Lex Anteinternet: Inflation. A needed primer.: Seeing as I see so many posts, some from people running for office on this, a reminder. Inflation going down just means the rate of inflatio...
I must say, this guy has a really nice looking suit.
Showing posts with label Mid-Week at Work. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mid-Week at Work. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 16, 2024
A nice suit.
Wednesday, August 14, 2024
Wyoming Catholic Cowboys - raw and real: Wool Mill
Wyoming Catholic Cowboys - raw and real: Wool Mill: With a nice late summer rain in Buffalo, Gerry and I took a field trip to the Wool Mill. Johnson county has been renowned for running sheep ...
Wednesday, August 7, 2024
I would not have guessed that being a Federal mule packer requires a person to have a Commercial Drivers License.
But it does.
I guess that makes sense, maybe
Or not.
At least at one time, to drive a commercial sized truck for the Federal Government you didn't need a CDL, as the Federal Government issued its own drivers licenses.
Wednesday, July 17, 2024
Wednesday, June 26, 2024
Bookends
I probably should have guessed, but I didn't.
I'd never met him before, and couldn't even place him in the set of people related to people I knew. He was, or is rather, the grandson of a rancher I've known for eons, but I'd never seen him at a rural gathering. He was dressed in a rural fashion, with the clothes natural to him, but wearing a ball cap rather than a cowboy hat. I probably was too. It was unseasonably cold, I remember that.
He was holding forth boldly on what was wrong on higher education. All the professors were radical leftist.
I figured he was probably right out of high school, in part no doubt as I'm a very poor judge of younger ages. It was silly, so I just ignored him, although I found his speech arrogant. The sort of speech you hear from somebody who presumes that nobody else has experienced what you have. 1 I.e., we were a bunch of rural rubes not familiar with the dangerous liberals in higher education.
I figured he'd probably get over it as he moved through education.
Yes, there are liberals in higher education. Frankly, the more educated a class is, the more likely that it is at least somewhat liberal. That reflects itself in our current political demographic. The more higher education a person has, the more likely they are to vote for the Democrats. It's not universally true, but it's fairly true. And the Republicans, having gone populist, which is by definition a political stream that simply flows the "wisdom of the people", is a pretty shallow stream. Conservatism isn't, but it's really hard to find right now.
I heard earlier this year that he'd obtained a summer position in D.C. with one of our current public servants there, and thought that figured, given the climate of the times. Recently, his grandfather told me he'd just taken the LSAT.
I didn't quite know what to say.
I didn't have any idea he was that old. And I didn't realize that was his aspiration. I asked his progenitor if being a lawyer was his goal, and was informed that it was. I did stumble around to asking what his undergraduate major was, thinking that some have multiple doors to the future, and some do not.
"Political science".
"Well, he doesn't have any place else to go then".2
Not the most encouraging response, I'm sure.
I've known a few lawyers that were of the populist political thought variety, but very, very few. Of the few, one is in office right now, but I didn't know that person had that view until that person ran. One is a nice plaintiff's lawyer who holds those views, but it's not his defining characteristic, like it tends to be with some people, and he's friends with those who don't. One briefly was in the public eye and has disappeared.
He's going to find that most law professors, if you know their views at all, and most you won't, aren't populists. Some are probably conservatives, and most are liberals. A defining characteristic of the Post GI Bill field of law is that it's institutionally left wing. As I've often noted before, there are in fact liberal jurists, but there really aren't "conservative" jurists in the true sense, in spite of what people like Robert Reich might think.
I suspect politics is the ultimate goal. By the time he's through with law school, and has some practice under his belt, the populist wave will have broken, a conservative politics will have reemerged and liberals will be back in power.3
So I hope that he likes the practice of law, as that's what law school trains you to do. Not to save the world. Not to "help people". Not to provide opportunities for people who "like to argue".4
I'm not holding out a lot of hope.
Recently, I ran this:
An article on Hageman's primary challenger in the GOP:
Democrat-turned-Republican challenges Wyoming’s Harriet Hageman for U.S. House seat
Right after I ran it, I went to a hearing where one of the opposing lawyers is approaching 70 and supposedly is getting ready to retire, but doesn't seem to be. Right after that, I was in a court hearing in which there were two younger lawyers, but a host of ones in their late 60s or well into their 70s. One of the late 60s ones appeared to be stunned and noted that there was at least 200 years of legal experience in the room.
I was noticing the same thing.
Lawyers have a problem and that's beginning to scare me, not quite yet being of retirement age. I'm not sure if they don't retire, can't retire, don't think they can retire, or something else.
It's not really good for the profession, I'm sure of that. While it's a really Un-American thing to say, a field being dominated in some ways by the elderly pushes out the young. And it's also sad.
It's sad as it's usually the case that younger people have wide, genuine, interests. Lawyers often, although not always, give a lot of those up early on to build their careers. Then they don't go back to them due to those careers. By the time they're in their late 50s, some are burnt out husks that have nothing but the law, and others are just, I think, afraid to leave it.
I think that's, in part, why you see lawyers run for office. Maybe some are like our young firebrand first mentioned in this tread. But others are finding a refuge from a cul-de-sac. A lawyer who is nearly 70 should not become a first time office holder, and shouldn't even delude themselves into thinking that's a good idea (or that it's feasible). They should remind themselves of what interested them when they were in their 20s. The same is true of office holders in general who are in their 70s, or older.
Footnotes:
1. I've often seen this with young veterans and old ones. Some young veteran will be holding forth, not realizing that the guy listening to him fought at Khe Sanh or the likes.
