GO GREYHOUND, GO DOWNSCALE.

Guardian travel correspondent Joanna Pocock looks for the good on the intercity bus.  "Gone are the small, clean, cheap motels and public spaces where anyone can find a place to nurse a cup of coffee. Yet the camaraderie of the Greyhound is hanging on."  It's still possible to find Greyhound bus stations in places, although travelling anonymously and paying cash isn't what it used to be.

My first stop was Detroit. I was unable to find a clean, cheap hotel in the centre of town. My only option was to download an app by Sonder, which offered affordable Airbnb-style apartments with kitchens (thus saving me money on food). I handed over my debit card details to this San Francisco-based hospitality company and received a code with instructions to a room in a faceless building. I would not meet another human during my stay.

This atomisation, and the reliance on tech for our most basic human needs, unnerved me. It became a leitmotif during my trip, and also spoke to something I saw repeatedly: the exclusion of those without smartphones or credit cards. The cashless society appears to be winning.

From Detroit, I headed to St Louis, via Columbus, Ohio, where the Greyhound would hit Route 66. My 20-minute stopover in Columbus was where a picture began to form of what Greyhound travel looks like today. The bus station consisted of a parking garage the size of a small airplane hangar. At both ends, electric doors opened and closed when a bus entered or exited. Between the two bus lanes sat a small concrete island where passengers were disgorged. There was a chemical toilet, no drinking fountain, very few seats and no windows. The air was choked with exhaust. A police van was parked at one end of the tunnel and armed policemen stood against a wall facing us.

Her itinerary reveals a gap left in Amtrak's national network with the end of the Detroit-St. Louis Wabash Cannon Ball, and Route 66 begins properly in Chicago, although she will be on the interstates paralleling that highway west of St. Louis.  Greyhound used to have proper bus stations, including station agents, including in the smaller communities.  When I hired out at Northern Illinois, the staffed station even accepted parcels for shipment.  There is still Greyhound service through DeKalb, at least I see busses so painted: but you have to be a digital citizen to find the schedules and book tickets.

These days, well, "down and out" appears to be the reality, for the company and for the clientele.

If you had commissioned an urban planner to design the most hostile, uncomfortable and unhealthy environment for passengers, this would be the result. I guess this is what you get when you travel in a seat costing $35 as opposed to a $200 plane ticket or in a car with a full tank of gas.

My next bus was scheduled to leave for St Louis – a mere 530-mile trip – at 3.00pm. I looked around at my fellow island-dwellers: an elderly man with four large zip-up bags printed with “Patient Belongings”; a couple travelling with a large fluffy blanket propped up against the Porta-Potti as a makeshift bed; a mother and her teenage son carrying large cardboard boxes. The sign on the empty Greyhound kiosk read: “As of 25 January 2023 – you will need photo ID to buy tickets.” Yet another barrier between those with little money, no fixed address, no car, no passport or credit card and their ability to travel.

Five pm and still no bus. Another passenger, a university student from India, had been checking his app, which showed that the bus had been and gone. How could we have missed it when we hadn’t left our island? Ruben, a young Amish man, approached. I gave him my phone so he could tell his family he would be late. A one-handed man asked us if we knew what was going on. We didn’t, so he told us his story: he had lost his wife and daughter recently and had just emerged from a 14-month coma – the result of being electrocuted at work, which also saw his hand melt. Like so many of the people I met on the road he had suffered extreme anguish, but had found God. “I am now never alone,” he told me.

Getting to St. Louis was not part of the fun, either.

The four of us were discussing tactics when a Greyhound employee showed up. Desperate passengers trying to get to bedsides, parole hearings, jobs and loved ones swamped her. She looked utterly out of her depth.

Our bus showed up, but we were further delayed while passengers on it waited for their luggage. Apparently, its faulty hold had opened and bags had scattered along the highway – or so the story went. You never quite know on a Greyhound. The rides can take on a mythical dimension. Our driver had never done the Columbus–St Louis route before and we wound our way through unlit back roads until a marine on board snapped and ordered her to use his GPS.

At Indianapolis, the driver – shaken and angry – quit. A replacement was found, and we got into St Louis as the sun was rising. An eight-hour trip had stretched into 24.

Let the record show that Columbus to St. Louis was on Amtrak's national network, until the National Limited made its last run as part of President Peanut's economy measures.  The experience did not get any better west of St. Louis, and, although it is still possible to go to Las Vegas in a $20,000 automobile and ride home in a $500,000 bus; the bus station is no longer on the Strip.  To get from Albuquerque, on Route 66, to Las Vegas?  You can't get there from here.

The only direct Greyhound bus you can book from Albuquerque to Vegas takes a minimum of 21 hours and does a bizarre route via San Bernardino. This is where you have to get creative. I worked out that if I went to Phoenix and changed there, I could do the trip in less than 18 hours.

I decided to walk to Albuquerque’s bus station early as I was tired of lugging my backpack around. A city bus honked and pulled up next to me. The driver motioned for me to get on rather than walk alone in the dark. What I didn’t know was that Greyhound stations now often close between buses to keep homeless people out – yet another communal space closed to those without the money to access private spaces. Dozens sat on the steps of the station shivering; some were lying in the foetal position; others hopped from foot to foot like their feet were on fire. I gave what food I had to anyone who wanted it, but I still had an hour before my bus.

I remembered [Simone de] Beauvoir’s descriptions of bus stations with restaurants, juke boxes, showers and lockers she compares to columbariums. Columbariums! I walked to a cafe where I very slowly nursed a cup of chamomile tea as part of my near-dehydration diet which had managed so far to keep me from having to use a bathroom on the bus.

Although her essay has not a little political economy in it, nowhere does she contemplate the possibility that after deregulation of air-fares, the people who didn't have the means to fly at regulated coach rates now had the means to fly coach, and whatever propensity they might have had to insist on decorum on the intercity bus no longer showed up to ride the bus.  It's not that the air carriers are treating passengers well these days either.

SO MANY WOKE WORSHIP-WORDS, SO MANY CRAYONS.

Chicago's genial socialist mayor let the kids loose to illustrate a "transition plan" for transportation.

I wonder if "buses and trains safe to ride on" is enhanced or eroded under that "holistic approach to safety."  Probably not, the Streetsblog discussion of the report is more word-noise.

The resulting twenty pages of transportation recommendations in the report reflect the priorities of a group committed to transforming our current car-centric roadways into a safer, healthier, more equitable system for all. An introductory context section acknowledges how the combined damage of transit disinvestment, destructive highways and a concentration of industrial freight in low-income Black and Brown neighborhoods has saddled residents with poorer health outcomes and less connection to the necessities of life. It also acknowledges the blow Covid-19 dealt to public transportation in ridership and revenue, and the urgent need for new, consistent sources of funding to restore and improve Chicago’s transit system.

They're wishing for more printed money from the Federal Capital rather than any substantive policy changes in Chicago, other than, predictably, adding another layer of management.

The report lists four major transportation goals. The first regards the crisis at hand: stabilizing CTA service, which has been plagued by staffing shortages, unreliable information for riders and subpar sanitation and safety—real and perceived—since the start of the pandemic. Recommendations include new accountability systems, like a structure and cadence for CTA leadership to report to City Council (bafflingly, this doesn’t already exist) and the creation of a deputy mayor of transportation position to coordinate projects across city departments and agencies.

CTA, Metra and Pace anticipate a combined $730 million budget shortfall in 2026, when federal pandemic relief funds run out. The report recommends seeking state and federal dollars to avert this fiscal cliff without raising fares for riders. When it comes to improving safety and sanitation, the report recommends a “holistic approach”: adding transit ambassadors to CTA staff and responding to non-violent emergencies with treatment-not-trauma methods.

