Author: philg

The museums of Indianapolis

by philg

After Great Smoky Mountain National Park, our family’s next stop on the way to Oshkosh was Indianapolis. We parked at Signature IND and Ubered into town for lunch in a sacred space:

Despite the sanctified-by-2SLGBTQQIA+ nature of the restaurant, it was tough not to notice that workers were unenthusiastic about being there, a sharp contrast to Gatlinburg in which genuine warmth is the usual attitude of a server.

First sightseeing stop, July 22, 2022, the children’s museum:

After handing over more than $100 for tickets (family of 4; would have been $8 for a family on what used to be called “welfare”), I made a beeline for the café in an attempt to score a Juneteenth Watermelon Salad. Instead of a history lesson, however, I got only a lesson in inflation:

The museum has an epic dinosaur section with real fossils that visitors can touch. Real paleontology is going on in this museum and visitors can arrange to take part.

The museum reminds children that they can make a difference, but only if they can first be classified as victims (of the Nazis (including Donald Trump), of prejudice against Blacks, of prejudice against those with AIDS, or of the Taliban).

Comic books are available to flip through via touch screen, but only those featuring female superheroes.

Barbie is not featured as a family court entrepreneur (“Divorced Barbie comes with: Ken’s Truck, Ken’s House, Ken’s Fishing Boat, Ken’s Furniture, Ken’s Dog, Ken’s Computer, one of Ken’s Friends…”), but rather as a physician or “computer engineer”:

Speaking of Barbie, the museum offered an opportunity to compare her 1959 physique with that of a modern parent:

(the guy’s wife was almost equally ample)

The next day, we went to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum, inside the famous track that was built by the creator of Miami Beach. Fred Flintstone’s Indy car is parked in front:

Note the two guys wearing surgical masks in their lonely fight against an aerosol virus:

They’re concerned enough about COVID-19 to wear masks, but not concerned enough to refrain from sharing the museum’s indoor air with 100+ other folks nor to refrain from taking a bus ride around the track (I can’t remember if they actually kissed the bricks or not, a seemingly less-than-ideal way to #StopTheSpread).

Next stop was the Eiteljorg Museum, which specializes in Native American and Western art. The museum acknowledges that it is on land that rightfully belongs to others, but it refuses to give the land back:

And then there is the posted DEI “commitment”:

Just a few steps beyond the righteous floor sign, we get the Native American perspective on white say-gooders and their land acknowledgments:

A couple of cloth-masked visitors again raise the question for me… why are they in an indoor public place?

Native-created masks for horses and humans:

Prevent COVID-19 from spreading by shutting down the water fountains:

Will Florida ultimately be the only state left with working water fountains?

If you’ve got kids, don’t miss the basement of this museum, which has a lot of hands-on activities. Back on the main floor, the scale of the Western paintings is literally awesome:

Another museum (Newfields), another pair of masked visitors:

They’re enjoying “THE LUME”, an animated version of the Impressionists set to music. But if they’re worried enough about COVID-19 to wear a mask, why aren’t they worried enough to stay home?

Our kids loved this production (see below; #LoveIsLove) and were reluctant to leave even after two hours. “This is the best place ever,” was the explanation. There is a bar/coffee shop within the exhibit and also bathrooms, so it would actually be possible to stay the whole day.

One idea had been to leave for Oshkosh on Saturday night. The “shelter in place & stay safe” text message was not promising, especially given that it was being sent to people whose shelter options were a 10 lb. tent and a 1500 lb. (empty) airplane.

The next morning was not a lot better for getting to our actual destination of Appleton, Wisconsin:

Southwest Airlines was delayed 3.5 hours getting into Chicago, according to a friend coming into Oshkosh the easy/smart way, so we didn’t feel bad trying to wait out the weather at the Indiana State Museum.

What’s interesting about the U.S.S. Indianapolis? Not that the U.S. Navy failed to heed a distress call from the torpedoed cruiser. Not that the U.S. Navy failed to notice when the massive ship did not show up in port as scheduled. Not that nearly 900 men died, 600 of them unnecessarily (left to float in the water and be attacked by sharks until a PBY crew accidentally discovered them). Not that the tragedy figured prominently in the movie Jaws. See the sign below for what visitors can learn next to the model.

