EU Spectacle
The word spectacle is carefully chosen, since this is what the current drama of which Greece is the symptom, not the cause, has become. It no longer bears any relationship to coherent democratic leadership or process of governance in a workable political and currency union. The cancellation at a moment’s notice of a summit of all EU leaders is extraordinary.
There is a problem with Greece, but it is not that difficult to solve. Indeed this blog working alone would be able to negotiate a workable solution. What is proving impossible is to find an acceptable solution, because the institutions normally established to process decision making at national and international levels are not there, or there in such abundance nobody can detect who is in charge. And to make matters worse the structure of the currency itself is unsustainable as it lacks a treasury and a finance minister answering to an elected government. A committee of finance ministers at loggerheads, elected by only one member state in each case, on conflicting mandates and to differing electoral timetables will work only in the good times and becomes dysfunctional under pressure.
So all we know at this moment is that Greece may or may not go bust tomorrow, the euro looks more like an impediment to growth than an engine of it, and the reputation of the EU as a coherent political union is severely damaged. Beneath that a big gap is developing between the north and the south of Europe, between the politicians and their electors everywhere and between those in the eurozone who want to stand firm to high principle even if it brings the whole thing down, led by the Germans, and by those who feel pragmatic reality demands compromise, led by France and Italy.
At the heart of of this crisis now engulfing the whole EU are three violated principles. You cannot have a democratic political union without an elected forum from which all authority flows. You cannot have a currency which cannot be printed. You cannot have capitalism which does not permit debtors to go bust. The first is violated because the whole EU is wrongly configured. The last two are rescinded because Germany says No.
message 201:
by
Linda
(new)
Oct 03, 2015 07:54AM
I don't like public transportation. You say I just took a trip on a ship. That's true, and I don't like boarding and disembarking and all sorts of customs regulations. But that's the least intrusive form of long distance public transportation I've ever encountered. If the QM2 didn't exist I wouldn't have flown to Europe. I don't like planes at all and haven't flown since I was in college when I didn't like it either. I never take buses of any kind. I hate taxis. I don't even like trains anymore after my unfortunate experience with the Amtrak train accident in South Crawley, Louisiana on the way back from Tucson to Charlottesville. And remember that though I went to Europe this summer we drove to the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal from Tucson. Then we drove back again. All the way back and forth about 6000 or 7000 miles each way we went by ground transportation of some sort either car or ship.
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I've never understood how you can go to the grocery store using public transportation. How do you carry all those bags with you? It just doesn't make any sense. How do you take your dog and cat with you on public transportation? We always take them in the car. How do you carry with you all the things you carry in your car such as sunblock, hand cream, wipes, water bottles, dog biscuits, maps, extra sunglasses, dog toys, a cooler in the back, etc?
Linda wrote: "I don't like public transportation. You say I just took a trip on a ship. That's true, and I don't like boarding and disembarking and all sorts of customs regulations. But that's the least intrusiv..."Oh yes I know you prefer your own (ground) transport and where you live it is the only option. But in Europe in the bigger cities public transport is widely used for routine journeys like work, college, school etc and by commuters. People still use their cars, especially for family outings where there is baggage etc.
Linda wrote: "I've never understood how you can go to the grocery store using public transportation. How do you carry all those bags with you? It just doesn't make any sense. How do you take your dog and cat wit..."Well as I say for family stuff cars are used. As for going to the store, if you do not want to drive you can buy on line and it is delivered within 2 hours from all the major supermarkets, even out here. Local stores deliver even if you shop personally, if you ask them. Old people find that helpful.
Dogs are allowed on busses and trains. Nobody ever takes a cat.
Ah, but Putlitz goes everywhere that Rommel, the Labrador Retriever, goes! He actually behaves better than the puppy. People remark on it all the time. He gets wheeled around in his stroller. He would have been the pet we could have taken on the ship. He could have gone up on the elevator to deck 12 --- in his stroller, of course --- and stayed a cat kennel. But we would have had trouble in Europe because of the lack of screens in hotel rooms. That would have been impossible for cats. Maybe somebody would have had a screen somewhere in a house rental. I don't know. But he is one traveling cat.P.S. We saw a video of a German train where the family was taking a cat who was sitting on the seat.
