I write letters to the editor of my local newspaper. The newspaper arbitrarily limits letters to 300 words, and the newspaper web site strictly enforces the word-limit. At first I was annoyed, but annoyance turned to satisfaction when my letters became more concise and more effective.
Some of these letters do not reach a newspaper, but most follow the 300 word limit.
TweetGlobal warming is real. In the pre-industrial era, the world was beginning to cool down as CO2 levels started to drop and the next glacial cycle began. At about 1700, when industrialization brought on increased burning of coal, CO2 and temperatures started to go up. Global warming from burning of fossil fuels is still an issue, with increasingly harmful effects on the weather and on mankind. Why is there still a debate on the existence of global warming even now?
An answer lies in how we view the world around us from a local perspective where local weather varies too much over seasons and over years to spot a trend. I used the historical weather feature of the wunderground.com website to identify local weather patterns that appear to contradict global warming.
Some examples of local weather variations are: The average temperature goes up and down yearly by an average of 1.25 degrees, so recognizing a real pattern can take decades. But decades-long patterns can reverse. From 1994 until now, the average temperature has increased from 42 degrees to 49 degrees, but from 1964 to 1994, the temperature dropped from 45 degrees to 42 degrees. Seasonal changes have also occurred. The winter seasons were much colder in the 1950’s than now and the summers were much warmer. Strange how I only remember the cold winters. Our own local observations can often validate faulty weather metaphors used to deny global warming.
One anecdotal weather event that doesn’t prove but certainly supports the idea of global warming is the ice skating on the Washington DC tidal basin in the early 1900’s. The tidal basin doesn’t freeze over enough today to allow ice skating, but the thought could incentivize someone to purchase a heat pump.
TweetDonald Trump keeps talking about his campaign promise to issue tariffs against goods coming from the three top sources; China, Mexico, and Canada. The tariff rates mentioned by Trump are in the 25% range. The tariffs would be a big revenue producer as long as everything works correctly. Skeptics say that Trump will back down to keep stock prices high and the cost of tariffs will be passed on to consumers and spark a new round of inflation. Even though the tariff idea is bad economics, the idea is far from dead.
The new Trump playbook, AKA Project 2025, proposed replacing personal income taxes and corporate taxes with a consumption tax aimed at all income levels. Tariffs, like Sales taxes, are examples of a consumption tax, so either plan would satisfy the objectives of Project 2025. Tariffs are easier to implement than a national sales tax, because tariffs can be issued without Congressional approval.
Trump is religiously implementing the worst parts of Project 2025. Why wouldn’t he implement tariffs as a national sales tax replacement. Since China, Mexico, and Canada are major sources of imported goods, it logically follows that Trump would target these countries with high tariffs, and Trump would have his consumption tax with little effort.
Trump’s tariff idea is sure to fail as it did in his first term when he had to bail out Midwestern farmers who faced potential bankruptcy as a result of Trump’s poorly planned China tariffs. History is bound to repeat itself, but Trump now knows his way around Washington, and he is capable of making a mess of historical proportions.
TweetDonald Trump’s Cabinet picks seem to all have flaws of one kind or the other, like Matt Gaetz who has a fascination for paid sex. Pete Hegseth seems to have the same fascination for extra-marital sex. He allegedly raped a woman in California, and Hegseth apparently agreed to a financial settlement. Matt Gaetz has pulled himself out of the Attorney General job. I expect that Hegseth might withdraw from the Secretary of Defense posting as well. Both candidates have virtually no experience related to their respective appointments. But removing their nominations might not make any difference.
Trump has already replaced Matt Gaetz with former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi. Bondi has real experience in the prosecution business, but she also has a history with Trump. When she was the Florida AG, she dropped an investigation into Trump University after receiving a $25,000 campaign contribution from Trump.
Like Gaetz, Bondi will do Trump’s bidding, if she becomes the next AG. Trump would still get his retribution against his political opponents, with no regard for the rule of law, and free speech will be dead.
The lesson is simple. The Congressional check on the President provided by the Constitutional advise and consent process of Cabinet appointments will have little effect, because Trump will either appoint someone else willing to carry out his extra-legal orders or Trump will wait for a recess appointment. Checks and balances only work when all parties, including the President respect them.
By his overt attempt to crush established rules and become an autocrat, Donald Trump is leading the Ship of State into uncharted territory without a rudder. The question now: How do we fix it?
TweetGoogle and Microsoft Bing Copilot were used to research this piece.
The Presidential election should have been a slam dunk. We are on the verge of heating up our atmosphere through the effects of higher CO2 levels. Even though the concentration of CO2 is only 0.04%, it is enough to make Phoenix reach a record-breaking 113 days over 100 degrees this summer. If we do nothing about global warming, the summers will be too hot, the hurricanes will have more flooding, the wildfires will be everywhere, and New York City and Southern Florida will be under water. Even if we ignore New York City and Southern Florida, the threat of overheating our planet is existential to the point that there should be no debate on this issue. Any candidate or political party that consciously ignores this issue should be automatically disqualified.
Unfortunately, the voters decided to give the price of eggs a higher priority than avoiding apocalyptically bad weather. Somehow the voters confused high prices with inflation. They are different. Inflation measures the relative change in prices. If prices remain high but constant, inflation is 0%.
