AUDIO:
POSSIBLE TOPICS: VOTETEXAS.GOV—Voter Information; REGISTER TO VOTE; APPLY FOR MAIL-IN BALLOT; Opinion — Trump Indicted For Jan. 6. At Last.; ‘We’ve Never Had A Year Quite Like This One’ — Montgomery County Facing $2.3B Tax Value Loss; Houston Will Face A Budget Crisis By 2025 Unless It Cuts Spending Next Year, City Controller Says; 99-Year-Old Trucking Company Yellow Shuts Down, Putting 30,000 Out Of Work; Opinion — The Pandemic Is Over. Excuses For Allowing Offices To Sit Empty Should End, Too.; Former Business Partner Says Hunter Biden Sold ‘Illusion’ Of Access To Joe Biden, Source Says; China’s Great Leap Backward: So Much For The Next Dominant Superpower; More
Welcome to Thinkwing Radio with Mike Honig where we discuss local, state, national, and international stories. My co-host, assistant producer and show editor is Andrew Ferguson.
Thinkwing Radio with Mike Honig (@ThinkwingRadio) is now on Wednesdays at 11AM (CT) or Thursdays at 6PM on KPFT 90.1 FM-HD2, Houston’s Community Media. You can also hear the show:
- Live online at KPFT.org (from anywhere in the world!)
- Podcast on your phone’s Podcast App
- Visiting Archive.KPFT.ORG
- An educated electorate is a prerequisite for a democracy.
- You’re entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts.
Except for timely election info, the extensive list of voting resources will now be at the end.
- MIKE: I don’t usually do media-dominating news stories, but I felt that this opinion piece by Jennifer Rubin in the Washington Post might be clarifying for some listeners:
- SPECIAL TOP ITEM: Opinion — Trump indicted for Jan. 6. At last.; By Jennifer Rubin, Columnist | WASHINGTONPOST.COM | August 1, 2023 at 8:40 p.m. EDT
- Some Americans thought this day would never arrive. Many doubted that Attorney General Merrick Garland possessed the boldness and wherewithal to overcome historically risk-averse career staff at the Justice Department. He certainly did not move swiftly to investigate the effort to concoct phony electoral college slates after the 2020 presidential election.
- But now, in one swift blow, special counsel Jack Smith has defended the rule of law — and made history.
- On Tuesday, a federal grand jury indicted former president Donald Trump for his role in the 2021 Capitol insurrection. Those concerned with the fate of our democracy should appreciate the magnitude of the charges laid out in the indictment. All Americans should savor a sense of relief that the Justice Department is seeking to hold everyone involved in the coup plot accountable under the law.
- Trump has spent his life evading responsibility for his conduct; within the space of a few months, he has been indicted three times in criminal court and held liable in civil court for defaming and sexually abusing writer E. Jean Carroll.
- After months of anticipation, the four-count indictment contains no exotic charges. Trump is charged under Title 18, Section 371, conspiracy to defraud the United States; Section 1512, obstruction of an official proceeding and conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; and Section 241, conspiracy to “to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person … in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States.” Six co-conspirators were not named but they appear to include former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark and attorneys John Eastman and Rudy Giuliani, who assisted in the phony elector scheme. Smith identified seven states in which the fake elector scheme operated.
- In describing the campaign to pressure Mike Pence to change the election results, the indictment contains specific allegations regarding the then-vice president’s pushback, including his conversations with Trump. Pence apparently gave Smith critical testimony. While not alleging that Trump instigated violence, the indictment asserts he “exploited” it. (By steering clear of this, Smith avoids having to show a connection with militia groups. Moreover, he avoids making Trump’s “Stop the Steal” speech a critical fact, which would have First Amendment implications.) It documents, as did the House Jan. 6 committee, Trump’s inflammatory tweet claiming Pence didn’t have the “courage to do what should have been done.”
- As former prosecutor Andrew Weissmann and Ryan Goodman, co-editor in chief of the Just Security legal forum, recently wrote, “If special counsel Smith can prove that Trump and one or more other people conspired to block the counting of ballots, that could serve as a stand-alone Section 241 charge in an indictment. If not its own charge, then the scheme to stop the counting of ballots can form the basis for the initial part of the overall charged scheme to deprive Americans’ voting rights in the 2020 presidential election.” In the indictment, Smith does not specify which people were deprived of the right to have their vote counted, but one can assume it includes those in states that Trump tried to steal.
- What’s most notable about the legal filing? Smith did not overcharge nor clutter the indictment with repetitive charges. He appears intent on keeping the case relatively simple. Simple does not mean unserious, however. Choosing not to bring the dicey charge of sedition or conspiracy to commit sedition, Smith nevertheless captures the enormity of the crime — the assault on our democracy.
- Now, unlike in the Mar-a-Lago documents case, Trump will face a judge he did not appoint, in a circuit that has shown little to no sympathy for his delaying tactics or absurd claims of privilege. The court will likely move expeditiously, although it remains an open question whether a trial can start, let alone finish, before Election Day in 2024.
- Three overriding issues should not be lost in the legal weeds.
- For starters, if Trump ran for president under the mistaken notion it would protect him from prosecution, it was a colossal miscalculation; instead, his decision forced Garland’s hand, drawing into the case an incorruptible, aggressive and determined prosecutor who, in roughly eight months on the job, filed two mammoth criminal cases against the former president. Had Trump not declared his candidacy, the Justice Department might still be “working it way up the chain” in its Jan. 6 investigation. Trump remains his own worst enemy.
