I have been very busy with work and, as I’ve said before, blogging is basically a reactive medium and there hasn’t been much to react to.
The Washington Post is absolutely convinced that we can boost the U. S. economy by importing minimum wage and sub-minimum wage workers. They’re written an editorial on the subject and now their columnists are beginning to join in the charge. That makes perfect sense as long as you only look at one side of the ledger. When you look at the costs as well as their earnings, it’s quite obvious it makes no sense. If we were importing families of professionals, we’d be fine. Families of minimum wage workers, not so much. And then there’s the housing! Where are they going to live? The housing units we’re building are not for low wage workers.
I genuinely wish the various writers who are absolutely convinced that Russia is poised on the brink of invading all of Europe would actually make a case for that. The only way I can see of arguing that is to consider only Ukraine and extrapolate from that. When you even look at the recent past, just the last 35 years, it actually makes a pretty good case that Russia’s concern about NATO expansion is well-founded. NATO has gone from being a defensive alliance to I don’t know what.
I’m not following Trump’s legal woes particularly closely because a) I don’t care much about Trump and b) even when the verdicts come down the outcomes are far from assured.
Re-authorizing FISA? I think that civil service reform is a much higher priority. FISA should only be re-authorized with stringent penalties for abuses. How do you you accomplish that without serious civil service reform?
I was chatting with my nextdoor neighbor the other day. She’s about as regular a Democrat as you can find and she thinks that Mayor Johnson is a total loss as mayor. A lot of Chicagoans want to recall him. As I’ve said before I think we need a Constitutional amendment allowing any elected official to be recalled. Here in Illinois just about the only elected official we can recall is the governor and that isn’t even mandatory. That was part of the special “Get rid of Rod Blagojevich” reform of about 15 years ago.
I’m typing this while in a meeting. I wish I didn’t have to show my face at these meetings. It would make it a lot easier to concentrate while writing.