Tuesday, January 23, 1973. Nixon announces the peace.

On this day in 1973, President Richard Nixon announced that a peace accord had been arrived upon at the peace talks in Paris, which in fact had been arrived upon at 12:30 p.m. that day.  On television and radio, he stated:

Good evening:

I have asked for this radio and television time tonight for the purpose of announcing that we today have concluded an agreement to end the war and bring peace with honor in Vietnam and in Southeast Asia.

The following statement is being issued at this moment in Washington and Hanoi:

At 12:30 Paris time today, January 23, 1973, the Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam was initialed by Dr. Henry Kissinger on behalf of the United States, and Special Adviser Le Duc Tho on behalf of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.

The agreement will be formally signed by the parties participating in the Paris Conference on Vietnam on January 27, 1973, at the International Conference Center in Paris.

The cease-fire will take effect at 2400 Greenwich Mean Time, January 27, 1973. The United States and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam express the hope that this agreement will insure stable peace in Vietnam and contribute to the preservation of lasting peace in Indochina and Southeast Asia.

That concludes the formal statement. Throughout the years of negotiations, we have insisted on peace with honor. In my addresses to the Nation from this room of January 25 and May 8 [1972], I set forth the goals that we considered essential for peace with honor.

In the settlement that has now been agreed to, all the conditions that I laid down then have been met:

A cease-fire, internationally supervised, will begin at 7 p.m., this Saturday, January 27, Washington time.

Within 60 days from this Saturday, all Americans held prisoners of war throughout Indochina will be released. There will be the fullest possible accounting for all of those who are missing in action.

During the same 60-day period, all American forces will be withdrawn from South Vietnam.

The people of South Vietnam have been guaranteed the right to determine their own future, without outside interference.

By joint agreement, the full text of the agreement and the protocol to carry it out will be issued tomorrow.

Throughout these negotiations we have been in the closest consultation with President Thieu and other representatives of the Republic of Vietnam. This settlement meets the goals and has the full support of President Thieu and the Government of the Republic of Vietnam, as well as that of our other allies who are affected.

The United States will continue to recognize the Government of the Republic of Vietnam as the sole legitimate government of South Vietnam.

We shall continue to aid South Vietnam within the terms of the agreement, and we shall support efforts by the people of South Vietnam to settle their problems peacefully among themselves.

We must recognize that ending the war is only the first step toward building the peace. All parties must now see to it that this is a peace that lasts, and also a peace that heals—and a peace that not only ends the war in Southeast Asia but contributes to the prospects of peace in the whole world.

This will mean that the terms of the agreement must be scrupulously adhered to. We shall do everything the agreement requires of us, and we shall expect the other parties to do everything it requires of them. We shall also expect other interested nations to help insure that the agreement is carried out and peace is maintained.

As this long and very difficult war ends, I would like to address a few special words to each of those who have been parties in the conflict.

First, to the people and Government of South Vietnam: By your courage, by your sacrifice, you have won the precious right to determine your own future, and you have developed the strength to defend that right. We look forward to working with you in the future—friends in peace as we have been allies in war.

To the leaders of North Vietnam: As we have ended the war through negotiations, let us now build a peace of reconciliation. For our part, we are prepared to make a major effort to help achieve that goal. But just as reciprocity was needed to end the war, so too will it be needed to build and strengthen the peace.

To the other major powers that have been involved even indirectly: Now is the time for mutual restraint so that the peace we have achieved can last.

And finally, to all of you who are listening, the American people: Your steadfastness in supporting our insistence on peace with honor has made peace with honor possible. I know that you would not have wanted that peace jeopardized. With our secret negotiations at the sensitive stage they were in during this recent period, for me to have discussed publicly our efforts to secure peace would not only have violated our understanding with North Vietnam, it would have seriously harmed and possibly destroyed the chances for peace. Therefore, I know that you now can understand why, during these past several weeks, I have not made any public statements about those efforts.

The important thing was not to talk about peace, but to get peace—and to get the right kind of peace. This we have done.

Now that we have achieved an honorable agreement, let us be proud that America did not settle for a peace that would have betrayed our allies, that would have abandoned our prisoners of war, or that would have ended the war for us but would have continued the war for the 50 million people of Indochina. Let us be proud of the 2 1/2 million young Americans who served in Vietnam, who served with honor and distinction in one of the most selfless enterprises in the history of nations. And let us be proud of those who sacrificed, who gave their lives so that the people of South Vietnam might live in freedom and so that the world might live in peace.

In particular, I would like to say a word to some of the bravest people I have ever met—the wives, the children, the families of our prisoners of war and the missing in action. When others called on us to settle on any terms, you had the courage to stand for the right kind of peace so that those who died and those who suffered would not have died and suffered in vain, and so that where this generation knew war, the next generation would know peace. Nothing means more to me at this moment than the fact that your long vigil is coming to an end.

Just yesterday, a great American, who once occupied this office, died. In his life, President Johnson endured the vilification of those who sought to portray him as a man of war. But there was nothing he cared about more deeply than achieving a lasting peace in the world.

I remember the last time I talked with him. It was just the day after New Year's. He spoke then of his concern with bringing peace, with making it the right kind of peace, and I was grateful that he once again expressed his support for my efforts to gain such a peace. No one would have welcomed this peace more than he.

And I know he would join me in asking—for those who died and for those who live—let us consecrate this moment by resolving together to make the peace we have achieved a peace that will last.

Thank you and good evening.

Peace with honor was the theme, but it is now known that neither Richard Nixon or Henry Kissinger expected the peace to hold or for South Vietnam to survive it. 

