Phi points to an article on mail-order brides and a scam therein:

To understand this incident you have to know about the Violence Against Women Act of 1996,” said Oldenkamp.“There is a little piece in it that states if an immigrant is abused by her husband or other family member, and can prove the abuse, then they become admitted for permanent residence.Elana was going to get her green card with or without me.

I find myself instinctually unsympathetic to those that marry a foreign girl they never met and get screwed in the process. Part of me thinks, “Well what they hell did they expect?!” Part of me finds the notion distasteful and I have to fight off the urge to say that they got what they deserved. I fight off that urge because while those that do or would beat their MOBs (a suitable acronym, considering…) do deserve what they get, nobody deserves trumped-up charges (as Oldenkamp alleges). Further, while some portion of these men may have ordered these brides because they wanted someone “docile, soft, and calm” (these are not characteristics I would generally associate with Russians) in a lot of cases it’s men without a lot in the way of other options. Men that have trouble relating to women on a square level. Hey, I can relate.

This is all further complicated by the fact that the participants from each side are going to be drawn from subsets of the population. The women are more likely to be desperate and/or ambitious, which makes them dangerous. The men are likely to be bitter and/or controlling, which makes them dangerous.

But even when I get past my biases, I am still uncomfortable with the business as a whole and can’t get too excited when I hear horror stories. I definitely do not support trumped up charges of spousal abuse. Nor do I support women using a sham marriage to get into the country and then cutting off the rope to the anchor at the first opportunity. These exploitations on the women’s part range from distasteful to abhorrent.

At the same time, though, I don’t entirely know what the alternatives are. If you don’t offer these women a degree of protection, you leave an extraordinary opening for exploitation the other way. A man can marry a woman and exploit the residency issues to turn her into a virtual slave. Or a punching bag. I mean, if she raises a fuss he can just divorce her and she’ll be sent home. That threat alone provides extreme leverage and marriage is not an institution at its best when one party has that kind of leverage over another. Giving a MOB (or a MOG, if such a thing were to exist and if domestic violence were a concern) recourse on the whole strikes me as better off than the alternative. We can quibble over what sort of standard of proof is required, but somewhere in a line beyond which his actions are demonstrably illegal and she should be able to report it without facing deportation.

On the other hand, I’m not sure how much it helps. The men with the most leverage are going to be those married to women that they manage to keep socially isolated. They’re less likely to speak English and it’s also less likely that she’s going to have the funds to hire a lawyer or the slightest clue where to go. The VAWA requires proof of hardship in the event of deportation, but those for whom the greatest hardship exists are those that would be deported before they knew what their rights were. Or maybe not, if she is appointed a lawyer by default or she at least knows to ask for one (if court-appointed lawyers exist for deportation?). In any event, it’s precisely those that would suffer the least hardship (comparatively speaking, anyway) that would have the strongest idea of what their rights were. Elana, the woman from the story above, notably had good command of English.

Incentivising accusations of spousal abuse is certainly troubling and if I were to isolate a concern, that would be it. If I were a man considering a MOB, it would matter far less if she got her own independent visa than if I have to defend myself against charges of spousal abuse. On the one hand, Elana’s accusations and the scratches that she had her son inflict would be pretty flimsy while applying for a green card. On the other hand, even if that is the case and Elana gets deported, Oldenkamp is still having to defend himself against felony assault charges. Back on the first hand, if Oldenkamp is a reliable narrator it’s pretty ridiculous that they pursued the charges. We can posit a situation wherein Oldenkamp would not have had the evidence that he did suggesting his innocence, but we can also posit a situation where a woman actually is being beaten mercilessly and has no recourse beyond deportation. Having to only be better than sent back to Russia provides a man a whole lot of leverage. Of course, being able to threaten trumped up abuse charges does the same for the woman. Regardless of the position that the government takes, somebody’s got lots of leverage.

One thing I find notable, though, is that absent charges of abuse a foreigner appears to lose the “conditional” on their conditional visa in two short years. If I were a man looking for a MOB, I think that would be my primary concern. That she just waits it out. She puts up with me for two years, being just enough of a wife that I don’t divorce her and deportation is kept at bay, and then leaves at the earliest opportunity. In that case, I am out several thousand dollars and two years of my life. Of course, at least then I am not out several thousand dollars, a little over a year of my life, and facing felony charges like Oldenkamp.

So I guess if you’re a guy looking for a woman to dominate, you can probably find someone less likely to be able to leave. If you’re a guy looking for an actual partner and are looking for intelligence and competence (and the ability to speak your language), you’ve got just two years to win her over for real. Or you look for potential Elana’s like a hawk and insulate yourself against charges of spousal abuse, which is wonderfully fertile ground from which love should grow.

Seems that the best way to win the game is simply not to play. It’s extremely risky from both ends. Or, if you do play, know your rights and what their rights are. Then again, how smart is it to engage in a marriage where you’re in such a defensive posture. For women from the poor side of a poor town in a poor country, it may be worth it with or without VAWA. Men, however, should really think twice. They are, in a sense, trying to game the system by taking advantage of her poverty. That is not the formula for a successful marriage even in a world where VAWA does not exist.

I found this site a pretty good primer on the subject. On the whole, it actually made me more sympathetic to both parties of the marriages while making me even more sour on the concept. But what are you going to do? The VAWA has the advantage of discouraging men from doing it (which is where the bottleneck is), though sort of at gunpoint. At the end, there’s no law that can be written that either (a) can’t be worked around or (b) doesn’t provide a serious imposition to those that are seriously in love with and want to marry someone that they met abroad. The closest think I can think of is the requirement for more face-to-face meetings over a long period of time. But that’s (a) harder to prove/disprove and (b) simply makes it more expensive, not impossible.

