Wednesday, October 31, 2018
Saturday, October 20, 2018
The Lottery and Voting
Mega Millions $1.6
Billion jackpot.
Buy a lottery ticket because it’s fun.
Vote because it is the responsible thing to do.
Buy a lottery ticket because it’s fun.
Vote because it is the responsible thing to do.
If you can take the time to buy lottery tickets, surely you
can take the time to vote in the mid-terms. One action is based on ignoring ridiculously absurd
probabilities. The other action is standing for basic American democratic concepts
such as checks and balances and three equal branches of government.
Here’s where voting for the Democratic Party candidate is
essential. The Republican Party simply
has not acted as a check and balance on the current administration.
Social Security & Disability Are At Stake
If the Republicans retain control of the House of Representatives
and the Senate, they will follow Mitch McConnell’s agenda as outlined by the Los Angeles
Times.
“At the root of the debate are interviews the Senate
majority leader gave to Bloomberg and Reuters on Tuesday and Wednesday. McConnell identified ‘entitlements’
— that’s Washington code for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid — as ‘the
real drivers of the debt’ and called for them to be adjusted “to the
demographics of the future.’” In fact,
it is the “budget-blasting tax cut for corporations and the wealthy that is
estimated to cost some $2 trillion over the next 10 years.” As the LA Times put it: “the real driver of
the deficit is Republican fiscal policy and its relentless payouts to the
wealthy.” http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-mcconnell-social-security-20181019-story.html
The Republicans will continue to restrict health insurance
and maybe eliminate coverage for pre-existing conditions. They will continue to take no action
regarding voter rights, respect for freedom of the press, respect for an
independent Justice Department and special counsel’s office, campaign finance
reform, climate change, consumer protection, and banking reforms.
Ask yourself what have the Republicans done to ban assault weapons or to make background checks effective, what have they done to guarantee proper veterans' care, what have they done on job training in the face of automation and what relief have they provided for college debt.
The Republicans lack empathy when considering issues involving the disabled and women and minorities and immigrants and children (all of whom are human beings). They will continue to allow American’s foreign policy and tariffs to be toyed with by an under-informed president characterized by questionable personal and business interests.
Ask yourself what have the Republicans done to ban assault weapons or to make background checks effective, what have they done to guarantee proper veterans' care, what have they done on job training in the face of automation and what relief have they provided for college debt.
The Republicans lack empathy when considering issues involving the disabled and women and minorities and immigrants and children (all of whom are human beings). They will continue to allow American’s foreign policy and tariffs to be toyed with by an under-informed president characterized by questionable personal and business interests.
Monday, October 15, 2018
The government is not stupid and bad
Michael Lewis interviewed the pre-Trump Energy Department’s “chief
risk officer” for The Fifth Risk. That official identified the fifth risk as “project
management.”
Lewis elaborates on the concept throughout the book as he
tell the stories of other pre-Trump government managers, focusing on the
department of energy and the weather bureaus of the department of commerce. More than institutional knowledge, project
management involves a passion to anticipate (imagine) service to the public. Good project management needs people who are
mission driven. It encompasses the
government’s providing services or solving problems that the government can provide
or solve or that the government does in the absence of action by other
institutions or business interests.
On the other hand, the Trump transition and the appointment
of cabinet secretaries and agency managers, with few exceptions, reveal
indifference, incompetency, lack of knowledge in general and an ignorance of
science in particular and an arrogant pre-disposition that everything government
does is “stupid and bad.” The Trump
Administration, as Lewis details with respect to the weather agencies, favors
exploitation of public data for narrow commercial motives. Just like Trump himself.
This is how Lewis characterized Rick Perry, the head of the
department of energy. “[Perry’s]
sporadic public communications have had in them something of the shell-shocked
grandmother trying to preside over a pleasant family Thanksgiving dinner while
pretending that her blind-drunk husband isn’t standing naked on the dining-room
table waving the carving knife over his head.”
The Fifth Risk also
describes the other cited risks, three of which involve nuclear matters. To borrow the title of an earlier Trump book
by David Cay Johnston, It’s
Even Worse Than You Think.
Tuesday, October 9, 2018
Overqualified for the Supreme Court
So there is a tee shirt.
RE: Justice Brett
Kavanaugh
After the testimony of Dr. Christine Blasey
Ford, the American Bar Association called for a delay in Kavanaugh's confirmation until
after a “thorough FBI investigation.” A thorough
FBI investigation was not ordered by the White House.
Retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens who had
at first supported Kavanaugh said that, “his performance during the hearings
caused me to change my mind.”
If Kavanaugh is
qualified for the Supreme Court, I am overqualified.
Kavanaugh lacks integrity and temperament; his jurisprudence
and ideology are far to the right. He
will reverse Roe v. Wade.
“[Kavanaugh] believes the president is above the law. In his
personal writing, Judge Kavanaugh has repeatedly demonstrated that he won’t
stand up to President Donald Trump, allowing President Trump’s abuses of power
to go unchecked. He has argued that a president should have ‘absolute
discretion’ and be able to dismiss any counsel ‘out to get him,’ that a
president need not comply with laws that he personally deems to be
unconstitutional, and that a president is protected from ‘criminal prosecution
and investigation’ while he or she is in office. [Footnotes omitted.]” http://www.nationalpartnership.org/research-library/general/seven-reasons-confirming-brett-kavanaugh-would-be-terrible-for-women.pdf
So there is a tee shirt that says, Overqualified for the U.S. Supreme Court.
As it happens this tee shirt is a second edition. Back in 1991-1992, I sold a tee shirt with
the same message after the nomination hearings and appointment of Justice Clarence
Thomas. There’s even small article in
the American Bar Association Journal of February, 1992 (pp. 34-35).
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