Saddle Up Anyway : The Exciting Sequal to The Dixie Apocalypse

 

Saddle Up for the exciting sequel to the cult-favorite dystopian satire, The Dixie Apocalypse.

Willoughby Burns never planned on becoming the Secretary of State for a breakaway Texan republic—but then again, the world ended weirder than he expected.

As the Second Texas Republic braces for war with the swaggering forces of the California People’s Republic, Willoughby finds himself stuck between his past as a wandering outsider and his uneasy future as a national figurehead. The battles aren’t just fought with bullets and bravado—there are deeper skirmishes at play: between loyalty and identity, progress and tradition, truth and spectacle.

When he’s thrown together with a captured Californian officer—Lieutenant Sandy Beech, equal parts soldier, smartass, and accidental philosopher—Willoughby is forced to confront the blurry edges of his own beliefs. Friendship, feral hogs, fried food, and a woman with a killer enchilada recipe all converge as Willoughby searches for courage, purpose... and maybe a second chance at love.

Saddle Up Anyway is a riotous, heartfelt road trip through the fractured politics of a future America— equal parts satire, spaghetti Western, and sincere tribute to all things Texan.

My Window Faces the Middle South: Climate Change is Prompting American Retirees to Relocate to the Middle of the Country

My window faces the south

I'm almost halfway to heaven

Snow is falling, but still I can see

Fields of cotton calling to me

Willie Nelson

For more than a century, older Americans have relocated to balmier climes to live out their golden years. Northern retirees often moved to Florida, attracted by better weather, no state income tax, and the reasonable cost of housing. Arizona and California also looked attractive because of their sunny climates.

However, in recent years, migration patterns for retirees have shifted partly due to climate change. Devastating hurricanes have driven up the cost of homeowner insurance in Florida, and California wildfires have made property insurance prohibitively expensive in the Golden State. In Arizona, water scarcity has made the state less attractive to retirees.

Climate change is causing Americans to rethink where they want to live out their last years. Many Americans are finding the Middle South increasingly attractive. West Virginia and North Carolina have benefited from this trend, as have Georgia and Tennessee.

These demographic shifts have political ramifications. Some commentators predicted that an influx of Californians to Texas and Florida would turn these red states blue because Californian immigrants would bring their progressive Democratic political values with them. 

That hasn't happened. Instead, newcomers to the predominantly red states like what they find: lower tax rates, decent weather, and a more benign and less strident political atmosphere.

In the years to come, the migration of older Americans to the Middle South will turn these states even more reliably red. Soon, radical progressive politics will be confined to urban enclaves as the recent presidential election presaged.

And we should not forget that working Americans are also leaving the blue states. In general, this outflow is driven by a rejection of crazed woke politics and urban violence, particularly in California, New York, and urban Illinois.

Dwight Yoakam's "I Sang Dixie" might be the anthem of this recent wave of emigres.

[W]ay down yonder
In the land of cotton
Old times there
Ain't near as rotten
As they are
On this damned old L.A. street

Most Americans don't define themselves in political terms. They only seek modest prosperity and a safe environment for their families.  For these Americans, I endorse Dwight  Yoakam's lyrical advice:

"Listen to me, son, while you still can,"
"Run back home to that Southern land!"
"Don't you see what life here has done to me?"

Image credit Raul Alonzo/Texas Standard

 

Trump Administration is Leaving Two Brutalist Office Buildings in Washington: Both Should Be Demolished

There's a reason God created dynamite.

Rich Lowry 

It's official. Washington, DC is home to some of the ugliest government buildings on the planet. 

Build World, a global design company, recently analyzed some of the world's worst architectural eyesores and decreed that the J. Edgar Hoover Building, the FBI headquarters in Washington, is the ugliest building in America and the second ugliest in the world. 

J. Edgar Hoover Building

However, the J. Edgar Hoover Building has competition as the nation's top eyesore. Newly appointed HUD Secretary Scott Turner said the Robert C. Weaver Building, HUD's headquarters, is the ugliest in the nation's capital.

HUD Headquarters in Washington, D.C.

Both buildings are Brutalist structures, representing a soulless, depressing architectural style that was fashionable in the 1960s and 1970s. At the theoretical level, Brutalism championed "functionality, honesty, and social purpose," but the structures themselves mostly look like concrete, maximum security prisons.

The Trump administration plans to move government workers out of both buildings and sell them. However, decommissioning these monstrousities is not enough because they will remain a blight on the landscape of our nation's capital.

Rich Lowery, a syndicated columnist, believes both buildings should be blown up. "There's a reason God created dynamite, " he wrote, and I agree.

I worked as a professor for six years in Farish Hall, a forboding concrete building at the University of Houston.  I didn't know at the time that I had been assigned to a Brutalist building, but I knew on a subconscious level that I was spending my days in a dispiriting, oppressive, and prison-like environment.

Farish Hall at the University of Houston

I was pleased to learn that the University plans to demolish Farish Hall this year and will not replace it. That's a good start, but UH has other Brutalist buildings, and all of them should be razed. Agnes Arnold Hall, for example, where three students have leaped to their deaths, is nearly as ugly as Farish Hall.

