Tag: Ridulously Bad Ideas

Saturday Soother – July 15, 2023

The Daily Escape:

Dawes Glacier, Endicott Arm Fjord, AK – July 2023 iPhone photo by Wrongo. The face of the glacier is 600’ high. While we were in front of it, the glacier calved 5 times, although never when a camera was pointed at it.

Word came that Anchor Brewing, America’s oldest craft brewer, is shutting down after 127 years in business. From CNN:

“The San Francisco-based company announced Wednesday it’s ceasing operations and liquidating the beloved business “following a combination of challenging economic factors and declining sales since 2016,” a press release said. Craft brewers, in particular, have been struggling for a variety of reasons including changing consumer habits, rising costs and lingering supply-chain challenges.”

Wrongo is old enough to remember when Anchor Steam was a cult beer in the eastern US. It was difficult to find, and it was more expensive than the big local beers. It was really an upmarket lager. There’s nothing wrong with being an upmarket lager, but today, plenty of craft brewers also do that, so America’s first craft brewery and the maker of the Steam Beer will be sold for parts. The surprising fact was that it employed just 61 staff.

It’s been a few years since the Wrong family had any Anchor products in the house. The last one was the Anchor Christmas Ale, which was for a time, an annual tradition at the holidays. But with the rise of local craft beers, tastes changed.

Today, family parties often include a craft beer made near where one of the kids live. The beers are admired because they are hard to get, and often have amusing names. The taste tests are conducted with much seriousness, although they’re similar in form to decades ago when someone would bring Coors Beer back from the west for all to taste.

Back in the day, we bought Anchor and Sierra Nevada when there were very few other craft beer offerings in the NY area. Now there are hundreds of craft beer choices throughout the country. And there’s so much good beer around, it seems logical that Anchor would fail. It’s surprising that Sierra Nevada actually seems to hold up.

But the industry’s facing headwinds:

“During the first three months of 2022, at least 53 craft breweries shut their doors, up from 42 closures in the first quarter of last year. That still leaves some 9,100 breweries in operation, but more closures are expected.”

That’s 9,100 breweries and 36,000 IPAs!

The pandemic and its ongoing effects, and the war in Ukraine continue to drag down smaller brewers, who are battling climbing costs, rising rents, and supply chain challenges.

2022 was supposed to be the “make or break” year for craft breweries, but problems remain in 2023. The biggest issue is increased competition in what has become a shrinking market for beer. Since most craft breweries cater exclusively (or mostly) to local markets, why wouldn’t Anchor still be viable in CA or a few western states? Apparently they were mis-owned.

Sapporo is a Japanese beer company that bought the brand in 2017. VinePair, a digital magazine that covers beer, wine and food reported last month that employees complained about Sapporo’s alleged mismanagement and lack of understanding of craft beer in the US. Sapporo also owns Stone Brewing, another craft beer with a national following. Let’s hope that Sapporo doesn’t do to Stone what it’s done to Anchor.

But there’s still 9,000+ breweries nationwide, so it’s easier than ever for consumers to find great beers within a few neighboring zip codes. For the brewers, they need to find a niche and make an extremely good product line. The brewer in our town has become quite successful with one location, and a rotating group of about 10 beers. They have gotten distribution in local supermarkets and liquor stores and seem willing to be a big fish in a small pond.

It’s Saturday, and in the northeast, we’re experiencing continued rounds of thundershowers that make it difficult to do much outside. In the past week, we’ve picked up around 5.5” of rain, so we won’t have to water the vegetable garden for a week or so.

And since it’s Saturday, its time for our Saturday Soother, where we step back from another week of news you can’t use and find a few moments to live as simply as possible in the present.

So grab a mug of coffee and take a seat near a large south-facing window and listen to “Jupiter” from Gustav Holst’s “Planet Suite” played here by The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Sir Charles Mackerras. The Planet Suite took nearly three years (between 1914 and 1917) to compose:

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Saturday Soother – April 29, 2023

The Daily Escape:

Crab Apple tree, Fields of Wrong, CT – May 10, 2013 photo by Wrongo. This year, the trees are in full bloom two weeks earlier. The petals will be long gone by May 10, 2023. Climate change?