The report also recommends improving CTA service by building a citywide Bus Rapid Transit network—improvements like dedicated bus lanes, priority signals at intersections and rear-door boarding that have been proven to speed up buses. Chicago lags far behind other cities in BRT and the strategy has been championed by the Safe Streets for All Coalition to improve the reliability of CTA buses and encourage ridership.

Yes, those community ambassadors are working out so well in the neighborhoods, aren't they?  And all the bus rapid transit bells and whistles come a cropper the moment a bus becomes a minute or two late, and starts picking up the additional passengers appearing at the bus stop or transferring from other buses.

The worship-words, however, are in the correct form.  “Translating these recommendations into actual policies, plans, and projects will take persistent pressure from all of us. However, the transition report provides a strong foundation from which those of us fighting for equitable and sustainable transportation can build a cleaner and healthier future.”

I continue to withhold judgement.  "Chicago can be made safer, but it will be on the ward-heeler Democrats and the people who instinctively vote for them to make it safer."

AN UNPRODUCTIVE REGRESSIVE TRANSFER.

Over the years, I've called attention to the public waste involved in the so-called "Essential Air Service" providing puddle-jumper service to smallish cities that are often away from the Amtrak National Network.

How foolish is that service?  "Up To 68 Miles: The USA’s Shortest Scheduled Jet Flights In August."  Let us call the roll.  Alaska Airlines, Petersburg to Wrangell, 31 miles, 26 minutes; Alaska Airlines, Juneau to Gustavus, 41 miles, 36 minutes; United Express, Mason City to Fort Dodge in Iowa, 97 miles, 38 minutes, triangular routing not bookable directly; American Eagle and United Express, Chicago O'Hare to Milwaukee, 67 miles, 73 minutes, multiple frequencies.  There's also a service in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

The Iowa service doesn't exist to connect Mason City with Fort Dodge.

The 12 weekly flights are broken down in two. Operating five weekly is O'Hare-Mason City-Fort Dodge-O'Hare, which leaves Chicago at 07:33 and returns at 12:22. Flightradar24 shows that the shortest leg – which is not sold separately – typically takes between 17 and 23 minutes."

Supplementing this is an afternoon service, which routes the opposite way: O'Hare-Fort Dodge-Mason City-O'Hare. Running daily, it departs Chicago at 15:27 and returns at 20:19. Aircraft typically cruise at about 7,000 feet during the intra-Iowa sector.

Not surprisingly, SkyWest, for United Express, is financially subsidized by the Essential Air Service (EAS) scheme to serve the two cities. This is because no airline would otherwise operate to/from Chicago as it would probably not be profitable.

Iowa once had a serious interurban network, much of which remains to handle freight.

Those Milwaukee flights out of Chicago are for connections from or for destinations beyond Chicago; unfortunately there's no convenient rail way to O'Hare from Milwaukee.  On the other hand, a Chicagoan holding a ticket out of Milwaukee has the option of riding a Hiawatha from Glenview or Union Station and getting to the airport about eighty minutes after the Hiawatha leaves Chicago; but the wrangling over adding more frequencies on that line (the airport station is getting a second platform) go on and on.

THE VAPIDITY OF CULTURE STUDIES.

Ladies and gentlemen, children of all ages, I give you "Making an Old-world Milwaukee: German Heritage, Nostalgia, and the Reshaping of the Twentieth Century City," a doctoral dissertation submitted by one Joseph B. Walzer to the history faculty at Wisconsin-Milwaukee.  The opening paragraphs of the abstract spell out The Narrative, while ticking all the Proper Boxes.

This dissertation examines the importance of white ethnicity, and especially Germanness, in the “civic branding” and urban restructuring efforts of city officials, civic boosters, and business leaders in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in the mid-to-late twentieth century. Scholars have increasingly identified the significant roles the “revival” of European ethnic identities played in maintaining white racial privilege in response to the Civil Rights Movement since the 1960s. I contribute to these new veins of scholarship by tracing the continued and evolving prominence of Germanness in the Midwestern city of Milwaukee, long after common assumptions of ethnic assimilation might have expected such nineteenth century German ethnic identities to have “melted” into American society. My research in civic and community organization records, as well as local newspaper stories, reveals the active, yet often-uncoordinated efforts of various cultural agents and power brokers to maintain white ethnic, German hegemony in Milwaukee between the 1920s and 1980s. The combined crises of World War, National Prohibition, and a perceived weakening of German influence in the diversifying city prompted civic boosters and business interests who relied on the privileged place of Germanness in Milwaukee’s social order to secure German hegemony in nostalgic memories of “Old Milwaukee” in the 1920s through 1940s. These narratives offered carefully crafted visions of Milwaukee’s Germanness as productive, pragmatic, yet fun, and characterized German cultural contributions—especially the festivity and hospitality associated with gemütlichkeit—as essential to the city’s nineteenth century development and charming Old World character. As working class politics, growing racial inequality, and civil rights movements challenged Milwaukee’s prevailing social order in the decades following the Second World War, business leaders, developers, and pro-business public officials deployed these narratives of heritage and nostalgia in their efforts to reimagine the city as a post-industrial tourist and entertainment destination. In the process, such constructions effectively secured white ethnic claims to power and privilege in urban space.

That's not what the ensuing analysis of public records shows: there's a bit of discussion about whether all of North Third Street should be renamed for Martin Luther King, or whether the section just north of downtown with Usinger's and Mader's and the remnants of the railyards for loading beer could be Old World Third Street.  (It's now King Drive from Wisconsin Avenue north.)  The business efforts to create entertainment space along Brady Street (once a hang-out for the counterculture) and in Walker's Point (now that the foundries and coke works have closed, there are taverns to repurpose) are more or less standard case studies in the tussle between existing residents and gentrifiers, and at best tangentially about any "privileged place of Germanness."

RELEGATION COMES TO COLLEGE FOOTBALL?

I've long suggested that Big Time College Sports, meaning football and men's basketball, has become incompatible with its amateur athletics integument.

College Sports, Inc. are moving toward sixty-four teams in four power conferences, and another sixteen in the not-quite range.  All the same, if the resulting league structure had flexible conferences with relegation (although that could make a mess of all sorts of rivalry games) these Boneyard wins might serve for making Mid-American teams candidates for elevation, and the teams that think they are buying wins by scheduling Mid-American cupcakes move onto the relegation list with a loss.

The Great Power maneuverings have been going on for some time.

I'm using "great game" in the sense of proxy warfare as it used to be waged in Asia and Africa, rather than what goes on on the field.  When somebody says a Tripartite Pact among the Big Fourteen Ten, Atlantic Coast Conference, and Pacific Twelve is "not driven by revenue," follow the money.

Never, though, could I envision the conference that once owned the Rose Bowl as its New Year showcase getting left out.

The Southeastern Conference (SEC) has led the way in recent conference expansion. The SEC added the University of Missouri and Texas A&M to the fold in 2012, and Texas and Oklahoma are joining the conference next year. Not only does the upcoming addition of the latter two schools stretch the definition of “Southeastern,” but it also had schools scrambling to revamp schedules to accommodate a larger conference.

Things got even crazier on Friday with more conference realignment news. Two rival conferences have gutted the Pac-12, a conference named for its proximity to the Pacific Ocean and for the fact that it had 12 teams. Not anymore — the University of Washington and the University of Oregon are joining the Big Ten in 2024, while the Big 12 is poaching Arizona, Arizona State, and Utah from the Pac-12. The University of Colorado has already jumped ship to the Big 12 starting next year.

“The day began with hope and nine members for the Pac-12,” writes Ralph D. Russo at the Associated Press. “It ended with the Pac-12 — with roots that date back a century and more NCAA championships than any other — down to four schools and facing extinction because it was unable to land a media rights agreement to match its competitors.”

