LongHairedWeirdo

I hate this kind of thing...

2009-11-07T20:12:00.000-08:00

This kind of thing drives me buggy.

The article is about how this guy wants a memorial to say that "Muslim terrorists" murdered his son. On the one hand, I understand the guy's anger. And I can't condemn him, as the father of a murder victim, for singling out Islam as part of his anger. It's not right - but it's understandable.

And the mature response is to sympathize with him, while acknowledging that government agencies can not, and should not, single out the religion of the attackers.

Unfortunately, we have people like Bill O'Reilly in this country, so maturity goes right out the window.

Look: here's the thing. Osama bin Ladin wants Muslims to think we're fighting Islam. We're not, but he'd like them to think that, so they harden in opposition against us.

So it's not just a matter of being mature, or of being honest... it's a matter of following a mature, and honest, strategy - telling the truth, that our enemy are the hateful followers of people like Osama bin Ladin, and not the billion plus peace loving Muslims in the world.

An unfair meme...

2009-08-27T07:46:00.001-07:00

...but one I might like to see propagated.

Republicans can't get put in charge of Medicare, ever. Why? Because as soon as they hear about hopes to control costs, the only thing they can think about is euthanasia and other forms of hastening death.

They can't even easily imagine people having other opinions on the matter; they're so lacking in imagination that they are unable to say "no, that's not the intent! What kind of hateful idiot would spread such a story?"

Of course, this meme is unfair for two reasons.

One, anyone reading this must know that they're just bullshitting^[1] for partisan advantage.

Two, anyone willing to allow anyone to believe such a despicable lie shouldn't be put in charge of anything... Medicare is just the beginning!

Oh, ouch, that wasn't very nice, was it? Sorry folks... but it's also true, isn't it?

[1] As always, I try to keep the language family friendly, but "BS" simply doesn't carry the same weight.

How smart is Obama?

2009-08-19T08:28:00.001-07:00

With talk of the drop of the public option, I've been wondering how smart Obama is.

If he's not very smart, then he's actually willing to drop the public option. He's willing to cave. The Republicans will never give up trying to stop him at every turn. Just like Bill Clinton, who folded on "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," the Republicans will smell vulnerability and use it as often as they can.

On the other hand...

On the other hand, if he's been intending to push substantial health care reform, with the intention of showing that he's willing to work with the Republicans, but only if they'll work with him, he might just be smarter than many of us expected.

He's exposed the lengths to which the Republicans will go - lying about reimbursement for living wills counseling, lying about government control of health care, lying about socialization of our health care system. He's drawn out the batshit crazy - apologies for the language, but sometimes profanity is appropriate - and shown the dishonesty that the Republicans will use for partisan advantage.

He'll have given them every chance to get on board... and they'll have, quite clearly, said "no".

If he gets a good bill passed after all this, he'll look like a hero, and they'll all look like villains.

I hope that President Obama is exactly that smart. But now is not the time to trust him.

Call, write, and e-mail your Representative and Senators. Tell them you *demand* solid health care reform, with a strong public option. Tell them that if they can't lead on this, they deserve to lose their jobs, and you'll do your best to make that happen. And mean it.

If health care reform fails, it won't just be Congress, or the Blue Dogs or the Republicans... it'll be the people who wanted it, and didn't make the prospect of seeing it fail scarier than passing it.

Mammon: the Reagan Years

2009-08-10T21:08:00.000-07:00

A lot of people think that Reagan caused a lot of damage to this country, and they're right. He set expectations of military spending so ridiculously high that the US spends more than almost the entire rest of the world combined on its military. He fought to bust unions, and he fought to support the rights of the wealthy to dump on the poor, and he fought to make people believe the very government he was in charge of was completely incompetent. He didn't succeed at that last bit, of course - it took George W. to turn "the government is the problem!" into something approaching truth.

But it wasn't Reagan so much as a part of the Reagan era that caused the most damage. It was during the Reagan era that the worship of money started in this country.

The lowering of the top tax rates were a part of it, but it was more of an attitude than a set of tax brackets. The attitude was that making money was a good and noble thing, in and of itself. For example, if you could sell 100,000 widgets at $5 profit per widget or could sell 90,000 at $6 profit, you should sell them at $6 a widget; otherwise, you're giving up $40,000 in profit. That you could make 10,000 additional would-be widget owners happy is nothing compared to the nobility in taking home an extra forty thou.

"But that's not a terrible thing!" you might say. And it's not... not if widgets are luxury items, at least; if they're some basic necessity, keeping them from 10,000 folks who need them isn't anywhere near as neutral.

Still, the attitude goes beyond "let's find the price-point that hits the profitability sweet spot." It also goes to "if you can get 10 workers to make you a million dollars a year, at a salary and benefits cost of $500,000, you should see if you can get 9 workers to do the same thing. Making a worker happy is nothing compared to the nobility of taking home an extra 50 thou."

And "if you can make a million bucks a year, but have to pay $100,000 in making sure your products are safe and your workers aren't being injured, you should see if you can lobby Washington to cut regulations so you can take home more money. The safety of your workers and consumers is nothing compared to the nobility of taking home some extra cash!"

And so on. Making money is all too often seen as noble and good for its own sake. And if something is good for its own sake, well, then, if it causes a bit of harm, we have to balance the harm it does with the good it does, don't we?

Sure, higher prices, layoffs, and loss of consumer and worker protections hurt... but think about how they help! Think of the money they allow people to make!

This wouldn't be nearly as ironic if the Republicans, who champion this idea, didn't push their Jesus-credentials so heavily. One of the biggest ideas Jesus constantly pushed was that you can't worship both God and money... first and foremost, you have to care about what's right, and loving, and what serves humanity - then you can figure out how to make some cash.

But then, if Jesus showed up at a Republican convention, he'd probably be one of those troublemakers who the police proudly haul away before they can be noisy or visible.

What is the controversy?

2009-08-02T10:38:00.000-07:00

There are a lot of people who speak about the "controversy over abortion". Well, there is one, there's no denying that, but most people don't' really recognize what it is. Oh, I don't mean what people claim it is - there are those who make false claims about all kinds of things, either because they're unable or unwilling to speak the truth.

