The Curmudgeon Speaks

The claim Haitian workers are stealing and eating their neighbors’ dogs and cats in Ohio has troubled me. In the big scheme of national politics, how can such an issue become a focal point? The story itself seems traceable to a woman who could not find her cat and speculated on Facebook that Haitian neighbors may have taken it. She later found the cat in her basement. Ok, just a naive woman who has accepted racist stereotypes coming to the wrong conclusion and feeling a need to share her biases online. How did the claim get beyond the attention of whomever her followers might be?

Somehow, a candidate for the Presidency is told of this story and decides to repeat the story during a debate broadcast to the entire country. The moderator of the debate is also aware of the story and attempts to correct the ex-President explaining that the story was not true. The Governor, the mayor, and the police chief, Republicans among them, deny the claims are true. However, the damage was done among the true believers. Trump’s VP also from Ohio picks up the theme and continues to promote the story. Soon, new observations are reporting ducks or geese have also been stolen. Community members begin to appear claiming the many problems caused by the Haitians.

So, it appears it was a false alarm turned into a national incident. What if it were true? What if instead, the Voodoo Catholics of New Orleans had sacrificed a chicken as part of a religious ceremony? What if individuals following ancient biblical accounts sacrificed an animal? Would there be national outrage targeting an ethnic group? Maybe it was the claim that animals had been stolen from neighbors instead of being purchased or raised. Maybe it was the thought someone would eat a cat. I know – that is weird. Dogs are eaten in places, but cats? A cat makes the story more appalling. 

How did it come to this? Some of this might be attributed to confirmation bias. People demonstrate confirmation bias when they select information that supports their views, ignoring contrary information, or when they interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting their existing attitudes. I suppose we all fall prey, but we all do not have the audience of a contender for the Presidency. Republicans primed with complaints about border insecurity seek and believe claims about those from other countries in the U.S. It does not matter that the Haitians are documented and not illegal and were invited to address worker shortages. A similar issue is involved in attempts to highlight every serious crime committed by undocumented individuals despite the data clearly showing that the general crime rate among such individuals is lower than that of U.S. citizens. Several biases are exhibited here. Aside from confirmation bias, there is anecdotal reasoning which is using individual cases to argue a point while ignoring the more typical or average case. 

All of these human limitations aside, it is more troubling to consider the behavior of a Presidential candidate. Perhaps this is a sign of impulsivity which is a dangerous characteristic in an individual who must make important and consequential decisions. Perhaps this is an indication of egocentrism which permits an individual to ignore the advice of better informed individuals. Trump has demonstrated such characteristics repeatedly, but I am afraid it is something even worse. I think it is a tendency to ignore facts in search of dirt that may sway supporters. Lies, misinformation, propaganda or whatever you want to call it, these false claims are damaging to individuals who have been falsely accused and the related hatred spread is not a trivial matter. 

“Political speak” drives me crazy. I am interested in specific policy issues and what candidates have to say about these issues seems relevant and important. Too often the stand taken is vague and sometimes outright weird. A reporter at a meeting of the Economic Club of New York asked Trump a straightforward question about the cost of childcare and the response makes a good example. The President began by stating the obvious – people need child care and child care is expensive. This, of course, was basically restating the policy question and not an answer. The policy response as far as I can tell was that other countries were going to be “taxed” amounting to trillions of dollars on goods imported by Americans and this was much more than the cost of child care. That was it.

I compare many of Trump’s position statements to something I covered when I taught Introduction to Psychology – the Rorschach Test. This projective assessment technique involved asking subjects what they saw in an ambiguous figure. In other words, the figure was not a depiction of anything and personal biases and prejudices projected on this figure would be helpful to the psychologist trying to understand the individual subjected to the request. In other words, the babble produced in response to the direct question communicated very little but it allowed viewers to read in their own interpretations.

My guess is that what Trump called taxes are what most of us would call tariffs. As I understand a tariff, a fee is added on top of the price of the producer of an imported good to make the price the item is sold at higher. Consumers in the country importing the item would have to pay more possibly making the item less attractive in comparison to locally produced goods. The government gets the tariff. Who pays the tax in this case is an interesting question. If I pay $20 for an item I could have purchased for $15 without the tariff, I might conclude that I have paid $5 to the government. Of course, the goal is to get citizens to buy local, but that might mean what they purchase will cost more.

What is the connection between the tariff tax and childcare? Again, one must speculate. I assume that some of the money collected by the government might then be allocated in some unspecified way to cover childcare costs. I would suggest that Harris’s child tax credit would have been a much more specific and direct response and would not have involved increasing the cost of goods purchased from other countries and then finding some way for the government to allocate this tax to the parents who need the help.

It is so challenging to work your way through the vagueness of political positions. Are candidates vague to avoid having to be specific and offer something specific for voters to consider? I understand that Republicans are against big government. I understand that this is about unnecessary regulations and unnecessary programs. However, the specific regulations that are to be rescinded and the specific programs that are to be abandoned are seldom mentioned. I assume that the military is a defensible expense. What about childcare? Trump did not really say if the government should intervene to cover some of the cost. Should childcare providers be regulated? Should training be necessary and should the number of children each provider can take be specified? If a provider could have a group of say 25-30 3-year olds much like a kindergarten teacher involved with 5-year olds, the cost to parents would be much lower. The specifics matter.

