Friday Farming: Lake County Farm, Lake County Minnesota. September 10, 1917.

Things you wouldn't see anymore. . . Tobacco funds parade, September 14, 1917

A parade sponsored by The Sun, a New York City newspaper, to raise funds for tobacco for troops.

You wouldn't see that anymore.

The Big Picture: 4th Nebraska National Guard, September 14, 1917.

 Sanitary Company.

Company K.

Today In Wyoming's History: September 12

Today In Wyoming's History: September 12:

 The original structure of the State Mental Hospital in Evanston which was destroyed by a fire on this day in 1917.

1917   The original structure at the Wyoming State Mental Hospital in Evanston was destroyed in a fire.  The large structure was completely destroyed, but no injuries occurred during the fire, although one inmate temporarily escaped.  A new edition built the prior year for male patients was not damaged however.

103rd U.S. Infantry, drill field, Camp Bartlett, Westfield, Maine., September 12, 1917

103d Infantry Regiment, U.S. Army (Maine National Guard)

Some things don't bear the test of time

The former Budget Inn in Rawlins, Wyoming.  It was probably pretty modern looking when built, I'd guess in the 1950s or early 1960s.  Now abandoned.

The tangled web. The botched morass of American Immigration and the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals

Oh what a tangled web we weave
When first we practice to deceive. 

Sir Walter Scott (Marmion, 1808

I started, a couple of days ago, what I assure you would have been a brilliant analysis of President Trump's actions, to the extent there actually were any, on DACA; the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals executive order that President Obama put in place. But George F. Will, who is a full time pundit, as opposed to me, who must relegate my activities to my free time, beat me to it, darn it. He said nearly the exact same things, in his Willian style, that I was going to say in mine.  And as he's a heavy weight pundit, while I'm definitely in the amateur league, I'll defer right away to him on that.

Trump may awaken a slumbering Congress

Will actually looks at two such topics, but his discussion on DACA was right on the mark.

I've discussed immigration here before and accused both parties in Congress of doing nothing on it. This is a byproduct of that.  President Obama's action which has been styled DACA is actually an unconstitutional determination for the Executive not to enforce the law.  He made the decision as almost nobody is comfortable with applying the law to the people it applies to here, which would be illegal aliens (let's cut the crap on "undocumented", we all know that means illegal aliens) who were brought here and who few up in the United States.  We can wax romantically about and call them "Dreamers" or act hostily and call some criminals, but most are just regular young people who have grown up as Americans with foreign born parents, a category that includes a lot of other people, most of whom did not have parents that violated the law to get in the country.  The feeling is that deporting these people would be unjust.  And I agree it would be.

But that doesn't mean that the doesn't say what it says. An a governmental Executive Officer does not have the liberty to not apply the law, although this is at least one of two such examples that I can think of in which the Obama Administration determined to do just that.  You can find others, no doubt, throughout our nation's history, but this one is spectacularly unconstitutional and legalistic in that it even contemplates registration of the illegal in order that the Executive Branch can help them evade the law.

Now, it's clear that something needs to be done about this, and sooner or later something would have been.  Nobody ever filed a Petition for a Writ of Mandamus on this issue, but if anyone had, the Court's would have almost certainly told the Executive Branch to knock it off and do its job (a Writ of Mandamus is just that, a Court order instructing a government official to do his job in some specific way that he is not).  No modern President has ignored such an order and as far as I can recall only Andrew Jackson ignored the Courts in regards to an illegal executive order, that being his order to deport the Cherokee.

It's orders like that, in part, that should give us real pause about executive orders not being challenged.  President Obama was seeking to prevent an injustice, but Jackson committed one, and every time an order like this goes unaddressed it tees up an inevitable situation, sooner or later, in which a President goes too far in a direction like that.  Executive Order 9066, which lead to the internment of Japanese Americans during World War Two was another such example.  The President simply cannot do that.

But the modern Congress has let Presidents act just that way, which is frankly to act like being a President comes with dictatorial powers.  Its encouraged it by sitting on its hands and not voting on the tough issues.  

