Chicago

We are in Chicago tonight, after a long ride. Today was the day of amazing food. We started out in Buffalo with a really amazing breakfast at my Mom's - omelet, fresh fruit, and blueberry tea. We got on the road at around 8:40. Once on the Thruway, we saw a caravan of PT Cruisers, including a very stylish convertible one! It started raining and they all pulled over so that the convertible car could put up its roof.

We stopped in Parma, OH for lunch with my grandparents. My Grandma made us a Lebanese feast, including fatoyah, tabouleh, mjadra, lubya, and apple pie for dessert! (I guess they probably eat apple pie in Lebanon occasionally, right?). We visited with them for 2 hours, and were back on the road at 2pm.

Then we had a looooooong drive through the rest of Ohio, Indiana and then Illinois. We saw a lot of green fields, silos, farms, and water towers. We passed through Gary, Indiana and could actually smell it. Yuck.

We got into Chicago at about 6:30 after a bunch of traffic, not unlike Boston. Here is Chicago from Rt. 90:



We got to A.Fuss' apartment. Here's me and A.Fuss in front of her apartment:



Then we went out and got awesome pizza!! We got buffalo mozzarella as an appetizer. JK^2 thinks it's dangerous to eat buffalo mozzarella because it comes from Milan and he had a bad experience with cleanliness in Italy last summer. And apparently there have been news reports that the buffalos who make this cheese live where they dump garbage. But I've gone swimming in Lake Erie, so I think I'll live. :) And anyway, it was really delicious. We also got pizza, of course.

We are probably going to drive through Wisconsin and Minnesota tomorrow. Unless we decide to do Iowa and Nebraska instead. But it'll probably be Wisconsin and Minnesota.

By the way, does anyone out there know why the Corn Palace is such a big thing and why everyone but us has heard of it?

Buffalo

We left Boston at noon, and started our journey on Interstate 90. It was a pretty easy trip. There was no traffic, not even in Boston. We got into Buffalo around 7pm, in time for dinner. We have driven the NY State Thruway so many times that it's really not that exciting. But I think that it's a beautiful ride if you haven't done it before. Green and rolling hills and picturesque farms and silos.

Buffalo is filled with lilacs. I never remember there being so many lilacs around here, but they are everywhere. Here is one of my mom's lilac bushes:
And here is Mr. Buddy, being silly in the lilac bush:

We had a nice dinner with my mom, including lettuce fresh-picked from her garden! My favorite! Then my mom's best friend Gretchen came over for a little while to chat. It was a nice evening. I wish we could stay longer.

Tomorrow it's on to Cleveland and Chicago. We plan to leave here at 9, meet my grandparents for lunch at around noon, and then be in Chicago for a late dinner. I think we're being a little optimistic with the timing, but that's part of the fun of a road trip.

The Night Before

It is 8:10pm. I just got home from work and a work-related meeting. I haven't eaten dinner yet. I haven't packed yet. I haven't taken my clothes out of the drier yet. But we are still leaving tomorrow.

Suddenly, work got busy. I have a list of things to do before I leave, and only about 4 hours to do them.

I'm worried about being gone for 2 weeks. What if all my clients' cases get denied while I'm away? I feel bad leaving my kitties behind. They will be taken good care of while we're gone, but I'll miss them. Zeusy is sitting on my lap at the moment and wants me to scratch her head.

Anyway, my goal is to write a short blog each night during our trip, so this is the first one ... although, technically, our trip hasn't started yet. Tomorrow night we'll (hopefully) be in Buffalo by now.

Things are back under control ... for now

We moved back into the house today - yea. It was all a little more rushed than hoped. They put on the first coat of polyurethane on Tuesday, and planned to put on the second coat on Wednesday. That would give us Thursday to sleep in our own bed and clean up for my mom's visit this weekend. But it didn't work out that way. Of course.

On Wednesday, the floor guys came back and realized that the floor was still wet. So they had to wait til Thursday morning, which meant that we couldn't move back in on Thursday because the house smelled strongly of polyurethane and the floors were still sticky. Plus, Jim was coming back from a three-day business trip, so instead of being able to come home and relax, we had to go to our favorite vacation retreat - the Adams Inn in North Quincy. This morning the floors were all dry. They are really nice, except for one tiny triangle that they missed when putting on the second coat of the polyurethane. Of course.

My mom arrived around 2pm. Luckily, I had changed the sheets on the guest bed last weekend, so she didn't think we were total slobs. The furniture goes back in tomorrow, and then the house will look somewhat normal again. We are dreaming of the luxury of being able to sit on our couch and watch regular TV. We are hoping to go to the Lilac Festival, except that I think it's supposed to pour rain all weekend.

Less than a week til we leave for our road trip!!

Musings on the news

Here I am, waiting for my friend Jen to get out of work, so I thought I would write some musings about today's news.

First, Hillary Clinton. She lends her campaign several million dollars, except that she's not going to win the primary any more. Could she give me the million dollars instead? I can think at least a million better ways to spend it, and top on my list would be the poor souls in Myanmar/Burma who got hit by the cyclone.

