Climate Change, What Climate Change?

A map of the U.S. plotted with 28 weather and climate disasters 

each costing $1 billion or more that occurred between 

January and December, 2023. (Image credit: NOAA/NCEI)

“Given that we’ve seen an unprecedented jump in global warmth over the last 11 months, it is not surprising to see worsening climate extremes so early in the year… If this record pace of warming continues, 2024 will likely be a record year of climate disasters and human suffering.” 

University of Michigan environment dean Jonathan Overpeck.

“We’re departing the climate of the 20th century right now, and we just can’t handle these events…So they’re getting slightly more extreme, but they’re passing our ability to handle them.” 

Andrew Dessler, a Texas A&M University climate scientist.

“Climate change is loading the weather dice against us in every part of the world…What this means is that it is increasing not only the frequency and severity of many weather extremes, but also that the risk of compound events is increasing.” 

 Texas Tech climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe, chief scientist for the Nature Conservancy.

The US oil and gas industry has never had it so good. “[The] the sector is booming under the Biden administration—oil production in the U.S. is projected to reach record levels in 2024, with job growth in the sector outpacing the overall job market... ‘Despite the fact that oil is doing incredibly well under President Biden, the industry and its allies have continued to press the misleading talking point that Biden is engaged in war on oil and gas, reality is that he’s been trying to put forward some modest rules on the industry,’ said Alan Zibel, an analyst at Public Citizen. ‘The industry prefers Republicans because they’ll do what they want them to do.’” FastCompany.com May 6th.

Despite the “environmental goals” touted by Big Oil – you see their ads everywhere – their push-back on alternative energy, their taking credit for little more than token efforts to accept the transition away from oil and gas and efforts to lobby Congress tell us that they have every intention to fight the reality of global warming at every turn. Writing for the May 10th Los Angeles Times, Sammy Roth, focuses on this backdoor battle against necessary change: “Exxon and others have waged successful, decades-long campaigns of climate change denial and delay…

“Earth just experienced its 11th consecutive record hot month. Heat waves, wildfires, droughts, floods — all of them are deadlier and more destructive than they were a few years ago. We shouldn’t ignore energy costs and smart use of taxpayer dollars. But in the absence of a livable climate, nothing else matters. With scientists telling us we need to cut carbon pollution more than 40% in the next six years, we don’t have time to waste prioritizing the most effective steps. We need to move on all fronts, ASAP…

“And how did we get to this crucial point in human history?... In large part because Exxon and other fossil fuel profiteers waged phenomenally successful, decades-long political campaigns of climate change denial and delay. .. Let’s set aside the fact that Exxon is a member of several trade groups that opposed Senate Bill 253 — the landmark measure approved by California lawmakers last year requiring major companies such as Exxon to publicly disclose their carbon emissions.

“As I watched a livestream of [a recent] Milken Institute Global Conference, I was frustrated but not surprised to hear Woods imply that emerging technologies such as carbon capture and green hydrogen — on which Exxon and other oil giants are spending a tiny fraction of their cash — will be the main drivers of climate progress. We need those technologies for sure. But solar panels, wind turbines and batteries are cheap enough and reliable enough to get us most of the way to 100% clean energy, scientists say…

“The deeper problem with [Exxon Chief Executive Darren Woods’] argument is that ‘prioritizing the most effective steps first’ is a recipe for disaster… Woods, however, said hardly anything about solar and wind power, instead calling on the federal government to ease permitting regulations to make it easier for companies to build large-scale carbon capture and green hydrogen infrastructure… ‘Permitting becomes significant bottleneck to advancing those projects,’ Woods said… He’s not entirely wrong. But he’s not telling the whole story.

“I also shook my head in amazement as Woods suggested that a major barrier to slashing carbon pollution is that the world lacks ‘a system for accounting for carbon.’ Until we can better calculate the costs and benefits of reducing emissions across different sectors of the economy, he said, we’ll continue to spend too much money on some climate programs and not enough on others — wasting taxpayer dollars in some places while missing low-hanging fruit in others.” Huh? We don’t have sufficient metrics on the impact of global climate change to implement the obvious necessary refocus: accelerate our transition away from oil and gas?

If there is one politician who senses what Big Oil is willing to spend to stop that transition and repeal those new tech programs in Biden’s Infrastructure Act, a job creating bill, it is the shameless cash strapped MAGA leader. “Former President Donald J. Trump told a group of oil executives and lobbyists gathered at a dinner at his Mar-a-Lago resort last month that they should donate $1 billion to his presidential campaign because, if elected, he would roll back environmental rules that he said hampered their industry, according to two people who were there.

“About 20 people attended an April 11 event billed as an ‘energy round table’ at Mr. Trump’s private club, according to those people, who asked not to be identified in order to discuss the private event. Attendees included executives from ExxonMobil, EQT Corporation and the American Petroleum Institute, which lobbies for the oil industry.

“The event was organized by the oil billionaire Harold Hamm, who has for years helped to shape Republican energy policies. It was first reported by The Washington Post… Mr. Trump has publicly railed for months against President Biden’s energy and environmental agenda, as Mr. Biden has raced to restore and strengthen dozens of climate and conservation rules that Mr. Trump had weakened or erased while in office. In particular, Mr. Trump has promised to eliminate Mr. Biden’s new climate rules intended to accelerate the nation’s transition to electric vehicles, and to push a ‘drill, baby, drill’ agenda aimed at opening up more public lands to oil and gas exploration.”

“Mr. Biden has called climate change an existential threat and has moved to cut the pollution that is dangerously heating the planet and supercharging storms, heat waves and drought… Over a dinner of chopped steak, Mr. Trump repeated his public promises to delete Mr. Biden’s pollution controls, telling the attendees that they should donate heavily to help him beat Mr. Biden because his policies would help their industries.” Lisa Friedman, Coral Davenport, Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman writing for the May 9th New York Times. Trump also promised a new round of tax cuts with juicy benefits for Big Oil. And damn those EV cars and trucks, a pox on expanding charging stations and accelerating the necessary investment in new technology. Brace, brace, brace for worse… or horribly worse if Trump has his way.

I’m Peter Dekom, and a vote for Trump is a vote to repeal democracy, increase government intrusion into our personal lives and add billions going to trillions of dollars’ worth of climate inflicted misery in our daily existence.

The Legacy of Strange and Most Brutal Bedfellows

 

The United States has been on the wrong of human rights for a very long time. Back in 1791, after Haitian slaves defeated Napoleon’s French troops, the United States sided with France as it “settled” for that new impoverished nation’s obligation to pay reparations to Bonaparte for lost “property.” Thank you Thomas Jefferson, although “desperate for cash” Bonaparte, with no slaves to work his holdings in the Northern Hemisphere, gleefully sold the Louisiana territory to the US. The half a billion dollars of Haitian payments to France over the years only ended in 1947 (when reparations we imposed on Haiti also ended).

