Trying to stick to a plan when you write a blog is difficult for many reasons, but I find the main one to be that you don’t have a boss who will hold you to a plan, there’s no “you promised to write x so that’s what you’ll do.” Instead, I find that I often come across a topic that I find more interesting than what I’m working on and shelve the work-in-progress for the shiny new thing. This is what happened a couple of times this month. I started “There are no Feminists in Foxholes” only to be sidetracked by a tweet by Robert Reich claiming that the rich and corporations don’t pay their fair share of taxes and again when the Ottawa Carleton District School Board decided that not having sufficient credits to graduate shouldn’t prevent a student from participating in graduation. Here’s what I’d planned and what I ended up doing:
March 1st - Weekly News Roundup
March 5th - “First Past the Post” - This was completed as planned but under the title “The Tyranny of the Minority.”
March 8th - Weekly News Roundup
March 12th – I had planned to look at the immigration crisis but instead, for reasons I can’t remember, ended up writing “No More Excuses” about how to “fix” the homelessness crisis.
March 15th - Weekly News Roundup
March 19th – I started “No Feminists in Foxholes” but Reich’s deceptive/dishonest tweet prompted me to write “The Insatiable Beast” an analysis demonstrating that the government always gets it’s take, often wastes it, and always “wants” more.
March 22nd - Weekly News Roundup
March 26th – I promised an unscheduled topic and delivered with “What Doesn’t Kill Me…Hurts My Feelings” which looked at the OCDSB’s new graduation policy and my belief that shielding society from every conceivable harm is doing more harm than good.
March 29th - Weekly News Roundup
So, I’ve got the “Weekly News Roundup” down but am a less than perfect hitting my stated plan on the “topic of the week.” I guess this is a long-winded way for me to say here’s my plan for April, don’t hold your breath.
Coming “Soon”
April has 5 Tuesdays in it so here’s the “loose” plan:
On Deck
Are you better off than you were 4 years ago – Canadian version
Are you better off than you were 4 years ago - American version
Human Rights are “made up.”
There are no feminists in foxholes. This is month #2 on this list. Maybe I’ll have better luck this month.
Something that will be too good not to write about and result in something else getting bumped off of this list. Perhaps more than once.
Researching
Bring Back the Smoke-Filled Room – How to bring politics back to the center.
Bureaucratic “Bloat” and the rising cost of college
Carbon Tax
Digital Currency’s and Social Credit Systems
Immigration – Why we’re in this mess and how to get out of it.
Racism – Why the Left’s Narrative is Simplistic and Wrong
Taxpayer Sovereignty
The Three Sides of the Climate Wars
Why Rent Control doesn’t work.
Top 10 Postings
For the first time ever, no new additions to the Top 10 although there are a couple that almost cracked the list.
You can find all my posts in my archive.
Comment of the Month
This month’s comment of the month goes to
:You are right when you say that "a failure to address the problem is more a failure of will than of solutions...just ask California governor Galvin Newsom, who managed to clean-up San Francisco in advance of the APEC Summit". Virtue signaling is indeed the coward's approach, and its attempts to make its practitioners feel better about themselves cause…continued
Monthly Draw
Every month as part of my monthly update I will raffle off a 3-month complimentary membership to some lucky subscriber. If you’re already a paid subscriber and you win the draw, I’ll tack the 3 months on to your current subscription. This month’s winner is:
Congratulations!
AYPWIP?
I have discovered – or perhaps rediscovered – that some people feel that if they don’t like the person who said something, it can be disregarded. I find this belief dumbfounding. Truth is independent of the character of the person speaking. I cannot look into someone’s soul and determine if they are a good or a bad person, but I can judge words and ideas on their merit. If you find yourself disagreeing with a quote you see here because you believe the idea is flawed, I’d like to hear what you have to say. If feel a quote/idea can be discarded because the person who it is attributed to “is a bad person,” consider just biting your tongue. You don’t want to embarrass yourself.
Having said that, I find myself frustrated with politics of late. Yes, that’s a little vague, aren’t we all frustrated with politics? To be specific, I’m frustrated with the left’s attempt to win the election by bribing voters. This is particularly prevalent up here in Canada as the Liberals and NDP try to outdo each other with new “free” things. “Free” dental was recently launched and now the Liberals are promising that birth control will soon be “free” as well. I like free things just as much as the next person, but I understand that when politicians say “free” they mean taxpayer funded. Everything a politician offers for “free” takes us one step closer to socialism or a level of debt that the country can’t afford. Both results will end in tears. The effort on the government’s part reminds me of this piece of wisdom:
“The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
-- Margaret Thatcher
Final Thoughts
Not to beat a dead horse, or to understate this, but socialism is bad and politicians lie. It’s not deep but its true and something we should keep in mind as the elections in Canada and the United States draw closer. As a reminder, I’ll wrap up with something I wrote previously on the topic.
Until next month,
Phil
"Free" things are like leprechauns and fairy godmothers - lovely ideas that do not exist. The mental exercise that we dispense with when we encounter and accept "free" is calculating the trade we are making, because the answer is often not one we like.