Mother Nature’s Budget-Busting Vendetta

 March 2023 flooding in Pajaro, CA

October 2023 Highland Fire in Aguanga, CA

Mother Nature’s Budget-Busting Vendetta

You Ain’t Seen Nuffin’ Yet

For most consumers, it’s usually somewhere between quality of life and insurance costs, but for an increasing number of Americans, it is beginning to boil down to survival, keeping your home and job/business/farm. For larger entities, including corporations with multistate operations, it’s about budgeting and planning. Insurance companies are constantly reevaluating their risk profiles, and increasingly, their business in many states either makes no sense or requires premium increases that make their customers blanche, hovering on the brink of unaffordability.

Which brings it down to the insurer of last resort, the fixer of infrastructure, the employer of those uniformed services that are referred to generally as “first responders,” the provider of emergency housing and medical care, and the maintainer of the vehicles and instrumentalities of massive disaster reaction and repair: government. Charities, like the Red Cross, can temper some of these needs, but it is government that shoulders the biggest load. Which does mean taxpayers.

All this is well and good, but it gets so much worse when a major political party generally denies the impact of climate change and is heavily focused on cutting government services to keep taxes low for the richest in the land. Add to this congressional gridlock and the quagmire generated by the lobbying and campaign contribution efforts against necessary regulation to contain the beast. The “beast,” if you haven’t figured it out yet, is accelerating climate change… and the litany of disasters that have already occurred and are going to in frequency and intensity in our immediate future is beyond clear.

Because of its size and the array of different climatic zones, California is one of most severely impacted states when it comes to climate related disasters and the massive resulting costs. Yet while California fully accepts the continued consequences of not containing greenhouse gas emissions, the undisputed (at least by virtually all qualified scientists) cause of climate change, it remains, like most states, woefully unprepared for the expected disasters and related costs. Oh, and California also enjoys the trials and tribulations of sitting on the earthquake home of homes: the ring of fire. We’ve had climate related: atmospheric torrential rain, floods, mudslides, desertification of some this nation’s once-most productive farmland, severe water shortages (and we still have floods?!) and wildfires after wildfires taking out buildings by the hundreds.

So, California is a great place to start when it comes to state budgets and their planning for the inevitable climate change-related disasters. We’re facing a projected $38 B+ budget shortfall generated by changes related to reduced income tax revenues (expected investment returns to the mega-wealthy fell short), a major homeless crisis (California’s warmer cities attract unsheltered people, supplemented with busloads of undocumented immigrants from Texas), a slowdown in real estate sales and revaluations, and the exodus of several big corporate taxpayers to states with lower taxes. It with perspective that Anita Chabria, writing for the January 12th Los Angeles Times, addresses the proposed state budget presented by Governor Gavin Newsom:

“[U]nlike most years when state officials have a grasp by April, when taxes are usually filed, of how much money California can responsibly spend, last year was different… Mother Nature slammed the state in winter and spring with record snow and storms that flooded entire towns such as Planada and Pajaro. Capitola was hit with a bomb cyclone that all but destroyed the pier. Tulare Lake reappeared in the Central Valley, submerging homes and crops and revealing the fragility of an expensive levee. The damage of that extreme weather cost $4.6 billion and took 22 lives, according to the National Centers for Environmental Information.

“Our weather was so volatile and devastating that even the IRS had mercy, delaying the deadline for the majority of the state’s residents to file taxes first to October and then to November… Which meant that no one really knew (though certainly there were indicators) how much we were spending that we didn’t really have until a couple of months ago, when those taxes were finally tallied and came up short… ‘This has been a hard year,’ Newsom told the reporters gathered to hear his plan, and no one is arguing that.

“But it also may not be an unusual year, as we move forward into the economic realities of climate change. Sure, the stock market is projected to rise, inflation is down and employment figures are up. By all measurable standards, the economies of California and the United States are primed for a good year, regardless of public sentiment that, faced with higher bills and a nagging sense of uncertainty, isn’t quite ready to embrace a positive outlook.

“But the severity of our weather is not likely to abate, and dealing with the unrelenting price tag of storms, floods, fires, rising sea levels, extreme heat, mudslides and more is going to change what we can and can’t afford in California. Consumers see this already with home and car insurance — rates are rising based on projections of more climate disasters to come.

“At the same time, costs of rebuilding or maintaining homes in high-risk zones are increasing as well, be it in places where the sea is encroaching on mansions or where flames threaten double-wides in fire-prone forests. Even keeping those homes hot or cool is getting tougher to pay for… That means it’s harder to stay housed at any income level. More than 3 million Americans, mostly in storm-heavy states such as Texas and Florida, have already moved because of weather, a trend of climate migration expected to increase as the cost of living in dangerous and devastated places becomes untenable.

“The federal government recently released its National Climate Assessment, which detailed the many ways that climate and economy are linked, and the many ways the situation will likely get worse… In the 1980s, the report said, ‘the country experienced, on average, one (inflation-adjusted) billion-dollar disaster every four months. Now, there is one every three weeks, on average.’.. Every three weeks, a billion-dollar disaster. In the last few years, that added up to 89 billion-dollar events. And that billion-dollar amount doesn’t include the emotional and economic tolls of deaths and injuries, the families traumatized, generational wealth literally up in smoke, poor communities — often people of color — left without drinking water or roads.

“The costs of climate change aren’t just the obvious ones, though. Newsom’s budget has cuts — though the next few months will be all about the governor and the Legislature hashing out exactly what those will be. Newsom is suggesting reducing spending by $8.5 billion, the largest chunk of which would come out of climate programs. But also losing money would be housing programs, the Middle Class Scholarship fund and other reductions likely to be unpopular…

“While our reserve fund is robust, states including Wyoming, which also has a volatile revenue model, have funds that are much stronger than ours. Wyoming could run for nearly a year off the money it has saved. Obviously, California is bigger, but we have saved only enough to last less than three months…. Projecting future revenue, for people and for states, is always a bit of a crystal-ball endeavor. But climate change is going to cost us dearly, one way or another.” Yet as much as Texans and Floridians like to make fun of California, at least we don’t pretend climate change is just a passing cycle.

