FIND YOURSELF A CIRCUS AND GO TO IT.

If you can.  "The disappearance of the circus from American life leaves us lonelier."

Absolutely.

What drew audiences of 7,000 to 10,000 beneath the big top day after day in whistle-stop after whistle-stop, however, was the prospect of seeing seemingly impossible things: human beings cavorting upon the backs and heads-in-the mouths of animals from storybooks, performing feats of daring on swings and slender wires 100 feet or more aloft that the Wallenda family would apotheosize. It was a nonstop array of death-defying activity punctuated by such 20th century astonishments as automobiles soaring into loop-the-loops and elephants performing ballet choreographed by Balanchine, the gone-mute clowns cavorting all the while.

In the United States, these amazing feats helped make the circus into a political and social institution that reflected sky’s-the-limit thinking. The circus’s development paralleled the nation’s own growth. Yes it was a diversion, but one that also became a portable manifestation of the American Dream.

We will be judged by the monuments we've destroyed.

By the time television became ubiquitous in the 1950s, the writing was on the wall. The Feld family, who purchased the Combined Shows from Ringling heirs in 1967, made a go of it for another half-century, but in May of 2017, the show — its elephants dropped two years before as a result of mounting pressure from animal rights activists — was closed for good. It left behind a few small regional shows, currently covid-shuttered Cirque du Soleil and such vestiges as the television show “America’s Got Talent,” as a reminder of what once dominated popular entertainment.

Some might dismiss the passing of the circus as the demise of an outmoded pastime, but to dismiss an enterprise that for more than a century held an entire nation spellbound is a shortsighted example of ahistoric thinking. One cultural critic deems the long success of the circus to be a result of its ability to wrap up the “American Experience,” including most everything that we find entertaining — exoticism, supreme athleticism and life-or-death drama — in the space of an afternoon. And, adds Kenneth Feld, successor to his father Irvin as latter day circus man, all the impossible feats witnessed in the circus are real — a reminder of the institution’s ability not only to entertain but inspire.

Certainly, the loss of the circus makes us a more lonely people. Cultural historian Ernest Albrecht laments the fact that technological advancement has resulted in the increasing delivery of entertainment directly into homes (and phones), where diversion often becomes a solitary act.

The good news is, the itinerant circus is still with us, if you know where to look.

In the miniature world, the Karlson Brothers Circus presently will be announcing show dates for later in 2021.

ANTI-RACISM IS A TOOL OF THE BOSSES.

Perhaps Reason's Robby Soave deserves a Friday short Take for his

Alarm about critical race theory—a previously obscure field of study pioneered by far-left legal scholars and sociologists—has suddenly gripped the political right. This development has forced the right's adversaries on Team Blue to defend a theory that very few people on either side of this increasingly silly debate could accurately define if challenged to do so.

He captures the positive elements of the theory adequately enough.

Critical race theory is the idea that structural racism is embedded in many U.S. institutions. Slavery was the reality when the country was founded, and segregation endured for a century following the Civil War. It would thus be naive to assume that supposedly race-neutral policies are actually race-neutral—there's nothing neutral about America and race. Working from this assumption, adherents of critical race theory tend toward a kind of progressive activism that views post-Enlightenment classical liberalism and its notions of equal opportunity, the prioritization of individual rights over group rights, and colorblindness with hostility.

It's in that normative twist we see in the final sentence where things start to go wrong.  "It is thus not entirely unfair for conservatives to use [critical theory] as shorthand for the sorts of things to which they object." For instance, "Punctuality and whiteness have nothing to do with each other. People who strongly cling to the idea that there is such a thing as whiteness, and that it has to do with punctuality, objectivity, and hard-work, are actually promoting harmful and inaccurate racial stereotypes."

INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS ARE EVIDENCE OF GOVERNMENT FAILURE.

They're slowly catching on in Wales.  The deputy minister for climate change, Lee Waters, gets it.  “We need a shift away from spending money on projects that encourage more people to drive, and spend more money on maintaining our roads and investing in real alternatives that give people a meaningful choice.”  It's likely the case that they've built more stuff than they can maintain, but if they have to bundle reality with climate virtue-signalling, fine.  Apparently, odd public offices are a thing in Wales, but if the holders' portfolios don't preclude saying sensible stuff, I can deal.

Sophie Howe, the future generations commissioner for Wales, said it was an important decision. “This is a huge step in the right direction for the healthier, resilient and more equal Wales,” she said.

“Wales has for too long been prioritising cars over people. I’m hopeful that this new decision signals more of the radical action that will be taken by the Welsh government’s new climate change ministry.

“An overreliance on the car has led to increased noise, poorer air quality, time wasted in traffic and an unacceptable burden on communities living near our most congested roads, often in areas where fewer people drive a car.”

The titular head of the self-styled Party of Science^(TM) in the United States, however, hasn't yet got the memo.

But if you look back across our history, from the Transcontinental Railroad to the creation of the Internet, you can see the truth in that idea, about coming together.  Because America — America has always been propelled into the future by landmark national investments — investments that only the government has the capacity to make; only the government, working together, could make.

Today happens to mark — coincidental — but today is the 60th [65th] anniversary of one of those significant investments to change the nation.  Sixty-five years ago today, President Dwight Eisenhower signed the bill that created the Interstate Highway System.  Sixty-five years ago today. That was the last infrastructure investment of the size and scope of what — the agreement I’m about to talk about today.

The transcriptionist calls attention to the small brain-fart, but not to the larger one, which is that the resources devoted to early public works, whether the National Road or the various canals or the land-grant railroads, might have been prematurely and inefficiently allocated, and that it took subsequent private investment to put the Pacific Railroad in a state of good repair, and future analysts, including researchers in the office of the Commissioner for Future Generations, might rank the decision not to make the Interstate Highways toll roads a blunder right up there with the War on Poverty and the corona tyranny.

The ficus, however, has to balance pressure from the rent-seekers of the construction lobby against pressure from the make-stuff-free poverty lobby.

You all know why that matters.  One in five miles of highway and roads in America are in poor condition.  One in five miles.  Some states it’s worse where the weather is tougher.  Five perc- — 50 years — 50 [40] percent of our bridges are over 50 years old.  More than 1,000 bridges here in Wisconsin are rated as structurally deficient by engineers.  One thousand just in Wisconsin.

And I’m not — that doesn’t make Wisconsin better or worse; it’s — all across the nation is this way.  The bridges — the 10 most traveled bridges in America need repair, and some need to be completely rebuilt.  More than 600 — more than 600 here in the state of Wisconsin — bridges have weight limits to prevent trucks from crossing.  That means long detours for farmers heading to market.

The transcriber again catches the small brain farts whilst eliding the possibility that the private toll bridges of the early colonial era might have generated the revenue to keep the bridges in a state of good repair, as well as the possibility that the federal subsidies for road and bridge building might incentivize the acquisition of larger trucks.  Perhaps the best thing for the national government to do is to go away, and let the local road commissioners and private enterprises maintain the section roads.

The brain farts continue.

