The Worst Healthcare System in the Developed World: Ours

“Two-thirds of Americans are putting off medical care they need because of the cost

and half are already struggling to pay off debts…” 

Kaiser Health News (6/22)

We know that the United States is the only developed country on earth without universal healthcare. We also know that we have the highest per capita medical costs, the most expensive average prescription costs and even those who have health insurance are often slammed with co-pays and deductibles. And there are lots of developing nations with healthcare coverage for all as well (e.g., Costa Rica). Medical bankruptcies are exceptionally rare in the rest of the world… but not here.

With the pandemic official over, millions of Americans who were covered by some form of extended Medicaid or at least for inoculations and test kits are being dumped without healthcare coverage. Red state conservatives, conflating social programs as “creeping socialism,” were at the starting gate to cut back Medicaid and other healthcare programs the instant the pandemic provisions of federal services lapsed. Our system remains so flawed, well beyond the decimation of government healthcare for the poorest in the land. Even those with insurance coverage are being pushed into severe debt beyond the cost of the premiums themselves. Co-pays, exclusion, caps and deductibles are breaking the backs of so many working Americans. Medical bankruptcies in the United States are hardly a rarity.

Writing for the July 16th Los Angeles Times, journalist Noam Levey, having surveyed those with insurance who have received unaffordable invoices for medical care, tells us: “The experience offered a stark lesson, he said: ‘Don’t trust the system.’…

“Reporting on medical debt over the past two years, I’ve spent hundreds of hours on the telephone, in the living rooms and at the kitchen tables of patients [who have received surprised bills for healthcare costs excluded from their coverage]. They are among the 100 million people in America who have been driven into debt by medical and dental bills… Many of my conversations with patients have revealed a deep and disturbing disillusionment with our healthcare system… Medical providers ignore this at their peril — and at a high risk to Americans’ health.

“Doctors and hospitals have long held an exalted position in American life, retaining public confidence even as the public has steadily lost trust in other institutions such as government, law enforcement and the media… Growing up, I shared this faith. My father was a physician who never hesitated to get up in the middle of the night and drive to the hospital to operate on a sick child in his care. But as a journalist covering healthcare the past 15 years, I have seen American patients’ faith shaken.

“They’re tired of shocking medical bills they didn’t expect and can’t afford. And they’re disgusted by the collection notices, the threatening phone calls and appointments they can’t get because they owe money.

“Many Americans say they simply no longer trust their medical providers. This is borne out by polling conducted by KFF [Kaiser Family Foundation] as part of an investigation of medical debt. Just 15% of people with healthcare debt said they have a lot of trust that providers have patients’ best interests in mind. That’s about half the rate as among people without such debt…. And as the political turmoil of recent years shows, public anger and disillusionment can produce unpredictable, even dangerous results.”

Even Medicare patients are still struggling with the cost of prescription drugs, and even though prospective changes will moderate some of these concerns, the lack of real coverage for dental, hearing and vision issues is a serious problem. Seniors are skipping life-saving prescriptions or cutting their pills in half to extend their usage.

The only solution – universal healthcare – is mislabeled “creeping socialism” by the GOP as it proposes cuts to Social Security and Medicare but is willing to incur massive deficits to keep taxes for the rich low. To call Germany or Switzerland “socialist” because they have exceptionally effective universal healthcare seems almost laughable. It’s hard to believe that countries that manufacture some of the most complex machines, are home to major banks and private equity funds, create and manufacture some of the most effective medications and exceptional consumer goods targeting well-heeled buyers – from Rolex watches to Porches and BMWs – are bastions of socialism is indeed ludicrous. That every other developed nation on earth – all of which have universal healthcare – is “socialist” is equally absurd.

As this nation has elevated plutocracy as its own reward, fashioning laws that have allowed one percent of our population to own half of all of American wealth, and as one of our two main political parties advocates autocracy as the new American form of leadership, we just might watch as well slip-slide down the economic and global influence ladder, allowing China to achieve their wildest dream of global domination with our leadership clearing a path for that rising possibility.

I’m Peter Dekom, and even for those who believe in “America First,” they actually might try embracing policies that indeed put American citizens first… or at least equal to the rest of the developed world.

Cycles, Permanent Changes, Trigger Points

    

A dying rice crop in India

“The recent record temperatures, as well as extreme fires, pollution and flooding we are seeing this year, are what we expect to see in a warmer climate…We are just getting a small taste for the types of impacts that we expect to worsen under climate change.” 

Cornell University climate scientist Natalie Mahowald.

I listened as Fox News host Laura Ingraham explained the hottest days in the hottest week in recorded history: “It’s summer! It’s supposed to be hot!” For so many climate change deniers or marginalizers – ignoring the rest of the obvious “natural disasters” from floods and fires to hurricanes and draughts – they tell us that the Bible pledged no more global disasters (after the Great Flood), that mankind was permitted unrestricted rights to do with its planet as it chooses… and everything is always cyclical, especially weather. There is some truth to that cyclical reality, but I have always thought of time-change as more of a spiral than a rather simplistic circle.

The “cyclical” nature of the current El Niño cycle – dry and rain-impaired – vs the rains-soaked, cooler La Niña, shows the essential part of periodical transitions, just as the currently enhanced solar explosions on the Sun have natural consequences on earth as well. But the intensity of those recurring transitions also describes how climate change has accentuated the increasingly devastating trigger points… creating more intolerable weather realities than we have ever before experienced. As Aniruddha Ghosal, writing on July 16th for the Associated Press, points out, global food supplies are at risk now, perhaps more in Asia than much of the rest of the world:

“An El Niño is a natural, temporary and occasional warming of part of the Pacific that shifts global weather patterns, and climate change is making such events stronger. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced the present one in June, a month or two earlier than it usually does. This gives the event time to grow. Scientists say there’s a 1-in-4 chance that it will expand to supersize levels.

“That’s bad news for rice farmers, particularly in Asia, where 90% of the world’s rice is grown and eaten, because a strong El Niño typically means less rainfall for the thirsty crop… Past El Niños have resulted in extreme weather as diverse as drought and floods.

“There are already ‘alarm bells,’ said Abdullah Mamun, a research analyst at the International Food Policy Research Institute, pointing to rising rice prices because of shortfalls in production. The average price of 5% broken white rice in June in Thailand was about 16% higher than last year’s average.

“Global stocks have run low since last year, in part from devastating floods in Pakistan, a major rice exporter. This year’s El Niño may worsen other woes for rice-producing countries, such as reduced availability of fertilizer because of the war in Ukraine and some countries’ export restrictions on rice. Myanmar, Cambodia and Nepal are particularly vulnerable, a recent report by research firm BMI warned…

“[In] northern India’s Punjab state, [less] than one-tenth of the usual rainfall had come by early this month, and then floods battered young crops that had just been planted.” Rice is such a basic foodstuff but added to the wheat shortages caused by Russia’s invasion or Ukraine, the pressure on the poorest on earth is now literally the difference between life and death. Indeed, the planet is sweltering, now in the equatorial region and the northern hemisphere, soon to be followed by parallel horrors in the southern hemisphere in their summer later this year. Although El Niño and La Niña cycles are always temporary, their intensity is far stronger now than ever before.