The grocery store that we always went to has now closed for good. We've been driving around trying to find something else. All we can find is Target, which isn't a grocery store at all and has only self checkout. The self checkout doesn't work very well at all. It's been a total disaster. I've stepped up grocery deliveries from Amazon.com as far as canned goods and packaged goods go. Amazon also saves money. It's buying in bulk. But that won't do you any good for meat, dairy products, produce, and bakery items. Amazon has a grocery delivery service for fresh foods in California only and on the West Coast --- not in Tucson or anywhere else for that matter. I'm skeptical about the quality of delivery fresh foods. If somebody picks out a steak for you, would they pick the best date? Would they check the salads carefully? About 10 years ago we experimented with a grocery store that delivered all your groceries including fresh stuff. If you ordered something that was out of stock, they did substitutions for you. You got something you didn't want. Eggs could be cracked and had to be returned. It didn't work very well and we went back to the grocery store. But at least there was a grocery store in those days. Now all we have is Target. P.S. I've never liked grocery shopping. I wish items would just appear in your refrigerator.
Personally I like going to the pet store and even the hardware store better than the grocery store. I even like getting gas or diesel better at the gas station. In season the city park is nice too. And of course restaurants are good, too. Best is when I have occasion to go the garden center to buy plants or the furniture store to buy furniture. I haven't been in a bookstore for years at least in the US. They've just about vanished thanks to Amazon.
Linda wrote: "Personally I like going to the pet store and even the hardware store better than the grocery store. I even like getting gas or diesel better at the gas station. In season the city park is nice too...."I quite enjoy going to my local supermarket, which is second rate but I am savvy about what to buy. It is on the edge of town. If I go to the centre there is a good butcher, traditional baker and a hardware store that has everything you can imagine.
The on line shopping from the major supermarkets is very good. They deliver quickly and everything is fresh. I think the system is more advanced than the one you describe because the distances are shorter and everything is concentrated.
Linda wrote: "Ah, but Putlitz goes everywhere that Rommel, the Labrador Retriever, goes! He actually behaves better than the puppy. People remark on it all the time. He gets wheeled around in his stroller. He wo..."Putlitz is very special.
How could the shopping from the major supermarkets be very good? Do they allow shoppers to come in and select food from the very shelves that they use to deliver from? If so how do they do inventory control? In other words, if you order a can of tomato soup and there's been a run on tomato soup and no more cans remain on the shelves when you order, what do they do? In order for grocery online shopping to work right they have to have a supply house of food that is not also a walk in store. Inventory control is the main obstacle to online grocery shopping here. In recent years Amazon has fixed this in terms of ordering canned goods, pre-packaged goods, etc. But fresh foods are still a problem in most of the country. I understand that New York City has online grocery shopping with dedicated warehouses that don't also serve as walk in stores. As I mentioned the other day Amazon delivers fresh food on the West Coast only.Right now in Tucson I can order frozen foods from Schwans and have them delivered to my door with inventory control. I can buy pre--packaged foods and non food products online from Amazon.com and have them delivered in the mail or by UPS or FEDEX. But dairy goods, bakery items, and meat have to purchased by me in a physical store.
Does Amazon.co.uk deliver groceries?
There used to be a grocery store in Charlottesville called Foods of All Nations. It's one of the things that's still there as we discovered this past summer. It's private and not a chain. They do catering. They have a small restaurant. But even they don't deliver. When we were in Brooklyn, New York, on the contrary, we found that anything can be delivered. We ordered from an Italian Restaurant and everything was delivered piping hot within minutes and you could order online, too, and I don't mean just pizza. This was a full course meal with lasagna, hot bread, salad, dressing, drinks, and silverware, plates, etc. There was an array of restaurants to order from. In addition when we were in Brooklyn three years ago we had a camera store deliver a battery charger to our hotel room in the nick of time before we boarded the ship. They would deliver books, clothes, suitcases, anything you needed. But why does it take living in New York? When we stopped on Staten Island this past June to eat lunch at Applebees before checking in to the Comfort Inn Brooklyn Cruise Terminal hotel for our last night ashore, we overheard a man at the next table say to another man, "Hey, my wife just told me that she saw an Arizona license plate in the parking lot. Can you believe it?" His table companion replied, "You've got to be kidding!" and started to crane his neck to see out the window on a rainy day. Arizona is the other side of the world to people from New York City. And it certainly does have fewer services.
