‘Utter Disgrace’: Trump Slammed After Admitting He Hopes Economy Crashes This Year.  Ed Mazza- The Huffington Post.

Dear Commons Community,

I have tried to avoid the vile, disgraceful comments of Trump during this presidential campaign season mainly because he says things simply to garner attention.  However, yesterday he is quoted as saying that he hoped that the US economy would crash in 2024 with absolutely no concern for the millions of Americans who would be adversely affected.

Trump claimed that the economy is “fragile” and running on “fumes” as he warned of a crash even though stocks are surging, unemployment is near historic lows and the nation appears to have avoided a predicted recession.

“And when there’s a crash, I hope it’s gonna be during this next 12 months, because I don’t wanna be Herbert Hoover,” Trump told Lindell TV host Lou Dobbs. “The one president, I just don’t want to be, Herbert Hoover.”

Hoover was president during the 1929 stock market crash, which plunged the nation into the Great Depression.

Speaking on MSNBC, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Trump may need “an intervention” from his family.

“It’s just another manifestation of the insensitivity and the grotesqueness of this person,” she told Jen Psaki as she slammed the effect an economic crash would have on people.

Also on MSNBC, former Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele called Trump’s hope “the dumbest thing in the world to say.”

“Think about it: The man says ‘I want to be a dictator’ and ‘I want the stock market to crash.’ OK, so you’re 0-for-2 in my book, Skippy,” he said, adding that Trump’s hope means the former president wants people to lose their life savings.

“Why? Because it benefits him,” Steele said.

Wake up Republicans!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Former Vice President Mike Pence, who said his life was threatened during the violent U.S. Capitol attack three years ago, is refuting the unsubstantiated claims of former President Donald Trump and encouraging Republicans to choose another candidate in 2024.

Pence, once fiercely loyal to his old boss, dismantled Trump’s recent description in Iowa that Jan. 6, 2021, was “peaceful” and the work of “patriots.” Trump also describes more than 1,000 people, who were convicted in connection with crimes on Jan. 6, as political “hostages.” And the former president has made unsubstantiated claims that the Jan. 6 attack was the work of the FBI.  As reported by USA Today and CNN/

“The truth is that this was a riot that should never have happened,” Pence said Sunday morning during an interview on CNN’s State of the Union. (See video below for full interview. Comments about January 6th are in the second half.)

He also emphasized what he has said before − Trump’s words were reckless on Jan. 6 and Pence did his duty in certifying the will of voters who elected President Joe Biden in 2020. Pence, who was at the Capitol on Jan. 6, said he saw people breaking windows, ransacking the Capitol.

“It just infuriated me,” Pence said. “I remember thinking, you know, ‘Not this, not here, not at the United States Capitol.'”

He thanked the FBI for bringing criminals to justice and countered Trump’s false claims. “I’ve heard the many repeated assurances from the FBI that they were not involved and I take them at their word,” Pence said.

Though Pence said voters are more likely to make decisions in 2024 based on the last year, and not three years ago, he hopes Republican voters get behind a different candidate than Trump.

Pence said the upcoming Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary are a chance for “good Republican voters” to “give our party a fresh start and give us new leadership to lead our party forward in the election and beyond.”

He stopped short of endorsing one of Trump’s challengers, saying he thinks “very highly” of Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis − and he said Chris Christie has been a friend for many years.

Pence bowed out of the race in late October, a contest in which he challenged Trump because he believes “different times call for different leadership.”

“We need new leadership in the Republican Party. We certainly need new leaders in the White House to move us forward,” he said.

If at some point his endorsement could have an impact on achieving that, “I’ll certainly do it.”

If Pence had exposed Trump during his four years as vice president, we might not be here now.

Better late than never!

Tony

Joe Biden took the gloves off in a speech in Pennsylvania, on 5 January 2024. Photograph: Shawn Thew/EPA

Dear Commons Community,

Maureen Dow had a column yesterday urging Joe Biden to pick up his attacks on Donald Trump otherwise our country might have to live with the hell that is Trump. She also cautioned Biden that he cannot simply depend upon the press to shore up his candidacy. Here is an excerpt:

“With the disreputable Donald Trump challenging the disfavored President Biden, the 2024 race has become the embodiment of Oscar Wilde’s witticism about fox hunting: “the unspeakable in pursuit of the inedible.”

