Electoral College: History, Pros, Cons and Alternatives

After the American Revolution was over, the revolutionaries had a most difficult task. What now? Many of the 13 colonies did not see the advantage of joining a new nation. James Madison's idea of elections being based on popular vote scared some of the smaller states. Some thought joining an old world nation, like Spain, was more advantageous. To keep the small states happy and within the union, a bicameral legislature (with two houses) was proposed during the Constitutional Convention of 1787, much like England's the House of Commons and House of Lords. This came to be known as the Great Compromise of 1787. While the House of Representatives would be based on population giving large states like Virginia and Massachusetts more power, the states would be equally represented in the Senate. Delaware, who had recently became independent of Pennsylvania, jumped at this and signed the Constitution becoming the first state to ratify it. 

Once the big stuff was over, most of the convention attendees returned home. Those who were from far away had a long trip ahead of them. George Washington went fishing. The rest of the constitution, much of the stuff that we complain about was created by the smaller committee called the Committee of Unfinished Parts which only had 11 representatives from different states). 

• Nicholas Gilman of New Hampshire 
• Rufus King of Massachusetts
• Roger Sherman of Connecticut
• Jonathan Brearly of New Jersey (Chairman)
• Gouvernuer Morris of Pennsylvania
• John Dickinson of Delaware
• Daniel Carroll of Maryland 
• James Madison, Jr. of Virginia
• Hugh Williamson of North Carolina
• Pierce Butler of South Carolina
• Abraham Baldwin of Georgia.

This is where they came up with the one person executive, the president's term of office, rules for treason and impeachment and of course, the electoral college. The electoral college was considered, at the time, innovative because it was a temporary body that met for only one reason. It was believed to be less corruptible than if the task of selecting the leader of the Executive Branch fell up Congress to do.  

When we vote for President, we are not voting for him/her directly but for electors who then vote for President for us. There are currently 538 electors (since 1964, 535 from the states and 3 from DC.) Each state gets one elector for each of their Senators and one for each of their Representatives. So the larger states get more but not proportionally more. Wyoming gets three while California gets 55. Wyoming is the least populated state with a half million people. For every 193,000 people they get an elector. California is our largest state with about 39.5 million people and one elector roughly every 718,000 people. Whatever candidate that gets a state's popular vote, gets all of that state's electors. Trump could get 10 million votes in California but if 10,000,001 voters chose Biden, all of the electors go to Biden. Winner takes all. You can understand why voters feel disenfranchised and don't show up.

Maine and Nebraska are the only two states that are not winner take all. They award only two electors to the state popular vote winner (for the Senators). The rest of the electors are given to the popular vote of each Congressional district. It is messy. Everything that was ever created via compromise is. Originally, most states were more like these two. Virginia was the first state to change to winner take all in 1808, the largest state at the time, in order to get their man, Thomas Jefferson, elected. 

A total of five Presidential candidates won the popular vote but lost in the Electoral College. The two most recent occurring in the 2016 and 2000. Two other presidents—Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876 and Benjamin Harrison in 1888—became president without winning the popular vote. If Grover Cleveland had won in 1888, he would have been president for three terms, but we have no way of knowing if he would have run in 1892, if he had won in 1888. In the 1824 election between John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson, Jackson won the popular vote but neither won a majority of Electoral votes. Adams secured the presidency only after the election was decided by a vote in the House of Representatives, a procedure provided for in the Constitution. Arguably, none of these presidents were very good. Both George W. Bush and Donald Trump may go down as the two worst presidents we ever had. B. Harrison, Hayes and Q. Adams have never cracked the top ten on anyone's list.  

This is clearly a problem. The most important decision any president makes in their time of office is their selection of judges, specifically the Supreme Court. We currently have nine judges, more than half of whom were appointed by presidents who didn't get the popular vote. Roberts and Alito were appointed by W. Bush. Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett were appointed by Trump. These judges make very important decisions about our everyday life (regarding our healthcare, our privacy, our bodies, our elections etc.) and yet, most Americans voted against them. This is hardly democratic. Hillary Clinton won in 2016 by over 2 million votes and yet Trump ended up with three Supreme Court appointments. That is just gross.  

Doing away with the electoral college altogether would require an amendment. We have come close. The Bayh-Celler amendment passed in the House in 1968 but died in the Senate. It even had support by then president Nixon. Again, the senators from states with smaller populations opposed it. If passed, we would be electing our Presidents via popular vote. This also has some drawbacks. Campaigning in rural areas would be ignored completely and they would be limited to the large metropolitan areas. Why would candidates spend time and money in areas that had few votes? Perhaps this isn't such a bad thing, more people getting more attention. One of the advantages of the Electoral College is that the minority isn't ignored, but one could say that the minority (in this case, rural voters) gets too much power. 

Some creative ideas have come up. Since 2007, fifteen states and DC have passed the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC). This an association of states declaring that during a Presidential election, all of their electoral votes will be given to the winner of the National popular vote. It doesn't take effect until it accounts for 270 votes so it wasn't applied in 2016 or 2020. Currently, it accounts for only 196 (MD, CA, VT, RI, CT, DE, CO, IL, NJ, HI, WA, OR, MA, NY, DE, DC) needing 74 more. There are bills in every state to pass this. Once it is passed, it will effectively make the Electoral College defunct. The problem with it, is that it is currently only Democratic leaning states that have signed on. It would have had no effect in 2016 with its current list of states. In 2000 it would have flipped Colorado making Gore the President. We might still have a couple of magnificent towers in Manhattan if this happened. They need some battleground and Republican states to pass it for it to be effective but they will never have enough votes. Republicans won't backed a bill that is clearly against their interest. 

The electoral college doesn't need to be completely trashed. Its original intent was a good one. The rights of the minority is important. We have millions of citizens, like myself, that live in rural areas. Our needs need to be considered in the executive branch. We just need to jiggle some numbers around perhaps. The states are disproportionately larger than each other than at our founding. In the 1790 census, Virginia (the largest state) had 111,000 people while Delaware had 12,000, roughly. This is a little over nine times the size. Currently, California is 79 times the size of Wyoming. California really needs to be split up into four or five different states and split Texas into two or three. While we are at it, we can merge the Wyoming into Idaho and merge the two Dakotas into one. Californians would probably love this. Not so much the Wyomingites.  This is not going to happen. I can't imagine the Republicans agreeing to loosing the Senators in Wyoming and giving the Democrats a few more in California, but it is fun to think about. 

What seems more practical is removing the two electors assigned to the states for their Senators. Very small states getting three electors instead of just one is throwing the math all off. All states would lose two. This would bring CA down to 53 electoral reps and give them a vote per every 745,000 people. Not a big change for them. The big change would be that Wyoming would get only one vote for their entire state of 500,000 people. That is a lot more equal than the 193,00 they currently have. The point here is that change is hard and getting an amendment passed is almost impossible. The last one that passed (the 27th in 1992) took over 200 years to do so. A little change might be easier to pass.

The problem with this one is that Clinton still would have lost in 2016 under this new count. Clinton lost to Trump because he won 30 states and she only won 20. He had 306 electoral votes and she only had 232 even though more than 2 million people voted for her. If you removed the Senate electoral votes from this count, he would lose 60 votes and she 40. She'd still have less votes. 

Even if you went with the Maine/Nebraska model and vote were divvied up via Congressional District, Trump would be victorious. He won 232 districts while she won 203. He just won by smaller margins and in smaller districts. In order for Clinton to have had an electoral college victory in 2016, we'd have to use both methods taking away the Senatorial electors and the Maine/Nebraska model. If you mess with the Electoral College that much, you might as well just go with a popular vote. 

Pro-lifers Are Not Pro-life

The term "pro-life" was first used by education philosopher A.S. Neill in 1960 and it had a different meaning to how we use it now.  It was a progressive term he used to condemn mistreatment of other human beings such as child abuse, homophobia, corporal punishment, war etc. In 1973, when abortion because legal nationally (due to Roe v. Wade), anti-abortion groups began using the term to mean anti-abortion. Those who disagreed with them and supported abortion rights didn't like the moniker of "pro-death" or "anti-life" so they came up with "pro-choice" acknowledging that it was a deeply personal decision that a woman had to undergo. This is the political framing we use today and it hasn't changed much in 50 years.  

The media portrays the difference between these groups as clear cut and black and white, but it is a lot more gray than it appears. If you don't believe me, check out this video from the Holy Post. I don't agree with it 100% but I am impressed with how aligned I am with what they are saying but I consider myself pro-choice and they are clearly not. Often the media lets radical factions define our culture while the rest of us are left scratching our heads. Middle ground does exist. Most, if not all, pro-choicers believe that abortion is a pretty awful thing and something to be avoided. Only the very careless see it as a birth control option. Most, even many people who call themselves pro-life, agree that birth control should be used to avoid pregnancy. 

