Let's not feed the troll

Let's try something.

Let's ignore the internet troll in the Comments Section.

"Mike" made the excellent point that the persistent troll at this website hijacks the attention and discussion of my readers. Hereafter, please do not respond to him. I won't either. Let's not feed the troll. 

Here is a definition of a troll: 

A troll is a person who posts inflammatory, off-topic messages in an online community, such as a newsgroup forum, or comments section, with the intent of provoking readers. This is typically for the troll's amusement, or to disrupt a rival's online activities or manipulate a political process.

We have a troll.

If readers notice something particularly disgusting or personal and want me to remove it promptly, please alert me by writing me at peter.w.sage@gmail.com.

Why Immigration Reform Eludes us

     "So let’s just focus on Haiti. The most blatant act of control was our invasion in 1915, the start of a military occupation that lasted until 1934."

          Herb Rothschild

We reap what we sow.

Herb Rothschild has done guest posts here, describing the United States' legacy of suffering and death in Afghanistan and Latin America. Schoolchildren are taught that the United States has been a great benefactor to the world, bringing better health, prosperity, and democracy to grateful faraway places. The full history is more complicated and troubling. We have toppled democratic governments, installed dictators, and have tortured and killed people struggling for self government. 

Educated at Yale and Harvard, Herb Rothschild returned to his home state of Louisiana to join the English Department at LSU and get into the Civil Rights Movement. He promoted civil rights and civil liberties in Louisiana. He worked in the Peace Movement in both Louisiana and Texas. After moving to Southern Oregon in 2009, he ran Peace House in Ashland. He has been a political activist on behalf of the environment, justice, economic fairness and opportunity, and peace.

Guest Post by Herb Rothschild

         Why immigration reform eludes us

Because the news media confines its reporting to what’s happening now, when a flood of refugees from Haiti washed up at Del Rio, Texas in September, they gave us the sketchiest understanding of why that happened. The incoherence of the Biden Administration’s response suggests that it, too, can’t form a coherent understanding despite having access to personnel with knowledge more extensive than the recent earthquake and the assassination of Haiti’s president (the only events even the best mainstream news programs cited as causes).

Donald Trump handled the challenge of immigration across our southern border appallingly but with consummate political skill. Unless a president is willing to imitate Trump, which Democratic presidents can’t afford to do politically even if they have the stomach for it, they cannot successfully handle the challenge. Not unless, that is, they acknowledge, and curb, the behavior that drives people to seek refuge in the very nation that is the primary cause of their misery.

I developed this argument in regard to Mexico. I pointed to the subsidized U.S. corn that poured into Mexico when NAFTA created the Canada-U.S.- Mexico free trade zone, which turned Mexico’s small farmers into landless laborers. I also mentioned our insatiable demand for recreational drugs and our refusal to repudiate the policies that have created a narco-nation across our border, with its pervasive violence and corruption.

Historically, however, the U.S. has rarely been able to control directly Mexico’s economy and government. Not so Central American nations like El Salvador and Honduras, or Caribbean nations like Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Our military interventions and occupations as well as our covert operations—all aimed at securing their resources for U.S. corporations and banks—have been so frequent that I cannot enumerate them here. I urge you to check out the list posted at https://yachana.org/teaching/resources/interventions.html  

So let’s just focus on Haiti. The most blatant act of control was our invasion in 1915, the start of a military occupation that lasted until 1934. We instituted a Marine-run regime operating under martial law. Resistance was suppressed with executions and torture. Hundreds of thousands who were forced into near slavery died working on large infrastructure projects. At least 260,000 acres were stolen by North American corporations. Most Haitians lived in dire poverty while the U.S. allowed a small minority, French-cultured mulatto Haitians, a share of power and wealth.

The invasion and occupation were carried out largely at the behest of National City Bank, which had acquired investor control of Banque Nationale de la République d'Haiti, Haiti’s only commercial bank; it served as the national treasury. Shortly after the invasion, Marines seized Haiti’s gold reserves and sent them to National City Bank’s New York headquarters. As if that weren’t enough economic control, U.S. government representatives took control of Haiti's customs houses and administrative institutions. Forty percent of Haiti's national income was designated to repay debts to American and French banks.

When FDR, the only president to repudiate U.S. imperialism in Latin America, ended the occupation, the U.S. left a modernized Haitian army to do its dirty work for the next several decades. We supported dictators like “Papa Doc” Duvalier and his son “Baby Doc,” but not leaders who wanted Haiti’s resources to serve its people. In 2004, we again invaded to remove Bertrand Aristide, the democratically elected president.

