Showing posts with label Subsidiarity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Subsidiarity. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 9, 2025
Sunday, November 9, 2025
CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 108th Edition. “The brave men and women of the USCG are pleased to be able to buy Trump wine and cider tax free.”
Announcement confirming that Trump wine and cider is now stocked at Coast Guard BX's.
Sigh.
Interestingly, just yesterday I heard a Catholic Answers interview of Dr. Andrew Willard Jones on his book The Church Against the State. The interview had a fascinating discussion on sovereignty and subsidiarity, and included a discussion on systems of organizing society, including oligarchy.
Oligarchy is now where we are at.
Last edition:
CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 107th Edition. Tacky Crap, Delusion, and the Sgt. Schultz defense.
Saturday, May 24, 2025
Here's Six Ways Trump’s Budget Will Hurt Rural Americans
Here's Six Ways Trump’s Budget Will Hurt Rural Americans: Right now, Congress is working on a giant, fast-track bill that would make historic cuts to basic needs programs to finance another round of tax breaks for the wealthy and...
Thursday, May 22, 2025
The Wyoming Freedom Caucus and its self-inflicted wounds
The Wyoming Freedom Caucus and its self-inflicted wounds: In a move that pokes holes in its "we the people" posture, the group of state elected officials is going after groups of local elected officials, columnist Rod Miller writes.
Wednesday, January 8, 2025
Work with meaning and the meaning of work.
You see, in this world there's two kinds of people, my friend: Those with loaded guns and those who dig. You dig.
Blondie, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
I have a theory that certain work is existential by nature. My post on that from several months ago:
Why do I note this?
Well I've had a bunch of synchronicitous events happen recently that perhaps demand it being noted, assuming that anything must be noted here at all. Because they're all sort of circular, I'll start in one spot and gather the round corral, noting that these recollections are all recent, but not chronological.
I was walking out of the sporting goods store and ran into a law school colleague. For some reason or another, for much of my life, I've always been the youngest person in a group as a rule, even when I really shouldn't have been. Anyhow, this fellow, like two other of my law school friends, was an older law student, in law school, although I'm not sure how old he really was then, Two of my other friends, both Vietnam War era veterans, were in their 40s, so they're in their mid 70s now. I think this fellow was probably in his mid to late 30s. He remained remarkably the same looking all that time.
He kind of bounced around at first as a lawyer before landing in a firm where he practiced for maybe 20 years. He's retired now, and has been for awhile. He asked me if I was getting ready to retire, which I indicated I wasn't, but I did ask him about the process, and he gave me some details of how he'd gone about it.
Good to know from somebody who has done it.
He doesn't miss practicing at all.
In contrast to this, a close friend of mine, well really a relative, who is a lawyer who must be crowding 70 told me the other day he's not going to. He'd miss the collegiality of being a lawyer.
That answer shocked me. Not that he wasn't going to retire, but the collegiality.
Eh?
It may be just me, but only a handful of my friends are lawyers. I do have some lawyer friends. But most of my friends aren't lawyers and never have been. I wouldn't miss most lawyers whatsoever. Indeed, I miss a lot of my genuinely close friends due to the practice of law.
This, frankly, is probably an exception to the rule. Law is a unique profession, litigation with in the law even more so, and by and large the onliy people who have a grasp on what it is like are other lawyers. It is, I suppose, kind of like being a combat veteran that way. Lawyers hang out with other lawyers as they're lawyers.
Indeed, being heavily introverted, I've often noted how much lawyers enjoy professional gatherings. They really do. There are organizations that we're all part of and we'll go to a conference and there will be a big dinner or something, everyone goes.
Unless my spouse is with me, or one of the few lawyers I really know well and like, I tend to avoid those gatherings.
Anyhow this takes me to a second point.
I know a couple of lawyers who have lost their souls.
I don't mean in a metaphysical sense. That is, I'm not saying they're condemned to Hell. What I'm saying is that their personalities are gone and been absorbed by false ones in the pursuit of nothing more than money.
It happens to people. It's not a pleasant thing to see.
I was never friends with either of the ones I have in mind. Interestingly, however, one seems to be trying to emerge. One, who sank into this a long time ago actually started talking to me the other day about what he was going to do "next", something he's never said before.
A really good lawyer friend of mine is mostly retired. Like the fellow I mentioned above, while he had his doubts, he hasn't missed the practice at all.
