Posts that May Not Make It - 5-13-2022 forward

6-20-2022

It's time certain community leaders take a leaf from early, pre-PUSH Jesse Jackson. In the April 18, 1976 New York Times Magazine, before he degenerated into a rabble-rouser, Jesse Jackson wrote a beautiful four-page article entitled Give the People a Vision (link). Among other things he said:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jesse Jackson

There is a definite welfare mentality in many black communities that derives perhaps from. slavery but that must now be overcome.

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We are allowing a minuscule minority of criminals in our midst to create disorder, ruin our schools and sap
the energy we need to rebuild our neighborhoods and our cities. Many leaders who are black, and many white liberals, will object to my discussing these things in public. But the decadence in black communities--killings, destruction of our own businesses, violence in the schools--is already in the headlines....

Unless he was just trying to appear respectable for fund raising, he nailed it.


5-13-2022 I remember it well too and plead guilty to voting for him in 1976 (my first Federal election I could vote) and 1980. I think you are right though. One of the reasons Nixon imposed wage and price controls in 1971 (Phase I, freeze) and November 1971 to January 1973 (flexible freeze) was to confine inflation to manageable limits in time for the 1972 race. 1972 actually felt, economically, rather good. The economy was only rarely in the news that year. On January 11, 1973 Nixon implemented Phase III, which amount to decontrol with the threat of re-control hovering in the background. In March 1973 he re-imposed Phase II controls on the petroleum industry. The result was spot shortages from May to July 1973 and disruptive shortages and surging prices from November 1973 on. Nixon knew the impact of inflation on electability. Not all Presidents do. Carter did understand, and if he had appointed Volcker rather than Miller in early 1978 perhaps history would have been different. On the other hand, with the way Volcker choked off the economy to throttle inflation, the mid-terms would have been a wipeout rather than a modest loss.

Yes, I did read the earlier threads and I remember well Carter's energy policy. Suffice to say it was not as good as it seemed. Wind and solar, then, as now, was a futuristic and visionary remedy with little real-world applicability. The problem is that you still need conventional sources to account for peak loads or periods when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow. It's the same reason that bicycles aren't a total replacement for cars.