This Was the Week That Was

The wild week that ended on 7/1/23 

Image by Mark Thomas from Pixabay

This is a weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny. I write letters to my grandkids — the Stickies — eventual selves to advise them and haunt them after they've become grups and/or I'm deleted.  

Trigger Warning: This column rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — Perusal by kids, callowyutes, or grups may result in debilitating psychological trauma.  

About 

Glossary 

Featuring Dana: Hallucination, guest star, and charming literary device  

"Whenever you put a man on the Supreme Court he ceases to be your friend."  -Harry Truman                                                                                                                                                  

Dear Stickies and Gentlereaders,

With apologies to the various versions of the TV show from which I stole the title of this column, permit me to say: That was some kinda week, eh? The Supremes, still under fire for pointing out that the Constitution actually has nothing to say about abortion — thus forcing the sorta/kinda united states to decide for themselves — were at it again. 

Now they've ruled against colleges and universities using affirmative action when deciding which credential-seeking students to let into top-rated, wildly overpriced colleges and universities top-heavy with administrators, amenities, and bias response teams.

And if that's not bad enough, they also ruled that Uncle Joe, the head of the party of the little guy, didn't have the power to bypass Congress and permit us all to share in the joy of providing student loan relief for students who majored in Critical Pottery theory and the like, and all those bartenders and baristas with Master of Fine Arts degrees.     

{Speaking of abortion, I've got an idea! What if Congress were to pass a law regulating abortion, a compromise (say 15 weeks?) that will satisfy neither side but allow those of us caught in the middle, and the entire nation for that matter, to move on?}  

Actually, that was my idea but since we're... never mind. But there are all sorts of rabid people on both sides that will...

{Yes, there are, and yes, they will. Let 'em march and protest and boycott and decry and submit legislation till their bums fall off. After all, this is a democratic republic. If you want me, I'll be in the bar. There's a really cute new bartender working there.} 

The Supremes also ruled that anyone who self-identifies as LGBTQQIP2SA+ can't force someone who doesn't identify with any of those letters, a number, and a plus sign to provide various and sundry services. 

{You love getting a chance to use the phrase various and sundry, don't you? I think ya got too many letters there, Sparky.}

Well, let's see. lesbian, gay, bisexual, transexual, queer, questioning, intersexual, pansexual, two-spirit, asexual, plus a marginalized minority to be named later. Nope, I'm good. I thought you went to the bar?

{Not open yet. What about furries?, why isn't there an F? Are you a furry phobe?}

Not me, some of my best friends are furries. 

I've emailed a friend of mine, my go-to person for this sort of thing, who works at the headquarters of the IUPPPP&PVTTOT about that very thing but I haven't received a reply. I'm guessing they're covered by the +, as are all sorts of folx we're likely to eventually hear about. 

{IUPP... etc?} 

I've mentioned them once or twice, but it's been a minute. International Union of Perpetually Protesting Protestors and Perpetual Victims of This, That, and the Other Thing. It's a nonprofit that likes to keep a low profile and concentrate on raising money and providing services for all of its many nonprofit member organizations, making sure all the paperwork and permits are up to date and all potentially applicable taxes are legally avoided.     

However, unlike the endless wailing, teeth gnashing, and garment rending that's occurred, and continues, over the repeal of Roe v. Wade things have settled down relatively quickly. 

I'm sure there are any number of plausible reasons I could promulgate as to why but my official, Crank-sanctioned reason is that summer is upon us. It's being widely reported that Normies are taking vacations in record numbers. I think they're putting the perpetual crises promoted by the purple press and social media on hold as best they can, and stocking up on sunscreen.

Multiple polls have been conducted (of course)... 

{By various and sundry polling organizations?}

But I double-dog dare you to read any article that reports on the results of more than one particular poll and claim that you feel confident about the mood of the American people. I'm starting to think all the news is fake.     

As best I can tell we seem to be about evenly split on student loans and forcing businesses to accept work from folx whose lifestyles they don't condone. It looks like a clear majority of us think it's time to end applying affirmative action when deciding on who's worthy of attending the sort of schools mentioned above. 

But given that some of our elite educational institutions have recently declared that there's more than one way to skin a Supreme Court ruling if you're clever/devious enough, this controversy, like the one around abortion, will never go away. 

The Supremes made another ruling that for some mysterious reason didn't get much publicity. Evangelical Christian Gerald Groff quit working for the USPS back in 2019 because the Fedrl Gummit refused to give him Sundays off to observe the sabbath because they wanted him to deliver packages — for Amazon. 

   

He's been battling the Post Office in various and sundry courts ever since to get them to change the rules in what turns out to be a very complicated case. Unfortunately for Mr. Groff, all he "won" was his case being kicked back down the road to a lower court. Follow the link for details. 

The USPS has vowed to keep on fighting this right-wing kook till balance is restored in the Force with the help of your money. 

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

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Politics Without Romance

Human nature is the nature of humans. 