Another good lawyer friend of mine, a woman, is trying to transition from one practice to another.
Two women I know otherwise recently lost their jobs. They weren't lawyers.
I note that as I think women in particular are subject to the Capitalist lie that careers are existentially defining, a completely modern notion.
St Paul was a tent maker. St. Peter a fisherman. I don't know if there are any classic Medieval or Renaissance paintings of St. Paul making a tent, but there should be.
Why do I note that?
Well, for this reason. You don't think much about St. Paul being a tent maker as his occupation didn't define him. His sainthood did.
But a lot of us moderns sure have made our occupations define us. And women are very much doing so now.
This takes me back to the item I linked in above.
That's more than I really need for my point here, but it ties in, this way.
Most careers are just jobs. They're an industrial way of separating you from your homes to make money for somebody else, in exchange for which you make some money too. This was done to men first, and then with the "women's liberation" movement of the 1960s, women drank the KookAide and have been wondering when the good feels will arrive.
They won't.
Most jobs have no greater existential meaning than that. If you define yourself by them, you are defining yourself as a fiction.
Which is why I worry about the lawyers who collapse into the cartoonish litigation personality. It makes you a cartoon, and not a very interesting one.
It's also why lawyers who become deep dive into the Whaling For Justice personality, or something like it, sort of boil off the people they were and become somebody nobody is interested in.
And I also think that's why old lawyers have a hard time retiring. After selling your life away, is this it? It must be. This must be it. I must love this as otherwise. . . .
I will note, and strongly, that I'm not advocating here for something that seems to be a current rage. Don't get any post high school education and hope for the best.
Indeed, the advocates of that, don't mean that. They mean don't forget to look at occupations where you work with your hands.
Now listen to me, all of you. You are all condemned men. We keep you alive to serve this ship. So row well, and live.
Quintus Arrius, Ben Hur.
The truth of the matter is that we sell our lives for a living, but we shouldn't sell our souls. A lot of career propaganda emphasis the nifty life you are supposed to have, but not the risk of losing your soul, and here I mean in both senses. Being able to sell the minutes of your life away for a decent return means that you need to have skills of some sort that are valuable. People should try to acquire those if for nothing else their own protection.
Women, I'd note, are particularly vulnerable here. A woman with a professional degree, such as law, is armed against loss of employer. A woman who doesn't have some sort of valuable skill is at the mercy of her employer. They're the ones who lose their jobs readily, and who are subject to all sorts of risks.
The trick, I guess, is to get those skills and remember that we shouldn't lose who we are.
One group of people who tend to make that career choice are people who work for the government. They're often grossly underpaid, but they also tend to have weighted the options and elected towards "quality of life". Lawyers who work for the AG's office, or biologists who work for state and Federal agencies provide such examples.
Interestingly, people on the outside in the same fields tend to hold these people in contempt. I guess people working 80 hours a week to make a go of it are naturally resentful towards those who do not. But those people are often very dedicated to their professions and even more purist than those who sell their labor in the private market. A dear cousin of mine who recently died was one such example. She was a research biologist at a university.
We're about to head into a Federal administration here that seems to contain a contempt to government employees. Indeed one recent campaign featured somebody who wants to limit the amount of time you can work for the Federal government. The same campaign repeatedly noted the candidates rural roots.
The rural roots are real, but what an irony. Descending from homesteaders means that you descent from the biggest American welfare program ever, one that used the U.S. Army to violently expel land occupants due to their race, to hand it out to European Americans. Don't mistake my point, I love agriculture and regard it as an existential occupation, and if I'd been alive when you could have homesteaded, I would have. But people who loved the land so much they fought for it, and lost, had the moral high ground on that, and those who came in behind them benefitted from the Federal largess and murder.
If you work for a living, why do you kill yourself working?
Tuco, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
Genesis tells us that since we sinned in the Garden, we've condemned ourselves to work. But it's also obvious that work was always part of the plan. It's interesting how well this comports to how evolution and societal development worked. We were likely a very happy group as aboriginals, and we know now that depression and modern angst is unknown in hunter gatherer societies. But we ate from the tree of knowledge and acquired it,
Well, now we have to work. Make the best of it.
Wednesday, October 9, 2024
Just two weeks ago Congress passed a bill that included funding for FEMA.
Be careful what you wish for, lest it come true!
Aesop.
