Yes Virginia, A travel update.

In a departure from my typical political, social, or job-related rants I am hijacking my own blog to talk about my adventures on the road.

I'm currently staying in an off-season ski condo just outside of Taos Ski Valley. The expressed purpose of this trip is rest and recuperation (the classic R&R). If I needed any confirmation that this was needed I got it when I spent most of the first two days I was here sleeping. 

On day three (Wednesday, 8/14) I decided I was feeling well enough to try to do some walking. The maps show a couple of trailheads close to where I'm staying, so I decided to walk up to the closer one and check it out. 
TIL:

• NM 150 (New Mexico state route 150) is not pedestrian friendly. While there are good gravel shoulders along many stretches they are inconsistent and tend to disappear at inopportune times. (Like around blind curves). The walk to the closer trailhead was only an 1/8 of a mile and it was enough to convince me that walking along the road is really not a good idea.
• The trailheads here have maps and descriptions at the entrance. The two that I checked (the one I walked to and one I drove to) were both listed at roughly 4 miles with an elevation gain of almost 4000 ft. They were classified as "difficult".
• I found a very helpful cashier at the Arroyo Seco Mercantile who directed me to a guidebook on local hikes and had lots of personal input on the trails in the area. She confirmed that the two I looked at were not for the faint of heart.
• She also told me about the "All Trails" app.
• Just down the road from that store is some of the best ice cream I've ever had.

Ok, that's enough for one day. 

Yesterday (Thursday, 8/15) I cracked open the guide book fully intending to find one of the "easy" trails that I had heard about. The book is really well laid out, they were easy to find. It turns out they are all an hour drive away... Hmmm. Maybe I should have done that reading the previous night. 
I looked again at the entries on the trails near me and discovered that while they were all listed as "difficult" the reviews in All Trails agreed that they were more "moderate" for the first mile or two and only got "difficult" for the upper parts. 

New Plan! There is no rule that says I have to hike the whole trail. These are all out and back anyway, not loops. So I'll go to the easiest looking of these and only go in a mile or two before I turn around. I fill my water  bottle, tell multiple people where I'm planning to go and when I plan to be back, and head out.

So here we are at the trailhead for Italianos Canyon. 

Hmmm, that's weird. This is the first trailhead I've seen here that doesn't have a sign and a map. Oh well, no problem. I've got my guide book and app.

Oh, wait. There it is. I was just set back out of sight from the road.

Quick picture of the map just for good measure.

Ok, now I'm all set for sure. Ready to head up the "moderate" part of the trail.

Roughly 0.1 mile up the trail.
"Dude, where did the trail go? Did I miss something? I better look at the map."

Yup, sure enough, the map said that I had gone past a point that I was supposed to cross the stream. You see the trail follows the course of a stream most of the way up (at least as far as I'm going). But now that I look closer at the map I see that the trail goes back and forth across the stream. Ok, better backtrack and see if I can find the crossing.

Hey, look what I found just a little bit back on the trail. Just off to the left, I just missed it on the way past. This doesn't feel all that solid. Lots of flex in those logs. Really they are more like branches than logs. 
On the other side I notice that there is a trail coming in from the left (downhill) as well as the one continuing up. I'm not sure that was really the crossing. Oh well. I'm on this side now. Keep going.

My suspicion that the springy branches as not the real trail crossing was reinforced at every subsequent crossing that were all good sized stones.

Except for a few places where the stream and the trail just became one.

However, after a bit I started getting used to the "moderate" trail. All except the part where I was huffing and puffing like an antiquated steam engine. I started peeking at my watch to check my heartrate. Hmmmm. Ok, new rule. If my heart rate is over 140 I should probably stop in a shady spot and catch my breath. Did I mention that the Italianos Canyon trail starts at 8400 ft? The full 4-5 mile trail gains another 3700 ft of elevation, but I had no plans of going that far. Still, it seems like even down here at 8400+ I may not be fully acclimated to the elevation. 

When I told everyone where I was going I had said that I would go in "a mile or two" and turn back. By 1/4 mile in that had changed to "let's see if I can get to a mile". 

Right around 0.4 miles I found a stick that was just the right length and diameter to be a very passable walking stick. So much so that I think someone must have cut it to that size and then discarded it. I accepted it gratefully. I was starting to understand the attraction of trekking poles. 

By 0.5 miles the "keep the heart rate under 140" rule had changed to "try to get it under 150" and that was not going well. Are you thinking what I'm thinking? Yeah, it's time to call it and head back. By this time in addition to being out of breath my glutes and adductors were screaming at me and I was remembering sections of the trail that might actually be more challenging going down than up. 

