I agree with the point Florida Sen. Marco Rubio is making in his Wall Street Journal op-ed:

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program is a lifeline for tens of millions of low-income Americans who rely on it for food. But like most government programs, SNAP is in dire need of reform.

Though SNAP is meant to supplement nutrition, more than 20% of all program spending goes to unhealthy food and drink. Taxpayers are projected to spend $240 billion on junk food, with more than $60 billion going exclusively to soda, over the next decade. Equally important are the health consequences for those relying on the program.

This subsidization of junk food is fueling American health crises. More than 40% of U.S. adults are obese, and roughly half have diabetes or prediabetes. These diseases can be debilitating. They are also extremely expensive, costing hundreds of billions of dollars in medical costs each year. That SNAP plays a role in their spread is immoral, irresponsible and reprehensible.

Both Democrats and Republicans should support this and have expressed support for this idea. However, in our present oppositional world I’m concerned that even something as commonsensical as this will be condemned as racist, anti-poor, etc.

I also suspect it will receive substantial pushback from the corporations who are profiting from the present subsidies. It has been estimated that as much as 40% of Coca Cola’s revenues are derived from SNAP (the program that replaced food stamps). I haven’t been able to discover how much of Hostess’s and Little Debby’s revenues come from SNAP but I’m sure it’s substantial.

That brings up a point too infrequently mentioned. The vast wasteland that is the American diet isn’t just a matter of availability but preference as well. The reason that junk food is such an enormous industry is because people like it.

The editors of the Washington Post support a plan for avoiding a default and reducing the deficit:

Two things are simultaneously true: Congress needs to raise the debt limit as soon as June 1 to avoid the first default in U.S. history, and lawmakers need to address the nation’s unsustainable budget situation.

It’s welcome news that President Biden is finally sitting down with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and other congressional leaders at the White House on Tuesday. But unless a miracle occurs, there likely isn’t enough time to agree on meaningful budget changes by early June. Mr. Biden wants a “clean” debt limit bill that solely raises the borrowing cap. Meanwhile, House Republicans want nearly $5 trillion worth of cuts. That’s a Grand Canyon-size gap. It’s encouraging that House Democrats have been quietly preparing to use an emergency parliamentary maneuver known as “a discharge petition” that would allow them to get a debt hike bill on the floor, but it’s a long shot. All Democrats and at least five Republicans would need to vote for it. That won’t happen without some sort of compromise budget deal in the works.

The plan they recommend consists of a short term debt limit increase, followed by “clawing back unspent emergency covid funds”, “revenue enhancers”, and “spending moderation”. The challenge for that is that President Bide poisoned the well when he backed off from the commitments he made to Joe Manchin to get his misnamed Inflation Reduction Act passed.

Democrats seem to have forgotten that during the last administration the president actually negotiated spending increases with the Congress to get the debt limit raised. I don’t actually blame them. Spending increases are more politically advantageous to them than spending reductions.

To my eye both parties are living in fantasy worlds. The Democrats demand real spending increases, imagining that will result in economic growth while the Republicans demand real tax reductions, similarly imagining economic growth. What are needed are much more targeted spending or tax reduction that results in real increases in production. We need to produce more of what we consume and, by the way, paying more for the same services is not an increase in production.

Targeting that precisely and correctly is difficult—it doesn’t play to the Congress’s strengths.

I’ve been quiet for the last few days. There’s a simple reason: there hasn’t been much to write about. I couldn’t be interested less in Charles III’s coronation. So far I’ve held off from needling some of my anti-monarchy Brit friends about it, the better part of valour, etc.

The partisan squabbling over the debt limit is entertaining in a perverse sort of way. What’s to be said that hasn’t already been said? In the place of the Republicans in Congress would you take Joe Biden’s word that he’d gladly negotiate spending reductions on Tuesday for a debt limit increase today? Statesmanship is a perfectly good argument but what makes anybody think that any of those involved are statesmen? I heard some political positioning to blame any impending recession on the Republicans. Will that work?

Depressing as it is mass shootings are a daily occurrence now. Nobody has any practical solutions for them. We’re not going to ban firearms. Even if we did there are so many of them out there banning them would do little good. Will we ban shopping malls? How about schools? The underlying problems are anger and attitude and, especially, mental illness.

The spring counter-offensive in Ukraine is beginning to look more like a summer counter-offensive. The media narratives are so pervasive I have no idea how anybody really knows what the heck is going on.

The surge at our southern border looks like it will become a torrent. I’ve already made my suggestions but the reality is that any reform worthy of the name to our immigration system involves denying entry to somebody and the further reality is that we’re not prepared for that.