I’m Peter Dekom, and take a good long, hard look at where kicking the climate change containment can down the road has brought us… and as I said above, you ain’t seen nuffin’ yet.

Living Paycheck to Paycheck, How Many Americans Are Living on Borrowed Time?

Two parallel American realities followed the COVID pandemic: (i) with pent-up demand instantly released, consumers went on a credit card spending spree, and (ii) the Federal Reserve began a very serious effort to increase interest rates to stem high inflation. Adding labor shortages, supply chain challenges, the process of restarting a moribund economy and a decline in unemployment, despite wage hikes, average Americans watched prices everywhere soar. These factors created a general feeling of instability that, in spite of Biden’s litany of economic success, escalated a general fear for the future in the hearts and minds of too many Americans. Whether the fear was real or imagined, it became fodder for the MAGA GOP to claim, without proposing any real or specific economic policies in support, that they would bring economic stability back to America.

Neither the President nor the Congress set interest rates. Likewise, they do not control commodities’ pricing, including that benchmark “price at the pump.” Sure, we could repeal all state, local and federal taxes on gasoline and diesel fuel, but our crumbling roads and bridges just might fail beyond repair. We already are the largest producer of oil and gas on earth, but those who produce fossil fuels don’t discount their products to fellow Americans one cent. So amping up oil and gas production is clearly not the answer, even as some believe logically that it should be. Housing for those seeking to buy a home has slid to a level of the least affordability we have experienced in many decades… and rents are skyrocketing as a result.

But the scariest part of life for too many average US consumers is their level of debt. Aliss Higham, writing for the December 16th Newsweek, underlines the related fear factor: “A new poll… conducted by Redfield and Wilton Strategies exclusively for Newsweek, found that 46 percent of Americans with credit cards are either ‘very’ or ‘fairly’ concerned over paying back their spending debts. The survey was conducted on December 8 with a sample size of 1,500 people living in the U.S…

“Experts have said the rise in credit-card dues comes down to high inflation. Dan Casey, investment adviser representative at Bridgeriver Advisors in Michigan, told Newsweek: ‘I believe credit-card debt has reached record-breaking levels due to persistent inflation…. Inflation has caused increased financial pressure, and many are struggling to keep up with the cost of living… This has caused many people to fall behind on their payments, forcing them to carry a balance over to the next month. Late fees and high interest rates on credit cards only add to the difficulty of getting them paid off.’" There are other factors gnawing at many American wallets as well.

In cities and states where there had been a moratorium on rent and evictions during COVID, most regulations did not relieve the rental obligation but merely deferred payment until the pandemic subsided. Last summer, a lot of shoes dropped when the pandemic officially “ended,” when those accrued rents began to mature: “Evictions [were] soaring as pandemic-era protections intended to keep tenants in their homes have been lifted. Princeton University's Eviction Lab finds average eviction filings in some cities have jumped 50% or more compared to pre-pandemic rates.” NPR, June 23rd. Some financial assistance was still available, but clearly it was trickling away. Homelessness continued to soar as a result.

For the monied class and their corporations, the ability to buy foreclosed homes, fix, aggregate their acquisitions and then flip them into the rental marketplace, made the rich so much richer. This practice became a new major housing path, for those still able to afford it, to access the homes they used to buy. Indeed, wannabe homebuyers in a rapidly contracting housing market often could not outbid or react fast enough thwart these corporate “we pay cash” buyers… and were forced into the expensive rental marketplace.

With the richest in our land – particularly the mega-rich billionaires with equally mega-borrowing ability – able to use their legions of tax experts to sidestep paying taxes, my Christmas day blog, Is the Middle Class Becoming the Upper Lower Class? took a long, hard look at our rapidly expanding income/wealth inequality gap. Even as the economy settles down as much as it can, the new American polarization anomalies – particularly our unwillingness to tax wealth except on transfer or death – are very likely to continue represent the greatest income gap in the developed world for the future.

We can succumb to the pablum of a promised return to the glorious days of yesteryear – which if you look carefully enough were anything but glorious – or we can dump false promises, dangerous conspiracy theories, inapplicable labels (like “entitlements” and “creeping socialism”) or false hope, and actually fix these anomalies with pragmatic solutions. Or we can feed the egos of wannabe leaders who truly offer nothing more than the same old-same old… or worse.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I continue to be amazed at how gullible so many Americans can be as they seem to believe the most obvious false promises and blame that unscrupulous politicians shamelessly pedal to satisfy their personal ambitions.

A Candid Admission – There May Be Some Value in Standardized College Application Testing

A Candid Admission – There May Be Some Value in Standardized College Application Testing

Getting In…. and Why Bother?

I guess you cannot be a top-rated, even “elite,” college or university without the most qualified students. But who are they, how do you determine their qualifications, and why are so many universities disposing of standardized test scores? The Supreme Court has dispensed with most DEI criteria – mostly race and ethnic heritage – and the demand for the top schools remains very high, but how do admissions officers choose? Because you play a tuba, and the university orchestra needs a tuba player? You are an amazing running back? Because you have straight A’s, but 85% of your high school also has straight A’s? It ‘s a big question for college admissions officers, and many of the reasons why some colleges have dispensed with those tests may be based on flawed assumptions and biases.

David Leonhardt, writing for the January 7th/8th NY Times The Morning news feed has some relevant observations on point: “Without test scores, admissions officers sometimes struggle to distinguish between applicants who are likely to thrive at selective colleges and those likely to struggle. Why? Because high school grades do not always provide enough information, especially because of grade inflation in recent years…

“I understand why many people dislike standardized tests. They’re unpleasant to take, and they have their flaws. The most significant concern is that they may be racially and economically biased… But the emerging data from academic research tells a different story: Standardized tests are less biased than many other parts of the college application process, like extracurricular activities, college essays and teacher recommendations. An admissions system that drops mandatory tests in favor of these other factors gives big advantages to affluent students.

