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We never really know what is going to generate a big response from the readers. This week, the subjects of interest ended up being NFTs, antisemitism, cryptocurrency, real currency, and the Mexican-American War. Try to predict that list! Well, except for the NFTs; that one was pretty foreseeable.
J.E. in Whidbey Island, WA, writes: K.C. in West Islip proposed wording for a new Electoral Count Act: "...the winner of the popular vote in each state shall be declared the winner of that state's electoral votes."
If only it were that simple. But there's this little matter of: "Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors..."
No mere law passed by Congress can override this passage; a constitutional amendment would need to be ratified. And we all know the probability of that happening.
R.P. in Alexandria, NY, writes: In response to T.R. in Vancouver, who asks "What's up with the term 'defense spending'?"
There is an argument that a significant part of the intention in changing the cabinet position from "Department of War" to "Department of Defense" in 1947 was to facilitate the move to a permanent war economy. According to this argument, this move was taken to help prevent the U.S. from falling back into another Great Depression due to the overproduction in the non-military sector of the economy. Further along these lines, if the U.S. continued to produce weaponry on a large scale, then our potential adversaries would also need to do so, producing an arms race that would be a self-generating growth sector of the economy. If this argument is correct, the timing of this change, from a hopefully temporary state of major activity for a Department of War to a more permanent ongoing effort (when can you relax in making expenditures for defense?), would mean T.R.'s description of this as Orwellian is on the mark.
T.M. in Odessa, MO, writes: A.T. in Arlington referred to the Republican trifecta in South Carolina, Georgia, and New Hampshire as a potential problem for the Democrats' new primary schedule. However, in none of those states is a legislative change (or a decision by the governor) needed. Instead, each state law already provides for flexibility in scheduling the primary.
South Carolina is the easiest of the three for the Democrats. South Carolina law does not set a date for the primary. Instead, it allows each party to set a date for its primary. Since South Carolina Democrats can pick whichever date they want, South Carolina will be on whatever date is authorized by the national rules.
Georgia and New Hampshire are similar in that neither state has an exact date for its primary. Instead, both states grant the power to the secretary of state to select the date for the primary. The Democrats' problem is that, in both states, the SoS is currently a Republican. While in theory, the New Hampshire Secretary of State could decide that the language in New Hampshire law that it goes first is not legally binding, it is unlikely that he will go along with the Democrats' scheduling plan (even if that means that New Hampshire Democrats will have to hold a second, party-run primary to comply with the national delegate selection rules). Similarly, the Georgia Secretary of State could schedule the Georgia primary for the date requested by the Democrats, but that date would be in violation of the Republican rules and he is unlikely to be willing to screw over Georgia Republicans to please Georgia Democrats.
D.P. in Sunnyvale, CA, writes: Here are my two cents on the new primary calendar: rubbish. The entire system needs to be retrofitted.
My proposal is to split the 50 states and the 5 territories/Democrats Abroad/D.C. (who hold primaries even if the territories don't get electoral votes) into groups of 8 arranged by size. For the smallest group, group 1, there would be one primary election per week, for groups 2, 3, and 4 there can be two primaries held per week, for groups 5 and 6 there will be four primaries per week, and the last group, group 7, with the largest states, will all vote together on a Super Tuesday. This allows small campaigns to get off the ground with limited funds and gradually thins out the herd. At the same time, about half the delegates will be awarded on Super Tuesday, meaning large states will not be ignored as there is very unlikely to be a presumptive winner. The parties can choose which state goes first in each group, though I am partial to having the states that have the highest voter turnout go first as a reward for their good citizenship, but I fear that may skew the demographics a tad too much. In any case, we would have a shorter and fairer primary calendar.
K.S. in Harrisburg, PA, writes: You have suggested that if there are competing primaries around the same time when New Hampshire holds theirs, no one will campaign there—especially if the party doesn't allow campaigners to be on the debate stage.
If I was an unknown candidate with very little money (but a warm coat), New Hampshire is exactly the place I'd go. So what if the Democratic party doesn't accept the delegates—no one goes to The Granite State for its few delegates. They go to get known as being a winner and since the press will be there, the winner will get known. If the winner sits out a few of the next primaries, no harm done—they will still be mentioned as a winner of an early primary.
I also would hope they'd follow through with the threat to bar me from the debates. Rather than getting 5 minutes of 30 second responses to gotcha questions in the 3 hour debate, each network would interview me for 5 minutes before the debate about being left out of the debate—a much better format to get my message out. Standing out from the other debaters as not being allowed on stage would get the bleeding-heart types sympathizing with me, many voters respecting me for standing up to the Party, and less attacks from the other candidates during the debate (it would look like bullying if I couldn't defend myself). With all this in mind, there may already be a number of unknown Democrats looking to see which New Hampshire hotel chains have the best rewards programs.
D.B. Jersey City, NJ, writes: I wanted to respond to your point about Joe Biden coming out in support of gay marriage as a trial balloon for Barack Obama.
If you read the book Double Down: Game Change 2012, they specifically talk about this event and that the Obama team was furious at Biden for doing this because it spoiled their plan for Obama's announcement.