Bleeding young and nonwhite voters, the president finally heeded Democrats urging him to “get out there,” as Nancy Pelosi put it, and throw some haymakers at Trump.

Biden flew to Pennsylvania on Friday to visit Valley Forge and make a pugnacious speech invoking an earlier moment when we were fighting against despotism and clinging to a dream of a democracy.

In a discontented winter during the American Revolution, George Washington tried to inspire his downtrodden troops at Valley Forge by having Thomas Paine’s “The American Crisis” read to them.

“These are the times that try men’s souls,” Paine wrote, adding, “Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered.”

As the voting to determine the next president gets underway, it is clear that the tyrannical Trump won’t be easily conquered. And that is our hell.

“You can’t love your country only when you win,” Biden said in his speech, making a forceful case that America, which dumped the mad King George, should not embrace the mad King Donald.

If we bow down to a wannabe dictator who loves dictators, who echoes the language of Nazi Germany, who egged on the mob on Jan. 6 and then rewrote the facts to “steal history” just as he tried to steal the election — what does that say about who we are, Biden wondered? Her conclusion:

Still, the Biden-Harris campaign… gives the impression that it expects the media to prop up Biden.

Biden has to press his own case and not rely on the media or Trump’s fatuousness to win the election for him.

People don’t want to vote against somebody; they want to vote for somebody.

The president must continue to be aggressive in convincing people he’s the best alternative; that, at 81, he’s not too old for the job; that he has solutions to stop the chaos on the border and relentless death in Gaza….

Do your job Mr. President!

Good advice!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The movie, Oppenheimner, dominated the Golden Globes last night with five awards including best drama movie, best actor, best director and best supporting actor.  I saw this movie twice and think the Golden Globe accolades are well-deserved.  You can see my brief review at: https://apicciano.commons.gc.cuny.edu/2023/07/23/must-see-movie-oppenheimer/

Bravo to all involved with its production!

You can find a list of all of the Golden Globe winners at:

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/golden-globe-awards-2024-nominations-winners_n_659adfb9e4b0f9f6621d0eb0

Tony

Alina Habba and Brett Kavanaugh. (Brent D. Griffiths).

Dear Commons Community,

Addressing the Supreme Court’s looming 14th Amendment decision on whether Donald Trump can be disqualified from state ballots for engaging in insurrection, his lawyer, Alina Habba, decided it would be a good time to remind people of just how much Trump has done for Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh.

“I think it should be a slam dunk in the Supreme Court; I have faith in them,” Habba said on Fox News. “You know, people like Kavanaugh who the president fought for, who the president went through hell to get into place, he’ll step up.”

She has since done some cleanup work, trying to assure audiences that she wasn’t suggesting that Kavanaugh owed Trump loyalty.

Two points as per The Washington Post.

One is that, despite Habba’s cleanup effort, she was clearly pointing in the direction of Kavanaugh (and potentially others) being beholden to Trump; there is no other reason to invoke the supposed favors Trump did for Kavanaugh. This adds to a volume of evidence that indicates that Trump does indeed expect loyalty from judges and justices — along with plenty of others in positions where that shouldn’t be a consideration.

The second point is that this is potentially counterproductive.

Trump’s record on such issues is unambiguous. He has made clear he expects judges to toe his line, and he looks for loyalty in all the wrong places — from officials who are supposed to be insulated from politics. That starts with but is hardly limited to an FBI director whose investigation threatened Trump, James B. Comey. “I need loyalty, I expect loyalty,” Comey testified that Trump told him in 2017 before Trump fired him.

The Washington Post reported in 2017, Trump considered pulling the nomination of now-Justice Neil M. Gorsuch because of a perceived lack of loyalty. Gorsuch had in a confirmation interview with a Democratic senator expressed displeasure with Trump’s attacks on judges, calling them “disheartening” and “demoralizing.”

As The Post’s Ashley Parker, Josh Dawsey and Robert Barnes reported:

The president worried that Gorsuch would not be “loyal,” one of the people said, and told aides that he was tempted to pull Gorsuch’s nomination — and that he knew plenty of other judges who would want the job.