Linda wrote: "There used to be a grocery store in Charlottesville called Foods of All Nations. It's one of the things that's still there as we discovered this past summer. It's private and not a chain. They do c..."But maybe it is because it is on the other side of the world and it has few services and law and order may be a bit uncertain, it is just the place to live real life in a modern world in which perhaps too much is too easy.
Linda wrote: "How could the shopping from the major supermarkets be very good? Do they allow shoppers to come in and select food from the very shelves that they use to deliver from? If so how do they do inventor..."Oh goodness yes. They have separate warehouses and everything on line is linked directly to the computer controlled bar codes. If it is out of stock it tells you and if you buy it that item is auto reserved for your order.Some of the warehouses are attached to supermarkets if they have big out of town sites, others are separate.
On line grocery shopping is very modern and cool and standards are kept high by intense competition for quality and service.It is very sophisticated and billions are spent each year shopping this way. Currently about £50 billion annually. You can buy dry groceries from Amazon but they are not really players yet.
Here Amazon is becoming more of a player. It's the only service where you can order online nationwide and get your nonperishable groceries delivered to your house or mailbox. Nobody can compete with them. They are probably the force behind putting the grocery store I used to shop at out of business. Other grocery stores are consolidating and becoming bigger as a result. Soon the only places to buy groceries in person in most communities will be Walmart, Target, and other big box stores. Right now only they can compete with Amazon. P.S. Amazon just surpassed Walmart as a retailer this past year.
You make it sound as if England is the place to live. You have all sorts of services we don’t have here. And for entertainment and spectacle you even have a Queen instead of the silly politics we have here. You make it sound as if America should never have become independent.
Those people we met at Applebees on Staten Island who were remarking about the Arizona license plate also remind me of the famous New Yorker cartoon. Have you heard about it? It's the one where it shows what the rest of the country and the world looks like from Manhattan? Everything else is either nonexistent or very small.
Linda wrote: "You make it sound as if England is the place to live. You have all sorts of services we don’t have here. And for entertainment and spectacle you even have a Queen instead of the silly politics we h..."I think America's relationship with Britain is like my relationship with my divorced American wife. We admire each other and we are still very good friends.
Linda wrote: "Here Amazon is becoming more of a player. It's the only service where you can order online nationwide and get your nonperishable groceries delivered to your house or mailbox. Nobody can compete wit..."The thing about Amazon is that it is like a giant department store, publishing house, entertainment centre like no other. It publishes my books but when I found I was developing a small hernia and wanted a support truss one Sunday evening recently, I went onto Amazon, chose from a big selection and had it in my hand before lunch on Monday. Nobody gets near it for efficiency. Similarly when my garden wheelbarrow developed a puncture which was too big to mend,I decided to replace the wheel with one with a solid tyre. By the next day I was fitting it. Where from? Amazon of course.
But remember Amazon is American. No British company would have the guts or imagination to build something like that. Amazon is a metaphor for America. Everything is possible. If you want it go for it.Live in America. Holiday in Britain.
Last night at an author's Facebook Party (the first I've attended since being back from the trip) we were asked where we would most like to travel. Interesting how a lot of people see a link between writing and travel. This is what I said: "Right now I think I'd like to go to the British Museum. When I was a little girl I saw the Rosetta Stone. I'd like to see it again as an adult. It's not very pretty being all black. But it's always seemed very mysterious an alluring to me. It's important in one of my novels. I have somebody hide a map in the museum near the Rosetta Stone.I want to see how this would work in reality."
I also added another note: "It was frustrating this summer. I stopped in Southampton and saw the Tudor House and Garden as a shore excursion. We sailed to Germany and I saw Waterloo for the 200th anniversary. But I didn't get to London. I saw the coast of Ireland from the sea, which is also important in my novel about the sinking of the Lusitania. I sailed right past the spot. But no British Museum."