The new Democratic governor of Arizona, Katie Hobbs, appears to be on the wrong foot with her take on food safety. The NYT reports that she vetoed a bill that would have allowed Arizona’s informal network of home cooks to sell perishable food legally:

“Though the state promotes itself as a low-tax, low-regulation haven for private enterprise, it does not allow the sale of perishable foods made at home. So for years, a thriving economy of working-class, mostly Latina home cooks has operated underground, selling tacos, tres leches cakes and chile-dusted corn illegally from living rooms and outside laundromats and soccer games.”

Earlier in April, Republicans who control the state legislature came together with Democrats in a moment of bipartisan accord to pass a bill that would let Arizona’s home cooks register with the state to legally sell perishable foods like salsas and tamales.

And Hobbs vetoed it. Naturally, there was a backlash. Why would the new governor alienate Arizona’s large Latino population? Even a few Democrats have criticized her for killing what is widely being called the “tamale bill.” More: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“They said her move was a slap in the face of Latino constituents who voted for Ms. Hobbs, and whose support was crucial in a politically fractured state that is about 32% Latino. Critics said her veto would hurt the working-class immigrants that Ms. Hobbs had championed during her campaign.”

We can debate the merits of Arizona’s food safety laws. You might say, “I’ve seen my kitchen, and I’m against it.”

But when we debate the merits, it ought to be in the context of a) the minimal acceptable standard for public safety, and b) what the people want. Arizona’s informal food network is very popular. People aren’t stupid: They know that eating food purchased from the trunk of a car or from a roadside stand carries a risk of a possible night on the toilet, yet no one complains. And if something happens the city or town can always trace it and shut someone down.

BTW: You haven’t lived until you’ve bought tamales from the trunk of a nice lady’s car in a Home Depot parking lot.

The Arizona food safety reform bill appealed to both Parties: Republicans could stand up for fewer regulations, while Dems could show that they understood and supported the working class. This is particularly relevant in Arizona, where working people have a long tradition of making money through selling food informally.

So, what was Hobbs thinking? The selling of home-cooked food is primarily practiced by people of color or immigrants. Banning sale of their cooking could be seen as institutional racism, something we might expect in Arizona, but from a Democratic governor?

Maybe roadside vendors could display a warning sign saying that the Office of Food Inspection isn’t inspecting their garage BBQs, or their kitchens, or their basement bakeries, so you’re on your own. Besides, the Feds allow Big Food to put pink slime in our ground beef.

Enough about Katie Hobbs, someone who we were thrilled to see beat Kari Lake last November.

It’s time to forget about politics and whatever Ron DeSantis was doing in Israel. Focus instead on finding some relaxing time before the week starts all over again. Here on the fields of Wrong, the spring cleanup continues, along with our working to convince a pair of house finches that building a nest under the walkway to our door is – well, wrong. Wrongo expects to prevail as he has in prior years.

But now, it’s time for our Saturday Soother!

Let’s start by brewing up a hot steaming mug of Ethiopia Basha Bekele coffee ($23/12oz.) from Virginia’s Roadmap CoffeeWorks, an award-winning artisan roasting company based in Lexington, VA. It is said to be chocolaty and fruit-toned in the very long and satisfying finish. Who doesn’t like a long finish?

Since there’s rain in Litchfield County today, grab a chair by a large window. Now watch and listen to “Simple Gifts” from Aaron Copland’s  “Appalachian Spring” conducted by Leonard Bernstein. In 1942, Martha Graham commissioned Copland to write a ballet with “an American theme”. It premiered at the Library of Congress on October 30, 1944, with Graham dancing the lead role.