Our forcible domination of Haiti and our blatant theft of its wealth constitute the worst injustices we’ve perpetrated in Latin America and the Caribbean, but the differences are of degree, not of kind. The only constructive proposal put forward to stem the tide of migration to our southern border is to help their home countries develop economically. This help is spoken of as aid, which panders to our unshakeable conviction that we are a blessing to the world. If people knew the history I’ve just recounted, however, such help would be understood as reparations.

No U.S. administration is going to own up to that history, to the immense harm we’ve done in the past, because we want to keep doing it in the present. Demanding an end to cruel treatment of people who arrive at the border will count for little until we demand an end to our cruel treatment of the general populations of the countries they’ve fled. Comprehensive immigration reform will never be comprehensive if we don’t reform our conduct in the hemisphere.

The trouble with memory and experience

The young are willing "to boldly go where no man has gone before." Sometimes that is an advantage.

My problem is that I see the past, perhaps too well. I learned the wrong things.

I am 72 years old. I have learned lessons that have served me both well and poorly. The lessons that have served me well seem obvious in hindsight. The memories I reflect on in quiet moments are the mistakes. For example, it is a mistake to notice that "to boldly go" splits an infinitive. Hardly anyone cares anymore.

I learned the lesson that is useful to know that in corporate reorganizations and mergers the acquiring company is the winner and the acquired company is a meal, not a partner. I learned that the acquiring company lies about that at first, telling the acquired company that they love the employees and they should stay put. They do value employees, in the way a predator lion loves a fawn it wants to kill and eat later. Experience didn't help me survive there. I was lucky, not smart. The acquiring companies wanted my clients, and to keep them they were stuck with me. 

I was a Financial Advisor for 30 years and did not strike it rich. I had a hundred opportunities to get seriously wealthy and missed every one. My experience taught me that bad things sometimes happen to stocks, so I was cautious. I know other people who happened to have worked for companies that did great. Their experience is that boldness works. They might own tons of Apple, Microsoft, Google, Tesla, or Amazon. 

Any young middle-income saver who put an investment amount common among such investors, perhaps $10,000, into one or several of these at various times over the past 20 and 30 years, and held them, would now be a multi-multi millionaire. That could have been me, except I was prudent, not bold. I learned from the 1987 crash that bad things happen. I kept diversifying and would sell off positions as they got big. My mistake. 

Chart of AIG

I had watched the most admired, cutting-edge companies, ones like Enron, collapse amid revelations of phony bookkeeping. I remember my company's most respected investment analyst write on company letterhead that any Financial Advisor whose clients weren't loaded up with WorldCom should leave the profession because he or she is too stupid to advise clients. WorldCom went bust. American International Group, AIG, was AAA rated and a leader in an innovative way to make endless amounts of risk-free money, insuring risk-free mortgage investments. What a deal! Oops.

Chart of Citigroup

My own employer, Citigroup, helped lead the charge into the quicksand of creating and owning structured mortgages in the mid-2000s, only to collapse into federal life support and bailouts. Its stockholders, including me, were nearly wiped out. I lived it. Unfortunate things happen.

Chart of Tesla

Therefore, I haven't believed in Tesla, a car company that is valued at more than the combined value of all the other car companies in the world. It makes no sense to me. I am stuck in the past. I missed out. 

I haven't bought a Non-Fungible Token, a NFT, even as I watched young people strike it rich buying unique, but identified, images identical to images that are available for free. What is the value of that, I wonder? I had watched Beanie Babies go up in value and disappear as worthless. My experience made me miss out. 

Chart of Bitcoin

I don't own Bitcoin either. It is a currency invented out of nothing with no guarantee that it can be used for anything useful, for example paying taxes. Bitcoin seemed to me like the magic beans in the Jack and the Beanstalk story. No thanks. It was valued at $4.00 back in 2012. It is valued at $64,000 now. I had $10,000 I could easily have invested anytime around then, just a tiny speculation, why not? It would be valued at about $140 million now. I missed out. I had too much experience with failure.

Ideally, experience makes me wise, but it does not make me bold. Maybe everything is OK and I need to relax, accept the tremendous future, and stay out of the way. But I am stuck with my experiences and I read history. I read how Rome turned from a republic into an empire. I read about Germany in the 1930s. I watched the "Brooks Brothers" riot in the year 2000, then watched January 6 this year. Most troubling, I watch how Republican thought leaders are falling into line, silent or participating, as an antidemocratic Trump replaces Reagan as the central vision of the GOP.

I don't like what I see.

[Note: to subscribe to this blog go to: https://petersage.substack.com and enter your email address.  The blog is free and always will be.]

WSJ on Trump: He's "bananas", but people like bananas.

     "We trust our readers to make up their own minds about his statement. And we think it’s news when an ex-President who may run in 2024 wrote what he did, even if (or perhaps especially if) his claims are bananas."

