On Christmas day, we learned that the ashes of James Doohan, the actor who played Scotty in the original Star Trek series and several movies, were surreptitiously brought to the International Space Station (ISS) in 2008. For fans of the classic science fiction franchise, it was a fitting extraterrestrial resting place for the man who played a beloved character. For those with dreams of a free life beyond Earth’s gravity, though, it was also a hint that the roguish spirit of Han Solo and Malcolm Reynolds has already taken root in humanity’s ventures into space.
“Now it can be revealed that in death the actor who played the starship’s chief engineer has travelled nearly 1.7 billion miles through space, orbiting Earth more than 70,000 times, after his ashes were hidden secretly on the International Space Station,” the Times of London reported on December 25. “‘It was completely clandestine,’ said Richard Garriott, a video game entrepreneur who smuggled James Doohan’s ashes on to the ISS in 2008 during a 12-day mission as a private astronaut.”
Garriott, who stashed a laminated card containing some of Doohan’s ashes in the ISS’s Columbus module at the request of the actor’s son, Chris, makes another appearance in space smuggling lore. The video game entrepreneur, who paid a reported $30 million to fly in a Soyuz capsule to the ISS, passed along gossip he’d picked up about cosmonauts transporting unapproved items into space.
“One of the historically common methods of taking a few extra personal items on board was on Soyuz, when you would be driving out to the launch pad where—starting with Gagarin—he stopped to unzip his space suit to urinate on the back tire of the bus,” Garriott told Chris Carberry, author of the 2019 book, Alcohol in Space: Past, Present and Future. “As it turns out, it was also an opportunity to push something inside your spacesuit at the last minute.”
We’re talking about Russian cosmonauts here but, surprisingly, the illicit orbital beverage of choice wasn’t vodka. “Cognac became the preferred drink for cosmonauts,” noted Carberry in his book. “And they devised clever and elaborate methods for smuggling this contraband on board space missions.”
Not only did the cosmonauts shove flasks of cognac into their space suits, but they also hollowed out books and hid bottles inside. Since weight is strictly regulated on space flights, some enterprising types starved themselves in the final week before launch to offset the mass of the contraband. They apparently offset a lot of mass.
“The occurrences of alcohol smuggling were so frequent that subsequent crews would often find bottles hidden in space suits, behind panels, and in other locations,” Carberry observes of the various Soviet/Russian space station missions.
The U.S. space program has also enjoyed incidents of illicit transport into space dating back to the earliest days of manned missions. In orbit in 1962, Wally Schirra discovered an unapproved gift in his capsule, courtesy of fellow astronaut Gordon Cooper. “A trimmed-down Tareyton pack held four cigarettes, but that was not the only bit of contraband to go into the little hiding place, because there was also a miniature bottle of scotch whiskey,” according to Colin Burgess’s 2016 book, Sigma 7: The Six Mercury Orbits of Walter M. Schirra, Jr.
Unsurprisingly, given the unappealing quality of most space rations, food features in the history of extraterrestrial contraband. Don Arabian, head of the test division at the Manned Spacecraft Center, reportedly “lost the will to live” after spending three days eating the food given to Apollo astronauts. A proposal to let space travelers drink sherry in orbit as a morale-booster was, unfortunately, shut down for public relations reasons. But astronauts had already dabbled with their own solutions to unpalatable fare. According to the National Air and Space Museum:
The (sanctioned) Gemini meal packages included a freeze-dried entree, vegetable, drink and dessert, protected with a 4-ply, laminated film coating. [Astronaut John] Young, it seemed, wasn’t interested in the freeze-dried option, so he brought something else on board. As he admitted to Life, ‘I hid a sandwich in my spacesuit.’
According to Young, his contraband corned-beef sandwich was thanks to astronaut Wally Schirra, who had it prepared at a restaurant in Cocoa Beach before Gemini 3 launched.
The smuggled sandwich caper actually caused a congressional fuss, prompting (probably empty) assurances from NASA that it would never occur again. A replica of the forbidden meal is preserved at the Grissom Memorial Museum in Mitchell, Indiana (Gus Grissom accompanied Young on the mission).
Admittedly, none of these incidents rise, so far, to the rule-breaking standards set by fictional smugglers in the likes of Star Wars and Firefly. We have yet to see the equivalent of the hidden compartments installed by Han Solo and Chewbacca in the Millennium Falcon, or by Malcolm Reynolds and Zoe Washburne in the Serenity. And professional smuggling remains a matter for fiction, though there must be terrestrial practitioners contemplating out-of-this-world opportunities. But we’re in early days for space travel and smuggling efforts will have to grow along with the ventures across a new frontier.
What we are seeing in abundance is the human eagerness to defy rules in order to have access to forbidden goods. Manned space missions might remain limited in number, government-dominated, and heavily regulated, but people have already found the will and the means to smuggle contraband past the authorities. Can you imagine what space travel will look like when competing private companies regularly carry thousands of passengers who want what they want no matter the whims of the powers that be?
So, hoist a drink—legal or otherwise—to Richard Garriott, rule-breaking space traveler. He not only found an appropriate resting place for an actor who portrayed a popular science fiction character, he also boldly went where extraterrestrial smugglers have already gone, and those of the future are sure to follow.