In 1945, Copland was commissioned by conductor Artur Rodziński to rearrange the ballet as an orchestral suite. “Simple Gifts” was a Shaker Hymn that Copland brought to life. He called the piece “Ballet for Martha”, and Graham gave it the title “Appalachian Spring”, after a line in a poem by Hart Crane:

“Tis’ a Gift to be Simple“….indeed.

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My Way Or The Highway

The Daily Escape:

Azalea gardens at the Biltmore, Asheville NC – April 2023 photo by Sherry Maddock

We all know that the US is staring down a series of domestic threats to American democracy. Here’s a short list: Corruption on the Supreme Court, fundamental rights being lost via Supreme Court decisions, and voting rights being on the ballot in many states. Then there’s the question of whether any high level politician will ever be held to account for the Jan. 6, 2021 coup attempt.

These threats require that we convince every voter to turn out in 2024. Even so, surprisingly the presidential race in 2024 could be very close.

All of this could be undermined by the plans of the emerging political party called No Labels. They are gathering signatures to get on the presidential ballot in all 50 states in 2024, while recruiting both Democrats and Republicans to run as a bipartisan ticket. The WaPo reports that the group has already gained ballot access in Arizona, Colorado, Alaska and Oregon. Apparently, they are backed by shadowy donors who have provided them with $70 million in seed money.

Former Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman is associated with No Labels. Other names often mentioned as possible No Labels candidates are Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WVA), Kirsten Sinema (I-AZ), Susan Collins (R-ME), and former Republican Governor of Maryland, Larry Hogan.

Here we go again. Another centrist third party effort to create a “unity” ticket that supposedly appeals to those Americans who say they want to end the partisan bickering in Washington. This year, it’s No Labels who are trying to throw a big monkey wrench onto our Electoral College map. If they are successful, it could possibly send Trump back to another term in Washington.

All in the name of unity, of course.

Lieberman is acutely aware of the impact third-party bids can have on presidential elections. He ran as Gore’s VP candidate in 2000, when the Democratic campaign fell 537 Florida votes short of an Electoral College victory. That year, Ralph Nader, the Green Party nominee, won more than 97,000 Florida votes.

It might be useful for Lieberman et al to remember that in the 2016 presidential election, Jill Stein got 50,000 votes in Michigan, allowing Trump to win Michigan by 14,000 votes. Ross Perot in 1992 arguably shifted the race to Bill Clinton.

The No Labels website specifically describes itself as an “insurance policy against a Trump-Biden rematch.” From Larry Hogan:

“The vast majority of people in America are not happy with the direction of the country and they don’t want to see either Joe Biden or Donald Trump as president.”

Hasn’t Biden worked productively with Republicans to pass a broad array of bipartisan legislation? His main partisan domestic initiative was essentially written by Manchin, who now wants a larger voice with No Labels.

First, it seems bizarre for No Labels to equate Biden with Trump. Comparing the two when Trump is under indictment in NY and likely to be indicted in several more cases, after having incited an insurrection is crazy. What’s Biden’s crime? Not paying off porn stars?

Second, why is a group dedicated to promoting moderate, bipartisan legislation working against a president who has actually accomplished just that? Jonathan Chait in NY Magazine reports that No Labels’:

“…own polling suggests its candidacy would serve as a spoiler on behalf of Republicans. In December, it found an unnamed moderate third-party candidate would win just 20% of the vote, against 33% for Trump and 28% for Biden.”

This result seems completely logical given Biden’s greater reliance on moderate voters than Trump. But still they persist. For Wrongo, you only needed to say “Joe Lieberman” to convey that this organization is wrong-headed on its face. When politically marginal people like Lieberman and Manchin are interested in a new political organization, you know they’re looking for a way to insert themselves more deeply into our politics, despite how little actual support they have.

They’re willing to cause great harm for an outside shot at real power.

We need to understand that political centrism isn’t the halfway point between today’s median Democrat and today’s median Republican. Biden has governed basically as a 21st Century centrist; otherwise, the left of his Party wouldn’t be so frustrated with him. The No Label people need to realize that there’s already a perfectly good moderate Party in America, and it’s called the Democratic Party.

