Rants, mumbling, repressed memories, recipes, and haiku from a professor at the University of St. Thomas Law School.
Wednesday, November 06, 2024
An important mission
I don't know about you, but I found yesterday to be kind of exhausting.
Yeah, I loved voting in the morning-- I always do. For the first time ever, I saw people waiting in a long line at my polling place. But wait they did, as they did all over the country. That was the best part of the day.
In Minnesota, we will have Tim Walz back here as full-time governor. And, in this new era, that will be a very important job. Here's why:
It's common to say we are becoming "two nations," referring to blue and red states, and there is some truth to that. But the deeper truth is that each state is becoming, in a way, its own nation. Red states are different than one another, and the same is true of blue states: Oklahoma is not the same as Indiana; Minnesota is not California. Texas is putting up its own border controls. My own state is an island surrounded by red-- we might as well be our own country, one that people flee to if they need an abortion.
To get through the coming years, a governor like Walz will be more like a president-- he will be leading a government that is largely cut off from the federal government both in culture and practice.
On Tuesday, one candidate will win and one will lose. There will be spiritual crises for some on the losing side. The race has been so tied up with identity that it will be hard not to feel that identity challenged-- and, if we are honest, because our principles and identity are tied up with our faith, it could challenge that as well. After all, if principle so clearly shows one candidate should win, who are we when they don''t?
And that is when religion will have to be more than politics.
Hopefully, as with any moment of crisis, faith can help us transcend hardship and understand those things that are hard to understand. After all, the entire faith grew up under a hostile regime, something that the Bible describes often. (And yes, I realize that many Christians don't see Trump as hostile to faith, but that will have to be another post).
It's the day after Halloween, and at least some of us got to see some kids come to the door. What good costumes did you see? (I know we did a personal favorite costume of our own last week, but this is about them, not you). It can be from another year if you didn't get the experience this year. Here, I will go first:
A green witch appeared
With terrifying visage
Genuine deep fear.
Now it is your turn! Just use the 5/7/5 syllable pattern and have some fun!
If, like many Americans, you are concerned about inflation, here is an important thing you can do about it: don’t vote for Donald Trump. Two of Trump’s top policy initiatives, deportations and tariffs, are going to drive inflation higher if implemented.
The reason why is not so hard to understand. Inflation goes up when costs go up for producers and sellers of goods and services. Both deportations and tariffs will raise costs for producers and sellers (in varying ways), and those added costs will be passed along to us, the consumers.
Let’s examine deportations first. Trump’s platform promises “THE LARGEST DEPORTATION IN AMERICAN HISTORY,” [All caps in original] and that’s a problem, if what is actually affecting your life is higher prices. In short, deporting a lot of undocumented workers will shrink the labor supply, and raise the cost of labor for people who grow, process, manufacture, and sell things. These increased labor costs will be particularly acute in certain areas: agriculture and hospitality, for instance. A lot of the focus on inflation lately has been about grocery prices, but what do you think will happen when workers in slaughterhouses, on dairy farms, and in food processing are deported en masse? To get anyone to do those jobs, employers will have to pay more—and that price will show up at grocery stores.
The University of Wisconsin recently estimated that over 10,000 unauthorized workers can be found just on that state’s dairy farms. Take away those workers, and the cost of milk—and everything made from it—will go up. Certainly, one can argue that undocumented workers are breaking the law and should be sent home, but if that’s your view don’t pretend that we won’t pay for it at the grocery store.
Of course, in general when the labor force shrinks, then wages go up; that’s a big part of Trump’s argument, and he is right about that. But the rise in wages will come in those fields where we find a lot of undocumented labor. Most undocumented workers occupy low-wage jobs in agriculture, construction, food service, domestic work and various kinds of day labor. If you are in one of those fields, yes, your own wages may go up—but most citizens aren’t doing that kind of job, so their wages won’t be directly affected by mass deportations. If you work in a restaurant kitchen, for example, your work will become much more lucrative. But if you are someone who eats in the restaurant, you are just going to be paying more.
And what about tariffs? “Tariffs are the greatest thing ever invented,” Donald Trump has said, but that might not be your view once they are imposed. Tariffs are basically a tax on imports—a price that importers have to pay to the government. Trump has proposed a 20% tariff on all imported goods and a special 60% tariff on goods imported from China. In other words, a $10 shirt made in China would actually cost $16 to bring into the United States. The added cost, of course, is paid by consumers—inflation.
In the long term, of course, the idea behind tariffs is that rather than pay high prices for imported goods, American firms will produce those goods. There is truth to that, of course. I lived in Detroit when the North American Free Trade Agreement went into place in 1994, largely eliminating tariffs with Canada and Mexico. The effect on Detroit was very negative, as manufacturing plants and jobs went to Mexico. Tariffs can play a role in maintaining or bolstering domestic production—but they also, especially in the short term, cause inflation.
Trump’s plan for lowering inflation centers on increasing energy production in the United States by lowering regulations and opening up new areas for exploration. There are a few problems with that plan. One is that energy in the forms he is talking about (oil, gas, and coal) are part of a world market. Right now, in fact, the United States is a net petroleum exporter—that is, we sell more of it to other countries than we import from abroad. That world market will greatly dilute the impact of marginally greater production in the United States. A second problem is the lag time that goes with oil exploration and production. For example, production from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge could not begin until 2031 at the earliest. If energy production is going to bring down prices, it won’t be for a while—and probably won’t have much of an impact, as much of the new production is exported.
One real tool that the federal government has for lowering inflation (albeit, also in the long term) is to reduce the national debt. Neither party seems very good at that, though, and neither candidate is talking about it.