I don't like the term pro-life because those who call themselves pro-life often only seem to care about the lives of the unborn at the exclusion of other lives. Can you still call yourself pro-life and also be pro-death penalty? Or pro-war? Many people supported Trump because they believe that he would appoint conservative judges and that he did. He was able to change the makeup of the Judiciary to favor the conservative ideology. not just on the Supreme Court level. He appointed 194 judges to Federal benches. In four years, that is more than half of what Obama did in eight years (312) and more than twice Clinton (84). All of Trump's appointments are anti-abortion. But they are anti a lot of other stuff as well like the ACA (Affordable Care Act) and they are actively chipping away at this law that has given about six million Americans health care. This is during a pandemic, kinda sick. If you were actually pro-life wouldn't you be concerned about people getting affordable healthcare. Both his appointees to the Supreme Court are against the ACA. This law could very well be overturned during Biden's term in office. Will they still call themselves "pro-life" when their neighbors can longer afford their insulin or their mood stabilizers? 

In 1988, long before he was president, Trump placed this ad in several NYC newspapers trying to bring back the death penalty in New York State. 

This was in response to the Central Park Five who were five young black men who were wrongly imprisoned for the rape and murder of a white woman. In 2002, they were exonerated and released from prison. As you would expect, Trump never apologized. This man has a long trail of hate like this, yet many so called "pro lifers" support him solely on the basis that he'd appoint "pro-life" judges. Since July this year (2020), Trump has approved the execution of seven Federal prisoners and three more are schedule before he leaves office. Before this spree, we had gone 17 years without a Federal execution. Pro-life? I don't think so.

Yes, Roe v. Wade, the legal decision that effectively legalized abortion in this nation, could be overturned thanks to this President. If that is all you wanted, congratulations. All it would mean is that states would be able to make it illegal again and many states will. This will not stop abortions from happening in this country. People can just drive to a neighboring state to get it done. Even if every state made it illegal, they could drive to Europe, Canada or Mexico etc. It would just inconvenience the rich and prevent the poor from getting a legal and safe medical procedure. An estimated 25% of abortions would be prevented. Any economist will tell you that if a demand exists so will a market. Illegal abortions will happen and many of them will not be safe. Also, there will be self induction. Before legal abortion, this was popular. We don't want people giving themselves abortions. Before the internet, girls would use poison, pills, coat hangers or throw themselves down the stairs to end their pregnancies. In a misinformation age, I can't imagine what awful stuff you would find if you started googling how to do your own abortion. An estimated 200 women a year died seeking illegal abortions before Roe v. Wade. But hey, if you want to call yourself "pro-life," go ahead, I just call you a hypocrite. This is why I use the term "anti-choice" to describe pro-lifers. They are not in protecting life at all; they are just into taking away other people's rights.  

If you want to be pro-life, you might want to start by not voting for scum like Trump. Abortion in America has decreased since the Roe decision and this has little to do with Roe. It has to do with the fact that we have increased sex education, increased women's access to healthcare and birth control and made adoption more affordable. All of these still need improvement. Putting an extremist like Amy Coney Barrett on the Supreme Court for a rest of her life is not helping the matter. 

Future of Local Journalism and the Collapse of the Fourth Estate

Disruption (or creative destruction) in an economy can be a great thing and an awful thing simultaneously. When the automobile was introduced, this disrupted the livelihood of thousands of people who sold and serviced horses (horse-breakers and blacksmiths) and wagons (wheelwrights). While they all lost their jobs and businesses, thousands of businesses and jobs were created making cars, paving roads and selling gas. Disruption is inherit in capitalism. Technology is not the only disruptor, but it is the most common. The biggest disruptor in my life has been the introduction of the internet and ecommerce. Almost every industry has been affected: music, education, retail, movies and gyms among others. 

Brick and mortar stores are being killed by Amazon, movie theaters are being killed by Netflix and music stores almost don't exist anymore because you can buy a song instantly on your phone or stream for free. Jobs and careers have really been shuffling for the past decade or two. I have benefited by this as well. I have been able to have a high-tech job and tele-commute to NYC each day while living in my rural home in northern Vermont. This wasn't possible twenty years ago when I moved to VT. 

Of all these disruptions, the one that bothers me the most is what is happening with local newspapers. Local news is expensive. Newspapers have to employ reporters who attend town and city counsel meetings, local events, sporting events, car crashes and fires. This is, of course, in addition to their overhead and the expenses of producing the paper. Traditionally their revenue streams are the selling of advertisement space and classifieds. When I was young, if you were looking for a job or looking for a kitten, you had to pick up the local paper. Now you can go on Craigslist for free. Craigslist devastated the classified revenue for papers, which in turn greatly reduced circulation. When circulation is down, it is harder to sell advertisement. Collapse ensued. 

In 2000, the advertising revenue for newspapers peaked to over $70 billion in the US. In 2018, it had dropped to under $15 billion which is lower than the 1950's. As of 2019, 65 million Americans live in a county with one or zero local news sources. How do citizens stay informed if there is no local news source? How can they vote confidently? How do they find out about businesses that is polluting their water or a politician that is stealing from them? They don't. Meanwhile, your local clueless jackoff has a YouTube channel, he's "telling it like it is" and giving it out for free. People are not just uninformed, they are misinformed. 

Some papers are hanging in there with a digital presence, but digital advertising revenue is still very low. There is also an increase of digital subscription in the past few years. Four in ten people under the age of 35 have at least one digital subscription. Young people are figuring out that paying for media means you get better information. Regardless, the outlook for local news to remain local is not good. When is a local paper not local? 

Since its founding in 1906, Gannett has been going around buying up small newspapers and other media markets. In addition to owning US Today, they currently own 260 daily local newspapers and about 300 national papers. These including The Providence Journal, The Cincinnati Enquirer, Detroit Free Press, Indianapolis Star, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, El Paso Times etc.  They own media in 47 states and Guam. This is a lot of power. Gannet is not immune to circulation problems. They are losing circulation even higher than non-Gannett papers. Here in VT, our "local" Gannett paper, The Burlington Free Press, circulation is down more than 36% since 2017. How long can they can survive with numbers like that? 

The Void: In capitalistic societies, the voids left by failing industries and businesses are often filled quickly but not always in desirable ways. The New York Times this week ran an article about how pay-to-play organizations are filling this void. Political and/or corporate PR groups are paying free lance reporters to write articles supporting their agendas. That agenda could be to promote their business or attack their opponents in an election. These articles are then sold to less than credible "news" papers and not labelled as advertisements, which they should be (according to the Federal Trade Commission). Here is a list of them organized by state. You may recognize some of them. Perhaps you get one of them free in the mail or perhaps, you pick one up outside your local market. They look legit because they might have a real article about your local high school soccer team or a local fire, but they are not. In 2010, there were five of these. Now there are over 1200. Something you should always remember, when you get something for free, it is not the commodity, you are. You are being manipulated into voting for someone or buying a product.  It is not journalism that you are reading but an advertisement. 

On a more positive note, David Plotz, one of my favorite podcast journalists, has created a new venture called City Cast. Print may be dead or dying, but podcasting is thriving. He is trying to create a network of local podcasts in cities around the country where the void is at its worst. I listen to podcasts all day at work. When I jump in my car, I put them on. We listen in bed. If there was a local podcast that I liked, about my town or larger local towns, I'd be listening. I feel so clueless about local news and politics. He is trying to get this going, guess what? ... he's hiring.  Contact him if you are interested. I contacted David on Twitter to find what towns they are going to start with and I haven't heard back yet. I assume medium size cities like Portland or Cincinnati. Regardless, I am excited about this. Hopefully it is coming to your town soon. 

Fucked Up Love

    I am not a fan of memes. I find most of them annoying. They are usually over simplifications of very complex situations. But sometimes, they nail it.  This one might be my favorite:

It just makes me say "yep." The best thing I ever did to make myself happy is relocate. I rid my world of assholes and kept those that I had to maintain contact with at a distance, but the rest of them, I cut them out. My life has gotten better and better each time I've done this. I am happier, more successful and basically a different person. Depression comes sometimes, seldom now, but not like before. It is occasional and I know how to handle it. It was once an everyday thing. Medication didn't solve this. Ridding my life of assholes did. I can't imagine what my life would be like if I hadn't. 

    Love is an abstraction. Those of us who are lucky enough to grow up in a house full of love, have no problem recognizing it in relationships when we are adults. Those of us who grew up in household without love, fall in love easily because we cannot recognize love when we see it. This love can come in some very strange forms. Not knowing what it is nor what to expect, prevents us from recognizing it. I am unlike both of these examples because I grew up in a household with love, but with a special kinda of love. It was fucked-up love. 

    Fucked-up love is not a technical term. No doubt, there are clinical names for it. I lack the knowledge, education and imagination to come up with a better term. Dysfunctional might be the term, but I rather like fucked-up love, as a term not a thing, because it just fits. They are the best words I can think of to describe what I went through growing up. 

