REALITY HAS NO REGARD FOR YOUR PROCESS WORSHIP.

Arnold Kling says that about the likely future of Syria.

It is not ready to become a democracy. North, Weingast, and Wallis describe two forms of order: one is the natural state, in which violence is contained by having the violent groups form a coalition to rule. The rulers exclude everyone else from forming large organizations, either political or commercial; the other form is an open-access order, in which anyone can form a political party or a corporation.

Syria does not have the background conditions or institutions to be an open-access order. If Syria attains any stability at all, it will be as a natural state. But I am not sure that a stable coalition can be had there.

Loosely, because several of Syria's neighbors disagree on the nature of that natural state.

DISREGARD THE RENT GRADIENT AT YOUR PERIL.

In the Federal Capital, the provision of bike lanes on arterial avenues becomes a racial flash point.  Marc Fisher, an associate editor with Washington's Post, argues those lanes are not about the bikes.

Despite its reputation as a liberal enclave, D.C. is not and will never be Amsterdam, Portland or one of those college towns where the streets teem with more bicycles than cars.

But sometimes, it’s not for a lack of trying.

The District’s planners are intent on putting many of the city’s most important streets on what’s called a “road diet,” which sounds healthy and nutritious but is actually a recipe for traffic constipation and commuter headaches — and maybe a stealth mechanism for encouraging a wholesale shift in race and class in certain neighborhoods.

The bike lane wars have been cycling through the city for about as long as the endless battles about gun ownership, weed legalization and abortion funding. And though they might seem a narrow concern, bike lanes have proved an enduring and powerful symbol of Washington’s central divide: Who is the city for? Is it forever Chocolate City, proud capital of Black America, or is it a fast-morphing magnet for hyper-educated young people — most of them White — who migrate to the city to populate think tanks, law firms, nonprofits, and government and its contractors? Can it be both?

On either side of Rock Creek Park, bike lane battles become seething debates about home prices, gentrification, school quality and crime rates. In affluent upper Northwest, residents and business owners have pummeled the city with protests against narrowing Connecticut Avenue to install bike lanes. For the moment, the people are winning.

Isn't it simpler to think of the Federal Capital as the Federal Capital?  And as long as that Capital becomes more involved in the generating and dissipating of rents, the migration of those "hyper-educated" people is going to continue, and with it, the bidding up of housing prices.  Whether that will lead to more motor vehicle ownership or not is a separate matter from whether or not the road diets will tame traffic.  You can pick your form of congestion: the stroad with lots of turn lanes and traffic light delays, or the shared road with bike lanes and rotaries.  But you will get congestion.

Across town, on South Dakota Avenue NE, the fight is ongoing, and, as The Post’s Rachel Weiner reported, this squabble reveals an essential truth about bike lanes as weapons of civic planning: They are often installed not to satisfy the barely measurable trickle of residents who pedal to work but mainly to make car traffic worse enough that people will be discouraged from driving.

A popular crosstown route, “South Dakota Avenue is a very dangerous roadway,” says VJ Kapur, an advisory neighborhood commissioner in the Langdon area of Northeast and a road diet advocate. “It’s very common for residents to have cars crash up onto their lawns. And any driver attempting to observe decorum and drive 25 mph is swerved around by reckless drivers.”

South Dakota features four through lanes, two in each direction. The city proposes to slim that down to three narrower lanes, one in each direction plus a turn lane where needed and room for a bike path.

“Just as the big, wide lanes we have now induce speeding and reckless driving” Kapur tells me, so too would bike lanes induce slower driving — and maybe more bike riding.

That "weapon of civic planning" is a common canard.  Does anyone ever complain that those traffic lights and left-turn-only cycles that hold everybody up are some conspiracy to discourage people from driving?  Has anyone considered that perhaps building a stroad through a residential or commercial area, then posting it at 25 mph, simply invites people to drive fast?  On the other hand, unless those bike lanes are protected from motor vehicles, Washington might experience what we understand as the "Milwaukee slide," people using those bike lanes to pass on the right and they sometimes wind up on lawns.  Change the visual cues, change the reckless driving.

The Federal Capital is older than Dallas or La Jolla or Los Angeles, all places famous, or notorious, for car culture, and yet each of those cities has made arterial streets safer.  You have to do the design work first.  It's about the road design, though.