An aside: One of the commenters at Phi’s place points out that the MOB business has been infiltrated by the Russian… well… mob. This was actually the topic of the episode of the late, great TV show Life, that introduced us to the main villain of the entire show. Sort of. Roman Nevikov’s operation would sell wives to desperate men. The husbands would then be extorted to keep their wives. They’d lose their wives anyway and she would then be remarried to another mark.

A while back, Megan McArdle explained why we can’t just keep raising taxes on the rich. While I disagree with her on particulars, one of the things that I have come to understand as we’ve jumped tax brackets is that regardless of what anybody thinks is “too much money” or “won’t be missed,” taxation takes a significant psychological toll. It’s one thing to say “I would be perfectly fine on $75k a year after taxes.” It’s another thing to see that you actually made $115k and the government has taken $40k of it. The progressive (and complicated) nature of the tax code means that you can’t easily factor it in when taking into account how much you’re going to make.

It’s not entirely logical. I mean, theoretically if you make $75k per year after taxes but pre-tax were only supposed to make $90k, it’s objectively no different than if you originally grossed $115. It sure feels different, though. And though the tax rates are marginal so that even if you’re in the “33% tax braket” it’s only part of your money that 33% comes out of, it’s the 33% that you remember. And even though you know and acknowledge that the government provides all kinds of services to you in return for that money, the benefits of government are dispersed and the tax bill laid out right there in front of you.

I am not an anti-tax sort of guy. I don’t think, in the abstract, that taxes are “too high” nor am I in favor of the flat tax which would be beneficial for us financially. If you disagree with me on those things, that’s fine and beside the point (and I don’t want to debate the matter). I’m merely stating where I am coming from. But despite these views, I find myself piqued at how much more is being taken out of our paycheck now than was a year ago. Even while I cannot point to a better way that things should be.

Now, a lot of people (including myself a half-decade ago) will say boo-freakin’-who and will tell me to look at how fortunate I am. And I am indeed fortunate and blessed. But the realization of how the fortunate and blessed can appraise their situation has provided me some insights.

If I get a job, the take-home from whatever my pay is will be little more than 60%. That makes me rather disinclined to work. Irrationally so since 60% is better than nothing and since I have always been willing to take jobs for less than I am worth. Part of me would rather give my time and energy for free to OpenOffice rather than get a low-level techie job making $9/hr of which I get to keep less than $6. Of course, in the current economy that’s not necessarily a bad thing. I don’t take the job and somebody else who actually needs the money takes the job instead. It’s a slightly bigger problem when it comes to my wife. She could probably get more money elsewhere working more hours. But is it worth that for less than 65 cents on the dollar?

Doctors’ hours have fallen in the last decade or so. This is likely due more than anything to lower job satisfaction. But I think that McArdle is right that as marginal tax rates approach and exceed 50%, a lot of folks including doctors will adjust their priorities accordingly. It wouldn’t be rational, but people are not rational creatures. This hurts not only because of the shortage of doctors (which can be remedied by other means) but also because by working less and earning less she would be paying less in taxes and we would be cutting corners which then puts less money in others’ pockets to pay taxes.

So I’m really at a loss as to what the right course of action is. Conservatives will say “cut government!” and liberals will say “raise taxes anyway!” but the sad truth is that with the deficit we’re probably going to have to do both of those things anyway. Or we won’t and we’ll suffer the consequences. Depressing.

Arapaho is a Rights Restorative State, which means that felons get back their right to vote and participate in the system once their sentence is complete. In my view, this should be the case in all states. I might be more sympathetic to barring felons to vote if felonies were still limited to only the worst of the worst crimes. I was on the fence on this issue until I lived in Belle Rieve for a while and got to know people that would never again be allowed to vote or run for office (in Deseret, anyway) because of a mistake they made when they were 18 or 19.

I only know about Arapaho’s law because there is a local state assembly race that has garnered some statewide attention. One of the candidates, Steve O’Reilly is on something called the Violent Offender’s Registry. Arapaho’s sense of forgiveness apparently only goes so far. Far from being a fringe candidate, he has been endorsed by some powerful conservative groups in the state. The current assemblyman, who happens to be the brother of the first real estate agent we talked to in the area, has a reputation for being something of a squishy moderate.

O’Reilly attributes his crime (the equivalent of a bar fight, except that he found something within arm’s reach to use as a weapon) to an alcoholism he has since conquered. In addition to being an independent businessman, he has apparently been doing some good works in the area. He can appeal to be removed from the VOR, which he evidently plans to do.

I haven’t decided whether I am even going to vote in the next round of current elections. I haven’t really been in the area long enough to know the issues at play. But the Rights Restoration issue is another in a string of rather pleasant things I have discovered with regard to state law that make me feel better to be an Arapahoan than I expected.

I tend to try to avoid hot-button political issues on Hit Coffee because by and large I have discovered that people on both sides of most issues bring their opinions and sets of “facts” to the table and in blogland it devolves into a screaming match of accusations and name-calling. But every now and again I do feel compelled to discuss a sub-issue of limited scope if I feel that we can avoid being dragged into intractable larger debate where everybody’s mind is closed like a liquor store on Sunday.