During his 2016 campaign, Trump repeatedly suggested that judges he nominated would rule in predictable ways, including on issues such as Roe v. Wade. “If it’s my judges, you know how they’re gonna decide,” he assured evangelicals at one point.

Trump in 2022 also bristled after the Supreme Court declined to help him shield his tax returns from the House Ways and Means Committee.

“Many Republican Judges go out of their way to show they are beyond reproach, & will come down hard on people before them in order to prove they cannot be ‘bought’ or in any way show favor to those who appointed them,” Trump said on Truth Social, adding: “As soon as they get appointed, they go ‘ROGUE!’”

The last point also shows how Habba’s comment could be ill-advised, even beyond the ethics of it.

Whatever you think of Trump’s expressed sentiment about relative party loyalty, it’s true that judges are fiercely protective of the perception that they are independent. Yes, judges and even Supreme Court justices often rule in predictable ways that align with the party that appointed them. But crucial to the legitimacy of the court is the idea that they aren’t just political operatives doing the bidding of their allies.

Habba’s comments — and Trump’s past comments — basically set the narrative that Trump is working the justices. And any favorable decision for Trump could be viewed as bowing to that pressure. Whether it affects Kavanaugh’s thought process or not, it puts him in a box.

While the conventional wisdom is that the court would side with Trump in the 14th Amendment case, not all legal scholars take that for granted. Trump is reportedly somewhat worried. And the Supreme Court has gone against Trump on several key issues.

Could the Supreme Court actually disqualify Trump?

Kavanaugh in his 2018 confirmation hearings was asked about this very subject. Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) cited Trump’s demand for loyalty from Comey, and he asked Kavanaugh to address the “credible suspicion” that Trump might have chosen Kavanaugh believing the justice would protect him.

Kavanaugh responded that “my only loyalty is to the Constitution, and I’ve made that clear and I’m an independent judge.”

Trump has since expressed displeasure with Kavanaugh when Kavanaugh has demonstrated a measure of independence in some key cases. Trump said in an interview for a 2021 book that Kavanaugh “hasn’t had the courage you need to be a great justice.”

Trump added: “Where would he be without me? I saved his life. He wouldn’t even be in a law firm. Who would have had him? Nobody. Totally disgraced. Only I saved him.”

It seems like no accident that Trump’s lawyer has now invoked basically the same argument, while attaching it to a crucial looming decision.

Whether it’s smart to keep barking up that tree is another matter.

I think Alina should think twice before opening up her mouth. We will see!

Tony

Astrobotic’s  6-foot-tall lunar lander, named Peregrine.  (Jordan K. Reynolds – Astrobotic/The Associated Press.)

Dear Commons Community,

Two private companies will try to get the U.S. into the moon-landing game, more than five decades after the Apollo program ended.   It’s part of a NASA-supported effort to kick-start commercial moon deliveries, as the space agency focuses on getting astronauts back there.

Pittsburgh’s Astrobotic Technology has a planned liftoff of a lander tomorrow aboard a brand new rocket, United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan. Houston’s Intuitive Machines aims to launch a lander in mid-February, in a collaboration with SpaceX. As reported by The Associated Press.

Landing without wrecking is no easy feat. There’s hardly any atmosphere to slow spacecraft, and parachutes obviously won’t work. That means a lander must descend using thrusters, while navigating past treacherous cliffs and craters.

A Japanese millionaire’s company, ispace, saw its lander smash into the moon last April, followed by Russia’s crash landing in August. India triumphed a few days later near the south polar region; it was the country’s second try after crashing in 2019. An Israeli nonprofit also slammed into the moon in 2019.

The United States has not attempted a moon landing since Apollo 17’s Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt, the last of 12 moonwalkers, explored the gray, dusty surface in December 1972. Mars beckoned and the moon receded in NASA’s rearview mirror, as the space race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union came to a close. The U.S. followed with a handful or two of lunar satellites, but no controlled landers — until now.

Not only are Astrobotic and Intuitive Machines looking to end America’s moon-landing drought, they’re vying for bragging rights as the first private entity to land — gently — on the moon.

Despite its later start, Intuitive Machines has a faster, more direct shot and should land within a week of liftoff. It will take Astrobotic two weeks just to get to the moon and another month in lunar orbit, before a landing is attempted on Feb. 23.