Contrary to news reports, it was not a FEMA funding bill, it was the stop gap bridge measure to keep the government open.
The hard right in Congress, including Wyoming's lone Congressman, voted against it. Voting against such bills has been really popular in the populist street level politics of Wyoming. And the hard right sees it as a way to force fiscal responsibility, as long as you don't want to be too cynical about it. It'd also handicap the government if it didn't pass, of course, which some long for.
Rep. Hageman gave her reasons as follows:
Washington, DC – Today, Congresswoman Harriet Hageman voted in favor of H.R. 9494 - Continuing Appropriations and Other Matters Act, 2025 (CR) that would keep the federal government open through March 28, 2025 and include the SAVE Act. The SAVE Act, cosponsored by Rep. Hageman and passed earlier this year by the House of Representatives with bipartisan support, would require states to obtain proof of citizenship—in person—when registering an individual to vote and require states to remove non-citizens from existing voter rolls. The bill failed 220-202.Representative Hageman stated, “Safeguarding our election process is critically important, especially with the open border policies of the Biden-Harris administration that have allowed over 11 million illegals to enter our country. By including the SAVE Act with government funding and extending the funding into 2025, when Republicans have a strong chance of controlling the House, Senate, and White House, America wins. We will be able to craft responsible appropriations bills that slash wasteful spending, stop the current administration’s radical climate agenda, and eliminate woke DEI programs from federal agencies – at the same time, we can ensure that only American citizens vote in federal elections.
“I am disappointed that the House was unable to pass H.R. 9494 today. While Continuing Resolutions are never ideal, securing our elections and creating an opportunity to pass conservative spending bills in 2025 created a unique opportunity. I will not support a CR that fails to include the SAVE Act.”
I'm sure her logic is likewise popular in the state, but I'd note that tying immigration to continuing spending is linking two unrelated things. She voted against the bill that passed.
Anyhow, while this wasn't a FEMA spending bill, FEMA is part of the government and gets its money from the government, which would have closed if the CR hadn't passsed. . . .
FEMA is now addressing hurricane damage in the Southeast last week, and is about to deal with a second hurricane that looks to hit Florida with a fury not matched in a century.
Interestingly, the Trump campaign is now lying (imagine that) about disaster relief funds not making it to Appalachia. Trump has, of course, inspired the far right and the "shut the government down" midset.
Well, what about us?
Here are the list of disasters that FEMA recognizes for this year in Wyoming:
Incident Period: - and continuingFire Management Assistance Declaration declared onIncident Period: - and continuingFire Management Assistance Declaration declared onIncident Period: - and continuingFire Management Assistance Declaration declared on
And quite frankly, there are going to be more to come.
The Elk Fire near Dayton and Sheridan is now up to 75,000 and is only 10% contained as of this morning. A forest fire broke out in this county yesterday afternoon.*
These fires aren't stopping until it snows, and daily temperatures are freakishly high for October.
Let's discuss subsidiarity.
Subsidiarity on this site is defined in the Catholic sense. It is an organizing principle that things (problems, matters, politics, economics) ought to be handled by the smallest, lowest or least centralized competent authority.
Least centralized competent authority, not the least centralized authority.
The most centralized competent authority can indeed be the Federal government for large disasters, particularly multistate disasters, and ones which require large sums of money that cannot be locally obtained.
That latter is particularly the case for Wyoming.
We can't afford these disasters on our own. We can't afford to fight them. We can't address what they destroy.
Wyomingites are on social media right now complaining that the country is ignoring us. Well, attention works two ways.
This upcoming 2025 Legislature is likely to see the House controlled by the "Wyoming" Freedom Caucus. The "Wyoming" Freedom Caucus basically wants to give the Federal Government the middle finger salute. But nobody in the state wants to tell Washington "no thanks, you keep your FEMA, Highway, FAA money, we'll do it on our own".
There's a word for lashing out when you don't get what you want, and see yourself as the center of things.
A tantrum, angry outburst, temper tantrum, lash out, meltdown, fit, or hissy fit is an emotional outburst, usually associated with those in emotional distress. It is typically characterized by stubbornness, crying, screaming, violence, defiance, angry ranting, a resistance to attempts at pacification, and, in some cases, hitting and other physically violent behavior. Physical control may be lost; the person may be unable to remain still; and even if the "goal" of the person is met, they may not be calmed. Throwing a temper tantrum can lead to a child getting detention or being suspended from school for older school age children, and can result in a timeout or grounding, complete with room or corner time, at home. A tantrum may be expressed in a tirade: a protracted, angry speech.
