Black Coffee – How Hard Could it Be?

When I started drinking coffee as a high school student, I added sugar since it was too bitter otherwise.  I imagined that drinking coffee was a signal that I knew how to be an adult (or maybe adult-ish).  In my first year of college, I lived in a dorm with a cafeteria that was above street level and had stairs leading down.  When rushing down those stairs to an 8 am class, with a paper cup of coffee, I often sloshed a little out of the cup and on my hand.  That sugared coffee was sticky and so, in the absence of lids, I decided to cut out the sugar.  In the years since then, I have taken my coffee black.  (Well, other than mud-like Turkish-style coffees or Louisiana chicory blends.)

You’d think a cup of black coffee would be just about the easiest order at a restaurant or cafe.  But, this story highlighted two things that have created a bit of friction in the life of a “just black coffee” drinker.

The first issue is that, at coffee shops, like Starbucks, many of the people in line ahead of you are ordering some complicated, sugary drink that has to be carefully negotiated with the server.  And it takes a lot of time – relative to a straight cup of black coffee – to prepare.  So dashing into the shop to get a “quick” cup of coffee often turns into a long-ish wait in a line behind these sugar and spice folks.  This phenomenon also causes me to mostly avoid any drive-through lane at a coffee shop.

The second issue is that many servers don’t actually know what “black coffee” means.  I typically order a medium size “black coffee” and most of the time, 3 seconds later, the server then asks the words they must learn in training – “room for cream?”  Aside from not listening to the customer, some of these servers don’t actually know that “black coffee” means no cream or sugar. I get a puzzled look, and the server gets an unwanted, 5 second tutorial.

I’m not sure if this is a sign that Western civilization is near its end, but we have failed as a society to pass along information that is useful and maybe essential for day-to-day life.  This is probably not the source of divisive culture wars or other failures to ensure that the basic concepts and principals that made America great are being inculcated in younger generations, but it means something.  My contribution to keeping America diverse and nimble and strong is to keep asking for “black coffee” and ensure that this knowledge is passed to as many as possible.  No need to thank me; just doing my part.

The COVID “Emergency” has ended in California

More than a year ago, I thought I had written my last piece about Covid-19.  Alas, both the virus and the various spin-off controversies are still with us, but thankfully both at a much-reduced level. 

Today, in California, the state’s “emergency” has officially ended.  The stories in California media, like this one or this one, have generally noted that for most of us, the “emergency” part ended long ago.

You probably remember “two weeks to flatten the curve” as the rallying cry for government intervention and lockdowns.  Most people could see the sense in that – just so that hospitals wouldn’t be overwhelmed with sick people all at once.  In California, the governor added five more goals to the test before we could emerge from heavy-handed government lockdown and restrictions.  Of course, its pretty unlikely that most of those “goals” could ever be achieved, and most were not.  But they allowed the governor to ignore the usual processes for government action and to issue unilateral decrees and spend hundreds of millions of dollars without any oversight.

Here’s where we are in February 2023, about 3-1/4 years from when SARS-CoV-2 virus first made its public debut in China –