J.M. in Albany, CA, writes: With due respect, the response from J.T. in Marietta mischaracterized my point by using a straw-man argument around "progressive candidates" that I didn't actually make. I may be on the real left wing (beyond anyone in the current Democratic Party), but I recognize the politics of reality as well. I was not saying that anyone who is not a "progressive" would fail as the Democratic nominee, I was saying it makes the most sense to recognize who the mainstream of each state party's base are, then select candidates who are definitely Democrats and fall within the mainstream of their state party's policy agenda.
Mandela Barnes, a Black progressive, was a poor fit for Wisconsin's Democratic base just as Val Demings and Charlie Crist (both of whom emphasized Republican-owned issues like "crime") were poor fits in Florida. However, we should note that Barnes came very close in his race and the Floridaians did not, because a progressive will still fire more Democrats up to vote than a conservative DINO who is making a play for ticket-splitters.
G.K. in Boston, MA, writes: As part of the item on Inflation Deflation and the lack of the GOPs support for rural broadband, you wrote: "For example, exactly why the Republican Party, which is the party of rural America, has not become the party of rural broadband for everyone right now, we do not know."
The GOP is unlikely to support decent rural broadband because giving rural communities the tools (education) and the access to a wider range of information and viewpoints (broadband) they risk making their constituency critical thinkers. They might than start asking tough questions of their representatives!
P.S. in Arlington, TN, writes: Years ago, I was a GOP small donor. I'd give what I could during the primaries to candidates I liked and usually some in the general. Donald Trump changed that, as I refused to donate anything that might be used by him. My donations never came from calls or e-mails, they always came from picking a candidate and donating to them through their website. I haven't donated anything since Spring of 2016.
Every two years now I have to go in and block hundreds of e-mail addresses or my inbox will register thousands and thousands of unread spam messages. This all despite having been completely inactive for more than 6 years now. The GOP also just hands my e-mail off to new candidates I hate and new PACs I don't agree with so maybe 100 new e-mail addresses need to be blocked every cycle. Those addresses probably send two or three e-mails a week if I don't, which adds up quick.
The Democrats know who I am as well, as I've had some communication with them through Joe Biden's website. I usually get around 5 text messages reminding me to vote in the general election. That's it. I actually appreciate the texts, as that reminds me to vote early and informs me that early voting has started. The texts don't come from bots, they come from volunteers and after I tell them I've voted they leave me alone.
Gmail blocks more email from Republicans as spam because it's spam. Being on a GOP e-mail list is like having herpes, except herpes is easier to get rid of and less annoying.
S.C-M. in Scottsdale, AZ, writes: Your analysis of the Kari Lake (R) gubernatorial campaign in Arizona was spot on. Basically, Gov.-elect Katie Hobbs' (D) campaign made the bet that Lake would basically destroy herself. The bet paid off.
Katie Hobbs is not a particularly good public speaker or political glad-hander. Instead of being at large rallies, she met with voters in much smaller groups and even met with Republican business executives telling them she would be a steady hand. Remember, Hobbs is basically a moderate Democrat.
Her campaign was not flashy, nor was it all that visible to the media, which is always hungry for drama. Hobbs knew she was not as media savvy as Lake and refused to compete on those terms, which was why she refused to debate Lake.
The media thought Hobbs' campaign was terrible as a result, but the campaign's approach was deliberate and it paid off as they watched Lake make error after error and basically destroy her chances of winning. Certainly the strategy was risky, but it appears the people around Hobbs were pretty sure Lake would wreck herself, being a political novice.
J.H. in Boston, MA, writes: Is that really a photo of Kari Lake vacuuming Trump's carpet? WTF? You observed that it would drive women away. That's surely true, but I'm struggling to imagine what demographic it wouldn't drive away. Like, maybe a hypothetical 1950s machismo husband who believes that wives should be subservient to husbands. But if you believe that, then surely you believe that Kari Lake cannot serve as chief executive of the state of Arizona, right? Maybe there are some Trump ultra-partisans who wants a governor who pretends to be his pseudo-wife, but outside of that fringe, surely this image is off-putting to everyone, on both ends of the misogyny-feminism spectrum.
T.G. in Salem, OR, writes: I've been thinking about the possibility of a three-way Senate race in 2024 if Sen. Kyrsten Sinema ($-AZ) runs for re-election, the Democrats have a candidate, and so do the Republicans.
A lot has been said about how the Democratic vote would be split, probably allowing the Republican to win the seat.
I would offer a different possibility. Oregon just faced this very problem in November in the race for governor. We had a legitimate Democratic (Tina Kotek), and a spoiler Democrat (Betsy Johnson), who was funded by Phil Knight (of Nike fame) for the sole purpose of keeping Kotek from winning.
While I freely admit that Oregon is a much bluer state the Arizona, I think the general principle of why this didn't work can hold true in Arizona: Voters don't like to be treated as if they are stupid.
Arizona voters don't like Sinema. They don't like that they sent her to Washington to do the things she told them she would do when she campaigned and then watched her do the opposite. They don't like that she's done little to nothing to improve their lives while doing everything she can to improve herself.
I actually think that given the choice of voting for a real Democrat or Sinema, the people who will vote for the real Democrat. Especially if that real Democrat does what they did here in Oregon, and that was to point out that the "fake" Democrat can't win and if you vote for them you're going to end up with a Republican senator instead.