The July 16th Associated Press also summarizes this current heatwave, exacerbated by El Niño: “An already warming Earth steamed to its hottest June on record, smashing the old global mark by nearly a quarter of a degree, with oceans setting temperature records for the third straight month, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced [July 13th].

“June’s 61.79-degree global average was 1.89 degrees Fahrenheit above the 20th century average, according to NOAA. Other weather monitoring systems, such as NASA, Berkeley Earth and Europe’s Copernicus, had already called last month the hottest June on record, but NOAA is the gold standard for record-keeping with data going back to 1850.

“The increase over the last June record is ‘a considerably big jump’ because usually global monthly records are so broad-based they often jump by hundredths, not quarters, of a degree, said NOAA climate scientist Ahira Sanchez-Lugo…

“Both land and ocean were the hottest recorded in any June. But the globe’s sea surface — which is 70% of Earth’s area — has set monthly high temperature records in April, May and June, and the North Atlantic has been off-the-charts warm since mid-March, scientists say. The Caribbean smashed previous records, as did the United Kingdom…

“NOAA says there’s a 20% chance that 2023 will be the hottest year on record, with next year more likely, but the chance of a record is growing and outside scientists such as Brown University’s Kim Cobb are predicting a ‘photo finish’ with 2016 and 2020 for the hottest year on record. Berkeley Earth’s Robert Rohde said his group figures there’s an 80% chance that 2023 will end up the hottest year on record.

“That’s because it’s probably only to get hotter. July is usually the hottest month of the year, and the record for July and the hottest month of any year is 62.08 degrees set in July 2019 and July 2021. Eleven of the first dozen days in July were hotter than ever on record, according to an unofficial and preliminary analysis by the University of Maine’s Climate Reanalyzer. The Japanese Meteorological Agency and the World Meteorological Organization said the world has just gone through its hottest week on record.” It is the new American abnormal. Texas, anyone? Gov. Greg Abbott, the Tsar of climate change marginalizers, thinks we need more fossil fuels in the marketplace. Sigh. Texas has had some of our highest summer temperatures.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I wonder how passionate climate change deniers and marginalizers would be if they did not have air conditioning and did not have the ability to buy food at their local grocery stores.

Lead to Death

Lead has long since been associated with birth defects, impairing physical and mental normal growth in children, and often a slow, agonizing death based on prolonged exposure. The Wall Street Journal began an extensive series of investigations and has produced a stunning array of published results based on new and extensive lead in our environment that has been dramatically overlooked for decades: telephone cables covered in toxic lead, underground, through major waterways and even overhead. Lead coverings that have degraded over time, leaching their toxicity everywhere. “These relics of the old Bell System’s regional telephone network, and their impact on the environment, haven’t been previously reported…

“Doctors say that no amount of contact with lead is safe, whether ingested or inhaled, particularly for children’s physical and mental development. Even without further exposure, lead can stay in the blood for about two or three months, and be stored in bones and organs longer. Risks include behavior and learning problems and damage to the central nervous system in children, as well as kidney, heart and reproductive problems in adults, according to U.S. health agencies.” WSJ, July 15th.

The use of lead as protective covering for these cable links in massive telecom networks spanned a period from the late 19th century right into the 1960s. And when I say massive, that notion cannot be understated. From New York west and south, lead-covered cables are absolutely everywhere, obviously more prevalent in the older networks. It’s also testament to why we have environmental regulations, since self-enforcement and taking responsibility for toxic clean-up is seldom initiated even by companies seriously aware of the problem.

“For many years, telecom companies have known about the lead-covered cables and the potential risks of exposure to their workers, according to documents and interviews with former employees. They were also aware that lead was potentially leaching into the environment, but haven’t meaningfully acted on potential health risks to the surrounding communities or made efforts to monitor the cables.” WSJ. Indeed, if you want to see how extensive the toxicity and how much the relevant corporation knew about the problem, I strongly recommend that you consume the excellent WJJ reportage on of the subject.

Here are some the Journal’s summary findings:

—Roughly 330 of the total number of underwater cable locations identified by the Journal are in a “source water protection area,” designated by federal regulators as contributing to the drinking-water supply, according to an EPA review performed for the Journal.

—Aerial lead cabling runs alongside more than 100 schools with about 48,000 students in total. More than 1,000 schools and child-care centers sit within half a mile of an underwater lead cable, according to a Journal analysis using data from research firm MCH Strategic Data.

—In New Jersey alone, more than 350 bus stops are next to or beneath aerial lead-covered cables, a Journal analysis of NJ Transit data found.

—Roughly 80% of sediment samples taken next to underwater cables, which the Journal tested, showed elevated levels of lead. It isn’t known if the level of leaching is constant; experts say old cables tend to degrade over time.

Scientists have been able to differentiate lead from cable coverings from lead from other sources: “The U.S. has spent decades eradicating lead from well-known sources such as paint, gasoline and pipes. The Journal’s investigation reveals a hidden source of contamination—more than 2,000 lead-covered cables—that hasn’t been addressed by the companies or environmental regulators. These relics of the old Bell System’s regional telephone network, and their impact on the environment, haven’t been previously reported.

“Lead levels in sediment and soil at more than four dozen locations tested by the Journal exceeded safety recommendations set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. At the New Iberia [Louisiana] fishing spot, lead leaching into the sediment near a cable in June 2022 measured 14.5 times the EPA threshold for areas where children play. ‘We’ve been fishing here since we were kids,’ said Tyrin Jones, 27 years old, who grew up a few blocks away.”

Tracking these cables is anything but easy, particularly given the mass of mergers and acquisitions in the industry over decades. “With the breakup of the Bell System’s monopoly in 1984, regional phone companies became independent competitors that consolidated over time to form the backbone of modern carriers AT&T and Verizon. Tracking the current owners of old cables isn’t a simple task after decades of deals, and the companies themselves in many instances denied their ownership. The Journal provided lists of cable locations to major telecom providers, which declined to detail cable locations.

“To track the underwater cables, the Journal collected more than 40,000 pages of records from federal and state government offices, including applications to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to install the cables that were approved more than a century ago. Removing Army Corps-approved cables at any time would routinely require a permit or be noted in the original paperwork, officials say. The Journal tally of abandoned lead cables is sure to be an undercount.” EPA Superfund money is hardly dedicated to cleaning up this cable pollution, and efforts in Congress and the GOP congressional delegation to cut funding to contain environmental realities has not helped either. Life vs profits? We are watching a conservative backlash against spending money in obvious ways to save lives.

I’m Peter Dekom, and if you care about living in a clean environment with a government that is targeting life-threatening emissions of all kinds, vote for candidates who also prioritize those views.