- Second, Republicans have a fundamental choice: Do they nominate a thrice-indicted criminal defendant who sought to overthrow our democracy? General election voters will not avert their eyes from the blizzard of facts or the seriousness of the charges. If Republicans proceed with Trump, they become the party of insurrection and deceit. The GOP will be stained for a very long time by sticking by Trump’s side.
- Third, Smith has done his job — faster and more completely than even his most ardent supporters expected. The judge and jury will be expected to follow their oaths. But it is up to the voters to make certain an abjectly unfit character never assumes power. There is no shirking that obligation, no matter what the results in court.
- All praise certainly goes to Smith for halting the hemming, hawing and general lack of initiative evident in the Justice Department’s early approach to investigating Trump. Few prosecutors could have acted so quickly to gather a mass of testimony, successfully litigate complex issues in multiple venues and deliver gobsmacking “talking” indictments. It’s all the more remarkable since he had to bring a separate case based on the Espionage Act.
- But before memory fades, we cannot forget the work of the House Jan. 6 committee, its staff and then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who pushed forward by appointing two admirable Republicans to the committee after Republican leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif) yanked his members.
- It was the Jan. 6 committee that first presented the country with a coherent view of the coup, brought forth witnesses such as former Trump aide Cassidy Hutchinson and scores of other Republicans to describe the coup plotting; showed how Trump and his cohorts endangered the lives of poll workers; and explained that Trump knew militia men were armed when he egged them on to the Capitol. They put all the pieces together in a compelling narrative. Despite cynical pundits’ insistence that the hearings would be boring or repetitive, the committee kept Americans glued to the proceedings with well-crafted multimedia presentations. Tuesday’s indictment faithfully follows the narrative the committee laid out.
- After the entire country saw evidence of the conspiracy set forth by the committee, the Justice Department would have been hard pressed to justify declining to prosecute. In short, the Jan. 6 committee made this week’s jaw-dropping developments possible. Democracy is in their debt.
- ANDREW: Parts of this feel a bit over-congratulatory– I don’t know many people who were “glued” to the January 6 Committee hearings– but I am glad to hear that Trump has finally been indicted, and I do appreciate the strategy that special counsel Smith is employing here.
- ANDREW: By avoiding charging Trump with incitement, he is avoiding a potentially sticky and time-consuming debate around Trump’s First Amendment rights, which Trump’s defense would undoubtedly press and pontificate on for as long as they could. Focusing on the false electors plot, while not as flashy as the riots at the Capitol, allows the government’s case to focus on the hard facts and the clear wrongdoing, rather than Trump himself, what he said, and his share of the blame for the attack.
- ANDREW: I think the author may give the Republican Party too much credit, though. They will not care that Trump has been indicted– they may rally around him even harder, in fact. Trump’s cult of personality is too strong to be overcome by simple things like political strategy or common sense. I don’t know that even sending the man to prison will be enough to break that. If they get the chance, Republicans will absolutely nominate Trump again. The question is, will they be able to pivot to another candidate if Trump is convicted– or will they just run him from jail?
- MIKE: Yeah, the phrase “glued to the proceedings” probably only applied to serious news junkies. I’m a serious news consumer, and I mainly followed the MSNBC analyses with excerpts, plus whatever else crossed my path. I couldn’t dedicate ~4 hours each time there was a hearing.
- MIKE: I think Jennifer Rubin provided some clear explanation of why Jack Smith charged Trump the way he did, without some of the more viscerally satisfying charges some of us would have liked to see. But always remember: Al Capone was alleged to have committed or ordered the commission of numerous crimes, up to and including murder. But he went to prison for tax evasion. Prison is prison.
- ‘We’ve never had a year quite like this one’ — Montgomery County facing $2.3B tax value loss; By Jessica Shorten | COMMUNITYIMPACT.COM | 2:49 PM Aug 1, 2023 CDT. Updated 2:49 PM Aug 1, 2023 CDT
- A record number of tax appraisal lawsuits along with rising home values and a backlog of 11,000 homestead exemptions has led to a $2.3 billion tax value loss for Montgomery County, resulting in an $8.8 million shortage in tax revenue.
- The Montgomery County Commissioners Court met Aug. 1 to accept the statutory tax rate limits ahead of budget workshops starting Aug. 8. These limits provide guidelines for the court when it comes to setting the tax rate, such as when voter approval is necessary and what the no-new-revenue rates are. …
- [Montgomery County Tax Assessor-Collector Tammy McRae informed the court that a] major contributing factor is roughly 11,000 homestead exemption filings, which delayed processing by MCAD. With Montgomery County offering a 20% homestead exemption, the influx of exemptions that were delayed caused a significant drop in the taxable values the tax rate projects are based on …
- McRae said the county is not alone with this issue. “We’re not the only taxing jurisdiction in this shape; anyone that offered a homestead exemption: city of Conroe, Conroe ISD and the other cities are in the same shape …”
- MIKE: One aspect of this story is a reminder that the business of public service is hard. But I was left a little confused about the “tax cap” situation. I’m unclear how much of this tax cap is decided by the Montgomery County Commissioners Court and how much, if any, was related to property tax caps imposed by the State of Texas. That might have been a useful factoid to include in the story.