• Its Still Around and May Linger Indefinitely – Despite ridiculous flip-flop statements from President Biden that the pandemic is over – or maybe that its not over – the virus is still circulating in USA and a few hundred people die every day with or from a Covid-19 infection.  In 2021, it was the third leading cause of death in USA (according to the CDC), and some say it will be a “top 10” cause of death indefinitely in the future.  More than a million nationwide, and 100,000 in California, have died “with” or “from” Covid-19.  (The worldwide numbers are mostly conjecture but could be as much as 20 million.)  So, it makes sense to deal with it in a serious fashion as we try to do with other serious health risks.
• But Partial Immunity Is Everywhere – From everything we know, it’s likely that most of the people in USA have had a Covid infection by now.  We have known from the beginning that surviving a bout with Covid-19 produces immunity.  And eventually – even miraculously – we developed vaccines that also produced immunity.  In some cases, both an infection and a vaccination mean you’re less likely to end up in the hospital or dead.  There’s really no excuse for not having that partial immunity by now, with the exception of that unfortunate portion of the population for whom vaccination is not an alternative because they have other ailments.  But even some portion of that group has already gotten Covid infections but never realized it.  If you believe the pronouncements of public health officials today, partial immunity – from prior infection or from vaccination – will usually be good enough to keep you out of the hospital when you are infected again.  So, even though SARS-CoV-2 is still roaming the countryside, most of us need not fear it like we did in the early days.
• Some Did and Do Need Special Consideration – We have known for years that the statistics for Covid-19 testing and the number or percentage of “positive” tests is at best unhelpful and at worst a true distraction.  Likewise, we thought earlier that statistics about hospitalization or death from Covid-19 were the true marker of how we were doing in dealing with the disease.  But its now clear that, by chance or by design, those statistics don’t really tell us what’s important because of a new word in our vocabulary – co-morbidity.  Most people who die with Covid-19 are already sick or infirm from other diseases.  Then there’s the notorious and affirmatively evil policy of Governor Cuomo in NY ordering infected people returned to their nursing homes, resulting in thousands of deaths, about which he then lied and denied.  Its likely to be a long time before we can untangle this with precision, but we now know with some certainty that we should have treated the old and the infirm differently from the vast majority of the population.  
• Can we now clearly see what we should have done when it arrived?  Hindsight allows us to see what we did right, and conversely, what was wrong and sometimes absolutely wacky or evil in the public and private responses to the SARS-Cov-2 pandemic:
  • Lockdowns – Lockdowns caused major harm to individuals and businesses.  They were irrationally designed and irrationally implemented.  They were not very effective.  Many small businesses were destroyed.  Poor people suffered more from lockdowns than rich people.  Many excess deaths and aggravated health conditions resulted.  Civil liberties were violated.  Dictatorial powers were grabbed by people in government who lied and continue to lie about it.  Children in public schools were harmed in ways we knew from the beginning and can now measure empirically.
  • Travel Bans – Prior to and during the Covid-19 pandemic, the WHO’s position was that travel bans were ineffective to stop the spread of a pandemic.  That turned out to be true, but the desire of governments to “do something” overwhelmed the evidence and wisdom of past experience.  It’s not much consolation, but we saw in recent months in China the result of the lockdown / travel ban policies – at some point, they have to end and then the virus runs its course. 
  • Social Distancing – The newly invented term “social distancing” is an idea supposedly grounded in empirical data and common sense, but actually doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.  Staying a meter, or 6 feet, or 10 feet away from others surely reduces the likelihood that, if an infected person sneezes in your face, you will inhale a lot of virus particles that they exhaled.  That’s the common sense part. but other than trying to stay away from other people, there’s nothing particularly scientific or effective about social distancing.  That is, the farther away you stay from others, the greater the protection will be, but it doesn’t assure you of anything, and the arbitrary rules come with great tangible and intangible costs.
  • Hand Washing – Remember in the early days of the pandemic, we were admonished to wash our hands frequently and keep our hands off of our faces?  Most of us had mothers that taught us that as children, and it is surely a good idea.  But did this stop a lot of Covid-19 infections?  Probably not, and no one now seriously thinks it makes a big difference in whether you will be infected.  The SARS-CoV-2 virus is spread mostly through the air, not from surfaces.
  • Masks – The final prong of the trifecta of visible measures we were all told to take was to wear a mask.  This has also been rejected as an effective measure by public health community prior to the pandemic.  The Spanish Flu pandemic in 1918-20 demonstrated that simple cloth masks just don’t stop viruses.  Its likely true that virus particles found in spit or mucus from a sneeze would be stopped or reduced by some masks.  But the initial advice – don’t bother to mask up – was the right advice.  But again, the desire of politicians to “do something” lead them to reject established, conventional medical wisdom and encourage and then impose a “mask mandate” on the public that doesn’t really work or make a difference.  Who knows how many infections and hospitalizations and deaths resulted from people who wore their masks, confident it would protect them.  Early on, it was pretty clear to to a layman like me that only something like N95 (and equivalent) masks were meaningful.  Of course, N95 masks will probably make some difference in that most (but not all) airborne virus will be stopped by the mask.  But the N95 mask has to be available, and has to be properly fitted, properly worn, properly handled and properly disposed of.  Long after we knew that most infections resulted from aerosolized virus particles, the CDC and other public health authorities insisted that we must wear a mask, and it didn’t matter what kind.  Tragic for some of those who were infected while wearing a cloth party mask, and for the rest of us, the source of untold amounts of social anxiety, strife and division.
  • Ventilation – Here’s the one thing that actually can and does make a difference – good ventilation that circulates cleaned, filtered air.  We knew this 6 months into the pandemic, yet no lay person or local government official can really figure out, as a practical matter, whether a grocery store, church, office or other indoor space has ventilation that is “good enough” to greatly reduce the airborne virus count.  Even now, on airliners, with very good filtering and circulation, some believe its not good enough, although its surely better than most places we go to in everyday life.
  • Compulsory Vaccination – This is another area where the actions of governments caused great harm.  The support that the US and other governments gave to the vaccine inventors and manufacturers was amazing and proper.  But the subsequent compulsory vaccination campaigns were based on the false premise that a vaccination meant that you could no longer catch Covid-19 or give it to someone else.  So, while it seems appropriate to justify big campaigns to encourage vaccination because it usually reduces the severity of the infection, there is no justification for government rules barring un-vaccinated people from travel or admittance to a public place or going to work.  Likewise, with the “booster” campaigns.  I’ve been vaccinated twice and boosted twice (and tested positive once, to boot), but I’m not convinced its worth the public effort and money to make boosters compulsory.  If the next round of boosters are each going to cost $100+, I’m not sure you will see widespread uptake unless there is clear evidence that it really makes a difference.
  • “Science” – Finally, great harm has been done to the argument that “science” has the answers.  Scientific method and scientific processes and scientific opinions can all be legitimate and interesting and helpful.  I almost always want to know what “science” says about a topic, in cases where science is relevant.  But the coercive measures that governments enacted and then justified as being necessary because of science often had no such justification or were not, in fact, effective.  “Scientists” should never make public policy.  Politicians should weigh what scientists say and make the decisions.  Deferring to the bureaucrats at CDC and elsewhere to establish and the require compliance with measures they believed might be helpful was a big mistake.
  • Huge Amounts of Wasted Money & Then Inflation – If governments imposed lockdowns and other measures that cost individuals and businesses money, and destroyed their livelihoods, its entirely understandable that governments should spend money to try to mitigate that harm.  I believed, and still believe, that the first round of federal pandemic relief programs was good and helpful, even if they were crude and poorly-tailored in many respects.  But the second and third federal pandemic relief bills were not well-designed and were very wasteful.  And now we see that the injection of that much money into the economy was a major cause of today’s inflation.  Curing that inflation with monetary measures only, as the Federal Reserve is now doing, will cause more disruption and loss before inflation is tamed.
• Ignore the ~20% on Either End – There were strident and sometimes violent claims from the far out ends of the “spectrum” of responses to Covid-19.  Maybe 10-20% of the population refuses to acknowledge the pandemic was a problem, refuses to taken any measures to protect themselves or others and accuses the government and public health experts of various politically-motivated conspiracies.  Maybe another 10-20% of the population refuses to acknowledge that Covid-19 is not really a big problem anymore, continues to engage fearfully in “hygiene theater” and accuses the group at the other end of the spectrum of various politically-motivated conspiracies.  Most of us have learned to ignore both kooky ends of the spectrum, while we have found a place somewhere on that spectrum that seems sensible and comfortable to us individually.  I still wear an N95 mask on long airline flights, but nowhere else.  That’s where I landed on the spectrum of opinions on the mask issue.  But I surely don’t criticize others for wearing, or not wearing, an N95 mask.  And I don’t much listen to those on either end of that spectrum who continue to want me to do things their way.
• Who wants “Amnesty”?  The media were abuzz a while ago about an article in the Atlantic by a professor arguing that there should be an “amnesty” for what people said and did during the worst days of the pandemic. She argues that, on every issue listed above and others, someone was proven to be “right” and someone was “wrong.”  But, she says, we shouldn’t “keep score” because no one knew what to do.  I’m certainly willing to accept two points from her argument as being correct – first, in the first couple of months of the visible, public pandemic in USA (let’s say March and April 2020), a lot of people in power and out of power didn’t know what should be done.  I’ll cut all of us some slack for that period.  Remember, just about everyone agreed with “two weeks to slow the spread”.  But after that, I have a lot less tolerance for foolish or evil public policy.  Second, among lay people who were just trying to do what they each thought was right or best, I don’t fault anyone’s decision for themselves or their families.  But those in government or public service who made decisions with the force of law, and compelled others to accept their decision, I have much less tolerance.  If you’re creating and implementing policies with the force of law, you had better be right.  Full stop.
• Who wants an Apology?  I think decision-makers in government and public health owe the public an assessment of their actions during the pandemic.  That would surely include noting the things that were done “right” and ought to also name the things that were done “wrong.”  I don’t expect to see that from elected politicians.  And I think it’s entirely appropriate for everyone to applaud them and boo them for the good and bad decisions they made.
• Will we be smarter next time?  The public health folks tell us that more virus pandemics will be coming.  I hope we learn the lessons from the Covid-19 pandemic, which I think are these:
  • Stay on your toes – I’m not sure that there was much we could have done differently in the early days of late 2019 and early 2020, even if the pandemic had originated somewhere other than China.  But be alert!
  • Learn something from this pandemic – We made plenty of mistakes.  Next time, don’t repeat the ineffective measures from last time.
  • Be ready with the right resources – This seems obvious, but maybe isn’t happening.
  • Be clear about what’s known and what’s unknown – We did learn a bit about “the science” during Covid.  But we surely will have lots of unknows in the next pandemic, too.
  • Don’t lie – There was lying – by governments, companies and individuals – to cover up for earlier mistakes and miscalculations.  This destroys the credibility of the liar.  
  • Don’t try to “sell” the public a solution – This idea of getting the “messaging” right and combating “misinformation” has generated a lot of mistrust and division.  Especially when the government’s “message” wasn’t always right and the “misinformation” wasn’t necessarily wrong.  The FDA and the CDC have presumably learned something about reputational damage.
  • Search for the least intrusive measures – Coercive government lockdowns, firing workers who refuse to be vaccinated and using the “emergency” as an excuse to further your unpopular and mostly unrelated policy measures will not be well received.
  • Don’t impose mandatory measures without rigorous debate and clear evidence that they will work – A lot of what governments tried to do, didn’t really work.
  • Be ready to change when indicated – Individuals and institutions don’t like to admit they were wrong and change their minds or policies.  We’ve seen that from all political and philosophical viewpoints.  But we really need to do this.

