The Daily Parker

My commute to work Friday might get a little longer, as Metra has announced that 9 out of its 11 lines (including mine) would likely not operate if railroad engineers and conductors go on strike Friday. Amtrak has already started cancelling trains so they won't get stranded mid-route should the strike happen.

In other news:

• Cook County tax bills won't come out until late autumn, according to the County President, meaning no one knows how much cash they have to escrow when they sell real estate.
• The Post has an interactive map showing everywhere in the US that hit a record high temperature this summer.
• US Rep. Marjorie Taylor "Still Smarter than Lauren Boebert" Greene (R-GA) has come up with a climate-change theory so dumb it actually seems smart.
• US Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC), another intellectual giant of the 117th Congress, proposed a Federal abortion ban, demonstrating a keen command of how most people in the United States view the issue.
• Robert Wright explores "why we're so clueless about Putin."
• Block Club Chicago explains why my neighborhood and a few others experienced massive geysers coming out of storm drains during Sunday's flooding rains.

Finally, right-wing lawyer Kenneth Starr died at age 76. No reaction yet from Monica Lewinsky.

With the death of Queen Elizabeth II, the British National Anthem has changed back to "God Save the King" for the third time in 185 years. In other news:

• The Guardian explains Elizabeth's funeral and other events that will take place over the next 10 days.
• James Fallows takes a second look at President Biden's speech from last week, in the context of the predictable reaction cycle about anything he does.
• Dana Milbank doesn't worry the MAGA folks want a Mussolini, since some of them keep going on about having a Caesar instead.
• Tina Nguyen wonders what Liz Cheney actually plans to do now.
• Matt Ford says, welp, "there are 'Trump Judges' after all."
• The Economist projects that the Democratic Party will keep its majority in the Senate come January, and probably even pick up a seat.
• Why is the United States the deadliest country in the OECD?
• Via Schneier, Facebook admitted it has no earthly idea what data it has on anyone.

By the way, the UK has a vacancy for the post of Prince of Wales, in case anyone would care to apply. I think we can bet on nepotism, though.

I took Friday off, so it felt like Saturday. Then Saturday felt like Sunday, Sunday felt like another Saturday, and yesterday was definitely another Sunday. Today does not feel like Tuesday.

Like most Mondays, I had a lot of catching up at the office, including mandatory biennial sexual harassment training (prevention and reporting, I hasten to point out). So despite a 7pm meeting with an Australian client tonight, I hope I find time to read these articles:

• The Chicago Bears have revealed a preliminary map of the Arlington Park redevelopment that includes a new football stadium. At least it has a Metra station, so people might actually not have to drive to see the games.
• Music critic Jim DiRogatis, who broke the R. Kelly rape story for the Chicago Sun-Times, moved to quash a subpoena in Kelly's ongoing trial.
• Michael Tomasky thinks the XPOTUS will destroy the Republican Party before he destroys democracy in America, but that ship might already have foundered.
• Paul Krugman argues that President Biden's economic policies have been great for workers.
• Strong Towns explains how McMansions aren't just ugly, they're also bad for their towns.

Finally, the Hugo Awards were announced in Chicago over the weekend, and now I have a ton more books to buy.

I posted this last night on Facebook:

It's so interesting to me that we're having a (manufactured) political argument about canceling $10k in student debt while all the countries we compete with are horrified that people even have to pay $10k to go to university. Even privatization-happy Brits flipped some constituencies to Labour in the last general election because the Tories raised university fees to £9,250 ($10,900) per year. The outrage isn't that we forgave a token amount of Federally-held debt. The outrage is that the richest country in the history of the world doesn't ensure its entire population gets the same education as the average teenager in Belgium.

One of my more rabid Republican friends did not like that, but I'll spare you his response. Instead, I'll note Paul Krugman's take on the topic:

The right is inveighing against debt relief on moral grounds. “If you take out a loan, you pay it back. Period,” tweeted the House Judiciary G.O.P. On which planet? America has had regularized bankruptcy procedures, which take debt off the books, since the 19th century; the idea has been to give individuals and businesses with crippling debts a second chance.

