Runners approach "Crossroads Outbound" aid station

I have taken up a new sport, of sorts:  chasing marathoners. Ultra Marathoners to be exact. Hey, that’s not easy. They are able to run for a long, long time.

(click images to enlarge)

The event was the Tejas Trails Bandera 100k of which the  2012 USA Track & Field 100km Trail National Championships Montrail Ultra Cup was a part. It was held near Bandera in the 5400 acres of the Hill Country State Natural Area. It is a wild area with many outdoor activities and interests of a “rustic” nature. Approximately 800 Ultra Marathoners had converged from every corner of the country to go head-to-head with a hostile environment.

The events included 25k, 50k and 100k courses. For you imperialists, 100km = approx. 62 miles, thus a 25k is a tad over 15 miles. In the hills. Having run a 5k I find a 25k to be daunting in mere contemplation and 100k — well, I just can’t wrap my mind around that.

Ultra Marathoners not only run for a long time, but some of them do it rather quickly and there I was — expected to chase them. The results were that the top male did it in 8:28. 8 hours, 28 minutes to run 62 miles. That is about 7.3 miles per hour. In the hills. Check a topo or terrain map such as Google maps. The #26 place male finished in 20:36. That’s about 3:30 Sunday morning. A 62 year young male did it in 17:50! The slowest male was 23:06 — just under the 24 hour limit while the slowest female finished in 22:46. 72% of the 212 starters in the 100k finished it.

One of several operating positions

So I’m supposed to chase these people, right? Well I did — we did — using radios. Brooks Blake, Rik Chapman and I joined the Hill Country React team to support the race with communications and safety. Following a complex communications plan — see my radio blog for details — we manned one of the checkpoints associated with an aid station. Ours was the “Crossroads Out(bound)” location which was co-located with “Crossroads In(bound).” Being two aid stations/checkpoints in one, this was a busy place. Here is what it looks like on paper (click to enlarge):

Aid station at Crossroad checkpoint

There were five such locations where the Ultra Marathoners were logged by their bib numbers into a computer spreadsheet that linked via “packet radio” back to race headquarters so that each runner was accounted for through each checkpoint. Packet radio techniques wed a computer to a radio and an additional device that sends “packets” of digital data over the air.

Comm trailer

We were set up in the EmComm (Emergency Communications) trailer that belongs to our Highland Lakes Amateur Radio Club which is not trying to emulate a porcupine — those are antennas on the top. It has a wide variety of radios inside for communicating all the way from high frequency (HF) bands to very high and ultra high frequencies (VHF and UHF). Brooks pulled it to the site and I pulled my travel trailer in order to have some creature comforts. We had a rather nice complex put together.

"Packet" station - computer and radio gear

Brooks and Rik wound up with the #2 pencils and Big Chief tablets jotting down the bib numbers and times. A ham from Houston and I got the briefing on how to enter that data to an Excel spreadsheet that was then transmitted by radio using “packetized” methodology through an amateur radio repeater to race headquarters several miles away. The resulting master spreadsheet was the tool to account for the last known location of any missing runners — and it was utilized several times.

About 2am I was wondering how a simple inquiry to the head duck of this communications effort had turned into this extended endeavor in the middle of nowhere! But the fact is that it was a rewarding public service and we made a bunch of new friends. Just as with my cycling hobby, amateur radio is populated with some tremendous people.

One runner was tracked through the checkpoint prior to us but was not located thereafter. The horse-mounted search and rescue — the Horse Patrol is a part of the Hill Country State Natural Area Partners, www.hcsnap.org – was about to be deployed — in the dark — when contact was finally made with a runner who had gotten off course which caused him to skip several checkpoints.

Runners approach the "Crossroads Out" checkpoint

Rik and Brooks brave the dark & cold

Night fell and temperatures began to drop but the runners kept coming, and going. When it was hard dark we would first see them coming by spotting their headlamps bobbing up and down through the cedar brush. Then they would come into full view looking like a pack of jittery trains on a wobbly track.  By then, having started at 7:30 Saturday morning, some were moving more slowly than others. The gear in our EmComm trailer continued to work flawlessly. Many hams from other locales came by to admire our rig.

Why do we do this? Why pull two trailers 109 miles and work Friday afternoon following by 25 hours straight to assist a bunch of testosterone-crazed fools and their female counterparts fling their bodies through the cedar thickets among flora and fauna that wants to bite, sting, stick, scratch, itch, eat, or otherwise irritate them?

It is practice for assisting communications during a disaster that has wiped out or outstripped the capacity of commercial and government systems. Cell phones are the first to go and fixed locations of radio gear can be damages. The Amateur Radio Emergency Service (ARES) is comprised of a wide array of hams with highly portable gear. As the saying goes, “When all else fails, amateur radio works.”

Oh, the results? We chased them all. 800 runners accounted for and safely home — albeit totally wiped out. These Ultra Marathoners are amazing. In addition to our ARES training opportunity it was a lot of fun seeing what the human body really can do.

Related articles

• Wilderness Unsurprisingly Impedes Insane Wilderness Marathon [Runners] (deadspin.com)
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• I was Born To Run (smileacrossthefinish.wordpress.com)
• The rise of ultra running (foot4ward.co.uk)

Making memories: are we doing the best we can, and are we preserving and sharing the memories we make?

[The wasted spending] was just 4 days since canceling our session, already totaling over $200 for un necessary things.  My nails only lasted about 2 weeks, my hair is gone, and seven weeks passed when I got the phone call from our doctor.  It was not something I expected and the cancer has spread very quickly.  I will be leaving my husband, my 6 year old girl and my now 2 year old – not by choice.

Via Fototails Photography, Jeanine Thurston, www.fototails.com (http://fototails.wordpress.com/2012/01/02/a-letter-on-my-doorstep-portraits-are-more-than-paper/ accessed 3 JAN 2011)

You’ve probably seen this posting referenced on Facebook. The letter from which this quote comes is — to say the least — poignant. The letter bleeds with the angst of this lady facing what she understands in hindsight to have been the folly of doing something frivolous instead of making memories. It deserves a careful and caring read.

