Almost Two Years

 Yes, I’m still sad. But the cats are well.

One Year Later

 John died on February 22, 2023.

Clinton and African American Voters

I wonder what makes Hillary Clinton so popular with African American voters.  After all, her husband's Administration brought about the mass incarceration of young African American men and the elimination of welfare, which led to, among other things, the eviction crisis in minority communities.  Worse than that, she has the support of the Wall Street bad actors who gave us the quadruple whammy that took what little wealth the African American community had.

Perhaps the community is more afraid of Trump or Cruz, and can't see Sanders beating them.  But Sanders does much more for the African American community, since any universal program benefits poorer people more than richer people, and what he proposes are universal safety net programs.  Hillary Clinton has argued that economic justice will not eliminate racism, and that's true.  But it sets a base below which we cannot fall--and gives minority communities a fighting chance.  What Clinton offers is compassionate neoliberalism, which is about as compassionate as Bush 43's compassionate conservatism.

Election Entertainment

No, I'm not talking about the possibility that we could end up with Donald Trump as President.  Not only is that slightly scary, but it's really like having a national version of the Weird Uncle at Thanksgiving, and you're just glad all the windows are closed so that no one can hear his rants.

This one is a record, the one Bernie Sanders made when Mayor of Burlington.  It's one of those things that's so bad it's good.  You can listen here, or buy it when Amazon gets more of the CDs.  Yeah, the CD is actually temporarily out of stock.

At Least One Girl Works at Google

The Anne of the Green Gables series is probably the most gender-defined of any book series.  Every girl in the English-speaking world has read them.  There aren't five boys who have read them, and not a one would admit it.  But today's Google Doodle recognizes the author of the series, Lucy Maud Montgomery.

Oh, and J is 67 today.  We'll be going out to dinner tomorrow, as he has Geezers With Guitars tonight.

Does Amazon Understand Its Business Model?

This morning's paper reports that Amazon will no longer sell video-streaming products from Apple and Google.  Now if Amazon were brick-and-mortar that might make sense. You might decide "oh, hell, I'm here and I might as well get this, rather than drive across town for Apple."  But that's not how Internet purchasing works.  Finding another product is a matter of opening another window and going to another site.  I'm still sitting on the sofa.  Isn't that the whole idea of Amazon?  

Greece

Can the Greek government be as incompetent as it seems?  Uh, if you've decided to force your creditors to negotiate with you by defaulting, prepare for the consequences up front. Be clear with people about what it means.  And share the pain equitably.  Learn from the Cuban crisis of the early 1990s, probably the worst collapse in any country since the Great Depression.

I want Greece to win this one--I really do.  Greece is standing in for all of the other people who got screwed in the Great Recession.  Ireland, for instance, stupidly decided to take on the debt of their private banks. Spain, which is selling off its social housing to Goldman and Blackstone. The US tenants who had to deal with Deutsche Bank, the worst of a bad lot. And of course, all of the people who lost their homes and jobs because banks couldn't behave themselves.

And an actual economist sent me to this, in case anyone has forgotten how often Germany has reneged on its debts.

One other note: it occurs to me that the investor purchases of rental housing post-recession isn't that much different from the securitization of mortgages, in that rental housing has become an important source of profit for the financial sector.  Just as housing equity was the only money left in the real economy in the bubble period, now rent payments have taken their place.

Notes

Americans should not feel proud that the Confederate flag is being removed from various government buildings.  Americans should be ashamed that, more than a century after the end of the Civil War, that flag hangs anywhere other than the basement bedroom of someone named Bubba.  Not only does it decorate any number of government buildings in the former Confederate States, but it appears on license plates, t-shirts, coffee mugs and so on.  If we were a decent people, the Confederate flag would have about the same status as the Nazi swastika.

In other news, I've decided to have Facebook friends.  Up to now, I've just used Facebook to play games and keep up on organizations I'm interested in.  I sent two friend requests, and nearly cried when one took a couple of hours to respond, so I'll wait for others to friend me.

Belated Happy Birthday to Me

Most people don't forget to note their own birthdays, but I am not most people.  Not only that, it's one of those "milestone" birthdays (60) that generally involve a fancy trip or dinner out or something.  J cooked dinner, but we put off going out until my knees were better and I could have trout.