“Test scores, by contrast, seem to be useful at identifying students from disadvantaged backgrounds who have enormous potential, even if their scores aren’t quite as high on average as the those of well-off applicants. ‘When you don’t have test scores, the students who suffer most are those with high grades at relatively unknown high schools, the kind that rarely send kids to the Ivy League,’ David Deming, a Harvard economist who has studied the issue, told me. ‘The SAT is their lifeline.’… Advantaged students who do better on the SAT or ACT do better in college, and the same is true of disadvantaged students…

“M.I.T. became one of the few colleges to reinstate their test requirement… Tests scores are not the main factor that M.I.T. uses, but they are part of the process. ‘Once we brought the test requirement back, we admitted the most diverse class that we ever had in our history,’ Stuart Schmill, the admissions dean, said. In M.I.T.’s current first-year class, 15 percent of students are Black, 16 percent are Hispanic, 38 percent are white, and 40 percent are Asian American. And M.I.T. is more economically diverse than many other elite schools… [Is abandoning standardized tests a mistake?] Melissa Kearney, a University of Maryland professor, wrote that standardized tests had become ‘another policy instance where doing what ‘feels good’ turns out to be counterproductive…

“Without test scores, admissions officers sometimes have a hard time distinguishing between applicants who are likely to do well at elite colleges and those who are likely to struggle. Researchers who have studied the issue say that test scores can be particularly helpful in identifying lower-income students and underrepresented minorities who will thrive. These students do not score as high on average as students from affluent communities or white and Asian students. But a solid score for a student from a less privileged background is often a sign of enormous potential…

“An academic study released last summer by the group Opportunity Insights, covering the so-called Ivy Plus colleges (the eight in the Ivy League, along with Duke, M.I.T., Stanford and the University of Chicago), showed little relationship between high school grade point average and success in college. The researchers found a strong relationship between test scores and later success.” But there’s a bigger question, when the cost of a college education has increased at a multiple of the cost of living over the past few decades… and student loans now aggregate far more than all the US credit card debt. With more than a few billionaires having been college dropouts, is a college education worth the cost?

Writing for the January 9th, FastCompany.com, Stephen Moret and Jeffrey Selingo examine this most interesting issue and an often overlooked alternative “education”: “The U.S. labor market has not been particularly kind to America’s latest crop of college graduates. Estimates from the New York Federal Reserve indicate that recent college grads have faced higher unemployment rates than other workers, a shift from typical historical patterns. What’s more, roughly 40% of recent college grads are considered ‘underemployed,’ meaning they are not working in a college-level job. With those sobering statistics in mind, it’s not surprising that more than half of Americans no longer believe college is worth the cost.

“Of course, cost is just one part of the higher education equation. Whether an education investment is worth it depends not just on what we pay, but on what we get in return. While most grads do reap economic benefits from their college experience, the lack of confidence among the general public should be taken seriously.

“Research shows that students go to college for many purposes, but getting a good job consistently ranks among their chief reasons for pursuing a degree. Without the opportunity for meaningful work and economic security, the many other benefits of higher education are unlikely to be fully realized.

“Unfortunately, one of the most promising ways to improve that return on investment remains out of reach for most students: internships.. We believe internships are a crucial component of translating the college experience into a career. One year after graduation, students who completed a paid internship, for instance, earn $3,000 more than those who didn’t have one. Grads who participated in paid internships during college are far more likely to be satisfied with their careers and report higher annual income… If students and employers agree internships are valuable, why don’t more students complete them?

“As with so many challenges in education and the workforce, there’s no one answer. But the problem stems, in part, from the fact that many internships are unpaid. Even when students can cover tuition, room, and board—which they must often cobble together different funding sources to do—they often don’t have the resources to take an unpaid job, particularly if it involves forgoing other work they’re doing to support themselves or their families. That’s particularly true for students from low-income backgrounds, including many of those who are the first in their families to attend college. Research from Strada shows that while first-generation students are less likely to participate in internships, they are much more likely to work 20 hours per week. For continuing-generation learners, the opposite is true.” In a world of rising polarization and escalating income/wealth inequality, is higher education still the path to upward mobility… or is upward mobility now relegated to the scrapheap of American history?

I’m Peter Dekom, and perhaps our focus should be more on creating “equal opportunity” and upgrading our primary and secondary public schools to meet that challenge.

Lower Violent Crime Rates, Higher Claims of Rising Violent Crime

 

Just as GOP claims constantly hammer on their belief that US violent crime is completely out of control, the FBI statistics (see above charts) clearly state otherwise. But yes, hate crimes are exploding, and gun-related crimes are significantly higher in states with the lowest level of gun control. And yes, mass shootings were on the rise in 2022/23, but while firearm homicide has become the leading cause of death for children and teens, otherwise there has been an 8% to 10% decline in gun deaths over the past two years.

Donald Trump’s calling cards include amping up the fear of violent crime, repeating the threat to US jobs and to rising crime from immigrants, challenging the citizenship bona fides high level politicians of color or Latino ethnicity (Barack Obama, Nikki Haley, Ted Cruz, Kamala Harris, etc.), almost always his political opponents, and maintaining i. only I can fix it, and ii. if I am not elected, there will be “bedlam.” Trump’s claims have become “indisputable doctrine” among virtually all GOP candidates… even though they are not true. That violent gun crime is measurably higher in red states should tell you which party has the right take on guns.

Writing for the New York Times The Morning (January 11th), German Lopez summarizes the trend: “In the chaotic early months of the Covid pandemic, when the U.S. was also going through the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder, violent crime rose across the country. Murders in 2020 increased at the fastest rate since national statistics began in 1960. Other crimes, like shootings and car thefts, also increased.

“The surge in violence left some experts worried that the U.S. might be entering another era of high crime, similar to that of the 1960s through the ’90s.