High Gasoline Prices in California

Lots of things are more expensive in California.  One of them in gasoline.  That’s undisputed, and has been this way for a long time.  Why? There are various reasons, some more mysterious than others.

Looking for villains, lets start with this question:  Are the gas station owners sticking-it to their patrons?

A recent podcast looked at whether the “gas stations” outside of California are gouging their customers.  Short answer – no, they are mostly convenience stores that sell gasoline as a low margin item to get you in the store so you’ll buy a high-margin item.  About 80% of them are owned by independent operators, not “big oil.”  The author explains how the retail price breaks down –

“But let’s say, in the current climate, you buy a four dollar gallon of gas. About two dollars of that is going to cover the cost of crude. It’s another 70 cents or so to refine it; 40 cents to move it from the refinery to the gas station, 50 cents or so for federal, state, and local taxes. Altogether, you’re looking at about $3.60, just to get it to the pump. When all is said and done, gas station owners make about 30 cents for every gallon of gas they sell on average. And that 30 cents has to cover a lot of overhead.”

From that 30 cents, they have to pay a lot of overhead, so he figures the station owner makes about 7 cents profit on each gallon.

OK, so what’s the reason why California gas prices are high?

Physical Isolation – California is isolated by the mountain ranges to the east.   Few pipelines bring gasoline from the eastern part of the country to the west coast.

Declining Production – Every year, California produces less and less of its own crude oil, meaning the oil used in California refineries has to be imported from somewhere.  Increasingly, the somewhere has been South America.

Declining Refining Capacity – When I moved to California in the late 1980s, there were something like 16 independent refineries in the state.  Most (maybe all) of them are gone.  Our local refinery permanently closed last month.  We’ve only got a few remaining refineries left; when there’s a problem at one and its shuts down, no one can take up the slack.

Taxes – We have high taxes for gasoline and that gets paid by the customers, not the oil companies.

Regulatory Burdens – The general cost of doing business in California is higher than elsewhere, and those costs get passed along.  In addition, California gasoline is made using a different formula than gasoline elsewhere.  This adds costs and also prevents California from importing gasoline from anywhere else when supplies are tight.

All of these factors are calculated to account for about $1 of the total price difference from other states.

What’s the source of the rest of the difference – something like 40 cents.

Liberals (meaning most politicians in state government) are quick to cry “oil company conspiracy.”  There have been numerous investigations over the years and each one turns up…. nothing.  (BTW, I’d be the first to admit that the oil companies, like any other business, would cheat if they could get away with it.  But there’s no evidence they’re cheating in a way to explains this price difference, so we have to look elsewhere.)

This story identifies the factor that is responsible for a large part of the “unexplained” price difference.

Short answer – in California, we have many fewer gas stations per driver and more of the gas stations are owned by the few remaining refineries or have long term contracts that don’t let the owner shop around for the cheapest gas.  The gas station owner’s take is ~79 cents per gallon, much higher than elsewhere in the country.  Fewer stations = less competition = higher prices.  Why don’t we have more gas stations?  California makes it tough to operate a business – any business – including a gas station.  And, given all the “green,” anti-gasoline government policies in place in California, who would want to build more gas stations?

Some of this is history, but most of it is intentional government policies.

Like a lot of things in California, we are getting what we asked for.

What are we to make of “He Gets Us”?

I grew up a devoted Dallas Cowboys fan, but don’t follow much of the NFL season these days.  I even missed the first half of the Super Bowl.  But, the game had an exciting finish and fans were pleased, I’d guess, particularly if you like KC.