The price of eggs fluctuates with the health of egg-laying hens. When the hens are healthy, the prices go down, but when they are ravaged by disease, the prices go up. But when all the prices go up for about any reason, they tend to stay up, and there is a built-in 2% inflation rate in a healthy economy, according to the experts. Inflation is easy to spot. The cost of a car in 1970 was about $2,500. Today a similar car might cost $25,000. We can afford a $25,000 car today, because salaries have risen. If you want a free-market capitalist economy, then the only way to fix overall higher prices is with higher wages. Instead of blaming Democrats for high prices, we should blame companies for not raising wages. Where is there a good union when we need one?
There is another side of the global-warming vs. inflation question. One of the side-effects of global warming is higher inflation. Climate disasters like hurricanes and wildfires interrupt the supply of consumer goods. Climate change can lower crop yields. The demand for more energy will be higher. Heat-related health problems will increase costs. And insurance costs will go up as the damages to life and property increase. Doing nothing about global-warming will raise prices even higher.
Who is going to tell Donald Trump that he can’t lower prices while he ignores global-warming?
TweetThe presidential election results in Kentucky were called for Donald Trump early Tuesday night. Kentucky residents clearly prefer Trump, but is that preference self-serving?
Kentucky serves almost 220,000 mothers and infants through the federal WIC program that provides food and education to new mothers in need. Almost 550,000 Kentucky residents receive food assistance from the federal SNAP program. And about 1.4 million Kentucky residents receive medical help from federal Medicaid and CHIP programs. Kentucky sends 14,000 children to federally funded Head Start and Early Head Start programs. Kentucky is the 6th poorest state with a lot of residents who need assistance to just get by.
But Donald Trump, the candidate favored by Kentucky voters, plans to make cuts to all of these programs to help fund his tax cuts to rich Americans. 40% of the funding for the Kentucky State budget depends on federal programs. After Trump makes his cuts Kentucky politicians will need to choose between raising taxes or cutting aid to a significant part of their population.
The logic in choosing Trump, who would cut aid to Kentucky is baffling, but so is the resistance to raise minimum wage, which is stuck at $7.25 since 2009. Inflation, based on the increase of the Consumer Price Index in Kentucky since 2009, has raised prices by 43%. Today, a minimum wage of $10.50 would be a fair wage and might actually reduce Kentucky’s need for federal assistance. Even Republicans would appreciate that.
TweetMicrosoft Bing Copilot was used to research this piece.
Donald Trump has been linked to fascism since the 2017 Charlottesville riots when he said there were ‘some very fine people’ on both sides. Now the GOP is claiming that the Democrats are fascists, because of their ‘socialism agenda’. Democrats and Republicans can’t both be right on this question, because the US is simply not a fascist country. But what is fascism anyway?
Fascism is a dictatorship emphasizing nationalism and centralized control. Adolph Hitler and Benito Mussolini are prime examples of fascist leaders. Both used dictatorships to steer their corporate economies toward a national agenda.
Neither dictator worried about the welfare of the people. Hitler’s Nazi Party had the socialist word in its title, but Hitler used socialism as a propaganda tool that helped to validate his abuses toward German citizens. Clearly American Democrats’ emphasis on social welfare ideas like safety rules for workers doesn’t make them fascists.
Donald Trump has acted like a fascist many times. He tried to steal the 2020 election that ended with the Jan 6 riot, and he is trying again in 2024. He echoes ideas from the Project 2025 plan that promotes ways to make executive power more centralized and authoritarian. He wants to use military troops to arrest and detain people exercising their right to protest. By his actions, Trump has earned the fascist mantle.
The fascist label imposed on Democratic politicians is a distraction from the issues that should decide this election, like a solution to global warming, a solution for Social Security, a solution for income inequality, and much more.
The election has veered to a contest over whether Donald Trump or Kamala Harris is the bigger fascist, and we are neglecting the issues that are more important. I hope the electorate figures this out before November 5.
TweetComments about Donald Trump can show up in the strangest places. There is a reference to Trump in British comic Matt Parker’s book, Love Triangle for example. Parker’s book is about how triangles and trigonometry are used almost everywhere.
Donald Trump posted a top-secret photo of an Iranian launch pad on what was then known as Twitter, and Parker explains how an astronomer in the Netherlands analyzed the photo using Google Maps to locate the launch pad and triangulation to determine where the satellite camera was located when the picture was taken. The astronomer determined that an as yet unidentified satellite he was tracking was a US spy satellite with a camera capable of incredible detail. All of his information came from the single photo that Trump made public.
If an individual astronomer from the Netherlands could glean some good information from a single photo, then the Russians or the Chinese could do the same thing. They are probably tracking this satellite very carefully until they have the capability to shoot it down.
Parker makes very clear just how dangerous Trump’s careless disregard for his responsibilities can be, especially when it is not certain that all of the secret documents have been recovered from Mar-a-Lago.
TweetThe Presidential polls are still too close to call, while we are only three weeks before we start tallying the ballots in the only poll that counts. Meanwhile the candidates are still explaining why the other candidate is not qualified.
There are many reasons why Donald Trump is not qualified. Trump’s economic plan includes slapping huge tariffs on just about every import. Economists say that Trump’s massive tariff plan would lower the GDP and raise the rate of inflation. Tariffs would be an economic disaster. Trump also wants to deport over 13 million undocumented immigrants. Even with the trauma to over 2 million spouses who are US citizens or have permanent residence status and 5 million children who are US citizens, the loss of these immigrants would hurt the economy, causing a 4% drop in our GDP. Trump also wants us to retreat from our efforts to reverse global warming and bring back oil just as we are starting to see progress in switching to electric energy. A Trump Presidency would mean even more big hurricanes, and we might even witness an as yet undefined category 6 hurricane. And don’t forget Trump’s attacks on free speech by threatening to shut down major news outlets and by jailing his opponents. Or Jan 6.
