Daily Archives: January 7, 2022

The Land Commission collection contains millions of records that can be seen as a critical part of the DNA of rural land ownership in Ireland.

The institution was established in 1881 under Liberal prime minister William Ewart Gladstone in response to the Land War of 1879, which started out as a drive for rent concessions before becoming a campaign against landlordism led by the Land League.

The commissions first function was to fix rents that were binding on both landlord and tenant. That reflected agitation for demands known as the three Fs: fair rents; fixity of tenure; and free sale of an interest in a tenancy.

But it was also given powers to buy up landlords estates with a view to transferring the ownership to farmers who could draw down loans from it for part of the price. This became its main work, heralding more than a century of operations before it was finally dissolved in the late 1990s and its records taken under the control of the Department of Agriculture.

The commission typically sold to estate tenants, says Conor Gallagher, who oversees the files in the department. They were supported in purchasing the land by advances from the government which then they repaid as an annuity, he says.

The records are extensive. You will be able to say who was the tenant on a particular field, says Gallagher. Wed know their names, their family connections, how long theyve been on the land. So its a huge repository of information.

Over time, the impact was seismic. As the imperial order shattered and momentum gathered towards independence, the commission processed most of the land of Ireland.

The story, at its most basic, is the story of a revolution in the ownership of land in Ireland, that is the vast transfer of wealth that took place on this island, says Paul Rouse, professor of history at UCD.

Land which had previously been held by a few thousand landlords was ultimately transferred to the ownership of tenant farmers, ordinary people around Ireland.

The records show how the British authorities sought to confront demands for independence which they called the Irish question by dealing with the land question.

But they show also successive Irish governments managed the ownership of rural lands, a key focus of the nationalist project.

Rouse says the files reflect everything from Big House Ireland and the lives of the elite to the attempts of the very poorest people of rural Ireland to gain enough land to secure the future of their families.

More:

Land Commission data revealing of rural ownership in Ireland - The Irish Times

When does a country stop being a country?

This critical moment takes place before a civil war breaks out or an official ceremony of dissolution is held. At some point, the citizens of the country stop thinking of themselves as members of a common association. At some point, the mystic chords of memory transmogrify into mutual disgust and incomprehension.

At that moment, the us is over.

For Yugoslavia, that moment came sometime in the late 1980s when the ubiquitous phrase brotherhood and unitybratstvo i jedinstvono longer held sway among the majority. Nationalist populists were coming to the fore in Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, and other republics. Economic gaps between those republics were growing untenable. Cultural practices increasingly diverged, and buried resentments resurfaced.

Actual civil war would come later, in 1991. But before Yugoslavia ceased to exist on paper, before it was extinguished on the battlefield, it disappeared from peoples hearts.

Here in the United States, weve not yet reached another Fort Sumter moment. But perhaps were at the Harpers Ferry stage with the January 6 insurrection serving the same function as John Browns thwarted raid on a federal arsenal in 1859.

Browns raid came 18 months before the start of the Civil War. We are now observing the one-year anniversary of the January 6 insurrection.

Is there no longer an us in the U.S.?

Deep Divisions

This country is no stranger to deep divisions, which culminated in the Civil War and have persisted ever since: North-South, urban-rural, Black-white, rich-poor, coasts versus heartland, liberal against conservative. In the 2000s, these divisions crystallized into Red vs. Blue, which was more than just predominantly Republican states squaring off against largely Democratic ones. Political polarization was coming to resemble nothing less than the Blue vs. Grey standoff that tore the country apart 150 years earlier. Barack Obamas appeal to a Purple America seems impossibly quaint in light of what has happened since.

Indeed, what had once been a matter of partisan competition has become something a great deal more serious. It is no longer simply a question of disagreements over what proportion of the federal budget should go into which pot or who should be empowered to make those decisions. It isnt a matter of governing ideology or judicial philosophy.

The current debate is not actually a debate. The two sides dont even share a common political language or understanding of recent events.

The defeat of Donald Trump in 2020 was supposed to put an end to Americas official foray into delusional politics at the national level. The quashing of the January 6 insurrectionand the brief, near-unanimous revulsion among members of Trumps party for that violenceprovided some hope that the fever dream of an illiberal takeover had passed.

The last year has demonstrated quite the opposite. Trumpism, which started out as a simple-minded rejection of the liberal status quo, has become something else: a thorough rejection of democratic procedures and a darkly conspiratorial hatred of federal power. This corrosive ideology is now orthodoxy within the Republican Party, and that party remains popular enoughand ruthless enoughto win back control of Congress this year and, potentially, the White House in 2024.

Those who adhere to Trumpism have recast the insurrectionists as heroespatriots who love their country, in the words of Virginia State Senator Amanda Chaseand are determined to block all efforts to determine who was ultimately responsible for what happened that day.

Consider the recent congressional debate over the investigation into the events of January 6 and whether Trumps former chief of staff Mark Meadows should be charged with criminal contempt for refusing to showing up to testify. Once a member of Congress, Meadows is now flouting the institutions authority.

But that act of disrespect pales in comparison with the support Meadows refusal has generated among congressional members of Trumps party. When the issue came up for congressional debate, Trumps lapdogs talked about immigration, Hunter Biden, mask mandates, in short everything but Meadows contempt of Congress.

When the Republican members did address the matter at hand, Amy Davidson Sorkin writes in The New Yorker, it was in startlingly vitriolic terms.

Representative Mary Miller, of Illinois, said that the committees work is evil and un-American. Yvette Herrell, of New Mexico, said that it is setting the country on its way to tyranny. Jordan called the committee an expression of the Democrats lust for power. And, inevitably, Marjorie Taylor Greene, of Georgia, said that its proceedings prove that communists are in charge of the House. Its tempting to dismiss such rhetoric as overblown, but Congress has become an ever more uneasy place. Last week, Steny Hoyer, the House Majority Leader, sent the Capitol Police Board a letter asking for clarification on the rules about where representatives can carry weapons in the Capitol.

Evil, tyranny, lust for power, communists: thats just the kind of language that prompted a pro-Trump rally on January 6 to become a mob intent on upending an election and re-installing a president determined to rule until the end of days. Nor is the rhetoric marginal within the Republican Party. In the vote on the House floor to charge Meadows, only two Republicans supported the measure: Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, who will be retiring after this session, and Liz Cheney, who has practically been drummed out of the party for her stand against Trump.

Republican lawmakers take these positions because they can safely count on the support of their constituents (those that havent fled the party already because of Trump). According to recent polling, nearly 70 percent of Trump voters think that Biden was not legitimately elected president in 2020. Worse, 40 percent of Republicans believe that violence against the government can be justified. Its no surprise that, in 2021, DC authorities recorded nearly 10,000 threats made against members of Congress and the Capitol itself, the highest number to date.

Its no longer a war between Democrats and Republicans, one Republican voter told The Washington Post: Its a war between good and evil.

Outright Defiance

A war of this nature requires a very clear drawing of lines. That has taken place in Congress, with the Republicans united in their opposition to anything Biden proposes. The divisions are even starker at the state level where the defiance of the administration goes well beyond the procedural.

The most egregious example of state pushback has been around the Biden administrations attempts to boost vaccination rates against COVID-19. Republican-led states have banned vaccine mandates in defiance of Washington. Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt even went so far as to fire the four-star commander of his states National Guard who supported the Pentagons vaccine mandate and replace him with a one-star lackey who shares the governors spirit of resistance.

By mid-December, 19 states had pushed through 34 laws restricting access to voting, setting up a confrontation with a federal establishment committed to ensuring free and fair elections.

Texas has led the way in criminalizing abortion, passing a bill that deputizes individuals to enforce the law by filing civil suits against abortion providers. More than 20 states have prepared legislation to ban abortion as soon as the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, which the Trump-packed Court seems increasingly likely to do next summer.

The residents of Florida and Massachusetts speak the same language, use the same currency, and salute the same flag. On practically everything else, from gun control and environmental standards to immigration and schooling, they could already be living in different countries.

Lets be clear: the refusal to accept federal authority doesnt come only from one side. During the Trump years, California rejected a number of federal policies, most notably on environmental issues. Liberal constituencies also defied Trumps deportation orders, efforts to undermine Obamacare, and attempts to reopen the economy even as the pandemic continued to rage. At that time, plenty of liberalsmyself includedagreed that a hitherto political confrontation had become a stark stand-off between good and evil.

