Tracking the Presidential Election Part VI. The wobbly Democratic Party.

In part III of this series, I address the sad situation in the Republican party, a scene so bad that some people believe the party is on the verge of death and, in spite of an effort to unify the party behind the "presumptive  nominee", we are actually still seeing an effort to find an acceptable third party candidate by some Republicans who are big names.

First the tell of the tape:

Democrats:  Needed to win, 2,383.

Clinton: 2,293 (525 of which are Superdelegates)
Sanders:  1,533 (40 of which are Superdelegates)

Republicans:  Needed to win, 1,237.

Trump:  1,161 (of which 58 are unpledged delegates).
Cruz:  567   Cruz has suspended his campaign. (of which 18 are unpledged delegates)
Rubio:  168.  Rubio has suspended his campaign.
Kasich:  159.  Kasich has suspended his campaign
Carson:  8  Carson has suspended his campaign.
Bush:  4  Carson has suspended his campaign.
Fiorina:  1  Fiorina has dropped out of the race.
Paul:  1  Paul has dropped out of the race.

Commentary

Well, if the GOP is in ICU, laying right there in the bed next to it is the Democratic Party, something that's become increasingly obvious as the Sanders campaign and its supporters have finally managed to get some press, late in the election, and as they start to become increasingly vocal about their discontent about the coronation of Hillary Clinton as the 2016 Democratic nominee, a move that reflects just how ossified the Democrats are.  Indeed, the insurgent Sanders wing of the party is now actually in full revolt.

A notable feature of this election is that, even though the country has more Democrats than Republicans, the Democrats would have been blown out of the saddle this year but for the fact that the GOP apparent nominee is even more unpopular than Hillary Clinton.  It's an amazing feat that the Republicans have pulled off, managing to find a candidate that actually is throwing voters to a candidate who is really unpopular, maybe.

I say maybe, as its still possible, although extremely unlikely, for Sanders to win. With a campaign that the press has treated as dead right from the onset, he has continued to win state after state and would be within striking distance of Clinton but for the Superdelegates, those delegates that the Democratic establishment have established to prevent the nomination of anyone who isn't solidly Democratic mainstream.  If the Republicans are facing an internal revolt, they at least have a democratic method of letting the steam off and the party adjust.  The Democrats, however, have built in a structural roadblock that's actually designed to prevent that, and for that reason, the fact that the party is nearly as ill as the GOP hasn't been apparent.  But the Democrats are a house of cards, held up right now only by the lack of a strong wind from the Republican Party.

How did the second American political party enter the same state of advance decay that the GOP did, and how can it address it?

Well, its where it is largely for the same reason that the GOP is where it is.

And to do that, we need to take a look at its history, to see how it got to where it is.  More particularly, how did the Democratic Party become a working class liberal party in the 20th Century, only to devolve to an effete, East Coast, upper class white WASP lite party?

As with the GOP, we find that story starting once again with the election of 1912.  It's amazing how pivotal that election really was, and the extent to which its defined the evolution of the parties for over a century.

 More Trump than Clinton, Andrew Jackson was the first Democrat to be elected President.  Even up until fairly recently Jackson was celebrated by Democrats in an annual "Jefferson Jackson Day" in most places, including in Wyoming. Recently, they've started omitting Jackson's name, cognizant that he wasn't exactly a modern liberal.

The Democratic Party is the oldest political party in the world.  It hasn't always been anything like the party it is today, however.  Prior to 1912 it was basically a conservative party with a strong secondary base in ethnic immigrants.  It was steeped in racism (which it didn't overcome in 1912) and it was the party that basically had come down on the wrong side of the Civil War.  Prior to the war the Democrats were strong supporters of Manifest Destiny, while the GOP opposed it, two positions that have oddly sort of lived on in the parties in spite of themselves, as the Democrats have always been more strongly associated with the violent maintenance of American ideals overseas, while the Republicans have not.

That the party survived the Civil War at all is stunning, in that the Democrats opposed the war for the most part and the Democrats had a strong Southern base, which the war did not disrupt.  Following the Civil War it retained its basic conservative base and it remained the party of Southern whites, which meant that after Reconstruction was defeated that it was the party of the South.  Only blacks provided a base for the GOP in the South at the time.  Still the war meant that the Democrats were out of the Oval Office for a 20 year period.

Running up to the 20th Century an aspect of the Democratic Party in the North that was already there became cemented as the Democrats also strongly came to be associated with ethnic minorities, and often Catholic ethnic minorities, such as the Irish.  The machine system in politics was extremely strongly expressed at the time and that strongly favored Democratic recruitment of disfavored minority voters in a region where the Democrats were otherwise not very strong.  With patronage being the basis of the effort, and successfully, in the North the party came in some ways to be partially defined by this, while ironically in the South its membership was much different.

 William Jennings Bryan, populist, and Presidential candidate at age 36.

The evolution of the modern party oddly began with an odd issue, coinage.  The Depression of 1893 threw monetary policy into focus and populist Democrat William Jennings Bryan ran on the platform of free coinage of silver, as ridiculous idea that would in no way have served to end the depression.  This makes Bryan recognizable, in some ways, to our modern era in that he was campaigning on an easy fix to a complicated problem that really had no hope of offering a solution to it.  The party nearly split in half as the conservatives in the North and the South united in a breakaway party, the National Democratic Party, which was started by Grover Cleveland and saw the recruitment of Woodrow Wilson.  Bryan took the nomination, in a manner that's somewhat reminiscent of Donald Trump today, and he saw huge crowed in the rural Midwest and South before he went down in epic defeat in 1896.  The result was a disaster, but it did start to bring into focus a populist movement that was brewing in both parties at the time, much as the same is occurring in both parties now.

What started in 1896 developed in 1912, and the upper class elements that had been the National Democrats united with populists and progressives to basically swipe the progressive movement from the GOP. The GOP was clearly split on progressivism at hte time, and the Democrats had their chance, which they took with Woodrow Wilson.  From that moment on the Democrats have been the liberal, or as it is sometimes said, the progressive, American political party, solidly to the left of the Republicans.

 Woodrow Wilson, of whom we've been seeing a lot here recently.

That 1912 liberal party wasn't what we see today, however, and its not really quite how the Democrats define themselves today. For one thing, Wilson was highly racist, but this didn't really matter to a party that didn't count on black or minority votes anywhere, and which could and did count on Southern whites, who really remained more reflective of the old conservative Democratic Party.  But the roots of the current party were there. They really came forth into bloom into what Democrats imagine themselves to be, however, with the 1932 election.

 Considered by some to be a "traitor to his class", Franklin Roosevelt as President.

In 1932 the Democrats elected the most liberal, by default, President the nation has ever seen, Franklin Roosevelt.  Coming up when he did, he came up in a party that had developed since 1912 in an era of increasing radical politics in the United States. The GOP remained solidly conservative during this time period, and the Democrats solidly liberal, except in the South, but the Socialist Party and even the Communist Party were serious parties from about that point until World War Two.  Angling for the votes of blue collar laborers, the Democrats found themselves contesting with really radical parties which saw some success.  The Great Depression brought that battle into sharp focus and the Democrats, seeking to address he nation's ills, went sharply to the left, basically taking the wind out of the hard left's sails, but also becoming a much more liberal party itself.  This continued to develop throughout the Great Depression and World War Two, during which the Democrats became solidly party nearly defined by support for working class laborers.  It became the part of the "working man".  Consistent with the general policy of progressives, it also became the party that favored expansion and protection of American ideals beyond our shores.