If there are rocket delays, which already have stalled both missions, either company could wind up there first.

“It’s going to be a wild, wild ride,” promised Astrobotic’s chief executive John Thornton.

His counterpart at Intuitive Machines, Steve Altemus, said the space race is “more about the geopolitics, where China is going, where the rest of the world’s going.” That said, “We sure would like to be first.”

The two companies have been nose to nose since receiving nearly $80 million each in 2019 under a NASA program to develop lunar delivery services. Fourteen companies are now under contract by NASA.

, will carry 20 research packages to the moon for seven countries, including five for NASA and a shoebox-sized rover for Carnegie Mellon University. Peregrine will aim for the mid-latitudes’ Sinus Viscositatis, or Bay of Stickiness, named after the long-ago silica magma that formed the nearby Gruithuisen Domes.

Intuitive Machines’ six-legged, 14-foot-tall (4-meter-tall) lander, Nova-C, will target the moon’s south polar region, also carrying five experiments for NASA that will last about two weeks. The company is targeting 80 degrees south latitude for touchdown. That would be well within Antarctica on Earth, Altemus noted, and 10 degrees closer to the pole than India landed last summer.

Scientists believe the south pole’s permanently shadowed craters hold billions of pounds (kilograms) of frozen water that could be used for drinking and making rocket fuel. That’s why the first moonwalkers in NASA’s Artemis program — named after Apollo’s twin sister in Greek mythology — will land there. NASA still has 2025 on the books for that launch, but the General Accountability Office suspects it will be closer to 2027.

Astrobotic will head to the south pole on its second flight, carrying NASA’s water-seeking Viper rover. And Intuitive Machines will return there on its second mission, delivering an ice drill for NASA.

Landing near the moon’s south pole is particularly dicey.

“It’s so rocky and craggy and full of craters at the south pole and mountainous, that it’s very difficult to find a lighted region to touch down safely,” Altemus said. “So you’ve got to be able to finesse that and just set it down right in the right spot.”

While Houston has long been associated with space, Pittsburgh is a newcomer. To commemorate the Steel City, Astrobotic’s lander will carry a Kennywood amusement park token, the winner of a public vote that beat out the Steelers’ Terrible Towel waved at football games, dirt from Moon Township’s Moon Park, and a Heinz pickle pin.

The lander is also carrying the ashes or DNA from 70 people, including “Star Trek” creator Gene Roddenberry and science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke. Another 265 people will be represented on the rocket’s upper stage, which will circle the sun once separated from the lander. They include three original “Star Trek” cast members, as well as strands of hair from three U.S. presidents: George Washington, Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy.

Good luck to both companies!

Tony

President Joe Biden speaking yesterday at Montgomery County Community College in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania, about the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of Donald Trump.   Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

Dear Commons Community,

On the eve of Three-Year Anniversary of the insurrection at the U.S.Congress, President Joe Biden tore into former President Donald Trump in a speech yesterday, describing his likely Republican opponent as a wannabe authoritarian who is willing to destroy a quarter-millennium of American democracy to hold on to power.

“As we begin this election year, we must be clear: Democracy is on the ballot,” Biden said at Montgomery County Community College outside of Philadelphia. “Your freedom is on the ballot.”   As reported  by The Huffington Post.

Though Biden has repeatedly delivered speeches warning about the threat the Trump-led Republican Party poses to democratic institutions, yesterday’s speech was noteworthy for the sheer number of direct attacks on Trump, whom he has tried to avoid focusing on for the first half of his presidency. He noted the former president’s recent use of rhetoric echoing Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler and his expressed desire for “revenge,” and he suggested Trump was not only a threat to Americans’ voting rights but also their broader freedoms. He called his predecessor “sick” for laughing about the October 2022 attack on former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul.

“Donald Trump’s campaign is about him, not America, not you,” Biden said. “Donald Trump’s campaign is obsessed with the past, not the future. He’s willing to sacrifice our democracy to put himself in power.”