On the walk back out I didn't have as much trouble with being out of breath, but a lot more muscles were really starting to complain. As I hit the one mile mark my watch informed me that I had been keeping an average pace of 46 minutes per mile. Gee, thanks. Made it back to the truck. Made it back to the condo. Digging through various apps on the phone that are connected to my watch I established that my peak heart rate had been 160 (right around the time that I stopped for a real break and then headed down). 

Bonus, all that work motivated me to make myself a good dinner featuring four types of mushrooms. This got a white wine and cream sauce, a lot of cheese and went in the oven with a lot of zucchini and chicken.

Making myself stand up and cook is also probably the only reason I was able to walk today. 

No hike attempted today. I had to go in to town to get 9v batteries to make the smoke detector stop chirping. While I was there I stopped at a sporting goods store and picked up some trekking poles and a combo backpack/hydration rig. (2 liter bladder).

Sadly, Taos Cow (The awesome ice cream place) was closed when I drove past.

The US Budget, the National Debt and Arithmetic. Don't let anyone kid you.

(Also known as Shameless Self Plagiarism)

Back in the day, before I became an intermittent and frequently vanishing blogger I tried my hand at long winded FaceBook posts...

The data here is 13 years old. I have not updated anything from the original. It appears that the article I read that originally inspired this has been pulled down in that time so it is not available for reference. The wikipedia links still work, I don't know to what extent the pages have been updated.

Neocons Talk Deficit but Won’t Budge on Defense Cuts

http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Issues/Budget-Impact/2010/10/08/Neocons-Talk-Deficit-but-Wont-Budge-on-Defense-Cuts.aspx

I read the article above (Thanks Rudi for the link) and it got me started thinking again about the Federal Budget, the National Debt and how the dialogue in Washington about balancing the budget seems to go nowhere. In my opinion Debt discussions tend to devolve in to arguments about items that are barely a blip on the radar because the majority of the budget is so politically charged that talking about cutting it is political suicide. 

Budgets have two basic components, Revenue (Income) and Spending (Where the money goes). In theoretical terms balancing a budget is easy. Make Spending less than or equal to Revenue. Bingo, your budget is balanced. If the budget gets out of balance, as ours in the US has, there are two basic options, increase Revenue and/or decrease Spending. 

Unfortunately this is where things break down.

An estimated 84% of our National Revenue comes from Individual Income Tax and Social Security and other payroll taxes. So barring the discovery of a new Revenue stream increasing Revenue basically means raising taxes (Ack, Political Suicide).

That leaves us with cutting Spending. Cut Social Security? Suicide. Cut Medicare? Suicide. How about cutting interest on the National Debt? Oh, wait. That would be illegal wouldn't it? Cut Defense spending? Maybe not automatic suicide, but definitely playing with fire. 

So what does that leave? What is up for discussion? 

Here is where I want to talk about some numbers. Most of the figures I'm using come from wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_United_States_federal_budget

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_national_debt

These articles contain links to the federal documents from which the numbers are drawn. I believe that they are fairly accurate give or take $10 Billion here and there.

In 2010 the Federal Budget is $3.55 Trillion.

The estimated revenues are $2.831 Trillion.

This leaves a budget shortfall of $1.169 Trillion (Generally rounded off to $1.17 T)

This means that approximately 33% of the budget is deficit spending. Viewed from the other direction it means we are spending approximately 49% more money than we have.

So where is that money going?

In the 2010 Budget the most expensive sectors are:

1. Social Security 19.63%
2. Department of Defense (Military spending) 18.74%
3. Other Mandatory Spending 16.13%
4. Medicare 12.79%
5. Medicaid and the State Children's Health Insurance Program 8.19%
6. Interest on the National Debt 4.63%
7. Health and Human Services 2.22%
8. Transportation 2.05%

That represent 84.38% of the Budget. No other department comprises more than 1.48% of the budget. Therefore I'm going to focus on those eight categories because even eliminating all other segments of Government spending together would only eliminate about $554.5 Billion, less than half of the deficit. 

The Federal Budget can be divided into two types of spending according to how Congress appropriates the money: discretionary and mandatory. Discretionary spending refers to the portion of the budget which goes through the annual appropriations process each year. Mandatory spending does not go through appropriations.

Of those top eight spending areas only three fall in to the category of "Discretionary Spending". 

