Wow. You're not wrong about the Middle East here, this entirely changes all sorts of things.
Playing with Mirrors
- Thread starter Expat
- Start date
I certainly have an idea or two...
By the way, if anyone has thoughts about where they think things might be headed, ideas for additional threads you'd like to see explored, or just general questions, I'd welcome them. It's always a good jolt to the creative process.
Story Post XXX: Real Estate Reacts
#30
1983
Brooklyn. Donna is sitting at the kitchen table as her roommate, Kelly comes in. It’s late. Kelly has been on a date. Her friend, Andrea, fixed her up. She’s really not happy with Andrea at the moment.
“So how was the date?”
Kelly groans
“That bad?”
“He talked about real estate for like, 90 minutes.”
“Real estate?”
“Yes.”
“That sounds painful.”
“No, what’s painful was his undying love of REO Speedwagon.”
“REO Speedwagon?”
“REO Speedwagon.”
“How does anyone work themselves up to forming a significant opinion about REO Speedwagon one way or the other?”
“Apparently it helps if you’re in real estate.”
“I thought this guy was supposed to be an intellectual. Didn’t Andrea say he studied poetry?”
Kelly rolls her eyes.
“Three times. Three times, Donna. Three times he referred to ‘Willams Carlos Williams.’ Williams. Carlos. Williams. ‘Oh, and of course this is indicative of Williams Carlos Williams’ *search* for the American voice.’ I wanted to grab the ice pick from behind the bar and shove it through his eye.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah. He should’ve stuck to real estate. At least there I learned something.”
“Oh really? Does this mean you have a new agent?”
Kelly rolls her eyes. But then Kelly shrugs.
“Hey, can’t live here forever. I’ve been thinking about it for a month or two now. And he did sell me on buying sooner rather than later.”
“Wow, really? So he’s actually good at his job?”
Kelly scowls.
“Are you really gonna make me compliment this guy after he just sucked an entire night of my life away?”
Kelly sighs.
“But honestly, yes, he kind of is good at his job. Our lease is up in six months. I think I’ll really look into it.”
“Wow, big decision! What exactly did he sell you on?”
“Well he threw a lot of numbers at me, don’t ask me to remember all of them. And he really eased my mind about buying in the city. It used to be buying meant leaving the city. But he told me that's just not how it is anymore. He said something like 90% of all new development in major metropolitan blah-blah-blah is something he called infill? Like instead of just going to the edge of the suburbs and building more suburbs, with the way things are now- commuting's so expensive, and apparently taxes are different now, too for homeowners- they're mostly trying to build closer to where people work. Supply and demand, you know? So for example you know how they’ve been building those, uh, watchacallems...Levittowns? Out on the Island for decades now?”
“Sure.”
“Well apparently most of that has ground to a halt. I guess some must still going up, of course, but he said almost all of the new stuff in the boroughs are like rowhouses in Queens and outer Brooklyn now, or building apartment buildings closer in wherever there’s a vacant lot. People want to live near the subway more and more these days.”
“I guess that makes sense. It’s why we live by the station.”
“So anyone who invests in a house now is going to see the price go through the roof in the next ten years. They’re not making any more land.”
“Okay, real estate brokers always use that line.”
“Maybe. But I need a place to live, anyway.”
“Ooh, so what kind of place are you gonna look at?”
“I dunno. I was thinking a rowhouse. He says they’re making plenty of those these days. That’s like the new standard. Out with the Cape Cod, in with the rowhouse.”
“Or how about a unit in one of those flashy new high-rises going up along the JMZ Line? That’s what I’d want.”
“Glamorous. But I want a family.”
“All those new buildings have family units.”
“Yeah, but there’s something about a yard. Even if it’s just 30 square feet. And you know I like to garden.”
“Sure, it’s your future, it should be what you want. So did you get his card?”
“Yeah. Huh, funny, you know he gave it to me without asking. And...you know what? He gave it to me when he said, ‘call me sometime.’ Like, not his home number, but his work number. And you know what? You know what? Andrea was there three weeks ago at the book club when I said in passing that I might be looking for a place.”
“Hmm. You don’t think…”
“I’m starting to think.”
“So…”
“Yeah.”
“This wasn’t a date at all.”
“This son of a bitch was just trying to drum up business.”
“Huh.”
“Ugh.”
“Vodka?”
“Vodka.”
----
March 17th, 1983
Wall Street Journal
Headline: Cities Win as Recession Ends
Subhead: But New Challenges Limit Success
The nation officially exited its 14-month recession in March, posting anemic GDP gains of less than 1% (.8% to be exact) with unemployment hovering around 11%.
But even this toehold onto stability evaporates when regional variance is accounted for. While urban centers have recovered strongly, a majority of suburban counties remain in localized recessions. Rural areas are coping with a mixed bag that includes stabilized GDP growth and wages but with an increase in out-migration as rising expenses outpace other indicators.
Much of the unevenness of the recovery has been laid at the feet of the bargains struck between congress and the Anderson administration at the start of his term in office. In particular, the combination of the tax code overhaul and the Gas Emergency Tax has been noted for shifting the nation’s economic growth away from the suburbs and back to the cities.
The creation of a universal Housing Tax Credit has changed the nature of home loans from catering to fewer, larger mortgages to many more smaller mortgages. While this might seem ideal for cheap land in the suburbs, the high price of gas and changing tastes has made long commutes economically impossible and undesirable for many.
Catering to these shifts in the market, the housing sector responded with cheaper, denser housing in cities and inner suburbs, taking advantage of the new federal push to desegregate established neighborhoods by subsidizing new construction. 45% of housing starts over the last two years have occurred within the borders of cities with a population of over 100,000. When inner suburbs- here defined as areas no more than 5 miles from the central city- are accounted for, the total rises to 80%. Most of the remaining 20% is occurring around smaller cities and dense small towns.
Barely any virgin land, detached subdivisions of the type that have dominated the housing market for the last 50 years are being built. This reverses a trend that began in 1924 and has accelerated up to the late 1970s, wherein the suburbs were responsible for a growing share of housing construction while cities and towns flat-lined. Only the slow housing market from 1978-1981 may have prevented a disastrous over-supply of unwanted housing stock in the far-flung suburbs.
Still, many people feel like they are stuck in their suburban homes these days, unable to afford gas prices, yet also unable to afford to sell and take a loss on their primary investment. At the same time, the federal government continues to present home ownership as an investment opportunity to grow the middle class- a path to eventual prosperity for millions. Now, it’s unclear whether those who bought within the last ten or fifteen years on the fringes of suburbia are going to see those bright futures.
Even as virgin land suburbs peter out, there exists the potential for a dramatic housing shortage now, as many cities are having trouble keeping up with demand. Housing prices are rising rapidly in the core and inner-suburbs in most major metro areas.
While some cities are meeting this problem by building unprecedented amounts of housing, others are facing a backlash from denizens wary of new residents or of being priced out of their own homes.
Nationally, lawsuits have halted or delayed more than 250,000 units of housing over the last two years, almost all of the suits brought to court by pre-existing residents. Efforts by local officials to enact new zoning codes that preclude new development have mostly been met with lawsuits from the powerful Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department, but that hasn’t stopped some localities from trying the tactic.
Among the ten largest metro areas, no particular factor seems to determine whether a city will be pro-growth or protectionist. The inertia of behemoth New York means it cannot readily adapt to changes in demand, and housing starts in the Five Boroughs have increased only modestly over the last year. Meanwhile, already-booming Phoenix has only had to alter its zoning codes to allow greater density in order to keep the growth rate it maintained through the 1970s. While many neighborhoods have protested, this is a city with a particularly strong real estate lobby, able to fight on every front and get plenty of new condos on the market even in the face of frequent lawsuits.
Philadelphia, San Diego, Houston, and Detroit have all seen large-scale attempts to hit the brakes on "non-traditional" housing starts, with varying degrees of success.