D.F. in Ann Arbor, MI, writes: In multiple comments you have sort of taken it as a given that Sinema and a possible Democratic opponent would split the vote in the 2024 general election, handing a victory to the Republican candidate. But polls in the last year show that Republicans actually like her more than Democrats. isn't it just as likely that she'd siphon support from a Republican (even a mainstream one, like Gov. Doug Ducey) and help the Democrat?
D.S. in Palo Alto, CA, writes: So maybe the right move for Democrats is to help qualify ten or a dozen independents for the 2024 senatorial ballot, along with their one candidate. That might dilute the field enough to overcome the problem Kyrsten Sinema poses. Best I can do.
S.S. in Elliot Lake, ON, Canada, writes: Donald Trump's NFT cards sold out very quickly—all 45,000 of them. So how many different cards are there? The website says, "Some will be one-of-one's [sic] (i.e. the only one in the world), while others will be limited to 2, 5, 7, or 10 copies. No Trump Digital Trading Card will have more than 20 copies in existence!"
And we are also told: "The Trump Digital Trading Cards are randomly generated and delivered, so you won't know which card you receive until you check your wallet after purchase. There are hundreds of different cards featuring President Trump, each with its own rarity. No more than 20 copies exist of any single card. Only 45,000 total cards exist in this series."
But if he sold 45,000 cards, with none of them having more than 20 copies, then there must be more than 2,250 different cards. That's a lot for one artist (Clark Mitchell) to create prior to this offering. However, according to Gizmodo, for these randomly generated cards the "photoshop job seems to be very haphazardly edited using images taken directly from the Internet."
And another point of interest: the company behind the auction appears to be operating out of a UPS store in Utah.
P.S.: I found this page where all the cards are shown. Essentially, there are about 20 pictures of TFG with dozens of different backgrounds. Interestingly, they are already for sale on Ebay as jpegs—with shipping and handling charges.
NS in Fayetteville, NY, writes: I'm not sure why everyone seems to be calling the Trump Digital Trading Cards a scam. Assuming he follows through with the raffle he promised, then everyone who buys knows exactly what they'll get. He's stating very clearly these are for entertainment purposes only. It's also clear that proceeds are going into his own pocket, not his campaign or charity. In fact, I think this might be the one time he's been completely above board.
S.C. in Bossier City, LA, writes: The Trump NFT cards are not "Pokémon" cards.
They are "MAGA: The Gathering" cards.
J.L. in Los Angeles, CA, writes: A more accurate Trump NFT from the Internet:
R.M.S. in Lebanon, CT, writes: This is one of the funniest political cartoons I've seen in the past 5 years. The Peanuts are transformed into the QNuts. They view Christmas as an opportunity to attack poor Charlie Brown and Linus. Singing Christmas carols around an AR-15 is probably the most hilarious political satire I've seen all year.
P.G in Boston, MA, writes: I wanted to comment on your item about antisemitism, that this is not only a problem from the right, but a problem from the left, as well. Several members of "The Squad" have been called out for engaging in antisemitic tropes, but the problem doesn't really start there. Many progressive members of congress talk about Israel as an apartheid state. Noteworthy in this,is that this language originally came out of the propaganda division of the old USSR as a way of creating division. After the fall of the USSR, Russia (pre-Putin, I believe) noted that this was a deliberately created tool to sow dissent. And this gained further traction at the 2001 Durban conference, which was noted, contemporaneously, for being deeply antisemitic.
At the same time, Israel is talked about as being a colonial state, and Zionism a colonial philosophy. Neither is true, and both speak to a deeply antisemitic tendency among progressives. In fact, Zionism is a true anti-colonial philosophy. Jews, as an ethnic-religious group, have a 3,000 year continuous presence in the Levant, while Arabs arrived as conquerors in the 600s. There is more time where Jews existed in what is now Israel without an Arab presence, than time in which Arabs have lived there. Zionism, at its core, is the belief that Jews will never be safe from persecution unless there is a Jewish state, and the correct place to establish this state is in the ancestral homeland, a homeland that was never relinquished even through thousands of years of diaspora due to forced expulsion.
When talking about Israel as a colonial state, people ignore the fact that the settlers are people of the indigenous peoples of the Levant. While Great Britain did act as a colonial power in its occupation of the region after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the movement towards a Jewish state predated that occupation by decades, and that movement had roots going back hundreds of years, as it has been a commandment to "make Aliyah" (to return to Israel) that Jews have followed for virtually the entirety of the Arab occupation, dating back 1,400 years. Why is this antisemitic? Because, we can see in the history of the treatment of Jews throughout North Africa, Western and Southern Asia, and Europe, that even preceding a Jewish State to blame violence on Jews for, Jews are not safe when they are a minority. And so advocating to not have a uniquely Jewish state is indirectly advocating for violence against Jews. And why should that Jewish state not be on the land that Jews have held as home, as sacred, as the place to live, for a period dating back 3,000 years? Again, antisemitism. Jews, apparently, are the only native indigenous people, who can, without giving up their claim to their land, be forced to give up their claim to their land.