The cease fire was to go into effect on January 27.

My mother, I recall, was relieved, as she feared I'd end up having to fight in Vietnam.  I was only nine years old on this day.

Electronic voting was used in the U.S. House of Representatives for the first time.

Saturday, January 23, 1943. Casablanca released.

Casablanca was given its general release.  Our review of it is here:

Movies In History: Casablanca

First of all, let me note that I made an error in my review of The Maltese Falcon.  The 41 variant of that film was released first, not Casablanca.  I don't know why I reversed the order, but I did.

Casablanca was released for general circulation on January 23, 1943.

At that time, Morocco was just recently brought into the Allied orbit.  Allied troops had landed there in November, 1942 with the landings being part of Operation Torch.  The Moroccan landings, much less discussed than the Algerian ones, actually took place at Casablanca.  French forces resisted the Allies briefly in Algeria and Morocco, before formally switching sides as part of a negotiated turn about in early November, 1942.  Casablanca was the host that January to the Casablanca Conference between Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt, where the policy of unconditional surrender was announced and agreed upon.

So how's the film hold up?

Well, the movie doesn't take place in 1943, it takes place in December, 1941, just before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The US isn't yet in the war.  Morocco is in the hands of the Vichy French, although at the end of the movie we learn about a Free French garrison in Brazzaville, a city in French Equatorial Africa.  Casablanca is, as the movie depicts it, as sweaty den of vice, filled with refugees seeking desperately to get out of Morocco and on to freedom somewhere else.  In the center of it is Rick's Cafe American, where everyone goes.  Working into this, we have Victor Laszlo, a Central European resistance leader and his beautiful wife Ilsa Lund, played by Ingrid Bergman.  Lund, we learn, was the girlfriend of Rick of Rick's Cafe, who proposed to her just as Paris was set to fall, not knowing that she was already married to Laszlo.  Laszlo and Lund need "letters of transit" to leave Morocco, and Vichy French control, and the cynical world-weary Rick is believed to have obtained them from the oily Signor Ugarte, played by Peter Lorre.  Through it all a charmingly corrupt Inspector Renault, played by Claude Rains, weaves his way.

If you haven't seen it, see it.  This is another film which, by some people's measure, is the "greatest" movie ever made, although it isn't as great as the film commonly taking that prize, in my view, that being Citizen Kane.  It's a great movie, however.  And it's all the more amazingly great when you realize how much the making of the film was beset by all sorts of difficulties.

But what of its place in history. Was Casablanca of 1941 like the way it was portrayed in this 1942/43 film?

Well, probably surprisingly close.

Places under European colonial administration were bizarrely reservoirs of traditional cultures, advancement of European ideas, and massive corruption.  All three are shown to exist in the film and, if in exaggerated fashion, probably not too exaggerated really.  Morocco was controlled by Vichy at the time.  Brazzaville actually was beyond Vichy control and French Equatorial Africa was held by France Libre, a Free French movement.  Portugal was a neutral and a destination for people trying to get to the United Kingdom and beyond, or for that matter into Spain and then Nazi Germany through France.

Letters of Transit?  Nope, no such thing.  It is, after all, fiction.

In terms of material details, well the film was a contemporary picture, and it has the pluses and the minuses noted in our review of the Maltese Falcon.  Male costumes, more or less correct, with Bogar again wearing a Borsolino fedora, maybe the same one. Women's fashion?  Well, women refugees probably almost never traveled with a radiant wardrobe.

Well worth seeing, however.

The movie had a limited release on Thanksgiving Day, 1942, in New York City.

It was not known to the general public that Franklin Roosevelt was in Casablanca, Morocco, at the time.

The 8th Army captured Tripoli. We erroneously had this date reported a couple of days ago.

US forces successfully concluded all major ground operations on Guadalcanal, effectively bringing the campaign to a conclusion, the second such conclusion in the Pacific in two days.

British commandos, with Norwegian support, raided Stord, a Norwegian island, in Operation Cartoon and put a pyrite mine out of commission for a year.

Tuesday, January 23, 1923. Money, Money, Money.

A movie.

It premiered on this day in 1923.

A reminder that the last shall be first, and some of the people who figure they are in the front of the line, may not be in it at all.

I earlier posted this item regarding certain people who profess to be Christians who are sitting in our legislature:

Lex Anteinternet: Hypocrisy?: Hypocrisy? Or just not really thinking things through? As noted here before, although it might not always be very obvious, I'm conservat...

I addressed in that, the bill to extend Medicaid, noting:

The bill to extend Medicaid, which only aids the poor, to mothers past 60 days to a year passed its committee, but barely.  

It was supported by Governor Gordon.

It was supported by physicians.

Deacon Mike Lehman, lobbyist for the Diocese of Wyoming, spoke in favor of it.

None of which kept some of the legislative guardians of public morals from speaking against it.  Jeanette Ward of Illinois spoke against it as an "entitlement program".

Eh?

Not hardly.

Deacon Lehman noted:“that not every government program is an inevitable slide into the fiery pit of Socialism.”  He further noted, according to the Cowboy State Daily: “We’re talking about a segment of the population that qualifies for Medicaid coverage while pregnant, then, when the mother and child are still extremely vulnerable, they no longer qualify.”

The physicians noted they were supporting it even though the program really doesn't pay them very well at all, just barely, in fact.

I don't know, I'd note, Ward's religious affiliation, but I’m sure she's some sort of Christian.  Prior to coming to Wyoming, she was very active in Illinois politics, where she was predictably controversial.  An example of that is as follows:

Do you know what your children are being taught: Muslims believe in the same God as Christians and Jews?