The No Label centrists seem to be living in some kind of dream world where the Electoral College isn’t closely divided and today’s political stakes aren’t monumental.

This is a vanity political project that could easily lead to a political disaster. Let’s hope it fizzles like most centrist third party bids have done in the past.

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What Should Happen When A Candidate Lies On Their Resumé?

The Daily Escape:

Christmas Tree, Cape Porpoise Harbor, Cape Porpoise, ME – December 2022 photo by Eric Storm Photography

Wrongo doesn’t like to write “Dems in Disarray” articles, but here goes. Monday’s NYT had a long article about a Republican Congressman-elect from Queens and Nassau County in NY. George Santos won and is set to be sworn in on Jan. 2. He ran as the “embodiment of the American dream”, something he wanted to safeguard for the rest of us. Turns out his back story is extremely difficult to confirm.

From the NYT:

“His campaign biography amplified his storybook journey: He is the son of Brazilian immigrants, and the first openly gay Republican to win a House seat as a non-incumbent. By his account, he catapulted himself from a New York City public college to become a “seasoned Wall Street financier and investor” with a family-owned real estate portfolio of 13 properties and an animal rescue charity that saved more than 2,500 dogs and cats.”

Ok, here’s the issue:

“….a New York Times review of public documents and court filings from the US and Brazil, as well as various attempts to verify claims that Mr. Santos, 34, made on the campaign trail, calls into question key parts of the résumé that he sold to voters…..Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, the…Wall Street firms on Mr. Santos’s campaign biography, told The Times they had no record of his ever working there. Officials at Baruch College, which Mr. Santos has said he graduated from in 2010, could find no record of anyone matching his name and date of birth graduating that year.

Grab your popcorn. More:

“There was also little evidence that his animal rescue group, Friends of Pets United, was, as Mr. Santos claimed, a tax-exempt organization: The Internal Revenue Service could locate no record of a registered charity with that name.”

Maybe Santos can explain. His financial disclosure forms say he has money.  He lent his campaign more than $700,000 during the midterm election, has donated thousands of dollars to other candidates in the last two years and reported a $750,000 salary and over $1 million in dividends from his company, the Devolder Organization. But several times, he was evicted for failure to pay rent:

“In November 2015, a landlord in the Whitestone neighborhood of Queens filed an eviction suit in housing court accusing Mr. Santos of owing $2,250 in unpaid rent. In May 2017, Mr. Santos faced another eviction case, from a rent-stabilized apartment in Sunnyside, Queens. Mr. Santos’s landlord accused him of owing more than $10,000 in rent stretching over five months and said in court records that one of his tenant’s checks had bounced. A warrant of eviction was issued, and Mr. Santos was fined $12,208 in a civil judgment.”

He sure sounds legit. How does someone who was evicted for non-payment of a total of about $14,500 in rent wind up in a position where he can loan $700k to his campaign? What caused his sudden change of fortune?

But Democrats, why are we only learning about this after the election? Why wasn’t this seriously negative information available before/during the election? Democrats do opposition research, even in a state like NY where they expect to win most seats.

And it gets worse. Santos ran and lost in the same district in 2020. So the Democrat’s state political higher ups had YEARS to do opposition research on Santos, but they didn’t. The Chair of the NY state Democratic Committee is Jay Jacobs, who is also Nassau County Democratic Chairman. Under his leadership, the Democrats lost four Congressional seats in November.

Within days after the election, dozens of Democratic officials from across the state signed a letter calling for Jacobs to be replaced. They accused him of sleepwalking into the midterms. Was Jacobs asleep at the wheel? Jacobs blames low voter turnout, but it’s his responsibility to get Democrats to the polls, to motivate voters to show up. And to check out the backstories of the opposition.

BTW, the NYT reached out to Santos for comment:

“We could not locate the congressman-elect and a person living at his stated address had no knowledge of his existence.”

