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Who is afraid of the Big Bad Debt?

The impending United States Government Debt Ceiling Default Crisis raises an interesting question: is this more like the Y2K crisis or like the bank run leading to the Great Depression. It all depends upon who you think Uncle Sam is.

Let me explain, first off: the debt ceiling is a legislative fiction; it is not real. It is imposed by the government on itself, and so the government can just as easily undo it. For example, the Congress can pass and the President can sign an increase in the authorized debt, or even a law that simply suspends enforcement. The Treasury can finagle revenues coming in and payments going out to extend when the debt ceiling is exceeded. Some have even suggested the Treasury could mint a so-called trillion dollar coin, in effect a non-negotiable trick to say, “here’s the money, so we don’t have any debt.” That last one is arguable, but serves to make the point how artificial this crisis is.

Second, the Democrats and Republicans have driven wildly toward the debt ceiling cliff many times, and always find a way to swerve or hit the breaks in the end. One time it may be different, but there is much history supporting more of the same.

No one knows exactly what the consequences of a debt limit default would be. The real inability to pay off debt–for a country or a person–is a serious thing. But the debt ceiling is not that. Most agree the stock markets would drop, as they fear uncertainty, and just the fact that the political parties didn’t avoid a technical default is a higher degree of uncertainty. But the markets are a difficult sign to read. Some investors believe the government will service their bonds first, so they will continue to get paid (as revenues come in). Others are short-selling, predicting a big market correction from which they would make millions.

But none of that is permanent. Would it send the economy into a recession, since all the other fundamentals don’t change? Would it change the willingness of Saudi Arabia, Japan, and China to buy US government debt? Remember, it’s a technical default: the US government and the Gross Domestic Product remain the same, and the US dollar is still the world’s reserve currency. So no one knows how it will play out. Am I worried? No, but I am prepared. Why? If a technical default occurs, I am sure things like federal pay and pensions will be among the first things that don’t get paid; social security, medicare, and military pay will all come first, although even those will be at risk. There simply isn’t enough revenue coming in monthly to pay the bonds and the entitlements and everything else.

Let’s use a personal metaphor. Imagine Elon Musk, he of an enormous fortune, is sailing on his yacht in the remote South Pacific when he hits a perfect storm, his boat sinks, and he washes ashore on a remote island as the sole survivor. Being incredibly lucky, this island has a small, non-cannibalistic population, and the first thing Elon sees is a small palapa with a “restaurant” sign! He wanders in, sits down, and waves to the waiter. The waiter, a vaguely Samoan-looking character who appears as if he could play nose tackle for the Cincinnati Bengals, takes one look at the soaking-wet, disheveled man and thinks “not another drunk tourist!?!?” but hands him a menu. Elon slams down several glasses of water, then some fresh fish, all the while amazed at his good luck. The waiter brings the check, and Elon realizes his wallet and his credit card holder are gone. He finds his iPhone in a special secured pocket, but it’s a sodden paperweight. He starts to explain about who he is, why he is there, but the waiter, certain it’s time to launch another drunk, is having none of it: he doesn’t know an “Elon Musk” from a “Musk Ox.” As he drags Mr. Musk by the collar towards the door (the palapa may have no walls, but it does have a door!), a woman, the restaurant owner, walks in and does a double take. “Elon Musk? Really?” she stammers. It seems Mr. Musk’s good luck has returned. The waiter re-deposits him at his table, and Elon recounts his story to the owner. He offers to invest in her restaurant, gives her an IOU for $50,000 dollars, and agrees to do a selfie for her to post on social media.

Fun story, what? But what does this have to do with the debt ceiling crisis? Elon Musk is Uncle Sam: fabulously wealthy, but out of available cash at the moment. The waiter is the market, which isn’t sure about anyone or anything, hates uncertainty, looks at the immediate situation and starts to react. The restaurant owner is the rest of the investing world. They see the situation in front of them, but they also recognize the larger implications, and they react differently. Which is why you shouldn’t worry (too much) about the debt ceiling crisis.

Imagine our shipwreck scenario again, only the survivor is Donald Trump. He of at least four bankruptcies, a tendency to overstate his wealth and litigate any debt. If you’re the restaurant owner, do you give him a pass? That’s the US if it ignores the debt (not debt ceiling) problem. Maybe they all decide enough is enough, and the global economy crashes. We don’t know whether we’re Elon Musk or Donald Trump in the eyes of the world’s investors. Which is a reason to worry.

The real problem is not the debt ceiling, but rather the debt itself. The US government owes tons of money. . . literally. It owes $31T as in Trillion dollars: 31,000,000,000,000. That’s over 34,ooo tons of dollar bills. Is that a lot? Well, just like for a person, it only matters if they can’t pay it.

The Edmund Fitzgerald only had 26,000 extra tons, and you know what happened to her!

The US Gross Domestic Product (GDP, a measure of the total resources available to the country) is over $25T, so we’re a little over-leveraged. Of course the all the debt never comes due at once, but the government can’t access all the GDP, either.

Add in to that the credit history of the United States: from the original debt of the 13 colonies, through the Union (not Confederate) Civil War debt and the enormous federal expansion during World War II, then the Cold War and creation of the New Deal social welfare state, the US Government has always, ALWAYS, paid off its debt on time and in full. And as any creditor will tell you, that counts for a lot.

Finally, in addition to its tangible assets, like the ability to raise revenue and print money, the US government has intangible but important assets, like the world’s greatest military. What’s it worth? When you need it, priceless!

When your bomb absolutely, positively has to be there overnight!

So far the debt monster is undeniably large, but seems manageable. Now let’s look at how the US Government finances that debt. The US can run large annual deficits (the difference between revenues coming in and payments going out) because it issues bonds: federal IOUs that pay interest, which are bought by investors. These IOUs are highly sought after, because of America’s stability (we don’t devalue our currency, we don’t nationalize other people’s assets) and payment history. When you have cash and you want to it to grow while being protected, nothing works like US bonds. Which is why China, and Japan, and Saudi Arabia hold so much of this debt. It’s not necessarily a bad thing being “in hock” to foreign governments. We took their dollars and gave them paper, which is only worth something as long as the US is around. Yes, they could try selling it all at once to harm the US, but that would involve destroying all their investments at the same time. It’s mutually beneficial, so it works. Banks, investment firms, insurance companies, pension plans and private investors all buy US debt, too, for all the same reasons.

Another big holder of US debt is (wait for it) the US government. What? The two largest government holders of government debt are the Federal Reserve (aka the Fed) and the Social Security Trust Fund. The Fed started large-scale buying of debt during the 2008 financial crisis. It didn’t have to, but it bought up federal debt from banks and others to keep the markets liquid (flowing) and prevent a depression. In effect, it “created money” just like the Treasury does, except the Treasury prints it while the Fed just creates it digitally. The Fed can decide when to sell those bonds and is starting to do so gradually, so as not to upset the markets.

All that money they take out of your paycheck under the heading OASDI (Old Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance)? That’s your input into Social Security. The Social Security Trust Fund takes the extra left-over after paying out benefits and buys US government bonds. So the Trust Fund is full of IOUs, not dollars. But that’s not a problem, because the US government always pays off its IOUs on time. Right now, the amount the Trust fund pays out is about the same as it takes in, but as the baby boomers continue to retire, and there are fewer workers out there paying OASDI, the Trust Fund will need to cash in its IOUs. Current estimates (and they change annually) say that the IOUs will be all used up by 2034. At that point, most of the Social Security payments will have to be appropriated, since the Trust Fund can’t send you (as a social security recipient) a government IOU, what you want is a dollar.