Jews are seen by many as "powerful" or "controlling," and therefore, antisemitism is often seen as "punching up," which lets progressives get away with a double standard for claiming to support indigenous people, and decolonization, while actively opposing those core beliefs for one specific ethnic-religious group.
Right now, antisemitic violence is taking hold, because both the extreme on the right and the extreme on the progressive left are pushing it into mainstream circles. This is creating a dangerous environment for Jews, and leaving us, once again, without a safe place to be... which is why 90% of American Jews believe in a Jewish State in Israel.
C.L. in Boulder, CO, writes: You wrote about Sean Spicer's retweet: "That tweet isn't even a little bit subtle [in terms of being antisemitic]." I'm not sure everyone is as well versed in dog whistles as you and E-V.com readers are, and not everyone knows or cares that Soros is Jewish. Just reading the tweet at face value, it says nothing about Soros being Jewish and has no Jewish symbols such as a Star of David or a yarmulke or a reference to Hitler (and, by association, the Holocaust). How will people know from the tweet that it is antisemitic? And a more important question: Does this mean that, in our hypersensitive environment, anyone who criticizes Soros (or his wealth or his financial dealings) is automatically going to be called an antisemite?
The tweet does contain some inflammatory hot-button words in its effort to demonize someone the tweeter sees as a bad guy: radical, propaganda, czar, bankrolls, influence, global, media. Money words, in particular, are often associated with the derogatory Shylock figure, but Soros is famous for having a lot of money and spreading it around. Is it not okay to use those words with Soros because he is Jewish, but it would be okay to use them with throw-away-the-Constitution Donald Trump or kill-Jamal-Khashoggi MBS or media mogul Rupert Murdoch?
How can we validly criticize the actions of anyone who is Jewish, Muslim, Black, Chinese, transgender, homeless, disabled, old, etc. if we will automatically be called antisemitic, anti-Muslim, racist, xenophobic, homophobic, classist, ableist, ageist, etc. If we are not able to validly criticize actions—I'm not talking about personal identity—then our society is really in deep trouble. We all belong to some targeted group. I respect people who criticize my actions, and I appreciate their engagement with me. I feel they are treating me with a level of respect because they aren't ignoring me.
K.R. in Oconomowoc, WI, writes: Why would StopAntisemitism give the Antisemite of the Year award to Ye instead of people are probably more antisemitic? Because he has a huge audience (in the news) from being famous, of course. I don't feel like antisemitism really had a face and Ye became that guy. So I actually think it made sense.
H.R. in Cudahy, WI, writes: As a non-scientist who has been lurking on MedTwitter for the last 2 years, I want to say that the censoring of misinformation/disinformation is more complex than what one might imagine. Along with nonsense spread by anti-vaxxers, Twitter has been also teeming with misinformation spread by COVID alarmists. From these accounts, I've learned that COVID will exhaust T-cells, weaken our immunity, that we can have long COVID and not know it, and that the well-known epidemiological concept of "immunity gap" or "immunity debt" is a false, made-up term. Hybrid immunity (combination of immunity from vaccination and prior infection) is also seen as a fairy tale by these folks. These accounts, some of which are the work of well-known doctors, have also treated us to alarmist predictions about monkeypox (it's going to spread through schools!) and never apologized when their hysteria didn't come to pass.
Unfortunately, some of the worst of these offenders have very large followings and have become go-to commenters for mainstream press. For this reason, I am likely to doubt much of the COVID information available from The New York Times, and even my beloved Washington Post. In these times, Twitter clicks have informed legacy media, and scientific debate has not been served.
M.P. in San Francisco, CA, writes: I would ask you to re-evaluate your editorial policy towards inclusion of quotes, photos and other content hosted on Twitter.
I realize that content hosted on Twitter is the work of the author who tweeted, and not that of an editorial board as found at traditional "news" outlets such as Fox News or The New York Post. However, Elon Musk has taken significant steps to gut content moderation, among several other deplorable actions. Quoting tweets (with the associated links) on your site only helps drive traffic to Twitter, helping to continue the viability of the platform and by extension Musk's mission to create platform for spreading disinformation and hate.
P.S. in Plano, TX, writes: J.S. in Durham is correct that cryptocurrency is fabricated out of whole cloth, and you are incorrect that the idea behind crypto is sound.
Actual currencies are valuable for three primary reasons:
- They are able to be reliably exchanged, meaning it is possible to transfer the currency to other people, and those other people can be sure they are not accepting counterfeit money which they will be unable to later exchange with others.
- They provide a reliable store of value, meaning it is possible to hold onto the currency and, when you later go to use it, have it be worth about as much as it was when you got it.
- They provide a unit of measurement, meaning it is possible to use the currency as an accounting unit to calculate how much of the currency is appropriate to exchange for a good or service. You have to be able to think things like, "I make $10/hour, so if I buy a bus pass for $15 and save 2 hours of time, I'm coming out ahead," because you can't use something as money if you can't figure out how much it's worth.
Cryptocurrencies meet only the first criterion, which is the easiest criterion to meet. Go stamp rocks with your face and threaten to punch anyone else who stamps rocks with your face in the face, and you have a potential medium of exchange. That's not hard. Getting people to trust that your face-rocks will keep their value is hard. Getting people to think in terms of your face-rocks when evaluating the values of things they want to buy or sell is hard.