         The Wall Street Journal

The Wall Street Journal says it is doing us a favor by letting Trump be Trump. After all, the public will eventually realize he is a dangerous nut job.

The public isn't figuring it out, and won't. Not when the Murdoch media machine is vouching for him.

The Murdoch family owns both the WSJ and Fox News. The newspaper noted that "the progressive parsons of the press are aflutter" over their having published without comment a letter from Donald Trump that presented bullet points of supposed fraud in the Pennsylvania vote. The WSJ said the falsehoods in his letter were too numerous to refute. They said there were a flood of misstatements and "it's difficult to respond to everything." They noted that this was no accident; "the asymmetry is part of the former President's strategy."

The "progressive parsons of the press" are also aflutter that Fox's Tucker Carlson is promoting an upcoming special report purporting that the "patriots" involved in storming the Capitol on January 6 are under attack by our gestapo government. As he tells it, the rioters in the Capital were heroes and victims-- or alternatively, maybe the whole operation was a "false flag" operation intended to defame Trump. Carlson, too, floods the zone with misstatements and conspiracies.

The Wall Street Journal wants it both ways. It recognizes that Trump is unique in American politics in his ability to gain attention by making wild, fully contradicted statements.  A big segment of Americans loves what he says and believe him. That segment is a giant market share for a media company and very possibly it is a governing majority of American voters. Trump has a salesman's talent for shameless and persistent reiteration of what the customer wants to believe. He sells the world's greatest steaks. He won the 2020 election in a massive landslide.  

The newspaper's editorial page quietly observed what their news pages have reported. The editorial wrote flatly that Trump lost the election in Pennsylvania by over 80,000 votes. Trump's misstatements about the Pennsylvania election are part of his  justification for overturning the 2020 election. Marketers understand what is going on here. The Journal is selling the Trump sizzle, but putting in a throw-away disclaimer. "Your mileage may vary." "Past performance is no guarantee of future results." 

The Journal's position in publicizing Trump without contradiction, or in the case of Tucker Carlson, actively promoting election conspiracies, is analogous to a widespread practice of GOP officeholders and opinion leaders. There are the people out there on front lines--Marjorie Taylor Green, Michael Flynn--in full-throated support of Trump. There is also a larger body of quiet or "disclaimer" partisans. They don't believe Trump and they recognize he sounds dishonest,  overwrought, "bananas" even, but they will let Trump be Trump because he gets them what they want, a riled up passionate base which will cast a convenient vote for the Republican team, even if based on a false and dangerous premise. The officeholders and thought leaders hope silence or a throw-away disclaimer tag relieves them of the responsibility for allowing to continue unchecked someone who attempted to overthrow constitutional government.

The movie Annie Hall describes a  complicated romantic relationship between Woody Allen and Diane Keaton. The movie ends with Woody Allen narrating these words: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-M3Q2zhGd4

I thought of that old joke, you know. The guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, "Doc, my brother's crazy. He thinks he's a chicken." and the doctor says, "well, why don't you turn him in?" and the guy says, "I would, but I need the eggs."

Well, I guess that's pretty much now how I feel about relationships. You know, they're totally irrational and crazy and absurd and, but I guess we keep going through it because most of us need the eggs.

There is a problem with the GOP's complicated relationship with a Donald Trump. They are getting eggs, but the eggs are poisoning our democracy. Many Republican leaders know the eggs are poison, but they have seen what happened to Liz Cheney when she said so. Better to just eat the eggs.

[Note: to subscribe, go to https://petersage.substack.com  The blog is free and always will be.]

Republicans beware: there could be an angry populist left, too

Republican legislators oppose new guardrails on our democracy. It is short-sighted.

Watch out for a left populist demagogue.

Father Charles Coughlin

Congress has a job to do, and it isn't doing it. "Fixing the guardrails" sounds "anti-Trump" and Republican legislators don't dare do anything that might give that perception to their voters. The result is that the deeply flawed, contradictory, possibly unconstitutional Electoral Count Act of 1887 remains in place. It is a time bomb, especially since some states have voted to allow their legislatures to ignore the results of a presidential election and to choose their own preferred electors. 

Few Republican officeholders object to Trump's position that the Vice President can determine the valid electors, keeping some, discarding others. The Vice President is Kamala Harris. Surely prudent Republicans are looking ahead to a potential disaster in the next election. No.They are silent. The notion of overthrowing an election to retain or regain power is not a bi-partisan idea. It is a Trump idea. 

I know of no current or emerging left populist demagogue. But American has had them, and might again. Father Charles Coughlin would be a potential model. Readers may remember him from histories they read of the 1930s. What people most remember now is his anti-Semitism, which forced him off the air. Like Trump, Coughlin was de-platformed. He did not lose popularity; he lost access. FDR's government took the position that the airways were public and what Coughlin was saying was not in the public interest. 

