Author Archives: rdmyers75@hotmail.com

What’s really new with the JFK assassination?

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You can read this Jacobin article on new document releases and still be confused, and this is is not an unbiased objective journalistic source. But I am just going to state what I think is by far the most likely scenario: The murder of JFK was orchestrated by anti-Castro Cuban exiles with ties to the CIA. Oswald was manipulated by those elements into either participating in the murder or just being in the right place at the right time to be framed for it. He was then assassinated in turn by an agent with clear CIA ties, because he could not be allowed to talk. He might have been a CIA asset at some point, or he might have been a Soviet asset at some point, or he might have been a double agent for either side. It doesn’t particularly matter. Civilian governments ever since have pretty much given the U.S. military industrial complex what they want in exchange for at least publicly staying out of domestic politics.

If this is the most likely scenario, the puzzle is why it is still so threatening today. Individuals involved at the time have to be close to the end of their natural lifespans at this point. Why is it so threatening to the CIA or other government organizations? They could just say yeah, bad things went down during the Cold War and we’re sorry and we are the good guys now. Even if that isn’t true and the dirty truth is that civilians are not really in charge of our government, they can still lie and use the lie to get away with the crimes of today.

But there is one more possibility – maybe the Oswald thing went down the way they say it did, in a bizarre fluke that denies logic and common sense, and that is why we will never be able to make sense of it and will keep searching forever for patterns that are not there.

climate change, migration, and right-wing politics

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Climate change is already causing displacement in poorer countries in Central and South America, Africa, and the Middle East, and this is clearly already fueling the rise of anti-immigration politics in developed countries including the United States and western Europe. The rational response, beyond dealing with climate change, is two-fold and fairly obvious. (1) Rational immigration policies based on the economic needs of the more developed countries, and (2) the more developed countries ponying up to help people in the less developed ones where they live.

The labor-market shortages in advanced economies are not some temporary or short-run phenomenon. In the US, a recent Brookings Institution study documents a shortfall of 2.4 million workers as of December 2022, relative to the 12-month average ending in February 2020. Most of this decline would have happened without the pandemic, owing to changes in the age and education of the population. But there was also a decline in the average weekly hours worked, producing an additional labor-supply shortfall equivalent to another 2.4 million people…

A well-designed immigration policy that allows for the controlled entry of willing workers, and that helps integrate them into host countries, would go a long way toward easing labor-market tightness and preventing humanitarian tragedies caused by smugglers’ shameless exploitation of migrants and refugees. But policymakers will need to look beyond the next election cycle and rise above partisan political interests.

At the same time, it is neither possible nor desirable to move the entire populations of low-income countries to America and Europe, so it is imperative to reject short-sighted economic nationalism. Advanced economies must do more to address the huge imbalances that still exist across the world economy. Reducing global inequality is essential to a sustainable future.

Project Syndicate

This is rational and fairly obvious, and yet politically very, very difficult. Anti-immigrant sentiment and fears over job displacement are common. And anti-immigrant sentiment is not just among people who consider themselves “native born” for several generations. Recent immigrants do not always support the idea of more people following them, especially if they perceive that the more recent immigrants might have an easier path or that they may have to compete with them. Combine that with legitimate fears of job loss and low wage growth among the general population, and sprinkle in some right-wing assholes, and the general apathy toward foreign aid when we have plenty of problems at home, and you have a pretty potent coalition. On the other side, big business generally favors immigration because they like low wages. So maybe there is something there you can work with, but unfortunately on this one issue it seems like politicians pay serious attention to the perceptions of voters and not just deep-pocketed big business. Maybe big business could divert some of their propaganda efforts from voters to support war and pollution and instead work on this issue. Or what about declaring war on climate change. That worked for drugs and poverty, right…ruh-roh!

North Atlantic sea surface temperature anomaly

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This year’s ocean temperatures are being described as “unprecedented”, “off the charts”, and “beyond extreme”. I have to stare at this plot for awhile to get it, but basically the 0 line is the long-term average, presumably over 50 years or so. Then each individual line shows the difference between actual temperature and that average, for one year, over the course of the year. So not only is the departure of more than 1.5 C in June 2023 way above the average, it is way above any other extremes seen over the last 50 years.

Daily sea surface temperature anomaly (°C) averaged over the northeastern Atlantic region during 2023 (black line) and for previous years from 1979 to 2022 (red and blue lines). Data source: ERA5. Credit: Copernicus Climate Change Service/ECMWF.  