My 6th-grader came home with this assignment today. She was supposed to read the article and answer the questions. (She will not be completing this assignment). The full text of the article is below. Quiz questions are depicted in the pictures. This article is utterly incorrect and false on many levels. This is one of the many reasons I voted no on this curriculum resource.

Well, Christians, Muslims and Jews do in fact all worship the same God.  Their understanding of God's nature if quite different from each other, but they all worship the same God.

Are we really willing to deny this small class of women and their infants medical help?  Seems really mean.

It's also the sort of thing that causes some people to slam the Pro Life folks on the basis that they don't care at all once people are born.  That's actually completely false, and indeed many of the more dedicated pro lifers do indeed support helping mother and infant post birth.

Indeed, while often missed, there's a strong streak of liberalism in at least the Catholic pro-life crowd, which is not only opposed to abortion, but opposed to the death penalty as well.  It's not actually easy to politically pigeonhole it.

Which unfortunately doesn't appear to be the case for Ms. Ward.  She's pretty predictable.

So, frankly, this doesn't surprise me very much.

Without knowing more, I sort of guess that Ms. Ward is a fundamentalist of some type.  I don't want to pick on fundamentalist too much, as they are highly varied, and the term is one that is put on them, rather than one they adopt, but fundamentalist of any type, and there are Islamic Fundamentalist, Hindu fundamentalist, etc., risk reducing their religion to a set of sort of Pharisaic type rules and becoming mean thereafter.  Abortion is wrong because it is, premarital sex is wrong, aborting the results of premarital sex is wrong, but after that you are your own and if you get sick and die, well that's your problem.

I'm not saying that all fundamentalist of any type hold that view, but the fundamentalist of any stripe, and I'd note that for the Apostolic religions as well, run that risk.

Note, orthodox, and fundamentalist, are not the same thing.

There's a real element of solidarity and subsidiarity missing in that thinking.  Yes, just the other day I criticized free school breakfast and lunches, on the basis that it encouraged parents in irresponsibility, but here a different concern exists, which is helping the most helpless in the most efficient fashion.  I.e, both solidarity and subsidiarity apply here, and they argue strongly for extending Medicaid here.  To argue against it as an unwanted "entitlement" really misses the boat.

Now, I learn from the Casper Star Tribune, that Ms. Ward stated the following:

“Arguing that if you’re pro-life you have to be for the expansion of entitlement programs does not follow,” Ward said. “Cain commented to God, ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’ The obvious answer is no. No, I am not my brother’s keeper. But just don’t kill him.”

Yes, Ms. Ward, you are your brother's keeper. That was the very point, and to a significant degree, of the entire Christian Gospel.  And in terms of the Torah, that was actually the point of the lesson.  Cain was Able's keeper. That was his obligation, not merely not killing him.

If you cannot grasp that, you've missed the message of the New Testament.  If you cannot be your brother's keeper, at least on occasion, you're claiming a crown that may well be beyond your grasp, if that is truly what you believe.¹

Truly, this is such a shocking position, that a person would have to be either blisteringly ignorant of the entire point of Christianity, or such a flaming Calvinist that even John Calvin would find your position abhorrent.

Appalling.

And a calling to repent.

When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit upon his glorious throne and all the nations will be assembled before him. And he will separate them one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will place the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

Then the king will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.

For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me.’

Then the righteous will answer him and say, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink?

When did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you?

When did we see you ill or in prison, and visit you?’

And the king will say to them in reply, ‘Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.’

Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you accursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.

For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, a stranger and you gave me no welcome, naked and you gave me no clothing, ill and in prison, and you did not care for me.’

Then they will answer and say, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or ill or in prison, and not minister to your needs?’

He will answer them, ‘Amen, I say to you, what you did not do for one of these least ones, you did not do for me.’

And these will go off to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”

Matthew, Chapter 25. 

Footnotes

1.  Indeed, there has been in recent years a Catholic Bishop, perhaps still living, who took his obligation to the poor so seriously that he always carried money so as to give to every beggar.  When asked why, he replied "How am I to know which one is not Christ?", recalling the Gospel line that Christ would recall that whenever you gave to the least, you gave to him.

Courthouses of the West: Supreme Court Dobb's Decision Leaker remains a mys...

Courthouses of the West: Supreme Court Dobb's Decision Leaker remains a mys...:

Supreme Court Dobb's Decision Leaker remains a mystery.

The U.S. Supreme Court concluded its investigation of the leak of the draft Dobb's decision with no determination as to who the leaker was.

Be that as it may, like most such events, the furor seems to have passed.

Missing.

Twenty eight South Dakotans, many of them teens, and many of them Native Americans, have gone missing since January 1, 2023.

They are, with their dates of disappearance:

Missing since Jan. 17, 2023

• Jake Moore, 13, reported missing by Rapid City Police Department

• Angelo Jones, 15, reported missing by Sioux Falls Police Department

• Kylie Mesteth, 16, reported missing by Rapid City Police Department

Missing since Jan. 16, 2023

• Emma Huska, 16, reported missing by Rapid City Police Department

• Luta Arapahoe, 14, reported missing by Rapid City Police Department

Missing since Jan. 15, 2023

• Ricki Becker, 29, reported missing by Sioux Falls Police Department

Missing since Jan. 14, 2023

• Delbert Bad Milk, 15, reported missing by Rapid City Police Department

• Anthony Bad Milk, 13, reported missing by Rapid City Police Department

• Kateri Two Elk, 37, reported missing by Box Elder Police Department

Missing since Jan. 13, 2023

• Maria Valladares, 17, reported missing by Sioux Falls Police Department

• Janae Mitchell, 15, reported missing by Sioux Falls Police Department

• Brooklyn Ford, 9, reported missing by Clark County Sheriff’s Office

Missing since Jan. 12, 2023

• Ethan Stewart 26, reported missing by Sioux Falls Police Department

• Matthew Harmon, 45, reported missing by Aberdeen Police Department

• Janiya Farmer, 17, reported missing by Sisseton Whapeton Oyate Tribal Police Department