Meanwhile, Los Angeles is in the midst of an unprecedented construction boom, building more densely than that city has ever attempted. Chicago recently drafted a new city plan that will see hundreds of thousands of new units of housing added over the next ten years. Joining them on the pro-growth bandwagon are Dallas and, to a lesser extent, Baltimore.
Where some cities are wary of growth, others welcome it. This is particularly true of smaller cities- old industrial centers in places like Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Upstate New York, places whose population peaked in the 1940s or even earlier. There, the resurgence is being welcomed as a lifeline for dying communities.
Scranton, PA is one such city. Suffering a loss of industrial and mining jobs over a 40-year period beginning just after World War II, the city began a slide from 140,000 people in 1940 to 88,000 in 1980. The city’s famed trolley lines ceased to be economically viable and were shut down in the 1960s. New housing fled beyond the city’s borders to take advantage of highway proximity, far-flung office parks, and planned shopping malls.
Now, those malls may never be built. Suburban office parks are shuttering one-by-one as rising logistics costs make them unsustainable. New leases are increasingly being signed in the old Scranton business district as building after building is refurbished and reopened for business.
Meanwhile, developers have made a deal with planned tenants and city officials to turn a largely-abandoned section of downtown Scranton into a new “Urban Shopping Plaza.” Announcements for a dozen housing projects totaling 8,800 units in the immediate vicinity followed on the announcement of this project. Economic activity is returning to the American Mainstreet.
More than 90% of the far-flung suburban developments in Lackawanna County have been scrapped, and a corresponding number of rowhouses, duplexes, and small-to-mid-sized apartment buildings are going up closer to the heart of Scranton and other small towns connected by the county bus system.
Today, the population of the city is estimated at over 90,000 and is on track to hit 100,000 as early as 1987. Plans to relaunch the trolley system are being dusted off, and a regional rail line to Wilkes-Barre, Allentown, and Philadelphia will break ground later this year.
Scranton’s success is far from an isolated phenomenon among smaller cities. With more distant suburbs untenable and larger cities often constrained by market or political forces, the All-American hometown is once again finding its moment in the sun.
1983
Brooklyn. Donna is sitting at the kitchen table as her roommate, Kelly comes in. It’s late. Kelly has been on a date. Her friend, Andrea, fixed her up. She’s really not happy with Andrea at the moment.
“So how was the date?”
Kelly groans
“That bad?”
“He talked about real estate for like, 90 minutes.”
“Real estate?”
“Yes.”
“That sounds painful.”
“No, what’s painful was his undying love of REO Speedwagon.”
“REO Speedwagon?”
“REO Speedwagon.”
“How does anyone work themselves up to forming a significant opinion about REO Speedwagon one way or the other?”
“Apparently it helps if you’re in real estate.”
“I thought this guy was supposed to be an intellectual. Didn’t Andrea say he studied poetry?”
Kelly rolls her eyes.
“Three times. Three times, Donna. Three times he referred to ‘Willams Carlos Williams.’ Williams. Carlos. Williams. ‘Oh, and of course this is indicative of Williams Carlos Williams’ *search* for the American voice.’ I wanted to grab the ice pick from behind the bar and shove it through his eye.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah. He should’ve stuck to real estate. At least there I learned something.”
“Oh really? Does this mean you have a new agent?”
Kelly rolls her eyes. But then Kelly shrugs.
“Hey, can’t live here forever. I’ve been thinking about it for a month or two now. And he did sell me on buying sooner rather than later.”
“Wow, really? So he’s actually good at his job?”
Kelly scowls.
“Are you really gonna make me compliment this guy after he just sucked an entire night of my life away?”
Kelly sighs.
“But honestly, yes, he kind of is good at his job. Our lease is up in six months. I think I’ll really look into it.”
“Wow, big decision! What exactly did he sell you on?”
“Well he threw a lot of numbers at me, don’t ask me to remember all of them. And he really eased my mind about buying in the city. It used to be buying meant leaving the city. But he told me that's just not how it is anymore. He said something like 90% of all new development in major metropolitan blah-blah-blah is something he called infill? Like instead of just going to the edge of the suburbs and building more suburbs, with the way things are now- commuting's so expensive, and apparently taxes are different now, too for homeowners- they're mostly trying to build closer to where people work. Supply and demand, you know? So for example you know how they’ve been building those, uh, watchacallems...Levittowns? Out on the Island for decades now?”
“Sure.”
“Well apparently most of that has ground to a halt. I guess some must still going up, of course, but he said almost all of the new stuff in the boroughs are like rowhouses in Queens and outer Brooklyn now, or building apartment buildings closer in wherever there’s a vacant lot. People want to live near the subway more and more these days.”
“I guess that makes sense. It’s why we live by the station.”
“So anyone who invests in a house now is going to see the price go through the roof in the next ten years. They’re not making any more land.”
“Okay, real estate brokers always use that line.”
“Maybe. But I need a place to live, anyway.”
“Ooh, so what kind of place are you gonna look at?”
“I dunno. I was thinking a rowhouse. He says they’re making plenty of those these days. That’s like the new standard. Out with the Cape Cod, in with the rowhouse.”
“Or how about a unit in one of those flashy new high-rises going up along the JMZ Line? That’s what I’d want.”
“Glamorous. But I want a family.”
“All those new buildings have family units.”
“Yeah, but there’s something about a yard. Even if it’s just 30 square feet. And you know I like to garden.”
“Sure, it’s your future, it should be what you want. So did you get his card?”
“Yeah. Huh, funny, you know he gave it to me without asking. And...you know what? He gave it to me when he said, ‘call me sometime.’ Like, not his home number, but his work number. And you know what? You know what? Andrea was there three weeks ago at the book club when I said in passing that I might be looking for a place.”
“Hmm. You don’t think…”
“I’m starting to think.”
“So…”
“Yeah.”
“This wasn’t a date at all.”
“This son of a bitch was just trying to drum up business.”
“Huh.”
“Ugh.”
“Vodka?”
“Vodka.”
----
March 17th, 1983
Wall Street Journal
Headline: Cities Win as Recession Ends
Subhead: But New Challenges Limit Success
The nation officially exited its 14-month recession in March, posting anemic GDP gains of less than 1% (.8% to be exact) with unemployment hovering around 11%.
But even this toehold onto stability evaporates when regional variance is accounted for. While urban centers have recovered strongly, a majority of suburban counties remain in localized recessions. Rural areas are coping with a mixed bag that includes stabilized GDP growth and wages but with an increase in out-migration as rising expenses outpace other indicators.
Much of the unevenness of the recovery has been laid at the feet of the bargains struck between congress and the Anderson administration at the start of his term in office. In particular, the combination of the tax code overhaul and the Gas Emergency Tax has been noted for shifting the nation’s economic growth away from the suburbs and back to the cities.
The creation of a universal Housing Tax Credit has changed the nature of home loans from catering to fewer, larger mortgages to many more smaller mortgages. While this might seem ideal for cheap land in the suburbs, the high price of gas and changing tastes has made long commutes economically impossible and undesirable for many.
Catering to these shifts in the market, the housing sector responded with cheaper, denser housing in cities and inner suburbs, taking advantage of the new federal push to desegregate established neighborhoods by subsidizing new construction. 45% of housing starts over the last two years have occurred within the borders of cities with a population of over 100,000. When inner suburbs- here defined as areas no more than 5 miles from the central city- are accounted for, the total rises to 80%. Most of the remaining 20% is occurring around smaller cities and dense small towns.
Barely any virgin land, detached subdivisions of the type that have dominated the housing market for the last 50 years are being built. This reverses a trend that began in 1924 and has accelerated up to the late 1970s, wherein the suburbs were responsible for a growing share of housing construction while cities and towns flat-lined. Only the slow housing market from 1978-1981 may have prevented a disastrous over-supply of unwanted housing stock in the far-flung suburbs.