2. That wasn't the most politic thing to say, but I was sort of hoping that the answer was "agriculture" or something, that had some more doors out.
Political science really doesn't. Maybe teaching. But if our young protagonist graduates with a law degree and finds himself not in the world of political intrigue making sure that the American version of Viktor Orbán rises to the top, but rather whether his client, the mother of five children by seven men gets one of them to pay child support, which is highly likely, he's going to have no place to go.
3. Bold prediction, I know, but probably correct.
Right now, I suspect that Donald Trump will in fact win the Presidential election, and the country will be in for a massive period of turmoil. By midterm, people who supported Trump will be howling with rage about the impact of tariffs and the like and demanding that something be done. The correction will come in 2028, but by that time much of the damage, or resetting or whatever, will have been done. The incoming 2028 Democratic regime will set the needle more back to the center.
4. Being good at arguing, in a Socratic sense, makes you a good debator or speaker. Liking to argue, however, just makes you an asshole.
Wednesday, June 19, 2024
The less they could do.
She had observed that the more education they got, the less they could do. Their father had gone to a one-room schoolhouse through the eighth grade and he could do anything.
Flannery O'Connor
Wednesday, June 12, 2024
Wednesday, May 15, 2024
You can have anything you want at Alice's Restaurant.
There ain't no such thing as free lunch.
El Paso Herald-Post, 1938.
There really isn't.
For some reason, the concept of "free" lunches and "free" breakfasts has bothered me for decades. I don't know why, really, but it always has.1 Generally, it's because I'm well aware that "free", in this context, means the financial cost is passed on to somebody else, and nine times out of ten in my experiences the bearer of the cost does so involuntarily.
I don't believe the common unthinking populist phrase that "taxation is theft", but in this case, the free meal is really darned close to it. I've railed here in the past against "free and reduced costs" meals at the local schools, as they aren't free or reduced costs, it's just that property owners pay for negligent parents failing to provide for their kids.
Yes, that's harsh, and that's not what brings me back to this topic, but it's the truth. I'm not opposed to helping the needy, but here nine times out of ten (that phrase again) some tragic "heroic" single mother is packing Young Waif to school hungry because Dudley Dowrong departed the scene after donating his genetic contribution, and now the people who are responsible are picking up the tab. That's okay on a limited basis, but as soon as those whose occupation is Buying Cotton pick up on it, they become to regard it as a right, and soon in fact it becomes one.2 3
Which, again, isn't what brought me back here.
You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant
You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant
Walk right in it's around the back
Just a half a mile from the railroad track
You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant
Arlo Guthrie, Alice's Restaurant.
Just like the meanderings in Guthrie's classic, what I’m here to write about isn't school breakfasts, but office lunch's.
For a reason that I'll omit, I suddenly find myself in the role which made an old Denver lawyer friend of mine supremely crabby when he had it assigned to him, and now I see why. I'm management.
In the new assignment, which snuck up on me, I was instructed I needed to cut expenses that weren't mandated or necessary. And what I found, of course, is that mandated and necessary are in the eyes of the recipient. Put another way, one parent's free and reduced lunch is another's absolute Constitutionally enshrined right.
The expense I rapidly cut was sending our runner to buy groceries for the break room.
Oh, I know what you are thinking, coffee, tea, and the like.4 5
No, I mean real groceries. Soup, relish, hot peppers and hot sauce.
In the over three decades of my current employment and having worked with lots of professionals, I've noted that there's only been a small handful that actually ever ate their lunch at work. There are a few, but it isn't many. Staff people who do, and there are a small handful that have, always packed their lunches, or went to one of the downtown shops to buy lunch and brought it back. Professionals, I'd note, mostly left the office for lunch. Some went home to eat there, often to take care of chores while they were doing it, and some ate downtown. A few, however, ate in the breakroom every day.
I've never done that. When I was younger, I actually walked home to where I then lived, ate a quick light lunch, and returned to work. It helped keep me 30 lbs lighter than I now am. Most of the time now I just don't eat lunch, so if I'm in the office, I'm working. This is against the wise council of my father, who felt that leaving the place of work every day at noon gave you a necessary break. He ate downtown every day with a small group of his friends.
I admire that.
Anyhow, of the professionals that have eaten lunch in the office over the past three plus decades, there are only two that have acclimated to the company buying them lunch or elements of their lunch.
I don't know how this happened.
Long suffering spouse suggest that it was probably started so that there was food for people in an emergency, and I can see that. You're trying a case, and it ran long in the morning as Dudley Dowrong was on the stand for a long time, trying to remember if he has six kids by eight women, or eight kids by six women. So you run back to the office, and you forgot lunch, and don't have time to go buy it. Have some soup, from the company stores.
Well, I wouldn't. I hate soup, for which there's no excuse.
My guess is that is how it started, but it expanded somehow. So for a long time I'll see somebody who hasn't tried a case for eons ordering soup to be picked up by the runner. And in another, a person who brings a gigantic lunch from home everyday spices it up with relish and condiments he had us pick up, that only he uses.6
Quite frankly, this has always pissed me off.
Basically, at that point, you are making every single person who works with and for you buy you lunch. Yes, it's not a major cost, but over the years that means you've taken hundreds or thousands of dollars in food from your coworkers by fiat.
So, with my new found authority and mandate, I ordered it stopped.
...came upon a bar-room full of bad Salon pictures, in which men with hats on the backs of their heads were wolfing food from a counter. It was the institution of the "free lunch" I had struck. You paid for a drink and got as much as you wanted to eat. For something less than a rupee a day a man can feed himself sumptuously in San Francisco, even though he be a bankrupt. Remember this if ever you are stranded in these parts.