There's enough border redrawing to confuse a Talleyrand or Metternich.  Colorado and Missouri were old Big Eight, Texas was Southwestern, Arizona, Arizona State, and Utah were not Pacific.  I continue to hold out for four big conferences of sixteen teams, as the existing alignments put me in mind of the Holy Roman Empire, and not in a good way.

In addition to the Pac-12 dwindling to four members, the moves have helped solidify the “super-conferences.” In addition to the SEC’s growth to 16 teams in 2024, next year the Big Ten will have 18 teams, while the Big 12 will have 16 teams.

In many ways, conference realignment has made a mockery of the names of the conferences. The Southeastern Conference has some teams that are hard to classify as southeastern, while the Atlantic Coast Conference has some teams that aren’t even on a coast, much less the Atlantic. But all the conference craziness this week makes the names of the Big Ten, Big 12, and Pac-12 nothing more than a bunch of numbers and letters.

I lose track of how big the Atlantic Coast is, although that's more of a factor in basketball than in football.  At the moment, though, the four remaining members of the Pacific Twelve are in the position of the non-deciders in a hand at leaster.

“The Pac-12 is on life support, at best,” writes Jeremy Mauss at Mountain West Wire. “The teams that do not have a current home are Oregon State, Washington State, Stanford, and Cal [the University of California].”

That a smaller conference like the MWC may have to bail out the Pac-12 shows the sad state of a once legendary conference, but it could also be the lifeline that saves the Pac-12.

“The Mountain West has rarely, if ever, been in a position of strength regarding conference realignment,” Mauss points out. “That may change now as these last four schools from the Pac-12 need some help.”

The trouble is that the 12 schools in the MWC can’t simply jump ship to the Pac-12 because the buyout to exit the MWC is a whopping $34 million per school. A merger is a possibility, but that could take years of legal wrangling and discussions about branding and other administrative hurdles.

Regardless of how the Pac-12 has to scramble to maintain credibility (or even viability), it’s clear that the era of the “super-conferences” is here. Welcome to college football in the roaring 2020s, where obviously anything can happen.

If Miller and Coors can merge, or the old American Football League and George Halas's and Vince Lombardi's National Football League could merge, the legal wrangling or branding aren't insurmountable.

In football, Stanford, Washington State, Oregon State, or California field respectable enough teams frequently enough that relegation as a condition of merger won't come up.

It's still something that I suspect appeals to the poobahs of the Southeastern or the B1G or the old Southwestern, whatever they're trading as these days, as they'd just as soon be rid of those annoying mid-majors and their guarantee games.

SEE YOU DOWN THE ROAD, KELLY AND VIOLA.

Wisconsin has not outlawed elephant acts in circuses.  The cohort of available elephants to perform, though, is growing smaller and older.

Every August, circus performers, animals and seasonal workers leave Circus World as the Baraboo museum’s summer performance season comes to an end. But after this year, for the first time since the Ringling Brothers arrived in Baraboo in the late 1800s, the elephants won’t be returning.

After this season, the elephants will move into retirement at the Endangered Ark Foundation in Oklahoma.

Circus World Executive Director Scott O’Donnell is sad to see them go.

It will not be the end of the itinerant circus, or of Circus World.

[D]oes O’Donnell think that the elephants’ exit will spell the end of the circus? Not by a long shot.

“The death knell of the circus has been rung ever since it first started,” he said. “When we went from horse-drawn wagons to trains, they thought that was the end. When we stopped exclusively performing under big top tents, they thought that was the end. And when some French-Canadian fire-eaters had a vision and created Cirque du Soleil, they said that was the end.

“But there’s still room for all of these things in the circus. Circus arts are so nimble and able to react, and that’s what’s exciting,” he said.

As long as there are acrobats, aerialists, equestrians, jugglers, and unicyclists there will be circus.  Performing elephants, though?  As the current stars get older, it's not as if you can ring up a lumberman in Thailand and have one shipped over, and Public Opinion isn't as favorable to the pachyderms as it once was.

Although Circus World initially planned to keep elephants even after Feld made its announcement, that changed in 2018, and Circus World started planning for the elephants to retire by 2023.

“When we consulted with our vet teams and animal care staff five years ago about our elephants, we knew this vista was coming to us, and there’s just not a next generation of circus elephants,” O’Donnell said. “If there was, we would continue to have them here, but as a species, they’re very difficult to breed, there’s not a robust gene pool in North America, and they just need our undying attention and commitment as the critically endangered species they are.”

Feld own the Ringling Barnum name, and they will be touring again, if sans elephants or train.

FRIDAY short TAKES.

There is no reality to the left.  "Left and right are in a pitched battle for America’s soul, and the right’s strongest argument, perhaps, is the obvious success of states that have pursued conservative policies, compared with the abject failure of the states whose policies have been liberal."  There's always some kind of mushroom to push.  "Leftist politics ... is something that the manipulative old sell to the gullible young."  Mostly, it's misery loving company.  "Misery and grievance are the family business over on the Left, and — thanks to their warped political views — business is always booming."  Until perpetual antinomianism becomes boring.  "The three saints of transgression are the illegal immigrant, the transsexual, and the woman who proudly celebrates abortion."  Stipendium peccati mors est.

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

CELEBRATE DIVERSITY.

Apparently, praying in Cathedral Square rubs some people the wrong way.  "Two women have been charged with a hate crime after prosecutors say they attacked a group of women in Hijabs in Cathedral Square Park in Milwaukee."  Check your priors before you read on.

NO KIDDING: THE SEQUEL.

Christian Toto follows David Marcus with his E-T-T-S moment at the cinema.  "Many of the 'new' moviegoers are behaving badly. They talk, snap selfies and conduct phone conversations mid-movie."

He didn't have to get to the inadequate concessions and the interminable previews, although a radio talker who conducted a group complaint based on the column elicited those.  (It's two hours or so into his August 3 audio archive.)

Rather, he saw as the bad behavior at the cinema the generalized decline of bourgeois norms.

Don’t blame the pandemic. It’s a societal issue and we have only ourselves to blame.

Look no further than a country that allows shoplifting to run wild in major cities. Criminals now get a slap on the wrist, if that, while citizens who take a stand get the book thrown at them.

Discipline in schools now falls under woke bylaws, meaning if a child belongs to a specific demographic he or she may get a pass.

Take one long, hard look at our southern border and you’ll see how easily we look the other way rather than obey the rules.

We no longer respect the rule of law, and that includes government officials and the media. What we’re seeing now shouldn’t shock anyone.

The toxic trend is arriving right on schedule.

That’s terrible news for the nation, of course, but it’s also bad for the theatrical model. Moviegoers who finally returned to theaters this summer now pay exorbitant prices for the honor of being distracted throughout a movie.

Instead, they’ll wait a few weeks and see the movies in question from the comfort of their home, just like they did during the pandemic. Theaters will only have themselves to blame if they don’t enforce strict but fair rules about in-theater behavior.

They won’t, most likely.

If big city mayors look the other way at rising crime rates, and voters won’t punish them at the ballot box, what chance do we have that theatrical managers will show a stiffer spine?

Slim to none.

This critic can’t directly weigh in about the current, sorry state of movie going. Press screenings either feature hardcore movie fans or fellow critics. Both groups are far less likely to be rowdy in the theater, and if they are they’ll be swiftly shushed into silence.

That’s likely not happening in theaters nationwide. Would you risk it?

We can fort up in our homes and avoid the nyekulturny at the theater. We can agree among ourselves to interact with each other at the bar or restaurant, and turn the electronic shackles off.

Unfortunately, we're going to have to turf the soft-on-crime politicians out of our local governments, and trust the residents of the cities people are fleeing thanks to the crime to figure it out.

WHAT IS A PRODUCTIVE PERSON'S FAIR SHARE OF TAXES?