Wikipedia.
“Be careful what you wish for, lest it come true!”, Aesop counseled, and for a reason. And Sappho counseled "don't bite the hand that feeds you".
And, of course:
Pride goes before disaster, and a haughty spirit before a fall.
Proverbs 16:18.
We've been pretty proud here recently.
Footnotes:
*A message from the Game and Fish:
Sheridan – The Wyoming Game and Fish Department advises hunters that the Elk Fire in Sheridan County continues to grow, impacting wildlife habitat and access to certain hunt areas.
Hunt areas impacted by the fire or associated public access closures are currently located within Elk Hunt Areas 37 and 38 and Deer Hunt Areas 24 and 25. This is an active fire situation and these areas may change. Game and Fish is maintaining a fire information page for hunters and updating it regularly.
As of Oct. 5, 2024, the following Access Yes areas have been closed until further notice:
- PK Lane Hunter Management Area.
Sheridan County Walk in Areas #8 and #12.
Game and Fish personnel are assisting public safety officials and fire suppression efforts as requested.
Personnel will assess impacts to Commission-owned properties and wildlife habitat when it is safe to do so.
Members of the public should be extra vigilant in watching for wildlife on roadways to avoid collisions, as animals may relocate to new areas where they usually aren’t expected.
Wildlife are generally adept at moving away from wildfires and the department has not received reports of injured animals at this time. Members of the public who see an injured animal can report the location to the Stop Poaching Hotline at 1-877-WGFD-TIP. The hotline operates 24 hours a day and reports are sent to the nearest wildlife manager to respond.
Hunters should consult the Bighorn National Forest website and Facebook page for the most current information on fire conditions and public access closures.
Other resources for information about the fire, current road closures and other impacts include the Sheridan County Emergency Management Department and Wyoming Department of Transportation.
Hunters can call the Sheridan Regional Office at 307-672-7418 for more information.
Sunday, September 29, 2024
Agitio ter consuli, gemitus britannorum . . .Repellunt barbari ad mare, repellit mare ad barbaros; inter haec duo genera funerum aut iugulamur aut mergimur.
So on this Sunday, 2024, I worked, contrary to God's injunction, like on so many others. As a result, I didn't really catch up with the horrific plight of Appalachia in the wake of Hurricane Helene.
It's awful.
Which makes this the worst, and best, time to note this.
We're headed into a legislative session, and an election season, in which the far right espouses a hatride of the Federal Government. If you are in Appalachia, and vote for the populists, you are voting to handle this disaster on your own. If you are in Wyoming, and voting populists, the same is true of the horrible fires we've experienced and are yet to.
If that is your view, don't ask for help, as stupid and cold as not asking for help would be.
We here are distributists, a philosophy that holds things should devolve to the lowest level possible. Here, that level is the Federal government. Distributism works up, as well as down.
Additionally, how long will we choose to ignore the signs? We've waited longer than we should have as it is. There's still time to act, no matter how much it impacts your temrporary pocket books, with you being temporary as it is.
Thursday, May 30, 2024
A New Business Plot?
In the early 1930s, upset with President Franklin Roosevelt, some well-placed businessmen plotted to stage a coup and install Gen. Smedley Butler (an odd choice, given Butler's independent character) as a fascist "President", or at least there's reason to believe they were plotting that.
Butler wouldn't go along with it, the plot failed, and FDR, thinking it best to not disrupt the country too much, never brought it out in the open, if in fact he did not outright encourage a general belief that the whole thing had never happened.
Read the recent Robert Reich item here:
The dangerous anti-democracy coalition
American oligarchs are joining Trump and his faux working-class MAGA movement
Reich reports that Elon Must recently held a billionair's gathering with the tehme of defeating Biden in which he invited; well. . . :
The guest list included Peter Thiel, Rupert Murdoch, Michael Milken, Travis Kalanick, and Steven Mnuchin, Trump’s Treasury secretary.
You've heard of Murdoch, of course, the Australian-born billionaire who owns newspapers of a certain type, and who has recently been opposed to Trump. And you've heard of Michael Milken. Certainly you've heard of South African born Elon Musk.1
Consider this quote by billionaire Peter Theil.