Still, many people feel like they are stuck in their suburban homes these days, unable to afford gas prices, yet also unable to afford to sell and take a loss on their primary investment. At the same time, the federal government continues to present home ownership as an investment opportunity to grow the middle class- a path to eventual prosperity for millions. Now, it’s unclear whether those who bought within the last ten or fifteen years on the fringes of suburbia are going to see those bright futures.
Even as virgin land suburbs peter out, there exists the potential for a dramatic housing shortage now, as many cities are having trouble keeping up with demand. Housing prices are rising rapidly in the core and inner-suburbs in most major metro areas.
While some cities are meeting this problem by building unprecedented amounts of housing, others are facing a backlash from denizens wary of new residents or of being priced out of their own homes.
Nationally, lawsuits have halted or delayed more than 250,000 units of housing over the last two years, almost all of the suits brought to court by pre-existing residents. Efforts by local officials to enact new zoning codes that preclude new development have mostly been met with lawsuits from the powerful Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department, but that hasn’t stopped some localities from trying the tactic.
Among the ten largest metro areas, no particular factor seems to determine whether a city will be pro-growth or protectionist. The inertia of behemoth New York means it cannot readily adapt to changes in demand, and housing starts in the Five Boroughs have increased only modestly over the last year. Meanwhile, already-booming Phoenix has only had to alter its zoning codes to allow greater density in order to keep the growth rate it maintained through the 1970s. While many neighborhoods have protested, this is a city with a particularly strong real estate lobby, able to fight on every front and get plenty of new condos on the market even in the face of frequent lawsuits.
Philadelphia, San Diego, Houston, and Detroit have all seen large-scale attempts to hit the brakes on "non-traditional" housing starts, with varying degrees of success.
Meanwhile, Los Angeles is in the midst of an unprecedented construction boom, building more densely than that city has ever attempted. Chicago recently drafted a new city plan that will see hundreds of thousands of new units of housing added over the next ten years. Joining them on the pro-growth bandwagon are Dallas and, to a lesser extent, Baltimore.
Where some cities are wary of growth, others welcome it. This is particularly true of smaller cities- old industrial centers in places like Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Upstate New York, places whose population peaked in the 1940s or even earlier. There, the resurgence is being welcomed as a lifeline for dying communities.
Scranton, PA is one such city. Suffering a loss of industrial and mining jobs over a 40-year period beginning just after World War II, the city began a slide from 140,000 people in 1940 to 88,000 in 1980. The city’s famed trolley lines ceased to be economically viable and were shut down in the 1960s. New housing fled beyond the city’s borders to take advantage of highway proximity, far-flung office parks, and planned shopping malls.
Now, those malls may never be built. Suburban office parks are shuttering one-by-one as rising logistics costs make them unsustainable. New leases are increasingly being signed in the old Scranton business district as building after building is refurbished and reopened for business.
Meanwhile, developers have made a deal with planned tenants and city officials to turn a largely-abandoned section of downtown Scranton into a new “Urban Shopping Plaza.” Announcements for a dozen housing projects totaling 8,800 units in the immediate vicinity followed on the announcement of this project. Economic activity is returning to the American Mainstreet.
More than 90% of the far-flung suburban developments in Lackawanna County have been scrapped, and a corresponding number of rowhouses, duplexes, and small-to-mid-sized apartment buildings are going up closer to the heart of Scranton and other small towns connected by the county bus system.
Today, the population of the city is estimated at over 90,000 and is on track to hit 100,000 as early as 1987. Plans to relaunch the trolley system are being dusted off, and a regional rail line to Wilkes-Barre, Allentown, and Philadelphia will break ground later this year.
Scranton’s success is far from an isolated phenomenon among smaller cities. With more distant suburbs untenable and larger cities often constrained by market or political forces, the All-American hometown is once again finding its moment in the sun.
Good ol' John Ashbrook. I guess there's a case for saying he was technically the first sitting politician to leave his party in the Conservative Rebellion. Of course he didn't officially join the ACP until they declared their existence, along with all the others, and by then he was no longer a sitting politician. He resigned his seat to focus on the election.
I'm honestly not sure how the butterfly effect would treat a gastric hemorrhage and I'm honestly not really interested in learning more about gastric hemorrhages to make an informed judgment. So treating it like a heart attack and rolling some dice...he was a prominent spokesperson for the party with many people considering him a top contender for the presidential nomination in 1984. He was getting set to run for governor of Ohio in 1982, but died unexpectedly in February of that year.
That could backfire on LA in any number of ways (where they're building densely, for one, and how sturdy the buildings are, of course)…
Still, this is interesting...
I'm told by a reliable source that the only mass transit system Phoenix really needs is one that links all the Culver's in town.
But seriously, I will, some point down significantly down to the line, get into some of that juicy transit good-ness AH readers have come to expect from a proper post-war TL. I've hinted at increased funding and mentioned a couple of sped up projects (Atlanta for sure, off the top of my head). But the lead times on these projects are quite long and I'm trying to keep things...sort of chronological. The plan is to bound sets of posts by US elections, more or less.
For Phoenix, I don't really see anything stopping something similar to OTL being moved up significantly in time. There's no technological requirements lacking, the city is growing denser, people are driving less, and the federal funds on offer are potentially pretty generous.
Yeah for sure, the 90s have a few shocks in store for LA. But "more dense than LA has ever built before" is a pretty low bar. We're mostly talking about missing middle housing rather than a bunch of new high rises. There's plenty of space in most of LA to increase density on the horizontal plane before you go vertical- smaller or no yards with duplexes or row homes instead of single detached homes, promoting the conversion of existing stock to be multi-unit, legalizing accessory dwellings (which LA has always been pretty good at; see Kato Kaelin's living sitch in the 90s), etc.
Don't get me wrong, if OTL had x buildings in an earthquake zone and suffered y damage, and TTL has x+n buildings in the same zone, odds are the damage ITTL is going to be greater than y. Just probably not catastrophically so.
LA's probably not going to see much of an increase over OTL in large apartment construction until transit improvements start to allow a bigger change in living patterns. Given where LA was at on subway construction IOTL at the "real" start of TTL (1980), there's not too much I can do to speed up its arrival, so it's probably coming online in 1990. Of course that means many new, big buildings just in time for three significant quakes from '91 to '94! It's probably fine. I'm sure it's fine. It's fine. It's fine. It'll be fine. It's fine.
Story Post XXXI: New Holidays
#31
1983
Katharine’s a senior Democratic aid on the Hill. She’s been waiting for an underling to come back with news on a fact-finding mission of sorts. His results are...surprising.
“How many?”
“Four.”
“Four?”
“Four.”
“FOUR!?”
“Four. Plus some other riders. The usual stuff: a little education spending, a little infrastructure. Hog farming showed up. Why does hog farming always seem to show up in these things?”
“Bobby.”
“You don’t have to say it.”
“Bobby!”
“You don’t have to-”
“This was supposed to be a gimme. This was supposed to be a slam dunk.”
“It is what it is.”
“That’s what you have for me? ‘It-is-what-it-fucking-is’?”
“You told me to see what it would take to get the bill passed, this is what it would take.”
“It’s Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday! How did this balloon so much!”
“It’s more controversial than you’d think. Plus you know how it is these days. We’ve basically been governing by coalition for a few years now. People are used to having their vote courted. It’s all quid pro quo to get office supplies these days, much less a yay vote.”
“God dammit. I can’t go to the leadership with four new federal holidays. What even are they asking for?”
“MLK Day, Flag Day, Women’s Suffrage Day, and Election Day.”
“God dammit. I don’t even know what to say.”
“It’s not necessarily a bad situation. We can spin this. These are all reasonable. This passes with a veto-proof majority. Anderson will decry the move as costing too much but he’ll have to sign it anyway. He loses a news cycle, we look good to women, blacks, flag-wavers, everyone.”
“Just...give me a minute to reconcile myself to this. The calculus I can see, that’s not the problem. But we can’t keep governing like this, Bobby.”
“I hear ya.”
