It can’t have escaped the notice of my readers that there are topics about which I’m not writing, even though I am rather interested in them. And, for the most part, these are topics where I don’t think, at this point, I have anything to contribute to the conversation other than just a “what she said.” (It also doesn’t help that this is the busy season at work. . . )
But, just to establish my bona fides as a person who follows the news, here are some short takes on the major news events:
Obamacare: Yes, I think we’re all getting tired of this. Even Megan McArdle is slowing down. The Republican leadership isn’t trying to actively move towards a fix that incorporates any of the proposals that have previously floated around — presumably waiting to see what the end result is of the frantic coding and parade of waivers and deferrals.
The budget debate: isn’t there supposed to be some movement on this now? There’s virtually no reporting. Every now and again, something pops up, largely around Democrats wanting to end the sequester, and the GOP having the upper hand, potentially, but news is scant.
In Illinois, a new pension bill aims to reform and fund the system. Republicans mostly voted against it, in a protest that it doesn’t go far enough, but, with Democrats in power, it’s about as good as you can expect — and already unions are threatening to sue. (No one listened to my proposal that we amend the Illinois constitution to give the government more flexibility regarding future accruals, which I promoted not only on this blog but in a “write your legislator” exercise and as an unpublished letter-to-the-editor submission. . . )
In the Ukraine, protesters are protesting the regime’s move towards Russia and away from the EU. Really, it would be lovely if this were a new Velvet Revolution, but I don’t hold out much hope. Most likely, the government will just ignore the protesters, with a significant chance of a new post-Prague Spring Soviet (OK, Russian) intervention. Russia is not going to let its nearest neighbors align with the EU.
Immigration: this one worries me, that there are too many Republicans who are chasing the “moderate” label, who will happily alienate their base with an amnesty which pretends to trade legalization for enforcement, but with a toothless version of enforcement with promises rather than true triggers. Of course, given how eager Obama is to waive laws he doesn’t like, it’d be difficult to construct any sort of triggers that can be enforced if the president doesn’t want to (unless the law could be designed in such a way as to give ordinary citizens standing to sue when non-enforcement happens?).
Pope Francis: liberals love him because they are turning him into, well, them. They don’t see him as a figure who inspires them to lead a better life in any fashion, but as a figure who tells them that the way they lead their lives is just fine. They latch onto statements that conform with their own beliefs and ignore those that don’t, and see him as a sign that any day now, the Catholic Church is going to revise it’s doctrine on every teaching they don’t like. For that matter, his calls against greed are read as criticism of “the 1%” — never of the rest of us who ignore the poor expecting someone else to take care of them.
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