Brutalist architecture has its defenders.  Indeed, some critics will praise the J. Edgar Hoover Building and the HUD headquarters simply because Trump wants to scrub them. 

In my view, Brutalist architecture is indefensible. Most Brutalist buildings appear indistinguishable from the Cold War bureaucratic structures of the Soviet Union. These eyesores are contrary to the American spirit, and all of them should be razed. Trump should demolish all the Brutalist government buildings in our nation's capital, and the universities should blow up the obscene Brutalist buildings that deface their campuses. 

What is the ugliest university building in America? I vote for the Claire T. Carney Library at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.

Claire T. Carney Library at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth

Not to Decide is to Decide: The Mississippi River Bridge That Can't Get Built

Not to decide is to decide.

Harvey Cox

 Interstate 10 is a transcontinental highway running from Jacksonville, Florida, to Santa Monica, California. Thousands of trucks are on this road 24 hours a day, dominating the highway during the nighttime hours. Sometimes the 18-wheelers are packed so tightly that they appear to be a long, endless convoy.

Along this 2,400-mile stretch of road, there is one major bottleneck: the Horace Wilkinson Bridge that spans the Mississippi River in Baton Rouge.  Every day, a traffic jam stretches for two miles or longer. I used to cross the bridge daily, and it often took me half an hour to creep over the Wilkinson bridge.

The need for a new bridge to route transcontinental traffic around downtown Baton Rouge has been apparent for over 30 years. And yet that bridge has never been built. Indeed,  as of this week, the site has not been selected, and state officials estimate that the bridge won't be constructed for another nine years.

Surely, the United States, the wealthiest society in the history of humankind, can get the job done faster. Using nineteenth-century technology, New York City took just 14 years to construct the Brooklyn Bridge. The Russians completed the Kerch Strait Bridge, the longest bridge in Europe, in only two years. 

The Americans are no longer a people who can get things done quickly and efficiently. Planning for the "Big Dig," a project to improve traffic flow in Boston, began in 1982, and the project wasn't finished until 2007. 

California voters approved the construction of a high-speed rail line connecting San Francisco to Los Angeles in 2008, to be completed by 2020. Yet the rail line is still not finished.

Americans have become a people who can't make decisions. We cannot even determine whether boys should compete against girls in varsity sports. The Supreme Court will decide that question for us in the coming months.

To borrow a phrase from the movie Lawrence of Arabia, Americans have become "a little people, a silly people--greedy, barbarous, and cruel." Our adversaries--Russia, China, and radical Islamism--know this about us. If we don't toughen up, our enemies will one day bring us down.

The Kerch Bridge, Photo credit: The Moscow Times

The Parent PLUS Student Loan Program Preys on Low-Income Families and Should Be Shut Down

When Congress finally passes the Big Beautiful Bill (BBB), it will include some changes to the Parent PLUS student loan program.  The Senate version and the House version both put a cap on the amount of money parents can borrow for their children's college education through Parent PLUS.

Currently, students' parents can borrow all the money they need to pay for their children's college education through Parent PLUS loans. The House-approved version of the BBB limits the amount parents can borrow to $50,000 total. The Senate caps the amount at $65,000 per dependent.

Three years ago, I argued in a blog essay that the Parent PLUS program is a predatory scheme that saddles low-income families with unmanageable debt. I'm reposting that essay below.

* * * 

 Years ago, I was strolling along a lakeside hiking trail in a Dallas-area park. As I was walking across a wooden bridge, I looked down to see a ball of wriggling snakes below me.

It was a big cluster--about the size of a beachball. It was a scary sight, and I didn't stick around long enough to determine whether the snakes were poisonous. I just hurried on my way.

The Department of Education's Parent PLUS program is like a big ball of snakes. The program has become so predatory, so large, and so politically charged that we don't want to even try to untangle it.  We just want to hurry along without thinking about it.

Parent PLUS is a federal program that lends money to parents to help them pay for their children's education. Although Congress supposedly intended the program to help affluent families, six out of ten parent borrowers are from low-income households.  And, as Matt Krupnick reported for Newsweek, at 140 schools, 80 percent of parent borrowers are in low-income homes.

Parent PLUS default rates are high. According to a Newsweek analysis, nearly ten percent of parents at 1000 colleges defaulted or were seriously late with payments within just two years of their child left college. At some schools, Parent PLUS default rates ran as high as 30 and even 40 percent.

And borrowing costs are high: "6.28 percent for the 2021-2022 academic year plus an upfront fee of 4.22 percent" (as reported by Newsweek).

In 2019-2020, parents took out Parent PLUS loans on behalf of three-quarters of a million students, and the loan amounts averaged about $16,000. 

But the average Parent PLUS loan at some colleges is much larger. At Spelman College, an HBCU in Atlanta, the median Parent PLUS loan was $85,000 for parents whose children graduated or left school between 2017 and 2019.