Coming out of World War Two, the Democrats were a solidly working class party that also had a strong base of ethnic Catholics and nearly the entire white Southern population.  It was very pro labor, and by that we mean pro organized labor.  It was in favor of big government and it also was in favor of a very active foreign policy designed to counter threats to American interest and in favor of American values.  Having been in favor of entering World War Two long before the Republicans, who only came to that opinion on December 7, 1941, the party tended to see, and often correctly, analogies with Hitler in Communist movements all over the globe.  The party was also strongly anti-colonial in terms of its foreign policy.  A recognition on its part that its support of the working class everywhere meant that its hostility to blacks in the South started to force the reform of the party on civil rights as well and blacks in the South started to join the party for the first time, following blacks in the North that had started to do so while FDR was President.

Following World War Two that Democratic Party remained the party up until the late 1960s.  It was the party's interventionist foreign policy that undid it.  The Democrats lead the nation into two wars following World War Two, neither of which was wildly popular.  Intervention in the Korean War in 1950 came first, obviously, and had the impact of finally ending GOP isolationism as the majority platform of the GOP.  The election of John F. Kennedy in 1960 saw the party take a "go anywhere" view towards intervention which shortly lead the country into a conflict in Vietnam.  It's interesting to note that during Eisenhower's Republican administration, the first GOP administration in over 20 years, the country eschewed intervention in foreign campaigns, leading in part to the Communist takeover in Cuba, while this changed rapidly with Kennedy coming into office.

 

 U.S. soldier in the Korean War and . . . 

Vietnam.  Two post World War Two wars which started for the US with intervention under Democratic Presidents, and not featuring Declarations of War, and which ended during the administration of Republican Presidents.

Vietnam would turn out to be a hugely unpopular war and that saw its reflection strongly in the Democratic Party. At the same time, the old hard hat blue collar base of the party really began to age out of politics.  Economic changes brought about by World War Two put the sons and daughters of blue collar workers into university where they remained in their parents party but lost their connection to the strong, often ethnic, working class societies their parents had been in.  As this occurred the union between theory (the Democrats had incorporated a lot of hard left economic theorist during the Great Depression) and practicality began to break down in the party.  The Democrats had been, because of their strong blue collar and ethnic base, surprisingly conservative on many domestic issues while practical liberal on economic ones, with the hard hat element of the base tempering strong leftist instincts that were otherwise there.  Staring in the late 1960s, however, with the economy doing well and younger members of the party divorced from industrial labor, while becoming increasingly radicalized in universities, the party began to transform into what it currently is.

The battle lines became sharply drawn in 1968s when Democrats literally fought each other at the Democratic Convention.  Hard Hat Democrats and the police, in a solidly Democratic city, rioted against war protestors, who were also Democrats, assuming that they were not in a party further to the left, over the war. The war, of course, had been brought about and maintained under two Democratic Presidents.  The result was the loss of the 1968 Presidential campaign and enduring memory on the part of the party insiders that its hard left elements had to be controlled or they'd bring the party down.

It didn't happen immediately at first, of course, but the impact was real and last to the current day.  Starting in 1968 the more conservative working class elements of the party became marginalized and began to leave it.  In the north the party increasingly became an upper class liberal party with little connection to working men or even to the ethnicities that had been strongly part of the part, although that process can be dated back to 1960 when John F. Kennedy started that process by suppressing any suggestion that his religious roots, strongly associated with an Irish base in the party in many cities, would not mean much.  The party really remained a separate party in the South, a legacy of the Civil War, but that would soon change too, but not before two Southern Democrats would in fact be elected President.

 Jimmy Carter, sometimes considered the first post Civil War Democrat to be elected to the Presidency since the Civil War, he was actually the second as Woodrow Wilson was as well, although his academic career had placed him in New Jersey at the time he ran for office.  Carter was an unsuccessful President, but reflected the best of the Southern Democrats.

The first of those was Jimmy Carter, a Georgian with strong rural roots, who reflected in many ways the Southern aspect of the party in the best way.  His Presidency failed however and he was replaced by Ronald Reagan, the first Republican President to separate southern Democrats from their party.  In fairness, while that strategy (often denied to exist by Republicans) was effective, the Democrats themselves started it in 1968.  The Southern party was largely conservative and the Northern party was increasingly liberal and highly urban.  By the 1980s the Southern Democrats were dying off, with that base defecting to the GOP in droves.

These factors, however, weakened the Democratic Party and it realized it.  In spite of being a liberal urban party in terms of its "establishment", it realized that the country was not as liberal, nor as urban, as it was, and starting with the election of its last Southern President, Bill Clinton, it worked to appeal to a broader base, hoping to retain Democrats who were not as left wing in the areas that it could.  The strategy has been very effective and the Democrats remain the largest American political party.  They've even gained since 2012 in some demographics, such as Catholics for example, where their social policies had been causing them to loose members.

And then came this election, the 2016 election.

But we need to look first at the election of 2008.

The election of 2008 and the election of 2012, for the Democrats, repeats what the Republicans  experienced, but have forgotten,in 1980 and 1988.  In 1980, the Republicans elected a new type of conservative with Ronald Reagan. In 1988 the old party mainstream seized the Presidency, and the party, back with the election of George Bush I.  The party is paying for hat now.

But that's what the Democrats have sort of experienced as well, and might, or might not, depending upon the rebellion going on in the Democratic Party.

President Barack Obama.  Like him or hate him, he's a point of departure for American politics, but perhaps the Democrats haven't realized that as of yet, a this year's choices show.  The first President to have come into his adult years without the Vietnam War and the 1960s as a point of reference, he's also the first President who is ethnically ambiguous, thereby reflecting the younger base of the party, rather than the older, whiter, and 1960s dominated nature of the party's elite.

Like him or hate him, Barack Obama was a different type of Democrat from those that came up in the party post 1968.  He is a true liberal, but a post 1968 liberal.  Not truly grounded in the hard core upper class effete branch of the Democratic Party, he has been a clever politician, and even if truly liberal on many things, he's held off in many areas and even declared what amounts to a truce in others.  He's been pretty ineffective in many areas, due to a professorial confusion of speech with action, but he's not a 1968 Democrat.  He's the first American President who has no 1960s frame of reference and the first who is really ethnically ambiguous.  He's not a 1960s, member of NOW, ERA, type of Democrat.

Hillary Clinton, however, is.

Clinton has a long history in the Democratic Party and came up in the party very much during its hyper liberal stage.  She represents the Boomer Party, which Obama does not.  If elected, she'll be the triumph of that wing of the party.  While Barack Obama has been regarded as highly liberal, and in his last year of office is indeed proving to be highly liberal and is actually remaking, to the distress of much of the country, the nation in a more liberal mold, perhaps temporarily, there's no doubt that Clinton retains a view of the world that can be found in the annals of the history of 1970s liberals, like most of the leadership of her party's elite, whether they've effected those views or not.

Which is the wing of the past.

And which is why there's a full scale revolt going on in the party.