In Milwaukee, that "slide" sometimes has a racial connotation to it, and that might be creeping into the Washington conversation.

Rodney Foxworth, a longtime civic activist who now leads an anti-bike lane group, says the city “has a bias in favor of bike lanes no matter whether residents or businesses want them, and a lot of these lanes are being installed in Black, low-income communities. There is a nexus between bike lanes and gentrification.”

Many of Milwaukee's traffic taming measures are being built in such communities as well, often at the urging of local adults worried about their children or their aging parents.  But bike lanes accompanying gentrification?  No.  Gentrification in the Federal Capital is part of the rent-seeking that goes on in the swamp.

THE PROPER RESPONSE TO DISINFORMATION OR MISINFORMATION IS INFORMATION.

I'm old enough to remember advocates of "liberating tolerance" complaining that freedom of the press was limited to those who owned one.  The political economy of that argument, loosely, was that people who had the means to own a printing press had enough of a stake in the existing order of things to foreclose people with serious reservations about the existing order of things from calling attention.

THE JOYS OF PROCESS.

Over the weekend, the Assad family dynasty relinquished control of Syria to management yet to be determined.  There's a United Nations special envoy for Syria, Geir O. Pedersen, who issued a perfect bit of bureaucratese.

The challenges ahead remain immense and we hear those who are anxious and apprehensive. Yet this is a moment to embrace the possibility of renewal. The resilience of the Syrian people offers a path toward a united and peaceful Syria.

To this end, the Special Envoy underscores the clear desire expressed by millions of Syrians that stable and inclusive transitional arrangements are put in place, that the Syrian institutions continue to function, and that the Syrian people are enabled to begin to chart the path to meeting the legitimate aspirations of the Syrian people and restore a unified Syria, with its sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity, in a way that can receive the support and engagement of the entire international community.

Has there really been a united and peaceful Syria at any time since Cyrenius served as governor with the approval of Caesar?  Isn't that another chunk of the Ottoman Empire carved out after The War to End All Wars?  The process-worship, though, is what keeps the striped-pants types in work.

Mr. Pedersen urges all Syrians to prioritize dialogue, unity, and respect for international humanitarian law and human rights as they seek to rebuild their society. He stresses that there must be a collective effort to secure peace and dignity for all. The Special Envoy stands ready to support the Syrian people in their journey toward a stable and inclusive future decided and shaped by the Syrian people.

Let us honor the memory of those who have suffered for decades by committing to help Syrians build a Syria where justice, freedom, and prosperity are shared realities. Let us stand in solidarity with Syrians to help them ensure that this new chapter is one of hope and opportunity for every Syrian.

That sounds good at Turtle Bay or in the faculty lounge, but will it change any minds on the road to Damascus?

HOW SUNDAY DINNER BECAME SUNDAY BRUNCH.

It's almost all about the calories.

The terms “supper” and “dinner” can be used pretty interchangeably, but “dinner” is typically used more often. Regardless, if someone says one or the other, most people will know they’re referring to the last meal of the day. But we came across some shocking news: they’re not the same thing after all and if your grandparents or parents used the term “supper,” there’s a good chance your ancestors were farmers.

“[In the 18th and early 19th centuries,] Americans regularly ate a light supper as their evening meal because they were eating dinner—the biggest meal of the day—around noon,” food historian Helen Zoe Veit told NPR. The purpose of eating their biggest meal at noontime was so farmers would have more strength and energy to get through the rest of their workday, according to the English Language & Usage Stack Exchange. Dictionary.com confirms, “dinner” doesn’t necessarily refer to a specific time of day. It simply means the main meal of the day. “Supper,” however, stems from the Old French word “souper,” meaning “evening meal.”

That checks out in part, longtime readers might recall from this visit to a threshing bee in Dalton, Minnesota. "Among other things, they re-enact a proper thresherman's dinner (the noon meal, for you clueless coasties) of hot dish and jello salad with store coffee, and there's a steam train calling at an honest to Yim Hill Great Northern depot."  There's also a New England custom of referring to the evening meal as "supper," er, "suppah," although that, too, might have its rural origins.

So what changed? Eating the biggest meal of the day around noon started to become a thing of the past when more Americans began working away from their homes and farms. “They couldn’t readily return home to cook and eat in the middle of the day,” says Veti. And so, more and more people shifted their main meal of the day to the evening, when they could spend more time enjoying their food and spending time with their family.