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2020 has proved to be a wild ride for the economy and finance. The economy posted its sharpest one-quarter decline to be followed by the largest quarterly gain. Meanwhile, the Dow Jones Index recorded the 10 largest daily percentage point declines and the 8 largest gains.
2021 could prove to be just as wild. But ending with opposite outcomes with the economy up and the equity markets down.
Here’s why.
First, in 2020 the divergence between the economy and finance has never been this wide. When the final numbers are in, the US economy will shrink 2% to 3%, while the broad equity market will record a gain of around 15%, twice its annual average.
Finance often records double historic annual gains, but not during a recession. During the prior three recessions, the equity market declined each time, with declines as small as 6% and as big as 38% for a calendar year.
So in 2020 finance is far ahead of the economy or the economy is far behind finance. A reversal with the economy growing and markets stalling or declining would bring about a better alignment.
Second, the 15%-plus gain in 2020 comes on the heels of a near 30% gain in 2019.The back-to-back large gains have increased the market value of equities by a record $12 trillion. That’s roughly twice the two-year gain that followed the Great Financial Recession when equities were cheap on all valuation metrics.
Market valuations increase over the course of the cycle as investor’s optimism increases. For example, over the course of the 1990s expansion, the market value of domestic equities to nominal GDP rose from .6X times at the start to 1.86X at the end. And during the economic expansion of 2001 to 2007, the market peak valuation reached 1.45X times, well up from the cycle low of below 1.
The market value of domestic equities to nominal GDP currently stands at a record 2X+times. Starting a new economic cycle with a record high valuation is unprecedented. Two of the past three economic expansions started with a market valuation to nominal GDP below 1.
Investors apparently believe that policymakers have all the tools and wits to prevent the equity market from declining ever again. The contrarian in me will take the other side of that bet; economic and market cycles live on, and policymakers are not wizards of finance.
Third, the medical vaccine could be a big positive for the economy and a big negative for monetary policy. That’s because as more and more people get vaccinated risk of business closures and layoffs subside quickly and substantially. As a result, the economic rebounds forcing monetary policy at some point in 2021 to end its unprecedented easy money policy.
Admittedly, policymakers have linked policy decisions to the outlook on inflation, not growth dynamics. But core inflation at 1.7% is 100 basis points above the low point following the Great Financial Recession. So a fast economic recovery could push inflation up above the 2% mark much sooner than many, including policymakers, now expect.
Investors seem to overlook or forget how sensitive equity prices and valuations are to the slightest change in monetary policy. It wasn’t too long ago when the Fed announced the end of the asset purchase program equity markets reversed course and recorded larger declines when policymakers talked about lifting official rates above the 2% mark.
There is no precedent for the uneven economic and financial outcomes of 2020. As a result, there is no precedent for what happens next. Even though the downside risks for equities from a recession were reversed in 2020 by unprecedented policy actions does not automatically mean the equity market should trade even higher when the economy recovers. 2021 could very well play out the opposite of 2020; the economy growing and the equity market falling.
On Christmas day, we learned that the ashes of James Doohan, the actor who played Scotty in the original Star Trek series and several movies, were surreptitiously brought to the International Space Station (ISS) in 2008. For fans of the classic science fiction franchise, it was a fitting extraterrestrial resting place for the man who played a beloved character. For those with dreams of a free life beyond Earth’s gravity, though, it was also a hint that the roguish spirit of Han Solo and Malcolm Reynolds has already taken root in humanity’s ventures into space.
“Now it can be revealed that in death the actor who played the starship’s chief engineer has travelled nearly 1.7 billion miles through space, orbiting Earth more than 70,000 times, after his ashes were hidden secretly on the International Space Station,” the Times of London reported on December 25. “‘It was completely clandestine,’ said Richard Garriott, a video game entrepreneur who smuggled James Doohan’s ashes on to the ISS in 2008 during a 12-day mission as a private astronaut.”
Garriott, who stashed a laminated card containing some of Doohan’s ashes in the ISS’s Columbus module at the request of the actor’s son, Chris, makes another appearance in space smuggling lore. The video game entrepreneur, who paid a reported $30 million to fly in a Soyuz capsule to the ISS, passed along gossip he’d picked up about cosmonauts transporting unapproved items into space.
“One of the historically common methods of taking a few extra personal items on board was on Soyuz, when you would be driving out to the launch pad where—starting with Gagarin—he stopped to unzip his space suit to urinate on the back tire of the bus,” Garriott told Chris Carberry, author of the 2019 book, Alcohol in Space: Past, Present and Future. “As it turns out, it was also an opportunity to push something inside your spacesuit at the last minute.”
We’re talking about Russian cosmonauts here but, surprisingly, the illicit orbital beverage of choice wasn’t vodka. “Cognac became the preferred drink for cosmonauts,” noted Carberry in his book. “And they devised clever and elaborate methods for smuggling this contraband on board space missions.”
Not only did the cosmonauts shove flasks of cognac into their space suits, but they also hollowed out books and hid bottles inside. Since weight is strictly regulated on space flights, some enterprising types starved themselves in the final week before launch to offset the mass of the contraband. They apparently offset a lot of mass.
“The occurrences of alcohol smuggling were so frequent that subsequent crews would often find bottles hidden in space suits, behind panels, and in other locations,” Carberry observes of the various Soviet/Russian space station missions.
