Three economists walk into a bar and. . .

spend the rest of the evening arguing on whether to adjust the thermostat from 68F to 65, or maybe 72.

By Flickr user midnightcomm - https://www.flickr.com/photos/midnightcomm/447335691/, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5596839

Not funny?

Neither are missing the point arguments economist out in the Twitterverse have about inflation, or elsewhere on the Internet.

Maybe we should have titled this thread "what causes inflation"?  If you are listening to economists or pundits on the topic, you probably don't actually know.

If you listen to right wing politicians, and economics is pretty political, you'll hear stuff like that put out by Dr. John Barrasso.  It's simple,  Inflation started on inauguration day when Joe Biden put his had on the Big Meter O' Gas Prices and personally shut down American oil production. All that needs to happen to fix it is to have Biden go down to the White House basement, find the Gas Thermostat, and adjust it.

Gas meters behind the White House where the President personally sets the price of natural gas.

That's nonsense.

So is "unleash American oil", or what have you. That's not what's going on.

If you listen to Robert Reich, the left wing economist, inflation is all caused by corporate greed. That's it.  Tax corporation and their heads, and it'll all drop back into price.

The cause of inflation, according to Robert Reich.

Sorry Robert, that's not correct, and I'm guessing in the middle of the night and ponder this, you know it isn't.

If you listen to NPR, and I do, it's all so complicated no mortal is capable of figuring it out.

Well, it ain't that complicated, either.

Apologist Jimmy Akin, who ponders a lot of non-apologetic topics, states that it's all caused by the government.  It isn't, but we'll start there.

Setting the inflation meter.

In normal times, and in a normal land, with a normal economy, there's a lot of truth to that.  In those circumstances, there are a lot of things that operate naturally, as long as the government doesn't mess with them.  You'll have a natural sized population, which may be stable, may be declining, or may be increasing somewhat, but it'll be in a sort of rough status in that fashion. And you have their "consumer demands". The cost of those demand is determined by supply.

The cost of government, in this scenario, is determined by its demands, which is paid for by taxes.

Pretty simple.

So how can that get off kilter?

In modern history, it got off kilter during the Great Depression.

With the Great Depression, the US turned to John Maynard Keynes.  Keynes believed that business cycles could be regulated through government spending.  If things were in the dumps, increased government spending could address it, but that spending had to be paid off in good times.

Yeah, right.

In reality, during the Great Depression, government learned how to deficit spend and liked it.  World War Two made it worse.  Ever since then, we've never really been able to reign that in, as Government likes to spend borrowed money it can't pay back.

The reason for that is simple.  People like getting money, but they don't like having to work or pay for it.  If you go from wherever you are today, in the US, and go anywhere, you're going to collide with things the Federal government bought with borrowed money.  You won't be able to avoid it.

Generally, the Federal government likes to keep the inflation rate caused by spending money it doesn't have right down around 3%.  I frankly feel this is immoral as inflation steals from people's wallets, but that's what they try to do.  It's decreasing the amount they have to pay back on their loans and gives them the extra cash to spread around without anyone really noticing inflation too much.

People should, and should, be up in arms about it, but they basically don't notice.

So, in the Jimmy Akin sense, yes, government causes inflation.

But, it's not that simple.

In the US, the government has also messed with the natural value of labor by inflating the size of hte working population through immigration. There's certainly outsized legal immigration, but there's also illegal immigration, which nobody did much about until fairly recently.  Immigrants are actually deflationary, as they work for less than native born Americans would in the same industries.  By the same token, however, if immigration is slowed, it causes wages to rise, as the labor pool shrinks.  If illegal immigration is slowed, it causes the artificially depressed wages to rise.  That's inflation, but it's also an example of wages seeking their natural level, effectively reaching the level they should have been.

This is important to keep in mind, as part of the way that the government keeps inflation down, in normal times, in spite of high borrowing, is by keeping wages down, through immigration.  Never raising the minimum wage plays into this, but the immigrant population, quite a bit of which is "off the books", plays into this.

That also serves to keep everyone in a household at work, which is a different topic we will address some other time.

So there you have normal times.

But what about abnormal times?

And we are in those.

It turns out that the Four Horsement of the Apocolpyse have a lot to do with causing inflation.

And when wars ride in, at least famine rides in with him.

In, other words, spite of what Jimmy Akin may think, a lot of current inflation has more to do with Vladimir Putin's government than our own.

Vladimir Putin, as we all know, has launched a war against Ukraine to bring it back under Moscow's heel.  Russia is failing badly at it.

A casualty of the war has been oil prices.  Oil is a globally traded commodity, and one whose value widely even in normal times.  Now the price has gone up because of the effort to take Russian hydrocarbons off the market to punish Russia.

Now, if only the price of things mattered in the world we could do what Trump probably would have done, which would have been to turn a blind eye to Ukraine's fate.  But that would have been a very dangerous thing to do.  It's still the thing that some Republicans want to do right now, but they seem to be a minority.

At any rate, this is why calls by people like Dr. John Barrasso to "unleash" American oil are wrong and won't work, which he probably knows.  The American oil industry isn't producing on all the leases it has now, in spite of the high prices.  Market instability is part of that reason.  If people like Marjorie Taylor Greene have their way, Russian oil will be back on the market, the price will drop, and having invested in American oil, which only makes sense if prices are high, would have been the wrong thing to do.

The price of oil is also high due to OPEC+, which operates to falsely set the price.  If the organization were a domestic organization, it'd get sued by the Federal government.  As it's international, it can't be, but it sets production to set the price and when it wants to raise it, it does. It recently did.

Russia is part of OPEC+

If the US really wanted to address this part of this issue, as we're always going to be subject to OPEC, we'd switch as much of the nation over to non petroleum energy as possible.  This gets into naysayers who say it can't be done, but it can be, and it's happening now naturally.  Of course, Wyomingites get up in arms about that too, as they fear that electric generation is going to omit coal, which is another topic. And on that topic, you don't just get to do what you want to do as it's good for you locally.  Most people know that, but they don't like to really believe that something that may be causing harm is doing that.  People elsewhere, however, will be deciding those things, not us.

And Putin's war has disrupted global food supplies as well.  Ukraine is often referred to as a "breadbasket", and it is. . . for much of the Third World.

Food prices, we'd note, are up in much of Africa by epic levels.

This impacts us too, as food has been a global commodity since ancient times.  If it's transportable, it will be traded long distance.

Of course, it's also the case that the US went to a "cheap food" model following the Second World War, which emphasized size and production. That was a mistake.  It would have been better to emphasize the producers and to have sought to keep as many people in agriculture as possible.  A more agrarian type of farm economy would cause prices to climb initially, but it would also help stabilize the market long timer, making some of it more local and all of it more direct.

For that matter, the whole scale up scaling of economic scale on the retail and production end of things achieved that as well. Robert Reich decries "corporate profits" without seeming to ever realize that for much of the economy, even now, corporations aren't necessary.  We don't need Walmarts at all, and for that matter, there's no reason that something like Twitter can't be corporate owned.  If changes like that were made, it would also damper inflation.

Be that as it may, should the Republicans take the House and Senate tomorrow, they're not going to introduce an anti-corporate ownership bill and bring back a more Distributist economy.  No way. And in spite of Harriet Hageman's agricultural roots, she's not going to introduce any bills directed at returning large scale agarianistic agriculture to the economy either.  

And as long as fuel and food prices are subject to the reestablishment of the Russian Empire, we're going to be in an inflationary cycle.