Suppose that a visitor wonders about the merits of low-skill immigration. He/she/ze/they will learn that “Securing the rights of all Hoosiers has been fought by many. Individuals and communities rally together to fight against hate and social injustices.” A migrant who shows up on a Monday morning is a “Hoosier” by lunchtime and, certainly, it would be “hate” and “injustice” if anyone were to regard the migrant as illegal somehow.

There’s a hands-on cardboard engineering lab on the top floor. Here a 2-year-old learns to build a park that is welcoming to the 2SLGBTQQIA+ community:

Is there room in Indianapolis for every American who identifies as 2SLGBTQQIA+ and for the entire populations of Haiti (11 million) and Honduras (10 million) to become Hoosiers? It sure feels as though there is! Downtown, at least on the weekend, feels empty.

Summary: This is a great 2- or 3-night stop.

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Inflation ideas roundup

by philg

Having fizzled out, at least on a month-to-month basis (see Inflation of 0 percent reported as inflation of 8.5 percent), inflation got a big boost today when Joe Biden decreed that some members of the laptop class won’t ever have to pay back up to $20,000 of student loans (the debt will be transferred to Walmart cashiers and other working class chumps) and nobody needs to pay student loans until the end of 2022 (and no interest will accrue). From studentaid.gov:

“no one with a federally held loan has had to pay a single dollar in loan payments since President Biden took office.” I think that this is the more significant driver of near-term inflation. If no one has had to pay a single dollar in loan payments then no one needs to put down the Xbox controller, leave mom’s basement, and look for a job. An employer will have to keep bidding up wages in order to woo some of the limited number of Americans who’ve decided, perhaps out of habit, to stay in the labor force.

With Americans anxious about inflation, how could it make political sense for a politician to do something that will obviously stoke inflation? Nate Silver explains why this is not an irrational move for a federal government run by Democrats:

Note the “redistribute well-being” from the working class to the laptop class, just as low-skill immigration does according to a Harvard prof and just as the newly expanded $7,500 electric vehicle tax credit does. I’m beginning to wonder how much more the working class can be made to pay to the laptop class. In which year of the Biden administration does the Walmart cashier begin to have to subsidize the laptop class member’s purchase of a new fuel-efficient Cirrus airplane?

Economists are back to their multiple hands… “Nobody Knows How Interest Rates Affect Inflation” (WSJ, 8/24, John H. Cochrane):

Conventional wisdom says that as long as interest rates are below the rate of inflation, inflation will rise. Inflation in July was 8.5%, measured as the one-year change in the consumer price index. The Fed has raised the federal funds rate only from 0.08% in March to 2.33% in August. According to the conventional view, that isn’t nearly enough. Higher rates are needed, now.

This conventional view holds that the economy is inherently unstable. The Fed is like a seal, balancing a ball (inflation) on its nose (interest rates). To keep the ball from falling, the seal must quickly move its nose.

In a newer view, the economy is stable, like a pendulum. Even if the Fed does nothing, so long as there are no more shocks, inflation will eventually peter out. The Fed can reduce inflation by raising interest rates, but interest rates need not exceed inflation to prevent an inflationary spiral. This newer view is reflected in most economic models of recent decades. It accounts for the Fed’s projections and explains the Fed’s sluggish response. Stock and bond markets also foresee inflation fading away without large interest-rate rises.

The learned and credentialed author concludes with no conclusion about who is right. Even our most notable economists aren’t going to get rich via financial market trades, it seems, based on their superior predictive abilities for inflation rates.

Also from the WSJ, but written by a journalist rather than an economist, “Jerome Powell’s Dilemma: What if the Drivers of Inflation Are Here to Stay?”:

In an August 2020 book, “The Great Demographic Reversal,” former British central banker Charles Goodhart and economist Manoj Pradhan argued that the low inflation since the 1990s had less to do with central-bank policies and more with the addition of hundreds of millions of low-wage Asian and Eastern European workers, which held down labor costs and prices of manufactured goods exported to richer countries.

Mr. Goodhart wrote that global labor glut was giving way to an era of worker shortages, and hence higher inflation.

