The Book of the Shadows

The State of the Union is a Constitutional mandated report card the Executive Branch must deliver to the Legislative Branch once every year. It is an update of what accomplishments and failures the nations has had, where the nation needs to go, what it needs to focus on. Often times it is also a “to do” list from the Executive Branch for legislation it wants the Congress to complete in the next year and lays out not just the president’s agenda, but a roadmap of potential compromise and contention.

The Republican Party is a party in need of friends. They don’t have many right now. They have a number of loyalists among their members and voters, and they have their opponents in the Democrats. They even have outright enemies all over the place. But they don’t have a whole lot of friends. Perhaps the long talked of revolution in the Republican Party is finally at hand.

I find myself looking back on the events on Tuesday in New Jersey. I listen to the news and read a few articles on the web about President Obama and Governor Christie being together touring the Jersey Shore and looking at the repairs being done. They have a few photo-ops of the two men at game stands chatting, giving each other high fives. Then the president gives a speech where he touts the area, talks about all the good that has been done between the federal, state, and local governments to fix the damage since Hurricane Sandy, how the federal government will remain invested in helping residents and businesses recover. A lot of the talk post the event was not about the actual event. It wasn't about what was done in Jersey, or what is left to be done. It is mostly about whether Republican Gov. Christie will be helped or hurt by being seen "paling" around with the Democratic Pres. Obama. It is the continuation of the same talk that came around when the two elected offic...

In my last post I noted that there was a need for individuals to think about the question How Much Is Enough. The point of the post was that devoid of any desire or need for legislation, individuals should think, both for their own benefit and for the general social welfare, about how much wealth they really need to accumulate and how they will go about doing so. Today I want to speak briefly about policy, particularly as it relates to the tax code and the interplay of corporations in that paradigm. The other day, May 21, Apple CEO Tim Cook went before a Congressional committee to testify. It wasn't part of any high-level investigation or anything of the sort, but they wanted to know how it was Apple over the past few years avoided paying taxes on a very large sum of money, somewhere in the neighborhood of $44 billion. For days leading up to this testimony the media seemed almost fearful that Apple would get raked over the coals with accusations of being railroaded and f...