“We ask for a scoop of ice cream and they want us to buy a goddamn Baskin Robbins franchise! Every time! Every piece of pissant legislation!”
“It’s a mess. It’s unworkable.”
“We need to stop pretending one of us is ever going to get- let alone keep- a majority with the fucking Conservatives around.”
“Amen.”
“Listen. I’m going to synthesize this and get it to Byrd. We'll get the brass involved on both sides and bring these idiots back down to Earth. But here’s what I need from you. Get Johansson and Bianchi and that new guy, the numbers guy with the sideburns-”
“Franklin.”
“Franklin. And get, um, what’s her name, Albright from Nitze. And I’ll give you more names tomorrow. Talk to Brookings. Arrange a consultation team from them. Find some office space off the Hill- I mean way off the Hill. I’ll clear it with Leadership, but I want a new project set up. We’re looking at reform. We’re looking hard and we’re looking serious.”
“You’re the boss. But shouldn't you clear this with the DNC first?”
"It's better to ask forgiveness than permission, Bobby, never forget that in this business. I'm done with this shit."
----
WTVD Eyewitness News, Raleigh
“Congress today announced the establishment of three new federal holidays. As expected, Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday will now be observed on the third Monday in January. It will be joined by Flag Day, to be observed on the second Monday in June, as well as finally making Election Day a holiday, which of course will only be observed every other year on the first Tuesday in November.
“The move is expected to prompt the few states who hold elections outside of the standard federal cycle to align their electoral calendars with the federal calendar. Other holidays that were considered but were ultimately voted down included Women’s Suffrage Day and Moon Landing Day.”
----
7th and Euclid
“EXTRY! EXTRY! ACP protests new federal holidays! Thousands march on Washington against MLK Day! Conservative state legislatures vow to fight! EXTRY! Read all about it!"
“Idiots.”
“What’s that, Hashim?”
“They’re idiots, that’s all.”
“I didn’t know you were political.”
“I’m not, but who makes friends by protesting a holiday? Everybody loves time off. They are idiots.”
“I wish we got holidays.”
“We’re independent businessmen, we can take a holiday any time we want.”
“Yeah?”
“Of course! You think you have to be here? You can leave now if you want to.”
“And you’ll man my stall?”
“What? No, I’m not gonna man your stall. You just close the stall.”
“Close the stall? I don’t understand. So who’s selling the papers?”
“...Al, when is the last time you took a day off?”
“Look, every morning I show up and every morning there’s papers. When the news stops, I’ll stop.”
“This is so unhealthy. You need a vacation.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Immediately.”
“Wow. Great! Where we going?”
“Al, I’m not going on vacation with you.”
“Camaaaaaaahn!”
“No.”
“Camaaaaahn!”
“No!”
“Hey, I know where we can go: Michael Caine’s house.”
“N-what? Michael Caine?”
“My brother’s his chauffeur out there in Hollywood. Lives in the carriage house.”
“Are you serious!? Do you know how many times I’ve seen Sleuth!?”
“We doing this? Sounds like we’re doing this! EXTRY! Al and Hashim are goin' to Hollywood!”
“Michael Caine…”
1983
Katharine’s a senior Democratic aid on the Hill. She’s been waiting for an underling to come back with news on a fact-finding mission of sorts. His results are...surprising.
“How many?”
“Four.”
“Four?”
“Four.”
“FOUR!?”
“Four. Plus some other riders. The usual stuff: a little education spending, a little infrastructure. Hog farming showed up. Why does hog farming always seem to show up in these things?”
“Bobby.”
“You don’t have to say it.”
“Bobby!”
“You don’t have to-”
“This was supposed to be a gimme. This was supposed to be a slam dunk.”
“It is what it is.”
“That’s what you have for me? ‘It-is-what-it-fucking-is’?”
“You told me to see what it would take to get the bill passed, this is what it would take.”
“It’s Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday! How did this balloon so much!”
“It’s more controversial than you’d think. Plus you know how it is these days. We’ve basically been governing by coalition for a few years now. People are used to having their vote courted. It’s all quid pro quo to get office supplies these days, much less a yay vote.”
“God dammit. I can’t go to the leadership with four new federal holidays. What even are they asking for?”
“MLK Day, Flag Day, Women’s Suffrage Day, and Election Day.”
“God dammit. I don’t even know what to say.”
“It’s not necessarily a bad situation. We can spin this. These are all reasonable. This passes with a veto-proof majority. Anderson will decry the move as costing too much but he’ll have to sign it anyway. He loses a news cycle, we look good to women, blacks, flag-wavers, everyone.”
“Just...give me a minute to reconcile myself to this. The calculus I can see, that’s not the problem. But we can’t keep governing like this, Bobby.”
“I hear ya.”
“We ask for a scoop of ice cream and they want us to buy a goddamn Baskin Robbins franchise! Every time! Every piece of pissant legislation!”
“It’s a mess. It’s unworkable.”
“We need to stop pretending one of us is ever going to get- let alone keep- a majority with the fucking Conservatives around.”
“Amen.”
“Listen. I’m going to synthesize this and get it to Byrd. We'll get the brass involved on both sides and bring these idiots back down to Earth. But here’s what I need from you. Get Johansson and Bianchi and that new guy, the numbers guy with the sideburns-”
“Franklin.”
“Franklin. And get, um, what’s her name, Albright from Nitze. And I’ll give you more names tomorrow. Talk to Brookings. Arrange a consultation team from them. Find some office space off the Hill- I mean way off the Hill. I’ll clear it with Leadership, but I want a new project set up. We’re looking at reform. We’re looking hard and we’re looking serious.”
“You’re the boss. But shouldn't you clear this with the DNC first?”
"It's better to ask forgiveness than permission, Bobby, never forget that in this business. I'm done with this shit."
----
WTVD Eyewitness News, Raleigh
“Congress today announced the establishment of three new federal holidays. As expected, Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday will now be observed on the third Monday in January. It will be joined by Flag Day, to be observed on the second Monday in June, as well as finally making Election Day a holiday, which of course will only be observed every other year on the first Tuesday in November.
“The move is expected to prompt the few states who hold elections outside of the standard federal cycle to align their electoral calendars with the federal calendar. Other holidays that were considered but were ultimately voted down included Women’s Suffrage Day and Moon Landing Day.”
----
7th and Euclid
“EXTRY! EXTRY! ACP protests new federal holidays! Thousands march on Washington against MLK Day! Conservative state legislatures vow to fight! EXTRY! Read all about it!"
“Idiots.”
“What’s that, Hashim?”
“They’re idiots, that’s all.”
“I didn’t know you were political.”
“I’m not, but who makes friends by protesting a holiday? Everybody loves time off. They are idiots.”
“I wish we got holidays.”
“We’re independent businessmen, we can take a holiday any time we want.”
“Yeah?”
“Of course! You think you have to be here? You can leave now if you want to.”
“And you’ll man my stall?”
“What? No, I’m not gonna man your stall. You just close the stall.”
“Close the stall? I don’t understand. So who’s selling the papers?”
“...Al, when is the last time you took a day off?”
“Look, every morning I show up and every morning there’s papers. When the news stops, I’ll stop.”
“This is so unhealthy. You need a vacation.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Immediately.”
“Wow. Great! Where we going?”
“Al, I’m not going on vacation with you.”
“Camaaaaaaahn!”
“No.”
“Camaaaaahn!”
“No!”
“Hey, I know where we can go: Michael Caine’s house.”
“N-what? Michael Caine?”
“My brother’s his chauffeur out there in Hollywood. Lives in the carriage house.”
“Are you serious!? Do you know how many times I’ve seen Sleuth!?”
“We doing this? Sounds like we’re doing this! EXTRY! Al and Hashim are goin' to Hollywood!”
“Michael Caine…”
Audiovisual Bonus! Wikipedia is a font of pointless, wonderful knowledge. It directed me to the early 1980s theme song for WTVD Eyewitness News (and apparently hundreds of other local news channels of the period). Now let's see if I can imbed this...and prepare to wrap your ear-holes around this bad puppy! If you can!
