The Daily Parker

Politics, Weather, Photography, and the Dog

Was it the endorsement?

Cincinnati mayor Aftab Pureval (I) will face Republican Cory Bowman in the November election after the two won 83% and 13%, respectively, of yesterday's primary vote. Bowman is the half-brother of Vice President JD Vance, whose endorsement of Bowman appears to have led to Pureval's enormous vote total. When you're the least-popular vice president in history, no one wants your endorsement, dude.

Also, today is the 80th anniversary of Nazi Germany's surrender to the Allies in Reims, France. What that has to do with Vice President Vance is left as an exercise for the reader.

Meanwhile:

Finally, United Airlines has pledged to buy up to 200 JetZero Z4 airplanes, which employ a blended-wing design that has never been used in civil air transport before. It's really cool-looking, and offers some interesting interior possibilities. I might miss the windows, though. JetZero expects a first flight in 2027.

A better definition of "classical" music

Conductor and composer Matthew Aucoin suggests we call it "written music:"

The unruly and elusive entity known as classical music does not sound like any one thing, and the sheer abundance of the tradition might invite the conclusion that trying to define it at all is a hopeless exercise. But that would be a mistake, especially at this moment. Like every other sector of cultural life, classical music has been roiled over the past decade by intense debates about the field’s ongoing lack of diversity, among performing artists, composers, and leaders of musical organizations. The stakes of these discussions—which have involved charges of Eurocentrism, head-in-the-sand elitism, even white supremacy—have at times felt existential, given many institutions’ financial straits. Maintaining a 90-piece orchestra is generally a money-losing proposition in America today, and as a result, classical-music organizations lean heavily on private donations. Why, many onlookers have asked, should an orchestra or opera company gobble up millions of dollars from wealthy sponsors to subsidize the salaries of musicians who mainly perform music by white men from centuries past, music for which (judging by ticket sales) demand is limited? What is classical music, whom is it for, and what about it is worth defending?

Our answers to these questions will depend on what exactly we love about this music, and what we care about preserving, enriching, and expanding. Claiming that classical music deserves a prominent place in American culture merely because we want to safeguard a particular sound, style, or cultural or ethnic lineage—“music that sounds like Brahms,” or “music from one of three Central European countries”—would be a losing cause.

But a better answer is out there. Rather than defend the “classical” in classical music, I want to champion a particular creative process. What links Hildegard von Bingen and Kaija Saariaho, Johann Sebastian Bach and George Benjamin, is not a specific sound or aesthetic but a shared technology of transmission. At its core, classical music isn’t “classical.” It is written music.

His essay from this month's Atlantic is worth a full read.

I'll drink to that

The Economist is kidding only a little bit by pointing out that creativity and moderate drinking correlate strongly:

Today the world sees fewer breakthroughs. Hollywood sustains itself on remakes or sequels, not originals. A recent blog by Peter Ruppert, a consultant, finds the same trend for music: “the pace of genuine sonic innovation has slowed dramatically”. A paper published in 2020 by Nicholas Bloom of Stanford University and colleagues concludes that new ideas are “harder to find”. Productivity growth across the world is weak. Something has gone terribly wrong in the way that Western societies generate new ideas.

For centuries creative folk, from Aeschylus to Coleridge to Dickens, have relied on alcohol for inspiration. In the 1960s, when productivity was soaring, everyone was drunk all the time. No other drug has played such a consistent role in human innovation. Being intoxicated opens up the possibility of accidents of insight. Purely rational, linear minds have fewer of the flashes of brilliance that can turn an art form or an industry upside-down. It allows brains to disconnect. A study of American painters in 1946 by Ann Roe of Yale University noted that “a nightly cocktail before dinner may contribute to the avoidance of a state of chronic tension, especially...when creative activity is at its height.”

The best approach, as with most things in life, is moderation: not Ernest Hemingway-levels of drinking, but not abstention either. What leads to successful human relationships and breakthrough innovations remains poorly understood. So, even if you are a Silicon Valley whizzkid who wants to change the world, it is best not to mess around with traditions too much. Gin from the freezer, good vermouth, and a twist.