- ANDREW: What also confused me was why there was the sudden influx in homestead exemption filings and how those filings have led to a shortage in the tax revenue. Here’s what I think happened: I found a Texas Tribune article explaining the new tax reduction amendment that will be up for a vote at the next election. That amendment includes the state limit on property value that can avoid being taxed due to a homestead exemption– going from $40,000 to $100,000. If this amendment is approved by voters, it will automatically start applying to properties already exempted. I’m betting that a bunch of people are filing for the exemption so that they can benefit from the change as soon as possible, assuming it gets approved.
- ANDREW: The reason all those filings are reducing tax revenue is not just because approved filings reduce the taxable value, but that there were so many filings that they couldn’t all be processed in time before taxes had to be paid. The Tribune article mentions that homestead exemptions can be applied retroactively up to two years prior, so I’m thinking that because these exemptions were delayed, the effect they would have had last tax year when it was more anticipated is now happening this tax year when it isn’t.
- ANDREW: Does any of that sound right to you, Mike?
- MIKE: Excellent research, Andrew. I think that sounds very insightful and plausible. That would leave us discussing the wisdom or lack thereof of increasing homestead exemptions to $100k. But I’m old, and inflation can confuse me over decades, so we’ll leave that for another show.
- Houston will face a budget crisis by 2025 unless it cuts spending next year, city controller says; City Controller Chris Brown says the approaching end of federal COVID relief funds means Houston can no longer put off dealing with structural budget deficit of up to $300 million. Massive layoffs could be the result. By Andrew Schneider | HOUSTONPUBLICMEDIA.ORG | Posted on July 31, 2023, 8:00 AM (Last Updated: July 31, 2023, 9:32 AM)
- Houston will face a budget crisis within the next two years if it doesn’t act soon, according to outgoing City Controller Chris Brown. That’s because a federal lifeline the city has depended on to pay its mounting bills is about to be withdrawn.
- “What I’ve been trying to articulate at City Hall for many years now (is that) we’ve had a structurally imbalanced budget,” Brown said. “We use one-time financing sources to plug the budget.”
- Before the pandemic, the city was able to close the gap by selling city properties, such as when it sold the former Compaq Center to Lakewood Church in 2010. Not long after the city ran out of property to sell, it got a significant infusion of cash from the federal government, in the form of more than $1 billion in relief from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA). That enabled the city to avoid having to lay off large numbers of workers when COVID took a bite out of sales tax revenues.
- “The challenge is we’ve become addicted to that money,” Brown said. “Instead of using that funding to narrow our structural budget imbalance, which at the time was probably about $180 million, we used this one-time money to fund recurring expenditures.”
- Those additional expenditures included multi-year raises for police, firefighters, and other municipal workers, as well as needed increases in spending on maintenance of roads, drainage, water purification and sewage systems, and other aspects of the city’s infrastructure. Recovery from spending from the COVID recession caused sales and property tax revenues to take off, but not enough to close the structural deficit, which ballooned to about $300 million. …
- Inflation is already starting to eat away at sales tax revenue gains, and overall sales and property tax revenues are on track to decline. Mandatory arbitration with the city firefighters’ union means spending on firefighters’ pay will likely increase further. And now, Brown said, federal ARPA money is about to run out.
- “To (Mayor Sylvester Turner’s) credit, he did increase the fund balance, which is our savings account, so to speak,” Brown said. “That will probably give us about one year of cushion. So, we’ll make it through ’24, but in ’25, we’re going to have to make some tough decisions.”
- Brown noted that the budget just passed for the current fiscal year is $6.2 billion, up from $5.1 billion two years ago. He said the next mayor and city council could limit the ultimate pain by reducing next year’s budget to where it stood in 2021. Failing that, he said, the only way to cut costs in 2025 will be to slash the city’s payroll, which accounts for about two-thirds of its budget.
- “Cutting $250 million or $300 million of personnel out of the budget,” Brown said, “it’s going to have a drastic impact on service delivery, because you’re talking about laying off a large percentage of people in every city department.” …
- MIKE: Using one-time windfalls for infrastructure repair or improvements is usually a sound premise. Using windfall money to fund normal recurring expenses is always a forerunner of financial trouble. It’s why cities and states are typically mandated to balance their budgets without borrowing. Sometimes, governments or agencies “balance the books” using accounting tricks, but this can only go on for so long. Eventually, it’s time to pay the piper.
- MIKE: Covid and its economic effects are once-in-a-lifetime events (if we’re lucky). Houston isn’t the only government body trying to rebalance its affairs now that the economy is sort of “normal”. (See the Montgomery County story above.) One way or another, it’s going to be painful.
- MIKE: But I disagree with City Controller Chris Brown on one point he made. Painful and drastic cuts aren’t the only way to balance the city budgets going forward. Some tax increases are also an option. Perhaps an indexed, progressive surtax on properties valued in excess of a million dollars.
- ANDREW: Yeah, that sounds pretty good. If the city does try to make cuts, well, unsurprisingly, the highest personnel expenditures budgeted for 2024 are for the police department coming in at over six billion dollars, with the fire department second place by about two billion dollars less.
- ANDREW: The problem there is, since House Bill 1900 passed in 2021, no cities in Texas can ever reduce just their police budgets without having their sales tax raided and their property tax frozen by the state. The only police cuts that won’t cause this are cuts across the board, ensuring everyone suffers. (Because for Republicans, the cruelty is the point).
- ANDREW: The only positive way forward that I can see would be the tax increases Mike is suggesting. The question is whether Houston City Council would be willing and able to implement them.
- MIKE: Again, great points, Andrew. Eventually, inflation will have the effect of cutting minimum budgets for police and firefighters as a fraction of overall budgets, barring other intrusive State legislation. And while any tax increases anywhere require considerable political courage, voters in million dollar houses are outnumbered by everyone else.