The U.S. space program has also enjoyed incidents of illicit transport into space dating back to the earliest days of manned missions. In orbit in 1962, Wally Schirra discovered an unapproved gift in his capsule, courtesy of fellow astronaut Gordon Cooper. “A trimmed-down Tareyton pack held four cigarettes, but that was not the only bit of contraband to go into the little hiding place, because there was also a miniature bottle of scotch whiskey,” according to Colin Burgess’s 2016 book, Sigma 7: The Six Mercury Orbits of Walter M. Schirra, Jr.
Unsurprisingly, given the unappealing quality of most space rations, food features in the history of extraterrestrial contraband. Don Arabian, head of the test division at the Manned Spacecraft Center, reportedly “lost the will to live” after spending three days eating the food given to Apollo astronauts. A proposal to let space travelers drink sherry in orbit as a morale-booster was, unfortunately, shut down for public relations reasons. But astronauts had already dabbled with their own solutions to unpalatable fare. According to the National Air and Space Museum:
The (sanctioned) Gemini meal packages included a freeze-dried entree, vegetable, drink and dessert, protected with a 4-ply, laminated film coating. [Astronaut John] Young, it seemed, wasn’t interested in the freeze-dried option, so he brought something else on board. As he admitted to Life, ‘I hid a sandwich in my spacesuit.’
According to Young, his contraband corned-beef sandwich was thanks to astronaut Wally Schirra, who had it prepared at a restaurant in Cocoa Beach before Gemini 3 launched.
The smuggled sandwich caper actually caused a congressional fuss, prompting (probably empty) assurances from NASA that it would never occur again. A replica of the forbidden meal is preserved at the Grissom Memorial Museum in Mitchell, Indiana (Gus Grissom accompanied Young on the mission).
Admittedly, none of these incidents rise, so far, to the rule-breaking standards set by fictional smugglers in the likes of Star Wars and Firefly. We have yet to see the equivalent of the hidden compartments installed by Han Solo and Chewbacca in the Millennium Falcon, or by Malcolm Reynolds and Zoe Washburne in the Serenity. And professional smuggling remains a matter for fiction, though there must be terrestrial practitioners contemplating out-of-this-world opportunities. But we’re in early days for space travel and smuggling efforts will have to grow along with the ventures across a new frontier.
What we are seeing in abundance is the human eagerness to defy rules in order to have access to forbidden goods. Manned space missions might remain limited in number, government-dominated, and heavily regulated, but people have already found the will and the means to smuggle contraband past the authorities. Can you imagine what space travel will look like when competing private companies regularly carry thousands of passengers who want what they want no matter the whims of the powers that be?
So, hoist a drink—legal or otherwise—to Richard Garriott, rule-breaking space traveler. He not only found an appropriate resting place for an actor who portrayed a popular science fiction character, he also boldly went where extraterrestrial smugglers have already gone, and those of the future are sure to follow.
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Mapping The Global Lockdown: Where Air Travel Is Partially Open And Where It’s Fully Closed
In a world gripped by partial (or full) lockdowns, the map below from Bank of America provides real-time data on the current state of air travel restrictions. It shows that 92 countries are currently partially open, 74 countries have no travel restrictions (having a list of these will come in handy during the next crisis), 50 countries are completely closed and 6 are reopening soon.
A quick look at North America reveals that the US, Canada, and Mexico extended their shared border restrictions through 21 January. This is the ninth extension since the restriction was first imposed on 18 March. “Essential” cross-border workers, immediate family members continue to be excluded from the restrictions. Additionally, on 8 October, the Canadian government announced it would allow extended family members cross-border privileges for those in an exclusive dating relationship for over a year and “have spent time in the physical presence of that person at some point during the relationship”.
Meanwhile, as a result of the ongoing partial or full lockdowns, air travel remains sharply lower than 2019. According to the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), checkpoint traveler throughput numbers over the last week were 67% (on average) below what they were in 2019, which while an improvement off early and mid-April lows, which were 96% below what they were in 2019 according to BofA is a deterioration from the 56% decline observed at the start of December.
Chart 1 below shows raw number data for TSA checkpoint traveler throughput, Chart 2 depicts the year over year change in traveler throughput 2020 vs 2019.
There is no quick recovery in sight: on 9/29, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) revised its 2020 forecast to a 66% Y/Y declined in air traffic demand as measured by revenue passenger kilometers (RPK). Previously IATA forecasted a 63% Y/Y decline. The forecast was updated to reflect a weaker outlook following 2020’s “dismal end to the summer travel season.”
On 7/28, IATA said the pandemic is expected to delay the recovery of air traffic demand to pre-COVID-19 levels till 2024, as measured by revenue passenger kilometers (RPK) (vs. previous forecasted recovery in late 2022/ early 2023). At the time, IATA also revised its forecast to reflect a 63% Y/Y decline in air traffic demand (RPK) in 2020, and a 75% recovery in 2021 (still 36% below 2019 levels). Prior to that, IATA had estimated the pandemic’s impact in 2020 would be a 55% Y/Y decline with a 55% recovery in 2021(but still remaining 29% below 2019 levels).
The result of this global collapse in air travel has been a tsunami of defaults, bankruptcies and bailouts. The list below courtesy of BofA tracks the most prominent airline bankruptcies and bailouts of the past year.