As I’ve written before I think that things are coming to a boil for Joe Biden and, indeed, the rest of us. His age, the economy, immigration, the war in Ukraine, possible prosecution of his son, violence, urban disorder, you name it. It’s going to be a long, hot summer.

Vivekanand Jayakumar’s conclusion in his piece at The Hill is a bit milder than its caption (“Those predicting a soft economic landing may be in for a rude awakening”) might lead you to believe:

Expectations that decades-high inflation levels can be brought down (alongside an unwinding of more than a decade of monetary excess) without causing any major financial or economic turmoil requires a level of innate optimism that might border on delusional thinking. Those who still think that a soft-landing is the likeliest outcome may be in for a rude awakening. The stock market in particular may be mispricing near to medium term risks.

A recession is the likely outcome, and the possibility of a stagflation-lite scenario cannot be ruled out. But resilient consumers (aided by relatively strong household balance sheets and tight labor markets) offer a modicum of protection against the possibility of a deep or protracted recession. Limited fiscal space and sticky inflation may, however, restrict policymakers’ ability to offer sizable stimulus this time around.

The statistics (debt service to disposable income, total household debt, etc.) seem to bear out his observation about the “resilient consumers”. I’m still concerned that our elected representatives are victims of Maslow’s hammer. “Stimulus” is the only thing they know.

President Biden may wish that a brief recession had taken place in 2022-2023 rather than holding off until 2023-2024. He will have a lot on his plate next year.

The slug on a New York Times editorial calling for California Sen. Dianne Feinstein to act gave me the giggles: “Senate seats are not lifetime sinecures”. I could only wonder why they would print something so easily falsifiable.

The average age of a U. S. senator is 65. Average, mind you. The majority of senators are either Baby Boomers or Silent Generation which is to say they are over 58. To the best of my knowledge there is one Millennial in the Senate and a relative handful of Gen Xers.

I believe that at 89 Sen. Feinstein is the oldest sitting senator, a few months older than Chuck Grassley, also 89. She has served since 1992; she’s presently serving in her sixteenth Congress.

That’s the norm in the Senate. Once elected you tend to be re-elected until you resign or die. If that’s not a lifetime sinecure I’m not sure how else you’d describe it.

In the first of what Nikolas Kristof threatens will be a series of columns in the New York Times he discusses pain:

All this raises the question: Is this physical suffering a canary in the coal mine warning us of larger dysfunction in our society?

Here’s what we do know: Tens of millions of Americans are suffering pain. But chronic pain is not just a result of car accidents and workplace injuries but is also linked to troubled childhoods, loneliness, job insecurity and a hundred other pressures on working families.

As someone who has experienced chronic pain for so long I can barely remember a time when I wasn’t in pain this passage rang true for me:

Dr. Daniel Clauw, director of the Chronic Pain and Fatigue Research Center at the University of Michigan, believes that we already have a toolbox of remedies that can help 80 percent or 90 percent of chronic pain sufferers but that our treatment system and insurance protocols betray those in need.

“We’ve really over-medicalized pain,” he told me. His first recommendation to patients with chronic pain is simple: Get more sleep and exercise. There’s no simple solution, he emphasized, and it takes work by patients to recover.

“I’m a huge advocate of physical therapy,” he added, and he also sees positive results from yoga, acupuncture, acupressure, cognitive behavioral therapy and meditation.

but I would add that the very idea that you can escape from pain is flawed. In some ways I blame our consumer culture. Life is not a spectacle to be witnessed but something you experience through active participation. To live is to be in pain. You can escape pain temporarily with drugs or permanently through death.

For me the better solution is learning to tolerate pain and go right on living.

The bill that has just been passed by the Illinois General Assembly raises an interesting question. Here’s a report by Peter Hancock in Crain’s Chicago Business:

SPRINGFIELD — A bill that would block libraries from receiving state grants if they ban books cleared the Illinois Senate Wednesday and will soon be sent to Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who is expected to sign it.

HB 2789 is an initiative of Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias, whose office oversees the Illinois State Library and administers several grant programs for public and school libraries.

It would require that as a condition of qualifying for those grants, libraries adopt either a written policy prohibiting the practice of banning books or the American Library Association’s Library Bill of Rights, which includes a statement that “(m)aterials should not be proscribed or removed because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval.”

