Odds and ends number 120

Since I'm using the concept from monoblogue, I'm keeping the numbering system, too. Here are thinner slices of bloggy goodness.

In years past, I used to go to the Wicomico County Memorial Day ceremony at their memorial at the Youth and Civic Center. I think this photo came from the last one I attended, in 2018.

Back after about a month with some new nuggets as well as good reads from Substack and elsewhere.

More on a national Rescue

In the process of announcing their Presidential candidate, Randall Terry, the Constitution Party linked to an interview he and his campaign did with a site called the Independent Political Report, which covers news from many of the minor political parties that dot our landscape. And it’s funny how close I came with my initial assertions.

Since I can’t blockquote from the original, the gist of the interview was that Terry’s campaign indeed hit upon the idea of using the CP’s ballot access to achieve their goals, rather than spend big money to petition their way onto ballots. “We could give them name recognition,” said Terry’s campaign manager Joe Slovenic. And they fully expect their ads to create controversy, and that “firestorm” could lead to more free media.

Maybe they’re going to be more into some of the other principles the CP espouses, such as a limited, Constitutional government, but I’m not sold on that probability. With Terry, I sadly believe it will be pro-life first, last, and always - not saying that’s necessarily bad, but maybe not the full message.

The end of an era

I did a lot of talking about FreedomWorks in my Rise and Fall book, as they were one of the groups who benefitted most from the birth and short political life of the TEA Party.

But a recent Politico story detailed the demise and eventual folding of the group, which had traced its roots long before the TEA Party began, beginning as the Citizens for a Sound Economy forty years ago in the midst of Reagan-era conservatism. Hewing a libertarian-leaning line, CSE morphed into FreedomWorks with the rise of the TEA Party and thrived as one of those think tanks that created a lot of sound and fury, but didn’t do a whole lot but give some consultants a good living.

The 2016 election of Donald Trump took the Republican Party in a new direction that wasn’t the way that FreedomWorks envisioned it:

After Trump took control of the conservative movement, (FreedomWorks president Adam) Brandon said, a “huge gap” opened up between the libertarian principles of FreedomWorks leadership and the MAGA-style populism of its members. FreedomWorks leaders, for example, still believed in free trade, small government and a robust merit-based immigration system. Increasingly, however, those positions clashed with a Trump-aligned membership who called for tariffs on imported goods and a wall to keep immigrants out but were willing, in Brandon’s view, to remain silent as Trump’s administration added $8 trillion to the national debt.

Adam Brandon pretty much called it and, for good or bad, that seems to be the direction the GOP has gone. But I would say the split is most prominent on the issue of limited government, since there’s nothing necessarily wrong with tariffs - which were how the government made revenue in our earliest days - and being choosy when it came to allowing in immigrants. The problem came when the philosophy shifted from having a limited government to having the same size government but using it for different priorities.

It’s the difference between starving the beast and feeding it in the hopes it eats you last. Looks like FreedomWorks ended up on the menu after all.

Newt’s thoughts on AI

(Not the town I grew up by.)

The thing I loved about Newt Gingrich’s take on artificial intelligence is that he perfectly understands the perceived role of modern government.

The classic American bureaucracy’s reaction to new technology is force it into the existing culture and system – rather than changing its culture and system to fit the new technology. A great example is the effort to protect the U.S. Army’s horse cavalry in World War II.

(…)

The Commandant of Cavalry (a branch Ronald Reagan served in as a reservist riding a horse in the 1930s) reassured Gen. George Marshall (the head of the Army) that his branch had carefully evaluated the German blitzkrieg. The cavalry had concluded that it needed to buy trucks that could carry the horses to the edge of battle so they would be fresh when they charged the German tanks.

Marshall listened to the Commandant and thanked him. As the Commandant left, Marshall told his assistant, Gen. Beadle Smith, to retire the Commandant at the end of the day and abolish the post of Commandant of Cavalry. Marshall understood that horses going against tanks and machine guns would be a massacre. He was committed to winning the war rather than protecting the bureaucracy.

AI can be a labor saver and problem solver if used in the right way. But it’s been my contention for years that government has no interest in solving problems if it means they’re out of a job.

See, I help solve problems in my job but we know that our solving the problem means the potential for repeat business. In government, though, there’s really no cause for repeat business so instead they look for ways to have mission creep. (For example, the Tennessee Valley Authority, which was created for rural electrification back during the Depression, now does broadband.)

There is a right way and a wrong way to utilize AI, and at present I have full confidence the government will mess it up.

Stating the obvious

I talked about this bill at greater length earlier this week, but I love it when other people “get it.” Another recent example comes from the folks at A Better Delaware:

Delaware’s policy makers are feeling pretty super-human these days. In an effort to eliminate all sources of carbon dioxide (which we will not debate in this article), bills and policies are requiring our electric providers to utilize a greater and greater percentage of the power we use from wind and solar. The result is less reliable and more expensive electricity.

