Category Archives: Economy

Emerging Theocracy – or maybe Nazism?

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From NPR – the whole article at

https://www.npr.org/2023/05/04/1173274834/book-bans-library-funding-missouri-texas-ashcroft?utm_source=npr_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20230504&utm_term=8367890&utm_campaign=best-of-npr&utm_id=39748169&orgid=445&utm_att1=

is horrifying not just for public libraries but for American democracy as well. One quote to show temperament:

“One of the board members said, ‘Well, what about this book? It’s about underage drinking, and underage drinking is illegal, so why would we have this book in the library?’ ” Dawe recalls. “And my question would be, ‘Where does that end? And what are you doing next? Where does this end?’ ”

U.S. Rep. Clay Higgins, a Republican from Louisiana, has a thought on that.

Higgins recently tweeted about the future of public libraries, saying libraries have become “grooming centers” and that he wants to change the “whole public library paradigm” and help get funding for “beautiful, church-owned public-access libraries.”

The topic makes mariner feel unwell. He will leave this issue in the reader’s hands.

Ancient Mariner

As we roll to 2024

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Mariner knows he puts out a lot of negative stuff (if he ever hears of a positive stuff, he’ll headline it). However, this paragraph below from 538, a respected pollster and sports oddsmaker, represents an assignment to each and every democrat and independent individual:

“Today, FiveThirtyEight is launching our national polling average for the 2024 Republican presidential primary. It shows former President Donald Trump receiving 49.3 percent of the national vote and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (who has not officially entered the race) receiving 26.2 percent. Former Vice President Mike Pence, another potential candidate, is at 5.8 percent, while declared candidate and former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley is at 4.3 percent.”

The assignment is this. Participate in local politics; put up a sign; make sure your friends and neighbors know your political position; donate (only) to your preferred local candidate; and, of course, attend the party’s local caucus and vote on election day!! (Congress is important, too – just beating on it doesn’t do any good; ever heard of beating a dead horse? Let’s elect a new young one!)

These are not normal times. In fact, they are a bit scary for every human around the world, not just democrats. 2024 is unique and the future 25 years will role out heavily influenced by the 2024 election.

Perhaps we should get 88 year-old Chuck Grassly (R-IA) and 80 year-old Joe Biden to run against each other in 2024. Then there would be only one theme: “Make America Eden Again”.

Just to prove the pudding, here’s some positive stuff from Science Magazine:

“A novel cancer vaccine tailored to genetic changes in a person’s tumor is showing promise in the clinic. In a study of about 150 people who had surgery for melanoma, a type of skin cancer, those given a personalized vaccine along with an immunotherapy drug were more likely to remain free of cancer 18 months later than patients who did not receive the vaccine.”

Ancient mariner

The REAL Election Results

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Printed by Politico

Here are your Lobbying Disclosure Act revenue rankings for the first quarter of 2023.

Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck: $15.8 million (versus $15.6 million in Q4 2022 and $15.4 million in Q1 2022)

Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld: $13.4 million (versus $14.1 million in Q4 2022 and $13 million in Q1 2022)

Holland & Knight: $10.8 million (versus $11.1 million in Q4 2022 and $10.1 million in Q1 2022)

BGR Group: $10.2 million (versus $10.1 million in Q4 2022 and $9.6 million in Q1 2022)

Cornerstone Government Affairs: $9.8 million (versus $9.5 million in Q4 2022 and $9.2 million in Q1 2022)

Invariant: $9.7 million (versus $9.9 million in Q4 2022 and $9.2 million in Q1 2022)

Thorn Run Partners: $6.5 million (versus $6.7 million in Q4 2022 and $6.4 million in Q1 2022)

Capitol Counsel: $6.3 million (versus $6.5 million in Q4 2022 and $6 million in Q1 2022)

Mehlman Consulting: $6.3 million (versus $6.4 million in Q4 2022 and $6.4 million in Q1 2022)

Forbes Tate Partners: $6.1 million (versus $6.2 million in Q4 2022 and $6.1 million in Q1 2022)