Missing since Jan. 11, 2023

• Felicia Dreaming Bear, 33, reported missing by Rapid City Police Department

• Isabelle White Calf, 16, reported missing by Box Elder Police Department

Missing since Jan. 10, 2023

• Diego Perez, 17, reported missing by Pennington County Sheriff’s Office

Missing since Jan. 8, 2023

• Ezra Decker, 16, reported missing by Kingsbury County Sheriff’s Office

Missing since Jan. 7, 2023

• Honorae Little Bear, 16, reported missing by Sioux Falls Police Department

Missing since Jan. 6, 2023

• Nevin Huapapi, 15, reported missing by Sioux Falls Police Department

• Liyah Adams, 15, reported missing by Pine Ridge Oglala Sioux Tribal Police Department

Missing since Jan. 5, 2023

• Ray Pena, 16, reported missing by Sioux Falls Police Department

Missing since Jan. 4, 2023

• Mercedes Johnson, 17, reported missing by Sioux Falls Police Department

Missing since Jan. 3, 2023

• Prairie Crowe, 16, reported missing by Pennington County Sheriff’s Office

Missing since Jan. 1, 2023

• Electra Wright, 17, reported missing by Butte County Sheriff’s Office

• Kelly Tiah, 16, reported missing by Sioux Falls Police Department

• Bobbie Miller, 23, reported missing by Pennington County Sheriff’s Office

Numbers to call for folks with information.

Rapid City Police Department: 605-394-4131

Sioux Falls Police Department: 605-367-7000

Box Elder Police Department: 605-394-4131

Clark County Sheriff’s Office: 605-532-3822

Aberdeen Police Department: 605-626-7000

Sisseton Whapeton Oyate Tribal PD: 605-698-7661

Pennington County Sheriff’s Office: 605-394-4131

Kingsbury County Sheriff’s Office: 605-854-3339

Pine Ridge Oglala Sioux Tribal PD: 605-867-5111

Butte County Sheriff’s Office: 605-892-3324

Year of

Leporidae.  They include sixty different species in more than one genus, all having a very similiar appearance.

Historically, an important food animal around the globe, Wyoming has six different species of hares and rabbits.  Of the rabbits, we have two species of Sylvilagus, the audobonii and the floridanus, which are the Dester Cottontail and the Eastern Cottontail respectively.  

Desert Cottontails hang out constantly in my yard.

 

We also have another rabbit species, the Brachylagus idahoensis, which is the Pygmy rabbit. They're little guys.

And we have three species of hares, the Lepus californicus, the Lepus townsendii and the Lepus americanus, or the Black-tailed jackrabbit, the White-tailed jackrabbit and the Snowshoe hare. They're all big guys.

Cottontail rabbits are delicious, in my experience.  Fried Cottontail is great.  Snowshoe hares are likewise tasty, but tougher.  I have no experience with the others, but lots with these.

And the seasons are still open.

Monday, January 22, 1973. The Supreme Court creates a decades long problem.

The United States Supreme Court, in an opinion that was obviously legally infirm and unsupportable, and which assumed a certain sort of status in the status of medical knowledge, decided Roe v. Wade 7 to 2.

The decision, which had little defensible basis in the law, or science, guaranteed that the topic of abortion would be divisive and bitter and encouraged the American political left's drift into rule by the courts, rather than legislative rule.  This latter effect has caused untold damage to American politics.

The decision which opened up abortion during the first three months of pregnancy stands with the Dred Scott decision as one of the absolute worst and disastrous U.S. Supreme Court decisions of all time.

Lyndon Johnson died from a massive stroke at his home in Stonewall, Texas.

Friday, January 23, 1943. Chinook.

A Chinook wind caused an increase in temperature in Spearfish, South Dakota, in which the temperature went from -4F to 45F in two minutes.  It ultimately went up to 54F over two hours, then dropped back below 0 in 30 minutes, all of this in a single morning.

Papua was liberated from the Japanese, becoming the first territory they had captured from which they'd been completely expelled.

Japan's losses on the island were 13,000 in number, compared to 2,000 for Australia and 600 for the United States.

On the same day, the British 8th Army took Tripoli.

According to many sources, today, not yesterday, was the date on which the Germans lost their last airfield at Stalingrad.

French police and German forces began the Marseilles Roundup, the gathering and deportation of the city's Jewish population.  The action would result in the deportation of 1,642 people, the displacement of 20,000 and the arrest of 6,000.  The Old Port district was destroyed.

Margaret Bourke-White flew in a U.S. bombing mission over Tunis in the B-17 Little Bill.  The photographer and reporter was the first woman to do so.

Bourke-White was already a famous photographer by that time, having photographed extensively during the Great Depression and having photographed the Soviet Union prior to World War Two.  She died at age 67 in 1971 of Parkinson's Disease.

Franklin Roosevelt dined with Moroccan Sultan Mohammed V, during which he expressed sympathy for post-war Moroccan independence.

Roosevelt was always solidly anti-colonial, a fact that became an increasing problem for the British as the war went on and which would impact the immediate post war world.

Monday, Januarly 22, 1923. No strike on the Rhein, Earthquake in Humboldt County.

