sunday/Hopkins' Harvest

Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence. Napoleon


Jeffrey E. Epstein, a billionaire New York financier long accused of molesting dozens of girls, was arrested on Saturday and charged with sex trafficking by federal prosecutors, an extraordinary turn of events in a long and sordid criminal case. Mr. Epstein, 66, had avoided federal criminal charges in 2007 and 2008 in a widely criticized plea deal whose lenient terms continue to roil the Justice Department. Before the plea deal, Mr. Epstein, a former hedge-fund manager, had been friendly with Donald J. Trump, former President Bill Clinton and Prince Andrew, the Duke of York.

There are no free lunches; there are always budget constraints; incentives matter to people; actions usually have unintended consequences; people often break rules when they think they can; rules shape incentives; and good rules economize on virtue (i.e., we should create ones that align public interest with individuals’ private interests). --Leef, on the basic rules of economics

For those who say America was never virtuous, Larry Reed has this analogy. Imagine if we could bring the Wright Brothers back to life for an hour so the critic could berate them. He would say, “You dummies! You two made this rickety flying machine and didn’t even install seat belts and tray tables, let alone in-flight movies. What good were you?!”

Foreigners crossing certain Chinese borders into the Xinjiang region, where authorities are conducting a massive campaign of surveillance and oppression against the local Muslim population, are being forced to install a piece of malware on their phones that gives all of their text messages as well as other pieces of data to the authorities, a collaboration by Motherboard, Süddeutsche Zeitung, the Guardian, the New York Times, and the German public broadcaster NDR has found.

Berkeley economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman contend that a wealth tax of 2 percent on individual net worth above $50 million would raise $187 billion a year in new tax revenue. Strangely, the ethics of confiscatory taxation does not enter the debate, only the effectiveness of it. Economist Lawrence H. Summers and legal scholar Natasha Sarin, who are both personally sympathetic to taxing the rich, argued in the Washington Post that the Saez-Zucman wealth tax would yield less than half of its promised revenue.

Hurrahing in Harvest

The gospel today is one where Christ sends his followers out to prepare for Him and "the harvest."   In a letter ’78 Gerard  Manley Hopkins wrote: ‘The Hurrahing sonnet was the outcome  of half  an hour of extreme enthusiasm as I walked home alone one  day from fishing in the Elwy.’

SUMMER ends now; now, barbarous in beauty, the stooks              arise Around; up above, what wind-walks! what lovely behaviour Of silk-sack clouds! has wilder, wilful-wavier Meal-drift moulded ever and melted across skies? I walk, I lift up, I lift up heart, eyes,         5 Down all that glory in the heavens to glean our Saviour; And, éyes, heárt, what looks, what lips yet gave you a Rapturous love’s greeting of realer, of rounder replies? And the azurous hung hills are his world-wielding shoulder Majestic—as a stallion stalwart, very-violet-sweet!—         10 These things, these things were here and but the beholder Wanting; which two when they once meet, The heart rears wings bold and bolder And hurls for him, O half hurls earth for him off under his                 feet.