Maggie's Farm

It's an election year - the time when politicians and their fellow job-seekers work their butts off trying to convince you that you have big problems and that your life is difficult - and that only they can fix that.

They want to be important and powerful.

Truth is, America has essentially no serious problems. It's quite remarkable, really.

We are the most prosperous nation in the world. We are the most powerful nation in the world. We are materially the best-off people in the world. We have more freedoms than anyone else in the world. We have more opportunity for everyone than anywhere else in the world. We reward effort more than anywhere else in the world. "Tolerance"? We tolerate things and people that few in the world would tolerate. We speak our mind freely, and dispute fervently. We have the lowest unemployment rates in the world, and our work ethic is the envy of every nation (except France, where they do not seem to like to work). Our blue-collar workers have two houses, $100,000 boats, and send their kids to college. Our most unfortunate have hot water, TVs, DVD players, and obesity problems. Our wealthiest are the most generous in the world. Our middle class is the salt of the earth. We are the most charitable nation on earth. We are the most conservation-minded nation in the world (or maybe on a par with England). Our educational systems educate kids who are ambitious about learning as well or better than any other nation. We go to church, and we value things greater than our our comfort and pleasure - but we rightly love the latter. We read books, news and the internets to our heart's content. We believe that every honest citizen deserves respectful behavior, and we do our damndest to provide justice for all. Our medical care is the most advanced in the world, and it takes very little effort for the most unfortunate among us to access it (via Medicaid, Medicare, and simple charity). Our only external enemies are ignorant loonies who hate almost everybody - but if they get the bomb, that would be a real problem - but one we could solve in 15 minutes if we decided to.

What a great country we are blessed with.

We are at the point at which our "problems" are gripes and bitches and minor details (see my recent post on Spencer's law) rather than major structural or institutional problems. Yes, we have an illegal immigration issue - but it's because most of the world wants to come here for freedom and opportunity. So enforce the laws. Gas prices? Gimme a break. A global market issue that pols can do little about. Energy prices? Readily solved by nuke plants. The housing market? Just a healthy bust of a bubble that dinged some reckless risk-takers but which provides cheaper homes for buyers. Iraq? If we can help those folks out, it will be to our credit, and we have fine guys and gals willing to fight and die for the cause. The economy? This normal rhythmic slowdown (not even a true recession except for Wall St. banks) will sort itself out in due time.

The working poor? Everyone who works should earn a living wage, I believe, but nowadays married immigrants will send one to work at WalMart, and one to do landscaping - and they end up with a middle class income of around $35,000 - not poor, and with excellent job benefits. Racism? We have a black guy who could be our next President. Global warming? Gimme another break. Some warming would be good for everybody. Just ask a Minnesotan.

So what change do people want?

Don't have as much money as you want? Who does? Envy the rich folks you read about? Go work for them or sell them something, and benefit from their wealth (and in the meantime, work on your envy problems). Want life to be easeful and totally secure? Get a government job or move to France (but don't decide to try to start a business there: it's almost impossible). Freedom, like religion, is not meant to be easy and stress-free - such things are far too valuable to be easy. Freedom is messy, and freedom requires that people be grown-ups and take responsibility for their lives.

In America in 2008, the only serious problems we face are the problems which our Founders intentionally handed us - the eternal problems which are our proud inheritance: maintaining freedom from the powers of our own government, and protecting our freedom from the external forces which threaten our personal freedom and our country. The former, I believe, is more of a challenge than the latter: we will, in time, always succeed in the latter when we want to.

But how do you run a national campaign on that? (Unless you are Ronnie Reagan.)

Stumbling and Mumbling linked to a site which discusses the two Latin roots of the English word "education:"

Craft (1984) noted that there are two different Latin roots of the English word "education." They are "educare," which means to train or to mold, and "educere," meaning to lead out. While the two meanings are quite different, they are both represented in the word "education." Thus, there is an etymological basis for many of the vociferous debates about education today. The opposing sides often use the same word to denote two very different concepts. One side uses education to mean the preservation and passing down of knowledge and the shaping of youths in the image of their parents. The other side sees education as preparing a new generation for the changes that are to come--readying them to create solutions to problems yet unknown.