Its hard to imagine any presidential candidate taking office in 2024 and healing this rift. As long as the two parties continue to aspire to take control of the federal bureaucracyand, more to the point, federal resourcesone side wont kick over the game board and walk away from the match. The problem arises when a major party, like the Republicans, develops such a disgust for federal authority that it decides not to play the game any longer.

Too Little, Too Late

In 1990, the Yugoslav government legalized opposition parties. It authorized democratic elections at the republic level. New efforts were underway to liberalize the federal government. Here was an opportunity to reinvent the country, to infuse bratstvo i jedinstvo with a new participatory energy. Membership in the European Union beckoned, as long as the country could get its act together. Previous Yugoslav governments kept the country from spinning apart through sheer force. In this hypothetical democratic future, the citizens would voluntarily cleave together.

Instead, the citizens voted to cleave apart. Those democratic elections at the republic level produced governments in Croatia and Slovenia committed to seceding from the country. Democracy ended up being a brief prelude to civil war and the end of Yugoslavia. Some of the successor states would join the EU, while others are still waiting in line 30 years later.

You can blame the short-sighted decision to hold democratic elections at a republic level before the federal level. Or you could argue that Yugoslavia fell victim to much larger forces that were irresistibly centrifugal.

The current polarization of political attitudes in the United States can also be seen as a reflection of much deeper demographic and cultural shifts in this country. Whites are increasingly anxious about their loss of dominant status as the white population dropped for the first time ever in the 2020 census. Religious conservatives decry creeping secularization as church membership dropped below 50 percent in 2020 for the first time ever. Poverty remains endemic in rural America, with extreme poverty counties existing only in the countryside, while Blue states have only gotten wealthier over the years.

The Democratic strategy has been to try resolve this last issue of economic inequality through targeted stimulus spending. The party is also fighting to promote voter access in the hopes that greater turnout boosts its electoral chances. If the Democrats can appeal to enough voters on economic grounds, they can win just enough elections before demographic and cultural changes shift the ground permanently in their favor. This is the promised land, the equivalent of EU membership for Yugoslavia: a liberal future for the United States with a strong social safety net.

But thats what Republicans want to stop at all costs. Thats what makes the next few years so critical for the United States. Yugoslav liberals thought that their reforms would keep the country together, that the promise of a European future would be sufficient for Yugoslav voters to keep thinking of themselves as Yugoslavs. Instead, these voters opted for independence, greater polarization, and war. Yugoslavia had already died in their hearts.

The same can be said about all those who broke into the Capitol on January 6, who have threatened lawmakers over the last year, and who embrace the multiple big lies of Trumpism. Of course, they think of themselves as Americans. They even say that they love America.

Energized by all their MAGA mania, however, they may end up hugging America to death.

See more here:

The End of US - FPIF - Foreign Policy In Focus

Under a 1986 newsletter headline, Ubuntu, Abantu, Abelungu, Black Sash, the anti-apartheid organisation founded as the vanguard of white liberal womens opposition in South Africa, reported surprising findings from a white fieldworker in their programme against forced land removals Black people of the land do not consider white people to be people. That is, we do not consider them to be Abantu. Instead, they are abelungu.

Ubuntu, Abantu, Abelungu appeared a few years before the late archbishop Desmond Mpilo Tutu thrust Ubuntu the African philosophy best understood through the proverb found in Bantu languages across the continent, umuntu ngumuntu ngabanye bantu (a person is a person through other people) into the global imagination as he presided over post-apartheid South Africas truth and reconciliation commission (TRC).

Ubuntu is very difficult to render into a western language, Tutu acknowledged in his book No Future Without Forgiveness. In his earlier classic African Religions and Philosophy the Kenyan theologian John Mbiti famously rendered Ubuntus philosophy of mutual personhood as an African humanist analogue to Enlightenment humanisms I think, therefore I am by translating Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu as I am because we are.

Mbitis classic humanist translation of Ubuntu obscures the fact that, in contrast to the western conception of the human, the African conception of the person is a social being who is always becoming. Ubuntu holds that to be a person, umuntu, among people, Abantu, one must continually uphold the personhood of others. It is for this reason that when I misbehaved, especially to the injury of others, my mother, like many other elders, reprimanded me in our mother tongue, Shona: Ita munhu! Be a person!

[The] white man has become umlungu because of us, dispossessed farmworker Aron Mlangeni stated in Ubuntu, Abantu, Abelungu. Mlangeni articulated what philosopher Ndumiso Dladla describes as Ubuntu as an African critical philosophy of race rooted not in biology, but in ethical historical and social relations. After centuries of conquest, the settler state formalised land dispossession through the devastating 1913 Native Land Act, which seized 87% of land for the white settler minority, leaving 13% to the Black majority, who were press-ganged into cheap mining and farming labour. Given white South Africas unjust historic land conquest and continuing relations of dispossession, it is unsurprising that Black people of the land, that is, we, do not consider white people to be Abantu. Instead, they are abelungu.

On the eve of Black majority rule, global whiteness held its breath in anticipation of a night of long knives for white South Africa. Instead, South Africa gave a world at the end of history a miracle the teleological release, a moral arc bending towards justice, a rainbow.

After the negotiated settlement secured Black political rights with the protection of white property rights, the Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act mandated the creation of the TRC. Dutch conquest of the Cape in 1652 is the genesis of genocide, slavery, indenture and land dispossession, yet the TRC had the limited mandate to hear allegations of human rights abuses between 1 March 1960, the month of the Sharpeville massacre, to 10 May 1994, the date of Nelson Mandelas inauguration.

Without the mandate to right the historic conquest of land and people, Tutus impossible task was to wield Ubuntu to reconcile the conflicting worlds of Abantu and abelungu into a nation of what he called the Rainbow People of God. As Allan Boesak, the anti-apartheid leader and Black Dutch Reformed Church minister who, alongside Tutu, helped cement Black liberation theologys centrality to the Black Consciousness Movement, has shown, Tutus theology of grace and forgiveness was grounded in a Christianised Ubuntu. African jurisprudence is restorative rather than retributive, Tutu said, describing the rationale for amnesty at the TRC.

If white South Africa did not repent (the apartheid-era president PW Botha declared I only apologise for my sins before God) or make itself humble (white radio listeners objection to TRC stories caused a rescheduling to hours when most of the farmers are no longer listening), it was surprised by and grateful for Black South Africas lack of bitterness and vengeance.

In some incredible way God has sown the seeds of a gracious attitude, of the spirit of Ubuntu, in the hearts and minds of the whole African community, proclaimed Beyers Naud, the Dutch Reformed Church minister who was one of the few Afrikaner leaders to publicly oppose apartheid.

Nauds awe at the seeming miraculousness of the transition revealed some of the ways in which even the more sincere, committed part of white South Africa had failed to truly reckon with what the ethical demands of Ubuntu requires of them to have meaningful reconciliation with Black people and become Abantu.

As Black people we ask Uxolisa ngani? (What are you atoning with?), because its understood that ukuhlawula, paying reparations for injuries caused to others, is indivisible from ukubuyisa, the restoration of injured relations. Ubuntu demands costly forgiveness you cannot receive forgiveness without giving something up as an act of your contrition. The TRC recommended reparations to victims and families who testified. Later, Tutu called for a wealth tax on all white South Africans. The government ignored both recommendations. Too often, calls for national reparation and restoration are conflated with retribution, but Ubuntu among Abantu requires the righting of relations through inhlawulo yokubuyisa, reparations for restoration.

Today, we Black people, 79% of South Africas population, own 4% of agricultural land, while white South Africans, 9% of the population, own 72% of agricultural land. In 2014, Oxfam reported, two white men Johann Rupert and Nicky Oppenheimer owned as much wealth as the bottom half of the population. The 74% youth unemployment rate concentrated among Black born frees is the worlds highest. It is unsurprising then, that in their statement to the South African Human Rights Commissions 2015 hearings, Abahlali baseMjondolo, a Durban shack dwellers movement whose members have faced arrest, assault and assassination in their struggle for post-apartheid liberation, cried out that poor Black people are not counted as human beings.

In other words, despite the flourishing of Ubuntu in post-apartheid discourse, lending its name to software, businesses, books and philanthropic organisations, South Africa is a country in which we have, as Dladla argues, Ubuntu without Abantu. Just as Black people have been dispossessed of their land, Ubuntu has been dispossessed of its deeply radical demands for ethical historical and social relations among people.

In a land left bereft by the loss of Tutu, its still common to hear Black people answer the question Ngumuntu na? (Are they a person?), Cha, ngumlungu. (No, they are white.)