The point is not so much about the foregone photos but the memories that would have been created by them. How many times have each of us passed up an opportunity to make a memory for something far less important. After all if you don’t seize the moment, it’s gone forever and conversely the memory made in the space of a few minutes or hours can last for decades — possibly for many people. Like that credit card commercial declares: Priceless.

Making memories. How do you do it? What have you passed up in the last month? Where and when do you make memories, and with whom? About whom? For whom? How do you/we share or store those memories? Karen could have both created and stored those memories of her child in photos and shared them with others for years to come. How will we record, store and manage our memories?

This is important because the memories we have shape us and the memories (and therefore experience and knowledge) we share help to shape future generations.

There exists a huge array of uses of technology to record memories ranging from the candid shot on your cell/camera phone to numerous approaches for storing and sharing the record through technology. Let’s look at some of those venues and consider whether the existence of these tools is an imperative for making sure we create the fabulous memories and take the care to record them. Some of those tools are:

• Ancestry.com for digging out the past as you record the present for future generations.
• Memolane — an interesting site that builds a timeline something like Facebook now does. It’s unique in that it gathers your data from many sources.
• Facebook — we all know about Facebook’s new Timeline approach.
• Flickr and Picasa for online photo sharing.
• Storage on your own computer with electronic albums and organizers such as Adobe’s Photoshop Elements.
• Writing your own memoirs with tools such as WriteMyMemoirs. Or a full autobiography.
• By blogging as with this blog or that of my cycling and sailing friend Don Bynum.
• Other means include audio and video recordings, pen and ink journals, cards with family recipes, and ways that only your imagination will find.

Making memories is important. But recording them is even more important with the passage of the oral tradition. In times past — far before my time — large families lived close to one another in multiple generations. They worked, played and ate together. And they talked. They told the family stories and repeated them over the years. Of course, the stories got better and better  :-)  but at least they were told.

When is the last time your family ate together or sat around a fireplace and told the traditional stories of your family? I know that I’ve lost many of mine with the passing of my grandmother and one particular aunt who knew all!

Making memories is important but it becomes every bit as important to record and preserve them. We have an unprecedented opportunity today to record, preserve and share our memories. Karen had the chance to do just that only to lament the passing of those opportunities. Let’s not let that happen to us.

Related articles

• String Your Social Activities in to One Single Timeline with Memolane (solsie.com)
• Facing Down Facebook’s Timeline, Memolane Adds Social Features And An Investment From Digital Garage (techcrunch.com)
• Ourspot: A Pinterest Alternative for Group Sharing (thenextweb.com)
• Shoebox by 1000memories – 1000memories (itunes.apple.com)
• Share Your Family History on Storytree (singularityhub.com)
• 1000memories Expands Beyond Digital Memorials, Becomes A Facebook For The Past (techcrunch.com)
• Timeline View From memolane|Facebook new Timeline Like feature (techtimely.wordpress.com)

Many teenagers have no dream about their future and therefore have no life goals, and the drifting often leads to juvenile delinquency. How do we foster teens’ dreams of a future?

(rejuvenating this posting which earlier appeared on Facebook and a local forum — if reading this on Facebook, please go to the blog to comment).

Overview of the Teens’ Dreams problem

OK, this will be long, but worth the read. As your district judge I am also the juvenile judge. The juvenile justice system in Texas has jurisdiction of children from the age of 10 to 18, and has as it’s primary purpose the rehabilitation of a child who has engaged in delinquent conduct. Sometimes the community safety issue requires more than simply the rehab effort but that is always the initial priority.

A common problem is with kids who are bored, lack direction, have no sense of belonging, and can’t imagine a future beyond tomorrow and the next _____ (fill in blank with whatever time period — usually a short horizon — floats their boat). I have seen articles stating that everyone has dreams, but not equal opportunities. I challenge that notion and assert that if a youngster has no dream of a future then whatever opportunity exists will not be utilized. The stories one hears of a disadvantaged youth who succeeded always start with a desire for more — a dream that more was possible. That is, success is born out of teens’ dreams. Without teens’ dreams of a future, whatever future develops will be pot-luck.

After gnashing my teeth over this for years I challenged my juvenile probation department — and now challenge the community, i.e YOU — with the following:

The problem

The typical juvenile offender comes from a family that is undereducated, underemployed and unmotivated. The child’s environment in the typical instance does not inspire him to reach beyond his current circumstances and even if he becomes inspired from an outside stimulus, his low self-esteem — internalized from the unsupportive family — will not permit him to dream of a future much less to work toward one. Teens’ dreams are essential to growth.

The solution

Unknown, but what we do know is that my standard “figure out what you want to be, research it, and write me a paper on how to get there” is woefully insufficient.

The route to improvement (the challenge issued to the juvenile officers)

You. You know kids. You know their environment. You’ve seen some succeed and some fail. Your objective, should you choose to accept this mission (which is NOT optional), is to wrack your brain and your mind on this problem and come up with ideas on how to empower your juveniles to dream of a future and to have sufficient self-esteem to do so.

The presentation

On __________ we will all meet and each of you is asked to make a presentation of your ideas. There are no limits, no boundaries, no criteria, and no idea is off limits. Don’t be concerned with budgets or personnel needs.

Your presentation can be in any format from a verbal discussion to a PowerPoint with a 3-piece band providing background music. Bring your Big Chief tablet and #2 pencil to make notes as the presentations unfold. We will brainstorm after all of the presentations.

Initial results

We had that meeting and I heard ten great presentations from the juvenile probation officers (including one office staff who also had super insights). But now I want to seek the wisdom of the community as well.

Your input is needed — how to foster teens’ dreams

Some specific question to ponder, and to which I hope this posting is flooded with responses:

#1 — who convinced you there was something better out there for you? and more importantly how did they do it? (Marc’s (our juvenile chief) original question)

#2 — As a youngster growing up (say, age 13 and up), how did you come to think about your future?