Squire Patton Boggs: $6 million (versus $6.1 million in Q4 2022 and $7.2 million in Q1 2022)

Crossroads Strategies: $5.9 million (versus $6 million in Q4 2022 and $5.8 million in Q1 2022)

Tiber Creek Group: $5.8 million (versus $6.3 million in Q4 2022 and $6.3 million in Q1 2022)

K&L Gates: $5.5 million (versus $5.3 million in Q4 2022 and $5.2 million in Q1 2022)

Cassidy & Associates: $5.4 million (versus $5.6 million in Q4 2022 and $5.5 million in Q1 2022)

Subject Matter: $4.8 million (versus $4.8 million in Q4 2022 and $4.9 million in Q1 2022)

Van Scoyoc Associates: $4.8 million (versus $6 million in Q4 2022 and $4.5 million in Q1 2022)

Alpine Group: $4.6 million (versus $4.7 million in Q4 2022 and $4.2 million in Q1 2022)

Ballard Partners: $4.5 million (versus $4.3 million in Q4 2022 and $4.4 million in Q1 2022)

Monument Advocacy: $3.9 million (versus $3.6 million in Q4 2022 and $3.3 million in Q1 2022)

 

OTHER NOTABLE FIRMS:

 

— Fierce Government Relations: $3.2 million (versus $3.2 million in Q4 2022 and $3.2 million in Q1 2022)

 

— Venable: $3 million (versus $2.9 million in Q4 2022 and $2.4 million in Q1 2022)

 

— Kountoupes Denham Carr & Reid: $2.9 million (versus $3 million in Q4 2022 and $2,820,000 million in Q1 2022)

 

— Venn Strategies: $2.8 million (versus $2.6 million in Q4 2022 and $2.8 million in Q1 2022)

 

— Vogel Group: $2.6 million (versus $2.7 million in Q4 2022 and $2.2 million in Q1 2022)

 

— Miller Strategies: $2.9 million* (versus $2.5 million* in Q4 2022 and $2 million* in Q1 2022)

 

*Estimated based on Senate disclosure filings. All other numbers have been verified by the firms.

 

TOP SPENDERS:

 

Chamber of Commerce of the U.S.A.: $18.7 million (versus $21 million in Q4 2022 and $18.7 million in Q1 2022)

National Association Of Realtors: $13.3 million (versus $25.3 million in Q4 2022 and $12.1 million in Q1 2022)

Pharmaceutical Research And Manufacturers Of America: $8 million (versus $6.6 million in Q4 2022 and $8.1 million in Q1 2022)

CVS Health (and subsidiaries): $7 million (versus $3.8 million in Q4 2022 and $3.7million in Q1 2022)

American Medical Association: $6.7 million (versus $5.1 million in Q4 2022 and $6.5 million in Q1 2022)

American Hospital Association: $5.6 million (versus $7 million in Q4 2022 and $5.4 million in Q1 2022)

The Cigna Group and subsidiaries (formerly Cigna Corporation and subsidiaries): $5.2 million (versus $1 million in Q4 2022 and $3.6 million in Q1 2022)

General Motors Company: $5.1 million (versus $1.8 million in Q4 2022 and $4.7 million in Q1 2022)

The Business Roundtable, Inc.: $4.8 million (versus $5.3 million in Q4 2022 and $4.8 million in Q1 2022)

America’s Health Insurance Plans, Inc. (AHIP): $4.7 million (versus $2.5 million in Q4 2022 and $4.7 million in Q1 2022)

Amazon.Com Services LLC: $4.6 million (versus $4.8 million in Q4 2022 and $5 million in Q1 2022)

Pfizer Inc.: $4.6 million (versus $3.1 million in Q4 2022 and $3.8 million in Q1 2022)

Meta Platforms, Inc. and various subsidiaries: $4.6 million (versus $3.7 million in Q4 2022 and $5.4 million in Q1 2022)

