Mainstream Media’s Most Useful Tools: Deception, Obfuscation & Dark Patterns

Conning folks to reveal personal information, even just providing an email address, luring consumers into their corporate webs… very sticky spider webs… to elicit subscriptions, to open marketing doors, track who you are (often sold and contributed to a much larger database increasingly to define who you are, what you like and what economic/political factors you embrace) and revealing what topics or products interest you.

Suggest you are pregnant, getting married or divorced, looking for work, older, younger, etc.…. and your text and email inboxes are soon flooded with inquiries, products and issue-related solicitations from sites you never approached. Selling personal information, of any kind, to datacenters creates a huge online profile of detailed information about you that would probably terrify you. Such information not only opens doors to online sellers, it also impacts your credit rating. For example, folks getting divorced just might find their credit score plunging.

Europe is light years ahead of the United States with their General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and comprehensive additional complementary laws, but we have a dearth of US federal legislation protecting privacy. Congress has become a vast wasteland of highly paid legislators unable to draft and pass meaningful bills. This last Congressional delegation produced less than 10% of the bills that the preceding congressional delegation did. States have stepped into the void creating a maze of local requirements that vary across the land, making enforcement difficult, especially for websites in other countries reaching into to the United States.

The various traditional federal consumer protection agencies are still lumbering under the massive defunding during the Trump administration. The remaining federal agencies with any hope of control, like the Federal Trade Commission of the Securities and Exchange Commission, struggle to apply existing laws passed in a different era. California, of course, leads the pack in consumer protection, but Liz Weston (a certified financial planner), writing for the December 17th Los Angeles Times, drills down on what it still looks like in the consumer trenches:

“See if any of this sounds familiar: …You can’t find an easy way to cancel an unwanted subscription, so you let it continue for another month — telling yourself you’ll try again later… You feel rushed into an online purchase you regret, but there’s no option to undo the transaction or demand a refund… You want to read an article or shop at a store online, but you’re bombarded with pop-up requests for your data. There’s no easy option for saying no, so you click “allow” just to get the annoying pop-up out of the way… These are just a few examples of ‘dark patterns,’ intentionally deceptive designs that companies use to steer people into making choices that aren’t in the consumers’ best interest.

“Dark patterns may sound like a feature of sketchy websites, but these manipulative practices are a common way mainstream companies dupe people into sacrificing their privacy or paying for stuff they don’t really want… Buttons that allow sites to scoop up and sell your data may be prominent, while the buttons for opting out are obscured. Retail sites may use a countdown timer to imply a deal is about to expire, when in reality there’s no deadline. Or you might see a fake low-stock warning — ‘Hurry, limited quantities left’ — that pressures you to buy… Making something easy to buy but hard to cancel is another common goal of dark patterns.

“The Federal Trade Commission issued a report last year on the rise of dark patterns and since then has taken action against several companies, including online retailer Amazon and Epic Games, which makes the ‘Fortnite’ video game… In March, Epic Games agreed to pay consumers $245 million to settle FTC charges it tricked users into making unwanted purchases, allowed children to rack up unauthorized charges and deliberately made refund options hard to find.

“Then in June, the FTC filed a complaint alleging Amazon duped people into signing up for Amazon Prime subscriptions and then designed a “labyrinthine” cancellation process. ‘Fittingly, Amazon named that process ‘Iliad,’ which refers to Homer’s epic about the long, arduous Trojan War,’ the complaint notes… (Subscriptions that are easy to sign up for and hard to cancel are known as ‘roach motels,’ according to Deceptive Patterns, a website that tracks dark patterns.)” Small corporate abusers are too expensive to rein in, but the monolith, mega-billion (trillion?) dollar abusers can throw legions of highly compensated “top of their law school class” in-house and out-sourced legal teams to battle any state or federal agency attempt to regulate.

And other than the MAGA GOP’s desire to open mega-social media to conspiracy theories – hence Congressional hearings over Section 230 of the federal Communications Decency Act of 1996, a statute that protects internet service providers and website companies from being held liable for most content created by users of their services, including content that could be considered false or defamatory – their mantra is simply to reduce or eliminate anything that in fact protects consumers from malign business priorities and practices.

Arguing that regulatory agencies are part of some nefarious anti-business “deep state,” draining taxpayer money and moving the country into radical, leftwing “creeping socialism,” the MAGA GOP wants to leave the average US consumer dangling by a thread in a torrential storm of unbridled but very savvy bullies sapping consumers bank accounts and extracting an aggregated encyclopedic cache of their individual and most personal information… without hope or recourse.

I’m Peter Dekom, and it’s time to stop electing legislators who sponsor a wild west world of anything goes and choose those who actually care about the day-to-day struggles with life that face most of us.

Rejected: Feeding Poor Children

The MAGA GOP is firmly committed to keeping taxes for the ultra-rich low, arguing that deficits are caused solely by government spending – never because we do not tax mega-wealth except on death or transfer. So, we are all asked to sacrifice so those private jets, lavish vacations and second, third and fourth homes remain easily accessible for those making gobs of money with even greater gobs of assets… those in the top one percent of mega-wealth who own more than half the assets in the entire country. The vocabulary of greed misuses words like “creeping socialism” – but socialism is government ownership of land, business and factories, not social programs like public schools, Social Security and school lunches – and “entitlements” – as if Social Security retirees did not spend decades contributing to that fund and poor children are to blame for their own malnourishment.

I will never forget a televised interview with a MAGA religious fundamentalist who answered a reporter’s question as to “What does the Biblical admonition Love thy neighbor mean?” The answer was that it was a requirement that was relegated to her immediate neighbors. While that is an Old Testament Commandment, I can only guess what being charitable, non-judgmental and not preconditioning kindness on personal attributes or beliefs – the entire thrust of the New Testament – meant to her as well. And so it is with no surprise that Iowa’s MAGA governor and legislature found that a federal program, passed by Congress to ensure that children who received free public-school lunches during the school term were also nutritionally covered during the summer break. Lots of other red states have yet to sign up; they have until January 1st to opt in.

It's what the US Department of Agriculture describes as: “As part of its efforts to end child hunger, the USDA Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) created the Summer Electronic Benefits Transfer for Children (SEBTC) demonstration to study the use of SNAP [Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program], formerly known as the Food Stamp Program) and WIC [Women, Infants and Children program] electronic benefits transfer (EBT) technology in providing food assistance to low-income children during the summer by providing their families with more resources to use at food stores.” Congress passed the bill, and there is very little in the way of administrative charges to the states for the children who benefit.

But for MAGA Republicans running Iowa and Nebraska, that form of “creeping socialism” simply is an unsustainable federal deficit contributor… and they want no part of it. “The state has notified the U.S. Department of Agriculture that it won’t take part in the 2024 Summer Electronic Benefits Transfer Program for Children, or Summer EBT, the state’s Department of Health and Human Services and Department of Education said in a news release Friday [12/23].