Well, you couldn't really speak of a "three martini dinner," could you? I will withhold comment on the emergence of that twee "luncheon" that got into society circles. As Sunday conventions of fasting before church changed, so too might have changed the idea of that big midday Sunday meal.  If you're not getting up early to spruce up for church, maybe skipping breakfast and putting something together late morning makes sense as well.

II. ADVENT.

We've noted the always sold-out-in-summer Santa Trains at the Fox River Trolley Museum.  Sometimes the theme of the event is a pajama party, and sometimes it's a toy drive.

Unattributed Fox River Trolley Museum photo retrieved from Facebook.

On the first weekend of operation, the Museum apparently combined the pajama party with a working party from the Marines Toys for Tots Foundation.

Unattributed Fox River Trolley Museum photograph retrieved from Facebook.

Patrons of the first weekend's runs got the memo to bring an in-kind contribution to Toys for Tots and they came through.

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A PRESIDENTIAL MANDATE.

That's straightforward enough that a middle school student should be able to grasp it.  "While students have an obligation to go to school, presidents are often believed to have an obligation to make changes they promised their voters would see. This obligation, known as the presidential mandate, gives them power and legitimacy in government."  Mightn't it be simpler to note that politicians, from selectman to president, campaign on platforms, meaning they make campaign promises, and doing anything other than attempting to implement those promises is politics as usual nyekulturny?

"NORMS AND TRADITIONS" ARE PROBABLY OPPRESSIVE.

It's Sunday, bringing in train a familiar sermon.  "Is anybody surprised that when you deconstruct bourgeois norms, bad things happen?"

Sometimes, the beginning of a restoration of a state of good repair begins with organized sports.

The Mid-American Conference (MAC) commissioner wants the NCAA to crack down on what he calls “abysmal behavior” at college sports events, which he said has shown a “lack of respect for norms and traditions.”

The letter, sent on Thursday from Jon A. Steinbrecher to NCAA president Charlie Baker and shared with CNN, argued that sportsmanship and ethical conduct are “urgent issues” that need to be addressed.

It comes days after several of college football’s top rivalry games descended into chaos, with all-out brawls breaking out between teams and players planting flags in opposition stadiums.

“Let’s face it, the behavioral trainwreck we have witnessed is probably great for television ratings, talk show fodder, and social media intrigue,” Steinbrecher wrote. “However, none of this is acceptable to an activity connected to the Academe."

I hope that "academe" is another voice transcription error and he properly used "the academy," although "connected to higher education" or "connected to academia" scan better.

THE FINAL SUMMIT.

Sad news from Chicago Boyz, where longtime contributor Michael Kennedy has departed this life.

Michael was obviously a brilliant man, accomplished, full of energy and with many interests. He must have been an excellent physician. He was a student of history, a skilled and experienced sailor, and a father. His observations on politics, current affairs, technology and other topics were always well informed and insightful.

The New Neo also reminisces. R. I. P.

FRIDAY short TAKES.

The issue is competence, not credentials.  "There’s a difference between competence and expertise. One of the most profound political changes in recent years has been the separation of notions of credentialed expertise from real world competence. This isn’t a new theme in American life, but the COVID-19 pandemic and the lurch toward identity politics amplified distrust of experts in unprecedented ways."  Their reign of hectoring is over.  Turf them out.  "Trump certainly presents a lot of problems for the transnational elite--but their dreams of a world in which elites can hire technocrats to run a utopia have run up against the realities of living in a tough world with some evil people."  What would we ever do without experts?  "Joe Biden is leaving office, making the strongest possible case for Donald Trump that anybody could possibly make it. And that's that our government and our justice system is of, by, and for the elites and nobody else. He ran to banish Trumpism from our political system in this country, and he has left it politically and now institutionally, the strongest possible political force in this country."  Remember, they, too, are mortal.  "We’re done being talked down to by the so-called experts."  By their fruits shall we know them.  "There's something not just gross but outright psychopathic about the arrogance with which so many in Washington carry themselves. "

Hell, Our Intellectual Betters can't even get urban land use or urban roads right.

