Meanwhile Back in the Sandbox...

[thriftyandboringinohio]

Re: Meanwhile Back in the Sandbox...

Sadly true. Civilization is a voluntary act by every individual in that society.

If most of us decide that if we can get any with it, then we will not follow any rules, or honor any traditions, or follow any law, we will have Somalia or Chad right here.

[dcarrigg]

Re: Meanwhile Back in the Sandbox...

Another piece of supporting evidence to watch tomorrow to (dis)confirm the "times-they-are-a'changin' thesis" is voter turnout. Estimates based on early vote suggest it may be the highest in 50 years, probably in the range of the '66 midterm. If it comes to pass, it would be shockingly high. None of the poll turnout projection models are built for this. I doubt anything definitive will be decided in 2018. But if midterm turnout does really spike to a level not seen since LBJ, it's going to scramble every experience any of the pundits under 70 have ever lived through.

[GRG55]

Re: Meanwhile Back in the Sandbox...

In the "western democracies" politics doesn't lead. Politics lags public opinion/public perceptions. And nothing seems to shape public opinion more powerfully than perceptions about current and future economic prospects.

I don't think its any accident that the backlash against some of the outcomes of the "lower tariffs, higher immigration, lower wages, higher profits international consensus" is most prominent in the USA. It is, after all, THE major economy in the world that is least dependent on international trade. Most everyone else needs to tread more carefully down that path, if at all. And I believe that economic reality is one of the reasons this has the appearance of "the USA against the ROW". And is consistent with the United States' historical proclivity to tilt to isolationism.

I share the perception that politics is "falling apart". I describe it in my conversations as the feeling we are gradually becoming "ungovernable". Not just in the USA, not just at the national level either. It seems all levels of the way we have traditionally organized our civic affairs are under duress. Pan-national structures from the WTO to the UN to the EU are struggling. National governments are under populist pressure. States and Provinces are all but bankrupt, thus tying the hands of officials. Cities are challenged, fiscally and otherwise (tent cities for the homeless, opioid/meth/crack addictions, just two examples) despite accelerating influx/economic urbanization which should benefit the tax base.

But of the two outcomes you describe, it seems (to me at least) combatting inequality and climate change requires a level of collective altruism that is difficult for me to imagine. From the elites, but even more so from what's left of the increasingly beleaguered "middle-class".

[jk]

Re: Meanwhile Back in the Sandbox...

But of the two outcomes you describe, it seems (to me at least) combatting inequality and climate change requires a level of collective altruism that is difficult for me to imagine. From the elites, but even more so from what's left of the increasingly beleaguered "middle-class".

my hope lies with the millennial generation.

[dcarrigg]

Re: Meanwhile Back in the Sandbox...

I think it's very much baked into existing public opinion and perceptions. Like DuBois observed years ago, Americans are a prideful people. You can pay them in wages of cash or in wages of whiteness. But one way or another, they'll demand to be paid. Manhattan GINI is, at this point, higher than Columbia, Haiti, Guatemala, or the Central African Republic. Only Bolivia, Namibia, and Sierra Leone are more unequal. Connecticut's now about as unequal as Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe, or Brazil. People can feel it even if they can't express it. It's significantly closer to one person owning everything than to an equal distribution. And the gulf between median and per capita income is yawning, to the point where median rent (~$44k) is now about two-thirds of median income (~$66k), mostly because they only build luxury housing as investment vehicles for those at the top now.

But regardless, the issue's becoming increasingly "partisanized." The number of people who say they're worrying about it is roughly flat. But increasingly those who worry are sorting into one party and those who don't are sorting into the other. You can watch in surveys how party politics has been realigning around this axis over time. Meanwhile, the climate change opinion is more of a landlubber vs. coastal scenario. But this aligns with party politics pretty well too. Of course, it just goes to show that self-interest still matters. If you live high on the plains hundreds of miles from the sea, what the hell do you care if sea level rises? If you live at sea level, and you've watched it rise these past years, it's kind of harder for propaganda to convince you to doubt your own two eyes.

But you may very well be right. In fact, there's a good chance you are. So far, in most countries that one might think of as liberal democracies, this seems to be the case. Bolsonaro and the Social Liberal Party in Brazil. UKIP in England. National Front in France. AfD in Germany. Sweden Democrats in Sweden. Freedom Party in Austria. Jobbik in Hungary. United Russia in Russia. The League in Italy. Golden Dawn in Greece. We'll see what happens.