The hot-button issue at hand is the health care reform law passed by congress and signed by the president. While everything is not completely settled on the matter, we have the broad strokes of what it is going to look like. The sub-issue I am interested in is the insurance mandate. There are all sorts of arguments for and against such a mandate and the Constitutional legitimacy thereof, but since they mostly come down to arguments about SOCIALIST(!!!!)S and FREE-MARKET WORSHIPPER(!!!!)S and STATIST(!!!!)S and HATER(!!!!)S OF CHILDREN, I am mostly interested in two particular arguments that I find off-base.

First, the comparison made between the federal government requiring that we get insurance and the requirements of each of the states that we get automobile insurance. Proponents of the legislation argue that of course the insurance mandate is okay because we already require auto insurance. There are three distinctions, though, of differing validity. I will approach them from least to most concretely valid.

1. There is a difference between individual states and the federal government enacting such laws. Truthfully, I find this argument uncompelling for reasons I will discuss below. However, there is at least a theoretical difference between a state government and the federal government enacting such a provision. Namely, if a state government enacts the requirement, people are free to leave the state without leaving the country. Or, if all states choose to enact a provision or requirement (as with auto insurance requirements) there is a substantive argument that the public has spoken as opposed to the blue states forcing something down the neck of the red states or vice-versa.
2. Drivers are not required to insure against damage to their own car the same way that a health insurance mandate would require is to insure against our own bodies. No state that I have lived in has required anything more than liability insurance. Right now, my Escort is not insured if I hit a light-post or another car. My car isn’t actually insured, but rather what my car hits is insured. For it to be comparable to a health insurance mandate, the state would be required me to insure my car against damage. I don’t know of any state where that is the case, though even if it is true in some state (a) we still revert back to #1 where the more local government made that decision for itself and (b) a whole lot of people that support liability insurance requirements would not support that move. So it’s not the “gotcha!” that a lot of proponents of the individual mandate suggest.

   The counterargument to this is that an individual mandate does protect other people because the uninsured are a drag on the system because they rack up health care bills that they cannot pay and the costs are passed along to everybody else. But this is far, far more indirect than the case that can be made for required auto insurance. Taken to its logical extension, it can be used to justify federal prohibition of any behavior that is unhealthy because the government (Medicare) is going to (partially) take care of us in our old age. That’s risky terrain even for those of us that are not of a particularly libertarian bent. In other words, this hands a substantial argument to those that would call this plan statist in nature.

3. Nobody is required to purchase auto insurance. You’re only required to purchase auto insurance if you drive. True, it’s difficult to get by in this country without driving, but people do it every day. Further, when people agree to drive they are already committing themselves to a series of expenses and we can just add auto insurance onto the cost of the car, licensing, and so on. I suppose one could make the case that living costs money, too, but I would think that as a society we would be more willing to accept people being unable to drive because they cannot afford it far more willingly than we would accept people being unable to live because they cannot afford it.

None of the above is to say that a health insurance mandate is a bad idea. In fact, despite the above I personally support it in the abstract (even if I have reservations with regard to how it was implemented in this law). On balance, though, in any system in between a state-run or completely state-subsidized health care system and a completely Darwinian system that allows people to die on the emergency room steps unable to enter because they cannot afford to be stitched up is going to be better served by inducing or coercing people into getting health insurance. Disagree with that? Fair enough. You have my views and I have mine.

The second argument I find off-base is that an individual health insurance mandate is simply not something the federal government can do. It may be true that either (a) how this particular health care plan does it runs afoul the Constitution or (b) a “proper” reading of the Constitution (ie how you would read it) does not allow for such a thing, but the courts have already given the government enough latitude to be able to practically enforce an insurance mandate by giving the federal government control over taxation the way that they have. And if the mechanism used by the current law does prove to be unconstitutional, there is a relatively easy workaround at Congress’s disposal.

Because the federal government has the ability to set the tax code, all that is needed is “fine” people by raising taxes and then to make health insurance tax-deductible (up to a particular amount or in total). Whether it was envisioned by the Founding Fathers or by those that enacted an income tax in the first place is procedurally beside the point. Right or wrong, the courts have buckled by allowing the government to use taxation as a stick and carrot to promote desired behavior and discourage undesired behavior. If they can encourage home ownership through the tax code, they can “encourage” the purchasing of health insurance.

There are some legitimate questions as to whether or not the way the precise way that they are using taxes to punish those without health insurance is constitutional, but the notion that the federal government is incapable of punishing those that do not get health insurance is not, as far as I can see, true. They punish housing renters every day.

-{I realize that by even mentioning the health care law I have potentially opened a can of worms. Let’s try to avoid broader discussions as to whether this bill is on balance a good thing or a bad thing and any comment that accuses those with differing opinions of being dishonest, unintelligent, uninformed, or of moral integrity will be clipped or deleted.}-

Jamelle Bouie writes that Emperor Palpatine (of Star Wars fame) was not as wrong as we think:

I’m not so certain that the operating philosophy behind the Galactic Empire — that despotism is necessary to maintaining the peaceful cohesion of a galaxy-spanning empire –is entirely wrong. Especially since we have enough examples of republican forms of galactic government to know that the alternative isn’t that much better. The previous galaxy-spanning political unit — the Galactic Republic — collapsed largely because it was too large to be effective. The Republic didn’t even possess the strength or legitimacy to handle a trade dispute on a minor core world, much less an existential threat like the Clone Wars.