    What I am going to describe is not the only example of fucked-up love that I have experienced in my upbringing, but just one of the many examples. I am not going to use any names and I won't be sharing this on social media. Most of the people I know, only access my blog via social media. So this will post will be our secret, dear stranger, dear anonymous blog reader. Lets keep it that way. 
    My grandmother's house was a farmhouse with about five acres of land in Cumberland, Rhode Island near Sneech Pond. I call it her house, Meme's house (that's right we called her Meme - pronounced Meh-may which is French for grandmother), but I guess it was just as much Pepe’s house as well. It just always seemed to be her house. It had a huge wrap around porch with creaky boards that gave you slivers if you walked in stocking feet. The yard was a big grass field with a beautiful rustic stone well, boarded-up, so that the kids would not fall in. I was third youngest of a slew of grandchildren, something around twenty of us. Holidays were chaos. 

    Behind the field was a huge garden that the family used to grow all their food when my dad was small. They had eleven children, seven boys and four girls and they were young during the depression. My dad was the seventh. They grew vegetables in the warm months and filled the shelves of the basements with canned goods. When my extended family visited during the holidays in the early 1970’s, we’d sneak downstairs and the jars were still there now empty and covered with dust.  Some of the shelving had been removed and replaced by an old pool table that was also covered in dust. I remember once finding a long dead rodent in a corner pocket.

    Beside the field was a picnic table not often used in good weather due to mosquitoes. A hornet’s nest usually appeared during the summer months. For the holidays, it was probably covered in snow. It was here where the children spent our times during holidays running around in the snow. Among the younger cousins was myself, my older and younger sisters. The families of cousins who were local were there every year. One of the younger cousins, around my age, was a heavy young girl. Meme called her “La Gross” which meant the “fat one” in her native French. Three cousins came from Massachusetts, a boy younger than I and two girls older. One family who still lived in Cumberland. Some years, my cousins from New York came but didn’t every year because of the long drive. Even less often, the cousins from Maryland and Connecticut came but I really can’t remember because these cousins are so much older than I.  They wouldn’t be outside throwing snow with the rest of us kids, but inside playing cards with the adults. 

    I am sure the adults were grateful when we played outside. Of my ten aunts and uncles, all but one of them was still alive in the 1970’s. One of my uncles died in the Korean War. Of the remaining ten, all but one had children. My oldest cousin is just a few years younger than my youngest uncle which I guess is not uncommon in large families. My dad passed away five years ago and his last sibling passed away the year after that, so that entire generation of my family is gone. 

    The one sibling that didn’t reproduce was an uncle (lets call him B) who was mentally ill and was institutionalized most of his life. The story, the one that my family told but may-or-may-not-be-true, was that Meme heard his skull crack when he was born. In the 1920’s, most women still gave birth at home. When I was very young I used to go with my father to visit him at an institution in Cranston. For the longest time, the word “Cranston” was synonymous with the mentally ill for me. When I was a teenager and met people from Cranston, I used to laugh to the confusion to anyone around me. I never went inside the hospital but I used to wait in the car reading a book. This was the time before cell phones and electronic handheld games. I used to be terrified, hoping for his quick return. He used to take me out for a milkshake afterwards.

    Due to deinstitutionalization of the US mental health system in the 60’s and 70’s, he saw a lot more of B during the holidays than we used to. He terrified me. He was as much a fear to me as any boogie man or imaginary creature that lived under my bed or in the darkness of our basement. He mumbled and he ate things like cigarettes, anything small that he could find to put in his mouth. The most terrifying thing about this situation was that he always wanted to kiss me. I don’t know if it was all the kids or just me. The only thing I could see in my mind was Uncle B taking a huge rip out of my ear or my cheek like something from The Walking Dead, long before there was ever such a thing. I tried to spend all my time outside when he was at Meme’s.

    Inside was always loud. That is the thing I remember most from that house during the holiday, the noise. This was an old farmhouse with two main rooms downstairs. I can only guess that we had about twenty, maybe thirty, people there each Christmas. We usually didn’t get there until after the holiday meal at home so the kitchen table was used for card games or dominoes. Pepe was always impressed with how young I was when I could play dominoes. It is just matching tiles, not that hard. I played a good game for my age, as well.  This is one of the few things I remember about him because he died before I was about six or seven.

    I sat on a makeshift booster seat, perhaps a pillow, so that I could reach the table. I knew the rules of the games but I doubt if I knew any strategy. Eight or nine adults sat around the table, mostly uncles and my dad. Meme played sometimes but since she cheated, and cheated badly, she wasn’t always welcome. She kept extra cards on her lap that everyone could see. The room was hot because of the crowd and smoky from Pepe’s pipe. It was the same room where the cooking was done so the art of stepping around others was practiced, but not well.

    My need to flee started here. There was love in this room but it is difficult to see it as anything other than self love, lacking empathy or understanding of how one’s actions affects another, particularly a small child.  I remember, one day, playing in the living with the kids and being called into the kitchen where the adults were. “Uncle B wants to say 'Hi”.  These were the words I feared.

    I would pretend I didn’t hear them. They weren’t calling the other kids, only me. Why me? At least that is how I remember it. My mom would yell, she was angry with me, so I had to go. I would go slowly into the room, the card playing had stopped, I went to my dad. I saw B standing near the entrance with his coat on. Thoughts of him ripping my ear off is all that I could think of. The stories of him eating lye or cigarettes just filled my mind. The crowd pushed me away, toward him. “B wants to kiss you.” He clutched a rosary and had snot coming out of his nostrils. I’d kept saying NO. I imagine myself running on ice, being pushed into a hole. My mom was getting angry with her, embarrassed of me. He pulled me and held me in a cold iron-like grasp. He’d cover my head with wet snotty kisses much more like being gummed than kissed. I screamed and eventually pulled myself from his grasp. I ran and hid. Some laughed, my mother certainly wasn't and I remember my aunts being shocked. Not sure for whom. This wasn't the only time they did this, but the most memorable. Of course, all of this is remembered in through the fog of decades and my tainted perception. 

    In a large family, sometimes love can be a monster, all consuming and selfish, unthinking, crude and oblivious. No one consoled me to try to find out why I was terrified. If I mentioned it to anyone, I was shamed, making me feel like an awful person, bad boy, bad Catholic. Poor Uncle B., he just wanted a kiss. 

    This festered and grew within me, my constant companion. It manifested itself in many awful ways in my behavior as an adult. I have it under control now. I can't remember the last time I had a panic attack. Fucked-up love had done this to me. 

    While in elementary school, children in special education were segregated, and I would always fear sitting next to any of them in the cafeteria. A girl with down syndrome would always seem to find me and I’d do my best to run away. As a teenager, I had a friend with a beautiful old red convertible and we went for a ride one afternoon. He said he had to pick up his uncle and I freaked, quietly dying, when I realized that his uncle was an adult with down syndrome. I was so nervous. It helped me calm down when I saw how great he was with his uncle. I felt like an awful person. As an adult while living in Boston riding the subway daily, I’d sit in fear of an insane homeless person sitting on the side of me. I’d move far away or to another car if I had to. The irony is not lost on me, now, that I am married to a special education professional.

    How do you solve fucked-up love. You don't, you run away. I left for Boston in 1990. I experienced poverty, loneliness and lot of other uncomfortable situations. All of it was easier to take than fucked-up love. It was sometime in the mid-90's, while I was living alone in Boston only about an hour away from my old life, that I realize that I didn't have to go home for the holidays. The holidays were depressing as hell, but staying home in my shitty apartment with a good book and a bottle of wine, was better. I stayed home for Thanksgiving. After that, I realized staying home for all the holidays was probably the best. After a few years, I had friends in the area and I didn't have to spend them alone anymore. Now I even enjoy the holidays. My life currently has very little fucked-up love. Thanks to social media, I can maintain these relationships on my terms ... or not.

Hindsight 2020: The Red Mirage

In 2016 support for Trump (polling data) was a 6% higher when the poll was taken on-line than when the poll was taken in person. This is a largest difference for any candidate in the short history of online polling. This suggests people may be a little embarrassed to admit that they support the guy. The privacy of the voting booth is very different than a poll where you have to admit to someone whom you support. This has changed in 2020. Perhaps it is because he has been president for four years or perhaps it was because his opponent was a woman in 2016. Online support is roughly equal to phone support in 2020. 

The Democrats need a slaughter in 2020, nothing but a complete mandate. If the election is close, you have to wonder if he will concede. If he refuses to leave, what do we do then? This fucker may not even concede if he is trounced. As it looks right now, it looks like Biden will win in a landslide, but the election is still a month away.  Yes, I do remember how off polling was off in 2016, but Biden is so far ahead that even if our polling is as bad as they were in 2016, Biden would win all but one battleground state and Trump would win a squeaker in North Carolina. I started writing this before Trump's horrendous debate performance/behavior and before his COVID diagnosis. Biden has jumped even higher in the polls since. Also, Trump is polling lower than any incumbent President in the history of polling. 

Election night will be quite different this year. We won't have all the results in for a while. We are still in the midst of a pandemic so many people, including me, will be voting via mail/absentee ballots. I have the day off so I was planning to vote in person, but after hearing a plea from our town clerk to stay home, I am complying. I will be hand delivering my ballot and hope you do as well.  I trust the post office, but they may be overwhelmed. I am also abstaining from buying anything online until after the election as well. Whatever we can do, we should, to help this election be legit. 