“This right-to-read legislation will help remove the pressure that librarians have had to endure from extremist groups like the Proud Boys who have targeted some of our libraries and their staff,” Giannoulias said during a news conference after the state Senate vote. “This first-of-its-kind legislation is important because the concept of banning books contradicts the very essence of what our country stands for.”

However

Senate Republicans, however, argued that the bill would put too much power in the hands of the ALA and that putting the group’s Library Bill of Rights into law would force local libraries to enact extreme policies.

For example, Illinois Sen. Sue Rezin, R-Morris, cited a provision that said libraries that also provide exhibit spaces and meeting rooms to the public “should make such facilities available on an equitable basis, regardless of the beliefs or affiliations of individuals or groups requesting their use.”

“I think what I heard is, regarding the Bill of Rights here, that if a library does not make its public space available for anyone who wants to use it, including, say, a drag show, because of what the local officials of that library feel is not appropriate for the library, that library can now potentially lose their state funding,” she said.

Likewise, state Sen. Steve McClure, R-Springfield, said that prohibiting libraries from banning books for any reason would mean they could not reject the donation of books from the public, including books that are purely hate speech or books offering directions on how to build a bomb.

Judging by my reading of the American Library Association’s Library Bill of Rights, this looks like it’s unintentionally opening a can of worms. Intended or not it may end up being a full employment bill for plaintiff’s attorneys and more may end up being spent on legal fees than on library resources.

Yesterday I mentioned that the saga of corruption revealed in the trial and conviction of the “ComEd Four” was far from over. At Crain’s Chicago Business Steve Daniels explores just how far it may extend:

Madigan’s successor as House speaker, Chris Welch, D-Hillside, said: “At every step, I have emphasized the need for due process and that the federal courtroom was the appropriate venue for questions of guilt or innocence. After reviewing the entirety of the evidence, this jury has sent a clear message that the behavior of the defendants was criminal. Since my election as speaker, I’ve been clear that restoring trust in government was paramount. I’m proud to stand with a new generation of leadership in Illinois who share these values.”

Left unsaid was that Welch was Madigan’s favorite to succeed him in 2021 after it became clear that he didn’t have the votes to carry on as speaker.

Also left unsaid was an embarrassing nugget involving Welch from the trial. In one of the wiretaps, Fidel Marquez, the ComEd executive turned government informant, expressed anger along with Hooker that Welch wouldn’t get to be the lead sponsor of ComEd’s bill to extend the highly lucrative formula rate system, which they said Welch dearly desired. That rate-setting process first was enacted in 2011 — at the beginning of the scheme prosecutors convinced the jury the four had carried out.

I don’t see how you can convict the “ComEd Four” and put Mike Madigan on trial without putting Springfield in the dock as well.

In a highly agonistic column at Financial Times Rana Faroohar concludes:

The global trade system as it stands isn’t working well. In his speech, Sullivan talked about the US maintaining its commitment to the WTO, while also recognising the key question of today: “How does trade fit into our international economic policy, and what problems is it seeking to solve?” As I’ll argue further in future, it should start by seeking to solve the problem of concentration and competition.

Her complaints about the “global trade system” appear to be that

• Suppliers to Western companies in non-Western countries care little about the safety or well-being of their workers
• Income inequality in non-Western countries that do business with Western companies increases
• Suppliers to Western companies in non-Western countries care little about environmental degradation or global climate change
• The global supply chains are too fragile and subject to disruption

I would say that the system of global trade has worked very well, indeed, over the last 30 years, lifting more than a billion people out of extreme poverty, but that the global security system and political systems in many countries, possibly including our own, are failing. Complaining that the global trade system is “not working” because buildings in Bangladesh fall down sounds to me like blaming your smartphone because it doesn’t launder your clothes. You evaluate the performance of your smartphone based on how well it accomplishes the things it was designed to do not whether it does things it was never intended to do.

I would further assert that her complaints are part and parcel of the victimization narrative so common in developing countries. While I agree that the colonizers were cruel and self-serving, she might reflect on the possibility that political, social, and economic dysfunction is what allowed countries to be colonized in the first place.

As evidence that the global security system is failing I would submit the following examples:

• The U. S. invasion of Iraq
• Saudi Arabia’s war against Yemen
• The Russian invasion of Ukraine
• The ongoing low intensity war between China and India in the Himalayas

and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

I also think that to fix the global security system the United States needs to

• Stop invading other countries or aiding aggressors
• Restore our productive capacity beginning with reducing our dependency on other countries for strategic goods.
• Restore a political and social consensus domestically.

Like it or not the global security system is dependent on U. S. might and U. S. military might is downstream from U. S. economic power and political stability.