Over at Post Partisan today, I have a post up talking about disclosure in campaign finance. I'm for it -- but over time, I've become less and less convinced that it does all that much good. I mean, even if we really had full, meaningful, well-run disclosure, which we often don't. Under current law, the costs of disclosure are relatively low. But if we really ever went with my preferred system, which regular readers know is partial public financing and then unlimited private financing plus disclosure, then the (marginal) costs of disclosure would be higher, since it would presumably be the only source of compliance costs for campaigns. I'm pretty sure it would still be worth it, and of course there's no way it would ever be repealed (although it can be more or less subverted in various ways), but I suspect it's a closer call than I've ever thought.
Meanwhile, if you thought I've been distracted, you're probably right. The latest is that my youngest's bat mitzvah is tomorrow. Woo! So please excuse the light posting today, and with any luck I'll be back to a more regular schedule on Monday. I'll try to get a Friday Baseball Post up at some point, but I don't really know whether I'll get to it, and What Mattered? might be rather incomplete tomorrow, although I should get it posted at the more-or-less regular time (sometimes I hold it until I catch up on my newspapers, but that ain't gonna happen tomorrow).
...and it's also the beginning of Fiesta here in San Antonio! OK, I'm not much for the local holiday, which is a week-long celebration with lots of parades and other events. The kids will get school off on Friday, and many local offices shut down, too. I'm curious: what other towns have local holidays? Are they significant enough that the schools would close down?
Friday, April 20, 2012
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1. Mazal tov! Don't let her watch "A Serious Man" between now and when she goes on. (I can't think of any other movies with bar or bat mitzvahs -- are there any?)
ReplyDelete2. In Massachusetts they get off for Patriot's Day, aka "Marathon Monday" but officially a commemoration of the Battles of Lexington & Concord. And, though it's not quite the same, I believe that in New York City, the public schools generally have off on Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur.
Mazal Tov on your daughter's simcha.
ReplyDelete(classicist - I hope you have seen "Keeping Up With the Steins." If not, rent it tonight.)
Having lived in SA for over 20 years earlier in my life, including part of my childhood (Army Brat) I quite remember getting out of school for Fiesta, although I was never one for all the parades - except the King William Fair, which was still neighborhood based back in the early 90's. And as a City employee, work was "interesting" as City Hall was surrounded by the Carnival for 2 full weeks. Actually SA kids also used to get off school for the first day of the Rodeo in February as well, but that hasn't been the case since the 70's. I now live in Portland OR which has a longstanding event called the Rose Festival that shares many of the same characteristics of Fiesta, but the kids do not get out of school.
ReplyDeleteDC has emancipation day, which is a city holiday that people get off. They used to do a parade back in the 1800s but that dropped off. Don't know if we still do a parade now, since it's become a thing again in the last 15 or 20 years.
ReplyDeleteMardi Gras is a 4-day weekend for schools in New Orleans and surrounding areas, including the Mississippi gulf coast. I adored it for the many years prior to Hurricane Katrina that I lived and taught school there. Unlike Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Easter holidays, it involved no obligations regarding family gatherings, and I completely ignored the local parades-and-partying frenzy in favor of starting my spring gardening.
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