And so I don't screw up again, J and I will celebrate our second 34th anniversary on the 9th.  I don't want an opal, so I may buy myself something in amethyst--the 33rd anniversary gift.

Sacramento Does Important Service to Art World

Most of the country does not know that Sacramento's City Council voted to pay money for a Jeff Koons piece, Coloring Book 4, which will permanently reside in front of the new basketball arena, which also received a bunch of public money.  Now I have to say that I have the same reaction to Jeff Koons that I do to David Salle and Julian Schnabel, that they came into being with Ronald Reagan and reflect that time--really big art, really expensive art, not requiring much thought on the part of those who buy it.  Like many other cultural phenomena of that period--belief in welfare queens, cutting social services, getting involved in stupid wars--Koons has hung around long past his "sell by" date.

Sacramento may be helping this along.  Trends come here to live on--many of them long beyond the time they've died out in more interesting places.  So getting a Koons may be bad for us, but the best thing for art in a very long time.

Race Together

Why do middle class people think they have the right to invade the privacy of the working class?  Why do they ask questions that they'd never ask of other middle class people?  And why do corporate executives think it's okay to encourage their underpaid employees to engage in conversations that are likely to be uncomfortable at best?  And they're worthless.  I mean, what can your local barista do about the systemic racism in our society?  Not much.

And middle class people always think they have a great deal to contribute to the conversation.  They don't.  Really.  Is the African American barista actually going to tell the honky office worker that she is full of it?  Don't think so.

You do not invade the privacy of others by discussing topics other than the weather, the crowdedness of the cafe/restaurant/store and so on.  You may, if Starbuck workers go on strike for higher wages and better working conditions, and win the strike, mention how wonderful it is to have the striking baristas back.

LAO on Housing

Dan Walters, who has been writing right-wing political analysis since I was a small child, sent me to the LAO report on housing in California and, while Walters puts his own spin on it, it does point up the real problem with housing here--it's way, way too expensive.  I haven't read the whole thing (I will, promise), but a couple of things stand out.  The first is that the LAO doesn't trash rent control, which is a good thing, since it's not a good idea to rattle on about the lack of supply and then suggest that we get rid of 170,000 rent-controlled units in San Francisco.  If you can't produce 10,000 affordable units a year, instantly coming up with nearly 200,000 units is going to be difficult.  The second is that, while recognizing the wimpy-ness of the Legislature's response to the problem, it doesn't point out ways to improve the situation.

I think that, first of all, we should eliminate the mortgage interest deduction.  It costs the state nearly $5 billion a year, most of which goes to already rich people.  Second tenants who are overpaying for rent should get a refundable tax credit of their excess rent payments.  It could be indexed, so that extremely low-income people received all of their rent back, very low-income people almost all of their rent payments, and so on up the economic scale.  The State Legislature does nothing to address the problem because it doesn't cost them anything not to do so. Third communities that are not providing affordable housing should face serious fines.  After all, they are forcing workers in their communities to drive long distance to work, which costs a bunch in time and pollution.  If a local government faces the loss of much of its state funding, it will very quickly address the problem.  

One of the fun things happening lately is that discussion of rent control is popping up all over the place, and in some of the oddest places, like Burlingame and Mountain View and Redwood City.  One silly local councilperson, faced with the need to allocate space and spend money to create affordable housing, as well as enact rent controls, suggested that people should come up with more "creative" solutions.  I thought immediately of 12 Grimmauld Place, where the house and its residents only exist in the magical interstices, and do not impinge on the lives of the rest.  Unfortunately that only works in children's fiction.

One other note: the report notes that the housing is needed in the coastal regions and doesn't advocate having people transport themselves to jobs from far-flung housing. That's a good thing, as it makes no sense in a time of climate change to increase transportation pollution.

Happy International Women's Day

Someday maybe we'll get equal pay for equal work, quality and affordable daycare, proper family leave, and men will listen to us without interrupting.

Spring has sprung in Sacramento.  My East Coast readers may be suffering under several feet of snow, but here the temperatures are in the low- to mid-70s.  Of course, we haven't had nearly enough rain and snow to make it through the year, but that's another story.