That argues for defeating Putin decisively and right now.  

Finally, there's the COVID effect.

A pandemic that kills 1,070,000 people is going to remove a lot of workers from the economy forever.  That's inflationary.

The necessary halting of imports from China, something Trump did right during the pandemic, was inflationary, however.  Giving credit for where credit is due, that needed to be done, but in the globalized economy, the econmy has never righted itself, just as it didn't after World War One when a highly globaized economy was also disrupted by the war, and then of couse the Spanish Flu followed.

Lots of workers stayed home during the pandemic, many during mandatory quarantines. Government efforts started under Donald Trump, not Joe Biden, to address this by addressing wage cessation amounted to sending people money, a lot of whom never needed it. That was inflationary.

The perceived and mistaken idea that something needed to be done to get people back to work, they would have done that on their own for economic reasons gave rise to infrastructure bills under Trump that expanded under Biden.  That was inflationary.

But here's the added things. Putin's war jump started inflation all over the globe, and as we're in a globalized market, that means one country's fever at least gets another one sick.

For example:

 CPI Austria Austria cpi september 2022 1.599 % 10.531 %

 CPI Belgium Belgium cpi october 2022 2.372 % 12.268 %

 CPI Brazil Brazil cpi september 2022 -0.290 % 7.169 %

 CPI Canada Canada cpi september 2022 0.066 % 6.858 %

 CPI Chile Chile cpi september 2022 0.859 % 13.728 %

 CPI China China cpi september 2022 0.291 % 2.783 %

 CPI Czech Republic Czech Republic cpi september 2022 0.801 % 17.973 %

 CPI Denmark Denmark cpi september 2022 1.305 % 10.019 %

 CPI Estonia Estonia cpi september 2022 0.321 % 23.648 %

 CPI Finland Finland cpi september 2022 0.780 % 8.119 %

 CPI France France cpi september 2022 -0.564 % 5.552 %

 CPI Germany Germany cpi september 2022 1.936 % 9.991 %

 CPI Great Britain Great Britain cpi september 2022 0.411 % 8.808 %

 CPI Greece Greece cpi september 2022 2.937 % 12.024 %

 CPI Hungary Hungary cpi september 2022 4.077 % 20.124 %

 CPI Iceland Iceland cpi october 2022 0.668 % 9.405 %

 CPI India India cpi september 2022 0.845 % 6.488 %

 CPI Indonesia Indonesia cpi october 2022 -0.106 % 5.710 %

 CPI Ireland Ireland cpi september 2022 0.000 % 8.175 %

 CPI Israel Israel cpi september 2022 0.187 % 4.594 %

 CPI Italy Italy cpi september 2022 0.263 % 8.866 %

 CPI Japan Japan cpi april 2022 0.396 % 2.422 %

 CPI Luxembourg Luxembourg cpi september 2022 0.257 % 6.879 %

 CPI Mexico Mexico cpi september 2022 0.620 % 8.700 %

 CPI Norway Norway cpi september 2022 1.372 % 6.894 %

 CPI Poland Poland cpi september 2022 1.586 % 17.254 %

 CPI Portugal Portugal cpi september 2022 1.226 % 9.281 %

 CPI Russia Russia cpi march 2022 7.613 % 16.698 %

 CPI Slovakia Slovakia cpi september 2022 0.908 % 14.170 %

 CPI Slovenia Slovenia cpi september 2022 -0.921 % 10.002 %

 CPI South Africa South Africa cpi september 2022 0.094 % 7.801 %

 CPI South Korea South Korea cpi september 2022 0.285 % 5.583 %

 CPI Spain Spain cpi september 2022 -0.696 % 8.872 %

 CPI Sweden Sweden cpi september 2022 1.429 % 10.838 %

 CPI Switzerland Switzerland cpi september 2022 -0.176 % 3.252 %

 CPI the Netherlands The Netherlands cpi september 2022 2.340 % 14.496 %

 CPI Turkey Turkey cpi october 2022 3.545 % 85.515 %

 CPI United States United States cpi september 2022 0.215 % 8.202 %

 HICP Austria Austria hicp september 2022 2.436 % 10.915 %

 HICP Belgium Belgium hicp september 2022 1.336 % 12.061 %

 HICP Czech Republic Czech Republic hicp september 2022 0.885 % 17.829 %

 HICP Denmark Denmark hicp september 2022 1.473 % 11.101 %

 HICP Estonia Estonia hicp september 2022 0.338 % 24.094 %

 HICP Eurozone Europe hicp september 2022 1.196 % 9.927 %

 HICP Finland Finland hicp september 2022 0.726 % 8.413 %

 HICP France France hicp september 2022 -0.511 % 6.232 %

 HICP Germany Germany hicp september 2022 2.176 % 10.899 %

 HICP Great Britain Great Britain hicp september 2022 0.569 % 10.142 %

 HICP Greece Greece hicp september 2022 2.956 % 12.117 %

 HICP Hungary Hungary hicp september 2022 1.850 % 20.673 %

 HICP Iceland Iceland hicp september 2022 -0.235 % 5.933 %

 HICP Ireland Ireland hicp september 2022 0.000 % 8.604 %

 HICP Italy Italy hicp september 2022 1.582 % 9.366 %

 HICP Luxembourg Luxembourg hicp september 2022 0.510 % 8.832 %

 HICP Poland Poland hicp september 2022 1.522 % 15.698 %

 HICP Portugal Portugal hicp september 2022 1.270 % 9.811 %

 HICP Slovakia Slovakia hicp september 2022 0.937 % 13.579 %

 HICP Slovenia Slovenia hicp september 2022 -0.284 % 10.629 %

 HICP Spain Spain hicp september 2022 -0.246 % 8.974 %

 HICP Sweden Sweden hicp september 2022 1.221 % 10.252 %

 HICP the Netherlands The Netherlands hicp september 2022 2.842 % 17.061 %

 HICP Turkey Turkey hicp september 2022 3.097 % 83.394 %

But also note that global inflation rates are expected to peak this year, and then steeply decline.

At any rate, in a globalized economy in which we depend on stuff with overseas sources to come here, when prices go up there, they go up here.  Put another way, when is the last time you bought a shirt made in the United States?

So, what should the government do, and by that I mean right now, to address inflation?

The most important thing it could do would be to make systemic changes that take the country out, as much as possible, of a system that is subject to foreign commodity and product inflation without falling into the falsity of autarky, which we'd note is, of course, inflationary.

That would entail moving the volatile energy sector over to stable, and frankly North American based, energy production.  Nuclear energy would be the best option for the US for domestic and transportation energy.  If we wanted an infrastructure bill, this should have been it.  It's not too late to do this through various means, however, including tax breaks where appropriate, and by removing subsidization, which occurs in places we're so used to use to we don't recognize them.  The national highway system, for example, is subsidized, which in turn amounts to a trucking industry subsidization.

We could also do this in the food and retail sectors through anti monopoly and frankly highly distributist policies that revested much of the economy at a lower level.  That would be inflationary in the short term, but stabilizing in the long term.

In the immediate short term, we could quit deficit spending on things that we don't need to, which is only almost all, but probably not all, things.  The Federal Government doles out cash like crazy under both Republican and Democratic Administrations.  There are a lot of things that the Federal Government takes care of that it could just say to localities, "you take care of it, it's yours anyway".  Quite frankly in quite a few instances local entities couldn't take care of it, at least not without tax hikes, but then those things would be paid for along the way in most instances, and where they couldn't be, there's likely an existential problem at work such that they shouldn't be.

