Blackhawk Down and Out I am watching Merrick Garland make a DOJ announcement about their investigation into the events surrounding the George Floyd killing and has concluded that the Minneapolis PD committed civil rights violations on a rather routine basis. His listing of the evidence of violations of those civil rights, the First Amendment, the American Disabilities Act and various other cultural guardrails is really quite eye opening. The one that jumps out at me…
Staying Loud I am here on the day after the indictment of Donald Trump on 37 federal criminal counts ranging from conspiracy to obstruct justice (one of Trump’s specialities) to willful retention of national defense information (not to mention sharing national defense secrets to unauthorized persons). Meanwhile a grand jury in Washington D.C. is hearing testimony from two fake electors from Nevada, which is part of the ongoing case by Special Prosecutor Jack Smith to…
Crossing the Line I voted for Ronald Reagan in both 1980 and 1984. I admit it and with the benefit of hindsight I think I contributed to the downfall of the liberal democracy that worked so well for our country from 1945 until 1980. I was actually more a fan of George HW Bush back in those days, but he didn’t have the momentous that Reagan had, so I stayed with the team and we…
Reparations The 2020 movie called Worth that stars such greats as Michael Keaton, Stanley Tucci and Amy Ryan is about the valuing of lives lost in the 9/11 tragedy. It is a fascinating study in how professionals go about putting human lives into dollars and cents and it may be one of the more instructive stories to help us deal with the next great reparations issue, dealing with the compensation for African Americans who’s ancestors…
Going Down in Flames It is amazing to watch a bully getting surrounded by a pack of dogs and attacked relentlessly from all sides. The bully knows that the only thing that has kept him from self-destruction has been his bravado. He is getting described as a caged tiger who understands that he has nowhere to run. The tiger can’t help but be what it is and snarl to remind people who is the predator…
Freedom!!! In 1941 Franklin, Delano Roosevelt believed that the United States should end its isolationist policies that came about as a result of World War I. Europe was in turmoil. Germany had taken over the continent of Europe along with Italy while Japan ravaged the Far East. The only countries left to fight the Axis powers were England and the Commonwealth. In the United States, the Neutrality Act prevented the United States from assisting them…
Butter and Markets I am just finishing reading 48 essays on Free Markets for my ethics class. The assignment I gave was to discuss the pros and cons of free markets in the context of being a asylum-seeking immigrant from Central America. It has proven to be a fascinating exercise (at least for me, but I also think for the students) because it has forced them to consider the libertarian value of free market capitalism…
The Gatemaster Gozer the Gozerian is the evil Sumerian God who is also known as The Destructor and is equally worshipped by the Hittites and Mesopotamians. He or she (Gozer was gender-nonspecific way before it became popular) is served by an array of minions and demigods including Vinz Clortho, the Keymaster. Vinz is some form of half-dog and half-bear in his incarnation during Gozer’s first attempt to destroy the world in 1984. Gozer, who is…
The Final Lie There is something so symbolic about Tucker Carlson’s final send-off to his Fox News audience of some 4.1 million loyal sycophants. He ends by saying something stupid about how he will be telling them about how they are being forced to eat bugs and then quickly reminds them that he promises to see them all on Monday. That was last Friday and, of course, as we all know now, Monday morning he…
The Demographic Dividend I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about demographics. That stems from my writing of Global Pension Crisis in 2013, because you cannot talk about pensions and retirement dynamics without getting into demographics. I wrote that book on the back of a course I taught about pensions at Cornell’s business school from 2008 until 2017. In fact, I found the demographics that I kept seeing and tallying every year when I…