The old fights that so concern the 1968-1978 liberals are largely ones that are either past concern, or are ones that society actually has caused to highly evolve and which are much different than those in the past.  The 1968 party still believes in "firsts", which the rest of American society put to bed with the election of Barack Obama.  Old causes, such as "women's issues", are largely unrecognizable to younger voters who have moved past those long ago, which explains why younger Democratic women are almost insulted by the suggestion that they are somehow required to vote for Clinton just because they are women.  Democratic base voters, moreover, who saw it as a matter of human justice to struggle for the rights of minorities and women do not necessarily equate those fights with ones that are based on social theory, such as re-identification of a person's gender or attacks on traditional marriage.  People who would have gone to jail to allow a black and white couple to marry are baffled in some instances by the suggestion that allowing people of the same gender to marry is the same fight, or that people are okay not to marry at all and are defined as "partners".  Indeed, to some there seems to be some retreat involved.  Rural voters who stayed in the party since the 1930s for support to rural populations are now baffled by why the Democratic Party seems so eager to disarm them.  Union members are baffled why the Democrats stood by and seemingly did nothing as the rich of both parties exported factories overseas.  To some extent, the natural base of the Democratic party has moved to the center or into lethargy on social issues that the party leadership, now that the gloves are off and they feel that they can surely win in the fall, has gone far to the left on.

The old Hard Hat Democrats in the Midwest and East, where they still exist, have produced a younger generation that is, moreover, nearly completely divorced from the upper class liberal wing of the party.  Their focus is economic, and on social issues they are may be or are far to the right of the leadership of the party.  The party's ethnic base is likely paper thin as those voters who still identify themselves as Democrats due to ethnicity are increasingly forced into a position in which their values are starkly in opposition to those espoused by the party.  A group such as Hispanics, for example, who are constantly presumed to be natural Democrats, are only Democrats on labor  and immigration issues.  On social issues their views are much more closely aligned to the Republicans.  In some areas of the country, such as the Rocky Mountain West, the Democrats became so disaffected with their own party that the majority of them left it and joined the Republicans or became independents, with t his move not being closely analogous to what occurred in the South.

But for the extremely strange GOP fight, caused by its ignoring its base, the Democrats would be dead in the water this year.  The Democrats seem set to chose Clinton against an insurgent Sanders in part because Sanders was ignored by the Press and because Democratic control over the party membership has proven to be more effective, although frankly only barely so, than Republican control over its base.  If Sanders, who has campaigned almost exclusively on populist economics issues, had been receiving the same level of attention that Trump did, he likely would be the front runner in actual "pledged" delegates.  Clinton's large margin is attributable only to the Superdelegates.

All of this reflects a party breakdown and the party is in fact breaking down. Sanders' supporters are now crying "foul" on a lot of the process and Democrats are starting to call for the head of Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a spokesmen that only the upper class East Coast Democrats could love.  The Democrats, however, are in danger of massively misinterpreting what is going on at the establishment level, however, as the insurgency is being lead by a candidate that is economically on the extreme left of the party.  They better think twice about what they are seeing.

Looked at carefully, the successful Trump insurrection and the struggling Sanders insurrection share certain common traits, which is not to say that they are identical by any means, and which is not to say that the two personalities are the same.  Rather, what's seems to be motivating core elements on both sides is similar or identical, and that's disaffection with American Corporate Capitalism. Beyond that, the  Trump voters are reacting to forced social change and being repeatedly ignored by their own party.  The Democrats are mostly reacting to the same economic factors the GOP insurgents are, but they are also reacting to the ossified leadership of their party as well, but not really over the same set of issues, if any issue in particular.

At the voting both level both Democratic and Republican insurgents have a significant number of what I've referred to as "Hard Hat" voters.  Voters who live in regions that were once industrially strong but now are shadows of their former selves.  Ironically, when the boomers moved on and left their parents in the rust belt, they left a lot of their fellows there as well. Not everyone went on to university.  The "60s" that formed the backdrop for the boomers controlling the Democratic Party was not one single experience, but several. For many in the rust belt the 1960s saw the last era in which American industry was really strong in the steel, coke and automobile sense.  Those Democrats and their children were left behind and they know it.  Now forced into college academics by the dissolution of t he meaning of university and with no solid place to go, and even facing a  future in which the traditional blue collar escape careers, such as the law, no longer mean anything near what they once did, they feel themselves to be in a box.  Hence the demands for the concern for the working men and for "free" university for their children.  They have to do something, they know, and feel betrayed by a party that claims to have the rights of the working class at heart, but hasn't shown it, because it no longer really does in the same way it once did.  Sanders voters suspect that the Democratic Party is comfortable with the new economy that shipped their jobs overseas.  They want those jobs back or, if they can't get them back, they want to be allowed to be trained for the new world they didn't want.

That makes those voters much more conservative than Democrats like Clinton or Wasserman-Schultz, and even where they are liberal, they aren't the same kind of liberal.  Clinton looks and sounds like she's staring in a guest episode of Maud!, which doesn't mean much to a group of people who think The Big Bang Theory is funny.  She sounds like an artifact of the 1970s, because she is.  Sanders, who is older, doesn't.  Because he's an artifact of the 1930s, which now seems oddly fresh again.  When Clinton up talks the end of her sentences in her harsh voice about what is going to be achieved, it sounds oddly like a cry from 1974 more than 2016.  Sanders rhetoric may read like Huey Long, but it sounds fresh in 2016.

Looked at that way, the Democrats would be wise to reconsider the hard slide to the general left they are taking right now, although that frankly means accommodating themselves to flexibility which they do not seem inclined now to do.  Democrats don't seem to trust any state to make its own laws, and they tend to come across, on the national level, as a party headquartered in Greenwich Village that thinks everyone, everywhere else, is stupid.  No matter what they declare their policies to be, deep down they give the strong impression that they thought their platform up in a Vegan Deli where only graduates of East Coast universities with trust funds were admitted. That is, they sound like snots and they don't seem to realize what matters to a lot of voters, including their own party members.  They need to get over that.

For one thing Democrats need to realize that in a lot of areas, for example the knee jerk side of an argument, and lurching to the left, isn't how people think on things.  In the rural ares of the country, for example, tacking to the left on gun control is not appealing to Democrats, not actually relevant to that region, and it wipes out any chance that local Democrats have on anything.  That's partially the reason that Democrats are nearly dead in Wyoming. Democrats would be wise to leave that as a state issue, which basically has been the approach of Sanders who is to the right of Clinton on this issue.  On social issues involving life, death, and marriage, the Democrats should realize that they're driving away ethnic groups and religious groups that have traditionally supported them and they don't need to for any reason.  They've been driving them away since the 1970s, and have lost a lot of ground in some areas here, and they really cannot afford to continue on this path long term.  This points to the Democratic support of statism, that is control from the top, which is anti-democratic and something the Democrats should learn to reverse themselves on.  Democrats nearly everywhere tend to be lock step in line with the Greenwich Village Vegan Party while most of the country isn't.

The Party, however, as a party that doesn't dislike government and which is in favor of an active role for government shouldn't be afraid of actually addressing modern problems on a state or local level, but it has to have some flexibility to do that.  Taking my state as an example again, the field should be wide open for Democrats this year as the GOP has become hostile to much of what the state stands for in terms of open spaces. And some Democrats have taken advantage of that this year. But with a party that can't resist campaigning in opposition to the views of the majority of residents on social views, it's not going to do well.

And they shouldn't ignore economics which is their actual natural defining point.  Economics, more than anything else, is what put them in power in 1932 and which has defined them since.  Democratic insurgents who accuse the Democrats of selling out to Wall Street put their argument well.  There's really no difference between the Democratic Party and the GOP on economic matters.  The Democrats need to rediscover that its the voter in urban Detroit that maters to them, not the voter in Manhattan.