And contrary to the Republican whining about "thousands of IRS agents" and the Democratic silence on taxes, the upper marginal tax rates ought to be increased.  Billionaires now control a frightening amount of the US economy and ought to be taxed aggressively. That won't reduce them to poverty, but would recapture money that should be recaptured.  And in inflationary cycles, a windfall profits tax should be put in place.

Finally, as grim as it is, the Fed ought to jack up interest rates to double their current amount and put a massive damper on the overheated economy.

How much of this is going to happen? 

Probably none of it.

Tuesday, November 7, 1972. Nixon Reelected.

Today In Wyoming's History: November 7: 1972 President Richard M. Nixon was re-elected in a landslide over Democrat George McGovern.

President Richard Nixon overwhelmingly won reelection to the Oval Office, defeating George McGovern.

I recall this election occurring, which means that this is probably the first Presidential election I directly remember.

In that same year, locally:

1972  A Sublette County straw poll shows 970 people opposed to, 279 in favor of and 105 undecided on the "Wagon Wheel Project" which would extract natural gas in the area with five underground nuclear explosions.  Yikes!  Attribution: Wyoming State Historical Society.

Saturday, November 7, 1942. Giraud escapes France.

The British submarine Seraph smuggled French general Henri Giraud out of France.

Giraud was an opponent of the Vichy regime and had escaped German captivity, for Switzerland, back in April.  Vichy tried to lure him back, but he demurred.

While all in anticipation of Torch, the submarine took Giraud to Gibraltar, where he remained until November 9.  Relationships between the Free French officers were always highly complicated and tense, in part because their legitimacy was really legally questionable, which their organization, supported by the Allies, reflected. The Allies always tried to split the difference between outright firebrand rebels, like DeGaulle, and those who still held some ties to Vichy as the legal government.  Those in a position in between, like Giraud, were in an odd spot.

Stalin issued his Order of the Day proclaiming, on the 25th anniversary of the October Revolution, that Germany had "yet to feel the weight" of the Red Army, a promise which turned out to be true.

The Australians flanked the Japanese on the Kokoda Track.

Johnny Rivers, blues influenced rock musician, was born in New York City.

Tuesday, November 7, 1922. The Election of 1922.

Today In Wyoming's History: November 7:1922.  Democrat William B. Ross won election to the Governor's office, defeating John W. Hay, a Republican who had defeated the incumbent Republican Governor Robert D. Carey for the GOP ticket.

Ross.

The Republican Party was split due to the extremely contentious primary race and Ross was able to use this to appeal to Carey's supporters through his strong Prohibition stance.  The 48 year old Carey was a lawyer by profession.

Democrat John B. Kendrick won a second term to the Senate, defeating Congressman Frank W. Mondell who was the Majority Leader of the U.S. House of Representatives at the time.

Replacing Mondell was Charles E. Winter, a lawyer from Casper who had also been a State District Court judge.

Winter.

Winter would serve in that role until 1929, as in 1928 he reprised Mondell's path and attempted unsuccessfully to move to the Senate.  He was thereafter the Attorney General of Puerto Rico and then returned to Casper, where he died in 1948.  One of my aunts worked for him in his later years, and his son, who lived to be nearly 100, was a lawyer who practiced in the office building which I do and still was when I first worked there.

Winter wrote the lyrics for the song Wyoming, which is one of the two state songs.  He was also a novelist.

Nationwide, in the same year, the Democrats made big gains in the House and Senate. 

The 2022 Election Part XIII. Some pre election predictions.

The much anticipated "pro choice" vote that the pundits are predicting to roll in nationally, and Democrats are depending upon, will almost wholly fail to materialize.

Young voters, who the Democrats are also depending on, won't show up.

Hispanic voters will, but a lot more of them will vote Republican, reflecting social conservatism, than anticipated.

The much ballyhooed babble that things are so violent out there that we're living in The French Connection, won't persuade anyone to vote one way or another on anything.

Inflation will influence older voters on fixed incomes quite a bit in their vote.

The Republicans will probably gain the Senate, but not by much.

The Democrats will barely hand on to the House.

A little more long term.

Withing a week of the election, Donald Trump will announce he's running in 2024.  He won't, actually, as by that time the nationa will have moved on and his troubles will have grown.  Moreover, given his age and all that being in the position of 1) being a candidate and 2) being a potential defendant in one more trials, will catch up with him and nature will take its course, as it always does in the end.

Up until that moment, Joe Biden will indicate he's running, assuming the intervention of the docking of the barque within the next year or so.  After that, however, one way or another, he'll announce that he's not running.

The Tribune predicts a Republican sweep locally, but how could that not occur?

It will, but Lynette Grey Bull will pull in at least 33% of the vote, maybe more.  Harriet Hageman will go on to be elected, but she'll be sidelined as an irrelevant freshman Congressman as soon as she shows up.  Senator Barrasso will start to slowly pull away from Trump and Hageman. Senator Lummis will not.

Chuck Grey will of course win the Secretary of State's position, but a surprising number of Nethercott write ins will appear.  He'll go on to be a largely ineffectual Secretary of State who will mark time until 2026, when he hopes to run for Governor.  He will run, but he won't be nominated.

The next legislature will take a sharp leap to the right, and as a result it will be constantly at war, in some fashion, on local control and social issues.  It'll also cut back on spending and dig in on fossil fuels.  Given the probable GOP take over of the Senate, nothing big "green" will happen in the next two years, but nothing of the opposite nature will happen either.  A couple of years in attempting to an evolving, changing energy economy will be lost.

By 2024 the bloom will start to be off the rose locally on the hard right lurch.  Many of the diehard forces will have waned, and to some degree the movement will be a victim of its success.  Political glory is short.  Two legislative sessions of attacking the Federal government and not funding things will have its toll and the rollback will start.

By that time, it'll be harder to find people who, although they have Grey and Hagemean signs out right now, will admit that they voted for them.  By the same token, people will be lying about who they voted for by mid-week. Lots of Grey Bull voters are going to deny they voted for her, and in some offices people who voted for Hageman or Grey will be lying about that.

Amendment A, allowing local communities to invest their reserves, will fail, even though it should pass.

Amendment B, allowing judges to serve for 15 years after they die, will pass, even though it should fail.

Last Prior Edition of Thread:

The 2022 Election Part XII. The General Election Race, Edition 2.

The 2022 Election Part XII. The General Election Race, Edition 2.

October 11, 2022

I didn't plan on doing a second one of these before the election, but the existing one got too big, so here we are. . . again.

Hopefully this is the last one in this tread, in a fairly sad election year.

The primary election really demonstrated Wyoming's lurch to the hard right with two of the state wide candidates receiving Trump endorsements, along with Harriet Hageman's whose only real issue was her loyalty to Donald Trump.  This upcoming legislative session promises, quite frankly, to be absolutely frightening and in the Congress Wyoming goes from having a respected, but not disliked in GOP circles, figure to one who will be, at least at first, a reliable GOP nullity.  In the Secretary of State office, which is the central business office for the state, a person who, back door, is widely disrespected in many circles goes into the fall completely unopposed.

And that points out the collapse of the Democratic Party in the state.  There are some notable Democrats who should be capable, in a sane situation, of easily beating a candidate like Chuck Gray, but they aren't running.