But this is a drain on our economy, as well.  Typical American — typical American — and it varies slightly from state to state — but the typical American pays a hidden tax of more than $1,000 a year in wasted time — wasted time and fuel due to traffic congestion.

Now, in the more the rural areas, the less the congestion.  But it creates other difficulties.

You all know that feeling: losing time, sitting in traffic, or being rerouted because the bridge isn’t wide enough or the road is poorly maintained.

But if you lose time sitting in traffic while the bridge or road is being widened, you never get it back once the project is completed, because people adjust their habits until they're indifferent between sitting in traffic on the improved road or sitting in traffic on their existing route.

Curiously, we haven't heard anything from the transit lobby or the climate change worrywarts about how making the roads less unpleasant to use contributes to greenhouse gas emissions, or how this emphasis on automotive infrastructure might constitute a regressive transfer.

The roads are productive assets and perhaps the environmentalist wing of the self-styled party of science might be able to find common cause with libertarian-minded transportation advocates.

EIGHT YEARS LATER, YOU STILL CAN'T GET THROUGH INDIANAPOLIS.

Aaron Renn first asked this question in 2013.  "If You Can Repeatedly Close a Freeway For Months At a Time, Do You Really Need It At All?"  The "carmageddon" some nervous types feared then never materialized, so he offered some suggestions.

Removing the only through interstate connection in downtown Indianapolis might seem, as it were, a bridge too far. But not only do I believe it may actually be feasible, it’s a potential game changer for downtown.

There is plenty of precedent for routing through traffic around the I-465 beltway. In fact, I-74 and the future I-69 do just this. For I-65, an I-465 routing is a similar distance to the downtown one. In fact, not that long ago that route was signed as an official alternate route one could choose (and still may be as far as I know). Similarly, because I-70 runs southwest out of downtown and the origin point of I-465 is shifted to the north of downtown, it’s not much of a detour for through traffic on I-70 either.

Earlier this spring, through traffic had to use the 465 beltway as there was yet another (or was it still the same?) closure of one of the interstates through downtown. Seems like there's always part of the interstate out of commission for construction there.  Might even be opportunities to restore central city neighborhoods to a state of good repair, putting right an error from years ago.  "But when the forecasted traffic apocalypse fails to materialize yet again this fall, I hope people will at least consider why the state has to keep spending millions upon millions of dollars to maintain forever a freeway that may not even be needed."

STOP CRYING WITH YOUR MOUTH FULL.

Originally I wanted to tag Inside Higher Ed designated race lady Wendi Williams with the Dumbest Short Take of a couple weeks ago for "The pandemic has laid bare the syndemics of racism, disease, sexism, economic indifference and a general disregard for our humanity that is deeply ingrained in our society." As if that is somehow worse than destroying, in a year, the past thirty years of increased prosperity in the third world.  As if that destruction didn't have knock-on effects, in making it more difficult for those countries to produce their own vaccines, or to buy from the countries that have.

HUMILITY BRINGS RESTRAINT.

On occasion, we've viewed posts by Steven Horwitz, such as this recent observation on the inevitability of majoritarian tyranny and this joint effort with Art Carden on the follies of the vulgar Welfare Economics Paradigm.  Word reaches Cold Spring Shops that Professor Horwitz has crossed the final summit.

Steve was a liberal. He was a liberal who believed in the human‐​affirming values entailed by liberalism, values that are not primarily political, but personal. Being a liberal means, on some level, that you love people. Steve loved people, and that love was returned.

But people are messy. We’re constrained by circumstance. We’re manipulated by our environment. But if you’re a liberal, you know that’s true of everyone, even those who pretend to have the moral and epistemological authority to rise above it and rule us. Those people pretend they are better, but they’re usually worse.

Steve saw through that. He saw through the pretensions of power and authority to the basic fact that we’re all trying to do the best with what we have.

He studied economics at George Mason with Donald "Cafe Hayek" Boudreaux.  "Steve is a former student of mine; he excelled in a graduate course in Industrial Organization that I taught. I forget which year exactly; it was either 1987 or 1988. But I can tell you exactly where in the classroom Steve sat and engaged so creatively with the material."  RIP.

PEOPLE CALL LIGHT RAIL PROJECTS BOONDOGGLES.

In addition to the multiple-unit commuter trains serving Denver Union Station, there are connecting light rail lines using more conventional upgrades of the Milwaukee three-truck train that literally bends the corner around.  The O Scale convention that recently took place used a Hyatt conference hotel in Aurora that is about a half-mile walk, admittedly through stroad hell, from a light rail   Senior citizen car-fare, $1.50.  What's not to like?

That's what appears to be a standard configuration of two three-truck cars heading south.  A car heading north will come along to deliver passengers to the Peoria Street station, to connect with the commuter rail line for downtown or for the airport.  There were a few Rockies fans getting on those trains.  Judge for yourself whether they went in with high hopes and went out with long faces.

Down on Colfax Boulevard, we see our more politically palatable uses of tax money on display.

Even when the traffic engineers make the effort to time the traffic lights properly, there's always somebody screws it up.  The idea is, first the turn arrow controlling a left from Colfax onto the beltway clears, then the green allowing traffic on Colfax to go under the beltway clears, and if all goes well, traffic leaving the beltway gets a clear path to turn left onto Colfax.  But (with the baseball traffic?) the accumulator lanes under the beltway are full, and somebody gets impatient and pulls forward hoping to nudge everybody up in the accumulator lane, and when that doesn't happen, tempers flare.

It's clear, isn't it, dear reader, that even with the turn signal clutter and the parking charges downtown or at the airport, that light rail connecting to the commuter trains is just too inconvenient and wasteful to be of any use?

THE ALLIGATOR TRIED TO WARN YOU.

The cartoon Tasmanian Devil has a counterpart in real life.

You'd think somebody in wildlife biology would know that.

The 45-square-mile Maria Island was once a safe space for the pocket-sized little penguin species. The corner blip of land was free of the menaces the birds face elsewhere and proved a safe home for the creatures, which grow to be just two pounds. Just a decade ago, some 3,000 breeding pairs of little penguins thrived there, the Guardian reported.

Then, in response to an outbreak of a deadly facial tumor disease among Tasmanian devils, 28 of the marsupials were released on the island between 2012 and 2013. Since then, the face tumor disease’s spread has slowed and the devils’ ranks have grown to approximately 100.

But all of that comes at the expense of the little penguins, as there are no longer any on the island.

“Losing 3,000 pairs of penguins from an island that is a national park that should be a refuge for this species basically is a major blow,” Dr. Eric Woehler of BirdLife Tasmania told the Guardian.

By attempting to save the devils, humans not only destroyed the island’s little penguin population but also caused fearful geese to live in trees.

As far as I know, no Australian crocodiles turned themselves into valises to hide. "'Every time humans have deliberately or accidentally introduced mammals to oceanic islands, there’s always been the same outcome … a catastrophic impact on one or more bird species,' said Woehler." It's the same principle as humans working too hard to manage the affairs of other humans, sooner or later reality gets a vote.

MICHAEL HIRST'S SELECTIVE COMPRESSION.