Now that our economy is headed for a soft landing after the effects of COVID, it would be a shame to throw all this progress away by electing Trump.
TweetThe Vice-Presidential debate between JD Vance and Tim Walz ended with no clear winner, according to many news outlets, but USA Today gave Vance the edge. Because the media often pays more attention to presentation than content, I am not so sure.
On the trust issue, Tim Walz had a big lead, based on two fact-checked false statements by Vance and in a follow-up CBS fact-checking report. JD Vance made 7 false claims, 2 mostly false claims, and 1 misleading claim. Tim Walz only had 1 false claim. In addition, Walz had 5 verified true claims, 2 partly true claims, and 1 that needed context. JD Vance showed us that he was less comfortable with the truth than Tim Walz.
On content, JD Vance concentrated on attacking the Biden Administration, but most of his attacks turned out to be false. Tim Walz’s comments about Donald Trump and Tim Vance, on the other hand were true, as were his claims about the Biden record. When cornered JD Vance wanted to look to the future, but he didn’t give many specifics. Walz gave the impression that the future would be an extension of the Biden years. I am more comfortable with Walz.
The big turning point in the debate happened when Tim Walz tried to get JD Vance to admit that Trump lost the election. Vance would not answer the question. Instead, he pivoted to a vague and undefined future. Vance’s answer convinced at least one uncommitted voter to cast their ballot for Kamala Harris. I believe that Vance’s non-answer convinced others to vote for Harris as well.
TweetRolling Stone magazine reported on Donald Trump’s claim that people who criticize Supreme Court Justices should be jailed. The focus was on criticizing conservative Justices who overturned Roe v Wade. In addition, Trump wants to use the military to round up ‘illegal’ immigrants and put them in camps until they are deported. That’s not all. Trump wants to jail his political enemies who, according to Trump, cheated on elections.
All of Trump’s bluster echoes the actions of Joseph Stalin as recorded in Yuval Harari’s book Nexus in which Russian scientist Trofim Lysenko developed a new theory of evolution based on the idea of re-educating plants and animals. Stalin liked the idea of re-education, so he promoted Lysenko’s theory over the well-established theory proposed by Charles Darwin and based on natural selection.
Any Russian scientist who criticized Lysenko’s theory, and there were many, felt the wrath of Stalin. Three science critics were shot after a show trial and another was sent to a work camp where he eventually died. Soviet Russia did not respect freedom of speech.
The ruthless actions of one autocrat from the past should make us pause over the threatening rants of a would-be autocrat in the present. Trump is giving us a clear decision for the 2024 election in November. Do we want to respect free speech or do we want to return to a past time when an autocrat could have someone executed or thrown in jail over the simple crime of speaking freely.
TweetOne of the cornerstones of our Democratic Republic is the concept of a peaceful transition of power, but that concept is in danger today because Donald Trump chooses to ignore the true meaning of a free and fair election and the need for a peaceful transition. Understanding what a free and fair election is in legal terms needs a historical trip to the 1876 election.
In the 1876 election, Samuel Tilden won over 50% of the popular vote, but neither he nor Republican Rutherford B. Hayes received enough electoral votes, because of electoral disputes in 4 states and competing slates of electors. An election commission failed to sort out the mess, so Democrats conceded the election to Hayes, and Republicans ended Reconstruction in the South. Clearly, the election process needed fixing.
In 1887, Congress passed the Electoral Counting Act that was designed to fix the mess of 1876. The new process gave States the overall responsibility of managing elections, defined a period to adjudicate election disputes until the deadline for election certification, also called Safe Harbor Day. After the Safe Harbor Day, Congress is compelled to accept the election results. The Congressional requirement to accept the election results codifies the concept of a free and fair election into law. It follows that a peaceful transition of power is the simple act of conceding the election by the incumbent Party.
The 2000 election shows how the Electoral Counting Act can work. The 2000 election hinged on Florida where George Bush led by just 1700 votes. The recount was complicated by the hanging chads problem in Florida’s punch card voting process. The intended votes on many of the punch card ballots were not certain, making a manual recount virtually impossible. Finally, the Supreme Court stopped the recount at the Safe Harbor Day and awarded the victory to Bush. Losing candidate Al Gore conceded the next day and preserved the concept of a peaceful transition.
The Electoral Counting Act almost failed in 2020 when Donald Trump ignored the Safe Harbor Day rule and failed to concede the election. Instead, he created fake slates of electors that voted for Trump, even though the State election results said otherwise. After Mike Pence refused to acknowledge the fake electors, Trump unleashed a mob on the Capitol building. The mob failed to stop the election, and Joe Biden was inaugurated President. After more than three years Trump still won’t concede.
The election this year will be a game changer no matter how it comes out. We will either be on a path to free and fair elections with Kamala Harris or on a path to making elections obsolete with Donald Trump.
TweetThe US needs to address a serious economic problem. The number of workers supporting Social Security has been falling for years from about 5.1 workers per Social Security beneficiary in the 1960’s to about 2.7 workers per beneficiary today. Projections have the Social Security Fund as unsustainable by 2035, and the problem is not only about Social Security. Labor shortages can disrupt the supply chain, cause increases in wages, more government spending, and can lead to inflation. Already there are a large number of job postings left unfilled, evidence that the worker pool is too small.