It needs to.

Once again,  everyone is at fault except maybe for those you think aren't at fault.

Except kids brought in by their immigration law evading parents. They truly aren't at fault.

But a Democratic Party that sees every immigrant as a future Democratic voter, and a Republican Party that has tended to see every immigrant as a menial labor in a Republican factory or Republican lawn, has conspired to do nothing.  That's given us this mess.

Does that mean those who fit into the DACA category should be deported?

I'm sure some think so, but most think not.  

Is that what Trump said he was gong to do?

Well, whatever he said in the past, it's not actually what he said here.  Indeed, as DACA is illegal anyway, he's basically doing nothing so far which continues, for at least six months, the same institutionalized result the illegal executive order did.  Which is what most people want.

And Congress knows what most people want in regards to at least these people.

Will it act?

It has an immigration bill before it.  Maybe it'll actually take it up and remember what its job actually is supposed to be. 

That will be a big chore for it.  But solving this problem, which can be more easy to solve than people suppose.  But it will require both parties to act like adults on a serious problem.  So far, they haven't been able to on this issue.  Maybe now they have to.

The Big Picture: 103rd U.S. Infantry Camp, Camp Bartlett, Westfield, Mass., Sept. 11th, 1917.

A unit made up of National Guardsmen principally from Main, but rounded out by Guardsmen from New Hampshire.

Lex Anteinternet: The dogma lives loudly within you

Yeah, I ran this just yesterday:

Lex Anteinternet: The dogma lives loudly within you: Now Peter was sitting outside in the courtyard. And a maid came up to him and said, “You also were with Jesus the Galilean; but he denied...

But I normally run legal topics on Monday.  This topic is one that crosses the boundary of topicality between Faith and the Law.  So I'm noting it again.

"After the Flood". Seward Alaska, September 10, 1917.

Monday Night at the Movies. . . the theme was sheep

A century ago, it seems, movies debuted on Monday nights.  Two such silent pictures hit the big screen a century ago today.

Barbary Sheep.

Yes, what an epic.  A well heeled couple travel to North Africa for travel and hunting of some kind (I'm unclear on what they were hunting. . . perhaps Atlas Sheep?).  While there, a desert sheik seeks to seduce Mrs. Well Heeled and Mr. Well Heeled it going to have to shoot him.  He doesn't, but it all resolves happily.

This film exists today on in the form of an eight minute segment of it.  It's a nearly lost film.

Well, if that was exciting enough, consider On The Level.

Merlin, the daughter of a sheep rancher, is kidnapped by Sontag who shoots here father and drives the sheep away.  She's then unwillingly employed by Sontag as a dancer in a Mexican saloon (really, are there a lot of saloons in Mexico owned by folks named Sontag. . . I doubt it).  She dances under the name of Mexicali Mae.  Fortunately, while there, she meets drug addicted piano player and . . . oh, it's so confusing you'll just have to see it.

Weird thing.  The piano players is played by Harrison Ford. But not that Harrison Ford.

The dogma lives loudly within you

Now Peter was sitting outside in the courtyard. And a maid came up to him and said, “You also were with Jesus the Galilean; but he denied it before them all, saying, “I do not know what you mean.” And when he went out to the bystanders, “This man was with Jesus of Nazareth.” And again he denied it with an oath, “I do not know the man.” After a little while the bystanders came up and said to Peter, “Certainly you are also one of them, you accent betrays you.” Then he began to invoke a curse on himself and to swear, “I do not know the man.” And immediately the cock crowed. And Peter remembered the saying of Jesus, “Before the cock crows, you will deny me three times.” And he went out and wept bitterly

The common inquisitors to Peter, soon to be the first Pope.  Matthew 26:69-75

It was the Democratic Party that was the party of Jim Crow, Anti Catholicism, Anti-Semitism and "Americanism".  In a lot of the country the KKK was its fellow traveler.  It's gotten over most of that, except it obviously retains at least one view of its old hooded pals.