Chin chin! And let the good (creative) times be gin!

Why they do controlled burns

The Chicago Park District periodically burns conservation areas throughout the city because the prairie we built the city on evolved with fire. Last fall, they burned some of the prairie-reclamation areas in Winnemac Park, close to my house:

Here's the same area yesterday, clearly benefitting from the burn:

And just because everyone loves her, here's a photo of Cassie enjoying the random pats and treats she got at Spiteful Brewing about two hours after we passed through the park:

Happy Monday.

Who holds the leash?

Radley Balko, who has spent his career examining police policy and law-enforcement mission creep, elucidates the latest authoritarian trolling from the White House:

Donald Trump says he wants to “unleash” the police.

The [latest executive order] is more virtue signaling than policy — more an expression of Trump’s mood than a serious proposal. And, when it comes to conventional crime, Trump’s mood is right where it’s always been: fearful, demagogic, and perpetually stuck in 1988.

The key term in the executive order is unleash, and it’s worth delving into what exaclty he means when he uses it. The literal definition is to remove from a restraint. In the context of law enforcement, it conjures images of cops siccing police dogs on suspects and protesters. Metaphorically, we tend to associate the word with starker imagery: we unleash fury, wrath, and retribution. Trump wants to project both.

He believes in projecting strength, and believes strong leaders demonstrate strength with violence. This is why he has often suggested that police officers will attack his enemies if called upon, and why the Capitol Police who defended Congress from his supporters received so much of MAGA’s wrath.

Yet you can’t unleash something that has never been restrained in the first place. And in the U.S., the police have never been restrained.

In other words, this version of reality in which police officers are hamstrung by overly restrictive rules, activist judges, and woke prosecutors only really exists in Donald Trump’s mind, and in the minds of his followers.

In the end, Donald Trump doesn’t really want to unleash the police. He just wants to be sure he’s the one holding the lead.

I mean, you can't have an authoritarian police state without balaclavas, can you?

It's the budget, stupid

The world has rightly reacted in horror to the OAFPOTUS's self-defeating tariff regime. But as economists Paul Krugman and Bobby Kogan point out, the tariffs are distracting us from the even more horrific Republican budget proposal:

PAUL KRUGMAN: So, it’s been a pretty amazing hundred days, but almost all of my focus has been on tariffs and other things like DOGE and all of that. But meanwhile, there's a much more sort of conventional Republican plan of huge tax cuts and big benefit cuts. There is a legislative push which in normal times would have been occupying all of our attention and maybe should be getting some of it. And you know more about this certainly than I do or than anybody I know.

So I thought I would get you to talk about what's happening. And so, where are we, what is actually happening on the budget right now?

BOBBY KOGAN: What we are seeing is an enormous tax cut bill that would spike the deficit by—depending on the version we're seeing—three-ish to five-ish trillion dollars partially offset by huge cuts to Medicaid and huge cuts to food assistance and some other things. So the net package will be a huge deficit increase while taking away people's health care and people's food.

PAUL KRUGMAN Yeah, anyone who thinks that Trump is being populist should have in mind that this is sort of the most aggressively un-populist, anti-populist legislation. How big are we talking about? The tax cuts, I think, it's a very big budget number. How serious are the cuts that we're talking about to Medicaid and basically food stamps?

BOBBY KOGAN Yeah, so they are shooting for $1.5 to $2 trillion of spending cuts. We haven't seen the Medicaid proposal yet. I think no matter what they're doing, it will be the largest Medicaid cut in history. And the only question is, by how much, right? Are we talking $500 billion of Medicaid cuts, 600, 700, 800? They gave the Energy and Commerce committee an $880 billion instruction. But some of that will be things that aren't Medicaid. The majority of that will be Medicaid.

On food stamps, they're looking at cutting it in quarter. Basically, there was a Biden-era reassessment of the thrifty food plan that kind of Reworked it already. Anyway, that doesn't matter. They want to undo that. Right now the average benefit is a little bit more than $2 per person per meal. So already very meager. Already incredibly meager, they want to take it down to a buck sixty-seven per person per meal. Really pinching pennies from hungry families.

