Look, we all know that both Josh Shapiro and Kamala Harris have their eyes on the 2028 Presidential race. I don’t expect them to be friends, and far from me to sit here and tell people to be nice in a political race. So I’m kinda good with them going at it a bit. A bit is the key here. Sounds like she really pissed off the Governor.
The writer shared with Shapiro that Harris had “accused him, in essence, of measuring the drapes, even inquiring about featuring Pennsylvania artists in the vice-presidential residence; of insisting ‘that he would want to be in the room for every decision’ Harris might make; and, more generally, of hijacking the conversation when she interviewed him for the job, to the point where she reminded him that he would not be co-president.”
His guard down, Shapiro blurted out about the art, “She wrote that in her book? That’s complete and utter bullshit.”
“I can tell you that her accounts are just blatant lies.”
He defended his actions during the interview with the former California attorney general who he had known for more than 20 years.
“I did ask a bunch of questions,” he told Alberta. “Wouldn’t you ask questions if someone was talking to you about forming a partnership and working together?”
Shapiro has a well-known reputation as ambitious. But Harris seemed to portray him in other ways – “selfish, petty, and monomaniacally ambitious.”
Asked if he felt betrayed by Harris, Shapiro dropped the gloves.
“I mean, she’s trying to sell books and cover her ass,” said to Alberta.
According to the author, there was a long pause.
“I shouldn’t say ‘cover her ass.’ I think that’s not appropriate,” Shapiro said. His tone was suddenly collected. “She’s trying to sell books. Period.”
Gosh damn, bro. I kind of appreciate the honesty, Shapiro was being honest when he said “cover her ass”- he thinks she didn’t run a great campaign, and I’m sure one of her bad decisions was picking Walz over him, in his eyes. Hey, he’s entitled to feel that, and maybe, just maybe, there’s some truth to that. He’s probably better off though having not been on the ticket, since they probably would have lost anyway. On the other hand, I mean he is hyper ambitious. I’m not saying that as though it makes him somehow worse than her, Walz, or anyone else at that level of politics. He’s always been ambitious and eyeing the next step though, since he reached the State House. Maybe nobody is lying here. “Utter bullshit” and “blatant lies” is pretty strong language from a guy who usually acts like he’s totally unbothered.
I don’t see how the Governor can get nominated, in no small part because I don’t see where he wins an early primary, whether we stay with South Carolina first or come to our senses and keep it in the opening four, but not first. He’s not winning South Carolina or Iowa, seriously. The question is though, is she? There’s a lot of goodwill towards her in the party, but do we really think things will be different in 2028? Is dumping on the people you didn’t pick for VP helping that?
Bethlehem is generally one of the more harmonious municipalities in the Lehigh Valley. It’s ruled entirely by one party, and for whatever reason has less infighting traditionally than Allentown, per se. Next year will begin Mayor Reynolds second term, and he will have a council that is mostly supportive (mostly is doing some work here). Anywhere from five to six members will vote with him most of the time. It’s not for me to say if that’s good or bad, I’m not a voter in Bethlehem. The reality is though that things should go smoothly for Willie.
Tonight though, they’re going to fight a bit, and it will be over fire- not literally over a fire, but over fire fighters. In the one corner, members of council who want to pass a budget amendment to add new fire fighters. In the other, the administration and some council members who don’t think it’s necessary or want to raise the revenue to do it. From the way it was explained to me, I’ll try to give you the most fair and balanced arguments I was told.
The administration holds that they don’t need to hire four new fire fighters this year. The fire chief wrote a memorandum saying as much. They don’t think it’s necessary this year to raise taxes or move money around for it.
Their opponents maintain that the fire department is under staffed and at risk. They say that a majority of the current fire fighters can retire at any time now. They also say that one fire house has no officer actually on duty at any given time, and is splitting an officer with another fire house.
So basically the fight is over hiring four new fire fighters to send to the academy, and then asks to promote four existing fire fighters to the rank of lieutenant. Obviously this would amend the budget and present a need for new revenue to pay for it.
I’m not an expert on staffing levels for a fire department. Generally speaking though, safety is the number one want of most citizens in most places. You need to have enough cops and enough fire fighters in a city like Bethlehem. It’s a safe place, and that reputation is a big part of why people like it there. At a minimum, if there’s a lack of officers currently, they need to promote some people. If there aren’t enough fire fighters in general, you need to hire some. I generally loathe tax increases and wouldn’t normally be for them. Raising taxes to have the manpower to fight fires might just be a good enough reason to do it. I know it’s not politically popular to raise anything, especially in an economy this poor. This isn’t some wasteful boondoggle though.