Traditionally, I watch the results roll in on election night and go to bed waiting for history to unfold. In 2000, I remember falling asleep pleased that my candidate, Al Gore, had won Florida and was probably going to be our next President. Two decades and two towers later, I am not so naive.  With so many mail ballots being cast, we may not know even a week later. Let this serve as a reminder, to ignore speculations of pundits and candidate on election night.  Many states have already started counting the ballots, but some can't. Some states can't start counting the ballots until the day of or the day before Election Day.  Since these are dictated by law, they can't simply change this.  This is particularly concerning because some of the larger swing states, like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, are among these states.  This is particularly an issue in Wisconsin, which as of right now, is on lockdown due to a COVID outbreak. I have no doubt, there is going to be a ton of problems. It doesn't help that Trump is recruiting his "Trump army" to intimidate everyone involved. 

We don't know what percentage of America will vote by mail, but do know that 75% of us do have the capability, the highest ever. One third of the American voter-base claim they intend to vote by mail and Biden voters are twice as likely to vote by mail than Trump.  This is probably because Trump keeps claiming how corrupt the process is. Since there is zero evidence of this, this shouldn't bother anyone. He votes by mail himself, so it is obvious this is just typical Trump bullshit. 

Since more Democrats are voting by mail, what we will experience on election night will be skewed toward the Republican especially in these states that don't start count until Election Day. This is what people are calling the Red Mirage. Keep this in mind when you see the result. 

Be patient. Brace yourself, we're in for a wild ride! 

Baseball During the End Times

The battle between the billionaires (owners) and millionaires (players) went on for a while. I thought for sure, we weren't going to have a season this year. I look forward to it all winter. It was upsetting, but compared to all the other problems around us, in perspective, it wasn't that big of a deal. After the dust settled, we did have a brief baseball season. I am glad we did, but it was too short. When it comes to these battles, I tend to side with the players over the owners. Indeed they do make a lot of money, but generally those who do make an outrageous amount of money, they only do so for a short time like a few years. Superstars are only superstars for a short time and most players aren't superstars.  Most players get paid very badly throughout their minor league careers while the team owners are raking it in, perennially. When it comes to a David and Goliath story, I'll usually chose David, even when David is a millionaire athlete.  

The season started the last week of July, instead of the first week in April and was 60 games instead of 162. 

Due to the season being so short a few rule changes were passed. 

• Extra innings would all start with a player on second base. The player who made the last out the prior inning would be the runner.  
• Doubleheader games (two games in one day) would each have seven innings as opposed to the traditional  nine innings.
• The National League would have a Designated Hitter (DH) which it is usually the purview of the American League only.
• Each pitcher has a three batter minimum (unless there is an injury). No more bringing in a pitcher for one batter. 

I thought I was going to hate the extra innings rule, but I ended up liking it. It made extra innings have more of a sudden-death type of feel. The inning starts and the team in the field is already in trouble. I hope they keep this one.  

In addition to these game play rule changes there are a bunch of COVID-19 related changes about general behavior, the biggest being a prohibition on spitting. This might be the most difficult rule to follow. Baseball players are notorious spitters. 

It is by far the weirdest season I've ever experienced. We have had games cancelled for players tested positive for COVID, for entire teams participating in Black Lives Matter protests and for poor air quality due to wildfires. Some doubleheaders have been played in which the home team switched. For example, Boston played Toronto in Boston in a double header last month. Boston was the home team the first game (meaning they batted last) but the second game, Toronto was home. This was the first time that Boston was ever the away team in Fenway Park. 

Oh yeah, no fans are allowed in the stadiums. So why travel? They considered playing in a bubble-like structure, similar to the NBA, but the player's union rejected that. The players didn't want to be away from their families for that long. They kept the travel to minimum by changing the schedule to only regional games. Regional being East Coast, Middle of the Country and West Coast. Travelling safely during a pandemic is difficult so this makes complete sense. 

The scheduling has been weird as well.  They are playing a total of 60 games with 40 of them being within their division and 20 games are regional interleague. So American League East teams, like Boston and Baltimore, don't play American League Central or West teams, like Chicago White Sox or Seattle Mariners, all year. But they do get to play other East teams from the National League, like Miami Marlins and New York Mets. We basically have three leagues now (East, Central and West) instead of two leagues, American and National. But they still plan on giving out awards at the end of the year for two leagues. Even though this year's monikers of National and American leagues are meaningless, we'll have a American League MVP and Cy Young Award winner. This is bonkers. Shouldn't there be three this year?

Due to the short season, the playoffs are going to have more teams in it.  With 30 Major League Baseball teams, only ten teams making it into the postseason makes sense. Especially since, four of them are Wild Cards that have a one-game elimination. This years more than half the teams make it into the playoffs; we'll have 16 teams, all of whom will be playing series, no one-game eliminations. Some of them as short as three games. Also we're going back to our American and National League placements. The first and second place teams from each division made it along with two Wild Card teams from each league. The Wild Cards are the teams with the best records that didn't get first or second in their league. The Milwaukee Brewers are in the playoffs even though they were in fourth place (out of five) in their division and they are also below .500. We have a losing team in the post season! Bonkers! Also, a team could be playing another in the playoffs that they haven't played in the regulars season. They could then get to the Word Series and play a team they did play in the regular season. 2020 is that year where everything is opposite. 

Houston Astros - If any team benefited from COVID-19, it is Houston. In the offseason, they were found guilty of cheating and lots of jobs were lost. It was going to be the big story of this year's season, but it fizzled.  It still comes up now and then when a pitcher bonks one of their batters, but over-all, it is no longer a big story.  They definitely benefited from not having fans in the stadium because they would have been booed everywhere they played, maybe even at home. 

Toronto Blue Jays- The Blue Jays were approved to play in Toronto by the city government and Provincial government of Ontario, but the Canada government would not allow them in the country. Canada has its act together when it comes to COVID unlike us in Reality-Show-Nation. They didn't want a bunch of potentially infected people getting people sick. This is the first time since 1968 that there have been no MLB games in Canada. This left the team scrambling to find a home. They tried to make a deal with PNC Park in Pittsburgh but that was rejected by the state of Pennsylvania. Their triple A team's (the Bisons) home park, Sahlen Field in Buffalo New York, could be used but the lights needed to be upgraded before MLB would approve it.  Their first home game there was August 11th. This is the first time since 1915 that a major league baseball game was played in Buffalo which was home to the Blues for two years. All "home" games for the Blue Jays before that date would be played in their opponents parks which was very weird. Even though they had to deal with all this confusion, the Blue Jays will be a Wild Card team in the playoffs this year. 

Washington Nationals - Things did not fare well for the defending world champs. Two days before the start of the season, their star Juan Soto tested positive for COVID. I thought this was the beginning of the dominoes falling and the season was going to be cancelled but they caught it quickly. He didn't start playing until August 5th. His .300 plus hitting was not enough to propel them into the post season due to their awful off-season deals. 

Miami Marlins - The Marlins and Blue Jays may be the best stories of the year in baseball. The Marlins started the season with low expectations. At best they were expected to have a .500 season (equal amount of wins as losses). They played their first series in Philadelphia where they were exposed to COVID-19; two coaches and 18 players tested positive. A bunch of players were stuck in Phillie quarantined in two hotels. They had to cancel seven games disrupting the schedules of other teams as well. Those games would have to be made up. The schedule was so tight in an abbreviated schedule, these had to be made up via double header. From September 4th to the 27th, they didn't have a single day off. In that time, they played a game a day plus two games four times. Ouch! You would expect them to be in the cellar, standings-wise, at the end of the season. But here we are, they finished in second place and they are scheduled to play the Cubs on Wednesday. 

Boston Red Sox - As a Red Sox fan, I expected this to be a bad year. Our best pitcher, Chris Sale, took the season off for Tommy John surgery. We lost our best hitter, Mookie Betts,  in the off-season along with most of our rotation. A rebuilding year indeed. But then, on July 7th, our second best pitcher (now our best), Eduardo Rodriguez, was reported as being COVID positive and later had been diagnosed with myocarditis which is an inflammation of the heart muscle, caused by COVID. This is very upsetting. He is one of my favorites. It has been very exciting watching him getting better and better each year. Hopefully, he will be well next year. 

This year our best hitter should have been JD Martinez, but he's been awful. It is said that JD is addicted to the tape room. After each at-bat, he'd go into the tape room to view his swing. This season, players weren't allowed access to the tape room. The league claimed this was because of COVID, but we all know this is because of the Houston Astros using the medium for stealing signs (aka cheating).  My Sox didn't have the worst record in the American League. That prize went to the Texas Rangers. 

Texas Rangers - The Rangers' Globe Life Field, their new $1.1 billion stadium, has yet to see any fans. Almost half the stadium's construction was paid for by tax-payers and they have yet to recoup any of the money. Attendance was already pretty light. Will the new park save baseball in Arlington in 2021? The economic of baseball looks bleak in general. 

