I drove down to Takoma Park last week for my monthly acupuncture session. Arriving just before 11am in “Old Town”, I parked in the metered lot and walked over to the office entrance on Carroll Ave. When I entered the code to get buzzed in, I waited longer than usual before my practitioner spoke in a surprised voice. I’d misunderstood our appointment time and would have to wait an hour. I agreed to wait and decided to take a walk around the neighborhood where I had lived for more than a decade. It was a clear, cool morning and I quickly accepted my mistake as an opportunity to visit some old haunts.

I made a plan to visit two of the houses where I had lived from 1983 to 1996. That was a mainly happy time in my life, when I had recovered from the collapse of my first marriage, established myself professionally, began a more stable and lasting relationship, and become a true-blue civic activist.

My first destination was 6733 “Little” Eastern Avenue, just a brief jaunt from Old Town. Eastern is the border street between DC and Maryland. “Little Eastern” is a one-block stretch on the Maryland side which runs along a long concrete abutment that separates it from the main strip.  As I approached my destination, I recalled the properties and the neighbors I had gotten to know back when I moved in with Andrea, my second spouse, in 1988, right after we had married. Andrea had bought a simple bungalow in 1979. By 1988, I was renting a house about a half-mile away and we decided that I would move in with her for the first years of our married life.

Andrea had taken justifiable pride in her house back then.  Given the price of real estate in the DC area, I had not even considered buying a house of my own while I was in my 30’s. Andrea had pulled it off because of her solid career in the labor movement and her commitment to saving.  She had a lovely English garden in the front of the house, and a rental apartment in the basement. While I was living with her there, we’d had a white picket fence built along the front sidewalk.

As I approached the house on foot from Old Town, I saw that the fence was gone and the small front yard overgrown. It had the same yellow siding, now quite faded, and the old wooden garage in the backyard looked dilapidated. Despite all that, the memories of our life together there were quite rich. It was a bright sunny morning. I was happy to have the opportunity to revisit the place on foot and inwardly reclaim an era in my life that was full of possibilities. Andrea and I both relished the neighborly simplicity of our life there, were active citizens in local affairs, and shared the Takoma Park political ethos of “think globally, act locally.”

My next destination was 6606 Cockerille Avenue, a small house I had rented from 1983-1988 after having moved to DC proper in 1981. It was a ten-minute walk from Andrea’s house, and I was really enjoying the stroll through the cozy old neighborhood where I had spent my prime adult years from age 33 to 47. I used to walk my dog along this route daily for many years before meeting Andrea, passing her house frequently. 

I walked Little Eastern to the end and turned left on Second Avenue, which took me to Cockerille, This part of town had been part of Prince Georges County, MD while I was living there.  It had been regarded as a poorer part of town before it was incorporated into Montgomery County, MD in the 1990’s. Takoma Park used to be regarded as one of the few affordable DC suburbs for people like me like me back in the 1980’s. But it was clear that “gentrification” had come to this area, apparent from the spiffed-up reconstruction of the many bungalows I was passing.

I didn’t even recognize the old rental house when I first approached it. Only its 6606 street-number sign in front identified it for me. I was taken with the handsome renewal of the old rental house I had inhabited for 5 years. It was here that my first marriage had ended and where I had painstakingly rebuilt a life for myself before meeting Andrea three years later. The house had served me well for those years and I felt grateful for it as I stopped to take it in.

The hot sun was evoking sweat as I made my way back to Old Town via Westmoreland Ave. I noticed at least half a dozen yard signs with slogans printed in different colors. I had seen signs like this before, but never in such abundance. They articulated for me the essential ethos of the Takoma Park counter-cultural community, past and present.

Arriving back where I started, I had a very relaxing and restorative treatment from my trusted acupuncturist of more than a decade. It was well worth the wait. The treatment was a pre-autumn “tune-up”, involving about 15 tiny needles in the back of my body, a long pause, and another set of needles in the front. I don’t fully understand the efficacy of acupuncture, but I always receive its benefits. My acupuncturist had me rest in silence after both the back and front treatments. During that silent time, I dropped into a very quiet place inside. It was a state of sustained inner peace and wellbeing felt throughout my entire body. As I walked to my car afterwards, I felt that the treatment had brought me to a place of fuller habitation of my entire body.

