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Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 29, 2025

I think Hood is underrated, but only to the extent that he was merely a bad general and not in contention for the worst the Confederacy had to offer. What frustrates me with a lot of Civil War discourse, especially online, is the same thing I mentioned earlier about judging actions with knowledge of the outcome in place. Yes, Hood's actions look bad when we know they were unsuccessful. The problem is that, at the time, it wasn't obvious that these actions were worse than any of the realistic alternatives.

To put the whole issue into proper context: In the spring and summer of 1864, the overall Confederate strategy was hold off the Union until the November elections, in the hope that war weariness would usher in a new administration with a mandate to make some kind of deal. To this end, it wasn't critical that they score any major victories, but it was critical that they prevent the Union from getting any of their own. Ever since losing Chattanooga the Joe Johnston playbook had been to stake out a defensive position, only to abandon it after getting outflanked. He'd given Davis repeated assurances that he'd hold behind this river or whatever, then not like his position and retreat. After several weeks of this Sherman is on the outskirts of Atlanta, a city the Confederacy can't afford to lose, and Johnston is talking about giving it up.

At this point Davis, who didn't like Johnston to begin with, is getting fed up and is probably getting deja vu about the Peninsula campaign, where Johnston did the same thing around Richmond, which probably would have fallen if Lee hadn't taken over and changed strategy. So Johnston gets cashiered in favor of Hood, who has a reputation for fighting and will at least make an attempt at fending off Sherman and saving Atlanta. Hood, true to his word, launched a series of ill-fated assaults against Sherman that do nothing to stave off the inevitable and only serve to inflict casualties he can't afford to lose. Buffs like to argue that Johnston would have at least kept his army intact, but an intact army is useless if it isn't going to defend anything, let alone something as critical as Atlanta. There was pressure from the president, the state legislatures, and the public to do something, and Hood at least did something. I'm not going to comment on whether what he did was ideal because I'm not an expert on battlefield tactics, but the buffs who criticize Hood aren't criticizing his execution.

So now, to get closer to answering your question, we get to the fall, after Atlanta is in Union hands and Sherman is aiming to push to Savannah. Hood didn't attempt to stop him because he knew that the endeavor was pointless. He could have slowed the march but not stopped it; he would have fallen farther and farther back, desertions and casualties increasing with every passing mile, and there would have been nothing left of his army by the time Sherman got to the ocean. Furthermore, there would have been no reason for Thomas to keep his troops in Tennessee. He could have either invaded Alabama unopposed, or joined up with Sherman to give him 120,000 men to Hood's 40,000. So Hood made the decision to move toward the Alabama line, cutting off Sherman's communications. This would purportedly compel Sherman to leave Atlanta and divide his army, sending one wing to protect the threat to Tennessee and the other to hunt down Hood, who would get the opportunity to fight the remaining forces in Georgia on the ground of his choosing.

Sherman did indeed give chase, and Hood found the area he wanted to give battle, but Sherman showed up with his entire army, which was more than Hood could handle. At this point, Hood was stuck; if he took up a position, Sherman could do the same, and hold him there while Thomas came down from Nashville to hold him while he turned toward Savannah. Or he could hold him while he sent Thomas into Alabama, before turning toward the sea and forcing Hood to give chase, which wouldn't do anything but waste Hood's time. So instead he decided to give up Georgia and head north to Kentucky, hoping he'd have better luck where he wasn't at such a numerical disadvantage. If nothing else, it would keep the Union out of Alabama.

It's worth also noting that the Confederate army was having serious problems with desertion at this point, largely driven by the hopelessness of the situation. The buffs who talk about how Johnston would have at least preserved his army don't realize that no one wants to spend weeks putting his ass on the line in rear guard actions defending land you intend on giving up in a few hours without any immediate prospects for taking the initiative. On the other hand, if you go to Tennessee where you can win a few battles and keep the Yanks out of Alabama, there's much less temptation to desert. If nothing else, it might force Sherman to pursue and backtrack out of Georgia.

For Hood's part, he was wildly overambitious, thinking he could march straight into Kentucky, replenish his army with locals, and force Sherman to abandon Georgia to keep him from crossing the Ohio or, alternatively, that he could march from there into Virginia and hit Grant in the rear, crushing his army. Fantastical, yes, but at this point in the war, the only way to keep morale up and preserve any chance of winning is to go for a knockout blow. Even defeating Schoefield would have been enough to effect a short-term reorganization of Union priorities. Again, we can argue about whether poor tactical decisions led to Hood's downfall and the destruction of The Army of Tennessee, but criticism of Hood isn't that he blundered away good opportunities; to the contrary, if anything good is said about him it's that he was a competent corps commander under Lee but was too aggressive to command an army. His actions were all failures, but it's not like there were a ton of obvious alternatives.

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 23, 2025

Never Meet Your Heroes, Even Posthumously

When I was a kid, I discovered Harlan Ellison on Sci-Fi Buzz during his Harlan Ellison's Watching segments. They were my favorite segments, and I was crushed when an episode didn't have one. I would have been about 10 years old at this time. Luckily enough, they are all still available on Harlan's youtube. This one in particular I remember, being a comic card collector in middle school, along with most of the boys in my boy scout troop.

For me at that age, there was a lot to look up to in Harlan. He was witty, funny, charismatic, and never gave up on his childhood passions. More over he seems important and respected, his awards always preceding his name. I thought he was simply the best as a young nerdling. But I never read his stories. I can't even remember wanting to. Maybe I wasn't there yet, in terms of reading level. I honestly have no memory of what I was reading at that age. I do recall that by the time I was a freshman in highschool, I had read ample Ray Bradbury collections, and had been dabbling in Iain M Banks. For whatever reason I never circled back to Harlan until much later, picking up a ebook copy of I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream and being blown away by every story in it, especially Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes.