Virgin Atlantic (Chapter 15 Bankruptcy filing 8/4): On 8/4, Virgin Atlantic (UK-based) filed for chapter 15 bankruptcy protection in the US, amidst increasingCOVID-19 pandemic pressures. According to Reuters, the US chapter 15 bankruptcy code allows “a foreign debtor to shield assets in this country.”
Grupo Aeromexico (Bankrupt 6/30): On 6/30, Aeromexico announced that it has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the US. The airline will continue to operate through the legal process. According to Cirium, Aeromexico’s fleet consists of 19787 Dreamliners, 6 737 MAX, 44 737 NG, 47 E190s, and nine E170s.
LATAM Airlines (Bankrupt 5/26): On 5/26, LATAM Airlines and its Chile, Peru,Colombia, Ecuador and US affiliates filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection inthe US. LATAM Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay are negotiating support with the government of Brazil. LATAM and all of its affiliates will continue to operate as it works to reorganize.
Lufthansa (Bailout 5/25): On 5/25, Lufthansa confirmed that the Economic Stabilization Fund (WSF) of Germany had approved a $9.8bn aid package for theairline. The terms include a 20% government stake in Lufthansa which could increase to 25% and one share in the event of a takeover attempt. Lufthansa’s acceptance of the package is pending the approval of its Management and Supervisory boards (which is expected to happen shortly) and the European Commission’s regulatory approval.
Avianca Airlines (Bankrupt 5/12): On 5/12 Colombian airline Avianca filed for bankruptcy. According to media reports the filing identified the impact of theCOVID-19 pandemic on the airline as the reason for its filing. Avianca is the third largest airline in Latin America. According to its website, Avianca’s fleet consists of13 Boeing 787s, 8 Airbus A330s, 15 A321s, 67 A320s, 25 A319s, 15 ATR-72s and 6A330F Cargo aircraft.
Air France-KLM (Bailout 4/24): On 4/24, Air France-KLM secured $7.6bn in funding from the French and Dutch governments. The loans include some “greenties” or environmental commitments ie. Reducing its CO2 emissions by 50% overthe next 10 years.
Virgin Australia (voluntary administration): On 4/20, Virgin Australia Holdings Limited announced it has “entered voluntary administration to recapitalise the business and help ensure it emerges in a stronger financial position on the other side of the COVID-19 crisis.” Virgin Australia Holdings includes Virgin Australia,Virgin Australia Regional, Virgin Australia International and Tigerair Australia(lowcost carrier). According to Cirium, the total fleet consists of 148 aircraft: 85 737NG, five 777s, 15 A320s, six A330s, 12 ATR 72s, 19 Fokker 100s and two Fokker70s.
Air New Zealand (Bailout): New Zealand offered its flag carrier Air New Zealand aNZ$900mn ($513mn USD) loan over the next two years, separate from the NZ$600mn ($342mn USD) aviation industry support package New Zealand announced on 3/17. Air New Zealand had previously cut its long haul flights by 80%and its government owns a majority stake of the airline (52%). The airline agreed to not pay dividends to shareholders over the duration of the loan.
Finnair (Bailout): On 3/20 media reports indicated Finland was preparing to grant its flag carrier airline, Finnair, 600mn euro in support through the COVID-19pandemic. The airline had previously cancelled ~90% of its flights. The airline is~56% owned by the state.
Norwegian Air (Bailout): On 3/19, the Norwegian government offered NOK 6bn(~$535mn USD) in credit guarantees for its airline industry. Half of the amount(~$267mn) will be made available to Norwegian Air, with conditions.
Alitalia (Bailout): Italy has earmarked 500mn euro for its airline sector. A large portion of that funding is intended for its flag carrier airline Alitalia.
FlyBe (Bankrupt: 3/5): UK regional airline that had 2,000+ employees and serviced over 8mn people per year. According to media reports, Flybe operated ~40% of UK domestic flights.
Air Italy (Bankrupt: 2/25): Formerly known as Meridiana, Air Italy was Italy’s second largest airline after Alitalia. Air Italy ceased flight operations on 25 February2020.
Other smaller bankruptcies include Atlasglobal (Turkey), Trans States Airlines (US), and Nantucket Express (US).
The late, great urban theorist, Jane Jacobs, wrote in her seminal The Death and Life of Great American Cities that, “there is no leeway for such chancy trial, error, and experimentation in the high-overhead economy of new construction. Old ideas can sometimes use new buildings. New ideas must use old buildings.”
She was explaining that people with innovative business ideas need an inexpensive place to get started. After all, the founders of Apple, Google, and Disney birthed their enterprises in garages. In California, these days, the cost of real estate—and everything else, for that matter—is so high, that few people can afford the cost of entry. That’s why so many innovators are high-tailing it to Texas and elsewhere.
Jacobs sprang to mind as the latest news reports that Silicon Valley stalwarts, Hewlett Packard and Oracle, are moving their headquarters from the San Francisco Bay Area to Texas. More than 200,000 Californians left the state between 2018 and 2019, some of whom might be among the next generation of tech moguls looking for cheap warehouse space to foster their groundbreaking concepts.
The once Golden State keeps growing—albeit at the lowest rate since 1900—thanks to the birth rate. The key reason for the continuing exodus is real estate is so unaffordable here that only established firms and families can afford the tab. This is the direct result of progressive public policies, which focus on divvying up existing wealth rather than letting people create more of it.