The 1920s were the last decade in American history during which one could be genuinely optimistic about politics. Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women — two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians — have rendered the notion of ‘capitalist democracy’ into an oxymoron. 2
Consider that somewhat alarming? Well consider this, from the same individual:
But I must confess that over the last two decades, I have changed radically on the question of how to achieve these goals. Most importantly, I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.
Theil contributed $15,000,000 to J.D. Vance's campaign. And according to Reich:
Just 50 families have already injected more than $600 million into the 2024 election cycle, according to a new report from Americans for Tax Fairness. Most of it is going to the Trump Republican Party.
One of the really remarkable things about politics of the last 20 or so years has been the swamping of right wing money into it. Rank and file Republicans like to worry about George Soros, but it's really the far right that's getting the cash infusion, and it's showing. It had a major impact on altering Wyoming's politics existentially, taking a more or less "leave me alone, and I'll leave you alone" brand of local Republicanism into far right populism. Early on, that was accompanied by lots of money. So much so that one frustrated legislature told me that those forces were "buying the legislature".
The amazing thing to see is the degree to which those who have radically different economic interests simply follow along. Again, the far right likes to call everyone else "sheep", but the analogy actually applies to Republican voters far more, who vote against their own economic interests continually.
The extremely wealthy can use their wealth in any number of ways. It's notable that Warren Buffett and Bill Gates weren't on the list. But that this occurs at all is troubling, to say the least.
Capitalist may believe that their interests serve everyone else, and that "freedom" would be "preserved" in an odd sort of Pax Capitalismus with a Cesarean Trump at its head, and probably as a figurehead but wealth, business and capital doesn't exist for the wealthy, but for everyone.
Panem et circenses, hatred and discontent, and false internal enemies. Sadly, the trend is well-developed, helped on by a Democratic Party beholding to its own blood soaked, genitals obsessed left wing.
Sic transit gloria mundi.
Footnotes:
1. There's something concerning here that two really rich guys who were not impoverished when they showed up here are now messing with American politics in some fashion. This, as much as anything, shows how screwed up our immigration policies are. Both Murdoch and Musk ought not to be in the US at all.
2. It's getting impossible not to note the real rise of misogynistic commentary by the far right.
It's not the comments of people like Harrison Butker so much, as the comments by other characters on the far right. Butker's comments have to be taken from the position of traditional Catholic thought. In some Evangelical corners of Christianity, however, there are now some really beyond hostile views of the current roles of women. Interestingly, these same forces seemingly have no problems with conduct well outside the Christian norm, ranging from Trump's serial polygamy to Theil's homosexuality.
All this should give the far right pause. People like Trump, or Theil, clearly aren't in the traditional Christian camp if their own conduct is observed.
Tuesday, May 28, 2024
Going to the hardware store. A note on taxes.
Socialism is when the government does stuff. And it's more socialism the more stuff it does. And if it does a real lot of stuff, it's communism.
Richard D. Wolff.1
I saw them there when I went into the hardware store, but they were talking to somebody and I didn't have to engage them. I was not so lucky on the way out. I glanced over as there oddly enough were cookies at the table and I thought for a moment it might be an effort to raise money for something like the Girl Scouts, but there were no girls there. Only two women, whom I'd guess were in their 70s.
Them: Excuse me sir, are you a registered voter?
I'll be frank, I really hate the initiative and referendum process. I figure most people sign the petitions to get something on the ballot, as they are polite and don't really want to offend the signature takers. Eons ago, I was like that myself.
I've long since being that way. Most of the time I refuse to sign the petitions, but I don't engage the petitioners in debate.
And I didn't this time. I wish I had.
The rest of the brief conversation:
Me: Yes (said in an irritated tone).
Them: Would you like to sign our petition? If passed, it would drop property taxes 50%.
Me: No (said in an even more irritated tone).
By the time I got home, I was irritated with myself. I wish I had engaged them in conversation. If I had, what I would have said is this?
Oh? Property taxes in Wyoming, which has no income tax, pay for police, fire departments, basic city sevices and education. Why do you hate policemen, firemen and teachers?
That's brutal, but that's the truth. If we don't tax property for these things, we have to tax something else, or go without.
This city has had two reported teenage murders in the last month, and a lot of killings here just go unreported. We have a developing violent gang problem. I'm not even going to bother with the drug problem that comes with living in a city that's on an Interstate Highway. We have a homeless problem due to other municipalities busing their homeless to our city. All of these ties right into what I just noted.