Over the last month, I've been working through The Essential Ellison: A 35 Year Retrospective. It's completely changed my view of the man, and not for the better. The tome really lays bare how autobiographical much of Ellison's short stories are. The barely disguised self loathing, the tireless hatred he feels for all of humanity, but seemingly goys above all others, and the immaturity disguised as worldliness. Qualities I admired as a child watching him on Sci-Fi Buzz I'm profoundly glad I did not grow up to emulate as an adult.

The facts are Harlan's father died when he was very young, he was constantly in and out of trouble, he ran away from home, he worked a smattering of tough sounding blue collar jobs, he spent 2 years in the army, he was expelled from college, he was married 5 times, divorced 4, and he had no children.

Through his fiction, you further learn that he was, imagines, or romanticizes, being the only jewish boy in a small Ohio town relentless victimized by it's shitty irredeemable goy population. He loathes goys, and it rears it's head in story after story after story. He hates their dumb kids, their dumb churches, their dumb music, their dumb bowling leagues, you name it, he hates it. And he hates that they're all bigger and stronger than him at 5'3". Does he really feel this way, deep down? Who's to say. But after 1000 pages, probably 500 of which riffed on that theme, I'm left with the impression some part of him must. Often cloaked in humor, or the virtue of the civil rights movement of his day. But in his fiction, he seems less interested in the humanity of Southern Blacks, and more interested in the inhumanity of the goy.

He returns to his childhood repeatedly in his fiction, and how much better things were then, when radio plays lit his imagination on fire and his father was still alive. This is a strain of stunted growth I too suffer from, as my grumpy rants about video games will attest. I find ample share of compatriots in this regard. But something about Harlan's inability to take on the masculine burden of supporting and raising a stable family casts a darker tint to his nostalgia.

Harlan Ellison's entire public persona was a fraud. Or at least, in many of his writings, his fear that he was a fraud came through. Stories about a 4 times divorced celebrity manufacturing a shameful charismatic and funny public persona to hide how much he hated everyone. Stories about a shameless womanizer who has worked all sorts of rough and tumble blue collar jobs... but only for a few weeks so he could say he did. In reality he (I mean his character of course) has soft hands only barely acquainted with manual labor. Which reminds you Harlan the author never draws on all the odd jobs he claims to have had in his fiction, beyond name dropping them. Lastly, multiple stories where a four times divorced main character convinces his first wife to get an abortion she doesn't want, resulting in her emotional destruction which he treats as a personal offense to himself.

Are all these details that sound curiously autobiographical true? Or angles Harlan plays up for want of something to do when seated at his typewriter? At this point, with enough dots connected, I suspect the worst.

After making it through The Essential Ellison, I'm hurt. Hurt that someone I looked up to so much as a kid was in reality a hateful, developmentally stunted man. And I mean emotionally, not physically, though I suppose there was that too. A man who for 35 years picked his wounds in public, on the page. He kept them fresh, knowing it's what put food on the table. I feel sorry for him, but I also sincerely wish I hadn't known all that. Ah well.

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 2, 2025

We still do have a First Amendment, it still applies to public officials, and Brandenburg v. Ohio is still the controlling precedent. Unless Newsom says more or less "Come on out right now and wreck the place", he's reasonably safe from prosecution. And he's not dumb enough to step over the line. (Trump might be dumb enough to try to prosecute anyway, but probably not)

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 2, 2025

A key factor is how productivity improvements are handled by legacy companies vs new entrants. The digital revolution probably didn’t change much for Ohio Widgets PLC, with its large unionised workforce and complex compliance requirements. For Shenzhen Widgets LLC, on the other hand, digitisation is essential for its ability to take customised CNC machined orders from anywhere in the world, translate them into Mandarin, and have them shipped anywhere in the world in 5 days.

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 2, 2025

Have you looked at the projected electoral college map after the 2030 census?

https://vhdshf2oms2wcnsvk7sdv3so.blob.core.windows.net/thearp-media/images/PEP_Estimates_2023_2030proj.max-1000x1000.png

Now look at 538 and try to figure out what path a D has to win here? Florida has been well lost (RDS doesn't get enough credit IMO) as has Ohio. So even if the D candidate wins the "blue wall" state and Nevada they still lose!

Of course, a lot can happen in 5 years. GA or NC might start to be in play, but even still, the Dems have to ring up a perfect set of victories with no margin for error. And their bench is not exactly exciting either: Newsom, AOC, Pete. Gretch is a good choice, which is why they probably won't chose her.

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 2, 2025

Makes perfect sense to me, AI is a national-level issue. Really it's global, a server farm in Ohio can take jobs off Uzbeks and Bolivians, not to mention Floridians. Makes sense to regulate nationally.

Plus, would you really want California regulating a critical sector of the economy?

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 26, 2025

Pick a suburb in Ohio and compare it to one in Florida or Texas.

What if you compare it to one in say Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi or New Mexico?

Granted, I don't live on that side of the Atlantic Ocean but Florida and Texas have never seemed to me to be modal examples of "the South".

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 26, 2025

The (rural) South has, if anything, done better than most of the rest of the country over the last few decades. The entire Sunbelt has no shortage of brand new construction suburbs and schools and infrastructure (even some factories!) while the Rust Belt, when I've visited, has, at best, maintained the infrastructure from most of a century ago. Pick a suburb in Ohio and compare it to one in Florida or Texas.