Jimmy Swaggart, TV ministry

Father Coughlin was a mix of radio talk show host (Rush Limbaugh), Fox opinion host (Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson), revivalist minister (Jimmy Swaggart), and harsh political accuser (Joseph McCarthy.) We associate these people with right nationalist populism. For his era, Coughlin was a left nationalist. He developed his audience in the early 1930s by attacking Herbert Hoover, Wall Street, predatory capitalism, and by praising the all-American working man and woman. He was equally anti-communist and anti-capitalist because he said both sides cheated workers. By 1937 he had turned against FDR, saying that FDR had preserved capitalism and a rotten status quo, and he would be sending America into a European war.

Oh, capitalism shall never again flourish as once it did. Capitalism has been almost taxed out of existence in an effort to meet the coupons and the bonds, in an effort to meet the dole system that is absolutely unnecessary in a country of our wealth. . . .

And democracy once more, thinking that it has power within its soul, shall rise up to clap and applaud, because the youth of the land is going abroad to make the world safe for what? Safe for dictatorship? Safe against communism abroad when we have communism at home? Safe from socialism in France when we have socialism in America? Or safe, safe for the international bankers?

Were Americans back in the 1930s moved by reading this?  No. They were moved by hearing it. Coughlin was an orator. He moved crowds.

Click here on this link and then on the MP3 file. He was passionate. He was uncompromising. He knew who he hated and he called them out. 

http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5111/

http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5111/

Here is a three minute video clip of him speaking about Americanism, the usurpation of the Federal Reserve over our money, and the failure of both Democrats and Republicans. Drain the swamp.

Watching Coughlin, readers will see familiar issues and themes of anti-elitism and anger over injustice. His publication was called "Social Justice." 

What would bring us a new version of a left demagogue?

   1. A Republican in office at a time of high unemployment or other economic or social distress, e.g. another recession like the one in 2008 or 2020. 

   2. Failure of Democrats to have implemented tax or anti-trust policies to restrain billionaire wealth, combined with high-visibility billionaire displays of lavish spending.

   3. Continuing agitation by Republicans saying that elections are rigged and unreliable reflections of the popular will.

   4. Some other stressor: Another oil embargo, a terrorist or natural-caused prolonged interruption of the electrical power grid, a trade or shooting war. There is always something.

Under those circumstances, I can imagine an angry, restless public demanding change. The failure could be seen primarily as economic exploitation, with the wealthiest Americans having captured Congress and the professional class generally. Left populism need not be "socialistic" or allied with Bernie Sanders. Like with Brexit supporters, it could be anti-statist and anti-elitist. 

Under those circumstances I could imagine a charismatic, rousing speaker, Trump-sized crowds, loud and angry people speaking at school board and county commission meetings, upset congressional town halls. Then, an election amid a public divided between people defending the economic status quo overseen by Republicans, and a coalition of frustrated white and blue collar workers, their 401k accounts down, and unemployment high, convinced that the billionaires are ruining the country. In that context imagine a close election with shouts of disputed ballots, and then a mob of people arriving on January 6 of some future year, demanding that the corrupt Congress vote with the people not the oppressive plutocrats, so that America can go back to work.

It won't happen immediately. The time isn't right. Not yet. Our democracy is fragile and we aren't strengthening it.

Rube Goldberg tax plan Hail Mary

Metaphors flourish, like weeds in a late summer garden.

Democrats are trying to find fifty votes. 

Ron Wyden is in the news, sort of like a very late inning relief pitcher, brought in to throw a totally new pitch. Democrats have to do something--anything--to get the ball into the end zone before the clock runs out.

The complicated way to hitch-hike

First, two disclosures. One is that I am making multiple contradictory metaphor allusions on purpose, attempting to have a bit of fun at a moment when the frustration of Democrats over the sausage-making of legislation is at its highest. The second is that I have followed Ron Wyden's career closely for decades. My wife and I donate to his campaigns. He is progressive enough to make this a more fair and just society, but bi-partisan enough to be effective in D.C. He wins elections. He gets a majority of votes even in Oregon's bright red 2nd Congressional district.

"I have the best job in the world," he told me. As a senior U.S. senator and Chair of the Finance Committee, he has put in the time to have an informed, nuanced, sophisticated view of our tax and financial system. He knows what can get passed into law.