Three factors can affect the worker pool. The falling fertility rate leads to fewer children that, in turn, leads to fewer workers and lower Social Security funding. Better medical care leads to longer life expectancy, a growing pool of retirees, and more demand on the Social Security Fund. And young immigrants will increase the number of workers and increase the funding level.
Democrats and Republicans have plans to fix the impending Social Security funding problem. Democrats want to raise the Social Security tax on higher-paid wage earners, and Republicans want to cut Social Security benefits. But both parties have policies that affect Social Security in interesting ways.
Both parties suggest different ways to increase the number of workers. Democrats want to give immigrants a path to citizenship, thus preserving the additional Social Security funding provided by working immigrants. Republicans want to round up undocumented immigrants, working or not, and send them back to their country of origin. Instead of taking advantage of immigration, Republicans want to ban abortion and force women to have more babies.
If you anticipate needing Social Security in 2035, ask yourself: Which party has the best chance of providing your Social Security, if given the opportunity?
TweetDonald Trump’s constant attacks on the current level of inflation just shows how little he knows about inflation. For someone seeking the US Presidency, Trump’s knowledge is shockingly naïve. Trump conflates today’s high prices as inflation when the inflation rate is at a low and manageable rate of 2.9%. And Trump blames the Biden administration for not acting instantly, when you need at least a year to lower the annual inflation rate, based on simple math.
There are three ways of lowering the inflation rate quickly, and only of them works. One, introduce Communistic price controls that roll back prices to last year’s values. A government mandate to lower prices would create chaos and huge business losses. Two, arrange for a recession or depression where many businesses shut down. Nobody likes a recession, and the follow-up to a recession is often inflation. Finally, raise wages to make it more affordable for workers to manage under the inflation induced higher prices.
Wages are actually catching up to inflation. Nominal salaries have increased 23% - 25% since January 2020, and the growth rate of wages exceeded inflation in February 2023. The number of workers still having trouble meeting expenses is shrinking, and the future is bright as long as Washington doesn’t mess with the current labor policies.
Trump’s inflation complaints are pure malarkey, to paraphrase the current President.
TweetA lot of noise is going around about Donald Trump’s original plan in Project 2025 and in the replacement plan of Agenda 47. The two plans have some differences and a lot of similarities, and both plans describe a dark, autocratic shift in US government.
Both plans would be catastrophic for the US, and a Trump Presidency poses many reasons why we should work as hard as we can to keep the Democratic party in control of Washington politics. Take the Project 2025 plan that gives Trump the power to fire 50,000 government workers. The Executive Branch ‘reform’ targets Government employees who resist Trump’s attempts to end support of existing laws that do not suit GOP objectives. But one reason is more important than any other Trump plan because of its long-range effect.
Trump’s plan to reverse all of Biden’s efforts to fight global warming will be catastrophic. If Trump stops all of the clean energy initiatives, he would reverse efforts that have reduced US emissions to the 1990’s level while US population has increased 30%. With a Trump victory, there is a very good chance that world-wide momentum will falter, and the warming trend will spiral out of control, making this year’s hot spells seem like a cold shower. The planet would be too hot to support human life and civilization as we know it would not recover. For this reason alone, Trump should not be elected President.
If we don’t fix global warming, nothing else matters.
TweetToo many Democrats are complaining about Joe Biden’s age and health while the time to November gets shorter. Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, Adam Schiff, and others have all shown concern over Biden. The Democrats have taken Trump’s problems right out of the news cycle.
Democrats became concerned after the CNN debate between Biden and Trump when the media pointed out that Biden came across as weak and confused. In a follow-up interview, George Stephanopoulos later questioned Biden relentlessly about his Presidential staying power. The wind seems to be blowing towards Trump, and the Democrats seem to be drifting with the wind.
The Democratic politicians might be sincerely concerned about the potential bad outcome of the election, but they are practicing bad politics. In the past, a new candidate emerging this late in a Presidential race has virtually no chance of winning. The Democrats are making a bad situation worse.
Historian Heather Cox has a different view in a CNN interview. She downplays Biden’s stumbles and Trump’s disconnected speech, his lies, and his disrespect for traditional democratic norms. Cox says she wants to focus on the long view of a possible Trump Presidency. Cox worries that the media is not questioning how Trump could disable our democratic institutions and create an imperial presidency. Instead, the media focuses entirely on Biden’s age.
Cox just addresses the surface of the issue. The news media and the Democratic politicians should understand the history well enough to know that it is too late to abandon Biden’s candidacy, and the media should understand that Trump’s dishonesty and agenda are actually more newsworthy than Biden’s age.
Too many people outside of Trump’s sphere have lost their sense of reality, like the citizens who admired the emperor’s new clothes.
TweetMy first contact with Christian Nationalism was in grade school. I didn’t know what Christian Nationalism was, and I don’t think the teacher knew what it was.
Each day, the class started with the Lord’s Prayer. I recited the prayer with the class until I repeated the phrase, “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” Then I said a quiet, “Amen.” As a practicing Catholic, I reached the end of the prayer, but the class continued, “For thine is the Kingdom…”
The teacher was a practicing Protestant, and she asked me pointedly why I didn’t finish the prayer. I explained that, the Catholic version ended at ‘deliver us from evil’. I don’t remember the teacher ever asking me again, and I don’t remember any other teacher broaching the subject, but I do remember always stopping early while the class continued with the Protestant ending as long as the Lord’s Prayer was recited in school.
