March 6

 Looking out the window it looks like we have clouds still. The Weather Channel says our current temperature is 40F and the high should be about 50. They expect the clouds to move out without dropping more rain. But I will wait until the next sunny day, at the moment predicted to be Sunday, to do the next round of garden clean up.

Super Tuesday came out pretty much as everyone expected. Biden and Trump won most of the states and their delegates. But each has his own problems with his supposed constituencies. Haley won Vermont and got a significant proportion of the vote in most of the remaining states. Who knows how many of her voters will vote Trump in the fall. Biden's big problem is the number who voted "uncommitted." Many of those are critics (whether Jewish or Palestinian-Americans) of our Israel policy. I think so many of our fellow citizens really want someone who will solve knotty problems (the way they want them settled) the same way Alexander "unraveled" the Gordian Know--for those who don't know the story, he simply drew his sword and cut it. Cutting through human problems that way is more likely to damage a lot more than it will solve.

On a sad note--the news this morning announced Haley's press conference this morning in which, a staffer confirmed, she will announce she is ending her campaign. Sad because I liked how she has morphed into a serious Trump critic. I only hope she never endorses him.

The Hill reports that the Biden Administration will form a "task force" to delve into the problem of price gouging. Various CEOs might regret their comments during a meeting a couple of years ago that they should raise prices as high as they could because of the COVID dislocations in the economy. The attitude basically was "do it while you can and as high as you can" consumers be damned. Found by way of Naked Capitalism with the reminder that the WIN (whip inflation now) Nixon and later Ford tried in the 1970s. It failed but what the admin on Naked Capitalism forgot to add was that in the next decade inflation was broken as the Federal Reserve raised interest rates to the sky. That slowed the economy and seriously hurt anyone who had fixed incomes, had low wage jobs, and held CDs and savings accounts. Real prosperity didn't return until the late 1990s under Clinton. I wonder how the history rhymes this time.

Yesterday Krysten Sinema decided against running for reelection to her senate seat. Over her time as a Senator I have rarely agreed with her positions which seemed, to me, to favor corporations and the wealthy and did little for people at the lower economic levels. However, I will agree with her that the political environment today is not at all conducive to honest negotiations or mutual accommodations with opposing views. Instead politics has become a "scorched earth war" in which little gets done. But, I remember several instances where she seemed to be deeply involved in throwing gasoline on the fire.