The Ad Campaign – Commercials in the Super Bowl often seek to be something new and different and memorable.  But a minor stir was caused this year by a couple of ads from the “He Gets Us” campaign.  Aside from the relative novelty of running an ad promoting Christ and presumably Christianity during a Super Bowl, there was wider buzz in social media.  One might think that the messages were pretty non-controversial – one said we should be childlike, echoing some of Jesus’ words.  And the other reminded us that Jesus loves the people we hate.  Neither of those should have provoked “controversy” except in the sense that Jesus has always provoked controversy.

Criticism from Left and Right – From the political left, U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted – “Something tells me Jesus would *not* spend millions of dollars on Super Bowl ads to make fascism look benign.”  Others on social media dug into the past in order to condemn “He Gets Us.”  Not because of what the ads said, but because some of those who funded it have also funded advocacy supporting traditional, conservative social and religious views.  And the political right jumped in to criticize the political left for criticizing the commercials.  Others criticized the waste of money spent on the ad campaign and pointed out how their respective favorite political causes could have benefited from the money.

The “Hate Group” Label – David Green of Hobby Lobby fame supposedly contributed to the campaign.  The left likes to disparage him and his family.  Here, they were criticized for having donated money to the Alliance Defending Freedom.  The ADF had taken a position in some litigation in Europe some years ago that was deemed unfriendly to the “trans” part of LGBTQ+ campaign.  And the Southern Poverty Law Center had labeled ADF a a “hate group.”   SPLC is a well-heeled, left of center political activist enterprise that has condemned any number of Christian groups that disagree with its politics. So their labeling ADF as a “hate group” isn’t exactly an evenhanded assessment of ADF or the various things it’s done.  I don’t know a lot about ADF, but it seems to me it advocates for traditional Christian positions in litigation where those values are at risk. That may or may not be your cup of tea, but supporting certain litigation hardly makes it a “hate group.”

Government Rules about Sex and Gender – That litigation had to do with government rules in France that said that, in order to change your sex on your driver’s license, you were required to submit various documentation and perhaps had to undergo an irreversible sex change operation.  You may or may not agree with the apparent underlying goal of the ADF in that particular EU legal proceeding – that changing your sex from X to Y on official government documents ought to be reserved for those who have actually done so, not just declared themselves to be X, not Y – but that doesn’t make them a hate group (or anyone who donates to ADF) a hate group.  Looking at ADF’s web page, they pursue other advocacy for unsurprising points of view, in addition to the EU “trans” litigation.

What’s the Biblical Support for ADF’s position in that litigation? –  So why would ADF get involved in litigation in Europe about driver’s licenses and passports?  I can’t speak for ADF, but I suspect that their position might go something like this, as found in the Bible:

God created us in his image. He created male and female. This is part of an order that was designed to be optimal. Men and women are complementary and the optimum way for society to be organized is through marriage between a man and a woman.
The current fascination with “trans” is part of our long history of rebellion against God. Seeking to be something other than what God created you – either female or male – is not the best way to live.

Changing Cultural Norms – Efforts to change societal norms and laws about sex/gender are often, but not always, part of this rebellion. (Many times our cultural norms are NOT Biblical and they should be changed.)  I don’t know the history of the particular laws in the EU that were involved in this litigation, but I suspect they were part of a long-standing view that, in many aspects of our society, we find it useful to make a note of a person’s sex.

If the particular issue was driver’s licenses, and the driver’s license says M or F (an objective, identifying characteristic like hair color, eye color or height, etc.), its likely because the driver’s license is a form of identification that is useful to law enforcement and others.

If a person has had sex change surgery, then the driver’s license policy might simply be a way of recognizing that the objective characteristic – a person’s sex – has changed. In that sense, the law did seem to allow a person to change his/ her sex on the driver’s license if they’ve actually had irrevocable sex change surgery. That’s different from, to make a silly example, a man simply declaring himself to be a woman on Monday and then declaring himself to be a man again on Tuesday and then a “none” on Wednesday.

I don’t know why someone wanted to change the driver’s license laws, but I suspect its goal was to continue to eliminate the way society recognizes the difference between the sexes. It furthers the “trans” movement by facilitating the changing of your identity to your choice at the moment, not objective characteristics.

That’s my guess as to why a group like ADF would oppose changing the driver’s license laws. Its a minor skirmish is a long struggle between those who are trying to follow God’s design for His creation, and those who want to satisfy their own desires irrespective of God’s design.  I think the French laws changed after 2017 when the litigation was finished, but who knows if the “woke” are satisfied with them now.

So, Is “He Gets Us” a Conspiracy from the Right or from the Left? – The political right criticizes “He Gets Us” as pandering to the “woke” in our society by emphasizing the “love” side of Jesus, and not emphasizing the discipline required in following Him.  The political left criticizes “He Gets Us” because its interested in political solutions only and focusing on the Bible’s teaching detracts from their message.  I don’t pretend to know what motivates those who funded “He Gets Us” but from what I can see, the message itself is the right one.

Let’s Preach “Christ Crucified” More Loudly than our Politics – As Christians, we have a wonderful message of love, grace, forgiveness and redemption to share with the world.  Lots of us are tempted to argue and “win” those arguments in the political world about culture and values.  All good, as far as it goes.  But the loudest message we need to proclaim is not an argument about politics, but “Christ crucified” since it contains the real hope for the world, not momentary political losses or victories:

“For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but it is the power of God to us who are being saved. For it is written,

I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
and I will set aside the intelligence of the intelligent.

Where is the one who is wise? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the debater of this age? Hasn’t God made the world’s wisdom foolish? For since, in God’s wisdom, the world did not know God through wisdom, God was pleased to save those who believe through the foolishness of what is preached. For the Jews ask for signs and the Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles. Yet to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God, because God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.”

Elections – Fair or Rigged or ?

In recent years, there have been claims that various US election were “stolen.”  The claims are not limited to either the Democrats or the Republicans.  As I mentioned here,  concerning former President Trump’s claims in 2020, actual election fraud that makes a difference is pretty rare.  That doesn’t mean that it hasn’t or won’t happen, but claims of election fraud or voter suppression are usually nonsense.

So, what’s happened in the last two years in this area that we should think about as we prepare to vote next week?

