A Mishmash of Monday Readings

Saving Dirt Roads, Banning Dollar Stores, A Bank Failure

“Of all the paths you take in life, make sure a few of them are dirt.” Naturalist, John Muir (noted in The NY Times)

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These readings were supposed to get to you during the weekend, but I became entangled in watching Oscar nominated films and then the awards themselves, shunted writing aside… and indulged myself instead. What could be wrong with going down a rabbit hole of Austin Butler appearances and bios, three hours of “champagne” carpet arrivals and a three-plus hour show? I shouldn’t have asked.

Back to reality with a few articles that address radically different topics, but have a common theme of people rising up in their communities to stop what some still call “progress” and others label as excess. And then there are a couple of bank failures, and one Senator’s learned explanation.

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— First up is a New York Times piece about the movement to preserve dirt roads—these particular roads are in Chatham, New York, but they could be anywhere in rural America. According to a New Yorker article about dirt roads written in 2019, approximately 32 per cent of America’s roads remained unpaved at that time. In fact, a number of towns across the country, according to a 2016 article from Wired, are un-paving roads to save money. Dirt roads are muddy in the spring and dusty in the summer, but they breathe, and give us a daily, direct connection to our natural world.

The people in Chatham, though, see preservation of their town’s heritage in their refusal to slap asphalt over the town’s dirt roads.

You can drive fast on asphalt, he [a resident of Chatham] said, but dirt roads force you to slow down, take in the scenery and enjoy the rural quiet. You notice things you wouldn’t have otherwise…It feels to me like you’re walking on the land, not over the land.

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— Another, more recent New York Times article discusses how some communities are banning the proliferation of “Dollar Stores” and why. The variously named stores, Dollar General, Dollar Tree, Family Dollar, and others bearing that keen marketing label, are not all connected. For example, although Dollar Tree merged with Family Dollar a few years ago, Dollar General remains a separate competitor. But they all have a similar business model and it’s not positive for either its workers or the towns where they plant their stores

More than one-third of all stores that opened in the United States in 2021 and 2022 were dollar stores. Dollar General alone opened 2,060 locations during those years, far more than any other retailer…

The more community officials and residents have learned about the Dollar Stores’ business model, copied from Walmart and based on low prices, low wages for employees, short staffing and anti-union activities, the more communities have chosen to ban these stores. They may have cheap prices (at least superficially because they sell second or third rate products, including plenty of junk food), but like Walmart, they tend to eliminate local businesses, replacing a town’s history and character with strip-mall style, and cheap products that probably will be in the local landfill in less than a year.

A 2023 report by the Institute for Local Self Reliance lays out a good case against the continued proliferation of Dollar Stores calling the model “predatory” and one that particularly hurts poor and minority communities. The report further explains the expansion of these stores in graph form, below. Unfortunately, it does look like an invasion, and not a friendly one.

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— Finally for this evening is an opinion piece, again from The New York Times, and written by Senator Elizabeth Warren (D. Mass.) for today’s paper. It discusses the specific reasons for the failure of the Silicon Valley Bank last Friday and Signature Bank yesterday. Both have been dissolved and the government has ensured all deposits. If anyone knows about the inner workings of banks and how these institutions should be regulated, it’s Senator Warren, a professor at Harvard Law School whose voluminous research convinced Congress and President Obama to create the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, Congress passed the Dodd-Frank Act to protect consumers and ensure that big banks could never again take down the economy and destroy millions of lives…Greg Becker, the chief executive of Silicon Valley Bank, was one of the ‌many high-powered executives who lobbied Congress to weaken the law. In 2018, the big banks won. With support from both parties, President Donald Trump signed a law to roll back critical parts of Dodd-Frank.

If this pattern sounds familiar, Norfolk Southern, whose trained derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, also spent millions lobbying Congress to roll back train safety regulations…and succeeded.

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I’d love to hear what you think about these articles. Had you heard about preserving dirt roads, banning Dollar Stores and/or the recent bank failures? Please leave your thoughts in the Comment Section below.

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