Of course, formal education - as opposed to all of the other education life offers - has the job of both "putting stuff in" and "drawing good stuff out."

But people vary widely in intelligence, talent, energy, curiosity, and ingenuity. Simon at Classical Values in Romantic Intellectualism has a fine discussion of American education, and about how PC prevents many from talking honestly about things like No Child Left Behind. (His post highlights  Charles Murray's The Age of Educational Romanticism in The New Criterion). Simon concludes his post thus:

"The society which scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a humble activity, and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because philosophy is an exalted activity, will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water." -- John W. Gardner, Saturday Evening Post, December 1, 1962

In other words not every man has equal intelligence. All have equal dignity if they comport themselves in a dignified manner. We owe the maintenance of our civilization (and it takes a lot of maintaining) to our plumbers and garbage men. We owe the advances to our scientists and engineers. What we must never forget is that we are all in this together. The man/woman who is respectful and contributes deserves our respect without qualification. The financial trader or the clerk at the grocery store.

Let me add one final point that the article didn't make that I think is vitally important and not well addressed in many communities. Hard work can make up to a 15 IQ point difference in outcomes (sorry no link). That is one standard deviation. It is not a lot. It is however significant. You can make up for some lack of anything with extra effort. How many times do we hear of the ball player with less than stellar abilities make up for his lack by devoting more time to practice than his team mates? What works in baseball also works in school. You can punch above your weight if you work at it.

Back to the S&M piece, in which Chris Dillow wonders about the differences between the Brit private and state schools. It begins:

The other day I was toiling away when I heard a series of loud bangs. "What idiot is setting off fireworks in the middle of the afternoon?" I wondered. I went out to find out. It was Oakham School's army cadets having shooting practice.

Which set me thinking:  isn't private schooling so good? It's education in the sense of "educere" - drawing out whatever latent talents a student has. If someone doesn't have the aptitude for academe, they are given the chance to excel at something else: the military, or music (Oakham School has a thriving music department) or sport: the school's county-standard facilities has recently helped it produce some fine cricketers.

Contrast this to the Marxian view, which regards (state?) schools as means for moulding people to meet the requirements of capitalism - a view which New Labour, which regards the state as a human resources department, seems to regard not as a criticism but as a policy ideal.

Our younger readers - younger than me, that is - might be interested in the reminiscences of the 60s by six prominent writers and commentators in City Journal.

Let me say that I was there. There is no period of time that is more wrongly romanticized, glorified, and magnified in importance. It was the lunatics trying to run the asylum, and little more. The socio-cultural story of the 60s belongs in the dustbin of history.

Just one quote from Sol Stern's  contribution, to tempt you:

The liberal media’s misunderstanding of what the antiwar radicals were all about continued through 1968, and particularly in the commentary about the year’s two biggest explosions: in May, the student uprising at Columbia University; and in August, the violent street demonstrations at the Democratic Party’s national convention in Chicago. Tom Hayden was back in action for both events. He happened to be in New York when he heard about students’ seizing buildings and imprisoning a dean to protest Columbia’s decision to build a gymnasium in Harlem. Immediately, he rushed to the campus and joined a student “commune” barricaded in one of the buildings. Most of the Columbia student leaders were SDSers well versed in Hayden’s grand project to “bring the war back home.” The whole point was to provoke a confrontation with the New York police, the closest available surrogates for the U.S. military. In a firsthand report on the uprising for Ramparts, Hayden proudly noted that his younger disciples had scrawled on the walls of the occupied buildings an exhortation to “create two, three, many Columbias,” a play on Che Guevara’s call for “two, three, many Vietnams.” Columbia was merely another battle in the plan, and Hayden fantasized that “the U.S. must either change or send troops to occupy American campuses.”

Whether the Vietnam War was a wise idea or not (debatable, as wars usually are), the cultural news of the time was dominated by nihilists, Communists, the drug-addled, and mixed-up adolescents - all magnified by a press who found a pimply "society-rejecting," pot-smoking "hippie" more intriguing than an upright, straight-arrow kid who volunteered for the Marine Corps.

