January 9, 2016

It would have been pleasant, and reassuring, to have ended the year thinking about positive developments. There were a few, but even those few seem to have corresponding negatives.

There was an international conference on climate change, which seemed to signal new resolve. However, the U.S. Congress remains mired in denial, and news media continue to report severe, abnormal weather without comment.

Withdrawal from Iraq, and our hesitant, confused drawdown in Afghanistan have resulted in far fewer American deaths than a few years ago. (In Iraq, the fatal casualties dropped to one in 2012, but rose to six last year). However, our invasion of Iraq and meddling in Libya have resulted in empowering radical Islamic forces.

The minimum wage will increase for 2016 in fourteen states, twelve through legislation and two based on the cost of living. (Apparently those two detected an increase which eluded the Social Security Administration). Perhaps that will reduce the number of children in poverty, variously estimated at rates exceeding twenty per cent. We don’t rank well internationally in that measure.

The SEC has adopted a rule requiring companies to disclose the ratio of CEO pay to that of the median worker. Will that result in lowering the former or raising the latter? We can hope. Economic inequality, illustrated by that ratio, is a serious problem, but all we see are new and better methods of evasion: tax shelters, havens, convenient mergers, and the like. Concentration of wealth in a few hands could destroy democracy as we know it, but the odds of serious action to remedy that situation are poor; the wealthy can buy protection from any effort to close the gap. The plutocracy even has a pseudo-scientific excuse for social pathology: "affluenza."

The economy has, perhaps, continued to recover; the Fed has increased short-term interest rates, which presumably reflects such a development. Whatever the Fed may detect, many people see little evidence of increased prosperity, and the stock market reflects no optimism. Fewer people in King County (and probably elsewhere) can afford housing, the cost of which has risen faster than incomes. A recent report details the problem, here and nationally: the inflation-adjusted median household income in King County peaked in 1999. In 81 percent of counties in the U.S., the median income is lower today than it was 15 years ago.[1]  Household debt is up, as is the delinquency rate on student loans.

The white middle class is in serious trouble, by any measure. Loss of well-paying production jobs, weakening of unions, loss of benefits, combined with worries about immigration, have created a large group of Americans who are depressed, afraid and angry. Life expectancy of middle-aged whites without a college education has dropped, in part due to suicides and diseases associated with drug and alcohol abuse. Flirtation with Donald Trump is an indicator of just how alienated many people are. They think, with cause, that the best days, individually and nationally, are behind them.

Fewer police officers were killed by gunfire last year than the year before. However, police killed around 1,100 citizens — the estimates vary somewhat — and the victims were disproportionately black. Accountability is uneven: a grand jury failed to indict the Cleveland policeman who shot Tamir Rice; in Chicago the officer who shot Laquan McDonald has been charged with murder, but a city attorney has been accused of covering up an earlier fatal police shooting. There have been protests, often under the aegis of Black Lives Matter. The protests are understandable, and are necessary if anything is to change, but often they were conducted in such a manner to be counter-productive.

That brings us to the subject of guns, about which there isn’t much good to say, other than to note the efforts of several gun-control advocacy groups. Legislation at the state level has gone both ways, with perhaps more people protected by stronger gun-control laws. However, many people are wedded to the good-guy-with-a-gun fantasy, Texas’ open-carry rule being the latest manifestation. Resistance to gun control has become so blindly rigid that even denying guns to those on a terrorist watch list is controversial.

On January 5, the President announced his intention to use whatever power he has to improve gun control, but not much can be done without Congress. In response, Speaker Paul Ryan released a statement which, given its mindless opposition, could have been, and perhaps was, written by the NRA:

From Day 1, the president has never respected the right to safe and legal gun ownership that our nation has valued since its founding. . . . [R]ather than focus on criminals and terrorists, he goes after the most law-abiding of citizens. His words and actions amount to a form of intimidation that undermines liberty. . . . Ultimately, everything the president has done can be overturned by a Republican president, which is another reason we must win in November.[2]

Republican presidential candidates also lost no time in reaffirming their worship of firearms.

At a lecture on Monday, we were advised that the major issue in the presidential campaign will be the Supreme Court, as several positions may open due to retirement. However, appointments must be confirmed by the Senate, so the result may be a stalemate if a Democrat is elected. Perhaps the more important point is that appointments to the Court, and gun control, depend on also electing Democrats to Congress. On December 15, Andy Borowitz’ news-as-irony column was headed "Congress Marks Third Anniversary of Doing Nothing After Newtown;" he noted that "during this same period of time, many of these legislators were able to sleep at night, sources say." Probably they slept with guns under their pillows, determined defenders of liberty that they are.

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1. http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/business/2014/12/12/why-americas-middle-class-is- lost/

2. http://www.speaker.gov/press-release/president-obamas-executive-order-guns-undermines- liberty