All eras end. All orders fall. But the big tectonic plates I'm feeling shift in the US rate now didn't have to, at least not so quickly. In some ways, the US is unique among developed nations. As you point out, it is least dependent on international trade. But it also redistributes the least to workers and sectors and cities dislocated by trade deals. And it has the weakest safety net. Lose your job; lose your ability to bring your kids to the doctor. Graduate and take six months to find a job; pray you don't have an accident and need a hospital. Get a retail job just to make ends meet; no health coverage. Also, now pay an annual tax penalty because your employer doesn't offer coverage and you can't afford the $1,200 per month to buy it for your family.

In rust belt cities that have experienced chronic high unemployment for 25 years or so, places where most who can move out and those who remain struggle, there are lots of problems. The factories that were there are rotting hulks that caused (and sometimes continue to cause) deep environmental damage. But the companies that ran them are long gone. So nobody does the remediation or tear down. Half the reason the opiate crisis exists is because everyone under median income has an informal network of people who get them pills in the US, since they can't afford the formal network. There's a nurse or a med coder or a vet or pharm tech or someone in the family who not only can get free antibiotic samples and flu shots, but who also is close enough with a doc they can get one-off visits off the books. And if not that, there's a state near you that has walk-in pain clinics or that lets quacks with "doctorates" in voodoo medicine prescribe. And if not that, you've had a drug dealer for your bad back for years. Maybe it's weed. Maybe it's patches. Maybe it's pills. Whatever.

Just about every working class person I know over 50 does at least one of these things. And sometimes you just have to take what you can get when you can get it. So medicine cabinets are stuffed full of "just in case" drugs. Hell, it's a boon when the vet gives the dog an extra dose of antibiotics or steroids. The same bottle full of the same exact pills from the same manufacturer for the dog that costs $50 at the vet costs $500 at CVS and $5,000 at the local hospital. I personally like to keep a bottle of doxycycline around as a tick bite prophylactic. But the price here increased 1,854% between 2011 and 2013 for people. Not for dogs, though. What a racket, huh?

Anyways, back to the post-industrial US city problem: Here's the next piece. Largely, in the luckier, more successful post-industrial cities, what has replaced manufacturing lost to trade has been "Meds & Eds." Universities and Hospitals. One medical job was created for every manufacturing job lost. This is largely how US' super-inefficient private health care system functions as a free-market-welfare program. Because there are literally tens of millions of people who just try to figure out what to charge anyone for anything all day, and no set prices, so it's all an arbitrary negotiation governed by arcane, half-written rules. But, and here's the key problem, factories generally pay property taxes. Universities and hospitals generally do not. And as they expand and take up more finite real estate in a finite city whose borders for various political reasons aren't changing, the city's tax base dwindles.

Meanwhile, wealthier people already moved to the suburbs decades ago in the white flight response to the second great migration of African Americans fleeing the south between WWII and Nixon. So the city schools already suck and have a reputation for sucking, meaning wealthier people don't want a home in that zip code. And the property taxes have to be higher, because cities provide more services than suburbs, and industrial and commercial property tax revenues have dropped precipitously. So a $200k home in the city might cost nearly as much per month as a $300k home just outside of it where taxes are lower, especially if you have to pay private schools, etc. Worse? The infrastructure in these cities is old and shitty and never getting replaced under existing political arrangements. So your kid loses a few IQ points for the lead in the water. And a few months off his/her life since the schools somehow still have asbestos everywhere. And the bridges are falling down. And there's no plan to fix any of it.

All this is to say, I think for the most part you're right. There are very real limits to what state and local government can do. Only a massive federal mobilization would even have a shot at solving any of these chronic problems at the ground level. Probably several trillions annually. Scales unthinkable even 10 years ago. But I think it's either that and we actually solve those problems, or at least make a significant and noticeable dent in them, or the alternative, which I personally think is far worse, but which has a real visceral appeal for a lot of folk. I just don't think the genie can be put back in the bottle. The US is a 2 party system. Duverger's Law and all that. It's more polarized than ever. Limp appeals to centrism are getting nobody anywhere. Tax cuts and rebates and government-established marketplaces don't even scratch the surface of the real problems, and everybody knows it, and everybody's sick of it. Just 5 years ago there was a bipartisan commission that was trying to find ways to cut social security. Now there's one party that wants it abolished and another that formed a brand new caucus to increase it. Increasingly nobody gives a flying shit about deficits. At all. I guess, the crux of what I'm saying, is that there's going to be a lot of pushing until it breaks and somebody really gets what they want, and a new political era will be built on that foundation. I'm not sure which party it will be. But it damn sure feels like there's a line drawn in the sand now and zero chance for consensus or compromise on anything. Can't be neutral on a moving train.

