ahoya

The Cut by George Pelecanos
4 of 5 stars

Pelecanos introduces Spero Lucas, a new hero for a new time in rapidly changing DC. He’s worthy of the tradition of Nick Stefanos, Derek Strange, Terry Quinn, Gus Ramone and Lorenzo Brown. If any of those names mean anything to you, you are going to want to read this book.

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Recommend: Spotify station based on Sleater-Kinney. A lot of girl power and other rocking times.

On Prince

Adam Kilgore absolutely nails it:

For the Nationals, Prince Fielder or Ryan Zimmerman is only a choice if they make it one

The Nationals, if they’re inclined, do not have to choose between Ryan Zimmerman and Prince Fielder. They have the means to sign the face of their franchise to a contract extension and to land the game-changing free agent slugger…

The Nationals have the means to build and sustain a team with Fielder, Zimmerman and their other core players, at a price tag of about $145 million in payroll per year once the 2015 season rolls around. With all the disposable income in the DMV area, a coming bump in television revenue and the Lerner’s billionaire wealth, Washington can be that kind of market.

Whether you hate Tea Party protests or deplore Occupy Wall Street demonstrations, can’t we all agree that rioting over the firing of a football coach involved in this bad a scandal is the worst?

Mark Titus has a strong idea (via Grantland) on the potential upside to college football trending toward 5 superconferences. It may not be all bad for the little guy, if we get creative: 

The way I see it, the powers that be should pair up each power conference with one of these lesser conferences and create a relegation system like foreign soccer leagues use…. [T]he last place team from the power conference would play the conference champion from the lesser conference in a bowl game at the end of the season to determine who gets to be in the power conference the following year.

Boise State playing its way into the Big 12? Let’s make this happen.

(Source: grantland.com)

How did we get here?

Not all at once. Societal changes compensated for long term economic trends, but they could only do so for so long. Until about 2007 apparently. John Harwood in the New York Times:

Any American economy would suffer compared with the one that emerged as a dominant force after World War II. In 1960, according to the World Bank, the United States accounted for 39 percent of global economic output.

Millions of soldiers came home to attend college under the G.I. Bill, lifting worker productivity and expanding the suburban middle class. Annual economic growth topped 5 percent four times each in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s.

Those trend lines eventually turned down. But changes in American society helped mask the effects.

While international competition shrank the American share of the global economy, women poured into the work force and gave more and more families two breadwinners instead of one.

While men’s median income declined slightly between 1970 and 1990, the median income for women rose nearly 50 percent. So household income rose.

While overall growth slowed — the economy expanded at least 5 percent in a year just once in the 1980s, and not since — so did the rate at which Americans had children. Smaller families stretched family incomes further.

And as increases in education and the number of women in the work force reached a plateau, cheap and easy credit encouraged Americans to consume more. So did the “wealth effect” from the Internet-fueled stock market of the 1990s, and the real estate boom after that.

From 1980 to 2005, personal savings as a proportion of disposable income shrank to 1.5 percent from 9.8 percent. All the while, politicians and voters grew accustomed to more government services than they were willing to pay for.

“The 2007-2009 collapse brought this era to an end,” Mr. Reischauer said. In the new one, ordinary Americans “are going to be very frustrated, because the political system can’t deliver the rising economic performance and living standards they’ve come to expect.”

We started artificially high from the postwar boom. As household income was threatened by international competition families moved to dual breadwinners and smaller families. When that wasn’t sufficient Americans supplemented their income via the stock market’s Internet bubble and then the real estate bubble. When those popped, there was no trapeze to jump onto. Consumer spending decreased and the economy stalled. The government tried to keep the economy moving through stimulus at the same time the recession caused tax revenue to decrease and spending on safety net programs to increase. These three factors, plus inflation in the health care sector, lead to massive budget deficits.

This isn’t the fault of any one party, congress or administration. It’s been decades in the making. Understanding how we got here is the only way we are going to turn this around.

There is a city here

For as much as people like to criticize and delegitimize DC, there is a city here. WaPo:

The Italians may have their marinara and the French their bearnaise, but for many District natives, the sauce that captures the flavor of home is called Mumbo. Few can tell you how it’s made or where it originated, but they know this: If you grew up in one of the predominately African American areas of the city, you’ve likely known the taste your entire life. If you didn’t, you probably have no idea what it is.

“It’s definitely a part of the subculture,” Jones, 34, says. “It’s the D.C. that isn’t the president and the politics.”

It’s the Washington that exists in hole-in-the wall joints owned by Chinese and Korean immigrants who long ago learned how to cater to a mostly African American clientele, down to a condiment. It’s the Washington that if you didn’t know where to look, you might never see.

The allure of Mumbo sauce (also known as Mambo sauce) is not just its flavor, which falls somewhere between barbecue and sweet-and-sour sauce. It’s the sense of identity it carries. It tells of roots in a city where many people just blow through.