Department of Defense

Department of Health and Human Services

Department of Transportation

The other five are classified as "Mandatory Spending".

Just because something is in the Mandatory Spending category does not mean that it can't be reduced, just that it is a different process. (I'm still trying to figure out how that is done)

Of those the five categories that are in mandatory spending "Other Mandatory Spending" tends to get the most attention as a potential place to cut the budget because it is the most vague and includes many programs that are lumped together as Welfare. However it also includes such things as federal employee retirement and disability, unemployment insurance, some veterans’ benefits, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Supplemental Security Income (SSI), Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and the earned income tax credit (EITC).

As it turns out the "Other Mandatory Spending" bucket was subject to the largest budget cuts from 2009 to 2010, -15.2% (Around $102.3 Billion).

The Health and Human Services budget was reduced 1.7% (Around $1.3 Billion).

Those were the only categories among the top eight that went down from 2009 to 2010.

The Defense budget had the largest increase 2009 to 2010, +12.7% (Around $75 Billion). 

Social Security increased 4.9% (Around $31.7 Billion).

Medicare increased 6.6% (Around $28 Billion).

Medicaid increased 12.0% (Around $31 Billion).

Interest on the National Debt increased 18.0% (Around $25 Billion).

Department of Transportation increased 2.8% (Around $2 Billion).

So what do I mean when I say don't let anyone kid you? Just this. Anyone who says they have a plan for balancing the budget that does not raise taxes and that won't touch Social Security, DoD, Medicare, Medicaid or interest on the National Debt is full of it. Those five categories are 63.98% of the budget. To balance the budget while leaving those five intact and not raise taxes we would have to do everything else on 3.02% of the current budget. That's around $107.2 Billion to do the work that currently takes $1.279 Trillion.

So don't let anyone kid you. To balance the Budget, the DoD appropriation will have to be reduced, Revenue (Taxes) will have to increase. Realistically the entire Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid system is going to have to be examined and restructured. Because if we don't look at everything, all of the spending and all of the revenue, then all we are doing is arguing over who gets the spare change wedged in the cushions of the National Couch.

Seeking Input on Writing

Greetings Hive Mind. 

I’m cross-posting this to my Blog, Facebook, and a couple of other locations in hopes of getting maximum coverage. Does anyone have advice or go to sources regarding tone (voice) and scoping in writing? I’ve reached this question after several hours of staring at a blank screen and trying to figure out how to even begin with what I want to say. 

Here’s my dilemma. I feel like I need to add my voice to those who are trying to shine a light on just how serious things are at this point in history but I can't figure out where to start. 

You: 

“Things? What things? Can you be more specific?” 

Me: 

Sure, absolutely. The thing that I started out trying to write about today is the erosion of democracy in the United States and the ongoing efforts of the Republican party to keep changing the rules until they can lock in minority rule. Everything we are hearing from the Congressional January 6th committee indicates that the attempt to overturn the presidential election last year was more serious and more coordinated than anyone wanted to believe at the time, and that a large number of sitting lawmakers at the state and federal level are actively trying to downplay the severity and continuing to change the rules. 

Heather Cox Richardson continues to do an admirable job of tracking and summarizing reports from the committee and various news outlets.

Letters from an American January 2, 2022

Among the things that she cited today was a piece from the New York Times Editorial Board emphasizing that January 6th last year was the beginning, not the end, of the efforts to subvert the election process.

Every Day Is Jan. 6 Now (Paywall)

You:
“Ok, it looks like you just wrote a whole paragraph about how fragile our democratic process feels right now. So what’s the issue from a writing perspective?”

Me:
Let’s start with tone. What I just wrote is a fairly dry statement that I think the United States is in imminent danger of dropping below the minimum threshold of a functioning democracy. I included a couple of references to sources who are more credible and better writers than me. That's all well and good except that this is not something about which I can be, or want to be, dispassionate. I feel like this needs to be screamed from the rooftops. I can’t for the life of me figure out why this is getting less media coverage right now than tributes to John Madden. So how does one convey via the tone of writing “HEY!!!! Pay Attention!!! This is SERIOUS!!!” without actually resorting to overuse of caps and exclamation points? I suppose this goes to the larger question of how one can argue against the lunatic fringe without becoming (or sounding like) another lunatic fringe.

Then there is the issue of scope. Let’s suppose for a moment that I was successful in conveying my sense of urgency about the future of democracy and the rule of law. If you are still with me you have now spent several minutes reading about that issue and my struggles expressing it.

