BACK TO SCHOOL.

Classes have resumed at Northern Illinois University.  There's some sort of a bubble for students living on campus, and as far as I know, class meetings are still virtual.  I might be wrong, but I have no incentive to study more.

I'm wondering whether this illustration, which has come out in a variety of forms, might have some value in teaching the survey of political economy class.

My first puzzlement is with the premise of the picture, that has the youngsters sneaking a peek into the baseball stadium from beyond the center field fence.  What would happen if a class contemplated how those buzzwords would apply to getting the kids inside the stadium?

There's a straightforward first cut at "equality."  The baseball stadium shall issue tickets to all comers without undue preference and prejudice.  In its simplest form, anyone with the means to buy a ticket gets to buy a ticket, provided the ticket is available.  "Equity" gets more challenging: are we looking at ensuring that any kid has the means to buy a ticket, or, if it's a game with a large crowd, that they get the same chance at standing in line as everyone else?  Or is it equitable that the kids queue first?  Or that children should be seen and not heard?

Now the "capitalism" panel: and I've been around this stuff long enough to be leery of using "capitalism" to refer to anything.  Perhaps we're looking at trade-tested betterments: the boxes are available in such abundance that the kids can put bigger stacks up.  But then, I live close to Chicago, where, long ago, building owners saw the value of putting grandstands on the roofs of buildings with a view of a baseball park, and then the baseball club and the building owners get into litigation over who pays how much for the right to use the grandstands, and how much the baseball club gets.

Taking the deeper view, though, isn't the point of trade-tested betterments to have better seats for the kids, at better prices, inside the stadium, where a better team is on the field?

AFTER THE PRUSSIANS MARCHED UP WHITEHALL.

In reality, that never happened, although you might get what happens if you put exaggerated arm-swinging in Stechschritt, and show your proficiency with the pace-stick.

I suspect every military has some version of a pace-stick, as getting everybody in step is easier if everybody is taking the same length stride.  (Those who spent any time with marching band understand the same thing: now imagine taking exactly eight steps or whatever it is to go five more yards across the football field, while playing in tune.)  It's the British, however, who seem to have made a competition of it, and that's something picked up enthusiastically by these senior drill instructors in India's army.

The cockades on those hats identify drill sergeants with highly regarded regiments.

It's not the first time I've discovered interesting adaptations of one country's military practices by another. If you want to see parading in the Old Prussian style, check out the Chileans.

That noted, let me also note that the most effective field army of the late nineteenth century made do with nothing fancier than a route step.

A SMALL GATHERING OF SOCIALISTS IN MILWAUKEE.

No, that's not a reference to the just-completed Democratic Party telethon produced in a control room there.  There's no reason to infer anything about the politics of the guys in the control room.

 

Michael Ramirez cartoon retrieved from Power Line.

Rather, it's a historical reference.  The Socialist Party of Norman Thomas (they'd likely be cancelled by any of the sectarians who call themselves socialist, communist, or Marxist these days) held their 1932 convention in Milwaukee.

When the Socialists gathered in Milwaukee in 1932, the White House seemed up for grabs. The Republican incumbent, Herbert Hoover, was flailing against the Great Depression. The Democratic front-runner, Franklin D. Roosevelt, faced opposition from conservatives in his own party.

And the Socialists, whose candidate Norman Thomas barely made an electoral dent in the 1928 election, believed their message would register with voters faced with a capitalist system that seemed to be crumbling.

Milwaukee was a logical place for the party to meet. Milwaukee Mayor Dan Hoan, Milwaukee's Socialist mayor since 1916, also was considered a serious presidential candidate — even though he said he wasn't running.

Yes, there was sectarianism. You might expect a spat over how closely to align with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the Ukrainian famine still a secret and the Kirov purges in the future, but it's only a socialist who can object to advocating in Milwaukee for the repeal of Prohibition because fighting hunger is more important. "But for the Socialist Party to mouth such platitudes as 'food is more important than beer' is to evade an issue of interest and importance to the American people." So said New York Times columnist Heywood Broun, a delegate to the convention. Socialist Party operatives with bylines. Imagine that.

THEY'LL EVENTUALLY GET TO THE ROOT CAUSES.

Common Dreams columnist Sam Pizzigati would like to penalize college football for hoarding. He makes one of the easy points: it's a strange sort of amateur athletics that's all about the money.  "How did we end up with this mix of privilege and entitlement, with college football teams that more and more run, in one critic’s words, 'as discrete commercial animals living tax-free and happy in the wilds of the American university system'?" Tax free, perhaps, but not necessarily happy.

It being a Common Dreams post, the rent seeking is there, if not specifically so named.

[Oilman and corporate raider T. Boone] Pickens resolved to blaze a more noble pigskin future. In 1983, after a tough Oklahoma State football loss to Kansas State, he gave the OSU football program $100,000. Twenty years later, he upped his giving ante, donating $20 million for renovating Oklahoma State’s football stadium.

The next big Pickens move would rewire the college football economy. Early in 2006, Oklahoma State announced a $165-million Pickens donation to the school’s football enterprise, the largest single donation in college football history. By the end of 2009, the seating capacity of Oklahoma State’s Boone Pickens Stadium had climbed to over 60,000 and players were marveling at their dazzling new state-of-the-art amenities for everything from dining and studying plays to lifting weights and passing time.

Now deep-pockets had been bestowing their largesse upon college football programs long before T. Boone Pickens started cascading dollars. But never at the level Pickens was suddenly playing at. To compete in the new Pickens era, college football programs would clearly have to up their games. Donations of a few million here and few million there would no longer suffice. College athletic directors had to be enticing eight-digit donations, not seven, nine-digit donations, not eight.

That is often the way of positional arms races, but like any other arms race, it ends up badly.

College football fans saw other consequences of the new economic order that Pickens and his fellow plutocrats had ushered in. Saturday afternoons in the fall had traditionally been the time for college football games and all the pageantry around them. In college football’s new reality, football conferences began signing TV deals that had them playing their games on fan- and student-unfriendly weekday nights.

Conference officials felt they had no choice. How else could they keep the money flowing in at anywhere near the new rates that America’s richest had made the new must-meet standard?

Short answer: they can't. Is it any accident that the Mid-American Conference bailed on football first? I leave to others with a closer understanding of their conferences to contemplate the correlation between Democrat governors and locked down states and the Big Ten, er fourteen, and Pacific Twelve also bailing, whilst the developmental leagues with party schools attached continue to play.

Finally, though, he gets to the Neglected Actor.  "Things like uncompensated college football players getting asked to jeopardize their health playing a game that’s catapulting their coaches into the ranks of the nation’s richest 1 percent."  Make that, and uncompensated, while participating in a risky investment in which somewhere between one in fifty and one in a thousand participants gets that call on draft day.

Where is the observer of the sports labor markets who will get people thinking about the connections between performers in the professional leagues showing their sympathy with protests against police who come off like occupying armies in the big cities, and the urban school systems that might not produce much literacy and numeracy, but they sure turn out pro players.

TODAY'S REMINDER TO REJECT THE FALSE BINARY.