Though the speech’s timing may seem obvious (it was scheduled for Saturday, the third anniversary of the U.S. Capitol attack, but was moved up because of an approaching winter storm), the location was also important. Biden contrasted the sacrifices made by Gen. George Washington’s troops at nearby Valley Forge and Washington’s decision two decades later to allow for a peaceful presidential transfer of power to Trump’s own refusal to accept his reelection defeat.

“Donald Trump exhausted every legal avenue available to him to overturn the election. Every one,” Biden said. “But the legal path just took Trump back to the truth: that I had won the election and he was a loser.”

Trump’s campaign responded to Biden’s speech by claiming the “radical left Democrats” are the ones who pose a threat to democracy, arguing that the multiple investigations of Trump’s role in the insurrection, his handling of classified documents and his hush-money payments to a porn star were all part of a liberal plot to bring him down.

“The bottom line today is that Joe Biden has given up on running an issues-based campaign for 2024,” Jason Miller, a top adviser to Trump, wrote on X (formerly Twitter). “Rather than help those suffering from Bidenomics or our porous southern border, Biden plans on weaponizing government against his leading political opponent.”

Biden delivered the speech even as faith in American democracy, battered by Trump’s authoritarianism, years of congressional dysfunction and decades of growing economic inequality, was at all-time lows. A recent poll from Gallup found just 28% of Americans were satisfied with the way democracy was working in the United States, a record low.

Many Democrats have been eager for Biden to begin defining the 2024 race as a referendum on the choice between himself and Trump, hoping the contrast will remind voters of Trump’s deficiencies and lift Biden’s weak approval ratings. (The two men are essentially tied in public polling.) Biden’s campaign has said it hopes rhetorically raising the stakes of the election will engage tuned-out voting blocs that have drifted away from the president.

The speech comes as Biden’s reelection message shifts from trying to sell “Bidenomics” ― a slogan that ended up being derided by Republicans ― and toward a focus on Trump and the threat his authoritarian tendencies pose to the country. The campaign released a television ad (see video below) touching on similar themes earlier this week.

“I refuse to believe that in 2024, we Americans will choose to walk away from what has made us the greatest nation in the history of the world: freedom, liberty,” Biden said. “Democracy is still a sacred cause.”

A sacred cause indeed!

Tony

Wayne LaPierre.   Credit.  Evelyn Hockstein – Reuters.

Dear Commons Community,

Wayne LaPierre, the longtime head of the National Rifle Association said yesterday he is resigning as of January 31st, 2024, just days before the start of a civil trial over allegations he treated himself to millions of dollars in private jet flights, yacht trips, African safaris and other extravagant perks at the powerful gun rights organization’s expense.

The trial is scheduled to start this Monday in New York Attorney General Letitia James’ lawsuit against him, the NRA and two others who’ve served as executives. LaPierre was in court this week for jury selection and is expected to testify at the trial. The NRA said it will continue to fight the lawsuit, which could result in a further shakeup of its leadership and the appointment of an independent monitor to oversee its finances.  As reported by The Associated Press.

“With pride in all that we have accomplished, I am announcing my resignation from the NRA,” LaPierre said in a statement released by the organization, which said he was exiting for health reasons. “I’ve been a card-carrying member of this organization for most of my adult life, and I will never stop supporting the NRA and its fight to defend Second Amendment freedom. My passion for our cause burns as deeply as ever.”

James, a Democrat, heralded LaPierre’s resignation as an “important victory in our case” and confirmed the trial will go on as scheduled. His exit “validates our claims against him, but it will not insulate him or the NRA from accountability,” James said in a statement.

Andrew Arulanandam, a top NRA lieutenant who has served as LaPierre’s spokesperson, will assume his roles on an interim basis, the organization said.

LaPierre, 74, has led the NRA ’s day-to-day operations since 1991, acting as the face and vehement voice of its gun-rights agenda and becoming one of the most influential figures in shaping U.S. gun policy. He once warned of “jack-booted government thugs” seizing guns, brought in movie star Charlton Heston to serve as the organization’s president, and condemned gun control advocates as “opportunists” who “exploit tragedy for gain.”