The Fourth Turning might be reaching its climax.  "In this new paradigm, institutions like the United Nations and the International Court of Justice are largely irrelevant, as are climate confabs and the high-minded pronunciamentos of the World Economic Forum."  The whole establishment house of cards finally came tumbling down.  It deserves to.  "By its fruit the tree is known, and the fruits of our ruling class, which has long based its authority on an assumed, and increasingly implausible, expertise have not been impressive. The election of 2024, as Silver rightly notes, represents a repudiation of those failures."  This is your country on Donald Trump.

To be a Biden is to be above the law.  The people thought otherwise.  "Biden and his fellow Democrats made the party so unattractive that millions of self-identified Democrats decided to call themselves independents instead."  Pray that he took the hectoring Karens down with him.  "If a losing party wants to win another big national election, it must try to understand the Americans who have come to dislike and distrust it. Aversion to the Democrats is actually not an insane reaction to the state of the country and world, or to the pinch of one’s own conscience—there might even be members of your own family who have arrived at just this assessment of reality, for perfectly nondepraved reasons."  Maybe Democrats can regain credibility by running Normals in local elections.  Make democracy local again.

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

LOOSEN THOSE PRIORS.

During the early days of the Jarrett regency, as Militant Normals forced their Intellectual Betters to loosen the corona tyranny, I warned the academic cadre of the errors of their tyranny of expertise.  "'The science' and 'Our democracy' have become incantations, more akin to the phrases invoked to denounce heretics than to concepts suggesting room for active contestation.  That's not going to end well."  That post went on to note, "There's plenty of that sort of supposedly principled unreason floating around, all of which can be summarized as "If a thing is hard to prove, therefore, we should skip the proof and simply assume it."  That's called faith, dear reader.  These times, however, are times in which more than a little healthy skepticism is desirable."  I concluded, "I'd be amused with the observation that the denial of coherent beliefs is itself a coherent belief, but for the consequences being what they are.  'You know you're dealing with encroaching Medievalism when a subject brooks no dissent.'"

Now comes Minding the Campus contributor Rebekah Wanic, suggesting "Activism Does Not Belong in the Academy."  Her objection is not to students being students, and using some of their thinking time to Get Involved and pretend they are Making a Difference, nor is it to faculty who might advise such students.  Rather, it is to scholars pretending that the tightness of their priors matters more than the quality of their argument.

In recent years, activism has become increasingly visible in academia, often permeating classrooms, faculty hiring practices, and research agendas. This trend has generated both support and concern across university campuses. While, in some cases, activism can be a powerful force for social change, its growing presence in academic settings has raised important questions about its effect on the integrity of higher education and the mental health of students. Activism-driven pressures not only reduce academic rigor but create a psychological burden on students that compromises their intellectual and psychological well-being. Here is what to consider:

[First of several points,] Academia is traditionally tasked with fostering critical thinking, promoting knowledge, and encouraging open-minded debate. This foundation relies on an environment where ideas can be freely explored, even if they challenge dominant ideologies or accepted norms. However, when activism intertwines with academia, it creates biases in research priorities, course content, and faculty hiring, shifting focus from intellectual rigor to ideological conformity.

Instead of teaching students how to think critically, activism-driven education teaches them what to think, framing certain perspectives as morally or ethically superior—namely, leftist perspectives. This approach stifles debate and discourages intellectual diversity, as students and professors feel pressured to adopt or conform to dominant activist viewpoints. Over time, this erodes academic integrity and limits students’ exposure to a balanced and comprehensive education.

[Second,] When activism guides academic discourse, academic freedom suffers. Professors and students alike often feel that they cannot freely express ideas that diverge from prevailing activist narratives without risking backlash. In fields like history, political science, and social studies, where multiple interpretations of complex issues exist, debate is shuttered, compromising the search for truth. A culture that enforces ideological conformity discourages professors from pursuing certain research avenues or proposing courses that challenge dominate activist perspectives. As a result, students miss out on a well-rounded education that includes exposure to multiple viewpoints, weakening the robustness of their education and the overall intellectual climate.

The essay continues in a similar vein for a few more points.  The greatest danger to placing too much weight on one's priors, particularly if they're not that well founded, is that people attempting to argue based on those priors aren't as well equipped to defend their positions as defenders of contrary positions, who have had to learn the weaknesses of their own arguments, are.