Rudyard Kiping.7
It went badly.
Interestingly, the person I thought might complain did not. The whining from another person was incessant, however.
I'll be frank that I really don't like the passive-aggressive snide type of hostility that some people will exhibit. I prefer that people know that I'm mad when I'm mad, and they almost certainly do. In this instance, after days of it, I blew up in front of the front office starting off with "you're pissing me off".
I yielded, however. People who feel they have the right to impose their lunch menu items back on everyone else now can.
If they dare.
Footnotes:
1. Without knowing for sure, I wonder if its because people who grew up when I did always had it impressed upon them as children that providing a meal for somebody was a big deal. If we received lunch at a friend's home, we were always asked if we had thanked the host for doing so. We were implicitly made to understand that food costs money.
Moreover, snacking just didn't exist where I lived as a kid. People didn't have snacks out, ever. One boyhood friend of mine who is still a close friend had a family that bought 16 oz glass bottles of Pepsi, and the lack of snacks situation was so strong that it always felt like a huge treat to have a bottle of Pepsi there when I was a kid.
2. I'm not one of those who currently feel that everything is wrong with public education, and indeed public education here is good. But this is one cultural difference that may in fact make a difference.
At least with Catholic schools here, there are those who attend who because parishioners have donated the tuition to make it possible. I don't know the lunch situation, but I'd wager this is also the case for some food served there. That's charity, but it's voluntary. Providing free or reduced cost food in public schools is legally enforced involuntary charity, which the recipients of, at least by way of observation, sometimes come to feel is a right.
3. "Buying cotton" is Southern slang for doing nothing.
4. I almost never drink coffee at the office, and never tea, but these are office staples. Likewise, a water cooler in a century plus old building makes sense. And some food, like soda crackers, or something does as well. But food that's used by one person. . .
5. Oddly, soda isn't viewed this way.
Years ago, we had a Pepsi supplied pop machine and, in going through a similar episode, the then managers determined to send it packing. Restocking it with soda was costing a fortune.
That move was detested by the staff, but not by the professionals. Why? Probably because the staff drank the soda and the professionals simply didn't.
6. If you drown your leftovers every noon with buckets of hot sauce and jalapeños, there's something wrong with them in the first place.
7. What Kipling failed to mention here is that the "free lunch" was packed was salty fare. Heavily salted ham, etc., was set out for the taking, but the one beer lunch accordingly became two or three.
As an aside, a depiction of this is given in Joe Kidd, in which the title character walks into a bar early in the movie and picks up ham, bread and cheese off an open plate.
Related threads:
Do these people actually have a clue how debt works?
There is such a thing as a free lunch. Was, Lex Anteinternet: Quiet Quitting? Is it real, and if so, why?
1910s, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, Food, Great Depression, Poster Saturday, Posters, The Depression of 1920-1922, The roles of men and women, trends, Women, Work, World War One, World War Two
Agrarianism, Commentary, Distributism, Economics, Government, Localism, Subsidiarity, Taxes, The Law of Unintended Consequences
Do these people actually have a clue how debt works?
Geez Louise:
RELEASE: BERNIE SANDERS, RO KHANNA INTRODUCE BILL TO ELIMINATE MEDICAL DEBT
May 9, 2024
Press Release
Washington, DC – Today, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt) and Congressman Ro Khanna (D-Calif) along with Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) introduced a bill to eliminate all of the $220 billion in medical debt held by millions of Americans in this country, wipe it from credit reports, and drastically limit the accrual of future medical debt.
In the United States of America, there are currently over 100 million people holding some form of health care debt, and 20 million people with unpaid medical bills of more than $250 specifically. That’s nearly four in ten American adults reporting health care debt, and one out of every 12 American adults reporting significant debt. Women, Black Americans, and those living in rural areas and the South are hit the hardest. As a result of our health care system, one in three Black Americans have past due medical bills, as well as nearly half of American women, and nearly half of adults living in the South.
Unpaid medical bills can ruin credit scores and make it challenging to get a loan, take out a mortgage, or buy a car. Nearly 75 percent of adults in the United States say they are worried about being able to afford unexpected medical bills, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Nearly one out of every four people say they have skipped medical treatment because of concerns about cost, including one in five adults with health insurance coverage.
The problem is only getting worse. Research from Yale and Stanford revealed a recent spike in hospitals, including non-profit and public hospitals, bringing medical debt lawsuits against patients over unpaid medical bills, disproportionately impacting Black and low-income patients and patients living in rural areas.
Canceling medical debt is a common sense position overwhelmingly supported by the American public. That support is nonpartisan with 84 percent of Republicans in favor of canceling it. In fact, when polled on which types of debt Americans would like to see forgiven, two-thirds of Americans pointed to medical debt.
“This is the United States of America, the richest country in the history of the world. People in our country should not be going bankrupt because they got cancer and could not afford to pay their medical bills,” Sanders said. “No one in America should face financial ruin because of the outrageous cost of an unexpected medical emergency or a hospital stay. The time has come to cancel all medical debt and guarantee health care to all as a human right, not a privilege.”
“Our current health care system is bankrupting Americans. I’ve heard heartbreaking stories from constituents who have skipped doctor’s appointments due to cost, who have lost loved ones because they couldn’t afford their medication, and who aren’t able to buy a house or get a job because of crippling medical debt,” said Khanna. “I’m so proud to join Senator Sanders to cancel medical debt, wipe it from credit reports and reform our system going forward. This bill would transform the lives of millions of Americans and I couldn’t ask for a better partner in the fight.”
