Realism vs Fatalism

A unifying theme of this year’s extremely active Atlantic hurricane season, which officially concludes on Saturday, has been the disbelief echoing from the Blue Ridge Mountains to the Ozark plateau. “I had always felt like we were safe from climate change,” an Asheville, N.C., woman told The Times after Hurricane Helene. “But now this makes me question that maybe there’s nowhere that’s safe.”

To which the obvious rejoinder is: You’re right. Nowhere is safe.

But some places are less safe than others. Atop the list of unsafe places is New Orleans. But unlike the other major cities that appear on such lists (Phoenix; Norfolk, Va.; Tampa Bay, Fla; New York), New Orleans has a striking competitive advantage. It knows that every hurricane season poses an existential threat.

I’ve never met a New Orleanian who feels safe from climate change. Living here, rather, engenders hurricane expertise — and hurricane fatalism. You become your own disaster planner, insurance adjuster, land surveyor and roofer. You know how many feet your neighborhood is above or below sea level, which storm drain on the block must be cleared by hand before the rain starts, which door sill needs to be bolstered with a rolled-up towel and where water is most likely to pool, with what appalling consequences.

The National Hurricane Center advises those in the path of a storm to have an evacuation plan. Most New Orleanians I know have three plans: one if the storm lands to the east, one if to the west and a third if the evacuation lasts longer than a week. We don’t wait for a tropical storm to form. We track every depression and cyclone advisory with grim scrutiny. There are storm shutters on every window, a hammer in the attic, candles and matches and gallons of bottled water in the pantry. Local news organizations track how many of the city’s drainage pumps, steam and combustion turbine generators and frequency changers are operational at any given time. We are as prepared as anyone can be with the certain knowledge that one day a storm will come for which no preparations will be sufficient.

Saul Bellow wrote that “no one made sober decent terms with death.” But cities can. New Orleans has. What does it mean, for a city, to make sober decent terms with death? It means living in reality. It means doing whatever it can to postpone the inevitable. It means settling for the best of bad options. But it does not mean blindly submitting to fate.

Read the rest here.

A letter from Syracuse New York

Syracuse, Nov, 25, 1847

Friend Greeley,

This is the day designated by some twenty of the States of our Union as a day of thanksgiving to our Heavenly Father for the many blessings and privileges that we have enjoyed during the past year. It is a good and wholesome custom, and will, probably, within five years, become general in all the states. It is not only due to the Author of our being, but its tendency to stop us in our mad haste to amass wealth and gain renown, to review our conduct as accountable and Immortal beings.

Most of our churches have been open for religious services. Drs. ADAMS and GREGORY (Presbyterian and Episcopal) and Mr. MAY (Unitarian) have spoken boldly and justly of the evils of the times- the Mexican War, Slavery, Intemperance, &c. I have never heard Dr. ADAMS, who is generally considered rather conservative, speak so plainly as he did to-day on the wickedness and injustice of the present War and the abominable system of American Slavery. And yet in a congregation composed of all classes and callings, all seemed to acquiesce and in and approve what was said. Is not this provoking? The country was warned in '44 of this War, its cruelties and hardships. Why cannot people see and hear and believe, and vote to avoid such shameful results?

The joy created by the result of the recent election is giving way to the agitation and inquiry, "Who will be the Whig candidate for the Presidency next Fall?" The answer appears to be almost unanimous, "Who can it be but Henry Clay!" The resolutions and telegraphic report of the Lexington Meeting were well received here, though there is much anxiety expressed to read the Speech of the occasion, written out by its author. It is expected here by this evening's train, when it will be immediately issued from the Journal Office. 

The weather this year has been rather unseasonable. Yesterday morning it commenced raining and it poured down all day, and almost all night. This morning, the sun shown out in all its glory, and we have had a pleasant Thanksgiving. Last year the canals closed on the 25th, but now there is no telling when they will freeze up.

Our town continues to grow and prosper, and there is no stopping its advancement. Several hundred buildings have been erected this season- some very beautiful ones. A long southern wing has been added to the "Globe" Hotel- a capital temperance house- the Malcom estate have built a splendid block of stores immediately east of the Empire House, the 2nd Presbyterian Society are now finishing a beautiful house of worship on the Park (the prettiest in town)- and Mr. TOMLINSON, the owner of the Empire, is now making arrangements to put up a block of dwellings, early in the spring, on Church St. next street north of the Empire block. But enough to-day. 

F.

Source.

Study: Half of states running business on debt

According to the study, 18 states are running very high levels of debt as measured by money owed per taxpayer to cover the state's fiscal obligations ($5,000+). Four of those states are running extremely high levels of debt at $20,000+ per taxpayer. 

Read the full report here (pdf).

Happy Thanksgiving

Wishing you and yours a blessed feast.

When Leniency Is the Goal, a Justice System Breaks Easily

Last week was not a good one for New York’s sense of public safety. That Monday a man with two knives roamed across Manhattan and is now accused of killing three strangers — Angel Gustavo Lata Landi, Chang Wang and Wilma Augustin — in separate attacks. The next day a man with a gun reportedly robbed a Queens bodega and a smoke shop before being fatally shot by the police after he shot and wounded an officer and a bystander.