Story Post XXXII: Iran
#32
Summer 1983
CIA station, Istanbul.
“So. The new photos.”
The agent lays the photos out on the station chief's desk.
“Tell me again?”
“This is Trabzon. A passenger ship, embarking for Crimea.”
“And the gentlemen boarding this boat, they’re Iranians?”
“Tudeh Party officials. These four, anyway. Gentleman number five is chief of procurement for the Air Force. Out of uniform, of course.”
“And greeting them?”
“Personal Secretary to the Soviet Foreign Minister. Who happens to have a very nice dacha on the Crimean coast, by the way.”
“Huh. Fancy that.”
“You know, this plus the other stuff we’ve gathered...it could make a lot of Iranian clerics lose their shit. If we were to...you know, let it slip…”
“That’s a no-go. Langley says we’re sitting this one out.”
“We’ve got so much. Names. Payments. Meetings all over Iran, in Turkey, in Russia, the Eastern Bloc.”
“We don’t say a word.”
“But the evidence is right here, the Soviets are worming their way into Iran.”
“Even so. We don’t get involved right now. That’s our directive. Saddam's a lunatic, the Ayatollahs are barbarians...the mood in Washington calls for zero cooperation with either.”
“And if that benefits the Soviets?”
“You don’t think I’ve had this conversation already? Here’s the deal: Syria and Lebanon are powder kegs right now. The Soviets are practically bodily sitting on Assad to keep him from doing something stupid. There’s also the possibility we might need the Soviets in a few months if things keep going the way they're going in Israel. Anderson wants any Israeli-Palestinian negotiations to have the blessings of the UN, so there’s just no upsetting the apple cart right now. Iran’s considered a secondary front for the time being, so we back off.
“So the commies get a free hand in Iran?”
“Commies. Listen to you.”
“Well, what do you call em?”
“Opportunists, maybe about as ideological as your average...I dunno, Angolan. Besides. If you gave me a choice between Moscow and the Ayatollahs...well. With the Soviets...eh, at least they know how to keep a Cold War cold, most of the time.”
“Still seems a shame not to meddle.”
“You want more reasons? Fine. There’s also Afghanistan to think of.”
“Afghanistan?”
“Right now the Iranians are supporting their own rebel groups against the Soviets. But they also keep scrapping with our guys. The thought is that if Iran and the Soviets start to cozy up, Iran will be forced to cut off their support. Then we can try to unify opposition under people we can trust.”
“That’s all fine, up to a point. But wouldn’t it be worse to have Iran become a Soviet client?”
“Okay, sure. Doesn’t seem likely right now. But if the war keeps going on and by necessity the Iranians get deeper and deeper in bed with the Soviets, sure, you could be right. But there are still up-sides. Think of the Gulf States. They may hate communists and Arab nationalists and...I don’t have to tell you it’s a long list. But oddly what they seem most afraid of right now is the Ayatollahs. Come to that, the American public has a special place in its most hateful heart for those bastards. If the clerics get bum-rushed the way the Shah did in '79? Don’t underestimate the political upside of schadenfreude, my friend.”
----
2019
American University (Go Eagles), Washington DC, 2019. In session is “The Soviet Sphere,” a class on Soviet foreign policy.
“There are several historians who believe the Soviet Leadership Crisis of 1981 ultimately had a positive effect on the Union. Most agree that the USSR had been on a path of precipitous decline since at least the time of Brezhnev, and that collapse had become inevitable by the 1980s. The only question was the exact timing.
“By providing a sort of ‘dress rehearsal’ for the end (so the theory goes), the Leadership Crisis caused the Soviet bureaucracy to perk up; to realize what was coming, and to do all it could to pull out of the nosedive- or at least make the landing as soft as possible.
“It’s certainly true that the strategy ultimately adopted by Mikhail Gorbachev, whose accession ended the crisis in early 1982, did a lot to ease domestic tensions both within Russia, the other Republics, and to a lesser extent in the Eastern Bloc. Anti-corruption initiatives seem to have had a real effect on production outputs by 1985, particularly in the agricultural sector. They also sponsored negotiations (albeit dramatically slow-pedaled) with Solidarnosc in Poland, and even held meetings with prominent Euro-communists on strategies for reform and possible future normalization (though these sessions would remain a state secret until quite recently).
“So we can certainly point to actions taken by Gorbachev, prompted by the Leadership Crisis, which may have had an effect on the ultimate trajectory of the Union.
“But of course there is a simple counter-argument to all this: it failed anyway.
“The responses to that stand on less solid ground, and often involve detailed counterfactuals that are impossible to prove. Could the collapse of the Eastern Bloc have gone any worse? Some scenarios posit a complete collapse of the Union; perhaps even the disintegration of the Russian state itself, with successor governments centered on Novosibirsk, Vladivostok, and other regional cities where dissent was expressed the loudest. Some even go so far as to posit global nuclear war.
“These arguments are, of course, unprovable. But they raise intriguing questions.
“As intriguing as they are and as interesting as Soviet domestic policy is- and I urge you all to take professor Solomon’s Domestic Politics in the USSR class this spring- we won’t be covering much of that here. Today we’re going to be focusing on how the Leadership Crisis affected Soviet foreign policy, particularly in Western Asia and the Middle East.
“These brief months of uncertainty for the Soviets were monumental in the modern history of the world, for they caused one of the two great powers on the globe to almost totally second-guess their Cold War strategy. Worried about having to quash a rebellion at home, the Soviets retrenched.
“They cut back on international aid to a number of organizations, pushed Cuba to take a less provocative stance in Africa and Central America, and used American defense cuts as an excuse to trim their own military budgets.
“Their most notable policy change came in the Middle East, where they had been juggling a handful of often diametrically opposed allies for more than 20 years. A great deal of effort had been expended throughout the 1970s to keep both Iraq and Syria on-side and away from each other’s throats.
“Though initially supported by the Andropov government, Iraq’s invasion of Iran was starting to cause headaches for the Russians even as early as 1981. Gorbachev in particular saw Hussein as a loose cannon with a sense of entitlement, who brought little to the table as an ally.
“Meanwhile, Syria was going a long way to bring Iran around to a favorable view of the Soviets, something the Soviets were desperately keen on from day one of the revolution in Tehran. While the religious leadership of Iran would never consent to join the Soviet sphere outright, they were willing to make a number of concessions for Soviet support in light of their current war with Iraq.
“As the Syrians grew their influence in Lebanon and Soviet fortunes rose in Iran, Moscow began to more-or-less ghost Hussein, who was left with precious few allies. US intelligence-sharing and aid had dried up almost as soon as president Anderson took office. The Gulf States were willing to support Saddam financially, but hardly anyone was willing to sell him weapons. And without Soviet advisers, the Iraqi army’s ability to use the weapons it had quickly degraded in the face of mounting casualties.
“By 1984, the Iraqis were falling back across the border with the Iranians in hot pursuit. Hussein was executed by his own generals, who quickly sued for peace. The resulting military government Iraq was weak, and remained in the outer echelons of the Soviet orbit. They were forced by necessity to make several political concessions. These included a UN-approved referendum on a border adjustment with Syria and autonomy for the northern Kurds.
“Iraq would remain an unstable member of the Soviet sphere for the foreseeable future. In at least one respect, this nominal Soviet ally would prove useful. After the realignment of the Iranians became clear, Iraq served as a tertiary front in the late Cold War, with the US and the Gulf petrol states spending undue time, effort, and money to try to lure the country away from the Soviets, with very little to show for it.
“Meanwhile, the necessary military ramp-up in Iran led to a dramatic increase in the number of Soviet advisers in the country. The Tudeh Party went from ‘tolerated’ to ‘favored,’ and saw significant expansion during this time, and the Sovietization of the officer class in both the Iranian Army and (particularly) the Air Force became inevitable.
