I Was Cancelled (For 24 hrs.)

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

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

Warning: This column is rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — A Perusal by kids, callowyutes, or grups may result in a debilitating intersectional triggering. Viewing with a tablet or a monitor is highly recommended for maximum enjoyment.  

About

Glossary 

Erratically Appearing Hallucinatory Guest Star: Dana — A Gentlereader  

"If you can live on rice and beans you're uncancellable because you're always rich relative to your needs.” -Eric Weinstein

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

Recently, Google, which I affectionately refer to as the Goog, canceled one of my columns for 24 hours. In fact, for some of those hours, my website warned a given he/she/they that if they accessed my site they might be in cyber danger.  

{Is that like stranger danger? They probably think you're just another one of the squillion H. sapiens that use their blogging software and don't realize you're a world-famous columnist.} 

Having said unkind things once or a hundred times about the Goog, the other tech oligarchs, and their Wokie minions, I assumed it was something I said.

{Well, privately-owned companies do have the right to restrict speech based on the clearly stated rules of the obscure, slippery, and ever-shifting rules laid out in the fine print.}

Indeed... and I'll come back to that.

As it turns out my temporary canceling, I was told, was because: "Your content has violated our Malware and Viruses policy." This was because of the content of a specific post titled Show Me the (Covid Relief) Money! 

Criminy! What if I've run afoul of the Goog and The Fedrl Gummit? I ran around Casa de Chaos turning off lights and closing curtains. I was about to push the panic button and make a run for the armory when I realized we never got around to installing the panic button and we don't have an armory.

The post in question was temporarily disappeared. I found out later it was covertly spirited to a black site and not-tortured using the same methods the CIA (used to use?) to not-torture transnational Jihadies. 

The next day I received an email from the Goog stating that "Upon review, the post has been reinstated." Apparently, a drunk algorithm made a mistake. While the column now has PTSD, it has willingly returned to my site.

BIG BUT. 

I have to re-publish it (click on a button) to make it re-accessible to the public thereby confusing my millions of regular readers who have already read it. I think I shall hold on to it for now thus turning it into a priceless collector's item.  

In the meantime, I've managed to get it waitlisted for a program at Johns Hopkins that has had much success (no, seriously) at treating PTSD and other disorders with "magic mushrooms." Rumors that I'm also trying, as the author of the piece, to have myself admitted to the program are absolutely true.

Please send emails of support to help me pitch Johns Hopkins. In the meantime, I've copied all of my columns onto flash drives that are stored in safe deposit boxes here, there, and of course, in Switzerland. 

Now, as to the notion that the Goog, the other members of the tech oligopoly (and even the squillion wanna be/wish we were tech oligarchs) don't have to respect free speech because they're privately owned, I call bonkercockie.

Legally speaking, from what I was able to ascertain from a solid ten minutes of deep googlin', the legal consensus is that social media platforms are private companies and can censor what people post on their websites as they see fit.

However, there are myriad legal reasons and myriad laws at myriad levels of jurisdiction that prevent a given Woolworth's lunch counter from refusing to serve me just because I self-identify as an Afro-American lesbian named Coco, who in my mind's eye, could pass for Hale Berry's sister.

And Woolworth's is a privately owned company.

{I'm guessing myriad is the word of the week? It's a shame you can't find a way to get paid for that the way others get paid for inserting product links into what looks like innocent prose.  

And by the by, legally speaking, you're comparing Esopus Spitzenberg apples to Cara Cara oranges, but I don't know where to even start... and Woolworth's has gone out of business.}

Are you sure? Perhaps that's why I can't find 99¢ 45s anymore. 

I realize I've compared apples to oranges. 

I was merely cleverly setting the stage for a big finish in which I marshall all sorts of dazzling, highly technical legal arguments as to why big tech shouldn't be allowed to censor speech but my research left me so dazed and confused I had to go lie down.

So permit me to insert a suffice it to say and say that given the monopolistic power of the Goog, Facebook, Twitter, etceterer, if they don't/won't find a way to resolve the problem (unlikely), they should be regulated like a public utility.

Given that they are or are becoming the primary information conduit for most Citizens of the Republic (and make lotza dough by selling data about some of us to others of us) they should have to follow first amendment case law just like (in theory anyway) The Fedrl Gummit does, and serve everyone at the information lunch counter.

{But that would require Congress to pass appropriate legislation.}

Indeed... Never mind. 

I think I feel a migraine coming on. Sorry to waste your time, gentlereaders. God help us, every-one.