The plants are blooming, the trees are putting out new leaves, and J has voluntarily taken me to to the plant nursery.  Two weeks hence we'll be traveling south to the suburb of Elk Grove, where a new plant nursery is opening.  I shall have my list at the ready, on the off chance that a local nursery will have what I want and I won't have to obtain plants by mail order from the Bay Area.  This is dreaming, but Spring is the season of hope.

Cats have been enjoying the weather, particularly on the days when we leave the doors open so that they can come and go as they please. That's Dash, getting sun on his tummy.

My little redbud,  which produced three flowers last year, is doing much better this year. Several branches have flowers.

The coral bark Japanese maple, which wasn't really very coral this year, as it wasn't cold enough, is leafing out and has tiny red flowers.

Nuccio's Gem

A bunch of years ago I bought a Nuccio's Gem camillia.  It's considered a perfect formal double, which means lots of petals, which open very slowly.  Most of the blooms deteriorate before they finish opening. It opens slowly, and because of some quirk of nature here, it blooms every year when we have rain.  If it rains in January, the damn plant blooms in January.  If it doesn't rain until March, sure enough, it blooms in March. Rain is the enemy of camillia petals, and overnight I end up with a lot of petals with ugly brown spots. So last year, in the midst of a drought here, with a tiny number of rain days, my Nuccio's Gem chose one of those days to bloom.  This year we had no rain in January.  The buds grew, with bits of white petal preparing to pop out, yes, just as it rained.  It probably won't rain again for a month.

But this year I raced out before the rain and found a bloom almost entirely open.  Yes, a formal double that looked like a formal double. Fully open.  No brown.  A stem long enough to stick in a glass of water.  J photographed it so that we could remember what it looked like, and that one year, we got one bloom that looked the way it should.

Diplomatic Relations

One of the first changes to come about as the result of the re-establishment of diplomatic relations with Cuba is that the cost of making phone calls to Cuba has collapsed.  It used to be that AT&T routed the calls through Canada and it cost $23 a minute.  So calling grandma didn't happen very often.  But now ads are following me about the Internet, offering calls for 59 cents a minute.  I don't know anyone in Cuba, but for those of you who haven't talked to grandma in awhile, just google "calling cuba" and you'll find a bunch of options.

Happy New Year!

I hope that my three regular readers had a good holiday season--eating, drinking, hanging out with people you wanted to hang out with, and the like.  And while we celebrate the Winter Solstice and the return of the light, I don't require that anyone else celebrate that, and allow everyone to do their own thing.  I'm an old hippie, after all.

My resolution for the blog this year is to write on a regular basis, and to write more organized and substantive posts.  I've been really lazy and it's time to either clean up my act or retire the blog.

A Few Comments on Cuba Silliness

I'm way too lazy to do an organized post on some of the silliness being written about Cuba since the Obama Administration decided to recognize the Cuban government.  First up is the argument by the right wing that we didn't get the Cuban government to give up their Revolution in exchange for recognition.  Yeah, we demanded that for 50 some odd years, and that was never going to happen.  The Cubans are perfectly happy to establish diplomatic relations with us, but they aren't going to dismantle the Revolution for it. Sensibly the Obama Administration and the Cuban government did a prisoner exchange instead.

Next up, the Cuban economy is not going to change in any major ways because we've established diplomatic relations.  If the embargo is lifted, Cuba will gain about $2-5 billion a year (the estimate of the cost to the Cuban economy of the embargo).  That's nice money, but it's not like winning the lottery.

Moving right along, Cubans were happy to see diplomatic relations re-established.  First the remaining Cuban Five were released from prison, a big issue for Cuba.  Second they won.  Yeah, they'd won a long time ago, but the US finally admitted that they'd won.  One lesson though: Cubans do not take kindly to the American government mucking about in their politics.  Those who have taken money from the US have been entirely discredited, not just in the eyes of the government but more importantly, in the eyes of the Cuban people.  The people who take money from the US government for nefarious purposes end up emigrating because they have no credibility in Cuba.

Fourth, this won't enable the US to take over Cuba, no matter what some people hope and others fear.  Cuba is a politically developed country, and they suffered the worst economic collapse of any country in the world since the Great Depression in the 1990s. The government didn't fall then, and it ain't gonna happen now.  Get a grip.