CTIA-The Wireless Association: $4.5 million (versus $4.5 million in Q4 2022 and $3.7 million in Q1 2022)

Northrop Grumman Corporation: $4.3 million (versus $2.1 million in Q4 2022 and $4.4 million in Q1 2022)

AARP: $3.9 million (versus $4.2 million in Q4 2022 and $3.5 million in Q1 2022)

Boeing Company: $3.8 million (versus $4 million in Q4 2022 and $2.7 million in Q1 2022)

UPS (United Parcel Service): $3.7 million (versus $1.4 million in Q4 2022 and $4.3 million in Q1 2022)

Edison Electric Institute: $3.6 million (versus $2 million in Q4 2022 and $2.8 million in Q1 2022)

Elevance Health, Inc.: $3.6 million (versus $1.3 million in Q4 2022 and $2.1million in Q1 2022)

 

BIGGEST CONTRACTS:

 

Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck: Johnson & Johnson Services, Inc. ($1.4 million)

Tributary LLP: HR Policy Association ($990,000)

Covington & Burling: Qualcomm Incorporated ($790,000)

Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld: Gila River Indian Community ($760,000)

Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld: Partnership to Address Global Emissions, Inc. ($640,000)

Ballard Partners: Renewable Energy Aggregators, Inc. ($630,000)

Squire Patton Boggs: Wau Holland Stiftung ($600,000)

Sidley Austin: Illumina, Inc. ($550,000)

Covington & Burling: Apple Inc. ($540,000)

Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer: Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) ($410,000)

 

What plutocracy?

Ancient Mariner

New signs

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Bottom up power: [Politico] “The country’s 900 or so rural electric cooperatives serve remote rural customers and are member-driven, -owned and -controlled. Their nonprofit status has made it hard to make investments in low-carbon energy; unlike investor-owned utilities, they can’t go into debt or sell shares to pay for a solar farm. But getting them off of fossil fuels is essential to meeting climate goals.

Already five co-ops have either left or announced they will leave a major G&T (generation and transmission) called Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association, which covers parts of four Western states.”

This tendency is happening in Europe as well. Despite all the ‘effort’ to stop using fossil fuel, oil companies are making record profits. Even Biden is allowing a new oil-drilling operation in Alaska – talk about plutocracy!

Mariner often writes about collective cultures. Collectivism includes concepts like extended families, local government, local cooperatives, community rules for equality of life, etc. To one degree or another, terms for collectives include cooperative, clan, communist, commune, tribe and many other terms denoting a localized group. The image below captures the general spirit:

Just being a small group does not automatically grant goodness. There are many small groups bent on anything but sharing and survival of all – NIMBY is one of countless examples that demonstrate the conflict between collectivism and the imposing needs of a much larger population.

Having learned from many sources over many years, mariner knows Homo sapiens is a tribal species, along with most of its primate ancestors. In past posts, he has cited authors who said things like “The maximum number of individuals that can be familiar to a human is 150”, “The further a person gets from a direct relationship with the environment, the more abusive the relationship becomes” and recently, “I’m first if its fair for everyone”.

When he studies the development of western nations, and the unimaginable wealth that suddenly appeared on the American continents, mariner is reminded of a group of hoodlums during a riot who break into a store and steal all its goods. Such tactics work for the hoodlums if there is plenty to go around. Western Capitalism is the fastest way to reorganize wealth.

Today, however, there is not enough to go around. Capitalism has an idiosyncrasy that doesn’t work anymore: Grow or die.

Because the West has achieved such wonders and accomplishments – especially when the achievements provide convenience, collective terminology is not popular and its advantages often are discounted. It is this resistance that makes it good news to mariner that there is a breakaway of self-owned electric companies from large conglomerates. There are other appropriate concepts of management that will work better in these challenging times. Bigger may not be better.

There are many more sociological points of interest but mariner can become boring.

Ancient Mariner

The Big Picture

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Like the scene on the battlefront in a war, there is much smoke, flying debris, destruction and conflict, but the scene is a battle for the ethos of the United States. Mariner decided to get above the commotion by sitting on one of 8,000 satellites in low Earth orbit and looking down at the fray.