Air conditioning has really changed things.

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 12, 2025

EDIT: I no longer endorse this post. USA Today and NPR for Northern, Central and Eastern Kentucky have both run stories that confirm that the Jackson, Kentucky NWS office was staffed the night of the tornado:

Fahy said Jackson workers were called in May 16 work the overnight shift to coordinate with emergency management personnel and issue warnings throughout the night. The Jackson office had a full staff that he described as an “all-hands-on-deck” situation due to the extreme storm.

“The deaths were not attributable to the staffing cuts,” he said. “Everybody was there last night. We had a full team.”

In a statement, the weather service said the Jackson office had additional staffing and support from neighboring offices through the weekend.

As USA TODAY reported before the Kentucky storms, the weather service has had to scramble to cover vital shifts. For the first time in decades, not all forecast offices have “24/7” staffing, according to the weather service union.

I still believe it is irresponsible to leave offices unstaffed, even if there is some ability to move neighboring employees around when they're expecting storms, but this is much less bad than I initially believed. I think I'm going to take a break from the Motte for a bit. I do love this community, but I have not been doing a very good job contributing to it.

On May 15th, the New York Times ran a story about how DOGE cuts had left parts of Eastern Kentucky vulnerable while it was under moderate threats for extreme weather:

Tom Fahy, the legislative director for the union that represents Weather Service employees, said the office in Jackson, Ky., was one of four that no longer had a permanent overnight forecaster after hundreds of people left the agency as a result of cuts ordered by the Department of Government Efficiency, the initiative led by Elon Musk that is reshaping the federal bureaucracy. (emphasis mine)

This morning, May 17th, it became apparent that eastern Kentucky had been hit by an overnight tornado that killed dozens.

I was honestly speechless when I read that.

This is what London, Kentucky looks like after the tornado. To quote someone who put it much more eloquently than I can:

Of all the disasters I’ve studied, tornadoes scare me the most.

They come with little warning and can erase entire communities in minutes — even seconds.

There’s no four-day lead-up to prepare like we often have with major hurricanes, and the winds of these storms can far exceed the most violent tropical cyclones.

In those few moments before one hits, especially if you’re sleeping, you’re at the mercy of your local weather station.

If someone is watching, they can issue a warning in those critical minutes before it’s too late.

Those few minutes after an emergency alert is issued are the difference between life and death.

[...]

Tornado warnings were delayed because of reduced staff. Those critical moments — a midnight warning to your phone waking you up, giving you precious seconds to find shelter — came too late for some.

My political stance has been evolving, but I'd describe myself as a state capacity libertarian.

To me disaster preparedness and relief are obvious, bread and butter, parts of the federal government. Sure we do stupid, wasteful things like give people flood insurance that lets them build and rebuild houses in the same vulnerable spot over and over again, when we should probably just heavily incentivize them to rebuild in a less risky area. Sure, with any given disaster there's going to be criticisms about how Biden did this or Bush did that. But I've always felt mostly positive about my tax dollars that go to disaster relief and preparedness.

I've had a growing sense of unease over the last few months as I saw reports of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announcing Trump administration plans to end FEMA, and reports about National Weather Service cuts back in April. I'm gutted that the easy predictions of these moves leading to unnecessary deaths has come true.

A part of me had hoped that Trump and Musk's Department of Government Efficiency would cut a lot of genuinely unnecessary spending from the government. When it was drag shows in Ecuador, even I as a rather Trump-skeptical person could admit that even a broken clock is right twice a day. But it was also clear to me that they were cutting with a chainsaw, not a scalpel. The images of Elon waving a chainsaw at CPAC feel a lot more hollow now. The man has blood on his hands. 27 people are dead in Kentucky because DOGE and Trump thought that it was "more efficient" to just let people die, instead of keeping overnight forecasters on staff.

Back in 2020, FEMA estimated the value of a statistical life at $7,500,000. By that standard, when doing the cost-benefit analysis the government bean counters are supposed to value 27 deaths as a loss of $202.5 million. I wonder how much it costs the government to staff permanent overnight forecasters in eastern Kentucky?

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 21, 2025

It's noisy, but more critically, it's also a signal that's very sensitive to other stuff. I'm not very optimistic about Ames, for example, but despite not being a disparate impact suit itself, I'm hard-pressed to think of any conclusion but a punt on the underlying circuit split that leaves the rate of disparate impact suits unchanged. There's some cy pres stuff that could have an even bigger impact on settlements in general.

Beyond that, a lot of my position is about the policy, itself. The paper matters, both as something that discourages behaviors well before a court case happens, and in acting as cover for a wide variety of other behaviors that would be legally questionable. Maybe that's not something that we can bet on -- a Dem admin blanket-reversing every Trump EO is possible and wouldn't necessarily mean a reversion to 2024 disparate impact rules -- but it seems more relevant.

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 5, 2025

Outside of Cali, Hawaii, Massachusetts and the NYC and DC metros the shall issue permits are genuinely shall issue- even Chicago has shall issue CCW. The biggest states are California, Texas, Florida, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio- and other than NYC(and that means not upstate) and California CCW permits in those places are available to any law abiding citizen who wants one.

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 5, 2025

As Abraham Lincoln once said:

At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it? Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant to step the ocean and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest, with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not by force take a drink from the Ohio or make a track on the Blue Ridge in a trial of a thousand years.

At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer: If it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us; it cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen we must live through all time or die by suicide.

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 28, 2025

Thanks for the kind words! Ah, Central Festival, I went there a few times- I stayed closer to some of the other malls but made the trip out to that one once in a while. Super fun. Small world!