- REFERENCE: Controller vs. Comptroller: The Differences Between Them — INDEED.COM, Updated June 30, 2023. (“A comptroller has a larger role within an organization and is often a senior-level employee. A controller is a part of the accounting department and has less impact on the decisions executives make regarding their short and long-term financial future. Controllers have a hands-on role in determining the costs and return a company can make on manufacturing or product marketing processes.”)
- 99-year-old trucking company Yellow shuts down, putting 30,000 out of work; By Chris Isidore | CNN.COM | Updated 3:27 PM EDT, Mon July 31, 2023
- Yellow Corp., a 99-year-old trucking company that was once a dominant player in its field, halted operations Sunday and will lay off all 30,000 of its workers.
- The unionized company has been in a battle with the Teamsters union, which represents about 22,000 drivers and dock workers at the company. Just a week ago the union canceled a threatened strike that had been prompted by the company failing to contribute to its pension and health insurance plans. The union granted the company an extra month to make the required payments.
- But by midweek last week, the company had stopped picking up freight from its customers and was making deliveries only of freight already in its system, according to both the union and Satish Jindel, a trucking industry consultant.
- While the union agreed not to go on strike against Yellow, it could not reach an agreement on a new contract with the trucking company, according to a memo sent to local unions Thursday by the Teamsters’ negotiating committee. The union said early Monday that it had been notified of the shutdown. …
- “The Teamsters had made a series of painful concessions that brought them close to wage parity with nonunion carriers,” said Tom Nightingale, CEO of AFS Logistics, a third-party logistics firm that places about $11 billion worth of freight annually with different trucking companies on behalf of shippers. He said the company began taking on [a] significant amount of debt 20 years ago in order to acquire other trucking companies.
- “Now their debt service is just enormous,” he said, pointing to $1.5 billion in debt on its books. …
- MIKE: If you’re a dedicated news consumer like I am, you may have already seen this story, so why do I bring it up?
- MIKE: First and foremost, it’s because I expect Conservatives to say something like, “See? Another company driven out of business by unions.” But for context, the CEO of AFS Logistics allowed as to how the unions had actually made very significant concessions over some years to try to help Yellow Freight stay in business.
- MIKE: I see the story as being about a company that over-extended itself to make acquisitions of competitors, and then got whipsawed by a changing economy. So, a mixture of bad business decisions and bad luck.
- MIKE: And of course, the constant story of taking on too much debt while crossing metaphorical fingers that it can be paid off.
- MIKE: Debt is not intrinsically bad, but must be assumed with due caution and consideration. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a multibillion-dollar business, a nation, or just a person. Judgment Day eventually arrives if you’re not careful, or just unlucky.
- ANDREW: Another argument for workplace democracy. Something tells me those 30,000 workers– or however many Yellow had twenty years ago– wouldn’t have voted to take on all that debt for the sake of rapid expansion, had they had a say. Working people understand the value of stable, healthy income. Boardrooms would be wise to take that experience on board and only pursue expansion when they know they can afford it– including any debt they would need to take on.
- MIKE: I’m inclined to agree.
- Opinion — The pandemic is over. Excuses for allowing offices to sit empty should end, too.; By Michael R. Bloomberg | WASHINGTONPOST.COM | August 1, 2023 at 7:30 a.m. EDT (Michael R. Bloomberg, co-founder of Bloomberg and founder of Bloomberg Philanthropies, was mayor of New York City from 2002 to 2013.)
- Anyone who has set foot in Washington recently knows that the city remains a shadow of its former self, as too many federal employees continue working from home. At some agencies, employee absences have negatively affected customer service. This has gone on too long. The pandemic is over. Excuses for allowing offices to sit empty should end, too.
- In his State of the Union address in March 2022, President Biden promised that “the vast majority of federal workers will once again work in person.” …
- A recent survey by the Government Accountability Office shows just how bad the situation remains. The GAO measured 24 federal agencies’ use of their headquarters during one week in each of January, February and March. Six of these agencies — the Agriculture Department, the General Services Administration, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Office of Personnel Management, the Small Business Administration and the Social Security Administration — recorded an average occupancy rate of less than 10 percent. Seventeen of them averaged 25 percent or less. Across all 24 agencies, the average was only a little more than 20 percent. In other words: Federal offices are mostly empty. …
- Some are trying to get credit for creating hybrid work arrangements while requiring employees to come in only a handful of days a month, while more and more private companies require people to be back in the office at least three days a week.
- At Bloomberg, for more than a year, we have been asking employees to work in our offices at least three days a week. There will always be a need for exceptions, of course, but more than 80 percent of our people have been meeting the standard. In the fall, much of the company will move to four days a week, as some of our employees are already doing.
- Our managers have seen the benefits of returning to in-person work, and we have heard about those benefits from their teams, too, especially from young people just starting their careers. When senior managers are not present to mentor and nurture junior staff members, it hurts their professional development and prospects for career growth — and the future of the organization, too.
- Some people argue that remote work for federal employees isn’t a problem. Tell that to the taxpayers who are footing the bill for empty floor space and the costs of maintenance, as the GAO emphasizes. Tell it to the small businesses that are suffering, whose tax payments fund city services. Tell it to the many residents who rely on those services, especially poor people and elderly people. Remote work by civil servants is especially troubling because the federal government is a monopoly supplier. In the private sector, if remote workers do a poor job, business suffers and customers take their spending elsewhere. In the public sector, people just have to put up with poor service.
