MICHAEL DUKAKIS WAS A LOUSY CANDIDATE.

The usual sort of suspects are objecting to "Democrats are soft on crime" campaign messages.  A U.S. News contributor called Susan Milligan still thinks it was Willie Horton that sank Mr Dukakis.  "GOP candidates are seeking to tap into fears of rising crime. But analysts say there is something more nefarious at play – a cryptic way of appealing to voters based on race."

For "analysts" read "academicians at trendy left institutions in safe areas."

"When they talk about crime, it's usually people of color" that candidates and ad-makers are referencing, says Christopher Stout, an Oregon State University professor and author of two books on racial politics.

"It's really a subtle way" to turn voters away from Democrats, Stout says. "Republicans look at it as a way to win back some persuadable voters."

It's kind of hard not to see the effect of crime on people of color, what with thirteen percent of the population involved in nearly two-thirds of the murders, with infants' bassinettes in bathtubs as a little protection against stray bullets, with toddlers still too often collateral damage when gang-bangers can't shoot straight, and their black parents, grandparents, other relatives, and friends mourning, when the Democrat-run cities are where you find the mostly peaceful weekends.  But go ahead, write your political science or semiotics paper.

But it's not really about crime – or it's not only about crime, says Sharon Austin Wright, a University of Florida political science professor and author of two books on race and politics. It's also about race and tapping suburbanites' fears about Black criminals coming into their communities, even if that fear is unfounded.

"I think it's really just coded language, and it's not uncommon," Wright says. While in the mid-20th century, candidates would openly use racial epithets, that changed later in the century, when GOP candidates would talk about busing and "states rights" to tap racial animus, she says. Now, crime and "socialist" are the themes, she says.

And while the anti-crime ads appear directed at suburban white voters, it's actually Black Americans and city-dwellers who are more concerned about crime in their own communities, experts say, noting polling showing that is the case.

That's not to say Republican or Libertarian candidates seeking public office are doing a good job pledging to protect all the neighborhoods, and all the residents thereof, irrespective of race, creed, color, national origin, or pronouns.  Long-time Democrat and public intellectual Ruy "Liberal Patriot" Teixera gets it.

The public response leans heavily in the direction of more policing, not less, countering the defund the police approach that was promulgated by many on the Democratic left and still holds considerable sway in those quarters. The same USA Today poll found 77 percent support for deploying more police to street patrols and 70 percent support for increasing police department budgets. In contrast, defund the police clocks in at just 22 percent support and is even opposed by black respondents 60-38.

His essay concludes, "Democrats would be well-advised to focus instead on an inclusive nationalism that emphasizes what Americans have in common and their right not just to economic prosperity but to public safety, secure borders and a world-class but non-ideological education for their children. That’s much more likely to work than simply denying a lot of these issues are problems."

TECHNOLOGIES OF CONTROL TRANSCEND DECONSTRUCTION.

It's fine to play around with ideas, as long as you understand that playing with them ought be different from implementing them.  The academic community has long transgressed that boundary.  "There's a longer post coming on how too much 'sophisticated' opinion is regressing to the medieval, as in identifying and denouncing heretics rather than engaging the controversies. The incantations include 'the science' and 'our democracy.'"  It's been a year-plus since that post, and I've probably carried on about that concept numerous times.

THERE ARE LIMITS.

Marquette University administrators have worked, mightily, to demonstrate that, for a basketball school, they're pretty woke.  "It's likely there are some supernumeraries among the deanlets, deanlings, and scribes there who are praying most fervently for the plague [of people calling attention to woke excesses] to subside in order that basketball might resume."

Perhaps the deanlets have figured out that the best way to not have attention called to woke excesses is to not commit them in the first place.  "Students who demonstrated at Marquette University convocation must step down from leadership roles."  Marquette is not the only "institution of higher learning" at which the most aggravated students disrupted the fall welcoming convocation for insufficient fealty to diversity. inclusion, and equity.

Back in August, Marquette postponed its 2022 convocation ceremony after members of multiple student organizations held an on-stage protest.

The Black Student Council (BSC) said in an announcement that the protest was held in response to the elimination of the school's Office of Engagement and Inclusion. It said shutting it down "without stating why is unacceptable."

The BSC also said "it's absurd" that the university's Urban Scholars program has over 100 students — mostly students of color — but just one full-time staff member and no plans to hire another until 2023.

Read on, it's the usual professional protest constituencies with the usual gripes.  Yes, the university made the usual protestations of good faith in times of corona tyranny.

"The Great Resignation has resulted in open positions at the university, similar to organizations across the country. Marquette is currently in the process of refilling four positions in the Office of Engagement and Inclusion. Each of those positions support first generation and students of color on campus.

In addition to OEI, Marquette has a separate Office of Institutional Diversity and Inclusion, several programs and faculty and staff throughout the university who support students of color, because the responsibility to be inclusive is on all of us," said Lynn Griffith, University spokesperson."

The university also noted that with the responsibility to be inclusive there is a responsibility to be well-behaved.

It is a longstanding policy outlined in Marquette’s student organization guidelines that the officers of all student organizations, as well as the elected and appointed senators and officials of MUSG, must be in good standing (not on academic or disciplinary probation) at the time of their election or appointment, and throughout their terms of office.

Do the crime, do the time. Disciplinary probation is not some sort of double secret probation, is it?

THE HIGH SPEED RAIL ADVOCATES IMPOSE PURITY TESTS ON EACH OTHER.

California's attempt to electrify the San Joaquin Valley service has turned into a Hero Project.  We've been paying attention to the Difficulties with Heroism for a long time.

In part, neither the California nor the Wisconsin plans were well-thought out. Under the terms of the non-stimulus stimulus plan (thanks, Obama) only "shovel ready" projects could be built, meaning plans, or perhaps pipe dreams, for which the environmental clearances were already in place.  In California, only the open country portion of the coastal route, through a relatively sparsely settled part of the state, qualified (and could be built with the available money.)  That's not necessarily a bad idea, but nobody thought too carefully about connecting that part of the railroad with existing rail service into the Bay Area, particularly on the west side of the bay, or into Los Angeles.

It's easier to go to the Moon in a decade, because that's a straightforward math problem and once the rent-seekers are mollified, off you go.

THE ILLUMINATIONS.

Cold Spring Shops headquarters are on a street that is slowly, and perhaps induced by cheaper solar electricity, turning into Candy Cane Lane at Christmas.

Those same elaborate decorations, now powered by cheaper solar electricity, show up at Hallowe'en.

The house in the distance, which has a solar array, was a winner in last year's house decorating contest.  Yes, there is a house decorating contest.  "Prizes will be awarded for the Best Overall Theme, Best Special effects, Scariest, and People’s Choice. Staff members will judge all displays on Oct. 19, between 4:00-10:30 p.m."

Here's the other side of the street.

The Hunters Moon was a few days ago.

October is off to a chilly start, and the turnout of kids on Hallowe'en itself is what I'll be watching.

FRIDAY short TAKES.

Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice.