The general strike called for in the Ruhr did not materialize.

Humboldt County, California, sustained an earthquake:

ON JANUARY 22ND 1923, A M7.1 EARTHQUAKE STRUCK NEAR CAPE MENDOCINO IN HUMBOLDT COUNTY, CALIFORNIA

One hundred years ago, a powerful magnitude 7.1 earthquake struck near Cape Mendocino and caused strong shaking and multiple aftershocks in Ferndale, Eureka, Petrolia, and many other communities in Humboldt County. The quake struck in the early hours of January 22, 1923 and was strong enough to knock down chimneys, split one home in half after shaking it from its foundation, and create a small tsunami. Shaking was felt hundreds of miles away in San Francisco and Sacramento.

Best Posts of the Week of January 15, 2023

 The best posts of the week of January 15, 2023.

Tuesday, January 16, 1923: Work on cattle ranch, Z/T Ranch, Pitchfork, Wyoming

Denver International Airport. Clearing the snow.

The 2023 Wyoming Legislative Session. The Legislature Convenes (Vol 2).

Saturday, January 20, 1923. Children singing, railroad mergers, German mines, and when masks didn't cause political posturing.

The Hageman speech to the legislature. Deconstruction and Analysis. Part One.

Wars and Rumors of War, 2023. The Bear and the Trident. The Russo Ukrainian War crosses the calendar year.

The 2023 Wyoming Legislative Session. End of the first full week, beginning of the next. (Vol 3).

The Hageman speech to the legislature. Deconstruction and Analysis. Part Two. The budget is a mess, but how it can really be fixed.

The Hageman speech to the legislature. Deconstruction and Analysis. Part Two. The budget is a mess, but how it can really be fixed.

Brünnhilde is visited by her Valkyrie sister Waltraute in Götterdämmerung.  Did Harriet Hageman appear with her sword and magic helmet to correctly warn of us of impending fiscal doom? "The ring upon thy hand ... ah, be implored!  For Wotan fling it away!" 

Okay, what about the second part of this speech. 

The dire economic warning part.

The Hageman speech to the legislature. Deconstruction and Analysis. Part One.

Just yesterday, in our overlong, Lex Anteinternet: The 2023 Wyoming Legislative Session. The Legislat... thread, I posted the following:

Harriet Hageman appeared to address the House.

The early portion of Hageman's address deals with the new rules that the House is operating under, some of which are a restoration of old rules, as is noted.

The back portion is a call for extreme budget cuts.  Without saying as much, it would seem that you can take hints that this would include Social Security, but perhaps I'm just reading that into the speech and it isn't there.

It then goes into the legislative session.

Are we correctly being forewarned about Die Nornen?  That'd be scary.

Maybe we should be scared.

Hageman was not precise in her warning that Waltraute ought to hurl the ring away, but the gist of it is that we're spending way beyond our means, government wise, and we can't keep doing it forever.

I agree with that, and that's always been my position.  I'd note that since Reagan left office, it's only been the position of the Republicans when they're not in office. They're all about fiscal responsibility then, but when they are in office in Washington D.C., the fleet's in, they have shore leave, the Rockettes are appearing downtown. . . Woo Hoo!

Given that, it's a little hard for me to take the GOP seriously on this.

Indeed, quite frankly, listening to Republican declarations that "we need to be really careful on how we spend money" has gotten a lot like listening to an evangelical preacher warn us about the dangers of dancing and drink when we were just downing Makers Mark with him the prior night at the "Ol Elephant Saloon".  Your sort of want to say, "um, didn't you buy me a tumbler of Makers last night, and didn't I see you dancing with Billie Jean. . . .?"

Hmmmm. . . 

The other thing is that it seems that the House of Representatives seems to have suddenly confused itself with the House of Commons and believe that Kevin McCarthy is the Prime Minister, rather than just the Speaker of the House.  In terms of actual power to influence directions, he's much more limited than he's presently pretending.  Indeed, he risks going down right now as a flaming failure who might end up a footnote in a biography on Nancy Pelosi.

None of which means that hte dire warning might not be right.

Well, it might be, but she's not really terribly accurate in her statements.

I agree that the government can't spend for ever, and I do think the budget should be balanced. Does that require massive universal cuts to achieve?

No, it really doesn't.

Actually, given the scale of the budget and the of the economy, relatively moderate cuts combined with rational tax increases would cover it.  You could easily generate a surplus that way too.   If you were hired by the Federal Government as the CFO, that's exactly what you'd do. Any halfway competent CFO would do just that.

So why didn't she call for that?

Easy enough.  Unlike John Howard Hermann, we're not talking about economics, we're talking about money.

John Howard Hermann: We aren't even talking about money! We're talking about economics.

Hail Caesar!

Economically, this is easy to achieve, at least right now.  So much money is spent, so much money is brought in.  You need to spend less, or bring in more, or both.  Doing both, if you control the expenditures and the income, is fairly easy. And that'd be easy here, fiscally.

Republicans hate the income part, however, as it requires them to concede a dear dear belief, which is that tax is theft and that by leaving lots and lots of surplus money at the upper end of the income scale the rich reinvest it in businesses, rather than buying Twitter and wrecking it, or going to hang out with Jeffrey Epstein and a passel of underage girls.

We already know from past experience that you can tax the very wealthy up around 50%, and it won't drive them to Argentina or cause them to tank the economy.  Indeed, we did that for years and years before the "rising tide lifts all boats, even the ones with big gaping holes in them" theory of economics came to prevail. We started cutting upper tax rates with Ronald Reagan, and we haven't stopped.

We need to, and it needs to go back to the 1940 to 1960 type rates.