Which is not to say Social Security is the problem. There are other entitlements (which for God’s sake, don’t ever complain about this word, as it means it is a legally required payment, not optional, and it has nothing to do with being “entitled” in popular usage) like Medicare and Medicaid which have similar issues, not to mention our federal tax code which is larded with tax breaks for corporations, wealthy investors, and homeowners. It is never one thing, it is always every thing, together.

By Wikideas1 – Own work https://www.fiscal.treasury.gov/files/reports-statements/mts/mts0922.pdf, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=124463747

As you already know, the larger circle is expenditures, the smaller is revenues, meaning the US once again ran a deficit. The administration points out the deficit was reduced last year, and I guess in these extraordinary times, that’s something. But it’s like a drunk telling you he only drinks half-a-bottle-of-whisky-a-day now: relevant, but not addressing the fundamental problem. Look again at Social Security, Medicare, Income Security, and Net Interest; these are mandatory budget items, requiring no Congressional approval. Most of these programs increase every year. For example, we still have ten more years of ten-thousand baby-boomers retiring every day, and as they apply for Social Security, that expenditure will steadily increase. Only about a third of the federal budget is discretionary spending, and it includes things like defense and education spending. Eventually (like in a decade or two), the entire federal revenue stream will be eaten up by mandatory spending if nothing changes.

What does it matter if institutional investors (countries and firms and people) will keep buying US issued debt? It doesn’t. The US can keep going on running an annual deficit, selling bonds to finance the debt, and nothing changes. But that willingness to buy US debt is built on a fragile, psychological base: the US is a stable, growing, responsible payer of debt. As we get to the point where we can’t pass a budget without huge increases in taxes or drastic reductions in spending (including benefits), who will continue to believe that? And once that trust is gone, it’s very difficult to reacquire.

The thing is, a series of small changes could place the US federal budget on a firmer path for many decades. Simply removing the cap on Social Security taxes (they stop collecting the tax above $160,000 income), means-testing payments for the very wealthy, and delaying the retirement age to 70 help a great deal. Creating a sovereign wealth fund to invest in market securities and help pay for entitlements is another great idea, or allowing the Social Security Trust Fund greater leeway in investments is another. A national sales tax is another good idea. And before you clutch your pearls (I’m thinking of the White House here), if it’s so regressive how come nearly all the progressive social democracies use it? Plus, the government could exempt groceries, for example (under a certain limit; we don’t need to have tax-free foie gras, as much as I like it!). Perhaps a separate value-added tax on items costing over $100k and a small financial transactions tax on securities would be nice additions. I’m open to any suggestions on consolidating (not cutting) federal welfare programs, where any savings would come from eliminating bureaucracies, not reducing benefits.

As things stand now, Republicans are for cutting entitlements and taxes, while Democrats appear to want to raise both. Neither approach will resolve our growing debt problem. When the two sides do compromise, like during a recent debt ceiling crisis in the Obama administration, they mostly compromise on revenue-neutral provisions, which don’t add to the deficit, but don’t reduce it either. That also fails the test, because soon we still run out of discretionary spending.

If you would like to play around with fixing the deficit/debt yourself, check out this website where you can tweak the variables and see how you do. I got within $50B (chump change with respect to the federal budget) of stabilizing the debt at 90% of GDP. It’s actually not that hard, if you try. The larger point is we don’t need to produce a balanced budget (which is practically impossible at this point), we only need to show we’re willing to reduce spending and raise revenue.

In the meantime, our political leaders (both sides) seem content to posture and pretend there is no problem, other than the opposing party. One side or the other will claim to “win” the debt ceiling default crisis. If the President agrees to cuts, the GOP will crow; if the Speaker agrees to raise or suspend the ceiling without cuts, the Democrats will do so. But nobody wins here, because the day after this ends, the debt still looms. It won’t really be a problem until it is, and then it will be too late.

Ernest Hemingway, when asked “how did you go bankrupt?” said, “gradually, then suddenly.”

Six Years an Expat

Facebook just reminded us we passed our sixth anniversary of moving to Mexico. Time to take a look around and see what’s changed here, and what remains the same.

First and foremost, there are more people around here. Not just expats, but also chilangos and tapatios looking to live the good life. Now that we are post-pandemic, there is a steady stream of NOB social media posts about “moving to Mexico,” and the snowbird season is especially noticeable for the crowds and traffic. But weekends year-round can be overcrowded, too. Now, to keep things in perspective, lakeside remains a string of small villages nestled ‘tween the lake and the mountains, and most of the time it still feels that way. But at times and seasons, one starts to feel the “where did all these people/cars come from?” vibe.

Several of the grand development projects intended for lakeside have flopped. The eyesore along the libramiento, on the hill overlooking WalMart, is in suspended animation: no building, maybe not even any advertising. Just an ugly road zigzagging up the mountain. May it always be only so. The seven story apartment complex on the lake near La Floresta got cut down to three or four stories, which was all it was originally approved to be. The assisted living facility west of town seems to be financially stuck, not completely finished. It’s still hard to do big things in Mexico; that hasn’t changed.

Which is not to say there is no development. Lakeside has been a beehive of what is known as “in-fill,” where small parcels or lots are transformed into little complexes of homes or apartments. This is happening in the village of Ajijic and westbound towards the county line with Jocotepec. There are some larger developments intended along the libramiento, and perhaps in and east of Chapala. There is also a continued gentrification challenge, as cash-heavy gringos buy traditional casas in Mexican neighborhoods, then gut-and-remodel them into much larger, more expensive properties.

Despite all this development, there is still no serious government plan to improve infrastructure. There are condominios with problems accessing water, others areas face sewage run-off. Internet access went from poor to good (not by NOB standards), but it is spotty by location, with the usual problems of intermittence. Still, it is generally good enough for streaming and perhaps working online. And the roads. . .well, they merit some paragraphs all their own.

First, we have mostly cobble-stone streets. They are the local tradition, quaint, difficult to walk on, and easily damaged. And when I say cobble-stone, I do not mean pavers, or bricks, or anything else other than STONES which are cobbled (placed) together to make a surface. During our rainy season, when some streets become streams, the stones get dislodged, and gradually grow into wheel-eating baches. Eventually the government hires someone to carefully replace the stones, usually after the rainy season ends. Rain-n-Repeat.

Given the lakeside villages lie between a lake-and-a-mountain range, there is only one major road crossing the area, with no space for another. The government occasionally adds traffic lights, which don’t help, since they are neither timed nor use sensors. All these lights do is spread the traffic jams smoothly across the area. Everyone notices that when the lights go out during the rainy season, traffic flow actually improves. Add in numerous gringos whose licenses NOB would have been suspended decades ago, young tapatios who think any straight road is a potential drag-strip, trash-trucks, gas-trucks, vegetable-trucks, families on scooters, pizza-deliverers, and people tripping on cobblestones and you can see why some folks find the traffic maddening.

The most obvious and nakedly terrible change was the redesign of the intersection of the libramiento (the main bypass leading in to Ajijic) with the carretera (main street) in front of WalMart. Months of work and apparently minutes of planning resulted in a concentrated series of lights, right turn lanes, no left turns, topes (speed bumps), bus stops, an access road (with dividers which can be driven over) that safely brings all traffic to a standstill, except late at night, when everybody just drives through regardless of the lights. There is literally no legal way for drivers coming from the east to turn into WalMart. It is a spectacle that must be seen to be believed.

The government did complete a cyclopista, a bike lane running the length of lakeside. It was widely derided by expats as a white elephant project, and even locals objected because it ate a parking lane on the carretera. But it turned into a field-of-dreams moment; they built it, and now it’s full of cyclists and pedestrians! Of course, gringos flying down the bike lane in electrified bikes are a new menace to left turns. But that’s Mexico, two steps forward, two steps left, three steps right, one step back, and what were we doing, anyway?

