Back in 2011, I posted:

I had a high school history teacher who, periodically, would draw three circles on the chalkboard representing the three branches of government: executive, legislative, and judicial. Depending on what era in history we were looking at, the respective circles would be bigger or smaller. Possibly there was a better visual representation to be had, but the basic notion was that, where one branch refused or declined to act, the other ones would expand into the vacuum.

Speaking of three rings, Congress has largely looked like a circus for the past generation or so. And that, as much as anything else I believe, is why we have seen the Presidency and the Supreme Court looming larger in our lives. This might also be why “limited government” is mostly a fantasy — at least if its proponents seek to achieve it through gridlock and inaction. The branches would have to affirmatively limit themselves and the other branches. Inaction simply leads to one of the other branches stepping into the breach.

President Obama’s executive order on immigration, and Gov. Pence’s executive action in opposition – joining a lawsuit by various pieces of various state governments – made me think of that post from a couple of years ago.

Simply stopping one branch of government is not, by itself, enough to stop the other branches. They can and probably will expand their reach until affirmatively checked by one of the other branches. In fact, I think Obama is, to some extent, trolling Congress here – baiting it into action. The political calculation is probably that regardless of which way Congress jumps, you’ll get some mix of better immigration policy and/or his Republican opposition making themselves less popular with Latinos. Additionally, despite the rhetoric to the contrary, I don’t get the feeling that President Obama is actually a big fan of a strong executive — at least not as much as his recent predecessors. So, rhetoric and action pushing back on a stronger executive might be welcome. (That last sentiment is more speculative than the former.)

This is a re-post of my 2011 Thanksgiving entry which I liked quite a bit.

I’ve blogged about this before – 2007, in particular, but in the recent past, I’ve come to learn that the “First Thanksgiving” has only a nodding acquaintance with the mythology we’re taught in school. At the end of the day, it boils down to our country’s harvest festival and, as such, the literal history probably isn’t that important.

As I recall the version I learned in school, the Pilgrims left England because they hated religious oppression, they arrived a Plymouth Rock, hewed a settlement out of the wilderness, received the help of some friendly Indians; in particular an English speaking one named Squanto; they were taught how to plant corn with the help of fish fertilizer; and then, at harvest time, had a feast to celebrate.

The reality is a little more complicated. The Pilgrims mostly did not think the right kind of religious oppression was underway in England. The Pilgrims had left England and settled in Holland for about 10 years; but, among other things, they thought the environment was a little too permissive for the kids and that the congregation was losing its identity. Their trip was poorly timed, bringing them to New England in November 1620. While on the Mayflower, the Mayflower Compact was created and signed in response to the suggestion of certain passengers that, once in the New World, they would be at liberty to do as they pleased.

Arriving in New England at the beginning of winter was a bad idea. Fortunately for the Pilgrims, the Native Americans along the coast had been decimated by disease – leaving empty villages with at least a little in the way of food and supplies. The eventual site of Plymouth Colony was in an area that had been cleared by the Patuxet before they had been ravaged by smallpox.

The Pilgrims were assisted by Squanto (Tisquantum), a Patuxet who had been kidnapped years earlier and enslaved by Thomas Hunt and taken to Spain to be sold. Some friars intervened, and Squanto was not sold. He made his way to England and worked for some time as a shipbuilder. After about 5 years away from America, he got back to find his tribe had been wiped out by disease. Shortly thereafter, he seems to have been captured by the Wampanoag people and may have still been a captive when he was acting as an intermediary between the Wampanoag and the Pilgrims; leading to some tension later on between Squanto and Massasoit, the Wampanoag leader. Squanto may have been playing the two sides against each other to some extent. I even read that the actual Thanksgiving feast was as much a display of arms and strength among the competing sides as a celebration of the harvest. I’m not sure how much to credit that.

Regardless of the beginnings, what I think is important to remember is that the tradition stems from a time where people can and did starve. Survival was uncertain from year to year where a bad harvest could mean famine in the winter. People had an incomplete understanding of the science behind weather and agriculture, so Native Americans and Europeans mixed their gratitude with a fair amount of superstition, believing, perhaps, that angry gods would cause famine in the future and gods who felt well respected would be more beneficent. Even without incorporating the supernatural, gratitude is entirely appropriate. I am thankful to live in a society (if not necessarily a world) with a secure food supply. And, of course, I have a lot of other things for which to be grateful – a loving family, a good job, and a warm place to sleep primary among them.

