I. ADVENT

If you don't like the weather around the Great Lakes, wait.  Early November again featured above normal temperatures and not much rain.  A few lakeside communities got hit with serious snow in the first of the Weather Channel's named storms.  That bought a few counties respite from the drought, but inland it was more of the same.  After Thanksgiving came the second named storm, complete with serious snow.  The neighbors who bling out their houses mostly got their outdoor lights up ahead of the snow.

There will be pictures of the illuminations in the snow for your viewing pleasure during the Festive Season.

YES, WE ARE A CREEDAL NATION.

That has long been the Cold Spring Shops position.  "Give these kids an America to buy into, and an America that buys into these kids, and we'll be OK."  Pajamas Media contributor Jamie K. Wilson would like to restrict that a bit.  "An American is a person who belongs to the historic political, cultural, and moral community formed by the United States — a community joined not by ancestry alone but by entering, adopting, and upholding its constitutional order, its laws, its common language, its civic story, and its ethic of self-rule, ordered liberty, and mutual responsibility."  I suppose my youth in Milwaukee where one could still find storefronts and sometimes libraries labelled in German, Polish, and Spanish makes me less inclined to be restrictive about language, and I've tended to view cultural and moral communities as emergent and evolving: do we still want to observe Sundays in the way of the Puritan rather than of the German?

THE FIRST THANKSGIVING DINNER WAS POTLUCK.

That might be one way to help the host or hostess spend less on preparation.  The past few years, the price of the traditional dinner has become a political football to go with the televised football viewed through a food coma, dimly.

It is difficult to take this presidency seriously any more.  Seriously, though, "dial back Thanksgiving" or "live more like Europeans" is consistent with what we experience elsewhere, such as putting up with less dependable electricity even if the solar and wind capacity isn't yet on line, or putting up with higher fuel prices to induce substitution to electric cars not yet safely available at scale.

The current president is often difficult to take seriously either, and the tradition of playing political football with the price of the traditional dinner goes on.

The 40th annual American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) Thanksgiving dinner survey found that a traditional dinner for ten people this holiday is going to run around $55.18, which is down five percent from the previous year. That counts for the price of items like turkey and cranberries going down, while the price of sweet potatoes and whipping cream went up.

Predictably, Trump-favorable outlets such as Red State are spiking the football.  "So, enjoy your upcoming Thanksgiving dinner - and enjoy walking away from it, stuffed with turkey, feeling that tryptophan-induced food coma coming on, and with a few extra coins jingling in your pocket."

EDUCATION SO INCLUSIVE NOBODY LEARNS ANYTHING.

I'm reusing an old post title and revisiting an old argument.  "I encourage readers to focus on two words: fifth grade. Perhaps, in suggesting that the state universities send the high schools a bill for each credit hour of remedial arithmetic and writing their students racked up, I was not being bold enough."

Conditions have not gotten any better in sixteen years.  Recently, collegians having trouble with 7+2 = x+6, which can be posed as a first grade arithmetic problem by replacing "solve for x" with "fill in the box" came to our attention.  Dear reader, even the house organ for business as usual in higher education was troubled.  "A ‘Steep Decline’ in Students’ Academic Preparation at UC-San Diego Struck a Nerve."

HOW BASKETBALL FORTUNES CHANGE.

Seven years ago, the feel-good story of the men's basketball tournament was Loyola of Chicago, returning to basketball relevance after many years in the wilderness.

This season?  Neither the inspiration of playing for the memory of their long-time chaplain, Sister Jean, who crossed the final summit either this year, nor the home-court advantage assisted by Chicago traffic, could keep the Northern Illinois team from sending the Ramblers to their fifth loss.

NIU (3-3) made 14 three-pointers, one off the school record, while shooting 41.2 percent (14-of-34) from beyond the arc.

"It was awesome," said NIU head coach Rashon Burno. "We had a little be of adversity with the traffic on the way here, we got here with 60 minutes to spare, but it started in the preparation. We had quality practices. Obviously, Dylan (Ducommun) 24 (points), six (assists) and zero (turnovers) … We have to fight, we have to play with pride, and we have to execute and I thought we did that for 40 minutes tonight."

Loyola (1-5) led 13-8 before Hassan 'Tre' Washington (Providence, R.I./Prise Academy) knocked in a triple and Ducommun added two from beyond the long line to put the Huskies in front, 17-13.

Mr Burno is on the final year of his contract, with a team restocked through the transfer portal, and playing in the Mid-American for the final year before moving to the Horizon League.

SCRATCHBUILDING AT TWELVE INCHES TO THE FOOT.

Great Britain is observing the bicentennial of the railways, and how better to celebrate than to roll out a stable of steam locomotives all built in the 21^st century?

That lineup entertained visitors at Bluebell Railway as the summer tourist season wound down.  Left to right, Southern Region Atlantic 32424 Beachy Head, built 1911, extensive restorations completed in August 2024; Northeastern Region Pacific 60163 Tornado, numbered one higher than any of the original Peppercorn Pacifics, completed in 2008; Great Western or Western Region 4-6-0 6880 Betton Grange, numbered one higher than any of the original Granges, assembled out of Swindon standard parts and first steamed in April 2024; Great Western or Western Region 4-6-0 2999 Lady of Legend, numbered one higher than any of the original Saints or Courts, reverse-kitbashed out of 4973 Maindy Hall (another of the Hall series, 5972 Olton Hall, stars as Hogwarts Castle in the movies, to the annoyance of Great Western enthusiasts) and in steam from 2020.  The whistle on Lady of Legend is off 2910 Lady of Shalott.

There's something about a steamer, even one without cowcatcher, bell, or Mars light, that continues to entertain children of all ages, including seventyish children.  Yes, the British have a few of their unusual diesels still operating in preservation, as do we Stateside, and yes, a pair of Alco PA-1 passenger cab units might be returning to excursion service, and we're still awaiting the Mark Twain Zephyr.  But a scratch build of a Baldwin Centipede or a Fairbanks-Morse Erie-Built seems unlikely.

IT'S THE PRETTY PIG PROBLEM.

Paul McDonnold of The Daily Economy dips into the world of socialist social media to discover that the interest in socialism ... has nothing to do with Robert Owen or Karl Marx or Frank Zeidler.

An older video offered a slideshow on basic socialism narrated by the DSA’s national co-chair, Megan Romer. It was candid, enlightening, and reasonably upbeat. My first light-bulb moment came when Romer explained how becoming a socialist is not typically an involved intellectual process.

“Most people become socialist because of one issue,” Romer said. “They usually become socialists because of something they specifically got mad about in the news. That is the primary thing that makes people become a socialist.”

What's that wisecrack about if you're still socialist at forty you have no brain?  But if you're angered by something in the news, it's easier to take the good things for granted and attribute all the ills to The System.  "Since the status quo seemed to be performing poorly, especially for the young, why not try socialism?"

Of late, particularly among the young, the pig-sty in which they live appears particularly messy, and Old Major's imagined pig-sty wins by default.  Venture capitalist Peter Thiel, who might have billions of reasons to keep the existing order pretty much as it is, suggests it's not so much "socialism" as "not-capitalism" or "not-neoliberalism" that is looking better, if only by default.