A Tale of Two Educational Priorities

The United States once had the finest public schools on earth, placing first in reading, science and math based on international testing standards. But that was back in the late 1950s and 60s. Since then, we have fallen out of the top 20 in all those categories, winding up only in the 30 or below for some. Starting with the deficits generated by the Vietnam War, first the federal government, rapidly followed by states (particularly fiscally conservative states), allocations for public education plunged at every level, from primary and secondary schools up through state colleges and universities. The mega-wealthy also lobbied heavily for tax cuts. That’s when our global comparative test scores dropped like a stone and college tuition soared at multiple of the annual rise in the cost of living. See also my July 9th A Fading American Value: Public Education blog for more specifics.

Public education in the United States is bit like bull-riding. Bucking and fighting an angry bull can be analogized to fighting a relatively small but highly vociferous group of parents whose concerns are not about the quality of the instruction but on promulgating fundamentalist Christian religious values and preserving the mythology of guiltless White supremacy. With approximately 13,000 autonomous school districts, it’s easy to see how teaching has become one of the biggest battle grounds in our massive internal struggle from extreme political polarization.

To make matters worse, textbook manufacturers are not well-positioned for multiple versions of their textbooks; it's just too expensive to cater to individual school districts. As a result, the lowest common denominator within the largest school districts (California, New York, Texas and Florida are the drivers) pretty much determines the content of textbooks, particularly in civics, history, social studies and English.

Today, the culture wars, the anti-CRT movement, led by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Texas Governor Greg Abbott, represent the driving force towards that lowest common denominator. In Florida, all it takes for a lesson plan to be pulled or a textbook or library book to be removed is a parent or student telling the relevant school board that the lesson or book makes them “uncomfortable” with the subject matter. It may be “guilt” over our slavery or our racially discriminatory past (present?) or mention of LGBTQ+ issues of any kind. This approach to education has become the model for rightwing school districts the nation over.

Some countries delete nasty periods from their history lessons too. Japan’s high school books conveniently delete mention of their cultural decimation of Korea in the earliest 20th century, or their genocidal pre-WWII invasion of China. Some nations don’t. German textbooks are very specific about Nazi atrocities; no one can graduate from high school without an in-depth tour of a WWII concentration camp. But rightwing school districts here are not just deleting these sensitive aspects of American history, removing books and lesson plans; accordingly, they are requiring textbook publishers to present rewritten, sanitized and highly inaccurate versions of our historical past.

The most recent example: ““The [DeSantis-appointed] Florida State Board of Education’s new standards includes controversial language about how ‘slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit,’ according to a 216-page document about the state’s 2023 standards in social studies, posted by the Florida Department of Education… Other language that has drawn the ire of some educators and education advocates includes teaching about how Black people were also perpetrators of violence during race massacres.” NBC News, July 20th. As educational budgets are sliced and diced, as state college tuition of results in decades of student debt repayment (US student debt exceeds the aggregate of all consumer debt), red state school districts are punishing teachers and letting America’s competitive advantage plunge even farther.

One horrific example of how inadequate our “revised” educational standards have fallen, in addition to the millions of unfilled STEM job openings, concerns are our desire to keep ahead of China’s military and economic ambitions to supplant the United States as the leading global power. One of China’s greatest Achilles Heels is their inability to manufacture the highly sophisticated top-level microchips that require these silicon wafers to grow in a highly stabilized, pristine and totally controlled environment.

The only significant mass-producer of these wafers is chipmaking giant Taiwan Semiconductor (TSMC – pictured above), one of the many reasons China wants to invade and annex Taiwan as a province “that has always been part of China.” The United States use to manufacture 40% of global chip demand, but the cost efficiencies of overseas production dropped US chipmaking to a mere 10%. Intel and Apple weren’t there for us either. A Biden sponsored bill passed last year committed $280 billion to high tech manufacturing and scientific research in the US.

So, with massive support from the Biden administration and with Intel on board, TSMC agreed to build two new facilities in the United States that will replicate the Taiwanese capacity. $40 billion worth! The required silicon wafers take months to grow in a very complex and controlled environment. They are way, way beyond the ordinary chips that electronics and carmakers had been relying on for years. They are capable of concentrating massive computing power within increasingly tiny chips that have become an absolute necessity in the modern era, for both civilian and military manufactures.

But there’s a catch, as TSMC discovered when trying to find educated and trained American workers to build and then operate their new plant, which had been slated to open in 2024, with a second plant in 2026. Work has slowed and, in some areas, stopped as a result. Annabelle Liang, writing for the July 21st BBC.com, explains: “On Thursday [7/20], TSMC Chairman Mark Liu said production of advanced microprocessors at its Arizona factory in the south west of the US would now begin in 2025… During an earnings presentation, Mr Liu said the plant, which has been under construction since April 2021, faced a shortage of workers with the ‘specialised expertise required for equipment installation in a semiconductor-grade facility.’… He added that the firm was ‘working to improve the situation, including sending experienced technicians from Taiwan to train the local skilled workers [in the US] for a short period of time’.”

Both GOP frontrunners, Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump, have pledged, among other administrative agency closures, to eliminate the US Department of Education and to cut support for education in general, including colleges and universities (as well as student tuition support) on top of that. DeSantis argues that he wants to make the United States look like Florida. Trump promised an administration literally driven by “retribution” against those who have opposed him and his policies. Seriously? How is any of this good for the United States?

I’m Peter Dekom, and as the GOP seems tired of supporting the United States to continue as the greatest nation on earth, China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea are chuckling to themselves.

Stuck!

Income has now begun to exceed the cost-of-living increases, inflation is down to a manageable level (3%), unemployment is low (3.6%), and most Americans are economically better off than they have been in a while. Yet, the majority of Americans are telling pollsters that the economy is heading in the wrong direction, Biden’s economic turnaround is all but ignored, and there is this lingering malaise that seems impossible to reverse. Do consumers need more time to adjust to the better “new normal”? Is the political unrest and polarization the unnerving cause? Is the GOP repetition, contrary to statistical realities, of economic disaster simply being taken at face value? Or is there something more?

I am going to take a risk at positing my own theory that goes beyond all of the above. I think in “the land of opportunity,” we no longer believe that folks in the United States in general, and their and their children’s lives specifically, are going to improve their lot in life. Sure, the United States is doing better than most of the rest of the world, but there are certain rising and pervasive realities that tell us that we are stuck.

Real estate (via rents, home prices and interest rates) has been pushing housing to become one of our greatest challenges. Square footage is dropping in new construction. Young college grads are returning to the center of bigger cities, eschewing the cost of owning a car, or being forced to commute increasing distances. Homeownership? Not in the cards for most new urban workers. Add this to the pressure of remote work, where remote work is even possible.

Tuition debt is crushing, as the cost of a college education has pretty much tracked around three times the rate of inflation. Rising workers are carrying a debt burden for years, often decades, that their parents never faced. Fewer are getting married, or if they do, it is later in life with a negative pressure on having children. As a result, Americans are reproducing at well less than the rate of replacement, a big bad reality for business seeking traditional growth in the consumer base.

Yet more young people are getting post-secondary education, and those mired in the world of high school degrees or less are hitting brick walls of economic stagnation. Since so many are getting some college, that great equalizer (education) no longer results in upward mobility. The majority of students and entry-level workers no longer believes that they will earn more and have a better lifestyle than their parents. Even for those who have jobs, many are locked in work below their expectations (picture: a Starbucks barista with a master’s degree), stagnant prospects for advancement and boredom with jobs that offer little in the way of challenging variety. All this without looking at the big environmental elephant in the room: climate change which is making day-to-day living increasingly uncomfortable.