Other schools with high Parent PLUS loan amounts include New York University (almost $67,000) and Loyola Marymount in Los Angeles ($60,000). The median loan amount is also high at several art and music schools: Berklee College of Music in Boston, Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, and Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia.

Newsweek, the Wall Street Journal, and other news media have shown that some colleges are taking advantage of their students' parents by encouraging them to take out loans in addition to the federal loans and Pell grants that students receive on their own.

This is predatory behavior. And parents who take out Parent PLUS loans will find it is almost impossible to discharge these loans in bankruptcy.

Congress needs to shut down the Parent PLUS program. Or at the very least, Congress should amend the Bankruptcy Code to allow financially distressed parents to discharge these loans in bankruptcy.

But Congress will probably take no action. It sees the Parent PLUS program as a big ball of snakes, and no politician has the guts to close down this pernicious scam against low-income parents.

Social Security is Not Going Away, But It Will Become Worthless

Inflation is the ally of political extremism, the antithesis of order.

Adam Ferguson

When Money Dies

According to a recent government report, Social Security's trust funds will be entirely depleted by 2034, just nine years from now. What does that mean?

Anil Suri, a Merril Lynch analyst, said that Social Security's predicted insolvency doesn't mean the government will stop issuing Social Security checks. However, recipients could see their benefits decreased by 20 percent.

This is bad news for retired or soon-to-be-retired Americans. Approximately 40 percent of older Americans rely on their Social Security checks for almost all of their income.  A 20 percent cut in benefits would be disastrous for these people--plunging them into poverty. Indeed, most retired Americans rely on their Social Security checks to help meet basic expenses, even if they have other sources of income.

I am 76 and receive monthly Social Security checks, but I'm not worried about a possible benefit reduction. Why?

First, there are several things Congress can do to shore up the Social Security trust fund, such as raising the age for full benefits or increasing payroll contributions for people who are in the workforce. I'm confident that Congress will take action to stabilize the Social Security trust fund.

Moreover, it's politically impossible for Congress to reduce Social Security benefits because so many Americans depend on them. Everyone recognizes that Social Security is the third rail in national politics. There are lots of budget items that will be slashed before Social Security benefits are cut.

Slashed benefits don't concern. What worries me is inflation.

The Federal government's national debt is $36 trillion, and interest on that debt is almost $1 trillion annually. Congress isn't even trying to balance the budget. Indeed, it will probably authorize an increased deficit as part of the Big Beautiful Bill.

Our government has financed our unbalanced budget with treasury bonds at reasonably low interest rates. The U.S. dollar is the world's reserve currency, and the United States has historically been regarded as a safe place to park money.

If the world loses confidence in the dollar, interest rates on treasury bonds will go up--perhaps dramatically. Inflation will rear its ugly head, and the dollar's buying power will shrink.

George Will wrote recently that the national debt makes a fiscal crisis inevitable. I agree.

That's what scares me: not a smaller Social Security check but a worthless check due to inflation. If inflation gets out of control, millions of Americans will suffer, especially older Americans whose Social Security checks are their sole source of income.

"Hangin' on to What I Got": Buck Owens' Advice for Hard Times

 Well, if a dollar bill is not worth a dime

And if the whole world goes to pot, 

Well, I'm a tellin' you that I'm a happy man

And I'm a hangin' on to what I got.

Hangin' on to What I Got

Buck Owens

Elon Musk dislikes President Donald Trump's "big, beautiful bill," arguing that it will contribute to the growing federal deficit and the nation's $36 trillion national debt. 

Musk is probably right, but whatcha gonna do? The Democrats oppose the BBB, but they won't consent to any budget cuts that would harm their shrinking and perpetually unhappy political base.

Meanwhile, hard-pressed Americans need a tax break, and I favor helping 'em out.

Let's face it: It's too late for the politicians to balance the federal budget or reduce our $36 trillion national debt. Nor will the Trump administration be able to halt inflation or curb interest rates. As Merle Haggard put it, our country is "rolling down hill like a snowball headed for hell," and the average American has no power to change the trajectory of our impending economic meltdown.

Hard times are coming to Flyover Country. Most of us will become poorer in the coming years, especially older Americans living on fixed incomes.

Perhaps all the little folk can do is take Buck Owens' advice and try to hang on to what we've got--our families, our jobs, and our homes.

This is a good time for Americans to get introduced to the music of hard times, a subgenre of country music dubbed the Bakersfield Sound. The leading lights of the Bakersfield Sound--Buck Owens, Merle Haggard, Woody Guthrie, Wynne Stewart, Tommy Collins, and Wanda Jackson--all saw hard times during the Great Depression, and they expressed their arduous life journeys in their heartfelt songs. 

You can hear that music today by listening to Dwight Yoakam's Bakersfield Beat on Sirius radio. I predict that the audience for the Bakersfield Sound will expand as our national economy collapses.  The Bakersfield Sound is the music of hard times, and hard times are just around the corner.

The Grapes of Wrath: Hangin' On to What I Got