepreneurship — stem partly from corporate gigantism.

Sarah Miller, deputy director of the Open Markets Institute, told Vox: (brackets by Wrongo)

… [When] you go to the store, you see all of these brands, but guess what? They’re all being operated by the same companies…She called the system a scam economy where competition is an illusion, and choice is an illusion.

The primary issue with corporate concentration is its potential to drive up prices. The fewer sellers, the fewer choices consumers have for goods and services, and thus, there is less pressure for the big competitors to hold prices down.

Even if many consumers don’t immediately realize they are victims of concentration, it’s visible when millions of homes only have one internet provider. Or, when four cellphone providers control 98% percent of the market (Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint). And if the T-Mobile and Sprint merger plan goes through, there will be just three.

Ultimately, monopolies aren’t just an economic problem. They are also a political one. Democrats believe that anti-monopolism can be a political winner. It’s a way to address voters’ anxiety over high drug prices, digital privacy, and low wages.

We have been at this rodeo before. At the start of the 20th century, we broke up monopolies in railways and energy. In 1984, we broke up AT&T, only to see the “Baby Bells” recombine in the 1990s. We’ve simply stopped enforcing our anti-trust laws over the past 40 years.

Meanwhile, the public has been manipulated to believe that ever larger companies are in their best interests. We celebrate the “right” of large corporations to operate in unfettered ways.

But, Econ 101 shows that the trajectory of a monopoly starts with economies of scale, and ends with economies of exploitation. And remember that six corporations own 90% of the media. We won’t hear much about wrongdoing at Amazon from the Washington Post.

The required anti-trust laws are already on the books, but interpretation of them has changed over the years under Republican administrations. Eventually, we will have to break up existing giants, like we did before. One obvious candidate is Amazon, a company that will soon dominate the supply chain and all logistics in the US.

Facebook, which has gobbled up Instagram and WhatsApp, may be another candidate.

America is very late in addressing the negative outcomes of free markets, so there’s no time like the present to begin to Make America Love Small Business Again.

Voters need to push for anti-trust enforcement, which can only be done by the federal government. We have to insist that the protection of citizens is more important than protecting the 1%.

Let’s close with this quote from Louis Brandeis: “We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.”

We Saved GM For This?

The Daily Escape:

Redfish Lake, ID – 2018 photo by potatopatriot

From the Guardian:

General Motors announced yesterday that it will halt production at five North American facilities and cut 14,700 jobs as it deals with slowing sedan sales and the impact of Donald Trump’s tariffs.

The cuts will also hit 15% of GM’s 54,000 white-collar workforce, about 8,100 people. And some 18,000 GM workers have already been asked to accept voluntary buy-outs. By next year, it will no longer make the Buick LaCrosse, the Chevrolet Impala, or the Cadillac CT6 sedan. It’s also killing the Chevy Volt plug-in hybrid. GM’s CEO Mary Barra:

We recognize the need to stay in front of changing market conditions and customer preferences…

“Changing market conditions” means that GM’s sales are down despite offering enormous cash incentives to potential buyers. GM’s new-vehicle deliveries in the US plunged 11% in the third quarter, and are down 1.2% for the year. In Canada, GM’s sales have dropped 1.6% so far this year.

GM’s goal in restructuring is to save $6 billion in cash flow a year by year-end 2020. But saving all this money will cost a lot: GM estimates it at $3.0 billion to $3.8 billion, including asset write-downs, pension charges, and up to $2.0 billion in employee-related and other cash-based expenses.

GM will have to borrow this money. They said they expect to fund the restructuring costs through a new credit facility. The money has to be borrowed because GM blew through $13.9 billion in cash on share buybacks over the past four years:

Source: Wolfstreet.com

Despite spending $14 billion on share buybacks, the price of GM’s shares fell 10% over the same period.

You’d think that GM, a company that went bankrupt not too long ago, would be conservative in how it uses its cash. Nope, they wasted their cash on stock buybacks, and now they have to take out loans in order to reposition the company in its market.