Several years ago, Jon Last wrote a seminal piece entitled The Case For the Empire:

Scores of thousands of planets are represented in the Galactic Senate, and as we first encounter it, it is sclerotic and ineffectual. The Republic has grown over many millennia to the point where there are so many factions and disparate interests, that it is simply too big to be governable. Even the Republic’s staunchest supporters recognize this failing: In “The Phantom Menace,” Queen Amidala admits, “It is clear to me now that the Republic no longer functions.” In “Attack of the Clones,” young Anakin Skywalker observes that it simply “doesn’t work.”

The Senate moves so slowly that it is powerless to stop aggression between member states. In “The Phantom Menace” a supra-planetary alliance, the Trade Federation (think of it as OPEC to the Galactic Republic’s United Nations), invades a planet and all the Senate can agree to do is call for an investigation.

Bouie is a liberal and Last is a conservative, which makes this a rare non-partisan issue (except for the fact that Last wrote his piece when Republicans were in power and Bouie his now that the Democrats are… the justification of power rises and wanes depending on who, precisely, is in power).

This sort of puts its finger on something that I find myself thinking about on this issue or that. Some of the greatest evils that have been committed were an illegitimate response to legitimate issues. Whether the villains were greedy oligarchs or the extraordinarily unfavorable terms of a post-war treaty, Hitler and Castro came to power because the previous models of governance were not working for large segments of the population.

Having gotten Godwin out of the way, you can see this in contemporary issues as well. To pick an example of something that has worked in multiple directions, sexual harassment law. Sexual harassment law, whatever its faults, was a response to a real problem. When women did not have sexual harassment workplace protections, there were no systems in place where she could file a complaint if men would demote or punish women that were not receptive to their sexual advances. The original incarnation of sexual harassment law, however, also went too far and the backlash was to be expected. Men had little or no defense against any allegation and could, at least theoretically, be fired for an innocent gesture taken the wrong way. There were absolutely no assurances that men wouldn’t be fired simply because a female coworker wanted them to be fired. There was no way that this was not going to cause a backlash. Even if it were the case that the men most likely to speak up were those that really just had a disregard for women and wanted the right to treat them however they wanted, they gained an audience in part because there were some legitimate fears about what this sweeping legislation would ultimately mean.

Ben Franklin’s famous quote about security and freedom notwithstanding, a society that disregards security for too long will almost certainly lose its freedom in the long run. When policies don’t allow the law enforcement and security personnel to do their jobs, the temporary result will be a population more free from police interference. The longer-term result is increased anger at rising crime that results in a new round of legislation that’s not unlikely to go five steps too far.

There needs to be a term for the opposite of the slippery slope argument. The slippery slope argument says that if you give in 10% on Issue X that you’re setting to stage to give in 20%, 30%, and up to 100%. The opposite of this would be that if you don’t give in the 10%, you’ll create a situation that will have people clamoring for a 50% solution.

Ultimately, institutions have to be able to respond to the problems set before it. Further, to the extent that those in power completely disregard the perspective and concerns of the opposition, they lay the groundwork for a disproportionate backlash that could easily outlast the effects of the legislation that they managed to get through in the first place.

-{Note, I touch on a lot of areas here with varying degrees of volatility. It may be too much to ask you to keep focused entirely on the abstract, but any and all comments that are disrespectful towards people that you disagree with will be cropped or deleted. Ditto for comments expressing great skepticism that the people you disagree with are good-intentioned or honest about their motives.}-

A couple weeks ago I discussed the gray area involving pre-existing conditions (PEC) and health insurance companies. In the comments, I made an allusion to a health care company that I signed up for that sheds some light on the issue.

Assurant Health specializes in offering short-term health insurance options to people that want individual or family policies apart from employer-financed health care. The terms they attach to their policies actually put their coverage between “insufficient” and “utterly useless.”

Assurant specializes in offering “insurance” on the cheap. Their plans are generally high-deductible and even after you meet your deductible you’re still on the hook for 20%. They may offer a permanent plan, but the policies I’m looking at are their “short-term” policies. Those are the policies that are half-useless. But they do fill a market void.

The way it works is this: You sign up for a plan and it can last for up to six months. The last time I used them, they cost $75 a month despite my smoking. The deductible was $2500 and, as mentioned, you were still on the hook for 20% once you passed your deductible. I’m not sure how much they charge now, though their web site says plans start at $60.

The catch is, though, is that after six months you cannot renew. You have to apply again. Therefore, any illness you got in the previous six months becomes a PEC. And if in the interim you get cancer, there is a good chance that they will refuse to cover you altogether. Which may be just as well because they won’t cover PECs in the first year** on their permanent plans (which cost twice as much) and you can’t get a policy for more than six months.

So why would anyone sign up for this plan? Well, if you get a sudden-but-temporary illness, they’ve got you covered until the policy expires. If you have an accident, you’re covered there, too.

But the reason that I signed on was solely to avoid the gaps in coverage I talked about in my previous post. In essence, I was paying them just so that I would be able to tell future insurance companies that I was insured. Which is kind of screwy, when you think about it.

I’m honestly a little surprised that the insurance companies let us get away with this. You would think that they’d lobby congress to only certify plans that meet specific criteria to count. It’s very likely that, if there were a PEC requirement, we will start to see more such lobbying. Not all of Assurant’s plans are allowed in all states and Assurant does not serve a handful of states. With the exception of some western states, the states with limited services are Blue States. So I suspect it’s a question of how tightly states are regulated rather than state legislatures being overly deferential to Big Insurance (not that these things are mutually exclusive).

Nonetheless, it’s a handy thing to have around for people that can’t afford better coverage. Clancy and I may have to re-evaluate our insurance options soon (her COBRA plan is wicked-expensive and not reimbursed by ARRA). We’re in a good enough financial position that we don’t have to accept this sort of half-coverage, fortunately.