On the other hand...

She He/she/they wore a glove, as my late father-in-law would've said. 

As I've pointed out elsewhere this cacophonous kerfuffle could be easily reduced to a tempest in a teapot any time the oligarchs wanted. For example, require users prove who they are and register under their real names.

{What's next, having to have an ID to vote?} 

But they would lose money once advertisers only had to pay for access to actual eyeballs and not virtual ones, and lawyers could sue malevolent and irresponsible eejits.

Howsabout a tightly monitored and controlled Google, FaceBook, YouTube, Twitter, etceterer paired up wide open, watch where you step, versions for grups only? 

{There you go again, people would have to prove they're 18...}

In exchange, I'd let 'em use as many pseudonyms as they pleased and post whatever insanity they like. Trolls in paradise. But I'm thinking they should have to prove that they're 28. 

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

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Cranky don't tweet. 

    

  

Pittsburgh, Pa.

 A Mr. Cranky's Neighborhood episode

Image by Hands off my tags! Michael Gaida from Pixabay

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

Warning: This column is rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — A Perusal by kids, callowyutes, or grups may result in a debilitating intersectional triggering. Viewing with a tablet or a monitor is highly recommended for maximum enjoyment.  

About

Glossary 

Erratically Appearing Hallucinatory Guest Star: Dana — A Gentlereader  

"I am a friend of the working man, and I would rather be his friend, than be one." -Clarence Darrow

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

This column/letter is about Mr. Cranky's original neighborhood, my hometown actually, Pittsburgh (with an h), Pa. Pittsburgh, by the by, is the hometown of Mr. Rogers. Cosmic coinkydink or cosmic consilience?

Anyways... The Burgh just turned its back on 1,000 full-time, union construction jobs and kissed off 3,000 steelworkers.

I was skimming a local business publication that serves the Hootervillle, Ohio region and came across a story about U.S. Steel canceling a $1,500,000,000 project to update its Mon Valley Works.

If you're not a Yinzer you're probably unaware that the Mon Valley Works isn't, technically speaking, actually in Pittsburgh, it's spread out across an adjacent "borough" or three. 

Locals know, more or less, where the borders are. But to most out-of-towners (and many Yinzers), lost and/or dazed and confused even with the help of GPS as they try and navigate the City of Bridges — and one-way streets, dead-ends, and death-defying hills — it's all Pittsburgh. 

To me, the Mon Valley Works is a perfect (and rare) example of the enormous steel-making complexes that were all over my hometown when I was a clip-on tie-wearing, daydreaming, Catholic grade school kid gazing out of schoolroom windows when sister Mary McGillicuddy was expounding on the esotericities of English grammar.

Mon Valley, by the way, is short for Monongahela Valley, named after one of the Burgh's famous three rivers, the semi-mighty Monogahela. 

{You just like writing the word Monongahela.}

Monongahela? Why yes, Dana, I do.  

Now, although the Mon Valley Works is about 100 miles southeast of Hooterville, the Hooterville region is the former home of all sorts of former enormous steel-making complexes, pieces/parts of which are still hanging on. The majority are now rusting hulks or hopeful empty fields. 

So the American steel industry is of interest to we flatlanders. There's no shortage of my fellow geezers/geezerettes that used to make steel, some of them while employed by U.S. steel.

Second paragraph of the article by Marc Levey of the Associated Press (AP):

"Project permits initially stalled by the pandemic never came through, U.S. Steel has added capacity elsewhere, and now it must shift its focus to its goal of eliminating greenhouse gas emissions from its facilities by 2050..."

Well, I thought, that sucks sweaty socks, and moved on. 

Recently, however, I came across a different article about the same subject; I confess I can't remember where. That article placed the blame squarely on regulators at the Allegheny County Health Department, the country wherein Pittsburgh is located.   

I returned to the original article and read it slowly, carefully, and in its entirety. 

Hoo-Boy...

From paragraph 17, "...the Allegheny County Health Department halted the permitting process because of the challenges the coronavirus posed to the public comment process."

Looong story short (based on the article in question and a bit of googlin'). 

Two years ago, in May 2019, U.S. Steel announced plans to turn the Mon Valley works into a primary source "...for high-strength, lightweight and flexible steel that feeds the automotive sector" via a process that was the first of its kind in the U.S.

The plan also included partially shutting down some of a highly polluting, locally controversial coke-producing operation, and adding a new emission control system. 