The final episodes of History Channel's Vikings finally made their way to ... the History Channel ... after having been available on various pay-per-view services since the Yuletide.  Thus, it's not really a spoiler to note that the same Floki who built boats for Ragnar Lothbrok to raid the east coast of England turns up somewhere southeast of where the Atlantic Ocean becomes the Bay of Fundy?

It’s worth hazarding a guess, then, that the Vinland beach Ubbe and Floki sat upon in the closing moments of the show’s finale was somewhere on the south-west coast of Nova Scotia. It’s likely they watched the sun set on the western horizon, with the coast of Maine hidden somewhere far beyond it. The flora, fauna and local tribes all match this location, too.

Read that essay in full for a comparison of the historical record with the story.  "Perhaps Vinland isn’t a place, but a state of mind."  Particularly at the History Channel, where an episode of "Ancient Aliens" suggested that Odin was a spacefarer, his ravens were drones, and Thor's hammer was some kind of kinetic energy weapon.  As if people who lived near an ocean couldn't develop any seafaring skills on their own.  But I digress.

All throughout the series the Vikings’ thirst for war and conquest is cloaked in the language of fate, destiny, glory, and the Gods. In a telling sequence half-way through the final ten episodes, these justifications are stripped away to reveal the dark, very mortal truth that lies behind them. Ivar, Hvitserk, and King Harald reunite in a calm and peaceful Kattegat. All three are burnt-out, frazzled, and dissatisfied. There’s a real sense that “the age of the Vikings is gone” and that this is “the twilight of the Gods”.

Harald and Ivar admit that there is no pleasure in being a King, despite it being a title both men have dreamed of and longed for, and for which they’ve lied, cheated, betrayed, and killed. In the final analysis, we can see – and finally they can see, however indirectly – that the great cycle in which the Vikings are trapped has been perpetuated not by the Gods – those great scapegoats in the sky – but by bored and angry men seeking in bloodshed distractions from a cold and brutish world whose quotient of misery has only ever been increased by their actions. It is especially sad to see Ivar churned back into this mill given the growth he experienced throughout this season, not only in being a caring, surrogate father to the Rus heir Igor, but in becoming an actual father after his body asserted itself just long enough to plant his seed in Princess Katia’s belly.

Yes, the wanting is almost always more pleasurable than the having. Perhaps I should apply that thinking to episodes 5-8 of this series, which all ran on History Channel Saturday afternoon when I was otherwise occupied.  I still don't see the point of the Kremlin intrigue, which was the same whether in Kiev or Novogorod or if it migrated to Moscow or if we waited seven centuries for the conquest of what became Petrograd from the descendants of the Vikings.  The gripe I saw elsewhere about too much "Game of Thrones" applies.

Thus we conclude with more palace intrigue in Kattegat (itself, also, a state of mind?), with Ivar and Hvitserk having one more go at the English, and Ubbe and the seekers somewhere near the Oak Island Money Pit, and, thankfully, not a Templar to be seen.  At the end, the contemporary sensibilities intrude, again.

Entering this battle we are fairly certain King Harald doesn’t plan to return alive to Kattegat, and while Ivar’s death doesn’t come as a complete surprise, it’s narrative execution does. We see his leg and will give way several times during the battle, but it’s his final stand that’s a bit puzzling as he allows a young Saxon soldier free rein to kill him. “Don’t be afraid,” Ivar tells the man, but the complexity of this brief scene also includes Alfred who witnesses the event from mere yards away. Despite viewing the Vikings as savages, Alfred watches the tender scene as Hvitserk holds his dying brother in his arms. “Just leave me here with my brother for a moment,” he tells the now kneeling king, who is so moved by what he sees that he immediately crosses himself. As the camera zooms out to an aerial shot looking down on the three men and Alfred’s burning cross, we can’t help but view this as the Christian God and the Norse gods looking down on these brave soldiers.

However, the larger twist to come out of the Wessex battle occurs when Hvitserk talks to Ivar’s grave and tells him to “enjoy Valhalla, brother, while it still exists.” While leaving the old ways behind has clearly been a central theme of the episode, this statement acknowledges that even their religious beliefs may need to be re-examined. We get our first hint that something’s afoot with Hvitserk when we see him brought to Wessex on a cart after his wounds have clearly been carefully dressed by Alfred’s surgeons. The flash forward to his decision to embrace Christianity and leave the Norse gods behind fits nicely with his father’s curiosity of faith. And how perfect that Alfred tells Hvitserk that from now on he’ll be known as “Athelstan, our brother in Christ.” The call back to Ragnar’s relationship with his Christian friend just works.

Is there ambiguity in that conversion? Hvitserk, recall, had a fraught relationship with mushrooms.

On the Nova Scotian coast, one Viking gets a bad case of gold fever, and things could have gone quite wrong between the castaways and the locals.

Nevertheless, when Naad asks about gold, we know where this is headed, and Ubbe’s response to the murder of the young tribe member is sure and unambiguous. What’s left to ponder is how the leader Pekitaulet (Carmen Moore) will react to this violent act. There seems to be no question the punishment will be swift and severe, but the initial choice of the Blood Eagle contradicts Ubbe’s desire to move forward rather than look to the past. Had he carried out the punishment, its savage brutality and cruelty may have had the opposite effect Ubbe intends. Fortunately, he changes tact and slits Naad’s throat instead, calling on the “eye for an eye” system of justice. It’s a wise decision.

With Ubbe and Torvi at the helm, it seems likely that the two groups will not only peacefully coexist but actually thrive as they openly share their collective knowledge. Still, it’s wise that Pekitaulet explains her stance in no uncertain terms. “When we said you were welcome to this place, we did not mean you were welcome to possess it.” Even so it’s what happens next that shows the untapped potential inherent in this land. So moved by her words, Torvi hugs Pekitaulet with such emotion that it’s clear, not only do the two women understand each other, they’re in total agreement. It’s a truly beautiful moment.

Thus we conclude with two more intrusions of contemporary sensibilities: female chieftans Norse and Native, and a possible foreshadowing of a misunderstanding many moons into the future, when the inhabitants of Manhattan Island might have thought they were trading away trapping and fishing rights, and the Dutch might have thought they were buying real estate.  That Vinland state of mind again?

TODAY IN SUBVERSIVE THINKING.

Is the Britney Spears conservatorship a metaphor for Expert Overreach more generally?  The first commenter on a Tyler Cowen post at Marginal Revolution went there.

Many people rationalize and advocate that even perfect strangers should be allowed to control almost every aspect of even normal people's lives: everything from what their health insurance covers, to what school their children attend, to what benefits package they should seek at work, to what lightbulbs they use, to whether they wear masks, even what kind of bag they use for groceries. The list is endless. Such people seem to also want to maximize, rather than minimize, how much of normal people's incomes are controlled by these perfect strangers, called politicians and bureaucrats.

Deeper in the thread comes somebody suggesting "Tyler is trolling."

Reason's Ella Lubell doesn't quite go there, although she concludes with a line of argument that could go there: "But there are still thousands of people who could have control over their lives taken away from them by a court through the conservatorship system."