[dcarrigg]

Re: Meanwhile Back in the Sandbox...

Also, I suspect that it may come to pass that the trajectory of elites will increasingly be at least somewhat tied to states' willingness to bring the hammer down. Things have been so lawless for so long that it's easy to forget about that option. To wit: Monaco just arrested a billionaire a couple hours ago.

You might remember Dmitry Yevgenyevich Rybolovlev from such scandals as the Berezniki mine collapse, the murder of Evgeny Panteleymonov, the panama papers, the football leaks scandal, or the extremely sketchy Florida land deal with Donald Trump.

[touchring]

Re: Meanwhile Back in the Sandbox...

"The world order built after WWII is on the table."

It is this that has been the tragedy. While the general public; world wide; were fed a diet of all the wonderful things the US was doing. "leaders of the free world" keeps springing to mind........ that is until one sits down and reads the likes of: Gold Warriors, America's Secret Recovery of Yamashita's Gold by Sterling and Peggy Seagrave https://www.amazon.co.uk/Gold-Warrio.../dp/1844675319

And then we have to realise that THE BIG mistake was to turn a blind eye to what was going on in the background. You can fool some of the people some of the time; most of the people most of the time; but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time. In the background were people acting as if they were completely unaccountable to anyone; to any aspect of leadership of the free world. It has taken a lifetime for me to realise just how sad this is; how much damage has been done to that image, of leadership of the free world. They may have won their individual wars; but in the process they destroyed everything they touched. They very effectively, destroyed the credibility of the United States; as leaders of the free world.

There are no 2 ways; it is way past too late.

If you still think about credibility and the glory of "Rome". They don't matter any more in the New World Order.

It's about industrial espionage, stealing of technology, poisoning of political opponents (Salisbury), annexation of land and sea that don't belong to you (Russia of crimea, and China of the South China Sea islands), buying off politicians (China and Russia of Clinton using speech fees).

Welcome to the New World Order created by the bankers.

The post WWII world is long gone, the USA (and the UK) needs to change to face the "New World Order" instead of basking in the old glory of the free world, which is long gone.

REPEAT: The "FREE WORLD" is long gone and no longer exists.

[GRG55]

Re: Meanwhile Back in the Sandbox...

my hope lies with the millennial generation.

Yes, well we Boomers were going to change the world in the 1960s too. We sure did. Somehow Woodstock morphed into Wall Street and we culminated our anti-war, free love tenure with the greatest financial crisis since the 1930s.

I hope you are correct. The Millenials are still bunking out in Mom's basement, unable to find decent jobs. Even when they can most can barely afford to put Corn Flakes on the table in this liquidity infused, zero-cost-capital, overpriced asset world. So their aspirations seem to have adjusted to this reality. Fine when you are young enough, as we Boomers were at one time, to dabble in idealism. But unless they inherit Mom's overpriced house, looming middle-age will not be accompanied by prospects of middle-class, and that planet-saving Tesla Model 3 will be forever out of reach. I am having difficulty discerning what will be the driving force(s) behind the needed changes.

[Chris Coles]

Re: Meanwhile Back in the Sandbox...

Welcome to the New World Order created by the bankers.

The bankers were all American or British, backed up by the likes of the economics professionals that set out to destroy the economies of whole nations.

[Chris Coles]

Re: Meanwhile Back in the Sandbox...

It's about industrial espionage, stealing of technology, poisoning of political opponents (Salisbury), annexation of land and sea that don't belong to you (Russia of crimea, and China of the South China Sea islands), buying off politicians (China and Russia of Clinton using speech fees).

They are just copying what we had been doing for decades. Iran; Chile; immediately spring to mind.

[thriftyandboringinohio]

Re: Meanwhile Back in the Sandbox...

Yes, well we Boomers were going to change the world in the 1960s too. We sure did. Somehow Woodstock morphed into Wall Street and we culminated our anti-war, free love tenure with the greatest financial crisis since the 1930s. ....

Isn't that the darnedest thing? Back when we were young in the 1970s it seemed inevitable that those grouchy old Archie Bunker types would fade away and we could be rid of them. But somehow lots of my high school friends morphed into Archie Bunker and now I see them waddling around with concealed firearms yelling about some right-wing falsehood that has them full of fear and anger any particular day.
It's just the darnedest thing.