Never enough.  At least the editorial board of Chicago's Tribune have the good sense to recognize that replacing a cranky socialist with a genial socialist won't turn out well.

San Francisco is the deeply depressing Exhibit A of this phenomenon, a formerly vibrant and prosperous real estate market that has been shedding hotels and seeing major retail and office space fall fallow. In a recent commentary, the editorial page editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch made a similar, compelling case about downtown St. Louis falling into a downward spiral, not least because of pro-gun and other anti-urban policies imposed by Missouri state lawmakers hostile to the city.

The genial socialist, felicitously named Brandon Johnson, is both soft on crime, and of the view that productive people never pay enough taxes, and the editorial board, which I believe endorsed his opponent in the mayoral run-off, calls attention to both the softness on crime and the resentment against achievement.

As this page has observed on several occasions, downtown needs to be re-imagined as a mixed-use neighborhood, less reliant on office commuters and more welcoming to a diverse array of residents. It needs to be safe and walkable, with green space and the kind of cultural, retail and dining options that make people want to put down roots. It needs housing that’s at least reasonably affordable for everyday families. Remaking this economic engine should be a top priority for anyone who cares about the city.

For Mayor Brandon Johnson, who took office in May, a reckoning awaits. Johnson campaigned on raising hundreds of millions of dollars in new revenue to fund projects in neglected parts of the city outside the urban core.

Shortly after he took office, his progressive pals floated a plan titled “First We Get the Money” that fantasized about imposing billions in new taxes, while imagining that those who earned the money would simply hand it over and keep handing it over indefinitely. After the predictable backlash, Johnson retreated from the plan — at least temporarily.

It never occurred to the mayor or his Gimme Caucus on the city council that people could say no.

Want to run off some of downtown’s top employers? Impose a transaction tax on the financial markets. Want to discourage companies from bringing office workers back downtown? Pass a head tax on each employee, and a tax on suburbanites commuting to the city. Want productive people to leave altogether? Sock them with city wealth and income taxes. Want to chase away visitors? Jack up those already outrageous hotel and entertainment taxes and invent new user fees to make popular events and venues more costly.

It's not as if big city mayors don't have the Detroit commuter tax to study, is it?

Ironically, the one tax that Johnson has said he doesn’t want to increase is probably the one where he has the most latitude. Property taxes in Chicago tend to be lower than those in surrounding communities. The city could in theory levy higher taxes by socking it to new property, for instance, or levy for expiring tax increment financing districts, as the Civic Federation noted in a recent research report. It also could simply raise property taxes across the board. It has the legal authority to do so.

Ah, but politically that would be deadly. Chicagoans who supported Johnson understandably want other people to pay more taxes — but certainly not them.

Of course not.  Don't tax you, don't tax me, and all that.  Those other people, though, aren't hiding behind trees, they're up and moving, whether outside Cook County or outside Illinois.

Johnson needs to stop trying to get rich quick by targeting Chicago’s most productive citizens and undertake the arduous work of remaking the city’s core without gimmicks. He needs to partner with real estate owners to sustain the downtown recovery amid the office market crisis. He needs to get busy promoting public safety, workforce development, entrepreneurship and the arts, events and other programs that will keep the heart of the city productive.

Mayor Johnson, downtown matters, and it needs you to be its patron, not a leech.

Yes, although asking a socialist not to be a leech is like asking water not to flow downhill.

SHAKING OUT THAT EXCESS CAPACITY.

It's likely too obscure to rate a "College Bubble Alert" when one of Wisconsin's most notorious party schools has to take economy measures, but it's either the bubble popping or the U.S. News problem as Reality steps up to bat.  "UW-Oshkosh said it will begin intermittent furloughs and layoffs in order to reduce a projected 2023 structural deficit of up to $18 million."  It's the same sort of retrenchment we've been paying attention to for years.

According to a statement from the university on Thursday, "intermittent furloughs" start during the September 2023 pay periods and last through the June 2024 pay periods.

The university said furlough days are tied to their salary level. Employees enrolled in the Voluntary Retirement Incentive Options Program (VRIOP) will be exempt from furloughs until their retirement, no later than January 2024.

But the university also said, "Unfortunately, furloughs alone will not cover the deficit this year. Yet they will help close the gap by providing immediate financial relief. More specific details on this element of our plan will come from human resources over the next few weeks."

According to their statement, they will also be "examining" layoffs. "Layoffs and nonrenewals are unavoidable, with notifications coming later this fall semester," officials said.

"Furlough" is higher education's way of saying "pay cut." Those exemptions offered to people who are being encouraged to step out of line and disappear are to protect the pensions, which get calculated on the basis of recent years' salaries.  Wouldn't want to cut the pensions of people who will soon be off the payroll.  A few years ago, Northern Illinois University was able to claim no layoffs, because of an extension to the Christmas closures.  "Scheduled Closure differs from Floating Holiday, in that employees paid on a timecard basis will not receive pay. Thus the Operating Staff Council and the Supportive Professional Staff Council have committed to small pay reductions, perhaps offset as involuntary vacation days."  Those were not designated as "furlough days" for salaried employees.

THE MONUMENTS WE'VE DESTROYED.

It's a frequent theme of mine, and it's likely something everyone has in mind, if, perhaps, a different list of lamentations.  Consider Bill McKibben's The Flag, The Cross, and the Station Wagon: A Graying American Looks Back at His Suburban Boyhood and Wonders What the Hell Happened.  The simplest way to motivate Book Review N^o. 11 is to view the book as a collection of E-T-T-S moments, although, again, each person has a different set of candidates for E-T-T-S moments.  In Mr McKibben's case, a passage at page 152 is emblematic of his set of such moments.

[Real estate ownership] also helps explain a great deal about how America came to be a deeply conservative country, and why most of the ice in the Antarctic has melted.  The only other things in my lifetime that approach its economic impact are the rise of the internet and the ascent of China,.  Understanding how we lost that opening for justice in the 1970s, understanding the rise of Reagan and libertarianism, understanding the failure to grapple with climate change: that means grappling with the sheer economic force of the suburbs.

Bear in mind that Mr McKibben is a doomsday environmentalist of the first water, no matter how wrong he proves to be: and that his memoir is of a piece with a lot of recent policy and politics writing that includes (an obligatory?) coming to terms with How Awful (and Irregular) The Trump Presidency is: and, yes, he hails the election of Dementia Joe as somehow a Great Thing (there being no limits to the Cult of the Presidency, even among self-styled progressives who should know better) and among his litany of things gone wrong we have the demonstration solar panels that President Peanut put on the White House, President Reagan subsequently rendered cost-ineffective, and President Messiah sold for scrap.  But I digress.

BUILD IT AND THEY WILL COME?

The new Milwaukee mayor, Cavalier "Chevy" Johnson, aspires to a city (not metropolitan area, city proper) population of a million inhabitants.  I'm not sure pursuing population in the pursuit of taxes is the best strategy.  "It is not just that Johnson wants Milwaukee to grow. He needs population and business growth to help relieve enormous pressure on the city’s long-term finances."

THE NATIONAL DEAN'S LIST IS IN.

The Northern Illinois women's basketball team are on it, again.

The Northern Illinois University women's basketball team had the third-highest team grade point average in NCAA Division I in the 2022-23 academic year according to the Women's Basketball Coaches Association, which released its Academic Top 25 Honor Roll Tuesday.

The Huskies had a cumulative team GPA of 3.778 last year, behind only Albany (3.791) and Robert Morris (3.801) for the top GPA in Division I. This is the third consecutive year NIU has been in the top 10 of the WBCA Division I Academic Top 25. NIU was seventh in the 2020-21 year and ninth in the 2021-22 year. It is also the fifth straight season the Huskies have been on the WBCA Academic Top 25 Honor Roll.

Also representing the Mid-American are the Kent State squad, which had Northern Illinois's number last year.