No, I mean the actual controversy.

The controversy is this: does a single cell, without a brain, without a heart, without lungs, kidneys, liver, stomach, or any other organ, have more rights than we grant to any living, breathing person?

Now, don't get me wrong. If we resolved this controversy, there would be others. There would be questions about moral and pragmatic and legal issues. But at this time, this is the controversy.

Does a single cell have the right to attach to a person, and demand the right to continue to draw sustenance from that other person, even when that other person is unwilling to provide that sustenance?

(Technically, a single cell doesn't attach. However, there are a great many pro-lifers who say that if God, fate, blind luck, or whatever you want to call it, would deem that the fertilized egg would attach, it is wrong - or even "murder" - to prevent it from doing so.)

In any rational, free society, the answer is no. Carrying a baby to term is dangerous. It's not extremely dangerous (it's happened billions and billions of times, after all), but there is a real risk, to both life and health, to being pregnant. It's also uncomfortable, and can cause a variety of other problems.

Since I'm a no-name blogger, I can make this comparison, with little fear of it being twisted by liars: if it was not pregnancy, if it was some other medical condition, say, a tumor, it would only be the most heartless (or most idiotic) people who would forbid a woman the chance to remove that risk and discomfort with a simple and safe operation.

(I say "since I'm a no-name blogger" because if I were someone of importance, you can bet that there would be liars who would insist I just equated a developing fetus to a tumor. In fact, I just used a fictional medical condition as an allegory. Unfortunately, if you follow debates on abortion, you'll see that form of dishonesty used quite frequently.)

Since we would certainly allow a woman to get this operation if there wasn't a fertilized egg, a zygote or a developing fetus inside of her, then the question comes down to whether or not that fertilized egg, zygote, or developing fetus has the right to insist that the woman continue to bear that risk, and burden, despite her unwillingness to do so.

(I hope it's clear that no one else - not even the man whose sperm fertilized the egg - has the right to insist that she continue to bear that risk and burden.)

The pro-life side has an answer to that. Their answer is "it certainly does. From the moment of conception - from the moment it's a single cell, a fertilized egg, invisible (or nearly so) to the naked eye, it has a right to demand the woman undergo the risk and burdens of a full term pregnancy. If she is unwilling to undergo those risks and burdens, too bad."

But is that rational?

If there's any rational basis for when we are people, for when we have rights, it seems to me that it must lie in our brains. Remove a brain from a person, and what's left over is no longer a person, even if it's kept alive artificially. On the other hand, if we met a non-human creature, and realized they had the same self-awareness, ability to think, and dream, and love, and communicate, that we did, we'd consider them to be "people" too (or so I hope). It's the thinking/dreaming/loving/communicating parts of us that makes us people; it's our brains.

And a fertilized egg has no brain. (Literally - unlike those who think that George W. was a great President.)

Even at 12 weeks - and most abortions occur before 12 weeks - there is simply not enough brain matter to sustain life, let alone support what we think of as personhood.

This is not to say that there aren't people who have legitimate moral qualms about abortion (even abortions that occur prior to 12 weeks). People can have legitimate moral qualms over anything. Hell, people have legitimate moral qualms over masturbation. But the question isn't "can (or do) people consider it wrong?" the question is "should it be illegal? Should a free society put people in jail for doing this?"

So, in the end, that's the controversy over abortion. "Should we put people in jail if they refuse to bear the risks and burdens of a pregnancy, based upon our beliefs in the rights of a single cell (or small clump of cells, or even a developing fetus smaller than a peanut)?"

Someday, this controversy will be resolved, and we'll be able to hold sensible conversations on the other issues surrounding it. But until that day, that's what pro-choice folks are fighting against.

A sample of what's wrong with this country's political climate

2009-08-01T16:29:00.000-07:00

Do a search on "health care bill euthanasia" and you'll start to see results pop up where people are claiming that the health care reform bill "promotes euthanasia"

What the health care reform bill actually does is this.

Let's say you want to make our a living will to specify your end of life treatments. Do you want them to continue treatment as long as there's any hope at all? Cool; you can put that in a living will. Do you want them to let you die in peace, rather than keep you alive through artificial means? Cool; you can put that in a living will. You want continued treatment in on circumstance, and want them to stop trying in another? Cool; you can make sure your living will is put together so your wishes are known.

The health care reform bill says that, if you want counseling to help do that, insurance has to pay for it.

Now, in a sane world, anyone who claimed this "promotes euthanasia" would be branded an idiot (for failing to check the facts), or the most despicable form of liar (for knowingly spreading such a hateful lie), and would never be taken seriously again.

In a sane world, such a person wouldn't be listened to if they later claimed that Republicans wanted to cut taxes on the rich - "hey, you were so hideously wrong, or told such a despicable lie, that we can't trust you about anything anymore!"

But in today's world, they can spread the message around, and be listened to, and believed.

A meme that drives me crazy

2009-07-31T21:49:00.000-07:00

There's this idea going around that officer Crowley, who arrested professor Gates, couldn't be racist. "He taught a class on avoiding racial profiling, so he can't be racist!" goes the idea.

Well, let me emphasize this: I don't have any reason to believe that he is a racist. However, teaching a class on avoiding profiling is not evidence that he's not.

You have to understand what racial profiling actually is, and what it isn't. Racial profiling is not a case of an officer who hates (FITB) deciding to hunt down (FITB) criminals. Profiling is trying to determine a set of criteria - a profile - for a particular criminal. So it might mean determining that a black man driving a flashy, late model car could be a drug dealer; drug dealers drive flashy, late model cars, after all. Using profiling, an officer might stop that driver, and try to find some excuse to search the car, looking for evidence of any criminal activity.

Well, if you arrest someone based upon such weak evidence, you'd expect to have the arrest thrown out as unconstitutional, and if the arrest is thrown out, the evidence gathered might also be thrown out, as the fruit from a poisoned tree.