Because of network effects, there is usually only one circulating currency in a society. That means, to succeed as a currency, you generally have to displace the old currency. Some countries have found themselves unable to displace the existing circulation of widely trusted foreign currencies like the U.S. Dollar and Euro and therefore have been unable to establish their own currencies. There is no credible reason to believe crypto backers can succeed at a task many nations find daunting. Since the alleged value of cryptocurrencies is tied to their potential as currencies, that means cryptocurrencies are intrinsically worthless. Their market values are likely to match their fundamental values eventually.
P.S.: Stablecoins are different. They're more like distributed payment networks than currencies. They have more potential.
D.B. in Mountain View, CA, writes: I'm not sure why you thought it was worth mentioning that there are no debts that can only be paid in Bitcoin, but it's not true. Ransomware ransoms can typically only be paid in Bitcoin or other cryptocurrency.
V & Z respond: What we meant is that there are no legal mandates requiring the use of Bitcoin. By contrast, you are legally required to pay certain debts in the U.S. (like your taxes) in U.S. currency.
J.E. in Manhattan, NY, writes: Your answer to J.S. in Durham was quite good; allow me to add a few things about currency that are often overlooked.
The fundamental problem with the cryptocurrency is that it is a deflationary asset—and that's why it probably hasn't much of a future as currency. Essentially, you replicate all the problems that gold, silver (or any other metal-based currency) have and add new ones.
First, Bitcoin is deflationary because there is a limited amount of it. That is, Bitcoin is designed with a fixed number of bitcoins in mind (if I recall correctly it is 21 million). This is not unlike gold or silver; there is a limited amount of the stuff around at any one time.
The reason this was a problem can be illustrated by the panics that occurred in the U.S. financial system in the 19th century as well as during the Great Depression. If you have a certain amount of gold in the country, let's say 50 tons, and you minted into coins so everyone uses it as currency, that means your total money supply is limited by the amount of gold. If no more gold is found for a few years, but the population goes up or your economic activity increases, there is less money to go around. If I want to sell $100 (in gold) worth of wheat, and someone does not have enough money, they can't get any more money to buy it—which means I have to lower the price of the wheat. The same problem arises with silver coinage, and it is why whenever gold strikes happened you had massive (local) inflation.
All this means you have periods of deflation, where prices go down, wages go down, and money becomes more valuable because nobody has any. This is not a good situation because if there isn't enough money in the system, then people and businesses cannot engage in economic activity they would otherwise undertake—hiring workers, for example. Gold-based systems work well enough in near steady-state economies (which is what describes a lot of pre-industrial settings) where the growth was relatively slow and the gold supply could (sometimes) keep pace. But the minute you have an industrial society this becomes harder to do. This is especially true where you have to have government spend money on things like roads, schools, or a military at larger scales.
This is why governments went off of metal standards—even if you were just dealing with population growth, the money supply couldn't keep up. And Bitcoin has the exact same problem.
A lot of Bitcoin enthusiasts will tell you that bitcoins are divisible to any small denomination—you could theoretically have 0.00000001 BTC and still use that. But if you think it through for a moment, you'll see why this doesn't help—if it did, the Great Depression would have been cured immediately by issuing coins for 0.01 cents. It's like saying that if I haven't enough money to buy a car, I can just make change and that will generate enough to buy the car.
Aside from the deflation problem, Bitcoin adds a new wrinkle: For a variety of technical reasons, BTC can't handle transactions at large scales. VISA alone does three orders of magnitude the number of transactions every day that Bitcoin networks process. The reasons have to do with the way Bitcoin's block chains work, but what it means is that if as many people were using Bitcoin as use your average bank debit card, the entire system would come to a screeching halt.
The reason libertarians and their ilk love Bitcoin is the idea that a centralized banking or currency system is bad in itself; gold wasn't centralized either. The thing is, you can't really operate a post-medieval economy that way. Essentially. libertarian understanding of economics is, to put it generously, incomplete a lot of the time, and Bitcoin reflects that.
J.S. in Hillsboro, OR, writes: In response to the letters about coins, you wrote: "[...] during the Civil War there were wooden nickels because all the real nickels had been melted down to make cannon balls."
I'm sure this was meant as a joke, but as a pedantic numismatist, I have to point out that the modern "nickel" five-cent piece was not issued until 1866. Prior to that, the five cent coin was known as a "half dime" and was half the size of the silver dime and used the same alloy.
D.C. in Brentwood, CA, writes: The U.S. shouldn't make any coins that the people wouldn't bend down to pick up off a dirty floor. That's probably a dime. And if the government wants to stop making those, they should be motivated to raise up the poorest so that they're not interested in dirty dimes.
C.J. in Boulder, CO, writes: Gosh, reading those reader comments, you'd think nobody ever got rid of small denomination coins...