I can no longer remain in today’s Democratic Party that is now under the complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness, who divide us by racializing every issue & stoke anti-white racism, actively work to undermine our God-given freedoms, are… pic.twitter.com/oAuTnxZldf

— Tulsi Gabbard 🌺 (@TulsiGabbard) October 11, 2022

Note, the former representative implicitly rejected the false binary, unlike useful idiot James Wigderson, who writes "I'm voting for Mandela Barnes and Tony Evers," in the naïve faith that the policy battles can wait.  Crime is up in Milwaukee.  "Crime and the economy will be the top issues in November, as most major cities have seen a surge in crime, and residents don’t feel safe anymore, while middle-class families’ pockets have been hit the hardest under the Biden administration."  As we keep reminding you. What if the little people refuse to go along?  [The nomenklatura] just have to be defeated.

The weekly roundup of pithy elaborations of traditional Cold Spring Shops themes follows.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE FACULTY FAILS TO EXERCISE GOOD STEWARDSHIP?

If we're talking about the Oberlin faculty, they brought their most recent troubles on themselves.

Much about Oberlin College is unique, including long-standing policies guaranteeing the faculty a say in matters that extend well beyond academics. Many faculty members say it’s this level of input that keeps them at Oberlin. Most importantly, they say, it’s a big part of what keeps Oberlin … Oberlin. So these faculty members are perplexed—and angry—that the college is trying to change its bylaws to restrict faculty control to academics only.

“We just found out that the bylaws were going to be changed two weeks ago, and why we’re so upset is that faculty governance—which Oberlin College has really prided itself on, and contributes in such important ways to the success of the college—is being seriously eroded,” said Christina Neilson, associate professor of Renaissance and Baroque art history. “The limitations that we’re going to have on us as faculty to make important decisions, and to really shape the institution as it develops into the future, will profoundly influence the student experience.”

Read on, and note the presence of the absence.

Jeff Witmer, professor of math, said that what the board appears to want “will change the ethos of Oberlin—a place where historically the faculty have made progressive decisions and where the dean has been viewed as first among equals. We as faculty will no longer feel that we are vital partners working with the administration and the board.”

Well, yes, if your dean is first among equals behaving like juvenile delinquents with respect to a town bakery of long standing, maybe the trustees have to take the reins.

It's tempting to wish that they be occupied by the Russians, or sacked and pillaged by Ivar the Boneless.  But perhaps they ought to be let alone as the quintessence of clueless snowflakery.  Apparently, to the Obies, campus outreach means its the students' privilege to instruct their elders and harass the businesses that serve them.

I'd be more comfortable thinking the elders stood up and reasserted their authority, but for the business bafflegab that accompanies the proposed changes.

In internal and public communications, Oberlin has argued that the changes are necessary to streamline operations in an increasingly complicated legal and administrative environment, and to align with accreditation expectations about delegation of authority and reduce “operational risk.”

Updating the bylaws will affirm the board’s authority and establish a foundation for the delegation of authority, the college says. It will further clarify both the role of the president in running the college and the faculty’s role in academic affairs.

A related proposal would make it so that the president appoints new deans with faculty advice, as opposed to clear "concurrence" from a committee that includes elected faculty members (as is currently the case). A separate proposal provides flexibility on establishing a provost’s position (Oberlin doesn’t currently have a provost).

Perhaps that's for the better. Oberlin is such a juicy target for mockery.

EVENTUALLY THEY'LL FIGURE IT OUT.

Earlier this year, I let loose with a Tax Day rant.

Sometimes, the only possible response is See, I told you so.  "In the case of the roads, though, well, the purpose of transportation is to move resources toward places that are productive in some way, and that makes the roads assets, if only somebody would think about pricing the use of them."  That post concluded with a question, "Is it so difficult for the highway departments to think more like investors and look for rates of return on investment?"

Lo, the sun comes up over Lake Michigan, and reality dawns.

In order to ease congestion and create revenue for infrastructure improvements, the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning has some new proposals laid out in its ‘On to 2050‘ plan update released this week.

“We’ve talked to a lot of people experiencing extreme congestion. Managed lanes are a way to think about how do you get to a free-flow traffic lane? Part of that has to do with pricing the lane,” said Erin Aleman, the executive director of the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning.

CMAP is suggesting adding what are known as “managed lanes” to several expressways. It would be a tolled express lane, where drivers would have to pay more to use it.

There is still a lot of work to do.  The story opens with an Oak Park commuter who drives on the Congress Eisenhower Expressway and has to pay to park downtown near the Monadnock Building, a vintage office tower.  There's a rapid transit line in the median of the expressway, and an L subway stop near the Monadnock.  But we're not going to gripe about crime on the L.  The story also includes the usual political economy stuff about making government services that used to be "free" now paid, but on the other hand, the Oak Park resident gets consumer surplus.  “There are times when, yes, I wouldn’t mind paying a toll to get through traffic out of the Loop this time of day.”

DON'T LOOK FOR YESTERDAY'S BOX SCORES IN TODAY'S PAPER.

If your local printed newspaper is part of the Gannett chain, you're getting a lot of USA Today content, plus maybe a page or two of local material.  As I understand it, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel and Green Bay Press-Gazette are now printed in Peoria.  (And no Chicago and North Western express trains to move the bundles of papers any more.)

The Journal Company recently built a printing plant in West Milwaukee, Wisconsin (which once had low residential property taxes thanks to a lot of heavy industry).  Now that Gannett have moved the printing to Peoria, that West Milwaukee plant went up for sale.

The Tribune Company bought it.  Not a joke.

An affiliate of the owner of The Chicago Tribune has purchased The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's closed printing plant in West Milwaukee.

Twenty Lake Holdings LLC, a real estate affiliate of Tribune owner Alden Global Capital, bought the facility for $26 million, our partners at the Milwaukee Business Journal report.

Journal-Sentinel owner Gannett closed the plant at 4101 W. Burnham St. in May amid falling newspaper circulation. The closure meant 180 full-time and part-time workers lost their jobs.

Nor is the rest of the story. "The Tribune is currently printed at the leased Chicago Tribune Freedom Center in Chicago, but there are efforts to turn that building into a casino."

THERE'S A REASON EXPANSION TEAMS TEND TO UNDERACHIEVE.

Matt "Dean Dad" Reed makes an observation, "Rigor and scarcity are not the same thing," that could be a Friday short take, although the article elaborates on a variety of Cold Spring Shops themes.  He's commenting on a situation that recently arose at New York University, where a distinguished but elderly biochemist got fired, apparently because disaffected students didn't like his grading methods.  To the conservative-populist-traditionalist observer, that student complaint is yet another manifestation of the dumbing down of higher education.  ("Every American should be worried because this kind of standard-lowering is becoming commonplace in medical school.")

THE RETURN OF THE PRIMITIVE.

A few years ago, we noted New Zealand's efforts to avoid further Californication.

Then came the corona tyranny, which set new records for repression there.

I wonder if it's something in the air.

New Zealand's government on Tuesday proposed taxing the greenhouse gasses that farm animals make from burping and peeing as part of a plan to tackle climate change.

The government said the farm levy would be a world first, and farmers should be able to recoup the cost by charging more for climate-friendly products.

Don't you love government spin masquerading as objective journalism?  Sure, there are people willing to pay higher prices to signal their virtue (look no further than the "organic" counters at your grocery) but when you're already on the hook for transportation and your primary market is a nest of polluters?