The article gives physical explanations, including El Nino, changes in ocean currents, and changes in wind currents. It says climate change is a factor but doesn’t really reach conclusions on how much of a factor. I think it almost certainly has to be a factor. But the important question to me is whether this is an extreme fluctuation the likes of which we are going to start seeing occasionally, or the start of some runaway trend we are going to start seeing frequently and may even get worse? The article does not suggest anything like the latter. Tipping points concern me – could this be an early warning that we have hit some tipping point in terms of runaway methane release for example? The article doesn’t suggest that. Let’s hope not. If it is, it would be an “unprecedented” planetary emergency and we would need to pull out the stops and try any and all of those risky geoengineering ideas we have been hearing about, because “risky” is by definition less risky than “certain doom”. Let’s hope not. The fluctuation does appear to be subsiding, so we can see where we are next year around this time.

Operation Atlantic Resolve

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We hear that the U.S. is mobilizing about 3,000 reservists for deployment to Europe. I wondered how troop levels now compare to the past. Here are a few facts and figures:

  • In the late 1950s, the U.S. had about 450,000 troops in Europe. (from The Week)
  • For “most of the Cold War”, the U.S. had around 330,000 and NATO as a whole around 900,000. The Warsaw Pact had around 1.2 million. (same source as above)
  • After 1991, U.S. troops were reduced to around 66,000. (same source as above)
  • In 2018, it was around 65,000. This is a bit surprising to me – so even though “Operation Atlantic Resolve” started when Russia invaded Crimea in 2014, troop levels were still maintained around where they were during the supposedly peaceful 1990s.
  • Currently in 2023, the U.S. has around 100,000 troops in Europe. (Politico)
  • I tried to figure out how many troops Russia has in Ukraine, but I found this number elusive. CNN says around 500 battalions, and just from random web searching a battalion varies but could be something like 500 soldiers. So multiply these very rough numbers you get 250,000 troops.

So the headline about 3,000 reservists seems like a pretty small number in the grand scheme. What are the troops in Europe actually doing. Going back to the The Week article (from 2022):

The US will establish a permanent headquarters of the US 5th Army Corps in Poland, acting as a forward command post and army garrison headquarters. There will be an additional brigade stationed in Romania to enhance Nato forces across the eastern flank, alongside other manoeuvrable US army units. The US will also increase deployments of special operations forces, armoured vehicles, aviation and air defence to strengthen the security of the region.

The emphasis is on combined operations with other Nato allies, using forces that have enhanced flexibility and combat readiness. The US will also deploy two additional F-35 fighter bomber squadrons to the UK and two additional destroyers at Rota naval base in Spain.

The Week

Did an alien spaceship land in the ocean, and can we find it?

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Yes and yes, according to at least one serious astronomer, Avi Loeb, who was also a strong proponent of Oumuamua being an alien spaceship. Although the fierce debate over that one might be hard to resolve with hard evidence, Loeb is now looking for a specific object that crashed into the ocean in 2014.

Loeb co-authored another paper, this time with a student, Amir Siraj, suggesting that the meteorite was yet another interstellar object, based on its speed and orbital trajectory. Later, the Department of Defense issued a statement in support of Loeb and Siraj’s hypothesis. The statement reads, in part, “Dr. Joel Mozer, the Chief Scientists of Space Operations Command, the United States Space Force service component of the U.S. Space Command, reviewed analysis of additional data available to the Department of Defense related to this finding. Dr. Mozer confirmed that the velocity estimate reported to NASA is sufficiently accurate to indicate an interstellar trajectory.”

Having locked down an interstellar origin, Loeb set about recovering any remains of the object, now dubbed Interstellar Meteor 1 (IM1). He’s interested in IM1 not only because it’s a piece of material from beyond our solar system, but because he thinks there’s a good chance — or he’s at least operating on the assumption — that it’s a piece of technology made by aliens.

Syfy.com

It’s interesting to think that we might find evidence of aliens in outer space, and yet argue over it or never fully believe it. On the other hand, if someone found incontrovertible evidence in the ocean and made it public before a government or private entity could stop them, that could be the most interesting thing that ever happened.

Artist’s impression of ʻOumuamua (Weryk 2017)

Austin Powers – Rocket Scene

Is the UK’s NHS collapsing?