The only consolation for us in the US is that the press in Europe took this BS far more seriously than ours did. Our press just wanted voyeuristic and disturbing new stories to sell magazines and newspapers. Their press wanted a Communist revolution. (They would have been quite surprised, however, if it did happen, to find that they and their friends were not in charge.)

Photo: The appalling and deluded Tom Hayden - Communist, traitor.

Over the transom:

"Damascus barrels consist of a combination of forged iron and steel.  Strips of iron and steel are braided in different forms into a band.  This is then wound around a mandrel and welded.  The manufacture proceeds little by little; the form is worked with light hammering until all the small rods or wires are joined into a solid piece.  The mandrel used as a form is then removed by boring it out. 

Depending upon how the wires are braided and twisted, there appears upon the finished barrel after browning or bluing a more or less fine Damascus-like figure.  The finer and more regular these appear, the greater the worth of the barrel.  The cheapest Damascus barrels were the so called “band” Damascus barrels.  Better types according to the quality are the so called “Horseshoe,” “Rose,” “Bernard,” “Crolle,” “Moiré," and “Laminette.”   Other fine types of Damascus included those made in England, known as “Laminated Steel,” and the genuine English Damascus produced in Marshall’s workshops in Birmingham.

Confidence in quality of Damascus was so great that even ordinary steel barrels were either painted or covered with decalcomania showing Damascus patters.  These imitation Damascus are even now occasionally to be found. The improvements in barrel steels have now, however, practically driven Damascus off the market.  Until the year 1900 approximately one third to a half of the Belgian guns were produced with Damascus barrels.  In Subl, however, the switch over to the use of the much superior open-hearth steel type, the elastic limits of which even in the very cheapest types, are equal to the very best Damascus barrels, i.e. about 45 kilograms per square millimeter, was undertaken considerably earlier." 

Source: Stoeger’s The Shooters Bible, 48^th Edition, page 57, 1957:

...in proportion as the evil decreases the denunciation of it increases; and as fast as natural causes are shown to be powerful there grows up the belief that they are powerless.

Herbert Spencer was a giant of his time. His socio-political "law" is discussed at Cafe Hayek.

You have the best, most modern, and most widely available medical care in the world? But it's terrible - because some few fall through the cracks! You have terrible storms, with wind and rain? Surely governments or the UN can fix that!

Spencer's Law surely applies to many areas of life today.

The technical definitions of solipcism and sophistry tend to elude my memory. I study them, and a month later they slip away. "Sophistry" is of course often used as a general insult towards arguments with which one might disagree, but that usage degrades the meaning.

AVI did my work for me today, on sophistry. His handy practical definition: "Sophistry is a phrase so neat you can't see the loose end that would unravel it. It's flawless, but wrong."  Sleight-of-mind.

One of the examples he offers is:

You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.

Hmm, wait a minute - why can't you do both? I'll offer this one:

If the glove don't fit, you must acquit.

Wait a minute - a glove gets to make the decision?

One more:

Heard from a New Zealand interviewer last week re global warming:
"It's very important for New Zealanders to try to help, even if it doesn't make a difference."

It is? Futility is an essential part of the Kiwi national character?

Thus sophistry is designed to defeat thought, not to provoke thought. Such assertions are designed to ward off that "Hey, wait a minute, does that make sense?" reaction. Always check the premises before discussion, even if they sound OK. Or especially if they sound OK.

You can read AVI's piece here.

A quote from McCain's NRA speech, via Classical Values:

Senator Obama has said, if elected, he will withdraw Americans from Iraq quickly no matter what the situation on the ground is and no matter what U.S. military commanders advise. But if we withdraw prematurely from Iraq, al Qaeda in Iraq will survive, proclaim victory and continue to provoke sectarian tensions that, while they have been subdued by the success of the surge, still exist, and are ripe for provocation by al Qaeda. Civil war in Iraq could easily descend into genocide, and destabilize the entire region as neighboring powers come to the aid of their favored factions. A reckless and premature withdrawal would be a terrible defeat for our security interests and our values. Iran will view it as a victory, and the biggest state supporter of terrorists, a country with nuclear ambitions and a stated desire to destroy the Sta te of Israel, will see its influence in the Middle East grow significantly.