So, take stock of what you have going for you; and if you’re not cold and hungry tonight, you have it a lot better than a good chunk of the multitudes that have lived over the course of human history. And, if you think your good fortune is attributable to God or the Great Spirit or Ceres or Demeter or being responsible for good harvest; by all means offer thanks to them as well. Gratitude isn’t a limited resource; but should be spent freely.

A statesman, policy wonk, and dedicated public servant retires. These are sentiments not reflected in this article about the retirement of long time representative Eric Turner or, so far as I’m aware, by anyone else reflecting on the legislative career of Rep. Turner.

Tony Cook’s article is entitled “Rep Turner, plagued by scandal, formally resigns.” He announced his intent to retire back in September following a brouhaha involving his efforts to kill legislation behind closed doors that had the potential to cost his family piles of money in the nursing home business.

I’m pretty excited about the news that the European Space Agency landed a module on a comet. Although, I’m kind of bummed that the harpoons didn’t work. Saying we harpooned a comet makes humans seem pretty badass. And right now, the situation might be precarious. With almost no gravity, the lander weighs less than a sheet of paper on earth and the comet is outgassing as it approaches the sun which apparently creates a bit of a wind. The screws on the landing legs may be securing the lander, but it will be a while before we know for sure.

But, even without the harpoons, the planning and math necessary to land a tiny spacecraft on a comet 30 million miles away is audacious.

As Phil Plait of the Bad Astronomy blog puts it:

After 10 years of travel through the depths of space, and at least that long beforehand filled with meetings, designs, construction, and a launch in 2004, the Philae spacecraft was successfully released from its Rosetta mothership. Then, seven hours later, it made history.
. . .
It’s difficult to overstate this achievement. The comet is moving on an elliptical orbit that takes it just outside the orbit of Jupiter (850 million kilometers from the Sun) and as close as 186 million km sunward (just inside the orbit of Mars). The Rosetta spacecraft had to travel for a decade through space to catch up to its target, flying past two asteroids—Lutetia and Steins—as well as getting a gravitational boost by swinging past Mars and even Earth. It was a long, cold journey, which finally brought it alongside 67P in August 2014.

Humans can ban together collectively and achieve amazing things. We forget that way too often, envisioning ourselves as reasonably competent individuals surrounded by idiots in a world that only gets worse and never better. (Never mind, as Louis CK points out, everything’s amazing.)

Sheila Kennedy has a post entitled “Pence, Pre-school, and the Right Wing Base”. The back story is that Indiana had the inside track to get $80,000,000 in federal grant money to fund pre-kindergarten education for Hoosier children. In a surprise move, Gov. Pence decided that Indiana would drop out of the race. He cited vague concerns about entanglement with the federal government. I speculated that Gov. Pence’s presidential ambitions were the explanation.

Sheila suggests a related but more local and specific rationale: opposition by the likes of the Indiana Family Association because it would fund competition to church day cares:

We’ve seen this movie before. Every time the state legislature tries to pass minimum health and safety standards for daycare and preschools–usually, after a tragic accident at some unregulated, unsafe facility– conservative churches mount a hysterical assault on “big government,” and claim a religious right to be free of pesky (too-expensive) rules about nutrition, fire safety, minimum ratio of caregivers to infants and the like.

Churches operating daycare and preschool operations that don’t want to comply with health and safety standards are a big part of Governor Pence’s base. Those churches clearly didn’t want federal money funding safer competitors, and the Governor just as clearly got the message.

Maureen Hayden, writing for CNHI, has an article entitled “Retracing a border incites tensions between Hoosiers, Michiganders” (h/t Indiana Law Blog).

The issue has to do with surveying the border between Indiana and Michigan. (If you’re a Michigander, dependent on hand-based maps, that’s the area between the palm and wrist.) When the original survey was performed in the 1820s they used wooden posts, most of which are long gone. The boundaries are generally known, but small differences can lead to problems. So, the states agreed to re-monument the border.