You know I think when you next sail to Europe you should disembark at Southampton and spend time in GB. There is so much that interests you here but you need time to get the 'feel' of the country.
Gary wanted to go to Waterloo for the 200th anniversary this past summer. I just bought a book called Beauty and Chivalry: The Duchess of Richmond's Ball Brussels 1815 by Lisa Eveleigh. I'm working on a novel about the Battle of Waterloo this fall. A pivotal scene takes place at the ball in Brussels on the night of June 15. The Battle of Waterloo took place on June 18. What really strikes me is the totally different attitude about war. I'm used to the more modern attitude surrounding WW1 and WW2. This is the romantic era for sure!How do I relate this to the Edward Ware Thriller Series? The British Colonel in the story is Edward's great-grandfather.
In the writer's group I'm associated with for the purpose of going to Facebook parties, there's a craze about Scotland lately. All the ladies (all of them Americans) are writing novels about medieval Scotland and men in kilts. I saw a post by a guy who is a writer from the Isle of Wight. He keeps on saying no way would he ever write about Scotland. The people there are horrible. He says he stays away from the north. Is this still a typical attitude in the British Isles? Do people still write about how they hate people from the north? What's supposed to be wrong with them anyway? Somehow they're not as prosperous? In the US it was always just the opposite. The North was more prosperous than the South.
Oh yes very different. I think it best for you to write the new novel as a stand alone, but reference the connection through the family line in an Afterward that introduces the reader on to your Edward Ware series.Remember the critical thing about Waterloo is that Napoleon very nearly won it. It was the Prussians who rescued Wellington. The famous line is that Napoleon believing he was about to triumph is suddenly confronted by an aide who gallups up shouting ' Sire, the Prussians are in the woods!'
Have you got the DVD WATERLOO with Christopher Plummer as Wellington and Rod Steiger as Napoleon?If not it is a must see.
The Last Time I Was In London:I was in England when I was in junior high school and high school. The last time when I was 17 there was an incident the last night I was in London that reminds me of something from one of my YA novels. There were other teenagers on the trip which was a group tour my parents had signed up for. My sister and I went to an Othello play at I think it was the Aldwych Theater. We were supposed to meet two boys on the tour at a nightclub. My parents didn't know anything about the nightclub and expected us back early after the play. We thought my younger brother would tell my parents where we were at just the right moment. But as it turned out he fell asleep early and forgot to tell them. We got to the nightclub. It turned out that wild things were going on there. I remember seeing people swimming around in some sort of tank or pool without any clothes on. I figured this wasn't the right place to be. So I told everybody we were going back to the hotel. I called the shots since I was paying for everything. I called a cab. When I arrived back at the hotel my parents were standing there in the lobby with London bobbies. They'd reported our disappearance to the police and the newspapers. The newspaper was going to report the next day that we were missing. Boy were we in trouble! All the way back on the plane to New York the next day my sister and I weren't allowed to talk to the boys we'd made friends with. P.S. One of the boys was to fly to Pittsburgh the next May to see my sister and serve as an escort to take me to the senior prom (dance). His name was Joe Cruz. He was the Puerto Rican that I fought to get admitted to the University Club in Pittsburgh, the other incident I told you about months ago.
Linda wrote: "The Last Time I Was In London:I was in England when I was in junior high school and high school. The last time when I was 17 there was an incident the last night I was in London that reminds me o..."
Wow, that is a dramatic revelation!
Linda wrote: "In the writer's group I'm associated with for the purpose of going to Facebook parties, there's a craze about Scotland lately. All the ladies (all of them Americans) are writing novels about mediev..."I don't think there is any real anti north feeling in the south.This guy on the Isle of Wight may have some deal going on in his mind but it is not typical. The English love Scotland which is why they want to keep the Union.
Historically the industrial revolution was largely in the north of England and the midlands, which became the powerhouse of the British Empire. The south was something of a backwater, with very little industry and almost no coal.
Thatcher collapsed the UK's industrial base and changed the economy to services and consumption funded by borrowing. London became the new engine of all of it and the south became the prosperous part of the UK, through its vast financial sector.