Said Merkley: “Patients should be able to get the care they need when facing illness or injury without fear of financial ruin. America’s medical debt crisis continues to harm millions, and Congress must do all it can to relieve patients of this tremendous burden. Our Medical Debt Cancellation Act sets up a grant program to cancel patient medical debt. This bill is a common-sense step forward that will help families in Oregon and across the nation.”
“No one chooses to get sick and seeking essential medical care should never keep families in poverty. Yet millions of people—disproportionately Black and/or disabled—are burdened with medical debt brought about by our broken health care system. Many families are forced to file for bankruptcy, while others struggle to access necessities like housing or transportation because of debt collections listed on their credit report. Imagine being denied housing while wrestling with a major medical issue and mounting bills. This is unconscionable. I am proud to stand with Representative Khanna and Senator Sanders in cancelling medical debt and bringing us one step closer to making health care a human right,” said Tlaib.
Organizations endorsing the bill include: TheCenter for Health and Democracy, The Center for Popular Democracy, The Center for Economic and Policy Research, Just Care USA, Public Citizen, and Social Security Works.
Specifically, the Medical Debt Cancellation Act will:
Amend the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, making it illegal to collect medical debt incurred prior to the bill’s enactment and creating a private right of action for patients.
Amend the Fair Consumer Credit Reporting Act, effectively wiping medical debt from credit reports by preventing credit reporting agencies from reporting information related to debt that arose from medical expenses.
Create a grant program in the Health Resources and Services Administration to eliminate medical debt, prioritizing low-resource providers and underserved populations.
Amend the Public Health Service Act, updating billing and debt collection requirements to limit the potential for future debt to be incurred.
###
Congressman Khanna represents the 17th District of California, which covers communities in Silicon Valley. Visit his website at khanna.house.gov. Follow him on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter @RepRoKhanna.
Debt isn't "eliminated" or "cancelled". It's shifted.
What this proposes is to shift the debt on a massive scale. That will be made up elsewhere, either passed on so that it can be absorbed, or through provider collapse.
A horrific idea.
I don't know about the rest of these folks, but Sanders many years in government really show here. He seems to have a complete lack of understanding of how money works in the real world.
Wednesday, May 8, 2024
A conversation with an old friend. The Good Death, and the Good Life and Existential Occupations.
A really old friend of mine and I were talking about it just last week.
I had to catch up with him as he was working on something for me. It was Friday, but I was fairly formally dressed and he noted it. The reason was that I had just come from my uncle's funeral earlier that day. He extended his sympathies, but I noted that my uncle had lived a long and good life. Not a life free of troubles, as no such thing existed, but a long life, that was well lived, and he'd remained sharp right up until the end. His health had declined in recent years, but only in very recent ones. It was the last few months that were rough.
My friend and I, who first knew each other as National Guardsmen back in the 80s, are co-religious. Neither of us was married when we first met, but both of us have, and have seen our kids grow up since then. And of course, we've seen our parents pass away, his before mine. He has siblings, which I do not, and one of his brothers died, only in his 50s. I noted that in the Middle Ages, people often prayed for good deaths, and he noted that a prayer group that he's in now does that every week.
Prayer for a Happy Death
O God, great and omnipotent judge of the living and the dead, we are to appear before you after this short life to render an account of our works. Give us the grace to prepare for our last hour by a devout and holy life, and protect us against a sudden and unprovided death. Let us remember our frailty and mortality, that we may always live in the ways of your commandments. Teach us to "watch and pray" (Lk 21:36), that when your summons comes for our departure from this world, we may go forth to meet you, experience a merciful judgment, and rejoice in everlasting happiness. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.
I'm constantly amazed by people who work into old age, as I'd judge it, and keeping working. A dear friend of mine, now in his 70s, noted that just the other day. He doesn't have to, he just is. Likewise, I know a collection of lawyers who fit that description. The law is a hard job, surrounded by hard facts, hard people, and difficult scenarios
I think they just know nothing else, their real personalities, perhaps, burnt to the core eons ago.
In contrast, I'm also constantly amazed by those who have extensive plans for their retirements well before they can retire. Another friend of mine fits this category, but when I look at him, I can tell his physical condition is so poor it'd be amazing if he lives long enough to retire. It's one of those things where you don't know what to say. If you were to be blunt, you'd say that the dreams of early retirement are probably forlorn, but that his dreams of retiring at all may be foreclosed by a bad early death, if some correction isn't made soon, and those corrections are harder to make once you are past your 30s.
The call came to my wife on Saturday. I could tell from the tone what the topic was, without even being told. A relative of hers was on his way to the hospital by helicopter. Even though he was being sent in, in that fashion, I knew, but did not say it, that he'd not make it. I'm not even sure if he wanted to.
And so another death.
In this case, unlike my uncle, he was much younger. My age, in fact. I hadn't seen him for many years, and before his troubles really set in. He hadn't been able to adjust to them well. The most common comment from people, none of whom were surprised, was that his torment was over.
I don't have any big plans, like one of my friends, for retirement. I hope to be healthy, and just become more of an agrarian-killetarian than I presently am. Funny thing is that recently I've been running into people who claim "you're looking really good". Somebody asked me the other day, indeed at the funeral gathering, "you're working out", the question in the form of a statement. Not really.
Indeed, I've gained some weight I seemingly just can't lose, which I think is the byproduct of my thyroid medicine, which has made me hungry, and I know that I'm not in the physical condition I was before my recent health troubles commenced. People close to me just won't accept that, which brings me to the other side of the retirement coin noted above. Some lawyers I know are already planning for me to work into my 70s, as that's the thing to do, apparently. Long-suffering spouse, for her part, won't say something like that, but from an ag family, she doesn't really accept the concept of retirement anyhow. Having said that, I wouldn't plan on my retiring from the ag operation either.