“Such ‘federal COVID-era cash benefit programs are not sustainable and don’t provide long-term solutions for the issues impacting children and families. An EBT card does nothing to promote nutrition at a time when childhood obesity has become an epidemic,’ Iowa Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds said in the news release.

“She added, ‘If the Biden Administration and Congress want to make a real commitment to family well-being, they should invest in already existing programs and infrastructure at the state level and give us the flexibility to tailor them to our state’s needs.’… States that participate in the federal program must cover half of the administrative costs, which would be an estimated $2.2 million in Iowa, the news release says.” Associated Press, December 26th.

Dear, sweet Governor Richards, the Biden Administration did not pass the enabling federal legislation; Title 42-THE PUBLIC HEALTH AND WELFARE CHAPTER 13-SCHOOL LUNCH PROGRAMS was passed well before Biden became President. The legislation began in 1973 and was amended several times, most recently in 2010. So, Iowa’s plethora of fat kids means that poor kids don’t get fed healthy food? $40/month in benefits denied to impoverished families?

“States that participate in the federal program must cover half of the administrative costs, which would be an estimated $2.2 million in Iowa, the news release says… Some state lawmakers, including Democratic Sen. Izaah Knox of Des Moines, voiced their opposition to the decision… ‘It’s extremely disappointing that the Reynolds administration is planning to reject federal money that could put food on the table for hungry Iowa kids,’ Knox said in a statement. ‘This cruel and short-sighted decision will have real impacts on children and families in my district and communities all across Iowa.’

“Officials in neighboring Nebraska also announced last week [mid-December] that the state would not take part in Summer EBT, which would cost it about $300,000 annually in administrative costs, the Lincoln Journal Star reported.” AP. If I recall, during his campaign Donald Trump pledged to replace the Affordable Care Act with a cheaper but vastly more effective national healthcare plan.

Funny how no such replacement plan was ever proposed, but in 2017 Trump did push through a massive reduction in the federal corporate tax rate, from 35% to 21%, which added trillions to our deficit. Everyone partakes in supporting the interest payments attributable to our federal deficit… but only very rich people benefit from those loopholes and tax cuts. Hmmmm. Reverse Robin Hood tactics… and the less affluent MAGA voters continue to shoot themselves in the foot.

I’m Peter Dekom, and the hallmark of MAGA leadership is “cruel and unusual” legislation if you are in the middle or bottom of the income ladder… and “OMG bonanza” if you are at the top.

Till Death Do Us Part

US Vietnam War protestors in the 1960s

NY students against Israeli attacks on Gaza

It’s clear that Israel – now having found hostages’ corpses in the tunnels and buildings they have blown apart… adding the hostages (holding white flags) shot by over-anxious IDF soldiers – truly does not prioritize releasing those kidnapped individuals. Israel’s leaders were loathe to stop the fighting, even for a few days, to enable “prisoner/hostage” exchanges, feeling that the time needed to effectuate these humanitarian gestures only gave Hamas time to regroup and distribute their stashed weapons and ammunition to their fighters.

As Israeli PM, Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu, now pledges to deepen the attacks, particularly as new, massive Hamas tunnels are discovered, there is also a touch of reality that the world, including the United States, is moving closer to demanding a sustained if not permanent cease fire. So, pressure to get “major success” on the battlefield is forcing Israel to push harder. Like Donald Trump, Bibi the master of the outrageous “double down.”

Palestinian civilians clearly do not matter to either side. When Hamas uses them as human shields, and Israel is more than willing to decimate these “shields” in its efforts to purge Hamas from the earth, Hamas rejoices! Huh? The bodies of women, elders and children, the vision of hospitals devoid of medicine in total ruin, residential structures leveled and food lines everywhere, are the stuff of Hamas’ dreams. As these horrific visuals permeate global media, shoving the Hamas’ October 7th horrors into the “distant past,” most of the world now only sees Israeli excess retaliation and retribution. Hamas seems to have more than enough medical supplies, weapons and food stashed for its soldiers. Thank you, Iran. And Israel relies heavily on the United States for the bulk of her weapon systems and munitions.

In the United States, those of us old enough to remember the anti-Vietnam War protests in the 1960s that brought down President Lyndon “LBJ” Johnson, might also remember how they started. Angry students marching in the streets, carrying banners, assaulted by tear-gas wielding cops, some with spray cannons. Today, protests against US Universities, where university leadership is being challenged from all sides… and wider protests, even shutting down Los Angeles streets and freeways… provoking a massive rise in antisemitism and Islamophobia… remind me how support for US involvement in Vietnam just shriveled away as LBJ was replaced by Richard Nixon. Could these protests escalate, pressure against US Security Council vetoes against a real call for a cease fire, and become the final nail in the coffin of Biden’s stumbling reelection bid? Peace is necessary for humanitarian reasons… but without peace there is a political price to pay.

As I have blogged before, the United States is no longer a credible potential mediator to end this war. The only forces that have a shot would be Arab nations in the region, perhaps under UN supervision. Iran, an avowed enemy not only to US and Israel but also to regional Sunni Arab nations (most of them), most certainly does not want the Gaza War to end, a sentiment shared among Iran’s surrogates, particularly Hamas. Bibi’s doubling down is a less-than-subtle statement he wants the fight to continue. But there is now a proposal, from Gaza neighbor Egypt, not particularly warmly received by the combatants, that is a nascent effort to stop the war.

Writing for the Associated Press (December 26th), Samy Magdy, Najib Jobain and Melanie Lidman explain: “The Egyptian plan calls for a phased hostage release and the formation of a Palestinian government of experts to administer the Gaza Strip and occupied West Bank, according to a senior Egyptian official and a European diplomat familiar with the proposal.

“The Egyptian official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the proposal, said the details were worked out with the Persian Gulf nation of Qatar and presented to Israel, Hamas, the United States and European governments. Egypt and Qatar mediate between Israel and Hamas, and the U.S. is Israel’s closest ally and a key power in the region…

“Israel and Hamas on Monday [12/25] gave cool public receptions to an Egyptian proposal to end their bitter war. But the long-standing enemies stopped short of rejecting the plan altogether, raising the possibility of a new round of diplomacy to halt a devastating Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip…

“Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who visited soldiers in northern Gaza on Monday [12/25], did not comment directly on the proposal. But speaking to members of his Likud Party, he said he was determined to press ahead with Israel’s offensive, launched in response to an Oct. 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel that killed at least 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took 240 others hostage… ‘We are expanding the fight in the coming days, and this will be a long battle and it isn’t close to finished,’ he said.”

