Steven at Ethel commenting on this report in Forbes:
WALL STREET BANDITS UNDER FIRE
“Wall Street is qualitatively no different than Las Vegas. You’re gambling money to try to make more money. If the casinos weren’t honest and the proles knew that they weren’t honest, the casinos would disappear. And if the proles figure out what a huge pack of grifters and con artists run Wall Street, then well …. let’s just say the system would go through a transient phase. Nail a few of the biggest offenders now and then and the proles will happily keep shoveling their money at a house that keeps a hell of a larger percentage of the take than any casino.” [Ethel the Blog]
Best of luck on your new start in Seattle, Matt and Tara. [Once I noticed I was on fire, I decided to relax and enjoy the fall.]
National Park Foundation: Purchase a Parks Pass for $10 off. [another from garret]
Nuts, I deleted the previous postings in a flurry of high speed cutting and pasting. I’ll try to recreate the gist of it. later: Radio’s news aggregator had the previous entries tucked away! Neat. I was going to see if the goggle cache had them (a la Jake last year) if that didn’t work.
Along with some other things, garret ruminates on FDR, the WPA, and public architecture in the Southwest [note: I have reversed the order of garret’s postings to keep them chronological within this entry]:
"ny times letters to the editor: bush and f.d.r. hah. the c.c.c. did more for people [and the country in general] in the depression than a blasted tax cut would have.
speaking of f.d.r., look around you. see that post office, that federal courthouse? out west here, the federal buildings put up by the works progress administration program still dominate the majority of towns. most republican intelligentsia want you to remember roosevelt as a creeping socialist. but the evidence around us shows the remnants of something great, that we unfortunately take for granted. if what i see around me was the product of socialism, then i say we need a little more. sometimes, when driving through the southwest, it comes across like you’re discovering the remnants of a once-grandiose civilization, now dead and gone. where did they go? what happened to them?" [dangerousmeta!]
I suspect those people secumbed during the great drought that has withered the stock of community spirit, optimism, and mutual tolerance and laid heavily upon the land since then. I fear thoes spirits dead, though as a descendant of those people I remember the songs my Grandparents ones would sing at night with slow, mournful voices. I pray those spirits still inhabit the land, but are only slumbering, waiting for rain and for the songs to be sung again. Someone needs to seek out where the White Tree has sprouted in the wild and bring a seedling back. If that was creeping socialism then we need a torrent, a flood of it to wash away the stagnant waters of corporatism. (Is ‘corporatism’ a word?)
blivet will be dark Friday and Saturday as yet another archaeological conference is attended. This one is in the nexus of power in the Silver State, Area 51^W^W Carson City, so there will be travelling and rental cars and I finally get to experience air travel in our ’state of heightened security’. I really hadn’t given much thought to how many pointy things I keep in my toilet kit unitl now.
Audrey’s mother is coming to town tonight to be with her and Ian through the weekend. A quality Grandma & Ian weekend.
The PapaScott - blivet Transatlantic summit occurred last night at and near the Paris Hotel and Casino in our fair city. OK, it’s not so fair a city in many respects, but the get together was fun as Scott is a great guy! Pictures tonight. Hopefully.
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