The consequences of our defeat would threaten us for years, and those who argue for premature withdrawal, as both Senators Obama and Clinton do, are arguing for a course that would eventually draw us into a wider and more difficult war that would entail far greater dangers and sacrifices than we have suffered to date. Thanks to the counterinsurgency instigated by General Petreaus, after four years of terribly costly mistakes, we have a realistic chance to succeed in helping the forces of political reconciliation prevail in Iraq, and the democratically elected Iraqi Government, with a professional and competent Iraqi army, impose its authority throughout the country and defend its borders. We have a realistic chance of denying al Qaeda any sanctuary in Iraq. We have a realistic chance of leaving behind in Iraq a force for stability and peace in the region, and not a cause for a wider and far more dangerous war. I do not argue against withdrawal because I am indifferent to war and the suffering it inflicts on too many American families. I hold my position because I hate war, and I know very well and very personally how grievous its wages are. But I know, too, that we must sometimes pay those wages to avoid paying even higher ones later. I want our soldiers home, too, just as quickly as we can bring them back without risking everything they suffered for, and burdening them with greater sacrifices in the years ahead. That I will not do. I have spent my life in service to my country, and I will never, never, never risk her security for the sake of my own ambitions. I will defend her, and all her freedoms, so help me God. And I ask you to help me in that good cause. Thank you, and God bless you.

12 ga. ammo that you would not believe! (Thanks, Habu. That site is a kick.)

My only concern is the danger of that confetti load. Won't that damage the Environment? What if the confetti isn't biodegradable? Or causes Global Warming? 

Their other loads seem very fine, though, and intriguing in many ways.  A shotgun, in fact, is a far more serious weapon than a handgun for 99% of life's possible heavy-duty problems, but is a bit more difficult to conceal. When young 'uns aren't around, I keep one loaded (12 ga. pump, buckshot) and handy, just like my ancestors in CT did. You hope you never need it, but you use it with righteous force if you ever do because I hear from Vergil that there is still room in Motel Hell for bad guys.

You can get those PC t-shirts here. The wording is "Should be a convenience store, not a government agency."

(Ignore "continue reading." It's a glitch.)

Gun Broker.com

Photo: Theo's girlfriend

Patchwork Nation, from the CSM. Push "reset map" to clear the counties and start over.

I took their "Where do you fit in?" survey. It said " Your zip code puts you in XXX, which we've identified as Monied 'Burbs community type. Based on your responses, you have a 85 % match with other people in your community type." I hope that doesn't make me a Country Club Repub, cuz I am not.

Depressing to fit so much in a mold.

From Peggy Noonan's critique of today's Repubs, Pity Party:

Mr. Bush has squandered the hard-built paternity of 40 years. But so has the party, and so have its leaders. If they had pushed away for serious reasons, they could have separated the party's fortunes from the president's. This would have left a painfully broken party, but they wouldn't be left with a ruined "brand," as they all say, speaking the language of marketing. And they speak that language because they are marketers, not thinkers. Not serious about policy. Not serious about ideas. And not serious about leadership, only followership.

This is and will be the great challenge for John McCain: The Democratic argument, now being market tested by Obama Inc., that a McCain victory will yield nothing more or less than George Bush's third term.

Re the California court decision, do I have to be homosexual to marry a guy, or lesbian to marry another girl? Or can I do that if I am straight, for insurance benefits or for inheritance tax purposes, or just for the heck of it? Lots of people get married on crazy impulse. And can I marry my brother? If not, why not? If you are gay, why not be able to marry a family member? And then it would only be fair (equal protection) to let straights have the same right.

So here's a cool idea for single guys: If your Mom dies, marry your Dad and dodge all inheritance taxes. Vice versa for single gals.

Polygamy is next. Mark my words. It will be for the Moslems, not for the Mormons.

It's sick out there, and getting sicker...

Readers know that we tend to maintain an attitude of wholesome skepticism towards almost everything, including ourselves and our own thoughts.