This means that for that same period of time you have probably not been thinking about the state of the pandemic; variants, boosters, vax deniers, super spreader events, and what is going to happen as more and more people decide that they are bored with Covid and want it to magically disappear. Of course, these topics are not unrelated since the entire response to Covid has been politicized from the outbreak. Our ability to respond rationally has been drastically hampered by politicians who are more concerned about making sure their opponents fail than making sure their constituents live. 

The same could be said of climate and environmental issues. We are seeing increasing numbers of extreme environmental events 
2021 Western Kentucky tornado - Wikipedia, 
Colorado Wildfires: What We Know - The New York Times (Paywall),
Cold, heat, fires, hurricanes, and tornadoes: The year in weather disasters (Paywall)
but any discussion of what it would take to move the needle dies before it even gets going. The people, companies, and governments that are in a position to do anything meaningful seem to be unwilling to begin the discussion until someone can demonstrate how to make saving the world profitable.

And least we forget, right here in the good old USA (the richest country in the world) we have a huge and rapidly growing portion of our population living at or below the poverty level and cut off from goods and services that the “mainstream” (read top 25%) consider basic necessities. We have a wealth gap the like of which has not been seen since the 1920s (the runup to the Great Depression)
Wealth concentration returning to ‘levels last seen during the Roaring Twenties,’ according to new research (Paywall).
We have a policing, court, and incarceration system that is driven by profit margins and occupancy percentages. We have people who have every reason to fear the very agencies that are supposed to protect them. We have a history of deeply rooted racism and racial inequality that we can’t even talk about for fear of offending some old white guys.

So, Yeah… Scope. All of the topics above, Climate Change, Pandemic, Democracy Hanging by a Thread, Social and Economic Inequity/Injustice, are vital and need immediate attention. And yet somehow this gets less airtime than Antonio Brown taking off his pads and walking out in the middle of a football game.

Which sort of brings me back around to my original question. Does anyone have any good resources on how to scope important topics so that they are manageable and how to set a tone that will get people to take serious matters seriously?

Minimum Wage Math

 Opening #3 (Meaning I’ve thrown away two entire versions of this post)

Who would have guessed it? The history of the minimum wage in the US is a fairly dry and appalling depressing topic. I thought that by looking at previous minimum wage increases I could come up with some simple math for what a reasonable minimum wage would be now. This, of course, is silly because as I’m sure everyone else already knows the minimum wage has nothing to do with math and everything to do with politics. (Maybe a little tiny bit to do with philosophy, but it’s mostly politics.)

As usual, I have ended up writing the opening last. After throwing out a lot of numbers, and a little history I finally reached something that passes for a conclusion and I’m moving it here. My take away from all the number-crunching that follows is that the current system of trying to negotiate static increases every few years does not work. We have watched it not work for 70 years. For the minimum wage to be a viable living wage it needs to be indexed to something real. Whether that index is based on median household income, median rent, some percentage of homeownership cost, I don’t know. I could see arguments for or against any of those. I could also see an argument that the indexing needs to be done at a state or local level to account for variation in the cost of living. What we can’t keep doing is saying “ok, the minimum wage is X, let's raise it to Y and that should be good enough, now go away and don’t bother us, after all, you should be grateful you are getting anything.” All that does is leave us in a perpetual cycle of falling farther and farther behind. If we look at minimum wage from the perspective of what it is right now and talk about increases in proportion to the current level we will never reach anything resembling a living wage. 

The problem with looking at things like pay from the point of view of percentage increases is that if a job or a person starts out behind or falls behind it (the job) or they (the person) can never catch up. The minimum wage is so substandard right now that a 100% increase still would not make it a living wage in many areas. 

When Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the first minimum wage bill into law in 1938 the country was struggling to get out of a deep depression and I would imagine almost any wage looked better than nothing, even $0.25/hr. The fact that Congress increased it by 20% in 1939 shows that the politicians of the time knew that $0.25/hr was too low. The 1945 amendment increasing the minimum wage to $0.40/hr was essentially a maintenance measure and did nothing to address the low starting point. The 1949 amendment jumping from $0.40/hr to $0.75hr was another correction almost on par with the 1939 boost. The 1949 amendment took the minimum wage to a point that one could argue it was a viable living wage. If congress had included an automatic 4.6%-4.8% annual increases from then on we would now have a minimum wage in the $18-$20/hr range and the country would be a very different place. In 1949 I don’t think anyone would have believed what would happen to the cost of housing and the median income of the next 70 years. I’m guessing that even now some people (maybe even many people) would still balk at the idea of setting an annual increase of 4.8% or even 4.5%. However, if you look at the history that is exactly what we would need if we want to use percentage increases rather than indexing to the current cost of living.