In one example of the NRA’s evolution under LaPierre, after the Columbine High School shooting in Littleton, Colorado, in 1998, the NRA signaled support for expanded background checks for gun purchases. But after a gunman killed 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012, LaPierre repudiated background checks and called for armed guards in every school. He blamed video games, lawmakers and the media for the carnage, remarking: “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”

“The post-Sandy Hook apocalyptic speech was kind of the talismanic moment when, for him and the NRA, there was no going back,” Robert Spitzer, a political science professor at the State University of New York-Cortland and author of several books on gun politics.

The NRA remains a strong political force, with Republican presidential hopefuls flocking to its annual convention last year. In recent years, though, the organization has been beset by financial troubles, dwindling membership, and infighting among its 76-member board along with lingering questions about LaPierre’s leadership and spending.

After reporting a $36 million deficit in 2018, fueled mostly by misspending, the NRA cut back on longstanding programs that had for decades been core to its mission, including training and education, recreational shooting and law enforcement initiatives. In 2021, the organization filed for bankruptcy and sought to incorporate in Texas instead of New York, where it was founded as a nonprofit charity in 1871 — but a judge rejected the move, saying it was a transparent attempt to duck James’ lawsuit.

“(LaPierre) is, more that any other single person, responsible for putting the NRA in the dumpster situation it is right now,” Spitzer said.

Gun control advocates lauded LaPierre’s resignation, mocking his oft-repeated talking point in the wake of myriad mass shootings over the years.

James sued LaPierre and three co-defendants — NRA general counsel John Frazer, retired finance chief Wilson Phillips and LaPierre’s ex-chief of staff Joshua Powell — in 2020, alleging they cost the organization tens of millions of dollars from questionable expenditures including lucrative consulting contracts for ex-employees, and gifts for friends and vendors.

LaPierre is accused of setting himself up with a $17 million contract with the NRA if he were to exit the organization, and spending NRA money on travel consultants, luxury car services, and private flights for himself and his family — including more than $500,000 on eight trips to the Bahamas over a three-year span.

As punishment, James is asking that LaPierre and the other defendants be ordered to pay the NRA back and that they be banned from serving in leadership positions of any charitable organizations conducting business in New York, which would bar them from any NRA involvement.

Powell, who wrote of “staggering” waste and corruption in his 2020 book “Inside the NRA,” settled with James’ office late Friday. He agreed to testify at the trial, pay the NRA $100,000 and forgo further nonprofit involvement. Frazer and Phillips have denied wrongdoing.

Defending himself in prior testimony, LaPierre said that cruising the Bahamas on a vendor’s 108-foot (33-meter) yacht was a “security retreat” because he was facing threats after the Sandy Hook and Parkland shootings. LaPierre also took steps to purchase a $6.5 million “safe house” for him and his wife in Texas through the NRA after the Parkland shooting, but the deal fell through, the lawsuit said.

LaPierre conceded not reporting the yacht trips on conflict-of-interest forms, testifying: “It’s one of the mistakes I’ve made.” Some expenses related to the trips were covered by the NRA, the lawsuit said.

Phillip Journey, an ex-NRA board member who clashed with LaPierre and is expected to testify at the New York trial, said LaPierre’s resignation doesn’t resolve open questions before the court or fix persistent rot within the organization.

“Honestly, the grifters are a snake with many heads and this is just one,” said Journey, a Kansas judge who is running to rejoin the NRA board.

Journey also testified at the NRA’s bankruptcy trial in Texas and said he anticipates there is enough evidence for the James to prove her case. “It’s a tragic end to a career that had many high points,” Journey said of LaPierre stepping down. “It’s one of his own making.”

Good riddance to LaPierre!

Tony

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.  Getty Images.

Dear Commons Community,

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell warned of hard times ahead after the Fed began jacking up interest rates in the spring of 2022 to attack high inflation. Economists predicted that the much higher borrowing costs that resulted would cause a recession, with layoffs and rising unemployment, in 2023.

Yet the recession never arrived, and none appears to be on the horizon. The nation’s labor market, though cooler than in the sizzling-hot years of 2022 and 2023, is still cranking out enough jobs to keep the unemployment rate near historic lows.

The trend toward slower, but still healthy, hiring likely continued in December. The Labor Department is expected to report Friday that employers added a still-solid 160,000 jobs last month, according to a survey of forecasters by the data firm FactSet (see NOTE below). That would mean that the economy had added 2.7 million jobs in 2023 — an average of 226,000 a month.