In more recent years, we backed the infamous brutal regimes in Iran (under the Pahlavi regime), the secret-police dominated Chilean “good for us anti-communist” Pinochet regime and were actively involved in drug smuggling into the US via the infamous Iran Contra scandal during the Reagan presidency. We were infamous for supporting any manner of brutal and corrupt dictators as long as they were “anti-communist.”

Realpolitik – acting pragmatically to further your own interests with a willingness to look away from the ugly side – has made us convenient allies with unsavory governments long after communism faded from obsession following the fall of the Berlin Wall. Corrupt and/or cruel autocrats have caused us to look the other way with much greater frequency than one would expect from a democracy that touts “human rights.” The tumultuous but oil-rich Middle East has been a particularly relevant allure for our policymakers.

During the Trump presidency, on October 2, 2018, Saudi dissident journalist and US resident, Jamal Khashoggi, was killed by agents of the Saudi government at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. Khashoggi was ambushed and strangled by a 15-member squad of Saudi hitmen. His body was dismembered and disposed of in some way that was never publicly revealed. Trump’s intelligence agencies confirmed that the killing was most probably authorized by Saudi Crown Prince (and de facto head of state), Mohammed bin Salman (MBS). Trump was lambasted for continuing to work with MBS, the same man who handed $2 billion to an inexperienced Trump son-in-law after Trump lost the 2016 election… Jared Kushner’s new investment fund.

But don’t just hold your nose at Trump’s willing acceptance of continued good relations with MBS and Saudi Arabia. With a dearth of American Middle Eastern allies remaining after our Iraq and Afghanistan failures, President Joe Biden continued to accept normalized relations with the Saudis and simply ignored that infamous murder. Saudi Arabia was essential to contain regional Russian and Iranian aspirations and to help find a path to regional peace with Israel (we can see how that worked out).

Even as Saudi women are now allowed to drive, even travel, without familial male escorts, don’t mistake those “liberal” steps with a reduction in expedient cruelty in the Saudi Kingdom. Saudi Arabia has a mission: to find a path out of a total dependence on oil revenue in a world where fossil fuels are facing rising animosity from greenhouse gas emissions and the resulting climate change.

Saudis are used to oil money spread around, foreigners brought in to provide professional management and tons of cheap, mostly Asian workers, willing to tolerate miserable heat and abusive bosses to build gleaming buildings and modern infrastructure. But for what? Aside from oil extraction, what would be the relevant Saudi skillset to modernize the Desert Kingdom? Even as Saudi policymakers greenwash international sports and search for a positive PR path, what exactly is the Saudi economic business plan to evolve local industry and business?

Enter: “Neom, Saudi Arabia's $500bn (£399bn) eco-region, is part of its Saudi Vision 2030 strategy which aims to diversify the kingdom's economy away from oil… Its flagship project, The Line, has been pitched as a car-free city, just 200m (656ft) wide and 170km (106 miles) long - though only 2.4km of the project is reportedly expected to be completed by 2030... Dozens of global companies, several of them British, are involved in Neom's construction… The area where Neom is being built has been described as the perfect ‘blank canvas’ by Saudi leader Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman.” Merlyn Thomas & Lara El Gibaly, writing for the May 9th BBC.com.

Hey, that sounds like a good idea, a good use for an otherwise empty and unproductive desert, right? Except this land is not empty; a whole of people live there… but they would have to move to make way for this eco-city. Maybe eminent domain can compensate these desert dwellers from their traditional villages and homes, maybe even make them rich. Saudi Arabia certainly has the funds to do that. But remember, this is brutal autocratic monarchy; there are other ways to clear people from lands that the government wants for other uses.

“Saudi authorities have permitted the use of lethal force to clear land for a futuristic desert city being built by dozens of Western companies, an ex-intelligence officer has told the BBC… Col Rabih Alenezi says he was ordered to evict villagers from a tribe in the Gulf state to make way for The Line, part of the Neom eco-project… One of them was subsequently shot and killed for protesting against eviction… The Saudi government and Neom management refused to comment… [To date] more than 6,000 people have been moved for the project according to his government - and UK-based human rights group ALQST estimates the figure to be higher.

“The BBC has analysed satellite images of three of the villages demolished - al-Khuraybah, Sharma and Gayal. Homes, schools, and hospitals have been wiped off the map… Col Alenezi, who went into exile in the UK last year, says the clearance order he was asked to enact was for al-Khuraybah, 4.5km south of The Line. The villages were mostly populated by the Huwaitat tribe, who have inhabited the Tabuk region in the country's north-west for generations… He said the April 2020 order stated the Huwaitat was made up of ‘many rebels’ and ‘whoever continues to resist [eviction] should be killed, so it licensed the use of lethal force against whoever stayed in their home’… He dodged the mission on invented medical grounds, he told the BBC, but it nevertheless went ahead.

“Abdul Rahim al-Huwaiti refused to allow a land registry committee to value his property, and was shot dead by Saudi authorities a day later, during the clearance mission. He had previously posted multiple videos on social media protesting against the evictions… A statement issued by Saudi state security at the time alleged al-Huwaiti had opened fire on security forces and they had been forced to retaliate. Human rights organisations and the UN have said he was killed simply for resisting eviction.” Thomas & El Gibaly. It’s always someone else’s fault. Ah, you wonder why China accuses us of hypocrisy when we decry their obvious human rights abuses. They don’t even point to our support of brutal autocrats (perhaps because their president is one), just our internal struggles with race relations, ethnic and religious discrimination, etc., etc.

I’m Peter Dekom, and our attempting to take credit for standing on a moral high ground is well… hypocrisy… but what exactly do we really stand for these days?

Europe?!

  

The Russians called it the “Great War” and suffered 70% of the casualties in the European theater. It was a war that, like WWI, was supposed to be the war that ended all wars. World War II. It gave birth to the United Nations, but with a Security Council where specified powers from designated “permanent member states” – China (subsequently the Peoples’ Republic of China), Russia, France, the United Kingdom and the United States – where each has veto power over “substantive” resolutions. That has never worked very well. Now, less than ever.

But WII allowed the United States with heavy industry – with excess electric power by reason of FDR’s New Deal construction of massive hydroelectric projects – literally to supply the Allies with the hardware and software of war necessary to counter Nazi manufacturing excellence and Japanese industrial discipline. Take away our ability to manufacture at a level the world had never seen before, and the Allies would have been subjugated under vicious totalitarian boots.

