-

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

New Years Thoughts

-
Yes, I know. In reality it is all arbitrary, this New Years crap. It's a new year every moment, depending upon where you start from. This linear time thing just provokes more questions, for which there are no apparent answers, yet we still persist in asking them because... that is what we must do. My wife and son are in the next room singing songs in Basque, a language that has no apparent antecedent, from a people whose origins are unknown, a bloodline that apparently runs as an ancient tangent to the rest of what we call the human race. So we continue on in the world of what is apparent, with joy and trembling at the wonder of it all.
Read more

SMIC

-
Just when we thought it safe to go back  to Paris...or Bordeaux...or Toulouse... with everything collapsing around him, French president Emmanuel Macron tried a dribbler. In baseball terms, that means getting the ball back to home-plate before another player (most often the pitcher, catcher or first baseman from the opposing team can do the same. In this case it didn't work. Acting on a plan hatched by the previous government, the proposed cure in French politics turned out to be an attack on the third base line, more suited to a remark by the man guarding third than anyone. The awarding of 100 euros monthly has the rancid aroma of a bribe. The SMIC, the Salaire Minimum Horaire as it is known in France as a bribe) adds some money to the monthly check workers get Macron, who received 70% in some areas of France when he was elected, was not as popular this time.
Read more

Lets Ask the Framers

-
The GOP win is a victory for an electoral strategy that deliberately obstructs the legislative process over a long period of time so it can later claim that Washington doesn't work; the opposing party is held responsible for gridlock when the next electoral cycle comes around. This is a fundamental defect in how democracy functions and should be eliminated through constitutional amendment. It is the constitutional responsibility of the legislature to propose and act on legislation. Government through obstruction is clearly not what the framers intended. Why do I get the feeling that what's at work is not how best the country can benefit by what the government does in its behalf, but who gets the credit.
Read more