We can also tax a lot of surplus and idle wealth quite easily. We just don't.  People buying pure luxury itemss, third houses, McLaren cars and the like, can pony up.  

My guess is that Harriet Hageman, however, isn't going to go to Susan Gore and say, "wowsers Susan, these are some nice digs here in your compound. .  now let's talk about taxing you a little more. . . "

Not hardly.

But it ain't just Republicans.

Democrats never saw a spending program they didn't like.  Americans are so used to spending programs that have come into existence over the years in through relatively liberal (usually) Federal projects that they really have no idea whatsoever what they all are, and people have come to support them as rights.

As an example, when I was a kid, there was no Federal Department of Education. Education was 100% a state concern.  In FY 2023, the Department of Education had $89.76 Billion distributed among its ten subcomponents, which is a fair chunk of change, and that's only a single example.

It's tempting to believe, and some fiscal conservatives will tend to claim, that if we cut out all the fluff and added on budgetary items, the budget would balance.  While what the GOP wants to do would require that, and indeed it is required realistically, that still  doesn't get you there.  The big bear is non-discretionary spending.

You can get a bit of an insight into that here:

Much Ado About Debt

Oh oh.

Here are the Congressional Budget Office's infographs on the topic for 2021, first with discretionary spending.

And here's the graph of non discretionary spending:

As you can see, the list of items that Congress has placed beyond itself, and then refused to find a way to pay for, is something like five times the size of what it can control through annual appropriations.

In other words, there's no earthly way to pay for everything the Federal Government is funding through spending cuts alone.

None.

That's why Republicans hint at going after non-discretionary funding.  But because people like it, that's also why they hint, but won't flat out admit it, usually.  You aren't very likely to have Harriet Hageman or anyone else say, "wow, Medicare is expensive, let's cut it".

Indeed, programs like Medicare have been big budget inflators.  Richard Nixon, going down in flames due to Watergate, still retained enough political savvy to give a gift that kept on giving, with that one.

Once you give a benefit like that to people, there's no taking it away.  The Affordable Health Care Act certainly has proven that, and the COVID relief bills came close to being a Uniform Basic Income that wouldn't go away, and is still impacting the economy.  The point is not that these need to be cut, they likely cannot be, realistically.

You have to tax to pay for them.

Republicans in the House thinking that they're going to cut into Social Security or Medicare might as well plan on having pony rides on the moon.  Ain't happening.  Americans are used to these programs and are entirely acclimated to depending upon them. The only way that programs of that type every go away is due to massive societal disaster, which is ironically enough the way they tend to come into being in the first place.  You can't now tell people who are Social Security that something they were depending on for their entire lives needs to be drastically reduced. And all the youngsters who didn't care much about Nixon and his geezer centric Medicare bill in 74 sure do now.

Lots of conservative economists will, at this point, say something like "hold on there buckwheat, that would hurt the economy".  They'll propose just growing the economy out of this problem.  That actually is completely true, up to a certain point, but at some point you just can't do it.  Cutting back and tightening the belt makes sense if you can actually expect to be able to live within your means. But if you are far beyond them already, that's not going to happen.  It also won't happen if there's simply no moral hazard for anyone in the Federal economy, and right now there isn't.  I.e., it's easy to think "Free lunches for house cats?  Why not. . ." right up until somebody raises taxes to pay for it.

Indeed, one way that taxes could be raised would be simply to raise user fees for things. Some budget items are already paid for this way.  Hunters and fishermen pretty much pay for the entire U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, as well as state agencies, through excise taxes, user fees and hunting licenses, for example.  The U.S. Department of Transportation could be paid for this way as well.  The U.S. Post Office, while not a great example, funds itself.   That won't address mandatory spending directly, but if departments that task specific civil roles can be funding that way, general taxes don't have to fund them.

If you expand this out, there's no good reason that health related expenditures, which include a fair amount of the non discretionary spending, can't be covered by excises. Alcohol excises could pay for nearly 100% of alcohol related diseases.  Tobacco related excises could pay for 100% of tobacco caused illnesses.  A tax on marijuana, which is tricky as it remains illegal at the Federal level, could be imposed on the increasing amount of health and crime expendistures it causes.  All this, moreover, is just as not everyone drinks, smokes, or uses dope.

The level at which a person might wish to do this inevitably gets tied up with social concerns.  Some would say, well, if you are going to do that, are you going to tax firearms and ammunition manufacturers to cover health care costs derived from shootings?  Are you going to tax automobile manufacturers to cover costs related to automobile accidents?

I might.

Now, the working deficit right now is $421,409,781,344.

That's a lot of cash.

Here's a Federal chart on the deficite for FY 2022.

.S. Deficit Compared to Revenue and Spending, FY 2022

The FY 2022 chart is really instructive, as what that tells us is that the deficit frankly isn't that huge in the annual budget.  yes, that's a big number, but the revenue figure nearly covers.  We only had to make up $1.38 Trillion to balance in FY 2022, and that was a COVID mess year.

Elon Musk has an annual income of $2,400,000,000.

Let's put these figures side by side.

For FY 2022 the deficit and Elon Musk's annual income were:

$1,380,000,000,000.

$0,002,400,000,000.

So, obviously if you taxed Elon 100% of this income, you wouldn't cover the deficit.

But, if you taxed him at 50% of his income, it does make an actual dent in the deficit, and there are plenty of billionaires around to tax.

And of course if you cut out half of the Department of Education's budget, keeping in mind it didn't even exist for most of the Post War period, you've cut into it an appreciable amount.

So, what does this tell us.