The federal government has a False Statements Act for material omissions or misrepresentations on personal financial disclosures. It carries a maximum penalty of $250,000 and five years in prison. We’ll see. The House also has internal procedures for investigating ethics violations, but because Republicans who will control the House with Santos’ help, have no bottom for the ethical lapses they’ll accept, NY is now probably stuck with this guy.

Let’s close with another version of the Mariah Carey hit “All I Want for Christmas is You”  this time performed in 2021 by the Welsh of the West End, a group of UK theater performers:

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Monday Wake Up Call – July 11, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Penstemon and Paintbrush, with Mt. St. Helens in background – June 2022 photo by Edwin Buske Photography

There are two big economic issues that the media and pundits say will influence the 2022 mid-terms: inflation, and the possibility of a recession.

Let’s start with the scare of a looming recession. Most Americans have been told that a recession occurs when real GDP contracts for two consecutive quarters. Sounds easy to figure out, but this definition wasn’t met in two out of the last three recessions. Some facts: The 2020 downturn lasted just two months, not two quarters. And during the 2001 recession, real GDP didn’t contract for two quarters in a row either.

The difference is that recessions are determined not by pundits but by a group of economists at the National Bureau of Economics (NBER), and they use several measures beyond GDP to make it official. Here’s how they explain it:

“A recession is a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, normally visible in production, employment, and other indicators…”

They go on to say that:

“There is no fixed rule about what measures contribute information to the process or how they are weighted in our decisions.”

In recent decades, the two measures that have had the most weight are real personal income and non-farm payroll employment. So, despite what you’re hearing from pundits about GDP, it basically boils down to income and employment. If income and employment turn south, there’s a good chance economic output will be lower.

But after two quarters of 2022, while output is slowing, income and the labor market are both still solid. The WSJ quotes Robert Gordon a Northwestern University economics professor and member of the NBER’s committee that decides on recessions:

“We are going to have a very unusual conflict between the employment numbers and the output numbers for a while…”

The US economy added 1.6 million jobs in the first quarter, and another 1.1 million jobs in the second quarter. Those numbers certainly don’t look recessionary, despite what the media is trying to tell us. U6, which is a measure of underemployment declined -0.4% to 6.7%. This is a new all-time low for U6, which has been tracked since 1994.

It may seem like splitting hairs to talk about the definition of a recession. But we need to be prepared for the coming political scenario where some argue we’re in a recession while others will refute that idea vigorously.

In this mid-term season, things are going to get weird.

Let’s turn to the scourge of inflation. It is among the first stories on the local news every night, but you might not know that as Paul Krugman says:

“The wholesale price of gasoline has fallen about 80 cents a gallon since its peak a month ago. Only a little of this plunge has been passed on to consumers so far, but over the weeks ahead we’re likely to see a broad decline in prices at the pump….what are the odds that falling gas prices will get even a small fraction of the media coverage devoted to rising prices?”

That seems to point to profit taking by the petroleum corporate interests. Have you noticed how much profit they have made lately? ExxonMobil plans to buy back $30 billion of stock this year with the extra money that we all paid at the pump.

Last Friday, PBS talked about a looming wage-price spiral, a neoliberal concept that says rising wages drive prices. But the annualized rate of wage growth, comparing the last three months (April, May, June) with the prior three months (January, February, March), was 4.3%,down from a previous annualized rate of 6.1%.

This is big since the Fed’s plans for aggressive interest rate hikes is based on its concern about a 1970s-type wage-price spiral. It is impossible to have a wage-price spiral when wage growth is slowing. The current 4.3%  wage growth is less than one percent higher than the 3.4% rate in 2019 when inflation was comfortably below the Fed’s 2.0% target.

Retailers are now stuffed to the gills with merchandise. What happened was that all of the product that was stranded at sea has finally reached store shelves. They will hold massive sales this fall to get rid of it, and that will lower prices.