One thing unchanged is lakeside remains dining-out heaven. There are more, more diverse, inexpensive but good quality restaurants than any comparable town on the planet. The restaurants constantly come and go, or just change locations. The staffs move around, too. We often find we are re-introducing ourselves to a waiter by saying, “weren’t you at X and then Y restaurant?” Prices have been hit by inflation and a small appreciation by the Mexican Peso. But here’s a telling example. We went out for German food yesterday. Yes, German food in a tiny Mexican village. We had two suppen as vorspeisen, a bottle of German bier, two glasses of Mexican wine, and two servings of German-style goulash (beef) with red cabbage and spaeztle. Delicious, and quite authentic (we used to live in Germany). Total with tip? $1000 MXP, or roughly $50 USD at current rates. Of course one can eat much more frugally, but you get the point. I can cite German, French, Italian, Spanish, Polish, Middle-Eastern, Thai, Indian, Vegetarian/Vegan, Russian, Jewish Deli, Venezuelan, Chinese, Japanese/Sushi, Vietnamese, Argentine, Tex-Mex, diners, pubs, and maybe even a few Mexican places, doncha’know?

We’re seeing more, younger expats. The pandemic sent several million baby-boomers into early retirement, and that’s something (I can attest to being) much more affordable in Mexico. We also see more young families, who are looking for a quality-of-life improvement. The weather, the cost of living, and the cultural emphasis on family over financial success all play parts. We don’t see as many of the young, single, digital nomads. They tend to head toward bigger cities, as the night-life at lakeside can be limited.

The increase in migration from the United States to Mexico has led the Mexican federal government to be more rigorous about immigration status. The financial requirements keep increasing (they don’t want indigent visitors any more than any other country does), as do the enforcement of things like tourist visas, property ownership, car buying, et cetera. On the plus side, they are streamlining the actual process of crossing the border at airports, so it’s much smoother and faster.

The weather remains near perfect in this expat’s opinion. Long-time expats assure me it was warmer in winter way back when (twenty years ago), but I remind them they were much younger way back when, too. We still don’t have and don’t need heating or cooling. I have yet to start my gas fireplace for any reason beyond cosmetic. I admit the climate here has greatly reduced my tolerance for extremes. I used to run daily in Washington, DC, whether in 100° F “black flag” heat-warnings or two feet of snow and ice, always in just a t-shirt (sometimes long sleeve) and shorts. Our recent visit to Panama left me seeking shelter from the tropical Sun, and our December visit to northern Italy had me shivering uncontrollably. I guess my blood has officially thinned.

Commercial development has started to spread along the carretera west of Ajijic, much like it once did east through Riberas and San Antonio Tlayacapan. There are more restaurants, shops, and services, although again they come and go without any sense of a development plan. Nothing captures this better than the sad tale of the dog shelter, which gringos requested and the local government funded the purchase of a property. Which ended up being next to several developments. Which meant 24 hour-a-day barking. Which led to petitions to move or close it. And another government effort to find a place, which apparently fell through and, well, you get the picture. One thing that has not changed is the absolute necessity of visiting a neighborhood before living here, and also looking at the land around it. Your small set of homes amidst groves could later have an auto-body shop, a dog run, and an evento (party palace) next door.

Some expats tell me the locals are starting to resent the expats for driving up prices. WalMart’s prices don’t change due to the expats, and the locals shop the tiendas, where they never pay “gringo taxes.” Expats do run up real estate prices–the gentrification problem I mentioned earlier–but that happens regardless of who is buying: Mexicans from Mexico City (Chilangos), Guadalajara (Tapatios), or expats (Gringos). The problem exists anywhere there is a desirable place to live. Regardless, everybody seems as friendly as ever, and this remains a great reason to visit or move here.

What about crime? Well, one becomes accustomed to waking to the sound of automatic weapons fire, and cordite-in-the-morning? It smells like victory! I kid of course, the only consistent noises we hear are cohetes (fireworks) and roof dogs. Nothing tells you you’re dealing with a newbie expat more than if they ask “what’s with the fireworks?” or “why are there dogs barking from rooftops?” Seriously, lakeside remains a Mexican Mayberry. We have predictable crime patterns: before Christmas, there are a raft of petty thefts and purse-snatchings, as some desperate people try to eke out some extra cash. After an election, the police are hesitant to make arrests because they don’t know how the new administration will respond. Sometimes a few new crooks come into the area and we have a string of car thefts or mustard-bandits, until they get caught. The degree of violent crime is such that no one thinks twice about walking around at night in the village. Can you do that where you live?

What do we have more of? More hospitals, clinics, doctors and dentists than you would imagine, especially since we are a short drive from Guadalajara, which is Mexico’s medical centro. We have two hospitals and a hospital-like clinic just around Ajijic. A couple more private international schools have opened, along with the existing public schools and the technology training center. More real estate firms (‘natch!). A dozen or more thrift/resale/antique shops. More Costco re-sale shops, who travel up to Guadalajara, purchase from Costco, then stock shelves locally.

Living among an aging retired expat cohort, one change is constant: good-byes. We’ve lost amigos to death, family emergencies NOB, and health issues. More newbie expats arrive than depart, and while this discomforts some old-timers, life here would be less if it was otherwise. Like the steady flow of people into the United States (I’ll write more on that in the near future), the steady flow to lakeside attests to one thing: life really is better here, if this lifestyle fits you. It sure fits us!

SECRETS for Dummies

The partisan hype machine geared up after the Trump, then Biden, now Pence “Oops I forgot I had classified documents” scandals. I fully expected some partisans to get whiplash as they excused, then excoriated, then well, what do you do after you’ve already taken every contradictory position on an issue? Stay quiet? Never!

But the steady drip of revelations also brought out another tired old set of talking heads: the “there’s too much classified information” group. Some of these are so-called democracy promoters who claim secrets are antithetical to democratic government, or we should spend much more de-classifying than we do now. Some are journalists who crave access and hate the fact they can’t have it, or small-government advocates who see an easy target in the always-growing national security establishment, one which often does not respond publicly to criticism. Some are politicians who are looking for a scapegoat. Let’s tackle these objections, shall we?

First, all forms of government have secrets, and even Western democracies (and I hate that term, but permit me) all have intelligence organizations. George Washington personally ran spies as a General. Benjamin Franklin, as Post-Master General, oversaw secret communications and intercepted enemy ones. Part of the consent of the governed is to accept that there are reasons to withhold information. Why? To protect lives and avoid wasting resources. Classified information sometimes contains names of people (“sources”) who provided it, and should they become public, bad things would ensue. Wonder why some government files about the Kennedy assassination are still redacted or classified? In it are names or descriptions of people who provided information, and those people or their immediate families are still alive. What do you think happens in Cuba when somebody’s family name appears in a CIA file? You think Havana forgets or forgives what granddad did?

Likewise, classified information may include clues as to the technical way it was collected (“methods”). Let’s say there is a super-secret satellite which can detect and analyze someone’s breath, allowing us to track individuals and determine their health and activities. Even a document which simply states “Kim Jong-Il is out drinking again” as its bottom line would reveal we have a real-time ability to monitor this situation. If released, the other side can begin researching how we do it, and ways to defeat our capability. And billions of dollars in research, production, and operations would go down the drain, not to mention we’d be totally surprised the next time Kim showed up drunk!

This “sources and methods” problem is like a web, where every document must be scrutinized for how its release could jeopardize national security. The original decision to classify something is easy (more on this later): there are rules any analyst, collector, or official can consult and apply. When agencies are asked to de-classify something, it’s much harder. How does one determine whether all of a source’s relatives are dead or safe? How much of a give-away about the technical method is too much? What if the document has multiple references from multiple agencies? Each must consider and rule on it.