THE PUSSYCATS OF GILEAD.

Rush Limbaugh used to crack wise about leftists (still liberals by his lexicon, before the split between corporatist and communist Democrats grew more pronounced) becoming wacky and stupid when they were out of power.  Here we are, with the people again voting for a gridlocked federal government: the House a special election or two from having a Donk majority, a Senate with Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski and a filibuster, and Donald Trump undoubtedly facing down Official Washington types in his own party, and it's enough to compel Rebecca Gordon (yes, dear reader, another Common Dreams contributor) to hoist her crazy cat lady flag.

I never realized before that men hate us so much.” That was the lesson drawn by one of my fellow organizers in Reno, Nevada, the morning after the 2024 general election. She’d turned 21 during the campaign, a three-month marathon she approached as a daily opportunity to learn as much as she could about everything she encountered. “Of course, they hate immigrants, too,” she added, “and I’m both.”

Welcome to Gilead.  "Welcome to the Republic of Gilead, where they really do hate us that much and they’re not afraid to say so."  Get your tubes tied, go on a sex strike, and break all ties with men.

EVERYTHING I LIKE GOES AWAY.

Years ago, when I was pursuing the higher learning in Madison, a substantial share of my discretionary spending went to Paul's Book Store, which stayed the course even after the passing of founder Paul Askins in 1975.  And yes, some of those books are still at Cold Spring Shops headquarters.

The family is now calling it a career.

After a 70-year run, Paul’s Book Store announced in a Tuesday Instagram post that it will close in early 2025. The bookstore is located at 670 State St. and has been well known for its vintage and cozy feel since its opening in 1954.

Paul’s Book Store was founded by Paul Askins, and the business was given to his wife and University of Wisconsin alum Caryl Askins in 1975 after his death, according to On Wisconsin Magazine.

“It’s been an adventure and a labor of love, and now it’s time to say goodbye,” the bookstore said in its Instagram post. “Stop in, find a good book, say hello and goodbye, and keep on reading!”

Thanks for the memories.

COHERENCE ON THE HIGH BENCH MIGHT BE A GOOD THING.

I've been fighting it out on this line for years.  [W]hen you deny coherent beliefs of any kind, you get incoherence."  But if you're Dementia Joe's diversity hire you probably think you're being profound.  Pajamas Media's Matt Margolis disagrees.  "Justice Ketanji Jackson Makes a Fool of Herself During Oral Arguments."

What did Mrs Justice Jackson say?

She attempted to draw a parallel between banning transgender procedures for minors and banning interracial marriage during the oral arguments. Her premise was nothing short of baffling. She started by saying, “Being drawn by the statute that was sort of like the starting point, the question was whether it was discriminatory because it applied to both races and it wasn’t necessarily invidious or whatever,” before trailing off in a haze of confusion.

Her argument only got more tangled as she continued, “But you know, as I read … the case here, the court starts off by saying that Virginia is now one of 16 states which prohibit and punish marriages on the basis of racial classifications.” She clearly wanted to invoke the history of racial discrimination, but the connection to the current case was tenuous, to say the least.

Then, the real leap in logic came: “And when you look at the structure of that law, it looks in terms of you can’t do something that is inconsistent with your own characteristics. It’s sort of the same thing.” The idea that prohibiting minors from receiving irreversible barbaric gender surgeries and hormones could be compared to a law prohibiting interracial marriage is, quite frankly, laughable. Jackson’s comparison seemed to rest on an assertion that both laws were somehow grounded in “inconsistency” with one’s “characteristics.”

Of course, this is the same person who infamously declared during her confirmation hearings that she couldn’t define what a woman is because “I'm not a biologist.”

Then, without missing a beat, she tried to pivot: “So it’s interesting to me that we now have this different argument, and I wonder whether Virginia could have gotten away with what they did here by just making a classification argument the way that Tennessee is in this case.” At this point, even she seemed to realize how far-fetched the analogy was.

Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, who is at the Supreme Court arguing on behalf of the Biden administration, responded, “Yes, I think that’s exactly right that there is absolutely a parallel between any law that says you can’t act inconsistent with a protected characteristic and in all other context.”

And that, as Mr Margolis continues, is why we get more Trump.