For white South Africans to no longer be abelungu, settlers in Africa, and to become Abantu, people of Africa, they would have to restore that which made them settlers in the first place the land. Restoration of the land would begin the national process of ukubuyisa ngokuhlawula, restoring relations through reparations, among Abantu and abelungu into a common world of people bound by Ubuntu.

Until there is a true reckoning with the reparations Ubuntu demands, Black and white South Africa will continue to live worlds apart as Abantu and abelungu. White South Africa, nixolisa ngani? What are you atoning with?

More here:

Can white South Africa live up to Ubuntu, the African philosophy Tutu globalised? - The Guardian

In late December, economists at National Bank Financial pointed out Canadas expected population increase of more than 400,000 in 2021 will exceed population growth in the United States, a country nine times larger, for the first time ever.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press

In the years before the First World War when Canadas population surged to nearly eight million immigration climbed to record levels. It peaked in 1913 at 400,900.

More than a century later, the country is poised to set new immigration records. Canada was on track to hit the Liberal governments target of 401,000 in 2021. The aim is for 411,000 in 2022 and 421,000 in 2023.

This new surge is in part to make up for the pandemic year of 2020, when arrivals dropped to just 184,000, the lowest since the late 1990s. But the upward trend line stretches back to the late 1980s, first under the Progressive Conservatives, then Liberals, Conservatives and Liberals again. It is now supercharged.

Canadas next wave of immigration set to add more fuel to overheated housing market

Immigration will help Canada build back better, but only if the country has all hands on deck

The policy of high and rising immigration is centred on the economy. The goal is to bolster current and future growth in the face of an aging population and low birth rates. But amid an emphasis on the benefits of immigration, whats missing from the discussion is how to shoulder the main challenge a rapidly expanding population brings: namely, the demand for housing.

Population growth moves at the speed of a glacier. Looked at day to day its effect goes unseen, but over time it is like compound interest: inexorable and enormous. Canadas population statistics bear this out. Pull back the lens to 2015. Canada has added another Metro Vancouver since Prime Minister Justin Trudeaus Liberals won government. Canadas population was 35.7 million then; by 2021, it was 38.3 million. Thats 2.6 million more people in six years.

In 2019, Statistics Canada reported that the countrys population growth rate, on a percentage basis, was the highest among the Group of Seven. Now, Canadas growth on an absolute basis is the highest in the G7. In late December, economists at National Bank Financial pointed out Canadas expected population increase of more than 400,000 in 2021 will exceed population growth in the United States, a country nine times larger, for the first time ever.

In the annual report to Parliament on immigration, questions of housing supply or urban planning, or the adequacy of new public transit are not even part of the discussion. Yet the bulk of newcomers to Canada settle in the countrys biggest cities, where housing is especially stretched.

After a wild housing market through the pandemic, the pressures pushing prices higher, and making urban homes scarce, are unlikely to wane. In 2020, prices spiked even though immigration was temporarily low because of the pandemic squeeze; what will the future bring, given the consistently rising population expected in the years to come? And that higher housing demand from immigration will land on top of existing strains in the market, from the low supply of units to buy or rent, to the steady underbuilding of recent decades.

As Canada pursues record immigration, the country has to explicitly plan to meet the challenges. We wont reap the full benefits unless we do so. But the system for addressing all of this is fractured. Ottawa sets immigration targets yet new housing supply is dictated and too often stymied by municipal zoning.

Canada could welcome more than four million immigrants in the 2020s. Thats another Alberta. Greater urban housing density which is the main solution will become ever more essential to provide homes to current and future Canadians, in the places where the jobs are. Such density must be accompanied by major investments in transit. Canadas long history of sprawl was never good planning. And as more people come, endless sprawl cant be the answer.

The new federal cabinet includes a housing minister for the first time in three decades. In the housing mandate letter, there are calls to quell speculative demand (a temporary ban on foreign investors) and to increase supply (a $4-billion plan to build more housing in cities). Ottawa also wants to help ensure a more stable Canadian housing market. The current situation is the opposite: During the pandemic, the average home price shot up more than 30 per cent.

Ottawa is convening a so-called national housing supply summit later this year, bringing together the feds and the cities. Its a start. For too long, a policy of population growth has been disconnected from all discussion of housing that growing population. For too long, there has been a little or no co-ordination. Housing policy has to catch up to immigration reality.

Keep your Opinions sharp and informed. Get the Opinion newsletter. Sign up today.

See the original post:

Globe editorial: Immigration is rising. So will housing prices unless we start building a lot more homes - The Globe and Mail

news, national

A tropical cyclone may be brewing off far north Queensland as the remnants of another crosses the coast in the state's southeast, causing widespread showers. The Bureau of Meteorology is keeping an eye on a monsoon trough in the Coral Sea that is threatening to develop into a tropical cyclone by Monday. As ex-tropical cyclone Seth peters out after finally reaching land on Friday, BOM says another could be developing as it approaches the Cape York peninsula. "There is a moderate chance of a tropical cyclone forming (from the monsoon trough) in the northwest of the Coral Sea," BOM hazard response co-ordinator Brooke Pagel told AAP. She said the trough is set to develop into a tropical low and drift over the Cape York peninsula, intensifying when it enters the Gulf of Carpentaria by Monday. "That's where we are expecting it to really ramp up and maybe form into a cyclone," Ms Pagel said. A cyclone watch for the far north may be issued as early as Saturday. The monsoon trough is set to cause heavy rain and isolated thunderstorms across the Cape York peninsula and Torres Strait in the coming days. A flood watch may also be issued for far north Queensland catchments as early as Friday afternoon. Meanwhile, former cyclone Seth is petering out as it finally reaches land after causing massive swells along the coast this week but it is still making its presence felt in the southeast of the state. Thunderstorms are set to hit in the coming days after Seth crossed the coast in the Wide Bay area north of Brisbane on Friday. The southeast is expected to receive up to 30mm of rain on Friday with Wide Bay the worst hit, while isolated showers could reach totals of 50 to 120mm in Gladstone, the Sunshine Coast and Kingaroy in the coming days. "Seth has now completely weakened but there will be heavy rain with showers and thunderstorms set for the next few days in the southeast," Ms Pagel said. Australian Associated Press

/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/silverstone-feed-data/b8fcd07a-7fe0-4069-bd39-fda8b3f0b24a.jpg/r0_74_800_526_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg

A tropical cyclone may be brewing off far north Queensland as the remnants of another crosses the coast in the state's southeast, causing widespread showers.

The Bureau of Meteorology is keeping an eye on a monsoon trough in the Coral Sea that is threatening to develop into a tropical cyclone by Monday.

As ex-tropical cyclone Seth peters out after finally reaching land on Friday, BOM says another could be developing as it approaches the Cape York peninsula.

"There is a moderate chance of a tropical cyclone forming (from the monsoon trough) in the northwest of the Coral Sea," BOM hazard response co-ordinator Brooke Pagel told AAP.

She said the trough is set to develop into a tropical low and drift over the Cape York peninsula, intensifying when it enters the Gulf of Carpentaria by Monday.

"That's where we are expecting it to really ramp up and maybe form into a cyclone," Ms Pagel said.

A cyclone watch for the far north may be issued as early as Saturday.

The monsoon trough is set to cause heavy rain and isolated thunderstorms across the Cape York peninsula and Torres Strait in the coming days.

A flood watch may also be issued for far north Queensland catchments as early as Friday afternoon.

Meanwhile, former cyclone Seth is petering out as it finally reaches land after causing massive swells along the coast this week but it is still making its presence felt in the southeast of the state.

Thunderstorms are set to hit in the coming days after Seth crossed the coast in the Wide Bay area north of Brisbane on Friday.

The southeast is expected to receive up to 30mm of rain on Friday with Wide Bay the worst hit, while isolated showers could reach totals of 50 to 120mm in Gladstone, the Sunshine Coast and Kingaroy in the coming days.

"Seth has now completely weakened but there will be heavy rain with showers and thunderstorms set for the next few days in the southeast," Ms Pagel said.

Australian Associated Press

Continued here:

Another Qld cyclone may be on its way: BOM - Daily Liberal

Its not just another perk in a benefits package remote work could fundamentally reshape the urban geography of the United States.

Where we live has been dictated by where we can find a good job. That truism has defined much of where Americans reside clustered in and around lucrative job markets.

In particular, superstar cities have been a defining technological advancement. According to a 2018 article by economist Richard Florida, the five leading metros account for more than 80 percent of total venture capital investment and 85 percent of its growth over the past decade. Another economist, Enrico Moretti, recently noted that the ten largest clusters [cities] in computer science, semiconductors, and biology account for 69 percent, 77 percent, and 59 percent of all US inventors.