It finally occured to me, however, what's different about agricultural jobs as opposed to others, at least if you are an owner of the enterprise or part of it. The occupation itself is existentially human. It is, if you will, an Existential Occupation, or at least it is right now. The mindless gerbil like advance of "progress" may ruin that and reduce it to just another occupation.
Existential Occupations are ones that run with our DNA as a species. Being a farmer/herdsman is almost as deep in us as being a hunter or fisherman, and it stems from the same root in our being. It's that reason, really, that people who no longer have to go to the field and stream for protein, still do, and it's the reason that people who can buy frozen Brussels sprouts at Riddleys' still grown them on their lots. And its the reason that people who have never been around livestock will feel, after they get a small lot, that they need a cow, a goat, or chickens. It's in us. That's why people don't retire from real agriculture.
It's not the only occupation of that type, we might note. Clerics are in that category. Storytellers and Historians are as well. We've worshiped the Devine since our onset as a species, and we've told stories and kept our history as story the entire time. They're all existential in nature. Those who build certain things probably fit into that category as well, as we've always done that. The fact that people tinker with machinery as a hobby would suggest that it's like that as well.
Indeed, if it's an occupation. . . and also a hobby, that's a good clue that its an Existential Occupation.
If I were to retire from my career, which I can't right now, I wouldn't be one of those people who spend their time traveling to Rome or Paris or wherever. I have very low interest in doing that. I'd spend my time writing, fishing, hunting, gardening (and livestock tending). That probably sounds pretty dull to most people. I could imagine myself checking our Iceland or Ireland, or fjords in Norway, but I likely never will.
What I can't imagine myself doing is imagining that age and decline don't occur, and that I should be in court in my 70s. I don't think that the lawyers who do that realize that younger lawyers don't admire that, and most of the lawyers I'm running into in court are younger than me now.
And indeed, frankly, it isn't admirable. People who work a hard non-existential job and keep at it into their advanced old age, or at least past their 7th decade, have just lost something they were when they were young, and much of that is themselves. They've lost who they were.
AN ACT OF FAITH IN ANTICIPATION OF THE HOUR OF DEATH
From the works of St. Pompilio M. Pirrotti
On my journey toward eternity, dear Lord,
I am surrounded by powerful enemies of my soul.
I live in fear and trembling,
especially at the thought of the hour of death,
on which my eternity will depend,
and of the fearful struggle that the devil will then have to wage against me,
knowing that little time is left for him to accomplish my eternal ruin.
I desire, therefore, O Lord,
to prepare myself for it from this hour,
by offering you now, in view of my last hour,
my profession of faith and love for you,
which is so effectual in repressing and rendering useless
all the crafty and wicked schemes of the enemy
and which I resolve to oppose to him at that moment of such grave consequence,
even though he should dare alone to attack with his deceits
the peace and tranquility of my spirit.
I N.N.,
in the presence of the Most Holy Trinity,
the blessed Virgin Mary,
my holy Guardian Angel
and the entire heavenly host,
affirm that I wish to live and die under the standard of the Holy Cross.
I firmly believe all that our Holy Mother,
the holy, catholic and apostolic Church,
believes and teaches.
It is my steadfast intention to die in this holy faith,
in which all the holy martyrs, confessors and virgins of Christ have died,
as well as all those who have saved their souls.
If the devil should tempt me to despair
because of the multitude and grievousness of my sins,
I affirm that from this day forth
I firmly hope in the infinite mercy of God,
which will not let itself be overcome by my sins,
and in the Precious Blood of Jesus
which has washed all my sins away.
If the devil should assail me with temptations to presumption
by reason of the small amount of good
which by the help of God
I may have been able to accomplish,
I confess from this day forth
that I deserve eternal separation from God
a thousand times by my sins
and I entrust myself entirely
to the infinite goodness of God,
through whose grace alone I am what I am.
Finally, if the evil spirit should suggest to me
that the pains inflicted upon me by our Lord
in that last hour of my life
are too heavy to bear,
I affirm now that all will be as nothing
in comparison with the punishments I have deserved throughout life.
In the bitterness of my soul
I call to remembrance all my years;
I see my iniquities, I confess them and detest them.
Ashamed and sorrowful I turn to you,
my God, my Creator and my Redeemer.
Forgive me, O Lord, by the multitude of your mercies;
forgive your servant whom you have redeemed by your Precious Blood.
My God, I turn to you, I call upon you, I trust in you;
to your infinite goodness
I commit the entire reckoning of my life.
I have sinned greatly, O Lord:
enter not into judgment with your servant,
who surrenders to you
and confesses his guilt.
Of myself I cannot make satisfaction to you for my countless sins:
I do not have the means to pay you for my infinite debt.
But your Son has shed his Blood for me,
and greater than all mine sins is your mercy.
O Jesus, be my Saviour!
At the hour of my fearful crossing to eternity
put to flight the enemy of my soul;
grant me grace to overcome every difficulty,
for you alone do mighty wonders.
Lord,
according to the multitude of your tender mercies
I shall enter into your dwelling place.
Trusting in your pity,
I commend my spirit into your hands!
May the Blessed Virgin Mary
and my Guardian Angel
accompany my soul into the heavenly country. Amen.
We should all hope and indeed pray for a happy death. And perhaps we should pray for a happy life, which is one worthwhile. That doesn't, quite frankly, include the "I'm going to work here at my desk until I die". That's surrendering to fear or meaningless, in most cases.