Questions and comments to Judicial nominee Amy Coney Barrett from the Democratic members of the Senate Judicial Committee:

Senator Dick Durbin, Democrat, New Jersey:  "Are you an orthodox Catholic?"

Senator Diane Feinstein:  "When you read your speeches, the conclusion one draws, is that the dogma lives loudly within you. And that's a concern, when you come to big issues that large numbers of people have fought for for years in this country."

It would seem that Democrats have retained some of the their old bigoted beliefs in a major way.  Indeed, maybe in a way that they haven't done since any point since the 1950s, or earlier.  The party housed a strong anti Catholic streak, as well as an anti Jewish and anti black streak, going far back in its history, even as machine politics brought a lot of immigrant Catholics into the party (particularly Irish immigrants) and the liberal politics of Franklin Roosevelt brought in a lot of blacks.

 The Birth of a Nation, about which President Woodrow Wilson, a southerner by birth but a "progressive" Democrat politically, declared "it is as it was".  It wasn't.

The United States started off as a deeply anti Catholic nation and while Catholics are the largest single faith in the United States the country retains anti Catholic strains in some ways.   Anti-Catholicism has been called "the last acceptable prejudice" in some quarters.   Not that this is unusual.  Almost every nation that started off as a Protestant nation retains anti Catholic strains even if they don't recognize it and can't seem to see it.  The unique aspect of this in the United States is that it is, in some ways, so open while at the same time, up until very recently most post World War Two Americans didn't realize it or at least blinded themselves to it.  Serious Catholics are now caught quite surprised, or have been in the last few years, by the re-emerged open hostility to Catholicism in liberal spheres.  Indeed, as this has occurred, Protestant Christians, or at least socially conservative ones, have likewise been caught off guard and surprised.  This has lead to widespread reconsideration of political values by Catholics as well as such movements as The Benedict Option and the Constantine Option.

As this isn't a history of anti Catholicism in the United States, or the history of religion in the United States, I'm not going to go into all of that.  What I am going to say however is that Diane Feinstein and Dick Durbin (who is a Catholic, but who must have problems with the "orthodox" Catholics that sit in the same pews) have done religious people in the United States a huge favor by flat out revealing the true nature of the current Democratic party in its upper reaches.  That is, you can accept the dogma of your Faith, or the dogma of the extreme left of the Democratic Party, but not both.  And if you chose your deeply held Faith of the Political Faith, you are not welcome in the public sphere.  Not just not welcome in the party.  You aren't welcome anywhere.

Not that this should be that much of a surprise, it's just a surprise how open it has become.

 Four time governor of New York, Al Smith was the Democratic candidate for the Presidency in 1928.  His Catholicism likely resulted in his defeat in an era when being openly anti-Catholic was acceptable.  It would seem we're back to that.

American Catholics became comfortable with the Democrats on a very wide scale early after their entry into the US due, as noted, to machine politics.  It was the elevation of John F. Kennedy to the presidency in 1960, however, that caused what used to be "Irish Democrats" to become nothing more than Democrats. At that point Catholic Americans felt that they'd exited the Catholic Ghetto and in fact they already had physically, even if they remained in it socially and intellectually.  Accommodating themselves to that, they allowed themselves to slowly adopt views that were contrary to the tenants of their faith as long as it was excused in some fashion.  Politicians like Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, and Dick Durbin epitomize that.  

 John F. Kennedy.  "Young", in political terms, at the time he was elected, war hero, and an Irish American Catholic (albeit with the personal morals of an alley cat), he made Catholics comfortable with compromise.  Not directly, but by making the "American" part the dominant part.

Nonetheless as early as 1973 some Catholics began to question the degree to which the Democratic Party could be a home for American Catholics.  Catholics were generally "liberal" on matters of rich and poor, and pubic assistance, reflecting their relatively recent immigrant status.  The Democratic Party of the time was careful not to shut the door on Democrats who opposed abortion, which became the law of the land in 1973 with Roe v. Wade.