A Hail Mary throw and catch

He has introduced a Rube Goldberg, last minute, Hail Mary, bolt-on attachment to our tax system, a tax specifically on billionaires and on people who had taxable income of $100 million a year for three consecutive years.  Readers of this blog likely understand a key element of tax-paying. One pays taxes on taxable income, not on wealth. Taxable income tends to have discrete dollar-amounts attached to it because it is money in motion--a verb. Wealth is static--a noun. A painting or yacht or 50,000-acre ranch is only "worth" what someone might pay for it, and that is a guess.

Democrats have 49 votes in the senate to raise taxes the normal way, by moving up the tax rates on income, by re-defining capital gains and write-offs. They can target those changes to corporations and the very wealthy. Raising taxes on the very wealthiest is popular, especially now, when billionaires are spending money conspicuously and lavishly. Krysten Sinema says no and she is the missing 50th vote. Republicans won't help. Raising taxes on billionaires is popular among Republican voters, too, but the GOP strategy is to deny everything to Biden and Democrats to create a narrative of Democratic failure. It is politically better show Biden's inability to persuade than it is to support popular things. It is un-intuitive, but it works politically for Republicans. 

Wyden put on the table a wealth tax. It would treat as taxable some of the "unrealized" growth of wealth among the very wealthiest. The richest have gotten richer, and they have mechanisms for spending that wealth without triggering taxes on themselves.

Bezos in space. Fun, but bad PR

Billionaires are showing off, and the tax system allows them to get away with things that come across as abusive. For example, in 2011, back when Jeff Bezos had a net worth of $18 billion, he showed zero "income" and claimed a $4,000 child tax credit, designed to assist children in poverty. 

A complicated way to match soup-eating and napkin-wiping

The Wyden wealth tax is a bolt-on addition to the tax system because the rest of the system is built around money in motion, not wealth itself. The plan requires a complicated system to define wealth. There needs to be a complicated way to compute losses. A wealth tax may not be Constitutional. 

Possibly Senator Wyden is dead serious about this plan, but my uninformed, outsider guess is that we are watching political theater. Wyden has a primary audience of one, Krysten Sinema. He is putting this complicated tax program on the table so it can be shot down, but in doing so prove to Sinema that her fellow Democrats tried everything to accommodate her. Possibly the audience is bigger than that, an audience of progressive Democrats, again to show that establishment Democrats tried everything before accepting half a loaf.

I like Wyden. Wyden does not sound like Bernie Sanders. Wyden supports unions and higher wages, he supports programs that target middle income and poorer Americans, but he doesn't sound anti-wealth, to my ear, in the way Sanders does. Very left progressive voters in Oregon hear what I hear, and they criticize Wyden for it. I like what I hear. I think Wyden understands Americans very well. In my long career as a financial planner and wealth custodian, my observation is that most Americans like the idea of having money. People don't buy lottery tickets so they can find paradise as a member of the mass proletariat, working in solidarity alongside comrades on the shop floor. They buy lottery tickets for the chance to get rich.

The plan Wyden put forth is so complicated I will not summarize it here. Here are links, first Wyden's comment, and then some media descriptions:

https://www.finance.senate.gov/chairmans-news/wyden-statement-on-proposal-to-ensure-wealthy-tax-cheats-pay-taxes-owed-

https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2021/10/22/sinema-warren-billionaire-tax/

https://www.rollcall.com/2021/10/27/wyden-details-proposed-tax-on-billionaires-unrealized-gains/

I write here to put the plan into the context I think it needs. I don't think Wyden thinks this will pass. It is a straw man. I think it is a move in a chess game, perhaps like a flagrant sacrifice ofthe bishop, for a bigger purpose of moving the game toward victory.

[Note: If you want home delivery of this blog, in your email box every day, go to: 

https://petersage.substack.com Enter your email. The blog is free and always will be.]

Public Health is a victim of its own success

Americans used to kill each other with communicable diseases. 

Now we mostly kill ourselves, one at a time.

We need to think of COVID as like VD, not cancer.

Disease and death used to come suddenly. Rich and poor, young and old, people caught smallpox, bubonic plague, yellow fever, polio, and a multitude of other diseases. We got them directly from each other or from some vector like fleas, mosquitoes, or bacteria from human waste. There were solutions that involved public cooperation. We had mass vaccinations. We built public sewerages. We have rules regarding wells and septic systems. It mostly worked.

Polio iron lung room

My parents used to worry about polio, but by the time I was old enough to worry about it I stood in line and ate a sugar cube. Smallpox and bubonic plague were things in the history books, no more a worry than were dinosaurs. I got chicken pox, measles, and mumps, like all the kids my age, and I thought it was a rite of passage, like losing front teeth. I never really worried about Ebola, because it was so awful that Americans who had it were deathly sick and isolated in hospitals.