California officials love to boast that the state is the world’s fifth-largest economy—and point to Silicon Valley as evidence that we’re still on the cutting edge of entrepreneurial activity. But California is driving on fumes—living off the residual investments and innovations of past generations. These lawmakers take credit for something they seem intent on destroying.
Who in their right mind would start a business here? As Rep. Tom McClintock (R–Calif.) likes to say, California remains a great place to build a small business—provided you start with a large one. The only surefire ideas that work here now are living on a trust fund or getting a cushy job in California’s remaining high-pay growth industry, the government.
California isn’t only losing people, but is losing its future. “The state’s long-held self-image—a blend of Tomorrowland and Fountain of Youth—is colliding with the inescapable fact that the Golden State is getting old,” as a 2018 Los Angeles Times article noted. No wonder. Older folks who own their homes aren’t going to leave the lovely climate or Pacific views, but energetic young people are building their lives elsewhere.
The state’s big cities are becoming virtually childless. “San Francisco has the lowest percentage of children under 18 of any major city in the U.S., and Los Angeles County has seen a 17 percent decline in the number of kids in the past 10 years,” notes Derek Thompson in the Atlantic. Big surprise. It’s tough to raise a family in an 800-square-foot, $1 million condo.
How can we reverse these trends? It starts with a new mentality—one that’s committed to recreating a state of opportunity. California has the nation’s highest poverty rate, according to the Census Bureau statistics that consider cost-of-living data. We have the most generous welfare benefits in the nation, but few people want a subsidized apartment and a monthly stipend. It’s better to give them a shot at upward mobility.
Unfortunately, the Democratic leadership is hostile to private industry. It pretends that wealth is something that fell miraculously out of the sky, and that their job on Earth is to redistribute it. They bemoan income inequality, but fail to see that their slow-growth, regulatory policies have made new and old buildings unaffordable for virtually everyone—or that their labor rules crush new enterprises before they get off the ground.
State officials can start by reforming their housing policies. Housing is no different than any other industry. It’s about supply and demand. Local and state land-use rules add as much as 40 percent to the price of new construction. Most people buy older homes, but if governments restrict new construction, they inflate the cost of existing properties.
For all their bragging about Silicon Valley, California’s leaders spend a lot of time punishing those companies for imagined crimes. Currently, the state is joining a lawsuit against Google for offering free search-engine downloads on cellphones. Don’t forget the state’s relentless efforts to ban companies from using contractors, which demolishes the foundation of the gig economy and robs moderate-income Californians of their livelihoods.
Is it any wonder so many Californians are heading to Texas or Arizona? We can look at specific policies that California officials can (but won’t) take to make this state the magnet that it once was, but it starts with a change of perspective. Perhaps good ideas require new politicians.
This column was first published in The Orange County Register.
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The late, great urban theorist, Jane Jacobs, wrote in her seminal The Death and Life of Great American Cities that, “there is no leeway for such chancy trial, error, and experimentation in the high-overhead economy of new construction. Old ideas can sometimes use new buildings. New ideas must use old buildings.”
She was explaining that people with innovative business ideas need an inexpensive place to get started. After all, the founders of Apple, Google, and Disney birthed their enterprises in garages. In California, these days, the cost of real estate—and everything else, for that matter—is so high, that few people can afford the cost of entry. That’s why so many innovators are high-tailing it to Texas and elsewhere.
Jacobs sprang to mind as the latest news reports that Silicon Valley stalwarts, Hewlett Packard and Oracle, are moving their headquarters from the San Francisco Bay Area to Texas. More than 200,000 Californians left the state between 2018 and 2019, some of whom might be among the next generation of tech moguls looking for cheap warehouse space to foster their groundbreaking concepts.
The once Golden State keeps growing—albeit at the lowest rate since 1900—thanks to the birth rate. The key reason for the continuing exodus is real estate is so unaffordable here that only established firms and families can afford the tab. This is the direct result of progressive public policies, which focus on divvying up existing wealth rather than letting people create more of it.
California officials love to boast that the state is the world’s fifth-largest economy—and point to Silicon Valley as evidence that we’re still on the cutting edge of entrepreneurial activity. But California is driving on fumes—living off the residual investments and innovations of past generations. These lawmakers take credit for something they seem intent on destroying.
Who in their right mind would start a business here? As Rep. Tom McClintock (R–Calif.) likes to say, California remains a great place to build a small business—provided you start with a large one. The only surefire ideas that work here now are living on a trust fund or getting a cushy job in California’s remaining high-pay growth industry, the government.
California isn’t only losing people, but is losing its future. “The state’s long-held self-image—a blend of Tomorrowland and Fountain of Youth—is colliding with the inescapable fact that the Golden State is getting old,” as a 2018 Los Angeles Times article noted. No wonder. Older folks who own their homes aren’t going to leave the lovely climate or Pacific views, but energetic young people are building their lives elsewhere.
The state’s big cities are becoming virtually childless. “San Francisco has the lowest percentage of children under 18 of any major city in the U.S., and Los Angeles County has seen a 17 percent decline in the number of kids in the past 10 years,” notes Derek Thompson in the Atlantic. Big surprise. It’s tough to raise a family in an 800-square-foot, $1 million condo.
How can we reverse these trends? It starts with a new mentality—one that’s committed to recreating a state of opportunity. California has the nation’s highest poverty rate, according to the Census Bureau statistics that consider cost-of-living data. We have the most generous welfare benefits in the nation, but few people want a subsidized apartment and a monthly stipend. It’s better to give them a shot at upward mobility.