- Employee union leaders are resisting return-to-office efforts, of course, but the case for remote work looks increasingly weak. Though some early research found that remote employees were more productive than those in the office, newer studies are finding the opposite. Remote work’s organizational benefits, if any, are likely to fade with time because the first months of working from home can draw on established relationships and office-based patterns of collaboration. With time and as workers change jobs, these understandings break down. In jobs where productivity is hard to measure, face-to-face supervision and mentoring are especially important.
- Some of the post-pandemic changes in where and how work is done might persist — and some of this innovation, proving itself in competition, might be valuable. Agencies should have flexibility to allow some remote work, particularly where recruitment and retention challenges — which are declining nationally — persist. Yet overall, there’s no good reason why government workers have been so much slower than everyone else to get back to the office at least a few days a week, especially when so many jobs — from social services to law enforcement — require people to be present.
- The federal government should lead by example, and the president should keep his promise. Taxpayers deserve immediate action and hard deadlines — and the better service and stronger capital city that will result.
- MIKE: Andrew and I predicted these sorts of changes and disruptions back on March 23, 2020, and I think that a “post-pandemic world” — one where most people that can get vaccinated have been vaccinated — people can work in a traditional business environment relatively safely, with perhaps a few adjustments to the spaces and the building.
- MIKE: I think Bloomberg’s arguments boil down to 3 points: a) Empty office space is a waste of money and should therefore be used; b) Small businesses such as restaurants and cafes that serve office buildings will suffer with continued remote work; c) Working relationships, professional relationships, supervision and — perhaps most importantly — mentoring of employees all suffer from too much remote work.
- MIKE: The first argument — using office space because it’s there — is akin to saying, “We already have horses and buggies. We shouldn’t waste them by investing in automobiles and motor buses.”
- MIKE: Times and technologies change, and one way or another, we are forced to change with them. If government and business can function effectively while using less office space, then let it be so. Leases will expire and realignments will occur. These realignments will save money and energy, and be better for the environment.
- MIKE: As to the second argument, probably no business has ever remained open against its best judgment just because the workers and small businesses that rely upon it will be hurt. In the case of Bloomberg’s argument, I might argue that any businesses that have survived the past 3 years have already adapted in some way to these new realities. I’m also sure that some businesses have benefited from remote work as shopping simply moved elsewhere. But unused office space doesn’t have to remain empty. In an era of housing shortages, there is a desperate need for affordable housing. That affordable housing would not necessarily be created in unused office space, but the overall stock would be increased, and some housing may open elsewhere. As housing stocks expand, rents may go down and houses and apartments may become less expensive. As always, there will be winners and losers. Bloomberg as much as anyone should realize that this is the essence of capitalism.
- MIKE: I think that Bloomberg’s third point is the most worthy of consideration. As businesses hire people that never worked personally with their co-workers, what does office culture become? How are new hires integrated into the human relationships and dynamics of a team? And how do you properly mentor people so that they can improve and gain skills that will enable them to do their jobs better and advance in their careers? And how do you effectively “supervise” workers that aren’t physically present with you as a supervisor?
- MIKE: I can’t answer many of these questions since I’ve never worked for a company under Covid conditions. However, the adaptation Andrew and I have made due to Covid is that we’ve been doing Thinkwing Radio as a pre-recorded show from our homes for over 3 years. This has changed the nature of the show in important ways, but we adapted. KPFT has gone to virtual monthly meetings instead of physical meetings; KPFT adapted.
- MIKE: I think we should also add Elon Musk’s argument for returning to the office for a full week: People working on production lines and in warehouses can’t work remotely, so why should so-called “white collar” workers? This argument was largely treated as a joke by media, but it’s a good question. Maybe “essential workers” who must be physically present on a job deserve extra compensation for their inconvenience and their commuting costs. Would that level the “fairness” imbalance?
- MIKE: Andrew, what do you think?
- ANDREW: Hospitalizations from COVID-19 are increasing. People are still dying. [NOTE: Maps, charts, and data provided by CDC, updates Mondays and Thursdays by 8 p.m. ET.] Some immunocompromised people are still not able to leave their homes. [NOTE: POLITICO.EU, August 31, 2022] The pandemic is very much not over, no matter how much governments or especially business executives want to claim it is.
- ANDREW: Removing public safety measures, pushing people to go back to physical work, never having allowed some people to work remotely in the first place– all these things are prolonging the pandemic, and showing callous disregard for the people still at risk. So long as these things are the case, arguments to “return to normalcy” will always, always fundamentally be arguments that it is acceptable for certain kinds of people and certain amounts of the populace to die so that more money can be made. Remote work, along with other safety measures, saves lives, and that should be all that is needed to justify it.
- ANDREW: The challenges it brings are legitimate questions, though. I don’t think office culture and mentorship have to suffer thanks to instant messaging and video calls. Especially if those messages are encrypted so the company can’t read them whenever they like, and if those video calls aren’t held at the crack of dawn and treated like actual conversations instead of addresses from Emperor Boss. Treat your employees like humans, allow them to collaborate and communicate with each other and yourself, and a healthy culture will develop whether you’re in the same office or not.