"You Don’t Owe Your Vote to Anyone," writes National Review's Isaac Schorr.  His focus is on the pundits pushing turnout for its own sake, and it perpetuates the false binary.

I’ve never understood the fetish for increasing voter turnout. Voting is both a right and a responsibility; it should be easy for all Americans. But each additional vote is not some kind of victory for democracy; those who care enough to show up should and those who don’t should stay home. The sanctity of each individual vote, on the other hand, should be sacred. Americans who head to the polls should not allow themselves to be bullied or shamed into voting one way or another. Pundits of all stripes have increasingly fallen back on such tactics instead of working to persuade people to their side. Their understanding of who owes what to whom is backward: It is the job of candidates for public office to appeal to voters with their values, policies and behavior, not the responsibility of voters to get in line to prove their righteousness to Tom Nichols or Geraldo Rivera.

That supporters of both Biden and Trump would call you complicit in the other man’s victory if you decide to write in a candidate or vote for a third party should tell you everything you need to know about the quality of their arguments; they can’t both be right. This November 3, Americans should do what an earlier, better version of Ted Cruz told them to do in 2016 and vote their conscience.

Precisely, and unless there is an increase in the number of battleground states, voters who have an opportunity to vote for who they want, rather than for who Our Political Masters might want them to vote for, and who take advantage of the opportunity, are, in addition to revealing their preferences, letting their discontent with a major party system that screens, from some two hundred million possible aspirants, a reality television host and a corpse, be made clear.

You'll get better nominees when the party establishments have incentives to provide better nominees.

WHAT GOOD IS A TRANSCONTINENTAL RAILROAD THAT COMES UP A SMALL PROVINCE SHORT OF THE COAST?

None, and Canadian Pacific apparently finally figured that out.

Some background: once upon a time, Canadian Pacific ran from coast to coast, and its easternmost ports were Saint John, in New Brunswick, with a carferry operation across the Bay of Fundy to Nova Scotia.  (The all-rail passenger service from Boston to Halifax used Canadian National metals to the east of Saint John.)

Evidently, the eastern end of the railroad wasn't performing up to the standards headquarters wanted, and the lines east of Montreal were sold off to various operators, including most notoriously the Montreal, Maine, and Atlantic that the whole world heard about when a crew failed to properly secure a tank train, and the resulting runaway, derailment, explosion, and fire lead to massive loss of life in Lac-Megantic, Quebec.

Canadian Pacific again own some trackage east of Montreal, and their intermodal trains are exchanging containers with the ships at Saint John.

The inaugural train carries containers from the Hapag-Lloyd vessel Detroit Express bound for intermodal terminals on the CP network in Canada and the U.S.

"The new Port of Saint John service offers shippers a compelling value: a congestion-free port with a world-class operator, matched with CP's precision scheduled railroading model," said Keith Creel, CP President and Chief Executive Officer. "CP has been without access to a deep-water Atlantic Ocean port for a quarter-century, and today I'm pleased to deliver a simple message: We're back."

CP originated westbound train 251-11 this morning for the Montreal region at Brownville Junction, Maine, with the first Port of Saint John containers on connection from the New Brunswick Southern (NBSR) and Eastern Maine (EMRY) railways. From Montreal, CP will move containers from the vessel Detroit Express on connecting trains to destinations that include Toronto, Winnipeg, Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver, Chicago and Minneapolis.

The first eastbound intermodal train to the Port of Saint John departed Montreal on Friday, Aug. 7.

CP gained access to the Port of Saint John through connections with EMRY and NBSR with CP's purchase of the Central Maine & Quebec Railway (CMQ), completed in June. CP has committed to investing $90 million over three years into the CMQ property to enhance safety and efficiency over the corridor. Complementing that investment is the port's $205 million West Side Modernization project, which includes a new wharf, a terminal upgrade and a deeper shipping channel.

CP's route is the shortest between Atlantic Canada and key North American markets. By year's end, CP anticipates it will be able to offer 24-hour service between Saint John and Montreal.

Time for me to ask again, what is the point of the additional more than a day sailing into the St. Lawrence River to Montreal, let alone transiting the Seaway to Toronto or Buffalo or Chicago or Superior for Minneapolis, Winnipeg, Calgary or Edmonton?

BLACK PEOPLE DON'T HAVE TO VOTE DEMOCRAT.

Kim Klacik is running for the House in Maryland's Seventh District.  She posted a campaign message that has apparently played pretty well, particularly among the insurgent blogosphere.  Power Line's John Hinderaker suggests there might be a "growing rebellion among African-Americans against one-party rule."

In Baltimore, the Sun's editorial board are less impressed.

If Ms. Klacik were running to be Baltimore’s next mayor or at least a member of the City Council, her claim that Democratic leaders had ruined the city would at least be understandable. But she is actually running against Democrat Kweisi Mfume for the seat in the U.S. House of Representatives formerly held by the late Mr. Cummings. Whatever one may think of members of Congress, they don’t run cities, counties or even states, they represent one of 435 votes in one chamber of the federal legislative branch. Maryland’s 7th extends far beyond the city to Howard and Baltimore counties.

And while complaining about city leaders, current and past, is fair game for anyone (and among our favorite pastimes), it’s ludicrous and overly simple to blame the city’s ills on party affiliation. Concentrated poverty, substance abuse and a war on drugs that disproportionately criminalized low-income African Americans, racism and red-lining, the loss of blue collar jobs, collapsing public infrastructure, broken families and failing schools, these are among the major culprits. We’re all ears if a Republican, Democrat or, frankly, interplanetary visitor, has immediate means to correct any or all of them. It’s telling that Candidate Klacik offers no remedies in her video. Not one.

Let the record show that the Sun's editorial board endorsed Mr Mfume.

Substantively, the remedies the board hopes for begin once the regime changes. Although Ms Klacik is waging an uphill campaign, seeking to capture the seat recently held by the late Elijah Cummings, and currently by Kweisi Mfume, himself a civil rights lion with serious chops, the first step in correcting the ills of the big cities, which will take a long time, and that time is likely to be longer with the taxpayers leaving, is to put those long-time Members of Congress on notice that their constituents are no longer mascots whose continued suffering is essential to the continuing tenure of Democrat politicians.  "[B]usiness as usual has rendered [destitute] generations of Black and Latino inhabitants of Democrat-controlled territory. It's the way ward-heeler politicians always operate.  And the clients of ward-heeler politicians sometimes figure out that they're being played."  The lady is telling potential voters they've been played, and to their disadvantage.

Then, perhaps, we can have a serious discussion of the ways in which, fifty years ago, privileging the Kerner Commission's report and ignoring the Moynihan report has not turned out well for the people the Great Society programs and civil rights legislation and comprehensive immigration reforms of that era intended to help.

ANOTHER SITUATION POORLY FORESEEN.

The summer housecleaning continues, with the March 1989 issue of The Atlantic going to the recycle bin. Not, though, before I skimmed through "Cotton Mather Democrats" by Mark Shields.  The reference is to the Cotton Mather of Technocratic Wisdom, not the Cotton Mather of witch-burning, and the puzzler Mr Shields was dealing with was common among the intellectual journals of the era, namely, how was it that Michael Dukakis, selling himself as a technocrat (anybody else remember Andrew Cuomo's "not ideology, competence?") whilst the elder George Bush, even more of a technocrat, sold himself as some sort of good old boy.  And note, dear reader, the Hungarian border was still closed in March of that year.