The first step is to talk about the problems, even if you don’t know what to do about them. There’s been a failure of, let’s say, the center left-center right establishment to even talk about them.

I don’t know if I would say that young people are pro-socialist. I would say they are less pro-capitalist than they used to be. If capitalism is seen as an unfair racket of one sort or another, you’ll be much less pro capitalism. So in some relative sense, they’re more socialist, even though I think it’s more just: Capitalism doesn’t work for me. Or, this thing called capitalism is just an excuse for people ripping you off.

The interview explores a lot of territory, including the potential challenge for genuine socialists that most of the leadership comes from the remnant of the Silents and the older cohort of the Baby Boomers, the ones that never dabbled with being yuppies, and some sobering thoughts about whether it is better that some voters stay home.  Material for another day.

PRUSSIAN PROPRIETY, RHENISH REVELRY.

Karneval has been under way since Armistice Day, with Milwaukee's German community getting things started during German Fest.  But why the coincidence with Armistice Day?

It started with Napoleon.  From 1801 to 1813, part of the Rhineland was under French administration, and French propaganda bragged on their "Egalität, Legalität, Fraternität," which probably applied to Rhinelanders as much as "Diversity, Equity, Inclusion" applies to Normals.  So, like Normals rephrasing the acronym as "Didn't Earn It," the Rhinelanders made an acronym, "ELF," which they did not put on a shelf ... in German, it's "eleven."

But it was when the Prussians reclaimed the Rhineland on their way to fail to assist Napoleon at Waterloo, that Karneval emerged as that Rhenish rebuke to Prussian propriety.  Masquerade was a proper way to send up the rulers, so why not send up the Pickelhaube set from ... 11 November until Aschermittwoch, with an intermezzo for the Festive Season?  Recall, the illuminated Christmas tree is a German creation.

The main events of late winter commence with Weiberfastnacht, the Thursday preceding Aschermittwoch.

Find yourself a Karneval event, even if it calls itself Fasching or Mardi Gras, and enjoy.

THE INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS DELUSION.

Two hundred years ago, the Erie Canal opened for business from Albany to Buffalo.  In his tribute to the canal, Pajamas Media contributor Rick Moran notes that once upon a time presidents looked to the Federal Constitution for the specific authority to spend money.

DeWitt Clinton tried to get financing from Congress for his project, which Thomas Jefferson called "madness." However, President James Madison believed that using federal dollars for a state project was unconstitutional and refused to sign the bill authorizing congressional funds.

America's longest canal up to that point was 27 miles. Clinton was proposing the construction of a canal 13 times larger, much of it through wilderness, using Irish immigrant labor and, most astonishingly, without any trained engineers.

The original engineers were largely self-taught locals who designed and constructed the canal despite having never seen one before.

It got built, and although the original course has in places been filled in and elsewhere bypassed by subsequent expansions to create the New York Barge Canal, historic bits of it remain for your entertainment or edification.

TEMPER, TEMPER.

Red State's Ward Clark tells a sea story from the M*A*S*H* era.  It involves Wisconsin, BB-64, confirming that throwing long bombs was a Wisconsin thing long before Bart Starr and Brett Favre.

"Big Wisky," as her crew called her, served through the rest of World War 2 with little incident; she was assigned to the 5th Fleet and took part in the pre-invasion bombardment of Japan before the war ended.

After the war, Big Wisky was briefly mothballed, then reactivated for the Korean War, to go do what she did best - toss one-ton projectiles at bad guys. Her mere presence off the North Korea coast made the communist country feel maladjusted, and when the Americans started solving their problems with a suitable application of high explosives, they began to truly worry. Wisconsin even had the distinction of having fired on a stalled North Korean troop train, thus achieving the status of being the only American battleship to sink a train.Then came March 15th, 1952. The USS Wisconsin, on that day, was operating as usual off the Korean coast, tossing explosive Volkswagens at the communists. But on that day, a North Korean artillery battery tried to defy the great American ship and shot back. A single 155mm shell struck the Big Wisky, striking the gun shield of one of the starboard twin 40mm anti-aircraft gun mounts, causing minor damage and injuring three sailors.

The counter-battery guys were pretty good.

That North Korean battery pushed the "Fool Around" button, and in due course was removed in a classically American "Find Out" reply. You have to love as well the dry terminology in the ship's official history: "...blasted that battery to oblivion." Indeed, nine one-ton shells, nine tons of Attitude Adjustment, aimed at one sorry little North Korea artillery battery. They probably could have engaged the battery with their secondary guns, which were 5/38 dual-purpose guns, capable of outranging and engaging the North Korean guns. But we are Americans; go big, or go home.

There's a meme for that.

Apocryphal response or not from the escort, that's the American way.  That is all.

YES, THAT CHEAP LABOR SUBSIDY IS REAL.

In two published papers, Eliakim Katz and I analyzed immigration amnesties as a way of screening the pool of illegal immigrants by subjecting them to exploitation in the underground economy and confronting a positive but not certain prospect of an amnesty, in order to induce favorable self-selection, meaning it wouldn't pay to sneak into a rich country in the hopes of going on welfare later.

Yes, that sounds cynical, and yes, we did get some grief for characterizing the underground economy as a sort of apprenticeship.  Other scholars subsequently expanded on our work.

We show that an amnesty is more desirable the bigger is the gain to aggregate income induced by granting legalized workers access to all the available employment opportunities. On the contrary, a more redistributive welfare state makes an amnesty less desirable, as low-skilled legalizedforeign workers will gain access to benefits. We also find that the introduction of a legalization program can only be optimal if there is a positive shock affecting the income received by the natives. In this case, the legalization allows the government to mitigate the adverse effects of an excessively restrictive policy implemented in the first period.

That paper offers the following elaboration on our work.

Karlson and Katz (2003) consider instead the role of amnesties as a tool for governments to induce immigrants to self–select based on ability. Similarly to our model, they also consider migrants that differ in their skill level. In particular, they emphasize that a legalization will offer skilled workers better labor market opportunities. As a result, the latter might be enticed to migrate even as illegals, in the hope that an ex–post legalization will improve their income opportunities. Differently from us, in Karlson and Katz’s (2003) model and in their companion paper (Karlson and Katz 2010), legal immigration is not explicitly considered together with illegal immigration.

The authors continue in an academic vein, and it looks like light bedtime reading.  But not tonight.  Rather, I'm in the mood to thank loudmouth leftist Jill Filipovic for simultaneously validating our cheap labor argument and demonstrating the folly of minimum wage laws.

If you would like to pay $30 for a pint of strawberries, $700 for someone to clean your one-bedroom apartment, and $100,000 for a new roof on your normal-sized house, then deporting all undocumented people is a policy you should support. https://t.co/l3m7JyCzfP

— Jill Filipovic (@JillFilipovic) November 18, 2025

Twitchy's Brett T. compiled a few of the more pungent ripostes.  "Are Americans that spoiled by cheap, illegal alien labor?"  Hie thee hence, and judge for yourself.

DOWNSIZING TOOK AWAY MY BEAR CLAW FIX.

Insta Pundit contributor Stephen "Vodka Pundit" Green links to "Panera lost diners by cutting portions and staff. It’s reversing course to win them back."  It's the same old story, downsizing is a false economy.  Market tests have steep grading curves.