But, you may argue, student borrowers weren’t struggling to cope with a pandemic. True. But many student borrowers were suckered in by the misleading marketing of for-profit colleges; millions ran up debts but never received a degree. Millions more went into debt only to graduate into a labor market devastated by the global financial crisis, a market that took many years to recover.

So don’t think of this as a random giveaway. Many though not all of those who will benefit from debt forgiveness are, in fact, victims of circumstances beyond their control.

Of course, that's an argument based on facts and evidence, so it won't sway anyone on the far right. I just wish they'd find something else to do than get outraged over every single thing the administration does.

At least I don't have an opera rehearsal tonight. That means I might, just might, have some time to read these once I finish preparing for a 7am meeting tomorrow:

• Robert Wright warns that the war in Ukraine could lead to war in Taiwan if we aren't careful.
• As if we needed reminding that right-wing conspiracy propagandists and competence by definition don't co-exist in the same people, Alex Jones's lawyers accidentally sent opposing counsel the contents of his phone, which uncovered a remarkable amount of perjury.
• Lindsay Beyerstein calls on Blue America to fight back.
• Jennifer Rubin looks at last night's pro-choice victory in Kansas as a sign that other extreme right-wing ideas may not survive the midterms either.
• Pity Rocky the Coyote who lives in a cage as an exhibit in the Cook County Forest Preserve District. The FPD wants to give him a bigger cage while community members want him released.
• Xochitl Gonzales wonders, "why do rich people love quiet?" Oh, so many reasons...
• The Chicago Transit Authority has asked for $2 billion to extend the Red Line down to 130th St, and swears that this time it'll really happen as Mayor Richard J Daley promised in 1969.
• Speaking of 1969, Mark Cenedella suggests you may not come across as sufficiently modern if you have a land line, use an AOL email address, or set your Zoom camera to look up your nose in meetings.
• Writer Allison Davis reflects on her 10-year relationship with Tinder.

Finally, the old Morton Salt plant on Chicago's Near North Side opened last night as a new music venue called "The Salt Shed." It even got a new coat of paint.

But someone did after buying a ticket at a Speedway gas station in nearby Des Plaines, Ill.:

Someone in a Chicago suburb beat the odds and won the $1.28 billion Mega Millions jackpot.

According to megamillions.com, there was one jackpot-winning ticket in the draw Friday night, and it was bought at a Speedway gas station and convenience store in Des Plaines.

The jackpot was the nation’s third-largest lottery prize. It grew so large because no one had matched the game’s six selected numbers since April 15. That’s 29 consecutive draws without a jackpot winner.

The $1.28 billion prize is for winners who choose the annuity option, paid annually over 29 years. Most winners opt for the cash option, which for Friday night’s drawing was an estimated $747.2 million.

The odds of winning the jackpot are 1 in 302.5 million.

Because each ticket costs $2, the break-even jackpot for Mega Millions is $605.2 million. That is, $2 is 1/302,575,350 of $605,150,700; therefore, a single $2 ticket is a reasonable bet for any jackpot larger than that. At $1.3 billion, two tickets give you an optimum risk-reward curve.

So, yes, I bought 3 tickets (thus wasting $2). Yet I did not win. Which is too bad, because I had planned to use the winnings to set up a fund for K-12 math education throughout Illinois, emphasizing those areas of the state with the highest per-capita lottery purchasing.

I sincerely hope that whoever won last night gets good legal and financial advice.

This is a bit of good news for my weekend getaway:

The strikes have affected the Central, Jubilee, Northern, and Victoria lines, two of which figure prominently in my plans this week as I'm staying in Holborn and spending time in Gospel Oak/Camden Town.

The euro has fallen below parity with the dollar for the first time since 2003:

Sterling has fallen to $1.18, just days before I fly there. The pound dipped down to this level briefly just as the pandemic hit in March 2020, but you have to go back to 1985 to see it at those levels.