#3 — Who or what made you dream about what kind of life you would have?

#4 — Another way of asking: who or what made you strive to accomplish “something?”

#5 — Who is the one person or thing that encouraged you to be who you are today? And more importantly how did they do it? (another of Marc’s specific questions)

Another view of the problem

My very wise cousin Nancy explained the problem in another dimension in a comment to my original Facebook posting this way:

The academic literature on this says that even if you “almost” have a dream, you will not let yourself own it unless some other factors are in place. (1) What do others whom you value think of this dream, but most especially (2) what is your self efficacy in terms of this dream. Which means, if you think there is no chance in *&%#* you will ever achieve, you protect yourself by not dreaming. The key, in my humble opinion, is self-efficacy. They have to think they can before they want to try.

 

How true, and well-put. So we must not only foster Teens’ dreams, but (a) the dream can’t be merely academic, the Teen must obtain real ownership and (b) we need to help them develop realistic dreams — perhaps baby steps — or failure of purpose is inevitable. As to her point #1 above, “we” — whomever that is in a given context — must be the valued person because the hypothesis is that the child’s environment lacks people to fill that role.

“Good” kids need direction too

While my inquiry is focused on the child who has engaged in delinquent conduct (typically drugs, unauthorized use of a motor vehicle, theft, assaults, runaways), the inquiry can apply to any youngster who lacks motivation to have a life goal toward which to work. I expect we’ll come up with suggestions here that many of you can use.

C’mon now … let me have it! How do we foster teens’ dreams?

–
Judge Gil Jones
33rd District Court / Juvenile Court
Burnet, Blanco, Llano and San Saba Counties

Recent Possibly Related External Links

• Essays for Student: Adolescents in Jail
• Advice for parents of troubled teens | Juvenile Justice Reform …
• 1st Ed Sullivan Appearance: September 9, 1956 | The Sheila …

Zuckerberg introducing Facebook Timeline. Image by Getty Images via @daylife

The critical info about Facebook Timeline:  Once you get Facebook Timeline, you’ll have 7 days before anyone else can see it. This gives you a chance to get your timeline looking the way you want before other people see it. That is also a very short period of time to clean things up if you need to. See the official announcement at http://www.facebook.com/about/timeline.

The quick advice about Facebook Timeline

Pay attention and get ready for it. While it is likely to be very “interesting” for most people, it could also, I think, be way TOO interesting ABOUT some folks. Will you be one of those whose Facebook Timeline presents a part of your Facebook life that you had forgotten about — and hoped others had as well? Need examples perhaps close to home?

If there is a photo album of you drinking in college that was posted several years ago, which you assumed no one would find, now is the time to go back and un-tag yourself. If you posted status updates ranting about a bad boss or said something controversial about a political issue, go back and delete it or select the option to remove it from Timeline. It’s easier now than ever before to unearth these details.

via Facebook Timeline: What You Need to Know – TheStreet. (accessed 17 DEC 2011)

I present some brief “must do” steps but mainly, I hope that this post can represent a good compendium of some great resources. I share some excellent portions from http://www.readwriteweb.com (all accessed 17 DEC 2011):

Facebook’s new Timeline is rolling out to the public, offering users the chance to upgrade to “a new kind of profile.” The new profile was revealed at Facebook’s f8 developer conference on September 22. The rollout began in New Zealand on December 6, and it’s now spreading worldwide.

Timeline turns the profile into an illustrated, browsable history of a user’s entire life, with major milestones and little moments smartly chosen by Facebook’s algorithm. The recent history is specific and full of activity, but Facebook automatically focuses older stories on life’s big moments.

via Facebook Timeline: What You Need To Know.

The most important new Facebook Timeline changes

Whether you call these simply changes, features, or problems will depend on your point of view. Here is a significant checklist that bears study:

Here’s a quick summary of what’s changed (emphasis added –  my comments in () ):

• A new Subscribe button, allowing you to follow people you aren’t friends with, plus filter the amount of information you get from current friends. (This means people can follow you whom you’ve not friended)
• Improved friends lists - easier way to group people into lists, including via semi-automated “smart lists.”
• A News Ticker that streams a constant flow of user updates in a sidebar (on top of your chat bar).
• A newspaper-like relevancy filter for your Facebook homepage.
• Instant sharing of what you read, listen to and watch. (Focus on that word instant).
• A new Timeline profile a colorful history of you and your “life events”. (if you don’t do the cleanup ahead of time, your history may be more colorful than you intended!)

via The New Facebook: 3 Major Implications.

The features of Facebook Timeline I’m worried about

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Followers I’ve not friended. Supposedly non-friends can only subscribe to your public items. I rarely post as public, usually only for friends, but what about friends of friends? Can they subscribe?

What about the Facebook Timeline instant sharing? According to this article it is an opt-in feature but you can bet that you’d better keep track of that setting even if you don’t opt into that sharing — recall all the “secret” changes Facebook has made in the past. And if you do opt into it, consider this:

This new feature will send an instant update to your Facebook News Feed every time you click through to a news story of a Facebook media partner (Washington Post and The Guardian are two early examples, but many more media companies will follow). It will also update your News Feed every time you listen to a song on a partner app, such as Spotify, Rdio and MOG. The ‘watch’ partners include Hulu and Netflix. Update: a commenter pointed out that this is opt-in. Yes, you do have to allow the media app to automatically share on your behalf.

The implications for you, the user, are clear: watch out that you’re not accidentally sharing things you’d rather not. For example, maybe you don’t want your social network to know that you like reading stories about Glenn Beck. Or that you listen to WHAM!’s Greatest Hits every Friday.

via The New Facebook: 3 Major Implications.

And finally:

Facebook Now Knows a Heck of a Lot More About YOU.
You probably don’t want more noise in Facebook or the risk of over-sharing. Tough cookies, because for Facebook all of that data is a gold mine. As Chris Saad noted, “the more information you have the more ability you have to find patterns and surface them in relevant places.”