[jk]

Re: Meanwhile Back in the Sandbox...

I hope you are correct. The Millenials are still bunking out in Mom's basement, unable to find decent jobs.

some are in the basement, but many are not. [a quick google says about 1/3 of millennials are living with their parents, and in general we are seeing a resurgence of multigenerational households in another manner as well, as elderly boomers live with or near their adult children.] the young[ish] whom i've met via my millennial son [b. 1985] are all doing just fine, thank you.

as a group, they are more social [not just my son's friends- this is data esp from neil howe], and more cooperative than their elders. they accept without question all the incendiary identities anathema to the right wing. yesterday young voters [18-29, so not the whole millennial cohort, who range up into the mid 30's] skewed democratic by 37 points. [of course, this could change with age]

howe compares them to "the greatest generation" which fought wwii and came back and built institutions while imposing great social conformity through the 1950's. this period was also the historical low for inequality in the u.s. we're still not through our 4th turning by any means, but my hope is that the millennial cohort will somehow bridge our current differences.

[Chris Coles]

Re: Meanwhile Back in the Sandbox...

but my hope is that the millennial cohort will somehow bridge our current differences.

Very recently, I came across a small breadcrum. We have a highly regarded radio news program, BBC Radio 4 Today, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qj9z on which I heard what we were told was the voice of the head of MI5 say; (from memory - words to this effect), "we have to act to the highest ethical standards". Some of you may already know that the concept of government must act to the highest ethical standards, is a major plank in my debate that I set out in chapter 12, The Responsibilities of Government, page 101, The Road Ahead from a Grass Roots Perspective. http://www.chriscoles.com/page3.html

It always requires someone to set the ball rolling.

[dcarrigg]

Re: Meanwhile Back in the Sandbox...

Another piece of supporting evidence to watch tomorrow to (dis)confirm the "times-they-are-a'changin' thesis" is voter turnout. Estimates based on early vote suggest it may be the highest in 50 years, probably in the range of the '66 midterm. If it comes to pass, it would be shockingly high.

Approximately 114 million votes were cast in U.S. House races in 2018, compared to 83 million in 2014, according to estimates by the New York Times. Very high turnout happened. At least the highest in 20 years, probably the highest in 50. Topline races didn't go obviously to one side or another. Down-ballot's another story.

1. First point: Voters come out in bigger numbers when the stakes are perceived as higher.

And maybe the buried lede of the night: polarization. Corker, gone. McCaskill, gone. McCain, gone. Donnelly, gone. Flake, gone. Heitkamp, gone. Except Joe Manchin, the top-line centrists in either party got destroyed last night, either because they died, didn't run, or lost. The House got reconfigured too. Freedom Caucus of extreme right-wingers looks like it probably doubled in size, even as Republicans lost seats. The seats Republicans lost were overwhelmingly moderates.

Food for thought: Last time Pelosi was speaker, she was on the left, defending her position against Hoyer to her right. Now she will be on the right, defending her position against who ever emerges as her competitor in a party that has moved to her left. The two parties will come into even sharper relief now. And over the course of weeks, the real effect of this shift on discourse will be to make strategists and people mulling runs more hesitant to take up centrist positions in national races--for state offices, ymmv.

2. Point being that the path forward has been paved with polarization. Both parties got the best turnout in half a century by playing it less centrist. They'll not reverse course.

Meanwhile, with the House flipping, the odds of investigations and/or impeachment just went up. That's going to be a polarizing roller coaster. And a whole lot of nonsense teched up small ball techniques went down. No more gerrymandering Utah, Colorado, Missouri or Michigan in 2020 (or Pennsylvania this time). No more complicated voter registration in Nevada and Michigan. Felons who served their time and parole and probation with good behavior get the right to vote back in Florida, nearly 2 million of them. Nationwide, instead of Republicans being +1,000 seats in state legislatures, the number is probably closer to even now. Instead of having 2/3 of governorships, it's closer to even too.

Meanwhile, legislative supermajorities were busted up all over the place at the state level. Republicans will still control the House and Senate in North Carolina, but with a Dem governor and without their supermajorities, the flavor of things will change. States, like the feds, have all different voting thresholds for different bills and procedures and veto overrides and state constitutions, sometimes 50%+1, sometimes 50%, sometimes 3/5, sometimes 2/3, sometimes 3/4, etc. Meanwhile, even Democratic-dominated legislatures at the state level in the north have leadership starting to see challenges from the left ranks of their own parties. Wouldn't doubt if you hear more of that between now and January.