Badly educated people are a major social problem that ends up being a burden on emergency services.
The "I don't want to be taxed" movement really came about, no matter how it is thinly intellectually justified, as property taxes have risen significantly in the state in recent years. The reasons are several fold, one simply being that county assessors falsely suppressed raising them, as property values raised, as they're elected officers and they were chicken about it. The State, which has the duty to distribute the taxes, finally got after them to do t heir jobs, and they've been having to do them. That's raised taxes.
Another is that a certain attitude in the state has encouraged people to move in, although a large number move right back out. Those who move in are largely older, having made their lives elsewhere, and having educated their children elsewhere. They sold their houses high in those places, where they should have stayed, and don't want to pay for anything here. Additionally, a lot of these people have real populist views, and would be just fine with not educating anyone in their declining years as they'll be dead as a door nail when current children become ignorant voters themselves.
For that matter, some of the recent imports have washed up from regions where education in particular is lacking. This is particularly the case for people who have come up from the South. Steeped in a sort of ignorance themselves, they aren't thinking things through, and regard education as some sort of left wing conspiracy. This has unfortunately seeped into American conservatism itself, and is now sort of a rallying cry.
Property taxes are rising just because of people like this. They sell out their homes for a pile, and then come here and buy new ones at inflated prices.
I'd really like to know what these people would propose to cut, if we didn't have the property taxes. They likely have no idea. The same people who would cut property taxes would go to a city council meeting and complain about a pothole, which is filled, basically, with money from property taxes.
Property taxes are, moreover, more fair than people suppose. If you have property, you have means. It's telling that these complaints come from old people, not young couples. Renters aren't paying property taxes. And if the property taxes are too high, it may mean you exceeded your means, or you have multiple properties. In the latter case, sell one, that will reduce property values and help distribute the scarce resource.
Footnotes.
1. A relative of mine uses this quote frequently, which is where I heard the first part of it.
I looked Wolff up, and he is an academic Marxist, which I'm not in any sense. Marxism is proven murderous crap. But the quote is not without merit. Every democratic society has governments which do a lot of stuff, and by and large the public really likes the stuff it does if it benefits from it, and doesn't if somebody else does. Some of the most subsidized industries in the US completely fail to realize that and their members loudly complain about the government. Trucking is, for example, a prime example.
Saturday, April 13, 2024
Subsidiarity Economics 2024. The times more or less locally, Part I. And then the day arrived (part two).
Our lifestyle, our wildlife, our land and our water remain critical to our definition of Wyoming and to our economic future.
Dave Freudenthal, former Governor of Wyoming/
January 2, 2024
The Energy Information Administration’s Short Term Energy Outlook Report states that combined generation from wind and solar will overtake generation from coal by more than 90 billion kilowatt-hours this year.
US coal production will drop to its lowest amount since the 1960s, with it taking more miners per ton to produce in the 60s than it does now.
Pennsylvania's Flying Fish Brewing Co. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
January 11, 2024
January 17, 2024
From the Trib:
According to a report put out by the Wyoming State Geological Survey this month, the state’s oil production has not yet surpassed its 2019 high, while nationwide oil production has surpassed pre-pandemic levels.
More than 95 million barrels of oil are expected to be produced in Wyoming in 2023, which is about 3 million more barrels than in 2022. The drilling of new oil wells has helped greatly.
In the first half of 2023, a total of 110 newly drilled oil wells were completed, most of them in the Powder River Basin. This is in line with the first half of 2022, when 118 oil wells were completed.
January 22, 2024
Flying Fish Brewing has declared bankruptcy.
January 23, 2024
U.S. oil production has been holding at or near record highs since October, topping the previous peak from 2020, even though the number of active domestic oil drilling rigs is down by nearly 30% from four years ago.
New technology is the reason why there is higher production with fewer rigs.
And also:
The U.S. set a new annual oil production record on December 15, based on data from the Energy Information Administration. Although the official monthly numbers from the EIA won’t be released for a couple of months, we can calculate that a new record has been set based on the following analysis.
Prices at the pump have been declining.
January 25, 2024
In spite of repeated Republican declarations about how bad the economy is doing, the economy grew 4.9% in the third quarter of 2023, for which the latest figures are out. This grossly exceeds expectations.