Make no mistake, this is extremely valuable data to Facebook. They will be able to use it to sell highly targeted ads and maybe even sell anonymized data to corporations and governments. There are plenty of privacy measures in place to protect you, but as a user perhaps a more relevant question is: do I want a single corporation to know so much about me? Or, as John Battelle put it, do I want the “story of my life” under the control of Facebook?

via The New Facebook: 3 Major Implications.

Cool links I found on the web about Facebook Timeline

I have tried to comb through the many posts about the timeline business and present you with the most useful.

• A slideshow type presentation (scroll the darts, look at the explanations on the right)
• A simple outline of how to do the tweaking.

Resources

Related articles

• Ask and Answer Questions About Facebook Timeline [Help Yourself] (lifehacker.com)
• What to do About Facebook Now that Timeline is Here?? Hummm… (mediatechparenting.net)
• How Do You Feel About Facebook Timeline? [POLL] (mashable.com)
• Can You Take The Timeline Off Your Facebook Profile? (allfacebook.com)

Recent Possibly Related External Links

• Things You Need To Know About Facebook Timeline | Zen Schrager …
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Search engine market

What is WordPress search engine optimization? If you are reading this, then you do internet searches. Do you ever wonder why some pages end up closer to the top than others? It is called search engine optimization, SEO for short. There is now an entire industry touting search engine optimization, and willing to either share their secrets or to sell them to you  :-). 

The world of SEO

Just try a search using my title above (click here, I’ve done it for you on Google). You first see ads with other pages following. In earlier days of the ‘net searching was mainly based on “meta tags” but apparently that is a lesser factor now. Being curious about how search engine optimization really worked these days (a friend was having trouble with a web site) I scouted around and found WordPress SEO by Yoast.¹ In the process of configuring that WordPress plugin I discovered that the idea of search engine optimization was now quite complex.

The other side of the coin lies in the numerous search engines that may make use of your cleverly crafted and search engine optimized web site. You know the big names like Google, Yahoo, Bing, Ask — and there are many others.

Why bother and who needs to do it?

Commercial businesses do it to get their product or service sold. Bloggers with monetized sites do it so people will click ads on their site. Bloggers like me who like to promote discussion and share information and ideas like to drive readers (who hopefully become commentors) to their sites.

What does WordPress SEO do?

In quick summary, the plugin affects

• Titles ranging from the blog itself, to the individual page or post, to headings used in a post.
• Forcing precise indexing by search engines (after all, this is about search engine optimization).
• How to fashion your “permalinks” — like the address of this post with “wordpress-search-engine-optimization” coming after the main URL of the site.
• Creating breadcrumbs to the specific post.
• How the RSS feeds are constructed.

Is search engine optimization worth the effort?

I don’t know yet. The discussion out there in the “ether” says it is, but only time will tell.

Resources

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• Secrets Of The Professionals In Search Engine Optimization (ronmedlin.com)
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Recent Possibly Related External Links

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Protest against SB 1070 in Minnesota

Widespread interest exists in the Arizona law known as “S.B. 1070″ which may be about to get to the US Supreme Court.  The constitutional question is one of federal implied preemption. Of course, this interest is acute in Texas and the Southwest but I would think that states formerly thinking they were immune from the problems of illegal immigration now realize that it’s everywhere. Otherwise why are there protests in Minneapolis against the law?

What is federal implied preemption

Here is a very simple explanation of federal implied preemption. The Supremacy Clause of the US Constitution provides that where federal law and state law clash, federal law wins. They can “clash” if federal law preempts state law which can be done explicitly or impliedly. If a federal statute states that it preempts state law, then you know. In many situations there is no federal law at all similar to state law and thus there is no question. But if there is a federal law dealing with the same general subject matter but the federal statute does state that it preempts the states, then the question of whether there is an implication that it does. The referenced article goes into more detail.

Will the Supreme Court hear it and what is the issue?

This article has an excellent explanation of federal implied preemption and sets out very clearly the issues involved in the potential case. Apparently we may hear as soon as Monday Dec 12 whether the Court will hear the case.  (Update: the Court has agreed to hear it)

What I don’t understand, is how there could be any doubt — if indeed there is — about the Supreme Court agreeing to hear it.

Four provisions in S.B. 1070 are in dispute. First, the law instructs Arizona law enforcement officials to try to determine an individual’s immigration status any time someone is arrested, as well as during a police stop or arrest if they have reason to believe that the individual may be an unlawful alien. Second, the law makes it a violation of Arizona law for someone to fail to register as an alien under federal  law. A third section makes it illegal for unlawful aliens to work or to try to obtain work. The fourth provision gives Arizona police the power to make warrantless arrests of anyone whom they have probable cause to believe has engaged in activity that would make them deportable under federal law. (emphasis added)

The U.S. Justice Department sued to block the Arizona law. A federal judge issued a preliminary injunction against the four provisions, finding that federal law likely preempted Arizona’s efforts. In April 2011, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld the preliminary injunction, agreeing with the federal government that the district judge had not abused her discretion in issuing the injunction.  One member of the panel , however, would have held that two of the four provisions were not preempted.  Arizona then filed a petition for certiorari in which it cited an urgent need to be able to enforce state law. The Justice Department has opposed Supreme Court review.

via SCOTUS for law students: Preemption and the Arizona immigration law : SCOTUSblog. Stephen Wermiel, SCOTUS for law students: Preemption and the Arizona immigration law, SCOTUSblog (Dec. 9, 2011, 1:37 PM), http://www.scotusblog.com/2011/12/scotus-for-law-students-preemption-and-the-arizona-immigration-law/

My analysis of the Arizona law

I too have written about the Arizona law. Note that the disputed provisions relate to determination of status upon arrest or with reason to believe a law (regarding immigration) has been violated, making a federal crime also a state crime, creating a new crime for aliens to work here, and warrantless arrests if an (immigration) law is believed to have been broken thus making that person deportable.  Thus it seems that the main complaint is about identifying people. In my earlier piece I said:

So the person has been stopped, detained or arrested according to existing law and procedures, and will simply be asked to identify.  That is accomplished

. . . if the person provides to the law enforcement officer or agency any of the following:

1.  A valid Arizona driver license.
2.  A valid Arizona nonoperating identification license.
3.  A valid tribal enrollment card or other form of tribal identification.
4.  If the entity requires proof of legal presence in the United States before issuance, any valid United States federal, state or local government issued identification. . . .