No, I haven't seen the movie. But I intend to download it from Amazon and watch it. I'll let you know what I think. But it's hard for me to imagine that Napoleon was much of a threat. Compared to stuff going on in the 20th century, it just doesn't seem like it. After all, Napoleon didn't have the atomic bomb.
Traditionally the south of England was always the area with the money, wasn't it? When we were at Salisbury Cathedral they talked about the New Forest being Royal Lands and a Royal Hunting Preserve. Also this is where William the Conqueror came ashore and built castles. It's where ships were built, too. Is it new that London has all the money and controls the economy?
Britain had the best Navy in the world but Napoleon's army was the best by far. It could only be beaten by a combination of almost everybody else.
Linda wrote: "Traditionally the south of England was always the area with the money, wasn't it? When we were at Salisbury Cathedral they talked about the New Forest being Royal Lands and a Royal Hunting Preserve..."The history you are talking about is tourist stuff from 1000 years ago . Yes the conquest was in the south (but it went on north). But I am talking about Britain's rise as a world power. Then its wealth came from the industrial revolution which was founded on coal. The south had no coal so the wealth was generated in the midlands, north west and east, Wales and Scotland. When I was a child the south was really a depressed area and wages were very low. This village did not even get electricity until 1952.
Then came Thatcher and she closed down Britain as an industrial power. We became dominated by financial services and all that is based in London so it spills into the south and south east, which is now the richest part of the country.
I don't see how Napoleon could have beaten Great Britain in any real, lasting way. France was in decline for more than one hundred years at that point ever since the end of the reign of Louis XIV. Britain was on the rise because of her empire and her economy. Napoleon could barely sustain the "wrong idea" at his time period. He was slipping. The time for emperors and kings was passing and he didn't seem to know it. It was the dawn of democracy and the middle class. England had the right idea He had the wrong idea. In history you can't prevail with the wrong idea. Show me one example of a power or a great man who prevails with the wrong idea.
Do you think of London as being in the south of England? If you do, you must concede it's always been the city that was in charge. There must have been a lot of economic interests here, too. Nor do I think that one person, i.e. Margaret Thatcher, has enough power to singlehandedly change England from an industrial power to one that is dominated by financial services. It was the times, not she. You could say the same thing with the US. Are you going to say Reagan made it happen? I doubt it. Now the dominant financial factor here seems to be high tech and what you call financial and here also medical services. I'd also say that real estate is a big factor in the economy. But maybe that's part of financial services and investing? Also the public sector is huge here and growing just as it is, I'm sure, in Britain. All you have to do is drive around California and see all these types of financial activity in different regions. But of course there are more minor but significant activities, too, such as agriculture or agribusiness and even the entertainment industry which includes publishing. There's even tourism as there is in Britain. P.S. All the industry here has gone abroad at least for manufacturing.
Linda wrote: "I don't see how Napoleon could have beaten Great Britain in any real, lasting way. France was in decline for more than one hundred years at that point ever since the end of the reign of Louis XIV. ..."There was no chance of Napoleon beating Britain in the sense of occupying it or its Empire, but Britain saw Napoleon as counter to its own ambitions as a world power. Had we lost a Waterloo it would have made little difference to Britain itself and we would have got up a new coalition and beaten him later. But loss at Waterloo would have been a blow to prestige.
Linda wrote: "Do you think of London as being in the south of England? If you do, you must concede it's always been the city that was in charge. There must have been a lot of economic interests here, too. Nor do..."I think you have a vision of England which is a little different to the way we see it. Perhaps in America the South has a cultural as well as a geographic meaning, like the West.
But here it is much more a geographic reference. We have the South West, Central Southern and the South East. Of course London is in the southern part of the country but we usually refer to it as the South East.
We then have the Midlands, East Anglia, Wales, the Peak District,the North West, the North East, the Lake District, the Borders, then in Scotland, the Lowlands, the Highlands, the Western Isles and the Northern Isles.
The term 'South England' is never used. If everything is lumped together it becomes Southern England, Northern England, East Anglia, Wales and Scotland.
London has always been the political capital and business centre since Roman times, but the industrial revolution changed the nature of wealth and the centre of it moves to where industry was and where the coal was. Obviously a lot passed through London, as it does New York, but London did not generate wealth in the industrial sense.