The exception in Americans' thinking regarding infectious diseases involves sexually transmitted ones. We own those, and they spread and we know it. AIDS scared us. We know gonorrhea and syphilis are here. When I started my term as a County Commissioner I thought the county's role in controlling the spread of sexually transmitted diseases would be controversial. It wasn't. No one wanted to talk about sexually transmitted disease. Then and now, no one advocates for the God-given American right to spread gonorrhea.

30 sec. clip from USS VD, a Navy training film

There has been a change in Americans' notion of where disease comes from. Except for VD, disease has stopped being seen primarily as something that spreads. Disease is a consequence of lifestyle choices or unlucky DNA. Either way, it is on us, personally.

The heart attack victim ate cheeseburgers. When a slender vegan marathoner dies young from heart disease, we see it as proof that you can't fight unlucky DNA. One does not "catch" heart disease. Nor cancer. There must have something in the environment, some chemical they ate or drank, or again, unlucky DNA. Old men get prostate cancer, so there is an explanation: They are old, and had unlucky DNA.

Good health is self-care. We value early detection; get your mammograms; get that mole checked. And of course, get regular exercise, take 10,000 steps. Since disease is on us, disease prevention is on us. If someone smokes at home or eats cheeseburgers, it is nobody's business but that person.  

That brings us to COVID. The GOP/Fox News line in the sand has moved from vaccinations to "vaccine mandates." A few people criticize vaccinations per se, but most of the opposition and outrage goes like this: "We're not anti-vaxxers, but we strongly oppose vaccine mandates. Mandates are tyranny!" That position is possible because it floats atop the idea in general circulation that health decisions are inherently personal, not social. People analogize COVID to the other great killers of Americans: heart disease, cancer, diabetes, strokes, accidents. It is a false analogy. People with COVID give it to others, some of whom get very sick and die from it. 

COVID is like VD. Not cancer.

At my local Costco store, people are required to put on masks as they enter. Mask-wearing is enforced at the door. Once in the store, by my count on Saturday, about 7% of shoppers take off their masks. A mask does little to protect oneself. One wears a mask to protect others. Maskless shoppers don't appear embarrassed at having taken off their masks. They look "normal" and at ease. They appear to consider COVID is a personal choice, not a social one, so going maskless is a different category from smoking a cigar, having a dog that is pooping in the aisle, or walking down the aisle pointing a loaded gun. Those would be a public act, affecting others. Surely they would be embarrassed. Going maskless is in the category of a private matter, like whether or not they had gotten a colonoscopy in the past ten years, their own business.

Thousands of Americans every year would avoid dying from colon cancer if people over age 40 got colonoscopy screens. Insurance companies encourage colonoscopies but there are no colonoscopy mandates. Colon cancer is not communicable. COVID is.

Working 9 to 5, what a way to make a living.

"Well that foreman, he's a regular dog
The line boss, he's a fool
Got a brand new flattop haircut
Lord, he thinks he's cool
One of these days I'm gonna' blow my top
And that sucker, he's gonna' pay
Lord, I can't wait to see their faces
When I get the nerve to say

Take this job and shove it
I ain't working here no more."

          Sung by Johnny Paycheck, "Take This Job," 1977

Going to work is a habit. COVID broke the habit.

Jobs are going begging.

Americans are hearing a policy debate over the enhanced federal and state unemployment benefits initiated back in March 2020. Unemployment insurance is an easy explanation for people not going back to work. People got paid to stay home, and they had school children at home to watch or home fix-up projects to do. The widespread expectation was that states which ended unemployment payments would have a big surge of people going back to work. It didn't happen.

Work is about money, but it is also about life.

People have gotten more fussy and demanding about their work. People can quit work feeling secure in the knowledge that they can find something else. A person helping me grow cannabis at my farm explained that he quit a job at Federal Express. He worked hard, unloading and re-loading trucks getting paid $17/hour. He worked alone, from 3 a.m. to 9 a.m. and didn't mind the hours or solitude because he listened to music on earphones as he worked. A supervisor noticed the earphones and said he couldn't wear them. The employee said it made the job enjoyable and didn't hurt anything. The supervisor said no. The employee quit. He said the supervisor later called repeatedly offering higher pay. The employee said no. Working alone, without music, "the job sucked."

Entry level jobs in fast food are advertising $15/hour, and more. School bus and delivery jobs pay more, and employers are begging people to apply.  Manufacturing jobs have signs offering a sign-up bonus, health benefits, and $17 an hour.  

Approximately 5% of American employees are quitting their jobs because they refuse to be vaccinated. They are in the news, sometimes described as heroes of conscience, and sometimes as stubborn, selfish fools. Police officers and nurses who quit will eventually find work again if they want it. The number of people saying they are quitting to avoid vaccination is not surprising or exceptional amid the overall national "I quit" movement. About 3% of all U.S. employees quit their jobs in September. I suspect many people who say they are quitting because of a COVID vaccination were half way out the door anyway, restless, and ready for a break. Nurses and police have been working extra hours under stressful conditions and get burned out. 

