I didn’t want Norman Lear’s remarks in the New York Times on the occasion of his 100th birthday pass without comment. Here’s the kernel of his observations:

It is remarkable to consider that television — the medium for which I am most well-known — did not even exist when I was born, in 1922. The internet came along decades later, and then social media. We have seen that each of these technologies can be put to destructive use — spreading lies, sowing hatred and creating the conditions for authoritarianism to take root. But that is not the whole story. Innovative technologies create new ways for us to express ourselves, and, I hope, will allow humanity to learn more about itself and better understand one another’s ideas, failures and achievements. These technologies have also been used to create connection, community and platforms for the kind of ideological sparring that might have drawn Archie to a keyboard. I can only imagine the creative and constructive possibilities that technological innovation might offer us in solving some of our most intractable problems.

I often feel disheartened by the direction that our politics, courts and culture are taking. But I do not lose faith in our country or its future. I remind myself how far we have come. I think of the brilliantly creative people I have had the pleasure to work with in entertainment and politics, and at People for the American Way, a progressive group I co-founded to defend our freedoms and build a country in which all people benefit from the blessings of liberty. Those encounters renew my belief that Americans will find ways to build solidarity on behalf of our values, our country and our fragile planet.

I agree with him that Archie Bunker would probably have been a Fox News-watching Trump voter. We can be confident that Maude would have voted for Biden. How about George Jefferson?

Also see my earlier post this morning. The divide between Trump voters and Biden voters may not be quite as great as most think but the gulf between us and our elected officials is enormous and getting greater every day.

I’m looking for input on what has been called the Safe-T Act here in Illinois which takes effect January 1, 2023. The best, fairest description I have found is by Grace Kinnicutt at Capitol News Illinois:

The broad-ranging measure abolishes cash bail beginning in January 2023, reforms police training, certification and use-of-force standards, expands detainee rights, and requires body cameras at all departments by 2025.

Since its passage, the measure has been amended twice to accommodate concerns of law enforcement groups, pushing back certain effective dates and changing some of the initial use-of-force language.

Proponents say the reform is a step toward making the justice system equitable and fair for Black, Latino and minority communities who have been disproportionately harmed by it.

but

One of the more controversial provisions of the bill abolishes cash bail in Illinois and replaces it with a system that will prioritize the severity of an offense, the risk of not appearing for court and the threat and danger the individual poses to another person or the community if they were to be released.

The provision does not go into effect until Jan. 1, 2023, but opponents claim it will allow “dangerous and violent criminals” back on the street, tying the hands of prosecutors who seek to keep the accused individuals incarcerated before a conviction.

It seems to me that this measure will discourage judges, prosecutors, and law enforcement officers from keeping those arrested for any reason whatever from being kept in custody and possibly discourage LEOs from arresting people in the first place.

Of course, opposition to the SAFE-T Act has been deemed racist, fascist, etc.

Again, I’m looking for input. What should I think?

I was completely mislead by the headline of Tom Friedman’s latest New York Times column, “Biden’s Big, Bold, Surprising Plan for a Green Transition (I Hope)”. It turns out that the column consists of an interview with Ryan Lance, CEO of ConocoPhillips, and the “I hope” relates to Mr. Friedman’s hope that the Biden Administration will adopt something that resembles what they’re discussing.

I feel comfortable in predicting that the Biden Administration will do nothing of the sort, particularly before the midterms.

What the column describes is Mr. Friedman’s hopes for a “Green Transition” plan.

I think I need to file this under “I’m surprised that he’s surprised”. At CNN Chris Cilizza has realized to his amazement that winning elections is of transcendent importance to Democrats, so important that it takes priority over any other objective:

Democrats have spent months insisting that the aftermath of the 2020 election – and January 6 in particular – amounted to a fundamental threat to American democracy and was, therefore, above petty partisan politics.

Which is true!

But, the actions of Democratic campaigns and committees – meddling in Republican primaries to try to ensure election deniers wind up as the party’s nominee so they can run against supposedly weaker candidates – suggests that all of those pledges about democracy are mere words, not borne out by action.