Here in Boston, the mafia is in the news again. A man who calls himself "The Cheese Man" had a bail hearing today in federal court on charges that he bribed an undercover FBI agent who he thought was a state government official. It seems like if he truly wanted to protest his mafia connections, he would stop calling himself the Cheese Man, even if it's true that he owns a cheese shop in the North End.

And finally, I want to share a fabulous journal article about immigration judges from the Social Science Research Network: Crisis on the Immigration Bench: An Ethical Perspective, by Michele Benedetto. I'm just reading through it, but it is right on. Some of the anecdotes that you'll read in this article are almost unbelievable, except that I've seen similar situations in cases that I've had. From what I can tell, no First Circuit cases are included. Maybe that's because the First Circuit is blindly deferential!! I keep wondering when my firm is going to move to California.

Interesting topics?

I've realized that it's hard for me to blog because I don't have a lot in my head that I need to tell the world, you know? Like, I could go into rants about immigration law, but most people have strong views on immigration, and frankly, I'm not a big fan of getting into arguments with people. Plus, in order to really describe how crazy the immigration system is, I'd have to tell you anecdotes, because I don't think you'd believe it's all true otherwise. But then we've got client confidentiality issues. Maybe there's a way to tell stories without disclosing personal information. I need to think about that.

So what are the other topics that surround my life? Well, home improvement. But that's pretty boring for other people to hear about. And travel. I'm happy to say that we're (finally) going to do quite a bit of that this summer. But it's not happening yet. And seeing friends. We did a little of Somerville Open Studios this weekend, because our friend was showing her work.

Someday, I would like to write a book. But see, it's the same issue. What should I write about? Immigration law? People have already written about it. I don't have anything new to say, at least not yet. I could write fiction, but law school drained all creativity out of me.

That being said, my life isn't as boring as it seems. This week, for example, should be interesting. Tomorrow I'm going to see Sandra Day O'Connor hear oral arguments at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit (if we can get in). I'm not sure how it is that she can still participate if she's retired, but I guess she can. She's definitely going to be there tomorrow and Tuesday. Jim is going south for a business trip, and I'll have the usual dramas at work. On Tuesday and Wednesday, we're getting our floors refinished and I'm staying over with Jen. (The rooms are going to look amazing once the floors are finished, and then we can put our furniture back!). Next weekend, my mom is visiting and we're going to attend the Lilac Festival at the Arboretum. I'd also really like to go here, but my mom doesn't seem as excited about it as I thought she'd be. And maybe I'll be one week closer to a book topic ... or, to think more realistically, an interesting blog topic. :)

The Gas Tax

So it appears both John McCain and Hillary Clinton have gone off the deep end. Well, this was expected, it is campaign season again. Both McCain and Clinton are proposing dropping the federal highway tax on gasoline this summer.

Obviously this is cheap trick since neither has the power to actually do it. Even if they were president they probably couldn't do it. McCain, realizing this is just gibberish didn't waste his time trying to figure out how to recover the lost tax revenue. Clinton has put a little more thought into it: she proposes a tax on Oil Companies to recover the difference.

The McCain plan doesn't seem to be serious; I don't actually believe the Clinton plan is either. But, I worry. I worry that someone, somewhere believes its a good idea, and that is a bad thing. The reason it is a bad idea is simple: switching who pays the tax will take a bunch of work (to be paid for by the American Tax Payers), and it won't change the price of gas. In fact, there is a good argument that it will *raise* the price of gas at the pump. Given these two factors the American Tax Payers will see a rise in total taxes paid and nothing will be gained.

The fact that changing around who pays what for taxes will cost money should not come as a surprise. Most of you work. Lets say one day your boss walked in and said, "for the next three months we will do things differently." What ever you do, you need to adjust how you do it. The government will need to change rules, issue new tax forms, auditors will need to change how they do things, laws will need to be passed and printed and distributed etc. This may be a marginally small cost given the huge cost of government bureaucracy but it will be a cost anyhow. You will pay for it, or your children will.

Now, the second part of the cost is the bigger problem. Oil companies *will* absolutely pass the cost along. It won't happen right away, there will be some lag, maybe this summer gas prices will be cheaper, but next fall they will be more expensive than they would be if there was no tax shift. Why would you, as a company in a free market just decide to give your profits away to the government? If you are going to give profits away why not given them to your customers? The Oil companies will pass along any cost of tax increases (and all extra accounting required for them) to their customers. We already PAY in the cost of gas for all services added by the oil company, why do you think they will change their mind now? Especially if Americans need their products?

Finally, the cost will rise because of speculators. One could reasonably expect that should the gas tax go away, and prices come down(in the short run), demand for gas will go up. This is simple supply and demand, it is not questioned, it is not the Lauffer Curve(which also shouldn't be questioned). Currently most of the literature says that a big part of the cost of gas is caused by (among other things) speculation. There is a lot of money floating around looking for something to invest in. The commodity market is hot, and if you tell me there will be increased demand for oil, why won't people buy more oil? This will push prices higher (especially in the short term).

In the end the Oil Companies win: no change in profits plus increased demand for product through speculation and increased consumption. The American Tax Payers pay for it all. Maybe not this year (since your government will just issue more bonds) but someone is going to pay. Its probably your kids who will pay for it when the government needs to pay 10% on bonds to sustain its debt. But that is a story for another day.