When Panera Bread began shrinking its sandwiches and skimping on salads, it started shedding customers.

Now, to win them back, the chain plans to reinvest in the business and undo many of those same cost-cutting measures, it said Tuesday.

Once the No. 1 fast-casual brand in the U.S., Panera has dipped to No. 3.

It hasn't been a good year or two for the "fast casual" sector more generally.  That might be evidence of precarity among the middle classes, reverting to McDonald's, or of upward mobility, going for casual dining with service.

THE MONEY MUST COME FROM SOMEWHERE.

Or, as we would crack wise, years ago, "When politicians promise you pie in the sky, they're going to do it with your dough."

My post title comes from a recent essay by John "Grumpy Economist" Cochrane, notionally writing about price controls, and elaborate rationalizations of their use: in reality, he's reminding all and sundry of the fundamentals of political economy and taxation.

A rent control is the same as a tax on landlords used to subsidize the rents of current tenants. You may picture a giant corporation, but many landlords are sympathetic individuals who worked hard and saved and use the apartment to fund their retirement. Corporations are owned by the 401(k) plans of sympathetic workers too. But economists should know better than to tug on your heartstrings for who should get resources forcibly taken from who else. If you ask “what’s the optimal way to tax people in general in order to lower housing costs for a politically attractive group (current tenants)” the screaming answer is not “let’s tax the people who currently own the buildings.” Sure, “tax the rich.” If you want to go down this route, it’s a lot more efficient to tax all the rich. If you ask “what’s the optimal way to help families who just got stuck with higher rents,” the screaming answers is “send them a check, but then let them move to the apartment that best fits their needs.”

A rent control only makes rental “affordable” for the lucky recipient. It does not make rental housing more “affordable” for society as a whole. It does not increase the number of people who have housing. Indeed it reduces that number. It just changes who gets it. It does not even make housing more “affordable” on average. For those who want it must now pay with time, and inconvenience, or pay by foregoing the great opportunities that moving to the city provided.

The biggest losers of rent control are the young, the mobile, the ambitious, immigrants, and people without a lot of cash. If you want to move from Fresno to take a job in San Francisco and move up, and you don’t have millions lying around to buy, you need rentals. Rent control means they are not available. Income inequality, opportunity, equity, all get worse.

There is no blob of “government” money, or “policy” that can make something affordable for one without making something else less affordable for another.

The extension to other attempts to make things "affordable" is straightforward.  "It doesn't matter what account the federal money comes from: whether you call it Medicaid or it comes out of some assigned risk pool among the insurance exchanges, where policy holders might get a premium subsidy, ultimately the money is extracted from taxpayers, borrowed on the bond market, and printed."  In that long passage, Professor Cochrane is reminding people that everything has an opportunity cost.  Without proper technique, there is no economic content.

GOOD HELP, HARD TO FIND?

Little Caesars opens first self-service restaurant in Rockford.  There's a video clip at the link.  "Restaurant" appears to be a misnomer, as there are no tables to eat in.  A Horn and Hardart has more charm.

Little Caesars photograph retrieved from WIFR.

What have I been telling you for over twenty years, dear reader, about the "slovenly, poorly trained people" who might not get the order right, who have no clue how to handle change, who can't manage a "we are sorry and hope to do better next time?"  Is it any accident that the first of these outlets is in Rockford?  "Perhaps the mayor would like to have more Rockfordians equipped to finish college, that is, to not be among the inefficiently many people in institutions pretending to offer higher education. That, however, is a call for stronger common schools, or perhaps stronger commitment to the Habits of Effective People among Rockfordians."  Rockford's schools, and its television stations, emphasize high school sports to the exclusion of almost everything else, including the etiolation, etiolation of pizza, pizza.

The restaurant at 3134 11th Street removes the traditional walk-up counter. Customers can place an order on the Little Caesars app or website, go to the restaurant and grab their items from the mobile order pickup zone.

Another option for customers is the new Hot-N-Ready self-service station inside the restaurant. Guests can select and scan items, then pay for their order without going through a cashier.

“It’s really intuitive, and the self-checkout is very similar to what you might see in a convenience store or at the airport. So, it makes it very easy, and who doesn’t want a hot fresh pizza really quickly,” said Trish Heusel, Vice President of Innovation at Little Caesars.

Hot, fresh, and to order suggests there might be someone, or has the kitchen side been automated as well?  I wonder, this being on Rockford's South Eleventh Street, how much security is on duty.  And people buying from this automat don't have to pay the incompetence tax.

Managers say the new design keeps today’s customers in mind, with an experience focused on speed and convenience.

“You can get in and out of the store in less than 20 seconds,” said Heusel.

Little Caesars got its start in Detroit.  I wonder if the innovation will be available south of Eight Mile.

THE WIVES AND THE SONS AND THE DAUGHTERS.

Survivors and descendants of Edmund Fitzgerald's last crew assisted in the fiftieth anniversary reciting of the names and tolling of the ship's bell at Detroit's Old Mariners Church.

The final ringing was for all the other mariners lost on the Lakes.

Should you wish to expand that to all the other mariners lost, or, in the language of the Submarine Service, those on eternal patrol, do so.

THE COMMUNIST WING, RUFFLING CORPORATIST FEATHERS?

Pass the popcorn!  "It’s time to replace Chuck Schumer as Senate minority leader and do it without delay."

Why?

1.  "Schumer inspires no one."  I don't know, every time he goes to the well of the Senate with that nasal voice and those Mr Whipple glasses, the Militant Normals are inspired to squeeze all the Charmin, or, better yet, to mock him on social media.
   
2.  "He doesn’t get modern communication."  Social media followers don't necessarily translate into influence: for all the followers Crazy Bernie or Squeaky or Fauxahontas have, they're still in the opposition, and still giving the Militant Normals material.
   
3.  "He’s an old-looking, old-talking, and old-thinking 74, staring down, with faltering energy."  As opposed to the gesticulating Crazy Bernie or the faux-hood Jasmine Crockett?
4.  "He’s turned his back on the future."  In Common Dreams world, the "future" is the Next Big Thing for the communist wing of that party.  Which continues in its delusion that somehow the Donks lost the presidency and the Senate by not being communist enough.
5.  "Schumer is isolated from critical feedback."  In Common Dreams world, that has nothing to do with the shilling for All Things Democrat that make the palace guard media so annoying.
6.  "Schumer lacks the strategic and tactical skills to meet the unprecedented challenges of the moment."  It's probably hard to herd corporatist and communist cats, and it's unprecedented for the past forty days that the slim Republican majority didn't fracture despite all the scolding from the usual suspects.  The minority leader in the House wasn't able to peel off sufficient Republican votes to stop the latest budget resolution, which includes a few regular order appropriations, from passing and being signed.
7.  "Schumer is also fundamentally compromised on critical issues."

Which boiled down to being insufficiently on board with the so-called progressives and their intersectional fantasies.

What's amusing is that three years ago, while the Jarrett regency still enjoyed majorities in both houses of Congress, Mr Whipple was already playing his dilatory games.  "The youngest gerontocrat, New York senator Chuck Schumer, who has been putting the country through hell, the better to stave off a primary challenge from the communist wing of his party, recently joined the brain-fart brigade in a recent speech where neither he nor his wordsmith recalled who Thurgood Marshall was."