• The claims of widespread fraud in 2020 went nowhere.  Trump’s claims of fraud that caused him to lose the election were either abandoned or found to be unsupported by competent evidence.  Even the recount in Maricopa County, Arizona, a friendly jurisdiction for Trump, found that he lost.  And a follow up investigation didn’t find the election was stolen.  Same story all across the country.
• Some state legislatures did tighten up election procedures and practices, as I urged them to, in order to bolster confidence that results are fair.  Very Blue states like California in effect doubled down on measures they instituted in recent years to boost Democrat voter turnout – and proclaimed those measures reduced the likelihood of voter fraud.  That seems dubious, but election monitoring by both parties may be up this cycle, so we can expect to hear about it if something is amiss.  In very Red states, and even some not-so-Red states, legislatures have changed procedures to eliminate the potential for fraud and for the “gaming” of election processes.  Maybe the most publicized case was Georgia.  When Georgia’s legislature updated its election laws, woke corporations like Coca-Cola and Delta Airlines publicly condemned them, as though these businesses were suddenly experts on election laws in the fifty states.  Major League Baseball moved the All Star game to Colorado in protest.  But, in elections since then, voting doesn’t seem to have been suppressed, but maybe even enhanced.  Early voting in this election looks very strong; I’m not expecting an apology from Coke, Delta or MLB, but maybe they learned something.  The left predictably calls the new laws in Georgia and some other states “election interference” laws, but most changes seem designed to promote accountability and clarity.  A somewhat more nuanced opinion concludes that the actual changes were less than the hype from the media – the changes in 19 states that revised election laws were broadly in line with other states.
• Big Tech companies will likely push Democrat stories and the Democrat agenda, while marginalizing Republican candidates and their messages.  There’s no serious dispute about the political leanings of the leadership and personnel of the big tech companies – the policies that they institute will have the effect of supporting Democrats.  The tech companies claim their algorithms are neutral but neither the “automated” or human decisions and policies, nor the results as implemented, are even handed.

Looking back on the big picture from the 2020 election, the most unsettling item was the action – probably legal – by Mark Zuckerberg and his wife to tilt election results in a number of states.  What they did was largely undisputed.  Zuckerbergs’ entities gave close to $400 million and other resources to certain election officials in Democratic areas to “help” them with the election.  And, indeed, it appears that they may have increased Democrat voter turnout in some very close races.  Seemingly without any irony at all, NPR says Zuckerbergs’ money “saved” the election.  Republicans appear to have simply been outsmarted and outmaneuvered by this process, but at least eight states have now outlawed outside “help” for election officials.

We shouldn’t expect that voter fraud or voter suppression will play any significant part in next week’s elections.  It could happen, but with all the attention given to the topic two years ago, and poll-watchers and other monitors alert for any slip-ups or shenanigans, I’m expecting a reasonably fair and free election.  Be sure to vote!

Serial and American Justice

In 2014, a former crime reporter narrated a story about a murder in suburban Baltimore and the subsequent trial and conviction of the murderer. It was released in weekly installments as a podcast called Serial, a spin-off from the NPR show, This American Life.  The reporter, Sarah Koenig, and one of her co-producers, Julie Snyder, created a very entertaining and interesting tale that invited the listener to decide whether the defendant, a teenager named Adnan Syed, was either guilty or not guilty.

Since Serial told the story, the true-life murder conviction of Syed was appealed and his conviction was upheld.  He served 23 years of a life sentence for killing his ex-girlfriend, Hae Min Lee.

Serial was wildly popular, and attracted at lot of attention.  A number of high-profile popular media stories, including an HBO documentary, dealt with both the phenomena of Serial in popular culture, as well as the flaws and shortcomings of the police investigation and Syed’s trial.  Most of the focus of these efforts was to attack the prosecution’s case and to create doubt about Syed’s guilt.

Under a new Maryland law, Syed asked to have his sentence reduced and to be freed.  As a result of that process, but using a different rationale, the outgoing – and controversial – state’s attorney in Baltimore, Marilyn Mosby (herself under federal indictment) convinced a court to vacate the original conviction and free Syed.  She recently announced that she would not retry Syed.

I’ve leaned towards Syed being guilty since listening to Serial years ago when it first dropped. I have not followed closely all the subsequent media over the years since, but nothing I’ve seen or heard lately has changed my opinion.

But, here are a few observations about human nature and the way our criminal justice system is constructed:

• We’re studying the Bible’s first murder just now in a class at church. I was struck by how little it took for Cain to murder Abel. They each offered seemingly appropriate sacrifices to God and God preferred Abel’s sacrifice. Cain, angry at God, killed his brother.

We tend to regard this whole story about the offerings as “unfair” to Cain, because we can’t easily see why Cain was treated this way by God. But the inferences we can draw from the whole story (his anger, his pride, his despondency, his giving-in to sin) point to Cain’s attitude & character, not his offering. Sin was “crouching” at Cain’s door; then Cain acts on the sinful impulse.  In this story, sin prevailed in Cain’s heart and conduct.

The point is that we can never really know someone’s heart, and anger, malice, and self-delusion can motivate someone to murder, even if we can’t see or understand why they would.  What we can do, and what we do every day in various ways, is look at someone’s actions and infer their intentions from what we are able to observe.  This isn’t to say that Syed (or any other suspect) is undeniably guilty, but simply to say that those who believe a 17 yr old just wouldn’t kill in this situation are not recognizing how human nature works.

• The second observation concerns those, including Sarah Koenig, who want the main focus of the story to be about how rotten the American criminal justice system is. I’m quite willing to believe that there are lazy, corrupt and evil police, defense lawyers, prosecutors and judges. Every human and human institution has the capacity for laziness, corruption and evil-doing. But, rather than let professionals (magistrates, judges, etc.) or the powerful (political figures) decide guilt and punishment (which is how it works most places in the world), our system requires ordinary citizen jurors to hear the evidence from both sides, weigh that evidence and decide guilt based on their collective view of the case. That’s huge, and often overlooked or under-appreciated by those who criticize a case where they disagree with the outcome.