- ANDREW: As for blue collar versus white collar work, I think it’s very easy to simply assume that all blue collar work has to be done in-person– and much of it does– but we should be looking for ways to make it remote too. Last year, a Canadian fast food chain introduced remote cashiers at some of their locations. This chain was rightly criticized for hiring workers from countries where wages have been suppressed for the sake of geopolitics and global trade, but the unethical hiring practices aren’t a requirement here. Service jobs like these could be done for regular wages by local people who would otherwise stand at those registers and take orders, but instead be done by those people at home from their laptops. Every job that can be made remote is one potential transmission vector cut off, and I think that’s worth it.
- ANDREW: When that isn’t possible, yes, I definitely think hazard pay should be standard for essential work, certainly enough to bring in-person blue collar jobs up to the same level of pay as remote white collar jobs. But in-person work needs to have every possible safety measure in place to reduce transmission, as well. This is good business sense, as safety always is; you can’t get the work done if all the workers are in the hospital with COVID.
- ANDREW: Unfortunately, we can’t expect to hear this kind of perspective from business representatives like Michael Bloomberg. I don’t believe his arguments in this article are based on a concern for the quality of public service, or the welfare of people relying on government support. If he really was concerned about people’s welfare, he would understand the importance of keeping as many people as possible out of the office.
- MIKE: Just in brief response, I agree that it’s useful to remember who Michael Bloomberg is: A multi-billionaire who might be relatively progressive for his wealth class, but who is clearly aligned with business interests.
- MIKE: Also, I think it was Dr. Anthony Fauci who once remarked that Covid is now endemic, which is to say that we are no longer in a situation where it makes sense to quarantine the infected. But Andrew’s points are well taken, as remotely working whenever possible is a way to reduce transmission of all sorts of communicable diseases, from the common cold to tuberculosis.
- REFERENCE: THINKWING RADIO POST-COVID PREDICTIONS — ADAPTING NOW AND IN THE FUTURE (March 23, 2020) (Starting at roughly 38 minutes)
- REFERENCE: Opinion — 15 ideas to revitalize ‘lifeless’ downtowns in the work-from-home era; By Washington Post Staff | August 1, 2023 at 8:00 a.m. EDT
- Former business partner says Hunter Biden sold ‘illusion’ of access to Joe Biden, source says; By Zachary Cohen and Kara Scannell CNN | Updated 5:04 PM EDT, Mon July 31, 2023
- Devon Archer told the House Oversight Committee on Monday that his former business partner, Hunter Biden, was selling the “illusion” of access to his father, according to a source familiar with the closed-door interview, the latest development in the Republican-led congressional investigations into the president’s son. …
- Dan Goldman, a Democrat on the panel who sat through the portion of Archer’s interview where he was questioned by Republicans, also said there was a lack of evidence connecting the president to his son’s foreign dealings. Goldman said Archer told the panel that Hunter Biden did put his father on speaker phone in the presence of business partners, but that business was never discussed.
- MIKE: This is a much longer story, but I think this hits the main points.
- MIKE: One detail not mentioned in the story is if Joe Biden knew that Hunter was at dinner with potential business associates during these calls. This doesn’t necessarily make a difference legally, but it would tell us where Joe was in the grey of moral clarity.
- MIKE: Nonetheless, by avoiding discussion of anything other than personal matters, there is a bright line here that I don’t think was crossed, based on what I’ve read and heard up to this point.
- MIKE: I think Devon Archer’s description of Hunter’s calls to his father as selling the illusion of access is a very accurate — and legally important — one.
- China’s Great Leap Backward: So much for the next dominant superpower; The Chinese century is over. Facing upside-down demographic and economic trends, China is heading off the cliff. By Joe Tauke |COM | Published July 30, 2023 @ 12:00PM (EDT)
- The “Chinese century” is over.
- After all the prognostications, projections and proclamations of the past 20 years asserting that China would soon overtake the U.S. as the world’s dominant superpower, the People’s Republic is now facing twin perpetual headwinds, and has no realistic options for countering either of them.
- The first could accurately be described as the strongest long-term force driving the fates of all great powers: demographics. What was, for many previous decades, China’s ultimate advantage — its never-ending supply of working-age laborers — peaked at almost exactly one billion people in 2010, according to the Chinese census. The next census, in 2020, revealed that for the first time since China’s economic liberalization in the 1970s, the working-age cohort had shrunk, decreasing by more than 30 million. The U.N. estimates that this group will continue to contract, dropping to 773 million by 2050. (In other words, between now and then China is likely to lose a number of workers larger than the entire population of Brazil.) The under-14 population will also fall in that same period, from just over 250 million in 2020 to a median projection of 150 million in 2050. Not only will the workers be disappearing, but nobody is expected to replace them.
- Every age-related trend in China is going in the wrong direction. The nation’s median age, once well below the Western world’s, is now older than America’s and headed further north with every passing year. Deaths outnumbered births last year for the first time since 1961. The fertility rate, which normally must be at 2.1 children per adult woman just to maintain a steady population, has slipped to below 1.1 — a figure made worse by the fact that, unlike in virtually every other country on the planet, China doesn’t have a relatively even gender split in its adult population, the long-term result of male favoritism combined with the central government’s infamous one-child policy. Basic math dictates that tens of millions of these “extra” men will never start families of their own. To compound the problem even further, women in China have indicated lower interest in having children than ever before; more than two-thirds have expressed “low birth desire.” According to Prof. James Liang of Peking University, fertility rates in Beijing and Shanghai have fallen to an astonishing 0.7, “the lowest in the world.” …
- Much has been made of the difficulties China will face in attempting to manage a rapidly-shrinking workforce against a rapidly-growing retirement age population, which is projected to double by 2050. But that issue may actually be preferable to what is likely to happen afterward, or perhaps sooner if some of China’s older population doesn’t wind up living as long as expected. …
- [T]he lower-end expectations at the end of the century: 600 million, 500 million, perhaps as low as 450 Even the median projection puts the number at around 750 million. This is not just a rogue estimate by a single U.N. agency — the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences has issued an extremely specific prediction of 587 million. If you think China has ghost cities now, imagine that vast nation with barely one-third of the population it has today. What will happen to property values in a country where between 50 and 70 percent of its people have disappeared? What will happen to tourism? To retail? So many articles have been written about what happens when a modern society grows “too old,” as has happened in Japan and Germany, among others. But how many have been written about what happens when the majority of a modern society vanishes altogether?