I read your post about India when you posted it yesterday. I have very little knowledge of the country but the situation sounds pretty dire from your post. If I read correctly, it looks like the right wing Hindu party announced a census. Does this not benefit the right wing Hindu upper caste? If not, why did they agree to do a census? I think that you're opposed to the census because it will be used by the lower castes to demand reparations or better treatment from the right? (Sorry if I'm way off base with anything here)

Though I know very little about India, I do work in ecommerce and lots of people are eying India as an alternative manufacturing base post China tariff apocalypse, is this something that people in India are aware of? Would you see this as a benefit to your country, bringing in jobs and money, or not really because they are low paying jobs with long hours? (In my mind, the manufacturing is what built China from dirt poor to where they are today so I don't see it as a negative but feel free to tell me I'm wrong)

China

I didn't mention China in my original post at all because I haven't been there. But I believe they've grown massively in the past 2 or 3 decades. I imagine people feel great about themselves and their prospects. I'd love to have someone make an effortpost (or even a short post) about the way China would fit in with my analysis of things.

Plenty of small towns are employed by one or two giant factories or industries, these people are at gods mercy if the owner packs up shop and leaves.

This is pretty true. The fates of entire cities in Ohio, Kentucky, Eastern PA etc definitely operate this way

I was in Chiang Mai, and it seemed dead

So fascinated by this take! I found it super exciting and not dead at all. Then again I grew up in the midwestern rust belt so my standard for dead has to be way lower than someone from India.

Small-Scale Question Sunday for April 27, 2025

Hardline Religious conservatives hard - 21 with exception for marriage Moderate Religous conservatives - 18 Centrists/liberals - they will look at Europe and see that the world didn't ended and probably say that it is 16(.)

So, let me get this straight:

Hardline religious conservatives in Congress, many hailing from states like or constituencies resembling Alabama and Arkansas and Ohio (16) are going to set the age at 21, while the liberals from California (18) and New York (17) are going to set it at 16.

Full list here. The plurality is 16, though we all seem pretty comfortable enforcing CP laws built around 18, and you have most of the big important states (CA, NY, TX, VA, FL) higher than 16. There's actually not much of a pattern to Red/Blue: FL and CA are both 18, TX and NY are both 17, Massachusetts and Alabama are both 16. Either this issue is simply not one actually considered,

Fighting the hypo a little: if we were to see a movement form to actually pass such a law, it would undoubtedly need some passionate movement behind it, and the passion right now comes from the "SHE WAS JUST A 28 YEAR OLD BABY YOU SICK FUCK" age-gap end of things. We'd need a movement similar to Prohibition: an alliance of women and Southern Baptists. I could genuinely imagine a scenario where we get some kind of insane age-gap law that took the Romeo and Juliet law approach and tried to set the "true" age of consent at 25, with a R+J rule set at 5 years and an exception for marriage. Feminists call it a law against exploiting young women (sub rosa: against young women stealing husbands!), the Qanon caucus calls it an Epstein law, the rump-remnant of the Evangelicals is happy with any law that both serves to restrict fornication and inserts the government back into sexual morality, a bunch of IdPol types on both sides find ways to make it about protecting preferred races against the exploitation of disfavored races. Zoomer online discourse around age gaps is truly insane, older voters are broadly more conservative and will relish inserting themselves into young people's sex lives. Only 8% of couples have an age gap bigger than ten years.

That's how I could see it happening.

Closer to your hypo, if everyone for some reason was forced to vote on it tomorrow, I think we'd land on 18 with a 4 year R+J, and at least at first blush without time to propagandize we wouldn't see much partisan breakdown, the state list shows no pattern and if there were a strong partisan pattern it would show up in state legislatures. That seems to be the direction that more recently passed laws are going, I don't know the last time a state truly lowered the AoC.

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 21, 2025

Hard work is necessary, but luck also is a part of it. "I work hard and my dad's a plumber" versus "I work hard and my dad is a partner in KPMG", you tell me who you think is going to get further in life.

JD Vance is a legitimate "I came from poor stock, worked hard, and made it" success story, and look at the shit he gets for his political allegiance. Kamala Harris ran in part on "I grew up in a middle-class family" (where middle-class is supposed to mean "upper working class/lower middle class", i.e. 'just like one of you schlubs') but she is the daughter of university professors. I don't know if anyone has done a comparison between "is Vance more privileged than Harris because he's a white male and she's a biracial female, versus his family were poor and he grew up between Kentucky and Ohio and her mother only divorced once and she grew up between California and Canada". It'd be an intriguing problem to do a privilege walk between them!

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 31, 2025

I can see the argument that 'labor' as a class is somehow fungible and that it is best to allow labor to flow to where it is most needed/most cost effective, even across borders. If there's farm work that needs to be done in the U.S., and ample farm workers in Mexico, then you can acquire mutual gains through trade! So 'free trade' does, to some degree, imply free movement of laborers, which implies some level of immigration.

But the apparent reality is that the benefits of most immigration, particularly lower skilled, accrue primarily to the upper and political classes, while costs are borne by the relatively low classes and strains infrastructure for everyone. That time Desantis flew 50 migrants into Martha's Vineyard and the entire town basically declared a state of emergency to get them out ASAP really drove that home. The Migrant hotels in New York also bolstered the point, we don't even have to get into exaggerated stories of Haitians in Ohio to see the issue.