A thousand construction workers and three years later 3,000 current steelworkers would be breathing a little easier, literally and figuratively.

Fast forward to 4/30/21. U.S. steel announces that while the project updating the coke plant will go forward, the rest is canceled. 

In the last two years, U.S. Steel spent $170,000,000 on the project before deciding to give up. From paragraph 17: "...the Allegheny County Health Department halted the permitting process [a year ago] because of the challenges the coronavirus posed to the public comment process. My emphasis.  

Apparently, there was no possible way to gather public comments in the midst of the Wuflu Plague. 

County officials are accepting no blame; the usual suspects are pointing fingers at each other. Allegheny County and Pittsburgh are Democratic strongholds. My old man's Democratic party (he died in '69) would've never allowed this to happen.

My father's Democratic party, the working man's person's party, is now the Depublican party — often hard to distinguish from the Republicrats, and now the party of tech oligarchs, teacher's unions, and Wokies.   

 

What Have You Learned, Dorothy's?

My Dear Stickies, firms and entrepreneurs are about results. Without a facility and/or profits, there is no business. Regulators (bureaucrats) — competent, incompetent, well-meaning, or otherwise — are all about process.

No one who works for the Allegheny County Health Department will experience having their lives or paychecks disrupted because of this cluster suck. FYI: A cluster suck (sucks sweaty socks on steroids) is worse than a... well, you're likely familiar with the other version.   

Although the county and the city are both Depublican strongholds local Depublican officials will not pay a price. One-party rule, particularly by the party that has abandoned the working person, doesn't work very well in the Rustbelt. 

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

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Cranky don't tweet.

  

 

Working, 2021

Top off your coffee it's a long one

Image by Hier und jetzt endet leider meine Reise auf Pixabay aber from Pixabay 

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

Warning: This column is rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — A Perusal by kids, callowyutes, or grups may result in a debilitating intersectional triggering. Viewing with a tablet or a monitor is highly recommended for maximum enjoyment.  

About

Glossary 

Erratically Appearing Hallucinatory Guest Star: Dana — A Gentlereader  

"When a man tells you he got rich through hard work, ask him: 'Whose?' 

                                                                                      -Don Marquis

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

Recently Amazon offered me a free copy of a best-selling book that came out in 1974 titled Working. I was a callowyute who had been working (at a real job) for three years at the time. I wish that I had read it back then, it might've changed my life for the better. 

[Dubious.] 

Yes, Dana, but possible. It's loaded with life lessons.

The book was written by Lewis Terkel, a well-known man who was well-known as Studs Terkel. I'd be willing to give up a body part of lesser importance for a nickname as cool as that. 

Ironically, and as you know I'm all about ironicalities, he was dubbed Studs (the name of a character in a novel Terkel was reading) by the director of a play that he was acting in to distinguish him from another actor who was also named Lewis and it stuck. 

[So he wasn't actually a...]

No idea. Doesn't matter. The point is...

[Can we move on, please?]

(Heavy sigh) Certainly. Working is an oral history subtitled People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do. Nowadays, it serves not only to provide insight into how ordinary people felt/feel about their jobs, it describes a pre-woke world that has changed dramatically. 

Which got me thinking about my working life.    

I only belonged to a union once, not a very good one, in the course of working full-time for 45 years or so at various and sundry jobs. And I never managed to cobble together an actual career despite a sincere attempt or two... maybe three.  

In spite of distressingly regular setbacks, I never fell back to my fallback position and attempted to join a Taoist monastery in China's Wudang Mountains.

I never gave up, although I confess to having once deliberately remained unemployed for as long as the checks kept coming. When they stopped I was working at a new job a week later. 

In my defense, I was still young enough to think I was bulletproof and ten feet tall — and having a helluva lot of fun at the time.

Several decades later I found myself on the dole again for an unexpectedly long time. It was the height of the Great Recession; I was in my late fifties; I couldn't buy a job. 

This puzzles me since it's illegal to discriminate against someone in need of a job because of their age and I had... 

[Is that sarcasm?]

If you have to ask, Dana, well... never mind.

I had plenty of experience in doing this, that, or even that, but I had to cobble together a clutch of crappy part-time jobs to survive till I could opt for early Social Security due to a busted hip and a major financial crisis or two, maybe three, here at Casa de Chaos.

I worked a lot more hours for a lot less money than I was making prior to the crash.     

I spent decades stumbling through the American occupational landscape, confident that a career, or at least financial security, was just around the next corner. However, no one in their right might would describe me as financially successful. 