Serious question here- could you be watching a Bears-Patriots football game on Sunday, February 8th at 6:30pm Eastern. I’m going to still tell you probably not. The fact that it’s December and we can still discuss it means we’re well past the point of calling it ridiculous. By the way, you could substitute in the Seahawks, the Broncos, the Jaguars, and even far more remotely, the Panthers here. There are some teams that are not supposed to be this good that are now. Does this mean write off the Rams, Eagles, Bills, or any other early favorites? No, but as I told you last week, I was pumping the brakes on all the Rams talk. I’m kind of at the point I’m pumping the brakes on everyone though. Is anyone that great? If you had to bet your life on any of these teams, would you? I wouldn’t.
The Bears looked really good against the Eagles. Yes, the Eagles looked really bad too, and these last two games have shades of 2023, but don’t knock the Bears. They committed to the run and made the game much more simple for their second year QB in a hostile environment. Their coach, and more importantly their defense, did the job. The Patriots and Broncos had more trouble than they should have against weak NFC East teams this past week, but neither has lost in a couple months now. We’re going to rank them as if they’re legit this week. Even if I’m not convinced they’re going all the way.
Now we find out that he probably had a few girlfriends at a time until fairly recently. Now look, I have friends who have been on both sides of these pages, and this can get touchy- I really don’t care if he ghosted someone, men and women do that all the time today- but that’s not all it looks like here. The NRSC is practically just trolling the guy, because they can. They know that will drive some primary voters towards him, and they’d love to run against him, because the general electorate will hate this guy. It’s a joke that this guy is still running.
The damage is done at this point. There’s a portion of Democrats who won’t vote for this guy, especially once they’re reminded about him, and he can’t overcome that. Unfortunately, thanks to Comrade Bernie, there are movement leftists dug in to only vote for this guy now, so we’ll probably lose either way. His team will get paid though. I guess somebody wins here. Just not America.
You live in the most advanced time in human history. If you’re an American, you live in the wealthiest and militarily strongest country in the world. There are now apps that can look up virtually any fact on the face of the Earth and feed it to you in seconds, all you have to do is interpret them (thanks AI!). There are stoves that can connect to Wifi. Your car will yell at you if don’t buckle up. You can put money into an investment account every month and that money will make you money over the long haul. We can fight wars with drones instead of people. We have cars that run on electric. Solar energy can power your house. We have planes that can fly you around the world safely, and faster than ever before. I mean, we have the internet.
But God dammit, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN.
Sure, we’ve sacrificed a lot to achieve the greatness of modernity. Income inequality is higher than at any point in modern history. We pile debt onto you to buy houses, cars, pay for your education, even get married. Your labor is less secure than it was when more of America was in a labor union. Globalizing the market made a shit ton of money for most people, comparable to times when we were more domestic, but it also gutted out “low skill” work and devalued it. Basically we got more comfort and amenities, we made life easier in most ways, but we also traded away any sense of security and protection from ruin. It’s scary. It’s uncomfortable.
However, it is better.
The past really wasn’t that good. Any analytic can tell you that, provided that we even measured these things then. People watched black and white televisions in the 1950’s. Households might have had one car. The internet, personal computer, laptop, Wifi, and social media were completely unheard of, not to mention they didn’t exist. People were poor compared to today:
There probably is some benefit to recognizing that lots of middle-class Americans managed to have good lives and happy childhoods despite growing up with material living standards that would be typical of poverty in the contemporary United States.
That said, nothing is stopping you from dropping out of the workforce to be a full-time domestic worker, eliminating your family’s child care expenses while cooking more economical meals at home. Yes, even with those savings, you would have less money than the average married couple, but you could also choose to live in a smaller-than-average house like the one in the picture. The problem is that you probably don’t want to do that, and your spouse probably doesn’t want you to, either. It’s fine to make the case that the norms around this today are bad and wrong as a matter of values — the Amish show that people certainly can choose to live materially poorer lives if they really want to. But factually speaking, living standards have risen dramatically since the era of that photo, and people who lived like that would be poor today.