In other words, the Democrats shouldn't lurch to the left on everything, and they shouldn't use 1973 as their defining moment in the world.  And they ought to pick up their copies of Keynes and maybe even find Belloc and Chesterton.

More than anything, the Democrats have got to let the party leadership that's stuck in the 1970s go.  Claiming to be the party of diversity, the Democrats this year ran two elderly candidates who were both white.  Sanders is Jewish, of course, but post Obama that hardly matters.  He seems to be an elderly white man, which is odd for a candidate who is the hippest and coolest of the year.  Hillary Clinton seems to have been transported, Star Trek style, right out of 1974.

A good example of what I mean here might be given, again, by Wyoming.  This year there is a Congressional race going on in Wyoming. The GOP field has quite a few candidates, but because of the nature of the last couple of legislative sessions, right now the field is being dragged to the far right.  The field is open for the Democrats to try to challenge, and they are.  One of their announced candidates is a young man from the coal industry.  He's clearly a liberal, but he's also a liberal in a fashion that addresses some issues that are deeply appealing to Wyoming voters, such as access to public lands.  Well, of course, just yesterday Charles Hardy announced. Hardy symbolizes what's wrong with the Democratic Party.  He's 75 years old, a 1970s type liberal, announced right away that he was concerned with equality issues based on gender identification, and he's notable for having been a Catholic Priest that left his vocation to get married.  He may be, and probably is, a very admirable, deeply Christian man, but he calls to mind, in this sort of thing, the Berrigans of the 1960s and 1970s, and that ship sailed and sank long ago, for the US and for the Catholic Church for that matter.  That Hardy would feel he'd need to run, with a young more vigorous working class man actually running, says volumes about what the Democratic Party is, and what it needs to become.

__________________________________________________________________________________

Tracking the Presidential Election, 2016

Tracking the Presidential Election, 2016, Part II

Tracking the Presidential Election, 2016, Part III Sic Transit Gloria Mundi.

Tracking the Presidential Election Part IV

Tracking the Presidential Election Part V

Standard of Dress and Casual Friday.

 Tools of the trade?

I've written quite a few times here about clothing and how standards of dress have declined even while expectations of how others are supposed to dress remain remarkably consistent.  Last Friday, I got a couple of examples of that in unexpected quarters.

First of all, I had to run to the high school as I had to help my daughter transport her "Rube Goldberg" project. All kids running through the high school have to do one of these as a project which helps demonstrate energy and energy transfers.  They are, of course, a little big so I helped her take hers there.

That put us in the school early as the teachers were coming in. I didn't know it, as it certainly wasn't he case while I was there, but now on Fridays teachers are supposed to wear something in the school's colors, so most were wearing polo shirts, and a few t-shirts.

That was a bit of a shock. When I was there, which is admittedly a long time ago, the teachers generally wore a light variant of business wear.  Some men wore ties, some did not, but they all wore a shirt you could wear a tie with.  And they wore trousers of a type that at the time were called "slacks".  Nobody wore jeans.

Well, that standard is obviously completely out the window.  I don't know what they usually wear on a daily basis, but on Friday's polo shirts and t-shirts, and jeans, seem to be the rule.

Not that I was dressed in a suit by any means.

I probably ought to dress more like a lawyer most days than I do.  Frankly, I go through phases on that, where I'll try to wear a tie every day and then I grow tired of it and stop.  Today, for example, I'm wearing a button down dress shirt I could wear a tie with, but I'm not.  And I'm wearing chinos.  I'm actually dressed up to that degree, to the extent that I am, as I was going to ride my bicycle and I don't wear jeans if I ride a bike.  I didn't ride my bike, however, as it was too cold (that's another story).

Anyhow, last Friday I was wearing jeans and a starched green Levi shirt.  And I was wearing, while out, my Alaska Railroad baseball cap.

Now, that's not really lawyer wear, but I had been hauling in a building a large wooden item.  Moreover, I had thought that I might be traveling out of town to a rural location to look at an accident site, but things didn't work out.  When I do that, I dress down.

Anyhow, at 1:00 I came back in the building and ran into another lawyer and his client, coming up to our office for depositions.  This lawyer always dresses like a lawyer, and always has.  I suppose for a Friday he was somewhat dressed down as he had no tie, but he was clearly in business attire.

I said hello and the client right away addressed me, as he was fascinated by the hat.  "Alaska Railroad"? he asked.  "Yes", I replied.

"Did you work for them" came the question.

Now, that was an interesting question.  I guess as a guy wearing jeans and a jean ball cap, I did look like somebody who might have worked for the railroad.

"No, just rode the train", came my answer.  "Me too" came his reply, clearly fishing for more information, but then I started talking to the lawyer about lawyer stuff.  I'm sure it was totally mystifying to the poor fellow.

Now, he probably imagines that lawyers sleep in suits and ties.  Just as I imagine that teachers still sport ties with dress shirts.  Our expectations were not met.

It's interesting, however, that there still are expectations. That says something about the standards themselves, or perhaps the need for them.

The Punitive Expedition: 10th Cavalry, May 24, 1916.

The Punitive Expedition: Villista prisoners guarded by the 24th Infantry, May 24, 1916

Lawyer Doctorson

I have been working with a lawyer in Texas who casually mentioned that his father was a physician.  That surprised me at first as it just struck me as surprising that the son of  a doctor would opt to become a lawyer. That probably says something about how I view doctors, as they are a profession I respect and admire and whom I figure are pretty smart.  Lots of people, of course, figure lawyers are pretty smart but as I am a lawyer I figure we're just average in the smartness department.

Anyhow, after that, I realized that I was working with a lawyer here in town whose father was also a physician.  That still sort of surprised me.  And then just the other day I was at a legal proceeding with a lawyer who was about my age who mentioned that his father was a general practitioner.  And I can think of at least two other lawyers I've worked against whose father was a MD.

After that, it dawned on me that maybe I was looking at this the wrong way as, well, my father was a dentist.  And dentists are, after all, a medical profession.  At first I started to think that was different, but it probably really isn't very different. And then I was thinking that I don't really know any other kids of dentists who became lawyers, although it then occurred to me that, other than a set of cousins whose father was a dentist, I don't really know any people whose parents were dentists.  None of my cousins form that family, I'd note, are lawyers.

Upon further pondering, however, it occurred to me that I do know a Chilean lawyer whose father was a dentist. And then it further dawned on me that a lawyer I work against frequently, who  has two brothers who are lawyers, also had a father who was a dentist. And, indeed, one of the retired district court judges, who has a sister who is a Wyoming Supreme Court justice, also had a father who was a lawyer. 

So, obviously, this isn't that uncommon.

Is there some natural attraction to the profession of law in the children of medical professionals?  If there is, I can't think of what it would be.  I think there's one that runs to some extent the other way around, as a fair number of lawyers kids go into medicine, and I think that may be because they they see how hard the profession of law is, which is not to say that medicine isn't hard.  Indeed, while I do see the children of doctors and dentists enter those professions, a lot do not, and I think that may be because those kids have a close up view of what those professions are like, and they aren't easy.

I can't say, however, that this leads to a profession in the law.  It didn't in my case anyhow.  I started off to be a geologist and then an oilfield crash changed that. Still, it's an odd coincidence and maybe it isn't one.

United States Supreme Court decides the United States v. Forty Barrels and Twenty Kegs of Coca-Cola, 241 U.S. 265 (1916). May 22, 1916.