Economists have predicted that the unemployment rate ticked up from 3.7% to 3.8%. But even that modest rise would mean that the jobless rate remained below 4% for the 23rd straight month — the longest such streak since the 1960s.  As reported  by The Associated Press.

The resilience of the job market has been matched by the durability of the overall economy. Far from collapsing into a recession, the U.S. gross domestic product — the total output of goods and services — grew at a vigorous 4.9% annual pace from July through September. Strong consumer spending and business investment drove much of the expansion.

Despite the economy’s steady growth, low unemployment, healthy hiring and cooling inflation, polls show many Americans are dissatisfied with the economy. That disconnect, which will likely be an issue in the 2024 elections, has puzzled economists and political analysts.

A key factor, though, is the public’s exasperation with higher prices. Though inflation has been falling more or less steadily for a year and a half, prices are still 17% higher than they were before the inflation surge began in the spring of 2021.

At the same time, though, average hourly pay has outpaced inflation over the past year, leaving Americans with more money to spend. Indeed, as they did for much of 2023, consumers, a huge engine for U.S. economic growth, hit the stores in November, shopped online, went out to restaurants or traveled.

Since March 2022, the Fed has raised its benchmark interest rate 11 times, lifting it to a 22-year high of about 5.4%. Those higher rates have made loans costlier for companies and households, but they are on their way toward achieving their goal: Conquering inflation.

Consumer prices were up 3.1% in November from a year earlier, down drastically from a four-decade high 9.1% in June 2022. The Fed is so satisfied with the progress so far that it hasn’t raised rates since July and has signaled that it expects to make three rate cuts this year.

Beyond a hard hit to the housing market, higher rates haven’t taken much of an economic toll.

“A lot of the resilience was in parts of the economy that aren’t particularly sensitive to interest rates,’’ like healthcare and government, said Nick Bunker, economic research director for North America at the Indeed Hiring Lab.

The job market has cooled as inflation has subsided, though nowhere near enough to signal that a recession is on the way. Job growth in 2023 amounted to a monthly average of 232,000 through November, a solid figure but down from a record 606,000 a month in 2021 and 399,000 in 2022. And much of the hiring in recent months has been confined to only a few industries. Just three sectors of the economy — healthcare, governments and hotels and restaurants — accounted for 91% of the 199,000 added jobs in November.

Normally, slowing job growth might be a cause for concern. But under the current circumstances, with inflation still above the Fed’s 2% annual target, a more moderate pace of hiring is seen as just what the economy needs. Lower demand for workers tends to ease the pressure on employers to raise pay to keep or attract workers — and to then pass on their higher labor costs to their customers by raising prices.

And the labor market appears to be decelerating in a relatively painless way: Employers are posting fewer job openings but not laying off many workers. The number of Americans who apply each week for unemployment benefits — a proxy for job cuts — has remained unusually and consistently low.

The Biden economy keeps chugging along!

Tony

NOTE:  After I made this posting, it was reported that the US economy added actually 216,000 jobs in December blowing past the 160,000 originally predicted and that the unemployment rate remained at 3.7%.

The Great Wall. Courtesy Bo Xiao

Dear Commons Community,

Rammed earth portions of the Great Wall of China — built by compressing natural materials with soils — have been regarded as a weak point in its structure. But these swaths of the iconic landmark developed a natural line of defense against the looming risk of deterioration, a new study has found.

These soil surfaces on the Great Wall are covered by a “living skin” of tiny, rootless plants and microorganisms known as biocrusts that are a source of the heritage site’s staying power, according to soil ecologist Matthew Bowker, a coauthor of the study published December 8 in the journal Science Advances.  As reported in this study and by CNN.

Examining samples taken from over 300 miles (483 kilometers) across eight rammed earth sections of the site built during the Ming Dynasty between 1368 and 1644, the study authors found that more than two-thirds of the area is covered in biocrusts. When the researchers compared the stability and strength of samples layered in biocrust with samples sans “Earth’s living skin,” they discovered that samples with biocrusts were as much as three times stronger than those without.

“They thought this kind of vegetation was destroying the Great Wall. Our results show the contrary,” said study coauthor Bo Xiao, a professor of soil science at China Agricultural University. “Biocrusts are very widespread on the Great Wall and their existence is very beneficial to the protection of it.”