Consider the possible generalizations.  For the past year-plus, Our Credentialed Betters have been telling everyone to mask up, stay home, shut up, and have no fun and it's All. For. Your. Own. Good.  (No, it wasn't, and it is the Right of the People to ignore those experts.)

There is a vulgar interpretation of "behavioral economics" that interprets the research as "because people don't appear to behave like chalkboard rational agents there are social betterments possible by way of nudges."

Moreover, dear reader, you've surely heard the argument that "Social" "Security" exists because none of us has the self-discipline to set money away for old age and not blow it all on some indulgence, never mind that Congress has been kiting checks against the so-called trust fund for years.

Our Intellectual Betters would like you to imagine June Cleaver, or Father Knows Best.  Perhaps if you think about James Spears, or the latter-day incarnation of a chubby buck-toothed middle-schooler we all know as Hillary Clinton, we might be able to resist more actively.

ELECTRIC TRACTION RETURNS TO DENVER UNION STATION.

Years ago, cars of the Denver and Interurban called there, as well as narrow gauge trains of two railroads.

The latest iteration of the station is different.  The one Amtrak train calling has to turn on a wye to get from Burlington to Rio Grande, and it reverses in to head out.

At one time, the station was a through station, with Santa Fe and Colorado and Southern trains, as well as Rio Grande trains for Pueblo, leaving from the opposite end of the station.  Those tracks are long-gone, and the station that remains is a stub station, but it hosts a serious Commuter Rail operation that is electrically operated.  Some impressions of that station are below the jump.

FRIDAY short TAKES

Cold Spring Shops can go on holiday, but the beat goes on, both with pithy good points and well-distilled jackassery.

1.  Excelling at failing up.

2.  Some people are terminally clueless.  "After nearly five years of straining to depict Donald Trump as some kind of Russian agent—a depiction that squandered vast quantities of messaging without electoral benefits—most Democrats in Congress are now locked into a modern Cold War mentality that endangers human survival."

3.  You are the system.

4.  The worst get on top. "[N]ormal people would rather grill than protest"

5. She isn't leaving the Democrats, the Democrats are leaving her.  "One discouraging thing about Critical Social Justice Theory is that it is now playing out in scenarios that challenge the success of Asians, not just white people, in the push to limit the number of Asian students at competitive public high schools."

6.  Mugged by reality.  "Chicago appears to be a laboratory over the last three decades for the extremist left, an experiment to see just how much damage progressives can do to the criminal justice system."

7.  That aggregation problem in democracy, again.  "Disappointed Americans sometimes wonder why the United States does not enjoy the levels of consensus or solidarity that seem possible in, say, Denmark. Part of the answer is that the population of Denmark is comparable to that of metropolitan Phoenix."  That's comparable in numbers, you'd be hard pressed to find a quorum for an Althing in Phoenix.

8.  Thanks, feminists.  "[B]efore women start asking where all the good men have gone, perhaps they should look at themselves first."  If only someone had told them.

9.  Shopping for accommodations.  "[L]earning disabilities have become a bonus rather than a burden."  It's been going on for some time.

10.  Policy gridlock.  "[M]ost cities remain trapped in a regulatory environment that makes such innovation and adaptation extremely costly."

11.  Unintended consequences are real.  "Democrats should not take advantage of being in the majority by passing legislation that a future Republican majority could overturn."

12.  Eventually, they all lose.  "Henry Kissinger once quipped of two other odious regimes at war, but only Nazi Germany lost in the 1940s. The world would have to wait another 46 years for the Communist USSR to lose, but on Christmas Day, 1991, they finally did."

13.   Thomas Sowell at Harvard. "[S]mug assumptions were too often treated as substitutes for evidence or logic."

14.  More Democrat wisdom.  "[California congressman Ro] Khanna said, "I don't think people look at what's going on in this country and say, 'You know what we really ought to do is punish people at the pumps and and punish the working class.'""  Even if you spin that gas tax as a carbon tax?

15.  It pays to increase your word power.  "Metadehumanization" is not a Ficus brain-fart.  "We found the most politically engaged partisans held the most exaggerated, and therefore most inaccurate, levels of metadehumanization. Moreover, despite the socially progressive and egalitarian outlook traditionally associated with liberalism, the most liberal Democrats actually expressed the greatest dehumanization of Republicans. This suggests that political ideology can at times be as much an expression of social identity as a reflection of deliberative policy considerations, and demonstrates the need to develop more constructive outlets for social identity maintenance."  Sometimes it's good to have the commonsense notions validated by peer review.

16.  That monopoly on violence.  "Politicians, then, must be comfortable with the fact that any rules they pass will at some point be maintained via force, and, yes, violence."

17.  A curious case against school choice?  "Wealthy families pay for their children to attend high schools that receive preferential treatment in the admissions process at highly rejective colleges."

18.  John "Grumpy Economist" Cochrane takes stock.  "Maybe City College [of New York] moved to an equally important role of providing remedial education to people ill-served by the city's disastrous public high schools. Maybe City College fed meritocratic middle managers, and left to Chicago the business of producing Nobel Prize winners. Really, that City College failed in this new role is the more trenchant criticism. But the decline of meritocracy in favor of other goals is indeed the post 1968 trend of modern universities."  Twenty years of Cold Spring Shops in a nutshell: that trend was not for the better.

19.  Woke Catechism.  "There is something confining, deterministic, in a premise that judges a white person incapable of a certain understanding or fairness just because that person is white. It’s a bit like Calvinistic dogma that if you’re not among the chosen ones, your soul is doomed no matter what you do."

20.  The point is to get the heavy trucks past the town so they're not generating safety and health risks for local shoppers.

21.  Be careful what you ask for. 'You'll Never Beat The Government With Just Guns,' Says Party That Also Believes Government Was Almost Toppled By Unarmed Mob On January 6.

22.  I was there forty years ago.  Prosperity should be a great American goal.  But "Biden may well prove a 'transformative' president — by bringing America back to 1970s stagflation."

23.  Hail to the ficus!  "Joe Biden, 78, looked out of it."  But he's keeping the boodle coming.  "Democrats have enticed the votes of urban residents by promising money without regard to social consequences."  Until a serious opposition contests those votes, it will continue.

24.  Soft on communism, soft on crime.  "Republicans did not summon into existence voters’ increasing discomfort with progressive governance. They merely noticed it."

25.  Peer review is useful.  "It would save the rest of us having to read undergraduate poppycock in the pages of the Washington Post and provide these academics with useful criticism. It is shameful how academically bankrupt these disciplines have allowed themselves to become through complacency and the competition to out-progressive one another. The upside, if we can call it that, is the public will have the opportunity to mock them for years to come until they self-correct."

26.  Schadenfreudelicious!  "I've long made fun of universities for taking such a broad view of what counts as offensive language, but the fact that trigger warning—a concept designed to prevent offense—has itself landed on such a list is fairly amusing."

DEMOCRACY IS SIX WHITES AND FOUR NONWHITES VOTING ON WHO PICKS THE COTTON.