On this day in 1916, the United States Supreme Court reversed a lower court in order to uphold the Federal Government's position in United States v. Forty Barrels and Twenty Kegs of Coca-Cola, 241 U.S. 265 (1916).

The Federal Government argued that it could require Coca Cola to reduce the amount of caffeine that it put into its signature beverage under the Food and Drugs Act of 1906 .  The U.S. Supreme Court agreed that it could.  Coca Cola thereafter voluntarily reduced the caffeine content of the drink.

That Coca Cola once contained cocaine is widely known.  That it once contained a greater amount of caffeine, and that the Federal Government sought fit to seek them to back down on it, is much less so.  Likewise, the concept that the Federal Government has only regulated such things relatively recently is clearly incorrect.

The Heart of Everything That Is

Book review of  the excellent new biography of Red Cloud:

The Heart of Everything That Is

Sunday Morning Scence: Churches of the West: St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Catholic Church, Fort Collins, Colorado

Churches of the West: St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Catholic Church, Fort Collins, Colorado.

I had the digital SLR on a completely incorrect setting at the time this photograph was taken, so it's a truly horrible photograph, which is unfortunate as this is a very impressive church. I'd really hoped to
get a good photograph of this church, and I should have checked the stored photo before ceasing to take further photographs.

This is a very new church, was built in 2005, and is very modern, and my guess would be that it is less than 20 years old.

The following photo, taken at this church, was taken with an Ipod.

Wyoming Fact and Fiction: Speed and Communication

Interesting observations:

Wyoming Fact and Fiction: Speed and Communication: It All Started with the Pony Express Everything got started in April of 1860, at least that’s the way I see it. What am I talking about...

We've posted on similar topics quite a bit.  And as I note in my comments to this post above, I'm frankly not that certain that increased speed in everything is really a good thing.

Railhead: Started thinking about the new Denver RTD A Line. ...

Railhead: Started thinking about the new Denver RTD A Line. ...

The United Kingdom Imposes Daylight Savings Time, May 21, 1916

The UK brought Daylight Savings Time to wartime Great Britain, May 21, 1916

The return of brewing to Casper and the decline of the large brewers

Recently I ran a long post on Wyoming's economy, that post being this one:   Lex Anteinternet: The Wyoming Economy. Looking at it in a different...: 

One of the things I noted in that is the return of local breweries to Wyoming, although I noted that the only one in Casper is the one at The Wonder Bar.

What I stated was:

It's not only hard alcohol that's making inroads into Wyoming and processing the state's agricultural produce. Beer has made an amazing\ return in these regards.

Snake River Brewery in Jackson Wyoming.

I've commented on this before, but here too the trend has really developed.  And to an amazing extent.  There are now breweries in quite a few Wyoming towns putting out a really high quality product.  This industry has gone from one which, a few years ago, would have required a person to hunt for a Wyoming beer (and a few years before that there were none) to one in which a person could easily buy beer on any occasional and always find a high quality Wyoming beer of any type.  

It's really amazing.  

Indeed, Wyoming beer is even canned now.  That may not seem so amazing, but a brewery has to put out quite a bit of beer before they begin canning it.  But that's now going on.  Indeed, beer is the Distributist Economic champion of Wyoming.

This revival, it should be noted, represents a return of an industry that once was all over and very local.  Casper, which recently saw local beer return at The Wonder Bar, an bar that dates back forever in Casper's history, once had a regional brewer in the form of Hillcrest Brewery.  

Bottles from Hillcrest Lager Beer, a beer that was once brewed locally but is no more. Casper doesn't bottle any beer anymore, but it does brew it once again.

Well, what I noted in the caption above, will no longer be true fairly soon.  A brewery is about to get up in running in Casper, that being Skull Tree Brewing.  I don't know much about it, but it's another example of how this ancient business that was once very local, is once again.

Indeed, it's worth noting that one of the largest brewers in the United States, Budweiser, is Belgian owned, even though its going to change the name of its signature beer, oddly, to "America" this summer.  Budweiser's share of the American beer market is 7.6%, at least as of few years ago.  That's not really very much.  The American brewer with the largest share of the market is D. G. Yuengling & Son, which is also the country's oldest brewer.  It has less than 2% of the market.  Local breweries have cut into much of the market here, and there presence is welcome as they put out a good product and provide good local jobs.

Roads to the Great War: Veteran of the Great War and Saint: Padre Pio

Roads to the Great War: Veteran of the Great War and Saint: Padre Pio: Great War veteran Francesco Pio of Pietrelcina (25 May 1887–23 September 1968), a Catholic priest from Italy, was canonized as a saint by ...

Norman Rockwell painting appears on the Saturday Evening Post for the first time: May 20, 1916

A Norman Rockwell paining appeared on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post for the first time on this day in 1916.

The paining was The Baby Carriage and depicted a well dressed boy (even wearing a bowler) unhappily pushing a baby carriage as boys in baseball uniforms walk by and tip their hats.

Friday Farming: Milk for France.

Google's Image of the day. . . not so great.

Today's Google image, repeated here under fair use:

 

This is an image in celebration of the late  Yuri Kochiyama, a Japanese American Marxist (and later Islamic) agitator.  

She shouldn't be celebrated.

It's worth noting that not everyone who demonstrates for a worthy cause, does so with a goal that's worthy of celebrating.

Hitler was adamantly opposed to tobacco use and the Nazis took on smoking big time as a public health hazard.  Should Adolph Hitler be praised as a public health pioneer?  The Nazis were some of the very first to really try to enlighten a public on the danger of smoking.  Should Adolph Hitler get a photo of the day?

The early Communists in the USSR supported the self determination of nations.  They got over it.  They were also in support of all sorts of evil.  Should Lenin appear on a Google image of the day?

No doubt she supported equality, but Yuri Kochiyama was an American Marxist (and later a convert to Islam) in the era when we already knew what Marxism meant.  Millions starved in the Ukraine.  Thousands imprisoned (and at that time) in the Soviet Union and China.  A blood red legacy everywhere the red flag had prevailed.  But it wasn't just Marxist causes she supported, seemingly any radical, as long as they were opposed to the United States, got her approval, including Osama Bin Laden, about which she said:

I consider Osama bin Laden as one of the people that I admire. To me, he is in the category of Malcolm X, Che Guevara, Patrice Lumumba, Fidel Castro, all leaders that I admire ... [who] had severe dislike for the US government and those who held power in the US. I think all of them felt the US government and its spokesmen were all arrogant, racist, hypocritical, self-righteous, and power hungry..... You asked, 'Should freedom fighters support him?' Freedom fighters all over the world, and not just in the Muslim world, don’t just support him; they revere him; they join him in battle. He is no ordinary leader or an ordinary Muslim.

To support Che Guevara and Osama Bin Laden in the same breath is delusional.  They certainly wouldn't have supported each other and neither is worthy of support.  Ironically, this same sort of American leftist support comes in the context that, if the supporting person lived subject to the person they're praising, they'd be shut up.  It's a tribute to the very nation that such unthinking agitators rail against that they're allowed to spout off in support of those who would hardly support them directly if they lived under them.  Was Osama Bin Laden a "freedom fighter"?  Not of the sort of freedom we'd recognize.  That such personalities exist, therefore, is more a tribute to us, than anyone else.

The History of Income Tax Brackets.

 Early cartoon view of the restored income tax.

Federal Individual Income Tax Rates History

Really interesting history of income tax rates.

