Michael Lissack transfer-seeking. Benefits flow to all income groups, roughly in proportion to their share of the population. Rich, poor, and middle-all are enjoying benefits and feeling entitled. America is the land of the free and the home of the subsidized.” The result of all this is a pattern of policy making that is positively schizophrenic in quality. On the one hand, policies have a sweeping, radical, whatever-it-takes grandiosity about them, corresponding to the crisis-and-emergency-response scenario by which they are sold to the public and pushed through the legislative process. On the other hand, the laws as written are riddled with exemptions, special timetables, one-time payments, tax breaks, and all manner of goodies and deals tailored to the special re- quirements and agendas of the many interests that are to be affected by the sweeping declaration of policy. Often, dare I say always, there is no mean- ingful policy-related connection between the two sets of provisions. And is there then any wonder why we feel that our government isn’t working? We have a role in fixing this mess. In this respect, we are all like the boy apprenticed to a famous Chinese master who fashioned a head of stone in the hope it would reveal secret knowledge. But the master had exhausted himself and charged the boy to watch the head and come at once to wake him should anything happen. In a lull during which the boy’s mind could not help but wander, the stone head trembled slightly and whispered, “Time is coming.” The boy was quickly alert and across the room. As his hand touched the door, he looked back. All was still and as before. “Did I doze off’, he asked himself, “and dream?” He slipped back to scrutinize the head. “Nothing’s changed,” he told himself. “if I wake the Master shortly after he’s gone to rest, and then have nothing to show, hell be angry. Besides, if I heard right, the voice said only, ‘Time is coming’ so nothing has yet happened.” And as the boy hesitated, the head shook, gave off a puff of smoke, and said smartly, “Time Is Now.” The boy again sped across the room, deter- mined not to repeat his initial error. But as he neared the door he pictured the long passage down which he would need to travel to wake the Master, who would then need to travel the same route back. “Is there time,” he asked,
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