In these continuing spats between the communist and corporatist Democrats, who differ on how punitive the taxation of productive people or how meddlesome the administrative state should be, there is a real opportunity for Trumpian populists to win over skeptical voters, perhaps by working on simplifying citizenship for legal residents, introducing trade-tested betterments and price discovery in medicine, and continuing to thin out the Federal Register.

WELCOME BACK TO THE HORIZON LEAGUE.

Northern Illinois University have swapped out head coaches and almost all the players of their perennially inconsistent women's basketball team.  This year they will attempt to sail fully loaded for Cleveland in the Mid-American Conference.  Horizon League member Wisconsin-Milwaukee played a nonconference game.  "Huskies' Late Charge Falls Short In 76-65 Loss To Milwaukee."

THIS MAY NOT BE THE FLEX THE DONKS THINK IT IS.

Read Jeffrey Epstein’s newly released emails about Trump.

Here's the photo, dated to February 2000, immediately below the headline.

Davidoff Studios photograph retrieved from PBS.

Our President seems quite capable of meeting up with younger women without any help from Jeffrey Epstein or Ghislane Maxwell.

WHAT WOULD IRAN EVER DO WITHOUT EXPERTS?

These experts are part of that country's Hydrohijab Industrial Complex, and boy howdy have they failed to please Allah.

As Iran’s water crisis worsens and the regime fails to manage its water resources, a member of the Assembly of Experts claimed that the regime’s desired form of mandatory hijab not being observed in the streets is the cause of Iran’s water crisis, drought, and reduced rainfall.

On Sunday, November 9, Mohsen Araki said: “Drought, water crisis, and reduced rainfall are signs of God’s warning to awaken us from negligence and inattentiveness toward Him.”

He added: “The Islamic Revolution is built on the blood of martyrs, and it is not right that our streets become a parade ground for open sin, unveiled women, and public immorality.”

The Assembly of Experts member continued: “These behaviors have consequences, and a society known for its faith and Shiism must be sensitive toward such deviations.”

It is easy to snicker at such pronouncements, and yet, substitute "mandatory bicycle not being ridden" or "a cruising strip for muscle cars, toxic masculinity, and parking."  Surely Gaia will punish you!

Keep reading the essay, though, and note what the "independent experts" fail to mention.

Independent experts in water and environmental issues have emphasized that Iran’s drought results from a combination of the water mafia’s influence, climatic trends, and decades of structural mismanagement—including the expansion of water-intensive and subsidy-driven agriculture, overexploitation of groundwater, and lack of sustainable consumption models in industries and cities.

According to them, reducing this multilayered crisis to the issue of hijab not only lacks any scientific basis but also hinders the political will necessary to reform water policies and hold responsible institutions accountable.

The mullahs are asking their flocks to pray for rain, but presumably no African or North American natives will be brought in to do their rain dances.  It's probably haram to say "If you can trade it, you can allocate it efficiently."

Pajamas Media's Rick Moran also documents Iran's water troubles: the mullahs "ran through '1,000 years’ worth of groundwater reserves in just three decades.'"  Lest we get too full of ourselves, bear in mind that aquifer depletion is a reality in the High Plains, flood irrigation of golf courses may still be the practice in Phoenix, and California treats dams as affronts to Gaia.

WHAT WOULD WE EVER DO WITHOUT EXPERTS?

Obamacare could collapse under Trump’s new plan, policy experts say.  Fine.  It's neither patient protection nor affordable care.  After politicians have tried everything else, will they try something that works?  A month ago, the editorial board of New York's Post wanted to put Obamacare out of its misery.  Forget Obamacare subsidies — it’s time to mend or END the whole thing.  "Obamacare was a calamity from the start: It raised taxes, destroyed the old (imperfect, but functional) private insurance market and slapped all kinds of requirements on insurers, spiking costs." That can has been kicked to the end of the road.

What’s left is an extremely pricey, Rube Goldberg system that provides, as health-policy expert Michael F. Cannon puts it, “junk coverage.”

Without the Obamacare law, he notes, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that most people could obtain better coverage at lower premiums. (And Congress could look to cover those left out with some targeted assistance.)

Democrats would rather keep burning money than admit their huge mistake.

They insist the law left more Americans with health coverage, but that’s largely due to the Affordable Care Act’s (hugely expensive) expansion of Medicaid.

Today, Medicaid, once a safety net for the poorest of the poor, covers one in every five Americans.

The ACA’s “temporary” federal subsidies to states to expand it were originally also set to expire — but Dems have kept those going, too.

Maybe Congress could extend these subsidies one more year to keep Obamacare on life-support, but Republicans — and Democrats — absolutely need to find structural fixes (if not a complete repeal) to boost choices for the public and access to better coverage and health networks, and to lower costs.

That means addressing key ACA provisions — on essential benefits, subsidies, preexisting and expensive illnesses, the medical loss ratio, community rating, etc. — that drive costs through the roof and limit choice.

"Expanded Medicaid" means more patients looking for care from practitioners and pharmacists who have not yet opted out of Medicaid reimbursement rates, which is one more time bomb waiting to explode.

CITIES, RENDERED LESS HABITABLE BY PROGRESSIVE POLICIES?

I started the year with a question wrapped inside an observation.

Regional economics is always about balancing centrifugal and centripetal forces, isn't it?  So it was with the river towns bypassed by the railroads, so it was with the frontier towns that the railroads didn't build to, so it was with much of the railroad-based metropolitan corridor by the early 1980s, so it might be with the shopping malls that were still all the rage in the early 1980s, and it remains to be seen what will come of the edge cities (does anybody even write about edge cities any more?) and in the ongoing tussles over gentrification and congestion pricing in densely populated cities we see precisely the tensions Romans dealt with two millennia ago.

Now comes Power Line's Bill Glahn with an edge city arising in the Cities.

St. Louis Park is actually located in Minnesota, sitting immediately to the west of the Minneapolis city limits. It’s where the movie director Coen brothers (Fargo) come from.

The West End development is easily accessible from two major freeways and features plenty of free parking. Other than bus service, there is no mass transit available.

A large movie theater, restaurants, shops, office buildings, apartments, and hotels fill the complex. Crime in the area is much lower than the adjacent big city.

That last observation is key to the point he subsequently makes.

Neither crime nor taxes are mentioned at all in the article.

No, since at least the 1980’s, the future exists in Edge Cities. An Edge City is exactly how I’ve described the West End. The classic example of the type is Tyson’s Corner, outside of Washington, DC.

Urban hellscapes like Minneapolis can no longer support retail and office space, due to high taxes and high crime. Residential uses will be the next to go.

Twenty years ago I suggested big cities might be obsolete, and that might not have been correct.  More recently I proposed that edge cities with expressway interchanges and the pretense that parking is free are a consequence of the automobile convexifying space.

Put more precisely, the automobile convexifies space and time in such a way that the second-, third-, and lower-order central places are no longer tied to the waterways or the railroad lines the way those late-nineteenth-century towns were.  At the same time, though, the opening up of those hinterlands affects the shape of the rent gradient, and while it is possible to build parking decks in cities, the parking decks and the expressways and arterial streets that connect them to the hinterlands clog.