Most agencies treat de-classification as an additional duty for employees, and it is one widely hated by the workforce. Why? It’s hard, time-consuming and nobody gets a bonus for a record number of de-classifications, but woe-be-it to you if you release something that should not have been released. Like being a gate-guard, there is no upside for being lenient. So we’ll never spend much on de-classifying, plus, what’s the relative benefit to the American public? Documents which have high classifications based on sources and methods often have an analytic line that is simple or even obvious. De-classification results in a “so-what?”

The second complaint comes from journalists, and you can see a prime example here from Fareed Zakaria, who should know better. He cites the amount of classified, when he knows this is a canard, and even throws out the old ‘information classified because it is embarrassing’ idea which is specifically prohibited under Executive Order 12356. Let’s focus on the amount of classified. 99.9% of classified information exists not as documents or photos, but as digits in a secure classified computer system. It is physically inside vaults and SCIFs (Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities) which are monitored and secured. The computer systems themselves are encrypted and monitored both by systems and people. How much classified is there? Nobody knows, any more than you can say how much info is in your cloud storage right now. The government generates enormous amounts every day. Take the breath-sensing satellite I made up: it circles the globe, taking sensings, and every unique sense of a location is classified, because if you had it, you might be able to figure out what the capability was. So the sensing over your favorite bar is just as classified as the one over the Kremlin, not because of the target, but because of the capability. And the gigabytes of sensings are stored in the classified system. How much are they and is it too much?

It’s only count-able when you produce it as a document, photo or other “thing.” 99.9% of such classified “things” are produced and kept in those same vaults and SCIFs, and only leave them when people properly trained and authorized to do so take them out to show them to whomever needs to see them (sometimes senior officials), but more often that not other intelligence personnel. So the overwhelming majority of classified info exists and is secure, regardless of how much there is. The problem is not the amount, it’s that people get involved.

So does the US government keep spending more all the time for this classified information? Yes. We get better at collecting and using it, and we acquire more. Does it cost a lot? Depends. As any info tech geek will tell you, storage is the cheap part. The government even eventually realized that and outsourced some of its classified holdings to cloud-storage firms like Amazon and Google, because they can operate at extreme orders of magnitude. The expensive part is acquiring the data, and do you want the national security system working with more and better, or less and worse, data?

The third complaint comes from those looking for a scapegoat: someone else to blame. Politicians have a love-hate relationship with classified information. They love it when a secret gives them an advantage in a negotiation, or prevents a crisis, or helps win a war. They hate it when they are told what they can and cannot say in public, for obvious reasons, or when they have to turn in their classified documents before leaving for the day. They also dislike being subjected to background investigations (as do we all). A security clearance is not a right, it is a privilege, so one can be denied for a host of reasons for which a politician might not feel they should be penalized: extramarital affairs, suspicious foreign links (business or family), past drug use, lewd and lascivious conduct, lying (this one scares them the most), bankruptcy. The standard is not a legal one; it’s whether you have weaknesses or vulnerabilities which would make you an opportune target or desperate enough to trade classified info.

Things get especially sticky when it comes to Congress. Remember that most classification comes from Executive branch guidelines, so it does not apply to the co-equal Legislative branch. Congress Members (both House and Senate) have security clearances by virtue of being elected! Their staff must submit to background checks. Furthermore, Members like to go before the cameras and opine, but if you access classified info, there may be things you can’t say publicly. In general, Congress Members and staffs are more rigorous about handling classified, since they in effect must police themselves. Watch carefully the reactions of Democratic Senators to news that classified documents (more than 14 years old) from Senator Biden’s service were found in his home. The degree of shock and concern was much greater than the original case.

Congress created two committees (the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, SSCI or “Sissy”, and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, HPSCI or “Hipsy”). Both were originally quite bipartisan and worked primarily to provide oversight on secret matters, especially as intelligence budgets climbed during the Cold War. Afterwards, the HPSCI became very partisan and worse so over time. The most important role these committees have (in my opinion) was to control the flow of classified info in the Congress. There was no need for every Member to see everything; the rest of the Members in effect gave the committees a proxy to tell them “it’s ok.” Which the committees did. Everything revealed by now-Russian citizen Snowden was briefed to and authorized by the committees. It pains me (and many others) when they ran from responsibility with a “What? Gambling in this establishment? I’m shocked!” response.

(brief aside: I had to chuckle when someone was defending Rep. Swalwell–and whether he should be on the HPSCI–by saying “he hasn’t been charged with anything!” Gosh, that’s a great thing. No, he just exhibited horrendously bad judgment by having a relationship with a woman who turned out to be a Chinese agent. Who knows what she has about him? He should have been turned out of the HPSCI by Speaker Pelosi. In the good ol’ days, both parties policed their own when it came to the intelligence committees.)

As to the current cases, Trump can’t really use a scapegoat defense, since he claimed the documents are his and he de-classfied them. No one saw President Biden with the documents, so it’s possible an assistant put the documents where they didn’t belong. But that means it was multiple assistants putting multiple things in multiple wrong places over a decade and a half. Or just Joe. Apply Occam’s Razor here. Finally, Pence has the strongest scapegoat argument, as he denied having documents, he probably did not box them up himself and send them to his home, and they were unopened. But we’ll see. Every politician wants a scapegoat; it’s their favorite pet.

There is no dichotomy between secrets and accountable government of the democratic or other sort. There are more secrets than ever, because there is more information available than ever. No, you and I can’t see them, and there are good reasons for that. Yes, the Congress can see them, and does with great regularity. Yes, senior government officials of both the executive and legislative branches misbehave and mishandle classified information. And everybody should own a scapegoat.

Everything You Know is Wrong (XI): the Internet

Here’s a series of things you might have heard of as true, but aren’t, since everything you see on the internet is not true (shocking, I know):