Opposition lawmakers from the conservative ACT Party said the plan would actually increase worldwide emissions by moving farming to other countries that were less efficient at making food.

New Zealand's farming industry is vital to its economy. Dairy products, including those used to make infant formula in China, are the nation's largest export earner.

There are just 5 million people in New Zealand but some 10 million beef and dairy cattle and 26 million sheep.

The outsized industry has made New Zealand unusual in that about half of its greenhouse gas emissions come from farms. Farm animals produce gasses that warm the planet, particularly methane from cattle burping and nitrous oxide from their urine.

Yes, and the atmosphere is great at mixing the gases circulating in it, including the agricultural byproducts from Chinese farms.  But the same political party that brought Kiwis the corona tyranny wants to bring them less stinky agriculture.

Under the government's proposed plan, farmers would start to pay for emissions in 2025, with the pricing yet to be finalized.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said all the money collected from the proposed farm levy would be put back into the industry to fund new technology, research and incentive payments for farmers.

"New Zealand's farmers are set to be the first in the world to reduce agricultural emissions, positioning our biggest export market for the competitive advantage that brings in a world increasingly discerning about the provenance of their food," Ardern said.

Agriculture Minister Damien O'Connor said it was an exciting opportunity for New Zealand and its farmers.

That is, if the current government doesn't get turfed out first.

Ardern's Labour Party has slipped in popularity and fallen behind the main opposition National Party since Ardern won a second term in 2020 in a landslide victory of historic proportions.

If Ardern's government can't find agreement on the proposal with farmers, who have considerable political sway in New Zealand, it's likely to make it more difficult for Ardern to win reelection next year when the nation returns to the polls.

On the other hand, perhaps the implementation of a burp tax in New Zealand might induce some of the noisier advocates for green agriculture in these United States to go there and run sustainable farms.

THE GUARDIANS OF APPROVED THOUGHT ARE ALWAYS WITH US.

I continue to clean out dated reading material and other stuff that has outlived its usefulness, and recently The Progressive's controversial "H-Bomb Secret" issues came to light.  A passage in John Buell's "On science and secrecy" from the May 1979 issue seems germane.

That economic elites feel especially threatened by political dissent has been clear at least since the publication of the Trilateral Commission's Crisis of Democracy report in 1975. These elites are concerned about declining rates of real growth which exacerbate social tensions, about lower corporate profits, and about the failure of the military budget to keep pace with increases in Gross National Product. They are eager to get corporate capitalism moving again. To this end, they would like to keep workers' wages down, cut spending for social programs, and open the military spigot more widely. Fearing the kind of grass-roots resistance to elite aims that characterized the 1960s, the Trilateral leaders argue for "a moderation of democracy" in the interests of "governability."

These days, the bête noire might be the Davos set or the World Economic Forum, and the dissenters might be right-populist as well as elements of the traditional left: and the "moderation of democracy" now becomes "countering disinformation in the name of democracy."

The reaction of the ruling class, though, is the same.

The effect of the secrecy mystique -- the notion that there are vital decisions which only a select few can and must make -- is to keep out of the public domain information that is indispensable to the formation of public policy.

If the physics of a fission-fusion-fission weapon is something you can get along without knowing about, dear reader, might you think differently about the past two years and counting of corona tyranny, including the suppression of dissenting scientific points of view?

To the credit of The Progressive, contributors continue to endorse the exchange of ideas.

We all expressed concern to live in a time when lies are common currency and truth has been devalued. We said this underscores the importance of fact-based journalism and honest investigation into official pronouncements.

I ventured that, with regard to President Donald Trump’s refusal to accept the results of the Nov. 3 election, the U.S. press has been doing a fairly good job. The president’s allegations of widespread electoral fraud are being appropriately tagged as “baseless,” “without evidence” and “unfounded and erroneous.”

You give neither a Carter administration nor a Trump administration the power to enforce prior restraints.

The visitors I’ve met — from Latin America, Asia, Europe and Africa — often express amazement at how much freedom the U.S. press enjoys. Some marvel at the ability of journalists here to criticize and even ridicule those in power. Most dryly observe that they could not undercut government officials without putting themselves at risk.

But sadly, I told the visitors, the ability of U.S. journalists to tell the truth has been substantially diminished by the widespread erosion of regard for truth itself. Large numbers of Americans believe, based on zero evidence, that Democrats, the media and the “deep state” stole the election from Trump, at the same time as they believe that COVID-19, which has killed a quarter of a million Americans, is a hoax.

My message to the visitors was that we face a common enemy: the preponderance of lies. We also share a common goal: to make truth matter.

That assertion is in part a rebuke of the social-media-legacy-journalism-administrative-state nexus that would suppress "disinformation" in the name of "Our Democracy."  Good.  That article concludes "Our obligation as journalists and opinion leaders is to insist that truth is knowable, and deserves more fidelity than falsehoods."  Also good, as that is a rebuke to the kind of truth-is-socially-constructed-and-voices-must-be-equitably-heard idiocy that has destroyed the academy.

Long ago, in the early days of the independent blogosphere, the organizing principle was that a distributed network of people, each with different areas of expertise, could more effectively fact-check the elites than the elites, whether organized into countervailing collectivities or not, could do. That "independent fact checker" has become a joke expression for "paid narrative enforcer" does not vitiate the power of emergence. Two passages toward the end of that essay reinforce the point. First, "To the elites, 'disinformation' is simply information that the establishment in media and government find inconvenient (or embarrassing)." Second, "Thanks to the open internet, we’ve been able to expose the regime media and hold it accountable for its own words and actions. Our student-driven, viral reporting is exactly what the elites want to put a stop to, and that’s why we all need to keep fighting." Or keeping our independent web journals going, or occasionally tagging regime tweets as misinformation or otherwise demonstrating the folly of the gate-keepers' methods.

As an end-note, that May issue also includes a letter from Gerald Piel, who then published Scientific American, that concluded,

If a hydrogen bomb turns up in the hands of Idi Amin or some terrorist gang, it will not be made from a recipe published in a magazine. Very likely, it will be one of our own bombs, deployed within their reach by a blundering decision made in secret.

That's right, a sideshow in the argument over prior restraint was whether a nest of pacifists in Madison was going to release information that would enable a third world Big Man to build a thermonuclear device.  A dozen years later, just before the Soviet Union ceased to be, Tom Clancy published The Sum of All Fears. and the terrorist nuke was built from ... an Israeli broken arrow that used Savannah River plutonium the Mossad somehow purloined.  In the novel there is a hypothetical passage from an astrophysical journal, "Imagine the center of a star with an X-ray flux of [some very big number.]"  You still have to somehow procure the materials and machine them.

Our best protection against Guardians of Approved Thought, no matter what their proclivities might be, is to Think for Ourselves.

JOE BIDEN'S RAILROAD LABOR DEAL IS IN TROUBLE.

At the time the White House and the nomenklatura announced a tentative new rail labor contract, I noted, "Because of the way the Railway Labor Act works, there will be no general strike of railroaders until after the November elections, although there is no guarantee that the strike has been averted by the agreement currently being voted on."