Teaching an officer to avoid profiling might, or might not, teach the officer not to harass a black man driving a flashy, late model car. The only thing it's guaranteed to teach the officer is not to use that as the reason for the stop. So a bad officer who has learned to "avoid racial profiling" might still decide that the black man in the flashy car is a criminal... but he'll have learned to come up with a better, more defensible reason for making the stop.

So, you might ask, why does this meme drive me crazy? Well, because it's sloppy thinking. People see he taught a case on racial profiling and say "There! See! He can't be racist!"

But that doesn't follow. A racist can learn what will, and won't, be considered a lawful reason for stopping, investigating, and arresting someone, just as easily as a non-racist. Similarly, a hot-tempered officer can teach other officers about appropriate use of force just as well as an officer who is in a constant state of zen-like calm.

The only additional knowledge we have about Crowley, when we learn that he taught officers to avoid racial profiling, is that he knows police procedures, and what needs to be in an arrest report. And we already knew that, since his arrest report has already been made public.

Explaining part of the health care reform issue

2009-07-30T21:18:00.000-07:00

The lousy coverage of the health care reform debate has been bugging me, to the point that I don't know where to start criticizing. I finally decided I'd start small.

One of the reforms we need is to stop letting insurance companies find ways to drop people's coverage as soon as they get sick. If insurance companies are allowed to only provide health insurance for healthy people, then they're not really providing insurance at all.

On the other hand, if you force all insurance companies to accept any patient, you'll have people who will game the system... they'll skip buying health insurance as long as they can get their routine care cheaper than the cost of the premiums, and only buy insurance if they find themselves facing a long term illness. As little sympathy as I have for insurance companies, that's not fair for them. And further, it will mean that if the insurance companies are trying to keep premiums down, then everyone else will have to pay higher premiums to provide enough funding to cover those who buy insurance only when they need it.

Fortunately, the answer to both problems is relatively easy... universal coverage.

If everyone is covered, then no one is getting dumped for pre-existing conditions, or for forgetting to mention they had an ingrown toenail on their application form. And, if everyone is covered, no one is gaming the system by waiting to get coverage.

With universal coverage, there's plenty of money flowing into the system - someone is paying premiums (or their equivalent) for everyone, and the financial burden is spread out evenly. Sure, some people will complain that the healthy are subsidizing the health care costs of the sick, but that's kind of like saying that the long-living people are subsidizing the life insurance of folks who die young... that's the whole point of insurance! You pay to fund the unfortunate, hoping you won't be one of them.

Getting universal coverage isn't easy. Right now, it's looking like we're going to maintain private health insurance companies (hopefully, with an additional public insurance company run by the government). We'll need regulations to make sure that they cover everyone. But then we're going to have to fund coverage for everyone. That can either be through taxes - yeah, right, like that's going to happen! - or through a set of mandates.

It's not very pretty; no one likes to be told what to do. But if you don't want people gaming the system, you need to make sure they're paying into the fund (or that someone else is on their behalf), one way or another.

So it's looking like that's what we'll end up with... assuming we want effective health care reform.

If we'd rather remain the last industrialized nation that doesn't care about the health care of its citizenry, we could use the Republican plan, or just make some cosmetic tweaks.

Wait, I'm repeating myself, aren't I?

Protesting too much?

2009-07-22T09:45:00.001-07:00

I've seen a lot of Republicans claiming that the government can't provide good services. Today, for example, Bobby Jindal suggests that this is the case because the Bush administration's FEMA couldn't respond well to Katrina.

You know, I think this is exactly what Republicans fear about government involvement in health care. Just imagine if your health care was denied for spurious reasons, and you were in the public plan... you'd call up your Senator or Representative and tell them to do something about it. You'd be on all over them, right? You'd have something that focused your mind on whether or not the government worked, whether it did the job you were paying for.

For a good many years, since Reagan, that's been the Republican mantra - "Government is the problem". They want to cut regulations (remember the peanut recall? sensible regulations could have prevented the salmonella infection, and made it easy to trace if it had happened) and taxes, because that makes their interest groups (read as: the wealthy and big business) happy.

But what if people had a reason to pay attention to governance? What if they had a vested interest, a direct interest, in a branch of the government?

You'd have an awfully hard time telling people that government is the Big Bad, then. You'd have to make certain parts of the government (such as the public plan) work well. And suddenly, you couldn't claim the government was always inefficient and always a problem, and suddenly, you'd have to come up with actual ideas, and real arguments, about why any given problem should, or shouldn't, be owned by the government.

I don't blame them for being scared.

But that's not a good reason to try to scuttle health care reform.

And let's face it; in the long run, it'll be good for them as a party to have to confront new ideas and create new arguments.

The arrest of Henry Louis Gates

2009-07-21T22:07:00.001-07:00

So, the arrest of Henry Gates is causing a bit of a stir. These kinds of things are like word problems (or "story problems" as I've heard them called) in mathematics, though. The first thing you need to do is figure out what matters, and toss out the rest of the information as irrelevant.

There are always competing narratives in these cases. The police officer will have you believe that he was honestly concerned and polite and deeply respectful of Mr. Gates, and yet, for no reason, Mr. Gates became belligerent.

And Mr. Gates would undoubtedly like you to believe that he was cooperative and friendly, but the officer was rudely aggressive and harassing a man he knew was innocent.

And here's the thing: none of that matters. That's the part of the word problem where they tell you a red car leaves Los Angeles; it doesn't matter that the car is red, and it doesn't matter that the place it left was LA.

Look, I don't care how Gates or the officer acted. The officer was going in to a possibly threatening situation, and was probably hyped up, and Gates, sitting at home, having had a long, frustrating day, had reason to be pissed off at any intrusion. People have been rude with less provocation, and the rudeness shouldn't enter into it.

What matters is this: the police report tells us that, in the face of a hostile situation, the police officer specifically tried to draw Mr. Gates outside. And, surprise, surprise, once he had him outside, he could claim he was creating a disturbance, and arrest him.

This, by itself, is an abuse of power.