“But the data over the past year has offered a much more optimistic picture. The number of murders in U.S. cities fell by more than 12 percent — which would be the biggest national decline on record. The spike that started in 2020 now looks more like a blip, and the murder rate is lower than it was during the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s. The recent data also suggests that the violent-crime rate in 2023 was near its lowest level in more than 50 years, as Jeff Asher, a crime analyst, wrote for his newsletter…

“Regardless, the reality is this: During Covid, murders increased. As life has returned to normal, they have decreased.

“The second explanation involves Floyd’s death. High-profile police killings typically strain relations between law enforcement and the public. This leads some officers to pull back from activities that can stop crime. More people become skeptical of working with the police to solve and prevent crimes. And as they lose trust in the police and the justice system, more Americans resort to their own means, including violence, to settle conflicts.

“A similar phenomenon played out in the mid-2010s. Widely publicized police killings of Black men in Ferguson, Mo.; Baltimore; Chicago; and elsewhere strained relations between the police and their communities, and murders increased.

“Back then, murders declined after a couple of years, as tensions eased and officials tried to repair police-community relations and improve policing. The same seems to have happened in the last couple of years.”

So, it seems that social injustice, lax gun control and politicians pressing a rightwing “us vs them” platform are significant fomenters of violent crime. Communication, inclusion and increasing economic opportunity work the reverse. Extremism, “I’m right and you’re wrong” intractability, overly simplistic explanation, over-promising impossible solutions, polarization, and inciting fear with threats and blame destabilize and increase (justify) volatile social realities, making our world more dangerous. You don’t have to wonder why the FBI traces a serious increase in pro-Trump clandestine hacking into social media from our greatest enemies.

I’m Peter Dekom, and as we fail to contain the above negativity and destabilize our own country, remember that China, Russia, North Korea and Iran are cheering us on and using their hacking skills to support online the election of Donald Trump.

The Distraction of a Single-Issue Campaign

The Antisocial Personality Disorder is characterized by a pervasive pattern of disregard for the rights of other people that often manifests as hostility and/or aggression. Deceit and manipulation are also central features. People with Narcissistic Personality Disorder have significant problems with their sense of self-worth stemming from a powerful sense of entitlement. This leads them to believe they deserve special treatment, and to assume they have special powers, are uniquely talented, or that they are especially brilliant or attractive. Their sense of entitlement can lead them to act in ways that fundamentally disregard and disrespect the worth of those around them.

Per the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders – 5th Edition, updated 2022 (aka DSM 5 TR) published by the American Psychiatric Association. In the United States, the DSM serves as the principal authority for psychiatric diagnoses.

Democrats have a slew of issues that seem to resonate with voters: abortion rights, autocracy rising, the acceleration of income/wealth inequality, lack of reasonable limits on assault weapons, censorship, fighting laws against the LGBQT+ community, reinforcing the notion of one citizen/one vote, corporate profit increases as the leading driver of price increases to consumers, equal application of the laws, the explosion of tuition and student debt, Supreme Court justices’ ability to accept lavish gifts from biased political benefactors, healthcare and soaring costs, housing affordability combined with exorbitant insurance premiums and the disastrous failure to contain the exploding devastation from climate change.

Aside from “deep state” conspiracy theories, bogus data on “rising crime’ rates, alleged profligate government spending, the subtext of stopping “the erosion of traditional white Christian power and values,” the MAGA GOP is laser-focused on the “invasion” of mostly Hispanic immigrants/asylum seekers (considered non-white) at our southern border. US gun laws have fueled the smuggling of US-made assault weapons to cartels in Latin America, creating narco-states facing mega-corruption and de facto civil war. These factors, added to the devastation of subsistence farmers from decimation of their farmland from climate change – combined with inconsistent US asylum policies – have led to that immigrant border surge.

The January 25th The Economist summarizes the hard numbers: “There were nearly 250,000 attempts to cross the southern border in November alone. Most of the newcomers will have sought asylum and been released into America to wait years for their claims to be adjudicated. Since Mr Biden became president, over 3.1m border-crossers have been admitted. That is more than the population of Chicago. At least a further 1.7m have come in undetected or overstayed their visas. Republican governors have paid for migrants to go to places run by Democrats, forcing the problems of the southern border northward. Their experience helps explain why voters trust Republicans to deal with border security by a margin of 30 points. It is the party’s biggest lead on any issue…

“Mr Trump’s [2015 campaign] language about Mexico sending rapists across the border and his cruel separation of children from their parents as a deterrent, along with his plan to build the wall, radicalised some Democratic policymakers on immigration. They thought public opinion was on their side. Voters did indeed revolt against Trumpism and while he was in office support for immigration reached a new high. When the new Democratic administration took power its instinct was to do the opposite of whatever Mr Trump had. Work on the border wall stopped. Democrats ditched the remain-in-Mexico policy, which obliged asylum-seekers to stay south of the border until the authorities decided on their applications. Predictably, illegal immigration surged.

“Since the midterms in 2022, Mr Biden has quietly adopted some of Mr Trump’s policies. He has agreed to fill gaps in the wall. Asylum-seekers who try to cross undetected will, with a few exceptions, automatically have their applications rejected. They must apply online before showing up. Yet Americans are unaware of these efforts, partly because Mr Biden is loath to draw attention to his triangulation, lest his own side turns on him.

“The president’s room to do one thing while saying another is running out. The House of Representatives has paired a stringent immigration bill with funding for Ukraine’s war. The administration resents this, because support for Ukraine makes economic and strategic sense for America regardless of the country’s policy on immigration. That is an error. Instead, in a system in which both parties use the leverage available to them, Mr Biden should see this as an opportunity.”

The Economist believes that the immigration issue alone could cost Biden the November election… and the United States a government predicated on democracy. But building on his oft-ignored statements to assume a presidency based on retribution, a dictator on day one, willing to use the military and DOJ to round up and arrest his political opponents, his total annihilation of other GOP candidates and his vision of massive detention camps for undocumented and even documented immigrants, Trump began a series of genuine threats and Trumpian mandates.