Meanwhile, the U.S. labor force has roughly 2.5 million fewer workers since the pandemic began, compared with what it would have if the prepandemic trend in workforce participation had continued and after accounting for the aging of the population, according to an analysis by Didem Tüzemen, an economist at the Kansas City Fed.

The low-inflation environment of the past 30 years caused consumers and businesses to not think much about price increases. Fed officials now worry that even if prices rise temporarily, consumers and businesses could come to expect higher inflation to persist. That could help fuel higher inflation as workers demand higher pay that employers would pass onto consumers through higher prices.

The expert witness world could serve as an example for the last paragraph. An expert witness engagement usually lasts no more than 3 years and, with inflation expectations low, it was conventional for a contract to call for a fixed rate for the entire engagement. Starting in 2022, however, it became conventional for contracts to allow for annual price increases.

[I should do a separate blog post at some point about how economists don’t seem to account for human nature in forecasting labor force participation. The assumption is that humans don’t get habituated to either working or not working. So an American will jump in and out of the labor force as soon as wages or conditions are adjusted. The American’s value of leisure time will be constant and won’t depend on whether the American has just spent the last two years not working, participating in a bunch of online games, in-person clubs and leagues, etc. Because of this flawed model of humans, economists are surprised on a daily basis that higher wages haven’t lured more Americans back into the labor force. There is nothing in the economics models that says if you play a lot of Xbox for a year you will get better at Xbox and enjoy playing Xbox more and, therefore, require a higher wage to tempt you out of the house.]

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Democrats love elderly white guys, Florida edition

by philg

Florida held a primary election yesterday. Democrats overwhelming chose Charlie Crist, an elderly white man, as their candidate to challenge Ron DeSantis. The 66-year-old won by 60:35 (CNN) over the 44-year-old Nikki Fried. (Voting was suppressed by Florida’s ID check requirement, yet CNN reports that millions of Floridians managed to vote anyway.)

DeSantis desperately needs to win in November, simply to keep his family housed. He had a net worth of $319,000 at the end of 2021 (law.com), not enough to buy a 1BR condo in a decent neighborhood thanks to Florida Realtor of the Year 2020 Andrew Cuomo and Florida Realtor of the Year 2021 Charlie Baker (of Maskachusetts).

As with other Democrats, Nikki Fried says that Republicans are “a danger to democracy”. Now that the Democrats control both the White House and Congress and talk about “treason,” “insurrection,” and “democracy in peril,” why don’t they imprison and/or execute Republicans in order to save our fragile democracy? A couple of examples:

“Donald Trump is the greatest threat to our national security, but Ron DeSantis is the greatest threat to democracy.” A person who lacks even the power to collect income tax is the greatest threat to American democracy, in other words (most taxing power in Florida belongs to the counties).

If Democrats believe what they’re saying, why don’t they take real action to eliminate Republicans from the United States? If they don’t believe what they’re saying, why are they saying these things?

We know that she was against Ron DeSantis and his plan to end American democracy. What was Nikki Fried actually for? Abortion care and marriage for members of the 2SLGBTQQIA+ community:

CNN agrees that the most important question facing Florida voters is whether abortion care should be limited to 15 weeks into a pregnant person’s pregnancy (3 weeks more than in most European countries) or if abortion care should be available as part of reproductive health care at 34 weeks, as is legal in Maskachusetts (the law) or Colorado (Wikipedia).

(It’s the “abortion fight” and not the “abortion care fight”? Where are the copy editors at CNN?)

How about the old white guy who won? He promises “reproductive freedom” and is endorsed by Planned Parenthood, the world’s largest provider of pregnancy-ending reproductive health care (abortion care to more than 300,000 pregnant people every year):

Charlie Crist also promises to consider a state-wide governor-ordered mask mandate (source). This is against the spirit of Florida law, passed by the legislature and signed by Governor DeSantis, but maybe not against the letter of the law since it could be a state-level order instead of one imposed by counties or school districts.

The Feds had to force companies to hire those over 40 but even this law allowed putting anyone over 65 out to pasture if important decisions were being made in that position. Given how much prejudice there is against hiring old people for regular jobs, I am mystified by American voter behavior in favor of the elderly for seemingly much more important jobs (state governor, President of the US, etc.).