Remember how the US used to lead the world in science? Yeah, that's gone too. Peer-equivalent health care outcomes? Forget those. Jobs? Them too.

And, of course, cutting all these things will create opportunities for private businesses to go after your money more directly. Why get weather reports for free if you can pay someone for them? Free enterprise! Too bad all those people have to die for corporate profits to increase.

George Ryan dead at 91

Former Illinois governor George Ryan (R) died earlier today in hospice. He, like half of the Illinois governors who served in my lifetime, spent time in prison for corruption, stemming from a time when, as Secretary of State, he would issue commercial drivers licenses in exchange for bribes. The scandal went national when an unqualified driver crashed into a family car, killing six kids.

He also single-handedly blocked Illinois from ratifying the Equal Rights Amendment in 1982, but as governor he didn't do nearly as much damage as his successors Rod Blagojevich (D) and Bruce Rauner (R).

Grifting with a soupçon of Big Brother

Happy May Day! In both the calendar and crashing-airplane senses!

We start with two reports about how the Clown Prince of X has taken control over so much government data that the concepts of "privacy" and "compartmentalization" seem quaint. First, from the Times:

Elon Musk may be stepping back from running the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, but his legacy there is already secured. DOGE is assembling a sprawling domestic surveillance system for the Trump administration — the likes of which we have never seen in the United States.

President Trump could soon have the tools to satisfy his many grievances by swiftly locating compromising information about his political opponents or anyone who simply annoys him. The administration has already declared that it plans to comb through tax records to find the addresses of immigrants it is investigating — a plan so morally and legally challenged, it prompted several top I.R.S. officials to quit in protest. Some federal workers have been told that DOGE is using artificial intelligence to sift through their communications to identify people who harbor anti-Musk or -Trump sentiment (and presumably punish or fire them).

What this amounts to is a stunningly fast reversal of our long history of siloing government data to prevent its misuse. In their first 100 days, Mr. Musk and Mr. Trump have knocked down the barriers that were intended to prevent them from creating dossiers on every U.S. resident. Now they seem to be building a defining feature of many authoritarian regimes: comprehensive files on everyone so they can punish those who protest.

And from The Atlantic:

But what can an American authoritarian, or his private-sector accomplices, do with all the government’s data, both alone and combined with data from the private sector? To answer this question, we spoke with former government officials who have spent time in these systems and who know what information these agencies collect and how it is stored.

To a person, these experts are alarmed about the possibilities for harm, graft, and abuse. Today, they argued, Trump is targeting law firms, but DOGE data could allow him to target individual Americans at scale. For instance, they described how the government, aside from providing benefits, is also a debt collector on all kinds of federal loans. Those who struggle to repay, they said, could be punished beyond what’s possible now, by having professional licenses revoked or having their wages or bank accounts frozen.

These data could also allow the government or, should they be shared, its private-sector allies to target big swaths of the population based on a supposed attribute or trait. Maybe you have information from background checks or health studies that allows you to punish people who have seen a therapist for mental illness. Or to terminate certain public benefits to anybody who has ever shown income above a particular threshold, claiming that they obviously don’t need public benefits because they once made a high salary. A pool of government data is especially powerful when combined with private-sector data, such as extremely comprehensive mobile-phone geolocation data. These actors could make inferences about actions, activities, or associates of almost anybody perceived as a government critic or dissident. These instances are hypothetical, but the government’s current use of combined data in service of deportations—and its refusal to offer credible evidence of wrongdoing for some of those deported—suggests that the administration is willing to use these data for its political aims.

This is what the Republican Party has bequeathed us. Because they never wanted to govern; they have always wanted to rule.

Finally, American Airlines plans to add flights to seven new destinations this fall, including (whee!) Sint Maarten. I haven't been to the island in 11 years and I've wanted to go back, but the frustrating schedule involving an early-morning flight from JFK or Miami made it inconvenient. But a non-stop from O'Hare? Oh, yeah.

