Quote:Filmed in the hollows of Appalachia, on native lands of the Upper Midwest and in West Coast migrant camps, Class of ’27 presents distinct yet complementary personal stories from places too often ignored in America. Each of the three portraits demonstrates that children from distressed communities, despite their circumstances, are more likely to grow into productive and civically engaged adults if they receive support in their earliest years. Committed to supporting the children’s potential, each community is a place of hope, inspiration and resilience. 

http://worldchannel.org/programs/episode...ass-of-27/

Both of my Silent grandmothers ('28 and '34 cohorts) have been having health problems lately and I know my time with them may be limited. This and also the fact that most of the newspaper obituaries are Silent has hit home to me how their generation is now deep in old age and is slowly beginning to leave us (in spite of a few active Silent in public life like Bernie Sanders, Nancy Pelosi, John McCain, etc). Has anyone else had to deal with the decline or passing of aging Silent family members? What do you think will be the ultimate legacy of a generation that has often been overlooked by historians?

With its creditors at its heels and its coffers depleted, Puerto Rico sought what is essentially bankruptcy relief in federal court on Wednesday, the first time in history that an American state or territory had taken the extraordinary measure.
The action sent Puerto Rico, whose approximately $123 billion in debt and pension obligations far exceeds the $18 billion bankruptcy filed by Detroit in 2013, to uncharted ground.

While the court proceedings could eventually make the island solvent for the first time in decades, the more immediate repercussions will likely be grim: Government workers will forgo pension money, public health and infrastructure projects will go wanting, and the “brain drain” the island has been suffering as professionals move to the mainland could intensify.
Puerto Rico is “unable to provide its citizens effective services” because of the crushing weight of its debt, according to a filing on Wednesday by the federal board that has supervised the island’s financial affairs since last year.

The total includes about $74 billion in bond debt and $49 billion in unfunded pension obligations.
While many of Puerto Rico’s circumstances are unique, its case is also a warning sign for many American states and municipalities — such as Illinois and Philadelphia — that are facing some of the same strains, including rising pension costs, crumbling infrastructure, departing taxpayers and credit downgrades that make it more expensive to raise money. Historically, Puerto Rico was barred from declaring bankruptcy. In the end, however, financial reality trumped the statutes, and Congress enacted a law last year allowing bankruptcy-like proceedings.
Puerto Rico has been in a painful recession since 2006, and previous governments dug it deeper into debt by borrowing to pay operating expenses, year after year. For the last two years, officials have been seeking assistance from Washington, testifying before stern congressional committees and even making fast-track oral arguments before the United States Supreme Court.


https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/03/busin....html?_r=0

I predict political consequences far beyond Puerto Rico. What do you think?

https://www.the-american-interest.com/20...shmen-are/

Quote:The Chronicle of Higher Education has a new web tool for exploring trends in the attitudes and opinions of incoming American college freshmen as measured by UCLA’s nationwide freshman survey. During the survey’s lifetime, the demographics of higher education have changed significantly—a larger share of high school graduates (especially women) attend college today than in 1972. So it’s impossible to say for sure which changes are the result of the UCLA survey’s changing sample composition, and which are the result of broader cultural shifts among young people. Nonetheless, few of the changes say particularly encouraging things about the future of America’s middle and upper classes. Here are some of the results we found interesting...



https://www.the-american-interest.com/20...shmen-are/

http://gnxp.nofe.me/2017/05/03/millennia...ensorship/?

Quote:There’s a specter haunting the academy. The specter of “red guards” destroying lives and tearing down Western civilization and all its accomplishments in the interests of antinomian leveling impulses through denunciations and purges. (here is the latest instance; the whole thing leaves me yawning, because too few people have the courage or gall to stand up for what they know is right, so this will happen again and again and again)
I am plain in my view that this is a problem. Some of my friends in the academy agree, but in the end they make different choices about priorities. Others don’t think this is a problem at all (and honestly, they clearly think that free speech is more about speech that they think is acceptable). Ultimately I don’t think that this will end well; I’m most certainly going to be on the other side of people whom I consider friends if and when the end of our current liberal democratic order collapses of its own contradictions.
But this isn’t about that. Rather, it’s about an aspect of it: are Millennials, those born after 1980, who go to college more opposed to freedom of speech than previous generations? Is this what’s driving the flair up of campus events? The answer, as clear in the GSS is that Millennials who have gone to college are not more censorious...




http://gnxp.nofe.me/2017/05/03/millennia...ensorship/?

From the WaPo
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powe...bcd29a1522

Glad to see McAuliffe on this list!

-- The New York Times, looking at the vast number of Democrats who are actively taking steps to prepare 2020 presidential campaigns, notes that the list of contenders may ultimately be the largest since 1976, when Democrats lined up after Watergate for a nomination seen as offering a short path to the White House. From Alexander Burns and Jonathan Martin: “In a largely leaderless party, two distinct groups are emerging, defined mostly by age and national stature. On one side are three potential candidates approaching celebrity status who would all be over 70 years old on Election Day: Mr. Biden, and Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. All three are fiery speakers inclined toward economic populism, and they have urged the Democratic Party to shift in that direction since its defeat in November.” From their story:

• Sanders is already planning his first return trip to early-voting Iowa in July, and plans to be the keynote speaker at the convention of a social justice organization that works closely with his political group, Our Revolution.
  
• Warren has mapped out an intensive speaking schedule: “Last weekend, she traveled to Detroit to address the annual fund-raising dinner for the local chapter of the N.A.A.C.P. She has used the release of her latest book, ‘This Fight Is Our Fight,’ to travel the country in recent weeks. This week, she will be the guest of honor at a fund-raising gala for Emily’s List, the Democratic women’s group, and in June, she will be the final speaker at a daylong liberal organizing meeting in San Francisco spearheaded by Susie Tompkins Buell, a prominent Democratic donor.”
  