The new snag is that it’s taken awhile to get going, and Michigan doesn’t think the original cost estimate is reasonable. Apparently the original estimate from 2009 figured for about $1 million in expenses with each state footing half the bill. But, Michigan thinks that the estimates weren’t accurate Michigan anticipates that the true cost is more like $2 million.

Michigan insists that a survey crew needs to spend eight hours a day occupying a point on the boundary to get an accurate global positioning reading from satellites, for example. Indiana surveyors think the same work could be done in less than three hours.

“If you do it their way, it costs about $1,600 a day. If you do it our way, it costs $600 a day,” [St. Joseph County Surveyor John] McNamara said. “You can see how fast the extra costs add up.”

Indiana has only appropriated $500,000. So, it sounds like the states are going to haggle over the budget before they get started. Michigan should figure a way to get a bridge involved so Indiana could give them $1.7 billion the way we are to Kentucky.

As is his wont, Abdul just stirred the pot a little by saying on Facebook:

Ok, let’s make a deal. I’ll concede “income inequality” if you concede “work ethic” inequality.

That’s true, as far as it goes, but as he acknowledged in the discussion thread, the correlation is imperfect. It’s an old theme around here, but seems worth repeating.

Much as we’d like it to be, the economy isn’t a morality play. The economy doesn’t reward virtue. It rewards leverage. Hard work is one kind of leverage, and probably the most accessible form for the average person. Talent is another. Already having money is a big form of leverage. Controlling a bottleneck in the economy (e.g. monopoly or money supply) is yet another.

From the perspective of the person who makes the money, by and large, it seems like a function of their hard work and talent. They are acutely aware that they busted their ass, and they’ve seen, probably carried the load for at one time or another, any number of people who were lazy and talentless. What is often less obvious to someone in that position are the people who are also busting their asses with much less (or no) payoff. And even harder to recognize — on account of Upton Sinclair’s observation about the perspicacity of one whose salary depends on not being perspicacious — is when one’s own good fortune depends on siphoning off some portion of the value created by others.

The lack of insight into the condition of others is not unique to the well-to-do, of course. Just to pick an example, my guess is that there is a high percentage of employees who have no idea that their employer pays extra to Medicaid and Social Security on behalf of the employee for the privilege of employing them. While they no doubt have their own stressors in life, they perhaps don’t know what it’s like to continue thinking about work most of the day, every day, clocked in or out — where the next client is coming from, whether existing clients will renew their contracts, whether your vendors are cheating you, whether you have the company’s third quarter paperwork in order, etc.

In any event, the economy is complicated. We all have our problems. But, by and large, a person’s prosperity is not a good proxy for insight into the person’s moral character.

The United States Supreme Court has issued its order denying to grant the petitions for certiorari to review the same sex marriage decisions by the various Courts of Appeal. The 7th Circuit had issued its opinion written by Judge Posner which upheld District Court Judge Young’s opinion issuing an injunction which nullified Indiana’s ban on same sex marriages.

Following an opinion by the Court of Appeals, the Clerk of the Circuit Court issues a mandate (See Fed. R. App. Proc. 41). This certifies the opinion to the lower court whose decision was under review. The Court of Appeals issued a stay which prevented the Clerk from issuing the mandate. The terms of that stay says that it terminates automatically if the Supreme Court denies the petition for certiorari. That has happened. Therefore, the stay on the 7th Circuit Clerk has been lifted. The 7th Circuit Clerk is now, I believe, free to issue the mandate, certifying the opinion to the lower court. That should probably happen as soon as the 7th Circuit Clerk can process the paperwork. Once that happens, Judge Young’s initial injunction will resume and Indiana’s prohibition on same sex marriages will be nullified.

Writing at Strong Towns, Charles Marohn notes that he has a book coming out entitled “A World Class Transportation System.” He is frustrated with the not-even-rising-to-the-level-of-a-Band-Aid approach to transportation policy. Our policymakers try only to come up with funding solutions for our current, outdated, system — and are not successful.

Transportation policy in America needs to focus on building cities that are financially productive and then connecting them with high speed, high capacity roadways. We built the interstate. Cross it off the list. We’re done. It’s now time to use that investment – to mature that system – to start getting more out of it.

Might be worth checking out.

Related – 50 years ago, on October 1, 1964, Japan began high speed rail service – Tokyo to Osaka at 130 miles per hour. Faster than we manage even today in the U.S.