Banning sex changes for minors and banning interracial marriage are fundamentally different and cannot be compared. Interracial marriage bans were rooted in overt racial discrimination. In contrast, bans on gender procedures for minors aim to protect children from irreversible medical interventions when they lack the maturity to make such life-altering decisions.

Interracial marriage laws targeted consenting adults, while these bans focus on protecting vulnerable youth. Comparing the two minimizes the harm of racial segregation and misrepresents the ethical concerns surrounding experimental medical treatments for children. It’s a false equivalence that undermines both history and reason.

That Our Progressive Betters hope to change the old term "sex change operation" to the murkier "gender affirming procedures" only contributes to the incoherence.  But undermining history and reason is the essence of activist scholarship, isn't it?

THE CRAZY NEVER STOPS, DOES IT?

It's not enough for Democrats to hawk their wealth taxes.

Tax-'n-spend Democrats have control of the presidency^* and both houses of Congress, and they're all about wanting to make the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes.  Perhaps  I'm too much the purist, expecting an incidence analysis to stratify tax receipts by income quintiles (deciles would be better, but that's how the empirical research goes) and then, with something resembling a good estimate of the share of taxes paid by the higher income earners, we could have a good common-room lunch session about what share was fair, or not.

That's not how things work in practice.  Rather, you get populist froth.  "The share of the nation’s wealth pie owned by the richest 0.01 percent has quadrupled over the last 70 years. Their percent of the total tax obligation has stayed the same. What’s wrong with this picture?

And apparently Old Joe screaming about how the Congressional Budget Office, or perhaps Santa's elves, anticipates that his tax on unrealized capital gains will bring in FIVE HUNDRED BILLION dollars over the next ten years isn't enough, at least for the moochers at Common Dreams.  Comparing flows with flows, that is to say, annual income taxes on annual income, is too logical.

The Tax Foundation claims instead that the Treasury report confirms that America’s rich “pay more than one-third of their annual income in federal taxes and more than 45% when state and local taxes are included.”

Indeed, the Tax Foundation adds, the total tax burden on the nation’s super wealthy can, with foreign taxes paid taken into account, run “upwards of 60% of their annual income.”

The key word here: income. The Treasury study, the Tax Foundation charges, “classifies taxpayers according to an estimate of their wealth rather than their income, with the intention of showing that the rich pay very little in taxes.” The rich, the foundation concludes, “are not undertaxed relative to their annual income.”

This Tax Foundation’s claim begs some obvious questions: What yardstick should we use to consider whether our wealthiest are paying an appropriate amount of tax? If our wealthiest, after paying their taxes, are still watching their personal wealth grow at a higher growth rate than the nation’s total wealth, are these wealthy paying their “fair tax share”?

News flash: a productive person's fair share of taxes is never enough.

What level of taxation would be required to stop America’s wealth from concentrating so furiously? To close the gap between the growth rate for the wealth of the richest Americans and our nation’s overall growth in total wealth, current combined federal and state taxes on those at the top would have to rise substantially, at least tripling.

None of these figures should come as a surprise. We’ve known for decades now about the under-taxation of America’s billionaires, a reality that rests on what may be the single most glaring flaw in America’s tax system: “adjusted gross income.” The Internal Revenue Code uses this “AGI” as the starting point for calculating federal income tax due. But “adjusted gross income”—for America’s richest taxpayers—has become and continues to be an entirely meaningless figure.

I won't tell you. Bob Lord just did.

For America’s wealthiest, adjusted gross income bears no relationship to actual economic income. Any estimate of income that places, as the AGI does, the income of the 92 richest Americans at only 1.66% of their wealth rates as essentially useless.

To sharpen this picture even more, consider the increase in tax on America’s wealthiest 367 that would be needed to freeze the increase in their share of our nation’s wealth. Avoiding a further increase in the concentration of the nation’s wealth would require an overall increase in the rate of taxes our top 367 pay to more than 150% of their adjusted gross income. If we limited their overall tax rate to a mere 100% of their adjusted gross income, their share of the country’s wealth would continue to increase.

Where does that leave us? For taxing the rich, we currently rely on an income tax based on adjusted gross income as our primary vehicle. That isn’t working. If we’re going to achieve fair share taxation of the rich, we need to scrap AGI and develop a measure of income that accurately reflects their true economic income. Otherwise, we need to tax wealth directly.