Unfortunately, the Democratic leadership is hostile to private industry. It pretends that wealth is something that fell miraculously out of the sky, and that their job on Earth is to redistribute it. They bemoan income inequality, but fail to see that their slow-growth, regulatory policies have made new and old buildings unaffordable for virtually everyone—or that their labor rules crush new enterprises before they get off the ground.
State officials can start by reforming their housing policies. Housing is no different than any other industry. It’s about supply and demand. Local and state land-use rules add as much as 40 percent to the price of new construction. Most people buy older homes, but if governments restrict new construction, they inflate the cost of existing properties.
For all their bragging about Silicon Valley, California’s leaders spend a lot of time punishing those companies for imagined crimes. Currently, the state is joining a lawsuit against Google for offering free search-engine downloads on cellphones. Don’t forget the state’s relentless efforts to ban companies from using contractors, which demolishes the foundation of the gig economy and robs moderate-income Californians of their livelihoods.
Is it any wonder so many Californians are heading to Texas or Arizona? We can look at specific policies that California officials can (but won’t) take to make this state the magnet that it once was, but it starts with a change of perspective. Perhaps good ideas require new politicians.
This column was first published in The Orange County Register.
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A New Year Every Two Months? Year-End Celebrations Around The World
In August, Muslim countries rang in a new year on the Islamic calendar. 1442 AH will last from Aug 20, 2020, to approximately Aug 8, 2021 – twelve days shorter than the 365 days of the Gregorian year. The date set by Saudi Arabia is based on astronomical calculations of moon cycles and while many countries in the region follow the Saudis’ lead, others wait until they can spot the new moon themselves, causing slightly different observation dates for the holiday.
Like the Islamic New Year, Statista’s Katharina Buchholz notes that many regional new year’s celebrations rely on lunar calendars, causing their dates to vary each year in relation to the Gregorian calendar, which is based on one revolution of the Earth around the sun. Because the Islamic year is the only one which is significantly shorter than the solar year, the Islamic celebration is also the only one which can occur in any month of the Gregorian calendar.
Saudi Arabia until recently condemned new year’s celebrations on Jan 1 and only this year allowed fireworks to take place on the date for the first time.
Jan 1 celebrations have also caused debate in Uzbekistan, where the Persian New Year Nowruz is celebrated in March and traditionally minded Uzbeks would like to see Jan 1 celebrations – a Soviet legacy – disappear. Nowruz is considered the main new year’s celebration – and main festival of the year – in Iran and Afghanistan, while it is celebrated as “Spring Festival” in much of Central Asia.
In Southeast Asia, Jan 1 and regional celebration Songkran coexists peacefully. Its date used to be determined by the lunar Hindu calendar, but has since received set Gregorian dates varying slightly by country for convenience’s sake. In India, the Hindu calendar’s new year is celebrated on various days in March and April depending on the region, while Jan 1 celebrations are also popular.
In China, where the lunar new year occurs in January or February, Jan 1 is a public holiday but rather insignificant compared to the massive Chinese new year’s celebration lasting seven days.
Persecution is not typically doled out to those who recite mainstream pieties, or refrain from posing meaningful threats to those who wield institutional power, or obediently stay within the lines of permissible speech and activism imposed by the ruling class.
Those who render themselves acquiescent and harmless that way will — in every society, including the most repressive — usually be free of reprisals. They will not be censored or jailed. They will be permitted to live their lives largely unmolested by authorities, while many will be well-rewarded for this servitude. Such individuals will see themselves as free because, in a sense, they are: they are free to submit, conform and acquiesce. And if they do so, they will not even realize, or at least not care, and may even regard as justifiable, that those who refuse this Orwellian bargain they have embraced (“freedom” in exchange for submission) are crushed with unlimited force.
Those who do not seek to meaningfully dissent or subvert power will usually deny — because they do not perceive — that such dissent and subversion are, in fact, rigorously prohibited. They will continue to believe blissfully that the society in which they live guarantees core civic freedoms — of speech, of press, of assembly, of due process — because they have rendered their own speech and activism, if it exists at all, so innocuous that nobody with the capacity to do so would bother to try to curtail it. The observation apocryphally attributed to socialist activist Rosa Luxemburg, imprisoned for her opposition to German involvement in World War I and then summarily executed by the state, expresses it best: “Those who do not move, do not notice their chains.”
The metric to determine whether a society is free is not how its orthodoxy-spouting, well-behaved, deferential-to-authority citizens are treated. Such people are treated well, or at least usually left alone, by every sovereign and every power center in every era, all over the world.
You will not feel the sting of Silicon Valley or other institutional censorship as long as you affirm the latest COVID pronouncements of the World Health Organization and Dr. Anthony Fauci (even as those decrees contradict the ones they issued only a few months earlier), but you will if you question, refute or deviate from them. You will not have your Facebook page deleted if you defend Israeli occupation of Palestine but will be banished from that platform if you live in the West Bank and Gaza and urge resistance to Israeli occupying troops. If you call Trump an orange fascist clown, you can stay on YouTube for eternity, but not if you defend his most controversial policies and claims. You can vocally insist that the 2000, 2004 and 2016 U.S. presidential elections were all stolen without the slightest concern of being banned, but the same claims about the 2020 election will result in the summary denial of your ability to use online tech monopolies to be heard.