Again, there are exceptions. People with Existential Occupations, people who own their own special business, and the like. The list can't really be set out in full.
That doesn't include pouring through the latest edition of the IRS code for deductions, or reading the Restatement (Second) of Torts, or engineering an oilfield implement.
Wednesday, April 17, 2024
Why Law School Should Be an Undergraduate Program — Minding The Campus
Why Law School Should Be an Undergraduate Program — Minding The Campus: In most parts of the world, lawyers are formally trained in an undergraduate degree program. The Bachelor of Law (LL.B), is also an accelerated three-year curriculum. In the United States it takes over twice as long. First you need a 4-year undergraduate degree in any subject—a gratuitous requirement, as there is no such thing as […]
Thoughts?
There's something to this suggestion, particularly since law school has become essentially a trade school, as that's what the law is now, a trade.
But it shouldn't be, which might be why law school shouldn't be either.
Wednesday, April 10, 2024
Wednesday, March 20, 2024
Carrie Gress and feminism.
Lex Anteinternet: Lex Anteinternet: St. Patrick's Day: Lex Anteinternet: St. Patrick's Day : A Celtic cross in a local cemetery, marking the grave of a very Irish, and Irish Catholic, figure....
In the afternoon, I went out fishing and took the dog. On the way, I was listening to a podcast, like I'll tend to do. It was a Catholic Answers Focus interview of Carrie Gress and it was profound. I'll post on that elsewhere.
Here is elsewhere.
The title of the episode, and it should be easy to find, is Can Catholic's Fix Feminism? Gress' answer seems to be no, but what was so interesting about it is that she, as a woman who holds a PhD has had a career as a professor was frank on some things that we've addressed here repeatedly, but from a more academic standpoint, and she was able to thread them together. Without really expressing it the same way we have here, she's spoke on metaphysics, theology and evolutionary biology, as well as political science.
We've typed out all of that here, but without really including the Marxism portion.
Gress basic thesis is that feminism really came out of the same radicalism as Marxism, and adopted a Marxist view that women should be compelled to live to the male standard. It didn't really free women at all, it forced them into the male world where they're now judged on how well the live up. . . and down, to it. She dared to say something that's an anathema to modern Americans, that your career will not make you happy, and it very well may make you miserable.
Tying it in to Marxism is also a bit of an anathema of a topic too, to most, but if you look at it, it's hard not to go there, at least in a fellow traveler's sort of way early on. To at least a degree, even if you want to just lighten it up, early feminism fits into the family or radical movements of the early 20th Century, all of which were pretty heavily dominated by far left thought. Communism itself was very hostile to motherhood and marriage, and wanted to destroy the latter. The early radical Communists were opposed to both, and Whitaker Chambers discusses in Witness. The association, at least tangentially, is there. And of course, as the far left saw human value only in terms of people being "workers", this makes sense. The American far left still speaks this way today, with Bernie Sanders, for example, being in favor of warehousing children so that their mothers can work, adopting the traditional leftist view that a human's value is found only there.
We've dealt with all of this before, of course, and frankly we've taken it one step further.
We are so in the thick of this that we hardly appreciate where we at on these matters now. But this explains much of the misery of the modern world. We don't live in accordance with our natures, or at least very few of us do, and we're really not allowed to. An aspect of that is this topic. Women have careers open to them, and should, but they are now compelled to act like men within them, in every fashion.
I've recently had the displeasure of witnessing this in a peculiar fashion. It hasn't been a pleasant thing to observe. The interesting thing is that in observing it, when people feel free to make comments, they grasp their way back to the old standards, as with so much else, even while not living them.
Related Thread:
Women at work. "Whoever fought, for women to get jobs. . . . why?. . . . why did you do that?" Looking at women (and men) in the workplace, and modern work itself, with a long lens.
Labels: Agrarianism, Capitalism, Career Myth, Distributism, Playboy Philosophy, Sexual Revolution, The relationship between men and women, Traditionalism, trends, Women, Work
Thursday, March 14, 2024
The Agrarian's Lament: A sort of Agrarian Manifesto. What's wrong with the world (and how to fix it). Part 5. What would that look like, and why would it fix anything, other than limiting my choices and lightening my wallet? The Distributist Impact.
The Agrarian's Lament: A sort of Agrarian Manifesto. What's wrong with th...:
So, having published this screed over a period of days, and then dropping the topic, we resume with the question.
So, having published this screed over a period of days, and then dropping the topic, we resume with the question.
Why, exactly, do you think this would do a darn thing?
Well, here's why.
A daily example.
When I started this entry on Monday, March 4, I got up, fixed coffee and took the medication I'm now required to as I'm 60 years old, and the decades have caught up with me. The pills are from a locally owned pharmacy, I'd note, not from a national chain, so I did a distributist thing there. It's only one block away, and I like them. Distributism.
I toasted a bagel, as in my old age the genetic "No" for adults consuming milk has caught up with me. I got that at Albertson's and I don't know where the bagels are made. Albertson's is a national chain that's in the process of trying to merge with another national chain. Corporate Capitalism.
The coffee was Boyers, a Colorado outfit. Quasi distributist there.
I put cream cheese on the bagel. It was the Philadelphia brand. Definitely corporate capitalist there.
I'd already shaved (corporate capitalist, but subsidiarity makes that make sense).
I got dressed and headed to work. My car was one I bought used, but its make is one that used to be sold by a locally owned car dealer. No more. The manufacturers really prefer regional dealers, and that's what we have. All the cars we have come from the dealer when it was locally owned.
I don't have that option anymore. Corporate Capitalism.