Who wants to forecast the Crist v. DeSantis result in November? It was 49.6:49.2 for Ron D. back in 2018, but Democrats were a majority of Florida’s registered voters then. If we go by simple party registration (source) DeSantis wins by 51:49. However, my bet is that DeSantis gets a boost of 2 points from young people who don’t want to be locked down and/or ordered to wear masks the next time a respiratory virus appears. And then he gets another 3-point boost from parents of K-12-age students who don’t want to see public schools (a.k.a. “free daycare”) shut down. So that would be a 56:44 victory for DeSantis. It is rare for Floridians to say much about politics beyond Palm Beach County, but the most common expression that I have heard is gratitude to Ron DeSantis for keeping schools open and preventing local Covidcrats from imposing their Science-guided will regarding masks, vaccine papers checks, lockdowns, etc. The second most common expression is from older Democrats who are transplants from the Lands of Science, cursing DeSantis for failing to follow Science. So the 2018-2022 result spread will be an interesting referendum on the voter-perceived appropriate level of coronapanic!

Related:

  • “Most DeSantis-endorsed school board candidates win their Florida primaries” (Politico): “The majority of local school board candidates backed by Gov. Ron DeSantis — at least 21 out of 30 — won their elections Tuesday, results that underscore how the Republican governor’s stance on education has gained support throughout Florida. … DeSantis-backed candidates also scored big wins in Miami-Dade County, another school board that went against Republicans on masking students. In one race, Monica Colucci, an educator with GOP support, defeated Marta Perez, a 24-year school board member despite raising about $70,000 less than her opponent.”
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When the going gets tough, send in the Chief Diversity Officer

by philg

This summer we stayed in a hotel that was hosting a Knanaya Catholic Congress of North America convention. There were some very fine people attending the KCCNA convention, but others couldn’t resist partying until 4 or 5 am in the hallway outside our room and there were elevator issues. I decided to see if there was a way to contact Marriott’s “unhappy customer” line. Here’s the “Customer Care” section of the Bonvoy app:

What is the #1 concern of a hotel guest who requests “care”? “Where Can I Find Information on Diversity & Inclusion?”

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Dollywood

by philg

To escape the crowds of Great Smoky Mountains National Park during our five-night visit to Gatlinburg, we went to Dollywood in Pigeon Forge. Is a jammed theme park actually less crowded than a national park? It feels less crowded because it is properly engineered for crowds. Unlike in the national park, it is possible to find a parking space at Dollywood (pay up for premium parking; there is a separate entrance from the premium lot and no waiting in line for security or ticket scanning). Unlike in Gatlinburg or Pigeon Forge, it is fairly easy to get a counter-serve or table-serve meal (plan ahead for dinner, perhaps, but overall the food-to-customer situation is vastly better than at Disney World’s Magic Kingdom). Here’s the health food shack (pork rinds):

In addition to long lines and hassles to get basic food, the Orlando theme parks suffer from a lack of local feeling. Few of the park workers are from Orlando and, except perhaps for Legoland (in Winter Haven, FL) with its botanical gardens and water ski show, there isn’t much that relates to Florida. Disney is reasonably successful at finding people who are happy to be working at Disney, but the other parks are often staffed with people who seem disappointed that they couldn’t get a job at Disney and/or that they have to work at all. Dollywood is the opposite, being centered in eastern TN culture and staffed with people who grew up in the area, love the area, and are happy to be working at Dollywood.

Dollywood is built into a hillside and retains the mountain steam train ride from which it was seeded. In addition to the expected terrifying rollercoasters there are a lot of music shows. One artist that you won’t hear too much, not even covers of her songs, is… Dolly Parton. She uses the park to showcase lesser-known musicians. There are some craft demonstrations. Our boys (7 and 8) were fascinated by the blacksmith shop in which visitors can participate (makes sure to wear closed-toe shoes and stop by early in the day to book a slot).

The associated water park is underwhelming by Florida standards and there weren’t enough slides to handle the crowds of a hot weekday afternoon. Definitely invest in the line-skipping pass if you’re going to hit the water park.

The evening fireworks were worth staying up for, though the Oshkosh blow-out puts them to shame! There is a creative pre-fireworks drone show. Traffic into and out of the park is well-organized so you won’t be stuck trying to get out.