And yeah, the Cubans don't have a great human rights record.  But we installed and supported governments that make the Castro brothers look like human rights activists. And remember that the US has more political prisoners in Cuba than the Cuban government does.

Finally, Americans who lost property in Cuba are unlikely to see any compensation.  In particular, the corporations that "bought" property after the Spanish-American War shouldn't even ask for compensation.  What happened was that, during the US occupation, American banks (especially National City Bank) refused to lend money to Cuban landowners, forcing the sale of many properties at fire-sale prices to American investors. The Cubans view that as a national theft, and the US would be well-advised not to remind the them of it.

It's About @#$%^&* Time

We have to give President Obama credit for finally doing what needed to be done.  No, not figuring out how to deal with ISIS without getting more people killed, not deciding that some badly-behaved bankers and other Wall Street types should don prison jumpsuits, but simply for recognizing that the little Republic of Cuba should be recognized formally after 50 years of trying to make them cry 'uncle'.  It never worked. They never did.

As others have already noted, Obama wants a legacy, and he doesn't have much on offer. This will definitely make it into the history books, after the long chapters detailing the stupid and brutal policy toward our near neighbor.  Clinton will most likely get the worst rap for beating up on them when they were down--1993--and for signing Helms-Burton which, by the way, prevents Obama from lifting the embargo and establishing diplomatic relations in one go.

Ricardo Alarcon de Quesada is most likely smiling sweetly to himself, as he noted in 1996 that it would be 20 years before the embargo was lifted. He's probably right.

Winter Solstice Bush

We have obtained the winter solstice bush, and J is putting the lights on now. The solstice is at 3:03 PM on Sunday, and we will turn the tree topper from the moon side to the sun side then.

They Are Bipartisan--And Clueless

Turnout in the late election didn't surprise me one bit.  The Democrats touted the economic recovery, which left most of the poorest 65% looking about and saying "huh?", before sitting down to figure out how to pay the rent this month.  As in most "recoveries" since 1981, the economy has done well, while the vast majority haven't.

I don't read David Brooks very often, but was taken by this construction of his world:

Today we once again have a sharp social divide between people who live in the “respectable” meritocracy and those who live beyond it. In one world almost everybody you meet has at least been to college, and people have very little contact with features that are sometimes a part of the other world: prison, meth, payday loans, a flowering of nonmarriage family forms. In one world, people assume they can control their destinies. In the other, some people embrace the now common motto: “It don’t make no difference.”

Widening class distances produce class prejudice, classism. This is a prejudice based on visceral attitudes about competence. People in the “respectable” class have meritocratic virtues: executive function, grit, a capacity for delayed gratification. The view about those in the untouchable world is that they are short on these things. They are disorganized. They are violent and scary. This belief has some grains of truth because of childhood trauma, the stress of poverty and other things. But this view metastasizes into a vicious, intellectually lazy stereotype. Before long, animalistic imagery is used to describe these human beings.


Leaving aside the disclaimer of the final sentence above, it's interesting that his construction of the world has the rest of us in daily contact with prison, meth, payday loans and single parenthood.  I know many people who aren't part of his delayed gratification crowd who have no experience of prison or meth, and little of payday loans. Single parenthood crosses class lines, and while more poor men can't be part of their families, it's not some personal defect, but the result of economic realities.  Further, I've seen plenty of the families on my side of the class divide delaying gratification for decades.

I have come to expect this kind of silliness from both sides of the political divide.  Vice-President Biden's Middle Class Task Force, for instance, defined the middle class as:

…a combination of values, expectations, and aspirations, as well as income levels. Middle class families and those aspiring to be part of the middle class want economic stability, a home and a secure retirement. They want to protect their children’s health and send them to college. They also want to own cars and take family vacations. However, aspirations alone are not enough; middle class families know that to achieve these goals they must work hard and save.

If we look at the people presumptively left out of this definition, we get those who live in a world of prison, meth, payday loans and so on.  And of course, those in the middle class have grit and a capacity for delayed gratification (read: work hard and save).  You almost want to organize a field trip for those who not only utter this smug, self-serving, sanctimonious twaddle, but write it down and publish it.  How hard can these people really be working  if what they write is such nonsense?  You want to sentence them all to a week helping a home health aide change adult diapers and then living on her wages. Then they'd really understand hard work and delayed gratification.