My day got away from me

...and it's Star Wars trivia tonight at Spiteful Brewing, so I'll just have to save some links to read tomorrow:

Finally, WAPO has a list of 35 "definitive rules of train travel." Definitely Daily Parker bait. 

I got 99 problems, but a b- ain't one

The OAFPOTUS took office for the second time 99 days ago, which means we already have a few 100-days stories to mention.

First, from Canadian prime minister Mark Carney (Lib.–Nepean), whose party won yesterday's election and has formed a 4th consecutive government:

"As I've been warning for months, America wants our land, our resources, our water, our country," Carney told supporters Monday night. "These are not idle threats. President Trump is trying to break us so America can own us. That will never ... ever happen."

Conservative leader Pierre Polivievre and New Democratic Party leader Jagmeet Singh both lost their seats as well.

Former US Representative Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) decries "100 days of disaster:"

In just his first 100 days, Trump has issued more than 130 executive orders, throwing the economy, higher education, the legal system, and much of the federal government into chaos. He pardoned 1,600 insurrectionists who attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. And most damaging of all, he declared a trade war with China — and pretty much the rest of the world — sending us hurtling toward a severe recession.

If there’s one thing Trump has proven in his first 100 days, it’s that he’s consistently bad at this job.

Former US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg asks, "are you better off than you were 100 days ago?"

In every presidency, the 100-day milestone is a key moment to check on the status of an administration and of the country. Today, Americans are experiencing an administration marked by historic shows of incompetence, cruelty, and confusion, and a country that is measurably worse off than just a hundred days ago.

At this 100-day mark, I’d encourage you to do everything you can think of to make clear how you feel, not just to your Member of Congress but to people in your life. This is a time to talk with friends and family, even or especially if they have different political views than you do. It’s a moment to listen to any doubts and concerns they may be having - as millions of Americans clearly do - with interest and empathy while sharing your own sincere convictions.

James Fallows takes the moment to laud the people standing up to the OAFPOTUS's clown show:

Mariann Edgar Budde had no way of calculating the risks she might be taking on. Soon after the service, Trump was attacking her by name (as “nasty” and dumb) on social media. A GOP congressman “joked” that she should go onto the ICE deportation list. Other threats were not in jest.

But she stood up and spoke.

Let us remember the story of Bishop Budde, 99 days ago. And remember the people fighting for decent values in all these days ahead.

Jonathan Chait calls it "an unsustainable presidency:"

Historians tend to rate presidencies by the breadth of their accomplishments, on a scale ranging from ineffectual to transformative. The classic measuring stick for 100-day achievements is the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt. The frenetic first stretch of the New Deal featured a raft of major legislation that established new financial regulations and ambitious public-works projects, helping the economy begin to recover from the Great Depression.

Judged against Roosevelt’s record, the first 100 days of the second Trump term can be deemed a miserable failure. The president has passed no major legislation, and his economic interventions have had the opposite effect of Roosevelt’s, injecting uncertainty into a healthy recovery and seeding an economic crisis.

Trump and his inner circle have consciously patterned themselves after Viktor Orbán’s regime in Hungary, which seized control of the commanding heights of government power to suppress opposition, while permitting its president and his family to siphon vast corrupt fortunes. The Orbánization project has advanced like clockwork.

But one detail seems to have escaped the attention of Trump and his allies: Hungary, outside of its tiny parasitic elite, is a relatively poor country. That ought to have been a sign that, whatever benefits the Orbán model presented to the right-wing ruling class that would carry it out, it held little promise of helping to usher in the “golden age” of prosperity Trump offered the country.

Orbán’s economy has suffered a brain drain as the regime’s cronyism drives its great minds to work in freer societies. Trump’s policies have shown early signs of producing a similar outcome, as would-be international students must now consider whether pursuing an American degree is worth risking getting detained by ICE or having their visa revoked abruptly over minor legal infractions.

Trump’s first 100 days have set the country on an unsustainable course. The clash between the president’s determination to rule and his inability to govern has generated two opposing forces: a weaponized, illiberal state, and a smoldering political backlash. One of them will have to break.

Well, he's only got another 1,362 days to screw everything up even more. How bad can it get?