But I got by. I'm getting by. 

I was only briefly homeless (long story) for about 24 hours, never lived under an overpass, and never had to brandish a sign that said Will Work For Food.

I'm grateful that I'm a member of the global 1% — just about everyone that lives in the U.S. — and have lived long enough to join millions of my fellow Americans in enjoying an underfunded retirement. 

The Industrial Revolution, which created the modern world that we take for granted, upset apple carts all over the globe. Granted, there were hooge honkin' downsides, aren't there always? But overall, life on Earth improved rapidly and dramatically.

The Industrial Revolution was the coolest thing to happen to H. sapiens since the Neolithic (agricultural) Revolution and led to the eventual widespread availability of bacon-cheeseburgers and french fries. 

[We're talkin' homemade french fries and certified Black Angus beef, right?]

Of course. 

Also, it created jobs for the masses, as well as a thriving middle class, at least in countries that adopted the tenets of what used to be called Western Civilization.

[Used to be called?]

Typing the words Western Civilization in Wikipedia's search box spits out an entry titled Western Culture.

[Po-tay-toe, po-tah-toe?]   

Perhaps... but I smell a Wokie. 

[You're getting paranoid in your old age. A Wokie would use a title like Pasty Patriarchical Hegemonistic Euroimperialism (HT: Robert Greenberg).]

 

The Dizzinformation Revolution has created a handful of unimaginably wealthy oligarchs and a relative handful of good jobs for talented techies. The nerds have truly been avenged.  

These people are proud of the fact they found/continue to find all sorts of ways to make money by creating cool actual products to sell, and handing out "free" virtual products and services that people used to pay for.

How do you get around the proven concept there's no such as a free lunch? Reframe it. 

First, make the customer the product by harvesting the data accumulated by all those people using all those "free" products and services. 

Next, make the products and services as literally addictive as possible via applied science with the assistance of psychologists with flexible ethical standards. 

Finally, turn all this data into money by selling it to advertisers, using all that information supplied by "users" to sell stuff to — users.

A virtuous circle. Well, unless your job was destroyed by a free virtual product, or you used to make an actual product that's now being built by Chinese slaves.

[Oversimplification and hyperbole, sir!]     

Clarification and entertainment, sir!

The good news is the plague is slowly ending and there are now all sorts of jobs available. 

But in many cases, staying home pays better than all sorts of low-skilled jobs which is good news if you have one of those sorts of jobs but is also bad news because The Fedrl Gummit is funding the difference with borrowed money and driving up the largest deficit since WW2 but ultimately might be good news if you have one of those sorts of jobs because it might force firms to pay more which is bad news for their customers because prices will go up and then more people will want/need raises because inflation is a stealth tax on everyone and I'm getting a migraine I gotta go.

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

Comment, share this column, or access older columns below. If you find my work pleasing you should buy me some cheap coffee with PayPal or plastic.    

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Cranky don't tweet.

 

 

. 

 

 

    

 

I Call Bullshit!

Image by underworth from Pixabay 

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

Warning: This column is rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — A Perusal by kids, callowyutes, or grups may result in a debilitating intersectional triggering. Viewing with a tablet or a monitor is highly recommended for maximum enjoyment.  

About

Glossary 

Erratically Appearing Hallucinatory Guest Star: Dana — A Gentlereader 

"I was kind of secretly hoping one of my kids would go out and make a million bucks. So when they put me in a home, at least I'll have a window with a view." 

                                                                                                -Joe Biden

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

[I am shock-ed and appalled. A true gentleperson would not use the word bullshit in a missive that will be read by the general public, particularly in the title — not to mention his grandkids.]

Forgive me my delicate little flower, henceforth I'll use B.S., Dana. But sometimes, a full-throated I call bull... B.S. is called for. I call B.S. on Uncle Joe's call to spend trillions on top of the trillions already spent by him and the Donald.  

[Wait-wait-wait. I don't recall you sending back your share of the latest tranche of the Money for Mobs program. Any number of reputable charities would've been happy to put that money to work for ya.]

I'm tempted to say I needed it because I really needed it. Of course, the reality of my claim is between me, God, and the IRS. But I'm certain that almost all of the people who didn't need it also kept it, and I don't blame them. 

 [That doesn't make any sense.]     

Sure it does. Without congressional term limits, we're doomed. Well, I'm probably (hopefully?) not since I'm pushing 70 and according to The Social Security Administration I'm likely to be deleted when I turn 84.7. 