How hard is that? It’s what any of us would have to produce if stopped, detained or arrested. And note the relevant provision of existing federal law regarding ID:

“Every alien, eighteen years of age and over, shall at all times carry with him and have in his personal possession any certificate of alien registration or alien registration receipt card issued to him pursuant to subsection (d) of this section. Any alien who fails to comply with the provisions of this subsection shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and shall upon conviction for each offense be fined not to exceed $100 or be imprisoned not more than thirty days, or both.” 8 USC section 1304(e)

Thus it is no imposition on the registered alien to produce what he is already required to have on his person.

About the second squawk, making a federal crime also a state crime, how can that be preempted by federal law? While federal law does regulate a tremendous portion of the workspace, can it be said that making the failure to register also a state crime will interfere with the federal scheme? Drug laws already exist at both levels and there is frequent cooperation between state and federal authorities regarding which of them will prosecute offenses. Lastly on this point we should not forget that the “feds” are failing to enforce their laws in this regard.

Third,we come to the Arizona illegality of working or attempting to obtain work. How can that violate the preemption principle? Does the federal government have an interest or need — or a power granted it under the Constitution — to create a protected right-to-work status for aliens illegally in the country? I think not.

Fourthly, the argument over the fourth point is just silly given the fact that federal authorities are not enforcing most of those laws.

My prediction

My constitutionally-semi-informed-best-guess is that the “no work” provision may fall but that the other three will not. It seems to me that the balance between legitimate state interests and individual liberties is reasonable and that items 1, 2 and 4 have not been federally preempted — IF we believe that states still have any rights.

A suggested path to a solution

Finally, I want to be clear about a couple of things. First, I believe that we need to find a way to accurately and completely identify all persons not legally in this country and for those who are law-abiding and productive, to get them into legal presence here, and a legal path toward citizenship if that is their desire. But they have to start at the back of the line.

But second, we must first control our borders. Both of these steps are essential to protecting the sovereignty of this nation and doing so does nothing to close the welcoming arms America has always had. Is there any other country, of any size anywhere, that simply disregards its borders?

Related articles

• Supreme Court Meets to Review Arizona Immigration Law Case (ibtimes.com)
• Latest Generic Preemption Decision (druganddevicelaw.blogspot.com)
• Sanctuary Ordinances: Good Policing and Good Public Policy (lawprofessors.typepad.com)
• More Breaking News – Generic Preemption (druganddevicelaw.blogspot.com)
• SCOTUSblog Community Diuscussion of United States v. Arizona (lawprofessors.typepad.com)
• Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer Praises Supreme Court for Reviewing ‘Nationally Important’ Immigration Case (ibtimes.com)
• Supreme Court Takes Arizona Immigration Case – Kagan Recuses (jonathanturley.org)
• Will the Supreme Court Uphold Arizona’s Immigration Law? (reason.com)
• Az. Immigration Case Forces Feds Into Conservative Territory (forbes.com)
• Tough Arizona-Stlye Immigration Laws Pose New Issues for High Court (ibtimes.com)

Recent Possibly Related External Links

• SCOTUS for law students: Preemption and the Arizona immigration …
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Related articles

• Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer Praises Supreme Court for Reviewing ‘Nationally Important’ Immigration Case (ibtimes.com)
• Supreme Court Takes Arizona Immigration Case – Kagan Recuses (jonathanturley.org)
• Will the Supreme Court Uphold Arizona’s Immigration Law? (reason.com)
• Az. Immigration Case Forces Feds Into Conservative Territory (forbes.com)
• Tough Arizona-Stlye Immigration Laws Pose New Issues for High Court (ibtimes.com)

I love this site. It is chock full of situations we’ve all noticed, if not experienced. You may find a jewel in here that helps you to understand your own behavior or that of people around you. Ever observed Learned Helplessness? Have you been guilty of Learned Helplessness?

What is Learned Helplessness?

Studies of the clinically depressed show that when they fail they often just give in to defeat and stop trying. The average person will look for external forces to blame when they fail the mid-term. They will say the professor is an asshole, or they didn’t get enough sleep. Depressed people will blame themselves and assume they are stupid.

Do you vote? If not, is it because you think it doesn’t matter because things never change, or politicians are evil on both sides, or one vote in several million doesn’t count? Yeah, that’s learned helplessness.

via Learned Helplessness « You Are Not So Smart.

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• Learned Optimism – repost (achristian.wordpress.com)
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Fatherhood independently predicted decreases in crime and substance use. Men who became parents well into their 20s and early 30s exhibited greater reductions than men who had their first child in their teens or early 20s.

via Study of the Day: Men Forgo Their Vices When They Become Fathers – Hans Villarica – Life – The Atlantic.

Image via Wikipedia

Turns them away from being tough guys?

I would love to have confidence in that idea. In fact, I have seen it happen with probationers in our Drug Court program where I continue to see them twice monthly for a minimum of a year. But, sadly, those instances are small in number, a quantity that pales in comparison to the numbers indicted for family violence (which is typically accompanied by alcohol or drug abuse), the numbers in divorce court flavored with substance abuse and financial ruin, the numbers of men and women alike literally abandoning their children in favor of drugs and alcohol — and the resulting criminal episodes, the numbers of (mainly) fathers in child-support court mounting support arrearages in the $10′s of thousands — often because they have not foregone their vices.

An appalling fact of life is the abandonment by legions of men of their traditional roles as the stalwarts of the family — the breadwinners and protectors. I’ve written about one aspect of non-manly behavior before in regard to how boys treat their mothers and their likely treatment of girlfriends and wives later.