I also had a pessimistic reflection on the third-worldization of the Cities.

There was emergence in St. Paul's urban form; and I can't help but wonder whether I should have a gloomy moment.  "I wonder if we're not one looted convenience store away from some jurisdictions again becoming sundown towns."

That's on Mitch "Shot in the Dark" Berg's mind, and moreso on some of his commenters.  "My faith in the social cohesion of left-wing cities is thinner than the social cohesion of left-wing cities – but hope sprang eternal, and until 2020 history obliged."  Thus do the dealers in Executive Boxes and sport-utes continue to make their money.

No doubt, Minneapolis and St. Paul mayors will use the same language about "disinvestment" that Chicago's current mayor likes to use to deal with what Mr Glahn sees coming.  "In the Twin Cities, we are creating an urban donut, with commercial and civic life carefully avoiding the hole in the middle."

MAYBE MAKE A CASE FOR A HIGHER EDUCATION THAT IS HIGHER?

Common Dreams contributor Douglas Medina might have posted the most ridiculous essay that site has ever presented, and that is a hard bar to top!  "Let’s stand together and go on the offensive to create a social democratic vision for higher education and other universal public goods now under assault by Trump and his right-wing allies."

Dear reader, if I had taken him to task for not grasping "nonexclusive and nonrivalrous," that would suggest the balance of his essay might have attempted a serious argument, which would have taken it out of the running for "most ridiculous essay."  The case he makes for being ridiculous is in his opening paragraph.

There is no question that the contemporary system of higher education in the United States was facing several crises (commodification of education, access and affordability, faculty precarity, violations of academic freedom, the “rationality crisis”, administrative bloat, etc.—what we generally refer to as the neoliberalization and corporatization of education) before the Trump administration began its assault on colleges and universities in 2025. Trump’s Executive Orders (EOs) related to education have magnified these crises. At the very least, he has forced those of us working in higher education to seriously reflect on what needs fixing. I point to these EOs as an illustration of intent to destroy colleges and universities as public goods by his administration, supporters, and surrogates, including Chris Rufo and Marc Rowan, two of the most notable agents who are not shy about using the authoritarian playbook. They are deliberately pushing the limits of legal and constitutional mores and precedents to achieve their goals. This should not be a controversial interpretation of intent, considering how transparent the expression of the authoritarian turn has been and continues to be when it comes to higher education and, well, everything else.

If you charge tuition to individual students, you are dealing in a commodity whether the tuition is used for a tenured professor's salary or for a freeway flyer, and if you are trading in prestige degrees, whether your institution is selling it to high rollers for a consideration or not, by definition your service is exclusive and rivalrous.  Again, that might keep the essay off the "most ridiculous" list: nay, I could reproduce that paragraph on a political economy assignment and ask students to identify and rebut as many logical errors as they could.

THE FEAST OF ST. MARTIN'S.

It might be the opening act of Karneval, and it starts with a German version of Beggars Night.

Children make paper lanterns, fasten them to sticks, and walk the neighborhoods singing songs.  Often, they are led by someone dressed in a St. Martin outfit, which looks very much like a Roman Soldier carrying a sword.  The procession ends at a bonfire with more singing and delicious food.  Some children will then go door to door collecting treats like candy or money as a reward for their singing and beautiful lanterns.

Just before Aschermittwoch there will be a different sort of bonfire and it might involve singing and beer.

Apparently, this St. Martin was a Roman soldier, baptised as a Christian, and later made Bishop of Tours.  He is the patron saint of Modesty and Altruism (which might be as good reason as any to open Karneval with a Teutonic Beggars Night) and has gone afield with Neville Marriner.  There are other traditions one might consider.

This has been a trying year, and we might work a few Karneval references into posts through the Festive Season.  We've already got to Model Railroad Season.  "The eleventh of November is Remembrance Day in the Commonwealth countries, Veterans Day in the States, and the beginning of Karneval in the Rhineland."

The Music Choice Christmas rotation has begun and within the past hour we heard from Mariah Carey and Taylor Swift covering "Santa Baby."  This year she got the ring, and she didn't mean on the phone!

THE DEBASEMENT TRADE.

Peter St. Onge uses that felicitous term to contemplate the creaking fiscal edifice called Federal Borrowing.

First, it’s escalating debt interest payments, which go on top of old debt — we borrow every penny.

Second, it’s raising interest rates across the board as federal borrowing crowds out everything else — business loans, personal loans, mortgages.

Third, it’s raising concerns among investors -- the people who buy all that debt -- whether government will actually pay it back.

That's where the debasement trade, otherwise understood as a flight from dollars, comes in.

About 81% of voters say they care about the debt, but when they rank issues it comes around number 10 or 12, down with transgenders. Presumably because voters know in the back of their mind it’ll never be paid back.

It’s just numbers.

But it’s not just numbers to the investors who buy those bonds, including every major bank and pension fund. Their fear is already driving up interest rates -- bond yields -- which rise in lockstep with default risk.

And it’s driving the so-called debasement trade - gold and silver - as investors worry they’ll let inflation run to reduce the debt burden. So-called soft default.

This actually happened under Biden, where he added $8 trillion in debt but the debt to GDP ratio went down because of inflation.

In the extreme case, Weimar Germany used inflation to shrink their crippling national debt to the price of a loaf of bread.

Alas, Biden crashed out out before we got the loaf of bread.

James "Long Emergency" Kunstler suggest there will be no bread, only a long emergency that voters intuit is upon them.

The precious metals are sending out a distress signal in the futures charts this morning, even while the equities markets worldwide melt up. That’s got to be a bad combo. Something is going wrong with money everywhere. The overarching question is: will money continue to be money? (That is, will it be worth anything?) Money that is increasingly worthless leads to some of the worst social and political outcomes imaginable.

The authorities of the money world only pretend to be in control of the forces behind money and its movements. Money is subject to the laws of physics like everything else: actions and reactions. . . momentum / inertia . . . entropy. As economist Herb Stein sagely observed a half-century ago: “Things that can’t go on, stop.” An awful lot of things in our world need to stop if we want to continue the project of civilization. We can see, to our distress, that many things are actually stopping: Truck shipments of goods, idle freight trains, stores closing, closed down construction sites, restaurants empty. That tends toward rents, loans, mortgages not being paid. That leads to daisy-chains of broken obligations. Inflation reverses to deflation. Money starts to disappear.

In a deflation, money will stop losing its value. The catch is, people will have less money. There will be less of it around, chasing whatever goods get produced. Some people will have no money at all. The government will almost certainly attempt to counter that by giving them money created out of nothing. It will also give money to broke institutions like banks, and perhaps to businesses deemed “critical” to society. That will cycle back into money losing more value. We’ve been through this cycle a number of times in this young and turbulent century.

You’ve probably noticed that our country is seething with pissed-off citizens. All the machinations of the money authorities pretending to manage money have produced perversities, distortions, and spooky unintended consequences. Things manifest strangely. For instance, medical care is a godawful mess, namely, the ACA, Affordable Care Act. Got an acute problem like abdominal pain? We can give you an appointment three months from now, the HMO says when you call? Are they insane? Do they not hear themselves speaking? And you’re paying, like, $20-K-a-year for the family’s health insurance, so-called.