The races:

U.S. House of Representatives

Republican Party

Harriet Hageman.  Anointed by Donald Trump to take out Liz Cheney, and a late adopter of the stolen election theory, Wyoming lawyer Hageman is the favorite, albeit one who is seemingly now fairly quiet.

On that, Hageman won't even debate her Democratic challenger, which is both arrogant and rude.

Democratic Party.

Lynette Gray Bull.  Running a second time, the Native American candidate can be regarded as a "progressive" who is emphasizing her commitment to democracy, in opposition to Hageman's adoption of the stolen election story.  Gray Bull has challenged Hageman to a debate, but Hageman has rudely declined, as noted above.

Governor

Republican

Mark Gordon.

Democrat

Theresa Livingston.

Secretary of State

Republican

Chuck Gray. Gray has only been in the state for a decade and is widely held in many circles to be temperamentally and professionally unqualified for this position.

Gray, who wasn't universally popular in the legislature, focused on bogus election concerns in his campaign.  He'll take over from an even more unqualified interim Secretary of State who assumed this position when Ed Buchanan resigned to take a judicial appointment.

Democrat

None, the Democrats have defaulted in a race in which many feel the worst Republican candidate in the State's history won the GOP race, nearly assuring that the same individual will take that position. 

State Treasurer

Republican

Curt Meier won the GOP nomination for a second term.

Democrat

None.

State Auditor

Kristi Racines took this race in the Republican primary, and she seems to be the only candidate in the state that everyone likes.

Superintendent of Public Instruction

This is the only race for statewide office which actually features two qualified candidates.

Republican

Megan Delgenfelder.

Democrat

Sergio Maldonado.

Proposed Amendments to the Wyoming Constitution.

This year features two proposed amendments to the Wyoming constitution.  I'm not sure where the first one came from, but the second one is part of the general geriatric drift in the country, in which the generation that warned us to never trust anyone over 30 doesn't trust anyone under 60.

Proposed Amendment A

This proposed amendment's ballot summary states:

The Wyoming Constitution allows the state to invest state funds in equities such as the stock of corporations, but does not allow the funds of counties, cities and other political subdivisions to be invested in equities. The adoption of this amendment would allow the funds of counties, cities and other political subdivisions to be invested in equities to the extent and in the manner the legislature may allow by law. Any law authorizing the investment of specified political subdivision funds in equities would require a two-thirds vote of both houses of the legislature

The actual text of the revised statute would read as follows:

Article 16, Section 6. Loan of credit; donations prohibited; investment of funds; works of internal improvement.

(a) Neither the state nor any county, city, township, town, school district, or any other political subdivision, shall:

(i) Loan or give its credit or make donations to or in aid of any individual, association or corporation, except for necessary support of the poor; or

(ii) Subscribe to or become the owner of the capital stock of any association or corporation, except that:

(A) Funds of public employee retirement systems and the permanent funds of the state of Wyoming may be invested in such stock under conditions the legislature prescribes;

(B) The legislature may provide by law for the investment of funds not designated as permanent funds of the state in the capital stock of any association or corporation and may designate which of these funds may be invested. The legislature may prescribe different investment conditions for each fund. Any legislation establishing or increasing the percentage of any fund that may be invested under this subparagraph shall be passed only by a two-thirds (2/3) vote of all the members of each of the two (2) houses voting separately.

(C) The legislature may provide by law for the investment of county, city, township, town, school district, or any other political subdivision's funds in the capital stock of any association or corporation and may designate which of these funds may be invested. The legislature may prescribe different investment conditions for each type and class of political subdivision and for each type of fund. Any legislation establishing or increasing the percentage of any fund that may be invested under this subparagraph shall be passed only by a two-thirds (2/3) vote of all the members of each of the two (2) houses voting separately.

(b) The state shall not engage in any work of internal improvement unless authorized by a two-thirds (2/3) vote of the people.

I'm not really sure where this comes from, and I don't know what my opinion of it is.  The theory, I guess, would be that the legislature could provide for a means for local governments to invest their funds in hopes of getting higher yields than they do from banks, which would also mean that they'd have to be able to tolerate downturns in the market.

Proposed Amendment B.

The amendment summary that will appear on the ballot states:

Currently, the Wyoming Constitution requires Wyoming Supreme Court justices and district court judges to retire upon reaching the age of seventy (70). This amendment increases the mandatory retirement age of Supreme Court justices and district court judges from age seventy (70) to age seventy-five (75).

The actual text of the amendment provides:

Article 5, Section 5. Voluntary retirement and compensation of justices and judges.

The sales pitch on this is that many highly qualified jurists are forcibly put out to pasture to do something else in their lives rather than remain on the bench until they're taken out in a body bag.

Okay, that's not quite how it's put, but that's basically it.  Added to that, if they die before the state has to pay them any retirement, the state saves some cash.

October 13, 2022

Wyoming's interim Secretary of State Karl Allred made good on his promise to address a non issue by sending letters out to County Clerk's asking them to remove drop boxes.  Only seven counties use them.

Prior Secretary of State Ed Buchanan, who abandoned the post he was elected to in order to be appointed a district court judge, thereby effectively disrupting the election leading to the GOP nomination and probable election of Chuck Gray, had encouraged their use due to COVID during the last election. Gray has promised to ban them.

Probably most people don't realize that drop boxes probably include the election machine outside of the clerk's door.  I've only seen one dropbox that was located outside of a courthouse rather than in it, but I haven't been to all of these locations.  Clerks are free to tell the unqualified to tell Allred to pound sand, and the Clerk of Laramie County, in her interview with the paper there, basically did, noting that her office already complied with the security requests that the never successfully elected Allred suggested in his cheery letter which acknowledged that prior elections had been successfully conducted.

Flag of Laramie County, Wyoming.  By Jens Pattke - http://www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/us-wy-la.html, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=58499517

While time will tell, this probably foreshadows an upcoming potentially hostile relationship between Clerks and Gray, if Gray tries to build on his "stolen election" campaign to tell the elected clerks what they can do.

Tulsi Gabbard, who left the GOP officially two days ago, has already endorsed a Trump backed Washington candidate.

According to the Tribune, a council for Casper's city council had to be shut down from speaking at a recent school board meeting when he got a bit out of control.

October 13, cont.

Governor Ron DeSantis relaxed voting rules for the areas of Florida recently impacted by a hurricane.

It should be noted that the GOP Governor has been riffing off of Trump populists, who also feel that just such actions in regard to the 2020 election resulted in it being stolen.

Hmmm. . . .

October 14, 2022

A debate of candidates for the U.S. House, save for Harriet Hageman, occurred last night.

Hageman was castigated by the other candidates for her failure to appear, which is either rude, arrogant, or cowardly.  At least one candidate called her actions cowardly.

Hageman needs to be heard from on her failure to debate, and not with the excuse that she has other more effective means of communicating with Wyomingites. So far, more or less, her campaign has been limited to the fact that she supports now subpoenaed Donald J. Trump no matter what, whereas Liz Cheney has the courage of her convictions.  Other than having united herself to Trump no matter what, there's nothing really known to distinguish her from Cheney, but the voters really haven't heard much from her otherwise in a widespread way.  Public forum's she's attended to date have been principally populated with Hageman Fans/Cheney Haters, so that does not suffice.

October 14, 2022

Long serving (37 years) Deputy Secretary of State Karen Wheeler is leaving the office. She's the second prominent member of the Secretary of State's Office to leave, with the first one expressly leaving due to Chuck Gray coming into the office.