My second notable contact with Christian Nationalism happened during a conversation on some subject that I don’t remember, except that my Catholic faith entered into the discussion. Someone replied that Catholics weren’t Christians. I said quietly but forcefully that I, as a Catholic, was a follower of Christ, so I was a Christian. The antagonist let the conversation end on that note.
Christian Nationalists perpetuate their narrow view of Christianity by making it the sole driving force in our government. After centuries of fighting in the name of religion, our founding fathers were wise enough to build a wall between politics and prayer. We need to honor them and all the non-Christian soldiers who died for us by keeping that separating wall firm and in place.
TweetWith all the strange weather in and out of the US, global warming deniers should be out of a job, but they are still vocal. A global warming denier blamed water vapor as the cause of our hot weather by correctly observing there is more water vapor in the air than CO2. The denier omitted that we have some control over CO2 by cutting the use of fossil fuel, but we can’t stop our oceans from evaporating into the air, because of CO2 induced heating. The purpose of this article is to show how the CO2 based model for global warming makes sense.
The discussion about global warming begins with the glacial cycles occurring in the last 400,000 years. Based on temperature data, atmospheric data, and other scientific evidence the 4 most recent glacial cycles can be graphed. A glacial cycle consists of a glacial period in which glaciers grow in size, lasting from 70,000 years to 90,000 years and an interglacial period in which glaciers are get smaller, lasting about 10,000 years. Significantly. the graphs show that the duration of the glacial cycles is getting longer over time.
A popular explanation for the glacial cycles and also climate change is the work of mathematician and astronomer Milutin Milanković who theorized that periodic changes in the Earth’s orbit and changes in the Earth’s polar axis caused periodic changes in the level of the Sun’s radiation absorbed by the Earth. Milanković’s theory also explained that periodic glacial cycles occurred as the Earth’s orbital changes repeated every 41,000 years. The 41,000 year cycle could have applied to earlier ice ages, but not to the most recent ones. There must be another cause to the longer glacial cycles we are now experiencing. The variation of CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere, which corresponds closely to temperature change, is the most likely candidate.
The carbon cycle describes how the Earth’s atmosphere releases and absorbs CO2. Plants pull CO2 from the air and water and release O2. Humans and animals pull O2 out of the air and water and release CO2. CO2 comes from other sources as well, including; volcanic eruptions, wildfires, evaporation from the oceans, and human activity. Ideally, there would be an equilibrium where the amount of CO2 added to the atmosphere would be the same as the amount of CO2 removed from the air. With CO2 falling and rising in repeating cycles, an equilibrium state is complicated at best.
Tracking the level of CO2 and temperature during a glacial cycle can show how the Earth achieves a form of equilibrium. When the glacial period begins, the level of CO2 and the average temperature drops, and glaciers in colder areas start to expand. At this time, CO2 consumers, namely plants, remove more CO2 from the air than CO2 producers, namely animals and natural events, add CO2 to the air. The reduction of CO2 is slow, indicating a near equilibrium condition. The cooling process continues until it reaches a CO2 concentration of about 180 parts per million (PPM) and a temperature drop of about 14 degrees Celsius. At this level the cooling process stops. Apparently, it is too cold or too icy for the plants to offset animal production of CO2.
After cooling stops, the glacial cycle starts to warm relatively quickly, suggesting that the CO2 consumers are probably not equipped to draw a significant amount of CO2 from the air until the Earth gets warmer. In the meantime, the CO2 producers warm the Earth and melt much of the ice rather quickly until a warming threshold is reached. The warming threshold for the most recent glacial cycles is a CO2 concentration of 280 PPM and about 14 degrees Celsius hotter than the cold threshold. At this point the CO2 concentration starts to go down with a decreasing temperature. Apparently, the plant-consumers of CO2 catch up to the animal producers and start a new glacial cycle.
The little ice age, covering the period between 1300 and 1850, was a period of drastic cooling in a few regions, including Europe, North America, and New Zealand. In these regions, glaciers grew in size. The hypothetical causes include decreased sunspot activity, increased volcanic activity, and the killing of 60 million indigenous people in North America. Another possible cause: After over 11,000 years of warm weather, the Earth conditions might have been right for the beginning of a new ice age. According to Antarctic sampling, the CO2 level peaked at 285 PPM by 1150 and then began a very slow downward trend. The gradual transition to a colder climate was beginning. The CO2 concentration began increasing around 1700 at the beginning of the industrial revolution, and the little ice age ended when industrial revolution took hold in the mid-19th century. CO2 has steadily risen since then, so there seems to be no ice age in our immediate future, only heat, storms, rising seas, and more immigrants leaving the tropic zone. Could the little ice age have been the onset of the next glacial cooling period, and was it interrupted by the fossil-fuel based industrial revolution? Maybe.
TweetIn 2017, I used epidemiologist Richard Wilkinson’s claim that income inequality is a big contributor to social and health issues as a basis for rejecting the Trump tax cuts that were up for debate in Congress. The US fared very poorly in Wilkerson’s report, showing high income inequality and a high level of social issues when compared with other industrialized countries. So, has the US improved over the last seven years?
The US income inequality coefficient, on a 0 to 1 scale in which a higher value indicates more inequality, has been pretty steady since 2011, going from 0.41 to 0.42 in 2019 and to 0.40 in 2023. Except for a bump in the Trump years, income inequality is about the same but little better now than in 2011. Have the social issues improved along with the slight improvement of income inequality?