Now, there are a lot of people out there acting shocked - shocked! - that, if the officer is to be believed, Gates was argumentative. "You should always be calm and cooperative when dealing with the police!"

Well, in general, you should. Police are fully aware that cops have been killed in routine situations all the time. They've been killed investigating breakins, they've been killed at traffic stops, they've probably been killed helping young children get kittens out of trees.

And it doesn't matter how wrong or unfair it is if a cop makes a horrible mistake, and thinks you're going for a weapon, and tries to defend himself from a potentially deadly situation. It's still going to ruin the rest of the day for both of you.

So, yes, it's wise to be calm and cooperative. And let's throw in how you should try to be friendly, because even a bad cop can be the one who ends up taking a bullet trying to protect others.

But there's a whole bunch of folks who seem to be okay with a police officer making a pointless arrest, or even hurting someone needlessly, if the victim was rude or nasty to the cop. Those folks seem to have forgotten that we live in a free society, and the first rule of living in a free society is that the government, and its agents, must leave you alone unless you're doing something that hurts others.

When a cop can smack someone around, or use a Taser on them, or even arrest them just to waste a few hours of their time, without a compelling reason, that's a violation of civil liberties. Allowing that behavior is a violation of the very notion of freedom.

And that's all we need to know about the arrest of Mr. Gates. A police officer provoked Mr. Gates into coming to the door of his residence so that he could arrest Mr. Gates, when there was no need to do so.

Don't think I don't sympathize with the officer to some extent. I'll give the officer the benefit of the doubt and assume that Mr. Gates was quite rude to him. And when you're confronted with rudeness when you're trying to do your job, and when you're already hyped up because you're going into a potentially dangerous situation, it can be really upsetting.

But that's all the more reason that he should have kept his head, and either de-escalated the situation himself, or called in one of the other officers who were present to assist him. He could have let the pressure out of the situation, and maybe even turned it positive.

Instead, he got to make a pointless arrest, and a few headlines that he and his fellow officers will long have cause to regret.

What is racism?

2009-07-15T08:18:00.000-07:00

We've been seeing an interesting example of racially charged narrative in the news recently.

Sonia Sotomayor is being harassed for having said that she didn't quite agree that a wise man and a wise woman will necessarily come to the same decision; she cited some famous instances in which the Supreme Court upheld discrimination, and said she felt that a wise Latina would more often than not come to a better decision than a man who hadn't had the experiences of such a woman.

Many white men angrily said that this was unfair, that if *they* said that a white man was a better judge than a Latina, they'd be ridden out of town on a rail, and, oh, by the way, Sotomayor was WRONG WRONG WRONG on the Ricci case, where she obviously demonstrated prejudice due to her ethnic background.

No rail-riding so far.

MAJOR SCANDAL (Or, a bit of snark for your enjoyment)

2009-06-24T22:09:00.000-07:00

As you know, the President of the United States is suspected of engaging in horrendously egregious misconduct.

Noble Public Servant Gerald Walpin was fired - yes, *fired* - for daring to investigate one of Obama's supporters, leading to CRIMINAL INVESTIGATIONS ~~with no charges filed, and the return of some federal funding because there's no proof it was spent properly due to sloppy accounting~~.

This is terrible, because Walpin, ~~,just like any other competent attorney doing the same job could have,~~ found *SEVENTY FIVE MILLION DOLLARS OF WASTE AND FRAUD* in the Americorps plan, including the aforementioned Obama booster, Kevin Johnson ~~whose organization was actually only asked to return a bit under half a mill; ignore that; the 75 million is more impressive and damaging sounding~~.

There is no other reason for firing Walpin. The only possible reason for firing Walpin was that he investigated an Obama supporter.

Look... some members of the so-called "reality based community" will say he made overstated claims that could not be supported by the subsequent investigation... but hey, he got some money returned, so what's the big deal that he claimed a lot more than could be proven?

And they'll harp on that tired old allegation that he withheld exculpatory evidence from the US Attorney's office. But come on; prosecuting attorneys just *love* surprises!

And, sure, he didn't bother to do an audit to determine how much money might have been mis-spent, but what's more important, a few facts, or making some loud, newsworthy accusations against a person who's running for political office?

And come on... we all know that talking to the media during the election about an investigation ~~which later found no criminal wrongdoing~~ is *not* unethical. Why should people be entitled to the presumption of innocence *during a political campaign*? What kind of pansy-ass liberal thinks that you shouldn't let an investigation run the risk of doing irreparable harm to the subject of the investigation?

And, yes, yes, Walpin pushed to have Johnson barred from receiving or dealing with federal funds - a rare sanction, invoked (per the IG's office) "If we find really egregious stuff and we want to stop the bleeding" - which could have barred him from carrying out his duties as mayor, and Walpin vociferously fought to keep that suspension in place despite the damage that could do to the city of Sacramento, CA, but after his clear objectivity and fairness in other parts of the investigation, why should this count against him?

Anyway, as you can see, this is clearly a purge, and a warning. Obama is saying to people working for the government that if you ~~royally fuck up an investigation~~ investigate one of his friends, you're out of here, if he has the power to fire you.

You know how we know that?

Because Obama had one of his people call Walpin up, ask him if he was going to resign, and told him he had *one hour* - ONE HOUR - to resign, or he'd be fired.

Clearly, this phone call was an attempt to get around a law that said that if Obama wants to fire an Inspector General, he has to send a letter to both houses of Congress, saying that he is firing the IG, and why.

Even more egregiously, although the law doesn't dictate what reasons Obama can give for firing an IG, *HE SAID HE WAS FIRING WALPIN BECAUSE HE NO LONGER HAD CONFIDENCE IN WALPIN*.

So, clearly, he was quite possibly violating that law, by sending that letter, saying Walpin was fired 30 days after the letter was sent. Oh, maybe not the *letter* of the law, since the law just says he has to send a letter, but the *spirit*. Because the law was intended to provide oversight, giving Congress 30 days to act! And, you see, Obama claiming he lost confidence in Walpin denies Congress the power to engage in oversight, because if it doesn't, *OBAMA WOULDN'T HAVE VIOLATED THE SPIRIT OF THE LAW*. And we know that's not possible.

