For the past 3 national elections I've been fairly optimistic: disappointed in 2016, pleased in 2018 (though I tend to forget Republican gains in the Senate; happy in 2020. My optimism in each case was based on the polls.
Recently the polls have turned against the Democrats so I'm not optimistic for Tuesday (and the days and weeks after, since it may take that long to finally resolve some races). I won't venture predictions on the results.
The Constitution has a provison for holding a new constitutional convention whose powers would be essentially unlimited (just as the original convention far exceeded its authority). A number of states over the years have called for such a convention, and there's been recent discussion of it.
Lyman Stone doesn't connect the two, but his twitter thread on the faults of the 1982 Canadian constitution provide me evidence to argue against a broadbrush revision:
Canada's 1982 constitution is a lulzy document which was passed with little serious consideration and a large number of wild drafting decisions with massive unanticipated consequences.
— Lyman Stone 石來民 🦬🦬🦬 (@lymanstoneky) November 3, 2022
What I learned today.
Interesting thing about Ireland’s university system is it’s very meritocratic and no one really objects to that
— Ronan (@rfitz77) November 2, 2022
I confirmed there's no legacies or athletic admissions in the Irish system. That's for the Irish.
But if you want to study there, here's the site.
Seems there's a controversy in AZ over a group which wants to put watchers over poll drop boxes, armed watchers. The argument against is it's intimidating.
I believe in transparency, but it seems to me the best approach is to put video camera(s) up, so people can watch in real time. The video could be stored and analyzed later if necessary.
SCOTUS considers affirmative action today, the occasion for lots of comments; Three blog posts of note:
Reading "Uncontrolled Spread" by Scott Gottlieb on the US response to Covid19. So far (100pp in) it's good. Gottlieb was on the outside (former Trump FDA director for a couple years) but offering input via Twitter and close enough to people on the inside to be knowledgable.
Those who attack the medical establishment often cite the confusing advice about masks in the early months of the pandemic. Gottlieb says both CDC and FDA relied on their experience in dealing with flu epidemics, assuming that Covid-19 would be like the flu, SARS and MERs. They were tracking respiratory cases using their "syndrome" system, which relied on reports filtering up from Medicare and hospitals, using statistical analysis to try to determine if there was a surge in cases which might mean a new virus. The system had defects--it was after-the-fact--and not precise.
Dr. Birx made much of the failure to identify asymptomatic spread. Gottlieb also notes the problem, with an interesting consequence. Some early cases, which we now recognize as resulting from asymptomatic spread which isn't usual in influencza, were instead explained by fomites--the idea that the virus was deposited on surfaces. This meant the early emphasis on handwashing and cleaning surfaces, and the discouraging of masks.
Lyman Stone is an ex-USDA bureaucrat with an interesting take on many things (demography, religion being two of the big ones). This morning he tweeted things weren't too bad.
the world is actually fairly okay. there is no compelling reason for anyone with a job in a rich country to be miserable and angry all the time. inequality mostly doesn't impact most peoples' daily lives. the best evidence we have suggests it's been falling for a few years now. https://t.co/yg3vZtJTLB
— Lyman Stone 石來民 🦬🦬🦬 (@lymanstoneky) October 27, 2022
That was in response to a tweet by Claudia Sahm, an economics professor with a dismal outlook, at least today.
Today the sun is out after a spell of cloudy days, so my mood is improved. I'd claim now the world is in better shape than ever before. People are living longer and better, with more access to more options and more information than ever before. That's especially true of what we used to call the Third World.
I may be one of the few who remember the scandal which plagues the Clinton administration in the 1990s. No, not Monica, but Charlie Trie and John Huang.
Anyone interested can read this collection of Post articles, For those too lazy busy to do the reading, the capsule summary is that the Democrats accepted donations from various individuals, either Chinese or Chinese-Americans, which might have violated or indeed did violate laws on permissible political donations. The Republicans pointed at sleaze, claimed the money originated in China, were intended as bribes for favorable treatment and friendly attitudes by the government, and must be investigated by a special counsel.
If I recall, because I'm too lazy to research, the scandal eventually petered out with. Some cases ended in not guilty findings, some in plea bargains, some were more smoke than fire, some were fuzzy areas in the laws.