The academic achievements are always good to document, now I'd like to see a little more tenacity on the court.  "Personnel is policy, and it appears the policy at Northern Illinois is middling mediocrity in the most middling mid-major Mid American.  Not the kind of value proposition to get more butts in seats."

I'll reserve judgement on buying any tickets until the early games take place.

WE'LL HANG RONALD MCDONALD FROM A SOUR APPLE TREE.

Of late, the self-styled progressives have abandoned patriotism, although that was not always the case.

Locally, the Ann Arbor People's Bicentennial Committee of Correspondence (AAPBCC) was also celebrating the anniversary of "the shot heard round the world," but in a less traditional manner.

Taking up the spirit of the early "patriots," the A2PBC2 challenged a local corporation which muscled its way into the city over massive objections of residents - the Maynard Street McDonald's. Ronald McDonald hung in effigy on a "Liberty Tree" outside the construction site "to call attention to the corporate control of the American food industry," according to organizers.

With waving American flags, a flute whistling "Yankee Doodle" and a PBC banner with the traditional coiled snake and "Don't tread on me" slogan, fifty patriots pledged support of a statement of food rights and grievances. The statement calls for the right of people to adequate, unpolluted food at fair prices.

"The rapid and exorbitant rise upon the necessaries and conveniences of life...is chiefly occassioned by monopolizers, that great pest of society, who prefer their own private gain to the interest and safety of their country," - Connecticut price-fixing legislation, 1776.

Both actions by the People's Bicentennial are the beginnings of a major campaign to reorient American society by using the celebration to reacquaint Americans with the deeper political goals of the Revolution. The PBC is attempting to prevent the major U.S. corporations from using 1976 to sell plastic Liberty Bells and red-white-and-blue materialism.

The objectives of the PBC include: acquainting people with the Democratic principles fought for during the American Revolution; encouraging people to measure the founding principles of our republic against the authoritarian financial institutions that rule America today; engaging in direct social action to challenge dictatorial power the corporations presently wield over the affairs of the nation; and mobilizing public support for the transition of our economy from corporate rule to citizens' control.

These days, the adaptation of the Gadsden flag or the Betsy Ross flag would likely cause consternation in a gathering of the alphabet people, the criminal rights lobbies, or Occupy.  Some things never change, though, the concept of "rent seeking" probably still is alien to the self-styled progressives.

THE CONTINUING SUICIDE OF HIGHER EDUCATION.

Inside Higher Ed's Josh Moody asks, "Why Are So Many College Presidents Resigning?"  His explanation:

The resignations come as the sector faces a long list of challenges, from the growing politicization of higher education to the shrinking number of students to go around. And while certain institutions may be more affected by these issues than others, experts believe that a difficult environment is likely driving presidents away.

G. David Gearhart, chancellor emeritus of the University of Arkansas who has written books on higher education leadership, argues that the college presidency has become an increasingly hard job due to challenges that only seem to be increasing.

“I personally believe that being a college or university president may, in fact, be the toughest job in America, or for that matter across the world, but certainly in this country. It’s become a very difficult position to do the right way,” Gearhart said. “There are so many groups out there that a college president has to try to appease, and it’s almost impossible to do that with all of the political machinations that are happening these days, not to mention the huge decline that we’re going to be seeing over the next several years in enrollment, which has already started.”

If it's a difficult environment, it's a self-inflicted difficult environment. "Attacks on public higher education are attacks on American democracy, Philip DiStefano writes."  Mr DiStefano is chancellor of Colorado at Buffalo, and he blames everyone but himself and his colleagues.

In my five decades in higher education, never have I seen such divisive rhetoric and legislative action used to diminish public education—an institution as venerable as our democracy itself.

But one thing I have always believed is that America’s public universities are fundamental to a functioning democracy and a source of unlimited solutions. A strong democracy is associated with social mobility, civic engagement and a diverse, pluralistic society—all cornerstones of our country’s higher education system.

As the leader of Colorado’s flagship university and one of the nation’s leading research universities, I am committed to using my voice and to urging my fellow higher education leaders to do the same in the face of a wave of damaging actions and rhetoric that threaten free inquiry.

Such high sounding buzzwords, and such a divergence of desire from reality.  Those "damaging actions and rhetoric?"  I call them a self-inflicted DeSantis problem, one in which the faculty refuse to maintain standards, and in which faculty priors are so tight that the resulting research is silly.

THE ONLY THING BOILING IS THE CORN.

That is, if you didn't soak it in water and grill it with the sausages, chops, or steaks.

Recall how June ended?

In the Corn Belt, the past few weeks, the rainfall that has been a week away has not materialized, in a manner reminiscent of those out-year projections the Washington politicians tend to rely on.  Don't preach at me about wildfires in forests not properly maintained, show me a causal relationship between the alleged greater water carrying capacity of a warmer atmosphere and a decrease in the frequency of rainfalls.

That ought to be a straightforward exercise in calibration, one that might make those doomsday scenarios for fifty to a hundred years ago less mockable.  "Climate Models Overestimated Warming in U.S. Corn Belt."  The fundamental calibration problem would be there if the doomsday models underestimated the heat waves.  But Narrative Weather Forecasting isn't about planning next weekend's activities.  "Moral panics arise from a closed positive feedback loop. All the protagonists in the climate change panic—journalists, governments, activists, and scientists—are enclosed in an echo chamber that amplifies the message at every turn."

Currently, the five day forecast has rain chances Saturday night, most of Sunday, and Monday morning.  We'll see.  The extended outlook also puts in a rain chance for Thursday next.  The Victor E. Garden would be grateful for a drink.  I'll let you know.

By the looks of my water bill, the garden got its drink from me through most of July, although we saw two inches of rain in two nights just before month's end.  Ultimately, unless we're heading in a Venusian direction, and so far, none of the doomsday environmentalists have gone there, that water has to precipitate out.  It transpires that there's currently more water for the atmosphere to carry.

When the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano erupted on Jan. 15, it sent a tsunami racing around the world and set off a sonic boom that circled the globe twice. The underwater eruption in the South Pacific Ocean also blasted an enormous plume of water vapor into Earth’s stratosphere – enough to fill more than 58,000 Olympic-size swimming pools. The sheer amount of water vapor could be enough to temporarily affect Earth’s global average temperature.

Apparently the doomsday environmentalists and their "era of global boiling" didn't read the report.

This extra water vapor could influence atmospheric chemistry, boosting certain chemical reactions that could temporarily worsen depletion of the ozone layer. It could also influence surface temperatures. Massive volcanic eruptions like Krakatoa and Mount Pinatubo typically cool Earth’s surface by ejecting gases, dust, and ash that reflect sunlight back into space. In contrast, the Tonga volcano didn’t inject large amounts of aerosols into the stratosphere, and the huge amounts of water vapor from the eruption may have a small, temporary warming effect, since water vapor traps heat. The effect would dissipate when the extra water vapor cycles out of the stratosphere and would not be enough to noticeably exacerbate climate change effects.

That volcano, it transpires, was at just the right depth to superheat water enough to push through the water pressure at depth and boil off into the atmosphere.  More water in the atmosphere, more humidity, more air you can wear, and in corn country the evening aspiration of the corn plants manifests itself.

The month of July hereabouts, though?  "Near to Below-Normal Temperatures with Above-Normal Precipitation."  Yes, those are monthly totals, and a gully washer or two is less productive, or, in the case of the July 3 deluge in Chicago, downright deadly, as contrasted with several days of light steady rain.  And yet, at least in this neighborhood, the hot summer isn't special.

AMTRAK, THIS IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH.

Milwaukee reporter Adam Roberts takes a train ride.  First, he asked a meta-question. “If we are this country that talks about choice, and freedom of choice, why would we design a city that limits the choice and dependency on one mode of travel?”  To ask the question is to answer it.  Urban form is emergent, and the talk of design or planning implicitly limits choice and reinforces dependence.