Yesterday, I gave the critical studies types the benefit of the doubt.  In real life, though, the power plays of Morale Conditioners, or perhaps of overweening Human Resources types, are what people must deal with, rather than with the niceties of statistical inference and conflicting hypotheses.

SHE'S ON FIRE.

Primetime opinion television is frequently over the top and playing to the groundlings.  On occasion, though, as on Monday's Ingraham Angle, the opening skewers just the right people.

"Democrats from Andrew Cuomo to Gavin Newsom, who needlessly and ruthlessly kept their states in COVID lock down hell for more than a year, they're now trying to take a victory lap."

Sorry, no.  "The red states were leaving the blue states in the dust in every way. A mass exodus from New York, California, Illinois and other pro locked down high tech States told the tale. Americans were literally voting with their feet and in some cases, they were uprooting their families to be able to send their kids to in-person schooling."

Bet on emergence.

Now, here in the United States, most people, they simply moved on from COVID. They make their own risk assessment about the vaccine. And most of our restrictions, they have been lifted. But not because our experts one of them lifted, but because we gave them no choice.

One of the most untalented people in administration of delist [c.q. -- does anybody else despise voice transcription the way I do -- Ed.] players is Biden's CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky. Now, if it were up to her and the expert class, vaccinated people, little kids, they'd all be wearing masks while outside, inside, while they're swimming, or frankly in the shower. I'm only half kidding about the last two.

Again, they only relax their mask and summer camp guidance at the CDC, which is still ridiculous, because of public outcry. When Texas and Florida - remember, when they lifted their mask mandates, the medical elites predicted COVID surges everywhere. Now, of course, that didn't happen. But they never revised their opinions. But that's what real scientists do when they're wrong, especially. But with these people, the control was always what they craved.

Of course, among the top COVID cling-ons is Anthony Fauci. He's always wrong, but never in doubt. And, clearly, on the defensive after the release of his e-mails, St. Tony still claims infallibility.

There is still work to be done, whether it is pushing back on the corona tyrants or regaining control of the school boards.

If this were a business or any pro-sports team, Fauci would have been fired long ago.

You the American people, not Biden, and the D team deserve all the credit for where we are today. Almost, but not 100 percent back to normal. It took parents showing up at school board meetings to demand that schools open. It took actual doctors and scientists setting the record straight, regardless of the professional repercussions.

It took small business owners, fighting the shutdowns with everything they had. And in the end, those people forced the blue states to open earlier and more completely than they would have otherwise.

Now, despite our success, this is no time to relent. In fact, we need to stay on the offensive, we have to demand that all remaining restrictions be dropped - from masks on planes to social distancing at schools. And of course, we have to pass laws taking away the remaining emergency powers of all the governors. And going forward put a time limit on their duration after which the state legislature has to approve.

We must demand that Congress tear down its walls and reopen to the public. We're Americans were free. We must never allow them to do this to us again. Never.

The revisiting of arbitrary executive orders is a necessary corrective. Giving the self-styled progressives ownership of the rising crime rates is essential. Let the reckoning begin.

GETTING BACK INTO TRAINING.

Last weekend's pause was in order to take in the National O Scale convention, which took place in Denver.  That was occasion for a train ride, something that is again possible on a regular basis, even though the trains still require Biden muzzles on board and in the station.  My conveyance was Amtrak's California Zephyr, westbound on June 16 as Genesis diesels 76-139, Viewliner baggage car 61009. transition sleeping car 39036, Superliner sleeping cars 32006-32112, table car 38032, Sightseer Lounge 33020, baggage-coach 34080 and Superliner coach 31045.  I refer to a "table car" as the fake food service that plagued the eastern trains starting a few years ago became a pandemic economy systemwide.  Real food service is returning to the western trains this week.  Perhaps I will be able to refer to 38xxx series cars as dining cars again.

This will not be a performance and practice log.  The train got underway from Chicago as advertised, at 2 pm.  Some illustrations follow below the jump.

WHEN YOU LIVE IN A PIG-STY ANY SORT OF DREAM WORLD LOOKS PRETTY GOOD.

Sometime in the past week, I stumbled across a post, on a libertarianish site, coming to grips with the seeming love of young people for socialism despite the depressing record of various sorts of actually-existing socialisms.  The argument appeared to be that youngsters equated "capitalism" with government favoritism toward businesses, the financial bailouts (and more recently, the lockdown orders that kept big-box retailers open and slammed boutiques and coffee shops?), and that the inequalities were sufficiently unsatisfactory that something different might be in order.  The authors on that site grumbled that such a view left no room for creative destruction or entrepreneurial activity or all the other manifestations of competitive free enterprise.

It might be that the youngsters' attitudes toward political economy are a manifestation of the pretty pig problem.  That socialist pig-sty can't possibly be messier, can it?  Oh, yes it can, argues Harvards Edward J. Glaeser, at some length.  But he also sees that dream pig-sty.  "Since the status quo seemed to be performing poorly, especially for the young, why not try socialism?"  Or, as Luka Ladan puts it, "If the status quo ain’t sexy, then socialism just might be—or so they hope."

It might be, as Ryan Streeter and Richard Reeves point out, that "The debate we should be having is about what a free-market capitalist society looks like when it is struggling with certain inequities and injustices and trying to remedy those problems."

I doubt that there's widespread understanding among the young about what it means for the owners of the means of production becoming an objectively defined class, with the state serving as the executive committee of the ruling class, which would make sense as a Marxian understanding of those rent-seekers getting favorable lockdown orders and financial bailouts.  It's unlikely, though, that the young are steeped enough in Marxian political economy to be able to make that argument, let alone be in a position to challenge it, or any of the other supporting tenets.

The first reason is simple: All ideas are subject to debate, criticism, and revision. Teaching students how to subject ideas to good-faith critique is a core mission of liberal arts education. Marx relied on many ideas that can be challenged such as the labor theory of value, the idea that there is no human nature beyond historical circumstance and economic system, and the idea that societies naturally evolve bitter class divisions.

By identifying a philosopher’s key ideas, students can learn to critique political arguments of any stripe. Higher education should not be a church of true believers. The college experience should nurture skepticism.

Or, as Professor Glaeser puts it, "The task ahead is to convince today’s young people that society requires liberty as well as compassion."

And you thought working through the implications of critical theory was hard?  I wonder how many of those young people are familiar with even the vulgar manifestations of the Welfare Economics Paradigm, let alone with the structure-conduct-performance approach to entrepreneurship and competition policy, or with the notion of regulatory capture.

SHOULDN'T A THEORY HAVE TESTABLE IMPLICATIONS?

Debra Humphreys makes the case for critical theory as a legitimate academic discipline.

An area of legal and academic study honed for decades, this scholarly effort simply charts how racism and discrimination are baked into our systems of justice, education and other aspects of life. It’s a fact-based approach that helps us to chart the impact of racism historically and in the present. It helps us understand and begin to address today’s undeniable realities of inequality -- in income, wealth, housing, educational attainment and practically every other area that matters.

In principle, that is straightforward.

