Monday, August 18, 2014

Playing Oberursel Engine Running | The Vintage Aviator

Playing Oberursel Engine Running | The Vintage Aviator

Fancy?

Every summer there's some song that hits and becomes the big song of the summer. This summer it seems to be "Iggy" Azalea's "Fancy".

I only note this due to the odd use of terms and the way their conceived of. This is a hip hop song, I guess, and that's not a genera that I've ever liked, save for a couple of odd instances.  I don't like this song, and I wouldn't under probably under any circumstances. But Fancy?

Notable in the work are the following lyrics:  "Let's get drunk on the mini bar."

That's not fancy.  That's trashy. There is a difference

The Big Picture: Oklahoma City National Memorial.

Saturday, August 16, 2014

C-Span: Cities Tour. Casper Wyoming




Things I've learned from being an author

As some might know, a while back a book of mine was published.  Just a minor work, but nonetheless.  I'm trying to finish another, but work has been setting me back.

My book.

Having had a book published has taught me a few things, some of which reinforced what I already knew, and other things which I did not.  Here's a few observations.

Writing is hard work.

I write all the time.  I'm nearly compulsive at it.  From time to time people will ask me, for example, how much time I spend writing these blog entries.  Next to none is the answer.  I'm an extremely rapid typist and generally know what I'm going to say before I say it, so it doesn't take much time at all.  Most of these entries are written early in the morning after I've had breakfast and before I go to work, which itself is pretty darned early as a rule.

At work, as I'm a trial lawyer, I write a lot as well.  I have a lot of days where I basically write all day long until I get home from work.  

But, what surprised me, is that writing a book, on your own time, takes piles of discipline.  And it's often the case that after a full day at work, I can hardly sit down in the evening and write a sentence.

I'm an extremely shy person.

People who've known me since I was a kid know this.  I'm an introvert and I'm shy.  And by that I mean I'm genuinely shy.

What people often fail to appreciate about shy people is that almost all of them can, and do, check their shyness at their occupational door and proceed through their tasks unhindered.  That's why there are a lot of people in public roles who are rip snorting shy, but that's generally unknown. There are shy actors, shy musicians, shy public persons.  Actor James Garvin, for example, who recently died was quite shy.

In my case, I meet with a lot of people in an average week and I'm told that I seem really interactive and talkative with my clients.  I don't observe that to be the case myself, but I suspect that's true.  My father was a very shy man but he interacted with people all the time, and I can vividly recall him doing that, which he did on a daily basis.

Where it catches up with you, basically, is on your off time.  That's where the shyness comes back in.  And I've learned that here as I'm not only shy, I'm pretty modest.

A modest person shouldn't really claim to be modest, but if its a genuine attribute, you might be modest and be aware of it.   I have a relatively good idea of what I've done and accomplished, but I don't really say a whole lot about it, that's the combination of shyness and modesty.  Years ago, for example, I was in the start of a trial and an opposing lawyer, who had studied up on me, asked me if I was part of a group that had tried a certain number of cases.  I'm not.  "How many cases have you tried?" was her then question.  "I don't know" was the answer.  I really don't.  I could figure it out, and have from time to time, and its a large number.  But I don't keep a running tab, to paint on the side of my fuselage like I'm a P-51 Mustang pilot in World War Two or something.  That lawyer was amazed.  She later noted "You try everything".  I don't, but I have tried a lot of cases to juries and interact with them pretty well, but don't talk that up.  The point being, that you can know what you've done without talking it up much.

But I didn't think that most folks I know would realize I'd written a book, but they figured it out pretty quickly.  And so I'm asked a lot about it, and it always embarrasses me. Some tease me in a good natured way.  I have a hard time talking to anyone about it.

I have also found that I have a very hard time being in a public setting regarding my work.  That's odd, but true.  As an author you have to do that, which I didn't really realize, and its an odd experience for me.  It's one thing to be in a courtroom on another's cause, it's another thing to be signing your own works or talking about them.

Today In Wyoming's History: On C-Span Today

Today In Wyoming's History: On C-Span Today: I'll be on C-Span today, at 10:00 MST (along with a lot of other people), in their Casper Weekend.  Not that this is significant in anyway.  Just noting it.


