Notes On The Collapse

Bloody Spring

Opinion

It’s happened again: We’ve had yet another mass shooting. Just between us, as more and more people start coming out of their year-long lockdowns, I predict we’re going to have a fair number more. We got a year off from them, but that just means we’ve had people become crazy at the normal rate… but they didn’t have obvious targets and so kept right on stewing in their basements.

Plus, every time there’s one of these shown on CNN, it seems other nuts see the television coverage and get inspired to do one of their own — as though being a copycat nut-job is somehow better than the first one, who might have been honestly acting out his own selfish frustrations on innocents rather than pretending to for the free press.

Don’t get me wrong: They’re both foul and almost inhumanly selfish. But the copycat is at least partly after the attention, which is worse — people’s lives are more valuable than that.

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Earmarking: Greasing The Wheels

For decades, the term has been synonymous with Congressional corruption. Earmarks were the bane of responsible spending, the origin of billion-dollar boondoggles, bridges to nowhere, unwanted highways, and quid pro quo politics. Figures as different as Newt Gingrich and Barack Obama both parlayed their opposition to earmarking into heightened political power.

Today, there is a movement underway within the Democratic leadership to bring the practice back; Republicans, traditionally more responsible with spending, are initially showing some resistance. So who’s right and why?

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The Filibuster

While it may seem a strange way to conduct business, the filibuster within the Senate has existed as a procedure since 1806. It originated seemingly accidentally as an unforeseen consequence of a simple rules change, and has in one form or another regulated the legislative process ever since.

It has a much longer history; the first recorded filibuster was by Cato in the Roman Senate, opposing one of Caesar’s proposals in 60 B.C. However, the weight of tradition alone is insufficient to maintain this tool; one of McConnell’s unlauded triumphs was its preservation in the rules of the present Congress by passive opposition to the transfer of Senate leadership until language defining and guaranteeing it was inserted into the agreement. Otherwise, it may have been ended immediately with the convening of the new Senate — and it may well be again in 2022.

What is for us to consider rather is whether this tool is valuable enough to preserve, or instead fully deserves to be discarded as a relic of a long-outmoded past.

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What’s Actually In The Relief Bill?

With a nearly $2 trillion price tag, what is hopefully the last COVID-19 relief bill is up for debate in the Senate today — and, probably, tomorrow and the next and…

Due to the curious process under which it’s being considered — the Reconciliation rules — there’s no chance of a filibuster on the table; on the other hand, both the complexity of the proposed legislation and certain parliamentary tricks will create some fairly significant delays. These are normal (if petty) maneuvers; more to the point is considering the complexity of the bill proper.

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H.R. 1: Voter’s Rights Versus Election Security

Opinion

The headline’s boring, because I don’t write clickbait (no matter what Justin says). It’s also inaccurate, because the debate is being framed by two partisan groups who have skin in the game.

I’ll spell it out: While it would be nice to be able to say that Republicans are genuinely concerned about securing elections from fraud, or that Democrats are trying to make sure that everyone who wants to vote can vote, we really can’t. Oh, sure, when it comes to voters, that might well be their actual concerns, but that’s only because that’s what’s being hammered into them as what’s important by people they trust to tell them about things. The very simple version of the truth is, the Democrats want this to pass because it will mean they win more elections, and the Republicans don’t want it to pass for the same reason.

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How To Be Rich

A Tongue In Cheek Guide For The Working Poor

There’s an old truism we had in the used and rare books business: The secret to having a small fortune? Start with a large one.

Similarly, most of the advice on how to get rich starts with the word “Invest”. This is at one and the same time entirely truthful and completely useless. Only around one in ten Americans feel they have the luxury to invest anything; the rest are living paycheck to paycheck (or, truth be told, well beyond their means just making do).

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Of Course They Didn’t Convict.

Trump’s second impeachment is over in record time, and of course they didn’t convict him. They were never going to.

Some among you are disappointed, but what’s unsettling is that a few of you are actually surprised. You seem to have been under the misapprehension that this was a trial or something instead of the latest installment of the D.C. Bread And Circus Show (Hold The Bread).

(To be fair: I also thought it was a trial. My bad. -Editor)

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Free To Pose The Question

Are celebrities different from the rest of us?

Well, in some ways of course they aren’t. They’re just people, living their lives as best they can. Sports stars, actors, and those famous for being famous are as human as the rest of us; cut them and they bleed red.

In another and very real sense, they are definitely not. They are the public faces of entertainment corporations, skilled at their jobs and little more. When they adopt causes (which they so often do) it isn’t through expertise but rather exposure to charismatic activists; due to their isolated condition, those activists are usually the fashionable type sponsored by corporate investors. When they get involved in politics, it isn’t generally through their profound grasp of economic theory and social policy.

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Worse Than January 6th

This morning I was confronted with a Twitter poll about which date was the worst in American history. The choices were: the Kennedy assassination, September 11th 2001, Pearl Harbor, and January 6th of this year.

Now, I won’t say any of these days was a particularly good one. Pearl Harbor and 9/11 were especially bad. But let’s keep some perspective here; on August 24, 1814, an invading army actually burned down both the White House and the Capitol after inflicting a pitiful defeat on American defenders at the Battle of Bladensburg — and even that, while a bad day for America, wasn’t our worst.

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