In 1950, most homes in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, North Dakota, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, and West Virginia didn’t have complete plumbing. By 1960, the numbers in some of those states were still chillingly high by contemporary standards, but they’d fallen a lot and every state had full plumbing in the majority of homes. To the extent that nostalgia for that era makes sense, it’s that people who lived through it got to experience extremely rapid improvements in living conditions. More recently, things have continued to get better, but they’ve gotten better more slowly.
Yes, life was simple and good back then, because you didn’t know better. You didn’t know better, and life improved. Today you live in remarkably better conditions. It’s just that ten years from now your life will not naturally be so dramatically better than it is today. You’ll have better technology, more access to data and information, and better services available to you- but we’re not going to make poor people billionaires without inflation, or solve how to beat death, or end everything wrong in our world. We’re just going to keep marginally improving, with an occasional breakthrough that accelerates improvements and alleviates pain. I think it’s perfectly fine to point out how our society’s growth over the last 70 years has had flaws- the loss of union jobs, the rise of climate change, the rise of divorcees and co-parenting, mental health issues and mass shootings rising, and on and on. Those things aren’t great, and yes, both the government and the market need to help fix them. But they are.
The best way I can explain this is straight forward- I had a grandfather who died from a brain tumor in 1972 that today probably would have been completely treatable. He was about the same age I was when I almost died last year. If you reverse our chronological order, I would have been the one dead at 41. So in many ways, my grandfather may have lived a more fulfilling, simpler, and happier life than I do. I almost certainly am living better, and in fact, in a better time.
None of the nostalgia on both the left and right is about technology, housing, or economics though, as much as we would like it to be. If that were the case, we would have broad national and international consensus about reversing course on income distribution and labor protections. We’d build more affordable housing and allow for easier migration, at least within national borders. No one other than the most over-privileged brat young conservatives would actually argue that those in the service economy, or gig economy, or any low skilled job deserves to make crap wages, not receive access to quality health care, and shouldn’t be able to afford housing in their community. We are not pre-disposed to hate our neighbors like that. Especially not on the behalf of some rich person.
So let’s be honest, none of this is about economic nostalgia, it’s about demographic changes and identity.
So since both the tweet above and the writer who wrote about it pinpoint the 1950’s, I think it’s worth noting that this was exactly the right place to start our conversation. Yes, it has been 109 years since the last Presidential Election in the United States where only men could vote, and yes, some conservatives actually outright say they think we should go back to some approximation of that (either just men voting, or one vote per household). In the 1950’s, the lion’s share of women were either not voting, or voting how their husbands told them. We were still a solid decade from meaningful Civil Rights legislation that gave even Black men a right to vote. We had an electorate that was overwhelmingly male, and overwhelmingly white. As late as 1988, close to 9 in 10 voters were white. Women couldn’t have their own checking accounts without permission, Black children went to segregated schools, most of our immigration was from Europe yet, Roe v. Wade and no fault divorce were abstract concepts at best, red lining was a thing, and hell, we were still fighting into the 1950’s about desegregating the military. Boy, what changed since the 1950’s, I wonder? The sexual revolution? The Civil Rights Movement? An increase of visas for educational and work purposes for people from non-European countries? The rise of global power nations that aren’t white, such as India, China, Brazil, and Saudi Arabia? Suddenly you lived in a world where women had their own bank accounts and could get a no-fault divorce, so they didn’t have to stay in bad (and often unreported abusive) marriages. Suddenly both parties could enjoy sex for non-child birthing reasons. Suddenly Black people had a vote and could raise their own issues and concerns. Suddenly gay people were just out as gay. Your doctor was less likely to be a White man, or even born in America. We have street signs, instructions, and messages in languages besides English. Hell, we’ve had a Black President now.
The world is dramatically different in most democratized, Western societies, whether we mean the United States, France, England, Italy, or wherever. You can be whatever you want to be in the West, and that’s not really what I think bothers most people bothered by that, it’s that you can be that wherever you want to be it. Yes, we’re going to send jobs to India and China, and then we’re going to take their children in for educational and work purposes, and they’re going to compete with your children. That’s unpleasant. Your son may not want to find a wife and have kids, but if he does, women might be more picky now and demand more from a guy they pick, so your son may not find one. Not only is the world changing, and rather rapidly, but there’s really no good way to be shielded from it. There are no carve outs for you to live in a past world where you didn’t have to interact with people, cultures, and behaviors that you frankly don’t like or want to interact with. If you want the old traditional Christian family structure it will cost you somewhere. Middle, Upper-Middle, and wealthy life styles today are just more expensive than they were for my grandparents. My grandparents bought their home in Pohatcong, NJ for $25,000 cash, some of which they borrowed from family members. When my grandmother died in 2023, I had more than $25,000 cash to myself, and didn’t even think of buying it. It’s on the market now again, and listed at over $400,000.