Finding a path to a sustainable and permanent cease fire requires the United States, while supporting Israel as a longstanding ally in the Middle East, to stop blindly providing “anything Israel wants” in the way of military hardware without asking questions. We have repeatedly uttered our longstanding official support for a two-state solution, yet passively watching as Netanyahu encouraged militant Jewish settlements on the Palestinian West Bank… until Bibi totally rejected any possibility of a separate Palestinian state.

Netanyahu is so certain that the US will never stop that “anything Israel wants” policy that by doubling down, he arrogantly ignores US pressure to use targeting weapons against Hamas and limit casualties against civilians. The world is watching, and much of Israel’s unrestrained decimation of Gaza is now being blamed squarely on the US. Netanyahu doesn’t care. But in the United States, Gen Z – including a vast contingent of Jewish Americans – and an increasing number of others do. Biden’s position is untenable unless he takes real steps toward a real peace, a real cease fire… and uses American clout to moderate Israel’s vicious quest for vengeance. Or else till death do them part.

I’m Peter Dekom, and as I have blogged before, there are no possible winners in this egregious contest… except Iran and her supporters.

Everybody Loses… Except Iran

 

“It’s decision time… A cease-fire with living hostages, or a forced cessation of hostilities with dead ones.” 

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in a mid-December opinion piece in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

Iran didn’t pick the date that Hamas would mount a clear and highly provocative attack on Israel. But!!! The weapons Hamas used were either locally manufactured or supplied by Iran. Recent British spy planes recorded weapons transfers in Syria, clearly destined for Gaza. The Iran-backed Hezbollah (Lebanon) and Houthis (Yemen) were equally well-supplied with Iranian weapons, including sophisticated missiles and drones. Iran’s rising relationship with Russia, where Iran’s factories and weapons storehouses are working at a furious pace – benefitting from Russia’s designs and manufacturing expertise – results in her supplying Russia in its Ukraine war as well as Hamas in Gaza and the Houthis in their sophisticated attacks on shipping in the Red Sea, Gulf of Aden and the Persian Gulf. Strikes to regional vessels directly from Iran straddled the line of provocation with Western naval vessels defending shipping.

Israeli intelligence was apparently well aware of Hama’s training activities, conducted in plain sight, albeit from nearly obsolete Israeli spy ballons and observation towers… and US satellite imagery. But the Israeli high command simply dismissed this activity as merely aspirational. They had faith in a system of reinforced concrete walls separating Israel from Gaza, where those watch towers had performed well for many years. Too many years. The mocked-up buildings in those rather obvious Hamas training facilities, demolition experts training on concrete walls, Hamas fighters learning how to use motorcycles and two-seater powered parachute aircraft and urban assault programs… were all dismissed. Indeed, every aspect of the October attack was well-planned and well-rehearsed. Again, in plain sight with no attempt by Hamas to disguise it.

After all, Israeli policymakers believed that the West Bank rife with growing settlements, of very militant and well-armed Jewish residents, kept those Palestinians well-separated from a more militant Gaza – with monthly Israeli allotments to Hamas. To Netanyahu, this was sufficient to maintain highly destabilized Palestinians with very weak West Bank leadership. But clearly Iran had other plans. Using wiping out Israel as a regional rallying cry (a lesson lingering from the days Gamal Abul Nasser ruled Egypt), Iran’s autocratic theocracy was prepared to fight Israel and her regional and global supporters fiercely. Without Iranian troops, just her well-supplied surrogates.

Hamas was acutely aware of Israel’s struggles with a very unpopular Trump-like rightwing extremist government. They expected a beleaguered PM Benjamin Netanyahu, being tried for corruption, would “double down” to defend any Hamas attack with massive retaliation to distract and rally his citizens to support him. Especially if that attack were particularly morally reprehensible, taking lots of hostages for bargaining power. Iran and Hamas feared the pending rapprochement between Israel and regional Arab nations, most recently a proposed formal détente with Saudi Arabia. And they knew Israel had faith in a wall with observation towers that had successfully deterred small incursions and lone assaults. They also knew how to take down such walls in a mass, full-scale military assault.

Netanyahu followed the Hamas script down to the letter. Hamas did not care about their Palestinian shields. Even in the last “election” in 2006, where Hamas actually campaigned as moderates, they never got more than a plurality. And with no elections since (having wrested control of Gaza from other political parties by force), and with half of Gaza’s 2.1 million residents being under 18, Hamas was truly not elected by those now living in Gaza. So, the visions of casualties from the Israeli strikes against Gaza – dead and maimed children, starving civilians, non-functional hospitals, miles and miles of rubble, killing tens of thousands of Palestinians – was well-covered by the international press soon that seemed to forget the horrors of the Hamas trigger-attack. Hamas managed to change the narrative from “Israel vs Hamas” to “Israel’s overkill decimating non-combatant Palestinian citizens.”

As Hamas’ leadership seemed able freely to travel (for example, to Egypt), and knowing that no matter Netanyahu’s threat totally to eliminate Hamas was highly improbable political rhetoric, they did not care about the “martyrdom” of their soldiers or the deaths of tens of thousands of Palestinians. They cheered when the United States (aka “the Great Satan’), the major foreign supplier of weapons to Israel, vetoed UN Security Council resolutions demanding a ceasefire… eventually allowing a watered-down request for another humanitarian respite (again). Now, Hamas, following Iran’s most cherished desire further to isolate the United States from the rest of the world, was winning the hearts and minds of people all over the world… even in major pockets within the United States. Antisemitism and Islamophobia have exploded here.

Writing for the December 24th Los Angeles Times, Laura King and Tracy Wilkinson tell us that a meaningful ceasefire followed by meaningful negotiations were nowhere on the horizon: “The death toll in Gaza grows by the hour. International pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu steadily increases. And ordinary Israelis voice more and more frustration over the direction of the deadliest war yet against the Palestinian militant group Hamas… Yet as the year winds down, it’s unclear whether the combination of factors will force even a temporary hiatus in fighting that is exacting a vast human cost, eroding U.S. support around the world and threatening to influence American elections next fall.

“The death toll in Gaza, exacerbated by one of the most intensive bombing campaigns in the history of modern warfare, reached a bleak milestone Friday, surpassing 20,000. The United Nations has said about two-thirds of the Palestinians killed were women and children… Israel launched its bloody campaign to eliminate Hamas after the militant group launched a cross-border attack Oct. 7 in which it killed at least 1,200 people, mainly civilians, and took about 240 hostages, many of whom remain captive in Gaza.

“In the latest show of resistance to U.S. calls to stem civilian casualties, Netanyahu told President Biden in a phone call Saturday [12/23] that Israel would ‘continue the war until all its objectives are met,’ the prime minister’s office said… Netanyahu also sought to portray as a show of solidarity what was widely read as a rare public U.S. rebuke of Israel: the Biden administration’s decision Friday not to veto a U.N. Security Council resolution demanding that more aid be allowed into Gaza.