As the years progressed, however, the Democrats shut that door.  After awhile it became a Democratic litmus test.  While Catholics remain in the party, on that issue they must rationalize their position in a party that is deeply opposed to their moral beliefs, unless they completely suspend those beliefs as many in Congress have done. 

It would take another Supreme Court decision, however, to really turn on the spot light.  The Obergefell decision, bereft of sensible legal analysis, was nothing more than a liberal judicial coup which very rapidly brought in a new era of deeply anti nature politics and social activism.  Following Obergefell it was obvious that the Democratic Party was ready to jettison any social position that wasn't extreme.  The Catholic church, like most orthodox Christian faiths, takes a deeply natural position in regards to human nature.  Indeed, in spite of the common liberal assumption to the contrary, its the Church that stands for science and nature while the party stands opposed to both.

That Catholics weren't welcome to this brave new world became pretty obvious during the campaign when the internal emails of the Democrats were leaked. While the leaking itself is horrible, the fact that their servers were penetrated by, presumably Russian hackers, did have the effect of revealing what they actually thought, and some of that was their deep hostility to Catholics.  Now they no longer even pretend.

The irony here is that nominee Barrett actually came the attention of her critics for writing a law review article that suggested that Catholic judges should recuse themselves when they are faced with social issues that are deeply antithetical to their faith. That's the height of responsible jurisprudence.  It's true that Anthony Kennedy, who wrote the Judicial Manifesto of Obergefell that overthrew the rule of law in this area, is a Catholic and somehow in his mind manages to pretend that he's doing his job in a cogent manner, and therefore he would have been off of the panel that decided that opinion.  But probably somehow missed to liberals so are that five others on the Court are also Catholic, although at least one of those is only nominally so.  In other words, the Supreme Court would have been left with five to force a judicial coup anyhow.

But the fear that Feinstein confessed is revealing as to how the Democrats are currently thinking.  The fear isn't that Catholic judges will interpret the law through Catholic lenses.  The fear is that They'll suddenly do what Democrats have been doing and are now acclimated to. That is, the fear is that they'll ignore the law, like the majority in Obergefell did, and choose to decree what the law is, or should be, based on their beliefs.

Which is exactly what the Democrats have been doing in an increasing degree since 1973.

What Feinstein means is that she's afraid, as the Democrats generally are, that conservative judges might decide that the Constitution doesn't reach a lot of issues in the imaginary world that the Democrats are attempt to construct.  That's because it doesn't.  The entire idea that the Constitution, for example, can be read to mandate a restructuring of the definition of marriage is massively absurd.  For most of our history the Constitution was read in such as a way to defer all marriage issues to the states.  If that was done for the most part, except in states with liberal jurist themselves, these issues would be left to the people decide.

Horror of horrors. We can't have that.

Father Georges Lemaître, Belgian Catholic Priest, professor of physics, and scientist, author of the Big Bang Theory.  Scientists as they really are, not as depicted by some stupid television show, and a man obviously not made uncomfortable with the Truth.  Would Feinstein find him welcome him on the faculty committee?

Catholics and other conservative Christians, people who have studied biology, regular conservatives, and natural law folks might vote, after all. 

The 102nd Infantry Regiment, United States Army (Connecticut National Guard). September 10, 1917.

Officers

Headquarters Company.

Supply Company

 Company A

Company B

Company C

Company D.

Company E

Company FConnecticut

 Company H

Company I

Company K

Company M

A Viking Sword from the High Mountains of Oppland County, Norway

The History of the World: Every Year

Poster Saturday: For Our Aviators

Best Posts of the Week of September 3, 2017

Best Posts of the Week of  September 3, 2017

Monday At The Bar: Lex Anteinternet: The Uniform Bar Exam, early tell of the tape. Revisited Again.

It would appear that North Korea has a hydrogen bomb.

 

Garden Disaster

First, I had no time this year.  My two helpers from last year weren't around, and I was too darned busy, and sometimes really too tired, to put in the attention I needed to.