The episodes exacerbated New Yorkers’ sense that cascading failures of state and city government have left the city out of control. A criminal justice system transformed with a goal of keeping as few people in jail or prison as possible, for as short a time as possible, has no room for error, and yet it keeps making errors. All it takes for a potentially violent suspect to go free is one weak link — and state lawmakers and city officials have constructed a chain of weak links.

Over the past six years, under two supposedly moderate governors, Andrew M. Cuomo and Kathy Hochul, New York’s progressive-dominated State Legislature radically changed the state’s criminal justice system. In 2019, for example, the state eliminated cash bail for misdemeanors and most nonviolent felonies; in 2021 it eased its parole practices to prevent people from being sent back to prison for violations such as missing a parole meeting.

After decades of declining crime and imprisonment, these abrupt changes accelerated the decarceration trend until the state and city could no longer keep reducing crime. From 2019 to 2021, the average daily population in city jails fell to 4,921 from 7,938, a 38 percent drop. The number of people in prison for crimes that took place in New York City fell to 13,020 from 18,903. Prison readmissions for parole violations fell to 2,591 from 7,277.

It’s impossible to prove that New York would have avoided any single crime had its perpetrator been jailed or imprisoned for a previous crime.

But for progressive criminal justice policies to have even a chance of working, the state’s judges, prosecutors and mental health officials would have to be much better at predicting, out of a broad group of people accused or convicted of crimes, who, exactly, is likely to repeat or escalate his behavior.

Last week’s tragedies reveal no evidence that we’ve gotten better at such predictions. Monday’s knife attacks show that even one point of misplaced leniency can undo the protections of the whole criminal justice system.

Read the rest here.

New York: No bail + no mental health care = 3 murders

Tall and disheveled, with a scraggly salt-and-pepper beard, Ramon Rivera was just one month out of jail when he approached a construction worker early Monday and fatally stabbed him without saying a word, police said.

He was not done, police said. An urban nightmare was unfolding on a mild autumn morning in New York.

The 51-year-old made his way across Manhattan and, more than two hours later, police and prosecutors said, he fatally stabbed a fisherman and then a woman sitting on a park bench. His clothes covered in blood, Rivera was arrested shortly after the third attack with two bloody kitchen knives in his possession, according to police.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams described Rivera as a homeless man with a criminal history and “severe mental health issues,” an example of failures of the criminal justice and mental health systems.

The seemingly random killings highlight the challenges confronting New York City and other municipalities across the country as they maneuver a delicate balancing act – how to deal with soaring homelessness and mental illness and its perceived – and actual – impact on public safety.

Read the rest here.

Trump’s Theory of Power

These are the times that try a constitutional conservative’s soul.

Donald Trump and his allies have proposed two legal maneuvers that could have profound consequences for the function of the federal government. He has proposed confirming presidential appointments through an abuse of his power to make recess appointments, and his allies have proposed reviving a mostly banned practice called impoundment, under which the president can refuse to spend money appropriated by Congress.

These proposals together would gut core constitutional functions of Congress and could make Trump our nation’s most imperial peacetime president.

You can’t fully comprehend how pernicious these proposals are without knowing Congress’s intended role in our republic. If you read the Constitution carefully, you see that the United States was not intended to have coequal branches of government. Instead, it is clear that the branch of government closest to the people, Congress, was given more power than any other.

While other branches can check Congress’s power — the president can veto bills and the Supreme Court can use the power of judicial review to invalidate statutes passed by Congress, to give the most obvious examples — Congress’s enumerated powers surpass those of both the president and the court.

Article I, Section 7 of the Constitution says, “All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives.” This constitutional provision is particularly important, given that in the original Constitution the House was the only part of the federal government chosen directly by the people. The power of the purse is inseparable from democratic rule.

Congress has the sole constitutional power to declare war, even if presidents frequently usurp that authority. It can fire the president, executive officers and judges through impeachment and conviction. It can override presidential vetoes, and the Senate can reject presidential appointees.

But if Trump gets his way, he will have the power to nullify congressional enactments, even if they’re passed with veto-proof majorities. He’ll destroy the Senate’s advice and consent authority. He’ll make the executive the most powerful branch of government by far, creating a version of monarchical government that the founders despised.

Read the rest here.

Vigil for Entry of the Theotokos into the Temple

Can the President "Adjourn" Congress?

“…in Case of Disagreement between [the House and Senate], with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, [the President] may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper.” — Article II, Section 3 

The presidential power of adjourning Congress has never been used. There are no precedents and scant commentary about what it means or exactly what triggers it. But now, there is credible consideration of the idea being discussed as part of Trump’s demand for an adjournment to let him use recess appointments to completely bypass the Senate confirmation process. It wouldn’t be the first time the issue has come up, as Trump briefly floated it during his first term, and Speaker Mike Johnson has refused to rule out possible support for the scheme. 