After threatening fellow Republicans and political donors with excommunication if they did not immediately join in unquestioned support of Trump and his policies, on January 25th, Trump ordered GOP members in Congress to reverse an imminent bi-partisan budget compromise that included a hard-found border/immigration compromise (details not released publicly). His rationale: it would be a piece of legislation that could make Biden look good in an election year. Would the measure still pass? The edict was so outrageous that the conservative Wall Street Journal – a Murdoch-owned publication – issued the following statement by its editorial board:

“Public frustration over border failures is coming to a boil, and Mr. Trump is hoping to ride this back into the White House. Meanwhile, Speaker Mike Johnson is down to a hairline majority in the House, and he lives under daily threat of defenestration by members of his own party. Some House Republicans are demanding nothing less than their own preferred border bill, known as H.R. 2. That measure commanded no Democratic support in the House, and it won’t miraculously win over the Democrats needed to clear the Senate.

“Yet giving up on a border security bill would be a self-inflicted GOP wound. President Biden would claim, with cause, that Republicans want border chaos as an election issue rather than solving the problem. Voter anger may over time move from Mr. Biden to the GOP, and the public will have a point. Cynical is the only word that fits Republicans panning a border deal whose details aren’t even known.

“The GOP would also abandon the best chance in years to fix asylum law and the parole loophole that Mr. Biden has exploited. Mr. Trump while President in 2018 complained that such dysfunctions precluded him from fully restoring order to the border.” Trump sincerely believes he has found the one issue that guarantees his appointment as America’s first emperor.

Indeed, following the rants of someone manifesting the hallmarks of serious mental illness (per the above psychiatric standards), for his obvious benefit but at the detriment of the country, requires a maniacal and irrational cult following, which Trump clearly has. But does this cult define the entire Republican Party, or are there limits? Does Texas’ defiance of a direct US Supreme Court border ruling mandating border access and control to federal authorities augur badly for what a Trump administration would bring to the nation?

I’m Peter Dekom, and does the above, combined with Trump’s passionate belief that, as President, he has clear immunity from all legal restrictions, suggest that of necessity, a Trump victory in November represents the end of American democracy?

New Wars, New Technology & Obsolescence

 

Advantage: zealots with nothing left to lose with self-made weapons and supplies from other technologically advanced nations sending state-of-the-art missiles and rockets? Or… Major nations with vast militaries, super-sophisticated weapon systems on highly mobile platforms? Depends on the conflict, of course. But hi-tech countries are increasingly engaged in surrogate wars, where complexity joins deniability on the battlefield. For hit-and-run insurgents (particularly those willing to use innocent civilians as human shields), it may be a series of smaller wars that hammer away at an opponent. Or it may be a long, weary insurgency that tests the will of a major nation that is worn down over time.

Sophisticated us. The West vs the rising militant communist tide in Korea produced an armistice but most certainly did not contain an increasingly brutal and technologically advancing North Korea. Both France and the United States lost sustained wars in Vietnam/Indochina. The US pulled out of Iraq, purportedly leaving a local government in charge, but it is hardly a secret that mostly Shiite Iraq is today a de facto satellite of almost all Shiite Iran. Likewise, the United States fought its longest war in history, and after two US Presidents (Trump and Biden) signaled it was time for us to withdraw, the Medieval-minded Sunni fundamentalist Taliban returned to power. They had defeated the United States just way their predecessors, the fundamentalist Mujahedeen, defeated the Soviet Union decades before. Insurgents and small forces vs superpowers.

What’s happening here? We have major power brinkmanship – for example, a massive Chinese military challenging a massive American military (both with nukes and very sophisticated weapon systems and mobile platforms) – where sophistication and huge military expenditures are embedded in the conflicts. We have major power bullying – ranging from China’s attempt to control Taiwan as well as all of the sea lanes in its region and Russia’s invasion of autonomous Ukraine in breach of a litany of treaty obligations – and new ultra-violent regional conflicts that smack of combat surrogacy – like the Gaza war that has spread to drone attacks in the Red Sea against western shipping heading for the Suez Canal.

It makes sense to examine how technology has leveled the playing field between big armies and smaller insurgents. Much of this “leveling” has come via unmanned vehicles, mostly aerial but some seaborne, which we generically refer to as “drones.” But as the photographs of drones above illustrate, they can be huge aircraft with amazing observational and weapon systems capacities (able to stay airborne far longer than conventional jets), to small “suicide” aircraft (deadly but very cheap to build and operate), which are often homemade. Here’s what The Wall Street Journal sees as that drone advantage for smaller attackers:

“Over the past decade, uncrewed aerial vehicles—and recently naval vessels—have put increasingly lethal and effective military equipment in the hands of insurgent groups such as Islamic State, Yemen’s Houthi rebels and underdogs like the Ukrainian military. Kyiv used drones to slow Russia’s invasion in 2022 and later sent longer-range UAVs to hit targets as far away as Moscow… When Hamas struck Israel on Oct. 7, its attack began with strikes from hobbyist drones on Israeli surveillance posts. The Iran-backed Houthis are using drones to target Red Sea shipping lanes… The question for the U.S. and its allies now is how to defend against cheap drones without using expensive missiles…

“Like operating from a hilltop, drones extend fighters’ line of sight and field of fire. They improve the accuracy of weapons fired from afar, such as artillery. They can help locate and target logistical networks, stretching enemy supply lines and complicating operations. Long-range drones put civilian areas far from the frontline into play without the risk of sending pilots into danger…

“Unlike soldiers, drones don’t eat, sleep or get tired, and increasingly they’re expendable. Connected in a network, they can share information instantaneously with controllers and each other. Their unblinking eyes limit sanctuary on the battlefield, forcing troops to be constantly on guard, which is exhausting… Delegating some tasks to a drone – like mapping the terrain or identifying enemy positions – lightens the workload on human operators and frees them up to focus on higher-order tasks. Whether this autonomy reduces or increases the risk of errant strikes remains uncertain.