Then a storm blew down the electrical panel that serviced my pump, taking out my supply of water.

That finished it off.

Still got a lot of potatoes, and radishes, but that was about it.

So,  an old school agricultural disaster this year.

Blog Mirror: America; Wendell Berry: a yeoman farmer and voice for rural America

An article in the Jesuit magazine America about one of my absolute favorite authors and a national treasure.

America:  Wendell Berry: a yeoman farmer and voice for rural America

William Abram Mann. A glimpse at how eras span

Then Maj. Gen. William Abram Mann, on this date, in 1917.

He entered the Army as a West Point graduate in 1875 and was commissioned as an infantry officer.  That was the year, of course, before Custer lead his troops into Little Big Horn on tired mounts with no good reconnaissance of the Sioux camp found there.  After serving as an infantryman Mann made a rare branch transfer into the cavalry and entered Custer's old unit, the 7th Cavalry.

As a cavalryman and infantryman he served in the campaigns against the Sioux on the Northern Plains in the 1880s and 1890s.  He was back in the infantry during the Spanish American War where he fought in the Battle of El Caney and the Siege of Santiago for which he was later decorated for heroism.  In 1916 he served as the commander of the 2nd Cavalry Bde in Mexico during the Punitive Expedition, by which time he was 62 years of age, hold enough that in the modern U.S. Army he would have been required to retire two years prior.  Following that he was promoted to Major General and was in charge of the militia bureau, which oversaw the National Guard. From there, in 1917, he went on to be appointed the commanding general of the 42nd Division, a unit made up of all National Guardsmen.

He deployed to France with the "Rainbow Division" in 1917 but by that point his age and health were catching up with him and he failed a physical.  We'll deal with a very controversial example of this later, when it coincides with the centennial of the event, but this does show that the Army did in fact remove men from command who were too physically infirm to command them in combat in spite of their senior rank.  Mann was then returned to stateside duty in the United States and retired soon thereafter, as he was by that time at the required retirement age.

In spite of ill health, he lived to age 80 and died in 1934.

A long career in the Army, spanning the height of the Indian Wars to the dawn of global mechanized warfare.

September 5, 1917. The draftees begin to report

September 5, 1917, was a big day for a lot of younger men as they began to leave their homes to report to Army training camps.  Eleven, we learn from the Casper paper, were leaving booming Casper.

And 35 were leaving from much larger Cheyenne, whose paper was also reporting that the Japanese were mustering to come to the aid of the Russians.

In the university town of Laramie the paper reported on the total numbers of the first contingent of draftees in its headlines, 34,450.

There would be a lot more following.

Blog Mirror: Men in Black

We had a thread on this quite some time back, but here's the topic from the guys who adhere to it.

Men in Black

Aug 24, 2017 • Fr. John Nepil & Fr. Michael O'Loughlin & Fr. Nathan Goebel

Blog Mirror: A Hundred Years Ago: When “Time is Money” Serve Ready-to-Eat Cereals

First day back at work after a long weekend and I'll wager that this topic addresses what a lot of you are having for breakfast this morning:

When “Time is Money” Serve Ready-to-Eat Cereals

Blog Mirror: United States Naval Railway Batteries in France

Interesting stuff, as we ponder World War One here:

United States Naval Railway Batteries in France

Published under the direction of the Hon. Edwin Denby, Secretary of the Navy

It would appear that North Korea has a hydrogen bomb.

And this is not to be taken lightly.

A hydrogen bomb is massively more powerful than a conventional atomic bomb, which is bad enough.

And that means that its much easier to place such a devastating weapon on a missile.  In short order, they will do just that, and be a nuclear power.  Not one like the United States, to be sure, but one completely capable of killings millions of people in a single blow.

And they can't be trusted now.

They didn't get there on their own, or at least its not likely they did.

The question now is, is the United States, and indeed the rest of the sane world, willing to accommodate a nation lead by a truculent toddler with a weapon that can kill millions, and which he'll arm to the teeth with. And what can we do about it?  And what should we do about it?