With the war far from almost all of our shores, the United States did not suffer the massive death and destruction heaped upon the civilian lands of our Allies (pictured above). That is one of the most significant reasons why the United States rose to become the greatest superpower in the modern world, not having to pay for reconstructing our cities, towns and manufacturing centers. We were up and running with a GI Bill and a consumer economy for well over a decade and a half while Europe and Japan rebuilt.

Once again, contemporary Europe has erupted in the greatest war there since WWII, a military conflict between an aggressive and mendacious Russia and a noble but militarily weaker Ukraine combined with a rise in new autocracies making an awful mess even worse. And once again, the United States is far-removed from the military conflict, with debates mirroring the pro- and anti-Nazi factions before we entered WWII. As Europe discovered, and many in the United States seem to forget, appeasement and “and it’s your problem far away” do not work. In fact, this attitude simply incents the avaricious aggressors looking for “Lebensraum” (living space or territorial expansion) to attack even more. And get much stronger as we simply wait.

Today, there are leaders in Europe and the United States, proponents of a new rightwing populist repeat performance of pre-WWII complacency, who simply cannot fathom why we/they should support Ukraine, believing that living in the shadow of Russian nuclear capabilities should make sure that they do not provoke Mr. Putin. Even as instability is rising in Moscow, even assuming that there is the potential for a regime change against Putin, many believe that a substitute autocrat might even be worse.

One of the most interesting perspectives is that of French President Emmanuel Macron, whose rising unpopularity is giving way to a rising movement there in support of a pro-Russian populist faction. The May 2nd The Economist reported the results of a recent interview with Macron: “In 1940, after France had been defeated by the Nazi blitzkrieg, the historian Marc Bloch condemned his country’s inter-war elites for having failed to face up to the threat that lay ahead. Today Emmanuel Macron cites Bloch as a warning that Europe’s elites are gripped by the same fatal complacency.

“France’s president set out his apocalyptic vision in an interview with The Economist in the Elysée Palace. It came days after his delivery of a big speech about the future of Europe—an unruly, two-hour, Castro-scale marathon, ranging from nuclear annihilation to an alliance of European libraries. Mr Macron’s critics called it a mix of electioneering, the usual French self-interest and the intellectual vanity of a Jupiterian president thinking about his legacy…

“We wish they were right. In fact, Mr Macron’s message is as compelling as it is alarming. In our interview, he warned that Europe faces imminent danger, declaring that “things can fall apart very quickly”. He also spoke of the mountain of work ahead to make Europe safe. But he is bedevilled by unpopularity at home and poor relations with Germany. Like other gloomy visionaries, he faces the risk that his message is ignored.

“The driving force behind Mr Macron’s warning is the invasion of Ukraine. War has changed Russia. Flouting international law, issuing nuclear threats, investing heavily in arms and hybrid tactics, it has embraced “aggression in all known domains of conflict”. Now Russia knows no limits, he argues. Moldova, Lithuania, Poland, Romania or any neighbouring country could all be its targets. If it wins in Ukraine, European security will lie in ruins.

“Europe must wake up to this new danger. Mr Macron refuses to back down from his declaration in February that Europe should not rule out putting troops in Ukraine. This elicited horror and fury from some of his allies, but he insists their wariness will only encourage Russia to press on: “We have undoubtedly been too hesitant by defining the limits of our action to someone who no longer has any and who is the aggressor.”

“Mr Macron is adamant that, whoever is in the White House in 2025, Europe must shake off its decades-long military dependence on America and with it the head-in-the-sand reluctance to take hard power seriously. ‘My responsibility,’ he says, ‘is never to put [America] in a strategic dilemma that would mean choosing between Europeans and [its] own interests in the face of China.’ He calls for an ‘existential’ debate to take place within months. Bringing in non-EU countries like Britain and Norway, this would create a new framework for European defence that puts less of a burden on America. He is willing to discuss extending the protection afforded by France’s nuclear weapons, which would dramatically break from Gaullist orthodoxy and transform France’s relations with the rest of Europe.

“Mr Macron’s second theme is that an alarming industrial gap has opened up as Europe has fallen behind America and China. For Mr Macron, this is part of a broader dependence in energy and technology, especially in renewables and artificial intelligence. Europe must respond now, or it may never catch up. He says the Americans ‘have stopped trying to get the Chinese to conform to the rules of international trade’. Calling the Inflation Reduction Act ‘a conceptual revolution’, he accuses America of being like China by subsidising its critical industries. ‘You can’t carry on as if this isn’t happening,’ he says.

“Mr Macron’s solution is more radical than simply asking for Europe to match American and Chinese subsidies and protection. He also wants a profound change to the way Europe works. He would double research spending, deregulate industry, free up capital markets and sharpen Europeans’ appetite for risk. He is scathing about the dishing-out of subsidies and contracts so that each country gets back more or less what it puts in. Europe needs specialisation and scale, even if some countries lose out, he says.” Good luck with that, M. Macron.

Yet and unfortunately, there is a lot of truth in Macron’s message, accelerated by what many Europeans see as the increasing unreliability of the United States as a global stabilizer, a nation that is itself torn apart between liberal democracy (and that does not mean leftwing governance, just a form of self-rule) and fact-averse populism living in a world of mythology and conspiracy theories. Ukraine is just the tip of the iceberg of devastation we face. Even the war in Gaza and the West Bank is tearing us further apart, as if that were possible. The United States faces destruction from not just powerful and unscrupulous foreign powers, but even worse, our self-destructive nihilism that is tearing us apart from within. We just may vote for our own unraveling.

I’m Peter Dekom, and rational minds are finding decreasing traction with a vast pool of populists who prefer manufactured news to truth, about as toxic to democracy as you can get.

The New GOP Badge of Courage – Blaming Inoculations for Disease

Portable morgues required during the COVOD pandemic

We live in a strange new world where the man who declared he’d be a dictator on day one of his tenure if reelected and promised to arrest his opponents, use the military to round up undocumented aliens was labeling Democrats as mirroring the Nazi secret police, the Gestapo. A man who tells the world he will bring down prices while promising highly inflationary increases in tariffs against one of major sources of cheap goods, China, and purging cheap labor from our shores. A politician who has never accepted responsibility for any of his acts, while taking credit for anything good no matter where that “good” came from. The master of massive policy shifts, re-explaining plain meanings and results, out-and-out lying that calms down into mere explosive exaggeration, mis- and dis-information on steroids, the leader of the double-down with unlimited blame for anyone but himself. With an unshakeable cult that believes his every word.

The highly indicted Donald John Trump is happy to take credit for the control of the COVID 19 pandemic – and yes, he actually did accelerate the mRNA vaccine research – although he failed to deploy that preventative inoculation, leaving it to states, wiped out from the pandemic’s economic impact who had no means to implement that directive. Biden did. In time, Trump embraced the growing GOP mantra that vaccination was an individual choice (but reproductive care wasn’t?) and that keeping everything open with no masks, no social distancing and no restrictions on any business or government body was the American way.