Americans believe a lot of erroneous things about the Federal Income Tax.  For one thing, we constantly here that we're the most taxed people on earth, which is hardly true. In actuality, Americans pay a relatively low amount of their income compared to quite a few other peoples.  And we tend to actually pay them.  In some other countries tax evasion is the rule, rather than the exception.

This chart runs the rates all the way back, but the most relevant set are those that date from 1913 forward.  In 1913 the Income Tax, which had been declared unconstitutional in 1895, came back.  The tax was graduated, but the rates were pretty marginal, as can be seen.

They really began to increase in 1916, which isn't surprising as the nation was on the road to war, while desperately trying to avoid it.  In 1917 they really jumped, with the top rate being 67%.  Having said that, the number of people making that top rate would have been pretty small.  In 1918, things changed yet again, and really high rates were pretty common.

Rates didn't begin to decline, while remaining high, until 1922.  It took all the way until 1925, however, until they began to decline something recognizable to us today.

Top rates really began to jump again in 1932, which is interesting as we don't tend to think of there being really high tax rates until 1932.  During World War Two the rates were blisteringly high.  There was actually a 91% tax rate for very high earners during World War Two.  91%.  The bottom rate was 20% at that time.

Rates didn't begin to fall until 1964, although they sure didn't drop to the current low rate.  Rates like we have now didn't begin to appear until 1982, during Ronald Reagan's administration.  It wasn't until 1987, however, that there was no longer a 50% rate for high earners.  The following year was the first year in eons that there wasn't a rage of 30% or above.  That changed a few years later with the 30% rates came back in.

Be that as it may, the concept of Americans being heavily burdened by taxation is simply wrong.  And we live in an era in which, save for the period just before World War One, they are at an all time low. 

Thedore Roosevelt in Detroit, May 19, 1916

 Theodore Roosevelt in 1911.

I come here to Michigan because in the primary for the selection of delegates to the republican national convention, Mr. Ford was victorious, and following on his victory here, he showed a marked popular strength in Nebraska and Pennsylvania.

The effect of this showing has been immediately visible upon many of the politicians within and without congress. One of the leading anti-preparedness, or peace-at-any-price papers in New York recently commented with great satisfaction upon the defeat in the lower house of congress of the proposal to increase our regular army to 250,000 men.

This situation makes it advisable to speak with courtesy but with entire frankness of what the success of Mr. Ford means, and is taken to mean. It is in Michigan, Mr. Ford's own state, where the Ford movement began that I wish to say what I have to say on the subject.

For Mr. Ford personally, I feel not merely friendliness, but in many respects a very genuine admiration. There is much in the methods and very much in the purposes, with which he has conducted his business, notably in his relations to his working people that commands my hearty sympathy and respect.

Moreover, there is always something attractive to an American in the career of a man who has raised himself from the industrial ranks until he is one of the captains of industry.

But all that I have thus said, can with truth be said of many, perhaps of most of the tories of the revolutionary war and of many or most of the pacifists of the civil war, the extremists among whom were popularly known as copperheads.

Many of these tories and civil war pacifists were men of fine character and upright purpose, who sincerely believed in the cause they advocated.

These pacifists who formed so large a proportion of the old-time tories and copperheads abhorred and denounced in the militarism of Washington in 1776 and of Lincoln in 1861. They were against all war and all preparedness for war.

In the revolutionary contest they insisted that Washington was the embodiment of anarchic militarism.

Their purpose was to get the 'boys' of Bunker Hill and Valley Forge 'out of the trenches' and bring them back to their homes and make them quit fighting.

In 1864 they denounced Lincoln as a military dictator. They praised peace as the greatest of all earthly blessings. They demanded that the war should cease, and they wished to get the 'boys' of the Army of the Potomac 'out of the trenches' before Christmas and bring them back to the farm, the shop, and the counting house.

If these pacifists of the revolution and the civil war had had their way, they would have put an immediate stop to much suffering and much loss of life.

And unwittingly they would have utterly ruined this nation. They would have prevented its being a nation. They would have made the countrymen of Washington and the countrymen of Lincoln objects of scorn and derision, and they would have made of this great republic a hissing and a byword among the nations of the earth.

This is what these good well-meaning pacifists of those days would have done if they had achieved their purpose. This is what the pacifists of our day, the neo-tories, the neo-copperheads, will do if they achieve their purpose.

Either we must surrender our rights, and at the same time our self-respect, or we else we must be ready to defend our rights with a hand trained to exercise the weapons of free men, and with a heart steeled to that stern courage for the lack of which the possession of the softer virtures can never atone.

Such is the issue. It is as clear cut in this year 1916 as it was in 1861 or 1776. In the history of this country this is the third great crisis and it coincides with a tremendous world crisis.

This issue is: are we prepared with a sane and lofty idealism to fit ourselves to render great service to mankind by rendering ourselves fit for our own service, or are we content to avoid effort and labor in the present by preparing to tread the path that China has trodden?

We must choose one course or the other. We shall gain nothing by making believe that we can avoid choosing either course.

In any serious crisis there are always men who try to carry water on both shoulders. These man try to escape the hard necessity of choice between two necessary opposite alternatives, by trying to work up some compromise.

But there come great crises when compromise is either impossible or fatal. This is one of those crises.

There is no use in saying that we will fit ourselves to defend ourselves a little, but not much. Such a position is equivalent to announcing that, if necessary, we shall hit, but that we shall only hit soft.

The only right principle is to avoid hitting if that is possible to do so, but never under any circumstances to hit soft.

To go to war a little, but not much, is the one absolutely certain way to insure disaster.

To prepare a little but not much stands on a par with a city developing a fire department which, after a fire occurs, can put it out a little, but not much.

We, through our representatives at Washington, have absolutely refused in the smallest degree to prepare during these twenty-two months of world cataclysm.

We first hysterically announced we were afraid that preparedness might make us lose our vantage ground as a peace-loving people.

Then we became frightened and announced loudly that we ought to prepare; that the world was on fire, that our national structure was in danger of catching flame; and that we must immediately make ready.

Then we turned another somersault and abandoned all talk of preparedness; and we never did anything more than talk.

The net result is that there has been no preparation so far, because of what has happened in the great war. Congress is still in the conversational stage on the matter.

The ultra-pacifists, as represented by Mr. Ford, have made their great showing precisely because there has been no real and resolute opposition to them.

There are, at this time, two great lessons before us both inseparably bound together. They are the issue of Americanism and preparedness.

As a people we have to decide whether we are able and ready to take care of ourselves; or whether we doubt our national unity and fear to prepare, and intend instead to trust partly to elocutionary ability in high places.

Those in power at Washington have taken the latter positions.

Mr. Ford's supporters in the primaries seemingly come chiefly from three classes - the workingmen, who believe that he represents the desire to do justice to them; the pacificists who think that a policy of helplessness in the face of other nations will insure our national safety, and the German-Americans, some of them in an honest and sincere mood of protest, and others under the influence of that portion of the professional German-Americans, who have permitted their devotion to Germany finally to make them antagonistic to the welfare of the United States.

As for the wage workers who support Mr. Ford, I understand entirely their desire to support any man who, in their belief, stands for a more substantial measure of social and industrial justice.

But I wish, with all the emphasis in my power, to call their attention to the fact that in order for us to work within our own borders for social and industrial justice, it is necessary to secure to ourselves the power to determine these questions for ourselves.

It is of not the slightest consequence at this moment what the businessmen or the wage workers or the farmers of Belgium think should be done in the way of industrial and agricultural development and justice, because they have to do whatever the Germans tell them to do; and they work and live as they are told by their conquerors.