“The prime minister’s office said after the phone call that Netanyahu had ‘expressed his appreciation’ for the U.S. stance on the resolution, which stopped short of demanding a cease-fire while calling for ‘unhindered’ humanitarian aid for Gaza. Biden, in brief comments outside the White House, was more taciturn, saying he’d had a ‘private’ conversation with the Israeli leader and did not request a cease-fire.”

Facing increasing pressure to accept a cease fire, Israel has announced it will intensify its attack on Hamas. Meanwhile, “Egypt has put forward an ambitious, initial proposal to end the Israel-Hamas war with a cease-fire, a phased hostage release and the creation of a Palestinian government of experts who would administer the Gaza Strip and occupied West Bank, a senior Egyptian official and a European diplomat said Monday [12/25].” AP Christmas Day. It is increasingly clear that the United States no longer has the power to act as an intermediary in any peaceful resolution regarding the future of Palestine. Will the US even take any tangible steps to reinforce its official embrace of a “two state” solution that Israel has categorically rejected? Is Biden’s presidential candidacy at risk with his failed efforts to encourage peace? What is possible to end this horrific war?

I’m Peter Dekom, and I am increasingly of the opinion that a regional Arab mediation and control of the peace process (under UN supervision) is necessary sooner rather than later… before Iran, with Russian and Chinese support, finds a very different conclusion that very much excludes the US entirely from the process.

So Why are Prices So High if Wage Earners Are Doing So Well?

 

No matter what economists are saying about the wonders of our existing economy, and no matter how much Biden can tout the success statistics, stuff just costs more that those wage and salary gains. The basics – food, transportation of all kinds (and fuel), housing, interest, medical care and clothing – have collectively increased since prepandemic times by 19+ percent. Less than the collective wage increases. Yet people are/were spending as if there were no tomorrow, because they anticipated prices would continue to go up even more. Even with interest rates hitting the highest levels in decades, credit card debt was rising fast. Huh?

But if you look at the increasing differential between average workers and CEO of large employers, the multiple was only getting worse. Those with homes enjoyed asset value increases; those who rented or were trying to break into the housing market… well, not so nice. Income inequality spreads got worse. And during all of this, hospitals, airlines, hotels and most of all banks (and all their financial businesses) found new ways to gouge consumers… while still claiming they were moderating inflationary cost increases. Hidden fees that the Biden administration pledged to make more transparent, up-front. Not very popular with chambers of commerce or Republicans.

Take this exchange between Biden’s director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), Rohit Chopra, with a GOP member of Congress at a hearing of the House Committee on Financial Services on June 14th. Reported by LA Times OpEd writer (on December 10th), Michael Hiltzik: “‘I talk to a lot of banks,’ Rep. Dan Meuser (R-Pa.) told Rohit Chopra, director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, ‘and they’re really not happy with your agency.’… He urged Chopra to ‘be responsive to the clientele you’re supposed to be helping.’… With admirable restraint, Chopra replied: ‘Just to be clear, the clientele of the CFPB is not the banks. The clientele is the public.’

“The exchange occurred at a hearing of the House Committee on Financial Services on June 14. Leaving aside that Wall Street banks and brokerages have been among Meuser’s leading campaign donors, the congressman was not lying about the bankers’ opinion about Chopra and his agency — in fact, he may have minimized their hostility.

“The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, speaking on behalf of the financial services industry, has called Chopra a ‘radical’ pursuing an ‘ideologically driven agenda.’ Last year, the American Bankers Assn. and two other bankers’ lobby groups published a 21-page broadside against him, calling on Congress and the federal courts to rein him in.”

Just to be even clearer, this notion of regulatory agencies representing the corporate side of the ledger, not the public, was a hallmark of the Trump administration, which, when they weren’t getting direct pro-business decisions (as they did with the Department of Education fighting against students to force repayment of tuition loans for bankrupt and clearly fraudulent “for profits trade schools” or where the Postmaster General cut services, turned off sorting machines and raised rates, and promised to make the US Mail “profitable”), simply defunded the agency they wanted to rein in… like the Environmental Protections Agency and any agency unequivocally dedicated to protecting consumers from unscrupulous business practices. If reelected, Trump promises to go back to his efforts to dissolve or defund any government agency aimed at pro-consumer, pro-public policies at the expense of corporate profits.

Hiltzik continues: “[Republicans’ and their business donors’] ire has intensified in recent months, as the CFPB has stepped up its campaign against ‘junk fees.’ The agency defines these as excessive or unnecessary fees on overdrafts, account information requests, late payments on loans or credit cards, among other charges… The CFPB’s campaign is part of the Biden administration’s broader attack on junk fees across the U.S. economy — fees that appear on a consumer’s bill at the end of a transaction, rather than being disclosed in advance.

“If you’ve rented a car, bought an airline ticket, booked a hotel room or paid a cable bill, you probably know what the White House is talking about: hidden, surprise charges for services you may not even have used, transaction charges for buying online or downloading a concert ticket instead of picking it up at the box office, etc., etc.

“These charges have proliferated as retailers and service providers try to raise revenues by ‘unbundling’ services that used to be provided at no extra charge. The quintessential example comes from the airline industry, where baggage fees have soared, reaching nearly $6.8 billion last year among the top domestic carriers, up from $464 million in 2007. Some ostensibly low-cost airlines charge for checked bags and carry-ons.

“Biden took aim at the nickel-and-diming of American consumers within six months of taking office in 2021, when he instructed agencies including the Department of Transportation, Federal Trade Commission and Federal Communications Commission to devote close scrutiny to regulated industries’ treatment of consumers.

“The administration intensified its campaign on Oct. 11, when Biden, FTC Chair Lina Khan and Chopra jointly announced new initiatives on junk fees… The FTC’s proposed rule would require businesses to disclose ‘all mandatory fees when telling consumers a price, making it easier for consumers to comparison shop for the lowest price,’ according to a commission statement. The FTC would be empowered to obtain refunds for consumers and impose penalties on businesses that don’t comply.” Think it’s kind of weird and hypocritical that these “free market” bastions of capitalism want to charge hidden fees well after the fact? Competition? Hell no!

A lot of what Trump unraveled during his four years has still not come back online fully, and now his reconfigured US Supreme Court is challenging the power of administrative agencies (from the Food and Drug Administration and Department of Justice to the Securities and Exchange Commission) ability to hold hearings, assess penalties and create rules to implement Congressional mandates. They are beginning to rule that only Congress can make those detailed and highly specialized rules, and only courts can enforce them… Congress? LOL. Seriously? Congress should make detailed “laws” vs “rules” permitted to agencies by Congress on stuff like pharmaceutical standards and testing requirements, the minutiae of stock trading and reporting mandates, etc. Like they’re doing so well with ordinary legislation?!

I’m Peter Dekom, and if you really want to know why so many consumer prices are so high, take a serious look at the explosion of corporate profits… and those nasty federal interest rates aimed at taming those even nastier corporate practices that have made the monied class so much richer.