But this should still be easy-ish to fix within the rules of our system, just be willing to deport troublemakers, and shift some of the burdens/costs to the upper classes too so they internalize the cost of their policies and adjust them to make them more efficient. But like almost every other Liberal Shibboleth, it became a HUMAN RIGHTS ISSUE that ISN'T SUBJECT TO DEBATE.

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 24, 2025

I’ve heard of red state universities doing this. Specifically I’ve heard rumors about Texas A&M and Ohio state being made to begin doing this.

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 17, 2025

Let's assume that $211m was equally distributed among the states

It is not. They make their largest grants to state libraries, but they don't distribute it evenly. In 2024 they didn't even give Alabama state libraries a grant at all! California got $15,705,702 for their state library system, the only grant that went to anybody in Alabama whatsoever in 2024 was $184,876 to the Alabama African American Civil Rights Heritage Sites Consortium.

Here's the full list of 2024 grantees under their "Grants to State Libraries" program:

California State Library $15,705,702

Texas State Library and Archives Commission $12,512,132

State Library of Florida $9,533,426

New York State Library $8,125,215

Pennsylvania Office of Commonwealth Libraries $5,891,819

Illinois State Library $5,736,330

State Library of Ohio $5,448,084

Georgia Board of Regents $5,162,498

North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources $5,089,381

Library of Michigan $4,788,124

New Jersey State Library $4,506,420

Library of Virginia $4,289,358

Washington State Library $3,948,629

Arizona State Library $3,804,635

Tennessee State Library and Archives $3,689,581

Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners $3,642,371

Indiana State Library $3,589,836

Missouri State Library $3,338,467

Maryland State Library Agency $3,332,465

WI Div. for Libraries and Community Learning $3,230,831

Colorado Department of Education $3,218,246

MN Dept of CFL/Library Development & Services $3,165,524

South Carolina State Library $3,028,013

State Library of Louisiana $2,726,161

KY Department for Libraries and Archives $2,708,198

Oregon State Library $2,597,695

Oklahoma Department of Libraries $2,529,938

Utah State Library Division $2,289,874

State Library of Iowa $2,210,343

Nevada State Library and Archives $2,205,502

Connecticut State Library $2,164,184

Arkansas State Library $2,157,781

PR Dept. of ED/Public Library Programs $2,147,080

Kansas State Library $2,109,780

Mississippi Library Commission $2,109,457

New Mexico State Library $1,797,977

Nebraska Library Commission $1,746,652

Idaho State Library $1,741,500

West Virginia Library Commission $1,668,036

Hawaii State Public Library System $1,541,630

New Hampshire State Library $1,529,144

Maine State Library $1,526,754

Montana State Library, Natural Resource Information System $1,427,530

Rhode Island Office of Library & Information Services $1,413,623

Delaware Division of Libraries $1,389,442

South Dakota State Library $1,346,956

State Library, North Dakota $1,295,858

Alaska State Library $1,276,792

District of Columbia Public Library $1,256,248

State of Vermont Department of Libraries $1,244,357

Wyoming State Library $1,220,427

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 17, 2025

Is the economy good?

This takes the cake for the biggest load of nonsense I have ever read. It blusters a lot with only a few actual points made in defence of the notion that government economic statistics failed to capture true economic conditions post-Covid, all of which are very silly indeed.

My colleagues and I have modeled an alternative indicator, one that excludes many of the items that only the well-off tend to purchase — and tend to have more stable prices over time — and focuses on the measurements of prices charged for basic necessities, the goods and services that lower- and middle-income families typically can’t avoid. Here again, the results reveal how the challenges facing those with more modest incomes are obscured by the numbers. Our alternative indicator reveals that, since 2001, the cost of living for Americans with modest incomes has risen 35 percent faster than the CPI. Put another way: The resources required simply to maintain the same working-class lifestyle over the last two decades have risen much more dramatically than we’ve been led to believe.

In the first place I am disinclined to give this any credence because their calculations are very opaque. Even if you got to their website the 'data' section and 'white paper' for their 'True Living Cost' don't seem to give their actual weights or the changes in weightings (other that impressionistic statements like saying that 'luxuries' have been deweighted). However, even if I could trust their numbers it doesn't at all resolve the 'vibecession' question because based on TLC the Trump years were ones of economic decline too. However, the economic discourse in those years was uniformly positive. So what gives?

If you filter the statistic to include as unemployed people who can’t find anything but part-time work or who make a poverty wage (roughly $25,000), the percentage is actually 23.7 percent. In other words, nearly one of every four workers is functionally unemployed in America today — hardly something to celebrate.

Aside from the fairly preposterous gambit of saying that we can count some people in full-time employment as unemployed if their wage is too low (words have meanings, if you want to talk about wages then just do, don't crowbar it in to unemployment figures). More importantly though, what you will see again is that his 'true' unemployment figure tracks exactly the common U-3 figure over the years. So again it's totally worthless in explaining post-Covid dissatisfaction because the post-Covid 'true' rate was actually the lowest it has ever been since his data series starts in the 90s.

Here, the aggregate measure of GDP has hidden the reality that a more modest societal split has grown into an economic chasm. Since 2013, Americans with bachelor’s or more advanced degrees have, in the aggregate, seen their material well-being improve — by the Federal Reserve’s estimate, an additional tenth of adults have risen to comfort. Those without high school degrees, by contrast, have seen no real improvement. And geographic disparities have widened along similar lines, with places ranging from San Francisco to Boston seeing big jumps in income and prosperity, but places ranging from Youngstown, Ohio, to Port Arthur, Texas, falling further behind. The crucial point, even before digging into the nuances, is clear: America’s GDP has grown, and yet we remain largely blind to these disparities.