I'm now reading Andrew Weissmann's "Where the Law Ends: Inside the Mueller Investigation". I'll comment on the book another time, but what's striking is the degree to which the Trump campaign welcomed Russian aid, specifically the hacks of the DNC and DCC. Granted there's a difference between money and other kinds of aid, but I don't remember Republicans criticizing the campaign for doing so.
Either the Post or the Times today had a piece on the effects of using primaries to select candidates, with the main argument being that primaries widened the gaps between parties and increased partisanship. I don't have the patience to find the url.
The overall thesis may be right; I won't dispute it. But one sentence I did dispute--describing the time frame during which primaries became important. It wasn't the 1980s, but earlier.
For example, in the 1960 campaign, JFK and Hubert Humphrey were the main competitors in several state primaries. I acknowledge not every state held presidential primaries, but effectively JFK won the nomination by winning the primaries. In 1960, and before, the selection process was a composite: "party bosses", the man in a given state or often a major citywho could sway the selection of delegates to the convention, and "favorite sons" usually the governor or highest elected official in the state who also could sway delegates. (The "bosses" were behind the scenes; the "sons" might or might not have dreams of becoming the nominee themselves.)
Today states use primaries, in 1960 the bosses and sons relied on the primaries to assess the strength of candidates, rather like polls today.
Marginal Revolution pointed to this Ezra Klein piece on housing for the homeless in LA. Interesting, encapsulated for me in this quote from one of the mayoral candidates.:
Funders don’t want to give you general operating costs. They want you to solve their pet issue. What I always wanted was money for general operating costs.”
She's talking about her experience as an NGO exec, but the problem is universal. Every problem which Klein identifies, and there are so many neither he nor his readers will come away optimistic, is the result of proponents having tunnel vision, pushing a good idea into law or the courts without reckoning for the effects.
Liberals criticize capitalism for ignoring exogenous effects of the market economy. We also need to recognize that our good ideas will also have exogenous effects.
I've commented on it before. Some bits:
Here's the first of a thread in which Henry Farrell updates the thesis of a previous book in light of today's developments:
1. Six stories in the last few days about the weaponization of the world economy. It's very strange for @ANewman_forward and me to see the logic of our 2019 article (and forthcoming book - Underground Empire - Holt 2023) playing out. https://t.co/Z742KIljsl
— Henry Farrell (@henryfarrell) October 12, 2022
The thread is interesting. But I've a "but". I remember back in the early Clinton administration when there was a big controversy over export controls on 486 chips (the hot PC cpu of the day). The Times made a big thing out of it, in my view misunderstanding the problems of coordinating regulations between two cabinet departments. Anyhow, Moore's law quickly made the 486 a dead issue. It suggests to me that the "weaponization" which Farrel describes might be a bit more impressive on the surface, than it is when you get into the details.
Bottom line: It's difficult for bureaucrats to keep up with innovation; even more difficult for Congress to keep up.
Just getting back to the blog after a trip to NY Sheep and Wool.
Noted something this morning on the holes in the sanctions on Russia--Greek oil tankers are getting a break. The article referenced the large role Greeks play in oil shipments.
Led me to think of Aristotle Onassis, of Jackie fame. Also of an early scandal after WWII when Greeks picked up cheap ships from war surplus.
And finally to the Iliad and Greek ships. I wonder, has Greece always been prominent in shipping since Troy? Is that culture, or is it geography?
Remember that TFG had big problems with the Ford aircraft carrier--the latest and best USN warship? He told the Navy to go back to steam-powered catapualts instead of the electromagnetic ones they were pioneering. Navy ignored him.
Just imagine what he'll think of the new Abrams tank the Army is getting. It's a hybrid--I guess on the model of a prius though this doesn't give details. Presumably the diesel (rather than gas turbine) drives a generator to the battery which feeds electric motors. Advantages in fuel consumption and a "silent" mode of operation.
Disadvantages, which the TFG will note: it's new and therefore will having bugs.
Had a brief discussion about whether Republican victories in 2022 and 2024 would destroy our democracy. My position is firm: No.
Why? First I define our democracy as continuing to have free elections with winners taking office and losers leaving. (I'm not worrying here about restrictions on the ballot in any real sense.)
Next I believe in what I can call the "force of the job", which I think we saw working in 2020 and which will continue. Theoretically our allegiance is to the United States, but in reality our allegiance is to ourselves, our family, neighbors, etc. But part of our allegiance to ourselves is the widespread desire to do the job. In the end in 2020 election officials did the job, judges and courts did the job, the police on Capitol Hill did the job, the military did the job--across the board people did the job.