Inflation is a real problem for a large part of the population, and deserves the attention it is getting on the national stage (even as the inflation rate goes down). The problem is that neither party is addressing it openly and honestly—and Trump’s plan risks making things much worse.
As most of you have figured out, I'm a white straight cis man who has a lot of privilege. And I know it. Because of my work, though, I am rarely in places where the majority of people are like me. Yesterday, though, I did find myself in such a room when I signed up to hear a speaker from the former Trump administration talk about transgender laws. Which, in retrospect, might have been a mistake.
One thing that struck me was how aggrieved people in that room seemed to be-- they genuinely thought that they are the disadvantaged. This group, mostly affluent lawyers and law students, didn't strike me as suffering much, but apparently being expected to use people's pronouns-- or even have them identified publicly-- is very traumatic. Because, women's sports. Which they care about a lot. And which are being destroyed, except for the part where they are doing better than ever and riding a wave of public popularity never seen before. And that is very hard to see, this thing where women's sports are being destroyed. And where on a zoom meeting people say "She/her." It's the most important thing of all.
I'm really struck by one division in our country right now, which is the willingness of voters to accept the results of an election if their candidate loses. Harris voters are ready to accept the results, which Trump voters largely are not-- they think that if Trump loses, it will be because the results are rigged.
Part of it, I think, is the information they get. Harris voters are more likely to read newspapers and watch mainstream news, and those sources are full of reports that the race is dead even-- which means it is rational that Harris might lose.
Meanwhile the sources of information for Trump voters, such as Fox News, will mention polls but emphasize perceived miscues by the Harris campaign and perceived triumphs of Trump. They may live in a place where most of the people around them are for Trump, creating the impression that their line of sight represents the views of the nation. If you spend every day driving past lines of Trump signs, it probably does seem unlikely that he will lose.
Certainly, Harris voters tend to be surrounded by other Harris voters, as well. But they probably are more cognizant of the situation in other parts of the state or country-- because their sources of information report on that.
It's probably not great that the mainstream channels of information pay so much attention to the horserace part of the election-- it takes away from substantive discussion of policy, for one thing. Still, at least it gives people a rational view.
Fall in Minnesota is spectacular. The picture above was from a bike ride last weekend; before long the bright colors will change to grayscale, skewed towards white.
So, riding a bike down a path like that-- I'm not going to claim that it is a proof of God or anything like that. But it is transcendent, and we did not create it.
Haiku Friday: What you REALLY want to be for Halloween
Halloween is almost here. I know-- most of you aren't going to be in costume. But if you could... and could be what you really want... what would it be? Here, I will go first:
The costume I want:
Martin Van Buren, President!
Muttonchop magic.
Now it is your turn! Just use the 5/7/5 syllable pattern and have some fun!
-- The race will be very close, and by 11 PM Eastern time the results will still be unclear.
-- At that point, Donald Trump will declare himself the winner. It could be that at that point, the votes already tallied would have him winning the electoral college.
-- His lawyers will swing into action and, claiming abnormalities, try to stop the counting of votes in some places, locking existing totals into place.
-- The he will appeal to the Supreme Court to stop further counting, citing 2000's terrible decision in Bush v. Gore as a precedent.
I'm not saying it will work-- I'm just saying it could easily happen.
Last night as I was trying to get to sleep, I started thinking about the weird distribution of FBS Division 1 football teams. It doesn't correlate to population at all, given that North Carolina has seven, while New York, Pennsylvania and Illinois (much more populous states that produce a lot of football players) have only three and Wisconsin and Minnesota each have only one. These disparities must really matter for recruiting! Here is how it breaks down:
As the election approaches, I'm seeing more signs that if Trump loses, he will try to contest the election. Again.
First of all, that's a significant "if." The race seems to be a toss-up at the moment. But... yes, Trump may well win. And if he does, no one expects that the Democrats will substantially challenge the results unless something really hinky happens.
But if Trump loses, I don't doubt that he and his supporters will try to challenge the result. The landscape is very different than in 2020, though, because Trump is not the incumbent. He can run around filing suits again, but that did not work very well last time and probably won't this time, either.
More worrisome is that election officials in Trump-favoring places will aid the campaign to challenge the result. Across the country, MAGA enthusiasts have gained positions of power over the apparatus of the election, yes. But how would they then subvert the election-- by declaring the process they controlled to be compromised?
Well, yeah, I suppose they could do that, but it would be a pretty tricky game...
35 James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came forward to him and said to him, “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” 36 And he said to them, “What is it you want me to do for you?” 37 And they said to him, “Appoint us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.” 38 But Jesus said to them, “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?” 39 They replied, “We are able.” Then Jesus said to them, “The cup that I drink you will drink, and with the baptism with which I am baptized you will be baptized, 40 but to sit at my right hand or at my left is not mine to appoint, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared.” 41 When the ten heard this, they began to be angry with James and John. 42 So Jesus called them and said to them, “You know that among the gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. 43 But it is not so among you; instead, whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, 44 and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. 45 For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many.”
Ah, isn't that a familiar story? A couple guys try to get a favored position, then others find out and are mad.
Part of what is interesting here is that the story is about some seeking advantage (in the first paragraph) and others being upset at that (the second paragraph), but the lesson in the end is about... the nature of leadership!
There has been, of course, a certain interest in "servant leadership," often among business leaders who make 100x more than their workers. That form of servant leadership too often involves everything except selflessness and sacrifice-- what Jesus was talking about. Servant leadership has to go beyond mere empathy for those you lead, if Jesus is your example. You have to literally walk their walk.
I often tell my students that when they do the most important thing in their life, there probably won't be a parade. Instead, you might be castigated, embarrassed, fired-- because doing great things usually challenges the status quo in some way, and imposes that sacrifice.