I may have to stock up while I'm there. Euros too.

The town of Croydon, N.H., had a serious problem with its libertarians earlier this year, when extremists took advantage of low voter turnout to cut the school budget in half:

On a snowy Saturday this past March, the 2022 meeting began in the two-century-old town hall, where the walls are adorned with an 1876 American flag made by the “women of Croydon” and instructions to reset the furnace to 53 degrees before leaving.

Residents approved the town budget in the morning. Then they turned in the afternoon to the proposed $1.7 million school budget, which covers the colonial-era schoolhouse (kindergarten to fourth grade) and the cost of sending older students to nearby schools of their choice, public or private.

This is when Mr. Underwood, 60, stood up and threw a sucker punch to the body politic.

Calling the proposed budget a “ransom,” he moved to cut it by more than half — to $800,000. He argued that taxes for education had climbed while student achievement had not, and that based in part on the much lower tuition for some local private schools, about $10,000 for each of the town’s 80 or so students was sufficient — though well short of, say, the nearly $18,000 that public schools in nearby Newport charged for pupils from Croydon.

The town rallied and managed to reverse the budget cuts at a special meeting in May. But wow, this is just like the libertarians up the way who tried (and failed) to co-exist with bears rather than pay for a wildlife warden.

Another detail: as the Times points out, Underwood—the guy who argued school activities aren't necessary—"starred on the tennis team, ran track, played intramural sports and joined extracurricular activities in math, creative writing, radio and student government." So libertarianism works really well if you get a leg up on everyone else before kicking the ladder away.

In what The Economist calls "Clownfall," UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson (Cons) this morning resigned as Conservative Party leader and will leave Number 10 as soon as the party chooses his replacement. But the Tories have deeper issues—after all, they supported him through every scandal but this last one:

Boris Johnson’s government has collapsed at last. For months Britain’s prime minister wriggled out of one scandal after another. Now, irretrievably rejected by his own MPs, he has accepted that his premiership is over. He has asked to stay until the autumn, but he should go immediately.

Mr Johnson was brought down by his own dishonesty, so some may conclude that a simple change of leadership will be enough to get Britain back on course. If only. Although Mr Johnson’s fingerprints are all over today’s mess, the problems run deeper than one man. Unless the ruling Conservative Party musters the fortitude to face that fact, Britain’s many social and economic difficulties will only worsen.

Right up until the end Mr Johnson clung desperately to power, arguing that he had a direct mandate from the people. That was always nonsense: his legitimacy derived from Parliament. Like America’s former president, Donald Trump, the more he hung on the more he disqualified himself from office. In his departure, as in government, Mr Johnson demonstrated a wanton disregard for the interests of his party and the nation.

Despairing of yet another scandal, over 50 ministers, aides and envoys joined an executive exodus so overwhelming that the BBC featured a ticker with a running total to keep up. In the end the government had so many vacancies that it could no longer function—one reason Mr Johnson should not stay on as caretaker.

As for staying on as a caretaker PM, his party have other ideas:

[S]enior Conservative MPs are pushing back against the idea that Johnson should be allowed to stay in office for any longer and want to see an interim leader in place, such as Dominic Raab. Labour also said it would force a confidence vote on the prime minister unless he stepped down from No 10 in short order.

Support drained away from Johnson as more than 50 ministers and government aides resigned in a rolling walkout, while a slew of once supportive backbenchers declared no confidence in his leadership.

The revolt began on Tuesday evening with the resignations of Sajid Javid and Rishi Sunak as health secretary and chancellor respectively.

On the news, Sterling immediately started climbing from post-pandemic low of $1.19, and the FTSE 100 index also rose a bit. (The Pound hasn't traded at these levels since the mid-1980s, in fact, so I may have to stock up when I'm there later this month.)

Under the UK Constitution, the Prime Minister remains in office until the Queen invites a successor to take over, which will happen in this case when the Conservative Party elects a new leader. An early election seems unlikely, so the Tories will likely remain in power for a while, possibly until the next mandated election in January 2025.