In any case, calling Walpin up and asking him to resign must be a manner of dodging that oversight.

Because, you know, that call was a threatening one. Resign - or be *FIRED*.

*Quit your job* - or you'll lose it anyway.

I'm sorry; I know that's so threatening that some folks reading this are probably having palpitations, but I need to drive home the truth. Besides, can you imagine something more bullying?

I can't.

Oh, sure, some dirty stinking liberal who insists on giving Obama the "benefit of the doubt" will surely say that it's common courtesy to give a guy a chance to say he's decided to pursue other interests, rather than to say he's being fired. But how on earth are you supposed to believe that Barack Obama - a Chicago pol! - could have acted out of common courtesy?

Look, none of this proves anything... I'll be the first to admit that. But it bears watching. Because if we keep ignoring the atrocious acts of Walpin, and slant the story really heavily, we can make it sound like this makes Obama look really bad!

Thoughts on insurance

2009-06-21T10:05:00.000-07:00

I'm not that old, but I can tell you a story about how things used to be in the good old days.

Back in the day, here's how insurance would work.

An insurance company would expect to take in a lot of money - just to have a solid figure, let's say a billion dollars over the course of 20 years. And it would expect to pay out a billion dollars over the course of 20 years. And it would pay out its administrative expenses and such simply from the investment income from that billion dollars over those 20 years.

It's supposed to be a pretty dull business. You make careful, prudent investments to make absolutely sure that you have the money you need to pay out claims. You spend hours pouring over actuarial tables and calculating premiums to make sure that you offer good value for the customer's insurance dollar, while still covering the possibility of a large claim coming in.

But sometime a while back, folks decided that greed is good and free enterprise can do anything better than a bunch of boring accountants and actuaries trying to provide a valuable public service. Let's run insurance like a for-profit business, and the magic of the free market will make everything better!

And, since greed is good, it's good to try to keep every dollar in premium payments you can for as long as you can. It's good to find ways to cut the costs of claims (even if this means denying a claim for an excessive period of time). It becomes a great idea to find a reason to, say, drop an expensive patient-to-be from your health insurance rolls, if you can do so legally. Remember, you're not trying to provide a valuable public service, you're trying to maximize shareholder return!

Of course, if a small group of extremely wealthy investors wanted to run an insurance company along more traditional lines, they could. It would have to be a small group of very wealthy investors, though... if such a company was publicly traded, it would likely be the target of a buyout. You see, since it wasn't maximizing its profit, its stock value would be low; other companies would realize they could make more money from that customer base. They'd buy out the company (and thus, the insurance contracts), probably using a leveraged buyout - the kind of risky investment old-time insurance companies would consider imprudent - and bye-bye traditional company.

Right now, Congress is considering health care reform. One of the possibilities on the table is a "public option", which is to say, medicaid for anyone willing to pay for it. Let the government run a health care plan; it won't be for-profit, and it won't try to be flashy. It'll just try to balance out premiums paid with benefits paid. It'll be immune to leveraged buyouts, and while it won't attract the flashiest of the flashy investment gurus, it won't need to, because it doesn't need to make a bunch of shareholders happy with maximized profits... it'll just need to make stakeholders (that's "we the people of the United States") happy.

The insurance companies hate it; they're willing to take the good (a mandate that everyone has health insurance coverage), but they're not willing to take the bad (competition demanding that they be more efficient than a government agency). Which is strange, since we've been assured that the government can never be more efficient than a private company.

But what it really comes down to is this: in order to beat the government at the insurance game, they'll have to play the insurance game the old fashioned way, making more prudent investments, finding ways to serve customers and maximize the value of their policies, and otherwise engaging actual, honest competition that is intended to benefit the consumer first and foremost.

What is "context"?

2009-06-03T12:48:00.000-07:00

Here's an example of "context".

First, as Professor Martha Minnow has noted, there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life.

Let us not forget that wise men like Oliver Wendell Holmes and Justice Cardozo voted on cases which upheld both sex and race discrimination in our society. Until 1972, no Supreme Court case ever upheld the claim of a woman in a gender discrimination case. I, like Professor Carter, believe that we should not be so myopic as to believe that others of different experiences or backgrounds are incapable of understanding the values and needs of people from a different group. Many are so capable.

Note that the subject, a woman who has recently come to national attention, is talking about cases involving discrimination. Until 1972, no Supreme Court case ever upheld the claim of a woman in gender discrimination cases. It certainly is not true that other folks are *incapable* of understanding the values.

But it took until 1972 for 9 white men to uphold a discrimination lawsuit involving a woman.

A wise latina would, more often than not, reach a better conclusion when discussing cases like those under consideration... those involving racism or sexism. Or, so she suggests, recognizing that a great many of those cases were decided less wisely, since sexism and racism were both upheld when the court was composed entirely of white men. But even there, she states, quite clearly, that "many are ... capable" of understanding the values and needs of other groups.

Why don't conservatives who want to attack Sotomayor bring this context up? Is it that they can't read her speech and recognize the context?

Or does the first part of the sentence say all that needs to be said? That too many conservatives just wish to attack Sotomayor, without regard for the truth?

So what?

2009-05-17T22:14:00.000-07:00

There are a lot of people out there trying to make a big case out of the question of what Nancy Pelosi knew, and when she knew it, when it comes to the question of the Bush administration torturing people.

Now, me, I'm glad that there are people who realize that torture is a horrible, horrible thing, and who realize that someone who knew about it, and didn't act to stop it, was a terrible person for that failure.

But before we start crucifying the moral cowards who might have known about it (if the CIA isn't being deceptive - go figure, a spy agency being deceptive!), shouldn't we start crucifying those who engaged in torture cheerleading and coverups first? Or, you know, tortured people?

Shouldn't we investigate fully, and learn everything we can, and spread the blame where it belongs, rather than singling out individuals who weren't involved in the creation or implementation of the policy?

If Nancy Pelosi is horrible for having known and done nothing, there are a lot of bigger fish we should be frying before we get to this guppy.

