A Step In The Right Direction
I was disappointed today when I heard news of a hearing in the Texas-FLDS fiasco where a mother was trying to get custody of her nine month old baby. What surprised me was the age of the child since my…
Month May 2008
Federalist Nos. 13 – 14
Federalist No. 13 left me with imagining one of two conclusions based on the following statement: Nothing can be more evident than that the thirteen States will be able to support a national government better than one half, or one…
What Is A Billion
I got a forwarded email about putting some perspective on what “a Billion” is and how easily politicians throw around numbers on that order of magnitude. Here’s a summary from the email that attempts to put some perspective on the…
Increasing City Council Pay
The news that our mayor asked city council to raise his pay and theirs got me thinking about this issue more closely than I’ve ever thought about it before. It makes sense that it would be a sensitive issue, but…
Tis The Season
Yesterday officially opened the Dutch Oven season for me. I had the opportunity to participate in a Dutch Oven cook-off and I really enjoyed sharing a new recipe that I made up earlier in the week. It’s a simple and…
Federalist Nos. 11 – 12
Federalist Nos. 11 – 12 follow the same overarching argument that many of their predecessors followed. It can be boiled down to the truths concerning economies of scale. A larger union has great advantages over a smaller nation in many…
Re: Growth Will Force a Lake Bridge
It must be nice to be paid to publish your opinions – especially when there is nobody to dispute your position. With the power of the press you get to proclaim who is right and who is wrong, and you…
Picking Up the Pace
I realized yesterday that I have been losing steam on my review of the Federalist papers partly because the idea of 84 posts is rather daunting. I also realize that I am not obligated to break them up exactly as…
Fortune 535
Check out the Sunlight Foundation’s Fortune 535. It gives numbers of the net worth of each member of Congress based on congressional reporting requirements. Some of the numbers won’t be very surprising, but others will probably make you take a…
Federalist No. 10
A larger republic would be less susceptible to factions and the multi-level structure of government would allow for issues of local concern to be solved at a local level with only "the great and aggregate interests being referred to the national." But the advantage of a larger republic breaks down when large groups of people abandon their own thinking in favor of adopting the thinking of someone else and the advantages of a multi-level governmental structure evaporate when the vast majority of issues are presented as falling into the category of "great and aggregate interests."