Notes on the Way
Jury Duty Wrap-Up, Inflation Woes, Gun Control Follies & Happy Birthday, United States Army
Greetings, all.
As things turned out I was non-selected for jury duty in a misdemeanor felony case involving DUI and assault charges. Not exactly the crime of the century, right? I don’t know for sure why I was passed over but it may be that my status as a military retiree and the fact that my younger daughter is an Army veteran who served in the Military Police Corps had something to do with it. When I mentioned this during voir dire, counsel for the defense glanced at me rather keenly. Anyhow, my civic duty has been discharged, and good riddance to it.
Last week’s May inflation report was brutal, both for the Biden Administration and, much more importantly, for the American people. The month’s sharp rise in the pump price of gasoline was bad enough, but prices were up across the board—at an 8.6% rate. The President and his minions can squawk all they want about “Putin’s price hike” and supply chain woes; it will do them no good. First, fairly or not, people hold the incumbent administration responsible for the state of the economy. Second, the Biden Administration's profligate, not to say reckless, spending has been a major driver of inflation. This is a fact of life that Biden and the progressives to whom he’s sold his gnarled little soul seem unable to fathom. Their solution to inflation is—spend even more! Yeah, that’ll help…
On the gun control front, a bipartisan Senate group has labored mightily to produce a compromise proposal that combines futility and political implausibility in approximately equal measure. Its one sensible idea, money for enhanced school security, is far outweighed by such placebos as “enhanced background checks” for gun buyers aged 18 to 25, federal support for state “red flag” laws and, of course, billions for “mental health care.” Oh, and the “boyfriend loophole” will be closed! I was particularly annoyed by the mental health piece: A less cost-effective way of preventing mass shootings is hard to imagine. Now don’t get me wrong. There are good reasons for spending more on mental health care. But the prevention of mass shootings is not among them. As for enhanced background checks—enhanced how, precisely? Red flag laws? Okay. But as the case of the Buffalo shooter shows, red flag laws are only as good as the bureaucracy that administers them. That’s not exactly an encouraging thought.
Today is the 247th birthday of the United States Army, the senior branch of the US armed forces, whose uniform I was proud to wear for twenty-four of my twenty-eight years of military service (I started out in the Air Force). In fact I’m still proud to wear it, for that privilege is accorded to retired soldiers on appropriate occasions. The US Army traces it origins to an act of the Continental Congress on 14 June 1775, which authorized the enlistment of expert marksmen to serve the United Colonies as a whole. Though the Continental Army, as it became, was disbanded after the American Revolution, it was soon reestablished as the United States Army, and subsequently 14 June was recognized as the service’s birthday. The militia of the states, now titled the National Guard, is America’s oldest military organization with a continuous record of service dating from the seventeenth century. Of the five current armed services, the United States Coast Guard, in which my father served during World War II, has the longest continuous record of service to country.