This is in the context of local history, and I'm only one of several people. 

A second look at one of this season's bad political ideas. "Taking back" the Federal land

Recently I posted here an item noting Tom Lubnau's op ed in the Tribune on the bad idea of "taking back" the Federal lands.  Let's take a little closer look at it, as it reveals how little this is actually thought out.

 Mixed private and public land in Natrona County, Wyoming.

Now, this idea is currently popular with that section of the GOP that's in the "tea party" end of things locally, but that doesn't make it unique to them. A couple of decades ago it was circulated in the "Sagebrush Rebellion", so it's a species of perennial bad idea, now matter what a person's political stripes may be.

Okay, let's start with the basic premise.

!.  We're going to "take them back".

Well, you can't take back, what you didn't own.  That'd be something like theft, and the state never owned the lands.

This part of this debate, to the extent that there is one, is one of those odd deals that gets tied up in myth.  A lot of people in the "take back" end of this have a zealous belief that there was a duty on the part of the Federal government to give the land to a new state. There never was such a duty, the fact of the matter is that the Federal government never gave any new states all of the land within a state upon becoming a state.  The Federal government always "reserved" some  of the land for itself, depending upon what it through it needed for its own purposes.  The reason that most of the land was conveyed to the states prior to the Civil War was that most Americans were farmers and it was a good way for the states to encourage farming.  During the Civil War the Federal government, however, entered that scene itself, as in the arid Western regions the inducement of cheap land was no longer significant enough to draw homesteaders in, hence the "Homestead Act", which provided direct inducements to emigration.

If you really want to look at the legal theory of it, as opposed to the mythical version that some letter writer in the Tribune has today, this is it.

The Federal Government adopted the Crown's view that all land in North American belonged to the native inhabitants under what was called "Aboriginal Title".  Tribes were, and still are, regarded as sovereigns. As they were a sovereign of superior nature to a state, whose sovereignty devolved from the greater sovereigns, only the greater sovereign, the United States, could legally deal with an Indian Tribe.  And therefore only Congress cold extinguish ore acquire Aboriginal Title, by Congressional fiat, war, treaty or purchase. The U.S. Supreme Court, in fact, struck down the State of Georgia's attempt to acquire Indian lands by treaty directly.  Only true sovereigns may deal with one another.

Therefore, once that was done, the United States acquired title to the land.  Not the states. Anything a state acquired was a grant from the soverign, and the sovereign had no duty to convey land to any state.

So, sorry "take backers", the Federal government has absolutely no legal duty to give Wyoming any lands, and an acquisition of Federal lands wouldn't be taking it back, it be acquiring something new entirely.

2.  So purchase then?

In fairness, nobody proposes this, but it's really remarkable and revealing that we don't.

So what the proposal is, is that we buy them, right?  After all, the same segments of the political demographic demanding that we "take them back" claims to be in favor of a "free market economy" (it isn't, but it claims that).

So, what we'd do is buy 47% of the State at the fair market value?  Um. . . well . . . no. We wan the Federal government to give the land to us.

Give?  What?  What are we, a bunch of freeloaders?

Well, in fact, yes we would be.  Wyoming already takes in more in Federal tax dollars than it pays out. And this would be the biggest freeloading proposal of them all.  Wyoming, with its handout, would be demanding a gift.  Pretty unseemly.

Moreover, if a person is really true to their freemarket convictions, why wouldn't they just propose, as horrible of idea as it is, that the public domain just be sold tot he highest bidder?  Wyoming could bid, then, on the lands it wanted, right?

Well, of course, it couldn't afford to buy anything, and the 47% of the land now owned by the Federal government would pass out of public hands into remote hands for the most part, a true disaster for the state.  But at least it would be an intellectually honest disaster.

3.  Our right?

Now, wait a minute, you may be thinking, we're just asking for what the Federal government gave the other states, darn it.  It's our right.  I've heard at least a couple of shades of this line of thought.

Well, not so fast.  It isn't true that the other states all got their Federal lands.  Nevada didn't. Arizona didn't.  Montana didn't. Colorado didn't. Alaska didn't.  Idaho didn't. New Mexico, Utah, Arizona, and so on. . well you get the point. The western states, save for those that came in early like California, did not.