** - You have to have a gap in coverage for PECs not to be covered under group (ie employer) plans. The same is not true for individual policies.

One of the ongoing factors in the Health Care battle in congress is the issue of pre-existing conditions (PECs). It’s one of those issues where it is hard to strike a compromise that is fair to both consumers that have PECs and the insurance companies (and, by extension, their customers).

On the other hand, if all pre-existing conditions are covered no matter what, there is little incentive to get health insurance until you need it and an incentive to get something high-deductable until you need an insurer that’s going to cover whatever it is that ails you. Some, such as Megan McArdle, argue that this is not really such an issue, but I would expect it to become a much larger one as people get accustomed to the idea that they cannot be denied insurance due to a PEC. As it stands, I know someone that was uninsured, needed surgery, and cheated a single-issue insurance company by not disclosing it.

On the one hand, if PECs are never covered, people who happen to get sick while ininsured are forever locked out of the system even if they’re uninsured for brief periods of time. Or even if you were insured at the time, but for one reason or another have to switch insurance carriers. Further, PECs are frequently used by insurance companies for the sake of rescission.

Rescission, for those of you that don’t know, is when a policy is retroactive vacated. Insurance companies claim to do this when a customer was not up-front about a PEC. The problem is that some of the PECs used to vacate policies are things that a customer doesn’t even know about or that does not strike someone as significant (particularly if it’s something that hasn’t come around in a while). For instance, someone with a family history of heart illness or that had an irregular heartbeat in 2003 could find his policy vacated in 2009 when the insurance company finds out and argues that it needed to be informed.

The current balance that has been struck is that as long as one has maintained consistent coverage without a lapse over 30/60/90 days, they cannot be denied coverage on the basis of a PEC. State laws vary as to what length of lapse is acceptable and how long PEC coverage can be denied. In Cascadia, you have to have a lapse for greater than 60 days or so and if you have one they can deny you for up to 12-18 months. Further, rescission is generally only available to single-issue policy holders. In other words, you generally are not cut lose when covered through your employer.

This strikes me as a not-unreasonable balance, though I’m not sure it’s sufficient or proportional.

To take an example from the Truman-Himmelreich household, there was a snafu in the paper work for Clancy’s COBRA coverage* that lead us to find out, more than 60 days after coverage lapsed, that she had not been covered. So by default, we’ve already got a lapse that prevents anything pre-existing from being covered for a year. And I believe Cascadia is the most generous state I’ve lived in as far as this goes. I don’t believe Delosians are similarly protected, though I could be wrong about that.

As mentioned above, you generally have to have some sort of penalty for people that let coverage lapse during health, but the difference between enrolling in 70 days and enrolling in 59 days should not be that dire. A more fair approach would be to say something like “PEC do not have to be covered for whatever time period one was uninsured.” So we would not have any PEC coverage for 70 days. That seems fair to me. We would not have an incentive to wait as long as we wanted until we needed it since the longer we waited the longer it would be before we were completely covered. As it stands, we would have to wait nearly as long (within six months, anyway) as someone that went five years without coverage.

Rescission is a tricker issue. On one hand, insurance companies ought to be able to deny people that cheat the system. People should not be able to do what my friend did. The law didn’t stop him, but that’s only because the insurance company did not know. Meanwhile, however, insurance companies have picked up the practice of taking someone’s money until they suddenly have need of the services offered and only after that investigating someone’s application form and finding some (alleged) discrepency.

If an insurance company is collecting someone’s money, they ought to be relatively assured that they have coverage. Only those cases where insurance companies have reason to believe that fraud is involved should they be able to rescind. Insurance companies say that’s what they’re doing now, but frankly I do not believe them. They have too much financial incentive to do otherwise.

My proposed solution to that would be similar to the previous. Once an insurance company has been collecting premiums for a specified period of time (I’m inclined to say six month or a year), they should not be able to rescind a policy. Someone that hasn’t made any substantial claims in a year but continues to pay their premiums has demonstrated a degree of good faith. Someone that needs knee surgery is not going to pay $300-800 a month for a year just to collect benefits. Someone that is at risk of a heart condition didn’t start buying insurance with the plan of having a heart attack in a year’s time.

Now, both of these cases would have an exclusion for outright fraud. The difference between that and now is that the insurance company would have to prove that any reasonable person would know that a PEC was relevant. In other words, a heart attack a year before the policy could be considered fraud, but a heart murmur four years prior would not. A pack-a-day smoker that does not disclose his habit would be game, but family history that may have escaped their mind would not. Beyond that, the insurance company has the option of paying for (or splitting the cost of) a complete physical rather than not worried about it until it suddenly becomes very convenient to do so.

The other issue at play is that as medical records become more electronic, it’ll become harder and harder for people to knowingly (or unknowingly) hide PECs. There are questions as to what the insurance companies should and should not have access to versus the right of doctor-patient privilege, though it could well be that a compromise could become that if a person submits all of their medical records that there can be absolutely no rescission. Right now it’s not easy to collect that information, but it’s one of those things that (for better or worse) is going to become a lot easier in the coming decades.

* - For those of you that don’t know about COBRA, it’s a pseudo-mandate by the government that requires insurance companies not to drop coverage if you lose your job. What happens is that you get COBRA paperwork after you lose your job (for any reason excluding malfeasance) and if you respond within 60 days and pay the bill, you’re retroactively covered.