There have been rumor that resignations would be widespread.  It would have been anticipated that this would have commenced after Chuck Gray assumed office in January, if it was going to, but with Interim Sectary Allred being of a similar mind to Gray, it may start sooner.  If it does it will create the very election crisis that Gray and Allred claimed to be dedicated to avoiding, but because of their attacks on an institution which was not in trouble.

October 15, 2022

None of the clerks replying to Allred's request have agreed to comply with it, thereby making him 100% ineffective in that effort.  Of course, the effort was pointless to begin with, but it foreshadows a likely showdown between the county clerks and incoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray, who has no more authority over them than Allred does.

This is not a minor manner.  The clerks are rightfully telling Allred, and Gray by extension, to butt out.   This is likely to visit the courts in some fashion.

October 20, 2022

The Deputy Secretary of State Karen Wheeler and Election Division Director Kai Schon announced in front of the Corporations Committee of the Legislature last Friday that they're resigning after the November election.  While they termed it as being a good time to pursue other opportunities, it's pretty clear that neither wishes to serve under the likely winner, Chuck Gray, who based his campaign on fictional election security concerns.  It's no wonder that either would wish to serve under Gray, although it remains a wonder that Gray won the primary. A lack of a primary opponent means that Gray almost certainly will tragically win the office.

Both individuals are graciously remaining through the general election, and Schon indicated he'll reach out to the "Secretary Elect".

October 23, 2022

Liz Cheney appeared as a guest on Meet The Press today.  Relevant to the current election, she indicated that she's not voting for Harriet Hageman or Chuck Gray, and that anyone who is concerned about democracy, cannot.

Mary Peltola, Democratic Congressman from Alaska, received a number of Republican endorsements in that state for much the same reason.

October 25, 2022

The Natrona County School Board election is getting more attention than it normally would.

Superintendent for Public Instruction candidate Delgenfelder appeared at last night's meeting to support the district's right to make the decision to leave the book Gender Queer on the shelves, but to oppose the book itself, thereby basically taking both sides of the issue regarding the book. She suggested that it is pornographic.  The book has drawn the ire of three candidates who are members of something called "Moms For Liberty".

I'd never heard of the group, but the name is a poor one and a bit ironic in some ways. Basically they're a conservative, nationwide, organization that emphasizes parental control of schools and fears that schools engage in liberal indoctrination.  I'm not going to comment on that one way or another, but the "liberty" aspect of that shows the odd misuse of that word in our current culture.

The political right accuses, in essence, the political left of being "libertine", a word that I'd wager the majority of Americans are ignorant of nowadays.

The online etymology dictionary defines liberty as follows:

late 14c., "free choice, freedom to do as one chooses," also "freedom from the bondage of sin," from Old French liberte "freedom, liberty, free will" (14c., Modern French liberté), from Latin libertatem (nominative libertas) "civil or political freedom, condition of a free man; absence of restraint; permission," from liber "free" (see liberal (adj.)). At first of persons; of communities, "state of being free from arbitrary, despotic, or autocratic rule or control" is by late 15c.

The French notion of liberty is political equality; the English notion is personal independence. [William R. Greg, "France in January 1852" in "Miscellaneous Essays"]

Nautical sense of "leave of absence" is from 1758. The meaning "unrestrained action, conduct, or expression" (1550s) led to take liberties "go beyond the bounds of propriety" (1620s). The sense of "privileges by grant" (14c.) led to the sense of "a person's private land" (mid-15c.), within which certain special privileges may be exercised, which yielded in 18c. in both England and America a sense of "a district within a county but having its own justice of the peace," and also "a district adjacent to a city and in some degree under its municipal jurisdiction" (as in Northern Liberties of Philadelphia). Also compare Old French libertés "local rights, laws, taxes."

How much does the current use of the term, by anyone, reflect that?

That Delgenfelder would appear at the meeting is odd, frankly, as the political advantage of a Republican candidate appearing in this venue, when she seemingly doesn't need to, is an odd strategic choice.

October 26, 2022

Superintendant of Education Brian Schroeder appeared at an event earlier this week on the topic of sexualization of children in school, a topic related to the one noted immediately above.

Steve Bannon predicted that Anthony Fauci will be "hunted" following the mid terms, a particularly distrubing comment by Bannon who is out of the pokey following his contempt conviction pending appeal.

October 30, 2022

Harriet Hageman has an op ed in the Trib today in which she claims that 1) inflation, 2) high illegal immigration, 3) "record breaking human trafficing", 4) "record breaking drug running" and 5) high food costs (which would seem to be included in inflation), are all part of a "Democratic plan" to bring about a "leftist Utopia".

This places Hageman squarely in the really extreme category, rhetoric wise, and its fair to assume at this point that she probably believes what she's saying.

Hageman lashed out two days ago at University of Wyoming professors studying her tweats for "toxicity", stating:

I’ll tell you what’s ‘toxic’ . . . trying to freeze free speech with ominous warnings that ‘we’re watching you’ from pointy-headed college professors and the leftist corporate media.

Speaking of toxic, Nancy Pelosi's husband Paul was attacked by an unhinged lunatic this past week.  This has of course resulted in discussion on whether the atmosphere created by the late Trump administration and Trumpism since then has contributed to this event, as the actor had bought into all sorts of conspiracies.

Well, let's take a look at just what's noted here.  From the Trib:

In the Biden administration, we are seeing the most dangerous, most destructive administration in U.S. history. President Biden and the radical Democrats are responsible for record-breaking inflation, record-breaking illegal immigration, record-breaking human trafficking, record-breaking drug running, and record-breaking energy and food costs.

It would be one thing if these calamities were happening by accident, though it would still be tragic, but what we are enduring is actually the Democrats’ plan. Their goal is to completely upend our economy, to force people to bend to their will and compel behavioral changes to establish their leftist Utopia. We need members of Congress who will expose these nonsensical policies and fight to return us to a commonsense path that will lead us back to liberty and prosperity.

There you have it, from Wyoming's almost certain next Congressman. President Biden's administration is the most dangerous and destructive in the nation's history, out to create a left wing Utopia through all sorts of intentional bad acts.

No responsibility for rhetoric?

November 7, 2022

Cheyenne Representative Dale Zwonitzer blasted the direction the state's legislture has been heading in an interview with the Laramie Boomerang., accusing newer idealogues of being unable to read or even think.

I've heard similiar comments from legislators privately or ones who stepped down, but Zwonitzer was extremely blunt for a candidate who is not only an incumbant, but running for reelection.

Last Prior Edition:

The 2022 Election Part XII. The General Election Race, Edition 1.

Why won't Harriet Hageman debate?

Hey, wait a minute, didn't the Government make daylight savings time permanent?

If so, why did we all change our clocks back?

Nope.  The Senate passed a bill to do that. The House hasn't.

Ideally, we ought to just go to real, i.e., natural time all year around.

But we're probably not going to do that.  Or Daylight savings time year around either.

Thursday, November 6, 1947. Meet The Press Premiers.

Meet The Press, the longest running television program in the United States, premiered in that format.  It had previously premiered on radio as American Mercury Presents:  Meet the Press on October 5, 1945.

While I very much favor This Week over Meet the Press, it occurs to me that somewhat ironically, as I listed to the audio podcast variant, I listed to it closer to the radio version.

