Between Hell and High Water

Creating Clean Energy Is Not Enough

By Mike Koetting May 21, 2024

The struggle to adjust to changing environmental conditions is not a challenge that can be resolved by fragmented, individual policy decisions. It requires a network of mutually organized and supportive policies. None of the individual policies will be perfect—and can certainly be pecked to death if we let it happen. But we will thrive, perhaps just survive, only if we look at how the totality of responses work together to achieve an adequate outcome.

What’s going on with the nation’s electric supply puts very bright lights on this issue.

Educational Reform and Teachers

By Mike Koetting May 7,2024

I’m a religious reader of the articles published by Bob Melville in The Civic Way, a much more disciplined look at policy issues than my own scattershot set of interests. He has recently undertaken an excellent multi-part series on the challenges facing public education. It’s not a cheery read because public education is facing crises from multiple directions.

His piece on “The Public Teaching Crisis,” however, touched on a couple of my hot buttons, so I thought I would offer some suggestions as to how I would explicate and implement some of his thoughts. These proposals reflect my fundamental beliefs not only about teachers, principals, and educational quality, but also underline broader sentiments on doing the public business, which is much more complicated than people want to accept. These, however, are my own ideas and you can’t blame Bob for them.

Defining Educational Quality

Americans are generally unhappy with the direction of our educational system. However, descriptions of what is wrong vary so much by political ideology, one must assume a fair amount of this dissatisfaction is simply another refection of the broader societal malaise. People would like to imagine that education could fix whatever it is they think wrong with society—around which there is little agreement and much passion. But it will be hard to get public acceptance of education until we figure out how to address the broader disentrancement with our society.

In the meantime, this malaise combines with factors more specific to the educational environment to create a high level of teacher dissatisfaction.

Posturing of Republican States a Planetary Threat

By Mike Koetting April 22,2024

My last post used property insurance to illustrate how climate change is already intruding on our day-to-day lives. When I started that post, I had the vague idea that this might be causing some softening of attitudes, even in Red states. Talk about misbegotten hopes!

Rather, the impact of these states pretending environmental threats are not man-made has a greater rippling effect than I anticipated.

Property Insurance: An Environmentally Endangered Species

By Mike Koetting April 9, 2024

I believe one of the reasons that people discount the threats to our environment is that they imagine them as some really catastrophic events resulting in the kind of dystopian science fiction scenario portrayed in a Mad Max movie. Since that is, literally, unthinkable, it gives license to lower the immediate threat level.

However, it is not likely it will happen like that. It is much, much more likely that things will come apart gradually, one problem after another, each compounding the previous. It has already started to happen, poking successive holes in the fabric of our life. Today’s conversations are no longer just about the future.

This post addresses one of these clear and present problems—the retreat of home owners’ insurance in the face of environmental threats.

WTO or WTI—World Trade Organization or What Then Instead?

By Mike Koetting March 26, 2024

My attention was piqued last week when I noticed two articles suggesting that the wheels were coming off the World Trade Organization (WTO), the 160-something nation member organization whose members have agreed to negotiate, implement and abide by common rules for international trade under the premise of free trade. I started to think about the implications of its collapse and whether that was good thing or a bad thing. Oh, and I suppose, whether or not it was close to death.

Let’s start with the last. My Peanut Gallery View of the facts suggest that the WTO is facing some major problems. The most recent of its biennial meetings ended with no major agreements despite some serious issues on the table. The dispute resolution mechanism has come to a standstill as the United State has blocked appointments to the resolution panel for seven years. The Global South, particularly South Africa and India, have used their ability to block many resolutions. Competition between the U.S. and China has spilled into a wide range of issues.

Update on the Presidential Election

By Mike Koetting March 13, 2024

I last wrote about presidential politics in July. Now, we are half-way between that post and the election. The primary season is well under way. Probably time for an update.

The Nominees

The two front runners are still who they were in July—Trump and Biden.

