Odds and Ends

McCutcheon

Personally, I couldn't care less how many $5200 contributions fat cats pass around to Congressional candidates.  $5200 is chump change, and I'd rather see it publicly donated than filtered anonymously through a  501(c)(4).

Affirmative Action

Also, I couldn't care less whether or not the Obama children or the grandchildren of Stanley O'Neal get preference for college admission.  Let the top schools tap their endowments and bring in students, of whatever race, who never could afford to attend a top school otherwise.  The poor will be overrepresented by blacks and Latinos, but if the Ivy League can pull in some unemployed West Virginia miner's kids, that's great.

Iraq and Afghanistan

Elections do not mean a country is democratic.  In classically corrupt Iraq and Afghanistan, it's pretty obvious.  In the United States, it's less obvious, but just as true.

Affirmative Action

Maybe I'm not so old after all, because they've been rehashing this shit nearly all my life — and here we go again.

So now the Supremes get to listen to the whining of young Abagail Fisher, who claims that some darkie got "her" place at UT Austin.  UT Austin says they wouldn't have let her in whatever her race.  Maybe that's true.  Who knows?

Anyway, here's the scoop: it doesn't make a damned bit of difference what kinds of "advantages" people of color have at the college level.  College is just too goddamned late.  We need affirmative action in preschool, pre-preschool, and throughout the rest of the "grades" between birth and college.  By the time a kid is considered for college, it's too late.

We need affirmative action for infants, toddlers, children and adolescents, both of color and also others of lesser socioeconomic advantage.  We need to level the playing field a hell of a lot earlier.

Of course, it's not happening.  Level playing fields are not "the American way."

Whatever the Supremes decides this time around, it doesn't really matter.