I hope it is fairly well understood that in this day and age a person working 40 hours a week for minimum wage is hard-pressed to survive, let alone support a household. The current debate seems to revolve around whether someone should be able to live on a full-time minimum wage job. This was not always a question. Franklin D. Roosevelt was very clear in his stance on the minimum wage. He said, 

“In my Inaugural I laid down the simple proposition that nobody is going to starve in this country. It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country.” 

He didn’t even use the term “minimum”. No business should pay less than a living wage. Seems pretty clear. Whether the minimum wage met that standard at its inception is debatable. Even in 1938 $0.25/hr was definitely on the low side. The first point of comparison I’ve found for getting a direct comparison of the minimum wage to household income or cost of living is the 1940 census. By 1940 the minimum wage had been increased to $0.30/hr. The median household income in 1940 was $1,725/year or $0.83/hr. That makes the minimum wage just over 36% of the median household income.

The minimum wage hit its highest point in comparison to median household income in 1950. The amendment of 1949 went into effect in January of 1950 raising the minimum wage from $0.40/hr to $0.75/hr. The Median Household income reported in the 1950 census was $2990 or $1.44/hr. So the 1950 correction made the minimum wage 52.17% of the Median Household income. In 1950 the median rent was $42/month. That’s roughly ⅓ (32.3%) of a full-time minimum wage income for a month. The Median home value was $7,400. Roughly 4.75 times a full-time minimum wage income for a year. I think a strong case can be made that this constituted a living wage. No one was going to get rich on $0.75/hr, but you could pay the rent and eat.

Contrast that with 2010 (the last year for which we have census data). In 2009 the US minimum wage went up to $7.25/hr (where it still sits today ). The Median Household Income in 2010 was $49,445. This was actually down more than $5,000 from 2000 due to the 2008 subprime mortgage crash and resulting recession. This jumped the minimum wage all the way up to 30.5% of Median income which was a huge recovery from 2000 when it had been down to an all time low of 19.47%. In 2010 the median rent was reported as $901/month. That is almost 72% of a full-time minimum wage income for a month. The median home value was $221,800. That is roughly 14.7 times a full-time minimum wage income for a year.

Absent 2020 census data, I resorted to Wikipedia. Per Wikipedia, the 2020 Median Household income is $78,500. The minimum wage was still $7.25/hr, so working a minimum wage job 40 hours a week would have earned you $15,080 for the year. That puts us at a new all time low of 19.21% of the 2020 Median Household income. To reach the 52.17% threshold of 1950 the 2020 minimum wage would need to be $19.69/hr. (Just under $41,000/year). 

So how did we go from minimum wage being 52.17% of household median income in 1950 to 19.21% in 2020? 

The basic history of minimum wage amendments is relatively easy to track down. The department of labor has a good summary.

https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/minimum-wage/history

https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/minimum-wage/history/chart

Since its inception in 1938 the federal minimum wage law has been amended eleven times. The amendments have come at inconsistent intervals and have had wildly variable impacts. For instance, the 1961 amendment had more provisions dealing with expanding who the minimum wage covered than increasing the amount. Seven of the amendments included increases that were phased in over 2 to 4 year periods. Because of these variables, it is hard to talk about a “typical” increase. The overall trajectory is one of steady decline barely slowed by amendments that are long overdue and inadequate to make up for time and inflation. The best method I have come up with for looking at the historical movement has been to consider the entire increase for a given amendment amortized as if it had taken effect evenly across the time from the final increase of the previous amendment to the full roll out of the current amendment. 

Consider the examples of the 1977 and 1989 amendments.

• The 1977 amendment increased the minimum wage from $2.30 in January 1976 to $3.35 in January 1981. The overall increase was $1.05 over a period of 5.01 years. Starting at $2.30 this would be achieved with an annual increase of 7.80%. This was the largest increase in terms of annual percentage since the 1949 amendment.
• The 1989 amendment increased the minimum wage from $3.35 in January 1981 to $4.25 in April 1991. The overall increase was $0.90 over a period of 10.25 years. Starting at $3.35 this would be achieved with an annual increase of 2.35%. This was the smallest increase ever in terms of annual percentage.

