Our president's Big Beautiful Bill hides a small passage which makes contempt of court decisions of federal courts completely meaningless. To explain the importance of this new rule, I go back to my earlier discussion of justice and focus on the type of justice called "equity." It's a big deal.
Yesterday, Haaretz, a leading Israeli newspaper, reported that two Israeli soldiers were killed in Gaza. That makes eight soldiers killed in the last two months. I try to think about what that means, especially since now that the military situation in Gaza gets less and less coverage in the media.
The past winter was not kind to us, and we are faced with water shortage in the Rio Grande this summer. I link to several descriptions of where we are and what is predicted. Impacts will be important for farmers, ranchers, recreational businesses. We might get sued again by Texas.
High cost of home insurance is here to stay. I link to several recent articles on homeowners' insurance, its relation to climate change, its relation to banking, to construction, to real estate, to what the state is doing about this problem. I try to explain those relationships.
Trump supporters say his policies may hurt in the short-term but will bring jobs and economic security to the country. I respond to this in three ways: an AI generated meme traveling around the world, a poem ("Arbeit macht frei"), and a historical note on the poem's title.
What is justice? And, why should justice matter? When a government becomes a business for making money, is there any reason for it to be concerned with justice? Is the disappearance of justice both as an idea and as a political structure the sign of the end of government?
This is a very, very short sermon. The subject is immigration. The text is Matthew ii, 13-15. It ends with a call to action.
Our President has created a "sovereign wealth fund," which considers all government holdings as assets, investments for return of capital. This business enterprise immediately turns the federal holdings from their original purpose of public service into assets to be used to make money. Public land is now an asset.
The County has a trade deficit because we import much more than we export. As a result, money flows out of the county, making it economically weak. Outsiders are making money off us, taking advantage of us. What can we do to correct this unfair situation?
I link to an informative article on the Presidential order outlawing the siloing of personal data by various governmental agencies. Around this news, I weave comments on the kind of thinking that leads to this prohibition and what that tells us about our loss of a government.
It's business as usual in this country. Since the country is now a business, we look at how planning is a necessary part of any business, and we conclude that what looks like chaos is actually planned (as Secretary Kennedy claimed), visionary, even with a 20% error rate.
The godfather has two godsons: Elon Musk, his court jester, and JD Vance, his thinker. Together, they give the godfather the appearance of majestic distance as they replace the state nationally and internationally with a corporate business. Today, I look at an Executive Order teaching us to think corporately.