In the article, though, was this observation by William Schneider, who I think still turns up from time to time as Elder Political Analyst,  He asked, "When did the Democrats plunge into the fatal error that somehow it is acceptable to be rich, virtuous to be poor, and that the only sin is to be a member of the middle class?"  Recall, dear reader, that thirty years ago the massive shakeout of Big Steel and American Cars was still fresh in people's minds, and Robert Reich's "symbolic analysts" were still working off mainframes and relying on fast modems.

Read, though, this observation by Matthew Continetti, after the close of the Hollywood and Silicon Valley produced and urban poor catered to Democratic convention from anywhere but Milwaukee.  "Time and again, Americans have elected Democratic governments only to find themselves shocked and appalled two years later. The Democrats campaign as a worker's party, but govern as a Bobo one."  Yes, and Donald Trump became president running against both the entertainment elitists of the Donks and the rent-seeker elitists of the Pachs.  No surprise that more than a few moderate Pachs phoned in their support for Mr Biden.

James "Clusterf**k Nation" Kunstler also echoes what Mr Schneider warned about, only more pungently.  "The Democrats are crazy people with a mostly crazy policy program — which a large number of non-crazy Americans actually see for what it is: the drive to run America on sheer coercion, pitting the supposedly under-privileged against the supposedly over-privileged, telling everybody what to think and punishing all non-correct thinkers."  He fears that it's all an act.

I don’t see how this amounts to a winning election strategy. And the Democrats themselves may not either. Rather, their aim may be to generate as much disorder as possible from the election process itself to paralyze governing the USA at every level and paint Mr. Trump as Hobgoblin-in-chief in order to keep their hustle going: the mau-mauing of America. It’s a really dumb and reckless game and it will bring on a whole lot of not-good trouble for a country reeling into full-blown economic collapse.

There's a further problem: in Mr Schneider's formulation, it's acceptable to be rich only if you Pay. Your. Taxes.  President Clinton even stressed that, early in his presidency, when he had the votes to repeal tax rate reductions.  But thirty years of gutting the middle class means that there's less upward mobility as well as fewer examples of what life without dependency on the government looks like, and the only money that's left to tax is that of the rich people.  And even woke rich people have their limits.

California is home to 12 percent of Americans, but over a quarter of the nation's homeless. It also has the highest share of noncitizen residents, according to the Census Bureau, a group disproportionately likely to be less educated and more reliant on welfare benefits. The state is the nation's sixth most generous, in terms of public welfare dollars per capita—an arrangement funded largely by its wealthiest taxpayers.

But as state Democrats bear down on them, regular Californians and the uber-wealthy alike may reconsider if this bargain is really worth it.

"It's very tempting to look at [other] states and think how cost of living could be a lot better, and income could go a lot further, and you could grow your business a lot faster in different environments that may not even have an income tax at all," [Tax Foundation policy analyst Katherine] Loughead said. "So I think those types of states are going to look more and more appealing to Californians."

California's borders are still open for out-migration, although the legislature would like to impose exit taxes in the form of a wealth tax that applies even to expatriate residents.  But their technocrats make life more difficult for Uber drivers and the uber-wealthy alike.

By their fruits shall ye know them.

THE TRENCHANT OBSERVATION OF THE SCHOOL-OPENING SEASON.

A few campuses are attempting to open up, at least in part, and, collegians doing what collegians do, they mix and mingle and the Wuhan coronavirus shows up, uninvited.  Then the administrators have to figure out what mix of persuasion and coercion comes next.  "'I do not think messages to the student body that take a scolding tone to all students are useful and may be counterproductive to the many who are doing the right thing,' [said Sherry Pagoto, a professor and director of the UConn Center for mHealth [c.q.] and Social Media at the University of Connecticut.]"

Is anybody really surprised that when you peddle the residential campus experience as a social experience, and the classroom stuff might be secondary, that people might take you up on the offer?

Perhaps, though, there is another opportunity for reflection among the deanlets and deanlings.  "Instead of looking for people to blame, [Washington (St. Louis) assistant psychiatry professor Jessica] Gold wishes higher education communities -- and the nation at large -- would work together to come up with solutions. That strategy would work better than telling students you're disappointed in them, she said. Some students will hear that message and follow it to the extreme, she said. But they probably aren't the population the college is trying to reach."

In particular, does it pay to wage an all-out onslaught on supposed systematic racism and other social ills, when doing so also preaches to the converted, and the scolded and shamed might blow it off, that is, if they're even paying attention?

DID THE COASTAL ELITES JUST WRITE WISCONSIN OFF, AGAIN?

This time a year ago, civic boosters in Milwaukee were looking forward to hosting a Democratic nominating convention, with all the live coverage and the opportunity to show off the fun stuff.  At one time, CNN had intended to hire the Turnverein best known for its fish fries to base its coverage.

Didn't happen, nor did anything else involving Democrats and the media.  The Democrats even spun their invisibling of Milwaukee as truth in packaging.

Wisconsin was abused again by the Democratic National Committee’s decision to reduce the party’s national convention to the size of a typical Wednesday night softball league tournament. The Democrats actually removed Wisconsin from the logo for the national convention.

We don’t rate a visit from the Democrats’ candidates. We don’t rate a visit from their delegates. We don’t even rate a silhouette on the convention logo.

Because some Democrats don’t want to give the false impression that they were in Wisconsin among the peasants, Wisconsin was removed from the logo.

That quote is from Right Wisconsin's James Wigderson, and he might have political reasons to toss that "among the peasants" in.  But then comes late evening political commentator Stephen Colbert, offering to show his viewers what they missed.  (It would be schadenfreudelicious for that clip to have come in his show before the Donks wrapped up, meaning his self-selected audience would have missed it.)

The voice-over guy sounds like he came from Bridgeport, and the stock footage is from anywhere but Milwaukee.  I mean, with a small gathering of socialists in Milwaukee taking place, you'd think somebody might have found this, or taken a walk around the area outside the secure zone.

The local convention and visitors bureau types pushed back.  Maybe they could take up a collection to bring Mr Colbert out for a visit.

Read more about what's going on in that picture here and here.

Or maybe Mr Colbert could visit Illinois governor J. B. Pritzker (D-Chicago) at his dacha.  "Chicago has removed Wisconsin from the mandatory travel quarantine order. Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker can visit his family home here again, and half the population of Lake Geneva can return."

Let the record show that Harley-Davidson got its start in Milwaukee, and that Harley riders also vote.  "Bikers for Trump founder Chris Cox told Fox News reporter Vince Tobin the group wasn’t in Milwaukee to 'poke the bear, but we’re here to keep an eye on things.'"

They are also politically aware. “We’re not here to shout. You will never see a biker lighting a pharmacy on fire, looting a sneaker store, calling for the death and destruction of private property and police officers. We are here to stand with law enforcement, to stand with our servicemen and women, not only active duty, but the veterans and to support our president.”