Budget $1,000 for a family of four if you want to hit the main park, the water park, and pay for line-skipping and premium parking. (If $1,000 seems like a lot, remember that you don’t have to take the day off work so long as you’re a member of the laptop class. Just answer the occasional email from your phone while in line for a ride.) The day after you can return to Great Smoky Mountain National Park with a renewed appreciation for the woods:

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Rivian now has dog mode

by philg

A company whose stock value I have questioned (see What edge does Rivian have in the truck or EV market? (11/16/2021; market cap $127 billion) and How is Rivian still worth $78 billion? (1/6/2022); market cap recently closer to $30 billion) now has the feature that I begged for in 2003: dog mode.

“Rivian Just Added a Pet Comfort Mode” (MotorBiscuit):

Rivian has addressed this by creating a pet comfort mode that will maintain a temperature between 68 and 74 degrees Fahrenheit in the car while you are away. All you need to do to turn it on is hit the paw icon in the upper right corner of the climate control screen. This will stay on while you’re taking care of business away from the vehicle. If you don’t set a specific temperature, it will automatically set to 72 degrees Fahrenheit.

The Rivian addresses this by alerting anyone who passes by that the pet comfort mode is on and your dog is OK.

The companies that could easily do this with a bit of programming, e.g., Ford, GM, Toyota, Hyundai/Kia, Mercedes, BMW et al., apparently can’t be bothered. Only the startups (Tesla, Rivian, and maybe Lucid (according to a salesperson I talked to in a San Diego mall in June 2022)) provide this.

In other car news, a dealer here in South Florida had a new C8 Corvette in stock(!). With the Z51 (but not Z06!) performance package, convertible body, 3LT trim, and 75th anniversary color scheme, the machine carries an MSRP of $108,000. They expressed a willingness to sell it for $138,000, which includes a $30,000 “market value adjustment.” The high-end used car lot at the northeast end of Jupiter says that C8 Corvettes in yellow are the easiest to sell and that, within a day or two of being parked within sight of the road, are gone.

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Great Smoky Mountains, Gatlinburg, and Pigeon Forge

by philg

For a former New Englander, the big shock of being in the Great Smoky Mountains in July was the bug situation. Following standard practice from the Appalachians in MA, NH, VT, and ME, we had brought enough DEET and picaridin to cover a herd of elephants and yet found ourselves in the woods without being bothered by any flying insects, even in wetter lower-lying areas.

We spent our first day driving to Kuwahi, known to the white invaders as “Clingmans Dome,” the highest point on the Appalachian Trail and, at 6,643′, the third highest mountain in the land that we stole east of the Mississippi. We left the cabin before 7 am because we had been warned that parking lots within the park tend to fill up.

Our reward for the drive was getting progressively deeper into a cloud until, at last, nothing was visible.

On the way, official government scientists reminded us that, while diversity is our strength and non-native humans are hugely beneficial for any ecosystem, non-native insects are a disaster:

Cars feature a lot more religious and political expression than in Florida. We can be grateful to Jesus for the dinosaur blood that saved us from walking up 4,000′ from the Gatlinburg airport (KGKT):

On the back of a small SUV, a reminder not to follow the examples of Al Franken and Harvey Weinstein when visiting the Knoxville Zoo:

How about the bears? We spent a day driving to Cades Cove to see the bears. The approach to Cades Cove from Gatlinburg follows a winding river and features more curves than all of the roads in South Florida combined. The kids loved it and asked if we could go back the same way.

Upon reaching Cades Cove the National Park Service warned us, via a big electronic sign, that it would take 2-3 hours to drive the 11-mile loop. This was, if anything, an underestimate. Traffic moves slower than in midtown Manhattan. We were grateful to take a break in the middle and walk to Abrams Falls:

How about those bears? We did see a few during the Cades Cove day, usually at least 100′ away and often obscured by trees. After a long day of attempted bear-viewing in the National Park we found that the street right in front of our cabin was blocked by four bear cubs and a bear parent of unknown gender ID. After 20 minutes, one cub hadn’t moved at all and we began researching wildlife rescue options, thinking that perhaps the cub had been hit by a car. Eventually, though, all of the bears got up and moved up the hill and we were able to get to our cabin (that’s actually our rental, in the photo).