Does torture work?

2009-05-14T12:02:00.001-07:00

There are a lot of folks talking about this.

"Gee, Cheney, who will be shamed and maybe indicted if torture is useless, is telling us that torture is acceptable. Now, as tempting as it is to note that he's telling us self-serving bullshit, maybe we should consider whether torture works... because, after all, Cheney was so (cough) successful, and he seems so serious."

The trouble is that there were a lot of people who supported torture in the days after 9/11, who now have to try to justify their own cowardice and brutality. And there were a lot of people who turned the other way when hearing about torture, and they have to try to justify their own guilt over not caring.

Well, there's one thing that we know that torture does, one way in which we know that torture "works".

We know that torture can force people to say whatever needs to be said to get the torture to stop. In SERE, for example, our military folks are forced to sign confessions saying they have committed war crimes. These are tough people, who know they will become legends if they hold out against the worst that SERE can dish out to them... and they, in almost all cases, sign false confessions.

(I've heard it claimed that no one holds up under torture, but that groups have managed to escape or overpower the interrogators. Obviously, I can't speak authoritatively on this subject.)

So we know torture can easily produce false information. We also know that false information can be a lot more damaging than a lack of factual information. It can be very hard to prove a negative! On the other hand, truthful statements are easier to collaborate... hey, they're true, after all. So standard interrogation, which produces more true statements, is going to be better.

Ah, but if there's a ticking time bomb...

Yes, indeed. If we know there's a ticking time bomb, and we know who knows the location of the time bomb, we can torture that person... and maybe get false information out of them. And then we waste precious time chasing down a false lead.

And if it is a false lead, does it mean the torture-victim lied? Or didn't know the bomb's location after all?

The only thing torture does is get people to say something. Proving that it's true is another thing entirely, and figuring out if it's false can be flat out impossible. Standard interrogation methods produce better intelligence; that should be all anyone needs to know.

Universal coverage and Medicare

2009-05-14T08:17:00.000-07:00

I saw an interesting argument posted by someone, somewhere, and I thought I'd point out the flaw to it.

This person said that, if Medicare is going broke, universal coverage isn't going to help... that we awful liberals are just making stuff up when we point to universal coverage as a method to protect Medicare. After all, Medicare is already big enough to gain economies of scale, and to set rules and negotiate. So how can universal coverage help?

And on the face of it, it sounds almost reasonable. Doesn't it?

Well, here's the thing. No one is saying "let's start covering everyone without figuring out how to fund this coverage." There'll be some combination of contributions and taxes or fees, or who-knows-what, intended to pay for medical care. And if we figure out how we can fund medical coverage for everyone, we've also figured out how to fund medical coverage for those now covered by Medicare.

Too bad for the "universal coverage can't fix Medicare!" meme. It could have been such a lovely little soundbite if it wasn't so tragically and obviously false.

More thoughts about hopes for failure

2009-05-13T22:36:00.000-07:00

So, for the past while now, Dick Cheney's been going around being, well, Dick Cheney... do we need a nastier insult? Barack Obama, he says, is making the country less safe, and Cheney's championship of torture helped protect us.

For a while, I was just disgusted by this, but then I thought about two people.

First, I thought about Rush Limbaugh and his now infamous "I hope he fails" bit. Isn't this really the same kind of thing? Cheney's going around, hoping desperately that a failure on the part of Obama might redeem his own legacy.

But then I thought about Jack Goldsmith. Jack Goldsmith pointed out that the horrible legal opinions rendered by the OLC before he joined were the result of people who were afraid that there might be another terror attack... and that they might be blamed for letting it happen. It's kind of interesting that he, a lawyer, mentioned this specifically. It wasn't just the fear of another attack; if that was all it was, why bring up the prospect of blame at all? No... I trust Mr. Goldsmith on this. The Bushies were not just afraid of another attack; they were afraid of the blame and fingerpointing that would follow.

And isn't that all you need to know about Cheney, and Limbaugh, and the rest of the Bushies right now?

They had six years to run the country, and they failed miserably. They used every trick they had available to them, and they still flopped. And now, they have a smart, competent, strong leader who doesn't need to play their games, and what can they do? They can hope he fails.

Because what if he succeeded? What if he showed that fair tax rates and smart spending could help put the country back on its feet? What if he showed that America was stronger when it wasn't waging pointless wars? What if he does better at keeping America safe by using good intel, and living up to American values?

I think the Bushies can deal with being proven incompetent... they've had enough practice. But now, they'd also be proven wrong. And I don't think they're emotionally capable of dealing with that.

This is troublesome?

2009-05-11T20:04:00.000-07:00

So, I hear-tell that Wanda Sykes took some shots at Rush Limbaugh at the White House Correspondents Dinner, and this is supposed to bother us... over the line, and all that.

Well, let's remember who Rush Limbaugh is.

First, he's an entertainer, which is to say, a bullshit artist. If you're a bullshit artist, you can't expect to be treated with respect. That's the nature of being a bullshit artist. If you're not real, you don't get the respect due real people.

But, let's just pretend that he's not. Let's pretend he's being serious, and deserves the respect due his ideas. What's the most famous recent idea he's put forth?

Well, that he hopes Obama fails, of course. And we're supposed to accept this. Why? Well, because he disagrees with Obama's ideas. And so it's okay to hope they fail.

That is: he, and his supporters, say that it's okay to hope that the country goes through pain and trouble, rather than have that pain and trouble be avoided by ideas they disagree with.

In short, they'd rather hope that the country suffers, if the other option is that they'll be proven wrong.

Does Limbaugh deserve to be protected from scorn, when he'd rather hope the country suffers, rather than see his bloviation exposed for the utter bullshit that it is?

No.

Shorter Charles Winecoff

2009-05-05T21:00:00.000-07:00

Kids today - by which I mean 20 somethings - are evil, nasty, hateful, and short sighted. You know how I know this? They make broad over-generalizations and only consider one kind of thinking to be proper. They're all wrong, because they don't think the way I do!