Some social issues identified by Wilkinson have improved. Some have gotten worse. I tracked some of the social issues. Homicides which are lower. Infant mortality is lower. Obesity is higher. Mental health percentage is higher. Life expectancy is longer, Imprisonment is lower. And teenage birth rates are lower. The inequality index improved slightly, while five categories improved and two categories got worse. Less income inequality appears to correspond with a more stable social environment. How can government improve income inequality?
According to Robert Reich and others, Government can reduce income inequality by fixing the stresses on the lower and middle economic classes. For example, raising the minimum wage, investing in education and infrastructure, regulating Wall Street and corporations, campaign finance reform all help, and they can be financed with an increase in the marginal tax rate and with progressive payroll taxes. So, is social stability the only issue?
Until our politicians realize that a healthy economy depends on productive businesses that make good products and prosperous consumers willing and able to buy these products. The income gap describes a nation with an unbalanced economy. The US will not reach its full potential until the income gap is smaller.
Democrats generally support the fixes to income inequality and the inherently more stable society, and Republicans generally oppose the same fixes, because they believe that the economy depends on profitable corporations. Based on party priorities, only Democrats can deliver a more stable society and a more balanced economy.
TweetWith guilty verdicts starting, Donald Trump is treating his court trials the same way he treated the 2020 election with one exception. Trump is not blaming the late Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez for his trial defeats. Instead, he vilifies the judges. He defames the DOJ. And he falsely claims that President Biden is pulling all the strings to get guilty verdicts. Trump is even facing a possible third defamation lawsuit from E. Jean Carroll, because Trump just can’t keep his mouth shut.
I worry about the trials, the verdicts, the sentences, and the ensuing blowback. But mostly I worry about the distraction from all the obsessive rhetoric. I worry that the noise from all of these necessary court trials will make us forget what disaster we would face from a Trump Presidency that spends all its energy gathering up all the decentralized government power into the hands of the chief executive.
Trump is a long-time micro-manager, because he wants total control. Trump tried to micro-manage Federal policy-makers who wouldn’t change existing policies without legislative approval. So, Trump wrote an executive order in 2020 with the intention of firing those so-called ‘deep-state’ bureaucrats. President Biden immediately reversed Trump’s executive order, even for those bureaucrats who were making policy for Federal laws enacted by conservatives.
Trump’s executive order would reestablish the old 19th century federal spoils system with all of its instability and corruption. Our long-term Federal programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security would fluctuate according to the whims of the next administration or just disappear.
Trump’s guilt or innocence in the 2024 election is important, but it should not overshadow the damage he could do to the Federal Government if Trump fired an estimated 50,000 policy makers just because they want to follow existing laws.
TweetThe Presidential election is frustrating at best, because the media and the polling all focus on things that don’t really matter, including; high prices, Trump’s brashness, Biden’s age, Biden’s support of Israel, no interest in Ukraine, and a spike in immigration. These issues are real and they are current, but they are insignificant compared to the catastrophic things that Donald Trump plans to do during his hypothetical future Presidency.
For example, Donald Trump wants to reverse all of the progress we have made to counteract global warming and restore our dependence on fossil fuels. Without US leadership, the rest of the world will most likely follow Trump’s misguided lead. Global warming isn’t just some future event. It is happening now. We have more destructive hurricanes and tornadoes and more wildfires. We have more people coming into the US to escape the unbearable heat in the American tropics.
In the US, our environment is threatened. Whooping cranes are threatened by invasive mangrove trees. Cyprus stands are threatened by rising seawater. Sea turtle shoreline nesting areas are being destroyed by rising seas. Small animals like the pika are running out of ways to escape rising temperatures. Coral reefs that support much of our marine population are dying as the water becomes too hot. An island supporting wild deer is getting smaller as the ocean around it rises.
A Trump Presidency would push the global warming issue down the road for at least four years and leave us with a problem that might be too advanced to fix. On this issue alone, Donald Trump should not be President.
We can fix high prices with salary increases, but fixing global warming needs an overhaul of our energy industry and a real commitment.
TweetRepublicans are against raising the minimum wage. In 2017, Missouri Republicans lowered the St Louis minimum wage from $10 to $7.70. Ohio Republicans are trying to stop a ballot initiative raising the minimum wage from $10.45 to $15. Virginia’s Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin vetoed a bill raising the minimum wage from $12 to $15. In their zeal to keep minimum wage the same, Republicans are defying logic and common sense.
Republicans have claimed for decades without evidence that raising the minimum wage will cause low-wage worker layoffs and threaten small businesses, but Matthew Desmond in his book Poverty, by America says otherwise. In 1992, New Jersey raised the minimum wage, but Pennsylvania didn’t, making a perfect test-case. Data from the two states show that raising the minimum wage has no effect. And other examples show the same thing. Republicans focus on how raising the minimum wage affects businesses, instead of focusing on how keeping the same minimum wage affects workers.
The minimum wage was last raised to $7.25 per hour in 2009. Since 2009, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) has increased 46%. Based on the increase in CPI, the minimum wage should be $10.60, but that doesn’t describe what a worker making $7.25 per hour faces today. Because of inflation, the buying power of $7.25 has decreased to $4.96. So, an hour of work that bought $7.25 worth of goods in 2009 can only buy $4.96 worth of goods in 2024, compared to the market basket value in 2009. The worker lost $2.29 in buying power since 2009. Clearly, minimum wage workers are poorer today while they earn the same amount of money.
We index social security payments on inflation. Federal and State pensions are indexed on inflation. Why not index the minimum wage on inflation? It only makes sense.