?National Debt?

The secret “country killer” is and always has been debt. Countries with wanton disregard for fiscal responsibility always get slammed, sooner or later. Argentina is the poster child for politicians’ approving populist programs the country cannot afford that decimate their currency. They are constantly knocking at the door of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) looking for loans. Argentina's newly elected President Javier Milei is telling constituents to prepare for an extended period of government austerity, also suggesting that the nation abandon its currency in favor of the US dollar. That move is intended to rein in the country's 143% inflation rate, the highest in decades. But that still does not address the spending and taxation habits that caused the problem.

Countries around the world, unable to fund their nation’s needs, often watch their currencies dwindle into oblivion. The Lebanese pound, once one of most stable currencies on earth, hovers above worthless. After World War I, the French pushed for a most punitive set of confiscations and reparations against loser Germany (Treaty of Versailles) such that the German mark became almost worthless. It was this devaluation, imposing a very harsh existence for German citizens, that allowed Adolph Hitler to rise to power, fomenting WWII. But sometimes national debt represents a choice, even when the ability timely to pay the government bills is clearly doable.

The US massive national debt, heading towards $34 billion (one third of which is in foreign governmental hands), is completely a matter of choice. We’d rather look away from our staggering level of wealth/income inequality, incur borrowings that are spread to all Americans, to keep taxes for the richest in the land low. Except in transition (death or sale), we do not tax wealth outside of local real estate property taxes. In 2017, a MAGA controlled Congress dropped the federal corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%, rapidly adding several trillion dollars to the deficit.

We too pay a price for this heavy playing field tilt in favor of the wealthiest in the land. Indeed, MAGA Republicans push the only solution to our national debt is to cut spending on programs that benefit most Americans to keep taxes on very few mega-rich Americans abnormally low. We’ve long since established that cutting taxes for the rich is not a job creator… and never has been. They use misnomers like “entitlements” and “creeping socialism” to bolster their position.

There are clear signs that the world is beginning to question this longstanding American federal practice of unending borrowing. As MAGA Republicans have recently established a pattern of brinkmanship in their efforts to cut spending while keeping taxes on the richest abnormally low, global investors and foreign governments are now questioning whether the United States is politically sufficiently stable to justify the federal debt. Ratings agencies have even downgraded our national credit rating, increasing the interest we must pay on that deficit. Writing for the December 13th Wall Street Journal, Eric Wallerstein, sensed increasing reluctance in the usual buyers of US debt in the latest effort of the US Treasury to put a combined $108 billion of 3-year, 10-year and 30-year bonds on the auction block on December 11th and 12th, along with $213 billion of shorter-term bills, although our getting inflation under control did help keep interest rates from rising:

“[These] auctions started off shaky, but ended up soothing some of Wall Street’s fear that demand for U.S. debt isn’t strong enough to finance the waves of bonds hitting the market. Encouraging inflation data may have helped spark a newfound appetite for long-term Treasurys, serving as a reminder that the amount of bond supply from Washington is just one thing investors care about. The macroeconomy matters a lot, too… There was fairly weak demand for the new 3- and 10-year Treasury bonds that hit the street on [December 11th]. That’s been a trend we’ve seen recently: Investors are requiring higher rates to finance the U.S. government.”

There’s international mumbling about why the primary reserve currency remains the US dollar (the metric for most global commodities trading). As the US continues to provide the financial platforms and coordinated bank formats (e.g. Swift codes) for most global trade, hostile nations like Russia and China are beginning to create alternative structures which severely lessens the impact of international sanctions against these rogue nations. And despite her own internal debt woes, China remains in the best position to challenge US trade supremacy, owing an increasing debt of gratitude to MAGA Republicans for their help along the way. Writing for the December 13th Wall Street Journal, Matt Wirz ands Alexander Saeedy explain:

“China is upending how the international financial system handles debt crises in the developing world. Wall Street isn’t happy… Large bond fund managers cried foul last month when China blocked their deal to salvage investments in defaulted Zambian debt. The smackdown came just weeks after Chinese officials brokered a private debt restructuring with Sri Lanka, outmaneuvering Western governments that were trying to do the same.

“China can set its own rules because it has become the biggest lender to developing countries, outweighing Western powers that dominated such matters for more than 50 years. The new reality is rankling the old guard and making debt crises around the world longer and harder to predict… ‘If you’re hoping for a quick restructuring at a reasonable pace, that’s not going to happen,’ said Michael Cirami, a bond-fund manager for Boston-based Artisan Partners EMsights Capital Group.

“Western governments, investment firms and the International Monetary Fund have long decided how emerging-market debt gets overhauled, using a mix of formal rules and backroom deals. But China lent $1 trillion to countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America to bolster its global influence over the past decade and now many of the loans are going bad.

“Longer restructuring negotiations prolong economic pain for borrower countries and their citizens. They also lower recoveries for bond funds, which don’t collect interest payments while debt is in default... So far, the restructurings have involved small countries, including Ghana and Ethiopia. Larger nations, with greater geopolitical import—such as Argentina and Pakistan—could be next… ‘If we don’t manage the [restructuring] paradigm shift well, we can move onto very dangerous ground,’ said Pierre Cailleteau, a managing director at Lazard, the investment bank advising Sri Lanka, Suriname, Zambia and others in negotiations with lenders.”

With about $700 billion in annual Sino-American trade, there are a few checks and balances on China’s clear efforts to displace the US financial systems in the global trade. But MAGA policies, particularly a vector to pull the US out of international obligations and treaties (which have sheltered and advanced our financial supremacy), have begun to cast a rising tide of negativity against our trade superiority. If we lose our reserve currency status, if we find resistance in the international markets when we attempt to place our national borrowing into the international markets, the US consumer market with pay a very heavy price, as our standard of living will begin to plummet.

I’m Peter Dekom, and as MAGA policies, designed to appeal to an unsophisticated anti-government constituency, begin to tank our average quality of life, I’m those MAGA politicians will find someone else to place for their failed initiatives.

Is the Middle Class Becoming the Upper Lower Class?

Post-WII Levittown construction under the GI Bill

Post-WII Levittown construction under the GI Bill

 Once, the American Dream

Joe Biden is in a heap of trouble. He may be the last hope for American democracy, but aside from his severe age weakness, his defining era is now plagued with issues that he cannot do very much about. “It’s the economy, stupid!” resonates loud and clear. Even our foreign policy choices are riddled with domestic economic issues. But the Tyrannosaurus Rex in the room is the continuing, never-ending income and wealth inequality explosion. And income inequality has been one of the few Republican kitchen-table platforms. In a bad way. The continuous quest for deregulation, lower taxes (which really benefits the rich) and cutting the benefits include in the federal budget that benefit middle- and lower-class Americans the most is political deflection at its best (worst?). As Americans watch prices soar, the news is rife with the battle of the billionaires, who have never had it so good. Except at death and sale, we simply do not tax most wealth.

