The Department of Justice has gone more than a bit freaky lately; see Wonkette’s PULL THE F*CKING FIRE ALARM and Bill Barr Breaks The Justice Department for some frankly revolting details. Regulatory Capture. That’s the concept in government that describes…
Tax This: All Taxes Should Be Progressive
Oooh; it’s that word. In this case, it has a specific meaning though. Progressive taxes are important. Progressive taxes are ones where the percentage you pay goes up the more resources you have to pay it with. In the United…
Saying It Isn’t So: There Are No “Other Ways Of Knowing”
Contrary to what seems to be a common belief these days, we do actually have an entire discipline for evaluating “ways of knowing”. It’s called “epistemology”. And it distinguishes between “belief” and “knowledge”. “Knowledge” is “justified true belief”. Meaning a…
Voice Assistants: Big Sister Is Watching You
Well, mostly just listening at this point. But don’t get cocky. I’m no fan of the Internet of Things, or “cloud” services (as should be obvious from Escrow: Keep The “Cloud” Honest). But voice assistant devices bring them to a…
Public Infrastructure: Should be Owned By The Public
That may seem obvious; it’s in the words, after all. But it’s really not that way at all. A helluva a lot of the “public” infrastructure of the United States is actually private property. For example, I live in Northern…
Impeachment: Not An Effective Solution
Well, that ended pretty much exactly the way everyone except Senator Romney expected it to. And he was only half surprised. I actually have several other things I want to write about. Right now, I even have 7 posts already…
Iowa: Don’t Learn The Wrong Lesson
Yeah, Iowa screwed up. You can check out Iowa: Not What You May Be Expecting for more on that. But don’t learn the wrong lesson from it. A lot of political media folks seem to have decided that what they…
Iowa: Not What You May Be Expecting
You’re gonna be hearing a lot about the Iowa caucuses today. And not for why we all expected to anyway. You’re probably already aware that last night the Iowa Democratic Party failed rather dramatically in the one job they had…
Impeachment: IOIYAR Triumphant?
‘IOIYAR: acronym for “It’s Okay If You’re A Republican,” shorthand for discussing hypocrisy.’ Inconceivable! Well, not really; I just wanted to use that header. It’s actually been quite conceivable for a while, as I discussed the other day in Impeachment:…
Impeachment: A Stupid Thing Happened On The Way To The Senate
Well, lots of really stupid things. And even more stupid things have happened after it got there. There is one stupid thing that matters more than all the rest. Trump seems to genuinely think that he’s a king. To be…