This notion of being stuck is critical to understand, just as we are in the midst of what should be a time of joy that more people are making more money. But it is the “hope and expectation” quotient that most economists simply ignore. The 20-to-1 earnings differential between big company CEOs and their average worker in 1965 has risen to over 350-to-1 in 2023. In a nation that does not tax wealth (except on death or sale), half the wealth is owned by the one-percenters, income inequality in the United States is looking more like a banana republic than the land of upward mobility, long since passed. “That could be me” has been replaced by “never me.” And without those ordinary workers, those CEOs and shareholders could never have amassed such wealth.

Cost pressures and the need to keep overpaying those at the top of the economic ladder have permeated how we hire or engage people. Gig workers are now mainstream. Writing for the July 7th for The Morning (New York Times), David Leonhardt describes what fellow journalist Noam Schreiber calls “the fracturing of work.” Like the transition to highly skilled workers making automobiles in the early 20th century to the routinized “simple individual task” reality of Henry Ford’s assembly line. In 2023, this trend manifests in many ways.

“Universities devote a smaller share of faculty slots to tenured professorships than in the past — and hire more adjunct professors who have little chance for promotion. Law firms employ relatively fewer partners and more lawyers who are paid less. And Hollywood hires fewer writers to participate in the entire production process, relegating more of them to piecemeal work.

“This trend… is a central issue in the Hollywood writers’ strike that is now 11 weeks old [as of 7/20]. As one historian explained, there is increasingly a ‘tiered work force of prestige workers and lesser workers.’… Screenwriters — who are unionized — have gone on strike in an attempt to use their collective leverage to avoid becoming Hollywood’s equivalent of adjunct professors. Until the past decade, writers not only wrote scripts but also remained on set during filming and participated in the process. They offered thoughts about costumes and props and would tweak the script as the cast acted it out.

“The producer Michael Schur has compared the job to an apprenticeship. Schur was a writer on ‘The Office,’ and the experience helped him learn how to create and run his own shows… Today, only one or two writers remain with a show through production, while others produce scripts and are then dropped from the process. ‘The making of television is very compartmentalized now,’ John Koblin, who covers the television business for The Times, told me. ‘The writers write. The actors act. The directors direct.’…

“The trend is a microcosm of larger developments. Nationwide, the pay of the bottom 90 percent of earners has trailed well behind economic growth in recent decades (as you can see in these Times charts). Most Americans have not received their share of the economy’s growing bounty, while a relatively small share have experienced very large income gains.

“That’s not shocking. As the economist Thomas Piketty has explained, inequality tends to rise in a capitalist economy, partly because the wealthy have more political power and economic leverage than the middle class and poor do. But history also shows that rising inequality is not inevitable.” The rise of unions is one backlash that helps level that playing field, but our system of leaving the wealth of the richest class untaxed moves us in the opposite direction. And more specialized education, particularly in STEM subjects, would add new worker value.

Sure, we have massive technological changes impacting the future of work – AI and plasma computing being the hottest topics these days – but we have so institutionalized protecting wealth, so increased the inflation-corrected cost, until recently so marginalized the power of unions, that we have trashed hope, positive expectations and the prospect of rising up the economic ladder and for most. Add the contracting birthrates and the downright hostility to immigration, and you get an economic structure where genuine domestic growth seems to have left the building.

I’m Peter Dekom, and while are a nation with increasing expertise in promulgating mythology and explaining dysfunction through convoluted conspiracy theories, sometimes just looking at the obvious just seems to elude most of us.

If… Donald Trump Wins a Second Term as President, What?

I think we can pretty much count Ron DeSantis out as a non-MAGA-acceptable second place GOP candidate whose polls numbers are falling faster than a skydiver at an air show. Absent Donald Trump’s conviction of a crime enumerated in the 14th Amendment – which would require a judicial determination that Mr Trump “shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies” of the United States – or his sustaining a physical impairment (death or material disability), there are no legal barriers against his winning the GOP nomination and hence running in the general election. And in case you think Trump’s return, if elected President, would follow his almost randomized policy patterns inherent in his past term of office, think again.

Aside from his pledges to take down those who have criticized or opposed him in a fury of “retribution” and commuting or pardoning all or most of the January 6th insurrectionists who were convicted of associated misdemeanors and felonies, some very serious, there are details afoot. Since Mr Trump is not recognized as a detailed policy thinker, there are about 172 people in a Ft Worth, Texas think tank – the America First Policy Institute (AFPI) – who are preparing detailed policy vectors for a second (coming?) Trump term. The Ft Worth staff includes eight former cabinet secretaries from the Trump administration and 20 other political appointees. It’s part of their America First philosophy, which does not carry that meaning to those who oppose MAGA beliefs.

For those naysayers, who cannot conceive of a Trump victory in 2024, I point to their track record in 2016, and as noted in my recent Americans, the Economy and Unhappiness blog, incumbent presidents, where 70% or more of major polling shows 70% or more pessimistic about the economy, usually do not get reelected. Despite his litany of economic success, Biden’s negative economic numbers are at 74% now. His age is an issue that won’t go away, something that is irrelevant to DJT whose followers worship him as their MAGA cult master. The thought of Biden’s dying in office and leaving a very unpopular Kamala Harris as president is also weighing heavily on many voters’ minds. Biden’s elderliness follows him around like a shadow.

MAGA has morphed from an ideology based on deep state conspiracy theories, some as bizarre as QAnon’s grooming pedophiles notion, into an all-out cult-worshipping cadre where logic is not even considered. Trump has even passed Pope Francis in palpable “infallibility.”

Facts are denied or superseded by more palatable “alternative facts” (i.e., convenient falsehoods). Every Trump indictment is turned into a “they’re coming for you too” witch hunt, which in turn becomes a campaign contribution mega-generator.

So, we know we are lumbered with a Supreme Court not limited by ethical requirements or qualms, appointed for life, undoing individual and civil rights as quickly as they can review cases, that threatens to be with us for decades. As 22% of Republicans do not believe that we can have fair elections (77% of Dems who think we can), there is a lot of anger, lots of guns, and simmering unrest with a real threat of a repetition of election denial quite possible.

But there is a real Trump second term platform being developed in detail by AFPI, and they are not particularly shy about touting it. The July 13th issue of The Economist reports: “Even at this early stage, the details are something to behold. Thousand-page policy documents set out ideas that were once outlandish in Republican circles but have now become orthodox: finishing the border wall, raising tariffs on allies and competitors alike, making unfunded tax cuts permanent and ending automatic citizenship for anyone born in the United States. They evince scepticism for NATO and pledge to ‘end the war on fossil fuels’, by nixing policies designed to limit climate change.

“Alongside these proposals is something that aims to revolutionise the structure of government itself. MAGA Republicans believe that they will be able to enact their programme only if they first defang the deep state by making tens of thousands of top civil servants sackable. Around 50,000 officials would be newly subject to being fired at will, under a proposed scheme known as Schedule f.

