Tuesday, March 19, 2019

Et Cetera

As the saying goes, if you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, but if you teach him to fish you will feed him for a lifetime. Community organizers like Huerta don't teach people to fish, they teach activists how to steal their neighbors' fish. That is what Huerta and her ilk call social justice.--Vadum


Good morning.
Saw an extraordinary women's final from Indian Wells. After winning, the eighteen year old, who just months ago was ranked in the mid one hundreds and had just restructured her entire career after a fierce battle with injury and fatigue and a terrific opponent, asked the interviewer if her eyelashes looked alright.
Angela the Librarian came over last night.

One of the guys involved in the college dishonesty said he had no regrets about trying to advance his children. That is to say, he used what everyone recognizes as the coin of the realm.

Max Boot hating Trump and the Republicans:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/03/17/gops-declaration-moral-bankruptcy/?utm_term=.0f4bfb7c0a23
While Trump is silly, I thought this argument had a lot of complex nuance to it. Apparently not.

The New York Times has an article, As Costs Skyrocket, More U.S. Cities Stop Recycling.“
We talk a lot about these high aims. But, when the check needs written....

Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security account for 50 percent of federal spending and 10.4 percent of national GDP. These three programs will surge to 15.5 percent of the economy by 2048, with interest on the nation’s debt being in excess of 6 percent of GDP.  Voters from both sides of the political spectrum are opposed to cuts in large government programs—only 3 percent of Democrats and 10 percent of Republicans support cuts to Social Security, according to a 2017 Pew poll. Doubling the 35 percent and 37 percent tax rates to 70 percent and 74 percent would close just one-fifth of the long-term Social Security and Medicare shortfall, in addition to bringing negative repercussions for economic growth and dynamism.
 
So, what can happen here? We'll probably just elect intelligent leaders who want the best for the nation.

Michael Sanchez, Bezo's girlfriend's brother, sold the billionaire’s secrets to the Enquirer’s publisher for $200,000.


On this day in 2003,  the United States, along with coalition forces primarily from the United Kingdom, initiated war on Iraq.


                                                                   Et Cetera

There is a funny characterization in the play "The King and I" where the king, often unsure of his thinking or how to express it, interrupts himself mid-sentence, waves his hand and says, "Et cetera, et cetera." Many laws are now written this way. Laws are written as generalities with huge gaps the administration, the bureaucracy or a few functionaries are allowed --expected --to fill in. This encourages the insidious growth of the administrative state, where those functions ordinarily assigned to the legislative branch are assumed by the administrative branch--even deferred to the administration by the legislative branch--for the sake of efficiency or convenience, encouraging the gradual growth and centralization of unsupervised power that is incompatible with a thinking democracy. The unthinking see it as an improvement in administration function when in fact it is an erosion of liberty beyond assessment, checks or balance. It is much like those who applaud the tax deals to entice a business--like Amazon--with tax breaks when the development of such an incestuous relationship undermines the very free commerce it purports to encourage.

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