        

Seattle Mariners - A three game series between the Mariners and the SF Giants had to moved from Seattle to San Francisco due to air quality issues. Due to the fires on the west coast many young healthy players were gasping for air during a game between Seattle and Oakland, so they moved the next home stand. Another example of a visiting team playing their "home" games in a visitor's park.  

New York Yankees - This might be the first baseball season ever where no players were spit on by Yankees fans during a game. No smoke bombs were dropped into the visiting dugouts or no fishing sinkers were thrown at the opposing teams' outfielders. Must have been downright pleasant for all involved.  Maybe there is an advantage to not having fans. In 2017, NYY acquired Giancarlo Stanton from the Marlins for big money and they have been disappointed since. He has been injured a lot of the time. Even when he played, he did not hit well.  He was amazing in Miami but not so in New York. Some thought it was caused by the intimidation of the NYC crowd. Miami had very few fans in attendance. When this season started, it appeared that this was correct. He batted over .400 for the short month of July with two home runs. But the rest of the year wasn't so good, with only two more homers and he ended the year batting .250.  So much for that theory. His base salary this year is $26 million with the NYY's 30 man roster at $69 million (again the most in MLB).  The Tamba Rays' entire 30 man roster's salary is less than Stanton's salary alone at $25.88 million. The Yankees came in second place to the Rays. I am not sure why anyone roots for this Goliath, but clearly the Rays are the David we all should be rooting for. 

St. Louis Cardinals - Starting in July 31st, the Cards had to suspend the playing baseball for 16 days due to  COVID. This is the longest stoppage of play since the strike year. They had to cram 53 games into 44 days.  Amazing they made the playoffs as well. Four out of the five teams in the National League Central made the playoffs. The lowly Pittsburgh Pirates, with the worst record in baseball, didn't make it. Wouldn't it be interesting if the two teams with the COVID outbreaks (Marlins and Cards) made it into the World Series? Can't happen. They are in the same league.  

                    

Atlanta Braves - Without fans in the stadium, we didn't have to hear this racist chant at the Braves home games. 

This is definitely a big plus to not having fans in the stadium this year. Also, a plus going into the post-season. I usually root against the Braves so I don't have to listen to this crap. Now I will just root against them because I hate their fans. 

Chicago Cubs - The biggest concern of Cubs fans, before the pandemic started, was the age of their starters. They have five great starters, but all of them are in their 30's which is old for a pitcher. In a 162 game season, you know injuries are going to happen. Can these older player remain effective and throw hard for that long? Maybe not, but this being a shortened season, it was no longer a concern. They were awesome. With the Red Sox being so bad, at least I had another decent team to root for this year. Their hitting and bullpen aren't so great, but their great starters got them enough to win their division. Both Kyle Hendricks and Yu Darvish had Cy Young Award caliber seasons. If their hitting comes alive, they will be a dangerous team in the postseason. 

Los Angeles Dodgers - A handful of players opted out for the season. This is understandable but costly. The highest price player, ironically, was David Price who was traded to the Dodgers from the Red Sox in the Mookie Betts trade in the offseason. He has two small children at home and didn't think the protocols that MLB had put in place were enough. This didn't seem to matter to the Dodgers. They ended up with the best record in baseball. They are the favorites, on paper, going into the postseason, but as my high school track coach used to say "if we cared what it said on paper, we'd just mail in our results." The postseason is a new season and anyone of these teams can pull it off. 

My wife is a Cubs' fan so I am all in on the Cubbies. Since the Oakland A's have one of their Single A farm teams in Burlington, I'd love to see them in the World Series as well.  I'd love seeing the guys we saw play here when they were 18 or 19 play in the big game.  So I'll be rooting for a Cubs / A's world series. Hopefully, next year we'll be back to normal.  

Living without Water

Every trades person I have in my house looks at the prior trades person's work and bashes it. If my regular plumber is unavailable, I go with another one. "What shoddy work!" I hear. Same with every electrician, carpenter, etc. Last weekend I had problems with my well, I heard these exact words from an excavator "whoever constructed this well, did a shitty job." From that sentence on, this is what I hear "blah $ blah $ blah $ blah." As usual, my Type A response is "How much?"

The year 2016, a year I previously labeled The Year that Sucked, our well went dry for about six weeks. This was an awful end to a truly awful year. It not only brought us Trump as president elect, but on a more personal level, we lost lost four pets that year among other things. COVID alone probably makes this year worse. So here we are again near the end of an atrocious year without water. Life is just grand.

When we bought this house, over 15 years ago, it was our one concern. The previous owner only lived here one year and they had a problem with the well. They said they had accidentally left a hose running for a long time. This was a concern we decided to overlook because we were in love with the house. I write this on my back porch overlooking apple trees, towering sugar maples and blackberry bushes just crying for me to come pick more of them.  No complaints here.

A few weeks ago, we noticed a flutter in the water and a few faucets were producing rusty water. July was dry so we were concerned. We started doing a better job of conserving water and bought bottled water for our personal consumption. The problem went away with about seven inches of rain in August.  Last Saturday, the last weekend in August, the six year old complained that he couldn't flush. Of course, we didn't believe him until we tried and realized that there was no water anywhere in the house. Not this again! 

We have a beautiful five acre lot in northern Vermont on a very tall hill in the outer foothills of Mt. Mansfield (the largest of the Green Mountains). The dirt in my yard is only a thin layer and below is bedrock which is very hard. This is probably why the well is over 500 feet away from my house. Drilling a new one would be very expensive and to be avoided if we can. 

When I was a kid, I used to spend the summers in a cabin in Southern RI, near the beach, that did not have running water. When we went to the bathroom (big bathroom), to flush we went to the river with a bucket and then poured the water into the toilet.  No biggie. Some city folks will deal with a lot of bullshit just to get out of the city. Bottled water wasn't plentiful back in the 70's so we'd bring a huge jug from home. When that ran out, we went to the local cemetery and refilled. We took "sponge baths" at home and sometimes showered at the beach. . Since we were kids and our parents only went there when they weren't working, it wasn't that big of a deal. We had no place to go in a hurry. Being on a work schedule like that we would really suck. 

Back to the present, while we waited for the water situation to be fixed here, at the end of COVID summer, we did similar things. It was like being at the cabin of my youth. We don't have a river nearby but we had a friend who was on vacation who told us we could shower at her house. Wherever we could find water, we filled up, keeping a bunch of empties in the car. We have a dehumidifier that supplies us a big bucket of water each day (for the flushing). Bottled water is placed throughout the house along with hand sanitizer. We use paper plates and heated up water on the stove for whenever we needed It is a temporary situation, no more.

We hoped it wouldn't be six weeks like last time. Rainfall doesn't fix a situation like when it gets this low. The water table eventually gets replenished in the fall when the leaves start falling from the trees. After the leaves are gone, the trees release water preparing for the winter. Fall was still a few weeks away at this point.  

Monday, August 31st: Last Monday morning, I called a water hauling company to pump water into the well but when they showed up they did not have the equipment to go that far. The plan was to pump 4500 gallons (or whenever it is filled) of water into the well. We would basically be pumping water into the spring as a temporary fix which would allow us to have a reasonably normal life for a few days until I get the well fixed.  The quote I received was only for $285.00 so I thought this was a good deal.  If only they could reach the well. They only had 400 feet of hose. They agreed with me, when we looked into the well, the water was below the pipe that feeds to the house.

While they were here. I asked them about another problem we had. The pump that brings the water into the house was making a really awful noise. We googled this the first time, years ago, and know that you can damage your pump if you continually run your pump without water, so we had to turn it off.  Here is the problem: there is no off-switch. We had to turn off the power going to the pump which means a circuit breaker. The problem with this is that the breaker controls several plugs in the house. With it turned off, we lost the internet, the television in the living room and freezer in the cellar. We had extension cords running around our house. This is not a good thing when you have a six year old. They figured out how to disconnect the pump by removing a wire from it. This made life much more bearable. No more extension cords running around the house. We referred me to pump guy because there was nothing wrong with our well. 

Tuesday, September 1st: On Tuesday, the well guys showed up.  Of course, they bashed the work of the people who installed the pump back in 1984 when the house was built (I assume). Not up to code.  The pipe that I saw in the well, that is above the water, is the overflow pipe. It is supposed to be that high.  Phew! They also laughed at the guys I had at the house the day before.

They diagnosed the problem: I needed a new pump and they be back tomorrow with the pump.

Wednesday, September 2nd: Wednesday the water problem was fixed. A new pump was installed and they plugged it into the wall so we would not have the power problems if we ever had to turn it off in the future. Cost $1750.00. 

*YAY WATER*

But wait, "what is that puddle?!" After the water started flowing, a huge puddle accumulated on our basement floor. Water was shooting out the bottom of our water heater tank. The guys showed me how to turn the hot water off and suggested I call my plumber. I called the plumber and didn't hear him back from him until around 8pm.  He said it sounded like our water heater needed to be replaced. "Blah! $ Blah! $ Blah!"