In the same way it is of no consequence what the native Koreans at the moment think should be done to raise themselves upward toward civilization, because the determining factor in their future is the Japanese attitude.

Riding In The Snow Norwich University (1936)

HMHS Britanic sunk by mine on this day in 1916

The HMHS Britannic, a sister ship of the Titanic, was sunk by a mine in the Aegean.  Thirty lives were lost in the sinking.  She was the largest ship lost during the war.  She was serving in the  Royal Navy as a hospital ship.

Tracking the Presidential Election Part V

Yes, we're already on to part V.

Somehow, the tallies have changed a bit since I last put them up, and I dare not put those up on my last entry as it's already growing rather large.  I think the Guam results may not have been in when I last posted.  Yes, Guam. Let's not forget that most US territories get to participate in selecting a nominee even though they cannot Constitutionally participate in the Presidential election as they were not states.  Or I may simply have missed late adjustments (more likely).

Democrats:  Needed to win, 2,383.

Clinton: 2,240 (524 of which are Superdelegates)
Sanders:  1,473 (40 of which are Superdelegates)

Republicans:  Needed to win, 1,237.

Trump:  1,135 (of which 49 are unpledged delegates).
Cruz:  565   Cruz has suspended his campaign. (of which 19 are unpledged delegates)
Rubio:  168.  Rubio has suspended his campaign.
Kasich:  154.  Kasich has suspended his campaign
Carson:  8  Carson has suspended his campaign.
Bush:  4  Carson has suspended his campaign.
Fiorina:  1  Fiorina has dropped out of the race.
Paul:  1  Paul has dropped out of the race.

Commentary

With these adjusted tallies, both Clinton and Sanders gained, but Sanders gained more.  Clinton only picked up one Superdelegate, but that points out Sanders problem.  Clinton only has 183 left to go before she has the requisite number of delegates, but 524 of these delegates are soft, i.e. unpledged delegates.  Sanders now is asserting he'll go all the way to the convention and assert the's entitled to a percentage of Superdelegates that matched his pledged delegates. 

Trump actually lost a delegate since the last tally.  Kasich gained one.  This comes from an updated analysis by the NYT of the West Virginia primary.  What's interesting there is that names appearing on the Republican ballots, including even Carson and Rubio, keep getting votes even though only  Trump is now running.

The big news of the past week, in the GOP contest, was that Trump and Paul Ryan met and supposedly made peace in a result that was extremely predictable and which has a bit of a stage feel to it.  Be that as it may, not all the of the Republicans are coming together by any means.  Not at all.  A fair number of conservatives are still rejecting Trump and there's every appearance they will throughout the entire race this year.

Indeed a debate has broken out in the GOP if a "not voting for Trump is a vote for Clinton" in the general election.  A lot of Republicans are stating that now.  But is it true?  Like a lot of things, it just isn't that simple.

It would be clear that in states in play, which a lot more than normal will be this year, not voting for Trump probably is voting for Clinton, as a non vote in the American system isn't counted as "none of the above".  If that option existed this year, it's likely "none of the above" would win.  But in states that are going to go GOP anyway, like Wyoming, not voting for Trump isn't going to be a vote for Clinton, particularly if that vote goes to somebody else as a message.  Likewise, where the GOP will go down in defeat anyway, that's also true.  In any event, voting for Trump is voting for a party defined by Trump, which many Republicans are having a hard time reconciling to.

May 18, 2016

Oregon held its primary for both parties yesterday, and Kentucky held it for the Democrats.  The new updated tallies:

Democrats:  Needed to win, 2,383.

Clinton: 2,291 (524 of which are Superdelegates)
Sanders:  1,528 (40 of which are Superdelegates)

Republicans:  Needed to win, 1,237.

Trump:  1,161 (of which 58 are unpledged delegates).
Cruz:  567   Cruz has suspended his campaign. (of which 18 are unpledged delegates)
Rubio:  168.  Rubio has suspended his campaign.
Kasich:  159.  Kasich has suspended his campaign
Carson:  8  Carson has suspended his campaign.
Bush:  4  Carson has suspended his campaign.
Fiorina:  1  Fiorina has dropped out of the race.
Paul:  1  Paul has dropped out of the race.

Commentary

Both of yesterday's primaries are significant for both parties. 

On the Democratic side, even though he is largely treated by the Press as having already lost, Sanders picked up Oregon and Kentucky was basically a tie.  In practical terms, both candidates advanced and because of the Democrats Superdelegate system, Clinton is closing in on the nomination.  As can be seen she's far ahead of Sanders with only about 90 delegates left to go, but that's only because she has 524 superdelegates.  In actual pledged delegates she as 1767 and Sanders has 1488.  She's still ahead, but not nearly as close to the needed 2,383 as the superdelegates would appear to make her.  Its no wonder that Sanders, who continues to beat Clinton time after time, feels the superdelegate system is unfair if the superdelegates do not go the way that the voters have.  The press, however, does not seem to focus on this.  With at least one big western state left to go, Sanders really remains fully in the race, as long as superdelegate tallies are ignored.  Gaining the 300 votes he'd need to exceed Clinton is actually pretty doable as the Democrats have over 900 delegates left to pledge.  It's also no wonder that Sanders supporters are starting to get angry.

On the Republican side, candidates who have dropped out of the race continue to pick up a few delegates nonetheless, which reflects that a lot of Republican voters remain unhappy with what has occurred in their party.  In Oregon Cruz and Kasich each picked up three delegates in spite of not running there.

Commentary followup: 

All of a sudden Bernie Sanders is getting a lot of criticism of the same type that Trump has for some time.  This has spread to some of the pundits.  Once again, while a person hates to assume its press bias, it is odd that now that it's apparent that Sanders is really serious (as if it hasn't been for a long time), and that he doesn't intend to drop out and maybe doesn't intend to go away and make nice, but will in fact keep campaigning for his agenda, he's drawing negative attention.

Some of this is because his supporters are getting very edgy in some instances, just as Trump's did under the same circumstances. But some of it is beyond that.  For instance one column I read today accused him of being a racist.

Whatever else Bernie Sanders may be, I'm confident he's not a racist.  That he'd get accused of that now strikes me as a little odd.

______________________________________________________________________________________

Tracking the Presidential Election, 2016

Tracking the Presidential Election, 2016, Part II

Tracking the Presidential Election, 2016, Part III Sic Transit Gloria Mundi.

Tracking the Presidential Election Part IV

Men without work, basic living wage, free college tuition. Concept vs. reality and habituation

The other day I saw a Facebook post in which a friend of mine was pondering what he'd do if he suddenly came into a large sum of cash so that he didn't need to work.

He determined he'd devote himself to worthwhile causes.

Well, maybe he would, but most people wouldn't, including most who seriously believe that they would.  Indeed, most people would, after a few months, adjust to doing absolutely nothing.

That's right. Nothing.

Which is very well established, and why we should ponder the impact of outside funding in a year in which its getting a lot of traction in one form another another.  This extraordinary political year, which has seen a rich capitalist secure a the largest number of delegates in the Republican race, and an avowed socialist seriously threaten to take the nomination in the Democratic race, has seen a lot of discussion on these sorts of topics, including the suggestion that the US ought (which already is up in the top three or of the world's nations in terms of percentage of population with a college degree) to provide a "free" college education to all of its citizens and the suggestion that the government ought to provide a Guaranteed Minimum Wage to everyone of its citizens.  And of course we recently had a type of national health care pass which some feel should be changed into a more classic European style single payer type system.