“The Iranians also dropped their own nascent efforts at projecting power around the region, withdrawing support for Farsi-speaking rebels in Afghanistan, and merging their Shia fighting cadres in Lebanon with the pro-Syrian Amal Movement.
“For the moment the Iranians maintained a significant degree of independence of action beyond these fronts. But as we’ll see, the complacency of the religious leadership would cause them problems in the future.
“The Syrians gained a significant amount of prestige as the midwives of this realignment, but that didn’t translate to the same level of independence experienced by Iran. The Soviets successfully reigned Assad in on several occasions, including nixing his attempts to annex Lebanon, and most notably through Soviet participation in the Athens Conference. Athens was a moment of prestige the Soviets simply couldn’t pass up, even if the results meant undermining a key ally in the region.”
Summer 1983
CIA station, Istanbul.
“So. The new photos.”
The agent lays the photos out on the station chief's desk.
“Tell me again?”
“This is Trabzon. A passenger ship, embarking for Crimea.”
“And the gentlemen boarding this boat, they’re Iranians?”
“Tudeh Party officials. These four, anyway. Gentleman number five is chief of procurement for the Air Force. Out of uniform, of course.”
“And greeting them?”
“Personal Secretary to the Soviet Foreign Minister. Who happens to have a very nice dacha on the Crimean coast, by the way.”
“Huh. Fancy that.”
“You know, this plus the other stuff we’ve gathered...it could make a lot of Iranian clerics lose their shit. If we were to...you know, let it slip…”
“That’s a no-go. Langley says we’re sitting this one out.”
“We’ve got so much. Names. Payments. Meetings all over Iran, in Turkey, in Russia, the Eastern Bloc.”
“We don’t say a word.”
“But the evidence is right here, the Soviets are worming their way into Iran.”
“Even so. We don’t get involved right now. That’s our directive. Saddam's a lunatic, the Ayatollahs are barbarians...the mood in Washington calls for zero cooperation with either.”
“And if that benefits the Soviets?”
“You don’t think I’ve had this conversation already? Here’s the deal: Syria and Lebanon are powder kegs right now. The Soviets are practically bodily sitting on Assad to keep him from doing something stupid. There’s also the possibility we might need the Soviets in a few months if things keep going the way they're going in Israel. Anderson wants any Israeli-Palestinian negotiations to have the blessings of the UN, so there’s just no upsetting the apple cart right now. Iran’s considered a secondary front for the time being, so we back off.
“So the commies get a free hand in Iran?”
“Commies. Listen to you.”
“Well, what do you call em?”
“Opportunists, maybe about as ideological as your average...I dunno, Angolan. Besides. If you gave me a choice between Moscow and the Ayatollahs...well. With the Soviets...eh, at least they know how to keep a Cold War cold, most of the time.”
“Still seems a shame not to meddle.”
“You want more reasons? Fine. There’s also Afghanistan to think of.”
“Afghanistan?”
“Right now the Iranians are supporting their own rebel groups against the Soviets. But they also keep scrapping with our guys. The thought is that if Iran and the Soviets start to cozy up, Iran will be forced to cut off their support. Then we can try to unify opposition under people we can trust.”
“That’s all fine, up to a point. But wouldn’t it be worse to have Iran become a Soviet client?”
“Okay, sure. Doesn’t seem likely right now. But if the war keeps going on and by necessity the Iranians get deeper and deeper in bed with the Soviets, sure, you could be right. But there are still up-sides. Think of the Gulf States. They may hate communists and Arab nationalists and...I don’t have to tell you it’s a long list. But oddly what they seem most afraid of right now is the Ayatollahs. Come to that, the American public has a special place in its most hateful heart for those bastards. If the clerics get bum-rushed the way the Shah did in '79? Don’t underestimate the political upside of schadenfreude, my friend.”
----
2019
American University (Go Eagles), Washington DC, 2019. In session is “The Soviet Sphere,” a class on Soviet foreign policy.
“There are several historians who believe the Soviet Leadership Crisis of 1981 ultimately had a positive effect on the Union. Most agree that the USSR had been on a path of precipitous decline since at least the time of Brezhnev, and that collapse had become inevitable by the 1980s. The only question was the exact timing.
“By providing a sort of ‘dress rehearsal’ for the end (so the theory goes), the Leadership Crisis caused the Soviet bureaucracy to perk up; to realize what was coming, and to do all it could to pull out of the nosedive- or at least make the landing as soft as possible.
“It’s certainly true that the strategy ultimately adopted by Mikhail Gorbachev, whose accession ended the crisis in early 1982, did a lot to ease domestic tensions both within Russia, the other Republics, and to a lesser extent in the Eastern Bloc. Anti-corruption initiatives seem to have had a real effect on production outputs by 1985, particularly in the agricultural sector. They also sponsored negotiations (albeit dramatically slow-pedaled) with Solidarnosc in Poland, and even held meetings with prominent Euro-communists on strategies for reform and possible future normalization (though these sessions would remain a state secret until quite recently).
“So we can certainly point to actions taken by Gorbachev, prompted by the Leadership Crisis, which may have had an effect on the ultimate trajectory of the Union.
“But of course there is a simple counter-argument to all this: it failed anyway.
“The responses to that stand on less solid ground, and often involve detailed counterfactuals that are impossible to prove. Could the collapse of the Eastern Bloc have gone any worse? Some scenarios posit a complete collapse of the Union; perhaps even the disintegration of the Russian state itself, with successor governments centered on Novosibirsk, Vladivostok, and other regional cities where dissent was expressed the loudest. Some even go so far as to posit global nuclear war.
“These arguments are, of course, unprovable. But they raise intriguing questions.
“As intriguing as they are and as interesting as Soviet domestic policy is- and I urge you all to take professor Solomon’s Domestic Politics in the USSR class this spring- we won’t be covering much of that here. Today we’re going to be focusing on how the Leadership Crisis affected Soviet foreign policy, particularly in Western Asia and the Middle East.
“These brief months of uncertainty for the Soviets were monumental in the modern history of the world, for they caused one of the two great powers on the globe to almost totally second-guess their Cold War strategy. Worried about having to quash a rebellion at home, the Soviets retrenched.
“They cut back on international aid to a number of organizations, pushed Cuba to take a less provocative stance in Africa and Central America, and used American defense cuts as an excuse to trim their own military budgets.
“Their most notable policy change came in the Middle East, where they had been juggling a handful of often diametrically opposed allies for more than 20 years. A great deal of effort had been expended throughout the 1970s to keep both Iraq and Syria on-side and away from each other’s throats.
“Though initially supported by the Andropov government, Iraq’s invasion of Iran was starting to cause headaches for the Russians even as early as 1981. Gorbachev in particular saw Hussein as a loose cannon with a sense of entitlement, who brought little to the table as an ally.
“Meanwhile, Syria was going a long way to bring Iran around to a favorable view of the Soviets, something the Soviets were desperately keen on from day one of the revolution in Tehran. While the religious leadership of Iran would never consent to join the Soviet sphere outright, they were willing to make a number of concessions for Soviet support in light of their current war with Iraq.
“As the Syrians grew their influence in Lebanon and Soviet fortunes rose in Iran, Moscow began to more-or-less ghost Hussein, who was left with precious few allies. US intelligence-sharing and aid had dried up almost as soon as president Anderson took office. The Gulf States were willing to support Saddam financially, but hardly anyone was willing to sell him weapons. And without Soviet advisers, the Iraqi army’s ability to use the weapons it had quickly degraded in the face of mounting casualties.
“By 1984, the Iraqis were falling back across the border with the Iranians in hot pursuit. Hussein was executed by his own generals, who quickly sued for peace. The resulting military government Iraq was weak, and remained in the outer echelons of the Soviet orbit. They were forced by necessity to make several political concessions. These included a UN-approved referendum on a border adjustment with Syria and autonomy for the northern Kurds.