Censorship, like most repression, is reserved for those who dissent from majoritarian orthodoxies, not for those who express views comfortably within the mainstream. Establishment Democrats and Republicans — adherents to the prevailing neoliberal order — have no need for free speech protections since nobody with power would care enough to silence them. It is only the disaffected, those who reside on the fringes and the margins, who need those rights. And those are precisely the people who, by definition, are most often denied them.
Similarly: powerful officials in Washington can illegally leak the most sensitive government secrets and will suffer no punishment, or will get the lightest tap on the wrist, provided their aim is to advance mainstream narratives. But low-level leakers whose aim is to expose wrongdoing by the powerful or reveal their systemic lying will have the full weight of the criminal justice system and the intelligence community come crashing down on them, to destroy them with vengeance and also to put their heads on a pike to terrorize future dissidents out of similarly stepping forward.
Journalists like Bob Woodward, who spend decades spilling the most sensitive secrets at the behest of the ruling class D.C. elites, will be lavished with awards and immense wealth. But those like Julian Assange who publish similar secrets but against the will of those elites, with the goal and outcome of exposing (rather than obscuring) ruling class lies and impeding (rather than advancing) their agenda, will suffer the opposite fate as Woodward: they will endure every imaginable punishment, including indefinite imprisonment in maximum-security cells. That is because Woodward is a servant of power while Assange is a dissident against it.
All of this illustrates a vital truth. The real measure of how free is a society — from China, Saudi Arabia and Egypt to France, Britain and the U.S. — is not how its mainstream, well-behaved ruling class servants are treated. Royal court vassals always end up fine: rewarded for their subservience and thus, convinced that freedoms abound, they redouble their fealty to prevailing status quo power structures.
Whether a society is truly free is determined by how it treats its dissidents, those who live and speak and think outside of permissible lines, those who effectively subvert ruling class aims. If you want to know whether free speech is genuine or illusory, look not to the treatment of those who loyally serve establishment factions and vocally affirm their most sacred pieties, but to the fate of those who reside outside of those factions and work in opposition to them. If you want to know whether a free press is authentically guaranteed, look at the plight of those who publish secrets designed not to propagandize the population to venerate elites but, instead, those whose publications result in generating mass discontent against them.
That is what makes the ongoing imprisonment of Julian Assange not only a grotesque injustice but also a vital, crystal-clear prism for seeing the fundamental fraud of U.S. narratives about who is free and who is not, about where tyranny reigns and where it does not.
Assange has been imprisoned for almost two years. He was dragged out of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London by British police on April 11, 2019. That was possible only because the U.S., U.K. and Spanish governments coerced Ecuador’s meek President, Lenin Moreno, to withdraw the asylum extended to Assange seven years earlier by his staunch sovereignty-defending predecessor, Rafael Correa.
The U.S. and British governments hate Assange because of his revelations that exposed their lies and crimes, while Spain was enraged by WikiLeaks’ journalistic coverage of and activism against Madrid’s 2018 violent repression of the Catalan independence movement. So they bullied and bribed Moreno to throw Assange to the wolves — i.e., to them. And ever since, Assange has been held in the high-security Belmarsh prison in London, a facility used for terrorist suspects that is so harsh that the BBC asked in 2004 whether it is “Britain’s Guantanamo Bay.”
Assange is not currently imprisoned because he was convicted of a crime. Two weeks after he was dragged out of the embassy, he was found guilty of the minor offense of “skipping bail” and sentenced to 50 weeks in prison, the maximum penalty allowed by law. He fully served that sentence as of April of this year, and was thus scheduled to be released, facing no more charges. But just weeks before his release date, the U.S. Justice Department unveiled an indictment of Assange arising out of WikiLeaks’ 2010 publication of U.S. State Department diplomatic cables and war logs that revealed massive corruption by numerous governments, Bush and Obama officials, and various corporations around the world.
That U.S. indictment and the accompanying request to extradite Assange to the U.S. to stand trial provided, by design, the pretext for the British government to imprison Assange indefinitely. A judge quickly ruled that Assange could not be released on bail pending his extradition hearing, but instead must stay behind bars while the U.K. courts fully adjudicate the Justice Department’s extradition request. No matter what happens, it will takes years for this extradition process to conclude because whichever side (the DOJ or Assange) loses at each stage (and Assange is highly likely to lose the first round when the lower-court decision on the extradition request is issued next week), they will appeal, and Assange will linger in prison while these appeals wind their way very slowly through the U.K. judicial system.
That means that — absent a pardon by Trump or the withdrawal of the charges by what will become the Biden DOJ — Assange will be locked up for years without any need to prove he is guilty of any crime. He will have been just disappeared: silenced by the very governments whose corruption and crimes he denounced and exposed.
Those are the same governments — the U.S. and U.K. — that sanctimoniously condemn their adversaries (but rarely their repressive allies) for violating free speech, free press and due process rights. These are the same governments that succeed — largely due to a limitlessly compliant corporate media that either believes the propaganda or knowingly disseminates it for their own rewards — in convincing large numbers of their citizens that, unlike in the Bad Countries such as Russia and Iran, these civic freedoms are guaranteed and protected in the Good Western Countries.