“Battlefield drones have gone from high-end systems to an expendable item like missiles. Commercial drones are adapted for combat use. Their proliferation is forcing bigger militaries to focus on advanced anti-drone technologies to maintain an edge. It’s also pushing them towards mass production of drone armies.” As artificial intelligence becomes ubiquitous, the ability of swarms of drones to network their attacks becomes even more terrifying. But everybody is using drones today… we just keeping insisting that ours be expensive and very sophisticated.

When drones and missiles rely on GPS or communication with their launching stations, those without strong, state-of-the-art electronic warfare (EW) capabilities face countermeasures that can nullify the effectiveness of their own technology. A raw example of that is the Ukraine conflict, where Russia fared badly when it was just a battle of artillery, missiles, tanks and drones… until recently, when aside from using networked swarming drones and missiles, by increasing their use of signal jamming trucks (the last picture above); Russia secured an advantage they never had before. Unless Ukraine can secure a major upgrade from NATO powers, the effectiveness of their vigorous defense may be significantly blunted. The November 23rd The Economist explains:

“Ukraine discovered in March that its Excalibur GPS-guided shells suddenly started going off-target, thanks to Russian jamming. Something similar started happening to the JDAM-ER [Joint Direct Attack Munition - Extended Range] guided bombs that America had supplied to the Ukrainian air force, while Ukraine’s HIMARS-launched GMLRS [High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems/Guided Multiple Launch Rocket Systems] long-range rockets also started missing their targets. In some areas, a majority of GMLRS rounds now go astray.

“Even more worrying has been the increasing ability of Russian ew to counter the multitudes of cheap unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVS) that Ukraine has been using for everything from battlefield reconnaissance and communications to exploding on impact against targets such as tanks or command nodes.

“Ukraine has trained an army of some 10,000 drone pilots who are now constantly engaged in a cat-and-mouse game with increasingly adept Russian EW operators. The favoured drones are cheap, costing not much more than $1,000 each, and Ukraine is building enormous quantities of them. But losses to Russian EW, which either scrambles their guidance systems or jams their radio-control links with their operators, have at times been running at over 2,000 a week. The smitten drones hover aimlessly until their batteries run out and they fall to the ground.

“Neither hardening them against jamming nor investing them with artificial intelligence to fly without a live link to a human operator are feasible options yet, at least for mini-drones. Quantity still wins out over quality, but Russia may have an advantage there too. The skies over the battlefield are now thick with Russian drones. Around Bakhmut, Ukrainian soldiers estimate that Russia is deploying twice the number of assault drones they are able to.” One way or another, military conflict is ugly, today giving small but ultra-violent terrorists weapons to level the playing field against much larger forces. But technology also accords militaries that need advanced technology a distinct disadvantage if they cannot keep up with a more EW sophisticated opponent.

I’m Peter Dekom, and as our gridlocked and “keep taxes for the rich low” Congress seems unable to look at the bigger picture of global conflict, we do seem to be enabling our enemies, great and small.

GOP Continues to Oppose Immigration, Even If Necessary for Growth

CEO and engineer Sundar Pichai was born in Madurai, Tamil Nadu, India.  

  As low-end jobs go begging, this is our border now

Strange that American businesses, once the mainstay of GOP support, are the ones feeling the sting of labor shortages, both at the highest (STEM work) and lowest (agricultural, hospitality and construction) levels. Some of this is due to a corporate attempt to keep labor costs low. The bulk of US STEM workers, contrary to popular belief, are poorly paid, overworked into burnout, and tend to leave STEM for positions in management or finance where they are vastly better paid. The visions of happy workplaces, with lots of snacks and recreational facilities, belies the majority of STEM workplaces. Oh, and a lot of vacancies.

Many STEM workers also fear roiling layoffs and obvious job insecurity on top everything else. Most mergers and acquisitions result in major worker cutbacks; start-ups that fail make up for many more lost jobs. The pervasive use of “contract workers” avoids fringe benefits and job security, big time. The gig economy does not work for most workers in those areas.

As crops rot in the fields, slaughterhouses stretch to find workers, contractors raise rates (and still cannot get enough workers), we all pay more, child labor laws are violated, and shortages become the new normal. While it might not be obvious, US citizens seem unwilling to take many back-breaking jobs at any wage: agricultural stoop labor, ditch diggers, jobs requiring carrying heavy loads, to name a few. $100-$150/day does not attract workers, and when US citizens take these jobs, most do not last more than a day or two.

Educated and experienced STEM workers who can secure that precious H-1B visa usually find that they cannot bring their wives or children, a flaw in our immigration system that makes entreaties for their desired expertise from the UK or Canada very inclusive of those applicants’ families. We lose; US companies are increasingly moving their research and development activities offshore as a result. And as we can see in so many tech giants (not to mention mom and pop small businesses), those “foreign workers” are the true “job creators.” For those at the bottom of the labor class, hardly the murderers and rapists the MAGA GOP claims, life waiting for a “maybe” can be living hell as our political parties duke it out over our southern border. Don Lee, writing for the January 10th Los Angeles Times, picks up on this tragic and profoundly unproductive reality:

“Even as busloads of migrants sent north by border-state officials have strained cities and stirred new political firestorms in Washington, fresh data are driving home the increasingly crucial role that immigrants will play for U.S. businesses and the economy at large, especially in California.

“Net immigration to the U.S. hit a 22-year high of 1.14 million last year, newly released Census Bureau data show. California’s overall population, which lost 75,000 people between July 2022 and July 2023, would have fallen by more than 225,000 if not for international migration, according to calculations by Brookings demographer William Frey.

“And that resurgence of immigration has not only given the U.S. a modest gain in total population but also done something far more vital for the economy: It has fueled the nation’s workforce in the last year… Foreign-born people ages 16 and older account for about 18% of the U.S. working-age population, but they accounted for more than 60% of the country’s labor force growth last year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“As the overall population ages, as more baby boomers retire, and as family birthrates remain relatively low, the size of the U.S. workforce is increasingly dependent on immigration. That’s especially so in California because it has been losing many residents to other states, including more recently wealthier and higher-income people.

