Is This Heaven?
But for the 24-hour political newscasters, the Iowa caucus results were a panic moment. And now, 36 hours later, they are still mumbling and grumbling, talking about apps and coding problems and the horror of having to wait.
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CHANNELLING Behavior : Rewards and Punishments through the Tax System
Channelling is an important element of the tax system. We have no other way of rewarding – therefore, encouraging – good behavior. And we can’t punish – therefore, discourage – bad behavior except by making it illegal, and our Constitution and other rights often prevent us from doing that.
Re: Fake email replies
It plays on your sense of guilt that you missed an email, that you rudely ignored an email, that the sender is really interested in helping you – when, in fact, this email is just a pretense.
Message-Making: The Biden Speech
The speech is a lesson in the tactics, large and small, that hold a message together and burn your ideas into your audience’s consciousness. Repetition. Litanies. Framing. Promoting your Values, naming the Villain, holding out a Vision.
Impeachment
I am confident that any bill of impeachment passed by the House will not only fail in the Senate – it will never go to trial in the Senate. Senate boss McConnell has shown that he is perfectly willing to simply ignore House-passed bills, so they never get a hearing, never get a vote, never…
Nobody Likes a Sore Loser
We all remember that kid — the one on the playground who threw a tantrum when he lost. You called him a “Sore Loser”. And even though you were just kids, you knew — everyone knew — that nobody likes a sore loser. The Republican Party is the party of sore losers.
Biden Paused – A Missed Opportunity
Saturday night would have been the time to shift to a wholly-positive campaign. To inspire voters. To call them to “Yes, we can”, “We Dare to Dream”, and “We have before, we will again”.
“There Is No Accurate Information”
Because Republicans have such a long history of “voter-phobia”, they were particularly susceptible to claims of “voter fraud”. Since that claim has been popular among Republican spokespeople for decades, Republican voters were easy pickings in 2020.
How Do We Pay For it?
Let’s find a way to pay for it, whatever it costs. Because, if it’s a good thing to do, if it solves an intolerable problem, then we should do it. Not because we can afford it, but because we need it.
Because we can’t afford to not do it.
“We have met the enemy and he is us.”
A favorite quotation from American founding documents is this partial quote: “We, the people.” Taken from the Preamble (and thus the first words) of the U.S. Constitution, “We, the people” is meant to illustrate the primacy of the people of the United States over other powers, especially the powers of the government formed by that same Constitution.
But this reading misses the mark. I take those opening words to reflect that the people and the government are one and the same.
This seems like an important point in the discussion of 2nd Amendment rights. It is also an important point in many other aspects of how the people and the government relate to one another. And understanding that point drives many of the policies we operate under, and advocate for or against, today.
If we hold that “the government” is some entity that exists outside of, separate from, and in enmity against, the people, then many of the policies of the Republican party follow quite naturally.