Thursday, September 3rd: I spent the day calling water heater companies. It occured to me that I was probably going to spend the Labor Day long weekend without hot water, but at least we had water. We could flush, drink and cook normally. Again, not ideal, particularly during a pandemic. I found the receipt of the water heater that we bought in 2008. This was the first major purchase we made after we bought this house, $2k. I called the company I bought it from, an elderly man answered the phone with a dog barking in the back. "That's me," he said, "but I retired years ago." He gave me references to people who couldn't do the work for another two weeks. I found a guy on our town forum that sounded great but when I called him, he was on vacation in Wells, Maine. Nice guy. He referred me to Falcon Plumbing. They could not make it until Wednesday, September 9th.  Deep breath, okay. As I write this, that is tomorrow. 

Wednesday, September 9th: The water heater guy just left. We need a new tank, as expected. He quoted me $3,800.00, roughly, for a 75 gallon tank. But we could save $700.00 by going to 50. Since we barely use hot water in this house (wash dishes and showers for two and a half people), a smaller tank sounds reasonable.  We talked about a waterless tank but it sounds like a headache and is more expensive.  He'll come back tomorrow first thing in the morning.

Thursday, September 10th: I got up early in case he came super early. At around 12:30pm, he pulled in. I should have known better. Total cost $3,300.00. Totaling with the pump, I am down $5k. 

I showered. It was glorious!

 

Why Are Liberals So Bad At Branding?

You know you have a bad slogan when you have to explain it. It should make sense to you immediately. Like this one: Make America Great Again! We may not like what it says, but we understand it. We are not great now. We used to be great. Lets get back there. When your message is simple, primal (borderline racist) and hasn't changed in 100 years, messaging is easy. When your message is more nuanced and challenging, messaging is not so easy. Liberals have the harder task and they don't always succeed.

Black Lives Matter is a perfect example. People don't get it immediately. It often needs explaining. This is what I hear a lot, "All Lives Matter." Of course, they do. When someone says this, they are obviously missing the point. Some white people think that we are saying their lives don't matter. I assume it is one of these people stealing my BLM sign off of my lawn. The message is supposed to say that we acknowledge that there is a problem with racism, particularly in policing, in this country. We stand by our black friends and the oppression needs to stop. This is just too long for a sign. How about Black Lives ALSO Matter. The "also" makes it more clear, it does seem to fall flat. Maybe there would be less resistance to it if it was more inclusive. A lot of white people suffer from oppression from police. Pulling them into your plight may be more helpful. 

Another slogan that needs explaining is Defund the Police. Of course, we don't want to completely cut the budget of the police. I can't imagine what sort of mess our cities would be under those conditions. Currently, the police do too much. They direct traffic, mediate domestic abuse, investigate murder, chase bank robbers, respond to noise complaints .. the list is too long. No one has all the skills needed for this job. By defund the police, we mean to divvy up some of these responsibilities elsewhere and adjust the budget accordingly. Perhaps social workers could be dispatched to domestic violence situations instead of the cops. Seattle has volunteers policing the "protest zone" which seems to be working. The other problem is that cities are using their police as a revenue stream. Seven percent of Chicago's revenue comes from tickets ... not the police department's revenue .. the city's revenue. Yeow!  This is such bullshit. It is usually the poor they go after, because the wealthy have the resources to fight back. If you ever wonder why people hate the cops, here is Exhibit A.  

I know I have said it here before. I am a 50+ year old white man and I have yet to have a positive interaction with the police. Ever. When I was young, I seemed to have a target on my back and I really didn't make a lot of trouble. I was a bit obnoxious but I barely broke the law. I smoked pot, that was about it. I can't imagine how it would have been if I were black. Even now, as an older man, cops are rude and seem to be on a power trip no matter what the situation. A situation would have to be very bad for me to call the police. I have never called them, about anything, because I just don't trust them. I'd rather take care of problems on my own. Things are much better since I have left southern New England but it is still ingrained in me to be scared when I see a cop.  The bad part of town doesn't scare me. Seeing gang colors don't scare me. See a police cruiser does. That is just wrong. 

Few things make me shutter more, than when I think about how militarized our police have become in the past few years. I didn't need to see George Floyd killed to figure out we needed a change. I am glad others are finally figuring it out.  

The Longterm Social Effects of this Crisis

The greatest long term effect of the Spanish Flu pandemic in the early 20th century was its effect on World War I. It hit Germany and Austria before it hit France and England giving the Allies early advantages and the Allies eventually won the war. This flu is often considered the "forgotten" pandemic because there was so much else going on in the world at the time, not just a World War but other major illnesses also hit the world around the same time: yellow fever, diphtheria, cholera and typhoid.  History classes often overlook the diseases of this era because of the war. The Spanish Flu lasted 36 months and killed 50 million people. We all hope this pandemic won't be as devastating. At the writing of this sentence, the world is at three million and counting.

The long term effects I am talking about in this post are the social ones. The Spanish Flu left people with a lingering lack of trust in strangers. Strangers carry disease. This lead to isolationism and xenophobia giving way to fascists like Hitler, Mussolini and Franco. Of course, there were other factors, like a horrendous war, but the flu contributed to it. Anti-Semites have long linked Jews to the plague. Hitler famously referred to them as "racial tuberculosis" in "German lungs."  Such vile terms were more effective with the memory of the Spanish Flu fresh in their memory. .

It is impossible from this vantage point to predict the long term effects of COVID-19 on our society. Most lasting societal changes usually come as a surprise. Henry Ford had no idea that the mass production of cars would lead to more teenage pregnancies and air pollution. Did the flood of boys without fathers after World War II bring us rock and roll?  Did Roe v. Wade help bring us low crime rates decades later due to the lack of unwanted children? These are thought experiments. Let's do it, a COVID-19 version.

Celebrity: Celebrities have been showing us who they really are in this crisis. Maybe we'll finally stop making otherwise stupid, careless and mega-privileged people famous. Maybe we'll be more selective on who gets to be famous or perhaps put them on a lower pedestal. Of course not all celebrities are so bad. The smart ones know how to control themselves and shut up. You notice that Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt haven't stuck their feet in their mouths, but the hyper-narcissists and morons surely are.

• Ellen DeGeneres (aka Queen of Nice) compared her quarantine to being in a prison while she lives in a beachfront palatial mansion 
• Evangeline Lily urged people to ignore social distancing rules and isolation using terms like "Marshall Law" on Instagram which she obviously doesn't understand nor know how to spell. 
• Actress Jaimie King released a video thanking the virus 
• Gwyneth Paltrow is tweeting about what the best dildo to use during isolation, selling them as well. Some poor warehouse worker is risking his/her life to get someone a dildo. 
• Sam Smith tweeted the stages of his meltdown while he had to deal with isolation in his $15 million London mansion
• NBA player Ruby Gobert touched a bunch of mics at a media event as a joke. A few days later, he tested positive.
• Gisele Bundchen posted a picture of herself in front of a tropical waterfall meditating.
• High School Musical star Vanessa Hudgens suggested that people dying is "like, inevitable."
• Bette Middler is figuring out what her appliances do, no joke.

While many of their fans are living in tiny apartments, some of them under duress ... we get a crash course in how crudely unequal our society is. Our doctors, who keep us alive, don't live this way. Entertainers do. Will income inequality become an even bigger issue after this crisis?

Entertainment: When next year's television shows roll out, will they be including the pandemic in their story lines?  Do we want them to? Do you prefer them to have more of an escapist quality? Will we get to see the family on "This Is Us" in social isolation ... where will the plot line come from. We get to watch them binge watch other shows and argue ... not so fun.

Concert venues will be devastated by this crisis.Our days of hanging shoulder to shoulder in the dark listening to our favorite bands jam may be a thing of the past. They will be the last businesses to be allowed to open and for all we know, may not be allowed to fill them in like they used to.  This means that entry and/or beer will be more expensive ... I cried a little bit while writing this.

Environmental: Quarantine is only a few weeks old and already we see the environment recovering. Factories are idle, planes are grounded and commuters are staying home. We have cut carbon emissions worldwide by 8% and energy use is down in some places by 25% of last year. Some cities are reporting seeing constellations for the first time in decades. With the city streets desolate, wild life is returning to some areas that haven't seen them in decades. We will return to our old ways soon enough but this quick recovery might really inspire people to change. Stay home, use less, use mass transit, telecommute ... these are easy to do for some of us. We might just get into the habit.

Cities around the world have closed more than 1,000 miles of streets to cars for the use of bicycles. How much of that is going to be permanent? Seattle has already announced that 20 miles of their new bike only roads will be permanent. If the locals like it, it will stay. So if this is happening in your area. Contact a politician to keep it. They are probably desperate to find ways to make citizens happy right now.