RESETTING EXPECTATIONS IN MADISON?

It's been nearly twenty years of futility since the end of Badgerball for the Wisconsin women's basketball team.  Two coaches have come and gone since we last paid them much attention.  The latest hope is former Connecticut assistant Marisa Moseley, who was head coach at Boston University.  "Moseley was 45-29 at Boston University after working as an assistant on UConn coach Geno Auriemma’s staff during five of the Huskies’ national championship seasons (2010, 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016)."  It's possible that developing Connecticut style excellence on the court is what's on peoples' minds in Madison (if the value proposition is the academics, dear reader, there are reasons I always mention Connecticut and Northern Illinois together) although when athletics departments name women's coaches, there is the possibility, as there is with government service, of people are being hired for a blend of capability and box-checking.  We'll see.

The latest attempt to restore the women's program, though, is being lost amid the curious regression to the mean that the men's team displayed, from outright winning the conference in 2020 but having that tournament scrubbed, to failing to defeat any of the teams ahead of them in conference although qualifying for the tournament, inducing Roy Williams to retire, then losing in the second round to ultimate champion Baylor, and acquitting themselves a little better in that game than previously unbeaten Gonzaga did in the title game is small consolation. "Finishing anywhere from eighth to 12th in the conference is likely, but the difference in those two numbers means the difference in a tournament appearance."

That's before news broke of a confrontation between current head coach Greg Gard, and the players who were either disgruntled, or regressed to the mean.  That article, which goes in and out of the paywall, suggests that the current coach, previously the associate head coach, had trouble making the transition from being good cop to Bo Ryan's bad cop to being the head coach and having ultimate responsibility for setting things right when they had to be set right.

Guard Trevor Anderson, who announced after the end of last season he was transferring to Valparaiso for his final season, complained that Gard had a habit of assigning blame to players after losses.

“You always ask, ‘Why is everybody getting so defensive? Why can’t anybody take it?’ ” he said. “I think that’s what you do to us, you’re always pointing the finger.

“I think the defense mechanism is everybody’s pointing the finger at somebody else — I’m pointing at Brad, Brad’s pointing at Aleem — I think that comes down to a lot of, like, what you do to us.”

There's an art to giving, and to receiving, feedback, and the norms governing what is right and proper are emergent.  "Like it or not, the reality of the situation is that today’s player is more sensitive, more focused on personal brand, and more likely to articulate frustrations. If Gard can’t adapt, this is going to effect [c.q.] recruiting. The players in the meeting did not paint a picture of a place that I would want to live and play for four years if I were an 17-year old kid, or for that matter, that 17-year old kid’s parents."  Is another regime change in order?

MARKING OFF.

Summertime, and the pandemic travel restrictions are easing.  Thanks for looking in.

A SLOW TRAIN IS OF LITTLE USE.

Never mind the corporate spin attempting to pawn off a service degradation as a service improvement.

As of this week with its return to daily departures from New York and New Orleans, the schedule for Amtrak’s Crescent has been lengthened. This is “to improve customer satisfaction and on-time reliability,” according to a service change advistory.

But the adjustments, especially for the northbound train, threaten historically strong patronage on the Atlanta-Northeast Corridor market. New city-pair opportunities could be created with the new departure times, but only if properly promoted.

It's the same old dodge: where it's no longer possible to make time, whether thanks to sloppy dispatching or freight train congestion or main lines singled, turn "late" into "on time" by adding running time.

As with most long-distance trains, the Crescent developed strong, overlapping markets. Northeast Corridor-Atlanta overnight schedules in both directions delivered passengers the next morning, with time for dinner and breakfast onboard, and still allowed a full day’s activity.

Business was so heavy that some coaches and sleepers were switched out southbound and added northbound at Atlanta to accommodate demand. When Amtrak managers tried to institute the practice in 2012 to improve the train’s revenue and efficiency following a directive from Congress, Norfolk Southern refused to allow en route switching in the increasingly congested Atlanta terminal.

There's not much of an Atlanta "terminal" to speak of in the first place.

Early reports from the Southeast suggest that the loosened schedules have simply provided more margin for sloppiness.  "With the additional leeway given dispatchers to mesh Norfolk Southern’s version of Precision Scheduled Railroading with the newly-minted Crescent schedules, there should be an extra effort to run the passenger train on time, or at least minimize serious delays. Though the lengthened schedule has masked some of the problems, that hasn’t initially been the case."  It's Norfolk Southern.  Is anybody surprised?

BOOKENDING THE PANDEMIC IN ILLINOIS.

A modified version of the Chicago Auto Show, which ordinarily comes in February a few weeks after the lusting-after-cars season begins in Detroit, will take place in and around McCormick Place in July.

That's fitting, as the February 2020 Auto Show might have been the final major event at McCormick Place before the Illinois corona tyranny began.

Below the jump is a look at that show.

A METHODOLOGICAL POINT ON LATE-NIGHT TELEVISION?

It's about finding testable implications.  Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert might have some fun with whether or not a virus that came to light in Wuhan, China, might have had some connection to a virology lab in Wuhan, China.  "Captain Ed" Morrissey provides the logic lesson.

Before we get too ahead of ourselves, let’s stipulate up front that the lab-leak possibility isn’t a conspiracy theory, in large part because it doesn’t qualify yet as a theory at all. In science, a theory has substantial support in evidence. The lab-leak idea is a hypothesis, as is every other potential origin explanation for COVID-19, as there isn’t any substantial evidence for any of the hypotheses thus far. That’s not because of the scientists, but because of China’s totalitarian government and their complete refusal to cooperate in any independent investigation (scientific or otherwise). That in itself is circumstantial evidence that the zoonotic transfer hypothesis may not be the best explanation, but that’s all it is.

Stewart makes the same mistake here that the media made in shutting down discussion of the lab-leak hypothesis — jumping to a conclusion. We don’t know that scientists created this in a lab yet; we don’t have any direct evidence of that or zoonotic transfer. We should have been open to that possibility all along, however, and our media elites shouldn’t have tried to squelch that discussion and debate.

I'm more strict than many on the use of terms: a theory takes the form of a rigorous argument based on premises and rules of construction, which is why I get so cranky about humanities types "theorizing" everything willy-nilly, and the theory generates testable implications. What we have here is something different, a new infectious disease that got from an animal host to a person and thence out into the world.  There's more than one possible chain of custody: unfortunate human mingles with other humans before anyone catches on, or is it unfortunate human provides research material to a lab that augments it, and then it gets out.  I think everyone is in agreement on the source and nature of the contagion, but it's more like a criminal investigation identifying the steps from bat cave to the rest of the world.

PRESERVING THAT INSTITUTIONAL MEMORY.

James Jones, who has a Super Bowl ring with the Green Bay Packers as well as noncontiguous years on the team, has a business perspective on the current contract dispute, if that's what it is, between the team and disgruntled quarterback Aaron Rodgers.

The team’s focus on patiently developing offensive contributors rather than acquiring big names through free agency is something that Jones believes Rodgers understands and respects, and that it is not his issue. Rather, Jones sees Rodgers taking the following viewpoint: “I can’t control who you bring in in free agency, but what I do want a little input on is the guys you’re letting out of here.”

