When the most influential person is Scrooge

EarthPagan of the Daily Kos community briefly discussed an article from the LA Times that compares Omaha, Nebraska and Wichita, Kansas. Twenty years ago both cities were similar in size and employment rates. But Omaha is the home of the generous Warren Buffet and Wichita is the home of the stingy Koch organization. After those 20 years Omaha …

now has 1/3 more people, better schools, better infrastructure, transitioned to non-manufacturing jobs, and attracts more millennials to boost the local economy than Wichita.
…
It’s a good comparison of what happens to a town when the most influential person is Scrooge.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has been pretty good at protecting the little guy from the predations of big financial institutions. It was set up so that neither the Congress or the President could meddle, turning it to political purposes. Which is a big reason why the GOP and their backers don’t like it.

Joan McCarter of Kos reports the CFPD demanded Seila Law turn over some documents. The firm refused and sued saying, as McCarter summarized it, “the structure of the CFPD violated the constitution's separation of powers doctrine and thus should be entirely invalidated.” The case went to the Supreme Court, which has issued its opinion. The CFPD could continue to exist, which is good, but it couldn't have a director that the president could not remove at will.

And that could be a problem. There are several agencies in the government that only work because the rest of the government can’t meddle. These include the Federal Reserve, and the Securities and Exchange Commission. We would not want a president to fire someone from these agencies because they didn’t tweak monetary policy or stock certification to please his whims or election chances.



Tonight’s opera is Carmen by George Bizet. She’s the one who flirts with Don José, prompting him to jealously fall in love with her with tragic results. The music is full of Spanish (or at least Spanish sounding) tunes (not bad for a French composer). It is in the ABCs of opera, the three best able to serve as an introduction to the art. The other two are Aida and La Bohème.

A while back I had written that Pagliachi was in the verismo style – stories about regular people rather than princes and gods. Carmen is considered the first verismo opera.

Bizet finished the opera in 1874. Singers and management didn’t like it both for being too difficult to sing and for its tawdry subject. Bizet made changes and it was premiered in March 1975. But reviews were poor. Three months later Bizet died, thinking his opera was a failure, though it was still running at the opera house. The press had condemned the opera and after his death proclaimed him a master. The opera has stayed a favorite.