The prevalence of such terms as "no offense," "with respect," and "kind regards" are among the signs that we are in the midst of an unfortunate epidemic of politeness...End Is Near
You don’t realize what a dynasty you have. All those rented politicians and heisters and yeggs and torpedoes and tush-hogs. All your tea-pad boys, your gambling bosses, your labor racketeers. That’s your organization; you made it, but you can’t break it up. I don’t know why I feel sorry for you, Fats. All the killings that can be chalked up to your boys, the holdups, the beatings. The drunks and the hopheads you’ve made; the brothels you’ve set up and the girls you’ve buried in them.
~ from A crime novel about NY
The Self-Improvement Wars: How we Became Obsessed With Being Better
In 1986, John Vasconcellos, a somewhat tortured California state assemblyman who had attended programs at Esalen, persuaded Gov. George Deukmejian to fund a “task force to promote self-esteem and personal and social responsibility.” Professors from the University of California were to study the links between self-esteem and healthy personal development. And California — nay, the world — could then design programs to nip homelessness, drug abuse and crime in the bud, by teaching people to value themselves and achieve their potential. … Read More
In The Death of a Once Great City Kevin Baker argues that the current affluence of NYC has made the city “unremarkable” and “boring”.
New York has been my home for more than forty years, from the year after the city’s supposed nadir in 1975, when it nearly went bankrupt. I have seen all the periods of boom and bust since, almost all of them related to the “paper economy” of finance and real estate speculation that took over the city long before it did the rest of the nation. But I have never seen what is going on now: the systematic, wholesale transformation of New York into a reserve of the obscenely wealthy and the barely here — a place increasingly devoid of the idiosyncrasy, the complexity, the opportunity, and the roiling excitement that make a city great.
Public Release of CRS Reports: FAQ for Congressional Staff
Via FAS – CRS announcement, June 22, 2018: “On March 23, 2018, the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2018 was signed into law. The law directed the Librarian of Congress, in consultation with the CRS Director, to establish and maintain a public website that will contain written CRS products available on CRS.gov. In response, the Library and CRS immediately started work to ensure products required under this new law will be available at launch by Sept. 18, 2018. They also initiated planning to make additional written products available as expeditiously as possible. The Library of Congress and CRS are committed to implementing this publication directive while maintaining a consistent and high-level of service to Congress. The law does not change the mission or focus of CRS. The law does not affect the confidentiality of congressional requests or responses (such as confidential memoranda). It does not allow congressional requests or confidential responses to be made available to the public. All CRS reports will continue to be written for a congressional audience and focused on the needs of Congress. More details will be added as planning progresses. For more information, please contact the CRS Congressional Programs and Communications Office.
The U.S. Treasury Department’s top lawyer sold off up to $30,000 worth of bitcoin in December, a month after Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the department was looking “very carefully” into illegal uses of the cryptocurrency, according to financial disclosures.
Brent McIntosh, a former Sullivan & Cromwell partner who was confirmed as Treasury’s general counsel in August, reported two sales of bitcoin in December, valuing each at between $1,000 and $15,000, according to disclosures released by the U.S. Office of Government Ethics. The sales came at the end of a year that saw bitcoin’s value skyrocket from about $1,000 to a high of nearly $20,000.
A Treasury Department spokeswoman said Tuesday that McIntosh sold his bitcoin to avoid potential ethics conflicts after being asked in late November to participate in a review of digital currencies. Ethics officials advised McIntosh that his continued ownership of bitcoin could raise recusal issues in certain instances, the spokeswoman said.