The first guess for the then 30-minute Thursday night program was James Farley, the Postmaster General and DNC Committee chairman.  The initial moderator was Martha Roundtree, reprising her role from the radio variant, and the only woman moderator of the show to date.  Roundtree hosted the program until 1953.

She died in 1999 in Washington D.C., nearly blind since the 1980s, due to the harsh effects of primitive television lighting.

As noted, I do listen to it, but I'm not a fan of the current moderator, Chuck Todd.  Indeed, I was hoping for a second female moderator in the form of Kasi Hunt.

On the same day, Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov told a Moscow audience that the means of making an atomic weapons were no longer secret.  American intelligence took that to mean that the Soviet Union knew how to build a bomb, but didn't necessarily have one.  The Soviets, who had penetrated the American government fairly successfully, suspected that the US was working on such a weapon by 1942 and started their own project accordingly.  Nonetheless, they had not developed a bomb by this point themselves, but were only two years away from doing so.

Canada invited Newfoundland to join the Canadian Dominion.

Friday, November 6, 1942. The Vichy French Surrender On Madagascar, Carson's Long Patrol, Anglican Church Removes Requirement For Female Head Coverings, El Toro Established

Vichy French forces in Madagascar, which the Allies were not at war with, surrendered after weeks of fighting to the British.

Eh?

Yes, that's right.

The Allies were at war with Vichy, but by this point had invaded Syria and Lebanon and then the giant island of Madagascar.  Throughout it all, the French fought back, and often quite hard, but Vichy abstained from declaring war in a monumental example of restraint, frankly, and of hedging one's bets.

Westland Lysanders flying over Madagascar, December 1942.

It should be noted that the Allies had real reasons to fear that the Japanese would land on the island. In retrospect, it's clear that the Japanese didn't possess the reserve strength to do that, but in 1942 that certainly wasn't clear.   Indeed, throughout 1942 there had been constant fears that the Japanese would land on mainland Australia and points west, which of course in the form of advancing in Southeast Asia, they somewhat did.

Madagascar had become a French possession in 1897 following an absolutely horrific campaign undertaken by the French Foreign Legion.  It's frankly outright bizarre from our current prospective to imagine why France ever conceived of itself as having a right to the island.

Resistance to ongoing French presence commenced after World War Two, and the country became independent in 1958.

The 2nd Marine Raider Battalion commenced an operation known as Carlson's Long Patrol on Guadalcanal.  It was an interdiction action against retreating Japanese forces.

The Church of England abolished its rule requiring women to wear hats in church.

This is an oddly controversial topic among a select group of people even today.

Catholic female factory workers attending a Palm Sunday Mass after getting off work, 1943.

I wasn't aware of the Church of England rule, nor why it was abolished at this point in time.  That it existed, however, isn't surprising, as even though "High Church" Anglicans are critical of the Catholic Church in some ways, they very much lean into it as well.  Indeed, attending a High Church Anglican service gives a glimpse of some of the things that existed in the Catholic Mass long ago, and most older Anglican Churches retain their alter rails.

At any rate, while this may surprise some, in the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church it was a custom, not a law, that women wear head coverings up until the promulgation of the 1917 Code of Canon Law, which required women to wear a head covering and precluded men from wearing hats in church.  While this was the Canon Law, as of 1917, it was also the custom at the time as well, in any event.  Also, contrary to what some may suppose, it was only the Latin Rite that imposed these conditions, not hte Catholic Church as a whole.

The 1917 Code remained in effect until 1983, when a new one was promulgated. The 1983 Code removed the requirement that women wear head coverings. By that time, however, the practice had fallen completely away in much of the Western World anyhow.  I can't recall at all a time in which women generally wore head coverings in church, although a review of old photographs of weddings and the like shows that they certainly did well into the early 1960s.  Perhaps they were a casualty of the trend towards ever-increasing informality in the west, or perhaps it was something that the "spirit" of Vatican II reforms brought about, or both.

Oddly, however, in recent years, in Catholic circles, it's seen a bit of a revival.  There were always some who regarded female head coverings as Biblically mandated, citing St. Paul's letter to the Corinthians, in which he states, in part:

But I want you to know that Christ is the head of every man, and a husband the head of his wife,and God the head of Christ.

Any man who prays or prophesies with his head covered brings shame upon his head.

But any woman who prays or prophesies with her head unveiled brings shame upon her head, for it is one and the same thing as if she had had her head shaved.

For if a woman does not have her head veiled, she may as well have her hair cut off. But if it is shameful for a woman to have her hair cut off or her head shaved, then she should wear a veil.

 A man, on the other hand, should not cover his head, because he is the image and glory of God, but woman is the glory of man.

For man did not come from woman, but woman from man; nor was man created for woman, but woman for man; for this reason a woman should have a sign of authority on her head, because of the angels.

Woman is not independent of man or man of woman in the Lord.

For just as woman came from man, so man is born of woman; but all things are from God.h

Judge for yourselves: is it proper for a woman to pray to God with her head unveiled?

Does not nature itself teach you that if a man wears his hair long it is a disgrace to him, whereas if a woman has long hair it is her glory, because long hair has been given [her] for a covering?

St. Paul is, truly, the most ignored Apostle and the one most likely to make almost everyone in the modern world uncomfortable.  At any rate, some people have read this to mean that women must wear head coverings in church.

I'm not really qualified to comment on it, but I'd note that this was the subject of an article relatively recently in US Catholic, which stated, in part:

A hairy problem

Personally, I think it’s a no-brainer that the changes in the 1983 Canon gave us all freedom of choice about headgear. But a simple Google search convinces me this a matter that still isn’t settled in the minds of some Catholics.

Msgr. Charles Pope addressed this issue in a blog called “Community in Mission” on the Archdiocese of Washington’s website. It’s interesting that he calls the piece, dated May 19, 2010, “Should Women Cover Their Heads in Church?” Like it’s still a matter of debate.

It’s even more interesting how he starts out: “Now be of good cheer. This blog post is meant to be a light-hearted discussion of this matter.”

While admitting that the church currently has “NO rule” on hat wearing, he offered his thoughts to “try and understand the meaning and purpose of a custom that, up until rather recently was quite widespread in the Western Church.” He explains that even before the 1917 mandate, it was customary in most places for women to wear some kind of head covering.

He also tries to explain how the church got tangled up with this hat stuff in the first place. The reasoning is not easy to understand. He points to tradition and custom as well as feminine humility and submission.

I’m not weighing in on this one; I’ll defer to Msgr. Pope. He notes that in biblical times Jewish women often wore veils or mantillas in public worship. This custom got carried over to the New Testament by virtue of St. Paul’s letters, particularly 1 Corinthians 11:1–11, which takes up the topic of head coverings for women and men:

“For if a woman does not have her head veiled, she may as well have her hair cut off. But it is shameful for a woman to have her hair cut off or her head shaved, then she should wear a veil. A man, on the other hand, should not cover his head, because he is the image and glory of God, but woman is the glory of man.”

Msgr. Pope calls this a “complicated passage” with “some unusual references,” and goes on to say that Paul sets forth four arguments in it as to why a woman should cover her head. “Argument 1—Paul clearly sees the veil as a sign of her submission to her husband.” A second argument, based on custom or accepted tradition, is pretty straight forward and reasonable. Don’t ask me to explain the two remaining “arguments.” Even Pope concedes that Paul’s claims in the passage—that women should wear veils “because of the angels” and “nature”—are more “difficult references to understand.”

