Finished up the editorial and layout for this week’s
edition. Didn’t really do much. Evolene took care of the majority of the
writing given that the second installment of her Trek to Midden Harbour serial
runs this week. Thomas came in to do a
layout while I looked over his shoulder.
Everything got done on deadline and brilliantly. Guess I shouldn’t be so thrilled at being
proven replaceable, but in this case I couldn’t be happier. Budapest—oh, and Vienna, and Switzerland I’ve
been told—here I come.
But before I log off and start packing, I really have to get
some thoughts off my chest about the current insanity in Washington.
Luckily, we in Midden Harbour are far enough removed and
sufficiently self-sufficient that we seldom have to think about what a
government thousands of miles away is doing.
However, in this case, there seems to be so much damage being inflicted
on so many innocent people unnecessarily that it deserves a rant.
The Republicans in the American House of Representatives are
holding the country hostage in a final, desperate effort to expunge the
Affordable Care Act. They have already
shut down a lot of government operations, including veterans affairs, by
refusing to pass a funding bill. The
effects of this on hundreds of thousands if not millions of families cannot be exaggerated. People who work for departments that have
been denied funding have been furloughed—that means laid off without pay. And they have no recourse. In addition to the harm to these families,
there is the damage that is being inflicted on individuals who rely on
government services. So, for instance,
hundreds of thousands of children are being denied access to the Head Start
program that “promotes the school
readiness of children ages birth to 5…for children ages birth to 5.”
Just to be absolutely clear, the Republicans are denying
services to needy children under 5 and to the men and women who have put on a
uniform and put their lives at risk to defend American interests, because they
want to eliminate a program that was established to provide healthcare to 26
million Americans who cannot otherwise get health insurance.
On top of this bit of ideological lunacy, the Republican
members of the House are threatening to refuse to support raising the
government debt ceiling on or before October 17th, the date upon
which the United States of American will no longer be able to meet its
obligations. The consequences of this
event are so scary as to be incalculable.
But at very least, it will mean that interest payments on government
bonds will not be made. Imagine how
happy this will make the Chinese who own, according to some estimates, as much
as a quarter of current U.S. debt.
What could possibly go wrong?
I could go on, but won’t.
Hopefully all this will be settled by the time I get home, otherwise I
may not come back. That’s not true, of
course, I will be back. But once home I
think its past time that I revived my Free Midden Harbour campaign. Several years back myself and a group of
friends started looking into the feasibility of making our community as
self-reliant as possible. The idea was
to try to source everything we could locally, and to reduce our dependence on
the city and other outside entities to an absolute minimum. I think it’s time to bring that group
together again and launch a real campaign to make this a reality.
What could possibly go wrong?
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