3. Point being? Tactics will matter relatively less next round than grand strategy. For baseball fans, this is American League ball now, not National League rules any more.

Anyways, tees up 2020 to be a relatively fairer fight. And I think it'll be a real doozy. The zero year ones are always important because of the census and redistricting (even though a good chunk of the 4-6 year positions elected last night will still be there). They set the tone of the House for the whole next decade. If you get a landslide in either direction, that sucker gets locked in. It's a small miracle after the way the GOP drew the district lines in 2010 that Democrats will hold the House for any years in the 2010s at all (and it will only be for 2019). So the stakes there are big.

4. Everything's coming to a head. The next election is both structurally and politically a big one, at least as big as '80 or '00, and I'd bet much bigger.

And I think the other thing last night showed was that the "Never Trumpers" in the party running away from Trump lose, and nativism or whatever you want to call it drives the right out to the polls in record numbers. This was the real test-case. Trumpism largely worked 2 elections in a row. Even if he declined to run again, the GOP will decide it cannot afford to change course. SO that's gonna roughly be the 2020 platform. Only bigger. And more ostentatious. Because how else could Trump run again, or even if he declined, how else could anyone follow him?

Meanwhile the DSA has showed they can get real folks elected at the national level. They just put the youngest woman in history in Congress--a place where tenure and seniority still matter--and her platform is as far left as anything America has seen from an elected official in at least half a century. That doesn't mean it's the party's platform. But it does mean there is a growing rank of people to the left of Sanders. For a long time we had what you might call 'asymetrical polarization,' especially on economic matters. Real extremists like Rand Paul held power on the right who had no even half-equivalent on the left. That's increasingly less true. And I think all those corporate centrist Democrats that right wing media demonized as socialists when they weren't are going to look soft and cuddly to the free marketeers when compared to the actual socialists who popped up once they cried wolf too many times.

5. There will be a clearer policy difference between the top two candidates in 2020 than any in generations.

Fox News journalists were literally campaigning on stage with the president on the eve of an election. Nobody's even pretending anymore. Nobody's putting on airs. It's not for show. Nobody's interested in inoffensive, milquetoast corporate centrism where we all speak in PC HR-lingo so as to never offend each other and the only thing we argue about are minor adjustments to marginal tax rates and deductions then wave our pom-poms for the free market and globalization.

That was the 1990s. And that shit worked when real housing and education costs were less than half what they are now and healthcare costs were maybe 20% what they are now and real wages were the same and non-Hispanic whites were 76% rather than 62% of the population. Now they're not. Heat turned up too fast. The frog caught on that the water was boiling. Now it's hopping out, to one side of the counter or the other. But it's no longer going to stay in the pot.

I still think there was a time they could have just turned the heat down--they meaning those who spend billions to run political campaigns and lobby for a better deal for wealthy asset holders and inheritors and corporate executives and a worse deal for everyone else. They didn't have to nearly exclusively build luxury housing for a decade and nothing else. They didn't have to pass a bill called the affordable care act with no price controls. They didn't have to give a debt-financed multi trillion dollar corporate tax cut for nothing in return. They didn't have to cut higher ed funding to the bone and pass the cost onto students. They didn't have to do any of this. But it was a system in which we lived. The end of history. Ideology was dead. Only money mattered. And if the majority had to suffer, whatever. Rationalize it by saying it's a meritocracy and they aren't meritorious people, even as you increasingly and repeatedly change the rules to advantage capital and disadvantage labor.

6. A lot of Americans are at a breaking point. The dream simply isn't coming through for them. And I wouldn't bet on them giving up on it without a fight.

But I think that game's over now. One way or the other. Either the supply of labor's going down and trade barriers are going up or the rules of the game are going to start tilting away from capital and toward labor, either way, for the first time in 50 or so years. We had record turnout in a relatively good economy with very low historical unemployment, relatively affordable commodities (especially oil), and record high stock markets at the end of the one of the longest (if not the longest) expansions in US economic history.

7. When the economy turns south, and it always does eventually, it has the effect of cranking turnout and basically throwing gasoline onto the fire.

Like Twain said, History doesn't repeat. But it rhymes. And here's the thing, regardless of which way things break, one party's going to be left holding the bag for past failings, especially after the next downturn. That's to say, whoever owns the past the loses the future.

And Here’s How It All Happened

Well all I know is just what I read in the papers or what I see as I prowl hither and thither. With the election over everybody seems to have settled down to steady argument.