Apparently even the Eisenhower-era 90% tax bracket isn't enough.  Instead, the self-styled progressives want to "freeze the increase in their share of our nation's wealth."  Never mind that doing so might have the effect of slowing, stopping, or reducing the rate of growth of our nation's wealth.  "Since 1900, the average American’s life has improved dramatically due to various products for which the rich were willing to pay a far higher initial price."

GOVERNMENT IS THE PROBLEM.

Before the election, Verge editor Nilay Patel offered an odd endorsement of Kamala Harris.  "A vote for Donald Trump is a vote for school shootings and measles."

We could put a pin in that, take stock of the school shootings and the measles cases, and see whether tightening up at the border has an effect on the latter.

AMTRAK, IS THIS GOOD ENOUGH?

It's easy to watch trains from my computer, and the Virtual Railfan camera watching the Galesburg passenger station draws lots of viewers, particularly when the long-distance Amtrak trains are due.

Every so often, something interesting this way comes.

That's 4.45 pm earlier this afternoon, with the westbound California Zephyr receiving passengers.  In the distance is the consist of the morning's Carl Sandburg, which terminated at Galesburg.  Amtrak's web site offers little explanation of what happened.  There is, apparently, a bus service in substitution to connect with the train for the consist's return to Chicago.  That's not exactly an endorsement of an all-weather mode, and it might be more troubles Amtrak has had protecting its state-paid Regional Rail services out of Chicago.

NEVER CHANGE, COMMON DREAMS.

Doomsday environmentalist C. J. Polychroniou has long provided us with amusement, and now he proposes to salvage the Democrats by doubling down on what lost them the election.  "We should raise walls of resistance as much as we can. More important, though, we should demand from the democratic forces to adopt a socio-economic agenda that puts people’s needs above corporate interests."

Never mind that it was the fraud of running Old Joe as a standard-issue tax-'n-spend Democrat only to implement as much of the Bernie Sanders platform as he could get Joe Manchin to go along with, while letting the alphabet people take charge of personnel that got voters angry going into the 2022 midterm elections.

Never mind that several of the Members of Congress hailed as the Squad and given disproportionate adulation in the pages of Common Dreams lost primaries to Democrats possibly closer to being standard-issue tax-'n-spenders.

GOOD NEWS IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD.

Cold Spring Shops, late summer of 2023:  "As long as there are acrobats, aerialists, equestrians, jugglers, and unicyclists there will be circus."

The Northern Star, as Thanksgiving gave way to Advent.

NIU’s Circus Club began as an unofficial club in the spring 2023 semester. Within a year, the club went from being unofficial to being approved through the Student Government Association in the spring 2024 semester.

Circus Club focuses on teaching members different skills relating to the circus, such as juggling, acrobatics and unicycling.

Circus Club is currently in the process of switching from their current adviser, Benjamin Stone, an instructor in the School of Art and Design, to Michel Rodriguez-Cintra, visiting assistant professor in the School of Theatre and Dance.

Nam Pham, a junior illustration major and Circus Club founder, explained the reason for wanting to start the club.

“Two years ago, I decided to have a space where I could get some of my friends together and teach them juggling. And I decided, you know, it would be kind of cool to have that unofficially. So in order to get more outreach and more people knowing about that, I decided to make the club official with a constitution,” Pham said.

Circus Club plans to host future events and performances at NIU once time has passed and once other club members are interested in and comfortable with performing.

Good.  There's always reason to find a circus and go to it, even if that involves an intrastate rivalry with Illinois State and their Gamma Phi Circus.  Who knows, some of the members might dig into the history of the itinerant circus, including the instructional value of the menagerie, and the interaction of humans and big beasts, and become advocates for that dimension of the circus arts.

I. ADVENT

Early November brought above normal temperatures and not much rain.  There's been a cold snap since shortly before Thanksgiving, with little snow for Cold Spring Shops headquarters.

Some of the neighbors took advantage of the favorable weather to get a jump on the blinging out of the houses.

That's from the Saturday before Thanksgiving, with a scissor-lift still parked north of here to finish the work on that house.  Several more houses have also been illuminated, and the weekend after Thanksgiving seems by common consent to be when the lights come on.

The meditation from a few years ago about subsidized solar power encouraging more electricity use remains in order this Festive Season.