One day, the election will be settled, the virus tamed, and perhaps Tourist Milwaukee will again be open for visitors.

LET'S GO FOR A TRAIN RIDE.

Glen Brewer had opportunity to observe the Chicago Aurora and Elgin and the North Shore Line in the declining years of the interurban era.  Some of the rolling stock, and, on occasion, the ride and the feel, of those cars, is still available at the Illinois Railway Museum.  In particular, the Electroliner is back in running condition, although the plush seats are incompatible with quarantine restrictions, and it might be a while before passengers can again board.

At the North Shore’s small main station on the Loop elevated at Adams and Wabash, I caught the 8:00 am, bright salmon and turquoise stripped Electroliner for Milwaukee. We traveled over the sooty Loop structure with its contrasting bright silver rails around some pretty tight curves, then on to the straight, fast, ground level Skokie Valley line, one of Insull’s costly improvements.

At the Milwaukee end, he revised his travel plans.

The trip was swift and uneventful, but on it I noted that the ideal place for a railfan like me was the first seat on the first car – just to the left of the motorman’s tiny compartment.

In Milwaukee I had one hour to wait for the return of the same Electroliner. My original plan had been to wait for two hours over lunch in order to take a conventional train back. But now I was determined to stake out that perfect seat.

The first few miles out of the Milwaukee terminal were street running complete with traffic lights. I was surprised that the Electroliner had a foot-operated bell, just like many slow, conventional trolleys I have seen.

Then we entered private right-of-way, and the speed began to rise.

Yup, that sounds about right.

I kept my seat for quite awhile fascinated by the speed and the view. A little boy joined me, his father remaining in the seat behind. The boy sat transfixed, staring into the window, as I snapped the camera shutter, hand rolled the film ahead and lined up the next subject — always in a hurry to be ready when the next opportunity presented itself. I photographed the other Electroliner and conventional trains we met, but it was past lunchtime, and I was anxious to sample the famous Electroburger in the Tavern/Lounge.

I hope the 'burger was good. Apparently the induction stoves in the tavern are not up to code; thus, although the restored 'Liner will have a stove, it will not be operable.

I have often wondered if that young interurban enthusiast remembers to this day that blazingly fast ride and the privileged view we enjoyed together. I wonder if the experience changed him for life; I know I’ll never forget my only ride on the Electroliner.

I cannot claim to have been THAT young interurban enthusiast. I can claim to have been in that situation.

Find yourself a preservation railroad, and support it.  They're operating again, if under safe distancing and limited capacity restrictions.

KINDLY BE ADVISED THAT NORMAL PEOPLE SUCK.

Last night, Wisconsin governor Tony Evers (D - Public Instruction) opened the telethon with the night's talking point.

"So even though we can't be with each other, I know we have a shared sense of purpose," Evers also said. "That is, to elect Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.This November is about returning kindness, respect, empathy, and civility back to the White House, and that's who Joe and Kamala are, because they know — especially during challenging times like these — the problems we face can only be solved by all of us together."

The "kindness" tropes were the thing all night, and that's what the disgruntled Republicans who were making their pitches were all about.  Our President is, to put it mildly, unconventional, and his lack of manners often hurts him more than it shakes up his critics.  From that perspective, the restoration of what might pass as a state of good repair in national politics seems desirable.  At the end of the day, Joe Biden will return us to those thrilling days of yesteryear when politicians could reach across the aisle and make bipartisan compromises and comprehensively reform away those challenges, and the Sunday shows will be predictably more boring.

The populist insurgency is having none of it.  Derek Hunter writes, "Democrats really don’t like this country and the people in it."  John Kass wasn't fooled.  "Yet as the DNC infomercial makes plain, this new left Democratic Party of 2020 sees only two types: The Oppressed and The Oppressors, a formula that invariably leads to rising conflict and anger that can't be covered over with virtual kindness and virtual empathy."  Perhaps, he continues, the Democratic messaging is working.

The Democrats aren't appealing to Trump's base. They're targeting suburban voters in swing states. Their convention is designed to give those voters a comfortable place to call home in what is shaping up to be a close election. They don't respond well to Trumptastic bombast, something Trump can't grasp.

Yes, if you turn the sound off.  Turn on the sound, and here's what Roger "Tenured Radicals" Kimball hears.

I wonder what the viewership of this dog’s breakfast is? For the Democrats’s sake, I hope it is low. It will not convince anyone who is not already convinced. The truth is, this was mostly not a convention, but a series of political ads. The Dems are against your Second Amendment rights and for the Green New Deal (which means they are against America’s energy independence). They are for open borders, higher taxes, Black Lives Matter brutes and urban squalor (they do not use the word ‘squalor’).

Michael Goodwin is more direct.  "Perhaps the Dem Downers are right, that a majority of Americans see their country through the darkest possible lens. But I suspect the party is too much in the thrall of the activists who want to overthrow most of our institutions."

Oh, absolutely.

A participant in Common Dreams's service called Julie Hollar elaborates on the internal squabbles to come among the Democrats.

Attentive readers might also have noticed a word glaringly absent from [New York Times columnist Reid] Epstein’s article: white. 94% of voters in [Pennsylvania congressman Conor] Lamb’s race were white, which means that the working class observers of Lamb’s race are referring to is a white working class—hardly representative of the working class as a whole in this country, which is more than 40% people of color (and nearly half female).

As FAIR (11/13/18) has pointed out before, this erasure of people of color and women from the working class is rampant in corporate media, and it conveniently serves to frame the answer to winning over the “working class” as moving rightward, rather than the more obvious and straightforward strategy of addressing the economic needs of this entire diverse class—through policies like Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, a $15 minimum wage, and support for childcare and public education, as well as supporting unionization and workers’ pensions.

That essay suggests the efforts, such as they are, to reassure normal people they don't suck might turn off the dependent base the party regularly relies on.

National Journal's Josh Kraushaar sees the same tensions.  The party establishment appears to be pretending the restoration is at hand, even though the lot of people who are not tech moguls or otherwise able to ride out the house arrests at home deteriorates.

Both are betting on anti-Trump animus to propel them to victory instead of making concrete promises toward the working-class voters who grew disillusioned with the Democratic Party in recent years. The big ideological tent that Biden has pitched at the convention has been geared mostly at the upscale end of the electorate, and less toward the culturally traditional working-class voters who defected from Barack Obama to Trump in the last presidential election.

The missing piece from the convention is any semblance of Biden’s governing agenda. He’s the working-class Joe without the policies designed to appeal to the average voter from his hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania. Take away Trump from the Democratic message, and the party would be left speechless.

The further problem is that the more socialist elements of the coalition of the ascendant are wrecking lives in the precincts that the Democrats rely on for turnout.

The former vice president is heading a party anchored in the deep-blue cities and Democratic-trending suburbs of the country, one that’s held together by anti-Trump rhetoric and overtures to a diversifying America. Picking Sen. Kamala Harris of California as his running mate was designed to appeal to this multiracial coalition, centered more in the affluent suburbs than in the working-class Midwestern towns where Clinton badly struggled in 2016.