Oh, yeah - and if you disagree with someone, and say so in a mildly nasty manner, you should be thinking about how it looks like cross burning!

(I only wish I was kidding.)

Idiotic talk about torture and the Obama administration

2009-04-26T20:27:00.000-07:00

Ed Rollins is being an idiot here.

First, he accuses Obama of "waffling" for first promising not to prosecute those who, acting on the legal advice given them, committed crimes, and then saying it was up to his Attorney General to determine criminality.

This is not waffling, though his initial statement was certainly less precise than it should have been. The President can't made determinations of what is or isn't criminal behavior, and must give his AG a light rein in making these determinations. This is simple separation of responsibilities, and good leadership.

What's crazy, of course, is that Rollins can't even figure out that there are sound reasons for Obama letting Attorney General Holder being, well, an attorney general. No, Obama is doing this because he wants to be loved!

Rollins, here's a hint: if you need to build up a pathetic strawman to be the foundation of your argument, you need another argument.

Rollins continues with his short sightedness in other areas as well:

Fortunately, because of the enormous talents of many federal agencies comprised of extraordinary Americans who work very hard at their jobs, the United States has not been struck in 2,781 days.

It's true, there has not been another major terrorist attack inside US borders. Maybe that's because we've been dangling a lot of valuable soldiers and expensive military equipment out in a war zone, where it's a much easier target... maybe they're just picking the low hanging fruit.

We don't know. The assumption that the foolish flailing of the Bush administration protected us is unsupported by facts.

On the other hand, Rollins has knowledge - knowledge he is quite calm about speaking on a national stage - that should set his heart at ease.

Releasing the Justice memos opened a door and the contents repulsed many people. But these were not evil men who drafted the memos. These were not evil people who carried out the methods authorized by them. They were our fellow citizens who were trying to protect us from the real evildoers.

Good. Then a full, fair investigation will show that there were no evil men involved, right? And since it'll all be in the open, the more evidence comes out, the better these "not evil" people will look, right?

So, let's investigate. Let's have a full, open, fair investigation, and see the clean, beautiful lack of evil that Rollins is so confident that we'll see.

I, of course, disagree that we'll find a lack of evil. But I'm more than willing to be shown to be wrong, if that's what the investigation reveals.

Blogging the Bush torture memos

2009-04-18T20:57:00.000-07:00

You could define blogging as "trying to prove you're clever by writing about something nifty that you had no part in." I'm not sure it's a perfect definition (and it's certainly not comprehensive!) but today, I'm going to try to commit blogging by that definition.

As you probably know, President Obama ordered the release of legal memos that were written to try to provide a veneer of legality to the CIA's torture of prisoners. And there's a debate going on in the blogosphere. Obama pledged not to prosecute the CIA agents who followed those memos. Should he keep to that pledge, in the face of clear evidence that torture was performed? After all, as many, many, many people have pointed out, the Nuremberg trials did not accept "we were following orders!" as a defense.

But, these memos did not say "it is lawful to perform torture". This is a key issue: the memos said that certain actions did not rise to the level of torture.

If the memos had said "these actions, despite being torture, are lawful" that should have been a bright line in the sand. I'd say "prosecute away". But they didn't say that. They said "these actions are not torture."

Now, there's a huge problem here. This is all legal theorizing, ignoring the circumstances. Theorizing that a certain set of actions wouldn't be torture is simply absurd, especially when the basis of many of those decisions came from a totally different situation (people being willing to undergo SERE training, when they knew that they were not in real danger, and knew that it would all be over in a set time frame - a situation that doesn't apply to captives).

But the theories were given to the CIA as legal opinions. And they avoided the bright line in the sand... they said that these things would not be torture, and therefore, not illegal.

So, if we prosecuted the CIA personnel who performed in accordance with these opinions, we are betraying their confidence in the assurances they'd already been given. It would be, at best, extremely dangerous.

I also agree with Anonymous Liberal that it would probably be pointless. Juries would probably refuse to convict.

That's not the clever bit. Here's the clever bit.

I think that we should consider prosecuting any way.

Why?

Because I think if a lawyer gives such pathetically horrible advice that it gets his clients prosecuted, it should be enough to do some real damage to their reputation. It might even push some folks to consider malpractice actions against them. But I think if that advice doesn't lead to so much as an investigation, people will regard it as moot.

Now, someone's probably going to point out some ugly truth or another, like "there's no penalty for being a really stupid lawyer", and it'll ruin my cleverness. And, hell, someone might point out that it still is a betrayal of the agents who asked for legal opinions, and received them, and followed their advice.

And, of course, it would be. And it probably still would be pointless. If those memos didn't at least hang the jury, I'd be incredibly surprised.

So, yes, agreed. It's not really all that clever after all. But it does point to the competing villains of this story.

First, that there were lawyers who would write such evil things and claim they were legal, and second, that there was an idea that lawyers could pre-judge what was, or wasn't, torture.

Those people, and those ideas, are what should be in our metaphorical gunsights now.

State secrets privilege

2009-02-10T20:06:00.001-08:00

This really pisses me off.

Barack Obama's administration is pulling the same kind of crap that Bush used to do. He's saying that a valid lawsuit must be dismissed from the outset, based upon the state secrets privilege.

Now, if Glenn Greenwald is not to your taste, I can understand that, so let me explain what's at stake here.

Sure, there are times when the government has a valid interest in demanding the protection of state secrets during civil and criminal cases. No one disputes that. If we didn't allow this, enemies would find ways to involve our covert agencies in lawsuits and force them to reveal, well, anything.

But the way the privilege is supposed to work is this: someone demands evidence from the government, or tries to compel a certain bit of testimony, and the government says "no, we can't do this," and explains why this would reveal state secrets to the judge. The judge may negotiate terms, to see if there's a way to allow the evidence in an altered form - with sections blacked out, or a summary given, or assertions of pertinent facts.

There are certainly situations in which state secrets might cover so much evidence that there's no longer a provable claim made by the plaintiff, and the case must be dismissed. In the referenced case, dealing with kidnapping, the government might well be willing to assert that the identities of the kidnappers is a state secret, and that there is no way to prove that they were agents of the US government, and thus, there's no valid case against the US government.

