Month: April 2020

I have an extensive collection of quotes I have gleaned over the years from many sources. There is is usually one which is appropriate to whatever issue is at hand. From H. L. Mencken, we get... for every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat and wrong. The following is an example. Willie Brown is a long-time and very astute California politician.  He was the Democratic Speaker of the State Assembly for many years, during which time he went toe-to-toe with Ronald Reagan for the latter’s two terms in office.   An annual poll of the press in…

Some governments allow their employees to affiliate as unions.  When this is the case, the government agrees to negotiate with the collective concerning the terms and conditions of employment.  Other governments do not permit unions or will not deal with them.   While the employees may have an unquestioned right to affiliate, no government entity has any legal obligation to recognize them unless a superior level of government mandates such recognition.  It is almost universally the option of the government whether or not to deal with its employees in a collectivist form.  When the push for unionization for government employees came…

Neighborhoods change.  They change ethnically and they change physically.  They change for the better and they change for the worse.  The process isn’t always pretty.  Some people benefit and some suffer.  A letter to the editor in the San Francisco Chronicle presents the writer's grievances stirred by gentrification.  The writer’s points are dramatically presented but she does make her case.   Tax Big Tech and IPOsMore taxes on Big Tech and IPOs is a good idea.  And if taxes drive them out of town, better yet.  Taxes will never mitigate the miseries brought by the recent invasion of San Francisco.  The…

Certain things which are taken for granted at one time in history would be unthinkable at others.  I do not mean bad or obvious but literally unthinkable.   Do you imagine that it would have even occurred to Thomas Jefferson in 1776 to call out King George on his failure to allow gay marriage?   And yet, two plus centuries and a Supreme Court ruling later, all states now allow this practice. A hundred years from now, one can extrapolate that failing to allow gay marriage may well be viewed as barbaric as slavery.  Which brings me to the minimum wage.  The…

Everett Dirksen was the Republican Senate Majority Leader for virtually the entire 1960s.  Relative to the federal budget, he allegedly said:  A billion here, a billion there and pretty soon, you’re talking about real money.   The only thing that has changed is that a trillion is the new billion. A significant chunk of what the federal government spends is borrowed money.  Spending in excess of revenue is the annual deficit.  Each year, the deficit adds to the national debt.  The United States has not been free of debt since Andrew Jackson was president.  In a very real sense, we are…