The downside is that you have to foot the bill that your employer previously footed. In a case like mine, that’s diddly. But when employers are actually generous with their benefits, you can see your premiums jump three-fold or more, as was the case with Clancy. The other downside is that since COBRA was something that was thrust upon them by the government and the policy-holder’s employer, it’s not something that they’re excited about and it’s frequently the case that they don’t want your business.

On the other hand, President Obama’s stimulus package included a provision wherein the government will pick up 65% of the tab. For people like me, that means that COBRA is cheaper than penny-pinching employer-provided health care. For people that have more generous benefits like Clancy, though, it’s still going to cost more.

If you’re looking for a defender of Cash for Clunkers, you’re not going to find it with me. I’m not against it in theory if I thought that it could do what its supporters said it would do. I don’t like the idea of taking functional cars off the road and I think that the money would have been better spent elsewhere. However, there is one argument against C4C encapsulated in this article that I consider to be pretty problematic: The notion that it has made el cheap-o entry-level cars too expensive for people without much money:

The Manheim Used Vehicle Value Index reported that prices reached record highs in September. The consulting firm that publishes the index blamed low inventories.

That’s bad news in Berks, where many shoppers seek inexpensive, used vehicles, especially during difficult economic times, said George Tabakelis, general manager of Perry Auto Service & Sales on Route 61 in Perry Township.

“Customers used to be able to find a good car for their son or daughter to take to college for $2,000 or $3,000, but now that same car may cost $5,000,” Tabakelis said. “It’s sad.”

He, too, blames cash for clunkers, which has led to fewer vehicles being available at used-car auctions, and the recession.

The cars that C4C is taking off the road are those that are old and get less than 18mpg. So for people looking for cheap, entry-level, high-mileage old cars with poor mileage, their hunt got a little bit tougher and more expensive. So for bigger cars, trucks, SUVs, and low-mileage muscle cars, C4C has become tougher. However, those aren’t college student outfitters (except perhaps bigger cars). This article (as well as numerous conservative, libertarian, and anti-Obama commentators) implies that this applies to the most basic of entry-level cars. Like the old Dodge Colt or Chrysler LeBaron that I used to drive. Those aren’t being scrapped.

The LeBaron got around 25 miles to the gallon and the Colt got 30 until the day it died. The only vehicles in our family history that would be eligible would be the vans and the convertible, neither of which are “college cars” (and I have my doubts that the convertible would have been eligible because even though it got very poor mileage, I think the model itself got good mileage and I think that eligibility is determined by model and year).

The only really good argument that C4C made college cars more expensive is that by taking old SUVs and station wagons off the road, it forced people that would buy those to instead buy smaller cars, increasing demand on those cars and driving the price up. I’m not really sure how much of a factor that is, though. People that get low-mileage vehicles typically do so for a reason. When it’s necessitated by extra cargo space or passenger capacity, smaller vehicles don’t do them any good and so they’ll likely bite the bullet and get something a little more expensive. It’s a bit murkier with people that wanted a 1990 Ford Mustang or Taurus but instead must make due with an Escort. Those people may drive the price of Escorts up a little bit, but you can still get a 90’s Ford Escort for $2,500. Clint got an early-90’s Toyota Corolla for less than $1,000 and it runs great. Even if Crayola, my late-90’s Ford Escort, were running well, I wouldn’t expect more than a couple thousand for it.

For those noticing an uptick in the cost of entry-level used vehicles, it’s possible that C4C is playing a marginal role in it through a cascading effect, but to that extent so is the economy as a whole on models completely unaffected by the program. The article above actually points out that fewer new car sales are making barely-used car sales more expensive. As I’ve been car shopping for the last several months, I’ve noticed the price differential between low-usage used cars and new cars has shrunk to become pretty marginal (and I say this as someone that never intended to buy new).

Back to the original point, as much as I’d like to blame a government program that I never really liked for an undesirable turn of events, I’m afraid I just don’t buy into the notion that Cash for Clunkers, despite its various flaws, has priced people out of the entry-level cars that they need. It may have priced them out of the entry-level cars that they want, if they wanted a Ford Taurus or a truck of some sort, but for the poor cash-strapped college student depicted in the article, they have other options.

-{via LoOG}-

The fat guy wins!

This is not about President Obama or Democrats or Republicans or Wall Street fat cats. I mean, perhaps the election was about these things and perhaps not. That’s not Hit Coffee material. What is Hit Coffee material is that outgoing Governor Jon Corzine tried to win an election by making fun of his opponent’s weight and he lost.

The notion of Instant Replay is somewhat controversial in football. On one hand, you have the importance of accurate calls. If the video cameras catch something the refs missed, then shouldn’t that be corrected? On the other hand, you have pure pragmatism. There are all sorts of things that the refs always miss. There are plays that are simply too close to call. A three-and-a-half hour game could easily be stretched to five or more hours with too liberal an instant replay rule. Coaches could use replay challenges as defacto time-outs, which is precisely what happened when the NFL first tried instant replay (they’ve changed the rules since). So the leagues came up with their rules. Nobody is really satisfied with them because, well, what it would require for them to be satisfied with them changes from week to week and play to play depending on whether the rules favor their favored team or the opposing ones.