The old hidebound Republicans still think the world is just on the verge of coming to an end, and you can kinder see their angle at that for they have been running things all these years.


I got a letter the other day from a very prominent businessman in Los Angeles, Mr. Frank Garbutt, the man that has made running of clubs a science, and not just a business. He owns every club from the great Los Angeles athletic club to beach clubs, golf clubs, to polo clubs. Now Frank is the longest headed man you ever saw. Yet he said there wouldn’t be a bank open in five months after Roosevelt took office. I don’t know what these fellows figure the Democrats are going to do with the country.


You would think a lot of folks would have their passage booked to some foreign land til the next election when they could get these Democrats back among the unemployed. Why they were in for eight years here not so long ago, from 1912 to 1920. Course I was just a boy and can’t remember back that far, but I have heard my dear old dad say there was some mighty good times, including a war thrown in for good measure.


Personally I could never see much difference in the two “gangs.” They used to be divided by the tariff. The tariff was originally supposed to aid the man that manufactured things. Well, the Democrats of those days didn’t manufacture anything but arguments, so they were against the tariffs, but the south woke up one day and saw some spinning looms advertised in the Montgomery Ward menu card, so they sent and got some and started spinning their own cotton.


Well they had cheap water power, cheap coal, cheap labor, and the Yankees started moving their shops down from the north. Well the Democrats woke up on another morning with a tariff problem on their hands. The South had gone industrial in a big way. Well they started talking about a tariff in bigger words than the north, so now that the South had got ‘em some smokestacks where they only used to have some mule sheds, why they are just tariffing themselves to death. So that left the principal dividing line between the two parties shot to pieces. You can’t tell one from the other now. Course, the last few years under Mr. Coolidge and Mr. Hoover there had grown the old original idea of the Republican Party, that it was the party of the rich. And I think that was the biggest contributing part in their defeat.


I think the general run of folks had kinder got wise to that. In the old days, they could get away with it, but of late years, the rich had diminished till their voting power wasn’t enough to keep a minority vote going. This last election was a revulsion of feeling that went back a long way ahead of the hard times. Mr. Hoover reaped the benefit of the arrogance of the party when it was going strong.


Why, after that ’28 election, there was no holding ’em. They really did think they had “hard times” cornered once and for all. Merger on top of merger. Get two nonpaying things merged and then issue more stock to the public. Consolidations and holding companies! Those are the “inventions” that every voter that had bought during the “cuckoo” days was gunning for at this last election.


Saying that all the big vote was just against hard times is not all so. They were voting against not being advised that all those foreign loans was not too solid. They were voting because they had never been told or warned to the contrary that every big consolidation might not be just the best investment. You know the people kinder look on our government to tell ‘em and kinder advise ‘em. Many an old bird really got sore at Coolidge, but could only take it out on Hoover. Big business sure got big, but it got big by selling its stocks and not by selling its products. No scheme was halted by the government as long as somebody would buy the stock. It could have been a plan to deepen the Atlantic Ocean and it would have had the endorsement of the proper department in Washington, and the stocks would’ve gone on the market.


This election was lost four and six years ago, not this year. They didn’t start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickles down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn’t know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night, anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellows hands. They saved the big banks, but the little ones went up the flue.


No sir, the little fellow felt that he never had a chance, and he didn’t till Nov. 3, and did he grab it? The whole idea of government relief for the last few years has been to loan somebody more money, so they can go further in debt. It ain’t much relief to just transfer your debts from one party to another, adding a little more in the bargain. No, I believe the “boys” from all they had and hadn’t done had this coming to ’em.

[dcarrigg]

Re: Meanwhile Back in the Sandbox...

Isn't that the darnedest thing? Back when we were young in the 1970s it seemed inevitable that those grouchy old Archie Bunker types would fade away and we could be rid of them. But somehow lots of my high school friends morphed into Archie Bunker and now I see them waddling around with concealed firearms yelling about some right-wing falsehood that has them full of fear and anger any particular day.
It's just the darnedest thing.

It's not healthy either. We lost a loved one to this. Fought in Vietnam only to be shot dead at 63 after getting into an argument with a 70 year old over a business arrangment revolving around honey made chiefly by a 94 year old beekeeper. Leon didn't like guns since the war. He was 6'4" so he didn't really have a personal safety complex. But the guy he was arguing with did and shot him down. Now you have one 63 year old in the ground and one 73 year old rotting in a cage until the end. Concealed carry didn't get him respect or even help him intimidate his way on top of a business deal. It just got everyone tragedy.