That is a nasty, but possibly necessary, use of the privilege.

But this is different. This is the Obama administration saying "you can't try this case at all; you can't request information, and have us refuse every request by claiming state secrets; merely trying the case would be an unacceptable danger to state secrets."

This kind of thing is the executive branch using secrecy to avoid paying any penalty for violations of the law. It's exactly what disgusted me so deeply about the Bush administration... they broke the law, and then hid behind secrecy at every turn.

I have one single hope that I'm holding out for this. I'm hoping that Obama is insisting on doing this because he feels the courts must rule that this is an invalid use of privilege. If Obama is daring the courts to say that this is invalid, so that future administrations will not be able to engage in this behavior, then I can forgive him.

But right now, I'm thoroughly disgusted by his actions.

2009-02-07T21:09:00.000-08:00

Okay, lemme 'splain something. And I want to 'splain something to Republican obstructionists, so I'll use small words.

These obstructionists are complaining that the economic stimulus bill is this horrible, horrible "spending bill", not a stimulus bill.

Okay, now I know this is hard to understand, but the economy is made up of people making money by selling goods or making money providing services.

Right now, a lot of people and businesses aren't buying. So, the government is going to purchase goods and services, so people can make money providing those goods and services.

Now, I suppose there's a way to do this without a spending bill. You could just try to force people to produce goods and services without fair compensation, but that's somewhere between slavery and socialism. So actually spending money to acquire goods and services is considered a good thing.

Oh, but what about the magical magic of tax cuts, which are good when the economy is booming, and good when it's down, and good when there's a war on, and good when it's a time of peace?

Well, two problems here. First, by actually obtaining goods and services, you pay people money, and they then go out and purchase goods and services themselves, and then, the people who sell them goods and services take their money, and spend it themselves, etc.. Second, you reduce taxes, it might put more money in some people's pockets (remember, a lot of lower income people aren't paying taxes, and businesses get taxed only on profits) but that money might be saved, or used to pay down old bils, rather than directly purchase goods and services. You don't get as much stimulus, dollar for dollar, from tax cuts.

Okay, but, what about the "pork" in the bill? Well, first, "pork" has a specific definition. Pork barrel spending refers to earmarks. There's no pork in this bill. Period. The obstructionists complaining about pork are misusing the term because they don't like the particular spending in question.

Okay, then, what about the specific targeted spending, like the much mocked funds for family planning? Isn't that wasteful?

I'm sure there's some universe out there where family planning isn't important to women trying to manage a career or an education, or even stay at home and be a housewife or mom. But, since family planning helps women manage their jobs and their education, and since it prevents unwanted pregnancies which can lead to additional burdens on state resources, I don't see why anyone is complaining, unless they're just looking for something to complain about. What was the funding? A couple hundred million, in a bill spending four thousand times that much?

I'll grant, there's some spending in the bill that maybe isn't as likely to stimulate the economy as other stuff. Funding for Head Start, for example... that's only going to help young children with pre-school; they won't be earning money for over another dozen years. But it's money that will get paid to people for goods and services, and help working class parents provide for their children.

Sure, the Republicans don't like it. They want everyone to have to pay for everything on their own. They don't think we're a community that should be helping each other; they don't think that helping our most vulnerable accomplishes anything important.

But, let's face it. People chose to have the Democrats in power. They should get a chance to run things their way for a bit, so we can see how things go.

Frankly, I think the Republicans know all this. But I think they're afraid of this, just like they're afraid of health care reform. I think they're afraid it'll work too well, and show that their wailing and handwringing was wrong, and push them even further into the minority.

If so, that's a shame. Barack Obama is reaching out; he's more than willing to make sure there's plenty of glory for both parties. The Republicans can end up looking good, too... all they have to do is come up with some workable, positive ideas, and everyone will look better in the end.

It's called post hoc ergo propter hoc...

2009-01-30T07:58:00.000-08:00

"Whatever else he did or didn't do, at least George W. Bush kept us safe from terrorists. (Except on 9/11/2001 when he was ignoring the strident warnings that bin Ladin was determined to attack inside the US and who doesn't make teensy mistakes from time to time?)"

And folks know this because he's said he was working to keep us safe from terrorists. Cool.

And I'm keeping the Pacific Northwest safe from hurricanes. I mean, I'm here, right? And there hasn't been a hurricane affecting the Pacific Northwest for a long, long time, right? I see one from 1975, but while I was alive then, I was living in Philadelphia. (And note: during my time of living in Philadelphia, there weren't any hurricanes there, either. We got hit by the side arm of Belle one year, but that was just a nasty thunderstorm with high winds; the actual hurricane struck New Jersey.)

Of course, there are hateful partisans suffering from Weirdo Derangement Syndrome, who will insist I had nothing to do with this. They'll say that, even if I hadn't been here (or in Philadelphia), it's stuff that's beyond my control that causes hurricanes. Which is ridiculous. A great deal of what I do to prevent hurricanes is classified. They aren't privy to this knowledge.

What's that?

Oh, great. Now I have to put on my hurt-feelings look. You don't believe me either!

It's not fair. Just saying something is true works for an incompetent oaf like George W. Bush, but it doesn't work for me.

Well... maybe the unfairness is that people shouldn't believe that Bush kept us safe. Maybe they should grant that, sure, Al Qaeda didn't attack us on the US mainland again, but we have no idea if that was because of anything that George W. Bush did or didn't do.

He may have been lucky. Or, Al Qaeda might have thought it was better to go after US soldiers and try to damage expensive military equipment rather than attack the US again. Or, he might have thought that the US was doing plenty of damage to itself in Afghanistan, and then Iraq, so he had nothing else to worry about.

So let's modify that first sentence: "whatever else he did or didn't do, at least George W. Bush wasn't so blindingly incompetent that al Qaeda could hit us again on the US mainland, along with any other attacks they may have made against US targets."

It's not very catchy, but it does have the benefit of greater accuracy.