Battles for ethos occur, on average, every 41 years. Unfortunately, every change in ethos included a military war.[1] The nation has begun another battle for ethos, launched by the election of Donald Trump.

Ethos is a word that describes the innate spirit and purpose of an institution; in this case the institution is the United States. Ethos is an attitude carried by every citizen without conscious awareness yet it shapes the self-perception of what every citizen believes is a national role in society, morality and among other nations.

The political energy required to shift a national ethos is immense. It takes time, economic transition, generational adaptation, international acceptance and a period of stability. Even so, there are citizens who continue to oppose change for many reasons, e.g., racism and, currently, Reaganomics. In each transition of ethos there are always progressives and conservatives but a third issue is necessary – usually requiring cultural adaptation. Today, it is the global pressure on the role of a nation where technology ignores boundaries and global warming threatens global economics.

When will military war occur? It seems there is a point where the old ways want no more change and like the way things are whereas new behaviors, economic opportunity and moral stress want to move on.

Will war emerge in Taiwan and the Pacific Rim?

Will extended war erupt in Europe versus Russia?

Is it possible that war could erupt in the U.S. between populated states and Dixie all over again – a war fought in the Constitution?

Could it be an economic war between plutocracy and democracy?

Sitting on this satellite, mariner perceives one thing: It is far from over.

Ancient Mariner

[1]

Independence 1812, the third issue was becoming an independent nation.

Civil 1861, the third issue was recognizing civil rights for African Americans, but the war actually was over the complete dismantling of the Dixie economy.

WW1 1914, the third issue was a shift in the role of nations; nations had international responsibilities not constricted by oceans or continents; economies adapted to international trade that was not colonialism.

Vietnam 1975, the third issue is frequently called the ‘useless’ war; it seemed useless in that the liberal era of American politics was rapidly disappearing. By 1980 President Reagan launched a conservative economy that has lasted until current times. Now, forty years later, Trump and the invasion of the capital suggests the economy may shift.

2016, a war has yet to erupt but likely will. At no time in American history has the nation faced so many change factors affecting the nation’s ethos.

Population

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For the last few days mariner has been poking about in information about global population. As a general introduction to the subject, below is a clip from the New Statesman, a British web magazine:

“Japan’s prime minister Kishida Fumio warned last week that the country’s demographic crisis was approaching a tipping point. “Our nation is on the cusp of whether it can maintain its societal functions,” Kishida told the Japanese parliament on 23 January. “It is now or never when it comes to policies regarding births and child-rearing – it is an issue that simply cannot wait any longer.”

This is not an overstatement. Japan already has one of the world’s oldest populations (second only to the city-state of Monaco), and it is ageing rapidly. In 2022, the number of births fell below 800,000 for the first time since records began (in 1899), eight years earlier than the government had predicted. This compares to more than 2 million births per year during the baby boom of the 1970s. Life expectancy has also increased. This means that almost a third of the population – 30 per cent – is now aged 65 or above according to the World Bank, raising the cost of social security programmes, such as pensions and medical care, while the proportion of The working-age people who pay into these programmes is shrinking.”

This perspective pretty much describes the situation for virtually every developed nation. In the United States, the U.S. Census Bureau released estimates showing the nation’s 65-and-older population has grown rapidly since 2010, driven by the aging of Baby Boomers born between 1946 and 1964. The 65-and-older population has increased by over a third during the last decade.

Couple that with Japan’s other concern about fewer workers to support discretionary funding for things like retirement, Social Security and health care, and the U.S. clearly is on the same path as Japan.

Mariner’s interest in global population began as just a curiosity but the elephant in the room forces a serious fear about the United States comparable even to the devastation of global warming.

The elephant is the ultra-conservative movement in the U.S. Their focus is to reduce taxes, attack Social Security and stop immigration – the big three associated with the subject of population. Does the electorate prefer stupid, self-centered legislators? Consider George Santos, Marjorie Taylor Greene et al. Is the atmosphere in legislative chambers filled with debilitating drugs?

