49. Early Saturday thoughts

I am only writing because I'd like to try and have an entry each day. I've been thinking of different subjects to muse upon, but the Muses themselves are being of little help. I know I want to write about the conflicts between private property ownership and zoning, two ideas of great interest to me but I know of little interest to most other people.

I believe that the ownership of private property, and the taking of such property by the government, and the control of the property through planning and zoning laws, are topics which need continually to be addressed as more and more land is divided up into smaller and smaller spaces and owned by more and more people. Where once we spoke of 1000 acres land and military grants, metes and bounds, the Northwest Ordinance, we then moved onto the smaller parcels of 100 acre farms, then of the Lower 40 acres; we're now in the process of not only dividing up our land into parcels which actually touch the earth, but due to high rises and condominiums, we have to deal with horizontal property law, involving property that only exists in space, not on the earth.

I've also found myself weaving a pattern of support and non-support on how political districts and boundaries are drawn. There is a movement for this to be done in some neutral way when the time comes; the time for doing such drawing used to come around every ten years, but since the 1990s, it seems everytime a state legislature switched majorities, the lines for state house and senate, and federal house seats were redrawn to the then-current majority's benefit. Here in Kentucky, the one person who could tell you the most about that is Democratic-turned-Republican State Senator Danny Seum, currently serving in the 38th Senate District, which currently runs along the southern perimeter of the county. But Danny's district has been all over the place, including for a time all of Bullitt County. The Barack Obama book I've been reading the last few days touches briefly on this matter as well as that of public financing, which I have tended to not support and have sided with Mitch McConnell on the matter as it relates to the question "Is Money Speech?" and to the merits of the lawsuit which McConnell won titled McConnell v. FEC which came before the United States Supreme Court in 2003 and which revisited all the arguments of the earlier case on a very closely related matter, Buckley v. Valeo, itself before the same Court in 1976.

All of these topics can be very dry reading for those for whom they hold no interest. They are some of my few conservative leanings and I have spent a few minutes here and there arguing their merits with my more liberal friends from time to time. Neither me nor those with whom I am engaged in a discussion seem to me moved by such discussions. But in arguing the same matters alone, a battle of wits to be sure, I do find some movement to the left.

Once, when my brother and I were helping our very conservative Republican uncle with his fence gate, which was lodged and seemingly immovable; I gave it an extra heavy heave-ho, and indeed it became unlodged, and bolted strongly to the left, indeed so strongly that it jumped off track. My uncle's half-joking response was "you always go too far to the left." Truthfully, when in doubt, it is probably the best course to take - to the left. I will note, in defense of my uncle, that he would note here that he is not a latter-day Republican who believes in uncontrolled spending and church controlled politics, but one of small government, small spending (and no borrowing), TR-like conservation, and, as he would say about the so-called Christian Right - well, I won't print that here. He thinks as highly of them as I do.

But, in all of this, the Muses wont speak clearly, so for the moment, I'll leave off. Enjoy the weekend. By the way, just before I began this I checked my visitor and pages-read count. Whenever the next page is read, that page will be the 1000th page visited. There have been right at 600 visitors, of course 100 of those are me. Thanks to all of you. And, while I make no promises to respond to comments, I do invite you to leave one.