My last stop on my house visiting exploration that day required driving about a mile out of town just over the Takoma Park City line and into neighboring Silver Spring. Andrea and I had actively searched together to find a suitable new home for ourselves after 8 good years together at Little Eastern. We were excited to find this 3-bedroom, custom-designed, single-story, flat-roofed house in a park-like location near Sligo Creek, 8001 Boulder Lane. It had felt good for me to become a real co-owner of that home, albeit using the large equity from Andrea’s first home to secure the mortgage.

We moved there in 1996 after selling the Little Eastern house to a young couple. We were both enthralled with the nine-foot ceilings and the twelve-foot floor to ceiling “picture window” that met the eye on entering the front door.  We agreed that it would be a great home to grow old in…as well as to possibly accommodate some adopted children.

And two years later, in 1998, the two adopted children arrived with us on Boulder Lane after us having spent almost six weeks together during the adoption process in Sao Paolo, Brazil.  The house then took on a whole new dimension as home to a newly created family of four. The Boulder Lane home was big enough to hold us all comfortably. It was close to some of the best public schools in the area, which our new 8-year-old son and 11-year-old daughter made almost immediate use of. We had three good years of family life in that that home, overcoming a host of challenges, before deciding to move to the outer suburbs of Maryland to be closer to members of our spiritual community.

Taking that little house pilgrimage this week put me into a mellow mood, a peaceful and happy state of mind. Visiting the three houses had awakened many dormant memories, not all of them entirely inspiring. Yet the basic sense of wellbeing I am carrying in my present life allowed me to “take what I liked and leave the rest” from those old memories. Each of the three houses had become a veritable home. The feeling that won out is gratitude.

John Bayerl, 9/18/2023

(NOTE: This is an extract and summary of a recent article in The Washington Post Business section by Jeff Stein — August 20, 2023; p. G5. I’m posting this here because I find it disturbing that President Biden’s stellar performance on economic matters is largely unacknowledged.)

President Biden has defined his economic program (“Bidenomics”) as encompassing all that is good in the U.S. economy:  falling unemployment, robust wage growth, new small business creation. He says that “Bidenomics” is just another way of saying, “Restoring the American Dream.” The president professes to “growing the economy from the bottom up and from the middle out”.

Since taking office, the president has pushed through dozens of changes and personnel appointments that have upended everything from how workers unionize to how large corporations merge. His administration has helped to revive domestic manufacturing through a clean energy boom. His plan to expand the federal safety net has had some mixed success.

In a nutshell, Bidenomics means having the federal government intervening in the economy much more than has been done in decades. Economists say that Biden has already surpassed both Presidents Obama and Clinton in this regard. His administration has embarked on an ambitious program to boost labor unions and block corporate monopolies while spurring economic and industrial growth to new levels.

Here are six pillars of Bidenomics (and how they are faring):

1. Running the economy hot

2. Evening the playing field so labor unions can grow stronger

3. Reviving domestic manufacturing in key areas

4. Reining in corporate power

5. Expanding the safety net

6. Prioritizing national interests and domestic labor over consumerism and globalization in world trade policy. (NB: I added this sixth pillar based on the lead story in The Washington Post by David Lynch, August 27, 2023, p. A1).

Pillar 1. Running the economy hot

Biden’s first major economic triumph was signing the America Rescue Plan Act of 2021. It represented a $1.9 trillion economic stimulus to push the country forward after the years-long ravages of the Covid pandemic. Biden said he had learned from the early days of the Obama administration that: “the biggest risk is not going too big …it’s if we go to small”.

That one act spurred the fastest growing U.S. economy in many decades. GDP surged to 6% for the first time since the 1980’s. Unemployment rates dropped dramatically, and the number of small business creations soared. We are still reaping the fruits of that initial infusion of communal capital. When inflation began to rise steeply in the following year, skeptics like Larry Summers said that Biden had over-reached with his stimulus. But after Summers’ predicted rise in inflation over an entire year, that rate slowly but steadily started coming down.

After the American Rescue Plan, a massive infrastructure and climate technology initiative added to the economy’s “heating”, but inflationary fires predicted by skeptics have still not yet re-ignited.