Meanwhile, as climate change reduces agricultural capacity, puts severe strains on major population centers around the world, incenting desperate migration of impoverished people whose once productive land lies arid and incapable of food production, nature seems to need to add increasing pandemics and resulting conflicts over resources to cull the human herd. We’re now watching avian flu infecting poultry here… and beef (??) as well. Under the leadership of Florida MAGA-man, Governor Ron DeSantis, vaccinations have become the enemy, imposing any restrictions on businesses the very definition of government excess, even as Florida had one of the highest COVID mortality rates in the nation. DeSantis’ policy is now red state doctrine.

The tradition of mandatory public-school inoculations was eviscerated by red state exceptions, sometimes by dropping the decades-old mandate entirely – a new MAGA plus Robert Kennedy, Jr value – forcing parents to send their children to mingle in unvaccinated classrooms. And yes, this antivaxx movement has exaggerated the number of those inoculated who have had severe aftereffects from the vaccine, beyond the initial days of discomfort. It is true that some suffered from cardiac issues, allergies, vaccine induced immune thrombocytopenia and thrombosis (severe or usual headaches, easy bruising or bleeding, shortness of breath, leg swelling or persistent abdominal pain), etc., literally numbering in the thousands as against the nearly 200 million individuals who were successfully inoculated with approved vaccines; millions of people were literally spared COVID-related death or material permanent disability, creating one of the most effective, low-risk vaccination programs in history.

No, autism is not caused by CDC approved vaccines. And no, you cannot get COVID from these new vaccines; they innocuously mimic the “shape” of the virus to trigger your own body’s immune response. Enter our conspiracy theory driven MAGA controlled House of Representatives, uninterested in facts, even interrupting their own expert witnesses from answering questions and instead inserting their own “answers” to the questions they asked as Michael Hiltzik tells on in his May 5th Los Angeles Times column:

“We’ve all come to recognize that committee hearings conducted by the Republican House majority are almost invariably clown shows featuring spittle-flecked posturing by members intent on displaying their ignorance to an appreciative crowd… [The May 1st] hearing by the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic was a crystalline example of the genre. It was designed around the grilling of Peter Daszak, the head of EcoHealth Alliance, which oversees international virus research funded by federal agencies.

“The members scraped along rock bottom, but the most telling moment may have been this exchange between Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-Va.) and Daszak. Asked to explain an apparent (but not real) discrepancy in a progress report EcoHealth submitted to the government, Daszak started to answer, but a theatrically fulminating Griffith cut him off… ‘I can give you the answer to your question,’ Daszak said… ‘I’m going to answer it for you!’ Griffith shot back, then outrageously accused Daszak of lying. Daszak didn’t get a chance to reply.

“The whole session, more than three hours, went that way. The members kept peppering Daszak with questions about abstruse matters of science and the grant-making process, only to rudely cut him off when he tried to respond. They misquoted him to his face, misrepresented his work, and spouted cocksure inanities showing with every word that, scientifically speaking, they have no idea what they’re talking about.

“Ideally, congressional hearings should be fact-finding efforts. This was nothing of the kind. It was an opportunity for posturing by politicians intent only on smearing Daszak and EcoHealth on the pretext of getting to the bottom of the pandemic’s cause… How do we know this? From the fact that hours before the hearing even began, the subcommittee released a report calling on the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Health and Human Services to “immediately commence suspension and debarment proceedings against both EcoHealth and Dr. Daszak” — in other words, permanently cut them off from federal funding…

“The attacks on EcoHealth appall scientists and public health experts who know that the organization’s work in identifying potential pandemic sources and crafting responses has never been more important. Agricultural authorities are dealing with the spread of a bird flu virus into cattle herds, another case of species-to-species, or zoonotic, viral transmission.

“Given the bipartisan attacks against it, whether EcoHealth can avoid being cut off from all government funding is an open question. But that only underscores the supine irresponsibility with which Democrats have bought into the right wing’s attack on the organization and its crucial work… ‘We now have zoonotic threats emerging at an accelerating cadence,’ says Peter Hotez, a molecular virologist who is dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston… ‘This is a time when we need to be doubling down and expanding our global virus surveillance networks,’ Hotez told me. ‘By making up allegations, they’re undermining the work of EcoHealth and other organizations committed to understanding how viruses are jumping from animals to humans. We’re creating incredible vulnerability for ourselves. They’re damaging our national security. That to me is unforgivable — that they’re willing to jeopardize national security for political expedience.’”

If the January 6th attack on the US Capitol was a simple constitutionally protected political statement, then I suspect it is perfectly acceptable to claim that we would have been better off had there been no wide deployment of COVID vaccines. After all, we have too many people anyway… and we would have taken out a whole lot more citizens, particularly those living in crowded cities… who tend to vote blue anyway.

I’m Peter Dekom, and if ignorance and stupidity are the new American values for a huge segment of our population and the mantra of a major American party, then indeed we can “make America great again” in that vein.

The 92% Conundrum or "China, My China"

 

They’re comin’ for our patents. They’re aimin’ at our elections. They’re supportin’ our biggest military enemies. They’re claimin’ international waterways. They tell us that Taiwan has always been their exclusive territory. And they’re buildin’ a military that is seriously larger than our own based on an assumption that the United States is unraveling. And still, our defense industry, our high-tech sector and even our telecommunications capacity depend on a resource that China currently almost totally controls. As Jon Emont explains in the May 4th Wall Street Journal: “The American war machine depends on tiny bits of metal, some as small as dimes. Rare-earth magnets are needed for F-35 jet fighters, missile-guidance systems, Predator drones and nuclear submarines.

“The problem: China makes most of the world’s rare-earth magnets, with 92% of the global market share… Now, Washington is doling out hundreds of millions of dollars in grants and tax credits to revive magnet-making in America. Defense manufacturers are on a clock… A U.S. law in 2018 restricted the use of made-in-China magnets in American military equipment, shriveling the list of potential suppliers to a small number in Japan and the West. By 2027, the curbs will extend to magnets made anywhere that contain materials mined or processed in China, covering nearly all of the current global supply.

“After three decades of post-Cold War deindustrialization, rebuilding the industry—against China’s market heft—is an uphill battle, even with government help. Only one company in the U.S. is in production of the dominant type of rare-earth magnet.” To say our relations with China are severely strained – despite close to $700 billion in trade – is an understatement. Notwithstanding a recent telephone call between Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping and a visit by Department of State Secretary Anthony Blinken with high-ranking PRC officials, our battle against China is only ramping up.