Ever see a FaceBook post that instructs you to click on the white space, copy & paste something, rub your head and pat your tummy (I made that last part up), and then “Prest-o! Change-o!,” you’ll see more posts from more of your friends. No, just no. Their algorithm is a mysterious thing, but you can’t hack it. In fact, it hacks you. FaceBook (and all social media sites) measure everything you do on their site: how long you linger on a post, what/who you respond to, what groups you join, what ads you remove, every single thing. The algorithm is designed to maximize the amount of time you spend on FaceBook. Yes, it wants you addicted to FaceBook. So it tries different approaches: if you argue with someone, it starts showing you more of their posts, to get you to argue more. If you share something, same. But the algorithm is clever, too. It will adjust some things, “starving” you from one friend’s posts or some site you like and only giving you a “hit” once in a while. So the only way you could “hack” it was to do random things, which would confuse it as to what you like/dislike. And who has time for that? Not only that, but you’d still be spending time on FaceBook, which means they would still be getting paid. So don’t try to hack it; you can’t. Go with the flow and use it if you like, but always remember, it’s using you, too!
Speaking of hacking, you (probably) haven’t been hacked. Especially on social media, people receive “friend” requests from folks with whom they already are “friends” and they let their friends know, saying “you’ve been hacked.” Hacking involves assuming the identity and account access of a person. The hacker is you and you are not you, any longer. Instead, what I have described is called cloning. Clones are a ruse wherein the cloner starts another page with your name, perhaps image, maybe some info, and then starts sending out friends requests. Your page is still there, but now there is another one. While a hacker can do some damage by posting things you would never say, the cloner is less dangerous. They can ask your friends for help/money, but that’s about all the damage you can do. If you’re the type of person who gives out money to social media “friends” then perhaps the clone trick will work. By the way, if you are that type, send some my way, too! Cloners mostly exist to gin up more eyeballs looking at sites/posts by sharing them with their even-less-real internet friends.
Ever see an extra long video with a title like “unique way to clean X” or “hack your Y.” So you watch it and it seems crazier as it goes. There’s one on cleaning your toilet–which I won’t link to, because I don’t want you to watch it–that goes on and on, with the cleaning person putting ever more odd stuff in the toilet. So you get done and you think, “that was a waste of time.” Except it was only a waste of your time: what the creator got was your eyeballs on their video, which is worth real money to advertisers. So beware such videos, and who knows if the special technique even works?
Which recalls the internet maxim “if you’re not paying for it, YOU are the product.” Which is not to say paying for things is always better, or always results in better service. But paid exchanges have a predictable nature: I send money and I receive a thing. When someone provides a free object or service to me, they probably are relying on my reaction as a tangible thing to market to someone else. So they might be trying to manipulate me in the process. Just a caution.
That image somebody shares of an otherworldly view of a tornado, or lightning, or a cliff-side village, or, well you get the point. If you use the Chrome browser, you can right-click and choose “search image with Google” then “find image source” to see if somewhere out there on the internet there is an original, that may be very different. If you don’t use Chrome, try “Google reverse image search” and you’ll see how to be your own fact-checker with pics on the internet. While this is mostly innocuous now, you need to get into the habit of being skeptical. PhotoShop and Artificial Intelligence (AI) have gotten pretty good, so there’s a lot of digital imagery nonsense out there. Eventually you’ll see fakes of political leaders, friends, family, etc.
Speaking of Chrome, some really like a feature therein called incognito mode. They think that when they use this mode, they are invisible while out surfing the ‘net, so they perhaps can go to naughty sites to which they would rather not admit. Incognito mode doesn’t hide you browser history, nor does it prevent cookies. It simply masks who you are to the site you’re visiting. This is useful when reading an article from a news site that only allows three free articles, for example. But don’t think you’re invisible. Anyone with access to your computer can see where you’ve been. Oh, and if incognito doesn’t work to avoid access limits (perhaps for paid subscriptions), you can always try the WayBack Machine or the Internet archive. Sometimes brand new articles take a day or two to get archived.
Ever get one of those “I truly believe X is a cause worth supporting, and I want # of my REAL friends to share/post this”? Another version asks you to read all the way to the end of a long post. These do not support any cause. They are simply the internet’s version of chain letters. I may be going out on a limb here, but they mostly annoy everybody who sees them. If you really care about something, write (that is, in your own words) what you really feel about it and share it.
Pfishing is the fine art of getting someone to release important financial or personal details through an online interaction. You undoubtedly have received the infamous “Nigerian Prince” e-mail offering you a great cash windfall if you provide the sender with your bank information. Right. But it takes many other forms of which you may be less aware. A list of places you have visited, which “the average American has visited only 10.” A challenge to come up with your Hollywood name, wherein your first name is the name of your favorite pet growing up and your surname is the name of the street where you lived? Favorite foods, things you would give up forever, places you would never go, life experiences. It all seems so innocuous. But if you respond (as millions do), you add to the publicly available data about you. Hackers can send bots through the internet looking for “your name” and “whatever you post publicly.” So? What’s a common security question for websites: How about your favorite pet’s name? Your address growing up? Favorite food? Ooops. But it’s not like they have your birthday, since only all those “friends” on the internet who send you congratulations every year know that. Let’s not become paranoid, now! None of these things means you’ll be hacked. What they do is make you easier to hack. Remember the old joke about the two men going walking in the woods? The first one is wearing hiking boots, and says to the second one, “why are you wearing running shoes? Are you planning to outrun a bear?” The second one says “I don’t have to outrun the bear, I just have to outrun you.” Don’t be the person online wearing hiking boots.
What about password security? First, why are we even using passwords? Passwords started because networked computers were for businesses and organizations, who needed a simple security procedure they could mandate to employees. As online interactions and commerce took off, it seemed like an easy transition to keep using them. Except I don’t work for Amazon, and having a different password for everything I do online is unworkable. Not to mention passwords are eminently hack-able. The good news is passwords are dying, being replaced by other security measures like texts, biometrics, and tokens. So this is a problem being solved. In the meantime, using a simple generic password phrase is fine for all your unimportant sites. But remember, it’s only an unimportant site if it has NO IMPORTANT INFORMATION. If you let the unimportant site keep your credit card on file, or it has security questions or other data, it’s not unimportant. For important sites (think banking), use a password phrase with both upper and lower cases, a number and a symbol. Surely there is an old song lyric you will never forget: “ONCE th3r3 w@s” a way… is an example. If you have multiple important sites and know all the lyrics to a favorite song, using different lines of lyrics from the same song also works well.

Note as computers get faster, these periods will shrink!

Did you notice that many sites now ask you to register, usually using your name and e-mail address. Why not? Well, that’s another useful piece of information about you. Which means it can be shared, sold, or hacked away from you, and combined with all the other info about you out there. Solution? Get a second, free e-mail account for everything other than important business and friends. When anybody else asks for an e-mail, give them the alternative. You can check on it once a week in case something interesting shows up, but otherwise just let it sit there and fill up. If anybody tries to tie you to that e-mail, they don’t get anything useful!
Back during the pandemic, my family started doing monthly Zoom calls just to keep up to date and in touch. Some won’t participate because of the much-publicized “zoom-bombing” which coincided with greater Zoom use. Zoom-bombing is when someone unauthorized enters your Zoom call and generally makes a nuisance of themselves (or worse. Some folks share pornography!). That was a problem, especially for people who post Zoom sessions on public websites (like social media). But Zoom fixed that: when you enter a zoom call now, the call moderator has to “authorize” you to join the call. If they don’t recognize you/your number, they can chat with you to confirm or simply leave you in the “waiting room.” So Zoom to your heart’s content (which may be short).
Last, a tip I haven’t been able to confirm, but seems to work. If you access a site with many ads, and that takes a long time to load, try increasing the size of the displayed text or portion (usually <ctrl> and <+> at the same time) so only that text/portion is visible. The computer doesn’t always load things which don’t fit the screen. I noticed on my old MS Outlook Mail this hack works well, speeding up my reading and eliminating the flashing annoyances of paid adverts. If anyone can confirm or refute this, please do in the comments!

Secrets, Laws, and Norms

Bear with me if I meander a little today.

I have watched with some amusement the recent accusations of mishandling classified documents leveled against the sitting and former Presidents. My amusement stems not from the possible charges themselves: classified information is a serious thing, and anyone mishandling it should be dealt with accordingly. No, my amusement comes from the way the incidents are portrayed by partisans on both sides and the media (both sides). These people are digging deep into law and regulation to either confirm the similarities or deny the differences. What’s really quite clear to me is the cost not to national security, but to our national sanity.

Classified information, even of the highest nomenclature, is mishandled every day. That is not because, as some suggest, too much is classified. It is because there are very strict rules for who can see what, where they can see or keep it, how it can be transmitted or carried, how it is to be referenced, maintained, and stored. I’ve heard there are a million people with security clearances, and probably a terabyte (10¹²) of classified information: you do the math, it means somebody is breaking the rules every day.

When that happens, there is an investigation, determining “was it espionage?”, then “was it intentional?”, “was it repeated?”, “who might have accessed it?” and finally “what is the effect of a possible compromise?” In the classic case of someone accidentally leaving a briefcase of classified material in their car parked on a secure compound for a few hours, the answers are all “no/none” and the culprit gets a harsh tongue-lashing. Any answers of “yes” incur ever-increasing punishment, up to and including prison.