- To make matters worse, if that seems possible, all these numbers rely on official Chinese statistics, and the government has likely been overstating them. According to an extensive examination of different sets of books by University of Wisconsin Prof. Yi Fuxian, it’s possible to find the “fudging” effects by comparing local and provincial data to that published at the national level. …
- To be fair, most major nations in the West also face declining birth rates and aging citizens. The enormous difference in projected demographics, at least in many of those cases, comes down to immigration. Even with a current fertility rate of only 1.6, the U.S. population projects to reach roughly 400 million by the end of the century, according to the U.N.’s median estimate. East Asian countries tend to have much more restrictive immigration policies, but nowhere is this as true as in the People’s Republic. Since 1950, which is as far back as the data goes, China has never experienced a single year of net positive migration. Ever. …
- [The Chinese economy]is going to become a big, big problem. Much of this problem will, of course, be caused by the enormity of the demographic crunch. But there are specific details that will amplify the impact of that crunch. A whopping 70 percent of Chinese household wealth is held in real estate. Seventy. Percent. (The comparable number in the U.S. is less than half that.) The demand for investment properties has been so high that China’s construction eruption simply cannot be reasonably compared to those that have occurred in any other major economy, even ones that have experienced giant housing bubbles of their own. …
- [T]he Reserve Bank of Australia shows, “residential gross fixed capital” as a proportion of GDP is close to 20% in China — the comparable proportions in Australia, Japan, South Korea and the U.S. are all around 5% or less. …
- It is likely impossible to overemphasize the potential economic damage that will likely ensue when previous decades of population growth, urbanization and the frenzied real estate investment that has accompanied them run into the brick wall of new decades with consistently fewer buyers — and that doesn’t mean “fewer buyers” in the normal sense of a bubble popping, but the literal absence of hundreds of millions of buyers over time. What will happen as those aforementioned ghost cities begin to multiply? And perhaps the more important question: How can China possibly make its all-important transition to a consumer-based economy when consumers as a whole have shoved so much of their wealth into properties that will often end up being worthless? How in the world is this supposed to work? How could it work? …
- … Carnegie’s China scholar Michael Pettis explained earlier this year, “China has the highest investment share of GDP in the world. It also has among the fastest growing debt burdens in history. …
- Pettis is not strictly talking about central government debt here, but rather total debt within the economy. …
- … The total amount of such debt in the U.S. increased over those 15 years [by 120%], or slightly more than double the amount that existed in 2007. … [T]he Chinese measurement reached nearly … 50 times what it was in 2007. …
- The ironic lack of social safety nets in an ostensibly Communist country, combined with a seemingly unstoppable regime of compulsive over-investment, has for many years resulted in the exact opposite of what China needs — consumers have felt and still feel it necessary to have some of the highest savings rates in the world, which means they aren’t becoming a larger part of the economy but rather a smaller part of it. …
- The structural forces that have allowed it to grow at breakneck speed for half a century are now the same forces preventing it from continuing to do so. Chinese labor costs today are significantly higher than costs for the same amount of labor in both its Asian neighbors and Latin America, including Mexico, where manufacturing for the American market is much more convenient despite the overhanging power of the cartels. In fact, Mexico became the largest overall U.S. trading partner in the first quarter of this year, after surpassing China to become the biggest trade partner specifically for manufactured goods last year.
- China’s “factory of the world” status is slowly evaporating because cheaper workers can now be found elsewhere, which often come without problems like blatant IP theft across countless industries or figuring out whether any given supply chain involves Uyghur forced labor camps. The Chinese population is shrinking, meaning that domestic labor costs will continue to surge upward even as overall GDP growth falls. … China is no longer a place where capitalist dreams go to succeed, and indeed the fact that it ever was reflects one of the biggest mistakes the Western world has made since the fall of the Iron Curtain. …
- MIKE: This article is much longer, with more detailed specifics and graphs. I’ve digested it down as best I could.
- MIKE: I’ve discussed China’s “demographic timebomb” a number of times on this show, and while this article goes into a lot of detail and projections about China’s demographic and economic present and future, it doesn’t spend one word on the implications for global peace.
- MIKE: From my readings, this whole story discusses a big reason why the years 2025 to maybe 2030, or 2035, represent the window of greatest danger for an attemtped Chinese military solution to the Taiwan question.
- MIKE: Economic power is the ultimate source of military power. Population is the source of military manpower and production. China is nearing its historic zenith of both.
- MIKE: Meanwhile, the US, as the dominant Indo-Pacific power, will be declining to its military low point due to aging equipment that’s scheduled for decommissioning and retirement. And when I talk about “equipment”, I mean very expensive things with long lead times like ships, aircraft, and now even missiles and artillery.
- MIKE: The great danger here is this period may be China’s best window of opportunity for perhaps the next 50-100 years to take Taiwan by force, if it ever intends to do so. Let’s hope that the temptation doesn’t become too much to bear.