The Brotherhood of Maintenance Way Employees was dubious at the announcement, and they've turned down the deal.

Members of the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees union have rejected the tentative national agreement that was reached last month with the U.S. Class I railroads.

Some 56% of the rank and file voted against the contract, the union announced on Monday. Union leaders and the National Carriers Conference Committee that represents the railroads will go back to the bargaining table with the clock ticking toward a Nov. 19 deadline.

The maintenance workers might not be subject to the perpetual Aroostook Potato Rush that is the lot of train crews under Precision Scheduled Railroading, although they are away from home a lot, and maintenance windows open at weird hours.

“The majority of the BMWED membership rejected the tentative national agreement and we recognize and understand that result,” President Tony D. Cardwell said in a statement. “I trust that railroad management understands that sentiment as well. Railroaders are discouraged and upset with working conditions and compensation and hold their employer in low regard. Railroaders do not feel valued. They resent the fact that management holds no regard for their quality of life, illustrated by their stubborn reluctance to provide a higher quantity of paid time off, especially for sickness. The result of this vote indicates that there is a lot of work to do to establish goodwill and improve the morale that has been broken by the railroads’ executives and Wall Street hedge fund managers.”

Common Dreams coverage skates around the tension between the communist and corporatist factions of the Democrats.  "Major Rail Union Rejects White House-Brokered Contract Proposal."  Town Hall's Spencer Brown is less restrained.  "Remember That Railroad Strike Biden Supposedly Averted? Well..."

Hot Air's John Sexton wants to stir the pot.

A strike would be a potential disaster for the economy and a political disaster for the Biden administration which was involved in the deal reached last month. Luckily for the White House, whatever happens won’t happen until after the election. Part of me wonders if this wasn’t the deal all along, i.e. you can still vote to reject this but do hold out so whatever happens will happen after the election when it won’t be another millstone around the necks of pro-union Democrats.

The Leon Trotsky faction of rail labor wants to heighten the contradictions immediately.  "Fight against union sabotage! Prepare a strike before the midterm elections!"

Whether that's an unforced error that the libertarian faction of the Republican slate, if there is one, will exploit remains to be seen.  I see no reason, though, to amend a statement I made last month.  "For all the positive babbling Mr Biden engages in about unions, apparently the risk of a railroad strike on top of the inflation, empty shelves, out of control borders, and crime was a proletarian internationalist step too far."

BIDEN'S BEAR MARKET PROMOTES EQUITY.

Common Dreams regular Sam Pizzigati never fails to amuse and entertain.  "The distribution of income and wealth will remain ridiculously top-heavy until we start limiting the 'rewards' gushing into corporate executive suites."  Income is a flow and wealth is a stock, and "ridiculously top-heavy" is a seriously subjective term.  Never mind.  He's on a roll.

Corporate chiefs at the 350 top American firms that trade on the stock market last year realized an average $27.8 million in compensation, an 11.1-percent increase over their previous year's pay and a record 399 times more than the take-home of typical American workers.

Some context can help here. Back in 1965, top U.S. CEOs averaged just 20 times more than the annual compensation of typical American workers. In 1989, a quarter-century later, that gap was still only running 59-to-1. The gap since then has multiplied nearly seven-fold.

Part of that might be pay-for-performance, which now relies on stock appreciation rather than on salaries or bonuses.  That means a great deal of net worth has evaporated just this year.  There's no offsetting benefit to people who had no net worth to begin with, but simple arithmetic says there's less wealth being held, and there's less of it held by the wealthiest people.  "And thus, understanding the dynamics of capital accumulation, or wealth concentration, might be much more work than simply noting the presence of either."

It might be that other forces are at work affecting wealth holdings.  Mr Pizzigati attempts an inter-country comparison.

The United States last year averaged just over $579,000 in wealth per adult, almost double France's $322,000 average. But the most typical—the median—French adult held a net worth of just under $140,000, almost $50,000 more than the wealth of the most typical U.S. adult.

Average Danes, Canadians, and Dutch adults—to give just a few more examples—last year all held less wealth than average Americans. But the wealth of the most typical adults in Denmark, Canada, and the Netherlands all towered over the wealth of the most typical U.S. adults by at least 53 percent.

In his view, that's not a good thing for the United States. "In the United States, our grand enterprises have essentially become the world's fiercest engines of inequality. We need to change that."  Maybe.  What are those French, Danish, Canadian, or Dutch grand enterprises producing?

THAT 'S A H--L OF A WAY TO RUN A RAILROAD.

Years ago, when the Boston and Maine Railroad was a respected Yankee institution, their public relations people could offer an explanation of the disruptions to Boston suburban service during a nor'easter.

They'd have to cogitate some to offer anything other than profoundest apologies and resignation letters on behalf of Amtrak's Michigan service.  "Amtrak Wolverine to Chicago delayed more than 13 hours."

I'm not sure whether Amtrak has restored the three frequencies, with the morning departure out of Chicago turning on a wheel at Pontiac and returning to Chicago as the evening train.  By the time the carrier got the broken-down morning train sorted, the combined train was almost on the schedule of that evening departure.

Some details have emerged from an ill-fated Friday, Oct. 7, trip of Amtrak Wolverine No. 351, the morning departure from Pontiac, Mich., which arrived in Chicago more than 13 hours late.

The trip, scheduled for a trip of 5 hours, 49 minutes with a 10:32 a.m. arrival finally reached Chicago Union station at 12:02 a.m. Saturday, after stranding travelers on board for several lengthy periods without heat, ventilation, lighting, food, or operating toilets.

The train’s Siemens Charger SC44 locomotive became disabled 19 miles west of Ann Arbor, Mich. The operating crew was unable to restart it or put it on standby to provide head-end power. Amtrak spokesman Marc Magliari tells Trains News Wire, “Mechanical issues are under investigation.”

A decision was made to have the following westbound Wolverine, No. 353, couple to No. 351 and bring both trains to Chicago, but crews encountered difficulties in combining the two trains. Although 353 left Ann Arbor at 10:32 a.m., three hours behind 351, the combined trains didn’t arrive at Jackson, Mich., 38 miles away, until 3:30 p.m.

It got worse from there.

Employees were never able to get No. 353’s locomotive to operate the electrical system on No. 351’s passenger cars. The train stopped at Battle Creek, Mich., for a half-hour bathroom break, but travelers were then told to go back aboard to their original seats. There apparently wasn’t enough space to accommodate everyone on 353’s equipment.

Ann Arbor-based MLive was among media outlets reporting messages from stranded travelers.

Amtrak spokesman Jason Abrams told MLive that a medical emergency, sticking brakes, and battery problems contributed to cascading delays along the way, followed by a lengthy stop on Norfolk Southern’s busy, multi-track main line, waiting for an Amtrak relief crew to take the combined trains into Chicago.

It was at this point several passengers took it upon themselves to open the vestibule doors and leave the train to hail rideshare services into Chicago.

That Mlive report makes for interesting reading.

“There was just delay after delay,” said Michael Bambery, 48, who boarded the train in Ann Arbor around 7:15 a.m., jumped off the stopped train near Gary, Indiana, paid $200 for an Uber and got to his hotel 16 hours later.