Depending, of course, on who the culprit is. See a Marine Lieutenant who leaves a classified document in his car at the Base Exchange is probably looking at a career-ending Article 15 or worse. A CIA Director who releases reams of classified info to his paramour might see a $100k fine, probation, and resign. A Secretary of State who directs her staff to pass classified info over an unsecured server gets a stern rebuke in the middle of a Presidential campaign. And a President? Well, the President is the ultimate classification authority, the “god” of classification, so one can hardly charge a sitting President with misuse of that which he alone controls.

Why the disparate treatment? The punishments are harsher for the more junior personnel because they are designed to keep the legions of lower ranking security clearance holders from making ANY mistakes. When someone junior starts thinking classified material is no big deal, or worse yet someone like Reality Winner or Edward Snowden starts thinking it’s their job to correct US national security policy, very bad things happen. But for very senior people in each administration, it IS their job to do so, so they are handled differently. Frankly, if we treated everyone the same, we would run out of senior personnel pretty fast. No, it’s not fair, but it is the system as it exists, and everybody who is “in” the system knows it.

So former President Trump either took (or directed to be taken) many classified documents which were then stored at Mar-a-lago. He has claimed he declassified them, which is possible, but for which he has produced no proof. What if, as he claims, he could just “think” to make them declassified? Perhaps, but why not follow up and complete the process? And they were still Presidential Records, and thus would still be a violation of the Presidential Records Act. Note that there is no criminal penalty for violating same. So what do we have here, in light of my earlier questions to be answered when there is a mishandling of classified info? There is no public evidence he was trying to sell or give the documents away (we await the FBI report). He seems to have admitted it was intentional, since his “declassified” argument suggests so. It was one, albeit very large, incident. While his storage area at Mar-a-lago was not appropriate for classified documents, it was not generally open to the public and there is little chance anyone accessed them (again, we’ll wait for the FBI report). What this demonstrates is former President Trump’s legendary disdain for the rules, an intentional, highly inappropriate, and casual handling of serious material.

As for the sitting President, much less can be authoritatively said. His personal lawyers found classified documents (from his time as Vice President) when clearing his office at the Penn-Biden Center, a think tank. This raises three questions: Why were his lawyers (lawyers, not gophers) clearing his office six years after he left it, why were there classified documents there at all, and who had access to the empty office? The additional classified material (also allegedly from his time as Vice President) at his home in Delaware presents the same last two questions (the first being answered by the point the FBI agreed to have the President’s lawyers conduct that search). No one knows if then-Mr. Biden brought the documents to either location, or ever had them in his possession. The President has expressed only surprise at the fact of, and the discovery of, the classified information. There is little chance the information was accessed by anyone. What this case demonstrates is classified information was left unsecured at two locations for six years, which is negligence, gross or otherwise. We don’t know who committed it, yet.

Trump-partisans are braying at the hypocrisy of treating the cases differently, but there are differences, most notably, the intentionality of Trump’s case and the willingness to cooperate of Biden’s case. But the very nature of the comparison is what I want to highlight (I know, you’re thinking “Pat, you took me through all that, and NOW you’re getting to your point? Who do you think you are, Arlo Guthrie?”).

+1 if you saw that coming!

I read the Washington Post and the New York Times daily. I watch ABC Nightly News and FoxNews with Bret Baier. I get feeds from the Economist, the Atlantic, the New Republic, the Federalist, the Guardian, and the Wall Street Journal. It is rare to read a report about the recently-discovered Biden case that does not give equal time to the Trump case. Oftentimes, more on Trump and the differences than on the news about Biden itself.

Why? Why compare them? If there is a grizzly murder, does the judge compare it to yesterday’s murders? “My bank robbery netted much less than the one last week, your honor” will never be heard in a courtroom. The events stand on their own, and should be judged that way. In my mind, and with only the facts on hand, Mr. Trump deserves a stiff fine and a public admonishment. Somebody (still to be determined) but possibly President Biden, deserves the same. Why? They both sat atop the classification hierarchy and did not respect it. In neither case is there likely to be damage to national security. One case is short, intentional and adversarial, the other accidental and cooperative but negligently long.

Of course the MAGA hat-wearers are claiming “foul.” Why give them their due? Why diminish in any way the seriousness of the latter Biden case, if it proves to be serious, because Trump is so much more offensive? This has been the case from the beginning with the Trump candidacy, then presidency, and even now once again as a candidate. The investigations, the impeachments, the need to respond to every Trump tweet. At one point in the campaign, I recall candidate Kamala Harris saying “if Donald Trump says to take (the vaccine), I’m not taking it.” Hyperbole, yes, but since it’s Trump, well, ok. Apologies to my MAGA friends and Trump haters everywhere, but everything does not need to be about, or compared to, Trump.

President Biden even set himself up, taking the bait in a 60 Minutes interview when asked what he thought about former President Trump’s stash of secret documents at Mar-a-lago:

“How can anyone be that irresponsible?”

This aired in September, but why would the President say such a thing? Why even comment on an open DOJ investigation? Because it’s Trump. So one just has to notice it, be offended by it, comment on it, and denounce it.

Trump is famous for breaking not only the rules, but also the norms of civilized behavior. But here’s a little secret: the first person to ignore a norm does not destroy it. The norm only falls when everyone else says “well he did it, so now . . . “. The reflexive need to put everything into a Trump context ratifies his behavior as the new norm. Which means our norms (like a President taking care of classified material even if he can’t be charged with anything) get replaced with “was it fewer documents than Trump had?”, “were they less classified?”, “did we cooperate more?”, and “were we antagonistic?” Which are lousy norms. Think I’m exagerating? Yesterday, the President of the United States said he has “no regrets” about the classified documents found after being unsecured for six years. None. Zero. Nada. That’s a breathtaking assertion, but hey, it’s not as bad as Trump, right?

Neither of these cases look good for the alleged offenders. Both are serious, but neither (probably) resulted in any damage to national security. Trump is attacking the investigation, belittling the process, and making outlandish claims: par for the course. It appears to me that President Biden will employ a version of the “doddering grandfather” defense (“what? documents? where? huh!”), which would be dismissed as typecasting in Hollywood. We should treat them separately, based on how a former President or Vice President should act with respect to classified information. That is all. Our norms need a rest.

Book Report: Can Legal Weed Win?

This book was written by two University of California economists (Robin Goldstein and Daniel Sumner) who make no secret they see the legalization of “weed” (their preferred term for marijuana) as a positive step toward a more logical, more just society. They take no position about the moral implications of drug use, but rather focus on the economics. and more specifically the claims that legalization would have several positive results: ending the illegal drug trade (at least in weed), eliminating the unnecessary incarceration of those involved in the trade, redirecting law enforcement resources, and generating large and growing revenues for federal, state, and local governments. They conclude that– unsurprisingly for anyone familiar with supply and demand–none of these projections proved to be true.

When California led the way by decriminalizing weed in the form of medical marijuana, the path seemed clear: safer weed to smoke (or eat), easily available via a doctor’s note at local dispensaries, less expensive, and without the baggage of any connection to the illegal drug trade. The alleged medicinal properties of weed, which to date remain under study but not proven, were the ostensible reason to legalize weed. Yet medicinal weed was never the intended endpoint, but rather a useful start toward full legalization. Dispensaries and the fiction of a “doctor’s note” only salved some consciences, but did not satisfy the final goal of legitimizing recreational weed use. And that is where things became interesting.

What went wrong? Let us count the ways:

The move to full legalization almost always involved government regulation, taxing, safety and quality restrictions. Which increased the cost of doing business. So the price of legal weed went up, while illegal weed remained available from all the same suppliers at a discount. Would consumers pay extra for the government assurances and regulation? No, since most weed users had been buying for years from suppliers they considered safe, and the connection to the illegal drug trade seemed tenuous, even though it was real (“I don’t deal with a cartel; I buy from Joe down the street.”)