One day, Alfie, the government will represent the best interests of the nation, but not soon.

Ancient Mariner

It is over.

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The battle to sustain individuality and Homo sapiens authenticity has been won by AI. Watch the following clip then read on:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s11k0yAA8ZQ

Already AI is good enough to write novels, essays, legal briefs and singlehandedly manage most trades on the stock exchange. The ability for anyone to write any style of entertainment is just one database away.

With the invention of the gene splitter Crispr, AI will be able to pool all human variations into a massive database so parents can pick any child they want. Who wants a Donald Trump lookalike? How about triplets that are the Kingston Trio?

But then AI will perceive that it is much simpler to have one version of humans; just think how efficient that would be for politics, medicine, and one would need only one football team.

Perhaps it will be less expensive if humans had no need to travel.

Welcome to Matrix.

Goodbye.

Ancient Mariner

Food for thought

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The agricultural industry is entering an increasingly rapid pace of change. It was only yesterday (and today) that farmers were encouraged to use no-plow techniques for large crop fields. Basically, the intent is to let indigenous plants provide a cover crop so that (a) good soil will not continue to blow away or wash away (b) the indigenous plants will provide better chemistry and require less commercial plant food in the soil and (c) the indigenous plants would retain CO2 in the soil. Changing farming practices is very difficult for farmers.

There are other practices that are changing. A small number of commercially large farms have decided to pursue zero fossil fuel in their operation. Manure, crop waste solar power and chemical conversions are used to produce electricity, feed and fertilizer.

These and other similar efficiency-based crop practices are an excellent effort but the circumstances surrounding a human population approaching 8 billion by 2030 and little land left to increase agricultural production has taken farming in a different direction.

Everyone has heard of hydroponic gardening (grown in water without soil) but aggressive corporations are taking hydroponics to extreme levels. Soil and vast acreages have a small role to play in large quantity production. Combined with the use of solar and wind energy, these farms have no season – they are year-round.

 

Add to the plant operation the quandary of what to do about cows. Long a joke, it is a fact that through flatulence and digestion, cows produce 40 percent of atmospheric methane. Cows generate methane in two main ways: through their digestion and through their waste. Cows are part of a group of animals called ruminants. Ruminants have stomachs with four distinct chambers. Sheep, goats, and giraffes also are ruminants. Even on television there are ads suggesting that everyone fight climate change by not eating beef.

The other side of cow economics is provided by Mother Nature. She is causing drought and water shortage in the primary wheat-growing regions of the southwest. Cows et al eat wheat – and a lot of water!

There are critics who say “Why eat the cow? Eat the grass the cow would eat.” As mariner mentioned in an earlier post: Perhaps anchovies, scrapple and spam may become popular again.

Ancient Mariner

 

Pakistan

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Until 2010, Pakistan was an economic powerhouse of the Middle East. Its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) at $263 billion was ten times larger than second ranked Sudan at $26 billion.

In 2010, Pakistan had more than a million acres flooded by a storm that swept giant ocean surges far inland, decimating the agricultural base of the nation. In 2022, mountain snow melt from the Himalayan mountains swamped the country’s entire economic base.

Pakistan is centrally located in the Middle East and has a long border with India. While border confrontations have occurred in Kashmir, the two nations recognize one another in trade. Pakistan is bound by Iran to the west, Afghanistan to the northwest and north, China to the northeast, and India to the east and southeast. The coast of the Arabian Sea forms its southern border. Clearly in the center of the Middle East and a gateway to China and India plus access to global seaports make Pakistan a natural player at the center of economics and politics.

But no more. Pakistan’s economy has collapsed; its government structure is dysfunctional. Recovering the damage to the citizenry will cost more than $16.3 billion.

Pakistan is cited because it is more than a small island nation sinking into rising seas. Pakistan was a worldwide player with a slowly but continuously growing reputation among its neighbors. But Mother Earth advanced the global warming war from the Arabian Sea and from the Himalayan mountains. A Putin-style bullet war could not do this much damage.

