Thursday, April 21, 2022

Angel, carved in wood


 

13 comments:

  1. Wintery here this morning; half an inch of rain predicted throughout the day. Cool, windy, cloudy.

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  2. Corporations, since their creation is authorized by governmental entities (mostly states) are legally subordinate to governments and liablee to legislative direction. Although, until recently, most legislation has been directed towards facilitating enterprise or distributing advantages (copyrights, monopolies, resource extraction), as the electorate has swelled and become more demanding, legislators, in particular, have conditioned their beneficial legislation on enterprise support at the ballot box. In other words, incumbents, whose institutional power rests on longevity in office, have been extorting support in exchange for "tax cuts," a euphemisms for the military, transportation, labor and educaional programs they set up, or not.
    While the ACA seems like a watershed piece of legislation in terms of providing care for individuals, the real revolution occurred in the financial sector via Dodd/Frank--legilation that, for the first time ever rent the veil of privacy which the financial sector had enjoyed and misused in engineering rcurring crises and crashes to advantage themselves.
    I did not actually awaken to the resrictive potential of legislatures until Minnesota and Michigan stripped unions and municipalities of their powers--powers that, upon closer inspection, the legislatora of New York State have obviously made use of more often than, for another example, Texas.
    Truth is that agents of government are not empowered to direct the positive behaviors of "natural persons." So, doing it indirectly via the artificial persons they auhorize is an attractive alternative. (Note that in the reproductive arena, it is licensed care providers who are being directed not to provide certain kinds of services; a pattern that also accounted for why hair salons and barber shops and eateries were easy to shutter during the pandemic because the orders could be enforced by lifting their licenses to do business. People cutting hair in their living rooms were not affected. If there is no license, there is nothing to rescind.
    Free enterprise, aka underground economy had grown to $2.5 trillion by 2019. It will b interesting to see the numbers for 2021.

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  3. ABC News: GOP flips own script in fighting corporate 'wokeness' “The party's relationship with big businesses has been rapidly ‘evolving’.” [Click]

    What Oklahoma's governor and others get wrong about tribal sovereignty [Click]

    Welcome to a Village With More Booksellers Than School Pupils [Click] NYT: “Urueña, in northwestern Spain, has fought depopulation by reinventing itself as a literary hub. The full-time population is still just 100, but there are 11 shops selling books.”
    Photos—wow! [Click]

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    1. Oops--double-posted first item. Shoulda proofread.

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  4. The human costs of lockdown in Shanghai [and other Chinese cities] have sparked frustration and despair. But leaders have no exit strategy [Click] “Even by the standards of China’s overzealous censors, suppressing a hashtag that simply quoted its national anthem was striking stuff. The opening line – “Arise, ye who refuse to be slaves!” – had been deployed to express the growing anger and distress in Shanghai as what was supposed to be a short, sharp lockdown stretched on for weeks. . .” Merciful Heavens—- The Internationale deployed against a “communist” government? Might the same thing happen in Russia?

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    1. It remains a mystery to me why the version of The Internationale that I recall from my youth is the Socialist Party USA version rather than the much better known IWW version. I can be certain that it wasn't handed down to me through my family, although my step-grandfather was a member of the Socialist Party.

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  5. listener— here’s a YouTube video about places in US safest from climate change. [Click] Map of 30 most resilient counties starting at 6:15, shows Vermont to be among the best. There is a small part of coastal California and Oregon near where I come from, BUT— that area is subject to *great* earthquakes, one of which could happen any time now. Volcanic ash can be a problem, too, depending on which way the wind is blowing. But fair is fair—those are not related to climate change.

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    1. I watched the video. Nice to see about half of Vermont looking to be safe. Lamoille County is the next county over from us, and is top in the nation! But our county didn't make the good list. Interesting.

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  6. Hey! The gremlins now let me post as me from my iPhone …on one browser. They will let me edit the cover page, but still won’t give me the keys to delete a message in Comments. I can only do that from my computer.

    We’ll be in Maine tomorrow and Saturday. Trying to decide whether to bring my computer. I’d rather not for so brief a trip. Had I not been able otherwise to post here at all, I would have, though.

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  7. Stephen Colbert has tested positive for Covid and cancelled tonight's show. The show returns May 2nd (that break was already planned). He seems to be doing well, though.

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  8. Bernie Sanders has not ruled out running for President again, in 2024, if President Biden decides not to run.
    https://www.wcax.com/app/2022/04/21/is-senator-sanders-considering-presidential-run-2024/?outputType=apps

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