Well, folks like Harriet Hageman who call for "deep, deep, cuts" to the budget to fix the presumed crisis are wrong.

And folks like Robert Reich who call for big taxes on the wealthy are wrong.

Both are partially right, but only partially.

Shouldn't they know that?

Of course, they should, and they likely do, but if Hageman admits it, that means that people who are making $500,000 or more per year are going to pay more, and some a lot more, in taxes.  Hageman's former client, Susan Gore, for example, might look at her family company, which makes $3,800,000,000 in annual income ponying up more cash and having her annual income taxes higher as well.

The rich don't like that.

And Robert Reich won't like it either, as this would mean that funding Every Brown Bear Gets A Sandwich and the like won't happen.

All in all, it would be a big turn to the right, and it'd hurt the left, but it would also mean that programs that already exist, such as noted above, would be sound, and the hard right has never liked them.  In their heart of hearts, they'd make them go away based on the concept that everyone in society, including the bootless, can pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.

Finally, what about the claim that only three countries have "fixed" their budgetary crisis?

M'eh, that's hogwash.

Plenty of countries have fixed economic imbalance, including ones that spend a lot more on social programs than the United States.

Canada runs a mild deficit and spends a lot more on social programs, per capita, that have real effect than the United States does.  Germany, Switzerland, and South Korea often post budget surpluses.  Japan runs a mild deficit and is projected to increase military spending while achieving a balanced budget by 2026.   New Zealand, cited by Hageman, tends to balance.  New Zealand has national health care and national tort coverage.

What are these countries doing that we aren't?

Taxing.

Related Threads:

The Hageman speech to the legislature. Deconstruction and Analysis. Part One.

Sunday, January 21, 1943 (and 1973). Lost flights

Today in World War II History—January 21, 1943: 80 Years Ago—Jan. 21, 1943: Stalingrad airlift ends when Soviets take Gumrak Airfield, the last Luftwaffe field in the city.

On Sarah Sundin's blog.

Obviously, by this point, the German 6th Army, or what was left of it, was doomed.   

FWIW, other sources report this as occurring on January 22.

Pan Am Flight 1104 crashed into a hillside in Mendocino County, California, due to bad weather and low visibility, killing all on board, including Rear Admiral Robert H. English, the commander of the the US submarine fleet in the Pacific.  The clipper had been en route from Hawaii.

The Civil Aeronautics Board determined:

Failure of the captain to determine his position accurately before descending to a dangerously low altitude under extremely poor weather conditions during the hours of darkness.

It took ten days to find the wreckage.

On this day in 1973, Aeroflot Flight 6263, crashed at Perm, killing four in the impact. Thirty-five survivors would freeze to death awaiting rescue.

Areoflot ranks number 1 in airline fatalities, with the rankings as of mid summer 2023 being as follows:

Areoflot - 11,270 fatalities

Air France - 1,756 fatalities

Pan Am - 1,652

American Airlines - 1,453 fatalities

United Airlines - 1,217 fatalities

Avianca - 992 fatalities

Sunday January 21, 1923. Calling for strikes.

The Weimar government endorsed a general strike in the Ruhr.

A royal decree in Italy allowed coins to bear the fasces on the obverse side from the one bearing the image of the king.

New Zealand's new Prime Minister, Chris Hipkins, is. . .

 44 years old.

For the second time in a row, New Zealand has chosen a PM who was not old enough to have served in, or avoided serving in, the Vietnam War.

There's a lesson in here, US voters.

The Hageman speech to the legislature. Deconstruction and Analysis. Part One.

Just yesterday, in our overlong, Lex Anteinternet: The 2023 Wyoming Legislative Session. The Legislat... thread, I posted the following:

Harriet Hageman appeared to address the House.

The early portion of Hageman's address deals with the new rules that the House is operating under, some of which are a restoration of old rules, as is noted.

The back portion is a call for extreme budget cuts.  Without saying as much, it would seem that you can take hints that this would include Social Security, but perhaps I'm just reading that into the speech and it isn't there.

It then goes into the legislative session.

I didn't really do a deep dive into it, but maybe that's worthwhile.  This is the first big public address Hageman has given, and she took a much different approach than Senator Barrasso did, who gave a cheerful, very much at ease speech. Indeed, I've seen Barrasso speak before, but I've actually never seen him speak when he didn't sound stilted.  This is an exception.  He didn't try to talk politics in it.

Hageman did.

Hageman's speech isn't long, and it may be broken down basically into two parts.  What she claims the House has already accomplished, and fiscal concerns.  She was pretty blunt in it.

I'll start by noting that I probably didn't give the speech the due it deserves for a simple reason.  I think that Liz Cheney's claim that Hageman was exhibiting "tragic opportunism" by running is correct.  I find it a bit hard to take anyone seriously who is crying out from the hill they just climbed with the bloody knife of the body they just stabbed in the back in their hands.  

But maybe in the world of politics, metaphorically killing your friends is just the norm.  Well, it isn't, but it does occur.

Okay, the speech.

The first part of it addresses a whole bunch of House procedural changes which do make the Speaker less of a dictator and do force members of the House to show up and do their jobs. Frankly, I think those reversions to prior times are a good thing, and they needed to be done.  I don't like the fact that they came about due to the far right, but I have to note that in lauding these changes Hageman doesn't give credit to where it is due, which is the far right. She is a member of the far right, but the changes or reversions cited were things that were brought about by the Freedom Caucus opponents of McCarthy.  She stuck with McCarthy the entire time.

I'm not sure what to make of that, but there's an element of riding your opponent's horse in that.

Are these good things?

Well, even though I don't like the group that brought them about, they are.