The train first stopped about 19 miles west of Ann Arbor due to a power issue with the engine, according to Amtrak Senior Public Relations Manager Jason Abrams. It was then coupled with Wolverine 353, another train that left Pontiac around 8:50 a.m., to be pulled to Chicago.

Katie Kobiljak, 23, boarded in Dearborn and woke up two hours later when the train was at a “complete dead stop.” For seven hours, Kobiljak said there was a lot of “starting and stopping” as engineers tried to connect the two trains.

“Right off the bat when our engine went out, that also killed our electricity. So, we didn’t have charge and the bathrooms didn’t flush. You could use the bathroom, but it was like using a porta potty and that’s not great,” she said.

Just east of the Jackson stop, the train hit the brakes again for a medical emergency. Passengers said it smelled like burnt rubber while the train sat for another two hours without power.

“That was everybody’s breaking point,” Kobiljak said.

Abrams said the passenger who called for medical help stayed on board and the train continued west.

Once getting to Jackson, Kobiljak deboarded.

“I didn’t get off the train until 3:30 p.m. and I got off in Jackson. So, I was on the train for nine hours and only made it like halfway through the state,” she said.

Kobiljak’s family picked her up and drove her to Kalamazoo for the night. They planned to drive the rest of the way Saturday so Kobiljak could run the Chicago Marathon on Sunday.

Once the train got moving, it lost its path into Chicago, putting it at the mercy of Norfolk Southern and their nightly game of too many trains and not enough track on the old Penn Central, as well as subject to the Hours of Service Law, and it becomes a guessing game with a late and malfunctioning passenger train where best to send the dogcatch crew.

The Bamberys finally got to their hotel at 11 p.m., ate food and went to bed.

Saturday, Bambery’s wife and daughter planned to go the Harry Styles concert while Bambery was going to take his son to the Northwestern-Wisconsin football game. He said they’re feeling “not good” about taking Amtrak back to Michigan on Sunday.

Both trains eventually arrived at Chicago Union Station just after midnight Saturday. According to Abrams, this was nearly a seven-hour delay for Wolverine 351 and less than a four-hour delay for Wolverine 353. He said power was only out on the train for six to eight hours.

That's nowhere near good enough, and it's worse than the most serious delays I encountered on that line. Once was in 1987, when there still was a Toronto - Chicago service, and that was stuck at 21st Street in Chicago, when the Chicago River lift bridge stuck in the raised position account high heat.  The power stayed on for the duration of that delay, which was not six hours, but it was long enough to break connections with the last suburban trains of the night.  More recently, brush fires along the line near Jackson disrupted the train service, which was already disrupted for other reasons, leading to a three hour delay, but the power stayed on, and again the arrival was late enough to break connections with the last suburban trains.

On other occasions, the service has run well enough, although I have heard enough horror stories about delayed trains that even rail-friendly non-ferroequinologists in Michigan will avoid using Amtrak.  If a six-to-eight-hour power failure is something to take pride in, there's something wrong.

THE ELECTRIC PARK IN SYCAMORE.

The most recent entrant in the Hicks Car Works historic interurban photos series is the DeKalb Sycamore & Interurban Traction Company.  I was not aware there was an earlier electric railway promotion in the area, but there was.  "The company obtained the unused right-of-way of the Geneva Lake Shore & Northern Railroad, which had been incorporated in 1898."

In addition to the interurban running to the west end of the normal school administration building (now Altgeld Hall) it delivered materials, presumably interchanged off the Chicago Great Western at Sycamore, for the construction of what is now Williston Hall.

POWER RULES EXIST.

They must.  Nature just told us so.  "Most US professors are trained at same few elite universities."

In today's world, though, what would be the predictable workings of a power rule have to be evidence of biases.

The finding suggests that prestige is overvalued in hiring decisions and that academic researchers have little opportunity to obtain jobs at institutions considered more elite than the ones at which they were trained.

Specifically, the study, published in Nature on 21 September, shows that just 20% of PhD-granting institutions in the United States supplied 80% of tenure-track faculty members to institutions across the country between 2011 and 2020 (see ‘Hiring bias’). No historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) or Hispanic-serving institutions (HSIs) were among that 20%, says Hunter Wapman, a computer scientist at the University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder) and a co-author of the paper. One in eight US-trained tenure-track faculty members got their PhDs from just five elite universities: the University of California, Berkeley; Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts; the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor; Stanford University in California; and the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

The academic pecking order has long been a thing. The only thing worse than being recognized as among the fifty claimants to membership in the top twenty of a U.S. News category is not being so recognized.  In addition, the claimant universities have doctoral programs, and one measure of their productivity is that their doctoral students get jobs.  Hiring faculty from programs high on the pecking order might be Pareto improving.  "The Ph.D. is a research degree, and the academic job market has always been one in which aspirants do their work at the best possible place, and take the best possible job available. And yet there are more graduates from Harvard or M.I.T. than the top five departments will take, and so on down the pecking order."

The Nature article suggests that hiring patterns might not be raising those academic profiles.

Together, the studies portray an academic system in which most faculty members are trained at a few universities, and academic researchers generally come from families with similar backgrounds, setting up a cycle of sameness. “Is the system a meritocracy?” asks Daniel Larremore, a computational scientist at CU Boulder who is a co-author of both papers. “In peer review, no; in the spread of ideas, no; and in faculty hiring, surely no.”

Yes, the dynamics of old-boy networks have a lot in common with the dynamics of cliques, and somewhere Charlie "Prof Scam" Sykes is chuckling.

The enterprise might be self-referential, and cliquish, and dysfunctional.

Depending on the field, only 5–23% of faculty members worked at an institution more prestigious than the one at which they earned their PhD, according to the analysis. Fields with the least ‘upward mobility’ included classics and economics, whereas those with the most included animal science and pharmacology.

Hiring committees seem to be using prestige as a proxy for excellence on the job, says Kimberly Griffin, dean of the College of Education at the University of Maryland in College Park. But ‘prestige’ does not necessarily indicate ‘better-qualified’, and prestigious graduate programmes often admit students on the basis of standardized test scores, letters of recommendation and the renown of their undergraduate degree.

What institutional changes, though, will shake up the existing pecking order?  For instance, could the universities of the Mid-American Conference credibly commit to boycotting Harvard or Stanford in recruiting faculty, in the way a few judges are boycotting Yale Law in recruiting clerks?  To what end?  Might there be more research creativity?  By what criteria, and would anyone pay any attention to it?  Or would it be a sad ploy for attention the way weeknight football is?

THE GIMME MORE FREE STUFF CROWD GOES ON THE RAG.

It is a truth universally accepted that there is nothing the lunatic left can't argue ought be paid for by somebody else.  The latest:  Common Dreams contributor and poverty hustler Cara Brumfield, taking a shot in the dark.

Access to menstrual products and other basic necessities is too important to the wellbeing of our society to leave up to corporations. We should use this opportunity to start treating menstrual products like what they are: a public good.

I have trouble thinking of a product I'd rather have its use being exclusive and rivalrous than a tampon.  But we don't expect diversity hustlers and poverty pimps to be conversant with the discourse practices of political economy.  Heck, Robert Reich committed that error.  "That litany of public goods conflates 'government provision' with 'collective consumption' (read 'nonexclusive and nonrivalrous'; perhaps Mr Reich should familiarize himself with the terms of art of political economy before he writes another column.)"  So, too, with Ms Brumfield.  Bring on the socialist propaganda!