This is insultingly dishonest. Why does he say 'since 2013' in an article about the post-Covid economy? Because the trend doesn't hold true - after over a decade of sharply rising inequality, the 2021-23 period was actually saw bottom quintile income rise as a proportion of top quintile income.

This article is utterly irrelevant to post-Covid economic perceptions. What is might prove, if one believes the statistics, is that Americans ought to have been pessimistic about the economy throughout the 90s, 2000s and 2010s as well as post-Covid. But they frequently weren't. It still doesn't answer the question of why Americans get specifically upset in the post-Covid period.

What is a woman?

Couldn't resist just dwelling on this for a second too. Now, obviously no-one has to buy into avant-garde views of gender/sex, but to be simply unable to entertain the plausibility of a scheme of gender which includes trans women among women betrays a quite remarkable lack of intellectual imagination, and, frankly, intelligence.

This is talk radio 'why are my enemies all so thick' slop. Take it elsewhere.

Friday Fun Thread for March 7, 2025

I'm not going to defend Kentucky's system of vehicle registration, because it's dumb. In PA and Ohio at least, liens are recorded in the county where the vehicle is registered, period. In PA it isn't even recorded at the courthouse, just with the DOT, which makes sense since the records aren't public anyway due to Federal law. The legislature had a chance to change it but they put a safe harbor provision in instead. That being said, the court can't just ignore the system that exists because they'd prefer a better system. The bank is the sophisticated party here, and they should know, understand, and follow the law as it exists, at peril of their lien not being recognized. I have no sympathy for them.

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 24, 2025

I agree with that. But I think about Springfield Ohio. Let’s say all of the Haitians shares the political values. I still think it would be a tragedy for Springfield where over a few years the entire cultural fabric changed.

In short, I’m okay with some immigration but what I don’t want is to change in a fundamental way the culture. Part of that is politics but not only.

Transnational Thursday for February 20, 2025

India imposes direct presidential rule (rather than local elected government) in rebellious state

Drone strike on Chernobyl

IRGC holds large-scale military exercises in southwest Iran

Last week I was worried about Congo affecting more african nations. Since then:

  • Uganda deploys troops in Congo to help the local government against local militias
  • 4K deaths, 4K wounded in Congo civil war since Jan 21st 2025
  • DR Congo seeks Chad’s support to combat M23 rebels: Report
  • Bukavu, the second largest city in DR Congo falls to M23
  • US imposed sanctions to M23 members

And in Sudan:

  • Rapid Support Forces in Sudan kill 200 civilians in three days, are considering establishing their own government.
  • Sudan’s army-backed government recalled its ambassador from Kenya in protest over Kenya reportedly supporting Sudan's Rapid Support Forces.

Transmissible brain disease is spreading through Canadian deer.

US seizes weapons shipment to Yemen's Houthis from Iran; Iran denies provenance.

NK building capability for missiles to reach US

South Korea stages military drills near inter-Korean maritime border, and air drills with the United States

Zelensky warns of Russian invasion of NATO countries.

US/Russia holding talks without EU or Ukraine

Stray Russian drones hit Moldova and Romania

Former Bangladeshi PM Hasina accusses Yunus of deploying terrorists, pledges to return and avenge police officers. This seems unlikely, as she doesn't control the state apparatus. However, if she does return, it would lead to wider turmoil in the region.

Southern California has a 36% chance of a M7.5 or greater earthquake in the next 30 years," Elizabeth Cochran with the USGS Earthquake Science Center says. This would wreak havoc upon the state's most populated cities, causing roughly 1,800 deaths, 50,000 injuries, and $200 billion in damage.

How does this:

The President and the Attorney General, subject to the President’s supervision and control, shall provide authoritative interpretations of law for the executive branch. The President and the Attorney General’s opinions on questions of law are controlling on all employees in the conduct of their official duties. No employee of the executive branch acting in their official capacity may advance an interpretation of the law as the position of the United States that contravenes the President or the Attorney General’s opinion on a matter of law, including but not limited to the issuance of regulations, guidance, and positions advanced in litigation, unless authorized to do so by the President or in writing by the Attorney General.

affect injunctions and rulings? In a plain reading,

  1. if the Trump administration does something,

  2. and a judge disagrees and issues an injuction and then a ruling,

  3. the Trump administration can still disagree with that

  4. Until it goes up to an appelate court, and then to the Supreme Court.

At which step does the president/AG's interpretation cease to be binding?.

Washington post article on the topic: https://archive.is/XIMum

Geologists warn of an "overdue" very large earthquake for Istambul, and warn that Turkey doesn't have the infrastructure to mitigate it, and millions could die.. Die Erdbebenwarte Kandilli gibt die Wahrscheinlichkeit für ein Beben mit einer Stärke über 7 bis zum Jahr 2030 mit 60 Prozent an.

H5N1 also in India. They were doing less testing so they've caught it later. Or it could be that it only reached them now (unlikely). Authorities in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh have issued an alert and a series of containment measures following the outbreak of bird flu (Avian Influenza H5N1), officials said Thursday.. The outbreak has been reported in Eluru, West Godavari, East Godavari, Krishna and NTR districts of the state, where over half a million poultry birds had died over the last three days

CDC conducted a small survey of 150 bovine veterinary practitioners; 3 had H5N1 antibodies. Also wow is this very little testing still.

Nevada and Ohio report first human cases of bird flu; nominal egg prices hit record high – The Moderate Voice

41 Former Bangladesh Police Officials Arrested Over Crackdown On Hasina Ouster Protests

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 10, 2025

Who is spending money on winning California or New York? Republicans haven't broken 40% in 20 years in California, and except for the last election, ny is the same.