In an outstanding post, Driscoll nails the credulity with which some invest government and politicians. He quotes Betsy:

Today’s “presidentialists of all parties”—a phrase that describes the overwhelming majority of American voters—suffer from a similar delusion. Our system, with its unhealthy, unconstitutional concentration of power, feeds on the atavistic tendency to see the chief magistrate as our national father or mother, responsible for our economic well-being, our physical safety, and even our sense of belonging. Relimiting the presidency depends on freeing ourselves from a mind-set one century in the making.

Related: Last night's link asking Are we a nation of toddlers? Also related to a number of posts by our Dr. Bliss discussing how politics can be a tempting screen for the projection of, and an arena for the enactment of regressive, ie childish, irrational and unrealistic wishes and aspirations.

Are wine's pleasures all in your head? What motivates the wine shopper?, by Eric Asimov in the NYT, who notes:

In press accounts of two studies on wine psychology, consumers have been portrayed as dupes and twits, subject to the manipulations of marketers, critics and charlatan producers who have cloaked wine in mystique and sham sophistication in hopes of better separating the public from its money.

Is that true? I have tasted some undrinkable wines in my time, very many entirely OK table wines, and some sublime ones. Tasting a wine is like meeting a new person: put your preconceptions away and see who they are. Turning wine into an effete exercise is pure silliness.

h/t, a post on the subject at Neuroanthropology.

Jerry Muller at Foreign Affairs. The summary of his essay:

Americans generally belittle the role of ethnic nationalism in politics. But in fact, it corresponds to some enduring propensities of the human spirit, it is galvanized by modernization, and in one form or another, it will drive global politics for generations to come. Once ethnic nationalism has captured the imagination of groups in a multiethnic society, ethnic disaggregation or partition is often the least bad answer.

It's about healthy nationalism and the problems with the multicultural "ideal" in most places. Read the whole thing.

Learned from Kudlow on the radio today: Corporate business taxes in New York State and New Jersey are the highest business taxes in the world.

Of course, businesses taxes are nothing more than covert taxes on everyone, from the company's employees, to the people who buy the product, to the investor: business taxes are passed on in the form of lower wages, higher prices, and slower growth.

If we desire economic growth, job growth, and prosperous employees, there should be no taxes on the profits of public corporations. (Surely we could handle the resultant loss of tax accounting and tax attorney jobs, because the country is full of burgers needing flipping - and other jobs "Americans won't do.")

In a short post on tax competition, Mankiw gets right to the heart of it all:

...are you more worried about too little government or too much?

Some friends are leaving soon for a ten-day Ireland golf trip.

There seems to be some agreement that the Royal County Down Golf Club is the best links course in the world. They will also play Ballybunion and some of the other famous links courses. I find it pleasant that Ballybunion has their etiquette listed at their site.

That's Nicklaus at the 4th tee in 2001.

Is there a post-Protestant Ethic, post-Consumption & Hedonism Ethic of Capitalism? I suspect this book review from Spiked is more interesting that the book itself. A quote:

Barber argues that the new ethic of capitalism is one of ‘infantilisation’: money today is to be made in maintaining adults as needy children, who stuff down dumbed-down films, saccharine food and video games. While in the early stages of capitalism it benefited the capitalist system for everybody to save their pennies, now it benefits the system for us to splurge every penny and borrow more. While in the time of Franklin people were encouraged to restrain themselves and reinvest, now, says Barber, we are encouraged to act on every immediate whim, to be the grasping child in a sweet shop unable to say no.

Apparently I am way out of date, as usual, because I still operate on the Ben Franklin model, more or less.

I found the link to Keith Thompson's 2005 SF Chronicle op-ed piece, titled Leaving the Left: I can no longer abide the simpering voices of self-styled Progressives in a comment somewhere recently. I cannot recall whether I had read it in the past or not, but I post it because it sounds much like what happened to my thinking in my 30s.

Like most well-educated Protestant families in New England at the time (and much less so, today), I was raised in a soft-Left-oriented home. You know: "Joe McCarthy was the devil, but Joe Stalin meant well and besides, the Russians have free medical care." (The only Socialist we were willing to hate was Hitler.) This was combined with a solicitous condescension towards blacks, the "poor" people who worked with their hands, and any other convenient "victim" group. We "cared" about them, or so we convinced ourselves in our self-admiring superiority - but we didn't really know any of them very well, and had no clue about how they ran, or planned, their lives.