Apparently, even the bears can’t handle the epic crowds within the National Park and prefer to hang out in Gatlinburg and even inside our rental:

After a day off at Dollywood (maybe I’ll do that as a separate post), we returned to the park for a walk to Grotto Falls. We didn’t get out quite as early and found that we needed to park roughly 1/2 mile downhill from the trailhead. The parking areas within the Park would need to be 3-4X bigger to handle even the weekday demand for the more popular trails. Most of the photographs taken in the Park are lies. Most visitors, even those willing to go on a 2-3-hour hike, will have an essentially urban experience inside the National Park. The trail to Grotto Falls is more crowded than a typical American city sidewalk, but it is possible, even in the middle of the day, to make it look like you’re in the woods by yourself:

Where to stay? We liked our cabin, which had a great view from the desk and enabled us to see bears up close and personal. But it was 10 minutes of driving down some scary mountain roads to get to a supermarket, restaurant, or the main roads into the Park. Remarkably, there were delivery services that would, at a reasonable price, bring groceries (the Publix app works!) or meals up to the cabin, and it was also possible to get an Uber either to or from the cabin. If you want to go back to your lodging in between activities it probably makes more sense to stay closer to one of the towns.

Pigeon Forge, home to Dollywood, is a serious challenge to those who believe that markets will result in reasonable outcomes. It is a strip of hideous commercial development, fronted by massive parking lots, jammed with 6 lanes of traffic, and inaccessible to pedestrians. Every urban planning major should be sent here so that if he/she/ze/they is ever experience self-doubt or doubt in his/her/zir/their chosen profession, he/she/ze/they can think back to the Pigeon Forge experience.

The only thing that can be said in favor of Pigeon Forge is that people are friendly and seem happy to be working. Well, and that it is possible to purchase socks celebrating Rainbow Flagism:

And maybe the Titanic Museum, which gets great reviews, but was rejected by our 8-year-old: “Titanic hit an iceberg and sunk. What’s the problem with you?” The kids were irresistibly drawn to the medieval castle containing MagiQuest (not to be confused with MAGAQuest, in which the task is helping non-partisan FBI agents find documents) and it was actually a lot of fun (buy the unlimited time option because there is no way you’ll get out of the Magi section in less than 2.5 hours) and a smart air-conditioned choice on a hot afternoon or evening.

Gatlinburg is just as traffic-clogged, but at least it is walkable and it is closer to the Park:

Maybe the best compromise between a mountain experience, access to the Park, and access to services and attractions: the DoubleTree Park Vista hotel. It is right next to a road leading into the Park and high enough above the town that you get some mountain views and mountain air. We drove by it on our way to Grotto Falls. The reviews suggest that the place needs renovation, but once it does get a make-over it should be nice.

Travel tip: bring some mini bottles of maple syrup. The local mania seems to be for making pancakes (not obviously better than those McDonald’s serves as part of the Big Breakfast), but corn syrup with a touch of artificial flavor is the only topping that is reliably available. Our kids got a surprise after we asked a waitress “Do you have real maple syrup?” and she responded “Yes,” then returned with what used to be called Aunt Jemima. We explained that this was “real” to her.

Overall: Great Smoky Mountains National Park is, in fact, great. But unless you’re a serious backcountry hiker, it is also mostly ruined by the crowds. Everything was designed for the U.S. circa 1960 (population 180 million and most people had to work on most days), not for the U.S. circa 2022 (population 333 million and the entire laptop class can pretend to work from Gatlinburg just as easily as pretending to work from home). If you don’t love crowds you probably won’t find the Park relaxing.

At the same time that we were in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, a friend was in a $7,000/night dude ranch in Montana. The elites were paying $7,000/night for, essentially, the same experience that our family had in the National Parks circa 1980. An elite family could go for a walk without bumping into a lot of other people. They could park wherever they wanted to. They could get into a restaurant and eat without waiting 45 minutes or an hour. They could ride horses without making reservations in advance. But we could do and actually did all of those things as an upper-middle-class family (my dad worked for the Federal Trade Commission) in the early 1980s in Yellowstone, Bryce Canyon, Zion, Grand Canyon, etc.