A portion of this speech that seems to relate to fiscal matters, which we'll get to in a second post, dealt with oil and coal.  

It's now become a state mantra that the nation needs Wyoming's oil and coal.

Prior to the U.S. Civil War, a common claim in the South is that the North would never fight the South as it needed its cotton, and indeed the whole world did.

Apparently, Southerners had never heard of sheep.

Or Egyptian cotton.

Just as Wyomingites apparently just won't believe that wind, solar, and ultimately nuclear, are going to, well, as Everett McGill had it in Oh Brother, Where Art Thou; "Yes, sir, the South is gonna change. Everything's gonna be put on electricity and run on a paying basis."

Everything is on a paying basis already, and that statement applies to the whole country in the context of technological evolution.

Windmills and memorial.  Might as well be coal's grave.

We've addressed it before, but coal has been on its way out for well over a century now.  It's so clear, that we've basically gone from the "cool menthol filters make these cigarettes safe for anyone" stage of things to the "I don't care if everyone in my family smokes, and they all have lung cancer, people get lung cancer from other things too. . . " stage of this argument.  Yes, you can still light up a pack of "

Exceedingly creepy, and more than a little unrealistic, Lucky Strike advertisement from 1952.  Yes, cigarettes won't hurt you.  And yes, you can wish the entire nation back into the coal age. And yes, this young woman didn't die of lung cancer by 1972.  Or. . . . ?

To put it mildly, the same group of folks who thought that passing a resolution banning electric cars to be sent to the Governor of California on the basis that, "that'll show them", seems to think we can just hold our breaths and turn blue and it'll be 1973 again, or perhaps we can just force everyone to use coal whether they want to nor not.

Just not going to happen.  It's already not happening, all on its own.

Flat out denial of an economic trend is dangerous.

A lot of tobacco farmers are farming something else now.

Saturday, January 20 1973. Second Nixon Inauguration.

President Nixon was inaugurated for the second time.

Amilcar Cabral, leader of the Guinea independence movement, was assassinated.

The Soviets revealed the existence of its education tax on emigrants, which taxed exodus, based on the theory that the state had educated them and it was recouping its loss.

Mathilde Marie Christine Ghislaine d'Udekem d'Acoz, Queen Consort of Belgium, was born.

Wednesday, January 20, 1943. Senseless deaths.

Attila Peschauer, Hungarian Olympic fencer and gold medalist in 1928 and 1932, is commonly thought to have died in the Davidovka concentration camp in Ukraine where Hungarian Jews had been deported by Nazi Germany, an act which required cooperation of Hungary.

It's commonly misunderstood by those in the West that all the victims of the Holocaust were gassed in camps, which is far from true, and in the few camps whose names are in common circulation in the West.  In reality, bullets and starvation were the most common means of death and most of the killing took place in the Poland, Ukraine and Belorussia in those areas where they were occupied by the Germans.

While, as noted, it's been commonly thought that Peschauer died in a concentration camp, and may even have been ordered into execution by a fellow Hungarian serving the Germans, some recent information is that he actually died in a Soviet POW camp.  The irony here would be that Hungary was a German ally during World War Two.  This might actually be more likely as while Hungary was repressive towards its Jewish citizens, it didn't deport those who actually held Hungarian citizenship, that being done to Jews who lived in areas that Hungary took in after it invaded the Soviet Union.

By this point in the war, it should be noted, countries like the Kingdom of Hungary should have been seriously reconsidering their role in the war as, at least to an astute advisor, there was no way for them to come out on the winning side.  Of course, they were also captive to their earlier decision to side with the Germans.

The Luftwaffe bombed the Sandhurst Road School in a daytime raid of the London suburb of Catford, killing 41 school children. By this point in the war, Luftwaffe raids over the UK were increasingly rare.  Six teachers were also killed.  Eleven of the German aircraft were downed by Typhoons.

The Red Army continued to advance, with the New York Daily Post noting that the Germans were now back on their 1941 line as a result.  The British took Homs and Tarhuna in Libya.  The Germans advanced in Tunisia.  Chile broke diplomatic relations off with Germany, Italy and Japan.

Saturday, January 20, 1923. Children singing, railroad mergers, German mines, and when masks didn't cause political posturing.

 

As it was Saturday, the Saturday Evening Post hit the stands.  On this occasion it had an illustration of children playing music, probably loudly but badly, by Alan Foster.

For some reason, uploaded versions of period illustrations from the Saturday newsstands are a lot harder to find after late 1922 for a while.  Probably the drama of the war and the comparative lack of drama of the early 20s was the reason. The Country Gentleman hit the stands with an excellent illustration of Independence Hall.  Judge had a fascinating, nearly photo realistic painting of flappers in a club.

The Canadian Northern Railway and the Canadian Government Railways merged into the Canadian National Railway.  The merger of the CNR and the CGR was forced by the government due to the financial failure of the CNR, although at one time the railroad had steamships as well as trains.

The CNN is one of the world's great railways, spanning all of Canada and the Eastern United States.

You'll note that the creation of this system is either an application of the American System of economics, albeit in Canada, or of Socialism. At one time the nationalization of railroads was not the controvery it would be now.

The French arrested twenty-one German mine operators for failure to cooperate in the occupation, and Essen's banks all voluntarily closed.

The London Daily Mirror ran this cartoon:

Some current Chicago expats in the solon in Cheyenne would likely take offense.

As odd as it is to realize it, with yesterday being the birthdate for Janis Joplin, this is the same for Slim Whitman.  The country music star who came to prominence in the 50s, but who continued to record through the 90s, died at age 90 in 2013.