My prediction is twofold:
Had to buy a clothes washer today. Our old Magtag broke after 23 years so we were plunged into a world of many options; many new manufacturers (LG, Samsung, Medea) since the last time we bought, new alternatives (Consumer Reports seems to recommend front loaders now, not the top loading impeller used by our old machine, but there are pros and cons to all. Prices are higher now. IIRC the last time we bought the price range was $250 to $800, and ours was right in the middle. This time the range seemed to be $450 to $1.5K, and our purchase towards the low end.
Passed up one option because it had too many options, too complicated for two older people, even though the salesman recommended it as the best value ($400 off the list price--I wonder how many are really sold at the list prices.)
All the choices made for a stressful day, but the choice is made, the money is paid, and the machine comes tomorrow.
I suspect I've written on the subject before, but the president just pardoned everyone convicted of marijuana possession under federal law, and recommended that governors do the same with regards to state law. I noticed in the media today a poll in which a majority of Americans, a sizeable majority, favored the legalization of marijuana.
I'm ambivalent. I think the argument from alcohol and prohibition is strong. I've no experience with marijuana, though I'm open to using edibles if my arthritis gets worse. But a question: if you legalize marijuana, what else: heroin, crack, etc.? I'm not sure where society could draw the line.
My major concern is change. It will take some time for society to implement legalization. So far it appears that different states have taken different approaches with perhaps different results. Ideally in the eyes of this bureaucrat when the first couple states started legalizing the feds would have set up a cross-agency group (i.e DOJ, HHS, FDA, etc.) to track how the states were approaching it. It would share experiences and study results.
We've learned to live with alcohol, not perfectly, but we accept the costs, the addictions, the accidents. But we've been coping with alcohol for decades; we may need a similar time for pot.
I understand Microsoft is ending the free upgrade from Win 10 to Win 11 tomorrow. So I went through the process to upgrade the desktop my wife and I share. Eventually I got it done, but next time I think I'll just buy a new desktop for her.
[Note: I drafted this several days ago but didn't publish. Then I wrote yesterdays post. Although I never added the links, I ]
I've played with the idea that our big sort resulted from the proliferation of housing developments after WWII.
Today from pieces in my two newpapers I'm more persuaded by another factor:
They identify four areas of gradually deepening division: economic inequality, political partisanship, and questions of identity relating to race, as well as gender and sexuality.From wikipedia:
Additionally, since the 1970s, income disparities have disproportionately increased in metropolitan areas due to the concentration of high-skilled jobs in urban zones.[10][11] For example, even though New York is the state with the highest inequality levels in the country, the upstate part of the state has a much lower rate of income inequality than the downstate, as the economy of New York City (Gini index 0.5469)[12] is highly reliant on high-salary earners.[11] States with better financial development tend to be more unequal than those with worse financial opportunities, but the trends go in the opposite directions for high-income and low-income states, with the former actually seeing more equality up to a certain level of development, beyond which the inequality rises non-linearly
Can't find sources for my guesses. This is the closest, showing the ratio of women to men in rural areas went from 99.8 in 1990 to 99.0 in 2000. My guesses are:
Who knew that we have government bureaucrats worrying about our actual borders, as opposed to migration across them? FCW had a piece on Trump's infamous Schedule F, which described the two agencies which had reported their plans to OPM. One was OMB, as you'd expect. The other:
Over at the U.S. International Boundary and Water Commission, only five of the agency’s 234 employees were slated to move into Schedule F. The agency submitted its plan on Jan. 19, 2021, and OPM was unable to review the proposal before Biden rescinded the executive order.
Officials at the agency, which applies boundary and water treaties between the U.S. and Mexico, said the expedited hiring and firing offered by Schedule F was appealing to senior leaders, particularly given the location of its offices in remote locations along the southern border.
FCW reports on a White House deal about improving the nation's health and food situation. Reading between the lines it sounds as if some of the plans involve USDA and other agencies sharing data so they can improve participation in USDA food programs.
That may be mistaken, but 30 years ago there was a law restricting our ability to share data. I wonder whether that's changed or is now being ignored, or maybe privacy advocates no longer wish to oppose such deals?
