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For the birds
Apr. 23rd, 2012 11:49 pm
Currently at Toronto Pearson: 2. High today: 8, at midnight and 1 a.m. No sign of the advertised snow around here, though Buttonville is reporting snow.
Turns out the groundhog doesn't have much trouble climbing over two feet of chicken wire. In the words of Charlie Brown, I always worry about the wrong things. (L. points out that, seeing as she once saw a groundhog sitting on a fencepost, I should've seen this coming.) There've been a couple of pigeons hanging around the backyard the last couple of days--I think they may intend to build a nest on the cinder-block building. A cardinal couple has been visiting the feeder the last week or two. Rounding out recent avian visitors, I've seen a brownheaded cowbird a couple of times. No juncos in the last couple of weeks--just when I was starting to think they'd stick around for the summer. No more blackbirds, either. Still seeing a single song sparrow now and again, though.
Today I skimmed through Ronald Dworkin's piece in the New York Review of Books arguing for the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act; this is actually the first I've been aware that more or less the main thing at issue (at least as Dworkin frames it) is the proper interpretation of the "Commerce Clause", which says, in its entirety, this: Congress shall have the power "to regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes". Since Congress is not supposed to have any powers not explicitly mandated by the constitution, the basic question over Obamacare is whether making people buy health insurance amounts to regulating commerce or to creating commerce where there otherwise would have been none. (Dworkin points out that some people want to make an end run around this whole issue by saying that the "penalty" for not buying insurance is actually a tax, since the "penalty" is paid with your federal income tax--somehow taxing people for not doing something is supposed to be categorically different from penalizing them for not doing it (or it is so supposed in American law, supposedly; it reminds me of the ongoing debate in philosophy over what the difference is between a penalty and a fee (e.g., if you regard a certain probability of paying $40 as a good price to park somewhere, then you're regarding a parking ticket as a fee rather than a penalty ... ), and analogous debates about willingly taking penalties or committing fouls in sports.)
What actually prompts me to mention this, though, is the survey L. was conducting at![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
the_axel and the_siobhan's fabulous post-renovation-celebration (where Axel makes all the Gibsons) last weekend, concerning whether the American or Canadian government has more power relative to the states/provinces. The gut feeling basis for answering "Canadian" is that "states rights" are a prominent ongoing issue in the US. My gut feeling basis for answering "American" (thus agreeing with the_axel, and thus being of the minority opinion) is that the US has more powerful federal environmental and educational agencies than Canada does. (The scope of Canada's federal environment ministry is very limited--most of the action on environmental legislation is in the provinces--and Canada not only has no federal education ministry, but doesn't even have a minister responsible for educational policy.) I realized a day later that one strong reason to think that power is more centralized in Canada is that criminal law is entirely a federal matter in Canada, but (I gather) mostly a state matter in the US. And then back on the other hand, reading this Dworkin thing today, it occurred to me that I'd bet most Americans would be surprised to learn that Canada has no national health care/insurance system (but only a federal law requiring the provinces to provide universal coverage for medically necessary services in order for them to receive federal funds ear-marked for health care. This means that, in theory, a province could choose to privatize its health insurance system at the price of foregoing federal health funding.) The American government, on the other hand, has been running Medicare and Medicaid since 1965, and now of course is running Obamacare, pending the Supreme Court decision.
Turns out the groundhog doesn't have much trouble climbing over two feet of chicken wire. In the words of Charlie Brown, I always worry about the wrong things. (L. points out that, seeing as she once saw a groundhog sitting on a fencepost, I should've seen this coming.) There've been a couple of pigeons hanging around the backyard the last couple of days--I think they may intend to build a nest on the cinder-block building. A cardinal couple has been visiting the feeder the last week or two. Rounding out recent avian visitors, I've seen a brownheaded cowbird a couple of times. No juncos in the last couple of weeks--just when I was starting to think they'd stick around for the summer. No more blackbirds, either. Still seeing a single song sparrow now and again, though.
Today I skimmed through Ronald Dworkin's piece in the New York Review of Books arguing for the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act; this is actually the first I've been aware that more or less the main thing at issue (at least as Dworkin frames it) is the proper interpretation of the "Commerce Clause", which says, in its entirety, this: Congress shall have the power "to regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes". Since Congress is not supposed to have any powers not explicitly mandated by the constitution, the basic question over Obamacare is whether making people buy health insurance amounts to regulating commerce or to creating commerce where there otherwise would have been none. (Dworkin points out that some people want to make an end run around this whole issue by saying that the "penalty" for not buying insurance is actually a tax, since the "penalty" is paid with your federal income tax--somehow taxing people for not doing something is supposed to be categorically different from penalizing them for not doing it (or it is so supposed in American law, supposedly; it reminds me of the ongoing debate in philosophy over what the difference is between a penalty and a fee (e.g., if you regard a certain probability of paying $40 as a good price to park somewhere, then you're regarding a parking ticket as a fee rather than a penalty ... ), and analogous debates about willingly taking penalties or committing fouls in sports.)
What actually prompts me to mention this, though, is the survey L. was conducting at
the_axel and the_siobhan's fabulous post-renovation-celebration (where Axel makes all the Gibsons) last weekend, concerning whether the American or Canadian government has more power relative to the states/provinces. The gut feeling basis for answering "Canadian" is that "states rights" are a prominent ongoing issue in the US. My gut feeling basis for answering "American" (thus agreeing with the_axel, and thus being of the minority opinion) is that the US has more powerful federal environmental and educational agencies than Canada does. (The scope of Canada's federal environment ministry is very limited--most of the action on environmental legislation is in the provinces--and Canada not only has no federal education ministry, but doesn't even have a minister responsible for educational policy.) I realized a day later that one strong reason to think that power is more centralized in Canada is that criminal law is entirely a federal matter in Canada, but (I gather) mostly a state matter in the US. And then back on the other hand, reading this Dworkin thing today, it occurred to me that I'd bet most Americans would be surprised to learn that Canada has no national health care/insurance system (but only a federal law requiring the provinces to provide universal coverage for medically necessary services in order for them to receive federal funds ear-marked for health care. This means that, in theory, a province could choose to privatize its health insurance system at the price of foregoing federal health funding.) The American government, on the other hand, has been running Medicare and Medicaid since 1965, and now of course is running Obamacare, pending the Supreme Court decision.