Tuition has increased at an average of triple the rate of inflation for the last four decades. Food costs have escalated as land has been lost to desertification (preceding by extended periods of drought) or conflict that has made farming untenable. Oil and gas prices have risen and fallen (on average, really risen) under the avaricious control of OPEC+. Anything that bears or reflects interest has felt the pinch of the Federal Reserve’s trebling of effective interest rates, impacting consumer debt (particularly credit cards), student loans and, most of all, mortgage rates.

None of these matters can reasonably be controlled by the President. The Federal Reserve, a very independent body, sets interest rates, and in their effort to contain inflation, they have made homeownership out of reach for most Americans, kicked residential rental costs through the roof and thus have heavily contributed to our massive homeless population. Even if the United States were able to double its already-huge output of oil and gas, in order to keep their own oil and gas output at a solid price, the OPEC+ nations would simply reduce their output to counter such an American effort. The only American winners would thus be oil and gas companies, and unless Texas and Oklahoma fossil fuel extractors are willing to sell their wares at a huge discount below what they could generate as an export (don’t hold your breath), oil and gas would remain pricey. And even the President can’t bring parched desertified land back into production or settle all the global conflicts that make farming impossible. But the President will always be blamed for it all.

With so many people escaping big urban areas, like New York, Southern California and San Francisco, those venues have sent residents fleeing to lower real estate cost markets, mostly red states from Idaho to Texas and Florida, which is beginning to make those former bargain property prices er… well… very expensive. In fact, housing hasn’t been generally affordable for most first-time American buyers for decades. And those with capital have pushed most players out of the marketplace. According to a Johns Hopkins report this past August, “Despite the strong recovery in home prices after the Great Recession, the number of builders has declined 65 percent since 2007, right around the time the financial crisis started.”

Remote working, the demise of office space values in some of the biggest cities, and explosive property-owners’ insurance rates have played particular hob in California, especially in the Southland. Writing for the November 23rd Los Angeles Times, Andrew Khouri, tells us: “In October, the average home price for the six-county region climbed 0.12% to $831,080, according to data from Zillow. It was the eighth consecutive monthly increase, leaving prices just 1% below the all-time high reached in 2022.

“‘I don’t understand how people are affording these insane mortgages,’ said Nicholas Uribe, a 31-year-old property manager who is trying — so far unsuccessfully — to buy a single-family home in the San Fernando Valley [a Los Angeles City suburb]… Although prices are slightly lower than during the peak, a home is drastically more unaffordable. In October, the monthly payment on the typical L.A. County home was $4,830, according to Zillow. In June 2022, when prices peaked and rates were lower, the typical payment was nearly $900 less.

“Some experts say they don’t expect prices or mortgage rates to drop considerably in the near future — a forecast that, if realized, could dash the hopes of people like Uribe… In theory, he should be better off than he is. In 2019, he paid $329,000 for a Sylmar townhome that his agent now estimates is worth about $500,000…

“During the height of the pandemic, people rushed to purchase a home, motivated by stay-at-home policies and mortgage rates driven to record lows by the Federal Reserve’s easy money policies. That demand surge collided with a shortage of homes for sale and caused prices to skyrocket.

But as inflation soared, the Federal Reserve reversed course, tightening policy in a switch that helped send mortgage rates sharply upward. From November 2021 to November 2022, rates climbed from below 3% to 7% [and more!]. Initially, prices in Southern California fell as shocked buyers backed away and inventory swelled. Then the flow of homes hitting the market ground to a near-halt.” Low inventory – people not willing to sell and have to deal with high mortgages to move up – hurt homebuyers big time. Prices started rising again.

To make matters worse, commercial real estate lenders are raising the income and downpayment criteria. Only 11% of those in Southern California can afford to buy a home. With mortgage rates between 7% - 8%, and absurdly high insurance rates, Southern California reflects a national crisis. And when folks cannot afford to buy a home, they have to rent. Which explains the sky-high rental market, pushing people out of their homes and into the streets. There’s no evidence of a major decline in pricing for housing that matters. And because we will not really tax wealth, the rich get vastly richer… and the deficit soars. Instead, you have an entire political party that prefers to cut benefits for most of us in order to keep taxes low for the richest of the rich.

I’m Peter Dekom, and until reducing income/wealth inequality becomes a focus – including taxing major wealth – more and more Americans will be unhappy, finding someone to blame that is irrelevant to the problem, with growing levels of unaffordability in this country.

 

Yet More Reasons Bitcoin/Cryptocurrency Bites

If virtual currency exchanges and financial technology firms wish to realize the tremendous benefits of

being part of the U.S. financial system and serving U.S. customers, they must play by the rules. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen

Rules? What rules? The cryptocurrency world has been filled with scammers and thieves. It has provided criminals and rogue nations facing international sanctions with a backdoor currency that avoids the scrutiny of those attempting to enforce justice. It has accelerated global tax evasion. It has crashed and burned, losing as much of 80% of its aggregate value, leaving believers crying in the dust. If crypto were allowed to resume its prior growth, it could also threaten national monetary and fiscal policy controls. And given the massive, decentralized blockchain security system involving multiple computers and a highly energy-inefficient interface to deal with users. The process is called “mining,” and the aggregate heat generated by all the relevant file servers and computer terminals requires massive cooling systems, most of which use water.

But let’s start with a gridlocked Congress, several criminal cases (and convictions) and federal administrative agencies struggling to regulate cryptocurrency in the absence of tailored and more appropriate statutes. Los Angeles Times OpEd contributor (November 28th), describes the regulatory mess: “Things got started with a blast Nov. 2, when scam artist Sam Bankman-Fried was convicted on seven fraud and conspiracy counts related to his management of the once-upward scuttling crypto exchange FTX.

“Matters didn’t get any better after that. On Nov. 20, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged the crypto trading platform Kraken with a raft of legal violations… The SEC alleges that Kraken has been operating simultaneously as a crypto ‘broker, dealer, exchange, and clearing agency,’ which present potential conflicts of interest that work against customers’ interests.

“One day after that, the government dropped a nuclear bomb on the asset class. The Treasury, Commodity Futures Trading Commission and Department of Justice announced a $4-billion settlement of money laundering charges against Binance, the largest crypto platform still standing after the collapse of FTX… (Interestingly, the one agency not participating in the settlement is the SEC, which makes it seem that its enforcers are intent on pursuing their own case against Binance.)