Is "gradually" becoming "all at once"?

CONGRESS KEEPS CHOOSING DYSFUNCTION.

I think it's by design.  Reason's Robert Poole, their resident transportation maven, suggests that the United States lags behind other industrialized countries by treating air traffic control as a federal function.

Air traffic control (ATC) is too important to be vulnerable to politics. Around the world, governments have acknowledged this fact and depoliticized their ATC systems, beginning with the reformist Labor government of New Zealand in 1987. They removed the ATC system from their transport ministry and permitted the aviation user fees that had been paid to the government to instead be paid to the new Airways New Zealand.

It worked so well that within a decade, a dozen more governments had followed suit, realizing that ATC is essentially a public utility, analogous to electricity. A stream of ATC user-fee payments is a bondable revenue stream that has been utilized by ATC utilities to finance large-scale technology upgrades and consolidate aging ATC facilities into a smaller number of modern ones.

Today, roughly 100 countries receive their air traffic control services from user-funded utilities. Australia, Canada, Germany, and the U.K. all have newer, more-advanced technology than our Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), and all of them are self-funded and independent of government budgets. If any of their governments were to have a shutdown like ours, air traffic control would continue to operate normally.

I'm cynical enough to give credence to the idea that air traffic control makes for a useful hostage to protect continued fiscal incontinence.  Insurance buyers on the Obamacare exchanges?  Psh.  Food stamp recipients?  Moochers.  Inconvenience getting to that conference or family gathering?  Crisis!!!

MUSTERING OUT MIGHT BE A MISNOMER.

This year's Veterans Day ceremonies in what passes for downtown DeKalb was much like its predecessors, if perhaps shortened out of respect for the chilly (it used to be seasonably normal) weather and reflecting the advancing age of many of the regular presenters.

My post title reflects the sober message in Greg Byrnes's "The Ragged Old Flag and Veterans."

Current Veterans Affairs estimates are that there are about 35,000 homeless veterans on America's streets on any given night. Eight percent of total homelessness. It is one of the great unsolved problems of our time. It is a scandal that, like most intractable problems, will probably only end when each of these troubled souls goes to his reward. There is no easy solution, but it is worth our attention. Resources that can help are listed at the end of this story.

Suicide rates among veterans have skyrocketed to 7,000 a year. About one every hour.

His post continues, "If someone you know is in imminent danger," with extensive advice on how to proceed.  First, "Call 988 (or 988‑555‑0100 for the Veterans Crisis Line) right away."

Might the American High and the splurge I refer to as the Victory Dividend have been an attempt to make the shared bad memories of all those returning G.I. "Greatest Generation" veterans less painful?

FIFTY YEARS ON.

The Gales of November brought lake effect snow to the west shore of Lake Michigan, including a snow day for Kenosha students.  Sometimes, the clashing of polar and maritime tropical air masses this time of year turns catastrophic.  "Edmund Fitzgerald foundered on November 10, 1975, in an intense storm involving one large low pressure system."

Paul Michaels photograph.

In "The Gales of November Remembered," Law and Liberty contributor John Grove offers a musical and literary analysis of Gordon Lightfoot's "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" laying out the composer's techniques in a song that he suggests  "memorialized the wreck and made it part of American cultural consciousness."  This is how scholarly analysis of ballad is done, dear reader. 

Shipwreck is, for good reason, a perennial artistic motif, and the prospect of death at sea naturally summons up the emotions appropriate to the sublime. The sea is a restless, boundless, and untamable power, and its seeming infinitude means there is likely no relief to be found should disaster strike. Lightfoot’s ballad makes use of several elements that Burke identified with the sublime: conveying a sense of vastness and infinity; describing great strength and power laid low; and utilizing a “judicious obscurity” in describing the disaster. All of these leave the listener to wonder in awe at what the 29 sailors on board experienced that evening, and to feel our own smallness in the cosmos.

By all means, read it, understand it, and grasp the composer's humility.

As John U. Bacon recounts in his new book, Lightfoot hesitated even to record it out of fear that he would be seen as an opportunist making money off of tragedy. He had direct contact with many family members, and he refused to ever perform it in a way that might appear flippant.

He knew he hadn’t written just another ditty. He had penned a chapter in the timeless story of man facing his helplessness and mortality. As a remembrance of former things, it was deeply personal to some, and as a remembrance of things to come, it is needful for all.

Indeed, the "musty old hall in Detroit" became, after pushback from congregants of the Mariner's Church, a "rustic old hall."  And yes, the congregants gather and ring the bells, now thirty times, for each man on Edmund Fitzgerald with one more in memory of all sailors lost on the Lakes.  "Many of the bell-ringers were family members of the crew members of the ship, and pastor of the Mariners’ Church Rev. Todd A. Meyer noted that many of the families are passing the practice of ringing the bell onto the next generation — families in attendance ranged from older adults to toddlers."

Wisconsin Natural Resources offer their retrospective.  Much of the article brings readers up to date on what researchers have been able to work out about the catastrophic loss of boat and life in such a hurry.  Toward the end, though, comes a reminder that every procedure in transportation likely was learned in the blood of people.

These days, freighters larger than the Edmund Fitzgerald regularly sail the Great Lakes, [shipwreck historian Corey] Adkins noted, but improved weather forecasting helps keep them safer on the seas.

“Now, ships are 1,000-feet plus. If storms come, they’ll go to anchor,” he said, hanging closer to the shoreline or taking cover near Great Lakes islands.

“With better weather predicting, they’ll hide, hug the shore when they know a storm is coming.”

Our 2015 post on the loss of Edmund Fitzgerald includes a roundup of previous posts and tributes, including Gordon Lightfoot's song.

POLITICS IS EXHAUSTING.

In "Weeping and Wailing Over the Cave," Barbara "Maha" O'Brien, after taking stock of the pillage wing of the Democrats and their angry moocher base bewailing what might be an end to the current government shutdown, at least until the end of the Festive Season, complains, "Staying angry is too exhausting."  You could take a chill pill, Barbie, and rethink your Trump derangement.  And yes, at best there will be a couple of business-as-usual appropriations now and more wrangling about what to leave in or take out of the next continuing resolution.  It's as if nobody in Washington wants to be bothered with regular order appropriations.

As MSNBC’s report added, “Even if, as expected, both chambers pass the bill and President Donald Trump signs it, most of the government will only be funded through that stopgap bill going until Jan. 30.”

In other words, this new agreement funds the government through a temporary spending package known as a continuing resolution (also known as a CR). If signed into law, it will expire in 11 weeks, at which point most of the federal government will face the prospect of another shutdown.

Did I say the moocher base was angry?  Outside the Beltway's Steven Taylor suggests there might have been a better way to channel that anger.

The goal of shutting down the government to force the ACA subsidies to be restored was a non-starter from the beginning because the Democrats are in the minority in both chambers. They don’t have the votes, and no majority party is going to capitulate to a massive (in their minds) policy change on the basis of a shutdown.

I am currently a bit vexed by some political journalists/commentators and folks with PhDs in political science on Blue Sky who seem to think otherwise.