Our system also has numerous mechanisms to deal with errors and misconduct- if there truly was a Brady rule violation here, then perhaps vacating Syed’s conviction is appropriate. But don’t confuse that with the ultimate and perhaps unknowable question of whether Syed really did kill her.

• Finally, most criminal cases are messy and each side’s case has strengths and weaknesses. Sarah Koening didn’t pick this case for her story in the inaugural edition of Serial because it was clean and clear; to the contrary, Syed’s case is, indeed, messy.  In our system, jurors have to weigh the value of all the conflicting evidence and come to a decision. Here, they concluded Syed was guilty.

I wasn’t a juror in Syed’s trial, but I still lean towards accepting the jury’s verdict there.  We may yet hear more of the story and learn facts that could change my mind.  We’ll see, but I suspect that we may never know with certainty who strangled Hae Min Lee.

The Right Amount of Energy: Should We Worry about Demand Destruction or Supply Destruction?

Energy is essential to our modern way of life in the West.  There is a direct, clear and undisputed connection between wealthy, industrial economies and the easy availability of energy.  Where energy is relatively cheap and plentiful, society prospers; the reverse is also true.  Right now, we’re in a period where there are forces disputing this idea.  So, do we have too much energy available at too low a price, or do we have too little energy available at too high a price?

Is Peak Oil a thing? – Since fossil fuels provide the overwhelming majority of energy in the world, let’s look first at what worries those who examine the markets for oil & gas (I’ll look at coal in a separate note).  For many years, there was discussion and worry about “Peak Oil.”   The Peak Oil idea is that there is a point in time when we have produced oil and gas at the highest possible volume or rate, and from then on, there would be lower and lower rates of production.  With less and less supply available, eventually we would “run out of” oil.  At one time, it was believed that Peak Oil would occur in the 1960’s or 1970s.  Now, it is sometime in the indefinite future.  Of course, its true that there will be such a time, but we likely won’t know when Peak Oil has occurred until looking back a long time afterwards.  This idea is useless for deciding how much or what kind of energy supplies we will need or when.  Provided producers keep investing to develop new supplies, in practical terms, we can have all the oil & gas we need.

Remember this Number -> 100 Million – Today, the world produces and consumes about 100 million barrels of oil each day.  Most forecasts say this number will rise in the future, assuming reasonable economic growth.  We are not “running out of oil” although it is getting harder and harder to find, and will be more and more expensive in the future.  Oil producers are always balancing the increasing cost to find and produce oil & gas against the increasing price they can get from selling their production.  But in recent years, roughly 100 million barrels a day is the balance point.

What are we to make of Demand Destruction?  So why do we sometimes hear about “demand destruction?”  When a petroleum economist talks about “demand destruction” she means something – like high prices or artificial barriers – that causes demand for oil & gas to decline.  A producer or seller of any product worries about demand destruction.  When prices are high, the seller likes receiving that high price, but doesn’t want the price to be so high that the seller makes less money because its selling less product.  In the popular press, “oil companies” are often described as greedy, evil people who want the price of gasoline to be very high.  All businesses want to make money, but they don’t want their customers to stop buying their product. 

Very High Prices = Demand Destruction.  Since the disruption of oil & gas markets resulting from the Russian invasion of Ukraine last spring, prices rose a lot, interrupting and perhaps destroying demand.  When oil & gas prices are very high, it will eventually result in demand destruction.  At that point, even those greedy oil companies would like a more moderate price.

Recession Suppresses Demand. The pandemic, government-ordered lockdowns and resulting supply chain issues have all wreaked havoc on economies all around the world. Some of those countries and economies are already in a recession. Recessions will reduce economic activity and generally will reduce demand, although not permanently destroy it.

Governments Try to Destroy Demand.  What else destroys demand?  Artificial barriers like government rules prohibiting natural gas appliances in new homes and businesses, or laws forbidding the sale of gasoline powered vehicles.  Government policies are sometimes explicitly intended to reduce oil & gas use, and other instances, reduceing demand may be an incidental result of government policy not primarily focused on oil & gas use.  Obviously, oil companies would worry about these measures as well.

What are we to make of Supply Destruction?  How about the supply side?  Is there concern about “supply destruction” as well?

Yes.  Remember that the worldwide supply & demand for oil & gas is balanced at about 100 million barrels per day. On average, the amount produced from existing wells declines about 5% every year.  The producers have to explore for, find and develop new supplies all the time.  So what would stop producers from exploring, developing and producing?  Like the demand side, there are natural, market forces and artificial government forces.

CoVid Destroyed Demand and then Supply – The CoVid-19 pandemic, and associated “shut-down” in many countries lowered the demand for oil & gas.  In rough terms, the demand for oil fell from 100 million barrels of oil per day to somewhere between 70 and 80 million barrels.  In relatively short time, producers found themselves producing 20 to 30 million barrels a day more than they could sell.  Its not easy to quickly stop producing, though companies and countries reacted by stopping or slowing production, as well as delaying or cancelling exploration for new reserves.  With supply greatly exceeding demand, prices fell dramatically, somewhere around 50-60% in the early days of the pandemic.  Demand recovered gradually as economies went back to work, but producers of oil & gas who lost money were hesitant to start large scale spending again.  The unprecedented cut to demand was met with an unprecedented cut to supply. So, some “supply destruction” resulted from the producers themselves failing to invest the money needed to restore and expand production. 

(Moreover, those “greedy oil companies” are, about half of the time, the national oil companies of  other countries.  The big decline in prices was hard on companies and countries.  This huge price drop damaged the economies of those countries and their national oil companies.  So the consumers in those countries now find themselves with both high prices and poorer governments.)

And Some Governments are Busy Trying to Destroy Supply.  Other “supply destruction” factors include the relentless anti-oil forces at work in the governments of many developed countries in their zeal to address climate change.  The idea is that renewable energy – usually meaning solar and wind, but not nuclear or hydro – will replace oil & gas. Some particularly radical activists simply want to greatly discouraged all energy consumption and remake industrial society. These governments are discouraging investment in oil & gas and are making it more difficult and more expensive at each stage to explore for, develop, produce, refine, transport and sell oil & gas.  The Biden administration has granted fewer oil & gas leases on federal lands than any administration since WW II.  In every regulatory way possible, the Biden administration is destroying oil and gas supply.  Until the war in the Ukraine occurred, these same anti-oil forces were at work in most European countries.