The convention messaging to date has been focused mainly on these cosmopolitan voters, from Michelle Obama’s lacerating indictment of Trump’s character to Jill Biden’s captivating promise that her husband will make the country whole again, just as he rebuilt his family in the wake of unspeakable tragedy.

That might be so, and yet, is the party's woke component making light of the efforts of petit-bourgeois residents of those precincts to rebuild their businesses going to affect voter turnout more than any invented complaints about missing mailboxes?

GIVE YOUR MATH MUSCLES A WORKOUT.

Instead of getting into the culture-studies weeds about the social construction of arithmetic, just warm up with this.

Cribbed from Right on the Left Coast.

THE HIPPIES PASS THE TORCH TO THE TRANSVESTITES?

I haven't been paying much attention to the political conventions. That has long been a practice of mine, as dour people with faces made for radio and voices made for print who take up prime time, this week to scold us, next week to scare us, don't interest me.  (And why, dear reader, do people whose career success depends in part on delivering speeches, never engage the services of a voice coach?  But I digress.)

That means I missed Monday evening's closing segment, in which Billy Porter sang Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth" with old Stephen Stills on the guitar. That amused the insurgents at Twitchy.  Years ago, the Democrats nominating Michael Dukakis replaced the primary colors of red, white, and blue, with the nuanced colors of salmon, gray, and mauve, and that might have been almost as much of a faux pas as putting the candidate in a tank.  The odd color combinations on the Stars and Stripes in the song might be just as off-putting as those nuanced pastels were back in the day: as a way of winning over swing voters, not so much.

Red State's Brandon Morse noted that the video really didn't let everybody look what's going down, so he added the relevant content.  Note: Town Hall registered the video as not suitable for children; you will have to sign in on You Tube to play it.

Here's why Mr Morse modified the show.

Only we at RedState couldn’t help but find the performance a bit dishonest. It didn’t really give you the 360 look into what Black Lives Matter really was…so we thought I, RedState’s resident video maker, should lend a hand.

I think this remix of the performance is a bit closer to reality than the one Porter and the DNC were trying to sell.

I'm not sure "enjoy" is the right word.  Sometimes, like with lumber yard fires or chain-reaction crashes, you just have to stop and look.

THE ONUS IS ON THE REGIONAL COMPREHENSIVES AND MID-MAJORS TO LIFT THEIR GAME.

Joanne Jacobs counsels, "Don't overpay for a prestige degree."

The pay-off for a prestigious college degree is smaller than you think, write Frederick M. Hess and Joseph B. Fuller on The Hill. Hess directs education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, where Fuller, a Harvard Business School professor, is a visiting scholar.

The argument, dear reader, ought be familiar.

[I]t’s not clear whether elite colleges’ high graduation rates are “due to terrific teaching and support, or simply to student bodies composed of hand-picked high achievers,” write Hess and Fuller.

They advise students and parents not to overpay for “bragging rights” or future networking possibilities. That’s especially true now that “the promised intimate mentoring has been reduced to the occasional Skype session.”

I tend to agree that it is the interaction of high achievers that is the source of the premium, although it's possible that the institutions elsewhere on the academic food chain are complicit in the U. S. News problem.  "[A]s long as the regional comprehensives, the mid-majors, the land-grants refuse to act as if they are in the same business as the Ivies, the Ivy premium inflated though it likely is, will continue."

THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE CONFIRMS WHAT TWITCHY READERS HAVE LONG KNOWN.

A month ago, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, a woman who takes no cr@p off anyone, correctly described Chicago's mayor Lori Lightfoot a "derelict mayor."  The mayor eschewed profanity, preferring to refer to the press secretary as a Karen.

More recently, the mayor has been an indefatigable source of fun for Twitchy's writers, for instance, getting angry with a reporter for asking about city officials failing to prosecute looters after the first round of wilding; then Jim Treacher of Pajamas Media had a Clapback of the Vanities moment while more traditional members of the press had reason to be dismayed with her performance; then she sought Federal assistance in enforcing gun laws (news flash: any crook worth his lawyer knows how to get around Chicago's existing laws); and the latest round of wilding began not 24 hours after the mayor decided shutting down a beach party was Necessary for Public Health.  I wonder if the Log Cabin Republicans saw a recruiting opportunity in that bit of quarantine theater.

That might be passed off as the populist insurgency alternative media having some fun with such a tempting target.  The editorial board of Chicago's Tribune can't be so easily dismissed. "Not good enough. Not even close."  No kidding.

So you can listen to the words of the politicians. You can look at the conflicting data. And you can sweep aside both and assess the situation outright: chaos. Lawlessness. A city forced to raise its drawbridges to protect residents and businesses. Perception is reality in Chicago, and the perception is that this is not a safe city — anywhere. The long-term damage of that reputation is incalculable.

Tribune columnist John Kass, who has been facing down the cancel culture himself, interviews Paul Vallas, who has been involved in Chicago and national Democratic politics for years.

“I don’t think she likes criticism,” Vallas said of the mayor. “And I don’t think she knows what she’s doing quite frankly. … She’s always looking for a scapegoat. There’s got to be a scapegoat. And you know that she doesn’t like tough questions.”

Vallas said Lightfoot was unprepared for the mass looting downtown a few days ago. And most people would agree, including many Chicago aldermen. She was woefully unprepared. What happened downtown on Monday morning was a repeat of what happened a couple of months ago when looting erupted during the George Floyd protests.

Vallas has been quite active on the public policy front, writing op-eds for newspapers and posting on social media. His latest was titled, “The city burns, the mayor goes to a ribbon cutting.”

Rookie politicians making rookie mistakes. The damage to Chicago as a place to live or to do business well might be long-lasting.

OUR NEIGHBORS AT PLAY.

Homestead High School, in the far northern suburbs of Milwaukee, announces the retirement of long-time head football coach Dave Keel.  "Keel, who spent the past 30 seasons as the head football coach at Homestead, resigned Friday, ending a career that included 292 victories, an .807 winning percentage and six state championships." If I recall correctly he quarterbacked the Milwaukee Hamilton team a season or so after I graduated.  The story notes that the continued school closures as the state deals with the Wuhan coronavirus contributed to his decision.  Best wishes.

NORTHWARD HO.

Meg Jones of Milwaukee's Journal-Sentinel reports on the restoration of the Mark Twain Zephyr, which apparently will get a Wisconsin & Great Northern nose emblem.

Funds to transform the baggage car into a museum are being raised by Midwest Rail Rangers, a nonprofit based in Barron.  A 400-page book about the Mark Twain Zephyr's history is scheduled to go on sale in September — at MarkTwainZephyr.com — with purchases helping to pay for museum car displays.

The restoration will not re-create the look of the Mark Twain Zephyr down to the last tile, said [director of passenger development Robert] Tabern, but it will be a faithful re-creation. The goal is to finish by fall 2021.

"This is a pretty big project for us," Tabern said. "When you see the Zephyr in the Museum of Science and Industry it looks great, but it's a museum piece. This one in a year's time will be running right here in Wisconsin."

I was not aware of the connection between the Rail Rangers, who publish a series of mile-by-mile guides to what's outside the train window, and these might be the people who conduct historic talks on the South Shore Line.