Remote work could change that.

While only 37 percent of jobs could be performed remotely full time (according to two University of Chicago economists), those jobs have outsize purchasing power (accounting for 46 percent of all US wages by the same estimate). When people with these jobs congregate, they provide the necessary demand for a vast array of service sector jobs, from nurses and lawyers to teachers and taxi drivers. This is hugely important it means that remote work could expand the choices of where to live for millions of Americans, not just those who have the option to work from home full time.

Imagine, for example, that youre a human resources manager at a tech firm in San Francisco, married to a baker and paying $2,800 a month for a one-bedroom apartment. With remote work, you could instead move to be closer to your family in Nashville or Orlando, and save a bunch of money on rent alone. And when you move, youll take your family and your demand for services with you to those locations, opening up opportunities for other workers including, say, your spouse, who could confidently move with you and open a bakery catering to other new transplants.

To be sure, theres good reason to believe that very little of this will happen.

Productivity is an open question and perhaps the most important one. Remote work doesnt have one clear effect on workers productivity, evidence from economists Emma Harrington and Natalia Emanuel shows. Productivity losses or gains under remote work are likely to be different industry by industry, firm by firm, and role by role.

But if, on the whole, firms that choose to work in-person outperform those that are remote, it could push the equilibrium back to where we were before the pandemic. Thats what Moretti predicted to me back in April 2021: The moment you start losing that creativity and productivity, thats when both the employer and employee have something to lose from this decentralized application.

Moreover, agglomeration economies the tendency of employers and workers to cluster in big cities are very powerful. One of the big reasons this happens is because of matching between labor demand and supply. Particularly for highly specialized workers, you want to live in a place with a lot of firms you can work for, so that you can bid up the price of your labor. And for firms, similarly, they want to be in a place with tons of workers they could hire for specialized roles, so they can find the best one.

For remote work to delink where people live from where they work, its likely not enough for just one biotech firm to decide its employees can work from home full time. A bunch of firms in that industry would need to make that shift.

If that happens one economist thinks about 20 percent of jobs will realistically go fully remote in the long run there will be massive implications for where Americans live and work, presenting new challenges and solutions for the housing crisis, climate crisis, and our political institutions.

Americas superstar cities are lucrative labor markets but the price of entry has become the cost of living, namely, the price of shelter. Housing costs have skyrocketed in these places, because supply has been artificially constrained by the labyrinth of regulations and veto points in the housing development process.

Fixing this process is paramount, expert after expert has maintained. And while there has been some progress in recent years notably on the West Coast as of May 2021, the country has a shortage of about 3.8 million homes, with the problem concentrated in the metropolitan regions with the most valuable labor markets.

Remote work could relieve some of the upward pressure on housing in these cities, in part by diffusing demand throughout the metro-suburban region. One study, for example, showed that a shift to working from home would directly reduce spending in major city centers by at least 5-10 percent relative to the pre-pandemic situation. And economist Matt Delventhal found that an increase in remote work in the Los Angeles metro area would lead average real estate prices to fall: As many workers move into distant suburbs, prices in the periphery increase. However, these price increases are more than offset by the decline of prices in the core. ... In the counterfactual where 33% of workers telecommute, average house prices fall by nearly 6%.

Fully remote work, meanwhile, could make it possible for people to avoid the high housing costs of places like Seattle or Boston entirely, while still accessing the jobs they offer.

By reducing the demand for housing in these major cities, the upward pressure on housing costs could ease. It also means that demand could be spread more equitably across the United States. We saw this dynamic begin to play out during the pandemic as rents rose in more affordable cities like Baltimore and Dallas. But to accommodate that demand, cities need to make it easy to build more homes in these locations, otherwise rents will follow the same pattern as in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Washington, DC.

While cities like Austin, Phoenix, and Atlanta are some of the natural inheritors of superstar city-dwellers seeking more affordable but still urban living, there is also an opportunity for smaller cities to benefit from a shift to fully remote work. One is already trying to seize it.

Like many American cities, Tulsa, Oklahoma, struggles with population growth and attracting high-wage workers. In order to combat this, a program called Tulsa Remote was launched offering $10,000 grants and numerous community-building opportunities to fully remote workers to move to Tulsa for a full year.

Tulsa did not just offer the $10,000, Upwork chief economist Adam Ozimek told Vox. Tulsa has also worked to build community for remote workers and create lots of local amenities. Tulsa was also the first to do it and this has been unequivocally good for Tulsa ... but I would be surprised if anybody found out [$10,000] works out by itself. No ones going to make lifestyle decisions around $10,000.

The Economic Innovation Group released a report in November outlining the results, finding that the program is expected to be responsible for 592 full-time equivalent (FTE) jobs and $62.0 million in new labor income for Tulsa County in 2021 alone. In total, for every dollar spent on the remote worker incentive itself, there has been an estimated $13.77 return in new local labor income to the region.

Making housing more accessible is great, but the impact of remote work wont be cheaper house prices for everyone. While people who formerly lived in urban areas and can now move to the periphery would likely see a reduction in their housing costs, those who already live there, or who live in more affordable cities, would see their housing costs increase. While the average cost of housing would decline in this scenario, the differential impacts are important for policymakers to consider so that they preempt unwanted displacement by liberalizing zoning laws.

Density is a carbon mitigation tool. Densely populated areas can benefit the most from transit and walkability. They can also reduce energy costs. If fully remote work becomes possible as the vast majority of American localities plan for sprawl and electric vehicle growth remains sluggish, it could exacerbate the climate unfriendliness of our built environment.

Both logic and empirical evidence suggest that developing more compactly, that is, at higher population and employment densities, lowers VMT [vehicle miles traveled]. Trip origins and destinations become closer, on average, and thus trip lengths become shorter, on average, reads a report by the National Academies. Whether remote work has a negative carbon footprint relies on what types of communities people move to and how that influences their energy consumption and driving behavior.

Most evidence thus far has shown that as people have moved over the last year, theyve generally stayed within the same metro region but tended toward the suburbs. In May, Stanford economists Arjun Ramani and Nicholas Bloom termed this the donut effect, with the hollowed-out center representing the declining demand for urban life during a pandemic that forced many urban amenities to shutter. This effect is concentrated in the 12 most-populous metro areas.

But these dont have to be your fathers suburbs. Recodes Rani Molla has reported on the urbanization of the suburbs, writing that while people are leaving cities for the suburbs, they are bringing their taste for city amenities with them these new suburbanites like walkability and access to a diverse array of restaurants and stores. If suburbs become more walkable and transit-friendly, and our land use laws allow for mixed-use development such that housing can be built near job centers, shopping centers, and schools, it could mitigate the harms of this change. As always, every locality should stop subsidizing the cost of parking and make it easier to take climate-friendly transportation.

The Stanford researchers note there isnt a significant amount of movement happening between metro areas, which indicates that at least so far, hybrid remote work is a more likely outcome than a large number of workers going fully remote.

Remote work may need more time for its true impact to be felt. While many people may have moved to the suburbs in a state where they already resided, that decision was likely influenced by their uncertainty around how long remote work would be permitted in the pandemic and after.

The carbon impact of fully remote work is highly uncertain. There are many reasons to think that it would be negative: People moving toward less dense areas without access to transit networks and into a land-use legal framework that incentivizes large single-family homes and sprawl does not bode well.

For some, remote work could eliminate commuting, which is a significant contributor to workers emissions. As the Atlantics Derek Thompson explained in a recent interview on Voxs policy podcast The Weeds, a culture where Zoom is considered a perfectly decent replacement could curb the most carbon-intensive travel of all: air travel. Depending on a lot of factors, the reduction in flying could outweigh any increase in commuting by car.

Its also possible that focusing on urban geography as a major part of the solution to the climate crisis is misguided. My bet would be that the energy sector-specific changes are more important than the future of remote work, Thompson said. That is, pushing the US to electrify vehicles and get more of its energy from low-carbon sources like nuclear, wind, solar, or hydropower is likely far more important than marginal changes in density.

In recent years, Democrats have grown increasingly concerned as college-educated voters cluster in heavily liberal-leaning states. This exacerbates an Electoral College and Senate advantage for Republicans, whose constituency is more evenly distributed across more of the country.