I wonder if I were to have a sex change operation and became a full-fledged (well...) female if I'd live to see my 87.0th birthday...

[Did you stop taking your meds again?]

To paraphrase a Shakespeare misquote, read on Macduff.

Uncle Joe — with the help of no shortage of lefty pseudo-journalists of the purple press  — ran as a traditional, moderate, steady as she goes center-left Depublican. 

The Donald, they told us, was the creepy uncle, the racist, xenophobic old letch kept at a careful distance by all the women and girls at family reunions. Uncle Joe was just a lovable, harmless old hair sniffer prone to occasionally blurting out embarrassing remarks. 

"If you have a problem figurin' out if you're for me or Trump, then you ain't black!"

[Maybe you misunderstood. Maybe...] 

From a Chris Cillizza piece at CNN (.com) posted just after (11.17.20) the election:

"Biden told everyone — the left included — exactly what sort of president he would be. One who believed Trump was an anomaly, that Republicans were good people who could be dealt with in a post-Trump era and that deal-making and centrist politics were the right way forward."

And then the Depublicans used a parliamentary trick to pass the stimulus bill without a single Republicrat vote.

The Republicrats, the same Republicrats that gleefully ran up the deficit when the Donald was in charge, went ape... poop crazy. 

Thus my use of the world-famous quote," Without congressional term limits, we're doomed." -Me Clearly, both the Blue team and the Red teams are suffering from an epidemic of constipation.

This brings me to spending/printing/borrowing trillions and trillions (please pronounce like you're Carl Sagan). 

Call it what you will, stimulus/democratic socialism/socialism/whateverism, as George Will has pointed out, "The political class is more united by class interest than it is divided by ideology. And the class interest is to give the American people a dollar's worth of government and charge them 80 cents for it."   

That's how you buy a political career with other people's money. 

As best I can tell (for some reason the Goog makes it hard to get a straight answer) approximately 24,000,000 people in America are working for a government entity in some form or fashion.

This means that one out of every 14 people has a government job. But this column is about the people at the top, the ones with real power. It's not about your average low-level government employee, most of whom are just like you and me. 

It's not even about the teacher's unions, the primary source of institutional racism in America (HT: Scott Adams) so I probably shouldn't have mentioned it.

[Then what exactly is your...]

Sorry... It's quite simple really. 

There aren't nearly enough rich people/evil corporations to fund Uncle Joe's dreams.

And corporations — large, small, evil, and otherwise — get their money from us, their customers. 

They employ us and are usually owned by us, their shareholders, because The Fedrl Gummit has made it impossible to grow a nest egg the safe, boring, old-fashioned way — savings accounts and compound interest. 

The European social democracies that the progressives like to point to are funded by high taxes on everyone at every level of exchange. If that's what we really want, fine, let's do it.  

BIG BUT.

To pretend that utopia can be financed by the 1% (who paid 38.5% of all income taxes last year) without the bottom 90% (who paid 29.9% of last year's income taxes) kicking in a lot more dough is bullshit. 

[Gasp!]    

Incidentally, the phrase "over ten years" is also complete B.S. since the US doesn't have ten-year budgets (the Swamp can't even pass a one-year budget anymore) and even if he lives long enough, Uncle Joe will be gone in less than eight years even though he'll only be 86. 

Speaking of bushwa:

Uncle Joe, recently giving a speech to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Amtrak (the heavily taxpayer-subsidized gummit railroad that loses money every year) told a heartwarming story about his relationship with an Amtrak conductor, and taking the train home to visit his sick mom around 2014 or 2015 when he was the vice president.  

Slight problem. His mom died in 2010 and the conductor retired in 1993. 

Why would a dude with FU-level wealth and the most powerful job on the planet continue to tell dubious boring old man stories (I'm an expert on this topic...)? Mansplaining? Toxic masculinity? Perhaps some other problem?

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

Comment, share this column, or access older columns below. If you find my work pleasing you should buy me some cheap coffee with PayPal or plastic.    

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Cranky don't tweet.

     

  

   

 

The Bureau of Indian Affairs

Image by wwboy from Pixabay

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

Warning: This column is rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — A Perusal by kids, callowyutes, or grups may result in a debilitating intersectional triggering. Viewing with a tablet or a monitor is highly recommended for maximum enjoyment.  

About 

Glossary 

Erratically Appearing Hallucinatory Guest Star: Dana — A gentlereader

"I am aware that as presenting myself as the advocate of the Indians and their rights, I shall stand very much alone." -Sam Houston 

"There are not enough Indians in the world to defeat the Seventh Calvery." 