Price increases for essential goods are tolerated by consumers not because they can afford them, but because they cannot go without basics like tampons, diapers, toilet paper, and toothpaste (all products sold by Procter & Gamble brands, by the way). While everyday people struggle to make ends meet, corporations like Procter & Gamble pull in massive profits, much of which is funneled to shareholders through stock buybacks.

I suppose you could create a schedule of goods whose production ought to be subsidized in order that everybody could have access.  That's worked so well with roads.  Moreover, don't put it past Procter & Gamble to rent-seek off such a subsidy, the way Moderna and Pfizer have with those corona shots.  "Period poverty—the lack of access to sanitary products due to financial constraints—is a public health crisis deserving of a coordinated response that profit-driven private corporations are neither motivated nor prepared to provide."  Oh, I don't know, isn't a government contract to buy the stuff motivation enough?  That is, until you run out of other people's money.

ON THE LIGHTER SIDE.

One useful metric for the unseriousness of a broadcast or online forum might be the frequency with which it refers to a television show called The View.  Make what you will, dear reader, of whether a very public feud between a former cast member, Rosie O'Donnell, and Donald Trump might have contributed both to Candidate Trump's populist credibility and to his election.

That noted, there's a clip from the defiantly unserious Gutfeld! show that takes a proper view of The View.  Enjoy.

A beautiful thing. Gutfeld rules !!!pic.twitter.com/y0lnfvAYW2

— psychforensic 🇺🇸 (@psychforensic) September 30, 2022

Hilarious!

FRIDAY short TAKES.

Libs never learn.  Unfortunately, neither does Donald Trump.  "[M]ost of that [wasteful federal] spending wouldn’t have passed if Trump’s late-2020 'stolen election' lunacy hadn’t given Democrats control of the US Senate by depressing GOP turnout in the Georgia runoffs."

His successor is worse.   How long do you intend to mock us, Catiline?  We'll mock him right back.  "The president's claims are bunk bordering on carelessness. His policies, I am afraid, deserve even harsher words."  Such as: Energy and immigration tell the tale.  Such as: Democrats have a crime problem.

The weekly round-up of pithy elaborations on traditional Cold Spring Shops themes follows.

THE REAL SYSTEM FAILURE MIGHT BE THE OVERWEENING FEDERAL GOVERNMENT.

Georgians have a choice between two objectively lousy major party candidates for a Senate seat.  That might lead to some introspection about the nature of candidate selection, and perhaps, about the role of the national government.

I've been on record for some time.  "I'd still prefer for elections not to be advance auctions of such large policy bundles, but one thing at a time."  The full Christmas list?

Plutocracy plus process-worship plus faith in Wise Experts plus the Cult of the Presidency produces rent-seeking.  But you have to be alert to those things in order to aid in the emergence of a more modest government in the wake of the failures of social insurance and nation building and Hope and Change and all the rest.

That's the aspiration.  What, though, about Georgia?

I do not know if Herschel Walker paid a woman with his own money to have an abortion. If so, that makes him a bad person unfit for the Senate.

I do know that Raphael Warnock wants to pay women with our money to have abortions, which makes him a bad person unfit for the Senate.

— Dan McLaughlin (@baseballcrank) October 4, 2022

That ship has sailed, notes Nick Catoggio:

It’d be passing strange for pro-life Republicans to punish a candidate who favors abortion on demand in his private life by throwing their support to a candidate who favors abortion on demand as national policy. Although it’d be less strange for them to withhold their vote from both.

The appropriate time to filter out damaged candidates is during primaries, we might say, when the alternatives on the ballot are palatable. Give conservatives a choice between a pretend pro-lifer and a real pro-lifer and that’s when you’ll see their commitment to the cause shine.

That's also something I've groused about. "You'll get better nominees when the party establishments have incentives to provide better nominees."  Unfortunately, the party establishments are subject to what takes place in the primary elections, and Outside the Beltway's Steven Taylor, who has noted the trouble with primary elections, also recognizes that it is support for something resembling a governing manifesto, rather than support for an individual, and in the case of both major party candidates in Georgia, a flawed individual, that influences voters.

First, the importance of partisanship is clear and is baked into electoral behavior. Candidate quality matters, but not as much as people think it does because, ultimately, people are voting for reasons that actually aren’t just about the candidate.

Second, nomination processes matter and ours does a lousy job of vetting candidates. Again, people can blame “The Republican Party” for Walker, but there was no centralized process that decided he was the best candidate for Georgia.**** No, he essentially self-selected and then rode his celebrity to a win in a low-information, low-turnout process.***** Since most people only have vague ideas about the candidates in primaries, it is hardly a shock that one of the most famous athletes from the state in the last 50 years won.

We simply do not have a nomination process that is designed to produce qualified candidates if “qualified” means meeting some set predetermined criteria. Instead, voters get what they get and are then faced with the partisan choice noted above. Worse, when voters are faced with that choice (or, more accurately, when voters behave as we know they will behave), the result is often the pushing of a given party is a negative direction due to poor candidate selection.

Third, we see here the consequences of only two viable choices in terms of parties. Voters faced with a bad choice within their own party have no other viable place to go with their vote, which simply means they are likely to vote for the bad candidate, which over time can reshape a party in a negative direction. It also means that partisans will likely stick with their own team even as it degenerates because switching teams is an unlikely behavior en masse.

Those endnotes do not have hyperlinks. It's worth reading Professor Taylor's post in full, including the endnotes, anyway.  His second and third points merit further consideration.  There's an instructive essay in A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper that suggests even a high-information, high-turnout primary can go wrong.  A first-past-the post primary produces one winner.  A Georgia-style runoff produces a different winner.  An Alaska-style instant runoff produces yet another winner.  Perhaps the problem is in expecting too much of elections.  Those logical problems -- what the third point speaks to -- will be present under a different method of choosing representatives under which multiple parties have a chance.  But the bundles are too big.  All the same, "Is it too much to ask, though, for people to think beyond the two major parties?"  That might be a way around the "reshape a party in a negative direction," as disaffected voters support a minor party rather than punishing the major party that left them by supporting the other major party, which offers a worse policy bundle.

COME SAIL AWAY.

A few years ago, sailing enthusiasts built Denis Sullivan, a replica Great Lakes cargo schooner.

I got in a cruise toward the end of the 2016 season, that set sail despite questionable weather.

The Great Lakes sailing season, and a few other things, made the venture costly, and now Denis Sullivan has been sold.

Discovery World announced in September it has sold the tall ship to Boston's World Ocean School, a non-profit educational sailing organization founded in 2002. The ship will now pursue a new mission of connecting students to the natural environment. The non-profit provides students with at-sea opportunities. World Ocean School hopes to make return visits to Milwaukee. They also hope Milwaukee youths will participate at its Boston and US Virgin Islands locations.

That's right, Boston and the Virgin Islands.  You don't fool around with the Great Lakes.  Historically correct construction techniques should prove seaworthy.  Fair winds.