Even the Eastern states really didn't.  There are a lot of "Federal Reservations" in the east, where the government kept what it thought it needed.  The only real exceptions to this story are Texas and Hawaii, which were sovereign nations that asked, in their sovereignty, to become states. But there's a lesson here (we'll look at below) of bitter unhappiness that should forewarn of not wanting to go this route anyhow.

4.  The Feds just got greedy, right?

Well, that's just because the Feds were a punch of party poopers after the Civil War, right?

This has been addressed a bit above, but no, it's because the Federal domain was open to every citizen for homesteading, and the the states were just peachy with that.  This had come about as the old system, with states selling off the public land, wasn't working for the arid West.

Beyond that, by the 1860s it was clear that the onset of the industrial revolution meant that the country needed to do something to encourage mining on the vast public tracts that were not attracting development, and that resulted in the Mining Law of 1872, which give the mineral industry, one of Wyoming's most favored industries in terms of public sympathy, the right to enter in and occupy lands in a manner that was superior to any other claim.  As I don't want this to turn into a treatise on the public lands, I'll stop there, but this is what established the system we basically have today.  And this was a system the state were perfectly fine with, and in Wyoming's case a private war was actually fought in the 1890s in an effort to preserve it.

Beyond that, in Wyoming's case, it's because we had such a small population we had to bribe the Federal government for statehood. We doubleed our voters by granting women the right to vote, and then we promised the Federal government we wouldn't ask for anything, small poulation state that we were. We even put it in our state constitution.

Oops.

5.  Our own self interest

Well, 1890 was a long time ago, and this would be in the best interest of the state today, right?  Let's ingore the history and grab what we can, and we'll all be better off.

Not hardly.

First of all, something Wyomingites fail to appreciate is that the Federal government actually manages the land much more lightly than the State.  A Wyomingite can pretty much go where he wants and do what he wants on the public lands, in spite of the oil wells, cattle and sheep.

Not so on State land. State land is specific for its leased use, and you really have fewer rights on the State land.  People simply ignore that, as they're unaware of that.  If the state acquired the land, the state would either have to take up ignoring that, or would make people mighty unhappy.

Assuming the state kept the land, which is a doubtful presumption.  The State of Wyoming already has a history of disposing of the land it has, often for values which seem doubtful at least from the outside.  With more land to dispose of, there's no reason to believe that market pressures, and the cost of now having to manage the land itself, wouldn't cause it to sell a lot of it off, maybe darned near all of it off.

And the primary beneficiaries of that would be out of state wealthy interests.  Some imagine a mythical world of renewed small homesteading. Well, that's not going to happen.  Millionaires from St. Louis would be more likely to acquire the land than the existent tenants or average Wyomingites.

And some imagine that if the Federal government could be cajoled, coaxed or sued into giving us the lands, it would be a boon to those sectors of the mineral industry that aren't doing as well as they once were, like the coal industry. Well, guess again. Inside the industry the Federal government isn't regarded as a particularly harsh landlord and frankly its easier to get along with than private landowners generally are.  Indeed, if the State sold the land industry would likely have to compete, in some instances, with environmental groups that would claim an equal right to bid on the land, something they've done before with oil and gas leases, if they could.

The net result, moreover, would be to make us a Western state like Texas, or Hawaii, where the native inhabitants look out on a state that they live in, but largely cannot access.  Texans might like to point towards their Western cowboy heritage, but there aren't many of them living it.  How could they? They have no right to go on the soil of most of Texas, most of which is privately held.  In Hawaii feelings are so bitter in some sectors that there's a nativist independence movement which would take the state and its lands back for the original inhabitants.

We should be thankful that the Federal domain is Federal.


Tuesday, August 12, 2014

On Robin Williams

Richard Cory
By Edwin Arlington Robinson 

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
"Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.

And he was richyes, richer than a king
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head
The news today is full of stories and attributes on Robin Williams, who killed himself yesterday.  Apparently he was battling depression and had a history of addictions, which probably were part and parcel of each other.