“As part of the deal, Binance agreed to cease doing business in the U.S. and employ an independent compliance monitor for five years. Its founder, Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, agreed to step down as chief executive; he pleaded guilty in Seattle federal court to a felony money-laundering charge and agreed to pay a $50-million fine. Federal prosecutors are asking the court to sentence him to 18 months in prison.” That’s more than enough to make you distrust, perhaps even hate, cryptocurrencies. But if you have any concern for serious environmental concerns, take a good, hard look above at one typical cryptocurrency datacenter … at the file servers cooking up heat at unjustifiable levels. Writing for the November 29th FastCompany.com, Chris Stokel-Walker examines on controversial study, disputed by big crypto-players for obvious reasons:

“It was meant to revolutionize finance, and free us all from the tyranny of centralized control of our banking. But it turns out, Bitcoin just might end up killing our planet… That’s the findings of a new study by Alex de Vries, a researcher [and PhD candidate] at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, who has put forward an estimate for how much water is consumed every time someone buys, sells, or mines Bitcoin on the blockchain.

“Writing in the journal Cell Reports Sustainability, de Vries calculated that in 2021 mining Bitcoin consumed more than 1,600 gigaliters of water worldwide, with every single transaction on the blockchain using 16,000 liters of water—6.2 million times more than is used every time we swipe a credit card to pay for something.

Water is used in these transactions to cool the computer equipment used to mine Bitcoin, as well as to cool the power plants that supply the electricity for those computers. ‘In order to generate electricity, you also need a lot of water to cool the fossil fuel-based power plants,’ he explains.

Only between 10% and 20% of the water usage involved with every Bitcoin transaction is direct—that is, used to cool the equipment that actually mines the Bitcoin, says de Vries. The remainder is the transaction’s indirect footprint, where water is used elsewhere along the supply chain… ‘Water footprint is a very important, but often overlooked, environmental cost of computing systems, including AI and Bitcoin,’ says Shaolei Ren, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of California, Riverside, who tries to track the water impact of various technologies. Ren was not involved in the Cell Reports Sustainability study.

“Ren welcomes the paper putting forward a concrete estimate of the overall water footprint of Bitcoin. ‘The operational water footprint for server and power-plant cooling is already huge,’ he says. ‘If we further factor in the embodied water footprint for manufacturing Bitcoin servers, the total water footprint could be easily doubled. But, at this point, there’s been very little, if any, data available for the embodied water footprint.’”

In a time where climate change is inflicting severe drought in many countries, embracing crypto centers can be disastrous: “Countries like Kazakhstan, a major hub for cryptocurrency mining, are already facing water shortages. In 2021, Bitcoin transactions in Kazakhstan accounted for 997.9 GL [gigalitres] of water, adding to the country's water crisis.” Eric Ralls for EarthSnap.com. Maybe we like providing tools for drug cartels, Russian attempts to annex sovereign nations or income tax evaders. Cryptocurrencies are hardly the legal facilitators that wire transfers and credit cards have become; their nefarious use and creation of values based on faith of unvetted privateers and technology geeks are downright dangerous.

I’m Peter Dekom, and sometimes what appears to be too good to be true, what has mistakenly caught on as the future of trade, just might be a minefield of painful disasters.

Grade-Fraud in the Ivy League

“Grades are like any currency… [Elite Ivy League schools] are actively championing their students by giving them higher grades than the national average… They want their students to have a competitive edge.” 

 Stuart Rojstaczer, a retired Duke University professor who tracks grade inflation.

“I don’t think many people care, 10 years out, what kind of grades you got at Yale… They mostly care that you, you know, you studied at Yale.” 

Yale College Dean Pericles Lewis.

Admission: I am a graduate of Yale in an era when a B was actually considered pretty good. My old room is on the extreme left side of the above photo. I am sad to say the “good B” reality has slowly eroded over the years. Yale students getting Bs today are horrified, often going to their professors to protect… or at least beg for a better grade. Why? Writing for the November 30th The Yale Daily News, Evan Gorelick calls out elite Ivies: “Yale College’s mean GPA was 3.70 for the 2022-23 academic year, and 78.97 percent of grades given to students were A’s or A-’s.

“The data, which show a sharp hike in grades coinciding with the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, come from a document presented at a November faculty meeting. According to economics professor Ray Fair, who authored the report, Yale College Dean Pericles Lewis distributed the document to faculty members who attended the meeting.

“Even before the pandemic, the percentage of A-range grades was climbing — it reached 72.95 percent in the 2018-19 academic year, up from 68.97 percent five years prior. But in 2020-21, that share jumped to 81.97 percent. Fair dubbed the grading upturn the COVID effect… ‘Some thought [the COVID effect] would be temporary, but it has more or less persisted. [It’s] probably the faculty going easier on students because COVID was a pain,’ Fair told the News. ‘The report simply documents the history of grading at Yale … It gives the ‘current state of grading’ and I think the numbers are straightforward to interpret.’” Gorelick adds that these numbers are “nearly identical to figures released by Harvard College in October.”

It's not as if Yale is proud of this reality (I’m sure not!): “Earlier this semester, the University Registrar’s Office denied the News’ request to access Yale College grading data, and the University has not published similar data in over a decade.” Gorelick got the data directly from Professor Fair. Writing for the December 6th New York Times, recent Yale grad and NYT journalist Amelia Nierenberg, seems as stunned as I was when I learned the news: “The mean grade point average was 3.7 out of 4.0, also an increase over prepandemic years.

“The findings have frustrated some students, alumni and professors. What does excellence mean at Yale, they wonder, if most students get the equivalent of ‘excellent’ in almost every class?... ‘When we act as though virtually everything that gets turned in is some kind of A — where A is supposedly meaning ‘excellent work’ — we are simply being dishonest to our students,” said Shelly Kagan, a Yale philosophy professor known for being a tough grader… The trend has scrambled the very meaning of grades themselves, he said. Students no longer think B means ‘good.’ An A is the new normal.”

“Yale’s cluster of A’s and A minuses has been rising for years. In the 2010-11 academic year, 67 percent of all grades were A’s and A minuses, the report found. By 2018-19, 73 percent were in the A range.” This grade inflation is nothing new. Many private prep schools have indulged in this practice to get their students into top schools. But college admissions offices got wise to the practice, discounting the grades from those who attended schools that applied this process. But now the contagion has spread to major prestigious universities, mostly private.

State colleges and universities have, for the most part, maintained more traditional grading skews… “Private colleges tend to have higher average G.P.A.s than public schools, Dr. Rojstaczer said. In 2013, the average public school G.P.A. was about 3.1, compared to 3.3 to 3.4 at private schools. Yale’s and Harvard’s averages are even higher.” NYT.

In fact, this trend toward jacking up grades appears to be an overall reaction of elite colleges trying to level the playing field for their students competing for professional and graduate admissions or even better jobs… when comparable institutions have inappropriately elevated their average grades. “[S]tudents — and graduate programs — do care about undergraduate grades. And Amanda Claybaugh, Harvard’s dean of undergraduate education, worries that grade inflation could ultimately hurt students’ mental health.