Will Wilkinson outlined many of the political harms that have accompanied urbanization in a Niskanen Center research paper, The Density Divide: Urbanization, Polarization, and Populist Backlash. He argues that polarization has been amplified by the self-selection of temperamentally liberal individuals into higher education and big cities while leaving behind a lower-density population that is relatively uniform in white ethnicity, conservative disposition, and lower economic productivity.

Its not just that there are higher-paying jobs in Los Angeles than in Youngstown, Ohio the nation has been segregating based on peoples openness to experience and liberal attitudes.

Remote work could change some of this. While some people might still sort based on those characteristics and stay in deep blue states, others will find there are enough liberals in cities like Bozeman, Columbus, or Austin, to make do. Others still could forgo these preferences in favor of slashing their cost of living, deciding that its fine to live in a neighborhood of the opposite political party as long as you can afford a pool.

As Arizonas population has grown in part from California emigrants (one study showed that 23 percent of all Arizona immigrants came from California) Democrats have netted benefits, winning both Senate seats and the states 11 Electoral College votes in the 2020 presidential election. Increasing numbers of college-educated voters could advantage Democrats further in the state, as well as in places like Georgia, Florida, and Texas.

But the impact of more remote work might not be that straightforward: In August 2020, Thompson theorized that a demographic shift could reshape American politics. A more evenly distributed liberal base could empower Democrats in the Sun Belt; accelerate the Rust Belts conservative shift; strengthen the moderate wing of the party by forcing Democrats to compete on more conservative turf; and force the GOP to adapt its own national strategy to win more elections.

But an influx of well-educated, highly paid coastal expats could affect the political trends of existing residents in other, unexpected ways. Coastal emigrants views might change because part of what was making them Democrats was living in diverse and dense communities.

Theres also a chance that in many of these states, existing institutions could stifle liberal sentiment.

At the local level, as long as these states governors and statehouses remain Republican, state preemption laws could hamstring localities from enacting policies that reflect an increasingly liberal electorate. Republican states have stepped in to make it illegal for localities to tax plastic bags for environmental reasons, to prevent localities from extending anti-discrimination protections to LGBTQ people, and Indiana attempted to cripple a bus rapid transit system in Indianapolis.

As blue cities gain prominence in red states, it is likely to set up showdowns over the limits of municipal power. These fights will only intensify if left-of-center voters flock to electorally vital red and purple states.

Another important political trend is that newcomers will trigger NIMBY sentiment wherever they go. NIMBY-ism is a product of scarcity, not a deficiency solely found near the ocean, and as higher-income Americans move where their dollar goes further, existing community members are likely to balk at the changes.

As the New York Timess Conor Dougherty reported last February, The Californians Are Coming. So Is Their Housing Crisis. Locals are angry, Dougherty writes: in Boise, Go Back to California graffiti has been sprayed along the highways. The last election cycle was a referendum on growth and housing, and included a fringe mayoral candidate who campaigned on a promise to keep Californians out.

Localities have the opportunity to reduce the economic costs of newcomers and preemptively bring down the temperature by liberalizing their zoning laws and investing in market rate and affordable housing as well as enacting anti-displacement measures in order to reduce the conflict. But some conflict is inevitable; as one dispatch from East Austin recounted, residents of a new luxury building began calling the police on a neighborhood tradition.

This past year shows that government can have a large role in shaping how remote work plays out. Expanding broadband access to ensure that the ability to do remote work is equitably distributed, liberalizing zoning laws, investing in amenities to attract knowledge economy workers, and ensuring that the gains from growth do not solely accumulate to the most well-off thats all in policymakers hands.

Link:

What work from home means for the climate and house prices - Vox.com

An explosion caused by a police munition is seen while supporters of then-President Donald Trump gather in front of the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. (CNS/Reuters/Leah Millis)

Yesterday was the first anniversary of the attack on the U.S. Capitol. That day, Archbishop Jos Gomez issued a statement condemning the violence, and promising prayers for members of Congress, congressional staff and the police. He added:

The peaceful transition of power is one of the hallmarks of this great nation. In this troubling moment, we must recommit ourselves to the values and principles of our democracy and come together as one nation under God. I entrust all of us to the heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary. May she guide us in the ways of peace, and obtain for us wisdom and the grace of a true patriotism and love of country.

Like most Americans, Gomez recognized how appalling the day's events were and, given the fact that even many Republicans finally broke with the would-be despot still living in the White House at the time, you could almost hear the collective sigh of relief that the chapter of American history marked "Trump" was being closed.

Except it wasn't.

Donald Trump has made the entire Republican Party dance to his ongoing tune of downplaying the attack on the Capitol, denying the legitimacy of President Joe Biden's election and taking steps to put Trump loyalists in key election oversight posts.

Why, then, have the U.S. bishops failed to sound the sense of concern and alarm for the "values and principles of our democracy" that continue to be threatened? Surely the sanctity of the vote is above partisan politics of a kind the bishops are right to shun.

For most of American history, the story of U.S. Catholics was one of trying to prove that we were loyal citizens, confronting the charge that our religion and its precepts made it impossible for us to adhere to the norms of a democratic polity.

From colonial laws that deprived Catholics of basic rights to vote or hold office, through the 19th century's relentless nativism, up until the 1960 election when prominent Protestant pastors like Norman Vincent Peale and liberal organs like The Nation still doubted a Catholic could be trusted with the powers of the presidency, Catholicism was understood to be a threat to democracy.

The charge was not based in mere cotton candy. Official church teaching held that in countries where Catholics were in the majority, Catholicism should become the established religion, with other religions merely tolerated and only insofar as the Catholic majority permitted. On the other hand, if Catholics were in the minority, official church teaching held that Catholics should enjoy full liberty to practice their religion without interference from the government. This double standard was defended by the proposition that error has no rights.

The charge of Catholic anti-democratic prejudices was defeated by two events, one domestic and political, and the other in Rome and ecclesial.

First, Catholic Americans proved themselves to be good citizens, serving in local and federal government in a variety of posts, serving in the military when the country went to war, paying taxes, forming Boy Scout and Girl Scout troops, attending a different church on Sunday morning and disproportionately sending our children to parochial schools, but in most respects behaving in ways little different from our Protestant and Jewish fellow citizens.

In looking back at John F. Kennedy's election, we tend to focus on his speech to the Houston Ministerial Association as the key to his overcoming Protestant prejudices. We do so in large part because the issues entailed in figuring out how a faithful Catholic relates to politics in a pluralistic society are still with us.

President-elect John F. Kennedy shakes hands with Fr. Richard Casey, pastor of Holy Trinity Church, after attending Mass at the church prior to inauguration ceremonies in Washington Jan. 20, 1961. (CNS/Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington)

Just as important as that speech to Kennedy's electoral success was his prior heroism during World War II. The story of PT-109, crushed in two by a Japanese destroyer, and Kennedy's heroic effort to save his crewmates, made headlines around the world in 1943.

Kennedy, the child of privilege with numerous severe physical ailments, used his father's influence to get into the Navy. Compare that with the behavior of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, who used their connections to get out of serving. John Kennedy's older brother, Joe Jr., had been killed in action during the war when the explosives in a plane he was flying detonated prematurely. He had already flown 25 missions at the time of his last flight, and had the option of returning home. Instead, Joe Jr. volunteered for the top-secret mission that took his life.

In that same Houston speech, Kennedy said:

This is the kind of America I believe in and this is the kind I fought for in the South Pacific, and the kind my brother died for in Europe. No one suggested then that we may have a "divided loyalty," that we did "not believe in liberty," or that we belonged to a disloyal group that threatened the "freedoms for which our forefathers died."

He dared people to gainsay his patriotism, and Kennedy could point to millions of fellow Catholics who, like him, had served the country in war.

Sixty years later, when the next Catholic became president, no one asked if he could be a good American, even while many asked if he was a good Catholic!

The second nail in the coffin of the anti-Catholic canard that Catholics could not make good Americans came at the Second Vatican Council (1962-65). There the 19th-century hostility to modern liberal democracy was abandoned, and the church officially recognized the value of religious liberty for all people, and voiced support for human rights and democratic norms for all societies. I recently recapitulated some of that history in my column following Biden's summit on democracy last month.

Given this history of patriotic Catholics and the development of doctrine at Vatican II, why have the bishops not been more outspoken in defending democracy?

I understand that they may not wish to go to the mat to champion more hours for early voting. But as Yuval Levin who is no liberal recently wrote in The New York Times, there is room for bipartisan consensus about how votes are counted and certified, how "requiring accountability and transparency and setting some boundaries on what can happen after an election" could forestall future electoral shenanigans of the kind Trump tried, and failed, to get election officials to perpetrate last time.