In hitting the highway, I looked up the highway towards property owned by a major real estate developer/landlord. A type of corporate capitalism.
I drove past some churches and the community college on the way in. Subsidiarity.
I drove past one of the surviving fraternal clubs. Solidarity.
I drove past the major downtown churches. Solidarity.
I drove past a collection of small stores, and locally owned restaurants adn bars, and went in the buildings. Distributism.
I worked the day, occasionally dealing with the invading Colorado or other out of state firms. Corporate Capitalism.
I reversed my route, and came home.
So, in this fairly average day, in a Western midsized city, I actually encountered a fair number of things that would be absolutely the same in a Distributist society. But I encountered some that definitely ran very much counter to it.
Broadening this out.
A significant thing was just in how I ate. And I eat a lot more agrarian than most people do.
The meat in our freezer was either taken by me in the field, or a cow of our own that was culled. Most people cannot say that. But all the other food was store bought, and it was all bought from a gigantic national chain. In 1924 Casper had 72 grocers, and it was less than a quarter of its present size. In 1925, just one year later, it had 99 grocery stores. The number fell back down to 70 in 1928.
August 1923 list of grocers in Casper that sold Butternut Coffee, which was probably every grocer.
When I was a kid, the greater Casper area had Safeway, Albertson's, Buttreys and an IGA by my recollection, in the national chains. Locally, however, it had six local grocery stores, including one in the neighboring town of Mills. One located right downtown, Brattis' was quite large, as was another one located in North Casper.
Now the entire area has one local grocery store and it's a specialty store.
Examples like this abound. We have a statewide sporting goods store and a local one, but we also have a national one. The locals are holding their own. When I was young there was a locally owned store that had actually been bought out from a regional chain, and a national hardware store that sold sporting goods. So this hasn't changed a lot.
And if we go to sporting goods stores that sell athletic equipment, it hasn't either. We have one locally owned one and used to have two. We have one national chain, and used to have none.
In gas stations, we have a locally owned set of gas stations and the regional chains. At one time, we only had local stores, which were franchises. The local storefronts might be storefronts, in the case of the national chains, as well.
When I was a kid, the only restaurants that were national were the fast food franchises, which had competition from local outfits that had the same sort of fare and setting. The locals burger joints are largely gone, save for one I've never been to and which is a "sit down" restaurant, and we have national and regional restaurant chains. We retain local ones as well.
We don't have any chain bars, which I understand are a thing, and local brewing, killed off by Prohibition, has come roaring back.
We used to have a local meat processing plant that was in fact a regional one, taking in cattle from the area, and packing it and distributing it back out, including locally. There are no commercial packing plants in Wyoming now. The closest one, I think, is in Greeley Colorado, and the packing industry is highly concentrated now.
We don't have a local creamery, either. We had one of those at least into the 1940s, and probably well beyond that. The milk for that establishment was supplied by a dairy that was on the south side of town. It's no longer that and hasn't been for my entire life.
We've been invaded by the super huge law firms that are not local.
Our hospital is part of a private chain now, and there's massive discontent. That discontent took one of the county commissioners that was involved in the transfer of that entity out of county hands down in the last election. But that hasn't arrested the trend. My doctor, who I really like is part of a regional practice, not his own local one, anymore. This trend is really strong.
And then there's Walmart, the destroyer of locally owned stores of every variety.
So would distribution make anything different?
The question is asked by a variant of Wendell Berry's "what are people for", but in the form of "what is an economy for?".
It's to serve people, and to serve them in their daily lives, as people.
It's not to make things as cheap as possible.
On all of the retail things I've mentioned, every single one could be served by local retail stores. If we didn't have Albertson's, Riddleys and Smith's, we'd have a lot of John Albertson & Son's, Bill Riddley & Family, and Emiliano Smith's stores, owned by their families. If Walmart didn't exist, and moreover couldn't exist, it would be replaced locally, probably by a half dozen family owned retailers. . . or more.
Prices would in fact be higher, although there would be competition, but the higher prices would serve families who operated them, and by extension the entire community. And this is just one example.
Much of the old infrastructure in fact remains. As discussed above, numerous small businesses remain, and according to economic statistics, small business remains the number one employer in the US. But the fact is that giant chain corporations have made a devastating impact on the country, making all local business imperiled and some practically impossible to conduct.
Reversing that would totally reorient the local economy. Almost everyone would work for themselves, or for a locally owned business, owned by somebody they knew personally, and who knew them personally.
And with that reorientation, would come a reorientation of society.
We'll look at that a bit later. Let's turn towards the agrarian element next.
Last Prior:
What's wrong with the world (and how to fix it). Part 4. A Well Educated Society.
Wednesday, March 6, 2024
Wednesday, February 21, 2024
The Transitions Issue.
The February 2024 issue of Wyoming Lawyer was exceptionally good. Its focus was on "transitions", by which it mostly meant career transitions (but also had some articles on the scary advances of AI).
The magazine usually good, frankly. Indeed, a magazine that has such a limited circulation can't be expected to be great, but it actually is very, very good as a rule.
This issue was on transitions, as noted, mostly, and it had some truly excellent articles. One was about retiring Wyoming Supreme Court Justice Keith Kautz, who was a great judge. I liked the question he was asked about his favorite quotes, with the answer being:
I have two:
1. Encouragement is the oxygen of the soul.
2. The greatest day in your life or mine, the day we truly grow up, is the day when we take responsibility for our own attitudes.
Those are both pretty profound. Nothing will burn a person out quicker than to work with people who only criticize them. And taking responsibility for your own attitudes is existentially a magnus opus. I don't know that many people fully ever manage to do that, myself included.