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Here in the USA, we hear talk of imperial collapse. In the UK, everyone pretty much agrees that the empire collapsed 70 years ago, and yet the nation/republic seems to march on. They seem to be in a foul mood though. Consider this blog post, “(Why) The Death of the NHS Is a Parable of Civilizational Collapse“:

You can’t get a doctor’s appointment, unless you’re really lucky, or incredibly persistent — you’ll get an automatic message telling you no appointments are available. Ambulance? Good luck with that — they can take hours to arrive, if at all. Think about that, though, in larger terms. What does it mean to…be this painfully, jaw-droppingly, infuriatingly stupid? To give up an NHS? 90% of humanity, maybe more, would kill to enjoy such a thing. The Roman and the Gaul and the ancient Egyptian could scarcely have dreamt of such a, to them, miraculous institution. But Brits…LOL. What the…

Umair Haque, Eudaimonia and Co

So that’s a blogger’s opinion. Let’s look at two British papers, the Independent and the Guardian.

Dr Phil Banfield, chairman of council at the British Medical Association, described the “frighteningly common” situation where dying patients are forced to sleep in a corridor or on a chair while “hospitals (are) failing and falling apart and ambulances (are) stacked outside emergency departments”.

Independent

Okay, so it sounds like a series of political administrations has been underfunding it, and outcomes are not living up to the high standards and expectations of the past. But the article goes on to say they have a plan to fix it.

The NHS has lost its prestigious ranking as the best health system in a study of 11 rich countries by an influential US thinktank. The UK has fallen from first to fourth in the Commonwealth Fund’s latest analysis of the performance of the healthcare systems in the nations it studied. Norway, the Netherlands and Australia now provide better care than the UK, it found. The findings are a blow to the NHS, which had been the top-rated system in the thinktank’s two previous reports in 2017 and 2014. The US had by far the worst-rated system, despite spending the most on care.

Guardian

So it’s still in the middle of the pack of the most functional modern countries, but slipping. If your benchmark is the laughably cost-ineffective and inequitable U.S. system, it is still pretty good.

If the UK can’t do it, should the U.S. even consider the model? We do have the Veterans Administration which gets pretty high marks, and we have a system for active duty military, I guess, although I don’t know much about that. (It would be interesting for someone to compare just the VA to other countries’ systems if nobody has done that. Somebody probably has.) And then we have Medicare, which is a massive direct subsidy to the private health care system (which does nothing but complain about it), which gets reasonable marks, and Medicaid, which is a massive indirect subsidy that gets terrible marks. Still, the U.S. government does better when it is just handing out money than when it is trying to build enduring public institutions. My proposal would be to scale up Medicare to everyone (but we voted against the politician who would really have fought for this). The government could also just create a standardized medical records and billing system and force private industry to use it, or just force everyone to use whatever is used for Medicare. This would take a lot of inefficiency out of the system and maybe reduce the bureaucratic overhead of the private system down closer to the public system (yes, I meant what I said there!) while keeping whatever benefits we think the profit motive provides (those ambulances sure do arrive fast in the U.S.!), and eliminating the insane inequities in the system. This would also get preventive medicine, addiction and mental health treatment out to the people who really sorely need it, which might go a long way toward improving our intolerable drug overdoses, suicide, and even violence problems. So it would really be a win-win for almost everyone EXCEPT the finance industry, which of course owns our corrupt politicians and makes sure we can’t have nice things.

June 2023 in Review

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Most frightening and/or depressing story: Before 2007, Americans bought around 7 million guns per year. By 2016, it was around 17 million. In 2020, it was 23 million. Those are the facts and figures. Now for my opinion: no matter how responsible the vast majority of gun owners are, you are going to have a lot more suicides, homicides, and fatal accidents with so many guns around. And sure enough, firearms are now the leading cause of death in children according to CDC. That makes me sick to think about.

Most hopeful story: It makes a lot of sense to tax land based on its potential developed value, whether it has been developed to that level or not. This discourages land speculation, vacant and abandoned property in cities while raising revenue that can offset other taxes.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: The U.S. may have alien spacecraft at Area 51 after all. Or, and this is purely my speculation, they might have discovered anti-gravity and want to throw everybody else off the scent.

Americans may value walkable communities after all?

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The other day I lamented that the nation’s population and economic center of gravity seems to be moving toward less walkable and sustainable areas. So if people and companies are voting that way through their market transactions, what do we make of a survey where a majority of people self-report that they do in fact want to live in walkable communities, and real estate markets tend to reflect this. It’s a logic puzzle, but I’ll offer a few thoughts.