Meanwhile, decriminalization/legalization made retailing weed a crime, but not possessing small amounts. So there was no longer a strong reason for police to “police” the illegal weed marketplace, except as a matter of violation of commercial regulations. And the move toward legitimate recreational weed use eliminated the need for the “medicinal marijuana” ruse: in states which legalized weed, the dispensary weed business largely evaporated. Meanwhile, Oklahoma, a relative newcomer, has stayed at the medicinal weed way point, and has a medicinal weed dispensary for every 3,000 residents (the greatest density of medicinal weed suppliers in the nation, despite no strong medical evidence)!

Specifically in California, legalization included giving local officials the right to regulate where and how weed was bought, sold, and consumed, a compromise necessary to ensure legislative support for legalization. And in the land where NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) rules supreme, public use of weed in most of the state, which was unregulated under medicinal weed rules, became outlawed under legal recreational weed laws. It seems that most Californians didn’t want a weed shop on their street, people smoking a joint in their public parks, or even a weed field next door to their homeowners association (marijuana fields are well-known for a distinctive, unpleasant odor).

Of course, the wild card in legalization was how would organized crime respond. The optimistic forecast was that drug-dealers would simply accept the inevitable and either go legit by becoming regulated weed retailers, or leave the weed business for other, more lucrative drugs. As the authors point out, people who thrived selling weed when it was illegal were those adept at avoiding government regulation and maneuvering among violent competitors: not skills which translate well into a legal marketplace. So local drug dealers simply went on selling weed more cheaply and without government interference (remember, the police don’t care as much about economic regulations), undercutting the legal business. And cartels have taken to offering legitimate weed retailers the classic Mexican dilemma: “plato or plomo,” meaning work with the cartels (accept their silver, plato) or get killed (received their lead, plomo). So illegal weed also continues to leak into the legal business. The biggest change in the illegal weed market has been to move weed growth from Mexico to the US, to avoid the problem of federal restrictions on its importation. Cartels don’t need to smuggle weed across the border anymore, when they only need to hide it as it grows in the States (where law enforcement is less interested in finding it).

Which points toward the long-term outlook. Of course federal law which still treats weed as a Schedule 1 substance (serious drug) acts as a restraint, but only just. The drug war was always fought primarily at the state and local level, and there it is ending with a whimper, not a bang. Eventually the federal government will give up also, but of course local drug-dealers and cartels will not. Meanwhile, numerous investing firms, tycoons, and get-rich quick investors have gone literally bankrupt betting on the profitability of legal weed.

What happens next? The authors point to several scenarios, but none of them are particularly positive for the weed business. They posit four changes they see as relatively certain in the long term (2050): (1) national legalization of weed, (2) legal interstate weed commerce, (3) more efficient weed farming production, and (4) agribusiness involvement in the weed market. Legal weed loses its counterculture cachet and a national market reduces profit differentials. Weed grown in greenhouses needs cheap labor and cheap power, making a place like Oklahoma incredibly competitive with California. Current demand is met by small, distributed producers, and while some weed aficionados claim market use will soar, that is unlikely. Just as weed may prove to have health benefits for some, long-term weed use is likely to pose health challenges. More efficient farming techniques will produce stronger, safer, and cheaper weed. All of which is to say the legal weed business will resemble farming more than prospecting: a highly competitive market with some product customization (read craft weed), low prices and profit margins, and relatively static demand.

Hardly the profitable, smokey nirvana the weed industry projected. If you like supply and demand charts and lots of data, read the book. The authors have a wicked sense of humor and make the economics discussions about as lively as the dismal science can be. Otherwise, you received the gist of their analysis here. And it is a cautionary tale: legal weed will be neither a golden goose for government revenue, nor a rainmaker for investors. Legal weed will not affect the illegal drug business, nor will it reduce crime. Legal weed does not cause mass addiction, but it also (probably) is not a wonder drug. What legal weed does do is add one more legal way to get high. That’s the blunt truth.

Travel Musings

As you may have noticed, we keep hitting the road, the waves, or the tarmac. I’ll often describe where we were, what we liked, what we ate and drank. Other times I just end up with some thoughts about travel that don’t fit in any particular location, but might be interesting nonetheless. This is one of the latter cases:

Airlines still haven’t recovered from the pandemic. Their passenger totals have, but their staffing and service lag. Wait times for simple things like checking in are up. Customer service numbers and chats are major sources of complaints, not ways to resolve them. Lost luggage numbers are up. Most of the large airlines say they’re getting better, but I don’t see much in the way of improvement. It is nice we can travel again. It’s still not nice to travel.
We had a terrible experience with Volaris and Viva Aerobus trying to get from Tijuana to Guadalajara, a simple three hour flight, on the day after Christmas. It took us the better part of two days, with two cancellations and two big delays. That was prompted by some fog in Mexico, just as the severe cold snap brought Southwest airlines to its knees in the States. The airlines have little slack in the system, and any disturbance (weather or labor, for example) can cause a passenger nightmare.
(Most of) Mexico is abandoning daylight saving time effective now. So especially for my fellow expats here in Mexico, if you’re making connections in the US in the summer, you need to check your reservations/flight schedules. As the US “springs forward” it will be an hour later there, so connections you might have made before may not be available now, or your Mexican departure may move up (earlier) an hour.
American pop culture continues its assault on good taste. My daughters tell me I gave them a real phobia as they were growing up about “looking like a tourist” when traveling. Nowadays, I see young locals all over Europe wearing athletic gear as casual attire, with off-kilter baseball caps to boot. Even older locals have taken to casual wear like athletic shoes or leggings. I guess it’s easier to fit in now. The funny aspect of this is the prevalence of rap music (in the local language of course). Can’t really walk around in most big European cities without hearing someone blasting a local rap; I hope the lyrics are better!
Speaking of manners, they’re either changing or declining. I was warned about eating with my hands in France (sorry, but everyone was). The curse of cell phone zombies, people unaware of other life forms because they are face down in a cell screen, is a real global pandemic. I especially dislike the Airpod-ders out there who think we’re all extras in their selfie music video; if they could only hear what we’re saying about them!
If you were lucky enough to get out and travel without the crowds during the pandemic, good for you. The crowds are back, so places like Venice and Santorini and the Amalfi coast are cheek-and-jowl experiences (at least in season). Many tourist haunts are adding visiting taxes which they hope will dissuade some visitors. That’s an experiment still playing out.
Partially, this is China’s fault. Just before the pandemic hit, the number of Chinese international tourists surpassed the number of American international tourists worldwide. Since Mexico is the number one tourist destination for Americans (not so much Chinese), this means Europe was especially overrun by large numbers of big Chinese tour groups. And Europe didn’t like it much. The pandemic was a chance to reset, and European hot spots are trying to change the dynamic. Now China is ditching its “zero covid” (failed) policy, which kept Chinese travelers from leaving the country since it could strand them overseas. Other countries are enacting testing/vaccine policies aimed at China, but this will not deter Chinese travelers, who faced daily testing and vaccine checks just to go outside.
Speaking of illness and travel, our involuntary stays in Tijuana and Monterey left us exposed at airports crammed with people, and guess what? We got very sick. Spent the last half of the week of 2022 through today self-quarantined with a series of symptoms better left unsaid. But therein lies a lesson for 2023. Due to all the pandemic precautions, the world had fewer flu and severe cold outbreaks for two years. Which means you, the traveler, were less exposed to such things for two years, while those nasty flu and cold bugs kept mutating. So you’re more susceptible to such illnesses in the new year. There’s a cheery thought!

When in doubt about your flight, just smile (a little) for the camera

Finally, with all that pent-up travel demand (Chinese and otherwise) coming to the fore, and airlines and tourist sites still recovering, prices have climbed and availability is dropping. You’ll see that some locations/routes are simply full all the way through 2023 already. So if you plan to travel this year, it’s probably best to get reservations now, and if you need it, get some travel insurance. Oh, and some patience. Lord knows, I’m praying for it!

