Good morning to you all on this first Sunday of December. We had enough snow to provide a good ground cover and the weather people have revised their temperature outlook for the next week---downward. Oh, well. At least we should have partly sunny days for the first three days when we have our usual errands. As usual we are on the borderline. We may or may not get lake effect snow today and tomorrow.

I agree, Kay. Sometimes all you can do is sigh at the mess in our political and economic systems.

Here is something else to sigh about. Because our mainstream media likes to go from dramatic crisis to dramatic crisis the only time we get stories about the debt crisis of states and local governments is when the crisis explodes. However, the crisis has been there smoldering along. In the first year of our 'Great Recession', when the Obama Administration got billions to help states and local governments keep teachers employed, I asked what would happen when the Federal government support ended. We got our answer when school districts laid off droves of teachers even as they got the Federal money because they were also worried about what would happen after the money ran out. Illinois, where the state government has consistently for years underfunded their pension plan, the legislature passed measures this last week to use property taxes and scheduled raises in levy to do so. Mayor Richard Daley (not running for another term) has warned that the Chicago property owners will be hit with a massive bill they can't pay. What we have is another shell game. In an economy which produces little in the way of real wealth we are reduced to robbing some worthy people to pay other worthy people.