Using this method we get the annual increases in the table above ranging from 2.35% to 20%. If we apply the same method over the 70.8 year history of the minimum wage from the time of its inception in 1938 to the last increase in 2009 we end up with an overall average annual increase of 4.87%. 

If we apply those percentages to the current interval since the last increase in July of 2009 (call it 12 years to make calculations easier) we see potential minimum wages ranging from $9.58/hr using the 1989 amendment to $64.64/hr using the 1939 amendment. If we apply the 4.87% average increase to that 12 year gap the minimum wage in July 2021 would be $12.83/hr.

Does this mean that if we increase the minimum wage to $12.83/hr this summer and implement annual increases of 4.87% everything is fixed? No, not really. This is where the inadequacy of the increases over the last 70 years come into play. If the 4.87% increase had been applied consistently since 2009 the minimum wage in 2020 would have been $12.23/hr. That’s still only 32.41% of the median household income (from Wikipedia), nowhere near the 52.17% standard set in 1950. What would we have to do to reach 52.17%? If we accept the Wikipedia estimate of $78,500/year as the median household income in 2020 the minimum wage would need to have been $19.69/hr in 2020. To go from $0.75/hr in 1950 to $19.69/hr in 2020 would have required annual increases of 4.78%.

“But wait”, I hear you say. “I thought you said that the average increase over the entire history of the minimum wage was 4.87% and that if we applied that up to 2021 we would only be at $12.83?”

Yes, you heard right. Welcome to the joys of compound returns and the relative impact of starting value and compounding periods. 

• Scenario A) Starting in 1938 at $0.25, increasing by 4.87% annually gets us to $7.25 in 2009 and $12.23 in 2020. ($12.83 in 2021)
• Scenario B) Starting in 1950 at $0.75, increasing at 4.78% annually gets us to $11.78 in 2009 and $19.69 in 2020. ($20.63 in 2021)

This is also why I refer to the 1949 amendment as a correction. The annualized increase in 1949 was 15.91%. I don’t think even the FDR or Truman administrations would have suggested that the minimum wage needed to go up that much every year. It needed a large boost to get to a viable level from which it could have been maintained. The fact that it was not maintained is the failure of the subsequent administrations.

But where does that leave us? As I was writing this when I reached this point I had thrown out a lot of numbers, and a little history and offered no opinion about what I think the minimum wage should be. This is what led me to the conclusion that piecemeal increases will continue to be ineffective and that given the seeming unwillingness to institute a standard annual increase, we need to find a way to make the minimum wage reflect the realities of what it costs to live.

When I first started looking over the history of the amendments it seemed fairly clear that the minimum wage has rarely had any champions in Washington. Since the end of the Truman administration even at times that Democrats have controlled both houses of congress and the white house, they have been unable or unwilling to maintain the minimum wage at anything close to the 1950 level. The Carter administration made some headway in the late 70s, but not nearly enough to make up for the losses in the 50s and 60s let alone offset the impending disaster of the Reagan years.

I have not done any real research on whether there have been other attempts at amendments that have failed. I'm sure there are stories to be found.

Was the 1996 amendment (the only one ever passed by a Republican congress) a ploy to push Bob Dole ahead of Clinton in the '96 presidential election?

When Democrats regained control of the house and senate in 1986 did they pass an amendment that Reagan vetoed? Was there a threat or promise of a veto that Democrats chose not to challenge?

The biggest question though is: What are congressional Democrats and the Biden administration going to do right now? By every standard I can find the current minimum wage is the worst it has been since its inception. There is no guarantee that Democrats will be able to retain control of the house and senate in 2022. Given that, it is crucial that they act decisively while they can.

Privilege from the inside. Part The Last of a multi-part series.

Part Last

In which Darrin gives up on the original outline and just tries to wrap this up.

If you have been reading this series from the beginning you may remember that part 7 was supposed to be

“In which Darrin realizes that the existence of racial and gender privilege is so obvious and so ubiquitous that he is dumbstruck and ashamed that it took him so long to clue in.”.

When I started working on this series I set out to write it from the point of view of my own experience and steer clear of anything that might seem like commentary or judgment of other peoples' actions or beliefs. I’ve realized that I just can’t do it. I can’t maintain that approach and tone. In the time since I published Part 6 over a year ago, I have been unable to get more than a few lines written without getting sidetracked by one appalling event after another. With the proliferation of increasingly overt racism and violence against BIPoC and those who try to support them, I can’t find that non-judgemental voice. 