I will note from the beginning that I preferred that the Democrats, if they were going to go the route they went, should have made the shutdown about Trump’s authoritarian actions. Moreover, if they really wanted a clear goal, they should have insisted from the beginning that the GOP would have to end the filibuster to reopen the government (a demand Trump made, but to my knowledge, not a single Democratic Senator made, although Fetterman endorsed the notion).

Whether changing the rules to reduce the ability of a legislative minority to obstruct things is wise or not, whether calling attention to a president's authoritarian actions by prolonging a government shutdown when the governing majority favors reducing the scope of the federal government is wise or not, that's not how it played out.  Moreover, Professor Taylor probably did not offer a way around the shutdown-continuing-resolution theater.  "Even better, it would be nice if we would join pretty much the rest of the world in having spending continue at the previously voted on levels in these circumstances."  That's kinda-sorta what's going on, with spending levels creeping up at approximately the rate of inflation what with no regular order appropriations in this century, but would we be surprised if the political class simply put all spending on autopilot and came up with other ways to pillage the voters?

His colleague James Joyner takes stock.

Ultimately, Democrats fought and lost. The Trump administration figured out how to minimize the pain of the shutdown for its own supporters early on by shifting funds to keep paying military personnel and federal law enforcement. And refused to do the same for SNAP recipients when existing funds dried up. That, and leveraging the crisis at airports caused by unpaid TSA agents and, especially, air traffic controllers calling out sick to order flights canceled upped the pressure.

There was no end in sight. There are enough institutionalists left in the Senate that totally ending the filibuster was just out of the question. Having the shutdown extend into Thanksgiving would have been devastating for all concerned.

No, taxpayers lost.  Money for food stamps will be forthcoming once the House acts.  No discussion of whether those benefits go to deserving poors only.  No discussion of rolling back the security theater at the airports or selling the air traffic control infrastructure to a private operator.  No contemplation of the ways by which simple voting majorities in Congress will whipsaw voters whenever able.  No thought about how those parties claim mandates when what really matters is voters wanting to stop the excesses of the current governing coalition, not to implement a different bundle of excesses.

NO KREMLIN PARADE FOR YOU.

It's 108 years since Great October Socialist Revolution.  I don't know whether there's inchoate socialist revolution in United States electoral politics, tavarish.  I submit, though, that Babylon Bee have proper perspective on current socialist mania.

Enjoy, and don't forget to thank Student Affairs for providing education!  Do svidanya.

WHO IS INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY'S OAKES AMES?

Common Dreams writer Brad Reed sees the rent-seeking in the latest "internal improvements" frenzy.

Tech giant OpenAI generated significant backlash this week after one of its top executives floated potential loan guarantees from the US government to help fund its massive infrastructure buildout.

In a Wednesday interview with The Wall Street Journal, OpenAI chief financial officer Sarah Friar suggested that the federal government could get involved in infrastructure development for artificial intelligence by offering a “guarantee,” which she said could “drop the cost of the financing” and increase the amount of debt her firm could take on.

When asked if she was specifically talking about a “federal backstop for chip investment,” she replied, “Exactly.”

Hours after the interview, Friar walked back her remarks and insisted that “OpenAI is not seeking a government backstop for our infrastructure commitments,” while adding that she was “making the point that American strength in technology will come from building real industrial capacity, which requires the private sector and government playing their part.”

Despite Friar’s walk-back, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said during a podcast interview with economist Tyler Cowen that released on Thursday that he believed the government ultimately could be a backstop to the artificial intelligence industry.

“When something gets sufficiently huge... the federal government is kind of the insurer of last resort, as we’ve seen in various financial crises,” he said. “Given the magnitude of what I expect AI’s economic impact to look like, I do think the government ends up as the insurer of last resort.”

Friar and Altman’s remarks about government backstops for OpenAI loans drew the immediate ire of Robert Weissman, co-president of consumer advocacy organization Public Citizen, who expressed concerns that the tech industry may have already opened up talks about loan guarantees with President Donald Trump’s administration.

“Given the Trump regime’s eagerness to shower taxpayer subsidies and benefits on favored corporations, it is entirely possible that OpenAI and the White House are concocting a scheme to siphon taxpayer money into OpenAI’s coffers, perhaps with some tribute paid to Trump and his family.” Weissman said. “Perhaps not so coincidentally, OpenAI President Greg Brockman was among the attendees at a dinner for donors to Trump’s White House ballroom, though neither he nor OpenAI have been reported to be actual donors.”

JB Branch, Public Citizen’s Big Tech accountability advocate, said even suggesting government backstops for OpenAI showed that the company and its executives were “completely out of touch with reality,” and he argued it was no coincidence that Friar floated the possibility of federal loan guarantees at a time when many analysts have been questioning whether the AI industry is an unsustainable financial bubble.

“The truth is simple: the AI bubble is swelling, and OpenAI knows it,” he said. “Big Tech is building a mountain of speculative infrastructure without real-world demands or proven productivity-enhancing use cases to justify it. Now it wants the US government to prop up the bubble before it bursts. This is an escape plan for an industry that has overpromised and underdelivered.”

An MIT Media Lab report found in September that while AI use has doubled in workplaces since 2023, 95% of organizations that have invested in the technology have seen “no measurable return on their investment.”

There's a lot going on in that passage.  The concluding paragraph brings to mind a Paul Krugman quip from at least a quarter century ago about information technologies showing up everywhere but in the productivity statistics.  But wherever the Next Big Thing looks like it might be an internal improvement, as surely as Packer fans hold their team to a high standard, the rent-seekers will do what they can to wet their beaks.  "The public roads and waterways have long been a federal project, all the way back to the American System of Internal Improvements, and there are still people who labor under the delusion that these can be paid for out of general revenues.  I'm still waiting for the penny to drop."  Public Citizen types might have particular distrust of Our President, notorious rent-seeker and grifter after subsidies for sketchy entertainment ventures: their argument generalizes.  "[R]esources devoted to early public works, whether the National Road or the various canals or the land-grant railroads, might have been prematurely and inefficiently allocated, and that it took subsequent private investment to put the Pacific Railroad in a state of good repair."

ASSERTION, INSINUATION, AND CHEAP SHOTS.

It's long been so easy for the self-styled progressives to push their preferences on others by being nasty.  Of late, the Militant Normals have decided to fight back in kind.

Is there a more annoying collection of people who never learned how not to be stupid about being supposedly smart than the Democrats and their willing accomplices in the media?  You'd think after Barack Obama became a laughingstock over "bitter clingers" and his anointed successor Hillary "Elphaba" Clinton talked herself out of the Oval with that "basket of deplorables" they'd learn.

But no.  Recently Katie Couric (why is she still relevant?) went on Bill Maher's show and went right on with the scolding.  "'The socio-economic disparities are a lot and class resentment is a lot and anti-intellectualism and elitism is what is driving many of these anti-establishment [people] — which are Trump voters — so, I think that is a huge problem that we have to address,' Couric explained to Maher, referring to the MAGA movement that got its name from the ex-president’s campaign slogan."  Yes, peddle your technocratic delusions in a less condescending way, that's a winner for you.  "I mean globalization and the transition from an industrial to a technological society — I don’t know if you’ve ever been jealous of someone else or resentful — it is such a corroding and bitter, almost bile feeling."