Heading forward

So who knows? Whether it was due to custom, a fascination with Victorian mores, or thinly-veiled patriarchy, the fact remains: After centuries of ignoring the matter, the church decided to codify regulations on head coverings in 1917 and to say nothing about them when it changed its own rules in 1983. For 66 years, milliners had a good run.

Of course, with the women’s liberation movement, most women had stopped wearing hats to church anyway. The whole idea of covering the head was a sign that had lost its meaning and even taken on a negative connotation in mainstream society. Besides, in the 1970s, in a document titled Inter Insigniores (On the Question of Admission of Women to the Ministerial Priesthood), the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith had already linked wearing chapel veils with customs that were “scarcely more than disciplinary practices of minor importance” and obligations that “no longer have a normative value.” The 1983 Code change just put the nail in the coffin.

Of course, some may still beg to differ. You have to wonder why church leaders like Cardinal Burke and Msgr. Pope would even feel the need to take up this issue. Chalk it up to the fact that old habits die hard and no one likes change but a wet baby. Today, traditional Catholic blogs advocate not only a return to the Latin Mass but pre-Vatican II accouterments like vintage attire for priests and nuns. Could a push for veils in the pews be the next big thing?

I wouldn’t bet on it.

I wouldn't either.

Let's take a look at the Msgr blog entry.  It states:

Should Women Cover Their Heads in Church?

Now be of good cheer. This blog post is meant to be a light-hearted discussion of this matter. The bottom line is that the Church currently has NO rule on this matter and women are entirely free to wear a veil or a hat in Church or not.

I thought I’d blog on this since it came up in the comments yesterday and it occurred to me that it might provoke an interesting discussion. But again this is not meant to be a directive discussion about what should be done. Rather an informative discussion about the meaning of head coverings for women in the past and how such customs might be interpreted now. We are not in the realm of liturgical law here just preference and custom.

What I’d like to do is to try and understand the meaning and purpose of a custom that, up until rather recently was quite widespread in the Western Church.

With the more frequent celebration of the Traditional Latin Mass, the use of the veil is also becoming more common. But even at the Latin Masses I celebrate, women exhibit diversity in this matter. Some wear the longer veil (mantilla) others a short veil. Others  wear hats. Still others wear no head covering at all.

History – the wearing of a veil or hat for women seems to have been a fairly consistent practice in the Church in the West until fairly recently. Practices in the Eastern and Orthodox Churches have varied. Protestant denominations also show a wide diversity in this matter. The 1917 Code of Canon Law in  the Catholic Church mandated that women wear a veil or head covering. Prior to 1917 there was no universal Law but it was customary in most places for women to wear some sort of head covering. The 1983 Code of Canon Law made no mention of this requirement and by the 1980s most women, at least here in America, had ceased to wear veils or hats anyway. Currently there is no binding rule and the custom in most places is no head covering at all.

Scripture – In Biblical Times women generally wore veils in any public setting and this would include the Synagogue. The clearest New Testament reference to women veiling or covering their head is from St. Paul:

But I want you to know that Christ is the head of every man, and a husband the head of his wife, and God the head of Christ. Any man who prays or prophesies with his head covered brings shame upon his head.  But any woman who prays or prophesies with her head unveiled brings shame upon her head, for it is one and the same thing as if she had had her head shaved.  For if a woman does not have her head veiled, she may as well have her hair cut off. But if it is shameful for a woman to have her hair cut off or her head shaved, then she should wear a veil.  A man, on the other hand, should not cover his head, because he is the image and glory of God, but woman is the glory of man. For man did not come from woman, but woman from man; nor was man created for woman, but woman for man;  for this reason a woman should have a sign of authority on her head, because of the angels. Woman is not independent of man or man of woman in the Lord. For just as woman came from man, so man is born of woman; but all things are from God.  Judge for yourselves: is it proper for a woman to pray to God with her head unveiled? Does not nature itself teach you that if a man wears his hair long it is a disgrace to him, whereas if a woman has long hair it is her glory, because long hair has been given (her) for a covering? But if anyone is inclined to be argumentative, we do not have such a custom, nor do the churches of God. (1 Cor 11:1-11)

This is clearly a complicated passage and has some unusual references. Paul seems to set forth four arguments as to why a woman should wear a veil.

1. Argument 1 – Paul clearly sees the veil a woman wears as a sign of her submission to her husband. He also seems to link it to modesty since his references to a woman’s  hair cut short were references to the way prostitutes wore their hair and his reference to a shaved head was the punishment due an adultress. No matter how you look at it such arguments aren’t going to encourage a lot of women to wear a veil today. It is a true fact that the Scriptures consistently teach that a wife is to be submitted to her husband. I cannot and will not deny what God’s word says even though it is unpopular. However I will say that the same texts that tell a woman to be submitted tell the husband to have a great and abiding love for his wife. I have blogged on this “difficult” teaching on marriage elsewhere and would encourage you to read that blog post if you’re troubled or bothered by the submission texts. It is here: An Unpopular Teaching on Marriage. That said, it hardly seems that women would rush today to wear veils to emphasize their submission to their husband.

2. Argument 2 – Regarding the Angels– Paul also sees a reason for women to wear veils “because of the angels.” This is a difficult reference  to understand. There are numerous explanations I have read over the years. One of the less convincing ones is that the angels are somehow distracted by a woman’s beauty. Now the clergy might be 🙂 but it just doesn’t seem likely to me that the angels would have this problem. I think the more convincing argument is that St. Paul has Isaiah in mind who wrote: I saw the Lord seated on a high and lofty throne, with the train of his garment filling the temple. Seraphim were stationed above; each of them had six wings: with two they veiled their faces, with two they veiled their feet, and with two they hovered aloft.(Is 6:2-3). Hence the idea seems to be that since the angels veil their faces (heads) it is fitting for women to do the same. But then the question, why not a man too? And here also Paul supplies an aswer that is “difficult” for modern ears: A man, on the other hand, should not cover his head, because he is the image and glory of God, but woman is the glory of man. For man did not come from woman, but woman from man. In other words a man shares God’s glory immediately whereas a woman does as well but derivatively for she was formed from Adam’s wounded side. Alas this argument too will not likely cause a run on veil sales.

3. Argument 3 – The argument from “nature” – In effect Paul argues that since nature itself veils a woman with long hair and this is her glory that this also argues for her covering her head in Church. What is not clear is that, if nature has already provided this covering, why then should she cover her covering? I want to take up this notion of glory in my conclusion.

4. Argument 4-  The Argument from Custom–  This argument is pretty straight-forward: Paul says it is customary for a woman to cover her head when praying and, other things being equal, this custom should be followed. Paul goes on to assert that those who insist on doing differently are being “argumentative.” In effect he argues that for the sake of good order and to avoid controversy the custom should be followed. However, in calling it a custom, the text also seems to allow for a time like ours where the custom is different. Customs have stability but are not usually forever fixed. Hence, though some argue that wearing veils is a scriptural norm that women “must” follow today, the use of the word custom seems to permit of the possibility that it is not an unvarying norm we are dealing with here. Rather, it is a custom from that time that does not necessarily bind us today. This of course seems to be how the Church understands this text for she does not require head coverings for her daughters.

Conclusions –

1. That women are not required to wear veils today is clear in terms of Church Law. The argument that the Church is remiss in not requiring this of her daughters is hard to sustain when scriptures attach the word “custom” to the practice.

