Saturday Thoughts

We see a number of cases that have gotten a lot of media attention recently.  We have the college admissions scandal where wealthy people paid to get their children admitted, we have the Smollett case where he seems to have paid to get headlines and we have the recently concluded Mueller report where criminal charges were brought against a lot of people but the main guy wasn't charged.

I have to say the college thing is just another example that we have crooked and corrupt people in this country who can get away with fairly outrageous things.  It happens because people who should be doing more work, generally accept as true things that aren't.  College admissions boards have to fill a certain number of slots and this gets hard when you get to the ones on the margins.  So if a trusted (even if maybe they shouldn't be) fellow employee gives you a recommendation, you don't really vet it.  Maybe you should.  One might wonder why in fact schools even offer scholarships for sports like crew.  I get that football and basketball easily pay for themselves in the big schools, and in the middle of March madness I enjoy watching the games, but I'm not sure how they are in fact student athletes when all is said and done.

The Smollett case just seems to be a publicity stunt gone wrong and while it was a costly investigation the fact that he wasn't charges with a crime isn't really a big deal.  He allegedly hired too people to pretend to attack him and it went wrong.  Sure he probably lied and maybe he should be prosecuted, but it may have ended his role in Empire and if he has agreed to make restitution it should be a minor trivia question soon.  It is no more a national disgrace than the migrant issue on the border is a national crisis.  In fact it isn't much of anything when you come right down to it.

Finally we have the recently concluded Mueller investigation that resulted in a good number of prosecutions but apparently did not find evidence of criminal collusion but did find enough evidence of obstruction of justice by the President that he left the decision to the Attorney General.  Without seeing the entire report it isn't easy to conclude much, but at the same time I am a bet leery of repeating the Benghazi or E-mail probes if recent memory.  I realize that everything has a political impact but maybe constantly second guessing everything is just tedious.  I know this isn't going away, and I would like to read the report, but can we at some point just move on?

The Administration may or may not be a criminal enterprise legally, but attacking health care, diverting money for a wall, allowing the financial markets to resume bad practices, failing to take action on climate change, attacking Social Security and Medicare should be where the focus goes, not what happened in 2016.  We need a better outcome in 2020.