I wrote that in the spring of 2024, before Dementia Joe face-planted in the debate and the Militant Normals finally tired of being polite.  Recently a review article from fifty years ago, in Commentary, when that journal was evolving in a conservative way, featuring Thomas Sowell engaging Ken Galbraith's Money, came to my attention, and in it one sees that Professor Sowell was onto the progressive con-job long ago.

For about 200 of the 312 pages of this book, Galbraith meanders through a selective history of money in the Western world. It is hard to see where the tour is going, but the scenery is nice and the guide calls our attention to various points of interest. Then suddenly there is what Galbraith calls “The Coming of J. M. Keynes,” and the grand design of the book falls into place. Throughout history the story of money has been the story of knaves and fools, but now the Truth has been seen.

What is the Keynesian truth for which all the earlier monetary history of the world was only a preamble? According to Galbraith, Keynesian theory and history both demonstrate that controlling the money supply does not control aggregate demand, and therefore cannot restore full employment after a depression. The Keynesian reason is that when the money supply is increased in an effort to spur demand, fearful individuals and institutions may choose to hold the additional money during the depression. Therefore direct government spending is necessary to get the money into circulation and restore full employment. Nowhere does Galbraith reveal that this sophomore Keynesianism has been under attack—and generally retreating—over the past thirty years. The reader gets no pros and cons. Instead, he is conned by a pro.

Robert Lucas's "Expectations and the Neutrality of Money" and the rational expectations modelling associated with Thomas Sargent and Neil Wallace with assorted other Minnesota math jocks getting in on the fun were getting a lot of attention in the workshop circuits and in imitative dissertations.  "Sophomore Keynesianism," though, we still have with us, as it was a concept Dementia Joe might still have been capable of grasping.

THE FANS KNOW WHAT THE STANDARD IS.

A Barstool Sports contributor called Hubbs asserts, "Matt LaFleur Has No Balls And Needs To Give Up Play-Calling For The Packers."  Well, yes, that Sunday fiasco in Green Bay made the absence of any coffee at the Baird Center for Train Fest look like the smallest of First World problems, at least in the sports world.

The Packers might be the most confusing 5-2-1 team you'll ever come across. After their convincing win against the Steelers on SNF I think most people felt they had no choice but to respect the Pack and consider them a legitimate Super Bowl contender.

Well, after Sunday's dud of all duds, losing as a 13.5 point home favorite to the Carolina Panthers, how can they be? I mean how does a game like that happen, especially when Bryce Young going 11 for 20 for 102 yards and an interception? How do you lose to a team that had give up 40+ to New England and Buffalo? If you're this Super Bowl contender you should be right on par with those teams.

That 13.5 point favorite scored all of 13 points and couldn't stop the Panthers from getting into reasonable field goal range to walk off as winners.  The columnist wants a change in play-calling responsibilities.

I think it's been a long time coming for LaFleur to give up play-calling. This offense needs a new voice. Do I expect a team that's 5-2-1 to make a drastic change like this? No, but they absolutely should. This Packers offense leaves far too much on the table every week. Whether they're starting slow like in the Pittsburgh and Arizona games, or playing with their food like the Bengals game. It's never a full 60 minute complete effort where they just run away with a game because the offense was relentless. When you look at the numbers under the hood you see it's a play-calling issue.

Listen, I don't know if this Packers team can overcome Tucker Kraft's season ending ACL injury. He was their number one option and really made them special. They have plenty of talent besides him, although LaFleur would rather feature Savion Williams than Matthew Golden so it might not even matter.

There are voices among the Packer faithful who are calling for a coaching change.  At the time Matt LaFleur introduced himself to the fourth estate, we reminded readers "The standard is still five championships in six championship games in eight seasons."  Over the past thirty years, Packer teams have had the window of opportunity to make a run at that standard, or at least to repeat, or to win a couple titles over five years, and that has not come to pass.  People with long memories might not be satisfied with a change in the play-calling responsibilities.

GOVERNMENT IS THE PROBLEM.

Reason's J. D. Tuccille might be provocative to make a point.  "Americans need to go cold turkey from Uncle Sugar."  I like his argument, because it follows lines I have been calling attention to for years.

That the "government shutdown" is disruptive is an indictment of just how far we've let the federal Leviathan intrude into areas it doesn't belong. Of course, it's not really a shutdown; it's a temporary suspension of nonessential activities while lawmakers posture over budget issues for the edification of their core supporters. But we still see the air traffic control system in chaos and all too many Americans complaining that they won't get full Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits because government officials always inconvenience the public first even as most of the federal behemoth chugs on as always. They want to convince us we need the state and get us begging for it to reopen.

Instead, we should ween ourselves from government and relegate the federal apparatus to the irrelevance—or even nonexistence—that it deserves.

That the current so-called shutdown has the party notionally of smaller government holding the presidency, a slim majority in the House, and a filibusterable majority in the Senate suggests there might be at least passing interest in rolling back some of those governmental excesses, subject, though, to the permanent bipartisan establishment rolling its logs.

Fortunately, neither the Democrats nor the Republicans have been able to secure a monopoly on demonization, marginalization, or suppression, and the fanatical moochers in the Democrat base and the fanatical believers in the Republican base counteract each other in numbers sufficient to secure gridlock, which is preferable to the tyranny either of Kenyan socialism or potted theocracy.

To the likes of Mr Schieffer and the legions of wannabe Influential People that gather Sunday mornings in front of pictures of the Capitol to hold forth on the Latest (manufactured) Crisis, however, that is as garlic to vampires. Offer public affairs programming that takes seriously the idea that Government is Big because Government Generates Rents and Rent-Seeking Creates Gridlock and the whole Pundit Industry will collapse.

That post concluded, "[I]t is gridlock that protects the liberties of the people."  After an extended review of the principal stumbling blocks of the current shutdown showdown: and I cannot completely shake the idea that it's a dodge to again avoid the regular order appropriations, particularly with another Christmas continuing resolution, possibly including a patch to those insurance subsidies, looming,  Mr Tuccille concludes, "Dependence on Government is a Bad Choice"  Why?  Because.

It destroys our independence and makes us vulnerable to government failures and disputes in the political process. I illustrate that point with SNAP and air traffic control because those are issues grabbing attention this week. But there are so many other areas into which government officials have intruded to convince us that they're indispensable. The shutdown emphasizes the importance of reducing, if not eliminating the government's role, in as many of those areas as possible.

We may need some government. But some government is far less than we have now when disruptions in the budget process affect one in eight Americans' meal planning and prevent passenger jets from crossing the skies. The government should be doing less, subsidizing fewer people and businesses, and it certainly shouldn't be encouraging a class of clients whose fortunes depend on politicians' largesse.

CNN reports that "a small group of fed-up lawmakers in Washington are furiously trying to end the standoff as soon as this week" so the federal government can resume its suspended activities. But that's the wrong approach. We need a real shutdown to make Americans go cold turkey. We need to rediscover our independence, kick the government habit, and learn how to live without Uncle Sugar.

We'll eventually learn how much, if any, government we really need. For now, keep it closed.

Unfortunately, that "class of clients" includes the narrative-setting punditry who think that sitting around under pictures of the Capitol dome is somehow securing the blessings of liberty or protecting Our Democracy^(TM).  Let's see how long the bond traders continue to put up with Washington's fiscal incontinence.