What else did we take on faith? That the UN would bring an end to war, that higher taxes (on other people) were a very good idea, that pacifism usually made sense even in the face of an enemy ("Better Red than Dead"), that FDR was a great president, that the world of business - as compared to the "professions" - was tainted with "selfishness" and thus dishonorable, that patriotism was jingoism and nationalism a bad thing, that there was no real "evil" (other than Conservatives), and that DDT was a terrible thing. Socially "nice" stuff like that.

(Of course, we took many good, solid things on faith too, but that's another story and another blog post.)

We all felt smugly virtuous, I think, and quite superior to the ignorant and presumably unwashed masses who cast votes for "idiots" like Nixon and Barry Goldwater instead of for the enlightened ones who only wanted to "help them."

That was before I fully appreciated how much Americans - and I - appreciate our freedom from government power and intrusion. And what a sturdy, thrifty, resourceful, practical, independent, hard-working bunch we Americans really are. I will never forget my first lesson in this on a summer job during high school, but it took years of exposure to real life and to real people to cure me of my malady which was, at the bottom of it, I think, related to pride: the sickest form of pride - the notion that we - the fortunate and privileged "intelligentsia" - the bien-pensants - knew what was best for other folks and for the country. We were educated in everything except humility, common sense, and an adequate appreciation for freedom. Life's wisdom cannot be taught. Only learned.

So, to return to a quote from Thompson's essay, which is similar to, but better than, the one I would have written:

I grew up in a northwest Ohio town where conservative was a polite term for reactionary. When Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of Mississippi "sweltering in the heat of oppression," he could have been describing my community, where blacks knew to keep their heads down, and animosity toward Catholics and Jews was unapologetic. Liberal and conservative, like left and right, wouldn't be part of my lexicon for a while, but when King proclaimed, "I have a dream," I instinctively cast my lot with those I later found out were liberals (then synonymous with "the left" and "progressive thought").

The people on the other side were dedicated to preserving my hometown's backward-looking status quo. This was all that my 10-year-old psyche needed to know. The knowledge carried me for a long time. Mythologies are helpful that way.

If you never read it, please do so.

A quote from Sowell's latest:

...I received a letter recently from a man who grew up in my old neighborhood back in Harlem. When he and I were in the same junior high school, one day a teacher who saw him eating his brown bag lunch suddenly arranged for him to get a lunch from the school cafeteria without having to pay for it.

It happened so fast that my schoolmate had already taken a bite from the school lunch when he suddenly realized that he had been given charity-- and he wouldn't swallow the food. Instead he went to the toilet and spat it out.

By now his brown bag lunch had been thrown out, so he just went hungry that day. He went on to become a very successful psychiatrist.

Good to see you Overlawyered folks visiting - check us out while you're here - you might like Maggie's Farm -

Re-posted from April 15, 2006 - forgot to post it on Tax Day. (As the weather improves, we like to go like totally Green and virtuously recyle old pieces a little bit, on weekends. To save Gaia.)

Here's my story for Tax Day. I could tell you far worse, but why spoil a nice day?  As regular readers know, I live in a small, charming New England town in central Connecticut, not too far from Hartford, with no crime and with no problems, except made-up ones like the crisis of having Coke machines in the High School.

When Robert Frost wrote "Mending Wall," his sentence "Good fences make good neighbors" was intended to be ironic, at the least. But fences do matter, in life.

The folks who owned our little farm built a pool many years ago near the edge of the river - it's a nice trout stream which borders the southern end of our place. Yes, the pool was built before anyone ever heard of the word "wetlands." Nice pool, perfect for smoking an Uppmann Magnum next to, with a glass of Scotch, while dangling one's feet in the water, listening to the river and the birdies, and just generally enjoying being a late-middle-aged American fellow.

I go to down to our little Town Hall,  just to stay on the right side of the law, to make a cautious inquiry. Town Hall sits in a nice old colonial house in the center of town, with a brick addition on the back. "It's about a pool fence," I tell the receptionist, who is doing nothing at all. "P&Z", she replies. I go up the stairs to P&Z, and wait for 20 minutes while it is decided that it is OK with the all-wise and all-knowing government for someone to install central vacuuming in their house.

