NO INTELLIGENT DESIGN IN POLITICS

Just saw on tv morning news a discussion with Shintaro (“If Japanese hadn't fought the white people, we would still be slaves of the white people.”) Ishihara, Governor of Tokyo, and Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe, ardent devotee of Yasukuni Shrine, who is currently being groomed as successor to Japan’s Prime Ministership, a fact reflective of the depth of democracy here.

The pair were talking about the 15~20% sales tax the government plans to impose in a couple of years, the LDP amazingly even less perceptive than 17 years ago, when they imposed a 3% sales tax and the economy fell apart. As to the burden of a 20% sales tax at this juncture, Ishihara offered this sage judgement: “If people don’t want to buy something, they don’t have to buy it.” Tourism will, of course, will be as rain in the Sahara. But Ishihara’s cross-eyed views are honored and Abe will succeed to the office of Prime Minister, as in any democratically cloaked aristocracy. That’s what really counts in this picture, as always.

The LDP prints money till banks offer negative interest on savings, property values plunge, income drops and taxes decline, so they add a higher sales tax. Anybody seen a lost IQ around here? Well at least the rivers are paved, and all those bridges and overpasses may lead somewhere one day, with the ciphers that built them still in power…