To make Comments write directly to Jim at jimt@quixotic.ca
25
Apr
2021
Sunday April 25, 2021
The federal budget is in. As presented by Finance Minister Christia Freeland last week, the budget expects to run a $354 billion -- yes, that’s billion -- deficit for the current fiscal year.
Plus $152 billion next year.
And $59 billion the year after.
On top of somewhere over $400 billion thrown at the economy during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic to reduce the carnage caused by closures, shutdowns, lockdowns, and travel restrictions.
The federal government itself has no money. It operates on money it collects from us, in taxes. If it doesn’t have enough money on hand, it has to borrow from us, so that it can feed that money back to us, to get us through an economic crisis, and then we have to re-pay ourselves the money that was borrowed on our behalf from ourselves.
Does that strike anyone else as somewhat circular?
Categories: Sharp Edges
Tags: government, deficit, credit, borrowing
18
Let’s imagine the unthinkable. Suppose life never goes back to “normal.”
Increasingly, I hear people expressing frustration about pandemic restrictions. They want to visit their grandchildren; travel to exotic places; hug their friends.
I share those desires.
I long for a time when I can associate with my friends directly – not virtually.
But maybe things won’t go back to what they used to be.
Tags: Friendship, COVID-19, isolation
11
Sunday April 11, 2021
Many years ago, when our son was still alive but not yet a teenager, our family watched a made-for-TV movie called “The Boy in a Plastic Bubble.”
It had little to commend it. Even the story line was a bit hokey – a boy born with no immunity to anything. To have any kind of normal life, he lived inside a large plastic bubble that isolated him from everyone.
It seemed to me, at the time, that it also reflected the life that our son had to lead. Because he had CF, cystic fibrosis, he had to be protected from anything that might lead to a potentially fatal lung infection.
When the movie ended, our son yawned, stretched, and said, “Okay. I’m going to bed.”
On a sudden impulse, I asked, “Do you ever feel like that boy in the bubble?”
He was frozen for an instant. Then he burst into tears.
Tags: bubbles, CF, isolation, trauma
4
Sunday April 4, 2021
What does it feel like, to live in fear? Not the short-term fear, that an oncoming car won’t stop in time. The long-term, constant fear that you, through no fault of your own, are a target for violence. Just because of who you are.
It happened to a 65-year-old woman in New York last week. An unknown man knocked her down, kicked her in the stomach, stomped on her face, then casually strolled away.
The woman was Asian.
Most of us who are white males, like me, have no idea what it is like to spend your life knowing that you’re at risk. To feel unsafe walking to the bus at night, after work. To feel people staring at you on the street or in the classroom. To hear jokes that imply you’re genetically stupid (or, conversely, genetically smarter), or a sexual object, or inherently untrustworthy.
Tags: Prejudice, Asian, Derek Chauvin, trial
27
Mar
Sunday March 28, 2021
Widespread belief in conspiracies is self-contradictory. A conspiracy requires vast numbers of people. Whose activities must be closely coordinated. Without anyone knowing about it.
Although conspiracy theories have been around forever, QAnon is relatively recent. It started with a single post, in October 2017, by someone anonymously claiming “Q-level” security clearance to top secret data.
Disclosure: I have not personally received QAnon mailings. Not yet, anyway.
But Robert Guffey has. An author who spent 24 years writing about conspiracy theories in the U.S., Guffey followed up sources that a correspondent assured him would provide unchallengeable truths about – well, let’s see:
Tags: QAnon, conspiracy, Hilary Clinton