(The ample evidence showing that the indictment of Assange is the single gravest threat to press freedoms in years, and that the arguments mounted to justify it are fraudulent, has been repeatedly documented by myself and others, so I will not rehash those discussions here. Those interested can see the article and video program I produced on this prosecution along with my op-ed in The Washington Post; Laura Poitras’ New York Timesop-ed last week on the indictment; former Brazilian President Lula da Silva’s Guardian op-ed calling for Assange’s immediate release; the editorial from The Guardian and column from The Washington Post’s media reporter Margaret Sullivan condemning this prosecution as abusive; and statements from the Freedom of the Press Foundation, the Committee to Protect Journalists, Columbia Journalism Review, and the ACLU warning of the serious dangers to press freedoms it poses).
Even Assange’s conviction on “bail jumping” charges, and the way it is portrayed in mainstream media discourse, reveals how deceitful these narratives are, and how illusory are these supposedly protected liberties. Assange’s misdemeanor bail jumping conviction was based on his decision to seek asylum from Ecuador rather than appear for his 2012 extradition hearing in London. That asylum request was granted by Ecuador on the ground that Sweden’s attempt to extradite Assange from the U.K. for a sexual assault investigation could be used as a pretext to ship him to the U.S., which would then imprison him for the “crime” of reporting on its illegal and deceitful acts. Such retaliatory imprisonment, said Ecuador, would amount to classic political persecution, thus necessitating asylum to protect his political rights from attack by the U.S. (the case in Sweden was subsequently closed after prosecutors concluded that Assange’s asylum rendered the investigation futile).
When the U.S. grants asylum to dissidents from adversary countries in order to protect them from persecution, the U.S. media heralds it a noble, benevolent act, one that proves how devoted the U.S. Government is to the rights and freedoms of people all over the world.
Recall the celebratory tone of U.S. media coverage when the Obama administration gave refuge in its Beijing embassy and then permanent asylum to the blind Chinese activist-lawyer Chen Guangcheng, who had faced numerous criminal charges in his home country for his work against various policies he regarded as oppressive and unjust. American liberals depict asylum when granted by the U.S. Government, to protect against persecution in other Latin American countries, as so sacred that the Trump administration’s efforts to limit such asylum invoked their sustained fury (that fury is about to dissipate as Biden does the same, but with the softer and gentler language of reluctance).
But when asylum is granted by other countries to protect someone against persecution at the hands of the U.S. Government, then suddenly asylum is transformed from a noble and benevolent shield against human rights abuses into a dastardly, corrupt crime. That is how U.S. and British journalists routinely malign Ecuador’s decision to shield Assange from the possibility of being shipped to the U.S to be punished for his journalism, or how they still speak of Russia’s grant of asylum to Edward Snowden, which shields him from being shipped to the U.S. to face a likely punishment of life in prison under the repressive Espionage Act of 1917, a law that bars him from even raising a defense of “justification” in court and thus obtaining a fair trial. Under this propagandistic framework, not only the governments that grant asylum against U.S. persecution (such as Ecuador and Russia) but also the individuals who seek asylum from U.S. persecution (such as Assange and Snowden) are cast by the U.S. and British media as villains and even criminals for availing themselves of this internationally guaranteed asylum right.
Indeed, the British judge who doled out the maximum sentence to Assange for bail jumping, Deborah Taylor, sneered at his sentencing hearing that he “used his asylum at the Ecuadoran Embassy to insult the British judiciary.” She added: “It’s difficult to envisage a more serious example of this offense. By entering the embassy, you deliberately put yourself out of reach, whilst remaining in the U.K. You remained there for nearly seven years, exploiting your privileged position to flout the law and advertise internationally your disdain for the law of this country.”
Snowden’s asylum in Russia — the only thing standing between him and decades in a high-security cage in the U.S. for the “crime” of revealing unconstitutional spying by Obama officials — is similarly scorned in elite U.S. media and political circles as something shameful and even treasonous rather than a perfectly legal shield under international asylum conventions against persecution by the vengeful and notoriously repressive U.S. security state.
Here we see the blinding propaganda to which U.S. citizens are endlessly subjected. Asylum is always warranted when extended by the U.S. Government to dissidents or outcasts from inferior countries, but is never warranted when granted by other countries to U.S. dissidents or other journalists and activists whose punishment the U.S. seeks. This warped formulation is potent because the U.S. media succeeds in peddling the toxic mythology that the U.S. has unique rights and entitlements that lesser countries do not because, unlike them, the U.S. is a freedom-loving democracy that honors basic human rights and steadfastly guarantees fundamental civil liberties of free expression, a free press, and due process to all peoples.
The next time someone makes that claim, explicitly or otherwise, tell them to look at the fate of Julian Assange, one of this generation’s most effective journalists and activists in exposing the crimes, deceit and corruption of key U.S power centers, particularly its permanent security state. Assange is not even a U.S. citizen, having spent a week total in his life on U.S. soil and having absolutely no duties — legal, journalistic or ethical — to safeguard U.S. secrets.
But no matter: anyone who effectively challenges U.S. power must and will be crushed. That is because freedom of speech and press and other civic guarantees are granted only to those who refrain from meaningfully challenging the U.S. ruling class: i.e., to those who do not need those rights. Those who do need those rights — those who dissent and are disaffected — are denied them, definitively proving that these rights exist only on parchment, that in reality they are artificial and illusory for those who actually need and deserve them.