This is interesting for a lot of reasons, one of which the "bad economy" is a consistent theme of Republicans in the current election cycle, when in fact this is a classic "good economy". It's frankly bizarre.
Some of that might reflect, however, an ongoing retention of a return to the 1945-1975 economy by Rust Belt voters, and anxiety over an inevitable decline in the fossil fuel economy in the West. The post-war economy is of course never returning, and the change in the direction in the energy economy cannot be arrested, although it too is doing well right now.
January 28, 2024
The Administration plans on providing billions for microchip subsidies for US producers to assure production can be made in the US.
It's worth noting that with war looming with China, there's more than one reason to do this.
The Biden Administration has paused all pending export licenses for liquified national gas (LNG) to consider the climate impacts.
February 8, 2024
Getting Wall Street out of our houses
February 10, 2024
US Credit Card debt is at an all-time high.
World's Foremost Authority On Solar Sheep Advising Wyoming $500 Million Solar Farm
Jobs, Jobs, Jobs
February 11, 2024
It is estimated that over 10% of Canadian craft brewers will close this year.
February 13, 2024
The city of Gillette and BWXT have agreed to work together to look at the possibility of having nuclear facilities and operations in Gillette
February 15, 2024
While this should be no surprise, given what we earlier reported here:
Remington, in its new form, will close its facilities in Ilion, New York, in March.
Colorado has filed suit to stop the Kroger Albertson's merger.
February 21, 2024
Japan's Nikkei stock index soared to an all-time high.
Rivian, the electric truck maker, is laying off 10% of its salaried staff.
This will cause piles of cackling from those who are convinced electric vehicles, which have taken off, will never take off. Rivian was an automotive start-up, something that's really tough to do. Basically, their business model depended on getting into the saturated truck market before other maker went to electric, a real gamble.
Wyoming Gets a Big Win in Court for Coal
CHEYENNE, Wyo. –Wyoming’s coal industry’s earned a
long-awaited legal win today, as three Ninth Circuit judges unanimously sided
with Wyoming’s arguments in support of the continuation of the federal
coal-leasing program. The decision vacated a lower court order that reinstated
Obama-era coal-leasing restrictions and required federal officials to perform
duplicative National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) analysis.
“This ruling is an unequivocal win for our coal industry and a
reminder that the Biden Administration has to follow the law,” Governor Mark
Gordon said. “The Department of Interior now has one less excuse to thwart its
federal coal leasing responsibilities. I appreciate the Attorney General and
her staff for their excellent work on this case.”
The complicated case spanned seven years and involved conflicting
orders issued by former Interior Secretaries, in which Secretary Jewel issued
an order to cease federal coal leasing and conduct a Programmatic Environmental
Statement on the entire coal leasing program. Before that review was complete,
Secretary Zinke rescinded the Jewel Order so coal leasing could resume; lastly
Secretary Haaland rescinded the Zinke order. The district court ruled that the
Department of the Interior needed to conduct additional NEPA analysis before
resuming coal leasing under its existing authorities. Wyoming argued that
the case was moot, because the Zinke order was rescinded by Secretary Haaland.
Litigation costs for Wyoming were covered by the Federal Natural
Resource Policy Account as directed by Governor Gordon.
-END-
March 15, 2024
Nippon Steel proposes to take over U.S. Steel.
March 17, 2024
Tyson, the giant chicken corporation, announced that it's closing a plant in Iowa in June which will result in 1200 people, 15% of the entire town, losing their jobs. Simultaneously, the company is working with an asylum advocate group to hire 2,500 asylum seekers who are cleared to work elsewhere.
Um. . . we've been running a series on our companion blog entitled An Agrarian Manifesto. . . might be worth reading, perhaps particularly these:
A sort of Agrarian Manifesto. What's wrong with the world (and how to fix it). Part 2. Distributism
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
March 21, 2024
Reddit is going public.
March 22, 2024
The Justice Department is suing Apple for Antitrust violations arising from its iPhones.
March 26, 2024
Trader Joe's is raising the price of bananas for the first time in twenty years.
March 27, 2024
Texas based and 7-11 owned USA Gasoline stores have closed in Wyoming.
March 28, 2024
Only the Northern Arapaho Tribe and the city of Cheyenne applied for portions of the $4.6 billion Federal fund to reduce reliance on carbon emissions-heavy energy sources and to become more economically resilient.