“Better technology can help increase productivity, but if the U.S. economy is to keep growing and offering the possibility of higher standards of living for more of its citizens, an expanding workforce is also vital, most economists agree.

“[The January 5th] jobs report for December, while showing resilient employment growth, offered new signs that the economy may be hitting a wall in terms of workforce participation and the return of those who dropped out of the labor market amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

“But the same report showed a rising tide of foreign-born workers, including many more who appear to be on the sidelines of the labor market… ‘There may be a larger shadow pool of available workers than is generally perceived,’ said Bob Schwartz, a senior economist at Oxford Economics in New York. He said an expanding supply of workers could help cool wage growth, an important factor in inflation.”

As I have blogged before, with our birthrate well below the 2.1-live-births-per adult female replacement value, without immigration our population numbers would plunge, our labor costs would skyrocket further, and the burdens of caring for the elderly would literally be untenable. Fareed Zacaria, in his CNN Global Public Square program, polled his coterie of economists who projected a net annual GDP loss to us of $5 trillion by reason of our absurd immigration policies, which have not been materially altered since the Reagan-era reform of 1986. The chaos we see is a direct result of a gridlocked Congress unable to implement the necessary legislative reforms and updates. The same Congress that passed fewer than 10% of the number of bills passed by any prior Congress in any recent prior year! What we do see is a series of redlines from the House rightwing Freedom Caucus.

I’m Peter Dekom, and we owe all of these problems to a large number of voters who have outsourced their opinions to power-agenda-driven politicians focused on riling up their constituents into unproductive, dangerous actually, biases and prejudices that work against their own and this nation’s best interests.

Particle Science, and Why You Might Not Drink a Toast to It

 

Just spent a few extra bucks on chichi bottled water? Pure, clean and refreshing? Well, apparently not exactly. Writing for the January 9th Los Angeles Times, Corinne Purtill and Susanne Rust break the bad news based on the most recent particle scientific studies: “It seems anywhere scientists look for plastic, they find it: from the ice in Antarctica to the first bowel movement produced by newborn babies… Now, researchers are finding that the amount of microscopic plastics floating in bottled drinking water is far greater than initially believed.

“Using sophisticated imaging technology, scientists at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty laboratory examined water samples from three popular brands (they won’t say which ones) and found hundreds of thousands of bits of plastic per liter of water… Ninety percent of those plastics were small enough to qualify as nanoplastics: microscopic flecks so small that they can be absorbed into human cells and tissue, as well as cross the blood-brain barrier.

“The research, which was published [January 8th] in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, raises new concerns about the potentially harmful health effects — and prevalence — of nanoplastics. The researchers found that the quantity of such particles was 10 to 100 times greater than previously estimated.

“‘For a long time before this study, I actually thought that what was inside bottled water [in terms of] nanoplastics was just a few hundred PET particles,’ said Naixin Qian, a Columbia chemistry graduate student and the study’s lead author. ‘It turns out to be much more than that.’ PET, or polyethylene terephthalate, is a type of clear plastic that is commonly used for single-use water bottles.

“Microplastics — particles that range from 1 micrometer to 5 milimeters in size — have been documented in bottled and tap water for several years. But the identification of nanoplastics — particles that measure just billionths of a meter — is raising alarms… The incredibly small size of nanoparticles allows them to behave differently than larger pieces of matter, said Beizhan Yan , a Columbia environmental chemist and a co-author of the study.

“Pollutants and pathogens can be carried on the surface of a particle, and the smaller a particle gets, the larger its surface area-to-volume ratio becomes… As a result, Yan said, ‘even if they’re not that toxic at a larger particle size, when they become smaller they become toxic, because they can interfere in the cells, in the tissues, inside of the organelles.’”

Generally, according to a February 13, 2020 report from our National Institutes of Health, “Microplastics can contain two types of chemicals: (i) additives and polymeric raw materials (e.g., monomers or oligomers) originating from the plastics, and (ii) chemicals absorbed from the surrounding ambience… Many substances that are classified as hazardous according to the EU regulation on classification and labelling are present in everyday products as regular ingredients.

“The toxicity of a substance is its ability to cause harmful effects. These effects can strike a single cell, a group of cells, an organ system, or the entire body. Chemicals that are considered most harmful are those that cause cancer, mutations to DNA, have toxic reproductive effects, are recalcitrant into the environment, are capable of building up in the food chain or bodies, and other harmful properties, such as disrupting hormones. The internal organs that are most commonly affected are the liver, the kidneys, the heart, the nervous system (including the brain) and the reproductive system.

“Among these chemicals, many routinely used to make plastics are dangerous. Bisphenol A (BPA), phthalates, as well as some of the brominated flame retardants, that are used to make household products and food packaging, have been proven to be endocrine disruptors that can damage human health if ingested or inhaled.

“Endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs), identified as substances that are exogenous to the human or animal organism, have hormonal activity that alters the homeostasis of the endocrine system, so they are of particular concern. These compounds interfere with the development of the endocrine system and affect the functioning of organs that respond to hormonal signals. The endocrinal and reproductive effects of endocrine disruptors may be a consequence of their ability to: (a) mimic natural hormones, (b) antagonize their action, (c) alter their pattern of synthesis and metabolism, or (d) modify the expressions of specific receptors.”

What’s worse, we have been operating on an assumption of a much lower level of intake of microplastics, and so we really have just begun to drill down on the full list of risks to our environment, and, selfishly, our own bodies. “Now, a team of physicians, epidemiologists and endocrinologists by from NYU, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and Defend Our Health — an environmental organization based in Portland, Maine have estimated the costs of plastic exposure on the U.S. healthcare system and come to a sobering conclusion. In 2018, several common endocrine disruptors cost the nation almost $250 billion.