MAKE KALININGRAD KÖNIGSBERG AGAIN!

National Command Authority might have Serious Plans for just such an outcome.

I confess to have cracked wise about such a thing.

Now come some cheeky Czechs also cracking wise.  "A petition is now circulating to pry Kaliningrad from Russia’s hands, with one Russian news site reportedly taking the suggestion seriously."

For now it's all in fun, but is poking a hungry bear wise?  "'After a successful referendum, 97.9% of Kaliningrad residents decided to merge with the Czech Republic and rename Kaliningrad to Královec,' the account tweeted."

THINK OUTSIDE THE (EDGEWORTH) BOX.

Word reaches Cold Spring Shops of the passing of University of Chicago economist Lester Telser.

I stumbled upon a footnote in a technical journal that cited Lester Telser and his work in what is called economic core theory. In effect, core theory describes how cooperation can be just as important as competition. It can thereby tell us how well a market is actually functioning, compared to more traditional approaches of economics that merely assume how markets work.

Lester did a fantastic job of linking economic science back to its more modern origins in the late 19th century, complete with a robust analysis of specific industries including railroads, steel, airlines and more. As he stated in Competition, Collusion and Game Theory, “Why is it that economists paid so little attention to the foundation of their discipline? One can find much attention given to questions of monopoly, cartel and competition, but virtually all this literature takes for granted some of the intrinsic properties of markets and competition without properly understanding them.”

As you might expect, this position did not sit well with many of Lester’s modern colleagues. Core theory was often casually dismissed as obsolescent in the face of the increasingly narrow interests of academic economics.

In part, that might have been because there were explanations for collusive behavior among railroads, steel, and airlines that could be handled using more conventional tools.  In part, that's because contemplating a strategic situation with no noncooperative equilbrium (such as the Nash equilibrium) is hard.  "To be precise, swabbies, it's a market so vast that the Lyapunov attractor is the core is the competitive equilibrium."  What happens, though, if the market is not that vast, and there are discontinuities in the industry-wide marginal cost curve?

“Businessmen complaining of excessive or chaotic competition are sometimes in situations that an impartial observer would describe as an empty core. It is hard for many economists to accept the proposition that competition may be excessive because received theory regards competition as always good, and the more there is, the better.” By an “empty core,” he was referring to the “core of the market” and whether the participants in that market, both companies and customers, were generally satisfied, as well as whether the buying and selling resulted in a stable, fairly reliable process.

Note: "generally satisfied" is not the same thing as "in equilibrium."  That's worth thinking about, if not earth-shattering.  "[T]he lure of the nagging small problems, and the insights gleaned from working them through, contribute greatly to the development of economics."

Fair winds.  R. I. P.

WHAT IS THE ROLE OF THE UNIVERSITY?

Common Dreams regular Mike Lofgren suggests that reports of the bolshevization of the universities are exaggerated.

There is in fact an ideology behind most universities, but unnoticed because it suffuses so much of American life: the corporate model of creeping bureaucratization and a metastasizing and overpaid upper management. They follow a business model geared to generating costs that result in tuition rising faster than the cost of living, while what is supposed to be the core personnel—the instructors—are paid relatively paltry sums. Somehow no one finds it strange that the right mocks them as "elites," when the junior professorate subsists on service worker compensation.

An acquaintance who teaches at a public university wrote the following to me: "Anyone who has spent any time at a university understands that most institutions of higher education are functionally right wing—something that they are able to conceal, perhaps even sincerely, with a cloak of social liberalism. They will adopt the fashionable vernacular, and essentially say, 'We pay our part time faculty poverty wages and give no benefits, but we support BIPOC and LGBTQ+ Americans!'"

Meanwhile, he suggests, there are a few overtly traditional-conservative institutions that explicitly position themselves in opposition to the wokies:  Hillsdale, plus Bob Jones, Pat Robertson's Regent, Jerry Falwell's Liberty, none of which turn out senior faculty for institutions with the U.S. News problem or nominees to the High Bench.

Meanwhile, there's more deconstruction on hand for traditional methods of inquiry.

Ideal applicants will demonstrate an approach to science and technology grounded in histories of and innovative methods of analyzing anticolonial, decolonizing, liberationist political thought and praxis, push the boundaries of the fields they inhabit, ask provocative questions, and relate critically and creatively to norms of knowledge production. Potential areas of research and teaching focus, among various areas of expertise, include but are not limited to environmental racism; climate justice; genomic justice; war technologies; medicine; public health; governance of science and technology; science policy; criminology, surveillance, and policing; border control; educational technologies; new media studies; critical data studies; histories of antiracism and anticolonialism in science, including the impact of grassroots collective and communal movements against racist science.

Bone in the nose optional.  I doubt any explanation of the Big Bang anomaly or a cure from cancer will be turned up by someone au courant with the latest Trendy Theories.  But I digress.

Mr Lofgren finds more subversion at work.

The Federalist Society, the shadowy cabal that vets federal court nominees of Republican presidents, vetted hiring and admissions to George Mason University's law school, which was not coincidentally named after Antonin Scalia. GMU has also been the recipient of donations from the Koch brothers and other right-wing funders.

For decades, law schools have been special targets of the right-wing influence machine, as Jane Mayer points out in her book Dark Money. She quotes the Powell memo's author, who said, ". . . the judiciary may be the most important instrument for social, economic, and political change."

That "shadowy cabal" has been so successful that an ongoing attempt by "conservative" judges to no longer hire Yale Law graduates as clerks ... might boomerang.

The highest levels of the federal judiciary have for too long been dominated by graduates of the same handful of select law schools, and it’d be a mistake to say we’re better for it. The illusion of meritocracy they sell has, if anything, helped to sustain the conservative legal movement’s own illusion of balls-and-strikes impartiality and the “originalism” that purportedly guides it—the Supreme Court’s majority bloc has cultivated an aura of exclusivity and scholarly diligence even as it increasingly resembles nothing more than an appendage of the Republican Party.

Yale in particular has been a feeder program and networking pen for the men (mostly) who have done the most to weaponize the legal system for conservative ends. I’m referring to people like Samuel Alito, whose belligerent opinion in Dobbs ended the federal right to abortion by leaning on literally medieval texts, and his colleagues Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh. Josh Hawley, who led the congressional opposition to certifying the 2020 election results, would not be a senator from Missouri today had he not been a Yale Law School graduate and Supreme Court clerk years ago. I don’t know that Ho is doing this for the soundest reasons, but it’s about time someone recognized Connecticut’s preeminent pedigree-mill for what it is and tried to shut the whole thing down. We could at least try unplugging it and then plugging it back in.

No doubt, though, the "shadowy cabal" has a short list of eligibles from Scalia or wherever else the long countermarch through the institutions has reached the law schools.

PRIVILEGE IS CIVILIZATION.

A Victor Hanson observation might ordinarily be part of a Friday short take.  "Civilization alone permits humans to pursue sophisticated scientific research, the arts, and the finer aspects of culture."

The column, though, might be a reminder that good times produce weak people.

[T]he great achievement of Western civilization - consensual government, individual freedom, rationalism in partnership with religious belief, free market economics, and constant self-critique and audit - was to liberate people from daily worry over state violence, random crime, famine, and an often-unforgiving nature.