Several years ago, there was an NFL playoff game between the Tennessee Titans and Buffalo where what appeared to be a forward lateral was thrown in a play that determined the game in favor of Tennessee. The refs did not call a forward lateral and though it appeared to be one in the replay, it was not deemed conclusive to reverse the call. And so the Tennessee Titans went to the Superbowl. Bills fans remained bitter and many suggested that they should reverse the result or if they win the Superbowl there ought to be an asterisk or somesuch. Titans fans argue that it wasn’t a forward lateral to begin with or, if it was, it doesn’t matter because that’s just how the ball bounces sometimes. Both stances have their merits. Teams should not win because the refs make a mistake. But there is also a point where you have to move on and accept that life is not fair.

However, one would imagine that had the circumstances been reversed, Bills fans would have been talking about moving on and Titans fans about the importance of the rulebook. There’s really no question about this. That doesn’t stop each team’s partisans from getting on their soapbox and saying that it isn’t about this particular game it’s about fairness or being an adult and accepting the unfairness of life.

Of course, sports are a multibillion dollar exercise in frivolity. It doesn’t reach the same importance as, for instance, public policy. Or the makers of public policy.

The Massachusetts State Legislature recently enacted a law allowing the governor to appoint a temporary senator until the next special election. The All Important Factor in this was that Massachusetts should not be denied representation between now and the election simply because a senator died. Several years ago, the same legislature passed a law denying the governor the right to make appointments and creating special elections with the All Important Factor being that appointments are anti-Democratic. Of course, that there was a Republican governor in office the same year that there was a good chance of a vacancy being created back then and that there is a Democratic governor and an important vote coming up in the senate now is hardly a coincidence. But in each case, they dressed it up as a matter of principal. Democracy, on one side, and pragmatism on the other. Both are valid arguments.

Republicans, of course, point out the inconsistency and charge that the change of heart is {gasp} politically motivated, but they themselves have rather suddenly embraced Democracy when it’s prudent. In 2002 in Texas, when they won the state legislature, suddenly it was undemocratic to have a majority-Republican state represented by more Democrats than Republicans. Throwing all of their supposed allegiance to tradition in process out the door, they created new districts that, quite astonishingly, lead to more Republicans in congress. But… they did have a point about a Republican state being represented by Democrats in congress. And the Democrats had a point about the bald partisanship involved as well as the dangers in changing congressional districts at the drop of a hat. But neither position was particularly in-keeping with their philosophy so much as it was politically expedient.

There are times when abstract philosophy and political expediency meet. For instance, even setting aside partisan factors, it is extremely likely that Democrats would support as many recounts as possible to get the “most accurate” result. Likewise, Republicans are, in general, more likely to say that if somebody didn’t fill out their ballot correctly they forfeited their own vote. So when the 2000 election hit, everybody lined up in their “proper” formation. When it was inconvenient, of course, the Democrats had no problems tossing unfavorable ballots and Republicans had no problem accepting a Supreme Court verdict they would have abhorred if it had gone the other way. And these reversals were genuinely considered fair and proper. Sure, in some cases it was cynicism, but there were two valid sides to this argument and each side found it pretty easy to clutch to the side that was most convenient for them and believe it.

The list really goes on and on. Parties out of power suddenly gain all kinds of new respect for the Filibuster while parties in power suddenly feel reverence towards pragmatic democracy. Consensus and democracy are both important concepts. Protests that are scary and immature when your side is in power are suddenly importantly protected free expression when your side is out of power and vice-versa. Protests are both immature and importantly protected free expression. The entire notion of freedom itself is constantly under review. When talking about smoking in bars, some people will wax philosophic about the importance of freedom. Then, in a discussion about insurance companies, the exact same person will demand that the government step in and sort everything out to make things fair for the “little guy”.

It’s a lawyer’s job to defend his client in court. He is expected to do this (within certain parameters) whether he believes in it or not. An uninterested party, the judge or a jury, are supposed to take both sides into consideration and come to a conclusion on whose interpretation of justice, facts, and the law is correct.

I used to be a political blogger and I used to discuss politics quite frequently with anybody that would listen. I still follow politics closely, but rarely discuss it anymore. The main reason for this is that almost everybody that is anxious to talk about politics is a lawyer at heart. They are discussing things with you to Make Their Case and that’s pretty much it. The balancing of valid points of view is rarely given much heft. The notion that there are competing ideals that provide a solid basis even for views that you are ultimately unsold on is extremely hard to establish. Instead, the right and wrong of a situation come down, more than anything, to allegiance to political party and political philosophy.

Not that there’s anything wrong with partisanship. It’s a rather necessary function of democracy. Just as lawyers are a necessary function of our court system. What exasperates me, though, is that the legal maneuvering seems almost never to end. And the uninterested observers are actually apolitical “moderates” and “independents” who are among the least educated and least thoughtful voters out there. And even in cases where they are neither of these things, they typically “hate politics” and are always in search for some “middle ground” that doesn’t even exist were it not for two sides pulling the rope feverishly. So you’re left to talk politics with the lawyers, and that’s as much a cross-examination as it is any sort of actual discussion. Where the stakes are more important than a Titans-Bills football game, but the discussion ultimately isn’t.

-{If your response to this is to say “It’s really the people that disagree with me that do this. The people on my side rarely do.” or a quest to prove that even though both sides do it the other side is much worse, please don’t bother.}-

The notion that all men are created equal and that results are determined by effort, discipline, and so on is what my former boss Willard referred to as “one of the great noble myths.” The subject came up shortly after two of my coworkers, Edgar Braughton and Charlie Belcher, were let go. While I had, up until that point, always known that raw intelligence varied from one individual to the next, and that there were people we euphemistically called mentally handicapped that biologically lacked the intelligence that most people have, I never fully appreciated the wide spectrum of intelligence out there until I met, worked with, had to checked the work of, and eventually had to team-lead Edgar and Charlie.