Finally, some oil and gas companies are busy at work advertising their business plans to destroy their own long-term supply by pursuing various “net zero” and ESG-heavy strategies.  If they are serious, and if they continue, then they will contribute to supply destruction and their own extinction.  (Since half the world’s oil production comes from national oil companies, not companies owned by “greedy capitalists,” it can be reliably assumed that the national oil companies will not knowingly contribute to supply destruction, although their inefficiencies are a form of sub-optimal development.)

Over time, supply and demand will equalize at prices that allow buyers and sellers to stay in business.  Historically, many governments subsidized oil & gas use.  Now, governments in wealthy countries are implementing plans and policies to destroy both supply and demand for oil & gas, further distorting those markets.  We will see if popular opposition to those anti-oil policies forces governments to change.

Is College Student Loan Forgiveness a good idea for the USA?

President Biden has unilaterally chosen to try to to forgive much of the college student debt that was incurred by borrowing from the federal government.  Students owe something like $1.7 Trillion to our government.

 

This decision seems indefensible, other than to buy votes.

 

And the continued deferment of payments on students loans until after this year’s elections, seems even worse.  Students have simply enjoyed not paying their debts and, to believe the reports, many have spent those funds on something else like cars, down payments on houses, “guilt free shopping,” etc. – this Planet Money story gives a nice snapshot – https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1093113723   A short-term pause on repayments seemed appropriate in the early days of the pandemic, when the economy stuttered and temporary layoffs happened.  But in the years since then, there has been record low unemployment, and presumably any student with any skills or aptitude could have gotten a job in the last couple of years.  Waiting until next year to start repayments has no real justification other than encouraging students to vote for democrats who gave them these freebies.

 

College costs would be nowhere near what they are today if it weren’t for government loans. This because, if the students couldn’t borrow the money, then they could not afford what the colleges are charging.  If easy debt from the feds were not available, colleges would find other ways to fund their operations or would change their business model.  And, this round of loan forgiveness doesn’t fix high college costs.

 

I’m sure there will be litigation and, at first blush, Biden’s legal basis seems weak.  He seeks to justify action by the executive branch alone under the guise of dealing with the pandemic.  But I haven’t seen any evidence to support a connection between debt and the pandemic.  Recall that initially, Biden said that he didn’t have the legal authority to cancel student debt, although he wanted to, and even Nancy Pelosi seemingly agreed with that he needed Congress to act.  My guess is that he doesn’t care whether he really has the power to do this, because he’ll get the political brownie points for trying even if it fails.  And a definitive court ruling against him likely won’t come until after the 2022 elections.

 

It’s inflationary (a $200 to $300 Billion hit to the budget) and, in the end, creates a bigger “moral hazard” problem – why worry about borrowing huge amounts if you can count on the feds to bail you out?

 

The final political issue is that it seems unfair to many.  Those who didn’t borrow for college, or repaid their student loans, look like chumps.  And the debt that was forgiven will be paid by the majority of Americans, who’ve never borrowed for school, or didn’t go to college.  Finally, the debt forgiveness is available even for an individual with $125,000 in income, about twice the median household income.  So, this is a gift to many well-to-do folks from the majority of citizens who earn less.

 

I guess we’ll see how it plays out, legally and politically, but initially it looks like a bad decision and bad public policy.

 

What are we to make of the US Supreme Court and Abortion?

The US Supreme Court has decided a case called Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, concerning a statute in Mississippi and concluded that “[t]he Constitution does not confer a right to abortion; Roe and Casey are overruled; and the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives.” So, regulating abortions (or not) is now a matter for each state to decide, or perhaps Congress.

In reaching this decision, the court overturns its prior decision in Roe v. Wade, 410 U. S. 113 (1973), which had famously held that there was a constitutional right to an abortion and that states could not prohibit it, and also overrules a later case called Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey, 505 U. S. 833 (1992) that followed Roe but used a different analysis and test.  So, the consequence of Dobbs is that we are back to where we were before Roe was decided – its for the elected government in each state to decide how to handle the issue.

Here’s my initial take on the issue of abortion and the US courts:

Historical Perspective – The “right” to an abortion is a relatively new idea in western civilization.

• Abortions have always occurred, but usually on the fringes of legal and respectable medical practice.
• Abortions were prohibited or restricted in many places for centuries.  Before Roe, abortion was illegal in many, but not all US states.
• After Roe, abortion continued to be heavily regulated in most western countries.  Roe actually made the USA an outlier, with far more permissive abortion policy than western European countries (and in a camp with the likes of North Korea and a few other countries).
• The technology of abortions has changed the details over time, but the concepts were / are the same – some mechanical or chemical means to end an unwanted pregnancy.  Today in the USA, pharmaceutical or chemical abortions (e.g. – RU 486) are about equal to the number of surgical abortions.  Some say Plan B a/k/a the “morning after pill” is different and not an “abortion.”
• Abortion is common in the USA – 1990’s high was about 1.6 million abortions; today, best guesses are something less than a million a year today.  Since Roe, there have been ~60 million abortions in the USA.
• About one-half of US states have no laws about abortion or permissive laws; the other half prohibit or restrict abortions.

Strictly Legal Issues – On purely legal grounds, it looks to me like Dobbs was correctly decided.