Now, each one of these things is a separate idea and has to be considered that way.  But one thing we want might to really ask is what is the impact, if known, of funding folks where they normally fund themselves.

And that's really well established.

Given funding, and no work, what universally occurs is that the suddenly funded person spends a period of weeks working on getting their work back, if they are working.  

But after several weeks pass, they acclimate themselves to the lack of work. After a few more, they habituate themselves to it.  After that, they'll do what they can to remain in that status, no matter what.

Now, a person can't say a thing like that and not spark all sorts of negative reactions. But the data is well established.  It's well established from various welfare systems for one thing, when they have generous benefits, which they often do not.  People have looked at welfare payments that relate to unemployment, when the benefits are generous, and the above is the universal pattern.  The recently out of work desperately seek to re-obtain it, then acclimate themselves to not working, and then habituate themselves to living at whatever level a subsistence payment provides.

There are, additionally, examples of massive social failure caused by prolonged welfare systems.

The other day I read an article from the Canadian Broadcasting System about a First Nation (Indian) area in Canada that's in a massive crisis.  Canada extended subsistence payments to really remote First Nation bands some decades ago.  When exactly this occurred I'm not sure, but First Nation groups that lived in remote areas lived on their own, by their own and through their own efforts at least through World War Two.  After that, the idea of providing them with subsistence to improve their lives came about.

It hasn't.  It's wrecked them.

Now, basically, the situation is that men in particular in these groups simply do nothing.  There's no incentive to do anything.  All of the old skills they once had to live in remote areas has vanished.  They couldn't effectively go back to hunting for subsistence now if they wanted to, the skills are lost. Suicide is rampant.  The bands are in crisis.  Only women, who by nature remained tasked with roles their gender imposes upon them or blesses them with, depending upon how you look at it, keep things together as they retain the basic jobs that women have had since day one.  So, the result?  Women have kept the roles that feminist are always thinking they'll liberate women form, and that's keeping everything together to the extent anything is kept together, while these groups are quite literally being killed with kindness.

Let's take higher education.

Eh?  How does that relate. . .?

Well, maybe it does.

Recently I published this item on a Paul Campos article:

Looking at the hidden reasons for the cost of higher education.

My guess is that Paul Campos doesn't get invitations to the faculty Christmas Party.

Campos is a law professor at the University of Colorado.  That wouldn't keep him from getting an invite. But his book Don't Go To Law School (Unless): A Law Professor's Inside Guide to Maximizing Opportunity and Minimizing Risk was not without controversy.  In it, Campos seriously took on law schools and sparked a huge amount of debate, including debate from law school professors (which both Federal Judge Posner and I have likened to refugees from the practice of law, but I stated that first).  

Now, or actually several months ago, Campos wrote a New York Times Op Ed entitled The Real Reason College Tuition Costs So Much  and the reason, according to Campos, isn't the one that schools like to give out.

According to Campos, public funding of education is causing it.

That's right, public funding.

Now, that's counter intuitive.  In this era of Bernie Sanders inspired "let's make education free" the logic would be that funding education drives the cost down, and makes it more affordable for all. But that logic is pretty thin, and Campos raises some really good points.

Campos first notes what most suspect, but that few are willing to acknowledge.  Following the baby boomer flood into college, public investment in college massively increased.:

In fact, public investment in higher education in America is vastly larger today, in inflation-adjusted dollars, than it was during the supposed golden age of public funding in the 1960s. Such spending has increased at a much faster rate than government spending in general. For example, the military’s budget is about 1.8 times higher today than it was in 1960, while legislative appropriations to higher education are more than 10 times higher.

In that article Campos noted:

In other words, far from being caused by funding cuts, the astonishing rise in college tuition correlates closely with a huge increase in public subsidies for higher education. If over the past three decades car prices had gone up as fast as tuition, the average new car would cost more than $80,000.

And he went on:

As the baby boomers reached college age, state appropriations to higher education skyrocketed, increasing more than fourfold in today’s dollars, from $11.1 billion in 1960 to $48.2 billion in 1975. By 1980, state funding for higher education had increased a mind-boggling 390 percent in real terms over the previous 20 years. This tsunami of public money did not reduce tuition: quite the contrary.

And he went from there:

Interestingly, increased spending has not been going into the pockets of the typical professor. Salaries of full-time faculty members are, on average, barely higher than they were in 1970. Moreover, while 45 years ago 78 percent of college and university professors were full time, today half of postsecondary faculty members are lower-paid part-time employees, meaning that the average salaries of the people who do the teaching in American higher education are actually quite a bit lower than they were in 1970.

By contrast, a major factor driving increasing costs is the constant expansion of university administration. According to the Department of Education data, administrative positions at colleges and universities grew by 60 percent between 1993 and 2009, which Bloomberg reported was 10 times the rate of growth of tenured faculty positions.

Even more strikingly, an analysis by a professor at California Polytechnic University, Pomona, found that, while the total number of full-time faculty members in the C.S.U. system grew from 11,614 to 12,019 between 1975 and 2008, the total number of administrators grew from 3,800 to 12,183 — a 221 percent increase.

Basically, Campos is stated that public funding of education amounted to bureaucratic and institutional social welfare.  Now, I"m not claiming that those who are employed in upper education aren't working, but I will say that it's a pretty common slam by people in any one industry to compare their jobs against academics in the same field.  Lawyers, for example, generally don't think "wow. . . those law school professors are really working hard."

Having said that, I will say that I've often found certain fields to be the exception.  In hard sciences, mathematics and agriculture I think the academics are admired.  In fields like history and languages the fields are considered naturally academic ones. But in other instances, such as where we get weird and fanciful theses being written in rarefied fields that only serve to secure an academic post. . . well things are questioned.

And apparently this happens to the expense of the students.

Thomas Jefferson claimed that:  "Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition."  Jefferson didn't know anything about biological evolution or DNA, but if he had, he might have added that humans being are seemingly programed by our nature both to work (albeit only of some types) and inactivity.  That is, our natures assume we're going to be busy in the wilds and that he we have enough coming in, and don't need to be, we ought to conserve our energy by doing nothing.

But doing nothing was never contemplated by our evolution as a permanent state of affairs.  By winter the wolf would be back at the door and starvation looming. Get back out there man.

And indeed the thing that runs contrary to what I've noted above is the degree to which lifelong, but I do mean lifelong, habituation eventually causes some to so identify with their work that they can't or won't escape it even if they could.  So, in those instances, you see people keep on working when they no longer have to, but then they're so fully habituated to it that they literally cannot stop. That's admirable in some, but not so much in others. And it can be sad.

Acquisition as an instinct also cuts against this, but that's not necessarily a good thing either.  We see that with the very wealthy who keep on acquiring, even though they no longer have to keep the wolf from the door by any means.  Indeed, at some point too much wealth in one person's hands can become destructive simply by accident.  The knowledge of that, in part, fuels the current resentment against the "1%".

So, I suppose, what does all that mean? Well, for one thing, it means we ought to be really careful about the provision of free anything as a society.  There are certainly times when people need help.  And that help ought to be provided.  But it actually isn't very helpful to start providing too many things as a public benefit, as people will nearly always acclimate to it and quit being industrious themselves.  Likewise, it probably isn't a good idea to allow for unrestrained acquisition either.

And it shows, I suppose, how instincts that developed when we were on the veldt are still with us.