The last time a celebrity was noted here upon that person's death, which is probably the only time a celebrity has been noted here due to death, was when Richard Seymour Hoffman died due to a drug overdose, and my entry at that time wasn't really sympathetic.  I tend not to credit too much the stories of pressure and angst associated with the performing arts, as I don't think they compare to those born by the unknown and average, who often have tremendous burdens.  In other words, I don't worry too much about the fame and its burdens that the famous have, as I don't think it's quite the same as being a blue collar worker in Detroit worrying about his job and his family.

But I do feel different about Williams, who seemed a fragile character in some ways, and a real one in other ways.

I wasn't an early fan of Williams, but I did start liking his work about the time he appeared in Good Morning Vietnam, and his performance in Good Will Hunting, ironically as a psychologist, was brilliant.  Perhaps that role, more than any other, showed his vulnerability and tapped into a completely non comedic serious role.  Unfortunately Williams could portray the deeply insightful but troubled psychologist in that movie, but apparently take no  comfort from it.

I don't know what it was that was so deeply troubling to Williams, and frankly for those very seriously disturbed, nobody really can.  But I note what was noted so long ago by the poem Richard Corey, set out above.  I don't want to be seen to be excusing his suicide, but it can be the case that a person who seemingly has everything, does not feel that way himself. And for those oppressed with the often heavy, but ordinary burdens of everyday life, things are often much better than they might appear.

Economic Ignorance and the American electorate

This is election season, and as a result, of course we see a wide set of topics discussed in the public sphere, with quite a few of those discussed badly.  Amongst these are economic topics.

Economics has been famously called the "dismal science" and not without good reason.  For one thing, economist themselves, including academics, have a real knack for doing to economics what some academic historians amazingly managed to do to history, which is to make it boring.  Economics differs from history, however, in that to some degree microeconomics is in fact boring to most people.

Macroeconomics isn't however, and people discuss it all the time without having any idea they're doing that.  Indeed, not only do they have no idea that they're doing that, but to an increasing degree even when people cite to economic terms they are utterly ignorant of the topic they're actually addressing.

That's downright dangerous, frankly.  People are always taking about income disparity, jobs, wages, prices and the like, and this sort of thing effects people daily.  All of that is an economic topic.

Additionally, in recent years, particularly since Barack Obama was elected, people have started to throw around common economic terms in a political context, often while not really grasping at all what they mean.  It taints the debate and really confuses it.

For example, it's been very common in some quarters to accuse President Obama of being a "Socialist".  He isn't, and he's not even ballpark close to being a Socialist.  On the other side of the coin, a lot of people are quick to brand themselves "Free Market Capitalist". They mostly aren't either, at least in a meaningful thoughtful sense.  From the outside, say Europe, where there are real Socialist, and even Communist and Autarkist, the use of the term "Free Market Economist" and "Socialist" in American political debates must seem bizarre in the extreme, as the average European would be completely unable to distinguish the difference between what the average Democrat and average Republican espouse, as they're really basically different versions of the same thing.

And what that thing is, is actually Corporate Capitalism, not Free Market Capitalism.  I'm not saying that this is good or bad, but I am saying that when people talk about the "glory of the American free market system", they don't really know what they are talking about.

What the US has, in economic terms, and what is generally the post 1990 case for most of the western world, is some version of the Corporate Capitalism, or what we'll just call Corporatism here for short.  I've dealt with this here before, but because I'm seeing the debate so skewed in recent weeks, it's worth dealing with again.

In a truly free market system, individuals, without the sponsorship or aid of the state, or its hindrance, compete with one another in the open market place. Think Adam Smith, basically. This is the system most Americans solidly believe they have, but we actually have a system that's nowhere near that. 

In Corporatism, the state takes a direct role in the economy by allowing the incorporation of what are actually partnerships.  Partnerships are, of course, when one or more person combine in a business.  Corporations are really the same thing. What makes corporations different, however, is that the state shields the individual members of the de facto partnership from liability and otherwise allows the corporate entity to act as if is a person.  Indeed, as lawyers know, a corporation is, and has always been, a person in the eyes of the  law. 