Failing to anticipate where their market is going isn’t a new GM story. It had a 46% share of the car market in 1961, and now has a 17.6% share. They emerged from bankruptcy in 2009, only to be laying off workers and shutting plants in 2018.

Some history: Through the Troubled Asset Relief Program, the US Treasury invested $49.5 billion in GM in 2008 and recovered $39 billion when it sold its shares on December 9, 2013. We lost $10.3 billion. The Treasury invested another $17.2 billion into GM’s former financing arm, GMAC (now Ally). The shares in Ally were sold on December 18, 2014 for $19.6 billion netting $2.4 billion.

Net, GM has cost taxpayers $7.9 billion, while the top decision-makers spent $14 billion largely to enrich themselves.

How were they enriched? Share buybacks boost stock prices. Usually the salary and bonus plans for top executives in public companies are keyed to share price, so the incentive to prop up the share price includes a personal reward. The Chairman and Board set the compensation plans for the CEO and C-suite. The composition of Boards is strongly influenced by the major shareholders, including the large stock funds, who want share price gains, along with a few buddies of the CEO.

We’ve just witnessed a decade of stock buybacks by large firms. They are doing that as opposed to investing in R&D, plant efficiency or market expansion. But companies can only go so far with financial engineering before they actually have to improve their businesses, and now GM has been burned by share buybacks.

This is more corporate greed that leads to the little guy facing real suffering when jobs are lost.

GM is a shot across the bow. The auto industry will follow with additional capacity reduction. Volkswagen has already warned that the shift to Electric Vehicles (EV’s) will drastically cut employment at its plants that manufacture internal combustion (IC) components. EV vehicle production is far less costly than IC vehicle production, so this will be a real and ongoing issue.

OTOH, car manufacturers all have an EV option, but people are still buying Toyota’s, Honda’s and Mazda’s, even though only a few are EV’s.

This new GM “plan” seems more like a smoke screen for being caught AGAIN behind a market that is moving away from them.

America: A sucker for saving GM in 2008.

And possibly, a sucker-in-waiting when the latest, greatest plan to make GM great again only works out for GM’s executives.

Monday Wake Up Call – November 26, 2018

The Daily Escape:

View of the Tetons, Jackson, WY – 2011 photo by Wrongo

Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (AOC) is making waves. Fortune Magazine reports that she has proposed replacing Columbus Day with a national voting holiday on Election Day. She tweeted this question:

How is Columbus Day a holiday but Election Day not?

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@Ocasio2018) November 18, 2018

A tweet storm ensued, led by David Martosko, US political editor for Britain’s Daily Mail, who accused AOC of “angling for more vacation days.” His tweet struck many as a reference to an inaccurate stereotype of Hispanics as lazy. AOC shot back:

…I would disagree with your complaint that Americans get too much vacation time (we work some of the longest hours of any dev country & have no Fed required paid leave)…

Although voter turnout in 2018 was the highest for a mid-term election in a century, many think the 49% turnout figure could be substantially improved because many people can’t take time off for work to vote. Other politicians, like Bernie Sanders, have called for making Election Day a holiday.

Others are opposed to making Election Day a holiday, arguing that it might give many white-collar workers and students a day off, while people working in service businesses, like restaurants, and retail stores may still have to work that day.

Early voting and mail-in ballots are alternatives for those who have to work on Election Day. But that is the rule in only a few states. Many states have rejected making voting easier. The seemingly intentional long lines at polling stations can make working people give up before voting, either because they have to get to work, or they need to get home after a long work day.

AOC’s idea has merit, not least because a large cohort of Americans believe Columbus Day celebrates something which shouldn’t be commemorated.

Many countries have holidays on Election Day. And what better way to promote participation in one of the most important aspects of our democracy? Republicans understand that larger turnouts generally won’t break for their candidates. Why is their default to prevent as many of the “wrong” people as possible from accessing the voting booth?

Areas with a high percentage of voters of color have been hardest hit by closures and election worker cutbacks. In urban counties where a majority of voters are people of color, voters lost an average of seven polling places and more than 200 poll workers. Meanwhile, in counties where more than 90% of the population was white, voters lost just two locations and two election workers on average during the same time period.