I remain torn because I know from personal experience how hard it is to get past the knee jerk defensive reaction. My whole objective was to try to show, as gently as possible, the kinds of advantages that I, as a white man, took for granted most of my life and hope that those realizations would ring true for others and encourage them to think about their own situations. I never expected to convince or convert throngs. At best I was hoping that I might encourage a few people to consider that it isn't too late to examine our viewpoints and that we must keep evolving.

Image via Ryan D. Wheelz

I hope that we are reaching a point that we can stop debating whether White Privilege or Male Privilege exists. I hope it is becoming too obvious to ignore. After watching an armed mob of white men occupy the Michigan capitol with no consequences while unarmed protestors nationwide are met with overwhelming (and far too often lethal) force I really can’t believe that anyone really buys the notion that White people and BIPoC are treated the same in this country. White Privilege exists. White Privilege has been central to the United States throughout its existence. We can’t change that. We can’t make our history anything other than what it is. The ONLY thing we can do is acknowledge reality and start working to change it.

Acknowledging that White Privilege exists is not saying that we have not worked hard.
Acknowledging that White Privilege exists is not saying that things have always been easy.
Acknowledging that White Privilege exists is acknowledging that if we are white, and particularly if we are white men in the United States, then whatever we have achieved would have been much harder (if not impossible) if we had tried to do it as black people (particularly as women of color).
Furthermore, acknowledging that White Privilege exists is acknowledging that we can’t fundamentally understand what it means to be on the other side.

I am white. Like "fish-belly" white. Like "translucent" white. I know a whole bunch of black people. I can NEVER pretend to know the kind of racism they deal with every freakin' day of their lives.

- Jim Tompkins MacLaine

I think it is fairly well established at this point that discussing White Privilege is not comfortable. It can be a hard pill to swallow. It took me, personally, 20 years to choke it down. BUT... Some very smart people have put a great deal of work into getting past the defensive reaction and trying to show how to move on to something productive. This is another reason I don’t feel the need to finish my version of understanding white privilege. What I have been trying to do has already been done, and done better than I am capable of. Don’t take my word for any of it. Go to reputable historians who have done the research and have the sources and citations to back it up. Here are just a few examples of white and black authors talking about this very topic.

Robin DiAngelo

White Fragility  (Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism)

Heather Cox Richardson

Letters from an American
How the South Won the Civil War: (Oligarchy, Democracy, and the Continuing Fight for the Soul of America)
Wounded Knee (Party Politics and the Road to an American Massacre)

Ibram X. Kendi

How to Be an Antiracist

Carol Anderson

White Rage

privilege

[priv-uh-lij, priv-lij]

1. a right, immunity, or benefit enjoyed only by a person beyond the advantages of most:
2. a special right, immunity, or exemption granted to persons in authority or office to free them from certain obligations or liabilities:
3. a grant to an individual, corporation, etc., of a special right or immunity, under certain conditions.
4. the principle or condition of enjoying special rights or immunities.

Coronavirus Math, Updated

This is an update to my post from March 21st,
http://zogprime.blogspot.com/2020/03/coronavirus-math-and-our-future.html

In the interest of not burying the lead, I’ll start by saying that we are still in a very bad place.
We are not doing enough to slow the rate of spread, and we are headed for a nightmare scenario.
If the United States can’t get the rate of new infections below 1% daily we will exceed a million deaths nationwide by January or February 2021.
The US now has over 1% of the total population with confirmed cases. The growth rate for new cases, or Daily Rate of Spread (DRS), is hovering around 2%. At 2% the time to double the number of cases is a fraction over 35 days. [1]
At that rate, we will hit roughly 5% of the population with confirmed cases by the end of September, 10% by early November, 20% by mid-December, and 40% by mid-late January. At that density of infection, the entire country will hit or exceed 100% of the available hospital capacity, with many areas over 200%.
https://projects.propublica.org/graphics/covid-hospitals
Phrased in the terms used in that article we will hit 20% within the first 9 months of the outbreak and 40% within the first 12 months.

When I published the original post the US was still under 25,000 confirmed cases, but the Daily Rate of Spread (DRS) in the US was over 40% and we were just days away from breaking 100,000 cases. I ran the numbers are various DRS to try to illustrate the severity of the situation. Any DRS in double digits would be disastrous. By early April the national DRS was below 10% and falling thanks largely to social distancing, quarantine, and mask orders. In spite of that, the US broke 1,000,000 confirmed cases in late April. By early May the DRS was below 2%, and in early June briefly dropped below 1%.