Currently, these intermittent resources are backed up and supported by reliable sources such as coal, natural gas and nuclear power. But Delaware’s government wants that to end. To help ease the cost of compliance with these restrictive policies, the State is providing significant subsidies to the companies who provide this “green” electricity. They are putting our money where their mouth is.

What our General Assembly (or, more precisely, a few of those in its majority party) did was write a bill tailored to the offshore wind project slated to be built off Ocean City. We got rid of another one, but there are people who just won’t take no for an answer even though Delaware won’t really benefit from the project.

I’ll keep saying it until I’m blue in the face: offshore wind isn’t the answer to our energy needs. As Capital Research Center’s Ken Braun notes, it’s great for creating massive tax break profits for certain billionaires, but it’s not reliable and no one wants to see those massive turbines off our beaches. While offshore wind does address concerns regarding the constant low-frequency noise that can be present on land-based wind turbine projects, we don’t really know if that will affect marine life.

I can understand why some wouldn’t want offshore oil exploration in the area (even though we could have marketable quantities of oil or natural gas under our section of the Atlantic) but most of those same concerns plague offshore wind. Why are we bothering when there are better alternatives?

Delaware spending in one chart

I often talk about the Caesar Rodney Institute on odds and ends because they come out with a lot of good stuff I can summarize in a few paragraphs. This one will take looking at one graph and imagining that the state spent half as much as it did now.

It’s all a matter of trajectories - slow growth in the 80s and early ‘90s, increased growth with new revenue sources after 1994, and the current (unsustainable) trajectory fueled with COVID money.

I’ve always used TABOR as a yardstick for budget growth, which is the sum of the rate of inflation plus population increase. (If inflation was 2% a year and the population went up 1%, the rate of increase should be no more than 3%.) I’m sure that population increase in Delaware plus inflation since 1987 doesn’t add up to 600%, but it looks like the budget crept over $1 billion in 1987 and now it’s over $6 billion. That’s insane.

Good Substack links to read

I bet I read 15-20 Substacks a day, some with multiple articles per diem. There’s a lot of good writing there, but sometimes I come across things worth re-reading, even a couple weeks later. So I saved a couple to share here.

My first comes from Nate, who writes as

The Rational Mariner.

He talks about:

Context And The Search For Truth

We, the Americans of this Post Modern world, are a gullible people who’s opinions sway with whatever is trending on our particular ideologically driven media outlets and algorithmically driven social media platforms. We are spoon fed a constant stream of semi/non-factual nonsense and images at a rate that is far too quick for us to think about. This happens because feeding us semi/non-factual nonsense and images makes lots of money for the people who feed us their bullcrap and sell us their garbage products.

One thing I learned when I researched my Rise and Fall book is that truth doesn’t come from only one side. Sometimes when the Left holds up a mirror to our side, they see that we’re fallible, gullible, and human, too. I don’t think either side has the monopoly on telling the truth, but I also know that absolute power corrupts absolutely so oftentimes those who say things to maintain that stranglehold are being less than forthright as they let their lust for control overtake their conscience.

When I first started reading Nate’s stuff, he wrote Trinity Forge. I think he’s still working on a name he likes, but the writing is still good.

Another is

Ted Gioia

, who writes The Honest Broker. I liked the theory he has about the eventual disappearance of bad music, a category which, to me, pretty much anything in certain genres would qualify for.

All Bad Music Will Eventually Disappear

Nobody can say that I’ve shirked my responsibilities as a music critic. In recent months, I’ve listened to death metal bands from Croatia who sounded like they were ready to bludgeon the entire population of Zagreb; incoherent Christian drone pop that only delivers the Good News when it’s finally over; entire albums of static, buzzes, burps, or toots; people singing to backup tracks, but apparently unaware that they are in different keys; and various home recordings that should never have left the basement. 

It's an ugly job, but somebody has to do it. I occasionally find that rare gem, a self-produced needle of rare pointedness in the otherwise dismal haystack. That makes it all worthwhile.

This stuck out because I dabbled in music criticism when I had monoblogue. For about five years I was a paid record reviewer, reviewing a number of different genres. (I think I told the guy that all I wouldn’t do is jazz and modern country, although a few of the records I listened to for review edged into that latter territory.) At the end of each year, I would take the 20 or 30 records I reviewed and pick a top five - usually it was pretty easy because so few stood out to me, and the worst time I had was when I had about seven I really liked. I mean, I wasn’t the harshest of critics because they still had more musical talent in their little finger than I do, as I can’t carry a tune in a bucket.

But it was an interesting (if modest) side hustle because it exposed me to a number of different genres I wouldn’t find on radio. I especially got to enjoy the musicianship found in bluegrass, which is a cousin of the old-school country my mom and dad listened to when I was a kid - that’s what made me rebel and take a liking to hard rock, heavy metal, and punk. But as a more mature adult I could appreciate the musical craftsmanship as opposed to the “noise” of some of the bands I listened to. So there are a few of these tunes that will become even more obscure or disappear entirely.

And last, just because I liked the meme from

The Stone Age

:

Until my next edition of odds and ends, remember you can Buy Me a Coffee since I have a page there.