“Iraq would remain an unstable member of the Soviet sphere for the foreseeable future. In at least one respect, this nominal Soviet ally would prove useful. After the realignment of the Iranians became clear, Iraq served as a tertiary front in the late Cold War, with the US and the Gulf petrol states spending undue time, effort, and money to try to lure the country away from the Soviets, with very little to show for it.
“Meanwhile, the necessary military ramp-up in Iran led to a dramatic increase in the number of Soviet advisers in the country. The Tudeh Party went from ‘tolerated’ to ‘favored,’ and saw significant expansion during this time, and the Sovietization of the officer class in both the Iranian Army and (particularly) the Air Force became inevitable.
“The Iranians also dropped their own nascent efforts at projecting power around the region, withdrawing support for Farsi-speaking rebels in Afghanistan, and merging their Shia fighting cadres in Lebanon with the pro-Syrian Amal Movement.
“For the moment the Iranians maintained a significant degree of independence of action beyond these fronts. But as we’ll see, the complacency of the religious leadership would cause them problems in the future.
“The Syrians gained a significant amount of prestige as the midwives of this realignment, but that didn’t translate to the same level of independence experienced by Iran. The Soviets successfully reigned Assad in on several occasions, including nixing his attempts to annex Lebanon, and most notably through Soviet participation in the Athens Conference. Athens was a moment of prestige the Soviets simply couldn’t pass up, even if the results meant undermining a key ally in the region.”
Lol, so mere days after saying that I wouldn't be sharing anything beyond 1984 right now, here's a direct contradiction in the form of some important info on the Soviets. But a few things:
First...I mean come on! The butterfly net came off in 1980, does anyone really think the Soviets are gonna be okay?
Second, there are many, many outcomes that could be considered a "collapse." This includes scenarios both more chaotic and less chaotic than OTL.
Third...I honestly needed to throw myself a marker down the path. This timeline writing is overwhelming stuff...so much to keep track of! So many possible choices! So much rewriting! So yeah, giving myself a solid fact to work towards in the future is supposed to keep me on track and writing and not constantly exploring new cul-de-sacs and alternate routes. Let's hope it works!
First...I mean come on! The butterfly net came off in 1980, does anyone really think the Soviets are gonna be okay?
Second, there are many, many outcomes that could be considered a "collapse." This includes scenarios both more chaotic and less chaotic than OTL.
Third...I honestly needed to throw myself a marker down the path. This timeline writing is overwhelming stuff...so much to keep track of! So many possible choices! So much rewriting! So yeah, giving myself a solid fact to work towards in the future is supposed to keep me on track and writing and not constantly exploring new cul-de-sacs and alternate routes. Let's hope it works!
This continues to be a fascinating and fun TL, and I have to thank and admire your juggling of the time shifts and how much info you're giving us is the right balance between full disclosure and opaque vagueness.
Thanks, I appreciate that! It's been an interesting challenge, one I'm very much enjoying. Really glad to hear the thematic approach is tracking so far.
While I'm thanking people, thanks to @Yes and @Wolfram for the Turtledove nominations and seconds! My hope is it drives a couple more readers my way. Winning things is nice, but honestly I already know who I'm gonna vote for and I don't plan on keeping that a secret once the nominations are set. It's just a real pleasure to get this in front of people. To hear that anyone likes it is...the Bearnaise on my steak. (Sorry, I don't really like sweets and cherries on top of anything are gross so I went for an equivalent but it doesn't really track and here we are in another long parenthetical, why do I end up here so often?)
I brain in parentheticals; it's many years' work that my writing is not littered with them so I'm glad for the company
Re: the Turtledoves, happy to! Above all I think nominations bring in new readers for TLs and this one certainly deserves them. And despite my sweet tooth (chocolate tooth, really, not that in to sugar candy) Bearnaise on steak sounds awfully good and it's almost lunchtime out here on the Left Coast. Best of luck to the whole cast at Playing with Mirrors and thanks for your kind turns towards my own TL, they're deeply appreciated.
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Story Post XXXIII: Constitutional Amendments
#33
June 2018
Antiques Roadshow, taped in Duluth, Minnesota
“It’s an interesting item, though it may not look like it. It’s just an ordinary copy of the US Constitution, right? The Government Printing Office’s pocket US Constitution; you can go online an order one yourself today. But what makes this one special is that we can tell you exactly which date it was printed on, and it was February 9th, 1984. And that’s because…”
Turns to the amendments
“...As you can see we have the 27th Amendment to the Constitution listed here, but not…”
Pointing to the next page
“...The 28th Amendment. There was only one day separating the ratification of the two amendments, with, I believe it was the Nebraska legislature approving the 27th on February 8th and then South Dakota ratifying the 28th on February 9th. When the news came down at the GPO, most of these were immediately pulped and the rest recalled without being delivered. But as legend has it, one truck making a local deliveries in DC and Virginia wasn't caught in time and a few made it out into circulation. Now, there are only something like thirty or forty of these left that have made it through the years. And so this edition has become sort of a favorite novelty item for collectors in some circles.
“Well, why did they do a print run of these at all, you might ask? My understanding is that there was a legal question and the head of the GPO at the time felt they needed to at least start the run in case the effort in South Dakota failed…”
----
January 1984
John Palmer is delivering the news on the Today Show
"The US Constitution could soon see not one, but two new amendments.
"You've probably all heard of the Equal Rights Amendment; it's a major priority of the president and he has been actively lobbying for it for much of the past three years. This, in addition to a vast array of interest group and celebrity support, has led to untold column inches being spent on the amendment by every major news outlet.
"But another constitutional story has been flying under the radar: the possibility of full congressional representation for the District of Columbia.
"It’s not an issue being heavily lobbied for by any of the national party leaders, and yet it is the case that an amendment was sent to the states for consideration in 1978. While it doesn't have the celebrity endorsements of the ERA, one celebrity in particular may have played an outsized role in its imminent adoption."
Cut to footage of Marvin Gaye singing "What's Going On" for the Motown 25th Anniversary Concert. Palmer's voiceover continues.
"Motown superstar Marvin Gaye has emerged as a success story for drug rehabilitation over the past year, becoming something of an evangelist for holistic drug treatment after his own three-month stint in a recovery center starting in June of 1982. It was there that he met former Washington DC mayor, Marion Barry, who was himself suffering public fallout over revelations of drug use and other illicit activities, which caused him to withdraw from the 1982 elections.
"Gaye, a native of DC, struck up a friendship with the former mayor, and the two made plans to spread their message of recovery and empowerment. This has resulted in the advocacy group, 'What's Going On,' named after one of Gaye's biggest hits. Gaye is the face of the organization, while Barry runs things behind the scenes. They have partnered to create drug education and rehabilitation programs in underserved communities and lobbied on behalf of criminal justice and drug policy reform to the federal government. Gaye even testified before congress this past year on the need for compassion in the nation's criminal code. Along the way and likely at the urging of his partner, Gaye has become an outspoken advocate for the DC Voting Rights Amendment.
"An interview given by Gaye in Ebony Magazine caught the eye, or rather the fingers of freshman New York state legislator David Paterson."
Cut to interview footage of Paterson, his support cane clearly visible:
“We all knew the ERA was coming up for a vote, you know, the party leaders were pushing it, there were rallies, there was a letter writing campaign, we were all very aware. And then I read this interview with Marvin Gaye where he mentioned another amendment that hadn't even crossed my radar. So I went to speak with one of the veteran clerks one day, and I learned that the New York legislature was stalled on taking up the vote for DC voting rights; it’d been waiting since 1978. So I thought, why not clear our constitutional docket at one go, and promote democracy for half a million disenfranchised American voters?”
Cut back to Palmer in the studio:
"He wasn’t the last to have the idea, and as the ERA has been making its way through state houses across the nation, we have seen the DC Voting Rights Amendment taken up not long after.
"And so as lawmaking bodies from Juneau to Tallahassee begin their latest sessions, a little-discussed amendment finds itself on the verge of becoming a part of this nation’s highest law. Back to you, Bryant and Jessica."