There is something else going on. It is an impression I have drawn from my own experience. Going to work is a habit, and when the habit is broken people who have the opportunity to drop out of the labor force sometimes do it. At age 63 I took a different kind of vacation, a full month off to visit the Amazon. It changed me in a way that long weekends and a one-week vacations did not. I lost the habit of being in a routine. I got into a new habit of reading at leisure. I liked it. I still loved my work, but putting on a suit and being engaged in markets and money seemed like a choice, not an inevitability. I got a taste of retirement and liked it. 

The shutdown in the spring of 2020 broke habits. Five million people left the workforce. They lost the nine-to-five routine of going to a job site. Maybe they discovered they liked spending days at home. Maybe they liked early retirement. Maybe they just wanted something new and on their own, where they don't show up as "employees" on someone else's books.

This isn't new. Artists understood it before labor economists did. Dolly Parton sang about it in 1980:

Working 9 to 5, what a way to make a living
Barely getting by, it's all taking and no giving
They just use your mind, and they never give you credit
It's enough to drive you crazy if you let it

Going to the office is a grind. But when routine is upset, one sees there is the alternative, out of the regular 9 to 5 workforce, turning a side-hustle into a new, better life:

Working 5 to 9, you've got passion and a vision
'Cause it's hustlin' time, a whole new way to make a livin'
Gonna change your life, do somethin' that gives it meanin'

Well you got dreams and you know they matter
Be your own boss, climb your own ladder
That moment's getting closer by the day

And you're in the same boat with a lotta your friends
Launching ideas you all believe in
The tide's gonna turn, and it's all gonna roll your way

Getting paid for the data we share.

"Every breath you take
And every move you make
Every bond you break
Every step you take
I'll be watching you."

Lyrics: "Every breath you take," sung by The Police, 2003 

We give up our valuable data. We should get paid for it.

Eavesdropper. 

This week I visited with a student finishing up a degree in Computer Science at Southern Oregon University's Honors College. She suggested I turn off "Siri" on my I-Phone. She warned me about "cross tracking" from applications I have downloaded. Apparently, just because I am not using an app doesn't mean that that it isn't tracking me. You are giving up all that data, she warned.

Andrew Yang got famous for suggesting every adult in America be paid $1,000 a month as a benefit of citizenship. It was described as socialism. Free money for nothing! Most of the attention was on what a guaranteed income would mean to the work ethic and federal budget. 

He said, no, it wasn't a give-away. It was an earned benefit. He cited Alaska. Alaskans share in owning the mineral wealth of the state, so every citizen gets a check representing a share of oil royalties. Yang's observation was that American citizens were turning over to technology companies, retailers, financial services companies--in fact to every business that swipes our debit or credit cards--data that had enormous value, and we were giving it away for free. It was like owning a pool of oil or the electromagnetic spectrum and not getting income from it. 

Who owns that data? Businesses collect it, yes, but in a democracy "we the people" can decide that they are collecting something that is still ours. WE own the data. That means we can charge them for it, collected through taxes, and redistribute it how we wish. 

With the student's warning fresh in mind, I made a small purchase yesterday. I wanted some small heat lamp bulbs to keep exposed pipes from freezing. I went to PetSmart, where they sell a variety of light bulbs to heat animal cages. I picked out three small bulbs, prominently marked at $8 for one, and 50% off on a second bulb. They had three on the shelf, so I bought all three. I expected to pay $20: Eight, plus four for the second one, and probably another eight for that third one. 

The friendly cashier rang me up, asked if I had a customer number. I said no. She said it would be $40. I said, no, it was $20, the eight dollar price prominently marked, plus the second one 50% off.  She explained that they post the member prices. The non-member price would be $40 for the three bulbs. She said she would make me a member right there. She needed my name, address, phone number, and email address. She entered them. Now it is $20, she said brightly.

I am already earning valuable "loyalty" points.

When I got home I had a welcoming email from PetSmart in my in-box. They wanted to confirm my information, know the name of each of my pets, their dates of birth, breed, neutering status, health conditions and whether I preferred to get notices about special promotions by text or email.

Andrew Yang, in explaining his idea of a guaranteed annual income said the value of the data that we were giving up to businesses was as valuable as the markup they were making on items they sold us. That seemed crazy impossible to me, so I dismissed it as exaggerated or imagined justification for giving people free money. Maybe Yang was exactly right. For PetSmart yesterday, the difference between having someone they could target marketing to versus an anonymous cash buyer holding a $20 bill, was 100%. Without my contact information, the bulbs were $40. They wanted to know when to send me birthday greetings and pet maintenance products to the pets they expect me to own.