“At the same time, to fill the thousands of political appointments at the top of the American civil service, the America Firsters are creating a ‘conservative LinkedIn’ of candidates whose personal loyalty to Mr Trump is beyond question. Merely expressing qualms about the storming of the Capitol on January 6th 2021 is grounds for disqualification. None of this is a shadowy conspiracy: it is being planned in the open.

“America Firsters will argue that civil-service reform promises to enhance democracy by preventing the unelected bureaucracy from stymying the programme of an elected president. Although checks and balances are an important part of America’s constitutional design, the civil service is not one of the three branches of government it enshrines…

“If the Republicans win both houses of Congress, as is possible, nobody in the executive or the legislature will be in a position to stop Mr Trump. After all, most of those in charge will already have publicly attested to the legitimacy of storming the Capitol. The federal courts will become one of the few remaining redoubts of independence and expertise in the American system. It is hard to see how they will not also come under sustained attack.

“If these carefully laid plans were enacted, America would follow Hungary and Poland down the path of illiberal democracy. True, America has more guardrails against backsliding—including centuries of democratic history and a more raucous and more decentralised media. However, these guardrails are weaker than in the past. Moreover, many Americans would be left worse off by these plans. Trust in institutions and the rule of the law would suffer, leaving the country yet more divided.”

Ukraine? Protecting Taiwan? Trump has been anything but subtle in his disdain for that protective umbrella – he also tends to avoid or withdraw from international treaties and commitments anyway – and is an overt admirer of autocrats the world over. China and Russia are totally into election mis- and dis-information; they want Trump as President like air.

I’m Peter Dekom, for those who do not believe in this Trumpian great American unravelling, I hope they are right… otherwise stand back and stand by.

Not Since Generalissimo Francisco Franco

In the first half of the 20th century, Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini rose to power and fought in WWII. Franco fought and prevailed in the earlier Spanish Civil War but sidestepped involvement in WWII but continued as Spain’s dictator until his death in 1975, when the Spanish monarchy pushed the country into the modern democracy that continues to this day. But in recent years, even after the fall of the Soviet Union and the satellite states, we’ve seen the rise of elected autocrats, like Hungary’s Viktor Mihály Orbán, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan or Poland’s Andrzej Sebastian Duda in NATO European democracies. France, Italy, Finland, Sweden, and the Netherlands are dealing with the rise of the populist right with rightwing governments. Germany’s Alternative for Germany populists are rising as well. Immigration continues to be the major issue. As of July 23rd, Spain seemed to be heading in that direction as well.

When the governing Spanish Socialist Worker’s Party (in coalition with the far left Unidas Podemos (“United We Can”) Party got taken to the cleaners in recent regional and local elections this past May, Socialist PM Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez was forced to call new elections. Spain could indeed march back to that rightwing autocratic mode not seen since Franco’s death in 1975. As reported by Ciarán Giles on July 23rd of the Associated Press: “The center-right Popular Party emerged from the May 28 elections with the most votes. Polls for the general election have consistently put the PP in first place — but [it needed] support from the far-right Vox party to form a government.”

Before we become too judgmental, we’ve seen that perilous swing towards autocracy from our ally Israel, as PM Benjamin Netanyahu seeks to override the checks and balances provided by the judiciary… or as GOP presidential candidate frontrunner, Donald Trump, pledges to be a president of “retribution,” taking over direct control of the Department of Justice and probably Homeland Security while eliminating the Department of Education, the Environmental Protection Agency and a few more administrative bodies.

There is both fear and impatience all over the earth as scientists (labeled by many as “elitists”) provide dire warnings of climate change acceleration, with no simple solutions and some very expensive long-term commitments. Autocrats embrace conspiracy theories that either deny or marginalize the inevitable challenges, even as climatic devastation explodes around us. The pandemic created parallel fears. Screw the “elitists” is that autocratic cry!

Further, even as the United States seems to have tamed inflation and generated what seems like a stable and prosperous economy, Europe is not faring well. The Ukraine War has slammed Europe harder, in terms of fuel and food prices. In a world where air conditioning is hardly as ubiquitous as it is here in the United States, climate change has leveled untenable European temperatures and uncontrolled flooding, washing away towns, farms and flooding even major cities. As with the United States, immigrants are shouldering blame wherever it can be alleged.

All over the world, people are feeling insecure about their future. Rightwing autocracies always promise strong and decisive leadership to end the crises, assign segments of society to blame… and always make things worse. The entire raison d'être for the anti-democracy MAGA movement is this anxiety about the changing world. Now Spain joins this rightwing fray. “The Popular Party and Vox have agreed to govern together in some 140 cities and towns since May, as well as to add two more regions to the one where they already co-govern. Sen. Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the PP’s leader, has not ruled out a partnership at the national level.

“Led by former PP member Santiago Abascal [pictured above], 47, Vox opposes abortion rights, denies climate change and rejects the need for government to combat gender violence… Nagore Calvo Mendizabal, a senior lecturer in Spanish and European politics and society at King’s College London, said the likelihood of Vox entering the government frames Sunday’s parliamentary election ‘in terms of the future of democracy in Spain as being what is at stake.’…

“Vox’s manifesto is virtually a ‘copy-and-paste of the tenets of the Franco regime,’ Calvo said. It promises, for example, a return to a highly centralized government by scrapping the 17 regions that came into being after Franco’s death.

“Beyond Spain, a PP-Vox government would mean another EU member has moved firmly to the right, a trend seen recently in Sweden, Finland and Italy. Countries such as Germany and France are concerned by what such a shift would portend for EU immigration and climate policies, Calvo said.

“Spain took over the EU’s rotating presidency July 1. Sánchez had hoped to use the six-month term to showcase the advances his government had made before a national election originally scheduled for December.

“Voter concerns over immigration and costs of living, as well as frustration with the EU’s perceived interference in national affairs, often have been cited to explain increases in right-wing support in other countries.” As major democracies face population contractions, the availability of arable land and habitable cities is contracting. Hence the pressure towards mass migration. Likewise, strongmen and narco-cartels are popping up in too many regions, promulgating civil wars and regional instability. The instability feeds on itself, and people are not comfortable with complex solutions… even if they are the only truth. Immigration factors in every rightwing rise.

Well, welcome to the new rising European mess. While Spain’s rightwing PP, even with Vox, did not lose the election, actually generating the most seats won, they fell short of a parliamentary majority. Now, the conservatives and the incumbent Socialists will both separately try to form coalitions that can rule. The only winner was instability.

I’m Peter Dekom, and since denial and marginalization are the current global placebos, we can expect an even great shift to rightwing autocracy… even though those who study history know it will never, never work… and will ultimately make terrible into horrible.