Reading Dr. Deborah Brix's "Silent Invasion", her memoir of her work in the pandemic. It's basically chronological, and I'm just about 2 weeks in.
She is trying to maneuver among the various camps in the Trump administration:
Putting together this Powerline post, which includes a graph projecting China's population to 2100, which shows it crashing. Meanwhile Mr. Kilcullen in his book notes the "little emperor" syndrome, with parents and grandpartents focusing attention on their one child/grandchild. He argues that it will make China's leaders very reluctant to incur casualties in a war.
An article on "equity", which is tl:dr, but it's a hook for a memory--we're coming up on the 55th anniversary of the launch of Sputnik, which set off a panic. The wikipedia article is rather narrowing focused. My memory is that education was impacted as well--sputnik was seen as reflecting weaknesses in US schools, particularly in math and science. There was also a perceived lack of focus on talent; education schools were seen as under the influence of John Dewey and progressive education.
Part of the response to Sputnik was the 1958 National Defense Education Act, which included student aid and an emphasis of science.
We didn't talk about equity back then, but it seems the pendulum has swung the other way now.
Here's an assessment of the impact of growing organic cotton in India. It seems the result is not higher yields (no surprise) but the benefits which are less tangible. I note the support from a number of NGO's and the psychic rewards of being involved in something of a crusade, or at least a good cause, rather than just grubbing for the added dollar.
A cynic would believe that those who chase the monetary rewards will, in the long run, win out.
I blogged previously about David Kilcullen's book. Not done yet.
Interesting discussion of the Russia military, particularly in light of their performance in the Ukraine. One striking bit is the idea of "escalate to descalate"--fast, aggressive strikes to establish a position where resistance is unlikely.
One example was the Georgian war. It seems as if the original Russian plan for Ukraine 2022 was the same--a fast strike to decapitate Ukrainian leadership, take Kyviv before NATO could respond. There's also the possible use of nuclear weapons--small nukes (300 ton TNT equivalent)--use them early betting that retaliation will be hindered by the need for an alliance to coordinate.
Kilcullen describes the evolution of the Russian military since the breakup of the Soviet Union, but might have been surprised that the reforms haven't been as effective in Ukraine as they were thought to be.
NYTimes recently ran an article, seeming to show that because of their political clout, Hasidic schools spend most of their time on religious subjects, slighting the basics, which mean their students, particularly boys, do not pass state exams. The article has led to a lot of discussion.
When you have a diverse society, we have a problem in drawing lines. Over my life the society has often backed off an original decision: no facial hair for military, no afros, no turbans for Sikhs, etc. The Amish do schooling up through 8th grade only, and don't participate in Social Security. There's no problem with the hijab and the burka, the sari and the whatever, though low-slung jeans that show underwear are, or were, controversial.
There's always been controversies over books in school, not to mention the behavior of teachers. No pregnant teachers in the past, no beards, etc. We once wanted books which embodied the Protestant version of Christianity. I don't remember whether, when we said the Lord's Prayer every morning in my school, whether we said "debts" or "trespasses".
There's always tension between the authority/teachings of the professional teacher and the authority/teachings of the parents (and these days, between parents who are separated or divorced).
I wonder how nations who are more diverse than the US, such as India or Indonesia, handle the lines. I doubt we'll ever get consensus on the lines.
They killed the last two American troops who were attacked from the air (towards the end of the Korean war.)
That factoid from David Kilcullen's The Dragons and the Snakes: How the Rest Learned to Fight the West. I'm about 100 pages in, finding it interesting and convincing. So far he's using an ecological/evolutionary approach to the recent history (say from 1991 on) of war, and the changes in how the opposing parties have changed their tactics and strategies, mostly learning from defeats.
One observation is that NSA can gather much more data than they can analyze. Terrorist/insurgent organizations don't rely on privacy laws, but on hiding in the woods of all the other data. I think that also applies to the average citizen--we get lost in the mass of data, so we don't need to be paranoid.
Ran into a projection of occupantions predicted to lose jobs over the next 10 years. Don't have the link. As I recall, data entry types, secretaries, and (personal/executive) assistants were big losers.
