No Guilt - No Tour

I wouldn't feel guilty on the tour because there would be no tour. As soon as I found out that the contest had been judged unfairly, I would have declined the prize. If the organizers of the contest didn't want a Shelbyville stranger to win the prize, they should have limited the contestants to Cheboygan residents only. Of course they wouldn't have known ahead of time that the Shelbyville guy was the best, but they should have taken that possibility into account. By the way, I usually don't like hypothetical scenarios, but this was a particularly good one. My compliments to the Dungeon Master.

In the Marquette Park incident, the rock throwers were obviously wrong, but I'm not sure about the marchers. What they did was deliberately provocative, but it was consistent with their code of non violence, so I'll give them points for that. If we judge their action by it's consequences, well even the authors of the book considered it a failure. Nevertheless, they displayed courage in standing up for their cause and they didn't break any laws doing it. If the marchers and the rioters were running against each other in a political contest, my vote would go to the marchers.

I'll admit that the setting of priorities might be construed as trying to weasel out of doing something but, let's face it, you can't do everything. Why should I put my agenda on hold in favor of somebody else's agenda? Would they do it for me? If you want to feel guilty about something, you should feel guilty about all those Asian carp that your people are letting into the Great Lakes. You don't, do you? That's because you are not a fisherman. You wouldn't deliberately plant those carp in Lake Michigan, but if they get in because of somebody else's negligence, it's not your fault.

I can see your point about feeling obligated to lead your people in the paths of righteousness, I used to be that way too. The problem is that we are leaders without followers. If we tell them what to do, and they refuse to comply, that's not our fault. As a teacher, I'm sure you encountered kids that just refused to learn no matter how good a teacher you were. It's like the old saying, "You can lead a horticulture but you can't make her think." There is also a lesser known saying that I picked up in the army from a son of Georgia: "Some people don't know nothin', some people don't want to know nothin', and some people don't even suspect nothin'."

I may have told you wrong about how those treasury auctions were conducted. The more I think about it, I think the bonds have a face value, representing the principal and the interest (which they call "coupon") that will accrue at the time of maturity. So, if it's a hundred dollar bond, with a coupon of ten dollars, the face value would be $110. The bond is auctioned to the highest bidder, and the difference between what he pays and the face value represents his profit if he holds the bond to maturity. Your right, though, that buyers will not pay as much for a flaky bond as they might pay for one they perceive to be more reliable, which means that the flaky bond issuer, for all practical purposes, pays more interest. That still works out to my advantage because my money market mutual fund currently holds a lot of short term government debt. They will buy private sector debt as soon as it becomes more profitable than government debt. Either way, I make more money if interest rates go up. Well, maybe not, because higher interest rates generally have a negative effect on the stock market, which is why it's a good idea to own some of both.