Doing some research for my cousin who lived outside DC during part of WWII.
I remember the temporary WWI buildings along Constitution, now the site of Constitution gardens, but I didn't realize how fully the Mall, at least west of the Washington monument was built. (There's problems with accessing the website, but here's the url: http://www.columbia.edu/~fdc/family/dcmall.html ) I didn't realize part of the buildings were dormitories for workers.
[Updated for official photo.]
There was a memoir written by a stenographer who worked recording and transcribing events in the Obama White House. It was pretty good. One thing I remember from it was the work needed so that everything was recorded. It was impressive.
When I read that Trump made a practice of tearing up the papers documenting his meetings I knew he wasn't good news for historians, even though he was worth a lot to journalists. That's now confirmed by this report of the missing transcripts of 8 percent or more of Trump's speeches. It's not a loss to the history of oratory and given his incessant repetition of his best hits probably not a big loss to history of his presidency, but it's a loss.
Damnit--presidents are supposed to follow the law. And Republican presidents are supposed to be organized.
Rural Blog has a piece by a minister on the many reasons for the decline of religion in the U.S. Ross Douthat has a piece on the same subject in the Times, focusing mostly on how the intelligentsia are divorced from religion.
Given my religious ancestors and my own atheism I'm interested. I've watched from the outside as my sister was heavily involved with her Presbyterian church. The other day I came across a newspaper report of a lecture my grandfather gave in 1902, describing his (and his wife) visit to Jerusalem. The newspaper found this noteworthy, presumably because grandfather was prominent in the West Pittston-Wilkes Barre area, the subject was somewhat exotic, and the lecture drew a good audience.
How often today, even before the decline of local city newspapers, did the media pay attention to clergy as authoritative figures? It seems most media stories deal with political/cultural/religious controversies. Back in 1902 churches/ministers filled a need for entertainment and instruction, a need 20 years later to be filled by radio, 45 years later by television, and today by the internet.
I grew up before McDonalds had spread to New York, so church suppers were an occasion. But church suppers can't compete with McDonalds, nor can slide shows/travelogues which I remember compete with TV.
According to IMDB this movie had a $1 million budget and made $48,000 at the box office. That must be close to a record for losing money on a film which actually made it to the theater.
It's a lot better than that, at least if you can get past the lousy sound job (very uneven but often the music/background obscures the dialog), It would be redeemable if it had captions, but it doesn't. Having said that, most of the reviews at IMDB are respectful.
Anyway my wife and I stuck it out. Perhaps our receptivity was enhanced by having been watching the first 23 episodes of Fauda (season1 and part of 2). "Fauda" seems to equate to SNAFU. It's based on an Israeli special ops unit fighting against Hamas and eventually ISIS with a reasonably balanced view of both the Israeli heroes and the Palestinian villains. It describes a complex situation in the West Bank, a complexity which is related to the complex situation of the American-Iraqi relationships in "The Situation".
The Situation was written and produced by Wendell Steavenson, a (female) war correspondent based on experiences in the Iraq war. It was released in 2006, perhaps just as the US was turning against the war, so it should have done well. It really would be worth someone's time and effort to fix the sound.
My mother was death on drinking. She would be pleased by this post.
It's strange how things have changed. I clearly remember Mr. Youngstrom, our science teacher for one year in HS (unless he was a substitute--the school had problems keeping science teachers) being very emotional when telling the class never to smoke marijuana. I think the reason was it was a gateway to hard drugs, but it could have been because it was evil in and of itself.
60+ years later Virginia has legalized marijuana, and there's a push for decriminalizing hard drugs. It seems libertarian philosophy has conquered much of American life.
That's my reaction to this request from President Biden which was included in his 2022 budget outline:
Supports a Fair and Equitable Tax System. To ensure that all Americans are treated fairly by the Nation’s tax system, including that the wealthy and corporations comply with existing laws, the discretionary request provides $13.2 billion for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), a $1.2 billion or 10.4-percent increase above the 2021 enacted level. With this funding, the IRS would: increase oversight of high-income and corporate tax returns to ensure compliance; provide new and improved online tools for taxpayers to communicate with the IRS easily and quickly; and improve telephone and in-person taxpayer customer service, including outreach and assistance to underserved communities. In addition to increases for base IRS enforcement funding, the 2022 discretionary request provides an additional increase of $417 million in funding for tax enforcement as part of a multiyear tax initiative that would increase tax compliance and increase revenues. Altogether, the 2022 discretionary request would increase resources for tax enforcement by $0.9 billion
I'd prefer a multi-year plan for 50 percent for more.
I'm seeing media reports of a looming labor shortage--restaurants are reopening but can't find help.
My local supermarket seems to be having staffing problems as well.
This raises the possibility of inflation coming. If the labor supply at the low end has been disrupted by the pandemic and possibly the Trump crackdown on immigration, wages will have to rise at the lower end. Perhaps that will diminish our inequality, or perhaps the better paid among us will try to maintain the wage gap and push for more pay themselves.
We'll see.
Two things, unconnected except they both recalled my past:
The Post is running "Classic Doonesbury". In a recent one Alex, the daughter, is giving her father her Christmas list. She wants a Pentium PC so she can keep up with her classmates, and a 288 modem. I want to say I remember my first modem, but I don't. Could it have been 120/240 baud or 1200/2400 baud? I definitely remember the big advance up the ladder to a 28.8K baud modem. I suspect these days few people remember a "baud" (1 bit per second, where 8 bits equal one byte, which was one character). Back then I was going on-line through Compuserve. So much has changed since then.
Going back even further in time, at some point in the 1940's-50's our poultry flock was hit with Newcastle disease. We had a run of diseases at that time, leading us to change the hatchery supplying our chicks, so I don't remember how bad it was, how many hens it killed, how many eggs weren't laid. I do remember the death toll one of the diseases took, taking the dead hens out and tossing them off a hill into a swamp (I know, not good, but that was another time).
The NYTimes had a Science article on virologists being able to use the Newcastle virus as a means of inserting a vaccine into humans. (Newcastle doesn't do much to people.)
I was a relatively early investor in Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) which Annie Lowery in the Atlantic thinks may be dangerous to capitalism (along with index based mutual funds).
If I understand the concerns: in the good old days of individual stock ownership and actively managed mutual funds people, fund managers and investors, were actively concerned about the performance of companies. They bought and sold stock based on that information, resulting in a an efficient sharing of information related to performance via financial markets. But with ETFs and index funds dominating the scene these days, many fewer people are tracking performance and incentives for managers to perform are less.
It sounds okay to me. Although I would point to Billy Hwang's financial distress to observe that financiers can be pretty stupid; they seem to be chasing returns through ingenuity rather than hard work.
Another aspect is the rise of global financial markets. Back in the days of actively managed funds we had much less in the way of global financial flows. Over time I've diversified our investments away from Spdrs and QQQ (the early ETFs tracking the S&P 500 and the Russell index) to include several with foreign investments. While fewer people may be tracking GM and Ford against each other, the competition between US car manufacturers and foreign manufacturers is being tracked.
At any rate, I expect the current setup will outlast me; at least I hope so.
One phenomena of recent times is the giant legislative bill. That's true of the reconciliation bill passed annually, but also of others.
I think what's going on is the filibuster. It raises the difficulty of passing laws, so the laws which can and must pass get stuffed with measures. As long as someone, Congressional or lobbyist, has the ear of a person who's involved in the writing of the bill, there's a good chance to get your issue addressed. That cuts out the back and forth we might expect from committee hearings, which can expose difficulties and at least gives the agency which has to administer the bill some additional background and understanding of what's going on.
Here's a related tweet.