In fairness I believe that’s true of Republicans holding elective office as well. The only Republicans on the January 6 House committee surely know they’re not going to be re-elected.

The New York Times has an interesting feature. They put together a focus group that consisted of seven Trump voters and six Biden voters and invited them to discuss various political issues.

They were all middle aged to elderly (38-65). Their incomes are not actually mentioned in the article but, based on the claimed jobs, they were all employed and may have been in the middle of income earners. They are fairly representative of the registered voters from the standpoint of race and ethnicity. They were apparently pre-screened by agreeing with the proposition that they were “mad as hell and not going to take it any more”. At times the conversation seems to have become quite heated. They actually agreed on a number of things.

The one thing about which there was the most agreement is that only one person wanted Joe Biden to run again in 2024 and that individual thought he wouldn’t.

Another issue on which there was substantial agreement is that they think that “America is broken”.

Both of the black participants think that America is a racist country. One of them thinks that America needs to be “torn down from the ground up” and started over.

When it hasn’t been determined to be a recession by the NBER, of course. Jeff Cox of CNBC reports the latest news on gross domestic product:

The U.S. economy contracted for the second straight quarter from April to June, hitting a widely accepted rule of thumb for a recession, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reported Thursday.

Gross domestic product fell 0.9% at an annualized pace for the period, according to the advance estimate. That follows a 1.6% decline in the first quarter and was worse than the Dow Jones estimate for a gain of 0.3%.

Officially, the National Bureau of Economic Research declares recessions and expansions, and likely won’t make a judgment on the period in question for months if not longer.

But a second straight negative GDP reading meets a long-held basic view of recession, despite the unusual circumstances of the decline and regardless of what the NBER decides. GDP is the broadest measure of the economy and encompasses the total level of goods and services produced during the period.

“We’re not in recession, but it’s clear the economy’s growth is slowing,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics. “The economy is close to stall speed, moving forward but barely.”

There are several points that need to be considered here. First, the analyses of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) are retrospective not prospective. You can’t tell which way the economy is going from the NBER—only where it’s been.

Second, what happened in 2020 probably shouldn’t be called a recession. We don’t actually have a word for it at this point because it has never happened before. What happened is that governments shut down a big chunk of the economy for several quarters and as the shutdowns ended the economy bounced back.

Third, during a period of high inflation like the present the economy can grow nominally but actually decline. That the economy is actually shrinking is not particularly good news but it’s not surprising given the actions of the Federal Reserve.

My own opinion is that we’re probably already experiencing a mild recession and that the NBER will pronounce it in due course (probably during the 4th quarter with a start date in the second or third quarter). I’m sure there will be plenty of catastrophizing about it and, realistically, for some people is will, indeed, be a catastrophe. Blame Congress. It’s practically always Congress’s fault.

“The Sahel” is the term used to describe the area immediately south of the Sahara that extends from Senegal in the west to Sudan in the east, six countries in all. When I was a kid most the Sahel was a French colony referred to as “French Equatorial Africa”. If someone were to ask you where the most terrorism in the world was you probably wouldn’t answer “in Africa south of the Sahara” but you’d be wrong. Nearly half of all of the world’s terrorism is there an DAESH has affiliates throughout the region. France has had an operation there fighting terrorism for the last eight years. It began to withdraw its forces from Mali earlier this year.

All of this and more are described in Walter Pincus’s piece at The Cipher Brief, “The Problem With the Sahel”. Here’s a relevant snippet:

The US dilemma when dealing with the Sahel countries was illustrated by an exchange between Committee Chairman Robert Menendez and Blyden over what to do with Chad’s Transitional Military Council. The Military Council seized power unconstitutionally in April 2021, when Chad’s former President, Idriss Deby Itno was killed while fighting rebels.

The former President ruled Chad with an iron fist but at the same time, worked with the French and Americans in the fight against terrorists operating within the Sahel region.