Thatcher headed the government which made the changes which brought the end of Socialism and introduced a different economic model. That is why it is called Thatcherism. It is now all coming apart and the Thatcher era is over.
I think a loss to Hitler in WW2 would have had more of a devastating effect on Britain than a loss to Napoleon at Waterloo. Hitler wouldn't have occupied Britain either nor its Empire. But his peace treaty would have made sure that England "towed the line". It wouldn't have been able to object to totalitarianism in Europe on the Continent for one thing. Freedom of speech would have been more frowned upon and curtailed. The British government was already spending a lot of time kow towing to Hitler in the 1930's. But it would have continued and gotten worse at the very least. The form of Parliamentary government would have continued. But then HItler came to power in an election in 1933, too. He would have had much less of an effect on America which would have remained isolationistic and apart from Europe.As you say a loss to Napoleon at Waterloo would have done little but postponed Waterloo to another day. At the time of Waterloo there wasn't a power vacuum the way there was after WW1.
Linda wrote: "I think a loss to Hitler in WW2 would have had more of a devastating effect on Britain than a loss to Napoleon at Waterloo. Hitler wouldn't have occupied Britain either nor its Empire. But his peac..."Oh yes you are quite right. Britain would have had to give him a free hand in Europe, but the Nazi sympathisers in Britiain, and they were at all levels of the establishment but not ordinary people, would have been very much in the ascendency.
As far as Thatcherism being dead or Reaganism here, it's too soon to tell. It's a contemporary event. You can never really tell what's going on right now. However, I've always been afraid that Western Civilization in general is moving towards socialism which says a lot about Germany because that's where socialism first appeared. I would prefer a government that does very little besides run the military, conduct international relations, perhaps supervise the construction of interstate highways, and make sure that there was a body of constitutional law. But everything else should be left to the state, the localities, and to companies and individuals. Cars would cost less, houses would cost much less, education would be cheaper, and income taxes would be abolished. There would be more money for private enterprise. I hate bureaucracy, and all this would be a big spur to having less of it Anything to do with the national government seems to be inefficient, slow, and maddening. For instance when we got back here on August 22 we had to engage in a month long battle with the post office to get them to deliver our mail. They kept on saying that the house was unoccupied and returning our packages to the sender. But FEDEX and UPS had no problem delivering them. A small but significant example.
I think there is a difference between the two systems of government. I agree with you that in the US everything except the currency and the military should be run by the states and the localities because your state governments with the counties etc are all that is required and all that was intended ( which is why I am a confederate, nothing to do with slavery) Your Federal government is a layer nobody wants or needs and it prevents diversity. States with big social issues might run different programmes to states with a wealthier economic base. Watching from over here this issue of how much federal government is still festering and has never been resolved. The Confederate view was that it was there to coordinate not to govern.Here Thatcher centralised everything so that even the smallest issues are handled by the central government. Local government has very little power, but it has to provide services for which the money is provided by London. This is just beginning to be unravelled with both powers and locally raised revenue being handed back but there is a long way to go.
I don't think at the time of Napoleon there were Napoleon sympathizers the British government who would have been in the ascendancy if Napoleon had won Waterloo. Napoleon wouldn't have been able to negotiate peace terms the way Hitler would have. Of course the US in 1815 wasn't what it was to be in the 1930's and 1940's either. But at both time periods you had Isolationism. In the early 19th century you had Jefferson trumpeting how the US should have no foreign entanglements.
What do you mean by Thatcher centralized everything? What wasn't centralized before she was Prime Minister that became centralized while she was Prime Minister?What powers do the German states like Bavaria have? I really don't know.
First, Germany. I am not sure what powers they have but they have their own parliaments and prime ministers, so I suppose it is something like your states or perhaps Scotland. I imagine most of daily life is supported at the state level.We used to have a very strong local government system where local County and city councils raised revenue and provided low cost housing,free education,law enforcement, roads etc. Often these councils were controlled by political parties opposed to Thatcher.
She took away their powers and their revenue raising activities and gave them government grants to provide certain services all decided centrally. After thirty five years we have a housing crisis, one in education, the roads are full of potholes and all local services including law enforcement are starved of cash.