Well, in New Zealand they got rid of their 1 cent and 2 cent coins in 1990—they were "demonetized" and so cannot be used in trade. So what happened when you went to buy stuff? If you used a credit card, the cost went down to the penny, but if you used coins, things were rounded to the 5 cents. It didn't seem to bother anybody. At the same time, they replaced $1 and $2 notes with new coins. But they weren't done: The five cent piece (Americans call them nickels, Kiwis didn't) were also removed in 2006, as inflation made them not worth making. I don't think the Kiwis were so attached to these coins that they were eager to make them at a loss. As an infrequent traveler to Aotearoa, it was a bit annoying to dig out coins and find they weren't usable any more.
Making coins in the US at a loss has happened before, too. In addition to the removal of silver from coins in 1964, much earlier in U.S. history, U.S. gold coins had a bit too much gold in them and so they were gathered up and melted down, which makes the remaining ones from that era worth quite a bit. Apparently it isn't worth melting down the pennies and nickels we have now. Incidentally, for 1965-1967 the US Mint didn't put mint marks on coins (there were three mints in operation at the time) in order to discourage collecting the coins, which might have produced a coin shortage. Today, almost the exact opposite game is played, as multiple versions of a quarter or dollar coin are produced every year for collectors to collect. This makes the government money, as they cost less than 25 cents or $1 to make. Though you do wonder about the wisdom of a few design changes to the nickel when that was a loss leader.
A brief history of New Zealand's currency changes is here.
L.S-H. in Naarden, The Netherlands, writes: The proposal by A.B. in Wendell to introduce yet more coins into U.S. money circulation seems to not make any sense (or should I say it just makes more "cents"?).
A.B. properly points out that there has been talk in the U.S. for years of getting rid of pennies. Time to cut the cord. While this would be quite a change (no pun intended) for the American populace, I think it's much better than minting new coins so people could pay for a 99-cent item with exact change. (Seriously, who does that? Just pay with $1 and leave the penny in the donation container at the register.)
As I'm sure (V) is aware, we here in the Netherlands only use coins in the amounts of 5 cents, 10 cents, 20 cents and 50 cents, as well as 1-euro and 2-euro coins. (We also have euro bills in the denominations of 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 200 and 500 euros—but 100 and above are not regularly used.) When the (physical) euro was introduced on January 1, 2002, there were also 1-cent and 2-cent coins (which remain legal tender) but they have not been in use here since at least 2004 (note that Germany—ever precise—continues to use 2-cent euro coins). Total sums, not the prices of individual items, are rounded to the nearest 5 cents; this can be either up or down. Some large supermarket chains have even studied the composition of an "average" supermarket basket in order to be able to round up the total to the nearest 5 cents (and gaining money, as opposed to rounding down and losing money), and have priced individual items most often present in the "average" supermarket basket accordingly. However, electronic payment by debit card is widely used and in this case the totals are, of course, precise to the €0.01.
Everyone quickly got used to the rounding, not the least because it reduced the number of different types of coins in your wallet. Note that the previously used Dutch guilder had more differentiation in terms of size and color of the various guilder coins, which made it much easier to differentiate a 5-cent (stuiver), 10-cent (dubbeltje) or 25-cent (kwartje) guilder coin. There were even coins of 1 guilder, 2½ guilders and 5 guilders. The euro coins are pretty standardized, varying only by each country's figurehead on one side, the color of the outer edge on 1-euro and 2-euro coins, and the color of the face of the coins.
H.B. in Nova Scotia, Canada, writes: Some of the letters you ran centered around the suggestion that the U.S. abandon the penny. I live in Canada, and we did just that about 10 years ago. While somewhat sentimental people (like me) were concerned about it, within days of the event almost the entire population said, "We should have done it years ago!" The only downside was not having enough pennies to be able to play a good game of Rummoli.
Transactions are simple. Electronic transactions (e.g., credit-card payments, bank transactions, etc.) are still to the nearest cent. With cash payments, change is rounded up or down to the nearest 5 cents.
This completed a transition of Canadian currency over a few decades. The first step, 35 years ago, was to replace the one-dollar bill with a dollar coin. Since it had a loon (waterfowl) on the back, it was instantly called "the loonie."
Some years later, the two-dollar bill (which Canadians used far more than their American counterparts) was replaced by a different, fancier coin. It took about 10 milliseconds and everyone was calling it "the toonie."
Later on, we replaced our paper banknotes with polymer plastic ones. They're full of anti-counterfeiting features (holograms, windows, wires, etc.) and are darn near indestructible. Exception: While they go through a clothes washer just fine, don't run them through the dryer on "high."
So, I'd recommend that you take a timid first step and get rid of the pesky penny.
L.T.G. in Bexley, OH, writes: I was a little surprised that the election of 1916 didn't make your list of elections where the loser might have done better than the winner. Both the incumbent, Democrat Woodrow Wilson, and the Republican, Charles Evans Hughes, were intelligent, thoughtful progressives. In domestic policy there would likely have been little difference between them. But Wilson's second term was dominated by World War I and its aftermath. Hughes was a successful administrator as Governor of New York and he was a devoted internationalist, so there is no reason to think that he would have prosecuted the war less successfully than Wilson. Unlike Wilson, however, he was not a racist, so the re-segregation of the Federal workforce and armed services that began during Wilson's first term would have ceased.