Politics in much of the Western world today has very little to do with class issues, and there’s no real way to put the genie back in the bottle here. For many people, social welfare and social safety net are just round about ways to say you’re going to give our money to people who aren’t from here, didn’t earn our national wealth, don’t speak our language, aren’t members of our churches, and aren’t a part of our culture. They don’t want the changes our society has undergone, and they have no way of avoiding them. So they’d rather burn it to the ground than help them. Some go so far as to say they are white nationalists, white supremacists, Neo-Nazis, and skinheads. Others say “fuck the poor, cut my taxes.” Running some supposed left-populist political candidates that are white, blue collar men across the nation is not going to meaningfully move any significant portion of these voters, and probably will alienate (at least) an equal number of voters who are currently voting left-of-center. It’s futile, it misses the point all together, and frankly it’s just embracing bad, outdated, poorly thought out policy goals that won’t work. These people are almost cartoon characters. Running away from the main divide in American (or any other pluralistic Western democracy for that matter), how people feel about a less traditional, more pluralistic, changing post-60’s society, is not going to work. They are not going to look away from the culture war issues that motivate them, anymore than a 35 year old single woman in graduate school today that doesn’t want to get married or have kids wants to hear how much you’re going to sell her out. Could it work for one election? Sure, I guess, anything can happen for a short period. It takes a longer term trend line to really change anything though.
I would be remiss if I didn’t scold my brand of liberals for exasperating these issues more than a little bit. We have folks who think the more female/non-white/LGBTQ/Atheist/immigrant you are, the more they want to elect you. This sort of adversarial push has forced a lot of voters who are not very comfortable with Nazis or Hamas to make a very stark choice, and Trump is the living proof that this forced choice doesn’t really work well for us. I mean, it’s worth noting that the only time this guy lost, it was to a 78 year old white man that was viewed as the “moderate” in the Democratic primaries. Even a lot of immigrants, the very group of people that Trumpism rails against the most, are really uncomfortable with what the face of the Democratic Party is to them, and an increasing number of immigrants and non-white people voted for Trump in each of his three elections. Saying “absolutely fuck all of your traditionalism” and pushing them to accept social minority policies and far left economics scares the living shit out of these people. That’s frankly to be expected.
People long for a world where they feel they can do well. That is still the defining question most voters ask, and that is not at all, let alone entirely, an economic question in our modern society. If reading all of this has made you feel dark and gloomy, don’t. There are examples of social progressive movements succeeding even in our modern American society, after the 1950’s. The Civil Rights Movement and the battle for Gay Marriage were won by progressives, even against long odds and an American society that is still overwhelmingly neither Black nor Gay. Both movements achieved success focusing on two things. First, optics. There was a reason that MLK Jr.’s marches were attended by people wearing their Sunday’s best, or that Rosa Parks was the woman that sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The movement for Gay Marriage had won less than a decade after George W. Bush largely ran his 2004 campaign targeting gay marriage bans across the country, and that was because every day, very average to successful American LGBTQ people became the face of the movement. The second thing both movements did was focus on the discussion of rights. You’re not going to convince a White, straight majority that the alternative to them are better than them, but you can convince them that they should be treated as human beings that deserve decency and dignity. Putting forward leaders that are credible with the majority and making the case for simple fairness can give agency to many voters that are even a bit uncomfortable with social change to walk away from their side when they have gone too far.
Doesn’t this look like a nice spot for a warehouse to you? Sorry, it’s in Warren County.
Let’s just be clear here- the Lehigh Valley Planning Commission is not going to get it’s $461,375 INCREASE in it’s budget from Northampton County. Even if Council approves the increase in cash at their next meeting, that’s going to get a veto from the Executive. Three of the five Democrats are never going to vote to override that. Councilman Brown said he doesn’t support a tax increase, and I doubt Councilman Goffredo does either. What conservative wants to increase taxes to pay for a regional government body’s staff? Good luck getting to six votes for the tax increase to fund this. It will die at the veto, 5-4.