Fisker is cutting the prices of its electric Ocean SUV by 39%.
April 1, 2024
Gold hit $2,262.19/oz.
April 8, 2024
The price of oil dropped 1%.
April 11, 2024
The Aerodrome: “It stinks, like bad medicine going down, it’s a h...: So stated a Casper City Councilman about extending an additional $400,000 to SkyWest Delta to anchor the flight to Salt Lake City from Caspe...
April 12, 2024
April 13, 2024
And gold hit a record again.
Last Prior Edition:
Subsidiarity Economics. The times more or less locally, Part XVI. And then the day arrived.
Recent Related Threads:
Friday, March 22, 2024
The Agrarian's Lament: A sort of Agrarian Manifesto. A sort of Agrarian Manifesto. What's wrong with the world (and how to fix it). Part 7. What would that look like, and why would it fix anything, other than limiting my choices and lightening my wallet? Wouldn't every one be just bored and poor?
The Agrarian's Lament: A sort of Agrarian Manifesto. What's wrong with th...:
His life will grow out of the ground like the other lives of the place, and take its place among them. He will be with them - neither ignorant of them, nor indifferent to them, nor against them - and so at last he will grow to be native-born. That is, he must reenter the silence and the darkness, and be born again.
Wendell Berry, A Native Hill.
So we've gone through this and lamented on the state of the world.
We looked at how working for largely local businesses, in an economy in which most were local, would work, in terms of economics.
In other words, if you needed an appliance, and went to Wally's Appliance Store, owned and operated by Wally, rather than Walmart, owned and operated by anonymous corporate shareholders, how would that look?
And we looked at something more radical yet, Agrarianism.
So how does this all tie together, and what difference would it really make?
Let's revisit the definition of Agrarianism.
Given the above, isn't Agrarianism simply agricultural distributism?
Well, no.
Agrarianism is an ethical perspective that privileges an agriculturally oriented political economy. At its most concise, agrarianism is “the idea that agriculture and those whose occupation involves agriculture are especially important and valuable elements of societyBradley M. Jones, American Agrarianism.
Agrarianism is agriculture oriented on an up close and personal basis, and as such, it's family oriented, and land ethic oriented.
We also noted that agrarianism as we define it incorporates The Land Ethic, which holds:
All ethics so far evolved rest upon a single premise: that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts.The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants and animals, or collectively the land.The Land Ethic, A Sand County Almanac. Aldo Leopold.
So what would this mean to society at large, and a distributist society at that?
To start with, it would mean a lot more family farm operations, and no remotely owned and operated ones where the land was held by Bill Gates or the Chinese Communist Party. Combined with Distributism, it would also mean a lot more local processing of agricultural products. Local packing houses, local flour mills, local bakeries.
It would also mean a society that was focused on local ownership of homes with residents who lived a more local, land ethic focused, lives.
Indeed, the local would matter much more in general.
And with it, humanity.
There would still be the rich and the poor, but not the remote rich and the ignorable poor.
Most people would be in the middle, and most of them, owning their own. They'd be more independent in that sense, and therefore less subject to the whims of remote employers, economic interests, and politicians.
All three major aspects of Catholic Social Teaching, humanity, subsidiarity, and solidarity, coming together.
An agrarian society would be much less focused on "growth", if focused on it at all. Preservation of agricultural and wild lands would be paramount. People would derive their social values in part from that, rather than the host of panem et circenses distractions they now do, or at least they could.
They'd derive their leisure from it as well, and therefore appreciate it more. If hiking in a local park, or going fishing, or being outdoors in general is what we would do, and we very much would as the big mega entertainment sources of all types are largely corporate in nature, preservation of the wild would be important.
And this too, combined with what we've noted before, a distributist society and a society that was well-educated, would amount to a radical, and beneficial, reorientation of society.
We won't pretend that such a society would be prefect. That would be absurd. Human nature would remain that. All the vices that presently exist, still would, but with no corporate sources to feed them, they'd not grow as prominent.
And we will state that it would cure many of the ills that now confront us.
Such a society would force us to confront our nature and nature itself. And to do so as a party of a greater community, for our common good.
Which, if we do not end up doing, will destroy us in the end.
Last prior:
A sort of Agrarian Manifesto. What's wrong with the world (and how to fix it). Part 6. Politics
Directly related:
Finis
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