$81 billion for 5G licenses

Data on some consumers are worth more than data on others, but there is no reason that in a democracy this wealth of data could not be defined as a resource owned by the public, inalienable, like our life and liberty. Recognizing that the public is creating wealth in the data we are offering up changes the moral and political justification for a guaranteed benefit. We would not be taxing businesses to give citizens something for nothing.  We would be taxing them to recover value from them something that is ours, the data on where we go, what we buy, what we read. 

The data Americans share are invisible, but it is as real as the invisible electromagnetic spectrum, and far more valuable. The public owns the spectrum and we auction that off and get paid for it. Why not our data? And since the public is constantly creating that resource, why not return its value to the public directly every month?

Thought of that way, it isn't a crazy idea. 

[Note: to get home delivery of this blog by email go to: https://petersage.substack.com The blog is free and always will be.]

Manchin bid "One No Trump"

A bid of "One No Trump" means something in the game of Bridge. 

It is a signal to a partner and opponents of having a powerful hand. It forces partners and opponents to take action.

Manchin signaled:

Back the hell off, Bernie. And stay out of West Virginia. Or else.

Today's blog is about Manchin, bidding in the card came of Bridge, and guns on the sets of movies.  It is all signaling.

Politics is carried out with body language, both between the candidate and voters, and also between political actors. People who play the card game of Bridge understand that the bidding to find the right fit and contract to win a hand involves coded signals, where a bid implies far more than it says. 

Bernie Sanders took a provocative act. He thought to increase the political pressure on Manchin by authoring an op-ed in the largest newspaper in West Virginia. He mentioned Joe Manchin by name, saying he was stopping West Virginians from getting what they wanted and needed. In Bridge, that was an opening bid: "One Club." It means Bernie wants to make a deal and wants to know what you are going to do about it.

Manchin responded by words: “I will not vote for a reckless expansion of government programs. No op-ed from a self-declared Independent socialist is going to change that.” This exchange gives Manchin more flexibility going forward. The words position Manchin in opposition to Sanders, which is good and necessary in West Virginia.

But Manchin's response showed that the pressure on him had become too intense. Manchin has more power if he is seen to be irascible, driven by emotion, maybe impulsive, maybe angry. Manchin needed something tangible, a warning shot.

Manchin used Rolling Stone reporter David Corn, done as a "scoop," by a sole reporter, reporting a rumor. Manchin would have deniability and ambiguity. It would be a threat, put out there to lurk. In a movie it would be the camera lingering for a full second on a gun, sitting on a table.

Pow! Crisis! The implications of this are enormous for Biden, for Democrats, for progressive policies generally. 

Manchin immediately denied the story he placed, calling it "bullshit." (Gun? What gun? I didn't even know there was a gun in the room!) Manchin is signaling he was a Democrat and wanted to be a Democrat. 

David Corn stood by the story, saying Manchin was talking about leaving and had thought through plans. Manchin adjusted. It was just talk, he said. 

We just watched a performance. It wasn't scripted, but each party knew how it would play out. Both won. Corn was a guy in the know. Manchin made his veiled threat. In a movie it would be a second look at the gun. Perhaps a teenage son would enter the room, idly pick up it up, the protagonist would notice and say to "put it back. It's loaded. It's dangerous. Someone could be killed." The gun would have moved from backdrop to a part of the action.

Manchin's is still a "No Trump" bid, and would caucus with Democrats, he said, but added that if he were thought an embarrassment to Democrats--too moderate--as a courtesy to his friends he would leave the party. This is an open request for some love, mixed with his power play. Don't you love me? I want to be in the Democratic tent, so define it to include me, please.

In the card game of Bridge, "One No Trump" means a strong hand. Manchin was sending message that criticism of him addressed to West Virginians angered him. Sanders went too far. 

Now Democrats know. In politics and in Bridge, one can only bid "One No Trump" like this once. The threat to leave the Democratic Party cannot become habitual or else it becomes an empty bluff. In this performance with David Corn, Manchin attempted to preserve for another time use of the overt threat. Corn misunderstood me, he said. And besides, he wouldn't be leaving in an angry huff. It wasn't a breakup. It was a request for reconciliation--but on his terms. I don't want Democrats to be embarrassed by me. Tell me I'm OK. 

 As with the gun in the movie, we got the message. The next time the protagonist touches the gun he might be making an overt threat: Do it my way, or else! Or maybe it will be too late, and he will use the gun to shoot the Democratic Party. 

[Note: people wishing to subscribe to the blog and get "home delivery" by email can go to: https://petersage.substack.com Enter your email address. The blog is free and always will be.]