Here And There With Dave Marash

When it comes to over a dozen American institutions from Congress and the Presidency to the church and TV news, American opinion over the past 3 years, describes a sharp-edged triangle, low in 2019, significantly higher in the Plague Year 2020, then falling swiftly back to 2019 levels this year. Mohamed Younis editor-in-chief of Gallup News on what his pollsters learned this summer. We Americans love the ones we need, for as long as we need 'em. And when we think we've dodged the bullet???

 The front line is a frightening place to be, especially when the forces on your side of the line are in bloody retreat.  In Asia Hong Kong has for more than 100 years been the front line of the battle for intellectual, cultural and political freedom.  Mary Hui of quartz.com has an update on the fight for the right to print, broadcast, teach or even think freely in Hong Kong. Her report is something of a casualty count. 

Like everyplace in New Mexico, the small city of Farmington, up in the Four Corners where NM, AZ, UT and CO meet, is feeling the heat from climate change, but Hannah Grover of the NM Political Report says the region is taking a second blow, from the threat of climate change, which is forcing the closing of its employment hub -- the San Juan Generating Station. And the mines for the coal that will soon stop powering it. Can the new technology of carbon capture save the region?  Grover says there are nay-sayers. 

Say the name Jack Ruby and most people remember -- he's the guy who shot and killed Lee Harvey Oswald.  But most of those people have forgotten his trial for murdering the man who assassinated President John F. Kennedy David Fisher has co-written with Dan Abrams Kennedy's Avenger a book about a trial in which much went wrong and the guilty verdict was overturned on appeal. 

 What are the measures of human satisfaction and discontent?  The pandemic helped the Gallup Organization expand its happiness horizon. Gallup Global Managing Partner Jon Clifton on how polling also unveiled a secret sign of sadness ... people smiled and laughed less in 2020, and their levels of perceived stress jumped dramatically. But the real headline may be that the bad year of 2020 only slightly exaggerated 10-year trends in growing unhappiness and sliding personal satisfaction.

 In a feat of protective coloration as successful as the zebra's stripes, the mid-20th century baseball clubowner Bill Veeck portrayed himself as hardball's class clown, sending a midget to gat for the St Louis Browns and making the Chicago White Sox pioneers in Latino hiring, but Ellis Simani of Pro Publica tells us, Veeck invented a tax trick that has saved his real team -- the owners --billions. It explains how one NBA owner paid taxes on his $650 million annual income at a lower rate than a woman who sells beer at his arena.

Donald Trump criticised NATO because the US carried too much of the weight for an alliance that, he said, failed to protect Europe against Russia. Rajan Menon, Professor of International Relations at the City College of New York isn't sure Trump was right about NATO, but warns "the Quad" a new alliance against China has both those basic flaws. The allies, India, Japan and Australia add little strength to the US and aren't likely to stem Chinese aggression against Taiwan.

The pending shift from petroleum-powered internal combustion engines to cleaner electric vehicles has only underscored a backlog of needs in America's power generation and distribution systems.  Ivan Penn of the NY Times has covered the competition for Federal funding between Big Power companies and their long-lines of transmission pylons and wires...and new technologies. Rooftop solar systems, small scale wind collectors and community scaled distribution nodes argue betting on them predicts a better American energy future. 

When the new coalition government took power in Israel, many observers noted their tiny 1-seat majority in Parliament and predicted it wouldn't last long.  Now, a month or so later, Associated Press Jerusalem Bureau Chief Josef Federman says, most observers think it could outlive those dire prognostications.  Why is there more confidence in Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and his coalition colleagues? It may be because of how they handed a series of crises tossed their way by the Bibi Netanyahu-led opposition. 

The President of Haiti has been assassinated, apparently by a professional hit team.  Jovenal Moise was under political siege before the attack, accused of using illegal and unconstitutional means to extend his time in power.  Amy Wilentz is one of America's top scholars on Haiti, she'll tell us the story in depth.

There's a new Delta variant of the Covid-19 coronavirus stirring trouble in Europe and the US.  Are vaccinated people safe? Do the unvaccinated compromise everyone's health or just their own?  And should people with weak immunity get a third shot of vaccine right away? Epidemiologist Justin Lessler of Johns Hopkins Medical school on what we know and what we're still learning about the pandemic.

Even as the Taliban sweeps government forces out of provinces in northern Afghanistan, their internal discipline may be coming apart.  Could the poet Yeats have predicted the chaos to come? Pamela Constable of the Washington Post has been watching the American withdrawal and those being left behind. The Taliban's attempt to put a pretty face on its conquests can't hide the ugly world they enforce on women. 

Aztec Ruins National Monument, Carlsbad Caverns National Park and the protected zone around Chaco Canyon, they're all surrounded by abandoned oil wells, more than 500 among the 3. There is important news here, none of it good. Southeastern New Mexico's oil patch, reporter J Weston Phippen of Searchlight NM in a forest of pump-jacks, some working, some dead, some big trouble. Volunteers investigate because the State hasn't got the resources.

The last time there was a Presidential election in Iran, more than 70% of eligible voters cast ballots.  And voted the Supreme Leader's candidate down by 2 to 1. This time, that same candidate won with 62.5% support. Of course, this time, more than half of eligible voters stayed home. Trita Parsi of the Quincy Institute explains the story.

One thing we know about the world after the Covid-19 pandemic has been brought under control -- it's going to be different from the one before the global coronavirus outbreak. Some of the biggest changes will be in the world's workplaces, about which Dr. Jim Harter has been asking questions and collecting answers for the Gallup Organization. Why are so many workers opting out of their jobs? How can employers bring them back... and then make them happier and more productive?

When the coronavirus pandemic made getting credible information to the American people an absolute necessity, already, an American Press Institute survey showed more than 20% of the adult population was already tuned out.  Since then, things have only gotten worse.  Longtime editor and media analyst Tom Rosenstiel helped run the API study and has some ideas on how to repair the damage to journalism's reputation and influence in our craven new world of extreme political partisanship and pick your facts news consumers.

When the coronavirus knocked on America's door back in February 2020 no one answered at the White House.  We now know President Donald Trump was informed, but stayed completely disengaged from the crisis.  In her new book, Virus, Nina Burleigh says willful ignoring, not willful ignorance cost hundreds of thousands of American lives. Burleigh's book goes misstep by misstep through the greatest medical catastrophe to hit this country in 100 years. 

Anthony, NM is one of the poorest towns in one of the poorest states in America. All the consequences of that were magnified by the Covid-19 pandemic and the non-responses of the state of Texas, halfway down Main Street and Mexico, whose border is just 24 miles away.  Rescue from catastrophe, Alicia Inez Guzman reported for Searchlight NM require a lot of Do It Yourself. Bringing testing and then vaccination to this remote desert community was just the beginning. Next, distributing food and assuring shelter.

The penetrability of data collected in the digital universe has made protecting the secrecy of government security operations a lot harder. But the US Government's response, says Newsweek investigative reporter William Arkin, has been to create "the biggest secret army" in world history. Thousands of spies, fighters, analysts and clerks...all of 'em kept off the books.  Arkin says it has made holding the people and the billiions of dollars spent on them accountable almost impossible.  Kinda dangerous in a democracy to cut the people out of the awareness loop.  

In a society where almost all our most successful people use everything from smart-ass lawyers to easily purchasable legislators to avoid paying a fair share of taxes, it should be no surprise how many cheaters abused the Paycheck Protection Program.  Still, Lydia DePillis's reporting on PPP fraud for Pro Publica should be a moral wake-up call.  How universal Donald Trump's definition of "being smart" by cheating the government has become!