My guess is that's continuing a trend as the impact of computing and the internet affects office work. As we develop systems online more of the data entry is outsourced to the user, the customers. Even IRS may be moving in that direction. And the secretary/assistant category likely reflects moving work from "auxiliaries" to their "principals", both a move from formal communications (letters with multiple copies) to informal (email and texts with electronic copies) and the increased capabilities of software. Bottom line: people believe it's faster and more efficient to do their own email than to have an auxiliary do it; easier to arrange their own travel; easier to be available for texts and calls on cellphones with software tools for screening than to rely on human screeners.
There might also be a decline in the value of "servants" (which after all is what secretaries and assistants are) in signalling status. We don't notice it, but I think there may be a decline in the number of chauffeurs, butlers, chefs the rich have these days, at least compared to the very rich. There may be an exception for entertainers, like athletes and movie stars. The premium on the physical, both fitness and appearance, means it's worth paying for personal trainers, hairdressers, etc.
I always found Dan Drezner interesting to follow, on twitter, blogging, and in the Post. Now he's moved to Substack and is trying to drum up readership.
He offered three contrarian positions for consideration as possibly attracting interest.
Here's my comments:
Trump voters? May not be that interesting. Remember the yellow dog Democrats? We have rattlesnake Republicans, people who've always voted Republican and will continue to do so. I grew up in upstate NY where if you wanted a choice, you voted in the Republican primary. It took Goldwater's candidacy to break the hold, at least for a while.
Globalization? I'm too old to change from being a free trader. We don't yet know how to have a good safety net for those displaced by it, but I was one of the liberals in the 60's and 70's who opposed Ike's "trade, not aid" (IIRC). Turns out he was righter than we thought. I can't get past the changes in what we called the Third World.. Anti-globalism is just an example of the thermostatic effect on a world scale.
Pandemic northingburger? That's too obvious to be interesting, at least when confined to IR. Sociologically, a different story.
NYTimes newsletter from Nate Cohn discussing election polls, also whether the Clinton indictment was a possible parallel to the impact of Dobbs on the campaign.
In comments there I suggested that Sputnik was in some ways comparable--a surprise event, raising the importance of a new issue, close enough to impact the 1958 elections in which Dems did very well --48 House and 15 Senate.
It helped that there was a recession in 58 and Ike was in his second term. It set the stage for JFK's pledge to get the nation moving and for the (false) concerns about "missile gap."
Fairfax has recently banned plastic shopping bags. I've seen calculations of how many times you'd have to use a durable shopping bag of different types to balance the impact of plastic bags on the ecology. What the calculations miss is the cost of collecting bags from the landscape, and the seascape. which must easily make the durable bags worthwhile. Bottom line: you have to calculate the cleanup costs to have an accurate picture.
When in trouble or in doubt
Run in circles scream and shout.
Herman Wouk--Caine Mutiny
(My memory is Wouk made it seem like a quotation, but it seems it was original with him.)
For Politicians:
When in trouble or in doubt
Spend money any amount.
Saw a chart of earnings by field of study in a newspaper today. Interesting enough "history" earned more than computer programmer. (The thrust of the article was that students were being pushed towards STEM majors.)
Today in the NYTimes Magazine the ethics column written by Prof. Attiah has a letter from a young attorney-to-be, who will have $150K in student loans and dislikes the idea of working for a big firm where:
The salary would be enough for me to pay off my loans, help my family and establish a basic standard of living for myself — plus maybe own a house or even save for retirement, which would be impossible for me on a public-interest or government salary.
I'm not sure what the writer thinks a "basic standard of living" involves. FWIW new attorneys for the federal government start at about $56K (with locality adjustments).
An article in the Harvard Magazine described the Harvard Law experience of a woman who preceded RBG (Orin Kerr linked to it in a tweet). The author describes a class where women were grilled over past legal cases with language which would be embarassing. Hers was a case involving a farmer's ass (donkey) who got out onto the road. This happened in 1956, a year I remember well enough to know that "ass" was never mentioned in polite society; neither was "butt" for that matter, except in the context of cigarettes.
I've been struck by changes in language usage over the years--"ass" being one. These days it seems pretty common in the print media, much more so in entertainment. So I decided to do an ngram search. In America its frequency of usage seems to take off in the mid '90's, reaching a peak in 2014 and declining slightly since. (The British usage pattern differs.)
The other day the Times had an article discussing the composition of the cabinet selected by PM Truss, which notably had no white males in the top four positions. Rather buried in the depths of the article was this fact:
In part, the gains in government by people of color reflect social change and advances through education. On average, ethnic minority pupils have outperformed white Britons at school in recent years. In every year from 2007 to 2021, white pupils had the lowest entry rate into higher education.
