Enjoy Pi Day, All About Truths

Wonderfully, this is Pi day, when we celebrate an historic mystery. The value of pi will stretch on to infinity, and has such uses as determining the dimensions of a circle. It is, literally, the distance around a circle divided by the distance across.

Bet you didn't know, if you divide the length of a river from source to mouth across a gently sloping plane by its direct length "as the crow flies", you'll find pi. I didn't either before this morning. Reading about Pi, at BBC: "It's Pi Day, a celebration of the mathematical ratio that man has been trying to unlock for millennia. But why are we driven to find the answers behind it?"

We all yearn to have answers, ways to predict what will happen so that we can actually plan to act in a way that will lead to the results we want. I would like to celebrate Pi Day, by looking at some answers we are learning in the present, as a piece of historical truth is unwinding for us.

In watching the financial breakdown, it appears to me that here we have proof of something we left wingers have known, have written about, and now finally can point to as an ultimate truth - robbing the poor to give to the rich is wrong, and it works out badly. It isn't moral because it sounds sweet, it's true because it works.

Those of you who have read this blog for awhile know that I've been on a tear for awhile about the stupidity of our business tycoons who think they can prosper by beggaring their customers. Henry Ford wasn't a saint by any manner of means, but his instituting the common sense policy of paying his workers enough to afford what they made was the beginning of the most prosperous slice of history here in the U.S. that has ever been known.

Thanks to the right wing's abolition of regulation, its failure to enforce the laws which our democratic congress enacted - through long and thoughtful deliberation mixed with a bit of self-serving answering to popular demand - the greedy have proved that it's wrong to steal. Congratulations.

We didn't want to see this happen, but if the right wing has once and for all destroyed any belief in its greed system, then something good has happened and we have something we can use to base actions on, as well.

.....presidential "signing statements" have become quite common since the Reagan presidency. Back then a young lawyer at Justice, one Sam Alito, argued that the White House could protect its executive prerogatives through the use of such statements. Hence you'll recall all the mumbo jumbo talk of the "unitary executive" theory during the Alito hearings, a theory my editors have begged me not to get into here.
(snip)
Signing statements are corrosive to our rule of law and our constitutional system, insofar as the president assumes for himself the power to amend legislation as he sees fit. And while most courts would disregard the executive's efforts to distort the will of Congress, signing statements do matter in the real world. The president, after all, presides over a vast bureaucracy charged with enforcing the laws of the land, and to folks on the federal payroll, what the boss says about a new law, and how it's to be carried out, does matter. Indeed, a report last year issued by the Government Accountability Office chronicled the reluctance of the federal government to pay heed to laws that Bush took issue with upon signing.

Pi is believable, and celebrating values we can count on is a great human quality. What we are seeing proved now, in the worst administration in history, may be establishing observed truth, the Rule Of Law, by showing the opposite, and its failure. Violating our laws destroys our system.

Now I'd like to consider setting up another absolute.

The Rule of Law makes our society, and our economy, work. What a good idea, to return to the values this country was dedicated to.

Systematically defying the laws has made the presently occupied White House a low mark in the country's history. It has proved that the system works, and that violating our laws does not work.

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Thank you Hecate, since you picked up something said about this today at Eschaton. I will do as you thought was a good idea, and repeat it.

"the international financial collapse due to the total failure to enforce our own laws by the worst admin. in history is killing trust in our financial system, with longterm results. killed the goose that laid those golden eggs."

So spot on that I just wanted to see it twice.
Hecate, Runnymeade Conspirator (at 8:04 a.m.)

I did appreciate the compliment and want to spread it around, guilty as charged.