The lockdowns in China are mostly over, last year’s fiscal stimulus has worked its way through the economy, and the Fed has begun sharply raising interest rates.

Krugman feels that as the economy weakens, the prospect for sustained inflation is receding.

Time to wake up America, don’t get demagogued by the scary economic terms that the politicians will throw at you. To help you wake up, let’s listen to Barenaked Ladies – “If I Had a Million Dollars” Live in Michigan in 2007:

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Time to End The Shit Show

The Daily Escape:

Early snow at Schwabacher Landing, Grand Teton NP, WY – October 2019 photo by travlonghorns

The shit show visited on America by Republican nihilists must end. Here are three of the latest examples.

First, Bloomberg reports that Trump says he won’t allow federal aid for states facing budget deficits caused by the Coronavirus unless they take action against their sanctuary cities: (brackets by Wrongo)

“We would want certain things…as part of a deal with House Democrats to aid states, [Trump] he said at a White House event on Tuesday…including sanctuary city adjustments, because we have so many people in sanctuary cities.”

Yes, Trump wants to hold Democratic states and cities hostage unless they end their sanctuary designations. He has previously tried to cut off their federal funding unless they change their pro-immigrant policies, and he thinks now he has some leverage.

Second, Mitch McConnell and industry lobbying groups want to make immunity from COVID-19 lawsuits a condition for state aid. In a Monday interview on Fox News Radio, McConnell said he considers liability protections for companies a non-negotiable demand for the next coronavirus stimulus legislation:

 “That’s going to be my red line….Trial lawyers are sharpening their pencils to come after healthcare providers and businesses, arguing that somehow the decision they made with regard to reopening adversely affected the health of someone else.”

McConnell is arguing that companies should have the right to be negligent, and suffer no consequences for negligence that kills their staff.

As some states begin opening their economies, lobbyists say retailers, manufacturers, restaurants and other businesses struggling to start back up need temporary limits on legal liability. The lobbyists want to give companies more protection against lawsuits by customers or employees who contract the virus and accuse the business of being the source of the infection.

Think about this: Workmen’s compensation takes care of what might happen to an employee, and does so at ridiculously low rates, even for death benefits. So this means that the primary corporate liability issue is over employees who bring the virus home from work and infect family members. Under the new legislation, family members would be precluded from filing a suit against the employer.

What about corporate liability for retail customers? Would retailers be held harmless if people getting sick are traceable to their store? There is a tension between companies having confidence to reopen, and employees and customers having confidence that they will be protected from unsafe practices that raise their chance of infection.

Lobbyists and Republicans want permanent changes to the business liability laws, while Trump is looking at how they could create some of those shields either via regulation, or executive order. But McConnell wants permanent legislation. His leverage is to make it a part of the next stimulus package.

Finally, GOP governors are holding their own constituents hostage: return to work immediately with no protection from the virus, or lose your unemployment checks:

“If you’re an employer and you offer to bring your employee back to work and they decide not to, that’s a voluntary quit,” Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) said Friday. “Therefore, they would not be eligible for the unemployment money.”

The only exception for workers getting unemployment after not returning to work is if they are ill with the virus or taking care of a family member who has the disease. The situation is similar for workers in Texas, where Gov. Greg Abbott (R) on Monday gave the go-ahead for retail stores, restaurants, movie theaters and malls to reopen on Friday.

“According to the Texas Workforce Commission, to qualify for unemployment benefits in the state, a worker must be “willing and able to work all the days and hours required for the type of work you are seeking…..employees who choose not to return to work will become ineligible for unemployment benefits.”

The only solution to these anti-worker policies is re-unionization of workers in nearly every industry, and these Republican efforts during the pandemic may energize that unionization.

Mitch wants to protect employers. Trump says the whole problem is China’s fault.

Now they’re teaming up to protect Smithfield, a Chinese company since 2013, to shield it from not protecting its American workforce. A positively Chinese idea!

At least there’s no pretense that they’re really just trying to increase employment.

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