TweetDonald Trump is pushing an absolute Presidential immunity defense in his many law suits that he is trying to delay until after the election. Never mind that a lot of the immunity issues came up during the Nixon scandal, and President Ford pardoned Nixon to protect him from potential prosecution. Never mind that most people don’t need a legal verdict, because there is so much information in the public domain. Still, the Supreme Court could rule in Trump’s favor.
Justice Samuel Alito suggested that immunity would protect future Presidents from being unjustly prosecuted by their successors. He suggested that acknowledging Presidential immunity might stabilize our democratic institutions. Conservative justices were also inclined to send the issue back to the lower courts to separate official duties from private duties as a determining factor for immunity. Both opinions avoided the legal question in the case.
In the Jan 6 case, Judge Chutkan and the Appeals Court got to the real point. Attempting to stay in power by overturning the election results through subterfuge and violence overrides any presidential immunity issues. Any other legal claim must be judged as one influenced by political loyalties.
If the Supreme Court rules according to suggestions made by the conservative justices, they may be setting a precedent that nails our Democratic Republic into a coffin.
TweetA recent article by Uri Berliner criticized NPR for being too liberal, so Donald Trump jumped in and bragged that he would cut funding to NPR. As you might guess, Uri Berliner is overly critical and Donald Trump exaggerates Berliner’s article. Nevertheless, Right wing news outlets ran with the story. After all the shouting, there is less to this story than it seems.
First, Berliner is overly critical. Berliner cherry-picks his areas of criticism. Two examples: He calls out NPR for not covering Hunter Biden’s laptop, while the Republican investigation of Hunter Biden found no connection between Hunter Biden and his father, President Biden. Berliner criticizes NPR for not investigating whether there is systemic racism in the US, while the evidence of systemic racism has already been investigated and codified thoroughly. Yes, there is systemic racism all over America.
Second, Trump exaggerates Berliner’s article. Trump claims that NPR is a liberal disinformation machine, so he wants to cut all government funding for NPR. The public news outlet is far from a liberal cog. It is ranked as the third least biased news outlet behind AP and Reuters. Most of NPR funding comes from donations and private grants. Only 4% is from government funding. Trump’s proposed cuts would not cripple NPR, but they might push NPR further to the left.
While NPR is more liberal than in the past, so is its audience. NPR merely reflects the views of its listeners. Trump’s 88 pending criminal charges, his failed attempt to stay in office, and his vicious attacks on Court officials have made Trump an easy target for criticism. Trump’s claims that NPR’s liberal bias is behind attacks on him have a little validity, but Trump’s failure to hold himself accountable for his actions makes his NPR claims only half-truths.
TweetMicrosoft Bing Copilot was used to research this piece.
Donald Trump is paying a lot to delay his trials until after the election and maybe beyond that. With the help of friendly judges and a cooperative Supreme Court, Trump’s strategy is working right now. A lot of people are mad as hell, because there may be no guilty verdict needed to convince them that Trump is unqualified. Satirist Jonathan Swift would have a field day over Trump’s politics.
A lot of well-meaning people want Merrick Garland booted out of office, because he equivocated over a Trump investigation so long that the courts moving at the super-fast rate of an angry sloth simply don’t have enough time. Garland started investigating Trump in July, 2022, and appointed Jack Smith as Special Prosecutor in November. Jack Smith and his team issued indictments in March and July of 2023, about 8 months after starting these investigations. The investigation could have started sooner, but, given the extent that Trump is issuing delaying actions, it is not certain that an earlier start date would have made much of a difference.
There are two irrefutable reasons why the trial verdicts don’t matter, and they are not about the plethora of evidence in the news, including insurrection planning documents, witness testimony, and the total lack of evidence of cheating by Democrats, documented in over 60 trials. The first evidence is Trump’s assertion that the Presidential Records Act gives him the right to retain top secret documents where public exposure would threaten National security. The second evidence is Trump’s defense that he is protected from prosecution because he has total immunity. Both Trump assertions clearly indicate that Trump knowingly committed crimes against the US government. In the court of public opinion, that should be enough to disqualify Trump in the voting booth.
TweetThe book That Used to be Us by Thomas Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum describes the decline of the US as a nation and provides a plan to recover as a nation. The book was written in 2011, but the message in the book is still timely, because the US leaders ignored the book enough to stay on the path of decline at least until now. We have a choice this year, to have a national reset or to fall off the edge of the cliff.
Tom and Mike, as they refer to themselves in the book, build their recovery strategy around two concepts: The US must face and resolve four challenges, and the US must resolve five elements necessary for national prosperity. Remember that these elements apply to 2011.
The four challenges are; rapid globalization, expanding information technology, budget deficits, and addressing global warming. These challenges are external and internal conditions that threaten our country. All four challenges still apply today, and there is a fifth challenge, the resolution of local but deadly wars in Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, etc. These wars all make the world less stable, and they make fixing the other challenges more difficult.
The five pillars of prosperity are; public education, infrastructure, open immigration, basic research and development, and appropriate regulation. These are basic government functions necessary for a stronger and a more effective nation. Public education builds our work force. Infrastructure promotes commerce. Immigration pumps more workers in a growing economy. Regulations promote safety and competitiveness. These pillars are even more relevant today as our country continues to become more average among the countries around the world.Tom and Mike blame the inability of Congress to compromise as a major problem that needs to be fixed. They say that both parties have abandoned the political center that is the essential place where compromise is possible. But if you define the center as having success in the nine essential components defined by Tom and Mike, then Republicans are the ones who won’t compromise. They won’t fix global warming. They fail in budget deficits by refusing to raise taxes. They fail in Ukraine by holding up funding. They want to reduce Federal funding in education. They want to stop immigration. They want to cut all regulations, including the good ones. Republicans can’t compromise until they accept that Tom and Mike’s four challenges and five pillars are real problems.
