Missive #594

From the bestselling author of Public Enemies & The Big Rich, account of the battle between the FBI & revolutionary movements of the ’70s: Weathermen, The Symbionese Liberation Army, The FALN, The Black Liberation Army. The names seem quaint now, but then bombings by domestic underground groups were daily occurrences. The FBI combated these & other groups as nodes of a single revolutionary underground dedicated to the violent overthrow of the USA. This is a good history of the underground groups in the ’60s and 70s with only some minor issues where the author knows very little about weapons and the editor didn’t either. The book promo skipped over the killing of police officers which was also a big goal for all the groups. It is worth reading.Burrough’s Days of Rage recreates an atmosphere almost unbelievable decades later, conjuring a time of native-born radicals, often nice middle-class kids, smuggling bombs into skyscrapers & detonating them inside the Pentagon & the Capitol, at a Boston courthouse & a Wall Street restaurant. The FBI’s response included the formation of a secret task force, Squad 47, dedicated to hunting the groups down. But Squad 47 itself broke laws in its attempts to bring the revolutionaries to justice. Its efforts ended in fiasco. Drawing on interviews about their experiences with members of the underground & the FBI, Days of Rage is a look into the hearts & minds of homegrown terrorists & federal agents alike, weaving their stories into a secret history of the ’70s. — Book promo @ goodread.com

When I got my Polar smartwatch I did the setup and when asked for my max heart rate I entered the ‘rule of thumb’ number that you get from the formula 220 less your age. Haven’t bothered to change it as I have aged by a year or two until last Friday. That was when my heart rate went up above what I had entered as my max. So now my max heart rate is what I reached that day – 145 bpm. Using the ‘rule of thumb’ that would mean that I’m 75. That rule is generally looked upon as being meaningless but it is still used by coaches and the medical industry.

The Polar watch is not going to last much longer so I have been looking for a Garmin watch deal during Black Friday sales. They have a Venu® Sq 2 on sale right now that I may buy, undecided between it or a Forerunner 165. But the Venu® Sq 2 is on sale now and the Forerunner is not so the $100 difference looms large. Bought the Venu® yesterday to be delivered to camp where I’ll be in December.

I think this prognostication is the best that I have read so far concerning the future of NY City since the election of Zoltan.

Here’s what I think will happen in NYC under Zoltan: The free buses and government grocery stores won’t happen; they never do. They sound good during campaigns, but collapse under basic math. You can’t run a city on ideas that cost billions and produce no revenue.
The only way to make housing affordable is to build more housing, and Zoltan has almost no control over that. Who wants to commit capital in a place where they promise to seize your capital? The free market lowers prices, not regulation. Every time politicians try to control rent or force affordability by decree, developers stop building and landlords stop maintaining. Supply dries up, the quality collapses, and the few properties that remain skyrocket in price. Once landlords can’t make a profit, they sell, lose properties, or walk away. Eventually, the government takes over.
Taxes will rise to pay for the promises, and the middle class will be the ones shouldering the burden. The rich will relocate, the poor will depend on subsidies, and the productive class will be squeezed from both sides.
Thriving businesses are the foundation of any thriving city. Look at Portland, Seattle, and San Francisco, which are boarded-up wastelands. When they leave, everything else follows: jobs, schools, grocery stores, and stability.
Chicago already proved this, too. Boeing, McDonald’s, Caterpillar, Citadel, nearly 70k jobs, all gone. Now they’re facing billion-dollar deficits, half-empty schools, and neighborhoods without grocery stores.
I saw someone who lived in a rent-controlled apartment in California put it perfectly, he said his landlord could no longer afford maintenance so the pool was filled with dirt, the floors had soft spots, and the foundation ended up cracking.
People who voted for this will eventually feel the pain, but they won’t blame the policies or the politicians; they’ll blame the rich for leaving. If you think things are expensive now, wait until they’re “free.” by Larry-Lambert