A boy listens to his mom receive instructions on how to vote at Ida B. Wells Middle School in Washington during the presidential election Nov. 3, 2020. (CNS/Tyler Orsburn)

Additionally, the U.S. bishops have long recognized the importance of the rule of law, even when the law contradicts the teachings of the church. For example, after the U.S. Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage nationwide in 2015, Washington Cardinal Donald Wuerl, one of the best theologians among the bishops, issued a statement that began and ended by recognizing that the ruling was now the law of the land and should be respected as such, even while the law of the church made same-sex sacramental marriages impossible.

The bishops in many states are not viewed as possessing the moral authority their predecessors did, but you would be surprised how influential their voice can be in some state legislatures. In several red and purple states, it was the intervention of Catholic bishops and other religious leaders that frustrated efforts to enact misnamed right-to-work laws that make it harder to organize unions.

Some bishops, and some conservative donors and academics, have demonstrated a hostility to Vatican II. That may explain why some bishops are reluctant to restrict the celebration of the Tridentine rite, or why they staff their seminaries with theologians convinced that the 1950s were a golden age in the life of the church, or why they are quick to quote previous popes and so allergic to citing the incumbent pontiff.

Could it also explain their indifference to the future of democracy? Is reactionary ecclesiology a church a kissin' cousin of reactionary politics? It shouldn't be.

I hope the bishops find their voice and find it before it is too late. History is littered with people who thought they could be bystanders, only to discover they, too, were swept up in the evil they failed to denounce when there was still time.

The bishops of the United States have only to look to the theology of the Second Vatican Council and to the proud traditions of American Catholics to find the inspiration needed to confront these threats to democracy. Those who aspire to moral leadership must do all they can to ensure the tragic assault on democracy of Jan. 6, 2021, will never be allowed to repeat itself.

Follow this link:

Will US bishops find their voice and defend democracy? - National Catholic Reporter

Over in Labour land, Keir Starmer is more secure, notwithstanding a second bout of Covid and a sixth spell of isolation. Yet rave reviews for the newly promoted Wes Streeting a City acquaintance reports that even bankers from the shadowy US investment fund BlackRock hailed the shadow health secretary as a left-winger they could do business with could prove a blessing in disguise for a leader under house arrest. Jealousy, however, remains a curse in a party ostensibly committed to fraternity. Two shadow cabinet members accused Streeting in my hearing of running an unofficial leadership campaign while a third insisted they didnt care as long as he helped win the general election. Starmer might be wise to keep friends close and the Ilford idol closer.

Mocked by one cropped member as the shortest poppy field in history, two rivals desperate to blossom in Boris Johnsons dustbowl cabinet will be pivotal in 2022. A Prime Minister with a voracious, insatiable ego isnt alone in cutting down competitors now that fan boys and girls of Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss wield the secateurs. The Chancellors dirty tricks brigade is asking whether fizz with Liz enjoyed undeclared discounts whining and dining Tory MPs at the Conservative donor Robin Birleys loss-making 5 Hertford Street private members club. The club offered a discount on a separate lunch she hosted in June provided the bill was paid immediately. The Truss gang returned fire by taunting the Treasury team over Sunaks struggle to convince sceptical right-wingers that hes a true Thatcherite tax cutter. The Chancellors charm offensive backfired in a tte--tte with David Davis, with Sunak looking ashen as the backbench bruiser and former Brexit secretary responded to the wannabe PMs insistence that theyre both disciples of Maggie by demanding to know how that could be true of when the Chancellor is imposing the highest tax burden for 70 years. Johnsons best chance of surviving may be potential successors scything fellow contenders for the crown, leaving nobody standing tall.

Tory clodhopper Daniel Kawczynski is giving up Polish lessons after a backlash against the Warsaw-born beanpole charging taxpayers 22,000 to learn a language hed previously claimed to be fluent in. The Shrewsbury MP told his local paper that hed wanted to improve reading and writing in Polish under a parliamentary scheme. Forced to apologise for bullying Commons staff and pleading with a fixer to secure a well-paid second job with a Saudi firm to help pay school fees, a lack of polish rather than Polish may be Disaster Dans downfall. Conservative MPs whisper Kawczynski frets he could be deselected with the Shropshire curse striking another Conservative after the self-destruction of former neighbour Owen Paterson.

The Lib Dems victory in Patersons former blue stronghold has Conservative Campaign Headquarters taking the Liberal Democrats seriously for the first time since they cannibalised their coalition partners in 2015. My snout whispered that a luckless Tory staffer is belatedly trawling the Lib Dem Voice website and watching endless YouTube party conference clips for ammunition. Ed Davey is entitled to regard it as a backhanded compliment from one-time government colleagues. I suggest the Tory snooper should fast-forward to the bit at the 1994 Lib Dem conference where a younger, idealistic Liz Truss opposes the monarchy before later defecting to the Conservatives.

Vainglorious Brextremist Mark Francois has sold at least one copy of his self-published Spartan story. Guffawing Tory MPs in the tearoom read aloud extracts in mockney accents. Come to think of it, the volume couldve been a freebie. That would be a final insult.

[see also: Commons Confidential: The Tories poison pens]

Sign up for The New Statesmans newsletters Tick the boxes of the newsletters you would like to receive. Morning Call Quick and essential guide to domestic and global politics from the New Statesman's politics team. World Review The New Statesmans global affairs newsletter, every Monday and Friday. The New Statesman Daily The best of the New Statesman, delivered to your inbox every weekday morning. Green Times The New Statesmans weekly environment email on the politics, business and culture of the climate and nature crises - in your inbox every Thursday. This Week in Business A handy, three-minute glance at the week ahead in companies, markets, regulation and investment, landing in your inbox every Monday morning. The Culture Edit Our weekly culture newsletter from books and art to pop culture and memes sent every Friday. Weekly Highlights A weekly round-up of some of the best articles featured in the most recent issue of the New Statesman, sent each Saturday. From the archive A weekly dig into the New Statesmans archive of over 100 years of stellar and influential journalism, sent each Wednesday. Events and Offers Sign up to receive information regarding NS events, subscription offers & product updates.

More:

Will Streeting succeed Starmer? - The New Statesman

The title of this paper comes from a conversation with an anonymous ninety two year old woman in Kuwadzana suburb of Harare. She lamented in Shona Dai pawana anotisvitsa kuZimbabwe nokuti hatisati tasvika this loosely translates to I wish someone could deliver Zimbabwe to the promised land. Her perceptive quote resonates with historical and contemporary political events and my previous article titled Crisis of political leadership in Zimbabwe. In this article, I write a revised version of that paper to reiterate how critical the crisis has become especially as the country approaches the 2023 elections.

It is becoming increasingly clear that Zimbabwe is like the proverbial sheep without a shepherd. The main opposition MDC is split into two groups which are using exactly the same name. The leader of the more popular faction led by Nelson Chamisa has repeatedly failed to present potential voters with a credible national plan or strategy that matches his presidential ambitions. Thus far, what is clear is that he has effectively spiritualised the Zimbabwe problem. This is in cohorts with the prosperity gospel religious sect which is on a mission to individualise Zimbabweans, by this I mean that they are reducing national problems e.g. unemployment and poverty to personal problems that can be resolved by praying and fasting at the mountains. In addition to these misleading practices, these religious organisation have also managed to profit from the Zimbabwe crisis by turning peoples problems into saleable commodities via numerous ploys such as personalised prophesies, exorbitantly priced merchandise such as holy water and other products aimed at making people believe that their personal as well as national problems would be miraculously cured. Consequently, instead of providing moral and spiritual guidance in times of crisis, religious leaders are becoming wealthier as the crisis deepens.

The ruling party continue to unashamedly make desperate attempts to hoodwink Zimbabweans and international community into believing they are reformed. The main proponent of this duplicity is Emmerson Mnangagwa who continues to stream his self-deception that the voice of the people is the voice of god. Fortunately, his intended victims of empty rhetoric and double speak can now clearly see his hand in the recent killings, abductions and sexual violence towards innocent Zimbabweans who are desperately calling out for change.

On the other hand, the IMF and World Bank are inside trading, dictating the countrys monetary policy via a very complicit proxy, the Zimbabwe minister of Finance Professor Mthuli Ncube who has resorted to the trickery of buying good money (US$) using bad money (the artificially overvalued and useless Zimbabwe dollar).