He then went for a train ride.

Amtrak’s Empire Builder first served customers in 1929, as the flagship train of the Great Northern Railway. It currently operates two lines between Chicago and both Seattle and Portland serving customers at up to 38 different stations depending on the line. One of those stations is the Milwaukee Intermodal Station downtown, where I hopped on board the train about 15 minutes behind my scheduled 4:45 departure time.

After boarding the Superliner, I took stock of my immediate surroundings. The first thing that stuck out: the legroom. As a six foot tall man, I was able to fully stretch out my legs and still had room in front of me to spare. Additionally, carry-on rules are a lot less strict than air travel; one of my bags was basically a cooler full of Pabst Blue Ribbon cans and snacks for the trip.

After an attempted nap was thwarted by a nearby crying baby, I made my way to the dining car, where due to Amtrak’s communal dining policy, I was placed with Kevin and Moa. The Swedish couple was on their way to the Twin Cities to visit Kevin’s host family from his college days. Getting a European perspective on rail travel seemed like a smart idea.

“The biggest [thing] that plays a role is the environment” Kevin told me. “Most people say “Yeah I [ride the train] because going with my car is bad for the climate. And the government just pumps money into good trains and good buses, because they care about the climate.”

Moa added the idea of using a car as the sole mode of getting around didn’t make much sense to them, especially on long trips. “Yeah you can get where you want to go, but you deal with detours, and then you have to stay up and drive and find somewhere to sleep.”

After finally grabbing that nap we arrived an acceptable 20 minutes delayed in La Crosse at 8:30pm, basically the same time it would take to make the trip by car with a bathroom/gas stop.

His attempt to return, on the other hand, illustrates why people are willing to put up with congested roads and cranky kids in the back seat.

By the time my scheduled 11:37am Sunday departure arrived, the train was somewhere in North Dakota and delayed by nearly 12 hours. Suffice to say I had no plans to wait for a train that would get me home at 1:15am. With a few taps of my phone on the Amtrak website, I was able to book a Thruway bus that would get me on the road at 4:00pm and arrive in Milwaukee just before 9. Not everyone was so lucky, however. One passenger attempted to get on the bus right as we were about to depart, saying he didn’t receive notice about how long the train was delayed. With no ticket for the bus, he was denied entry.

Once he got home, he did some journalism.

How can delays on a mode of transportation in 2023 stretch to half a day long, and how can it be deemed a common occurance? Amtrak’s website has a whole page dedicated to the different reasons why your train might be delayed. The most common reason they cite is “freight train interference”, a side effect of Amtrak not owning a large portion of the tracks they operate their trains on outside the Northeast. But rail hosts only tell one part of the Empire Builder delay story.

“On that route, there’s a lot of things that can happen” Passenger Rail Correspondent for Trains Magazine Bob Johnston tells me. One of those many things is breakdowns of long-distance train equipment. Johnston tells me that a lot of the replacements for this equipment is still put away, as a cost-saving measure. “Amtrak has not, despite what they say, prioritized returning this equipment to service. So that means, if there’s no spare equipment, and there’s a mechanical problem, then the train can’t leave the station or it becomes disabled en route.”

That deferred maintenance affects the regional routes as well. I took that picture last Friday enroute to Milwaukee, the people-watching in the Great Hall, even with the discombobulated long distance service, is generally compelling.  At the time I booked a passage on the 1.05 departure, train 335, for Milwaukee, Amtrak advised me the train was 30% filled.  That morning, though, the 8.05 departure from Milwaukee had mechanical troubles before it got to the airport station, arriving Chicago around 10 am, and it was taken out of service with no replacement rake available.  Thus, those passengers who were expecting to go north at 11 am had to rebook, if possible, for 335, and the crew were announcing that they could not accommodate any passengers holding tickets on the earlier train.  At Milwaukee, there were people waiting for both the early afternoon train that didn't run, and the return trip of 335 as 338.  That's not good enough.

IF SOCIALISTS UNDERSTOOD POLITICAL ECONOMY, THEY WOULDN'T BE SOCIALISTS.

Monopoly^(TM) started as a manifesto for Henry George's single tax, and it has long been misunderstood by people who would like to scold us for our selfishness.  "And how is it that a game conceived as socialist propaganda becomes a metaphor for competitive capitalism that inspires refinements to keep players engaged and involved?"

The latest such scold is longtime Ohio politician Nina Turner, once a regular on MSNBC's Ed Schultz and Chris Matthews programs.

She often feuds with libertarians about "Medicare for All," minimum wage, and other economic policies.

This week, she tweeted the following: "There's literally a children's board game that demonstrates that 'free-market capitalism' always leads to one person controlling everything."

I think those MSNBC hosts brought her on because she was colorful, not because she was the sharpest knife in the drawer.  The article reviews that history of the game, originally "The Landlord's Game," before getting to the difficulties of one person ever gaining control of everything.

As such, the rules and game mechanics don't exactly undermine the legitimacy of the capitalist system. As most people know from playing the game—which is weirdly popular, despite being somewhat unrewarding at both casual and advanced levels of play—Monopoly involves rolling dice, moving game pieces onto game spaces, buying property, and collecting rent. Players earn more money from their properties if they also own neighboring spaces and then develop them. There are gains to be had from trading properties with other players, but market mechanisms are mostly absent.

For instance, the amounts of money earned by landing on spaces is prearranged by the game's rules. In a free market, a landlord might charge more or less in order to entice renters and compete against rivals; in Monopoly, rents are set in stone. If anything, this is an argument against government-imposed rent control.

The fact that players must go bankrupt, one by one, until only the game's winner remains is a function of the game's design, not of capitalism. Indeed, this mechanic is actually so poorly developed that games of Monopoly often end well before this point is reached: People frequently quit the game because it takes so long. Even under conditions artificially engineered to reach an end-state where "one person controls everything," per Turner's description, the game often doesn't work out that way.

So much for the General Law of Capitalist Accumulation.

That the game does not have to have an end raises the possibility that many games will not end. So, also, can it be with business competition, whether as taught in the textbook or as observed in industries without strong scale economies or network externalities. With sufficiently many players, the pattern of initial ownership of railroads, utilities, and properties can be one in which no player acquires a monopoly in the first few trips around the board, and no proposed trades of properties (Boardwalk for Kentucky, Mediterranean, and $100) are mutually satisfactory. The resulting infinite loop is loosely a competitive equilibrium, although the game loses realism in that no housing gets built.

Although people have modified a number of the rules (payments directed by cards go into a pot gathered by the next player to land on Free Parking) I know of no local variation in which individual properties can be improved.  Even the combined intellect of all those Socialist Advocates has not produced a local variant in which there's a General Crisis of Accumulation affecting one of the players.

GET YOUR DEUTSCH ON.

Wisconsin's Oktoberfest season will begin later today, when German Fest opens in Milwaukee.

Regional Oktoberfesten are more of a thing in the United States, so much so that a fictional one involving a fictional biohazard in Chicago opened the One Chicago season, where there's no copyright infringement on the original in München.  In Germany, the regional event is more likely a sport shooting competition, a Schützenfest, and we'll feature some of those festivities as the deer get into the rut.

For now, though, a stirring performance by the massed Musikkorps that will participate in the Bürgerschützenvereins 1849 Grevenbroich Sharpshooters' Parade, fittingly honoring Alte Kameraden.

Find yourself an Oktoberfest and go to it.

FRIDAY short TAKES.