In addition to recent legislation supporting tens of billions of dollars for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, Congress’ bill (signed by Biden) contained a provision mandating that TikTok be divested from its Chinese corporate owner within a year… and our sanctions were also increased. “The Biden administration on Wednesday [5/1] announced nearly 300 new sanctions on international suppliers of military equipment technology that the administration said have been helping Russia restock its arsenal as it carries out the war in Ukraine.

“The sanctions represent a broadening of U.S. efforts to disrupt Russia’s military industrial complex supply chain. They include more than a dozen targets based in China, which the United States says has increasingly been helping Russia arm itself. The Biden administration has expressed growing alarm about the weapons technology alliance between China and Russia. Top U.S. officials have voiced those concerns to their Chinese counterparts in recent weeks.” New York Times, May 1st. But sanctions and tariffs are in fact a consumer tax, and that includes the US government when it buys products and services on the open market.

“The Defense Department in the past few years has committed more than $450 million toward rare earths and the magnets they power. The Energy Department is offering its own incentives because the magnets are also critical for electric vehicles… The funding is helping a German magnet-maker set up its first North American factory, which broke ground in March, two decades after its last U.S. factory shut down. The facility, in Sumter, S.C., will buy rare earths locally. Those supplies could come from other projects that are receiving government funding—such as processing plants coming up in California and Texas, owned by American and Australian miners, respectively.

“Their highest hurdle is low Chinese prices. A U.S. Commerce Department probe in 2022 found that China’s dominant position enabled it to set prices low enough to make production unsustainable for competitors… In the West, mines and processing facilities face more regulations. There are only a small number of experts left in the field, requiring pricey workarounds such as importing foreign talent, sending Americans abroad for training and automating.

“‘If you want it to be commercially viable, how are you going to accomplish it, because there’s a reason we don’t do it domestically anymore,’ said Moshe Schwartz, a senior fellow for acquisition policy at the National Defense Industrial Association, a trade group representing the defense industry… Pushing defense suppliers to buy more-expensive magnets that are made in the U.S. would raise costs and have a knock-on effect, potentially affecting how many defense systems such as submarines and jet fighters the Defense Department is able to buy, Schwartz said…

“The breakdown in supply chains during the Covid-19 pandemic rang alarm bells. Pandemic-era funding enabled the government to back Texas-based Noveon Magnetics, a startup that had begun small-scale magnet production in 2018. The company received around $29 million to boost production at its San Marcos, Texas, facility.

“Magnets made there are used in cruise missiles, missile-defense systems and helicopters… As tensions with China rose, the Defense Department between 2020 and 2022 announced $45 million in funding for MP Materials—America’s dominant rare-earth miner—to set up facilities to process minerals in the U.S. The first such facility came online last year. The company plans to start making magnets in Texas by next year.” WSJ. At a much higher price!

In a world of diatribes promising simplistic solutions based on conspiracy theories and populist rhetoric, if reelected, Donald Trump threatens even higher tariffs on Chinese imports. In the end, as our profound polarization and the unwillingness of a large number of voters to make decisions based on empirical facts derail our global influence and credibility, China is getting increasingly more effective at finding viable workarounds to all our attempts to hobble her aspirations and limit her ability to thwart our national goals. Sorry, isolationists, your simplistic answer to each of these issues is completely a falsehood that will bite us badly in the very near term.

I’m Peter Dekom, and we will either incite conflict that fulfills none of our self-interests or figure out a modus vivendi with those with whom we must deal with who are anything but allies.

Student Protests, Antisemitism and University Leadership that Didn’t Learn from the Past

"I did 92 listening sessions, 75 minutes each, with over 1,500 of our students, faculty, staff…I got to first tell you how I feel as a person, as an individual, and really as a Black man, I get a heightened level of anxiety…When people are in fear, they respond in a protected mechanism, which doesn't always lead to the best outcomes." 

Sacramento State University President Luke Wood, CBS News, May 10th

George Santayana admonished us that “those who do not study the past are condemned to repeat its mistakes.” Seems like a whole lot of university administrators, some with PhDs and JDs were befuddled, easily manipulated, ignored the obvious and turned to the “tried and true”: encourage free speech, revile antisemitism and then call-in cops with batons, shields and a touch of “those privileged kids need a lesson” gleam in their eyes. Clear them out. Arrest, arrest, arrest. As for those “outside agitators” – generally addressing that many on campuses were not students, although very few would actually qualify as rabble rousers – a whole lot of them seemed to be elected officials, with a disproportionate number in state legislatures and Congress. After all, it is an election year.

For the record, Luke Wood’s personal willingness to listen, take his students seriously, encouraging dialog along the way, was the right approach. In the second week of May, “Luke Wood oversaw a peaceful end to a campus protest over the Israel-Hamas war, one of the many that have taken place at universities nationwide in recent weeks… Sacramento State's encampment came down, not with violence, but with dialogue.” CBS News. It took work. Wood didn’t sleep much. He didn’t cancel events, try to please liberal or conservative alumni or discuss “policy directives” in stentorian speeches. He listened, opened doors, encouraged dialog and accepted divergent voices, however strident. It wasn’t, here comes the violence that marked the Vietnam protests in the 1960s. Wood wasn’t old enough to have been there.

Indeed, California and New York, particularly in their big cities and universities with academic stature, are ethnic and religious melting pot states. Minnesota and particularly Michigan have heavy concentrations of ethnic Arab and other Muslim citizens… remnants of a 1920s effort by Henry Ford, facing significant absenteeism and productivity lapses from alcohol consumption on his assembly lines, to bring Muslim immigrants, whose faith did allow them to drink, to work at Ford Motors. The famous regional breweries had a few secondary negative aspects, it seems.

Few Americans are aware that in the last election in Gaza (2006), Hamas campaigned on a platform of moderation, an ability to get along with Israeli leadership. Hamas turned quickly to the dark side of a culture war that was pitting Western culture against a rising tide of seething anger led by puritanical Muslim extremists. There have been no elections in Gaza since, and over half the local Arab population never got to vote. Since the 1979 Shiite revolution in Iran, Teheran’s Ayatollahs’ theocracy has galvanized anti-US and anti-Israel feelings into fully funded Iranian surrogates waging a hot and cold war effectively on Iran’s behalf. Iran and Hamas have long since declared themselves to be our enemy. The residents of Gaza were for the most part revulsed by Hamas… but poverty and tight borders with less-than-receptive Arab neighbors… kept them hemmed in. The West Bank, once pledged to be part of a separate “Palestine” under a US brokered set of Oslo Accords from the early 1990s, was being taken over by rightwing Jews.