In fact the classic criticism of the electoral college is that if you live in CA or NY then your vote doesn't matter. The ad spending bears this out. And this isn't a new trend - twenty years ago candidates were also focusing little on California and New York and way way more on Ohio.

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 10, 2025

It's Different When We Do It, Chapter 27

or

Did I Just Get Trolled?

tw: old news, unapologetic whataboutism

Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way have a free essay at the (reportedly centrist!) Foreign Affairs: "The Path to American Authoritarianism: What Comes After Democratic Breakdown." (Archive link.) You may notice the URL has "trump" in it, despite that word not appearing in the title. Curious.

But wait--who are Steve Levitsky and Lucan Way? After all, one can scarcely throw a cursor across a website these days without hitting, say, six or seven hyperlinks to "think pieces" about Trump, fascism, fascist Trumpism, or even Trumpist fascism. But never fear--this is no Average Andy/Joe Sixpack collaboration. This is professional work by a team of scholars whose most famous contribution to the canon of political scholarship is the term "competitive authoritarianism." What, you may ask, is competitive authoritarianism? Read on!

Steve Levitsky, according to his employer (Harvard University, naturally), is a

Professor of Latin American Studies and Professor of Government and Director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard. He is Senior Fellow at the Kettering Foundation and a Senior Democracy Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. His research focuses on democratization and authoritarianism, political parties, and weak and informal institutions, with a focus on Latin America.

His focus is not exclusive--he also writes on Israel policy while calling himself a "lifelong Zionist" (admittedly, in an article endorsing something like BDS)--but his interest in Latin America is apparently more than skin-deep:

Levitsky is married to Liz Mineo, a Peruvian journalist with degrees from the National University of San Marcos and Columbia University who currently works at The Harvard Gazette.

Lucan Way is no less distinguished. Well, maybe a litte less--the University of Toronto is not even the Harvard of Canada, much less the Harvard of, well, Harvard. But his title--his title! He is literally a Distinguished Professor of Democracy. Where Levitsky's focus is Latin America, however, Way's might best be described as "Cold War and Cold War adjacent." He credits at least some of that interest to family ties to historical events:

My stepfather's family were Jewish socialists, and his grandfather, Henrik Ehrlich, was a Menshevik during the 1917 revolution. This familial link to such a pivotal historical moment gave the chapter on Russia a deeper, more personal resonance.

This is an academic power couple, right here. Get one expert on authoritarianism in the New World, one on authoritarianism in the Old World, and baby, you've got a stew going! A book stew. An article stew. A bottomless cornucopia of cosmopolitan political commentary and analysis. Their 2010 text, "Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes after the Cold War," focuses on democratization (or its lack) under authoritarian regimes. David Waldner gave a blurb:

Regimes that blend meaningful elections and illicit incumbent advantage are not merely resting points on the road to democracy; Levitsky and Way guide us along the multiple paths these regimes can take and provide powerful reasoning to explain why nations follow these distinct paths. This deeply insightful analysis of an important subset of post-Cold War regimes is conceptually innovative and precise, empirically ambitious, and theoretical agile, moving fluidly between international and domestic causes of regime dynamics. Read it to understand the dynamics of contemporary hybrid regimes; then read it again to appreciate its many lessons for our general understanding of regime change.

So: you've literally written the book on how democracies are (or are not) born. What are you going to do next? No, no, you're not going to Disneyland--you're going to witness the election of Donald Trump and stop telling people that you study the birth of democracies, but instead the death of democracies. From the Amazon page for Levitsky's (but not Way's) How Democracies Die:

Donald Trump's presidency has raised a question that many of us never thought we'd be asking: Is our democracy in danger? Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt have spent more than twenty years studying the breakdown of democracies in Europe and Latin America, and they believe the answer is yes.

That's the preliminaries. This week, Levitsky and Way published an article, and I have to say, I found it... kinda convincing? Except, I couldn't help but Notice some things that gave me pause. The thesis of the piece, as I mentioned, was that the United States is headed toward "competitive authoritarianism." The article provides a small explainer:

The breakdown of democracy in the United States will not give rise to a classic dictatorship in which elections are a sham and the opposition is locked up, exiled, or killed. Even in a worst-case scenario, Trump will not be able to rewrite the Constitution or overturn the constitutional order. He will be constrained by independent judges, federalism, the country's professionalized military, and high barriers to constitutional reform. There will be elections in 2028, and Republicans could lose them.

But authoritarianism does not require the destruction of the constitutional order. What lies ahead is not fascist or single-party dictatorship but competitive authoritarianism--a system in which parties compete in elections but the incumbent's abuse of power tilts the playing field against the opposition. Most autocracies that have emerged since the end of the Cold War fall into this category, including Alberto Fujimori's Peru, Hugo Chávez's Venezuela, and contemporary El Salvador, Hungary, India, Tunisia, and Turkey. Under competitive authoritarianism, the formal architecture of democracy, including multiparty elections, remains intact. Opposition forces are legal and aboveground, and they contest seriously for power. Elections are often fiercely contested battles in which incumbents have to sweat it out. And once in a while, incumbents lose, as they did in Malaysia in 2018 and in Poland in 2023. But the system is not democratic, because incumbents rig the game by deploying the machinery of government to attack opponents and co-opt critics. Competition is real but unfair.

(As an aside, Way seems to think India is doing alright, actually? Not sure where that fits in with the above but, co-authored pieces do sometimes result in these little puzzles.)