The loopy left love their useful idiots, and currently Donald Trump is serving the role, by being a martyr to their lawfare.  "Trump, despite his vast legal problems, remains the GOP front-runner, but there are serious doubts about his electability." whilst Dementia Joe is literally serving that role.   "Joe Biden is too far gone, both in physical stamina and mental acuity to handle the job of the Leader of the Free World."  The one bright spot is that the loopy left are relatively few in number.  "Establishment Democrats and their liberal media mouthpieces expect total electoral loyalty from leftists while offering us little in return."  Yes, but let us count those leftists.  "The radical wing of the party can still fit our representation in Congress in a three-row SUV. And perhaps we’ve waited long enough to recognize that there’s no reason to expect better in the near future."  They continue to pin their hopes on the young.  "More than half of [Dementia Joe's] own party has been telling pollsters for months they don’t want him to run again. The sentiment is especially strong among young voters, whose turnout in large numbers is essential for Democrats nationally."

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

ONLY IN WISCONSIN.

Mark Judge goes clickbaity on us.  "Why Oppenheimer Has Hotter Women Than Barbie."

We used to call them “cool chicks.” They were the girls who, when I was in college in the 1980s, were left-wing, wore their hair in an unorthodox or punk style, read books and didn’t take shit from anyone. They loved Sylvia Plath, Joan Didion and Anne Sexton, but could also talk to you about Henry Miller, Tom Wolfe and Naked Lunch. I still remember one, Tess. I fell for her when we met in a DC bar. A New Kids on the Block video popped up on the nearby video screen. “Twinkies,” Tess sneered, then smiled at me and lit a cigarette. She was self-confident. She wasn’t what Gen Z feminists are—hectoring, didactic, nasty.

The foremothers of the “cool chicks” of the 80s are probably the women depicted in the new film Oppenheimer. The main one that illuminated the screen for me is Florence Pugh as Jean Tatlock, a communist who has an affair with Robert Oppenheimer in the 1930s. Whereas in Barbie the male characters are useless morons, Tatlock and Oppenheimer, the “father of the atomic bomb,” set off sparks through a exhilarating back-and-forth about books, art, and politics. When they first meet at a party filled with communists, she starts explaining the dogma of Marx. He retorts that it’s different when you read it in German. She marvels that his library has so many books that aren’t related to science or physics. One of them is the Bhagavad Gita—in Sanskrit. She plants herself on top of him, opens the book, and tells him to read a line: “I am become death, destroyer of worlds.” That leads to sex.

He's trying to be funny while he's being serious.  Reality might be even more compelling.

“I don’t think Barbie and Oppenheimer want to be tied together in any capacity,” Miss America Grace Stanke told WTMJ’s Erik Bilstad on Wisconsin’s Morning News. “I’m super excited for both Barbie and Oppenheimer. Specifically for Oppenheimer as a Nuclear Engineer.”

Stanke, of Wausau, is perhaps the one person who can relate to both films. Stanke, who studied Nuclear Engineering at UW-Madison, was posed the tough question ‘Who is more influential? Barbie or Robert Oppenheimer?’ — a difficult choice to make.

“100% Robert Oppenheimer,” she said. “For me, seeing someone who is able to utilize science and think about it critically is really an incredible thing and an important part of human history and an important part of human future as well.”

Spoiler alert: she went to Oppenheimer first. The meming potential is pretty in pink.

#barbenheimer pic.twitter.com/CNB7VUN3lh

— Nuclear Power Memes (@nukepowermemes) July 21, 2023

I wonder if we can get the doomsday environmentalists to take nuclear electric power seriously for base load power plants and railway electrification without hoping for Mattel or Hollywood to bring out Nuclear Engineer Barbie.

THAT DEEP BENCH IN WOMEN'S FOOTIE.

The Stritch Wolves might be finished as a program, but an observation I made at a game they played is still relevant.  "That's how it went, all game, every ball contested, nobody wanting to let a ball go out of bounds if at all possible."  It might be Stritch recruited overseas players who wanted to play against the best.  So too might it be with Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Olivia McDaniel, a 2020 graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, enjoyed a magical match in goal for the Philippines early Tuesday, making nine saves and leading her squad to an historic 1-0 upset of host country New Zealand in the FIFA World Cup.

The Philippines, appearing for the first time in its history in a men's or women's World Cup, registered its first-ever victory and moved to 1-1-0 in pool play.

Eighteen of the 23 players on the roster are American-born, including the California-born McDaniel and her sister, Chandler, who also played at UW-Milwaukee and didn't appear in the match. Indiana native and Marquette University alumna Ryley Bugay checked in at the 83rd minute.

The incentive to play against the best extends beyond college.

The team even trained in the United States, coming together in storybook fashion with players who have familial ties to the Philippines.

The McDaniel sisters' parents, Filipina mother Lindy and soccer-coach father Clint, first helped get the ball rolling for a Philippines soccer program in 2012, securing a complex in Corona, California, for the first tryouts.

Well, why not? Footie is popular with eight year old girls in the United States, and adolescent males nearly everywhere else, and the allocation of resources to sport reflects that.  "Perhaps U.S. policy contributes to its omnipresence.  In Brazil, by contrast, the resources tend to go to the adolescent males."

There's something Pareto-improving about wanting to pit yourself against the best on the pitch, and maybe secure a college education to go with it.  Yes, of late, the United States team has injected itself, probably to its disadvantage, into the culture wars.  The easiest way to deal with that noise is to tune the game out.

Sometimes, though, it's best not to fret over Geopolitics or whether a woman can kick like an early adolescent male, and just let the players rediscover their inner eight year old.

NO KIDDING.

David Marcus has an E-T-T-S moment at the cinema.

Ticket prices are up (the national average is $10.53 from $9.16 in 2019) and the quality of the experience is way down.

It's not just the threat of physical violence that mars the post-pandemic excursion to the cinema.

The whole experience is a dank, depressing metaphor for a society that barely knows how to function in public anymore.

Walking into your local theater, once a buzz with video game sounds, wild kids, coy couples on charming first dates, and an air of excitement, feels like trudging into some kind of [overpriced, understaffed] Soviet-era Costco.

At the concession stands, when they are open, one can wait in lines for hours for the privilege of spending the approximate price of fine dining in Paris for a bucket of stale popcorn or hot dogs of a strange greenish hue.

Shelves – once packed with a wide variety of candy and treats – are empty.

With a second mortgage worth of inedible snacks in your hands, you fumble on your phone to find your exact seat, which was purchased online, of course. God forbid, we have too much human interaction.

Not that the experience was any good before the corona tyranny.

Perhaps it is time for the people who run the theaters to rethink their business model, which seems to be based on upselling at the concessions, and endless commercials. Nearly half an hour of previews? Seriously? We're already doing the theaters a favor by purchasing tickets and their popcorn, and we can tolerate the high prices intended for popcorn lovers at the concessions. When the scheduled start time for the feature is 1.30, start it no later than 1.35.

With both the performers and the script writers on strike, though, there won't be many summer blockbusters coming to antagonize the curious.  The streaming services are likely to win the battle with the movie houses the same way they won the battle with the cable companies, by default.

A CONCATENATION OF MISBEHAVIOR.

When I noted, "you have the fraternity and athletic culture of the sub-prime party school, at a higher list price,"  Northwestern University's investigation of hazing rituals in athletics involved only football and baseball.  Turn the rock over, though, and look closely.

Northwestern athletics tried to protect their image over their own athletes, keeping up a facade to cover the rotten underbelly of the athletic department. Before I go any further, let me be clear. AD Derrick Gragg was hired in 2021 after Jim Phillips (who was very oddly gone without many questions being thrown at him) left for the ACC commissioner job, and president Michael Schill was hired last September, so the problems within the football program predate them. However, the baseball team’s problems? A cheerleading team that faced allegations of harassment and racism? That’s on their hands, and a symbol of a problem much larger than any one scandal.

This problem is larger than Northwestern football. It’s larger than Northwestern baseball and cheerleading. It’s a problem within the university, protecting their self-image and reputation over doing the right thing, and the leaders at the institution have nobody to blame but themselves.

