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June 2023 S M T W T F S 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 Archives
Author Archives: Robert Tighe
What Ceiling?
As I write this it is May of 2023. A Democrat is president of the United States and the Republican Party has recently gained a narrow majority in the House of Representatives. Unsurprisingly, the odd situation called the debt ceiling … Continue reading
Posted in Economy, Politics
Tagged 14th Amendment, Biden, congress, constitution, debt, debt ceiling, deficit, Obama, Reagan, sequestration, treasury
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Executive Risk
In the United States a great deal of the stability of the government is credited to what is commonly referred to as the balance of powers, the system in which each one of the three major functional divisions can put … Continue reading
Posted in Politics
Tagged balance of powers, Biden, bureaucracy, deep state, executive, judicial, legislative, Nixon, president, Reagan, Roosevelt, sedition act, signing statement, Trump, vote
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Poverty Memes
In the United States we are conflicted about poverty. When referring to poor people there are two over-generalizations that we use. On one side we have what might be called the concept of the “noble poor” such as the hero-protagonists … Continue reading
Posted in Politics, Sociocultural
Tagged family, Great Society, New Deal, poverty, TANF
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Community Aid
The system of local irrigation in New Mexico contains a lengthy network of canals, most of them small and dirt-lined, maintained annually in a system that was developed over many centuries. In a few places there are larger government-maintained diversion … Continue reading
Posted in Economy, Sociocultural
Tagged acequia, agriculture, economy, government, irrigation, labor, mayordomo, volunteer, water
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Pragmatic States
The United States has a lengthy history of pragmatism in both philosophy and action, a long tradition that may have helped the nation grow but may also have inspired, or at least prefigured, the serious political conflicts of the second … Continue reading
Posted in Sociocultural
Tagged de Toqueville, Franklin, John Dewey, philosophy, pragmatism, Republican, riots, tea party, Trump, United States, war, William James
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Just a Job
It was a job. It paid slightly above minimum wage and provided no other benefits. Its primary advantage, if you can call it that, was that it required no thought, no active personal involvement or commitment other than the repetitive … Continue reading
Change Le Même
One of the most common tropes around the beginning of the twenty-first century is a phrase that has been used to describe virtually every major event from the attack on the world trade center to the election of Donald Trump … Continue reading
Posted in Media, Sociocultural
Tagged behavior, change, focus, future, joy, observation, reality, significance
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CEO Government
In recent decades it has been common for political pundits and some candidates for office to denigrate the very title “politician” and to promote the idea that what the country needs is to populate our government with non-politicians. In truth, … Continue reading
Posted in Politics, Uncategorized
Tagged Bloomberg, business, CEO, government, Hrding, politician, politics, president, Schwarzenegger, Trump, Ventura
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Ban Books and More
As I write this we are in the midst of a national effort to ban ideas. This isn’t anything new; our politicians and pundits have been involved in what has become known as the “culture wars” for years, and previous … Continue reading
Real Magic
Arthur had come to the conclusion that even after years of dedicated effort, after all of those hours and hours of lonely practice, staring at himself in front of a mirror, watching attentively to micro-adjust his movements and his statements, … Continue reading
Posted in Fiction, Sociocultural
Tagged magic, religion, sorcery, witchcraft
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