Football teams operate under a strange sort of payroll budget constraint called a salary cap, which means that the economy measure teams take is hiving off more expensive players where they can, rather than attempting to compete with a smaller squad. It's a variation on downsizing, all the same, and shedding experience means shedding institutional memory.

Mr Jones remains optimistic about the Packers and their quarterback finding a Pareto improvement.

Jones does believe that the two sides will find a way to work out their differences. A primary reason for this is Jones’ suggestion that Rodgers wants to work out the issues and return for 2021, a position that few others have taken.

“He’s willing to go in there and make sure they can get this thing right and get it fixable and go out there and put the best football team on the field and try to compete for a championship. And that’s why I truly believe that he will be there for training camp, this will get fixed, and I think the relationship will get much better between him and the GM.”

Formal training camps open on July 27.

SOME PERSPECTIVE ON TREATING ROADS AS PRODUCTIVE ASSETS.

A contributor to Freewheeling opens with a trenchant observation, just a little too long for a pithy short take.

What connects drinking water, food, housing and fuel for heating and cooking? Answer: they are all absolutely essential for survival, yet we (as society) are happy for them to be chargeable according to the amount you use.

Indeed, as a society, we’re happy for almost everything to be chargeable according to the amount you use. Like most societies globally, we’ve found that payment is by far the most efficient way of allocating resources. In order to avoid grotesque inequalities, we then apply a tax and benefit system to ensure that everyone has at least some cash with which to pay for all this stuff.

Nitpick if you wish, that might be something for another day (or a full course in political economy), then enjoy where he goes.

In the 18th and early 19th century, roads were dominant and were tolled.

In the late 19th century, railways were dominant and roads were free.

In the 20th century and early 21st century, roads were dominant and charged fuel tax.

If we do nothing, in the late 21st century roads will be dominant and entirely free.

Is that really what we want?

He's writing from the United Kingdom, where that fuel tax is high enough to induce substitutions to rail in a way that would be politically deadly in North America, and those late 21st century roads will be "entirely free" provided electric automobiles make avoiding the fuel tax feasible.

It's not an outcome he desires, completely without any argument that roads ought be treated as productive assets.

PUBLIC FINANCE AND COMPARATIVE ADVANTAGE POLICY.

From the beginning of industrialization, the comparative advantage of the United States has always been in knowledge-intensive, emerging technology goods, with entrepreneurs figuring out ways to make people with modest skills productive, whether that is the monotony of the assembly line or the tedium of debugging lines of code.  That's still true, and Noah Smith is thinking about what that means.  He sees a government attempting to square two principles that might have to be traded off, seems like equity and efficiency are still there, long after Arthur Okun called attention to a related trade-off.  We're not in Adam Smith's pin factory any more; rather, we're in a semiconductor fabrication works.

A fab is a semiconductor fabrication plant — a factory where computer chips are made. They are huge, incredibly expensive things — a single fab can cost $17 billion, more than the entire 2020 capital expenditures of Facebook. Simply reading about what it’s like to work in a fab puts one in awe of modern technology. The amount of specialized machinery and software required to operate a fab is incomprehensible.

The amount of technical knowledge required to operate a fab is also staggering. When my friend, with a physics Master’s degree, went to work at an Intel fab, he found that he was the only person on his team without a PhD. A fab is a factory, but it’s not a 1908-vintage assembly line where people stand at an assembly line welding pieces of metal together to make a Model T. You have to understand advanced math and physics just to be able to make these machines run.

Which brings me to the point of this post. Fabs are a vivid illustration of the need for a strong STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) education system in the United States. In recent years there’s a push to de-emphasize STEM, mostly out of egalitarian concerns. But this push is wrongheaded. Egalitarianism is a worthy goal, but de-emphasizing or limiting STEM isn’t going to make us a more equal society; it’ll just make us economically weaker.

There has to be a metaphor to take the place of "carry water for a patternmaker" in there somewhere. I just can't come up with it.  We're still talking about the same thing, which is that some kinds of special machinery require more talent to operate than others.  The fun begins when some entrepreneur figures out how to Fordize those machines.  I suspect it is that phenomenon, rather than a race to more populous countries, that is the greater threat to the current comparative advantage in U.S. chip manufacturing.

The U.S. economy benefits enormously from exporting things like Intel chips, Google software, Apple phone designs, Applied Materials chip-making machines, and so on. If these industries migrate to Asian countries, the U.S. will be less able to generate the wealth that local service industries and government redistribution spread around.

Biden seems to know this, which is why his economic program relies heavily on spending more on scientific research. Government-supported scientific discoveries trickle down to knowledge industries and preserve U.S. dominance of the kinds of high-tech activities that bring home the bacon so that the rest of our economy can spread the wealth around. This is what I call the “two-track economy”.

I'll let somebody else tackle the symbolism of subsidized trickle down good (anybody else remember Teflon and Tang) while commercial trickle down is bad, if it even exists.  In simpler terms, those chips, search engines, and circuit boards are contemporary equivalents to Falk's gears or Harnischfeger cranes or Bucyrus-Erie power shovels.  For "local service industries" read corner tavern and bowling lanes and air-conditioned movie houses and sports teams.  Update those as you wish.

GOVERNOR PRITZKER TRAILS BY 10,944.

The geographic area and population of Illinois are both similar to those in Sweden, and there are similarities of the Chicago and Stockholm metropolitan areas.  But  Springfield politicians are hazardous to your health.  Governor J. B. Pritzker (D-Lake Geneva) continues to micromanage and destroy local businesses.

A service called Worldometers has been keeping track of coronavirus infections and deaths, disaggregated in a number of ways.

The latest report from Sweden counts 1,083,456 infections and 14,537 deaths.

The latest report from Illinois counts 1,387,595 infections and 25,481 deaths.

Conditions in Illinois are such that a transition to a full reopening is in order.   The full reopening of the state, subject to local mask mandates or businesses requesting customers to mask up, commenced last Friday, 11 June.  The Chicago Cubs kept pace with the Milwaukee Brewers at the expense of the St. Louis Cardinals with the stands packed with beer-swilling widebodies.  People going about their business more or less normally has been the case everywhere I've gone since Memorial Day weekend.

If the political opposition in Illinois cannot capitalize on the corona tyranny, the continued flight of productive people to other states, and the crime in Chicago, they deserve to lose.

The state continues to administer vaccines.  The latest count continues to approach twelve million injections (the page doesn't disaggregate among finished and pending) and the latest count of those scary variants notes just over 9,200.

These post will continue, less frequently, as long as update information is available.

Last week, the governor trailed by 10,887.  Note the time series: a margin of terror that used to be growing by hundreds in a week is growing by around a hundred, or less.  The body count is growing faster than the variant count. The details for the past seven months are on page 2.

VACCINATION PRIVILEGE?

Chicago is a city of contrasts, and that includes Third World levels of coronavirus vaccinations in neighborhoods hardest hit by coronavirus infections.