TweetIn her book, Prequel, Rachel Maddow tells the story of how German Fascists spread propaganda in the US during the 1930’s. The primary goal was to keep the US out of an impending European war that Germany was planning from the beginning. Germany also wanted to insert division and chaos into the US political landscape.
The Germans nearly succeeded. Their plan included enlisting the help of at least 20 conservative members of Congress, who would provide a level of credibility to the propaganda. The scheme used Congressional franking privileges to distribute anti-Semitic and anti-immigration material that also encouraged the overthrow of the FDR administration. The plot also included the formation of militia groups that were armed with munitions obtained from cooperating National Guard units.
Ironically, the plot fell apart after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and forced America into the war.
The obvious parallels between Russian interference with our politics, now and German interference, then makes this compelling. Russians, like the Germans, interfered in our elections. Like the Germans, they compromised American members of Congress. Like the Germans, they created division in our politics. And they enlisted a Militia to overthrow an election. I encourage you to read Prequel.
TweetAfter fumbling an attempt to steal the election on Jan 6, the MAGA Republicans in the House of Representatives under the leadership of Mike Johnson and the direction of private citizen Donald Trump have found a way to paralyze the Legislative Branch so that nothing of value is accomplished. The much-needed military aid package and the immigration reform bill are both dead on arrival. Work on funding the government after March 1 is stalled by a House recess. The MAGA Republicans seem to be more interested in making President Biden look bad than in governing. If the MAGAs in Congress continue to govern by creating chaos without consequences, they could accomplish what they failed to do on Jan 6.
The problem is simple. The checks and balances designed to maintain the democratic elements of our government don’t work when a government branch chooses to fail instead of governing. With an election nine months away, it might be too late to save the dysfunctional mess in the House of Representatives under the spell of Donald Trump and, by implication, Vladimir Putin. Face it, in a government as divided as Washington is today, checks and balances don’t work.
President Biden needs to stay within the rules of governing, because any departure from the rules just perpetuates a broken Washington. The only way to repair the breaks is by a bipartisan choice to govern around the MAGA Republicans at least until Washington is working again. How far along is that discharge petition?
TweetThe writers of the US Constitution inserted many checks and balances to protect against the collapse of our government into autocracy. The checks and balances deter one branch of government from abusing its power over the other. If Congress passes bad bills, the President can veto it, but Congress can override the veto, for example. The checks provide a way for the Federal government to retain its democratic spirit through self-enforcement.
The current state of our government clearly shows that checks and balances, by themselves, prevent nothing. Checks and balances don’t work when members of two branches collude. For example, Senate Republicans wouldn’t convict Donald Trump in two impeachment trials, so Trump was free to spend unauthorized funds on a border wall. Trump also openly organized fake electors and a Jan 6 riot in a failed attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Collusion for the sake of power leads to corruption. An example is the current House of Representatives. With a large contingent of Republicans and Mike Johnson all getting their marching orders from Donald Trump, the House is dysfunctional. It threatens US credibility in the international arena by withholding aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan, and it threatens US security by refusing to pass an immigration bill that resolves most of Republican demands for handling border crossings. The House Republicans are acting like a group of autocratic dictators.
President Biden is in a corner. If he stays within the Constitutional rules, he is accused of being too weak. If he takes any unauthorized action, he is accused of being a Fascist dictator. Meanwhile, Ukraine still needs military help to defeat Russia’s widely condemned invasion, and migrants will continue to cross our border largely unchecked. And Gregg Abbott’s lethal wire barrier will remain in place.
TweetGoogle and Microsoft Bing Copilot were used to research this piece.
A Washington Post article about the cost of food had some very misleading statements about the price of food. The article implied that, while inflation was lower, the price of food had not returned to normal. The implication needs a rebuttal.
Lower inflation doesn’t necessarily mean lower prices. Inflation is the percent increase in prices over last year. As long as inflation is positive, then prices will be higher than last year even when inflation drops. That means overall prices are higher than last year’s high prices, not lower. Overall prices get lower when inflation is negative, and negative inflation usually comes from a recession or economic downturn. Nobody wants that. In the last 75 years, only three years experienced negative inflation. It is safe to say that prices, in general, go up.
While overall prices tend to go up, individual items and groups of items will fluctuate, because of unusual market conditions. Some items actually get cheaper over time. Technological improvements have made televisions cheaper even while the cost of the overall market goes up. The cost of milk, bread, and broccoli have fluctuated over time but the long-term trend has been upward for all three. Expecting the price of food to go down, because inflation drops to a more normal 3.5% is unrealistic.
A big contributor to the price of food staying persistently high are the higher wages paid to farm workers, food packagers, warehouse workers, truck drivers, local distributors, super marker personnel, etc. Food-handling is labor intensive, and a lot of those food handlers got raises, because inflation often leads to higher wages.
After COVID most countries around the world experienced inflation, and the US got inflation under control faster than most. COVID caused the inflation, and the Biden administration dealt with it within their limited powers to influence the economy. To anyone disgruntled over the high cost of food: Instead of blaming President Biden, ask your boss why you are not getting an inflation adjustment in your salary.