----
7th and Euclid
“EXTRY! EXTRY! Constitution amended twice in two days! Voting rights for DC! Equal Rights the law of the land!”
Hashim isn’t reacting. Al looks a little disappointed.
“Wow, that’s pretty exciting, huh?”
Hashim doesn’t even look over.
“EXTRY! New oil fields opened for exploration on federal lands! Anderson promises more to come! Read all about it!”
Hashim huffs, but doesn’t look up.
“Hey...Hashim, did you uh, you hear what I was saying? About those new oil fields? That’s...uh, something, huh? And uh...solar power! You see they’re building solar demonstration homes on the National Mall? Huh? Pretty neat. Um...EXTRY! Uh. Solar...power...on the Mall…”
“Don’t talk to me.”
“Why?”
“Don’t talk to me.”
“Are you still mad about the vacation?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“I don’t know what you’re so mad about. I thought we had a pretty good time.”
Hashim slams his hands on his counter and glares at Al.
“You said your brother lived with Michael Caine!”
“He does! We met him!”
“We met a guy named Michael Caine but not the real one!”
“He seemed pretty real to me…”
“He owns car washes!”
“Really nice car washes!”
“I don’t even think he spelled it the same as Michael Caine.”
“Those were really impressive car washes, I thought. All those automatic brushes.”
“Why did we have to visit so many of them…”
“He was showing us the sights.”
“I can look at car washes here, I don’t have to go to California.”
“Well now you’re just looking for things to complain about. We got away from the rat race, we saw the ocean, we ate pizza with...like...pine nuts on it, okay that was not the best, but I think we made a pretty good team! Whaddya say? Travel companions forever? Be my Bing?”
“Be- what?”
“Be my Bing! You know, I’m Bob Hope, you’re Bing Crosby.”
“Nonono, if anything I am Bob Hope. Okay?”
“Fine. Whatever you say.”
There is silence for a moment.
“I’m dreaming...of a whiiii-”
“Oh...god…”
June 2018
Antiques Roadshow, taped in Duluth, Minnesota
“It’s an interesting item, though it may not look like it. It’s just an ordinary copy of the US Constitution, right? The Government Printing Office’s pocket US Constitution; you can go online an order one yourself today. But what makes this one special is that we can tell you exactly which date it was printed on, and it was February 9th, 1984. And that’s because…”
Turns to the amendments
“...As you can see we have the 27th Amendment to the Constitution listed here, but not…”
Pointing to the next page
“...The 28th Amendment. There was only one day separating the ratification of the two amendments, with, I believe it was the Nebraska legislature approving the 27th on February 8th and then South Dakota ratifying the 28th on February 9th. When the news came down at the GPO, most of these were immediately pulped and the rest recalled without being delivered. But as legend has it, one truck making a local deliveries in DC and Virginia wasn't caught in time and a few made it out into circulation. Now, there are only something like thirty or forty of these left that have made it through the years. And so this edition has become sort of a favorite novelty item for collectors in some circles.
“Well, why did they do a print run of these at all, you might ask? My understanding is that there was a legal question and the head of the GPO at the time felt they needed to at least start the run in case the effort in South Dakota failed…”
----
January 1984
John Palmer is delivering the news on the Today Show
"The US Constitution could soon see not one, but two new amendments.
"You've probably all heard of the Equal Rights Amendment; it's a major priority of the president and he has been actively lobbying for it for much of the past three years. This, in addition to a vast array of interest group and celebrity support, has led to untold column inches being spent on the amendment by every major news outlet.
"But another constitutional story has been flying under the radar: the possibility of full congressional representation for the District of Columbia.
"It’s not an issue being heavily lobbied for by any of the national party leaders, and yet it is the case that an amendment was sent to the states for consideration in 1978. While it doesn't have the celebrity endorsements of the ERA, one celebrity in particular may have played an outsized role in its imminent adoption."
Cut to footage of Marvin Gaye singing "What's Going On" for the Motown 25th Anniversary Concert. Palmer's voiceover continues.
"Motown superstar Marvin Gaye has emerged as a success story for drug rehabilitation over the past year, becoming something of an evangelist for holistic drug treatment after his own three-month stint in a recovery center starting in June of 1982. It was there that he met former Washington DC mayor, Marion Barry, who was himself suffering public fallout over revelations of drug use and other illicit activities, which caused him to withdraw from the 1982 elections.
"Gaye, a native of DC, struck up a friendship with the former mayor, and the two made plans to spread their message of recovery and empowerment. This has resulted in the advocacy group, 'What's Going On,' named after one of Gaye's biggest hits. Gaye is the face of the organization, while Barry runs things behind the scenes. They have partnered to create drug education and rehabilitation programs in underserved communities and lobbied on behalf of criminal justice and drug policy reform to the federal government. Gaye even testified before congress this past year on the need for compassion in the nation's criminal code. Along the way and likely at the urging of his partner, Gaye has become an outspoken advocate for the DC Voting Rights Amendment.
"An interview given by Gaye in Ebony Magazine caught the eye, or rather the fingers of freshman New York state legislator David Paterson."
Cut to interview footage of Paterson, his support cane clearly visible:
“We all knew the ERA was coming up for a vote, you know, the party leaders were pushing it, there were rallies, there was a letter writing campaign, we were all very aware. And then I read this interview with Marvin Gaye where he mentioned another amendment that hadn't even crossed my radar. So I went to speak with one of the veteran clerks one day, and I learned that the New York legislature was stalled on taking up the vote for DC voting rights; it’d been waiting since 1978. So I thought, why not clear our constitutional docket at one go, and promote democracy for half a million disenfranchised American voters?”
Cut back to Palmer in the studio:
"He wasn’t the last to have the idea, and as the ERA has been making its way through state houses across the nation, we have seen the DC Voting Rights Amendment taken up not long after.
"And so as lawmaking bodies from Juneau to Tallahassee begin their latest sessions, a little-discussed amendment finds itself on the verge of becoming a part of this nation’s highest law. Back to you, Bryant and Jessica."
----
7th and Euclid
“EXTRY! EXTRY! Constitution amended twice in two days! Voting rights for DC! Equal Rights the law of the land!”
Hashim isn’t reacting. Al looks a little disappointed.
“Wow, that’s pretty exciting, huh?”
Hashim doesn’t even look over.
“EXTRY! New oil fields opened for exploration on federal lands! Anderson promises more to come! Read all about it!”
Hashim huffs, but doesn’t look up.
“Hey...Hashim, did you uh, you hear what I was saying? About those new oil fields? That’s...uh, something, huh? And uh...solar power! You see they’re building solar demonstration homes on the National Mall? Huh? Pretty neat. Um...EXTRY! Uh. Solar...power...on the Mall…”
“Don’t talk to me.”
“Why?”
“Don’t talk to me.”
“Are you still mad about the vacation?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“I don’t know what you’re so mad about. I thought we had a pretty good time.”
Hashim slams his hands on his counter and glares at Al.
“You said your brother lived with Michael Caine!”
“He does! We met him!”
“We met a guy named Michael Caine but not the real one!”
“He seemed pretty real to me…”
“He owns car washes!”
“Really nice car washes!”
“I don’t even think he spelled it the same as Michael Caine.”
“Those were really impressive car washes, I thought. All those automatic brushes.”
“Why did we have to visit so many of them…”
“He was showing us the sights.”
“I can look at car washes here, I don’t have to go to California.”
“Well now you’re just looking for things to complain about. We got away from the rat race, we saw the ocean, we ate pizza with...like...pine nuts on it, okay that was not the best, but I think we made a pretty good team! Whaddya say? Travel companions forever? Be my Bing?”
“Be- what?”
“Be my Bing! You know, I’m Bob Hope, you’re Bing Crosby.”
“Nonono, if anything I am Bob Hope. Okay?”
“Fine. Whatever you say.”
There is silence for a moment.
“I’m dreaming...of a whiiii-”
“Oh...god…”
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