Why, a person might ask, does North Korea wish to have the bomb.  The use of it would be insane. That assumes, of course, an element of rationality that North Korea appears to be shy of.  But assuming that is their logic it makes them safe from conventional attack, they likely reason, as their situation deteriorates. 

The country already assassinates abroad and has engaged in any manner of weird and creepy behavior throughout its' long pathetic existence.  Always, in the back of its mind, the threat of action from the United States has been there, with their principle defense being an alliance with China. But China isn't as reliable as it might be here, and this secures it to a greater degree.

But at the same time was can somewhat assume that if China, and perhaps Russia, didn't wish to have a nuclear armed North Korea, there wouldn't be one. Why would they tolerate one.  It's difficult to say, but they likely regard the rogue communist state as principally an enemy of the west, and not their enemy.

Time will tell how that will develop, and that assumption is not really a safe one. But for the time being this appears mostly to be a problem for the United States and, accordingly, the completion of a test that commenced with the peace in 1954 and which has grown more dicey over the last couple of decades.

As recently as a few weeks ago, I felt that the threat of nuclear tipped North Korean missiles made war with the United States inevitable.  Interestingly, as this threat became real elements in the American political world that up until recently regarded a nuclear North Korea as a bright line that could not be crossed starting urging acclimation to the situation, showing that the lesson of Neville Chamberlin's blunder never really does become fully learned.

Peace in our time.

Which isn't to say that I'm urging an invasion of North Korea, which it seems apparent would be come a second war on the Korean peninsula with China.

But this is a very serious matter.  And regarding it as a non threat is not an option.  Some serious consideration of what must and should be done is in order.

The Big Picture: Granite plants on Batchelder's Meadow, Barre, Vermont. September 4, 1917.

Barre, Vermont, proclaims itself to be the Granite Center of the World.

Monday At The Bar: Lex Anteinternet: The Uniform Bar Exam, early tell of the tape. Revisited Again.

 State Bar Admission Committees carefully considering their options as the ABA and law school deans observe in the background with the interest of the average legal consumer in mind. . . oh. . . wait . . .

Posted three years ago after this dereliction of duty became the law here:

Lex Anteinternet: The Uniform Bar Exam, early tell of the tape.: One of the threads most hit upon here is the one on the Uniform Bar Exam .  As folks who stop in here will recall, Wyoming's adoption of...

So the result by now, 2017?

Just as bad, if not much worse, than predicted.  Any long term practitioner in the state is familiar with how this has worked.  New local admittees, unless they are very motivated, come into the practice ignorant on the law of the state.  Admittees from neighboring states, often from big cities, are clueless about the state's law in many instances but practice as if they know it, which is probably what their clients believe.  I've even experienced an out of state lawyer arrogantly telling a Federal jurist that he didn't have to comply with Wyoming's law as he'd complied with the law of the state in which he lived, on a very major matter.  The Court politely corrected him, to its credit.  A lot of judges would not have been so kind.

Why are we sticking with this lousy result?

States carefully pondering what's best for their residents. . . .

Part of it is that its a law of human nature (hmmm. . . . edit to major feature coming up?) to persist with an error until its blisteringly obvious that its a really big error.  There's a certain momentum in human affairs that allows a mistake to get very far progressed before its corrected.  That being the case, perhaps this isn't completely hopeless, although its hard to conclude its not.  In spite of some very erudite commentary warning that the UBE is a bad idea and flawed, and in spite of the protests of practicing lawyers that it should be halted, the UBE is expanding.

And part of the reason for that is that the ABA is boosting it, as are law schools.

The ABA, for some time, has seemingly only had the interests of lawyers in white shoe firms in mind anyhow.  So they worry about things like portability.  Gee whiz, after all, Joe Whiteshoe in Big, Bloated, Bigger, & Bigger shouldn't have to worry about his license as he goes from one metropolis to another to practice, should he.  After all, he's tried a case. . . sometime, and if he has to worry about state bars he might have to hire local counsel whose tried dozens of cases and knows the law.  We can't have that.