The absence of leadership extends even to civic society and includes celebrated journalist who are hogging the limelight while reducing the Zimbabwe crisis to corruption and misgovernance. But in saying this, it is important to pay homage to the brave journalists who are risking their lives holding power to account. But to illustrate my point, I will give an account of my experience when I approached several Zimbabwe online newspaper in an attempt to start a conversation about an idea or initiative in which I attempt to harness the voice of ordinary Zimbabweans through a proposed Zimbabwe Peoples Charter http://www.zimcharter.com. I approached various newspapers including one of the largest online newspapers owned by Zimbabweans in the diaspora but they completely ignored my attempts to engage with them. Just a few days after disregarded my overtures, they put a bold front news headline along the following lines; Prophet Pxxxx takes a one week break from social media. The fact that an attention seeking self-appointed prophet allegedly took a break from social media became headline news! This misdirected attention on the ephemeral is equally an indictment on the Zimbabwe leadership and its lack of capacity to provide moral guidance that could not only help the country overcome bipartisan politics but also produce a population that is critically engaged with discourses that matter.

My previous criticism that the MDC does not have a coherent strategy and is made up of intellectually lazy leaders remains starkly supported by contemporary events. In their recent 2023 election campaign poster, they made twelve demands that ZANU PF must; Demilitarise & reform ZEC, Stop Political Violence, Allow Diaspora Vote etc. This is despite the fact that a few years ago Professor Jonathan Moyo eloquently articulated an open secret that ZANU PF will never reform itself out of power. I am not certain of the context of that statement but I think it is relevant in this case.

Has no one from the MDC ever heard that proclamation, if they have, why do they all seem to believe ZANU PF would simply yield to these demands? And for those who havent heard that statement or disagree with it, why would a party with over sixty years experience of perpetrating violence suddenly stop because MDC demanded that they should?

Several critics have consistently argue that the MDC has to prove to potential voters that it deserves their vote, and this is by way of a plan or strategy which people can evaluate and use as a basis to make a voting decision.

The laundry list is neither a plan nor strategy, the expectation that people should make a voting decisions on the basis of charismatic authority is deceptive.

Perhaps potential voters would have considered it strategy if the MDC leadership set their laundry list as conditions for participating in the next elections and that is clearly not the case because they are already mobilising people to register to vote. Incidentally, setting political reforms as a condition for voting might also not work because the MDC splinter group to which Nelson Chamisa belongs is no longer considered as the official opposition, therefore elections can still go ahead with or without them.

It is less than two years before the next elections and the MDC is only just making a demand for diaspora vote which ZANU PF has refused to agree to previously. Given the very likelihood that they would not allow it still, what has the opposition done as contingency?.

Have they raised funding to allow movement of voters to come in and vote especially from neighbouring countries, the answer is no. Have they taken the initiative to ask countries that are hosting the largest number of Zimbabwe refugees to assist on this matter, the answer is yet another no. Have they thought of coming up with a legal test case to compel the government to allow postal voting by Zimbabweans in the diaspora, again the answer is a huge no.

Aside from the above tactical or strategic concerns, ideologically the opposition remains stuck on neoliberalism, religiosity, democracy (a demand that ZANU PF should voluntarily expand the democratic space), civil rights and rule of law demands. These are very narrow perspective, mostly because they are imported wholesale. For example, they conceive rule of law within the liberal frame and as I previously argued elsewhere, this has huge cracks because of the failure to acknowledge the fact that the basis of some aspects of the rule of law which they want to uphold at all cost were debated and enacted by the Rhodesian parliament in which not a single black person could sit in besides for purposes of making tea and cleaning up after the white conquests who plundered and looted and needed to protect their loot by all means.

Consequently, both rural and urban supporters of land reform and proponents of reparation of other historical injustices view the MDC with suspicion. This is because of their failure to take cognisant of the fact that the rights of conquests came at the expense of the conquered.

Since I penned the previous version of this paper, nothing much has changed for Dr Nkosana Moyo. He remains a neoliberalism fanatic, arguing that running a country is like running a private corporation. In a recent interview with Trevor Ncube, he asserted that, in order to recover, the Zimbabwe economy requires military tactics. This is commonly understood as a top-down methodology which is closely associated with Engineers and their big engineering projects e.g. construction of the Kariba hydroelectric Dam which despite its disastrous impact on Tonga livelihoods and culture, never led to the distribution of electricity to Binga homes and schools even though the ancestors of Tonga people lay buried in the lake and widened Zambezi River where rich people like Dr Moyo occasionally visit for fishing and boat cruises.

Another example of top-down mode of governance is apartheid, its origins is buried at a South African university which still stands today. Once accepted by the academic community, apartheid was enthusiastically adopted and promoted by powerful segments of Africana stock.

Similarly, the IMF and World Bank have also popularised the top-down approach through conditionalities that they exclusively impose on poor countries. In this method of governance, powerful segments of society arm themselves with theories and ideologies which they draw on to impose their pre-packaged remedies on the ordinary person in the streets because they are presumed not to have solutions to the problems that they face on a daily basis.

Dr Nkosana Moyos fervent support for trickle-down economics and a belief that foreign investors have the best interest of the long suffering people of Zimbabwe is almost evangelical. In his world, efficiency, profit maximisation and cost savings are of paramount concern over all else. In my view, theory and corporations should serve human needs not the other way round. Failure to appreciate this, is the reason why no one is blinking an eye when local and foreign owned mining companies are blatantly disregarding health and safety regulations and failing to provide severance packages and pensions. Not only that, Zimbabwe insurance companies are refusing to pay pensioners even after decades of appropriating their monthly pension contributions, mobile money companies are deducting over 13% fees just for the privilege of making a RTGS$5 000 payment, medical aid chief executives are remunerating themselves close to half a million USA dollars per month while hospital bills of people suffering from various sorts of chronic illnesses go unpaid. In all these examples, corporations and some of the values that Dr Nkosana Moyo hold dearly in particular efficiency and profit maximisation are privileged over human beings.

The Zimbabwe government recently imposed what they call command agriculture and from that, millions of US dollars ended up in the pockets of politicians and their sycophants. This is just one of many examples which suggests that Zimbabwes problems originate right at the top starting with the International Financial Institutions, in some cases private corporations, educated elites and politicians who are far removed from the lives of people who are bearing the brunt of Zimbabwes economic hardships. The idea that answers to Zimbabwes problems are pre-packaged in Dr Moyos head, or in some perfect theory or somewhere at the top echelons of society is unconvincing. In a recent twit, Tendai Biti dismissed his economic ideas as command economics similarly, I am not persuaded that the future of our nation would be in safe hands if he was to be allowed to unleash his neoliberal ideals without restraint.

Since I wrote the original article critiquing poor leadership in Zimbabwe, Jacob Ngaruvhume and Douglas Mwonzora hadnt come onto the scene. The former mobilised Zimbabweans to participate in the much anticipated but failed 31st of July (2020) protest while the latter wrestled power from Nelson Chamisa accusing him of unconstitutionally ascending to the MDC leadership. Besides successfully removing Nelson Chamisa as the official opposition leader, I am not aware of what Douglas Mwonzora stands for or what he can offer the people of Zimbabwe. Perhaps that might become clear as time goes but what is clear at this time, is his desire for power at all cost.

Jacob Ngaruvhume and his supporters main contention and basis of their protest was anti-corruption this protest objective is exactly similar to the street protests that eventually contributed to the removal of Robert Mugabe from power in November 2017. The wording might have been slightly different in that the latter was at times referred to as a march against the (alleged) criminal cabal the so-called G40 headed and or sponsored by Grace Mugabe. The important point to note is that a successful protest does not always yield liberation because Zimbabweans are now yoked to a more violent regime headed by Emmerson Mnangagwa.

Ngaruvhumes failed protest was as poorly planned and as short sighted as the protest that removed Robert Mugabe. If he successfully managed to remove Emmerson Mnangagwa, who would have been in power today? My guess is that it would have been someone just as bad if not worse but I will expand on this in the conclusion.

The prosperity gospel religious sect have everything to gain from the perpetuation of the Zimbabwe political and economic crisis. I will provide a few examples to support this argument. When Jacob Ngaruvhume was busy mobilising the youth to protest against corruption and possibly to also remove Emmerson Mnangagwa but of cause without declaring it openly, the all-knowing and all seeing self-appointed prophets were busy instilling fear into the hearts and minds of the angry young Zimbabweans by proclaiming that they see blood in the streets. Using similar tactics of extracting undeserved authority by self-ascribing a closeness to God, they extort money and wealth from their congregants by simply compelling them to surrender it to them arguing that the donations or tithe will please god, return blessings and end poverty and suffering.

