I particularly like the current brouhaha between Rosie O’Donnell and that arbiter of taste, THE Donald.  But I won’t write about them and their squabbling.  There are so many other interesting things to delve into.  One, of course, is the realization that the holiday (read HOLY day) of Christmas squarely rests on Pagan Roman and earlier winter feasts to break the weather and reality that this time of the year is deadly for it keeps you inside and prevents you from travel.  This last is particularly galling since we have the ability to predict what is coming down from the North and the machines to push the snow out of the way so we can get on with shopping.  Back in Roman days they holed up for the worst of the weather and made do with Saturnalias and merrymaking of the salacious kind. We haven’t changed that much in thousands of years – when the back of old man Winter is broken, Spring is not far behind – so we cavort as much as we can from inside while looking out at all the “bad” weather.

But, I like the ethical problems facing the new Democratic leadership better than the petty name calling of “celebrities”.  There is an ancient tradition that if you elevate someone to say the position of Satrap or Governor of a province, that person will consider it his private gold mine to extract the last possible bit of the precious metal before he leaves office to the next excavator appointed to rule in the Name of Rome - or Washington.  Our “public” officials have made the government of the United States of America their private means to raise themselves above the masses. The ethical problem in our Congress and local and state governments is that there are no ethics – only opportunities like the beneficiaries of Emperors and Kings of the past.

It is probably time for a revision of the rules about how rich a lawmaker or a judge can get after being elected into office.  But the ones who make those rules are the ones who have already enriched themselves.  You and I, who do the electing cannot even find a machine to record our vote and leave a paper trail to see if there was some unethical practice that resulted in the least ethical person getting the job.  What hurts most is that these elected representatives of you and me get to vote themselves raises while producing the most unfair tax system existing anywhere in the world.

Yes, I think that we should shop in the store that sells ethics rather than the right to plunder and loot the public coffers.  I think, while shopping for all the good stuff coming out of China across the Bay at cheaper prices than Americans can manage, that we pay more attention to the ethics of those we elect.