                                                                            - George Armstrong Custer

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

Fortunately for black people, The Fedrl Gummit doesn't include a Bureau of African-American Affairs. Unfortunately for Native Americans, there is such a thing as the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). 

In fact, having been set up in 1824, it's almost 200 years old.  

By the time the Pilgrims arrived off the coast of present-day Massachusets most of the previous occupants of the area had conveniently died. 

“Within these late years, there hath, by God’s visitation, reigned a wonderful plague, the utter destruction, devastation, and depopulation of that whole territory, so as there is not left any that do claim or challenge any kind of interest therein." -King James the first  

Yes, that King James.

The Pilgrims, not having access to GPS, or even AAA TripTiks, arrived in Cape Cod Bay after more than two months at sea. They were more than 200 miles north of their intended destination, Hudson Bay. 

They were a day late (several days actually) and a dollar short. 

[A dollar short?]

I'm speaking metaphorically, Dana, cool writers do that. Literally speaking, they were running out of food and their timing was terrible. It was early November and they parked the Mayflower in what is now the Northeastern region of the U.S.A. 

Winters there were/are even worse than those here in Northeast Ohio (aka Canada's Deep South).

[Shudder!]

They were supposed to have landed in the Big Apple (actually it was the little apple back then) having heard good things from the Dutch. Having once spent a winter in the NYC area I can verify that winters there are much milder than New England winters, or even Northeast Ohio winters. 

[Shudder!]

They nearly didn't make it; they almost became a historical rounding error. However, they discovered that by breaking into Native American homes and graves there was food to be had.  

By the time November rolled around again they had (temporarily) befriended some of their new neighbors and had, um, recycled cleared farmland and empty native villages left behind by the locals who had been dying off in droves from European diseases for over a hundred years.

In short order, the Europeans set out to save their souls while stealing their country. The rest is history. The fact that the majority of the natives would die from disease and didn't have to actually be killed sped the process up considerably. 

(Very) long (and complicated) story short — two centuries of theft, exploitation, and attempts at forced assimilation by The Fedrl Gummit. The Bureau of Indian Affairs is about to celebrate its 200th birthday. 

If one defines the Deep State as I do, as a group of mostly faceless, unelected bureaucrats that write and enforce most of the Rules&Regs of The Fedrl Gummit, we should be preparing to celebrate(?) the Deep State's birthday.  

Now, I'm a firm believer in what I call the That was Then, This is Now philosophy of history. That is to say, while the sins of the past should be acknowledged, lessons learned, and where realistic, compensation paid in some form or fashion, what can actually be done to actually solve a given problem so we can all move forward together?           

While I freely admit to knowing virtually nothing about the plight of modern Native Americans living on reservations googlin' the phrase why are Indian reservations so poor? immediately pulled up a nine-year-old article from Forbes (.com) titled, Why Are Indian Reservations So Poor, A Look At The Bottom 1%.

Another very long story short: 

"The vast majority of land on reservations is held communally...This leads to what economists call the tragedy of the commons: If everyone owns the land, no one does. So the result is substandard housing and the barren, rundown look that comes from a lack of investment, overuse and environmental degradation. "

It's the exact same reason most inner-city housing projects are a disaster. Property rights change everything. The article explains why, in detail, if you're interested. 

For our purposes, suffice it to say that if the provisions of the Dawes Act, passed in 1887, had been implemented and all Indian land privatized we could've solved this problem a couple of centuries ago. 

But what happens when Fedrl regulators, special interests, and self-serving, local Native American officials wind up on the same team? 

Ya get a 200-year-old agency of The Fedrl Gummit that's been working on the same problems for 200 years.

"Any Indian who didn’t win clear title to land by 1934 was left with a fractional share of the reservation’s land held in trust. With every generation, each share was divided among more family members and today hundreds of people may have a partial claim to one share of trust land."

Wednesday, April 30, 2121

HHS Task Force Releases Report

 

Washington (AP) — Dr. Anthony Steven Fauci III, Secretary of the United States Department of Health and Human Services, has announced that the Report of the Joint Task Force appointed to study and recommend reforms to the American healthcare system is now in the hands of President Kardashian and will be released to the public shortly. 

Dr. Fauci, asked if a final determination as to whether face masks work and under what circumstances had been made (as specifically requested by President Kardashian) responded, "Well, that depends..." 

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