As far as Budd's historic streamliners, there are two other shovel-nosed trains, the Pioneer Zephyr in the basement of Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry, and the Flying Yankee, itself the subject of abortive restoration efforts over the years, in New Hampshire.  In addition, the Nebraska Zephyr, which initially had a shovel-nosed power car, is operable at the Illinois Railway Museum.  Because of its original fabric seats that are difficult to keep sanitized, it's closed up for the duration of the coronavirus lockdowns.

IT MIGHT NOT HAVE MATTERED WHO CHARLES NEGY QUOTED.

That's a Central Florida professor of abnormal psychology who took exception to the preachments from the diversity weenies with a favorable reference to a controversial source. It might be that the Holy Inquisition is after the heresy qua heresy, moreso than on the use of sources.  Cornell's William Jacobson is on the story.  Here's a Twitter ukase from some functionary at Central Florida.  "Being actively anti-racist means calling out and confronting racist comments. We are aware of Charles Negy’s recent personal Twitter posts, which are completely counter to UCF’s values. We are reviewing this matter further while being mindful of the First Amendment."  Apparently Lernfreiheit and Lehrfreihet are counter to these values, First Amendment notwithstanding.  Jonathan Turley elaborates.

Faculty at state schools have the added protections from government regulation of speech.  However, even public school principals have faced content-based discipline for questioning the protests or BLM movement.  It is the lack of a clear standard or consistent application as academics that is so troubling.  The message of academics is that their positions can be lost if they express opposing views or dispute a rising orthodox position on these positions on campus.

Again, I often find statements from academics on both sides to be repugnant and inflammatory. However, I am admittedly “old school” when it comes to free speech, particularly on campus.  I have been writing for years about the erosion of free speech values in our colleges and universities. I have never seen the level of fear and intimidation in speaking with faculty today.  Most are afraid of being labeled racist if they utter a single objection to these measures or the targeting of unpopular colleagues.  The result is a chilling effect on speech that is being actively encouraged by Administrators and faculty in investigating, censuring, and condemning faculty to express opposing views on current issues like “Defund The Police.”

When I first entered teaching 30 years ago, universities were viewed as places of passionate debate and pluralistic viewpoints.  For years, we have seen ideological rigidity and intolerance supplant those values – a trend that is destroying the very intellectual freedom that gives life and meaning to our educational institutions. This is not about any individual academic or the merits of their speech. It is about all of us and when we will take a stand for the right of expression and academic freedoms — even of those with whom we vehemently disagree.

The intellectual monoculture will collapse eventually, and nobody left inside the woke universities will even have a clue why. By contrast, at least one Soviet official could joke about how Marxism-Leninism had to leave New Zealand alone in order that the rest of the (now Soviet) world would know what the price of anything was.

DONALD TRUMP'S NAVAL RESERVE.

These boats aren't painted gray, and the crew members tend to display a lot of skin to go with the flag hoists.

Apparently, though, going cruising with the family and meeting a few fellow power-boaters is a thing.

Huge, grassroots boat parades have been popping up all across the country in recent months, with patriotic Americans expressing support for the president andenjoying a popular summer recreational activity at the same time. While these pro-Trump rallies have gotten some local media coverage, the corporate media have been ignoring the Trump boat parade phenomenon, focusing instead on “mostly peaceful” Democrat-favored anti-Trump demonstrations.

In some states, those cruises are probably contrary to social distancing mandates, and the more woke among the newsies can denounce either the display of wealth or the disregard of mask-wearing or the fat shaming.  On the other hand, letting Militant Normals know they are not alone is probably contrary to The Narrative.

The article reports on such regattas in coastal states, inland states, states thought to lean Republican, states thought to lean Democrat, swing states, and up in the mountains.

At least one enterprising powerboater photobombed coverage of the recovery of the Space X capsule.

The political implications of cruise afternoon remain to be determined.  If these are protests, they appear to be more fun.  "Notice how wholesome, patriotic and upbeat these pro-Trump demonstrations are, especially compared to the grotesque and violent antifa/BLM demonstrations/riots favored by Democrats."  Not many sloops with smaller Trump flags where the protest flag might otherwise fly.

KURT SCHLICHTER'S "PEOPLE'S VOLUNTEERS" WERE SUPPOSED TO BE FICTIONAL.

The point of last week's wilding along Chicago's Magnificent Mile was ... liberations of property to feed the masses.

These are not the types of stores you’d expect people who Democrats like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have said are just desperate for household essentials like bread and milk to target.

But Black Lives Matter Chicago leaders have an explanation for that, explaining during their Monday rally that looting stores like Gucci and Macy’s is actually a form of “reparations”:

There's a video clip at the link.  A rally participant called Ariel Atkins even sounds a little bit like Sandy.  “I don’t care if someone decides to loot a Gucci or a Macy’s or a Nike store, because that makes sure that person eats,” said Ariel Atkins, a BLM organizer, according to NBC Chicago. “That makes sure that person has clothes.” Yes, if you cash in the clothes for food. Or perhaps you trade them for food stamps, the way there's an economy cashing in detergent for food stamps.

That post concludes with a denunciation of the local Democrat politicians.  "And thanks to the feckless Democratic 'leaders' in those cities, there appears to be no end in sight to what radical Black Lives Matter agitators and their extremist Antifa allies can get away with."  Other commentators in the populist blogosphere are reinforcing that message.  Monica Showalter notes, "Want more unrest? Vote Democrat, it's all they have on offer."  Power Line's John Hinderaker is more caustic.  "The Democratic Party is virulently anti-American. There are two choices in November: the Republican Party and chaos, followed by irreversible decline."  I'd like to reject that false binary wherever I can.

The most trenchant observation about Ms Atkin's talk might have belonged to Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams, something along the lines of "Looting is reparations?  OK, that topic is dead as a serious political issue."

TOO MANY CHIEFS, NOT ENOUGH CAPTAINS?

Restructuring comes to the Chicago Police Department, whether it's of the form the protesters are seeking or simply another chorus of "Take this job, and shove it."  "We don't need twenty or more Deputy Chiefs when the Department used to do just fine with six."

It's the nature of bureaucracies to proliferate layers of management, although I'm hard pressed to come up with a pithy description along the lines of "deanlet" for law enforcement.

USE YOUR IMAGINATION.

Streetsblog's Kea Wilson isn't.  "To Get More Electric Buses, We Don’t Just Need a Better Battery; We Need a Better Grid." She elaborates.

A groundbreaking new technology may soon help U.S. transit agencies overcome perhaps the single largest barrier to electrifying bus fleets: creating on-route electric charging stations capable of affordably and quickly fueling up buses as soon they run out of power.

As bus manufacturers rush to invent an affordable lithium ion battery that can hold a charge long enough to cover long routes in sprawling U.S. cities without a trip back to the depot, Northern California-based startup, Apparent, is urging agencies to take a more proactive approach: by installing ultra-efficient miniature power stations along bus routes — equipped (of course) with the company’s energy optimization technology.