That legal fiction creates a huge economic advantage to corporation. And that's not the only one. A shareholder in Walmart, for example, bears no personal liability should Walmart commit a tort.  If Walmrat were a partnership in the classic sense, that wouldn't be true.  And if that were not true, the advantage of holding an interest in a remote company like Walmart, or Ford, or General Electric, would be enormously reduced, to say the least.

The fact that this system, i.e., corporations, exists, creates numerous advantages to corporations in a quasi free market economy, with one of those being that such economies tremendously favor economy of scale.  That is, such economies will necessarily favor the big over the small. Walmart over, for example, "Bob's Appliance Store".

Now, a person can argue this one way or another. Economist tend to argue that this is really a good thing, as the big entities create cheap goods, and that's good for the "consumer".  Critics, and they tend to be much less heard, would argue that those consumers are people, and those people now have a greatly reduced ability to compete in the local market, which is also true.  Honest proponents of Corporatism, and here they tend to be somewhat few, acknowledge that, but argue that's still a good thing as those people are now forced into sectors of the economy where their talents now serve a greater good for everyone, and its undoubtedly the case that the whole world is getting richer as a result.  Critics of that few will argue that those people only live so long, and it's not much of a consolation to Bob that he has to leave his appliance store in Laramie Wyoming to work at Amalgamated Amalgamated, Inc, in Denver.  

Still, as many honest critics of Corporatism as there are, there are more confused adherents to it who will proclaim themselves to be "strong advocates of the free market", but aren't.  People will argue on one hand they're in support of the system but on the other they complaint about its effects and advocate that the government do this or that, or simply blind their eyes and complaint about injustice when, if the result they complaint of is not just, it may be a byproduct of the system they advocate.

Part of the oddity of all of this is that it seems to be simply assumed that the only other economic system on earth is Socialism, which many Americans equate with Communism for some reason.  It's perfectly possible to be a democratic Socialist. Socialism is a system, as we explored earlier, which advocates that the government own the means of production.  So, instead of Amalgamated Amalgamated owning the Consolidated Amalgamated Works, the government does.   The government is then supposed to run CAW for the benefit of all, and be fair to the workers.

The problem with that idea is that it doesn't work for a plethora of reasons.  And the fact that it doesn't work is the reason why Socialism is dead as a doornail, remaining only in a very few localities.  When people accuse some American politician of being a Socialist, they don't have this system in mind at all.

Rather, what they have in mind is any action in which the government plays in the economy directly, or even obliquely.  That's not usually actually Socialism, however, but some sort of statism.  As the U.S. has had a managed economy to some extent ever since the 1930s, that isn't really a new development however, and both political parties have participated in that since that time.  

Additionally, where there are direct government roles in the economy, people actually tend to support it without realizing what it is. Again, I'm not arguing for or against this, but a person should be honest about it.  Most people like the government paving the roads.  Most people like the government running the airports.  These are species of Socialism.  There's no existential reason we need the FAA, for example, but most of us would not deregulate the skies, fire the air traffic controllers, and hope for the best.

Indeed, while people whine about it, the dirty little secret of Socialism is that there are limited areas in a Corporatist or Capitalist economy where a little bit of it always exists, and perhaps even more should exist.  North Dakota Mill, for example, is a North Dakota owed flour  mill that assures that North Dakota wheat continues to get processed in lean times.  Is this an economic evil?  Well, its been operating since 1922 and they seem to like it, probably for good reasons.  South Dakota Cement is a state owned cement plant. Is that because there are red hordes in Rapid City?  No, it just exists for the same reason that North Dakota Mills does.  Wyoming, which always claims that it wants to boost economic development outside of the oil and gas industry might take a page from that book and consider a state wool mill, really, to help boost the sheep industry.  If it makes a profit, why not?

And Wyoming has taken a page from that book in terms of Workers Compensation.  Workers Compensation in Wyoming is a state controlled and captive insurance system.  It was modeled on the German system that existed pre World War One, and is 100% government operated and controlled.  It is a Socialist system.  Is that because the Reds are in the State Capitol singing The Internationale?  No, it just recognized a need very early on, and has been operating for nearly a century now effectively.  There's no suggestion that we privatize it, even though most other states have a mixed state owned and controlled, private carrier, system.