The Weathervane is Blowing towards Ignorance

The Weathervane is Blowing towards Ignorance

The Great “Hoax” vs Reality

There is such a backlash against science and the educated elite. Perhaps that these highly educated professionals are simply unable to ignore the harshest realities of change, from encroaching and rapidly morphing agents of disease to the rather obvious “natural disasters” that are scientifically clearly the product of man-induced accelerating climate change. But their posited “solutions” to these horribles, proselyted with great uniformity globally, are expensive, profoundly disruptive and anything but immediate. The scientific community has thus painted itself in a corner as harbingers of doom. Quite the opposite of the easy-to-digest pledges inherent in denial, blame and conspiracy theories.

It is hardly worth noting that people with greater education, those who are well read and perhaps have experienced other cultures through travel, are the least susceptible to conspiracy theories, and those elites with lust for power, the most likely to use conspiracy theories and blame to enhance their own malignant ambitions. Except for those who will support anyone who will cut taxes and environment/financial regulation, the MAGA Republican Party is almost entirely mired in denial, conspiracy theories and blame. Antivaxxers delight. Climate change marginalizers and deniers are elated. Those who believe God promised that there would never be another global natural disaster are reassured. And blame-mongers, including White supremacists, are in joyful “I told you so” mode. The passion between that battle between fact and fiction factions is extreme.

This rise in the ignorance over science is hardly historically unique as witch burning and the Spanish Inquisition should remind us, but there has always been a blurring between fact and fiction. When fact is too painful, fiction rises in importance, both in literature and common beliefs. Take this analysis from historian Lorraine Daston, writing in the Winter Edition (1998) of Daedalus, of the 18th century struggle between fact and fiction: “It was not only novelists and philosophers who worried about ‘fictions [that] begin to operate as realities,’ about the fragility of facts in the face of overweening imagination. Practicing naturalists also fretted openly. In his monumental Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire des insectes (1734–1742) the French naturalist and experimental physicist René Antoine Réaumur warned that ‘although facts were assuredly the solid and true foundations of all parts of physics,’ including natural history, not all reported facts in science could be trusted.”

We are once again consumed in our polarized America, between fact and fiction, between the educated and the uneducated or those relying on faith for their solutions and those who prefer easy explanations to reality. Nothing brings this home like the recent response to a local Iowa TV meteorologist Chris Gloninger’s telecasts in which he linked the rising number of searingly hot weather days, increasing intensity of tornadoes and catastrophic flooding in his state based upon step-by-step analysis of linkage to climate change statistics… the same facts that virtually all trained scientists all over the world have been presenting to us and to governmental agencies for years now.

Writing for the July 8th Associated Press, Hannah Fingerhut describes Gloninger’s fate for pressing those points: “The harassment started to intensify as TV meteorologist Chris Gloninger did more reporting on climate change during local newscasts — outraged emails and even a threat to show up at his house.

“Gloninger said he had been recruited, in part, to ‘shake things up’ at the Iowa station where he worked, but backlash was building. The man who sent him a series of threatening emails was charged with third-degree harassment. The Des Moines station asked him to dial back his coverage, facing what he called an understandable pressure to maintain ratings… ‘I started just connecting the dots between extreme weather and climate change, and then the volume of pushback started to increase quite dramatically,’ he said in an interview with The Associated Press… So, on June 21, he announced that he was leaving KCCI-TV — and his 18-year career in broadcast journalism altogether.

“Gloninger's experience is all too common among meteorologists across the country who are encountering reactions from viewers as they tie climate change to extreme temperatures, blizzards, tornadoes and floods in their local weather reports. For on-air meteorologists, the anti-science trend that has emerged in recent years compounds a deepening skepticism of the news media…

“Science is under attack in this country. It’s this larger trend. It’s really unacceptable from our perspective that anyone should have to fear for their lives for merely stating the facts… The gaps between Republicans' and Democrats’ confidence in both the scientific community and the news media have been the widest in nearly five decades of polling by the General Society Survey, a long-standing trends survey conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago. But confidence in both declined across the aisle last year. ‘Science is under attack in this country,’ said Chitra Kumar, managing director of Climate and Energy at the Union of Concerned Scientists. ‘It’s this larger trend. It’s really unacceptable from our perspective that anyone should have to fear for their lives for merely stating the facts.’

“Gloninger is moving back to Boston to care for aging parents, but he says he’s leaving Des Moines having realized that a small percentage of people who reject climate change make up an overwhelming percentage of the negative comments he has gotten.” Science sometimes fails. It can be wrong. But decades and decades of highly documented research has resulted in the virtual unanimity from the global scientific community, bolstered by the easily observable increase in average temperatures and soaring damage from “natural disasters,” that climate change is beyond real with serious consequences without major countermeasures. The minority of Americans who still deny climate change is, however, extremely vocal, dedicated and very, very angry at anyone who says otherwise.

I’m Peter Dekom, and when those who prefer conspiracy theories to science, might I suggest that they never visit a medical doctor for any complaint they may have… Clorox bleach anyone?

The Shame of Guantanamo Detention - 780 Detained Muslims, 30 Still Remain

   Iraqi prisoners tortured at Abu Ghraib in Iraq 

  Tortured Muslim Detainees at Guantanamo Bay 

As we explore war crimes against Vladimir Putin, Russian military leaders and civilians charged with integrating kidnapped Ukrainian children into Russian families, we gloss over our own war crime missteps. We’ve done it many times before, but most recently when the United States crossed the line against the Conventions Against Torture (a treaty to which we are not a signatory), our behavior is best exemplified by this century’s Iraq War and various other conflicts mostly involving the Middle East and Islamic Asia. We called our methods “enhanced interrogation,” justified as former US Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld labeled them, “what has been charged so far is abuse… technically different from torture.” Exposure to extreme cold, sleep deprivation, water boarding, urinating on the Qur’an, rough physical handling that often-included punching and hitting. White House lawyers during the G.W. Bush administration twisted legal language to exonerate what was clearly torture.

We purposely housed what we considered truly dangerous Muslim extremists, and many were very dangerous for sure, outside of the territorial United States, presumably a place unprotected by US constitutional rights: a naval base on Cuban soil that we occupied under a long-standing treaty - the detention center at Guantanamo Bay (“Gitmo”). It was the United States housing non-US citizens as enemy combatants outside our borders. Like the Eastern European “black ops” detention many claimed was often standard CIA procedure. Most have been released, some were people in the “wrong place at the wrong time” but otherwise innocent. Others were terrorists with American blood on their hands, most associated with the 9/11/2001 attacks against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. They were indefinitely detained, many without formal charges.

Gitmo was opened in 2002… and despite repeated political pledges to close the facility, continues to operate to this very day. After decades, an official investigator from the United Nations was finally allowed to visit those remaining prisoners. As reported by Edith M Lederer, writing for the July 8th Associated Press: “U.N. investigator Fionnuala Ní Aoláin met with the last 30 men at the U.S. detention center in Cuba, seen in 2006. She says all of the 780 Muslims who were detained, most without cause, were traumatized for life… At the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the aging men known by their serial numbers arrived at the meeting shackled. Every single one told the visitor — who was the first independent person many had talked to in 20 years: ‘You came too late.’…

“For the first time since the facility opened in 2002, a U.S. president had allowed a United Nations independent investigator, Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, to visit… She said in an interview with the Associated Press that it’s true she’d arrived too late, because 780 Muslim men were detained there after the 9/11 terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people, and today just 30 remain.