• Roe was decided on the basis of an idea that the US constitution contains some sort of “right to privacy.”  There is no “right to privacy” in the text of the constitution, rather it is an idea that was created by the US Supreme Court, generally recognized in a 1965 case called Griswold, in which Mr. Justice Douglas said that there were “emanations” and “penumbras” from the 1st, 3rd, 4th, 5th and 9th amendments to the constitution that had the effect of protecting personal liberty with a “zone of privacy” for individuals.  In Griswold, the court found that this right to privacy meant that state laws regulating the sale of contraceptives to married couples were invalid.  Later cases looked at the 14th amendment.
• Roe held that, as a pregnancy developed, the state had an increasingly strong interest in regulating and prohibiting abortion, but in first trimester, the interests of the pregnant woman and her doctor were stronger than the interests of the state, and so the state could not regulate or prohibit abortions in the first trimester.  Not even Roe held that a person had a right to do whatever he or she wanted – the law never recognized political slogans like “my body, my choice” and “no one can tell me what to do with my body.”
• After Roe, Casey changed the test and criteria and made it even messier – rather than a classification based on trimesters, Casey said courts had to use the idea of “viability” to decide whether a regulation violated the constitution.  Since Casey, there have been a number of state laws and a number of cases trying to figure out how to draw the line between permissible and impermissible regulation.
• Roe and Casey have generally been recognized as being based on weak or faulty legal analysis.  Even pro-abortion lawyers recognized that Roe was poorly or wrongly decided, and so often based their arguments on other ideas.

Social and Cultural Considerations – Why did the Warren court dabble in emanations and penumbras? To push a social and cultural agenda.

• The 1960’s was a time of great social and cultural change in the USA.  Old ideas were being discredited and cast aside.  Activists used courts to press for changes in the legal arena, as well as the broader culture.
• During era of Warren court, the activism and breakdown of societal norms was mirrored in some ways by court decisions. The contraception cases before Roe reflected a desire by a certain segment of society to change norms.  The particular justices in the Warren court were open to using the court’s power to advance social changes that they thought were good, regardless of what legislatures and governors thought.
• Feminism of various kinds was in ascendency in the 1960s, and the legal ability to abort an unwanted pregnancy was part of women’s demands for “equality.”
• In the 1960s, and in the years since then, there has probably never been a clear and strong nationwide cultural consensus about abortion.  There are strong views on all sides of the debate.
• Even today, many people are uncomfortable with the issue and have subtle / inconsistent / confused positions.  For example, pro-abortion politicians have used slogans that abortion should be “safe, legal and rare”; anti-abortion politicians have supported laws that allowed abortions in cases of rape, incest or to save the life of the mother.  As a political matter, abortion has never been a black & white issue for most Americans.

Political Considerations Today – Since Roe , Democrats have become the pro-abortion party, and GOP has become the anti-abortion party. Constitutional protections are needed for really important topics to protect against the will of the majority; if the US constitution does not decide the issue, then some states will continue to have pro-abortion rules and other states will continue to have anti-abortion rules. It seems fair to expect that more attention will be given to these proposed laws now, since they won’t be struck down by a federal court. There are some other interesting indirect political consequences; for example, there is a reasonable empirical case to be made that a significant portion of the reduction in crime in the USA in the years since Roe was due to unwanted babies being aborted. If more unwanted babies are born going forward in states that limit abortion, will their crime rates rise 15-20 years from now when those unwanted children come of age?

Religious Considerations – As a Christian, I’m interested in what the Bible teaches about abortion.

• The Bible does not speak directly and clearly and authoritatively on abortion.
• There are, however, strong Biblical ideas relating to abortion – humans are created in the image of God and our inherent rights as a person arise out of this idea.  Because we are created in the image of God, human life has “sanctity” and “dignity.”  There is some Biblical support for the idea that life begins at conception.
• Infanticide – killing the baby after it was born, not before – was seen at various times in the Old Testament and was condemned.  By extension, ending the life of a baby in the womb can also be condemned.
• Nothing in the history of the early church suggests that it supported the crude methods of abortion then available or the old practice of infanticide.
• The Bible condemns promiscuity and honors the idea of having children and the role of the husband, wife and children.
• Today, the Roman Catholic church and the Orthodox church continue to oppose abortion, as do many US evangelical Protestant denominations and churches.  The declining and politically liberal wings of old mainline US Protestant denominations don’t oppose abortion.  Some forms of Islam also restrict abortion. 

What now? Its now up to citizens and elected leaders to decide how to regulate abortion. Consensus-building and compromise; victories and defeats, etc. All the usual stuff of political life. We are fortunate to live in a country where the voters can decide these matters.

Innovation

Sometimes I wonder about corporate America. 

It so happens that I drink a fair amount of Starbucks’ coffee.  I don’t care for their corporate politics, but they have a lot of stores in convenient locations and their black, dark roast coffee hits the spot for me.

So I got a good laugh out of this story in the news recently.  Starbucks believes it needs to be “green” and “sustainable” or at least, that it needs to appear to be green and sustainable, a somewhat awkward position for a company in the retail food business where everything is wrapped in plastic.  They seem aware enough to understand that there are a lot of Starbucks’ paper cups in landfills (and roadside ditches) around the world and this maybe undercuts their green and sustainable image.

But they’ve got an innovative solution – cups that can be reused!  Who would have thought that they could have… I don’t know… maybe ceramic mugs with the Starbucks logo on them.  And that, when the customer is done, could be washed and reused!  Wow!  Or maybe sell the customer a mug or cup suitable for a cupholder in his car.  Of course, a corporate team or two will need to get on this, and after a few years of study, maybe this could be rolled out widely….

The story also points out, apparently without any irony, that Starbucks used to be willing to fill-up a customer’s own cup, but that the “company halted their use between March 2020 and June 2021 because of the Covid-19 pandemic.”  I laughed at this because Starbucks was among the worst of the corporate food chains in handling the Covid pandemic, and, even in March 2022, I still don’t know what to expect when I show up at a store.  Sometimes, the inside is still closed and only the drive-through is open; sometimes you can go inside, but you can’t sit down; many stores closed their restrooms for years, and I was in one today (like many others) where only one restroom is open, and the other restroom is “closed” (meaning only employees can use it).  We knew by mid-summer 2020 that the virus was not being transmitted on surfaces, like coffee cups handed to someone, or faucet handles in a restroom, but as recently as last month, a Starbucks employee insisted that I put my personal steel coffee cup in a big mug so that he wouldn’t have to touch it.  Other stores still won’t handle your own cup at all.  Apparently being green and sustainable doesn’t mean a consistent corporate policy or any of that “follow the science” stuff.

Anyway, I’ll enjoy watching the roll-out of this innovative program of offering re-usuable cups – once the corporate teams have finished studying, analyzing, number-crunching and pondering, followed by a few more test programs at carefully selected locations.  ‘Murica!