Traditionally, this is a pivotal week in the average year. We have celebrated a joyful holiday replete with good food and fellowship with family and fellow citizens. Then, Friday dawned with a traditional surge toward the malls to commence the frenzy of Christmas shopping, to be followed by a gigantic buzz on Cyber Monday.
We don’t know about the latter, but the former event was reported to be a bust. That presages talk about the prospects for the economy next year. Many are saying it will be worse than this year, and parts of the world are already in financial crisis. Congress is back in session, which naturally brings additional confusion to normal life. Big deals since the above slide was complete? The Marriage bill was passed in the House under the lame duck leadership of Speaker Pelosi. That it was first demonstrates the general sense of confusion.
We Refuge Farm refugees share an opinion about that. We have no bias against anyone in our society except for those who bang on the front door and demand we change what we think is appropriate. We have no problem with other citizens, regardless of “sex,” in who they choose to spend their lives with. We support a legal framework that enables them to share the legal and financial benefits accorded to traditional “married” couples.
We do think it should be called something that reflects a status of life partnerships that do not include the traditional procreation aspect, since men calling their male partners “husbands” or women referring to their “wives” can be a bit confusing. We think something like “Life Partners” would have worked better as a descriptive term, but we seem to have committed our society to a bunch of wildly improbable concepts. Life partnership? OK, works for us.
But of course, there is something larger simmering in that social stew that reflects a profound change in how we are expected to behave.
That is going on in a lot of places, like the case of the Department of Energy official who made news over the theft of someone else’s luggage. “They” admitted it was just a mistake and “they” were eager to get back to work supervising the distribution of spent nuclear fuel. Some of us had what are termed “advanced clearances” when we worked for the government, and had we indulged in felonious conduct while employed, we would have been fired immediately.
So, that was first in a Congress due for change. The next two issues partially solved by our Legislative Leaders is the matter of the Rail Strike, which had the potential to ruin the holiday distribution of goods and services. The House took action, and the cockpit of action shifts to the Senate for next week. There are reports there will be opposition over in that chamber about forcing Union members of the twelve involved in the dispute to not strike. We assume something will be worked out, since there is another matter involving finance that could lead to more chaos.
We are operating on a “Continuing Resolution” to fund the routine functions of the Federal Government. We have occasionally complained that the old Regular Order to fund the budget was replaced nearly twenty years ago. That was the one where the various agencies of the Executive Branch submitted their budget requests to the responsible committees on The Hill. Then they were debated, amended, and eventually passed by the whole of the two chambers.
The new process? Almost everything is jumbled up into incomprehensibly large amalgams of unrelated issues so vast that no Member has time to review them. We recall the most famous recent quote on the new process about a controversial issue. It happened to be about ‘health,’ and that was a very expensive bit of legislation that affects most of us. “We have to pass the bill to find out what’s in it!”
We suspect there will be some more of that coming up, since the current “CR” expires on December 16th, and theoretically the Government would have to shut down if something vast, hugely expensive, and absolutely necessary is likely to be passed without much review. We are used to that now, but outsourcing the power of the purse to the lobbyists seems like something that should have been debated so we would have a chance to hold someone responsible.
So, expect some more controversy in the week to come about money. And more.
That only gets us through the middle of this normally magic month of December. Winter is now here, and with it is a certain intrinsic chill. Some of us thought it was the 31st of November today. We recall hearing the rhyme chanted down by the Big Pink rear entrance where those boxes show up. Normally there is a short discussion of what “day of the week” we are supposed to live through. The Holiday last week made a Thursday seem more like a Saturday or a Sunday in terms of activity levels. Friday had already been confusing, since it seemed like a day of rest. The disorientation of day and date continued through the day after Sunday. That had been identifiable by various trips to church, synagogues and mosques, which seemed to have a lot in common with days normally allocated to “rest.”
We have solved that matter by adopting a general resolution that we accept the month of December with at least a month-long partnership with our calendar. And we will hold off on dealing with “2023” until it shows up on the doorstep, banging to get in whether we invited it or not.
Forward, Partners!
Copyright 2022 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com