Samizdat USA

  We are repeatedly told that the political divide in the US is as great now as it was in the years leading up to the civil war. A Google search on the topic yields these headlines: Trump leaves America at its most divided since the Civil War, CNN, Jan 19, 2021; Analyst says US is most divided since Civil War, The Hill, Oct 3, 2018; Is the US really heading for a second civil war?, The Guardian, Jan 9, 2022; and Biden says US more divided than at any time since the Civil Was, Fox News, June 24, 2021. This list goes on and it might be so or maybe not. But, most of the analysis behind these headlines misses the point. The divide, such as it is, is framed in terms of hyper-partisan politics. And clearly the policy differences between the parties now are more than squabbles over taxes, defense spending, social welfare programs and such. The divide is about the form and shape of the Union going forward. Until now it’s been hidden in fog and shadows. The Covid-19 pandemic has broug...

The Climate Control Knob  September 17     United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change most recent assessment report attributes all of the roughly 1.0 ᵒC temperature rise since 1850, the end of the Little Ice Age, human generated greenhouse gas emissions. Here’s what they say: “The likely range of total human caused global surface temperature increase from1850–1900 to 2010—2019 is 0.8 ᵒ C to 1.3 ᵒC, with a best estimate of 1.07ᵒC. It is likely that well-mixed GHGs (greenhouse gasses) contributed a warming of 1.0ᵒC to 2.0ᵒC, other human drivers (principally aerosols) contributed to a cooling of 0.0ᵒC to 0.8ᵒC, natural drivers changed global surface temperatures by -0.1ᵒC to 0.1ᵒC, and internal variability changed it by -0.2ᵒC to 0.2ᵒC.” What’s more they’ve pinned the “best estimate” of equilibrium climate sensitivity to a doubling of atmospheric CO 2 at 3.0ᵒ C.   “Based on multiple lines of evidence, the very likely range of equilibrium clim...

A cloud of disillusion is upon us and is manifest under various disparate names – Antifa, BLM, Proud Boys, and others. And it’s likely the larger of the two current epidemics. The one is a physical virus that will largely fade after it runs its course. The other is a cancer eating away at our body politics that left unchecked will lead to dissolution or tyranny. The broad social discontent is not unfounded. The American middle class has been in decline for two generations. Between 2002 and 2012, in inflation adjusted dollars, for bottom 90% of family income fell from $34,067 to $30,439 while the top 10% saw an increase from $127,692 to $130,990. From that point the disparity accelerates to where at the very top family income nearly doubled. The top 0.01% income grew from $12,247,943 to $21,569,156. Since 2012 the imbalance has only gotten worse. The richest three Americans collectively have more wealth and the poorest 160 million Americans. Against that backdrop, at least a college...

  February 2, 2021  Somehow GameStop Short Squeeze almost perfectly describes the past twelve months. The common story line echoes that of David and Goliath where small investors take down a Wall Street hedge fund giant. We the People are David, and the giant is a rigged economy where the big players always win. The bigger story is one that exposes how fragile the system has become. The ongoing romance between industry giants and our governing authority has grown from a flirtatious Military/Industrial Complex into a fully consummated Wall Street/Beltway union. Only now the Wall Street interests are global multinational corporations and banks. Each serves the other, feeding off the native wealth of local economies.     Since the subprime of mortgage crisis of the late 1990s whole edifice has been supported by cheap money with consumer inflation held in check by outsourcing to the lowest global bidder. When Obama was inaugurated the total stock market capitalizati...

 January 28, 2021 Yesterday President Biden signed a number of executive orders to aggressively address the global "climate crisis." The overall policy goals are to achieve a carbon emission free electrical grid in fifteen years and an overall carbon neutral energy footprint in thirty. " President Biden set ambitious goals that will ensure America and the world can meet the urgent demands of the climate crisis, while empowering American workers and businesses to lead a clean energy revolution that achieves a carbon pollution-free power sector by 2035 and puts the United States on an irreversible path to a net-zero economy by 2050." These policy goals echo those established by the United Nations International Panel on Climate Change. Globally to meet these goals from now on every day we would have to build either 2.1 gigawatts on new nuclear power generation, 3000 two-megawatt wind turbines, cover 96 square miles of solar panels or some combination thereof.  Serious ...

January 25, 2021   In 2020 the world changed. Now in Twenty/Twenty-one, new words are familiar -- Dox and De-platform. Others have new meaning - Cancel. It seems the First Amendment is now conditional and subject to the whims of various institutions. Political correctness has spread from the confines of ivory towers into algorithms policing digital town squares where speech offenders can be de-platformed, cancelled or doxed depending upon the severity of their offenses. The Conservative Purge Isn’t Over, It’s Just Getting Cranked Up – Issues & Insights The River of Forgetfulness - American Greatness (amgreatness.com) Liberal authoritarians are the real threat to our democracy (nypost.com)