20 June—Today is the real reason Juneteenth is celebrated: Inaccurately called Black Independence Day by some, it gives public-sector employees yet another paid holiday. So far only federal employees and those in just a few states are getting their paid Juneteenths off. But next year Connecticut’s already overcompensated state and handsomely compensated municipal employees, as well as some more rationally compensated private-sector employees, will be joining the hordes of the Juneteenth lucratively idle.

Lego, the Danish mini-brick maker whose North American headquarters has been (or have been, take your pick) in Enfield for ages, has announced it’s building a billion-dollar, 1.7-million-square-foot factory in Virginia. (For the record, but totally irrelevant, there are three Connecticut state prisons in Enfield and Paul Robeson lived there in the early forties.)

Despite Lego’s assurances that it won’t be closing shop in Connecticut, as well as state mucky-mucks’ predictably positive spin, realists reckon otherwise. Connecticut, after all, has demonstrated for decades that it’s not a good place for businesses to thrive. Or exist. Ned Lamont and his pals in the Connecticut General Assembly certainly haven’t been doing anything to improve the situation for commerce. And don’t count on them to change their spots.

Everybody bitches about inflation and price gouging. And well they—we—may. Isn’t price gouging what capitalism is all about, when you get down to it? It’s called the profit motive and simply means you charge as much as you can—what the market will bear—for a product or service.

There’s really nothing wrong with price gouging. Except in monopoly or oligopoly situations. One egregious monopoly that’s been impenitently gouging prices even before the current bout of inflation is the United States Post Office.

Saturday I paid my semi-annual extortion to the local post orifice for the privilege of delivering my own mail. $106 for six months’ so-called rental of the second smallest box size available. (It would have been less than half that in Bantam, based on a totally ridiculous formula the USPS abuses.)

That’s a 13 percent increase over the extortion I paid last December. But it’s nothing compared to the 27 percent—yes, 27 percent—last year’s extortion increased over the previous year’s. And given that the USPS is a government monopoly (the worst, most abusive kind), aside from bitching there’s nothing captive customers can do about it.

Well, there is. I could put up a rural delivery mailbox at the road. In fact, about four decades ago, I had one up. Make that three. Two got knocked down by the Department of Transportation and its contractor while they were paving the road. (Reimbursement from the state was easy and swift; not so easy from O&G.) But the rural-route delivery was so god-awfully unpredictable that I went back to using my PO box, which at that time must have cost something like $30 a year.

At least I’m confident that I provide much better last-mile delivery service than the USPS is capable of . . .