Complicating today’s situation is that the Military Council then installed the former president’s 38-year-old son, Gen. Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno, as head of government.

The Military Council suspended the country’s constitution, postponed negotiations for new elections, harshly put down demonstrators, and then ended security cooperation with the US. Promised elections have been put off until a future time.

Menendez asked Blyden, “Are you suggesting we engage in business as usual with the [Chad] military junta? How would doing so reflect US values in your view and what message would that send in that region and for that matter, throughout the world?”

Blyden responded, “I would not suggest that we support a junta. I would say in our pulling back and not engaging regularly with the military – and many in the [Chad] government – we are absent. And our ability to be able to provide influence, whether it be at the government sector or training where we emphasize human rights values, where we emphasize a democratic approach has eliminated our ability to have access.”

She continued, “While I don’t necessarily propose that we should continue to work with juntas, I do think having an ability to be able to work and talk to them is thus able to support our influence.”

Menendez responded, “Our engagement with the military entities that are not under civilian control ultimately continues and perpetuates them. That’s a problem.”

The reality is that it’s been a practical US problem for decades and will remain so in regions such as the Sahel.

I understand why the French were interested and why they spent eight futile years trying to reduce terrorist activities in Mali, Niger, and Chad.

What I don’t understand is why the United States should be interested. There is a strained argument that, since some of the biggest troublemakers in Mali are mercenaries formerly in the employ of the late Moammar Qaddaffi and we were complicit if not proximallyo responsible for his overthrow, that we bear some responsibility for the situation.

Wasn’t the lesson we spent 20 years learning in Afghanistan that there isn’t much we can do short of genocide to put down terrorism if the countries involved are committed to promoting it?

It is being widely reported that the federal Reserve Open Markets Committee has increased interest rates by three-quarters of a percentage point. Nick Timiraos reports at the Wall Street Journal:

WASHINGTON—The Federal Reserve continued a sprint to reverse its easy-money policies by approving another unusually large interest rate increase and signaling more rises were likely coming to combat inflation that is running at a 40-year high.

Officials agreed Wednesday to a 0.75-percentage-point rate rise, which will lift their benchmark federal-funds rate to a range between 2.25% and 2.5%. The rate increase won unanimous backing from the 12-member rate-setting committee.

In a policy statement after the conclusion of their two-day meeting, officials acknowledged signs of slower economic activity since they met last month. “Recent indicators of spending and production have softened. Nonetheless, job gains have been robust in recent months,” the statement said.

The statement repeated language from previous meetings that said officials anticipate additional rate increases will be appropriate. Fed Chairman Jerome Powell is set to speak at a news conference at 2:30 p.m. Eastern time.

I will update this post with anything pertinent from Chairman Powell’s remarks when they become available.

The Fed Funds rate is presently at the highest rate in 20 years and has been increased at the fastest pace in 40 years.

At Anthropocene Mark Harris makes a good observation. Some people view climate change as a population problem while others view it as a poverty problem. He continues by making the case for each concluding:

Dozens of countries have managed to break the historic link between carbon emissions and economic growth. Most of these to date have been richer countries—another argument, perhaps, for prioritizing development.

Frankly, I’m skeptical. The data in his link seems to illustrate practically the opposite of what he suggests. Countries “decoupling” carbon emissions from growth are largely doing so by offshoring heavy manufacturing and the emissions of the countries to which they are offshoring are increasing faster. When you combine offshoring of heavy industry and dubious schemes like carbon offsets it accounts for practically all of the reductions except in the United States. Much of the reduction in the United States is a consequence of substituting natural gas for coal in producing electricity.

Meanwhile, I’ll only observe that reducing carbon production is analogous to dieting. A good weight loss diet is

1. One that actually works. In this case that means it actually measurably reduces carbon production. Not just your carbon production. Total carbon production.
2. One you can stick to. In this case that means, for example, that it doesn’t work by depriving your people.

“Give up meat, don’t drive a car, turn off your air conditioner, and keep your thermostat set to 40°F in the winter” might work but you won’t stay with it.