"Waterloo Sunset" - Ray Davies
Just a great version of one of my favorite songs by a shockingly ebullient Davies.at the 2010 Glastonbury Festival. I was pondering other picks, but opted for something that made me unabashedly happy.
I'm sorry I keep saying this -- I sound like such a whiner -- but the schedule is just killing any time and energy to write. I left the house at 6:45 AM this morning for a lengthy meeting in Richmond, then spent the evening getting ready for a trip to Florida for the next three days -- the fourth week in a row I'm on Southwest Airlines. (I am becoming like a budget airline George Clooney -- give or take 40 pounds and swoon-inducing looks.) I am arbitrating the pretextual layoff of a guy who complained (quite justifiably) about working around toxic substances on a job. It's one of those cases you just have to win -- and I plan on it. (I can always tell when I am getting particularly geared up for a case because I find myself muttering bits of opening argument or cross examination in the shower or while driving the car or walking the dog -- I may look vaguely crazy when I am overheard muttering to Stanley "isn't true that . . . ?" Smart dog that he is he never answers.
- I hope that the White House slaps back hard at Boehner's ridiculous blathering about trillions of dollars in spending cuts being the price for raising the debt ceiling. I think the appropriate posture is to continue to argue firmly that threatening to default on U.S. debts is to invite financial disaster on an already struggling world economy. Boehner will blink -- the Wall Street and Chamber of Commerce factions of the GOP will have his head if he ever went through with this.
- This was a nice bit of economic news. A resurgent domestic auto industry -- thanks in large part to President Obama -- would certainly be helpful in fighting this problem. David Brooks seems mystified that policies that result in large quantities of people being raised in poverty, in an environment in which dropping out of school is all too prevalent, without adequate access to health care, and where industrial and construction jobs are in short supply results in large quantities of men being rendered effectively unemployable. It would be good for Mr. McBobo to occasionally leave Bethesda -- really, he wouldn't have to travel too far to find such people. I would happily serve as a tour guide in these exotic lands.
- Looks like the Obama Administration drew a good panel for the case in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond over Virginia's challenge to the Affordable Care Act, although people sometimes put too much stock in this sort of thing. I've never lost a case in the Fourth Circuit -- I've been on brief on several and argued two myself and even though the panels had a number of conservatives, they were very fair to my clients. (All of the cases involved either unions, union benefit plans, or, in the two cases I argued, employees bringing claims for unpaid overtime -- in both of which I got the Fourth to reverse trial courts and rule for the employees.) I think the arguments against PPACA are not terribly convincing and that even a more conservative panel would likely throw out the challenges. We will see as this plays out across the circuit courts.
- Ezra has a really succinct, straightforward, fact-laden post about Social Security that I commend to you. I am amazed that they would publish this sort of thing in the Kaplan Daily.
Update: As a parent who has gone through the college search and application process this year, and naturally, spent an inordinate of time discussing said search with others of my repulsive socio-economic class, (by which I mean people whose kids had better grades and scores and who were joyfully obsessed by the process), I must say this list of the 25 douchiest colleges in America made me laugh my ass off.
Alright -- must sleep. How goes it with you?