This is a weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny. I write letters to my grandkids — the Stickies — eventual selves to advise them and haunt them after they've become grups and/or I'm deleted. Best perused on a screen large enough for even your parents to see and navigate easily.   

Trigger Warning: This column is rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — Perusal by kids, callowyutes, or grups may result in a debilitating meltdown.  

About

Glossary 

Featuring Dana: Hallucination, guest star, and charming literary device  

"There's a reason that there are oodles of young Aussies, Germans, Japanese, even Chinese backpackers traipsing around the world. They are unencumbered by debilitating student loans. No such luck for the American Theater Arts major with $120,000 in loans." -J. Maarten Troost

Dear (eventual) Grandstickies and Great-Grandstickies (and Gentlereaders),

The public-choice school of economics, a.k.a public-choice theory, is, well...  'As James Buchanan artfully defined it, public choice is “politics without romance.”' -econolib.org 

For the record, I can't find exactly where or when Mr. Buchanan actually said that. I did find dozens of versions of something along the lines of 'As James Buchanan said, public choice is "politics without romance."'

{And this matters because?} 

Well, the dude won a Nobel Prize for his work in the field, you'd think that... 

{You really need to get out more, Sparky.}

Anyways... This normally would be a good place to quote the Wikipedia entry on the subject at hand, assuming, of course, it wasn't clearly crafted by a Wokie (it wasn't), but since it reads like it was written by an impoverished grad student who will never be famous for his/her/their prose stylings...

{Seriously, dude, you're not that old, find the car keys and...}   

Instead, I'm going to post the video below, because I'm cool like that and it does an excellent job of explaining public choice theory.

Now, for those you that are wandering in the wilderness and following the locusts and honey diet, or the Luddite like gentlepersons among my vast hordes of regular readers that rely on some intrepid soul to print out my column (not to mention any names, Ed), permit me to vastly oversimplify. 

Public choice theory holds that the politicians (sleazy and otherwise), and bureaucrats (and bureauons) that constitute the group of H. sapiens that run or work for the government at any level are subject to the same drives, incentives, and motivations as we mere mortals. 

{That's just common sense.}

Not necessarily. There's an awful lot of people that maintain that they're just humble but lovable public servants, grateful for a chance to serve. 

{Sure, but nobody actually believes...} 

So you say, but there are also an awful lot of people who say that we need a government solution for this, that, or that other thing — which can be true.

Big BUT.

As the video points out, instead of just asking what government policy is needed to solve a given problem, we also need to consider what policy is likely to actually emerge from "real-world democratic politics," and take that into consideration. 

To which I would add: before we pass yet another law on top of the thousands of other laws that, so far, have not led us to the promised land.  

Which is to say: since the H. sapiens in the government business are just as prone to temptation, egotism, and screwing up as you and me, what we want is often not what we get — that's politics without romance. 

And it gets worse: people in the government business don't suffer from an inconvenient constraint that most of us do, they pay the bill with other people's money.  

{This would be a good place to supply an example...}

For example, on a recent Joe Rogan podcast, Rogan had a guest, Ben Burgis, a writer for Jacobin magazine. Mr. Burgis is a socialist who, like Mr. Rogan (a democratic socialist), supports things like universal healthcare, a universal basic income, free college, etceterage. 

{Impossible, Rogan is a card-carrying member of the alt-right, just ask Neil Young.} 

They both agree that college should be free, and consider that the cost of a college degree nowadays, as well as kids going into debt up to their... butts is completely unacceptable. I don't agree with the free part — free is rarely actually free, and "free" is often perceived as having little value — but I do agree that kids just beginning their adult lives deep in debt is unacceptable.

But one of the many reasons college is so expensive is the result of several decades of The Fedrl Gummit handing out easily obtained loans to children (which can't be discharged via bankruptcy) and then the higher education business raising their prices faster than the inflation rate to absorb the money. 

This isn't an open secret, it's not even a secret. 

{They're not children! Well, not exactly, they...}

Simultaneously, education incorporated is top-heavy with administrators who are teaching nothing to no one, and many of these positions are mandated by The Fedrl Gummit. What about taking a machete and thinning out the ranks of all those people that don't actually teach anyone?

{You mean their jobs, right? Not actually the...} 

Isn't reforming the bloated education business the place to start?

{Bloated?}

Schools with well-fed endowments are currently fighting a 1.4% tax on their investment incomes if their cash stash is worth more than $500,000, per student! Leaving that tax in place is not just politics without romance, it could also be called common sense.

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

P.S. How about college grads having to take a standardized, general knowledge test to graduate and prove they didn't slip through with inflated grades, and publishing the aggregated results? 

What about students who are often taught by absurdly underpaid "instructors" and "teaching assistants" (often as not in debt up to their eyeballs in student loans) that help to prop up the system? 

What about charging the NFL for running a minor league for professional football wherein the coaches are often better paid than the professors? 

What about... 

{We gotta go, folks.}

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