May 2

 Cloudy and wet so far. Nothing planned for today.

Robert Reich has posted a good piece on the state of U.S. children. It seems that the most severe threat to children's welfare is--a radical Republican government. An interesting tidbit in Reich's account is that the response of such governments to violations of child labor laws by big companies. They change the laws to favor the company. I saw a study some months ago which followed the fate of legislation based on where it originated. Laws proposed by labor organizations, community organizations, or citizens' groups rare (very rarely) were rarely passed into law. Those by corporate or industry lobbying groups or those allied but supposedly independent overwhelmingly were passed. I said yesterday that we don't have two parties; we have two wings of a single party both giving allegiance to the wealthy few, the big business and industry, and the military. And the argument is they provide jobs and contribute to the GDP. That is increasingly hard to credit as they shed jobs prodigiously.

I found this by way of Doomberg and it is a jolly read. We are down to the point where the grifters are giving way to the "true believers." I couldn't get all of the Doomberg article because the last half is for paid subscribers. I included that link in case some of you would like to go there.

Almost 200 years ago, in a reaction against the "to the victors go the spoils" philosophy of staffing the government, the U.S. established a civil service. Today the pendulum has swung again and certain politicians are waging a war on the "deep state" (a.k.a., civil service).