These mini-hubs, called “distributed energy resources” by the energy industry, certainly aren’t new; any bus stop with a solar panel on its roof to help riders charge their cell phones qualifies as one. But most distributed energy resources have struggled to meet the massive energy needs of the largest electric vehicles on the road — or to do it cheaply enough that agencies can afford to make use of them.

Here's the problem, according to her.

A long-range electric bus powered by a lithium ion battery requires a massive amount of power to keep on the road — but a battery-powered bus takes anywhere from two and a half to six hours to fully charge, rather than just a few minutes at the pump for its fossil fuel-powered cousin.

And even under optimal driving conditions, the amount of energy required to charge the popular Proterra e-bus battery, for instance, is comparable to the daily energy consumption of more than more than seven energy-guzzling American homes — and that massive charge can only carry the bus about 125 miles.

And again, that’s under optimal conditions; steep hills, rough road surfaces, and heavy passenger loads can make e-bus batteries even more inefficient, cutting their driving range by as much as 24 percent and requiring mid-route charges that can keep a bus sidelined for hours.

Bus agencies in sprawling cities, meanwhile, often need their buses to cover far more distance in a day than the average battery life can manage — which means agencies need to rotate buses with depleted batteries out of service for hours, and rotate in fully charged buses to replace them.

Gosh, if only a technology existed to charge the batteries en-route.  The bus lines of Hamburg might be short enough for quick top-ups at the end of the line.  How hard, though, would it be to equip a battery bus with a pantograph configured to draw power from a pair of overhead wires?  Trackless trolley coaches used to be a thing.

WHY I CALL FOR A STATE OF GOOD REPAIR.

That has been a recent theme, with two of today's posts continuing it.  I object to the term "backlash."  A Pajamas Media essay by Tyler O'Neil makes clear why I don't like that term.  "Trump’s decision to appoint J. Christian Adams to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission may indicate a rising backlash to the Marxist reinterpretation of civil rights and the pernicious ideology behind the riots."

"Backlash" is a term borrowed from mechanical engineering (it's something that happens in gear trains) that self-styled progressives like to use to dismiss objections to the changes they would like to have us believe are progress.  As the full sentence clearly shows, "Marxist reinterpretation of civil rights and the pernicious ideology" clearly refer to breaking things.  When people get tired of things being broken, they seek to restore a state of good repair.

Stop referring to attempts to restore a state of good repair as somehow a disruption to the workings of somebody else's ideas of progress.

THAT PROTEST IS MOSTLY PEACEFUL. THAT MILK IS MOSTLY FRESH.

The city fathers of Wauwatosa have had enough.

Mayor Dennis McBride is implementing stricter enforcement to keep peace in the community. In a statement today, the mayor asks that all protests take place between the hours of 12 p.m. to 8 p.m. Protests will also not be allowed on private property.

“We fully support the right to peaceful protest in Wauwatosa…but over time, there have been violations of law, both big and small. We want to make sure protests continue to be peaceful, and we can have a sense of order in our community,” said Mayor McBride on Wisconsin’s Afternoon News Thursday.

“We are also concerned about counter-protests which are starting to happen. That’s a volatile mixture, when you get people on opposite sides of a very heated issue.”

Yes, counter-protests aren't the old school, you-stand-on-your-corner-we-stand-on-ours; rather they are the old school you bring a club we bring a knife.  Some of what's in Wauwatosa's new policies seem obvious enough, e.g. no trespassing, no discharging of fireworks, no blocking roads, and yet the term "peaceful protest" has been so abused that the codification becomes necessary.

Not that the mob gives a darn.  "At 10 p.m., approximately 50 protesters locked arms and walked from the Milwaukee border to the Wauwatosa border, with squad cars nearby. Hours later, other protesters went to McBride's home, and placed caution tape around his front yard."

THE INSURGENTS IN HIGHER EDUCATION ARE GETTING BOLDER.

A professor at Central Florida called Charles Negy has gotten himself into a jam questioning the woke indoctrination.  Here's a Quillette commentary by Samantha Harris, who I believe is a staff attorney with The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, on what's going down.

Professor Charles Negy is a wonderfully eccentric man, someone who teaches extraordinarily controversial subjects—Cross-Cultural Psychology and Sexual Behavior—with bluntness and humor. He is exactly the kind of professor you want in college: someone who is passionate about his subject, who will challenge your deeply-held assumptions, and who encourages free and open discussion in the classroom. Negy’s bluntness has occasionally ruffled feathers over the years, but throughout his 22-year career at UCF he has received consistently superior performance reviews.

It's not unusual for professors to take issue with dictates from Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity or manifestations of affirmative action.  There are lots of arguments from authority that a dissident professor can invoke; heck, if you're really desperate there's stuff right here at Cold Spring Shops.

It is unusual, though, for the professor to retweet a comment by Steve Sailer linking to one of his articles in Taki Magazine.  The comment is in the article's closing lines.  "What America needs to do is treat blacks as human beings with free will who when they make good choices should enjoy the benefits and when they make bad choices should experience the consequences. Instead, The Establishment views blacks as our Sacred Cows, above criticism, but beneath agency."

That's likely to set some people off.  There are similar sentiments available from, for example, the Thomas Sowell of Black Rednecks, White Liberals, and those would be good enough for the cancel mob.  The professor is citing (deliberately?) an author better known for his affiliation with V-Dare, which is to say, a site where white nationalists (gasp!) hang out.

The Holy Inquisition pounces.

Instead, last Friday the university subjected Negy to an “investigative interview” that was one of the most Kafkaesque things I have seen in my 15 years advising students and faculty about campus disciplinary matters. For four straight hours, UCF’s investigator grilled Negy about accusations stemming directly from his classroom pedagogy, having made no effort to weed out the countless accusations that were obviously just critiques of his choice of teaching material. UCF also made no effort to consolidate allegations, repeatedly asking Negy variations of the same question, ad infinitum. And again, virtually all of these questions related directly to Negy’s pedagogy, which deals with unavoidably controversial subjects. When Negy, physically and emotionally exhausted after four hours of interrogation, asked if the interview was almost over, we learned that the investigator had not even gotten halfway through her list of accusations. Since he could take no more, another five-hour inquisition was scheduled for the following week.

This investigation was obviously undertaken in retaliation for Negy’s protected tweets, and it is serving its purpose: How many professors are going to be willing to speak out if the result is a nine-hour inquisition followed by an almost inevitable punishment? How many professors will be willing to teach necessary but controversial material if they know they might be called upon, 15 years later, to defend every statement they made in the course of teaching that material?

The university has made it abundantly clear that it does not care about Professor Negy’s free speech and due process rights. This investigation is a means to an end—to get rid of a professor whose protected expressions of opinion have made him politically inconvenient. Cases like this are canaries in the coal mine: if a public university—a government agency—can treat someone this way for deviating from the university’s orthodoxy, and face no accountability for doing so, then what (and who) is next?

Nowhere in the Quillette report, though, is any evidence that the inquisitors are focusing on the author (Mr Sailer) or the source (Taki) as part of their complaint.  We'll see how the Overton window shifts.

RESTORING A STATE OF GOOD REPAIR.

Bookworm pulls no punches.