But so often the resulting leisure and affluence instead deluded arrogant Western societies into thinking that modern man no longer needed to worry about the fruits of civilization he took to be his elemental birthright.

Cue the ekpyrosis.

As a result, the once prosperous Greek city-state, Roman Empire, Renaissance republics, and European democracies of the 1930s imploded - as civilization went headlong in reverse.

We in the modern Western world are now facing just such a crisis.

Weak people produce hard times. "Westerners are systematically destroying the very elements of our civilization that permitted such fantasies [as the Great Reset or whatever] in the first place."

IN PLACE OF ATTACK ADS.

It's the election season, which means the sinister-sounding music and eerie voices on the air are not the Hallowe'en programming.

There are, however, people who are considering a different approach.  In Illinois, Republican Senate hopeful Kathy Salvi has been running a spot that starts a lot like a Geico home hazards commercial, only it's swarms of Officers, harassing people and eating out their substance.

I'm not sure how well the advert works, or whether people will tune it out because it starts like a Geico ad, or because it isn't a Geico ad.

But it might not be mannerly to run a standard-issue attack ad on injured war veteran Tammy Duckworth, although there might be wavering Democrat voters and country-club Republicans who are not on board with the Combine's corona tyranny in-state and the Jarrett regency in Washington.

In Washington, Tiffany Smiley, who is married to an injured war veteran, is taking on long-time ditz Patty Murray for the Senate, and one of her not-quite-attack ads struck some nerves in Seattle.

Several Seattle businesses are apparently sleepless over their cameo appearances therein.  That includes the Seattle Times, whose editors are upset that she's telling the truth about Seattle.

The state Republican Party has long pointed at Seattle as a cautionary example, trying to paint suburban, rural and statewide Democrats as one of a kind with Seattle progressives.

Smiley’s ads use Seattle backdrops to make arguments about COVID-era school closures and urban crime.

If the shoe fits, Democrats!

Turf them out.

IT SUCKS TO SKIP A GRADE.

Despite the creation of gifted and talented programs, that is, until the Harrison Bergerons of the world get after them, the school administrators still have trouble assigning the kid who shows up in kindergarten reading full-length books or newsmagazines, or has already forgotten more mathematics (or astronomy?) than the elementary ed major teaching the class ever learned ... and into the next-higher grade or two the kid goes.

That has knock-on consequences outside the classroom.

The Glenwood Cougars football program fields numerous teams with players up to 14 years old. Tremayne Gandy Jr. is 13 years old, but he's academically advanced and just enrolled in high school as a sophomore. That's great for his academic progress, but a problem for his football team.

The league has suspended the team for having a high school player on the roster.

The logic is straightforward under ordinary circumstances, although if youth football has the same mix of early adults and late toddlers you see in Little League, the rationale of not having the early adolescents run over by kids who have access to high school weight rooms is strained.

The circumstances, though, are not ordinary.

"Here's a young man that is 13 years old doing a 10th grade education and he is being penalized," team president Gary Richardson said. "Not just him, but the whole program is being penalized."

The league rules clearly state no player shall be registered if he or she is entering high school. The league issued a statement saying "...it is regrettable to enforce a disciplinary action that affects the wider organization, however, each of the 13 franchises in the league have agreed to honor these bylaws in exchange for fair play." The suspension affects all 200 players and cheerleaders in the program.

Would there be "fair play" if young Mr Gandy played for his high school team?

Coaches said Tremayne has been in the program since he was 6 years old. But the 13-year-old is 140 pounds, and his coaches say he's not physically or emotionally ready to play with other high school sophomores.

He read a letter of apology to his teammates, which has gotten thousands of views on YouTube, but other parents say he has nothing to apologize for.

"It bothers me as a parent," Tyrone Blatcher said. "We should be celebrating something like this, this kid."

The Cougars plan to play four more games left this season and they will have to forfeit all of them and will not be allowed to go to the playoffs, unless the board reverses its decision.

That strikes me as a situation where a little parental interaction with the governing board, and some quiet conversations between the business owners who support league activities and the governing board might go a long way.

THE FRUSTRATING GRIND THAT IS BASEBALL.

And so the Milwaukee Brewers go from the best first-fifty-game-start in franchise history and a lead at the All-Star break to the Cardinals wrapping up the division on Milwaukee's field, with the attendant on-field capering and clubhouse celebration afterward.

The Brewers actually led this thing for a large portion of the season. They were in first place 95 days compared to 87 for the Cardinals to this point. The Brewers' lead was as much as 4 1/2 games and they still held a four-game lead on July 30.

The Cardinals took over from there, though. Since July 30, the Cardinals have gone 37-17, the second-best record in baseball over that time. The Brewers lost 15 of 23 after July 30 to help give the Cardinals a push toward dominating the division, too.

Philadelphia returns to the playoffs for the first time since 2011, when the Cardinals earned the opportunity to face them under the wild-card playoff format of the time.  Some of the Cardinals who were in that playoff run are still active.

Although the playoff pairings were determined Monday evening, Saturday's game might have summarized the team's struggles all season.  What was I saying about not hitting with runners in scoring position?  Saturday night, the Crew registered another 0-for with runners in scoring position.  Two runs did score, on a hit batter with the bases loaded, and on a slow groundout toward first precluding any double plays or forces at home.  Also, at the beginning of the season, there were some people who pay closer attention to such things than I do who noted some gaudy consecutive scoreless inning strings recorded by setup man Devin Williams, perhaps enough so as to make him, rather than Josh Hader, the closer.  Thus, when the Padres offered a tender for Josh Hader ...

But even good closers can have bad outings.  "Devin Williams blew a ninth-inning lead and the Milwaukee Brewers squandered a great opportunity to pull even in the race for the final National League playoff spot, losing 4-3 to the Miami Marlins."

As I type this, the second-guessing has begun.

THE RED ARMY IS OBSOLETE.

No, not Vladimir Putin's.  Paul Chryst's.

Chyrst’s days in Madison were numbered before this loss. Chyrst achieved a lot of success early in his coaching career, winning three Big Ten West Division titles, a Cotton Bowl and an Orange Bowl. Though he finishes 67–26 over seven seasons, the Badgers overall record this season is 2–3, including 0–2 in the Big Ten.

Milwaukee radio sports pundit Bryan Dee repeated a message he has long been on.

It’s time for an entire philosophy change in Madison.

It’s not 1990 anymore.

Ground and pound by recruiting offensive linemen and running backs isn’t a winning strategy in the modern era of college football.

Nor is it a system that top recruits want to play in.

If I’m a 5-star recruit coming out of high school, my ultimate goal is to play in the NFL.

Wisconsin’s offensive system isn’t getting me there if I’m a quarterback or wide receiver.

You need top players at those positions to be competitive.

It’s that simple.

Yet the leadership in Madison is stuck in this antiquated mindset because “that’s Wisconsin football.”

Well, guess what? Wisconsin football stinks right now.

It’s deeper than Chryst.

The game has passed Wisconsin by.

Philosophical change is in order.

Now’s the time to do it.

Without successful quarterbacks and receivers, it might be difficult to showcase the running backs and offensive linemen, many of whom have gone on to play on Sunday.