Vacation break

I am on vacation for a few days, so this blog will be a couple of days behind. In the interim, some thoughts have come up.

• In a broadcast from NPR, a university professor made the statement "Poverty cannot be cured by the current method (motivate lazy people) nor can it be cured by throwing money at the problem (the old welfare system). To eliminate poverty one must eliminate the causes, which means not providing opportunities alone but providing the opportunity to seize those opportunities. In other words, poverty begets more poverty, and the best way to eliminate it (or at least reduce it) is to provide programs such that people do not have to worry where their next meal is coming from or if they have a roof over their heads. In the prior post I talked about Maslow's needs; in a subsequent post I'll list them and discuss how the government can help.
• On another NPR program, a question was raised as to what the new president will do about President Bush's (and de facto president Cheney's) grab for executive power. A former Reagan aide says not only does the next President have to promise not to abuse the power, he has to repudiate the current administration's attempts as unconstitutional, in fact illegal. I'm all for that, and I'll explain in another post.
• Last but not least, there are a couple of things I've learned in the last day about taxes and the US budget, again on NPR. I will discuss them and make some changes to my "! TAXES !" post.

Stay tuned!