‘Like a blanket’

Made up of components such as cyanobacteria, algae, moss, fungi and lichen, biocrusts dwell on the topsoil of drylands. Covering an estimated 12% of the planet’s surface, the communities of tiny plants and microorganisms can take decades, or longer, to develop. Forming miniature ecosystems, biocrusts stabilize soil, increase water retention, and regulate nitrogen and carbon fixation.

They are able to do so partly thanks to a dense biomass, which acts as an “anti-infiltration layer” for soil pores under the right conditions, as well as a natural absorption of nutrients that promote salt damage. The secretions and structural layers of biocrusts also intertwine to form a “sticky network” of aggregating soil particles that promote strength and stability against corrosive forces threatening the Great Wall, according to the new study.

Climatic conditions, the type of structure and type of biocrust all play a role in a biocrust’s protective function, with its reduction of erodibility “much greater” than its risk of weathering, the researchers found.

Compared with bare rammed earth, the cyanobacteria, moss and lichen biocrust-covered sections of the Great Wall exhibited reduced porosity, water-holding capacity, erodibility and salinity by up to 48%, while increasing compressive strength, penetration resistance, shear strength and aggregate stability by up to 321%. Of the bunch, the moss biocrusts were found to be the most stable.

“(Biocrusts) cover the Great Wall like a blanket that separates the Great Wall from air, from water, from wind,” Xiao said.

Working to keep water out and prevent salt buildup, the biocrusts resist chemical weathering, he noted, producing substances that act as a “glue” for soil particles to bind together against dispersion, making soil properties stronger.

Biocrusts are very widespread on the Great Wall and their existence is very beneficial to the protection of it.  Courtesy of Bo Xiao

Biocrusts’ role in an uncertain future

Most of the communities that make up a biocrust start from a single organism that grows and makes the environments it grows within suitable for others. Although they are still vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, these constantly evolving organisms are expected to deploy internal mechanisms to adapt to future extremes, said Emmanuel Salifu, an assistant professor at Arizona State University who studies nature-based solutions for sustainable engineering.

That inherent adaptability makes biocrusts great contenders for nature-based interventions to address structural conservation in our warming world, said Salifu, who was not involved with the new study.

“Even if we have warmer temperatures, they are already suited to performing in those conditions,” he said. “We hypothesize that they will be better able to survive if we engineer their growth at scale.”

Wind erosion, rainfall scouring, salinization and freeze-thaw cycles have led to cracking and disintegration across the thousands of miles of structures that link together the Great Wall, which is at risk of severe deterioration and vulnerable to collapse. Rising temperatures and increasing rainfall could also result in a reduction of the wall’s biocrust cover.

Still, the wider construction industry remains divided over the historic conservation potential of biocrusts, according to Salifu.

“The conventional idea is that biological growth is not great for structures. It affects the aesthetics, it leads to degradation, affects the overall structural integrity,” he said. However, there is a lack of concrete research that supports those conclusions, Salifu added, noting that “the jury is still out on that.”

Salifu sees the new study as evidence of the potential advantages to engineering biocrusts for the conservation of earthen heritage sites — though that is still an emerging field. The research establishes that the natural communities of plants and microorganisms “have the capacity to improve the structural integrity, longevity and durability of earthen structures like the Great Wall of China,” Salifu said.

The paper “goes a long way in further pushing the hand on the clock in bringing the industry closer to where we might be able to start thinking about (engineering biocrusts),” he noted.

The study’s authors also say their work makes a case for exploring the possibility of cultivating biocrusts for preservation of other rammed earth heritage sites worldwide.

Beyond its status as a tourist destination that draws millions of visitors each year, the Great Wall has great cultural relevance, which is why the biocrusts preserving it are so significant, Xiao said.

“The Great Wall is the cultural center of Chinese civilization,” he told CNN. “We should do our best to protect it for our next generations. For our children, for our grandchildren.”

In June 2001, I visited and climbed the Badaling Great Wall, considered one of its better preserved sections.  It is one of the most impressive man-made structures I have ever seen, comparable to the Great Pyramid of Giza.

Tony