But there has been a concomitant rise in the horrific voices of antisemitism in this country. Jews have historically become victims in times of strife, and the quick and justified disgust and horror of many Jewish students in the United States at October 7th, the clear hatred of Hamas (a feeling that too often and to quickly embraced antipathy for all Gaza residents) amplified their vitriol. Hostages. Innocents attending a music festival. Homes broken into. Women and children kidnapped. Hamas was lambasted for the pure evil they fomented, with weapons and training from toxic Iranian manipulators… the same manipulators pulling strings in Lebanon (Hezbollah) and Yemen (Houthis). Zionism – the protection of Israel as a Jewish state – rose fiercely.

Then, Israel countered, an indicted Prime Minister and his ultra-right coalition partners pledging unrealistically to root out Hamas in its entirety from Gaza. Using massive supplies of US made munitions, the Israeli Defense Force began a campaign of utter destruction, claiming 34,000 lives by the second week of May… mostly innocents (lots of children)… and rendering most of Gaza’s building and infrastructure into an uninhabitable wasteland. World opinion turned against Israel’s perceived overkill. Lines were drawn everywhere – from the US Congress to college students – struggling with American involvement in supplying Israel with weapons, which, even as Biden paused the shipment of the most people-killing bombs and missiles, began to tear American society apart. That this turmoil came in an election year, with demands from lots of factions to shut down the protests, made a bad situation much worse.

Much as Israel overreacted in its attack on Gaza, American politicians put pressure on college leaders to get their houses in order… another overreaction that has failed miserably. Like it or not, those are our kids at those schools. Writing for the May 12th, The Guardian UK, Arielle Angel asked a simple question, referencing that antisemitism seemed to go hand-in-hand with ethnic strife way too often: Who really benefits from rising antisemitism?

“Since 7 October, commentators have been ringing the alarm that a growing protest movement in solidarity with Palestine signals not just the end of a ‘golden age’ for American Jews – as Franklin Foer recently put it in the Atlantic – but for American liberal democracy itself… As Foer wrote, the ‘surge of antisemitism is a symptom of the decay of democratic habits, a leading indicator of rising authoritarianism’. Writing before the start of the encampments, he noted that Columbia was ‘a graphic example of the collapse of the liberalism that had insulated American Jews: it is a microcosm of a society that has lost its capacity to express disagreements without resorting to animus’. Meanwhile, on CNN, the anchor Dana Bash invoked 1930s Europe – ‘and I do not say that lightly … the fear among American Jews is palpable right now’.

“There is no doubt that many Jewish students – especially those raised to believe that their Jewish identity is indivisible from the political ideology of Zionism – feel uncomfortable, or that many of them feel ostracized by their peers. But their discomfort has justified a powerful attack on academic freedom and first amendment rights that long predates the student encampments – part of a longstanding rightwing project to curb speech and reshape the public sphere.

“Foer and Bash are right that American democracy is imperiled. But as the draconian crackdown on non-violent student protests makes clear, accusations of antisemitism are not themselves evidence of liberal decline, but rather the tip of the spear in a frightening illiberal project serving the agenda of an emboldened, autocratic right wing…

“Alongside this effort to tar protest as terrorism, the right is seizing on the emotions inflamed by Israel’s war to make headway in a longstanding offensive on education. Over the past several years, the GOP has sought to meddle in the academic freedom of universities, which they allege are indoctrinating students into ‘woke’, leftwing ideology… Republicans have also taken aim nationally at diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, introducing more than 30 bills targeting DEI funding, practices, and promotion at schools. Nine have been signed into law – efforts that the ACLU says ‘represent yet another attempt to re-whitewash America’s history of racial subjugation, and to reverse efforts to pursue racial justice’.

“The moral panic around antisemitism has been a useful vehicle to further the campaign against DEI, as congressional hearings on antisemitism since 7 October have made clear. ‘Evidence shows that campus DEI bureaucracies play a major role in propagating the spread of antisemitism,’ said the US representative Burgess Owens at a November hearing . ‘It is a dirty little secret at the heart to DEI.’” Remembering that evangelical fundamentalist doctrine calls for Armageddon in the Middle East, a war that will bring Jesus Christ back, and create the Rapture taking all true believers into heaven, leaving the rest of us behind. We are all Americans, a mix of faiths and ethnicities, a blend that once made us strong, a tolerance the defined our values… and that reality is being tested as never before.

I’m Peter Dekom, and you only have to look at the forces trying further to polarize our nation against those who truly seek our traditional desire for unity through diversity to understand who is fomenting divisive hatred as their underlying political focus.

Healthcare Profits Soar as Americans Die

 

      Self-reported obesity statistics (percent of adults) in 2022 per CDC

Healthcare Profits Soar as Americans Die

The US is the only developed country on earth without national healthcare

That we are a nation that, unlike virtually all other developed nations, have three distinguishing features to our healthcare: we pay double on average what our contemporaries in other developed nations pay for the same services and more for prescription drugs, we do not have universal healthcare, and our life expectancy is declining. By any metric, our healthcare system is a failure for tens of millions of Americans. If there is one health factor that could make a significant difference in our national wellness, it is the reduction of obesity across the land.

“Addressing obesity is critical because it is associated with a range of diseases, including type 2 diabetes, heart disease, stroke, arthritis, sleep apnea, and some cancers. Obesity is estimated to increase U.S. healthcare spending by $170 billion annually (including billions by Medicare and Medicaid).” The Trust for American Health, 2023 Report. And now, with new pharmaceutical treatments available – since Americans seem unwilling to diet and exercise their way to a healthy weight – the existing prescription drugs are often not covered for weight loss and have an exorbitant price point.

“Pharmaceutical executives from Amgen (AMGN.O) to Pfizer (PFE.N), are plotting to break into the lucrative obesity market by developing or cutting deals to acquire better drugs that will compete with Novo Nordisk's (NOVOb.CO) Wegovy and Zepbound from Eli Lilly (LLY.N) .

“At stake is a market that is now estimated to reach $100 billion at a minimum by the end of the decade, as consumers flock to the new treatments that have been shown to reduce weight by as much as 20%. Drugmakers are also testing these drugs for other health benefits such as lowering cardiovascular disease risk and obstructive sleep apnea.” Reuters, January 11th.

These drugs can cost hundreds of dollars a month, way, way above what consumers in other developed nations pay. According to a report covered by the Yale School of Medicine (April 23rd), “For years, Kasia Lipaka, MD, MHS, associate professor of medicine (endocrinology) at Yale School of Medicine (YSM), has been advocating for affordable pricing of insulin, an essential — and sometimes lifesaving—drug for many individuals with diabetes. Now, she is turning her attention to a similar trend of soaring prices among new diabetes and obesity medications.