“The U.N. had tried for many years to send an independent investigator, but was turned down by the administrations of George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump… Ní Aoláin praised President Biden’s administration for allowing ‘critical voices’ into the facility. And she expressed hope other governments that have barred U.N. special investigators will follow Biden’s example.

“The Belfast-born law professor said she believes the ‘high-value’ and ‘non-high-value’ detainees she met with — the Biden administration gave her free rein to talk to anyone — all “recognized the importance of sitting in a room” with her… ‘But I think there was a shared understanding that at this point, with only 30 of them left, while I can make recommendations and they will hopefully substantially change the day-to-day experience of these men, the vast majority of their lives was lived in a context where people like myself and the U.N. had no influence,’ she said.

“Ní Aoláin, who teaches at the University of Minnesota and Queens University in Belfast, said she’d visited many high-security prisons in her six years as a U.N. human rights investigator, including some built for those convicted of terrorism and serious related offenses… But ‘there is really no population on Earth like this population that came to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in the circumstances in which they came, rendered across borders,’ she said.

“In a report issued June 26, Ní Aoláin said even though the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, were ‘crimes against humanity,’ the treatment of the detainees at Guantanamo was unjustified. The vast majority were taken there without cause and had no relationship to the terrorist attacks, she wrote, adding that all of the men still alive suffer from psychological and physical trauma.

“The Biden administration, which has said it wants to close the Guantanamo detention center, said in a statement attached to the report that Ní Aoláin’s findings ‘are solely her own,’ and that ‘the United States disagrees in significant respects with many factual and legal assertions’ but would carefully review her recommendations.

“In her interview with the AP last week, Ní Aoláin discussed on a personal level what she saw there… She said all U.S. personnel are required to address detainees by their internment serial numbers, not their names, which she called ‘dehumanizing.’… Ní Aoláin said she was especially concerned about three detainees who have not been charged and ‘live in a complete legal limbo,’ which is ‘completely inconsistent with international law.’.. Of the others, 16 have been cleared to leave but haven’t found a country willing to take them, and 11 still have cases pending before U.S. military commissions.

“When the detainees were brought to meet her, they were shackled, which she said is not standard procedure even for those convicted of terrorism. Under international law, she said, people cannot be shackled except for imperative security reasons, and in her view it should be used at Guantanamo only as a last resort in exceptional circumstances… But they still talked — about the scant contacts with their families, their many health problems, the psychological and physical scars of the torture and abuse they experienced, and their hopes of leaving and reuniting with loved ones.”

All wars have potential war crimes. Many questioned the US saturation bombing of Dresden, Germany or the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan in WWII. Mostly civilian targets… but how many lives were saved by accelerating an eventual surrender and end to the war? But detaining terrorists, often not members of any military protected under the Geneva Convention, under conditions that are difficult to call anything but illegal torture and unsupportable incarceration without trial, we need to ask: Who are we? What does America stand for? Why are we so hated by so many all over the world? And how do we take a moral high ground when we have been so violative of human rights before?

I’m Peter Dekom, and as we cling to what’s left of our democracy, we cannot continue as a symbol of freedom and human rights until we examine our own practices and accept some serious level of accountability.

Downtown is Going Downscale

      The lesson of Detroit?

“Our bet was that downtown was going to come back, and it hasn’t.” 

LA Restauranteur Claude Cognian

Want some quiet time? Head on over to San Francisco’s pricey downtown, where restaurants are closing right alongside upscale boutiques and department stores. Union Square is embracing irrelevance. Office towers have massive space for lease. Yet California weather continues to lure a homeless crowd, from the Bay Area down to San Diego. Skilled white-collar workers faced historical housing prices but got used to remote employment during the pandemic. Convincing them to return to the office has been a challenge. In-office mandates, touted to promote the synergy of meetings and proximity, seem to have fallen on deaf ears, as highly skilled employees increasingly have the leverage quit and find that remote alternative, often at higher pay. Online shopping and take-out dining have also had a profound impact on real estate usage.

Unlike jobs where hands-on product manufacturing or transportation require physical presence or where specialized equipment and staffing (think hospitals) are a necessary, sales, marketing, software development, analytics, negotiation, document drafting and review, etc., etc. are well-suited to remote work. Even desired face-to-face meetings are now routinely virtual.

The impact of this transition, accelerated with artificial intelligence, is resetting how business real estate is valued and used. Parking garages, once filled with workers’ cars, increasing lie increasingly empty. As we transition from gasoline and diesel-powered vehicles to electrified alternatives, the economic justification for “gas stations” – with giant storage tanks of volatile grades of fuel and space-eating fueling bays – will slide into charging stations in different locations where people spend more than five minutes. Workplaces. Restaurants. Retailers that survive. Museums. Sports venues. Think of all that real estate that is no longer economically justified. Can offices be quickly adapted into housing, addressing a vastly more immediate crisis? Is it too late?

Indeed, these changes will reshape cities. San Francisco is but one example: “[The] city’s downtown retailing community already appears locked in a doom loop, with Nordstrom… and Coco Republic joining a mass exodus in the past few days. Offices empty during the pandemic have stayed vacant thanks to the popularity of remote working, in turn depreciating real estate values, reducing City Hall tax receipts, squeezing public service budgets, triggering more residents and businesses to depart, so shrinking the tax base further.

“And while the city’s authorities are attempting to push through legislation to make planning quicker, encourage pop-ups, hasten retail-to-office conversions and beef up policing, the reality is that many of America’s biggest retailers have already closed their doors.” Forbes, May 11th. I write about California, not just because that is where I live, but because what happens in the Golden State is often a precursor to cities across the nation. It is true that the cost of housing, mired traffic and taxes are motivating many to leave the state entirely, but most of those wanting to leave are not exactly prepared to abandon the weather and amenities.

Los Angeles, like San Francisco, mirrors the problem: “For decades the Los Angeles financial district was the beating heart of downtown, the corporate muscle that gave the city of sprawl a soaring glass skyline. But the pandemic and the wave of remote work hollowed out its skyscrapers and helped shut many restaurants and businesses that relied on crowds of workers. Though the neighborhood shows signs of recovery, few expect it to return to being the bustling hive of suits and ties that it was.

“To many insiders — the urban planners, real estate developers and business owners with interests in it — the area will recover only if its identity grows more textured than a zone of white-collar office space… Desirable office addresses were already spreading beyond the financial district before the pandemic, as downtown experienced a renaissance in housing, art and entertainment on blocks previously shunned by investors and residents.

“To the south, billions of dollars were spent improving the blocks around Crypto.com Arena with hotels, housing and entertainment venues. Obsolete century-old commercial and industrial buildings to the east were renovated into desirable housing and fashionably unconventional offices. Billions more were spent north on Bunker Hill, where the Music Center (including Walt Disney Concert Hall) and office skyscrapers have been joined by museums, apartments and a high-rise hotel… The housing boom drew residents to the financial district as well, and that has kept it from turning into a ghost town.