2. I will say however that I like veils and miss women wearing them. When I was a boy in the 1960s my mother and sister always wore their veils and so did all women in those days and I remember how modestly beautiful I found them to be. When I see women wear them today I have the same impression.

3. That said, a woman does not go to Church to please or impress me.

4. It is worth noting that a man is still forbidden to wear a hat in Church. If I see it I go to him and ask him to remove it. There  a partial exception to the clergy who are permitted to wear birettas and to bishops who are to wear the miter. However, there are strict rules in this regard that any head cover is to be removed when they go to the altar. Hence,  for men,  the rule, or shall we say the custom, has not changed.

5. Argument 5 – The Argument from Humility – This leads me then to a possible understanding of the wearing of the veil for women and the uncovered head for the men that may be more useful to our times. Let’s call it The Argument from Humility.

For both men and women, humility before God is the real point of these customs. In the ancient world as now, women gloried in their hair and often gave great attention to it. St. Paul above,  speaks of a woman’s hair as her glory. As a man I am not unappreciative of this glory. Women do wonderful things with their hair. As such their hair is part of their glory and, as St. Paul says it seems to suggest above  it is appropriate to cover our glory before the presence of God.

As for men, in the ancient world and to some lesser extent now, hats often signified rank and membership. As such men displayed their rank and membership in organizations with pride in the hats they wore. Hence Paul tells them to uncover their heads and leave their worldly glories aside when coming before God. Today men still do  some of this (esp. in the military) but men wear less hats in general. But when they do they are often boasting of allegiances to sports teams and the like. Likewise, some men who belong to fraternal organizations such as the various Catholic Knights groups often  display ranks on their hats. We clergy do this as well to some extent with different color poms on birettas etc. Paul encourages all this to be left aside in Church. As for the clergy, though we may enter the Church with these ranked hats and insignia, we are to cast them aside when we go to the altar. Knights organizations are also directed  to set down their hats when the Eucharistic prayer begins.

I do not advance this argument from humility to say women ought to cover their heads, for I would not require what the Church does not. But I offer the line of reasoning as a way to understand veiling in a way that is respectful of the modern setting, IF  a woman chooses to use the veil. Since this is just a matter of custom then we are not necessarily required to understand its meaning in exactly the way St. Paul describes. Submission is biblical but it need not be the reason for the veil. Humility before God seems a more workable understanding especially since it can be seen to apply to both men and women in the way I have tried to set it forth.

There are an amazing number of styles when it comes to veils and mantillas: Mantillas online

This video gives some other reasons why a woman might wear a veil. I think it does a pretty good job of showing some of the traditions down through the centuries. However I think the video strays from what I have presented here in that it seems to indicate that women ought to wear the veil and that it is a matter of obedience. I do not think that is what the Church teaches in this regard. There can be many good reasons to wear the veil but I don’t think we can argue that obedience to a requirement is one of them.

As noted, I'm not qualified to opine on this, and I'm loath to not take St. Paul at his word, but in some ways what I think St. Paul is instructing on here is simply to "dress decent".  That changes, quite frankly, over time, and varies by culture.

Indeed, on this, I heard awhile back an interview of an Easter Rite icon painter who was disturbed by the rich Renaissance art in Latin Rite churches.  His view was that the paintings bordered on indecency (well, he thought they were indecent but was too polite to say so) as seeing the naked or mostly naked body of a woman was strictly limited to her spouse.  St. Paul is saying something that's sort of in the same ballpark, a bit.  Having lived through the wrecking ball of the late 70s and early 80s in clothing standards, I can get that, as there was a time in there in which I'd see clothing at Mass that was occasionally indecent.  It might be the case that St. Paul is instructing people not to put themselves on display, and as recently as a few months ago I was at a Mass at which an attractive young woman with very long hair was constantly addressing it, for lack of a better way to state it.

No, she wasn't being indecent.  Yes, it was hard not to notice, but not in an indecent way.

Anyhow, as the articles above note, veils and even rarely hats at Mass are making a little bit of a comeback, but when you see them, they're making, usually, a bit of a statement. The women wearing them is usually some sort of Catholic Traditionalist.  That can be a bit distracting in its own right, but I don't mean to criticize it either.

Indeed, again by way of an example, some time ago I attended an early Holy Day Mass in which two young women, either on their way to work, or maybe to school, sat in front of me.  One was very well turned out, but in a modern fashion.  A nice wool seater paired with a nice leather skirt. She was wearing what we call inaccurately a veil.  Her friend in contrast was wearing jeans, etc. The veiled young woman also cut, in her apparel, an attractive presence.

Where am I going with this?  

Well, nowhere really.  I'm just noting another clothing change here that's taken place over time, the second in one day, really.

Before closing, I'd note that the "veil" or "chapel veil" is a "mantilla".  I know that my mother had some, as all Catholic women did.  No idea what happened to them.

A friend of mine actually recent got his wife, a convert from the Baptist faith, one.  He was asking me about it at the time, and I had no advice of any kind.  I don't know where you get them, etc.  He wasn't sure how she would take it, and I never followed up to find out.

By the way, my wife wouldn't wear a veil at church.  No way.

Also, back when head coverings were required, mantillas weren't required, just a head covering.  I recall my grandmother wearing a hat, usually of the pillbox type, and occasionally my mother doing so as well.

The Marine Corps aviation station at El Toro opened.

El Toro, near Irvine California, in 1947.

A chow demonstration was conducted.

"Dehydrated foods. Top war agency officials lunch on dehydrated foods--the kind of food that is being sent overseas to save shipping space. From left to right: Leon Henderson, Price Administrator; Donald M. Nelson, Chairman of the War Production Board (WPB); Brigadier General Carl Hardigg, Office of the Quartermaster General; and William Batt, WPB Vice Chairman. The luncheon was arranged on November 6, 1942 in the Social Security Building by Lee Marshall, Food Consultant to Mr. Nelson, to acquaint war agency officials with the progress that has been made in this country in the field of dehydrated foods. Such dried foods result in savings of up to eighty percent in volume and up to ninety percent in weight."

Monday, November 6, 1922. Appointment Clerks.

A group of Federal appointment clerks.

This, obviously all male, occupation was exactly what it sounded like.  Clerks who took appointments and handled the same.  Sort of the equivalent of a secretary/receptionist.

As late as the Second World War, in government service this occupation was a male one.  And, as the fine clothing in the photo demonstrates, one that paid a decent living to its occupants.

Indeed, every man here is wearing a three-piece suit of good quality.

Also of note, at least two are smoking cigars, not even taking time out from tobacco consumption to appear without one. When was the last time you were in an office and somebody was smoking a cigar?

A coal mine explosion in Spangler, Pennsylvania, killed 79 miners.

Ali Kemal, age 53, who we mentioned the other day, was lynched on his ways to the gallows by a mob.

By the way, in the long odds category, former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is a direct descendant of Ali Kemal.  I.e, not a cousin, Kamal is BoJo's Great Grandfather.

Released this day in 1922.

The Best Posts of the Week of October 30, 2022

The best posts of the week of October 30, 2022

Why on earth would this be surprising in any fashion?

Something interesting to note.

Some observations on being sick/injured

The Agony of being a Catholic Voter in 2022

Courthouses of the West: Vote No on the Proposed Amendment B to the Wyoming Constitution

All Souls Day

Cis

Friday, November 3, 1972. Mutiny on the Constellation

This is why we can't have nice things.

Blog Mirror: "We keep you alive to serve this ship", Part 1 of societal institutions and work. - November 04, 2022