In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. From time to time we’ve been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. Well, if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else? All of us together, in and out of government, must bear the burden. The solutions we seek must be equitable, with no one group singled out to pay a higher price.
–President Ronald Reagan, First Inaugural Address,
January 20, 1981
I didn’t do any blogging this weekend because I was busy enjoying the beautiful weather.
Saturday was the Uplands’ big neighborhood garage sale, so we spent a fair amount of time bargain-hunting (picked up a backpack for my youngest daughter and a big suitcase for a trip we’ll be taking later this year). We put the kids in a wagon and walked around the neighborhood, talked to neighbors, and had a good time. We even walked over to Avanti’s for lunch.
Sunday we went on the West Bluff Grand Tour of Homes. Our daughters were at their friend’s birthday party a good portion of the afternoon, so we just had our son with us. We made it to five of the six homes, and they were beautiful. My favorite was, of course, the Easton House, now home to Converse Marketing.
Outside one of the homes, Spotted Cow had an ice cream stand set up, and who do you think was serving ice cream? None other than Frank Abnour himself. Outside another home a young enterprising neighbor had set up a lemonade stand and was also selling cookies. Smart kid.
Clinton won Pennsylvania. City council met last night and defeated the teen dance club ordinance change. School board met Monday and decided to close Loucks School and buy property around Lincoln School. The RTA is still planning to do a “clean-up” on the Kellar Branch, even though that would be illegal.
Feel free to comment on any of these issues or anything else that’s on your mind.
[Our aldermen] seem to look upon taxation as the great business of life, and the ability to squeeze the greatest amount of taxes out of a given amount of property as the highest evidence of political ability.
The besetting sin of American society is a mania for office. Men will abandon a business worth two thousand dollars a year for an office worth one thousand, and they are ready to ruin the public interests, for the honor of ruling the public. They array the poor against the rich, and assume the honor of leading the former, because they are most numerous. This class of men are constantly endeavoring to get into some small office, as a steppingstone to a higher one; and they educate those who have nothing to believe that the way to get the property of the rich is to break them down by taxation; and, to get the votes of such, they promise to assess a new tax, or increase the old ones.
–Charles Ballance, The History of Peoria, Illinois, 1870
“I couldn’t give a [profanity] whether a person calls himself a scientist. Science has covered itself with glory, morally, in my time. Scientists were the people in Germany telling Hitler that it was a good idea to kill all the Jews. Scientists told Stalin it was a good idea to wipe out the middle-class peasants. Scientists told Mao Tse-Tung it was fine to kill 50,000,000 people in order to further the revolution.”
“I couldn’t give a [profanity] whether a person calls himself a scientist. Science has covered itself with glory, morally, in my time. Scientists were the people in Germany telling Hitler that it was a good idea to kill all the Jews. Scientists told Stalin it was a good idea to wipe out the middle-class peasants. Scientists told Mao Tse-Tung it was fine to kill 50,000,000 people in order to further the revolution.”