Hate: Hate crimes are already a lot higher for anyone that looks Chinese. Trump hasn't helped with this. "Go back to China," "Kung Flu" and "Wu Flu" are all things being said to and about people from Far East origins. Hate will only subside until we get rid of the creep in the White House, but it will never go away permanently. The protests in Michigan and other states have been organized by white supremacy groups. Many of the people showing up don't even know this. I hope this is all temporary, but isolation breeds contempt and xenophobic (the evil twin of isolationism) is not far behind. I fear these people will get more powerful the longer this quarantine lasts. Here is a list from the Anti-Defamation League of anti-Asian incidents in America since this crisis began.

Sporting Events: Maybe we'll have standing ovations for doctors, scientists and other essential workers during our sporting events rather than for the military. Instead of players wearing khaki to honor the troops, maybe they will wear smocks to honor the real heroes, and not those who make invasions possible. We live in a violent nation, with a violent past. It would be nice, if our priorities could finally change.

Parades: Maybe our parades will celebrate these essential workers as well.

The Work Place: A lot of mangers are going to realize after this is over that remote employees are quite productive. I have been doing it for twelve years now and it has its distractions but compared to the distractions of being in the office, it is nothing. No one is coming into my office to talk about the game or the weather, and I have no commuter traffic to stress me out.  Telecommuting is the way to go. Those who can do it, will. Office spaces will become like empty warehouses, and food delivery, during work hours, will spike to new heights. This is not going away.

Teachers: The only real distractions, for a lot of us, these days is that kids are at home. Will there be more respect for our teachers now that many parents had to teach their own kids and they getting first hand knowledge how difficult their angels really are to teach? or how difficult teaching actually really is? I'm guessing that the snow day will no longer exist now that we know teaching can happen remotely. Teachers should have a national strike in the Fall, demanding more pay.  We'd all freak to think that we'd have to have our kids home anymore after this Spring and cave immediately. 

Essential Workers: Will people have more respect for essential workers? I am not talking about me, someone who supports a hospital's software system. But those who bring us food, stack shelves, drive trucks and buses. They are not staying home and they are keeping us alive. I am guessing once this is over, we will go back to paying them badly and not providing them health care. That's the America I know. Hopefully, I am wrong. But with scum like Trump and his loyalty cult in charge, I don't see how change for the essential worker could be possible. Can you imagine how bad it would be without Obamacare (aka the ACA)? And yet, Trump is still busy trying to repeal it. I'm guessing (and hoping) that Medicare For All will get a big boost from this crisis, but I have been very wrong about this type of thing in the past. I did predict a landslide victory for President Gore.

Trade: Isolation will raise its ugly head again. I am expecting that domestic manufacturing will make a comeback. We still have factories in the US now, but not like in the past. I expect factories, mostly with robotic workers, will increase. Buying American will give people a sense of security and consumers will pay more for that feeling ... but not a lot more.This come back will be short.lived. Businesses will find new and creative ways to trick people that something is made domestically and eventually, they will forget all about this.

The Economy - What industry will recover? Will people go to gyms anymore now that they know how easy it is to do the trainer thing on-line. I want to know how my favorite restaurants are going to survive this. Restaurants have such a thin profit margin. How could they possibly survive this? I have a friend who is a contractor who did two hours of work in April, doing a training on Zoom. The state of Vermont used that as a reason to reject him for a small business grant. You think quarantine has been crazy, the recovery is going to be completely nuts.

After the Spanish Flu, if you had the flu and survived, this gave you economic benefits over others who had not. At this point, we don't know if having COVID-19 makes you immune. If this does end up being true for COVID-19, I could imagine that anyone that works with the public would have the advantage in a pre-vaccine economy.

Privacy: Those in charge know that when we are in crisis, we are more likely to accept power grabs... think of the Patriot Act after 9/11. Some authoritarian countries are using this crisis as justification to monitor their citizens. I can imagine this will get worst before it gets better. Expect more invasion of your privacy. It will be justified under the moniker of public health.

New Cold War: Will this crisis spark a new Cold War with China. Should they pay for their negligence in the matter of the spreading of the virus and the lack of openness? As soon as healthcare workers started getting sick, they should have told the world about it. There was a three week period that we could have stopped this pandemic or at least saved many lives. Perhaps they should reimburse the world, but they won't so why push it? It also sets an awful precedence, especially with the recent discovery that the Spanish Flu started in Kansas. If we push this, they may just close their doors to the world. You think a world where is China is open is a bad thing, wait until they shut their borders!

Politics: Maybe we'll stop electing politicians who are ignorant of science. Germany elected a Chancellor that has a PHD in Chemistry who wrote her thesis on quantum chemistry ... the US elected a President who doesn't understand and rejects evolution. Guess which country has been better prepared for this crisis?  Perhaps the Republican Party's war on science will finally come to an end.

Trump missed a golden opportunity. Great presidents emerge in the midst of great crises. FDR with World War II and The Depression, Lincoln in the Civil War ... we remember them as great leaders for taking us forward. We barely remember Hoover and Buchanan ... because they faltered. This disease's second wave will be hitting us badly right around the time of the presidential election. Hopefully, people will remember Trump's disastrous performance and lack of leader while they go into the polls. 

The countries doing the best during this crisis are the countries with the strong safety nets: Germany, South Korea and Taiwan. The countries with libertarian bents, the US and the UK, are fairing badly. Will we learn from this lesson? COVID-19 is the first truly global event in human history. Perhaps it will make the world closer.  It is hard to be believe when yahoos with guns are storming statehouses.But maybe this crisis will just scare enough people to move us along on this matter. Government can be a good thing with the right people in charge.

Hindsight 2020: COVID-19 Edition

I use humor as a defense mechanism. I can't remember any tragedy that I haven't used it to get me through the experience so this tragedy is no different. It is just how I deal. Not all appreciate this so I have been trying my best to control myself on social media. Humor on social media is difficult as well. Not everyone recognizes a joke as a joke. These are also touchy times. I sent an email to a neighborhood forum recently about a postponed event and I referred to COVID-19 as "this tiny virus."  I received an email stating what a poor choice of words this was in light of the "weak and frail dying." I found this to be nonsense since this virus is actually quite tiny and is referred to as being such on the CDC web site, but nonetheless, this was a good reminder to choose my words carefully ... not just for the sensitive but the clueless.

I have to remind myself that regardless of how miserable I am, there are many people who have it much worse. I find myself refraining from complaining about lack of baseball, cancellation of Summer festivals and how much I miss going out to eat. I have a co-worker that had to watch her father die of COVID-19 on-line over Zoom. I have another whose entire family was sick while they share a very small urban apartment. Even though I work remotely, I am fairly close with my co-workers. I won't catch any virus they have contracted but this doesn't stop me from feeling compassion and feeling sad. I generally don't promote the concept of luck, but in this case, the feeling of being lucky has occurred to me. It is just my wife, the kid and I in a relatively large Vermont house. Now that the weather is nice, we have five acres to just stretch out and play around with and a short drive to tons of hiking. I am okay and feeling quite good physically, but I am more disgusted than ever at our president and what he's done with our federal government. So I have set aside some time today to rant.

As a society we are in awful situation, we are amid a pandemic and we have the worst possible leadership. In general, it is difficult to see how truly bad a leader is until a major crisis occurs and then it is too late. Those of us who noticed it early were thought by some to be complainers or exaggerating, are now feeling vindicated. This is cold comfort. It is frightening that his approval rating has risen during this disaster. This too shall pass, I hope and believe. The pandemic has affected mostly large urban areas, so far, full of people who already hated him. Once it spreads around the Midwest and everywhere else, one would hope people will smarten up and actually blame him. Eventually everyone will be affected by this thing, either directly or indirectly, then they will take a closer look.

Of course, Trump couldn't have prevented this disaster but he could have gotten us through it with less death and less of an impact to our lives and economy. This is the least that we should expect from our government. The one shining light is that many governors are showing some real signs of leadership, on both sides of the aisle. You wouldn't know this listening to Trump. He blames everyone but himself. The mark of a good leader is someone that takes responsibility of failures and gives others, his teammates, credit for successes. Trump does the opposite. Harry Truman's "The buck stops here" can be inverted for Trump ... "The buck stops there ... and there ... and there ... but definitely not here." He will point the finger everywhere but take no ownership. Sure there is a lot of blame to go around. The World Health Organization (WHO) placated China for fear that the authoritarian regime would push them out altogether. I am sure in hindsight they regret it. They do not deserve the blame that Trump pushes their way.  He wants the illusion of being in charge without the accountability that goes along with it.

May 2018: You could say that Trump's pathetic leadership in this matter started way back in May 2018 when his administration disbanded the pandemic response team of the CDC. One of the places in the world the CDC cut their presence was in China. If you disband the fire department and a fire in one house spreads throughout a neighborhood and scorches everything. You don't get blamed for the fire, but you get blamed for the response or lack thereof. He also tried to cut the CDC by over $100 million to save money only to be stopped by congress.  From an economic standpoint, how does that decision look now?

December 31 2019: China informs WHO of a "mysterious pneumonia outbreak" in Wuhan, a city of 11 million people. A large portion of the world's intelligence agency already knew about it, possibly as early as November.

Early January 2020: The National Security Council received intelligence about the spread of the virus and they suggested that large cities should be shut down. Trump didn't respond until March.