Additionally, law schools are backing it.

Now, when the UBE was just passed here we actually had one of our occasional meetings with the (interim) dean of the law school, and she assured us that they'd had nothing to do with it.  I've heard skepticism on this, this very year, but I believe her. But she was honest that had they known it was being advanced they would have backed it, as it would have been conceived of as good for graduating law students.

And the reason it would have been so conceived is that the UBE would give them more options. 

For about 2.5 seconds.

In reality there are more graduating law students in the United States than the US can absorb and for that reason anyone know in law school ought to be thinking of second career options.  Seriously.  The UBE isn't going to save them.  Indeed, what it actually does is to damage the practice in smaller and more rural states and concentrate it in big cities where the costs of operation are high. There's every reason to believe that in the end there will be fewer jobs due to the UBE, not more.   That, by extension, now that licenses are more portable, means that those who graduate from "first tier" schools have a bigger option than they used to.  

It used to always be the case that there were two classes of advantaged law students, those who graduated from "first tier" schools and those who graduated from good state schools.  Good state schools, like Wyoming's, conferred a real advantage on those who attended them as long as they wished to practice in their states, as they had a big edge up on the local law as well as a network of contacts.  Now knowing the local law is necessary for the bar exam and by extension the erosion of some work means that contacts mean less (and the standards of practice are declining while the lawyers treat each other increasingly badly).  In my view this means that a school like my alma mater, the University of Wyoming College of Law, is pretty much unnecessary and an anachronism.

All of that of course is an application of the law of unintended consequences, but that's how these things often go.  A concept developed to aid "portability" instead aids monculture, hurts the local practice and by extension local people.

Not that it can't be stopped.  But will it?

Probably not for some time, or until some state bar is willing to really analyze the situation. . . which is what lawyers are supposed to do.

The CST goes into the Sunday before Labor Day with a barrel of economic news

In spite of its decline, the CST still manages to put out a really good issue every now and then.  This Sunday's is one such example, full of economic news.

Much of what isn't cheery, and some of which is quite surprising.  Although, if you follow us here at all, much of this will have a familiar ring, for good or ill.

So, the roundup.

1. Paying for not getting the Feds to pay for Medicaid Expansion.

 American volunteer ambulance in France, 1915.  Medicine has certainly improved, but the costs are getting difficult to deal with.

Wyoming now faces a $30,000,000 Medicaid shortfall and its going to get worse.  This comes in the wake of Wyoming declining Medicaid expansion in the late stages of the Obama Administration which would have garnered the state something like $100,000,000.

No matter what a person thinks of programs like this, I could never grasp why we turned down the money.  But we did.  I know the Governor was having  a hard time with that too.

Well, the economic chickens on this one appear to have come home to roost, or are at least headed that way.  Part of the overall mess, right now, of health care and what we're going to do nation wide.

This gets at the heart of a somewhat unrelated matter (which we have a thread in the hopper about) which is what to do about the Affordable Care Act, aka "Obamacare".  Depending upon who you listen to, it's either about to collapse or its not.  It doesn't seem to be working super well, but then how could it really?  Given that it was sort of a bondo and bailing wire approach to the whole topic to start with.  Truth be known a nationwide, forced insurance system with private carriers was unlikely to work and now we're not too sure what to do.

We do know, however, that once benefits are extended their nearly impossible to take away, so nobody wants to really contemplate that.  That provided the basic philosophical basis for not wishing to signed up for expanded Medicaid, but the problem is that the bills were coming anyway.  Now we don't really know what to do about that.

I don't know what the solution to this is, but this seems like a train that we saw coming before it hit us.

2.  Coal is stable, at a new normal, which is lower than pre bust.

 Coal burning (maybe, it could be oil by this time) coal train, West Virginia, 1938.

I would have predicated this, particularly as the paper reports that the reasons for this a pre bust decline. That is, it's not due to the Federal government, it's due to demand.