During the first week of June, many states (Particularly those with Trump loyalist governors) decided to declare victory and start re-opening. June 15th was the last day we saw a sub 1% DRS. Since then the DRS has slowly been climbing and broke through 2% on July 1st.

In March, starting under 25,000 cases had the US managed a DRS of 2% and a doubling rate of 35 days we would have had a realistic shot at containment. The US would still be under 250,000 cases with the 1,000,000 case mark over 4 months away and hospitals able to keep up.

From where we are now a DRS of 2% is a disaster. Right now the mortality rate when you compare deaths to new cases for the day is at an all-time low. July 10th saw 72,311 new confirmed cases and only 826 deaths or 1.1%. That is an artificially low number that reflects the case rate 2-3 weeks earlier, but as such, it can be considered a best-case scenario. If you combine a 40% infection rate with a 1.1% mortality rate and plug in a population of 330,000,000 you have 132 million people infected and 1.452 million deaths by mid to late January.

Let me restate that. At the current growth rate, and with the absolute, most optimistic, artificially deflated mortality rate I can come up with we lose almost a million and a half people by early next year. If you use the global mortality rate of 4% we are looking at over 5 million dead by January.

Most of the remaining news is also bad. The early spike in COVID-19 cases was centered around a few large outbreaks. Mostly in the New York/New Jersey area. When the northeastern US started to get its outbreak under control the numbers dropped rapidly. The current surge of cases is spread across the country with dozens of hotspots or potential hotspots. A concerted effort in Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, or Phoenix will not have the impact that the “all hands on deck” in New York had.
http://www.gregorybufithis.com/2020/07/03/the-trillion-dollar-question-why-are-covid-cases-increasing-in-the-us-while-deaths-are-decreasing-the-answer-is-simple-simpsons-paradox/

My conclusion remains largely unchanged from what I said in March…
Are we overreacting? No. If anything we are still underreacting. At the current DRS, even the current mortality rate will be devastating. As hospitals are stressed beyond capacity the mortality rate will only increase. If we don’t get out ahead of this and contain the spread millions will die. That’s not hype, that’s not alarmism, that’s math.

[1]
Doubling rate calculated using
log (2) / log (1+x) where x is the rate of increase.
E.g. for x = 2%:
log (2) / log (1+.02) = 35.003

Say Their Names

Say their names. Say them out loud.

David McAtee. 6/1/2020 

They were all human beings. They all had stories. 

George Floyd. 5/25/2020

They all had dreams. They should all still be alive.

Michael Ramos. 4/24/2020

Some were heroes, working on the front lines of a Pandemic.

Breonna Taylor. 3/12/2020

Their lives were all cut short 

Ahmaud Aubrey. 2/23/2020

because we exist in a society that places a higher value on some lives than others.

Atatiana Jefferson. 10/12/2019

Some of them were in their own homes 

Botham Jean. 9/6/2018

minding their own business,

Andrew Finch. 12/28/2017

when their lives were taken. Say their names.

Bijan Ghaisar. 11/17/2017

Some of them had criminal records.

Armando Frank. 10/20/2017

Some of them could not hear what the police were saying. 

Madgiel Sanchez 9/19/2017

That doesn’t mean they deserved to die.

Charles Kinsey. 7/18/2016

Some were in their cars.

Philando Castile. 7/6/2016

Some were in police custody or already in prison.

Sandra Bland. 7/13/2015

That doesn’t mean they did not deserve to live.

Freddie Gray. 4/19/2015

Some were playing in the park.

Tamir Rice. 11/22/2014

Say their names.

Laquan McDonald. 10/20/2014

Some were men of large stature.

Michael Brown. 8/9/2014

Is being big a capital crime?

Eric Garner. 7/17/2014

Some were children or teens. We will never know what they could have accomplished.

Trayvon Martin. 2/26/2012

Some had a history of mental illness.

Elliott Williams. 10/27/2011

That should not be punishable by death.

Say their names.

Many of their killers were acquitted or never charged.

Say their names.

In some cases their killers were charged and convicted.

It didn’t bring them back.

It didn’t stop the killing.

Say their names.

We have to remember and we have to do better. These names are only a drop in the bucket. For every name that we know how many more are there for whom there were no cameras, so they were quietly forgotten?

We have to keep saying their names so they are never forgotten. We have to keep saying their names so that we never think of them as statistics.

Even more, we have to keep saying their names until we can stop adding names. The only way that we can honor these people is by changing the culture that killed them. Say their names.