January 11 2020: China shares the virus's genetic sequence.

January 21 2020: First confirmed American with COVID-19.

January 22 2020: Trump states "we have it totally under control" at the Davos conference in Switzerland.

January 30 2020: Alex Azar, Trump's Health and Human Services Secretary warns him about the threat of COVID-19. Trump writes him off as being "alarmist."

January 31 2020: Trump announces his travel restrictions which he calls his biggest step yet, but they are a joke. As of this week in mid-April, since these "restrictions", over 40,000 people have traveled to the US from China.

February 10 2020: Trump tells a crowd at a rally, "by April, you know, in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away" and the crowd roared. There is no proof of this. It could be true but most likely it is not.

Third Week of February 2020: Trump's top health advisers urge him to promote social distancing to prevent the spread of the virus. He doesn't do this until almost a month later. In the period between 2/26 and 3/16, the number of cases in America increased from 15 to over 4,000.

February 25 2020: CDC releases a public notice without the president's approval. The president flips out and reduces Azar's role and puts Mike Pence, a guy who rejects evolution, to be in charge of the crisis.

Late February 2020: The CDC still hadn't delivered their own reliable test so doctors were developing their own. The test kits that are finally shipped were faulty. Trump can't be blamed for this but the fact that he procrastinated so much, makes this disastrous. In this period, only five states could test reliably. New York and Washington state, the two states with the most cases, were not among them.

March 12 2020: Trump decided to ad-lib an address to the nation in order to calm the stock market, but he makes so many mistakes that he has the opposite effect. He made six major mistakes in ten minutes. Do you remember when Bill Clinton used to talk off-script and talk, eloquently, directly to the nation off the top of his head?  I do. I miss those days.

March 16 2020: Trump tells a group of governors that they are on their own when purchasing respirators. So instead of purchasing them as a huge block, the states should compete with each other and drive up the price etc. This is stupid on so many levels.

March 19 2020: Trump continually urges people to use malaria drug chloroquin even though there is no proof that it works. This doesn't stop shit media companies like Fox News and Breitbart from reporting it as a potential cure. Many people who actually need this drug, for lupus and other conditions, are having difficulty in getting it.

Obama managed the Ebola crisis, Eisenhower polio, Ford over managed swine flu and Reagan ignored AIDS. Trump will go down in history as the president who inherited a pandemic and made it worse every time he opened his mouth.

Who will remember this in November?  In the 2000, George W. Bush spent a good part of the year traveling around the world promoting his "space shield" and obsessing over Iraq. When an intelligence report landed on his desk stating "Al Qaeda expected to attack America," he didn't even read it. Then the towers came down in 2001 and in 2004  we re-elected the fuck. You ask people about his performance, they don't talk about what he could have done to prevent the disaster. They talk about the nice things he said and how he made them feel. It is so maddening, it makes you lose all faith in democracy. Please don't let it happen again.

Love In the Time of COVID-19

Social Distancing is nothing new to me. I am by nature anti-social and I work alone in my home at the keyboard. Even when I have downtime, I am usually at the computer for some reason or other.  Now that everything is closed, I actually have more human interaction than normal. My wife is home all day now and our five year old foster child is as well. If I had known this was coming, I probably would not have step forward to be a foster parent. He moved in the week before Thanksgiving. We are making do the best we can.

I remember when I was a kid, I used to love it when we lost electricity. We'd light candles and sit closely around a table to play cards in the darkness. The change of routine was fun. I doubt that if it continued for a week or months, I would have still enjoyed it. Our kid is still in the enjoying-it phase. Our challenge now is trying to maintain the attention of a five year old, educate him and be nurturing, while continuing to do our jobs. Both of us are still employed so we hand him off to each other and do what we can. My employer is a health care provider in New York City so I don't think I will be losing my job anytime soon. My work day isn't very different for me than other times since I started telecommuting 13 years ago. The big difference is that I now, occasionally, have to type with a five year old climbing on my arm. This is a new talent, I am developing. Poor guy. He is getting a little stir crazy.

We have two things really helping us now.  The internet is truly awesome and the weather is starting to get good here in northern Vermont.

The Scholastic Corporation's educational web site has been an awesome tool. They have educational games that keep him occupied learning. His teachers are keeping in touch and giving assignments via SeeSaw. When all else fails and we are both too busy to do anything with him, Hulu, Netflix, PBS and Disney Plus have all come in handy.  He learned quickly how to use the remote control. I've also been teaching him how to use a PC so I pulled out an old laptop from the closet. He is using Microsoft Word to type words he knows. Each day I teach him something new like fonts, colors, wingdings, bold and type size etc. It is amazing how much fun he has with this. He is also staying in touch with friends via Marco Polo which is a lot of fun.

We are finally having mostly good weather days now in Vermont. We expect snow this week, but it should be light and it is supposed to heat right back up afterwards.  On our neighborhood email forum, my wife posted a request for a kid's bike. Within a few hours, we had two free kids bikes for him to use. We have been teaching him to ride on the nice days. Today has been in the 50's (F) so we went for a short walk / ride with the two dogs, two adults and the kid on his bike. Each day we see the same people. Vermonters are coming out of hibernation.  We maintain our distance. On cold days we have the Wii Fit to do yoga and balance games.

This is definitely not what we planned when we took on a foster child. We are learning as we go.Deep breaths and taking some moments for yourself is essential. Each day we make him take 30 minutes as quiet time in the afternoon where he has to play quietly in him room. During quiet time today, I decided to write in my Blog. Times up ...I hear his door opening.  Have a good day.

Hindsight 2020: March 2020

The week leading up the Super Tuesday, I planned on voting for Amy Klobuchar with Pete Buttigieg as a backup. I finally remember how to spell their names. They both dropped out just days before. The Democrats learned from the Republicans in 2016. The GOP candidates in 2016 feared that Trump was taking over the election because they were splitting the moderate vote. They dropped out of the race too late. So the Democratic moderates dropped out before Super Tuesday allowing Biden to win 9 of the 13 states. It didn't work for me. I voted for Bernie, but he only won California, Colorado, Utah, and Vermont.

Can we all agree? All of these Democratic candidates would be a much better president than the ass clown that we have in office now. Whoever gets the nomination gets my vote in the general election. I was looking for a moderate that wasn't Joe Biden, but if he gets nominated, I am all in.

I voted for Bernie mostly because I know him and trust him.  He is a Vermont icon that is widely respected throughout the state, but I have concerns about his ability to be elected in the general election. Leftist populist ideas may look good on a bumper sticker but they are losers when it comes to the general election. When people look closely at them, they shudder. Paying for them ... to play with words ... is very taxing. The leftist turn in Democratic politics has been overstated. It looks like Ocasio-Cortez will lose re-election in 2020. Democrats aren't using the Green New Deal and Medicare for All in their television ads ... Republicans are, to scare voters. Our most famous liberals didn't run on liberal platforms. FDR ran on balancing the budget, Kennedy ran on cutting taxes for the rich. Those who ran on liberal policies have lost miserably. How miserably? McGovern-miserably, Mondale-miserably. Maybe Bernie has his base fired up enough but the rest of the party is not and his base hasn't really been showing up at the primaries. This scares me. Young people talk a good game ... but they need to show up to vote.

I am also concerned about the down-ballot. Biden will bring in more party loyal voters who will select Democrats down ballot. The new president will need votes in Congress to reform health care. Since Bernie is really not a Democrat, he may have difficulty on both sides of the aisle. 

Biden looks safer, but I would like to point out that being safe often loses elections.We thought Hillary was safe. I am torn.

I want to thank you all for helping me make my decision. I am unsure if I am going to publish another one of these.

Delegate count
Candidates need 1,991 delegates to get the nomination. If he/she doesn't get this, it goes to the convention which could be quite messy and would probably go Biden.

The count is as follows:
Biden - 664
Sanders - 573
Warren - 64
Bloomberg - 61
Buttgieg - 26
Klobuchar - 7
Gabbard - 2

We have 11 states voting in March and two territories. Of them, Michigan is the largest with 125 delegates.

Dropping Out:
Thank you all for your service.
Michael Bennet

Andrew Yang

Deval Patrick - endorses Biden.

Pete Buttigieg - endorses Biden.

Amy Klobuchar - endorses Biden

Michael Bloomberg - endorses Biden.

Tom Steyer - endorses Biden.

Elizabeth Warren - - endorses Sanders.

Our Field:
Both candidates are considering stronger security. Biden had protesters jumping on stage with him during his Super Tuesday rally in LA. Today, someone showed up at a Bernie rally with a Nazi flag.

Bernie Sanders: Announced how he is going to pay for everything that he has promised. He plans to tax the wealthy, the fossil fuel industry and cut military spending.

Two Florida Democrats sue Sanders to keep him off the state ballot because he is an independent, not a Democrat.

Joe Biden announces a six figure ad buy. He appeared on Fox New Sunday with Chris Wallace. Biden calls him Mike who was Chris's father.

He issued a plan to fight the opioid crisis.