Pillar 2. Evening the playing field so labor unions can grow stronger

President Biden has publicly vowed to be “the most pro-union president in history.”  Vice President Kamala Harris says that Biden immediately succeeded in fulfilling that vow with the American Rescue plan, which unleashed a surge in employment. These numbers gave Labor greater power at the bargaining table and brought about long-awaited increases in wages and benefits. Other ways that the Biden administration has strengthened organized labor are:

• Appointing staunch union allies to the Labor Department and National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)
• Tying infrastructure grants and other federal funds to companies having unionized labor
• Meeting publicly with labor leaders trying to unionize their workplaces, including Starbucks and Amazon
• Encouraging the NLRB to enforce pro-labor rulings, such as forbidding retaliatory firings, tougher penalties on firms that violate labor laws, and banning the practice of requiring all workers to attend anti-union meetings.

Pillar 3. Reviving domestic manufacturing in key areas

Biden has signed sweeping investment laws that are reviving key U.S. industries: semiconductor manufacturing, essential infrastructure, and green energy.

All these growth areas have the potential to address the climate crisis. And the legislation has already helped to ameliorate blockages in supply chains that had restrained further growth.

In fact, all the passed legislation has an additional goal of restoring essential product supply chains in the United States. This is accomplished with a mixture of new tax incentives, trade restrictions, and domestic subsidies.

The Treasury Department is reporting that investment spending in U.S. manufacturing technology has exploded since Bidenomic legislation took effect.

Pillar 4. Reining in corporate power

President Biden has a core plan of muting some of the power of large corporations. This has manifested in trying to break down monopolies, in challenging large-scale corporate mergers, and in cracking down on corporations’ “junk fees”.

Biden has met opposition in Congress but has succeeded in meeting these goals via his selection of Lina Khan to lead the Federal Trade Commission. Khan has driven the FTC to be far more aggressive in blocking large corporate mergers. In fact, the number of merger notifications dropped about 40% since Ms. Khan took the helm. Business leaders seeking mergers report a “chilling effect” of the FTC’s newly found backbone.

The administration’s actions to control “junk fees” have enjoyed strong consumer support. Many of us suffer from the obtuseness of airline billing, mega-fees on credit cards, and the opaqueness of cable company fees and services.

Pillar 5. Expanding the safety net

The president’s initial “Build Back Better” initiative called for the largest expansion of social programs since the 1960s. It included generous child-care benefits, increased housing subsidies for the poor, and new dental benefits for seniors. Unfortunately, Sen. Joe Manchin refused to go along with his Democratic colleagues and prevented these large-scale initiatives from moving forward.

The American Rescue Plan continued to provide Covid-era subsidies to the poor and unemployed, but those have now largely expired. Food stamp payments have plummeted, and the ranks of Medicaid recipients have dropped dramatically.

Biden has taken a number of actions to foster healthcare, including a new cap on insulin costs, a plan to lower drug costs for all Medicare recipients, and bigger subsidies for people using the Affordable Care Act’s exchanges.

The President’s initial effort to cancel student debt was blocked in the Supreme Court, but he has been more successful with some smaller-scale Department of Education loan forgiveness programs.

A key item on the progressive agenda is to restore the Child Tax Credit enacted during Covid. That law allowed many millions of American families to emerge from dire poverty. Biden is a strong supporter of it.

Pillar 6. Prioritizing national interests and domestic labor over consumerism and globalization in world trade policy. (NB: I added this sixth pillar based on the lead story in The Washington Post by David Lynch, August 27, 2023, p. A1).

Many economists were surprised when President Biden let stand many of the significant tariffs that President Trump had imposed. Biden has broken with President Clinton and President Obama in his desire to downplay globalization and focus more on U.S. manufacturing and labor interests. He has blended a “tough-on-China” stance with lavish federal subsidies for favored domestic industries. Unlike Trump though, Biden continues to be a force for multi-lateral agreements in world trade, including international agreements on aluminum and steel pricing, and strong support for an Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity (IPEF).

Summary.  It’s clear that President Biden has brought about a most respectable economic program that has already reaped many benefits for citizens of all economic backgrounds. If the state of the economy is a primary indicator of strength for an incumbent, the president is in a strong position to claim the mantle of economic mastery.

John Bayerl, August 26, 2023