Of course, In July I predicted Trump would not be the Republican nominee. Sure looks like I was wrong. It is true that some people put a lot of money into Nicki Haley. I’m guessing some of that was because they didn’t want Trump and some because they wanted to have an alternative in case Trump imploded. It never crossed my mind anything would dissuade his base, but I simply couldn’t get my head around the idea that serious people would give a pass to a person with all his baggage in a world so fraught with difficulties. I don’t know if the issue is that these people think having a person like him is an advantage or the sense of inevitably has simply worn down those I thought would throw the switch. The glacial slowness of the court system has certainly benefited Trump. The fact that the Supremes agreed to hear the immunity case—however they ultimately rule—was a gift of delay. I always thought that people who said a Trump conviction would deter them were exaggerating the likelihood of their paying attention to the legal system. But I did believe more power players would balk at the idea of a candidate having to bob and weave around court appearances and spend large sums of money on legal defense. I failed to realize that the potential alternative power centers in the GOP had so completely capitulated to the Trumplicans.

I still think Biden will be the Democratic nominee. But, opposite Trump, his position in the party has gotten weaker—despite an objectively strong job performance and a good State of the Union performance. The merciless criticism of his age has taken a toll. Although the media is reasonably good about also calling attention to Donald Trump’s arguably greater cognitive deficits, the damage to Biden is much greater because Republicans simply don’t care. Biden has also been saddled with a mess in the Middle East that alienates key parts of his base. Again, the Republicans don’t care—and to the extent they do care, atrocities against Muslims are fine with them. He might turn this into something good if he can up with a settlement in the next few months. If a settlement is not forthcoming, his only political choice will be to get much tougher with Israel. Where that goes is hard to predict. Finally, it is a fact that Biden’s energy level is observably lower and his projection shakier. On balance, as Ezra Kein summarized it, Biden is a much better president than a presidential candidate.

Meanwhile, Closer to Home (Or….Cities Are Really Difficult)

By Mike Koetting February 26, 2024

The last several posts have been on extremely macro issues. Today’s post lurches to the opposite end of the spectrum—local, even hyper-local, issues. I am writing about two specific issues primarily because they remind me how in-your-face cities’ problems are. There is nothing abstract or theoretical about them; they affect our life, up close and in real time. These problems also serve as a reminder of how excruciatingly hard it is to manage cities. Once you put hundreds of thousands of people in a compact space, things get complicated. There are forces well beyond the control of any mayor and most of these problems have no really good answer.

How Do We Organize our Political Framework If It Isn’t Anchored by Economic Growth?

By Mike Koetting February 13, 2024

My last post suggested that at least some of the premises underlying specific political and policy decisions are based on assumptions about reality that are increasingly questionable. Today’s post considers what it would take to establish premises that might better fit evolving circumstances.

Our Framework for Policy May Point in Wrong Directions

By Mike Koetting January 30, 2024

When it comes to policy, most of our thoughts get focused on specifics—will Trump be elected again, will Congress reach a deal on immigration, will the Supreme Court strike down the Chevron deference, and so forth.

Not usually up for discussion is whether the background framework in which these issues get addressed will remain more or less the same. We simply assume it will. Intellectually, we know it changes over time—and that specific policy choices have a greater or larger impact on it—but we also don’t usually stop to consider how soon there could be changes that might drastically alter our barely conscious decision rules. We just assume that life will be more or less the same as it is now.

The Gap Between Awe and Fear

By Mike Koetting January 16, 2024

Today’s blog stems from my own feeling of disorientation as I contemplate the distance between some of the most spectacular knowledge ever achieved by humans and the risks to life as we know it from the application of this knowledge.

Some advances are truly dazzling. They can be seen only as magic to all but a handful of experts. My mind is blown by the fact we can identify a tiny strand of chromosome, understand its function and then manipulate it. Or that a computer can listen to a Zoom call and provide a workable summary of the discussion in multiple languages.

The application of science and technology inevitably results in changes to “life as we know it”. But how much change do we want? And, even if we could agree on the answer to that, how confident are we that we can limit change to within those boundaries? Or, perhaps, even if pushed beyond where we intended to stop, that we will be able to adapt to where the chips do fall?