First of all, when people are polled on what they want in a house and a community, they also say they want ample free parking. It sounds great to have ample free parking AND walkability, but the laws of geometry simply don’t allow this. This is because most cars are sitting still most of the time, you need large amounts of parking to accommodate peak demand (for example, a mall during holiday shopping season), and cars need a lot of room to maneuver in addition to the space they take up when they are parked or trying to get from point A to point B. People do not understand this – when everybody has a car, the space required to accommodate the cars requires things to get too far apart to also have walkability. People walk less and less gets spent on walking infrastructure, and it becomes a vicious cycle.

Geometrically speaking, the only ways to solve this conundrum might be alternative vehicles such as bicycles and golf carts which don’t need so much room to maneuver and can be parked very efficiently. The problem is, these vehicles are not safe to be in around high-speed highway vehicles and trucks. So all these forms of transport really need their own lanes and signals to make it work. This is way too much change and perceived expense for America’s can’t-do urban planning crowd. And the public tends to turn on anything they see as infringing their freedom to drive fast and park anywhere they want for free. No matter what they say in a survey.

Linear cities might theoretically work. This seems very science-fiction, but you could maybe have a nice skinny walkable city with a sea of parking lots on one side of it, so everybody is within easy walking distance of everything they need including their car. But in this case, the only reason to own a car would be to go on an inter-city trip, and rail or buses would make more sense. If anyone knows of a previously undeveloped continent where this can be tried, let me know.

Gentrification, perceived and/or actual, is another issue. What I see in Philadelphia is that clean, safe, walkable, green neighborhoods with good schools are in very short supply. Prices get bid up for things that are in short supply, so wealthier people live in these areas. Wealthier people are also more vocal about demanding infrastructure and services from their government. So they demand, and they get. Meanwhile, less well-to-do neighborhoods notice all this, and they complain. The government can’t or won’t spend the money to provide excellent services and infrastructure to all neighborhoods, so a very convenient and cheap solution is to provide them to nobody. The only beneficiaries are slum lords and owners of nuisance businesses like junkyards and building material warehouses in the middle of residential neighborhoods (yes, I have somewhere very specific in mind when I bring this up), some of whom are politicians or in bed with politicians. This is all a downward spiral.

making $$$ as a dog walker

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Sure, I thought. Dog walker is the kind of job teenagers make a few bucks at here and there. But compare the hourly pay for taking care of pets to the hourly pay to taking care of children. It is similar (according to one source linked to below, $13-20 for 20 minutes, $17-27 for 30 minutes, and $26-37 for 60 minutes, $39-59 for overnight), and surely it is lower risk and lower effort. I am not suggesting we neglect our fine furry friends, of course. I am suggesting that the pets will be less whiny and needy and able to complain to their human “parents” that you did not cater to their every whim every second. And I am thinking that if you convince someone to let you walk their dog and they think you do a bad job, the worst they are likely to do is not hire you again.

Where there’s a market, someone will develop an app to connect buyers to sellers. And this is probably the smartest business idea of all – being the middle man. Anyway, two apps you can sign up for are Rover and Wag. So, you can potentially make some money with this, and it seems easier and lower risk to me than taking care of a child or older person, risking your life and vehicle as a delivery person, or taking in humans overnight through something like Airbnb.

The New New South

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This article in Bloomberg gives some hard numbers on migration of U.S. population and business from the Northeast to the Southeast and Gulf states. It’s a long term trend, but it seems to have blown wide open during the pandemic. Although I actually have a soft spot for the south and the more positive aspects of its culture, I am disheartened by this trend in some other ways. People are moving into areas that sea level rise, coastal storms, inland storms, and extreme heat are expected to devastate in the coming decades. And say goodbye to the idea of walkable cities – these cities and states are the poster children for sprawl and automobile-dependence. We see in the headlines that insurance companies are starting to pull out of some of these areas, and the government may need to step in with more subsidy programs like the National Flood Insurance Program – in other words, the government may need to decide if it wants to support unsustainable development in these areas, and if so, we may need a national sea level rise and hurricane insurance program, and national thunderstorm insurance program, and a national fire insurance program. We will have to pay for this, or else go further into debt, and it will become one more reason why we can’t have nice things like health care, childcare, and equal access to high-quality education.

On the other hand, I am sitting here in Philadelphia, one of the most walkable northeastern cities and it is expensive, dangerous and just DIRTY AND BROKEN. And our voters just seemingly chose to keep it this way for at least four more years by re-electing the same if-it’s-not-invented-here-we can’t-do-it leadership that got us to this point. Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and DC are all coastal cities so I can’t argue that we have a leg up over the south in this area. And the U.S. Army Corps just came through with upgraded coastal flood protection for Houston.