It would be wonderful to think that fatherhood was a panacea but before I put much faith in that notion I would have to see the details of the referenced study.  The abstract does not give me comfort:

Fatherhood can be a turning point in development and in men’s crime and substance use trajectories. At-risk boys (N = 206) were assessed annually from ages 12 to 31 years. Crime, arrest, and tobacco, alcohol, and marijuana use trajectories were examined. Marriage was associated with lower levels of crime and less frequent substance use. Following the birth of a first biological child, men’s crime trajectories showed slope decreases, and tobacco and alcohol use trajectories showed level decreases. The older men were when they became fathers, the greater the level decreases were in crime and alcohol use and the less the slope decreases were in tobacco and marijuana use. Patterns are consistent with theories of social control and social timetables.

via Changes in At-Risk American Men’s Crime and Substance Use Trajectories Following Fatherhood – Kerr – 2011 – Journal of Marriage and Family – Wiley Online Library.

N=206? That is a quite small sample. Unfortunately the full study is not freely available for reading so I don’t know the full population from which it was taken, what the sampling criteria were, or any of the other parameters necessary to evaluate the validity of the results. But we can hope. I’ve linked other articles that discuss this study and perhaps together we can learn.

Related articles

• An American groom and/or a father … and less of a crime risk (sentencing.typepad.com)
• Engaging Dads: Recognizing the Sacredness of Fatherhood (indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com)
• Fatherhood May Help Tough Guys Straighten Out (nlm.nih.gov)
• Fatherhood can help change a man’s bad habits (esciencenews.com)

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U.S. Rep. John Linder with the 2007 Tax code and complete set of Title 26 of the US Code of Federal Regulations (from Wikipedia)

What? There’s the House and the Senate. Right? In both the state governments and the federal government. How can it be said there is another legislature?

Where do federal regulations come from?

It’s called the administrative law and it’s where the size and scope of government is out of control. Want to reduce the size and scope of government? Attack the regulation-making function of government. In theory, legislative enactments set forth the law and regulations are adopted by the departments and agencies “merely” to implement the law as passed by the legislature. At the federal level, we have the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR).

In fact, regulations often go far beyond the letter and the intent of the law. They are frequently attacked as being outside the proper scope and subject to being struck down by a court. Just how pervasive is the regulatory process?

Simply look at the size of the CFR and the rapid pace of its growth and that alone tells the story. Some snippets from various sources that convey the idea:

Americans are endlessly paying taxes–on their income, on their property, on almost anything they purchase. But the heavy burden that the U.S. government places on its citizens does not stop there. It continues with a slew of hidden taxes imposed by an ever-larger number of government regulations. These regulatory taxes do not appear on any balance sheet, yet cost Americans about $1 trillion every year. The regulatory burden on Americans continued to surge during 2009, with record increases in costs thanks to both the Bush and Obama Administrations.

via Red Tape Rising: Regulation in the Obama Era.  (accessed 12 DEC 2011)

Tax code example

Take just the tax code for example. Here are a couple of graphics with explanation (click thumbnails):

From CCH

Growth chart

What we find is that the tax code really didn’t explode in complexity until World War II, which we observe in the large jump from being just 504 pages in length in 1939 to 8,200 pages in 1945, the final year of the war. Since then, we find that the number of pages in the U.S. federal tax code have grown at a near-steady exponential rate of 3.28% per year, which as of 2010, means that the U.S. tax code has ballooned to be 71,684 pages in length!

via Political Calculations: The Growing Complexity of the U.S. Federal Tax Code. (accessed 12 DEC 2011)

Why is this a problem?

Some Background on Regulation
More than 50 agencies have a hand in federal regulatory policy, ranging from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service to the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection. Together, these agencies enforce more than 150,000 pages of rules, with purposes and impacts as varied as the agencies themselves. Many of these regulations provide needed benefits. Most Americans would agree on the need for security regulations to protect citizens from terrorist attacks, although the extent and scope of those rules may be subject to debate. But each regulation comes at a cost–a “regulatory tax” imposed on all Americans. Of course, Americans do not file regulatory tax forms on April 15; the price paid for regulation is largely hidden. It is nevertheless enormous: According to a 2005 study commissioned by the Small Business Administration, the cost of all rules on the books was some $1.1 trillion per year,[1] more than Americans paid in federal income taxes in 2009.

via Red Tape Rising: Regulation in the Obama Era. (accessed 12 DEC 2011)

Good grief, how many regulations are there? Really …

Apparently opinions differ. Likely it’s impossible to know because they grow so rapidly. Here is another article with startling numbers:

How Many Federal Regulations are There?
According to the Office of the Federal Register, in 1998, the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR), the official listing of all regulations in effect, contained a total of 134,723 pages in 201 volumes that claimed 19 feet of shelf space. In 1970, the CFR totaled only 54,834 pages.

The General Accountability Office (GAO) reports that in the four fiscal years from 1996 to 1999, a total of 15,286 new federal regulations went into effect. Of these, 222 were classified as “major” rules, each one having an annual effect on the economy of at least $100 million.

via Federal Regulations – About US Federal Regulations. (accessed 12 DEC 2011)

Where do these ‘regs’ come from?

It’s a law-making process all to its own and largely hidden from the public … until it impacts you. Here is a pretty good article about the process. You should not read the entire article on a full stomach. You can also read the law itself that authorizes this process.

Federal regulations are the actual enforceable laws authorized by major legislation enacted by Congress. The Clean Air Act, the Food and Drug Act, the Civil Rights Act are all examples of landmark legislation requiring months, even years of highly publicized planning, debate, compromise and reconciliation in Congress. Yet the work of creating the vast and ever-growing volumes of federal regulations, the real laws behind the acts, happens largely unnoticed in the offices of the government agencies rather than the halls of Congress.