Related:

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Trump vs. Biden in the New York Times

by philg

According to my browser, the word “Trump” occurs 6 times on the front page of today’s New York Times. “Biden” occurs 3 times.

Biden is featured for expanding government (and, therefore, borrowing and the deficit) as well as for being a quarter century older than the mandatory retirement age for an FAA air traffic controller (gone before age 56, even at the sleepiest airports where there might be one operation every 10 minutes).

Some of the headlines mentioning Trump:

Excerpts from the Trump stories:

Liberal excitement is understandable. Mr. Trump faces potential legal jeopardy from the Jan. 6 investigation in Congress and the Mar-a-Lago search. They anticipate fulfilling a dream going back to the earliest days of the Trump administration: to see him frog-marched to jail before the country and the world.

But the nightmare wouldn’t stop there. What if Mr. Trump declares another run for the presidency just as he’s indicted and treats the trial as a circus illustrating the power of the Washington swamp and the need to put Republicans back in charge to drain it?

There is an obvious risk: If Mr. Trump runs again, he might win.

It’s impossible to understand the G.O.P. reaction to the raid, though, without accounting for the context of the Russia investigation of Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign that consumed the first two years of his presidency. … investigations of prominent figures of one party carried out by officials of the other party aren’t going to be met by a relaxed attitude and sympathetic understanding.

The last time there was a significant investigation of a Democratic president, Bill Clinton, Democrats waged all-out war on the prosecutor. The independent counsel, Ken Starr, had a Republican background, but he wasn’t working for a G.O.P. administration. He was appointed by a three-judge panel after Mr. Clinton’s own attorney general, Janet Reno, triggered the investigation.

The Russia investigation was a national fiasco that brought discredit on the F.B.I. and everyone who participated in it. The probe prominently featured a transparently ridiculous dossier generated by the Clinton campaign, eventually spinning into a special-counsel investigation that became, to some significant extent, about itself and whether Mr. Trump was guilty of obstruction. People who should have known better got caught up in the feeding frenzy and speculated that the walls were closing in on Mr. Trump or that he might have been a Russian asset going back decades.

That experience guarantees that no Republican is going to take assurances about the Mar-a-Lago search, or any other Trump investigation, at face value.

Is it fair to say that Trump (our distant neighbor here in Palm Beach County, though there is a world of difference between the Palm Beach and Jupiter lifestyles!) has more mindshare, nearly two years after his last election, than any other former president with the same distance from being in office?

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Do the 87,000 new IRS agents boost the attractiveness of welfare relative to work?

by philg

One of the features of the latest spending bill from Democrats in Congress and Joe Biden is the hiring of 87,000 IRS agents (or 30,000 new agents, depending on whom you believe). I’m wondering if this tips the scales a bit in favor of not working. If you’re in public housing, on Medicaid, shopping via SNAP/EBT, talking on an Obamaphone, and playing Xbox via the new taxpayer-funded broadband benefit, you won’t have to deal with the IRS in any way, regardless of how many agents are hired.

Back in 2013, before all of the coronapanic-related enhancements, the welfare system yielded more spending power than working at the median wage (i.e., being a chump) in at least some states. Table 4 from CATO:

Obviously, the typical American will still be unlikely to get audited in any given year, but the greater risk of an audit, with all of the expense that is entailed even when no errors are found, could be reasonably expected to have at least a small effect on labor force participation, no? Especially for the declining percentage of Americans who are willing to incur the risk of starting their own business (See Inc. and “The decline of American entrepreneurship — in five charts” (Washington Post, 2015)). Speaking of labor force participation rate, let’s check the chart:

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A gathering of 20 kindergartners was a Scientifically unacceptable public health risk…

by philg

…. but Science doesn’t have a problem with an upcoming gathering of more than 275,000 mostly shirtless adults at Southern Decadence (September 1-5, 2022). Neither the CDC nor Louisiana’s public health officials, who eagerly shut down the New Orleans Public Schools, have made any attempt to shut down this event due to the potential for spreading SARS-CoV-2, monkeypox, and any other viruses that can spread from one shirtless human to another.

Science closed the Atlanta kindergartens as recently as January 2022 (NYT), but Science will soon welcome 100,000+ adults for all-day/all-night parties during Atlanta Black Pride.

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