“But for the area to truly come back to life, many say it will need to follow the path of Lower Manhattan. The financial capital of New York faced an exodus after 9/11, but city officials and investors staved it off by making it a place of more diverse uses. It is still an office district but is far more lively than it used to be since it also became a residential neighborhood with more shops, restaurants, parks and hotels than it had before the attacks. A performing arts center will open in September.

“‘Cities evolve. That’s what they do,’ said downtown L.A. business representative Nick Griffin. ‘From natural disasters, wars and pandemics. They evolve with market changes, customer preferences and cultural shifts. Downtown has evolved pretty dramatically over the last 20 years, and the next five or so are going to be very interesting.’” Roger Vincent writing for the June 25th Los Angeles Times. Across America, changes in technology, economic realities, the waning need to centralize and the rising costs of operating within big city limits are pushing urban planners to new models.

Shopping malls seem to survive only to the extent that they become destination centers with much more than just a lot of shops. Multiplex theaters are no longer cherished anchor tenants. These changes are exploding, and for those larger municipalities not able to adapt fast enough, take a good look at what happened to Detroit (above) when automakers decentralized and automated. We need to learn from our mistakes. But even mixed use has its limits. Manhattan has always been about mixed use, but housing costs are spinning out of control. What are the answers? Can we save cities? All of them? The answer is coming faster than we may wish. Opportunity or endgame?

I’m Peter Dekom, and the destabilizing hyper-acceleration of change is at the root of our polarization, and it is rapidly redefining how and where we will live and work in the immediate future.

The New MAGA Red State Mantra – If You Fail Big, Lie and Claim Success

For MAGA politicians, from Donald Trump to Arizona gubernatorial candidate, Kari Lake, their approach to failed candidacy is simply to claim that they actually won. They never have any meaningful substantiating evidence, even failed in litigation to prove their election fraud claims, but they and their diehard followers believe they were the righteous victors. If you repeat a lie enough, it seems, it begins to ring true, especially to MAGA voters. Red state legislatures are tripping all over themselves to pass “election integrity” laws to correct the “election fraud” that never was… statutes that make voting difficult by eliminating voting procedures that enable opposition voters, from gerrymandering and polling station placement to vote-by-mail, to name a few.

Well, if claiming success even in failure works in creating believers for candidates, does it work the same way for failed state policies and governance? Well, at least one state – Mississippi – gave it the good ole college try. The news so bordered the credible that even blue states and liberal journalists stood up and took notice. Maybe Mississippi, long known as clinging to the bottom of national statistics in health, income and education, seemed to have discovered an educational program that really could improve educational performance. Their rapid rise in their public-school reading scores seemed to confirm that their new reading education program was a big success. They called it, “The Mississippi Miracle.”

But why does it even matter? The reality remains that perpetually poor people these days have children who remain poor. Expanding racially directed affirmative action, now illegal per the US Supreme Court, did not do much to expand economic opportunities for disadvantaged classes. Effectively, “upward mobility” in the United States has pretty much been relegated to history books, assuming these books have not been purged from public libraries and public schools. As austerity policies have effectively reduced our nationwide commitment to public primary and secondary education, more prevalent in red states, all the while as taxes for the wealthiest have been sliced both at the national (the corporate tax reform act of 2017) and state levels – often under that profoundly incorrect GOP mantra that just won’t die (“a rising tide floats all boats”).

In those elite universities, state and private, that open doors to more lucrative careers. even after affirmative action, “At 38 colleges in America, including five in the Ivy League – Dartmouth, Princeton, Yale, Penn and Brown – more students came from the top 1 percent of the income scale than from the entire bottom 60 percent.” According to a Harvard study, reported in the New York Times, July 5th. The same is true for elite public universities (e.g., in California, Michigan and Virginia). The likelihood of children earning more than their parents has steadily declined since 1985. The only way to break this cycle, according to experts, is a ground-up improvement in public elementary, middle and high schools. Since Mississippi sits at the bottom of most educational and income statistics, its public-school students stand at the lowest level of educational and economic opportunity. So, news of The Mississippi Miracle turned heads. Could this impoverished state, with a large super-impoverished Black constituency, have found the solution?

Writing for the July 5th Los Angeles Times, columnist Michael Hiltzik delves into the truth behind this program: “The reference is to that benighted state’s surprising success in improving reading scores for its fourth-graders through a focused program of literacy instruction for teachers and pupils alike. It’s now 10 years old, an anniversary that may have inspired the most recent assessments… Statistics show that Mississippi’s children have gone from having almost the worst scores on the standardized national reading test for fourth-graders in 2013 to narrowly exceeding the national average in the most recent test, administered last year….

“Education writers and the New York Times jumped on the bandwagon. (‘Mississippi Is Offering Lessons for America on Education,’ was the latter’s headline.)… A close examination of the numbers suggests that it’s not true. Bob Somerby and Kevin Drum, two of the most adept myth busters in the blogosphere, have done yeomen’s work deconstructing the statistics. Their conclusion is that Mississippi’s program isn’t nearly as successful as its fans assert and may not have produced any improvement at all in fourth-grade reading scores. The apparent gains may be a statistical illusion…

“Mississippi implemented what appeared to be an aggressive attack on its literacy shortcomings in 2013. Its Literacy-Based Promotion Act (LBPA) required that pupils who failed to pass a reading test at the end of their third-grade year be held back… While repeating third grade, they were to receive intensified instruction. Funds were appropriated for ‘summer reading camps’ for poorly performing kids. New teachers were required to show proficiency in literacy education before receiving their certifications. The educational system was reoriented toward the ‘science of reading.’ That includes phonics, a method that teaches reading by breaking words up into sound bites of one letter or more, and showing students how to link them together into words…

“What’s the real story? Drum and Somerby focused on the so-called ‘third-grade gate’ implemented by the literacy program — the requirement that third-grade underachievers repeat third grade. In Mississippi, almost 10% of third-graders have been getting held back, a higher proportion than in any other state. (Some may have been held back more than once.)

“The statistical result of this policy should be obvious. If you throw the lowest-ranking 10% out of a statistical pool, the remaining pool inevitably looks better. Drum went so far as to add those dropped pupils back into the calculation. He found that the gains from 2013 to 2022 completely disappeared. ‘In other words,’ he remarked, ‘the 2013 reforms had all but no effect.’… As long as Mississippi’s social and economic conditions, especially for Black and Latino residents, remain mired just this side of medieval, its isolated effort to improve reading scores will be doomed to failure, and its statistical gains will look not much better than window-dressing. Journalists, take note.”

America’s only national commitment to improved public education was in response to the Soviet Union’s apparent lead in the “space race,” beginning in 1957, with several “firsts”: a satellite launch, quickly followed by placing a dog, then a man in orbit. That effort war off in favor of austerity in the years during and after the deficit-busting Viet Nam War. Today, the death of upward mobility seems to be a well-established norm.

I’m Peter Dekom, and we’d rather cut taxes for the rich, sending our federal deficit soaring, that improve the health and educational quality of all Americans needed in a very competitive global environment… instead of annihilating upward mobility with almost universally substandard public education, particularly in impoverished communities.