More important, Hughes was in robust health—after the war, he served as Secretary of State for Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge and then as Chief Justice of the United States from 1930 to 1941, remaining vigorous to the end. Wilson was not. It has been argued that Wilson either had a series of strokes or a severe case of the flu in 1918-19. Whatever the cause, by the time of negotiating the Treaty of Versailles, he was not the same person who had earlier proposed generous terms. In pursuit of the League of Nations, he gave in to the demands of David Lloyd George and Georges Clemenceau, with the draconian Treaty as the result. It isn't a great stretch to say that the Treaty of Versailles paved the way for the rise of Hitler and the horrors of the Second World War. Nor did Wilson get the United States Senate to ratify the Treaty and its League of Nations, in part thanks to his unwillingness even to consider any of the proposed Republican reservations. And let us not forget the Red Raids that did so much damage to freedom in the U.S.
In contrast, given his masterly conduct of the Washington Naval Conference in 1921 and 1922, Hughes would almost certainly have been able to secure less punitive terms in the Treaty of Versailles. As a Republican internationalist, it also seems likely that he would have been able to bring the U.S. into the League of Nations or something similar. It's hard to predict how the post-war world might have been affected by a relatively reasonable peace treaty and an engaged United States, but the result would have been less favorable conditions for totalitarianism to take hold in Europe. That seems to me sufficient to make Wilson's defeat of Hughes one of the most calamitous presidential elections in our history. (And Hughes almost did win, and might well have done so but for a misstep in California—but that's for another exercise in counterfactual history.)
M.S. in Phoenix, AZ, writes: Your answer on the inevitability of the Civil War following the acquisitions of the Mexican-American War was dead on. However, your comment that the area could have remained sparsely populated requires a bit more nuance.
I am a descendant of people who pre-existed and remained in the area following the war: Mexicans and Mormons (dad's side is Mexican; mom's is Mormon—not Latter-day Saint; the Utah church can say whatever it wants about their name and preferences, but there are many millions of us who maintain cultural affinity with our people without formal membership).
In both cases, the populations of New Mexico Territory and Deseret would have qualified both territories for immediate statehood. However, the Spanish-language dominance of New Mexico and the polygamist straight-up weirdness of the eventual Utah Territory were deemed un-American. Statehood was withheld until 1912 and 1893, respectively.
Whether or not it was justified to withhold statehood from a (bitter) conquered people with a vastly different culture and a group of religious radicals who, at the time, had the destruction of the United States as a literal matter of doctrine is a matter for debate. But the fact remains that there were two potential states in the Mexican Cession that were, rightly or wrongly, subjected to sometimes-tyrannical federal control for many years. And that's before we consider the substantial Native American population that my ancestors joined Americans in actively oppressing.
C.J. in Redondo Beach, CA, writes: You wrote: "Once the U.S. went to war with Mexico, there was little question that the U.S. would win."
Many generals and statesmen in Europe did in fact think Mexico would win. The U.S. didn't have much of a standing army (though it quickly grew through volunteers) and Europeans didn't think much of our generalship either. It's much tougher to win an offensive war than a defensive one. Of course, Winfield Scott was an excellent commander (Zach Taylor wasn't too bad either), so much so that Wellington, vanquisher of Napoleon, said he was the greatest living commander of the day at war's end.
We also had great artillery, perhaps even superior to European guns—and the war was arguably won by the artillery bombardments. This was really the first time Europe realized the growing power of the United States.
V & Z respond: The Europeans of that era often reached the wrong conclusions when it came to military outcomes. U.S. Grant, who was in a far better position to judge, thought the war was not a fair fight, and that U.S. victory was always a certainty. And the fact is that of the 16 or so significant engagements of the war, the Mexicans won... one. Maybe.
S.Ó.C. in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, writes: C.J. in Redondo Beach wrote that James K. Polk "allowed us to ultimately be super power we became. There is no way the United States assumes leadership of the free world without the vast resources contained in the West."
Does this really sound like a good thing? From propping up fascist dictators, to overthrowing democratically elected leftist governments, from dropping the most destructive bombs imaginable on a nation, to completely destabilising the Middle East. I am confused how the United States "leadership" (iron-fisted control) is a plus.
A.B. in Lichfield, England, UK, writes: You're no doubt half-expecting a minor barrage of tongue-in-cheek e-mails defending Vlad the Impaler from your claim that he was 'really hardcore' in comparison to Genghis Khan, but writing as likely one of the few site readers to have eaten dinner in the restaurant that now occupies the birthplace of Vlad III Țepeș 'the Impaler' in Sighișoara, Romania, I think it's worth putting a word in for the 15th-century Voivoide of Wallachia.
I'm not going to attempt to defend Vlad from his reputation for cruelty, a reputation that seems to have been widespread within his own lifetime (so no real risk of presentism here), and Vlad himself provided the highly precise figure of 23,844 Turks that he impaled at Târgoviște in 1462, deliberately leaving them behind for the Turks to discover—not to mention the tens of thousands of Turks and Bulgarians he massacred in his preceding invasion of Bulgaria. And then there's that incident where he nailed turbans to the heads of a group of visiting Turkish ambassadors who'd refused to doff those turbans in respect, and then...