- ANDREW: War is historically a popular policy in times of economic crisis. I too hope that China doesn’t fall back on the easy out. I thought this article was a very fair-minded analysis of China’s potential issues right up until the last few paragraphs where the author just had to throw in some jabs. But what else can you expect from a mainstream US publication talking about a geopolitical rival. I take exception with two points in particular.
- ANDREW: First, as I’ve said before on the show, until a government or international entity investigates the situation with the Uyghurs in Xinjiang and comes to a conclusion that contradicts its own biases, I’m not convinced one way or the other whether China is using forced labor or committing genocide. Second, I did some research, and based on my amateur currency conversion calculations, I believe that China has budgeted the equivalent of about $545 billion USD for social security and employment in 2023. By comparison, India, a country with about the same population, budgeted what I’ve calculated to be the equivalent of over $865 billion USD. I haven’t taken costs of living into account, or what specific programs are funded by each government, but I am disappointed to see that China is spending almost half of what India is on social welfare. One estimate even says across federal, state and local governments, the US is even spending $74 billion more than China is, and I think we all know how underfunded social services are in the US. So sure, China’s social safety net probably isn’t where it needs to be, but it’s not earth-shatteringly worse than the US’s either, and I feel like the article doesn’t accurately represent that.
- ANDREW: But with my criticisms out of the way, this is a very sobering look at China’s demographic and economic prospects for the future. I think one of the best solutions for China is going to be loosening their immigration laws, with a specific focus on working-aged people. If they had already had fairly lax immigration laws, and still got into this position, then I think there would be a lot of cause for concern. But I think that quite a lot of economies that have grown to take major positions on the world stage have ended up needing immigration to keep ticking over, and it may just be that time for China. True, they may not end up dominating global trade like maybe they want. But sitting comfortably among the top economies of the world isn’t too bad of a consolation prize.
- REFERENCE: Goldman Sachs says India will overtake the U.S. to become the world’s second-largest economy by 2075; Lee Ying Shan@LeeYingshan | CNBC.COM | Published Mon, Jul 10 2023,1:17 AM EDT. Updated Tue, Jul 11 2023, 8:27 AM EDT
=======================================================
- Make sure you are registered to vote! VoteTexas.GOV – Texas Voter Information
- It’s time to snail-mail (no emails or faxes) in your application for mail-ballots, IF you qualify TEXAS SoS VOTE-BY-MAIL BALLOT APPLICATION (ALL TEXAS COUNTIES) HarrisVotes.com – Countywide Voting Centers, (Election Information Line (713) 755-6965), Harris County Clerk
- Obtain a Voter Registration Application (HarrisVotes.com)
- Harris County “Vote-By-Mail’ Application for 2022
- Austin County Elections
- Brazoria County (TX) Clerk Election Information
- Chambers County (TX) Elections
- Colorado County (TX) Elections
- Fort Bend County takes you to the proper link
- GalvestonVotes.org (Galveston County, TX)
- Harris County ((HarrisVotes.com)
- LibertyElections (Liberty County, TX)
- Montgomery County (TX) Elections
- Walker County Elections
- Waller County (TX) Elections
- Wharton County Elections
- For personalized, nonpartisan voter guides and information, Consider visiting Vote.ORG. Ballotpedia.com and Texas League of Women Voters are also good places to get election info.
- If you are denied your right to vote any place at any time at any polling place for any reason, ask for (or demand) a provisional ballot rather than lose your vote.
- HarrisVotes.com – Countywide Voting Centers, HARRIS COUNTY – IDENTIFICATION REQUIRED FOR VOTING: Do not possess and cannot reasonably obtain one of these IDs?
- Fill out a declaration at the polls describing a reasonable impediment to obtaining it, and show a copy or original of one of the following supporting forms of ID:
- A government document that shows your name and an address, including your voter registration certificate
- Current utility bill
- Bank statement
- Government check
- Paycheck
- A certified domestic (from a U.S. state or territory) birth certificate or (b) a document confirming birth admissible in a court of law which establishes your identity (which may include a foreign birth document)
- You may vote early by-mail if:You are registered to vote and meet one of the following criteria:
- Away from the county of residence on Election Day and during the early voting period;
- Sick or disabled;
- 65 years of age or older on Election Day; or
- Confined in jail, but eligible to vote.
- Make sure you are registered:
- Ann Harris Bennett, Tax Assessor-Collector & Voter Registrar
- CHECK REGISTRATION STATUS HERE
- CLICK How to register to vote in Texas
- Outside Texas, try Vote.org.
- BE REGISTERED TO VOTE, and if eligible, REMEMBER TO FILL OUT AND MAIL NEW MAIL-IN BALLOT APPLICATIONS FOR 2023.
- Obtain a Voter Registration Application (HarrisVotes.com)
- Just be registered and apply for your mail-in ballot if you may qualify.
- You can track your Mail Ballot Activity from our website with direct link provided here https://www.harrisvotes.com/Tracking
____________________________________________________________________________
Remember! When you donate to KPFT, your dollars pay for:
- Transmitter and equipment costs
- Programs like Thinkwing Radio, Politics Done Right, and other locally-generated political talk shows
- KPFT’s online streaming
- Maintaining a wide variety of music programs
Each time you turn on the radio, you can hear your dollars at work!
Make your contribution to this station right now. Just call 713 526 5738. That’s 713-526-5738. Or give online at KPFT.org!