It is important, then, for us to quickly get a handle on exactly what this obscure bit of constitutional text means and what it does, and doesn’t, allow the president to do. 

The possibility is uncomfortably suggestive of one of the most firmly repudiated ideas in Anglo-American law, the attempt by Charles I to rule without Parliament. That did not end well, to put it mildly, for either side of the dispute or the nation as a whole. It was an example the Framers of the Constitution were very aware of and consciously sought to avoid by explicitly constraining the chief executive’s power to interfere with the legislature. 

As Ed Whelan writes at NRO, the basic outline of the idea is as follows: the House (presumably more amenable, though that’s far from certain with a razor-thin Republican majority) would pass a concurrent resolution adjourning Congress, which is the normal procedure. The Senate would not concur. Trump could then cite this as the two chambers being in “disagreement,” and adjourn them to whenever he wants. To allow for recess appointments would require an adjournment of at least ten days. But in theory it could extend nearly an entire year, until the next constitutionally mandated annual convening of Congress on January 3, 2026, per the 20th Amendment. 

Read the rest here.

Our Next Secretary of Defense

Here's Donald Trump's new defense secretary, Fox News' Pete Hegseth, hawking grenade soap so you can join the "well-groomed militia."

JFC.

Are all these people total grifters? pic.twitter.com/PyKHOn0SCu

— Art Candee 🍿🥤 (@ArtCandee) November 13, 2024

Words fail.

Quote of the day...

"He's resigned! All my prayers have been answered. And I don't even believe in God." -A comment from the Daily Telegraph on the news that the Archbishop of Canterbury has resigned

Armistice Day

One of the few upsides to Trump's (re) election

Some Democrats are finally waking up and realizing that woke is broke.

Donald Trump won a majority of white women and remarkable numbers of Black and Latino voters and young men.

Democratic insiders thought people would vote for Kamala Harris, even if they didn’t like her, to get rid of Trump. But more people ended up voting for Trump, even though many didn’t like him, because they liked the Democratic Party less.

I have often talked about how my dad stayed up all night on the night Harry Truman was elected because he was so excited. And my brother stayed up all night the first time Trump was elected because he was so excited. And I felt that Democrats would never recover that kind of excitement until they could figure out why they had turned off so many working-class voters over the decades, and why they had developed such disdain toward their once loyal base.

Democratic candidates have often been avatars of elitism — Michael Dukakis, Al Gore, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton and second-term Barack Obama. The party embraced a worldview of hyper-political correctness, condescension and cancellation, and it supported diversity statements for job applicants and faculty lounge terminology like “Latinx,” and “BIPOC” (Black, Indigenous, People of Color).

This alienated half the country, or more. And the chaos and antisemitism at many college campuses certainly didn’t help.

“When the woke police come at you,” Rahm Emanuel told me, “you don’t even get your Miranda rights read to you.”

Read the rest here.

Some Democrats have been worried about the crazy cult of identity politics for years. A lot of others are now seeing its perils. (FTR I am not a Democrat. Although I briefly considered it after leaving the GOP in 2016, far too many of their political views are anathema to me. I am  a registered Libertarian.)

Gasoline on a fire

FEMA employee removed from role after telling relief team to skip houses with Trump signs after Florida hurricane

The number of conspiracy theories emanating from the usual sources on the far right in recent years has been off the hook. Most are too silly for serious discussion and some are just bat-fecal matter-crazy. Unfortunately this nuttery has taken a firm hold in Trump world. So when you get the odd incident like the above, that actually is true, it just reinforces the belief in all the others. There is a veritable cottage industry out there made of kooks, cranks and conmen who are making a comfortable living off the credulous that regard people like Alex Jones as a more reliable source than the New York Times. 

Where we are

Trump’s legal allies set the stage for DOJ investigations of adversaries 

Pentagon officials discussing how to respond if Trump issues unlawful orders

Lord Save Thy People

Ross Douthat, David French and Bret Stephens discuss conservatism in 2024 and beyond

Not going to excerpt this. Read it all here.

Why?

People sometimes ask why I'm generally so hostile to government. 

Read this.

(No "Trump will save the squirrels" commentary please. Dictatorship is not the answer to governmental overreach.)

The Paths to 270 for Trump & Harris

A good examination of how each side could win in 19 maps. 

(Spoiler: The math and the maps favor Trump, but not by a huge margin.)

A few quick observations. 

* The undecided vote is still(!) believed to be around 4-6%. How they break could be decisive. 

* Disaffected voters could swing the election either way. But the risk is greater for Harris given the extreme rancor in the political left over Israel and Gaza. There are also a lot of Muslim Americans in Michigan. Right now, I'd say that Jill Stein is a dagger pointed at the heart of the Harris campaign. 

* The most likely path for a Harris victory (MI, WI and PA), especially if she wins them by very slim margins, could see her elected while losing the popular vote nationally. That would be flipping the usual script as Republicans generally believe the Electoral College gives them an edge in elections. It's how Trump won in 2016. But if this happens for Harris, expect MAGA world to erupt.