Democrats failed miserably at governance. The two-week lockdown turned into a seven-month lockdown that’s been disastrous wherever tried. It hasn’t slowed the Wuhan virus (which is proving to be a really bad flu rather than the Black Death), but it has destroyed economies and ruined lives. Democrats were also shown to be revolting hypocrites, cheering on mass riots while arresting people for opening hair salons. And let’s not even talk about the older people who died unnecessarily.

That's the gentle part. Relax, Otter, he's on a roll.

Democrats were the slowly growing boil on America’s butt. With every passing day of Trump’s administration, that boil got hotter, redder, and angrier. With the Wuhan virus, it came to a head and ruptured — and we all know that, when a boil ruptures, you finally get to see the hideously ugly, smelly, destructive putrefaction that was rotting within in.

But here’s the good news: If a boil doesn’t rupture but, instead, turns inwards, the host body goes septic and dies. If it ruptures, and the patient debrides and disinfects the wound, that nasty, deadly infection goes away. If someone got very sick from the infection, recovery may take a while, but it will happen.

If you're going to restore a state of good repair, you have to have an idea what a state of good repair looks like. "Yes, America has suffered terribly, but the whole thing has also been a bright light showing the rot and the rats on one side and highlighting the virtue of classic American, constitutional values on the other side."

So mote it be.

THE ARGUMENT GENERALIZES.

I've remarked previously about the Northern Illinois women's basketball team making the grade and taking it to the Ivies on the court.  The on-the-court returns weren't what the players or their fans were hoping for, on the other hand it didn't affect their work in the classroom.

The Northern Illinois University women's basketball team has been named to the 2019-20 Women's Basketball Coaches Association Academic Top 25 Team Honor Roll as the WBCA announced on Tuesday.

The Huskies posted a 3.696 cumulative grade point average for the 2019-20 academic year which put them tied for 11^th on the NCAA Division I honor roll with South Dakota State. NIU is one of two Mid-American Conference programs among the top 25.

We're still waiting for word from headquarters about when there will be spectators returning to courtside.

For the duration of the quarantines, is there any reason to think that virtual education from the Ivies is any better from that provided in the mid-majors?

TRADING HAPPENS OUT OF EQUILIBRIUM. EQUILIBRIUM HAPPENS ANYWAY.

Marginal Revolution's Alex Tabarrok notes, "The Supply and Demand Model Predicts Behavior in Thousands of Experiments."  That's despite the foundational thinkers not being able to coherently model price convergence.

It is true that economic theory is less capable of explaining the process by which prices and quantities reach equilibrium levels. Adam Smith’s theory about how competitive equilibrium is reached (“as if by an invisible hand”) has been improved upon only modestly. The authors, however, are able to test several theories of market processes and find that zero-intelligence theories tend to do better, though not uniformly so, than theories requiring more strategic and forward thinking behavior by market participants. The double-oral auction is powerful because the market is intelligent even when the traders are not.

That doesn't vitiate efforts to improve on Lyapounov basins and Walrasian auctioneers, although perhaps those ought be for intellectual curiosity.

A LAMENT FOR A DEGRADED COMMON CULTURE.

Or perhaps it's no common culture at all.  It's back to school time, maybe, and Matt "Dean Dad" Reed has his annual suggestions for drafting the conditions of carriage, er, the bloated course outline that flies under the inflated term, "syllabus."

When the rules are written down and made known to the students, then they know what the expectations are.  Unwritten rules tend to be much more legible to students with the cultural capital to just “know.”  In practice, that group tends to skew by race and income in predictable ways.  Students who come from other backgrounds may import the assumptions that worked in more familiar settings, like high school or minimum-wage jobs.  Spelling out the assumptions in writing, and taking a moment to explain them if students are confused, gives the ones who might be the first generation of their family to attend college something closer to a fair shot.

That's a bundle of points. First, what the article primarily refers to is fairly standard stuff, such as penalties for late assignments, firmness of deadlines, advising the professor of absences.  That stuff might get lost among all the other stuff that Student Affairs have imposed upon faculty recently, including the special education provisions, the diversity statements, the pronoun protocols of the alphabet people.

It is not to those things that I direct today's observations.  Rather, I want to call attention to that "students who come from other backgrounds."  Gosh, if only the common schools would do more to inculcate the habits of the middle class, and the Student Affairs types would stop (condescendingly?) applying an implicit set of deficiencies that comes bundled with first-generation-non-traditional-diverse incoming students would understand that due on time means due on time, examinations take place as scheduled, and matriculants are capable of reading, writing, and figuring at the college level.

BE PART OF THE COALITION OF THE UNWILLING.

I've been so encouraging readers.  Here's Reason's Matt Welch, making the same argument.

Behavior that gets rewarded gets repeated. If you reward your party for nominating people you don't like, chances are very likely that will happen again, sooner rather than later. There is a contradiction in complaining that two-party choices seem to get worse every four years while still voting reliably for one of those choices.

Yes. The so-called binary choice is only a binary choice if voters vote with the expectation that other voters are treating the choice as a binary choice. In the states and districts that skew strongly one way or the other, if you're going to be disappointed with the outcome anyway, at least vote for the choice you want, rather than vote the Nash strategy

.Just because you despise a major-party presidential nominee—trust me, I know the feeling—that doesn't mean your choice is limited to supporting his or her major-party opponent. Using your vote strategically in states where the outcome is certain gives you at least the remote possibility of positively influencing your own team's future behavior.

And who knows—if you stop despising your own nominees, maybe one day I will too.

You'll get better nominees when the party establishments have incentives to provide better nominees.

REACHING THE BREAKING POINT IN NEW JERSEY?

Laura "11-D" McKenna has had enough of the house arrests.

I tell you this for three reasons. One is to point out that with proper precautions, we can still work and live through this pandemic, even before a vaccine happens. Two is to point out that a whole lot of people, not just those deemed to be “essential” workers, are back to work. And three is to tell you what they’ve been telling me.

That's something the militant normals have known for some time, like a month into the house arrests. Her concluding remark is instructive. "There is definitely a liberal case for reopening safely and ending the shutdown. I think we need to consider all options."  You mean "mask up, shut up, and stay home on the dole until we oust those mean Republicans" is causing real hardship on Democrat voters?  Good.

FACT-CHECKING WILLIE BROWN'S FORMER MISTRESS.

As Kurt Schlichter quipped (on Twitter, sometime earlier this month), "Kamala Harris's positions include missionary ..."  Well, politicians lie and cast iron sinks.  "Kamala Harris Lies Repeatedly in First Speech as Biden’s Running Mate."

To wit:

“The president’s mismanagement of the pandemic has plunged us into the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression,” Harris said.

False. The pandemic and its associated lockdowns, not the president, are responsible for the economic contraction.

More at the link. But the gaslighting keeps coming.

“Just look where [Trump and Mike Pence] have gotten us. . . . Millions of kids who cannot go back to school,” Harris said.

It is not Donald Trump’s decision whether kids go back to school, because the federal government does not run schools, but he has urged the schools to reopen.

The worse, the better, for the Democrats.

But I can watch their foolishness and keep track of the unfolding urban disasters in Chicago and Milwaukee, and as long as the house arrests continue, I have plenty of time to record and report.