The cheerleader's lawsuit is a few years old, and for all I know sports journalists treated the story as business as usual.

Hayden Richardson filed a federal lawsuit against Northwestern University on Friday, detailing repeated instances of harassment while a member of the cheerleading program, according to the Chicago Tribune's Elyssa Cherney.

Per the 58-page complaint, Richardson experienced being groped by drunken fans and alumni at university-sanctioned events. The program's head coach, Pam Bonnevier, apparently required women cheerleaders to "mingle" with donors for the school's financial gain.

“It became clear to [Richardson] that the cheerleaders were being presented as sex objects to titillate the men that funded the majority of Northwestern’s athletics programs,” the lawsuit read, per the Tribune. “After all, the happier these men were, the more money the University would receive from them.”

Richardson says that in 2018 to '19, older men touched her breasts and buttocks over her uniform, picked her up without her consent and made “sexually-charged comments” about her appearance, per the Tribune. Despite being underage, Richardson says men offered her alcoholic beverages and asked to meet with her later at said events.

The lawsuit suggests Richardson's complaints were ignored by numerous university officials. It also states that Bonnevier told cheerleaders to socialize independently despite requests to visit donor tailgates and events in pairs. The women team members were required to take photos with fans, regardless of whether the fans acted inappropriately.

Makes sense: if the recruiting coordinators can line up "dates" for high school prospects, the fundraising coordinators can call on the cheer team to schmooze the donors.

CHRISTMAS IN JULY.

It is July 25, isn't it?

We've mostly worked off the Naughty List for this month.  We intend to close each day's posts with something cheerful, and to offer more cheerful fare as the month progresses.

There's no guarantee, though, as the crazies never stop giving me material.

THE GREAT SOCIETY WAS THE TRAGEDY. BIDENOMICS IS THE FARCE.

I'm on record as skeptical of the entire arc of the Democrats' technocracy.  "Perhaps the simpler explanation is that the New Deal failed as a macroeconomic policy."  My elaboration, with footnotes, is

At one time, academic historians were in general agreement that President Lyndon Johnson would be recognized as the greatest of all presidents. A few funerals later, he's probably fallen to the stature of a minor post-Rooseveltian. Perhaps one reason is that the Great Society's record is not what the true believers would have others believe. I am on record as attributing much of the now-missed-by-self-styled-"progressives" unionized, monopolized, and cartelized 1950s to the unusual position the U.S. economy enjoyed after World War II.

That post foreshadowed the "victory dividend" line of argument I have subsequently used.  Having the resources to attempt to build back better is one thing, but it's not the same thing as having the knowledge to do so, and the capability to make it happen.

The "wouldn't it be nice" ratchet has been screwing over people much longer than that: the interstate highways, and urban renewal, and the Great Society, and the story is always the same: self-congratulation over good intentions never compensates for bad policy.  Go, read and understand Thomas Sowell's The Vision of the Anointed.  I'll wait.

That's the tragedy. What are the elements of the farce?

LET US CALL IT WHAT IT IS: MAKE-WORK FOR FAILED SCHOLARS.

Minding the Campus contributor Robert Weissberg draws a felicitious comparison between cooking a stew and curating a matriculating class.  Reduced to one sentence, it would be something like "bean counting aggregates among fava, great northern, green, lima, and pinto; and there are some that enhance a chili but would fail in a casserole."

Imagine a cookbook-like course description that specifies in advance the demographic and ideological mix of those to be enrolled. In sum, there is no guarantee that whoever shows up will be the optimal mix for improved instruction.

“Diversity” is an empty vessel whose main purpose is to advance a political agenda, and it has always been that way. When Harvard in the 1920s decided that there were too many urban Jews of Eastern European extraction, it “diversified” its student body by admitting “more well-rounded” young men residing outside the big eastern cities, who excelled in leadership and sports. The number of big-city Eastern European Jews fell, and the WASP ascendency continued, at least for a few more decades. Today’s Left predictably prefers to diversify schools exclusively with students drawn from groups that overwhelmingly vote Democratic, namely, blacks, Hispanics, women, and gays.

This “diversity game” might be played across the ideological spectrum. Conservatives should abandon viewpoint diversity—which is hopeless, given the multitude of beliefs on everything “conservative”—and instead focus on diversity of life experiences to advance their agenda.

It's a fool's errand, he concludes. Perhaps, as Reason's Emma Camp suggests, the best thing to do with all those diversity hustlers is turf them out.

The survey provides further support for concerns that American college students are increasingly unwilling to tolerate political opinions they disagree with. Most troubling, it seems that the bounds of what is deemed "offensive" has continued to expand. Not only do students now bristle at tolerating truly hateful speech, but they also seem unable to stand even basic observations on popular political issues.

An easy way to fix this problem would be for universities to stop making it so easy to tattle to administrators over minor political disagreements—and stop setting students up with the expectation that any offense deserves administrative involvement.

However, that would require scaling back the huge bureaucracies that have exploded at many colleges for the express purpose of refereeing student and faculty speech—something most universities are unwilling to do.

No, those bureaucracies have to justify their existence, and their catechism, excuse me, their priors, like those of the Holy Inquisition, insure that there will always be demons to exorcise.  "Catholic university teaches 'transphobia' and 'fatphobia' are products of racism perpetuated through religion."  Am I supposed to be grateful that "Thou shalt have no other gods before Me" is not a constraint on the curriculum, or troubled that the priors structuring the workshop are tighter than stretch pants on Hillary Clinton's tush?

This workshop will explore the ways that systemic racism creates, co-creates and perpetuates all intersectional forms of oppression and marginalization by systematically limiting access to the agency, autonomy, opportunity, health, information and even pleasure necessary to dismantle oppressive systems; which promotes divisiveness both against and between targeted groups. Together we will explore how we can use our positionality in conscious, daring dialogue to explore our intersectional privilege and oppression through the lens of the most marginalized/vulnerable voice of the moment.

I seriously doubt that that "daring dialogue" includes "privilege and oppression comprise a false dichotomy."  The "learning objectives" are a narrowing of the notion of Original Sin:  "Briefly learn the historically racist roots of several ongoing forms of oppression including–but not limited to–racism, sexism, homophobia/transphobia, fatphobia, classism, ableism, ageism and more, through systems including education, religion, eating disorder treatment, gender-based violence, toxic masculinity, health care access and more."

If any of those secular sins overlap with the sins the priest recognizes, wouldn't it be simpler for the Worst Sinners in the workshop to go to confession and say a few Hail Marys?

EVEN FURTHER BEYOND RUSH LIMBAUGH'S ABILITY TO PARODY.

He came up with the concept of "male lesbian," and even that attempt to demonstrate absurdity by being absurd wasn't as absurd as where the gender studies types went earlier this year.  But even that absurdity fell within normal bounds, as the gender studies types were fretting about crossers who couldn't get a date.

What, though, can we make of "Lesbians are non-men attracted to non-men and not specifically for women."  No, seriously.

Typically, we would like to believe that lesbians are women who like other women.

A few weeks back, Johns Hopkins’ hospital changes the definition of lesbianism to non-men. Newsweek states, Johns Hopkins’ portrayal of women as “non-man,” is deeply offensive to women who strongly identify with their womanhood. Furthermore, they firmly believe that such labeling diminishes the importance of women’s biological essence, impacting their understanding of identity.

This characterization undermines women’s rights and equality, which they are tirelessly striving for. Drawing from personal experiences, the speaker notes that most women in professional settings take pride in their identification as women, considering it integral to their self-identity. 

So much going on in there: on the one hand, "biological essence" is too much essentialism for the victim studies types; on the other, with the reflection essay reified as a Minimal Publishable Unit, there's no longer a logical error in generalizing from one's own experience.