“‘This study is really meant to put a bright, bold line underneath the fact that plastics are a human health issue,’ said Leo Trasande, a pediatrician and public policy expert at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine and Wagner School of Public Service… ‘Fundamentally, we’re talking about effects that run the entire life span study from brain development in young children ... to cancer,’ he said.” Susanne Rust, writing for the January 18th LA Times. Humanity has made it so far, but how has this explosion of particles negatively impacted the quality of our lives? We are really just beginning to learn how much. Doesn’t this just make you feel warm and fuzzy inside? Oh, that’s not a fuzzy feeling… it’s more like…

I’m Peter Dekom, and when a “maybe but probable” toxic substance, however tiny, has entered our bodies at a rate 10 to 100 times greater than previously estimated, I think we all need to pay attention!

Democracy is So Woke

Democracy is So Woke

Especially When You Can Get a Strongman to Decide for You

You’d think that after all the genocide, ego-driven wars, economic failure, secret police ferreting out political opponents, repression, sheer misery for the masses, “right thinking,” intolerance, and unchecked power evidenced by 20th century brutal dictators – some even elected by popular vote – humanity would have wised up by the 21st century. But the captains of blame, the determiners of right thinking, embracers of political violence and the purveyors of “only I can fix it” solutions – the dictators, cult leaders and false prophets (real and wannabe) – are back in droves. Many are running in the dozens and dozens of elections this year all over the world… some don’t have to run. Many love war and saber-rattling to enhance the power of blame, to redefine “patriotism” (a very dangerous word) and rally rabid “loyal citizens” to their “proud” defense of the “motherland,” “fatherland,” or just plain “our” country… “our” values.

Though the “Father of Woke” may have killed his own political future, the legacy of using that ambiguous term, to describe anyone and anything the American religious right does not like, persists. And beyond the intolerance, violent white power and total embrace of a gun culture is the mechanism to dominate, control and, if necessary, extinguish those who believe in individual and personal freedom (which cherishes diversity and inclusion): a “right thinking” dictatorship. The poster child for how much more efficient and economically prosperous than Western democracy a totalitarian government can be: China. After all, in the space of three decades, beginning in the post-Mao era of Deng Xiaoping, the Peoples’ Republic of China elevated almost a billion people out of poverty, and two decades beyond that, put the PRC on an almost even military basis with the United States.

But modern China began in 1981, so the new Chinese model of success has a history of less than half a century. It literally grew from the dust and wreckage of Mao’s failed Great Leap Forward era and his Cultural Revolution. But does this new Chinese economic and political model have sustainability? The US model, which definitely could use some updating, has shown sustainability for almost five times the length of the modern PRC model. But one PRC pattern reflects what has ultimately happened to China, when a cult is built around a single, all-powerful autocratic leader without checks or balances: the eras of Mao Zedong and Xi Jinping. The only institution that has grown and endured during their rule has been the military. Under both Mao and Xi, China’s economy has suffered horribly. We all know about Mao, but Xi’s economy is also unraveling.

Writing for the January 20th Business Insider, Linette Lopez illustrates the fall of the PRC economic world: “2024 is the year of the incredible shrinking China… The country's growth has been treated like an inevitability for decades. Everything was getting bigger — its cultural influence, geopolitical ambition, population — and seemed poised to continue until the world was remade in China's image. The foundation for this inexorable rise was its booming economy, which allowed Beijing to throw its might around in other areas. But now China's economy is withering, and the future Beijing imagined is being cut down to size along with it.

“The clearest sign of this diminishment is China's worsening deflation problem. While Americans are worried about inflation, or prices rising too fast, policymakers in Beijing are fretting because prices are falling. The consumer price index has declined for the past three months, the longest deflationary streak since 2009. In the race for global economic supremacy, deflation is an albatross around Beijing's neck. It's a sign that the Chinese economic model has well and truly run out of juice and that a painful restructuring is required. But beyond the financial problems, the sinking prices are a sign of a deeper malaise gripping the Chinese people…’China's deflation is the deflation of hope, the deflation of optimism. It's a psychological funk,’ Minxin Pei, a professor of political science at Claremont McKenna College, told me.

“The fallout won't be contained to China's shores. Because the country's growth sent money stampeding around the globe over the past few decades, its contractions are creating a seesaw effect in global markets. The foreign investors who helped to power China's rise are running to avoid catching the funk on their balance sheets, and governments the world over are starting to question the narrative of China, the dauphin. What Beijing does — or fails to do — to fight this malaise will determine the course of humanity for decades to come…

“It may seem counterintuitive, especially given the Western experience of the past few years, but deflation is in many ways scarier than inflation. Inflation occurs when there's too much demand for too few products — people want to buy things, but there simply isn't enough stuff to go around. By contrast, deflation happens when there are plenty of goods and services available but not enough demand. Businesses are then forced to slash prices to entice consumers to come out and spend. Every economy sees recessions or downturns — periods of declining demand and sinking confidence that force companies to put their wares on sale — but sustained deflation is what happens when those maladies make themselves at home and decide to stay.”

Unemployment among China’s younger, educated labor force is north of 20%. Millions of square feet of new residential space, supported by trillions of dollars equivalent of debt, lie empty, likely never to be occupied. Since real estate accounts for more than a quarter of the PRC economy, the risks are huge. Several large banks and mega-developers are approaching insolvency. Supply chain issues and austerity among many of China’s major importers has hammered the PRC manufacturing export machine. As demand has slackened, many young Chinese have returned to live with their parents in rural villages. Former Fed Chair Ben Bernanke noted: Deflationary events are rare, but even moderate deflation — "a decline in consumer prices of about 1% per year” — can zap growth out of an economy for years. A depression looms in China.

So here we are, as one of strongest economies on earth, being told by our MAGA cult leader – himself having to settle fraud allegations in the past and now facing tax and overvaluation legal actions where there have already been a pile of court rulings against him – that our economy is failing… and only he can fix it. Sounds a lot like his “bleach as a cure for COVID” recommendation, doesn’t it? Or we could go back when “Great America,” with gas lines, race riots, mortgages with double-digit interest rates, an unpopular military draft, found waging war to be illusory in Korea and Vietnam.

I’m Peter Dekom, and you can have either “only I can fix it” MAGA world or democracy… but not both.