“‘Students feel the need to distinguish themselves outside the classroom because they are essentially indistinguishable inside the classroom,’ she said, adding, ‘Extracurriculars, which should be stress relieving, become stress producing.’… Dr. Claybaugh plans to disseminate more information about alumni outcomes, to reassure undergraduates that ‘students who get B pluses at Harvard still do fine in life.’

“But Harvard is part of an ecosystem, and employers compare resumes across schools. What if Harvard decided to intentionally limit the number of A’s awarded — as Princeton once did? How would its graduates compare to Yale’s, or Stanford’s, in such a competitive job market?... ‘We don’t want to move alone,’ Dr. Claybaugh said. ‘We don’t want to disadvantage our students.’ NYT. Are these grades effective lies? A macro-George Santos effect? Why have grades at all if they are so uniformly ubiquitous? Isn’t teaching honesty and values part of a solid undergraduate education? And yes, I am embarrassed by these “admissions.” That “everybody does it” is a horrible excuse… and at the root of the problem.

I’m Peter Dekom, and in a world cursed by flood of fake news and excessive braggadocio among our nation’s leaders and captains of industry, isn’t time for those institutions that are preparing the rising generation to take over the country to claw back to honesty and reality?

Wages, Hours & Working Conditions Notwithstanding

The above list represents the mandatory subject matter of collective bargaining for recognized unions and guilds under the National Labor Relations Act. But as with so many economic schisms, from landlord/tenant to company/worker, there are two sides to every story. Indeed, where these laws apply to larger economic units, especially where industry-wide jurisdictions apply, the power and advantage tends to favor the larger, better funded party. They have the money to hire legions of lawyers, lobby legislators where possible and are able to sustain long and complicated battles with lesser funded opponents. Even when they lose, their delaying tactic is often little more than the cost of legal fees. But when smaller economic units face serious and dynamic shifts in the cost of running their business, whether through rising statutory minimum wages or collective bargaining, the results are often quite the opposite.

Writing for The Morning, December 6th New York Times news feed, David Leonhardt, observes: “This year has been a good one for labor unions. They have won victories in Hollywood and the auto industry, and 67 percent of Americans approve of unions, according to Gallup. Still, I remain skeptical that union organizing is on the cusp of a major turnaround, unless federal law changes. For now, companies that aren’t unionized have many ways to prevent a union from forming even when most workers want to join one.” Leonhardt’s fellow contributor, Noam Scheiber, reinforces the power of the biggest boys in labor negotiations in deterring union recognition in the workplace, even as federal labor law is designed to protect labor activism aimed at generating such union certification:

“If an employer fires a worker for trying to organize a union — which is illegal — it typically takes years to litigate the case. Even if the employer is found guilty, it will at most have to pay back wages and some other ‘make whole’ compensation, not a financial penalty for the wrongdoing. So there’s little disincentive to violating the law.

“In 2021, the National Labor Relations Board found that Tesla had illegally fired a worker four years earlier for engaging in union activity, and the board ordered the company to reinstate him with back pay. Tesla appealed the decision in federal court and lost but is continuing to appeal. The worker has yet to be reinstated. Starbucks and Amazon have taken similar approaches.

“Even if workers succeed at unionizing, the law offers few tools for forcing employers to negotiate a contract. Employers can wait out newly unionized workers in the hopes that they’ll become demoralized and quit, allowing the company to hire new workers who will vote the union out. In 2021, House Democrats passed a bill, the PRO Act, to address these issues. The bill died in the Senate.

“That said, I’m not convinced that the organizing activity over the past few years is leading nowhere. Even as the rate of unionization fell to its lowest level on record in 2022, with only 10.1 percent of workers belonging to a union, there was still an absolute increase of nearly 300,000 unionized workers. (That is, the numerator rose substantially; it’s just that the denominator rose even more as workers re-entered the work force once the pandemic subsided.)”

In my world, Los Angeles and the entertainment business, both the Writers Guild and the Screen Actors Guild/American Federation of Television & Radio Artists endured months of agonizing strikes to generate the now, fully ratified going forward collective bargaining agreements with major studios and telecasters. That labor strike seems to have cost both parties and related vendors north of $6 billion in losses, while raising wages and residuals and dealing with the nasty rising threat of artificial intelligence. Was it worth it? Time will tell.

The big entertainment companies have announced major layoffs and reductions in production starts as well as focusing on production cost reductions across the board. Will that represent a permanent reset? We shall see, but so far, that threat appears to be real. Production starts and restarts have not remotely rebounded to prestrike levels, and budgets for many of the projects given a greenlight are substantially lower.

But collective bargaining is only one aspect of the new normal, with higher wages. Worker shortages, combined with state and local government increases in minimum wages, have hit fast food franchises and small businesses hard. Even in exceptionally liberal communities, such as Los Angeles LGBTQ+ friendly West Hollywood (WeHo – pictured above), the protests seem to be coming more from the employers than the employees. As Don Lee, writing for the December 6th Los Angeles Times notes: “Across the country, many American workers have enjoyed pay hikes unlike anything seen in decades. And for many American businesses, this also has been a good year for profits, with some corporations notching record or near-record gains.

“But don’t try to sing that song of good times in West Hollywood: Business owners there say that paying workers more is killing them, and that goes for some of the low-wage workers who many liberal policymakers worry about… In an area known for its nightlife, hip restaurants, trendy shops and boutique hotels, workers at or near the minimum pay abound. And, thanks in part to the political muscle of the hospitality union for workers in the Los Angeles area and the COVID-era shakeup that gave workers greater leverage, city leaders there have approved the highest minimum wage and some of the most generous paid time off to be found anywhere in the country.

“The West Hollywood rules, approved two years ago, stand in contrast to the situation in much of the country, where business leaders have successfully opposed substantial increases in minimum wages. The federal wage floor has been stuck at $7.25 an hour since 2009, and two dozen states currently are at less than $10 an hour or have no minimum wage at all… In California as a whole, the minimum wage stands at $15.50 an hour, behind only Washington state at $15.74 and the nation’s capital at $16.50… Many cities have their own minimum rate, and none higher than West Hollywood, where it’s now $19.08 an hour, with paid leave even for part-time staff.”

Likewise, there is pressure on local and state governments to increase license fees as well as state and local taxes as infrastructure demand increases and legacy infrastructure deteriorates. Insurance costs are skyrocketing as well. In red states, most of these funding needs fall on deaf ears as increasing taxes against high-earners and mega-wealth runs counter to GOP doctrine. We face increasing political polarization just as the nation needs funding to sustain our existing or desired quality of life. Climate change devastation is only making a bad problem so much worse. The reality of life in America is simply that without fixing and expanding what is needed, we all lose.

I’m Peter Dekom, and whether the United States will be reunited, whether it can support and fund the obviously needed big reset, remain very much in doubt.