Which suggest that in reality, people might actually go for practicality over economic theory, which brings me back to economic theory.  Everyone seems ignorant of the fact that there's other economic systems, and one significant modern system that just doesn't get looked at all, that being Distributism.

Distributism is an economic theory that advocates for "Subsidiarity", which is a confusing word based upon Catholic social teaching.  Basically, it means go small. Subsidiarity advocates the opposite of Socialism, in that it advocates that to the maximum extent possible, economic means should be vested at the lowest possible level, that being the family or the individual.

Wait just a freaking moment, you may be saying. That's what the Capitalist advocate!  Why just the other day I heard Politician Moe declare he was for motherhood, apple pie, the family farm, and the small businessman daggnabit!  Are you saying Moe isn't advocating that?

He probably isn't.  Moe probably says he's for all those things, and may believe that he is, but he probably also feels that it's consistent with his views is Amalgamated Consolidated Giant Big Box Inc. puts the bullet in Larry's Hardware, as that's just he way it is (and he's probably also okay with the FAA and State Highway Department too).  That's okay, but it means that he doesn't really grasp what he's saying.

The reason for that would be that if you were really a true Capitalist, you'd have to be a Distributist, not a Corporatist. The reason for that is simple, it's actually Distributism that advocates a free market, made up of competing people where possible, and competing companies where necessary, not Corporatism.

We don't have a Distributist economy in the US, we have a  Corporatist economy, and that isn't a truly free market economy.  If we had a true free market economy, it'd have to be Distributist.  In that economy, for example, Walmart wouldn't be state sponsored, and therefore it would be a partnership.  It'd probably be a small regional partnership.  You'd have to buy your stuff from a collection of local family owned stores that competed with each other.  Like it or not, and efficient or not, that's a free market economy, not the one we have.

Okay, what' the point of all of this? Well the point is several fold.

1. This is the election season, and a bunch of people are running around throwing words like "Socialist" and "Free Market" around, and its almost 100% inaccurate.  There are something less than 0% of politicians locally in most localities who are Socialist, and Socialist are so rare, that if they are Socialist, they'll actually claim to be Socialist.  And almost 100% of the people who claim to be "Capitalist" or in favor of the "Free Market' actually aren't. They're in favor of the post Reagan,. lightly managed, Corporatist economy.  

2.  Economic systems are economic systems, and when a person begins to get to be such an adherent to one that it passes from a philosophical belief into a quasi religious belief, a person ought to at least pause and ponder the nature of them.

3.  When a person mixes the words "Our Founding Fathers" and "Free Market", they're espousing a world view, not a historical view.  The founders had grown up in a mercantile system and were living in a system that is much, much, much, much closer to Distributism than what we have today.

4.  There are systems other that the Corporatist and Socialist ones, and perhaps that should be considered.  When people claim they're for "small business", the "family farm" and "entrepreneurs" they're suggesting a system that's more akin to Distributism than it is to Corporatism. If they mean that, they should ponder Distributist policies.  If they don't like Distributist philosophy, they ought to quit pretending that they do.

5.  Systems can be mixed, and that's not evil.  Everyone likes a little dose of Socialism, whether they'll admit it or not (if you don't, next time you are at the airport demand that the tower be privatized, and write your state about the horror of the socialist department of transportation).  We aren't mixing in any Distributism right now, but our rhetoric suggests that we'd like to.  Indeed, if we don't want to mix in a little Distributism, that would mean that we're 100% okay with state support of the economy, as that's what corporate laws provide for, and ought to admit it.

6.  Most people, or at least most politicians, are somewhat okay with "distribution of wealth", whether they'll admit it or not.  Any time there's a government body, the department of transportation, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Fire Department, or whatever, occupying a role that could be contracted for instead, some wealth is being redistributed. And our corporate system is a massive redistribution of wealth from the small to the large.  It seems that most politicians are okay with that, but if they are, they ought to admit it.  If people actually aren't okay with it, they should ponder that, as most of these systems aren't written into stone are capable of being changed. Sometimes the change doesn't actually require all that much.