As it should. Councilman Ken Kraft said it better than me:
“Why do we want to give Lehigh Valley Planning Commission all this money?” demanded Council member Ken Kraft. “You heard them when they were here. They have a huge budget surplus.”
Council member John Brown supported an increase and said it was part of the agreement we have with our sister county. But in the eyes of Kraft and many others going back to former Council President Wayne Grube, we are treated more like the ugly red-headed step-sister.
Kraft went on a tear. “I didn’t tell them to move into a new building. I didn’t tell them to incur all this new debt that they did and I don’t think our taxpayers should pay for that. And 90% of it was in salaries alone. … I think they need to figure out how to pay their bills without handouts. I’m a strong No. …. I can’t believe we’re doing this.” … “It’s ludicrous to give this kind of money to them when they said most of it is for salaries. Remember, they are the people who brought you the warehouses all over the county. They told every one of these little municipalities back in Walt Dealtry’s days, if you remember, to change their zoning and planning to allow what happened. And then in the future, we’re like ‘Oh my God, there’s warehouses and cars and everything everywhere.’ Who gave us that? The LVPC. … They have a lot of reserves. We should have their reserves.”
So there’s a lot here, but the main point is “NO.” I often times think the “we get treated like the little brother” argument is a bit trumped up. Is there some truth to it? Sure, but not as much as people think. Let’s dig into the real meat of this though. LVPC does not dispute that they have cash reserves. They did say most of this money would go to salaries. In what world should we fund salaries for an organization that has cash reserves? How far can their reserves stretch? How much of their reserves were county tax dollars? Current taxpayers don’t need to fund future rainy day funds or current bloated regional bodies. It’s not fair in this economy.
Then there is the whole discussion of warehouses and over development. My Father happens to be a township planner, and well, zoning is actually important. Township planning commissioners have very limited abilities to fight back against over development when zoning was already approved for more development and their Township Supervisors don’t have the stomach to fight against deep pocketed developers in court. Essentially most Planning Commissions in municipalities end up simply making sure developers dot their I’d and cross their T’s when they want to make a giant sum or money on a former farm land. If you’re lucky you can get the developer to put in an interchange (route 33 and Tatamy) or maybe give you a little league field (Forks used to love this). If someone buys a piece of land to develop it and has all their legal ducks in a row, they can. Is LVPC responsible for all of the townships being in this position? That’s probably a bit much to claim. Did most of the Lehigh Valley kind of, sort of all zone themselves into this mess in the first place? Yeah, basically. Is there a body that was kind of, sort of supposed to help them avoid that? Yeah, maybe there is.
So I’m a little split on the arguments Kraft made, but he’s generally right- they have money, their reasons for needing more money aren’t really our problem, and maybe, just maybe, this level of government hasn’t worked out all that well for what the residents of the Lehigh Valley would like. I’ll go another step though. Back in the dark ages of the Biden Administration, when infrastructure money became available, there was a shot at connecting up to regional rail from Northampton County to New York City. PennDOT wanted to put a “quiet veto” on that, and basically sought to do so by simultaneously raising the idea of connecting Allentown to SEPTA. The elected County Executive in Northampton County came out and publicly supported AMTRAK to NYC. It’s been alleged by OTHER elected officials that the folks at the LVPC asked them to not seek rail to New York City, because PennDOT would then yank their alleged interest in connecting Allentown to SEPTA (The “other” electeds are from Lehigh County). Neither has happened, nor probably will they, which was really what PennDOT wanted. You see, those bureaucrats stay no matter who is the Governor, and they oppose building anything but highways- even though they build some of the shittiest highways in the country. Even taking everyone at best intentions, they called for killing calls to connect Northampton County and it’s citizens to passenger lines to New York in favor of a never realized passenger line from Lehigh County to Philadelphia. So, in the best of intentioned scenarios you see Kraft’s “little brother” argument with LVPC, and well, he’s right. Worst case? PennDot didn’t want to do shit for anyone in the Lehigh Valley, which is why we have two lane highways all over instead of three way highways, and why we sit in the parking lot called US-22 from 3pm to 6pm every day. PennDOT fat cats keep padding the pension and you get nothing. LVPC either is not picking this up, or has too cushy of a relationship with PennDOT. Either way, if LVPC doesn’t support the objectives of the elected government in Northampton County, why give it extra money beyond what it needs to function?
Apocalypse Vibes 