Finding something to write about while spending your days in a car requires some creativity. Here is an observation related to our time driving through Iowa. Perhaps it is only of interest to old tech people. I can remember a time when we traveled by car and had to find ways to connect our devices to the Internet. How else to check email and post a photo or two? McDonalds was always an option. I remember driving through Iowa and seeing rest area signs announcing that this rest station offered wifi. Either Iowa has not changed its signs in the last 25 or so years or Internet access is still a selling point. I am writing this on the Interstate using our car as a hot spot. Times do change.

We will be traveling for the next couple of weeks. If you are interested in out travel blog, you find it at this online location.

 We are in Ames, Iowa, attending a reunion of Iowa State University residence hall workers. This group has met every other year on 8 different occasions. I am a member of the group by marriage and I did live in the residence halls as a student (President of Godfrey House) and husband of Cindy.

Iowa State has a beautiful campus with iconic buildings. Here are the Student Union and the Campanile. 

I had undergraduate majors in biology and psychology and eventually received my Ph.D. in Psychology. I was housed in Old Botany as a graduate student. I had been in Old Botany in second grade to visit my uncle Don who also has an ISU PhD and was then a Prof. The buildings I have had offices in throughout my career always seemed to be old something. Old Botany is now named Catt Hall. Catt Hall is the administration building for the Liberal Arts. This sequence is typical – STEM department, Psychology, liberal arts. 

One more for the romantics. Cindy and I were engaged and married while we were still undergraduates. We took a selfie at the approximate spot by Lake Laverne where I proposed, The lake looks far more attractive earlier in the year,.

We are on a quick road trip to help move our son’s family to their new home in Salt Lake City. Mom and dad have been there for a couple of weeks getting settled and we are no bringing Porter and Olive (their children) and a Uhaul of their possession. We decided to take a few extra days so take in some of the sights in South Dakota, Wyoming, and Utah. There is plenty of spectacular scenery. As always, I am posting to my travel blog and you are invited to follow this or previous trips. The photos from this excursion should be spectacular.

This statue is magnificent. It is called the Dignity of Earth and Sky and was a gift to the state of South Dakota on its 125th anniversary. Situated on a bluff with the river in the background it is very impressive.

Weather extremes seem an experience many of us now share. A year ago we were in the middle of a drought followed by a winter that wasn’t. Many days with record high temperatures. Now, the midwest has experienced so much rain with widespread flooding. Our own situation is summarized in the following graph. This is the second-highest year for precipitation (second line) which would possible have been the overall record if the winter had produced more snow.

Sometimes there are upsides. I like gardening. The frequent rains and reasonable temperatures have been perfect for getting our garden up and thriving. The following image is our new addition. It is called a garden tower. What you cannot see is the tube that runs down the middle of the tower. This tube holds worms that turn vegetable matter into compost that both feeds the garden and can be collected at the bottom of the tower to use elsewhere. It is amazing how quickly plants in the garden grow and produce a wide variety of vegetables.

The recent decisions of the NCAA concern me. Where will the money for college atheletes come from and what will not be supported as money moves in this direction?

“The financial hit for athletic departments, especially among power conferences, will be exorbitant. The NCAA will take on a lion’s share of the cost via reserves, insurance and budget cuts, but the schools themselves are still on the hook. According to documents obtained by Yahoo Sports, power-conference schools are expected to fork up as much as $30 million per year over the next 10 years to cover revenue-sharing distribution, back damages and expanded scholarship costs.” 

CBS Sports

First, it was the transfer portal and NIL and now the decision in the House vs. NCAA court case. I don’t see the present situation in college athletics as beneficial to college athletics or to colleges. 

I have always been a fan of college sports. I went to the games even in some cases to watch teams from schools I did not attend or work for. The “work for” part is significant. I also spent 40 years working in higher education and 8 more as a student. Like any academic, I hear the complaints about the high cost of college. Consider this combination of economic stressors for a few minutes. Add the requirements of Title IX and you have a toxic mix of pressures each of which seems oblivious to the conflicting demands.

I worked for most of my career at the University of North Dakota. Collectively the teams of this institution won a few more games than they lost. If anyone outside the region heard of UND sports it would probably be of the dispute over the team name (Fighting Sioux now Fighting Hawks) or the perennial national contending hockey team. For a few years, it also had a great women’s hockey program which was closed down. I think I am correct is noting that 7-9 UND women hockey players played in the last olympic games. As is, college sports simply lose money. New expectations certainly will not improve this situation. It is already difficult to be loyal to a team that has mostly new faces every year. Programs have already been cut to try to stay within the earning potential of existing revenue sources and external mandates. I keep looking for a reason for optimism, but I don’t see anything. 

One interesting component of the wave of Timberwolves mania sweeping Minnesota is the Naz Reid phenomenon. The Wolves don’t get a lot of national attention because of past history and the location of the team in a midwestern, small market city. The Wolves have a good deal of talent that is a mix of the experienced and the rising stars who seem to get along and take a significant role when needed.

Naz Reid has been selected as the league’s 6th man recipient for the year. He has some big games in the playoff run. All that aside, the name itself has taken on mythical properties and is now a popular tattoo and just shows up displayed in different places. The name has become a meme.