Bit by bit the mess is being unravelled, but it will take years. Of course she and her government could only do this in the UK, because we have no constitution. Just a simple majority of one in parliament and you can do whatever you like.
Linda wrote: "I don't think at the time of Napoleon there were Napoleon sympathizers the British government who would have been in the ascendancy if Napoleon had won Waterloo. Napoleon wouldn't have been able to..."Oh I agree. Napoleon was a revolutionary but he was not an ogre and much of his legacy is positive. Traditionally Britain was pragmatic in foreign affairs. They might even have turned Napoleon from rival to ally.
In this country people thought of Thatcher as being like Reagan. Reagan supported less government, not more. At least initially he cut down on the size of government, too. As far as centralizing government in Washington D.C. who knows? There are certain duties allotted to the states like public education, but the US government has programs to give localities matching funds if they meet certain requirements as a sort of carrot and stick approach. And there are certain US government requirements such as the stuff about handicapped education which by the way is modeled after the system in Pennsylvania. But even here the localities and states get to interpret it. I could give you a personal example here based on a case that Gary worked on four years ago, but that would open a new chapter of discussion and give you more reason not to like Arizona. Still there are all sorts of layers of government here. I mentioned the one about the local government in Pima County trying to sue the state of Arizona because it mandated that the locality turn over more money to the state. Some of the states brought lawsuits against the feds about the health care debacle, too, some of which have been heard by the Supreme Court and some of which haven't been heard yet.
Still that was the one thing that the US Civil War was really about. It said that the national government was in charge and states rights were limited. For one thing states could secede after they were part of the Union. Also if Congress passes a law or the Supreme Court decides a case such as Brown vs. Board of Education from the 1950's and the states don't comply, the feds can enforce it. For instance, certain southern states didn't want to have integrated education with blacks and whites in the same classroom. This reached such a crisis that I think some sort of federal law enforcement was sent in to make sure that it was carried out in the Deep South.
When I was at the University of Virginia there was an older professor there who said he could remember the days of Brown vs. Board of Education. He said that the public schools all over Albemarle County and in the city of Charlottesville closed down for the duration. The local churches took over public education. The blacks went to the black Baptist churches and the whites went to their own churches. This apparently went on for years. Incredibly the Feds didn't come into this area because it was so quiet. The professor said that the blacks didn't want to go to the white schools either and that both blacks and whites were embarrassed sitting next to each other. Being from the North I didn't know what to make of all this nonsense. Apparently all this ended I don't even know when. But it was long over by the time I got there. (Also the University of Virginia was the last public university in the whole country to go coed and admit women in the 1970's.)
Britain never did make Napoleon an ally but the Brits were toying around with making Hitler an ally. Remember Neville Chamberlain and his infamous visit to Germany? Remember the Anglo-German Naval Treaty of 1935? You might say this was Britain trying to be practical. You might say the US took a more idealistic stance insisting that it would not deal with any dictators. But that doesn't quite make sense either since they dealt with Joseph Stalin. Ditto with Churchill. He said he wouldn't deal with Hitler, but he too dealt with Stalin. Really everybody has to be practical. And by the way despite the newspapers and despite political rhetoric I think it can be proved that international relations are amoral. It all has to do with economics and power politics.
I guess it makes sense that the government of Germany has some resemblance to the US since we supervised the setting up of their government after WW2.
Linda wrote: "In this country people thought of Thatcher as being like Reagan. Reagan supported less government, not more. At least initially he cut down on the size of government, too. As far as centralizing ..."
Very well argued and I agree with all of it.
Thatcher's image in the US was always different from the reality, but the thing that she will always be remembered for was that she showed that socialism was neither inevitable, nor the only way. The trouble is big cracks are now appearing in the system of market driven global capitalism. Another adjustment is in process, but we cannot yet see its shape.
Linda wrote: "Britain never did make Napoleon an ally but the Brits were toying around with making Hitler an ally. Remember Neville Chamberlain and his infamous visit to Germany? Remember the Anglo-German Naval ..."Very much so. And complicated by the fact that one person's morality is another person's sin.