“The implications of exorbitant prices for these novel therapies are alarming, according to Lipska, who first became aware of the drug pricing issue in 2016 when one of her patients couldn’t afford to increase the dose of insulin she was taking. In subsequent research, Lipska discovered that 1.1 million Americans, or 14 percent of those who filled insulin prescriptions, reached catastrophic spending, defined as spending more than 40 percent of post-subsistence income on insulin alone.

“The same insulin and other medications for diabetes and obesity are frequently priced 10 times higher in the U.S. than in peer countries, Lipska said… ‘While the recent Inflation Reduction Act includes several policies to lower prescription drug prices, including for those used in diabetes treatment, the legislation also has serious limitations in providing relief for patients, particularly for novel, transformative treatments,’ [said Reshma Ramachandran, MD, assistant professor of medicine (general medicine) at YSM].

“Lipska pointed to the power of U.S. corporations as another obstacle to drug affordability. ‘Many patient advocacy groups, educational events, and even professional societies that clinicians are a part of are in some way influenced or supported by the pharmaceutical industry,’ she said…

Still, the issue is gaining traction, Lipska says. She notes a growing awareness of the need to address the drug pricing crisis through state and federal intervention and of the role clinicians can play in advocating on behalf of their patients.”

Despite the fact that the first serious proposal for national healthcare in the United States came in a February 1974 proposal from then Republican President Richard Nixon, the GOP has steadfastly rejected such proposals as “creeping socialism” (a serious conflation of the terms “social benefits” with “socialism”). Between that force plus massive campaign contributions from healthcare providers and pharmas half resulted in halfway measures, leaving major gaps in our entire system, that squeaked by Congress in the form of the 2010 Affordable Care Act and the recent Biden administration Infrastructure Reduction Act. Far short of what is needed.

Despite “populist” vectors, one thing is absolutely true about the MAGA GOP: they do not care one whit about healthcare for their own constituents but fall to their knees to embrace unconscionable windfall profits to pharmas and healthcare providers. Recent scandals among private equity takeovers of ER facilities and small local hospitals, reducing costs to generate higher profits as patients die for lack of necessarily available staffing, equipment and medication, should be enough to push national healthcare as the only viable solution.

I’m Peter Dekom, and American consumers should be madder than hell over these absurd costs and resulting outrageous corporate profits, but they keep electing representatives who staunchly oppose the obvious solutions.

The Higher Education Battle – Students 0, Universities -100

Your new college dorm with an 

 automatic transmission

The Higher Education Battle – Students: 0 / Universities: -100

It’s Not a Gap Year; It’s Just a Gap

Today’s college students are disoriented, denied the benefits that college degrees once bestowed on past college grads (affordable housing, upward mobility, good jobs with a predictable career path and a stable environment), disillusioned with their elders and the American leadership in particular, terrified of climate change that will impact them more than any prior generation, grappling with the absurdity of tuition costs and student loans and still recovering from the effects of stagnation during the pandemic (remote “learning”?). They believe that they are being ignored, stuck with a bill of good by old folks… and in many ways, are ready to give up and withdraw from a world that is obviously insane.

The growing sense of alienation, detachment from the country of their parents and grandparents, their disdain for the animosity their elders place on “socialism” (a philosophy that doesn’t seem too bad to them) and spending to enhance human benefits, the fact that they are paying more by far for stuff like tuition (which has risen at three times the cost of living over the last five decades) and housing than their parents ever paid, and the only thing they seem to show for it is debt and more debt. And a lunatic vs an octogenarian are the presidential finalists.

As I watched the same Columbia University building that was occupied in 1968, at the height of the Vietnam War protests (where 700 Columbia students were arrested), repeat itself in the Gaza controversy with a new student takeover… with protests at college campuses across the entire United States, I felt their shudders of “what do I really have to lose, anyway?” or “I don’t really care anymore!” or “I care too much, but not about the stuff you care about”… as antisemitism seeps in but also “stop the genocide with US money, investments and munitions” where Jewish kids join pro-Palestinian protestors while strong pro-Israelis fight precisely in the other direction.

But we really have sold this generation that bill of goods. With less than a quarter of jobs truly requiring a college degree, we’ve pushed our children to believe that without a college education they were less valuable as people. College is no longer seen as a necessary value, and the falling attendance rate, pushed hard by the pause in education from the pandemic, should alarm the proponents of higher education all over this country. But as LZ Granderson postulates in the April 30th Los Angeles Times, maybe it is the education that we are offering (with the dept it now carries) that is actually vastly overpriced and the lower value:

“A 2023 study of nearly 6,000 human resources professionals and leaders in corporate America found only 22% required applicants to have a college degree... The labor shortage is one aspect of the conversation. The shift in academia’s place in society is more significant. [Tale some time off before going to college… if they ever go back.] I’m sure that sounds like a good thing for young people joining the workforce. As an educator, my concern is what happens to a society if only the wealthy pursued higher education. Oh, that’s right: We did that already, back before there was a middle class … and paid vacations.

“Though it must be said the lowering of hiring requirements isn’t the only threat to the college experience… Academia has publicly mishandled the campus tensions and student protests that began after the Hamas attack against Israel on Oct. 7, and that certainly hasn’t been good for academia either. Neither has canceling commencement speakers … or commencement itself. Add in the rising costs — up nearly 400% in 30 years compared with 1990 rates — and, well, the college bubble hasn’t quite burst, but it’s hemorrhaging.

“Forgiving student loan debt — whether you agree with the idea or not — addresses the past…. The future of colleges depends on the future of labor. If employers are making it easier to enter corporate America without a degree, then universities must adjust how much cash they try to extract from students and their families, because the return on investment will be falling.

“College enrollment has already been declining for a decade, and it’s not because Americans have become less ambitious or less willing to invest in their children’s futures. It’s because of eroding confidence that a degree guarantees a higher quality of life… Imagine that your high school senior is interested in going to college and wants to major in education or communication or the arts. The sticker price for tuition, even at a state school, is going to look pretty steep. If your child were headed toward a degree in engineering or business, that same tuition might feel like a better bet.

“There’s no reason tuition rates couldn’t vary to reflect this reality. Colleges and universities should set tuition rates for classes based on the earning potential of the discipline studied… If our grocery stores can figure out a way to charge us more for organic produce, then surely this great nation can devise a system to set college costs that accounts for future earnings.

“For example, according to the National Education Assn., the starting salary for a teacher in California is about $55,000, the fourth highest in the nation. For California residents, the cost to attend UCLA comes to almost $35,000 a year, without financial aid. That math just doesn’t work… It’s easy to see why 20% of the nation’s teachers work a second job during the school year to make ends meet. Between 2020 and 2022, the nation lost about 300,000 educators , and we’re facing a teacher shortage. To address the issue, a number of states have loosened the teacher certification rules to make it easier to get more bodies in the classroom, which sounds … less than ideal.