I'm used to looking at the various breakdowns of statistics about our society and seeing what I might call the "usual suspects"--that is, Euro-Americans or Asian-Americans at the top, if the statistic relates to something good (wealth, income, etc.) and Afro-Americans and Hispanic-Americans at the bottom. The positions reversed if the statistic relates to crime, helath, life expectancy, etc.
We see that so often we, at least I, start thinking it's the expected order, which is just a step away from being "natural".
But this statistic from the UK upsets those expectations. And it raises the key question: what the hell is going on; why the difference in societies?
As part of a seminar on historiography I had to read Sidney Hook's book with this title. Still have the paperback somewhere in the house, and I can remember the crimson cover, but not anything of its contents.
The issue is and was whether the individual can influence the course of history. The answer I give now, whether or not it represents Hook's conclusions: it depends, sometimes "yes", sometimes "no".
It partly depends on the level of analysis. A story today in the Post on the death and burial of a WWII paratrooper, who fought heroically and was part of the force liberating a slave labor/concentration camp, where he formed a connection with a 17-year old inmate. He began working for peace. Did he change the world? No,
Gorbachev died the other day--he changed history. You can safely say the Cold War would not have ended in the way it did if any other communist leader had been in office.
I had jury duty for one month when I lived in DC. A big room of us gathered in the morning, waiting around for a panel to be called or for the manager to call it a day. It was boring, but the juries were interesting. I think I was called for 4 cases, got on three juries. The fourth was a marijuana case. I took the position that I couldn't be objective and was excused by the judge. I look back on that now with some amazement--I think in the same situation today (though I'm too old for Fairfax juries) I probably wouldn't say a thing. Did my opinion of pot change? Perhaps. But I don't remember ever believing in legalizing it; decriminalize it was, I think, my likely position in the early 1970's. These days I don't know; I've probably voted to legalize it but I don't know if it's the right answer. It's the popular position these days, but I'm not totally convinced it's working out.
Bottomline, I'm less confident now, because I'm older, have seen more, have changed my opinions more.
How does this tie to historians? A juror is required to put aside one's personal feelings and convictions and become an objective trier of fact. That's what I couldn't commit to back then. I'd argue a historian as a teacher is required to do the same; as a research scholar also.
Matt Yglesias has a piece at substack on the need for robots, attacking the thesis that robots will take away workers jobs.
I didn't study it, but it did cause me to think about farming and robots. My impression is that robots and AI are making rapid progress. Robotic milking in dairy, self-driving tractors, flame-throwing weeders, big data and precision agriculture. At least in the world of farming I don't see robots taking jobs. What seems to be happening is two-fold:
Jane Smiley is an award-winning novelist; her book "A Thousand Acres" is King Lear updated to 1980's Iowa. Here she reviews "Bet the Farm", describing a couple's return to an Iowa farm owned by her father-in-law. It came out last year. Smiley's review annoys me, but I did put a hold on it with the Fairfax library.
I wonder if there any good books by someone who's been farming their entire life, doing it full time without a sideline providing cash income?
The title is a phrase from a libertarian team's take on how to improve our politics and government. It's mentioned in passing as self-evident truth, without any suggestions that I see to make Congress more effective.
I take exception, of course. I am, after all, a bureaucrat.
The problem is not runaway agencies, not usually, but the failure of Congress to act so they either:
An ex-Marine writes here about the difficulties in properly cleaning/maintaining weapons. I wasn't a Marine, but the piece seems valid to me.
It struck a chord because I remember the captured soldier in the early days of the Iraq war. For a while she was made an icon of the fighting woman. Eventually it turned out that her weapon jammed so she never fought. I had sympathy for her. I don't think I ever cleaned my weapon in Vietnam. As a matter of fact, there was a screwup in getting my departure orders to me, so it was a mad dash to get to Camp LBJ and go through out-processing, one step of which was turning in my weapon. When I tried to, the guy (spec-4 maybe?) refused to take it until I cleaned it. I tried to explain the situation, my flight was due out shortly, but he was adamant. Finally I threw some money at him >$50<$100 and he agreed to take it.
I made my flight.
(It seems possible that the Russian soldiers fighting in the Ukraine have been as lax in their maintenance as I was. )