Zimbabwe and South Africa have robust evidence of religious leaders in particular self-appointed prophets and traditional healers dabbling in all sorts of nefarious activities, such as ritual killings, sexual violence against women and children, occultic practices, conspicuous consumption, human trafficking you name it. These excessive practices are clearly documented in reputable newspapers, state radio and social media broadcasts but meaninglessly abstracted in academia.

I read a recent PhD thesis on money and religion in Zimbabwe, the findings from that research never mentioned manipulation of vulnerable people, excessive wealth and conspicuous consumption by prophets right in the midst of poverty and misery was justified as deserved and earned, forced donations where conceived as voluntary, the abuse of excessive authority was normalised, hypnotic episodes and other psychological manipulations were embellished as godly experiences etc. In brief, it was completely unrelated with the above mentioned empirical realities which are readily coming to light.

Scholars of religion will probably dismiss my criticisms as emotional and simplistic but, the question remains, why are theories of dead white men privileged over the raw fact that a paedophile (who also claims to be a man of God) has the nerve to rape and impregnate a twelve year old child? These are existential problems which are reported in Zimbabwe on a regular basis but academia and policy makers are turning a blind eye or sanitising these despicable acts via theoretical concepts that are irrelevant to context.

In most countries, it takes close to a decade of university education before one can be granted the authority to take charge of anyones physical and emotional wellbeing. In Zimbabwe, anybody can manage vulnerable peoples spiritual health by simply consulting voodoo priests (aka spiritual fathers) somewhere in Africa and coming back a man of God. If that fails, one can simply wake up one day and claim to be a spirit medium or traditional healer and appropriate as they wish, the authority that comes with that.

In summary, the ruling party have no idea how to revive the Zimbabwe economy and livelihoods. Equally, the main opposition is headed by a wannabe man of God who has spiritualised Zimbabwes problems. The inconsequential opposition leaders whom I never mentioned in this article have been co-opted and silenced with luxurious cars and undisclosed financial packages paid to them by Emmerson Mnangagwa from state resources.

Civic society has been effectively decimated, the few that remain pay attention only to civil rights and governance issues and not much else.

Religious leaders have failed to put their own houses in order and in the process discredited religion as a source of spiritual and moral guidance in times of desperate need.

The IMF continues to meddle in the countrys financial affairs even though they are part of Zimbabwes financial crisis, starting with the racist Lancaster house agreement which not only upheld white settler neo-colonialism, but forced black Zimbabweans to pay for the financial costs of Rhodesians disastrous experiment with Apartheid. They also imposed ESAP and several disastrous interventions in and outside Zimbabwe.

In part, these sad observations supports my suspicion that Zimbabwe has failed to produce thought leaders capable of laying the foundations of a truly post-independent nation, the foundations upon which we currently depend on are not ours.

Given the incompetence and blatant self-interest of people who should be providing leadership, who will deliver the nation to the promised land?

I strongly believe the answer to Zimbabwes problems lies in them, we just dont know yet the solutions that they might come up with. As we speak, they are of interest to the ruling party, opposition and the church only as voting fodder and a source of excessive rent extraction.

If you are an ordinary card carrying member of MDC, ZAPU, ZANU PF, other opposition parties and many who are apolitical, the future of Zimbabwe is safer only when its firmly in your hands. To ensure that this happens, please go to http://zimcharter.com/nehanda-charter/ where you can take part in drafting the Zimbabwe Charter, a practical step towards defining the future of the nation, for it is highly improbable that the ones that live in fifty bedroomed bullet proof mansions together with those that charter private planes to attend medical check-up abroad at taxpayers expense are capable of defining the future of Zimbabwe on your behalf.

Dr Mike Chipere is a postdoctoral fellow affiliated with the Human Economy Program housed at University of Pretoria. Ideas expressed in this article are his and not representative of any organisation.

See the original post:

Who Will Deliver Zimbabwe To The Promised Land? - 263chat.com

After a year with three mayors amid an ongoing pandemic, Bostonians cant be blamed for wanting things to settle down a bit. But anybody whos made it to any Friday thinking, Well, maybe next week will be quieter, understands thats a hope and prediction unlikely to come true.

The race for governor is expected to thrum in the background for the first half of the year, as Democrats, already in possession of a legislative supermajority, hope to retake the corner office held by Republican Charlie Baker for two terms. There will be plenty of intraparty battles among Democrats, as well as Republicans, some of whom remain in the tight thrall of a former president.

The race is already having ripple effects throughout the local political scene. State Sen. Sonia Chang-Diazs decision to run for governor spurred two House lawmakers whove represented parts of Dorchester (Liz Miranda and Nika Elugardo) to gear up runs for her Senate seat. That means therell be at least two House vacancies in Boston, offering a chance for more local activists and community organizers to throw their hats into the ring.

Whoevers in the governors chair come next January will play a big role in determining what happens to Mayor Michelle Wus first term agenda, which includes a fare-free MBTA and rent control, two items that were part of her campaign platform.

Before announcing his decision to stick to two terms, Baker kept the door ajar for Wus proposals as he sought a non-aggression pact with Bostons new chief executive. Wu has already hit the road with plans for three fare-free bus routes that run through Dorchester, Mattapan, and Roxbury, but whether she makes more headway with rent control than the late Mayor Thomas Menino, who also proposed its return, remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, Democrats running for governor will be seeking Wus endorsement while taking pages from her playbook. Her 2021 win with an overwhelming 64 percent mandate from the citys voters came three years after Ayanna Pressley knocked out fellow Democrat Michael Capuano and a year after US Sen. Ed Markey fended off a challenge from an ambitious young member of the Kennedy family, as redundant as some of those adjectives may be. These results portend a shift in the electorate, at least in Boston, with voters in the latest election seeking a more liberal candidate who proposes an overhaul of how we take public transit and how much we spend to live here.

Heres what else to watch for in the coming months.

New police commissioner. The Boston Police Department was thrown into turmoil last year after Acting Mayor Kim Janey fired Commissioner Dennis White after the Boston Globe revealed a troubling personnel record overlooked by the Walsh administration. Separately, a former police union official was accused of molesting children, while other cops have been charged with overtime fraud. Wu, like some of her predecessors, is likely to run into resistance from public safety unions, which have typically resisted reforms, preferred praise, and disdained outsiders while turning contract fights into nasty affairs.

The schools. The Boston Public Schools system has its own multitude of problems, the most recent happening this week when more than 1,000 staffers, nearly half of them teachers, stayed away on Tuesday, in part due to the coronavirus pandemic. Violent incidents, such as the ninth grader who on Nov. 3 allegedly attacked the head of Dorchesters Henderson K-12 School, have also drawn scrutiny from advocates and city councillors.

In the background, theres the steadily declining percentage of school-age children among Bostons population as parents seek other options.

Next steps for Long Island. On Tuesday, Wu and her team lit out for Long Island, taking a 10-minute ferry ride to what was once home to many of the citys addiction and recovery offerings. The bridge to Long Island abruptly came down under Mayor Marty Walsh, who cited its dilapidated structure. But the city has been locked in a legal battle ever since with neighboring Quincy, whose residents have resisted rebuilding the bridge that starts on Quincy land.

In a press conference after her teams return to the mainland, Wu said the amount of space that remains available on Long Island 400,000 gross square feet of buildings widened the eyes of her housing chief, Sheila Dillon. There is a very powerful potential for recovery, and for those who need access to services to continue that legacy on the island, Wu, who pushed for a focus on ferry service during the campaign, told reporters.

There isnt yet a timeline for when an island facility could be back up and running, as city officials focus on creating temporary housing to deal with the addiction and homelessness crisis at Massachusetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard.

The end of the Boston Planning and Development Agency. Mayoral candidates often run against the citys planning and development agency, including Marty Walsh and, when he ran against Mayor Menino in 2009, City Councillor At-Large Michael Flaherty. Under Walsh, the agency underwent a rebrand while still technically carrying the name Boston Redevelopment Authority. Wu has been adamant about abolishing the agency and hiring a chief of planning, who will be tasked with streamlining the whole process and making it more transparent. The development pipeline is expected to continue as the abolishment slowly gets underway.

Speculation about the future of development in Boston, and who will be one of the key figures behind it, is a focus of the citys real estate industry.

Its like waiting for a pope to be chosen, one insider recently told the Boston Business Journal.

View post:

What's ahead at City Hall, on Beacon Hill for 2022 | Dorchester Reporter - Dorchester Reporter