The seacoast of Pakistan looks a lot like the eastern seacoast of the United States, around Florida and all the way to the Texas/Mexico Border. Fortunately, the US is a much larger nation than Pakistan with more than one narrow agricultural area. So far, Mother Earth is lobbing notable storms into the Gulf coast and Florida; as a diversion, she is engineering a major water shortage in the Rockies and California and this year started on the Mississippi River – preventing many river-dependent supply chains from operating.

Nations are not messing with an inexperienced, underfunded adversary. It is the nations that are underfunded – by several magnitudes. As humans continue to throw Carbon Dioxide and Methane into the atmosphere, as humans barbarically continue to destroy and contaminate the Earth’s environment, as thousands of mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, amphibians and microorganisms disappear, dare we expect that Mother Earth will turn her head away?

Will the US be able to maintain leadership in the world when trillions of dollars must be spent in the war with Mother Earth to salvage Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Charlotte, one-third of the land mass of Florida, Houston, one-fourth of Louisiana, San Francisco and Seattle? Perhaps Central America will disappear, and the Panama Canal will not be needed.

Mariner has not invented this dilemma. All the assumptions already have been discussed by scientists and futurists. Like a real bullet war, the battlefronts will shift, and the time may drag on but a war it is.

Ancient Mariner

Democratic Nationalism

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Television news, newspapers, magazines, internet news sources – all are filled with the difficulties of living in today’s topsy turvy world. Older folk can remember when the times had their difficulties, but the society was stable; people knew where they stood in the big picture. There is no big picture today. There are some worldwide, complex issues that may take several decades to reconcile.

Interestingly, the concept of ‘nation’ is under duress. This is due to a significant change in how economies work: supply chains are managed by corporations, not nations. An analogy would be that nations have become like unions in a struggle to control benefits. Also stressing nations is that the Internet and AI are too fast and too universal to be contained within superficial borders. It may come to pass that nations have a role more like regional collaborators for best practices rather than controlling economies directly.

Obviously, the issues with global resources and global warming together will be a major ‘earthquake’ as population outruns natural resources. These issues, too, will strain the role of a nation.

Riding such a high-speed rail of change raises risk for accidents. Nationalism is undergoing major adjustment in a new era; an accident may be to allow dictatorships or corporatism to replace much of nationalism’s role. Far more important than the old-fashioned East-West competition is to hold on to democracy. If democracy fails as a major philosophy and individuals no longer have a say in the world order, Armageddon will arrive much sooner – or some Matrix variation thereof.

Important news to follow is related to:

The philosophical outcome of Putin’s war. Is the European Union still one political entity (watch Great Britain and Germany in particular)? Has the consortium of authoritarian nations in the Middle East collapsed? Has Russia itself reinstated a genuine democracy?

South America seems intent on promoting authoritarianism. Will the United States be able to have direct influence in South American political philosophy or will China continue to back friendly dictatorships? Will America and international groups like G7 solve the immigration problem by underwriting large economic change in dysfunctional nations? A small cousin to the South American issue are the Caribbean and Gulf islands – even Puerto Rico isn’t happy with the US.

Pay attention to who controls public services, governments or corporations. A good example in the news today is the uncontrolled economic influence of corporations in the health industry. With much news coverage is the invasion into health services by Amazon and the hidden invasion into hospitals by venture capitalists. Pharmaceuticals have been an issue for decades. Also pay attention to support for senior citizens and common measures of human worth represented by policies on minimum wage and wealth taxes. If governments are to have a say in the future, they must be able to use taxes as an economic tool. Another sector under duress is all types of education, which have a growing investment by corporations.

So – intellectually there is a battle between 2oth century capitalism and 21st century socialism. Economically there is a battle between corporatism and democracy. Globally between China and the United States there is a battle for dominance in a one-world government.

The elephant in the room is physical war. What would it be like for significant portions of the world to live in battle-scarred ruins?

Ancient Mariner