George Epstein: Wishes for a New Year

We live in the beautiful Mount Washington Valley. There are very nice houses on lakes and mountaintops. Some of the homes in the area have lots of acreage. Some are grand edifices. I wish people could grow up here or move here at a young age, get a job, and earn enough to be able to afford the spiffy homes in the area. But few can. I don’t begrudge folks who inherited a place here or made a bunch of money somewhere else and bought their second home in the valley, but wouldn’t it be nice if more of the prime homes were in the hands of local people?

The president announced that the United States would come to the aid of protesters in Iran if the government there used “lethal force” against them. Not long ago, that same American president was defending a Saudi prince who had a dissident hunted down in Turkey, murdered, and dismembered (according to our president’s CIA director). The president has gone to war with Venezuela, blowing up people in motorboats and kidnapping its (probably) drug-dealing, murderous dictator. That same president has pardoned two of the largest drug dealers in recent history from their long prison terms.