About 48% of all Chicagoans have gotten at least one shot, which keeps pace with the national average. Twenty-nine city ZIP codes are exceeding that pace, while 16 have rates of at least 37%. The remaining 11 are well below it — and those are all located on the South and West sides.

The disparities correspond in the city’s vax breakdown by race as well: about 55% of white Chicagoans and 53% of those of Asian descent have gotten a shot, compared to 39% of Latino residents and 32% of Black residents.

That checks out for Englewood Ald. Jeanette Taylor (20th), who said institutions at all levels have “failed folks in Black and Brown communities from the time COVID hit.”

“When it comes to vaccinations, people don’t trust the government, and I can’t blame them. They’re scared,” Taylor said. “First we couldn’t get any testing. Then a bunch of our vaccinations went to people in the suburbs. Now I’m gonna trust you to shoot me in the arm? I don’t see it.”

Put another way, the lakefront liberal component of mayor Lori Lightfoot's coalition is on board with the Trump shots, but the communities that provide her largest pluralities are not yet there.

In Wrigleyville, which is the northern end of the fifteen square miles of privilege, the Cubs are again playing to capacity crowds.  Milwaukee isn't yet that optimistic.  The poorer parts of Chicago might still be doing most of the dying of coronavirus.

IT'S STILL NOT PRUDENT TO USE MILORGANITE IN A VEGETABLE GARDEN.

Years ago, when Milwaukee was the world's workshop, there was a warning on the bags.  Apparently, between the outsourcing of much of the foundry work to inter alia China and more effective methods of separating the heavy metal from the waste water before it goes to the sanitary sewer, that stuff is no longer the problem, but there are still things you wouldn't want getting into your food through the fertilizer.  "[P]er- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are a group of man-made chemicals used for their water- and stain-resistant qualities in products including clothing and carpet, nonstick cookware, packaging and firefighting foam. The chemicals are persistent, remaining both in the environment and human body over time. Accumulation of the chemicals in the body has been linked to cancer, studies have shown, or other adverse health effects."  There's still a lot of research to be done, to identify the sources and the paths from useful products into hazardous runoff, or diluted chemicals in the sewers.  We have more challenging forms of hazards accompanying convenience than our Roman forebears with their pewter plates, fortunately we also have more effective methods of investigating what's going wrong.  For now, the gardening tip is "Researchers recommended that at-home gardeners refrain from using biosolid-based fertilizers on their plants to minimize risk of exposure to the chemicals."  Your lawns and your golf courses are fine for now.

DOES NOBODY REALLY WANT TO EXPAND A COALITION?

A recent M. B. Dougherty column addressing political realignment captures an odd element of what's going on.  "Some thinkers, however, foresee in the realignment a hope to settle scores with their rivals, see their ideas come to fruition, and kick out all the useless people from the movement once and for all."  The major parties seem to be at a similar place.  Republicans accuse Democrats of pushing for that Capitol invasion commission as a way of shaming Trump voters into staying home, and of using open borders to import loyal Democrats who get to vote even before they become citizens.  Democrats accuse Republicans of objecting to immigration and requiring voter identification as a way of suppressing the vote.  That neither major party seems interested in, oh, recruiting refugees from Venezuela or Cuba as potential Republicans, or considering workers whose jobs were outsourced as potential Democrats, or of rethinking local policies in light of recent interstate migrations suggests a lack of thought on the part of people who fancy themselves thought leaders.  Shoring up the existing bases can only get you so far.

It's a given in American politics that partisans become born-again believers in federalism when their faction is out of power in Washington, D.C., only to lose faith in decentralization the next time they win control of Congress and the presidency. Bossing folks around is, after all, a lot more fun than being bossed around. So, it's refreshing to see in this deeply divided country at least tentative steps towards bipartisan agreement that not every issue should be settled by dictates issued from the nation's capital. As encouraging as it is, though, this grudging acceptance of live-and-let-live doesn't go far enough.

What was I just telling you about an aggregation problem the larger the polity becomes?

Onetime herald of that permanent Democrat majority Ruy Teixeira comes to grips precisely with an aggregation problem.

The fact of the matter is that Democrats’ approach in the American Rescue Plan and their general economic approach is centrist in the sense that it corresponds to the center of gravity of American public opinion.

This cannot be said of a wide variety of cultural issues that have come to the fore in Democratic party circles and have vigorous advocates within those circles and more broadly in Democratic-adjacent nonprofits, media and academic institutions. These cannot be said to be centrist in any sense of the term and are typically embraced by only a small percentage of voters overall and are not generally majoritarian even within the Democratic party itself.

That metrofexual coastal block, though, can get very noisy when they don't get their way, even if the macroeconomic stimulus efforts of the current government are a larger slice of the political salami than they'd get with the Trumpian populists holding a majority.  Aggregation problems within aggregation problems.

This new middle-class rebellion isn't rejecting everything that progressives stand for; the Left's critique of neo-liberal excess is resonating, as is the need for improved access to health care. But the current focus on "systemic racism," coupled with a newfound and heavily enforced cultural conformism and the obsessive focus on a never-ending litany of impending "climate emergences" are less likely to pass muster with most of the middle class, no matter how popular they are with the media, academics, and others in the progressive corner.

And this new middle-class rebellion is being bolstered by a wide-ranging intellectual rebellion by traditional liberals against the Left's dogmatism and intolerance. Indeed, what we're about to see has the potential to reprise the great shift among old liberals that had them embracing Reagan in reaction to the Left's excesses of that generation.

There are disaffected voters to be picked up, if only seekers after elective office would reach down.

The progressive case also increasingly suffers from its own manifest failures in urban bastions like New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Chicago, which have been losing residents and attracting far fewer immigrants while suffering among the poorest job recoveries since the onset of the pandemic. Meanwhile, there's a clear acceleration of growth in less dense, lower cost "boomtowns" like Nashville, Dallas-Ft. Worth, Austin, Nashville, Columbus and Des Moines.

Democrats who wish to remain in power will need to address critical challenges like a steady rise in urban crime and massive homelessness; citing systemic racism won't clean the streets of New York, San Francisco and central Los Angeles from drug addicts, the mentally ill and the destitute.

Politicians in places losing residents might gain from changing their approach, in order that fewer people leave. In the places gaining residents, politicians might also benefit by changing their approach, in order to expand their coalitions.

NORTHAMPTON GRANGE IS NO PLACE TO PLAY.

The Cold Spring Shops estate is a preserve for all manner of animals, not all of whom coexist peacefully.

A fledgling robin, just out of the nest, sheltered in the lawn overnight.

An adult robin did check on this one a few times.  He, or a sibling, also sheltered in the Victor E. Garden.

Let's hope those wings got working before one of the prowling house cats came across a midnight snack.

The turtles that come a long way inland from the decorative pond didn't fare so well.

What might the culprit be?  One of those cats?  Probably not a skunk, they leave traces?  There are woodchucks in the vacant lots, as well as prowling 'coon and 'possum in the neighborhood.  Something figured out the signature of a turtle nest, or sniffed out a snack.