Vote suppression takes many forms, and AOC is correct to point out a simple way to make voting easier.

Some on both the right and the left think Ocasio-Cortez should be cooling her jets. After all, she has yet to even take the oath of office for Congress. To their way of thinking, she should keep her head down and get the lay of the land before speaking out.

But, let’s hope that Ocasio-Cortez and the rest of Congressional freshman class quickly decide on their own paths forward.

These new Representatives shouldn’t be asked to be seen and not heard, particularly when the Democratic leadership seems to be bereft of ideas.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – November 25, 2018

Dems think the mid-terms mean dynamic change in DC. They’re mistaken:

Democrats seem to want younger leaders, but there’s this:

Another Trump Thanksgiving pardon:

If the Saudis can murder thousands in Yemen with Trump’s help, why get upset about one reporter?

We’ll see if new AG Whitaker pardons another turkey this season:

Some of NYC’s parade balloons are losing air at a bad time:

Turkey day should be a time for gratitude:

Saturday Soother – November 24, 2018

The Daily Escape:

Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, Milan Italy – photo by JaffaLarsen

Welcome to your post-turkey Saturday. What you may have missed on turkey day was the anniversary of the assassination of JFK on 11/22. If you are of a certain age, you have contemporaneous memories of his death, and the aftermath of public mourning. Now, 55 years later, news of it was difficult to find.

Wrongo remembers the black-and-white images of the arrival of JFK’s body on Air Force One at Andrews AF Base near Washington, the newly-sworn President Johnson speaking on the tarmac, and the kaleidoscope of events: Jack Ruby killing Oswald in real-time on TV, the funeral parade, and the Arlington burial.

JFK would probably be disappointed that what we remember most about his life was how he died.

History remembers the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion, the Cuban missile crisis, and some remember the start of the space program. But it is those seconds in Dealy Plaza in Dallas that defines him for those who were born after his death.

Each generation is fated to experience their own moment. For some older than Wrongo, it was Pearl Harbor. For younger folks, maybe it was the Challenger disaster in the mid-1980’s, or September 11, 2001.

And in all cases, we mostly carry the personal meaning of those moments. Your experience was/is unique. You have some emotions that are similar to the public at large, but your memories remain your own.

No one knows what might have happened if Kennedy had lived. There may be some insight in his 1963 Thanksgiving message, published eighteen days before he died. Here is an excerpt: (emphasis by Wrongo)

Today we are a nation of nearly two hundred million souls, stretching from coast to coast, on into the Pacific and north toward the Arctic, a nation enjoying the fruits of an ever-expanding agriculture and industry and achieving standards of living unknown in previous history. We give our humble thanks for this.

Yet, as our power has grown, so has our peril. Today we give our thanks, most of all, for the ideals of honor and faith we inherit from our forefathers — for the decency of purpose, steadfastness of resolve and strength of will, for the courage and the humility, which they possessed and which we must seek every day to emulate. As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words but to live by them.

Wow: we should be humbly thankful for the ideals we have inherited. Imagine having a president who could and would say such things.

It’s Saturday, and time for a little soothing, both of body along with the mind, because of all the calories we’ve consumed. Also, because the world seems so complicated today, with so few obvious solutions for our many problems.

So, take a break from your next big obligation, settle down, and live in the moment for at least few minutes. Start by brewing up a yuuge cup of Kibugu Kenya coffee ($19.95/12oz.), from the foothills of Mount Kenya. This coffee is sweet, umami-toned, with notes of date, almond butter, and cocoa powder in the cup. It is sourced and roasted by Lexington Coffee, in Lexington, VA.

Now, find a warm spot by the window, put on your Bluetooth headphones and listen to the second movement of “Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E Minor”, composed in 1844. Here it is played by Julia Fischer live in May, 2010 in Paris, with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. Wrongo thinks the conductor is Ivan Fischer, but he’s not a relative of Julia’s, he’s Hungarian and she’s German. This was Mendelssohn’s last large orchestral work:

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.