Kautz is retiring as he's hit the statutory maximum for a judge of age 70. He didn't seem bitter about it. Justice Fox, who does seem bitter about the age limit being 70, mentioned it and Justice Kautz retiring in her State of the Judiciary speech. She did reference it with her dry wit, referring to the age of 70 as "constitutional senility" and Kautz was in the audience.
An attempt at dry wit, I think, was made by the Bar President in her opening article of the issue, which was about a long time assistant retiring. She had the line:
I always thought that money, fame, and power brought the greatest happiness, but according to the 80-year-old Harvard Study of Adult Development, close relationships with others is what really keeps us happy.
I'm pretty sure the first part of that was intended as a joke.
Her advice seems pretty standard, however, that being:
First, people have an innate desire to have a sense of purpose and meaning. When retirement comes, sometimes that sense of purpose can be lost. So, after taking some time off, it is good to start thinking about something meaningful that will fill the days. This could be volunteering, substitute teaching, or mentoring. It could also include learning a new skill (such as a new language), picking up a new hobby or seeing new places.
Second, try to maintain and/or enhance social connections with others. I always thought that money, fame, and power brought the greatest happiness, but according to the 80-year-old Harvard Study of Adult Development, close relationships with others is what really keeps us happy. In fact, these ties help delay mental and physical decline, and are better predictors of long and happy lives than social class, IQ, or even genes.
Third, stay physically active as much as possible. Studies show that when someone retires, sedentary activities, such as watching television, increase dramatically. While watching extra television is not necessarily a bad thing in and of itself, much has been written about the link between longevity and good physical health. So, please try and enjoy our state as much as possible by spending time outside running, hiking or skiing.
Probably all solid advice.
Indeed, it causes me to recall that I recently was speaking to a cousin of mine who is retired from Federal service and who is keeping pretty busy. We were speaking on a grim topic, which caused me to joke that in old age I was going to take up grizzly bear wrestling. He stated he was going to take up heavy drinking (he doesn't drink) as that's what so many of his retired colleagues seem to be doing, to the point of death.
Grim.
Another article was about retirement planning itself, which didn't mention grizzly bear wrestling or heavy drinking. It was frankly really good, which is very much the exception to the rule in lawyers magazines. Usually in lawyer magazines and articles, the "planning" is about how you can go on practicing law for an additional ten years after you are dead. The articles are about how in "retirement" you can go from litigation to some other field of law, or perhaps switch from defense to plaintiff's work, or something equally moronic. This article wasn't that way at all. Indeed, it acknowledged:
Arthur C. Brooks, former president of the American Enterprise Institute and now a Harvard Business School professor, concluded in a July 2019 Atlantic article that professional decline is inevitable sooner or later, simply as the result of aging.
About time somebody said that. I've practiced against one lawyer who was a physical wreck and in clear mental decline, but was "never going to retire". He did, but I think it was because his (family owned) firm basically gave him a back room and things to pretend to do. Not very dignified. He probably doesn't actually know that he is retired. I used to ask his son how he was doing and to say hello, but it was clear it was an embarrassing topic, and he didn't want to have it come up.
I know another lawyer here in town, who is very physically fit I'll note, who is practicing law actively, not part-time, in his early 70s and declares that he'll never retire. How boring can you be?
I get that with certain occupations that are real vocations. But let's face it, most of the professions aren't. People may declare that they love being an accountant, or they love being a lawyer, or they love being an actuary, but they are lying. Shoot, they probably are lying if they say that about engineering. Farming, teaching, maybe medicine, the ministry, those are intrinsically different.
Indeed, because, in my arriving old age, my health has taken a beating the last few years one of my newer doctors, whose son was a high-powered lawyer in California and is now a Federal District Court judge in that state, asks me every time about my work. "You are a lawyer?". And he always asks, in the form of a statement, "And you love it". I'm not sure why that question is necessary to my medical treatment, but as its asked every time, maybe it is. Maybe it's because lawyers are so famously associated with depression, alcoholism and drug abuse that the medical profession regards it as necessary. Who knows. Anyhow, after doing it for over 30 years it'd be surprising if I broke down and started sobbing about it or something, but there are a lot of other things I'm interested in too. Having said that, I don't want to chat to somebody I barely know about those topics either.
Going back for a second, on vocations that make sense that people keep on keeping on in them, at least some of those actually have mandatory retirement ages, where the law allows it. I don't know about physicians, I think not, but there aren't that many that practice into old age, and I've been told that's because there's a general feeling that mental acuity decline in the late 40s and the practice advances so fast that you start to become dangerous to your patients. That's particularly true of surgeons, not all physicians, so you will see some practice into relatively old age.
In our diocese, Catholic Priests must retire at 70. We hear a lot about there being a shortage of Priests, although the reasons for that are debatable (Wyoming has never produced sufficient numbers of Priests for its own needs) but the Diocese nonetheless feels that 70, they need to retire, which usually means being quasi part-time. They can't be the pastors at a parish, for example.
Under Canon 401 of the 1983 Code of Canon Law all Catholid bishops must submit their resignation to the Pope at the age of 75.
It's a good policy.
Changing gears, even the back page interview, which is always of a practicing lawyer, was good for a change. It is occasionally, I'll admit, but more often than not it's an interview of somebody who just graduated from law school and is touring Patagonia or something. . . i.e., they haven't practiced law yet. This one was of a lawyer who has over 30 years under his belt and noted:
I was the only kid in my elementary school (and perhaps the only attorney in Wyoming) whose dad has been a matador de toros.
I'll bet that's right.
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