“Instead, why not lower the cost of credit hours for college students pursuing a degree in education? Wouldn’t parents feel more comfortable knowing the people in the classroom set out to teach and earned the credentials?... If colleges don’t find ways like this to lower costs for at least some students, higher education will become a relic. Just as cable cutting reshaped the economics of the TV industry, the trend of corporate America moving away from degree requirements is going to put pressure on universities to make some big changes.”

An American student, traveling to Germany for a college education in English, can expect basic fees of around $500/year plus books and living expenses. We desperately need more medical doctors, nurses and technicians, more STEM educated people in the work force, yet those folks are the ones, if they head on to professional or tech-specialized grad school who can easily amass a serious six-figure pile of student dept that MAGA Republicans do not want government to support in order to keep taxes for the richest lower than most of the rest of the world. We’re the only developed country on earth without universal healthcare; we pay an average of double per person compared with our national peers… and our life expectancy is unsurprisingly falling. Why can’t we actually begin to offer our rising generations what they truly deserve… need?

I’m Peter Dekom, one of those old guys, but I actually wonder why we’ve not only deprioritized our own children but have actually increased the cost of everything they need to absurd levels… and decreased the hope and dignity that once defined a young American mind entering the workforce.

Red States vs Blue States – Teachers and Public Schools

 

Ask yourself a question: why has the MAGA GOP shifted its marketing to its constituents from facts to herd-oriented conspiracy theories? Does any of this relate to prioritizing religiously perceived doctrine of over empirical learning? Cutting taxes for the mythical job-creators to stimulate job growth (history is replete with an utter and consistent failure of reducing taxes on the rich to create good jobs)? To turn against doctors, medical professionals, educated and experienced scientists as “out-of-touch” elites? To prioritize manliness and physical strength over “woke” civil rights seekers, educators and minorities seeking equality? To cast teachers as “groomers” targeting children to sate their sexual appetites? To bring the nation back to the 1950s when white Christian voters, then the majority, set the rules, established the societal values and controlled our political system?

It's no accident that Americans who generate their perception of the world based on consuming news primarily from a cross-section of mainstream media or who possess college degrees overwhelmingly vote blue. Voters who limit their consumption of mainstream media to a very narrow cast, get most of their news from social media and lack a college degree tend to favor red candidates and policies. Understanding the world today requires an acceptance of complexity, a requirement of flexibility as change accelerates, and an openness and willingness to embrace that change and base decisions on facts… not unsupported theories proselytized by manipulative leaders seeking greater power, even at the expense of the quality of life to their own voters.

When folks are threatened with change, particularly when that change threatens what they know, if they do not have a process to adapt and learn “the new,” they are likely to outsource their opinions, without any empirical analysis, to leaders who tell them they understand those complexities but offer simplistic solutions that jibe with their hopes but not facts. While there are numerous factors at work here, I believe that the demise of the quality of public education – from a public school system that was once the highest rated on earth to one that falls, on average, to 19th… and sinking – just might be the primary basis of this unraveling political polarization.

The Soviet launch of Sputnik in 1957 spurred a massive investment in American education at all levels, the new and highest national priority. In the 1980s and beyond, “education” became an expendable government expense, a category like most other government allocations, where “balancing the budget” and not raising taxes for the rich (second only to defense spending) were more important. The social unrest from the 1960s and 1970s also cast a giant shadow on colleges everywhere… and the rapidly rising tuition burden shifted from state funding to students and their families. By the 1980s, the pattern of loans against massive tuition increases began the toxic erosion of higher education we see today. Hmmm, are university protests over the Gaza war repeating that past?

Indeed, red states are far more concerned, on average, with culling lesson plans and books from their schools than they are with improving education for their own children. This “obsession against woke,” often required a highly edited revision of history, has risen to the level of firing or even adding criminal sanctions against teachers and public librarians for the books they have or the lessons they teach, however accurate. Add low pay, increased tuition and student debt to the equation, and it’s no wonder that red states – even rich ones like Florida – are losing teachers at warp speed with little hope of replacing them.

Reporting in the May 3rd Newsweek, Khaleda Rahman, hammers home the numbers: “The National Education Association's (NEA) 2024 report on educator pay in 50 states and the District of Columbia says the national average teacher salary for the 2022-23 school year increased to $69,544… California ranked as the best state for teacher pay, with teachers receiving an average salary of $95,150 in the 2022-23 year. New York dropped from first to second place from the year before, paying teachers an average salary of $92,696… Massachusetts came in third, with an average teacher salary of $92,307, followed by Washington, where teachers were paid an average salary of $86,804, while those in the District of Columbia earned $84,882 on average… West Virginia ranked at the bottom of the list as the average teacher salary there was $52,870. Florida was second from last, with an average teacher salary of $53,098…

“The NEA's report said average teacher pay has failed to keep up with inflation, with teachers on average making 5 percent less than they did 10 years ago… The national average starting teacher salary was $44,530 in the 2022-23 year. It was the largest increase in the average teacher starting salary in the 14 years that the NEA has been tracking the numbers, but salaries are still more than $4,000 below 2008-09 levels when adjusted for inflation, according to the report.” See the article for an interactive map of teacher pay. Red states do not fare well! The NEA report itself states:

• “Almost 38% of all full-time K-12 education support professionals earn less than $25,000 annually…
• For every dollar that a non-HBCU educator makes, Historically Black Colleges and Universities faculty were paid just 75 cents in 2023.
• The union advantage: Teachers earn 26% more, on average, in states with collective bargaining, and education support professionals earn 16% more. In addition, higher education faculty in unions make 16% more at comprehensive institutions and almost 28% more at community colleges than non-union faculty in the same states
• The starting salary of teachers in states with a bargaining law is $1,653 more than in states without a bargaining law. Top pay is $12,998 higher in states with bargaining laws. In states with bargaining laws covering education support staff, the average earnings are $38,167, compared to states where bargaining is prohibited, the average school support staff earns $32,308.

As rich folks have abandoned most of the nation’s public schools (except for “rich” school districts like those in the Silicon Valley or Beverly Hills), able to afford expensive private schools for their children, income inequality rises, upward mobility has mostly been relegated to history, and public education continues to sink, classroom size rises and fewer education-majors college grads are willing to make a career out of public school teaching. Teaching is viewed as a loser profession, and the result is the sinking academic performance of American students. Municipal trash collectors are often better paid!!!

I’m Peter Dekom, and in the United States we say, “those who can’t do, teach,” while in Japan teachers are revered with a special title applied only to those deserving of the highest respect in the land: sensei.