Actually, I give up. He just wasn't a very nice person. But it's worth noting that, at the time, in the immediate aftermath of the 1453 fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans, most of Christian Europe—Catholic and Orthodox—was enthusiastic about having Vlad III fighting on their side. To paraphrase a quote that's been variously attributed to FDR, Harry S. Truman, and others, Vlad the Impaler might have been a son of a bitch, but at least he was their son of a bitch.
And yes, of course I had steak (pun intended) in the birthplace restaurant; rare, with wine.
L.B. in Savannah, GA, writes: The Republican Party has definitely taken a turn toward extremism if otherwise far-right politicians like John McCain and Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) are characterized as "RINOs." For a while, I've noticed conservatives employing "socialist" or "communist" as a crass insult, to describe people who would hardly be recognized as such by Karl Marx or Lenin. I've started to describe their definition as "a communist is anyone to the left of Jefferson Davis." Most people know who he is and what he represents, and the left/right divide in his time was recent enough to be meaningful today.
V & Z respond: You're right. The next time we have need of that construction, Jeff Davis is an even better choice than Vlad the Impaler.
C.J. in Lowell, MA, writes: I'm writing to say how strongly I disagree with your item about dismantling Confederate statues in Richmond.
As someone who is very interested in and, if I do say so myself, knowledgeable about history I very much enjoy seeing representations of the past in public spaces. In an age of seemingly rampant historical illiteracy, I will take any excuse to have historical figures where average people not inclined to open a book or visit a museum will see them. If I notice a statue and it's possible to do so, I will cross the street to get a closer look. If it's someone I'm less familiar with, I may look up that person to see what he was about. Even if I discover that the person was pretty awful, at least I learned something new and that's always a plus.
I've lived in Virginia and they have different history. I have no patience for the Lost Cause, but neither am I a fan of practicing damnatio memoriae against anybody with whom we disagree or does not share our values, especially when they lived a long time ago, can't defend themselves, and who knows what attitudes they may have had if they actually lived today. I am of Scottish and Welsh descent and England's King Edward I treated both peoples pretty brutally, yet I would have no problem seeing a statue of him. We really need to stop this o-my-virgin-eyes attitude about statues of those we don't like or make us uncomfortable. The Left needs to stop trying to take down statues and the Right needs to stop trying to ban books. It's a very diverse country in all sorts of ways and we all need to learn to live with the fact that there are ideas out there with which we viscerally disagree. The men portrayed in Richmond are very significant in the annals of our collective history, even though we were divided for a few years in the 1860s.
J.M. in Portland, OR, writes: Kudos to J.L. in Walnut Creek for a truly epic "December to Rhymember" effort. What put it over the top, in my mind, was the rhyme:
Would the right at least stop acting as the Tsar's pied piper troubadours?
And join instead democracy's guarantors?
T.G. in College Place, WA, writes: I just want to share my gratitude for the epic adaptation of Poe's "The Raven."
I have read it repeatedly (often in my best Vincent Price voice) and shared it far and wide. I love all the limericks by all of the very creative people, but this piece by J.L. in Walnut Creek is a whole step up. I would love to read more long-form from this excellent satirist.
A.H. in Newberg, OR, writes: As your closing line on Tuesday, you wrote: "We don't know if critical verse helps any more than naming the 2022 Antisemite of the Year, but it can't hurt. And we continue to welcome submissions, of course."
OK, I am a politics nerd (degrees in poli sci and econ, 1969), work construction (fight with engineers and architects daily) and have been elected and appointed locally (local battles with freedumb fighters). I can't remember when I started reading E-V.com. But when I open my 'puter in the morning, after I check my pulse, E-V.com is my first destination. I come here for your insight and wisdom and look forward to your snark, sly asides, weird references to obscure movies and/or songs. Gallimaufry, Schadenfreude/Freudenfreude Friday and reader submissions are the dessert that I look forward to daily. And now Rhymember is the cherry on top of the whipped cream on the sundae, the dark fudge frosting on the German chocolate cake, the vanilla ice cream on the Georgia Pecan Pie, that subtle cheese to cleanse the palate, that malty Oregon craft brewed Hefeweizen after a hard day's work, playing with my great-grandson, holding her hand and watching the sunset with my spouse. The near perfect ending to a refreshing day. I ain't no poet, I am not going to Disneyland, and I didn't stay at a Holiday Inn.
V & Z respond: We appreciate the kind words. But we print this because it explains what we're trying to do. Staying on top of politics these days is tough, from an emotional standpoint, since there is so much unpleasantness. So, we add a little dessert to try to lighten things up a bit.
D.M. from Burnsville, MN, writes: I never thought I would ever see Andy Tanenbaum trying to sit on a backless chair.
J.K. in Short Hills, NJ, writes: Since you asked the question of whether anyone from Stanford be allowed to Tweet, ever, I, as an alumnus of the university, say absolutely not. We're not worthy. We "only" were the cradle of Silicon Valley, have 21 Nobel Laureates currently on the faculty, have won 130 NCAA Division 1 titles (10 more than #2 UCLA), and have an alumna, who is a fellow classmate of mine, who will be the next President of Harvard. We certainly can do better.
V & Z respond: This is encouraging. After all, the first step is recognizing that you have a problem.