Regulatory Federal Agencies
Agencies, like the FDA, EPA, OSHA and at least 50 others, are called “regulatory” agencies, because they are empowered to create and enforce rules – regulations – that carry the full force of a law. Individuals, businesses, and private and public organizations can be fined, sanctioned, forced to close, and even jailed for violating federal regulations. The oldest Federal regulatory agency still in existence is the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, established in 1863 to charter and regulate national banks.

via Federal Regulations – About US Federal Regulations. (accessed 12 DEC 2011)

An index from statute to rule

I dare you to link to the page cited next and scroll down through the entire page. You will quickly gain an appreciation for how many legislated laws, compounded by rule-made laws, we have at just the federal level.

PARALLEL TABLE OF AUTHORITIES AND RULES

——————————————————————–

The following table lists rulemaking authority (except 5 U.S.C. 301)
for regulations codified in the Code of Federal Regulations. Also
included are statutory citations which are noted as being interpreted or
applied by those regulations.
The table is divided into four segments: United States Code citations,
United States Statutes at Large citations, public law citations, and
Presidential document citations. Within each segment the citations are
arranged in numerical order:

via Code of Federal Regulations: Parallel Table of Authorities and Rules. (go ahead, click on the link ) (accessed 12 DEC 2011)

More on the rulemaking process

The following is a very extensive article which at a quick glance looks to be pretty thorough and accurate. Just a few excerpts:

In administrative law, rulemaking refers to the process that executive and independent agencies use to create, or promulgate, regulations. In general, legislatures first set broad policy mandates by passing statutes, then agencies create more detailed regulations through rulemaking.
By bringing detailed scientific and other types of expertise to bear on policy, the rulemaking process has been the means by which some of the most far-reaching government regulations of the 20th century have been created. For example, science-based regulations are critical to modern programs for environmental protection, food safety, and workplace safety. However, explosive growth in regulations has fueled criticism that the rulemaking process reduces the transparency and accountability of democratic government.

* * *

Rulemaking and the courts

In the U.S., interested parties can sue to have a judge review the rulemaking process once the rule is finalized. Interested parties frequently sue the rulemaking agency, asking the court to order the agency to reconsider. For example, environmental groups may sue, claiming that the rule is too lax on industry; or industry groups may sue, claiming that the rule is too onerous.

Traditionally, courts are reluctant to step into the shoes of the technical experts and re-open the decisions made in the agency’s detailed analysis. However, courts do review whether a rulemaking meets the standards for the rulemaking process. The basis of this review by the courts may be limited to certain questions of fairness or the procedures that ensure that both sides of a dispute are treated equally before any decision making occurs or that the decision is not patently unreasonable (under Canadian law) or Wednesbury unreasonableness (under British law) or similar doctrines described below.

These powers of review of administrative decision, while often governed by statute, were originally developed out of the royal prerogative writs of English lawsuch as the writ of mandamus and the writ of certiorari.

Thus, it is not enough to simply claim that the rulemaking agency could have done a better job. Instead, under U.S. administrative law, to ask the court to order changes in a rule, a party must argue that the rule is:

Arbitrary and capricious and/or unsupported by the record. Most frequently, objectors will argue that, even if the judge is not an expert, she can tell that there is an obvious gap in the agency’s data or analysis. A court may intervene if it finds that there is no reasonable way that the agency could have drafted the rule, given the evidence in the rulemaking record. A court may send a rule back to the agency for further analysis, generally leaving the agency to decide whether to change the rule to match the existing record or to amend the record to show how they arrived at the original rule. If a court does remand a rule back to the agency, it almost always involves an additional notice and public comment period.

Exceeds statutory authority. Frequently, opponents of a rule argue that it fails to follow the instructions of the authorizing legislation. Rules can be found to exceed statutory authority if they are too strict or too lax. If a law instructs an agency to issue regulations to ban a chemical, but the agency issues a rule that instead sets levels for safe use—or vice versa—a court may order the agency to issue a new rule.

Bolt out of the blue. Occasionally, interested parties argue that the final rule contains provisions that were never vetted during the public comment period. A court may intervene if it finds that there was no way that the commenting public could have anticipated the new provisions and provided comment. If so, the new provisions are said to be, in a colorful legal phrase, a ‘bolt out of the blue’ rather than a reasonable course correction during the rulemaking process. Frequently, agencies will vet several options during the proposed rule phase to allow for comment on the full spectrum of rules under consideration.

via Rulemaking – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. (accessed 12 DEC 2011)

The best discussion of the size and scope of regulations

Saving the best for last, this is probably the most authoritative source on the subject. Here is just the tail-end of the discussion :

Regulatory page counts. One of the most commonly used yardsticks of regulatory activity is the size of the daily Federal Register, which reports regulatory changes. Before any new federal rule can be finalized, the agency proposing the rule must have it published in the register. In 2008, the Federal Register hit a record 79,435 pages for the year.[6] In 2009, the number dropped to 68,598. Such a decrease is not unusual in presidential transition years.
The size of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) provides a second yardstick of regulatory activity. Unlike the Federal Register, which is a catalog of regulatory changes, the CFR is a compendium of all existing regulations. In 2008, the CFR weighed in at 157,974 pages, having increased by 16,693 pages since the start of the George W. Bush Administration.[7] In 2009, the page count hit a record high of 163,333.
Number of new rules. Page counts, however, are not the best measure of the size of regulation. More important than the mere number of pages in the Federal Register or the CFR is the content of those pages: How many new rules are being adopted, and what is their cost to Americans?
Thousands of regulatory actions, or rulemakings, are completed each year: 3,503 such actions were reported in the Federal Register in 2009 alone.[8] However, many of these rules are not “regulatory” in the common usage of the word; they do not limit or impose mandates on private-sector activities. Many, for instance, are just internal rules that govern how agencies are run. Others are fiscal in nature, such as those that establish conditions for federal spending programs.
Excluding such “non-regulatory” rulemaking activity still leaves many thousands of agency actions each year that increase or decrease regulatory burdens. All of them have a cost, but their impact varies widely. Perhaps as much as 90 percent of regulatory costs are imposed by “major” or “economically significant” regulations–regulations that have an economic impact of more than $100 million. While costly, relatively few regulations reach this threshold.
During the Bush Administration, more than 120 major rule changes were adopted that increased regulatory burdens.[9] Of these changes, 36 were adopted in 2008, ranging from standards for automatic brake systems to limits on Internet gambling.[10]
This backloading of regulatory activity at the end of the presidential term is not surprising, fitting a pattern of regulatory surges followed by other outgoing Administrations. The Clinton Administration, for instance, promulgated 20 major rules in 2000, and 15 more in 2001 before leaving office.
The most likely explanation for this pattern is that regulators have an institutional incentive to clear their desks before turning over the office keys to new occupants. The Bush Administration explicitly focused on finishing its regulatory to-do list before the 2008 presidential election, instituting procedures that required agencies to propose new regulations no later than June 1, 2008, and finalize them no later than November 1, 2008.[11]

via Red Tape Rising: Regulation in the Obama Era.