• “In the Senate alone, as much as a quarter of the Democrats’ 48-member caucus are thought to be giving at least a measure of consideration to the 2020 race, among them Cory Booker of New Jersey, Kirsten E. Gillibrand of New York, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota andKamala Harris of California. All are closer to 40 than 80.”
  
• The fact Trump could win has emboldened other dark horses: “Representative Seth Moulton of Massachusetts, a 38-year-old veteran of the Iraq war who has been a pointed critic of Mr. Trump, has not ruled out running in private conversations. High-profile city executives — like Mayor Eric Garcetti of Los Angeles, 46, and Mayor Mitch Landrieu of New Orleans, 56, who did a tour of cable shows last week after overseeing the initial removal of Confederate statues from his city — may also consider the race. … Among Democratic governors, Andrew M. Cuomo of New York and Terry McAuliffe of Virginia are seen as especially active in laying groundwork for 2020. Former Gov. Martin O’Malley of Maryland, who ran in 2016, has already returned to early primary states to campaign for Democrats.”
  

In any given year I will often reflect on past years, 12, 24, 36 .... and nowadays ... gak! ... 48 years in the past.

Today I reflect on 1981, like this year, Year of the Rooster.

I entered the year age 17 and exited age 18. I graduated from High School and started my Freshman Year of Uni.

Whereas in High School, we were in this somewhat isolated world, wondering if our punk / wave, our wrap around shades, our skater vibe, our attitudes, were just another campus clique, at uni, and in the adult world, there arose a larger consciousness about it all.

I went down to SoCal for uni. What I'd barely tasted here in the 2nd tier Bay Area become total immersion. Talk about the punk/wave revolution. I discovered KROQ, small venue shows (at the few that had all ages shows), and so many cultural variations.

Meanwhile, my roommate in the dorm was a South Central LA homie. We compared quite a few notes. We also had on our hall some other cats who brought in early hip hop, lots of lesser known Rasta tunes, and so much more.

We didn't quite have a generational identity, but it was clear by then the 70s were long gone. Disco, are you kidding? Even when I was among the black group there was no such thing.

That year was so transformational for me. It really was my point of departure on the journey I still find myself on.

I'm about out of time for posting tonight but will continue later.

Until then, enjoy:

Trump’s White House Family Affair Looks A Lot Like The Most Corrupt Nations In The World

Presidential advisers Ivanka Trump and husband Jared Kushner are still connected to their own businesses.

WASHINGTON ― For decades, the United States has worked with other countries to eliminate nepotism. There’s a good reason for that: Nepotism breeds corruption.

“You’ve seen it in countries all over the world where they’ve appointed family members, whether it’s their son, daughter, in-laws — it provides for tremendous opportunities for corruption,” said Shruti Shah, an international anti-corruption expert at Coalition for Integrity, a good-government nonprofit. “People who want to curry favor find their way to provide favors to family members as a way to get closer to the person in power.”

But President Donald Trump, who has entrusted more power to his family members than any recent president, puts that agenda at risk. “I like nepotism,” Trump told Larry King in 2006, the year he replaced his “Apprentice” costar, Trump company executive Carolyn Kepcher, with his daughter Ivanka Trump.

Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner, hold broad portfolios at the White House that include everything from diplomacy with China, the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, women’s issues, cybersecurity and reinventing government.

They determine who else has power in the Trump administration. Trump sidelined Steve Bannon, a close adviser, after he butted up against his daughter and adviser-in-law, and he elevated former Goldman Sachs employees Gary Cohn and Dina Powell based in part on their friendly relationships with Ivanka and her husband. And the couple act as presidential emissaries, with Kushner traveling to Iraq at the suggestion of the Pentagon and Ivanka heading to Germany.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trum...mg00000009

Every generation have their own subset of sexual triggers. What I've seen within our risk-averse generation is a propensity to conclude the safe-sex/consent agenda with a full-fledged fetishization of comfort and security. Enter "Adult Baby/Diaper Lovers".

I'm a diaper lover myself and nothing can feel more safe and secure than wearing something meant to soak up fluids. (No scat though. That's gross.) I know Baby-Boomers (and sometimes late Silents and early genX) like to use the Adult Diaper as a comedic gag to show the lows of getting older, but myself only sees it as a piece of clothing like anything else. Although meant for the bedroom as any other fetish equipment for that matter.

A study on AB/DL have revealed that it have some link to Autism, since that sometimes includes a subset of touch sensations different from normal people. And Autism as a diagnosis didn't become an everyday disorder untill the 1990's, and Millennials were the first generation to get that before puberty, which means their sense of security is stuck in their pre-pubescent years, which can explain their unorthodox risk-aversion.

Anything else that's worth mentioning here?

https://www.city-journal.org/html/french...15125.html

Quote:The real-estate market in any sophisticated city reflects deep aspirations and fears. If you had a feel for its ups and downs—if you understood, say, why young parents were picking this neighborhood and drunks wound up relegated to that one—you could make a killing in property, but you also might be able to pronounce on how society was evolving more generally. In 2016, a real-estate developer even sought—and won—the presidency of the United States.

In France, a real-estate expert has done something almost as improbable. Christophe Guilluy calls himself a geographer. But he has spent decades as a housing consultant in various rapidly changing neighborhoods north of Paris, studying gentrification, among other things. And he has crafted a convincing narrative tying together France’s various social problems—immigration tensions, inequality, deindustrialization, economic decline, ethnic conflict, and the rise of populist parties. Such an analysis had previously eluded the Parisian caste of philosophers, political scientists, literary journalists, government-funded researchers, and party ideologues...

https://www.city-journal.org/html/french...15125.html