"It's about a fence," I finally am able to say. "Go the Building Dept." I go to Building Dept., where there are two guys hanging around the desk. "It's about a pool fence." The guy is friendly and helpful. "Show me where on the map."  I show him the property, and he says "Got to go to Wetlands first."

I am now running short on time. I go down the stairs and to the back to Wetlands. The nice young lady takes about 20 minutes to determine that the obvious fact that my property abuts a river. "You can't build a new fence there - that's a high-velocity flood zone."

"But I am required to have a fence around the pool", I insist, "because the town requires it". And then I made a foolish error, mainly because I was impatient and had limited time. "The old fence was washed away when Katrina blew through here in the fall, so all I need to know is whether it is OK to replace it."

"An unfenced pool? That is a zoning violation. I am obligated to inform the P&Z inspector."  I sputtered "But but but..I only need to replace it."  She replied "We will need it inspected first, but you are probably currently in violation, because we take pool safety seriously in this town. But construction in a wetlands flood zone will require a variance and a hearing which will take several months to schedule. You can begin by filling out these forms", she said, handing me a packet about one inch thick. "Honestly, I might suggest to you that you get a local lawyer to represent you in this matter, because these issues become complicated, especially when you want something grandfathered."

I'm a lawyer. But I know little about Land Use law. So I am supposed to hire some goofball who plays golf with the folks in Town Hall for a $2000. retainer?

As I leave, I wonder why there is no law for a fence on the river. Heck - a kid or turtle or fish or moron could drown in that. And no-one can see my pool from any other house or road, so it hardly qualifies as an "attractive nuisance." But I don't mind that much. Just another dumb law - we all get used to them in this era in which government tries to be everyone's parent. Too bad people who go into government tend not to be too...um...swift. As everyone knows, but that's OK.

And I also wonder about this: We must have fences around pools, but not around rivers and ponds and lakes - or the ocean. And no fences to protect our national borders. Which is more important? I don't mind being Frost's practical but un-soulful neighbor: I will gladly provide both my pool fence, and my national border fence.

The law may be an ass, but it's the law. But when it takes a specialized lawyer to understand the law, it's a big problem - and expense - for everybody. If our laws are not comprehensible, everybody loses. Except us lawyers.

The laws regarding the importation of any Cuban products - including cigars - into the US are unambiguous and harsh.  However, I do not think that they are enforced with any vigor.

These laws seem to be a testament to the political power of the Cuban emigree population in Florida, who (rightly) hate Fidel so much that they are (wrongly, I feel) willing to harm all Cubans economically.

Re cigars, the history is that, prior to the embargo in the 60s, it was Cuban tobacco that was in demand - not Cuban cigars (which were a small part of the market). The best hand-made cigars were built with Cuban tobacco fillers and Connecticut wrappers in Miami, Tampa, and New Jersey.

Editor:  Juan Paxety corrects some of The B's assumptions, in the comments.

From our brother-in arms Coyote:

Todd Zywicki has a nice post on the The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle Class Mothers and Fathers are Going Broke by Professor Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warren Tyagi. 

In his writings on the tactics for engineering the communist state, Karl Marx talked a lot about the need to "proletarianize the middle class."  This has been a very popular tactic among leftish writers and politicians today, attempting to convince the middle class that they never had it so bad.

No doubt. Let's inculcate a sense of grievance in those two-income middle-class families, so they will turn to the State for rescue. The fact is, we have two-income families because people want more money, and desire a higher standard of living than the average single-income middle class family in 1970.

Ah, but they have less disposable income than in 1970 - and here's why (from the linked pieces):

Discretionary income has shrunk from 46% to 25% of total income - and taxes account for all of that reduction. The governmental solution, no doubt, will be to raise their taxes to provide more "free services." 

That's the Gramscian tactic: tax 'em 'til they feel poor, then apply incremental Marxism until they own your soul and you become a grateful serf of The State at The People's Tractor Factory #23.

For details, read the links above.