How Soon I Forget--Debt Ceiling

 Discussing the debt ceiling issue this morning I had completely forgotten that prior negotiations had included a "temporary suspension" of the ceiling in order to have more time to negotiate.

Born Round

 Just read Frank Bruni's memoir on food and his other loves. 

One point of his interest--he goes to Italy as the NYTimes correspondent soon after reaching a turning point in his food obsession which he'd lived with and denied since he was small. So he's very sensitive to Italy and their food ways (his grandparents were from southern Italy).  

Based on his memoir, and partially his analysis, at least circa the late 1990s, Italians enjoyed their food, but eating was wrapped in manners and routines, the servings were smaller and the eating slower. In his American milieu, the cooking was competitive (among his grandmother, aunts, and mother) and the amounts signified prosperity and success. 

Tyler Vs Hennepin

 George Will wrote about this case, as did Somin in Powerline and Tottenburg at NPR.

If I understand Tyler owned a condo, she left for assisted living and apparently left the condo unoccupied. Years later the county took the condo for nonpayment of taxes, auctioned it off, and kept the proceeds.  It sounds like a case of injustice.

What the brief summary seems to miss is that Tyler not only didn't pay her taxes, she didn't pay her HOA dues nor her mortgage.  The Minnesota law says if the county takes the property for unpaid taxes, that action wipes out all mortgage and HOA fee debts.

To me it's hard to see how Tyler should get any money. If she'd declared bankruptcy, then the three creditors: county, mortgage holder, and HOA would presumably fight over the proceeds of the auction.

To be clear, I don't have a problem with invalidating the law. 

This is a tear-jerker case, which might lead to poor decisions.  we'll see.

Biden's In

 I'll vote for him.  What I really want, and won't get, is a victory wide and deep enough to include Democratic gains in the House, the Senate, and state legislatures.

Slavery Everywhere?

 Americans, some of us, know that slavery was part of our history from 1619 to the Civil War.  We're less knowledgable about the slavery in the Caribbean and South America.  I'd have to use Google to find out the extent of slavery in Canada or Chile, Bolivia or Mexico.  

I know, of course, that "slave" derived from "Slav" because Slavs were often enslaved sometime back in history. The TV series "Vikings" touched on slavery there. 

The Bible includes codes for treatment of slaves. 

My recent reading has included discussions of slavery among Native American tribes and enslavement and slave trading in Africa.

Fraud, Waste, and Abuse

 Those terms are the mantra for conservatives attacking the size of government, and those who believe it's possible to reduce the deficit without cutting programs.

As a liberal and retired bureaucrat I'm dubious of the idea.

One thing we don't do is focus on is private companies.  Mr. Zuckerberg has been presumably cutting "waste, fraud, and abuse" in his Meta company--40 percent cuts? And Mr. Musk is cutting waste, fraud, and abuse in his Twitter company. 

Surprising Defection from TFG on Right

 Given Powerline Blog's support of TFG over the years, even going so far to oust one of its bloggers for insufficient loyalty (Paul Mirengoff), I never expected to see this post from John Hinderaker, who I think has been the most consistently supportive of the remaining three bloggers: 

Knowledge problem

 See Farrell at Crooked Timber has a discussion of the "Knowledge Problem". If I understand, it's the argument that market prices encapsulate a lot of information and provide a key basis for a decision.  

Based on that understanding I can agree to support market capitalism, at least partially. The argument depends on the framework that someone is deciding what to buy and when to buy, and the price conveys information.

But as a failed historian I'm struck by the idea that humans make decisions based on history as well.  Some of our history-based decisions are also economic decisions; we know what prices were yesterday and have an expectation of what they'll be tomorrow.  Or we know how good or bad our last car has been and how good the service from the dealer has been, which has a big impact on which new car we buy and who we buy it from.

But we also have history-based noneconomic decisions with little or no price involvement.  We know, or think we know how good or bad a politician or political party has been; the knowledge guides our future.

Resistance to Remote Work

 The Times has a piece on remote work, describing some research and a categorization done by a social scientist.  Attitudes fall into four categories:

resistor--high level types who go their own way.

defector--who will quit

quiet quitters--who don't work hard when at the office

skeptics--(not clear how they differ from the quitters, except maybe they're more vocal and still work harder than the quitters).

The breakdown reminds me of the Hirschman analysis in Exit, Voice, and Loyalty.

Note however that the Times expert is focused only on forms of resistance; he does not address the loyal employees who try to do the job both in the office and at home.

Thomas, Crow, and Heirs Property?

ProPublica reported this:

In 2014, one of Texas billionaire Harlan Crow’s companies purchased a string of properties on a quiet residential street in Savannah, Georgia. It wasn’t a marquee acquisition for the real estate magnate, just an old single-story home and two vacant lots down the road. What made it noteworthy were the people on the other side of the deal: Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his relatives.

Lots of discussion about the propriety of the purchase, but I wonder about something else, given the last 5 words.  Apparently Thomas' mother lives in the home.  

Slate reports that:  "All three properties were co-owned by Thomas, Williams, and the family of Thomas’ late brother."   That sounds to me like confirmation of what I suspected when I started this post--the property was "heirs property", meaning the original owner died without a will. That's been a big issue for ASCS/FSA, since having clear title to the land you're farming used to be a requirement for obtaining some loans. Congress has recently provided money for FSA to dole out to NGO's who are supposed to help owners of heirs property. 

I've always mentally ascribed the prevalence of heirs property among blacks to the historical lack of lawyers in the community. But here we have one of the nine most powerful lawyers in the US involved with heirs property. The iriony.