The good news is, for Wyoming, that its not still sliding.  But that's only marginally good news as it also like means that the hoped for return to a super heated expanding industry is likely to remain a hope, and nothing more.  New revenues, therefore, are going to have to come from somewhere else.  Coal will still be with us, but it'll be with more in the fashion it was in earlier eras.  But we budgeted in the state like it was going to be the economic powerhouse forever.

On the other hand, we started budgeting with coal prior to the latest super rosy predictions and that worked well.  What that means is that we might simply have to return to leaner economic times, which weren't all that lean, really.

3.  Wyoming to subsidize air travel?

 "The air liner "Hannibal" on the Alexandria aerodome"

In a really surprising story the Wyoming Department of Transportation is advancing a plan to contract with air carriers in Wyoming the same way that airlines do with regional carriers., this story coming in the wake of Allegiant saying "Tally Ho!" to Casper. That is, basically, they'll buy any seats the regionals don't fill.  It's an ambitious and surprising plan.  It basically accepts the reality of the situation, that being that Wyoming is too small of market, in the modern world, to support much air travel. Casper has what little there is, and even its services are being reduced.  Part of this is fueled, as the paper notes, by a new regulatory requirement that pilots for commercial carriers have a much increased number of hours in order to take that job.  This has resulted in a pilot shortage, which was coming on anyhow, and it's also meant that its more expensive to operate in the small venues.  A law of unintended consequences thing, sort of.

This plan would have to get past the legislature, of course, and I'm somewhat skeptical that in the current political environment that will occur.  The paper interviewed Chuck Grey with the nearly predictable result of Grey, who is a far right conservative fellow traveler with the Wyoming Liberty Group, not being keen on the idea. The surprising part of that was that Grey wasn't as hostile to the idea as I would have expected, even though he doesn't support it. Grey told the Trib; "We need to continue to look at the current situation and purse competition".

That isn't going to work, actually.  Regional air travel is limited here as its not economic.  Chuck feels the solution is to attract Southwestern which. . .isn't going to happen.

I can see the opposition to this plan and what it will entail already.  "Socialism!"  But the fact of the matter is that the American transportation infrastructure is already government supported, with the except of the railroads.  The poor railroads have to make it on their own for some reason but this isn't true of other things.  American highways and streets are not, after all, privately owned.  When you drive into your subdivision you likely don't  pay a toll to the homeowners association, and there isn't a Wyoming State Turnpike Company that owns the highways.  Nope, all subsidized.  Indeed, we're so used to this that we don't even consider the inequities in the funding of highways.

Looked at that way WYDOT's plan is really farsighted.  The lack of intrastate air travel has long been known to be something that hurts Wyoming's economy.  The airports are barely making as it is. Some, like Natrona County's, are real gems.   What WYDOT is proposing isn't really any more radical than what the state and the towns are already doing with wheeled transportation.

4.  No wheat.

 Wheat in Maryland, yes Maryland, 1944.

In a surprising article, no doubt picked up from a wire service, the Trib informs us that there wasn't a lot of wheat planted this year.  Just too much on the market already, so farmers have switched to other things, like chickpeas.

5. Gillette admits it has two high schools

Craig Colorado's 1920 high school athletic teams.

Not in the Tribune . . . well it probably is but I don't read the sports section, Gillette was finally forced to admit that its two "campuses" were two separate high schools and so now it fields two sets of sports teams. I'm told that the schools will have boundaries, like most do, that will determine which you go to, but right now you could elect which means that all the good football players, I'm told, went to one school.  I'm not sure which that is, but the other one played down here last week and it was a complete blowout in favor of NCHS.

I don't even follow football, but I know that, so it was truly a blow out.

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: United Methodist Church, Worland Wyoming

Churches of the West: United Methodist Church, Worland Wyoming:

The United Methodist Church in Worland Wyoming.  This Church fits into the Gothic Architecture category, but like a lot of churches in this region of Wyoming, it has some Romanesque features as well.