Then we can talk about state regulations

No, let’s don’t. Not now!

Other resources

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• Should Voters Have More Say in the Regulatory Processes That Drastically Affect Their Lives? (reason.com)
• What’s stopping job creation? Too much regulation (cnn.com)
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Givers versus Takers

It used to be that the vast majority of people worked at the best work they could get. The American Dream was alive and well and most people tried to take advantage of the opportunities given them. Now far too many just want to take advantage. Half of the taxpayers pay the tab for 100% of the country, yet the non-paying half (many of whom file a tax return to get a “refund” of your money, having paid in nothing) scream that they are the 99%.

Perhaps they are 99% of something. Who knows what, but it’s sure not of my idea of hard-working, red-blooded Americans of the style that made this country great. The Great Society has made this country anything but great. We need to re-energize the tradition of the hand-UP and discourage the hand-OUT. Let’s be clear:  if a person is truly unable to do for themselves for whatever reason, they get the generous help of those of us who can help. Philanthropy, individual and corporate, is still alive and well (at least until some of the tax changes that are discussed kill it) in America.

But in the meanwhile, far too many people are content to live “on the dole” and to live a life immersed in a sense of entitlement when they neither deserve it nor have earned it. Again, I’m not talking about the guy who is out of work and truly cannot find employment, or the single mother abandoned by a worthless sperm-donor, or someone disabled and unable to work.

What to do about moochers?

The trick is to identify those who need help and to assist them through whatever travails have hindered them, if possible, so that they can themselves give back to society with their time, talent and money. That does not include the selfish and deluded invaders at Zuccotti Park. I was especially appalled at the notion that student loans should simply be written off — having used loans in both undergraduate and law school. I also worked while carrying a full course load and thus minimized the resulting amount of those loans. I did not have time to lounge on someone else’s property and litter it with trash, feces, drug paraphernalia and weapons.

There is a great piece that paints the pig as it should be. I tease you with the following and commend the entire article to you. It pulls no punches.

(Referring to the faux revolutionary blathering) [a] fawning media heard more of the same on Tuesday morning from the shouting protesters: “We are unstoppable; another world is possible”; “We shall overcome”; “We are doing something revolutionary.” A genuinely revolutionary act might have been living for free for two months without the cornucopia of insanely cheap goodies that capitalism and free trade showered upon the OWS protesters, from laptops, iPhones, and abundant electricity for recharging them to mountains of fresh food, warm clothing, and medical supplies.

via The Moochers of Zuccotti Park by Heather Mac Donald – City Journal. (Accessed 12/5/2011)

Regular readers may recall a great picture worth a million words of so-called protesters with all of their “capitalist pig accoutrements” that I wrote about in The World Owes Me … Everything. One photo in particular from that article says it all (click to enlarge):

I rest my case on co-opted stupidity

Dividing Givers versus Takers

I suggest that the real problem with this idea of “Givers and Takers” is that we even have to sort people out into one camp or another. Whether you base it on the 50:50 proposition of who pays taxes, or on the 1:99 perception of rich and not-rich, or any similar distinction of “good” versus “bad” citizenship — it is a shame to have become so divided. It seems that the main function of political discourse now is to create divisions —  huge divisions — as opposed to searching for consensus.  Where is the statesmanship?

The reason the question of givers versus takers matters is that we must close the gap between them so that the giver/taker class distinction is no longer made. Much of the false premise for such distinctions focuses on perceived corporate greed, a perception that merely displays the lack of education and understanding on the part of the self-proclaimed “99%.” From where do they think all of the “stuff” came from that they used during the occupation.

McDonald’s article also had a pretty good statement about the view of the alleged corporate greed.

Yes, some large or politically influential businesses win wholly unjustified government subsidies, as well as exemptions from the high taxes that less connected businesses have to pay to fund the growing welfare state. (The green energy movement, of course, is as voracious a consumer of unfair government favoritism as any failing bank.) But the fact that capitalism can be distorted by politics says nothing about its unmatched power to raise the standard of living almost universally and create the wealth that is the precondition for so many modern rights, such as women’s liberation from arranged marriages. Occupy Wall Street proved incapable of making such distinctions, however. At their core, the protests represented another outbreak of that perennial temptation in bourgeois society: to take for granted the norms and institutions that make Western prosperity and freedom possible. (emphasis added)

via The Moochers of Zuccotti Park by Heather Mac Donald – City Journal.

If any doubts remain about the character of some of the people claiming to be some righteous part of the “99%” just enjoy these photos (click for larger):

Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times

Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times

A couple from the LA Times

And from the AP

from the AP

from the AP

from the AP

from the AP

from the AP

Be careful that you 99 percenters don’t kill the Golden Goose. ¹

Resources:

Related articles

• The Welfare State: Too Many Takers – Not Enough Givers – Larry Elder – Townhall Conservative (gds44.wordpress.com)
• Givers & Takers: A Retrospective of Sorts (dayofanewdawn.wordpress.com)
• A Nation of Citizens | Not “Givers” and “Takers” (continuumfi.wordpress.com)
• Know Any Takers? (psychologytoday.com)
• George Weiner: “Where’s the Pony?” Occupy Wall Street Demands (huffingtonpost.com)
• Occupy Wall Street: What It Isn’t (outsidethebeltway.com)

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