Mexican Riviera

This tourist zone encompasses a series of similar tourist resorts that stretch along the Mexican Pacific coast, from the end of the Baja peninsula down to the Huatulco in Oaxaca. It’s perhaps unfair to call these places similar, since they are in fact different. However, the chief difference is that they are at different stages of development in the same life-cycle: tourist hot-spots.

The oldest of these, and arguably the most famous, is Acalpulco, which became a getaway for the Hollywood rich and famous back in the 1940s. Now it is well past its prime, attracting fewer foreign visitors and having a vaguely seedy reputation. Puerto Vallarta, or PV among expats, is the reigning champion. It has a modern cruise ship terminal and a well-developed tourism infrastructure to host visitors and expats. Probably next in line after PV are the various resort towns at the end of the Baja peninsula, namely Los Cabos (Cabo San Lucas and San Jose del Cabo). We visited Huatulco, PV, and Cabo San Lucas.

What you’ll find at all these sites are plenty of the usual tourist development (yes, Señor Frog is everywhere) but even more amazing ocean/beach activities. World-class sport-fishing? Check. Ditto for surfing. Endless beaches with bars, seafood restaurants and palapas? Yup. Whale-watching? Swimming with Dolphins? Of course. Ocean kayaking, paddle-boarding, snorkeling, yes. Para-sailing: yeah. Back on land, there are tours of small Mexican towns, visits to haciendas, tequila and mezcal tasting, and eco-visits to jungles and deserts. There is quite literally something for everybody along this coast.

Not being beach people or adventure-seekers, we visited small towns in Oaxaca and Baja California Sur. We can certify that the cruise tours provided what they promoted: very authentic sites where locals produced textiles, mezcal, or other crafts, and small towns still mostly as they are, not carefully crafted tourist recreations. The rug-weavers we saw came from the same small town in central Oaxaca we visited back in July. The mezcal producer used the same techniques we saw in Tequila.

We did sneak in some adventure. I finagled Judy’s agreement to go whale watching while in Puerto Vallarta, as December is the beginning of the humpback whale annual visit to the bay. I imagine she envisioned changing out the cruise ship for a large boat and watching for whales from a distance. I didn’t bother to explain we’d be in zodiacs, basically large inflatable rafts (with a hard interior) and an over-powered pair of marine engines. While Banderas Bay is generally calm, there is nothing calming about screaming across the small waves at 30+ knots in a zodiac, chasing whales. Judy survived the experience, so I’m still here to blog about it!

Happy Judy, when the zodiac is going slow

Whales!

Our ship looming over the cruise dock in Puerto Vallarta

New development built to fit in, in *Todos Santos*

Local tour guide claimed this was the inspiration, but it isn’t

Not everything can be authentic!

Antigua, Guatemala

Sunday found us docked at Puerto Quetzal, Guatemala, so we availed ourselves of an “on your own” bus to Antigua, one of the ancient capitals (yes, plural) of Guatemala. It’s a well-maintained historical site with excellent views of local, active volcanoes. Which is why it’s no longer the capital.

Seems when the Spaniards arrived, they established their first capital on the site of the indigenous palace. Which was subsequently destroyed by a volcano. So they moved to another valley, where the second capital was safely away from a volcano, or so they thought. But there was a nearby mountain with a lake on top. You guessed it, there was an earthquake which unleashed the lake and destroyed the town. So the Spaniards built a third capital in 1541 in another valley, safe from most volcanoes and most earthquakes. Of course, mother nature has a way of making man look foolish, and in 1776 there was a tremendous earthquake which destroyed the third capital, resulting in the final site at Guatemala City (which still stands as of the time of this post).

Iconic archway between two convents, framing another volcano

But the people in the third capital didn’t want to give up, so they slowly rebuilt, calling the town Antigua Guatemala (as in the old capital). And there it sits today, a mix of preserved ruins and rebuilt colonial houses, without the business or industry a modern capital city would normally have. It’s as if the old city was preserved in amber from a date long ago.

It being Sunday, we had scoped out a Catholic mass in what remains of the old cathedral. Mostly magnificent ruins, locals refurbished one small wing of the cathedral as a small parish. During mass, we heard loud cheers and groans coming from the town plaza immediately outside. There was another religious event of sorts: the World Cup Final. The priest even made a parting joke at the end of mass about seeing everyone outside.

Cathedral interior in ruins, still magnificent

Defending champion France was playing Argentina that morning, and the local government had erected a giant screen in the plaza for all to come and watch. Normally weekends bring a rush of local tourists from Guatemala City to spend a day in Antigua, but this Sunday the crowd was all locals, and most of the town was bunched into a corner of the plaza, glued to the screen.

We heard Argentina was leading 2-0 as mass began, then we heard more screaming during the liturgy. We were surprised to learn France had tied the game up, so we grabbed a coffee (a local specialty) and enjoyed extra time and a penalty kick shoot-out. The crowd, which was rooting for Messi & Argentina, grew silent until the result was in. I mentioned to Judy how strange it was to know the whole world (less the US) was watching the same event at the same time, all holding their breath. It was something like the moonwalk, and special to enjoy among passionate fans.

The moment when . . .

Puerto Genérico

Don’t look for it on a map. It’s less of a place than a state of mind. You’ve been there if you did an ocean cruise in the Caribbean, Central America, heck even Alaska. It exists where a large cruise ship arrives at a small port in an underdeveloped region or country. And it’s always the same.

When Judy & I were hard-working professionals in Washington DC (“working hard or hardly working?”, yes I know the joke!), we tried to get away every winter for a week, usually to cruise the Carrib Sea from Miami (Pro-tip: you pronounce it “car-RIB-ee-an” not “care-i-BEE-an”). We soon learned there was no reason to off-board at the ports, because they were all the same. You walked off the ship and were accosted by a steel drum band. Locals started offering to (1) braid your hair, (2) sell you Ganja (marijuana), or (3) give you a henna tattoo. As we were uninterested in all three, well, why disembark? There were the usual set of excursions, but these too predictably fell into beach-time, water-time, and local customs. We tried some of the latter, but found them more generic than legitimate. I recall visiting a market near Cozumel and buying a “Mayan sun disc calendar” which turned out to be Aztec. Whatever.

If you head north to Alaska, they’re selling sweatshirts, salmon, and First Nations handicrafts. In Central America, its tropical drinks, Mayan art and indigenous clothing. Notice that few things have “made in” labels, because you don’t really want to know from where it came. I don’t mean to disparage the hard work or the opportunity. If you’re on your once-in-a-lifetime trip, enjoy the experience, don’t over-analyze it. And the vendors are trying hard to make a living, souvenirs being souvenirs the world ’round.

We landed in Puntarenas (sandy point), Costa Rica. We were greeted by a xylophone band, a market full of t-shirts and carved wooden tchotchkes, and some restaurants featuring (in English) “Costa Rican food.” We sauntered past in the tropical heat and found our way to the local church. After we tried the locked doors, a handyman came over and opened it up to we could visit. The cafes and shops were barely open, although there was a line outside the government medical clinic. This could have been any pueblo anywhere in Latin America.

We’ll be spared the experience in Nicaragua. The Captain explained that the Nicaraguan government is closing its ports due to Covid. Funny thing, the Nicaraguan government website has no mention of it. More likely, the Sandinista government is engaging in another round of repression, so Norwegian Cruise Lines decided not to send day-trippers merrily traipsing across the countryside lest than run into a protest, a riot, or an insurrection. But we will be in Acajutla, El Salvador, soon thereafter, and I bet it will be eerily familiar.