What actually struck me first about this description was my memory of posters here in the Motte discussing "Brazilification," the process by which the U.S. is, as a result of economics, immigration, and identity politics, gradually adopting the political norms of South and Central American nations. But my experience has been that it is usually more conservative, even arguably nationalist people expressing this concern. While Levitsky and Way do not use the term "Brazilification," they definitely seem to be placing the United States on that trajectory.

They elaborate on the problem at length:

Competitive authoritarianism will transform political life in the United States. As Trump's early flurry of dubiously constitutional executive orders made clear, the cost of public opposition will rise considerably: Democratic Party donors may be targeted by the IRS; businesses that fund civil rights groups may face heightened tax and legal scrutiny or find their ventures stymied by regulators. Critical media outlets will likely confront costly defamation suits or other legal actions as well as retaliatory policies against their parent companies. Americans will still be able to oppose the government, but opposition will be harder and riskier, leading many elites and citizens to decide that the fight is not worth it.

This is where I started to wonder, just a little, whether I was being trolled. While Trump's second term has indeed set a record pace for executive orders, Joe Biden's early flurry of dubiously constitutional executive orders was a greater departure from the norm. Most readers here will be well-acquainted with the IRS targeting of conservative groups. Many will also be aware of the time regulators inappropriately targeted the NRA. Conservative media outlets faced expensive defamation lawsuits (losing some, winning others). The fit with the Biden administration just seems too close in this paragraph, to be pure coincidence... but what am I supposed to conclude from that? Am I supposed to be doing a Straussian reading?

The piece continues:

[M]uch of the coming authoritarianism will take a less visible form: the politicization and weaponization of government bureaucracy. . . . Even in countries such as the United States that have relatively small, laissez-faire governments, this authority creates a plethora of opportunities for leaders to reward allies and punish opponents. No democracy is entirely free of such politicization. But when governments weaponize the state by using its power to systematically disadvantage and weaken the opposition, they undermine liberal democracy. Politics becomes like a soccer match in which the referees, the groundskeepers, and the scorekeepers work for one team to sabotage its rival.

Republicans have long complained against the weaponization of government against conservatives, and Democrats have long ignored those complaints. Whether it's a county clerk jailed for refusing to issue same-sex marriage licenses or the throw-the-book-at-them attitude toward January 6th protesters, conservatives regularly find the scales of justice thumbed against their interests. Similarly-situated Democrats need fear no prosecution at all.

Levitsky and Way have more to say about this sort of thing:

The most visible means of weaponizing the state is through targeted prosecution. Virtually all elected autocratic governments deploy justice ministries, public prosecutors' offices, and tax and intelligence agencies to investigate and prosecute rival politicians, media companies, editors, journalists, business leaders, universities, and other critics. In traditional dictatorships, critics are often charged with crimes such as sedition, treason, or plotting insurrection, but contemporary autocrats tend to prosecute critics for more mundane offenses, such as corruption, tax evasion, defamation, and even minor violations of arcane rules. If investigators look hard enough, they can usually find petty infractions such as unreported income on tax returns or noncompliance with rarely enforced regulations.

Tax evasion, you say? As for minor violations of arcane rules and rarely enforced regulations, well, the whole "Trump committed a felony" charade in New York was recognized well in advance as "novel" and "built on an untested legal theory."

The argument continues!

Moreover, much of the Republican Party now embraces the idea that America's institutions--from the federal bureaucracy and public schools to the media and private universities--have been corrupted by left-wing ideologies. Authoritarian movements commonly embrace the notion that their country's institutions have been subverted by enemies; autocratic leaders including Erdogan, Orban, and Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro routinely push such claims. Such a worldview tends to justify--even motivate--the kind of purging and packing that Trump promises.

Why would the Republican Party embrace the idea that America's institutions have been corrupted by left-wing ideologies? After all, just 63% of senior executives in government posts are Democrats; only 58% of public school teachers identify as Democrat; fully 3.4% of journalists identify as Republicans, and the ratio of liberal to conservative college professors is a measly 17 to 1!

I guess "believing facts about the ideological makeup of our country's institutions" qualifies as authoritarian, now?

There's more to the article--I invite you to read it. But maybe some of you want to ask, in total exasperation, "What difference, at this point, does it make?" Maybe none! I am not here to do apologetics for Trump. I was just really struck by the idea that this article could have been written, almost word for word, about Biden, or even Obama. Maybe Bush! Maybe others--FDR for sure, right? But I can find no evidency of Levitsky or Way ever actually noticing, or worrying, about American competitive authoritarianism, until Trump. They think he's special. I don't think he's special! I think that, so far, he has actually committed far fewer of the sins on their list, than Biden did. That doesn't mean I endorse Trump's actions, so much as I am confused that a couple of highly-credentialed experts on the matter only seem to recognize American authoritarianism when it is coming from their right (or, more accurately, even when it might eventually be coming from their right).

Aside from that, I don't see any obvious problems with the picture that they paint. Having pundits on both sides of the aisle say similar things about our nation's political trajectory serves to increase my worry that "Brazilification" might be a real thing, and makes me wonder how quickly it might happen, and how seriously I should take the possibility.

(Insert butterfly meme: is this authoritarianism? Insert spaceman meme: always has been.)

Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 9, 2025

IMO, it depends on what specific kind of freeway driving you do. My commute spends just twenty minutes each way on a busy freeway, where my speed changes all the time and cruise control is worthless. But I once took a drive through the featureless wastes of rural Ohio on US 30, with hardly any traffic on the road, and being able to rest my foot for two hours on an eleven-hour drive (each way) was nice.