Edgar and Charlie were not mentally retarded in the obvious sense. There were some questions about Edgar, but a lot of those were attributable to a speech impediment on his part that gave the false sense of retardation. Willard, too, had a speech impediment, but is among the smartest of the guys that I know. Edgar could easily have been in that category if he were, well, less dim. But he was the dimmest bulb in our shop. Charlie was a little bit smarter, though not much.

Edgar’s and Charlie’s job was really what I would call straight-forward. For much of the teach, it was mundane. Tedious. Perhaps the hardest part of the job was staying interested in the job enough to do it right. It required an attention to detail, though as Freddie demonstrated you could get away with a lot of inattention if you were simply fast. So really, all you needed was some combination of careless speed or slightly more time-consuming accuracy.

Most of the OSI Team did not have a whole lot in the way of external motivation. I was one of only four longish-term OSI Programmers that was married or in a committed relationship though the only one without children. Simon had kids to support but they were his girlfriend’s kids and he was not under any legal obligation to support them. The other two married OSI Programmers were Edgar and Charlie. On top of that, Edgar had a whopping four kids with a wife that didn’t work and Charlie had a chronically ill wife whose medical bills (by his own telling of it) were considerable. Further, they had less in the way of marketable skills than did many of us and therefore needed the job at Falstaff more than the rest of us did. In other words, these were two people that had the most motivation out of any of us.

And yet, despite all of this motivation, they simply could not get the job done. They could not get it done quickly. They could not get it done right. We tried vigorously to teach them how to do it. We patiently worked with them and looked over their shoulder and tried over and over again to teach them. They had the background that suggested that it wasn’t beyond their grasp. Edgar had a couple years of coursework from DeVry and Charlie a degree from the local vocational school. So it wasn’t completely alien to them. Charlie had a bit of an attitude problem, but his problems far surpassed that.

At the end of the day, despite each of their motivations and despite the easy nature of the job, it was simply beyond their grasp to do it right. Though I had always known of variable intelligence, it just never fully occurred to me that something as simple as that job would quite plainly be beyond people that were able to otherwise live independently. We may squish and squeak and slide a bit and say that they didn’t have the right kind of intelligence. There may be some truth to that in that I could see (maybe, possibly) Charlie being successful at fixing cars or something else that melded one’s mind with one’s hands. But the job itself is so easy to achieve basic competence with that it seemed to me and others that even if your real skills lay elsewhere, it’s not something that somebody shouldn’t be able to at least do right. It’s not an easy job to excel at… but to do? There isn’t a reader of Hit Coffee that couldn’t figure it out in a week.

Of course, Hit Coffee has a self-selected audience. It primarily appeals to people of a pretty basic level of intelligence. To people that like to think about things. People with college degrees (which I think all of you that I know about have) or at least the intelligence to get one. And some of my surprise at what should have been bloody obvious is that I have for most of my life been surrounded by such people. I went to an upper-crest high school. Then I went to college and hung out with the Honors College crowd. My career is mind-based. And even those I knew from outside my circles tended to be self-selected. The people I knew that went to more working-class schools tended to be the smarter people there (I met many of them through a computer network). The warehouse workers at my first job that I talked to tended to be team leads and the odd young man or two that were simply working their way through college. In that sense, it’s no surprise that my relatively sheltered existence lead to a sanguine view of the strength of human intelligence.

And so I gradually had to accede the notion that even within functioning individuals that don’t require special care and that didn’t ride the short bus and weren’t ill-educated and that weren’t just lazy, there can be some pretty basic limits as to what they are capable of. These limits include things that I would have been capable of doing in the seventh grade. Maybe earlier.

A lot of people come to this realization. Some wash it away with notions that it was really how people like Edgar and Charlie were raised and educated that are the problem. That’s historically what I’d done. Even though there were always people that couldn’t do things that I considered pretty basic and that in some cases it might take more attention and tutoring, that they could get there. A lot of whether someone accepts it or declines to accept it depends on ideology. To the extent that it dovetails with what they already believe about people (that, say, poor people are poor because they’re less intelligent), they believe it more readily than others where it presents some uncomfortable truths that contradict the way that they see the world.

For some people, it adds a stronger element of libertarianism because it adds more a sense of justice to the segregation of the haves and have-nots. For me it does slightly the opposite. If people that are at the bottom of the economic latter are so because they made less of an effort or made poorer life choices, I have far less sympathy than someone that is stuck manning a convenience store with little hopes of making it into management simply because they were born with fewer neurons firing quite as vigorously as the next guy. In fact, it almost starts to make a socialist out of me in that I believe that people that lack brain-power (assuming that they work somewhere doing something!) are deserving of, if not everything that their sharper peers that contribute more to society, as respectable a standard of living as we can afford. In short, it makes the notion of wealth redistribution bother me less. It makes the wheat-and-chaff of capitalism overall less appealing.

On the other hand, my experiences at Belle Rieve, that occurred at the same time, which come to think of it included a number of people that probably wouldn’t have been able to do OSI programming work, counteracted this somewhat by demonstrating pretty clearly the dangers of subsidizing lifestyles that aren’t going anywhere. It may be too much to expect them to get jobs that pay well, but it’s pretty important that they work. If idle minds are the Devil’s Workshop, idle lives partake in a never-ending buffet of counterproductive habits. Further, on the subject of crime-prevention, if people that live among the poor are not just limited to those that made poor lifestyle choices, trying to keep those zones as free as possible from crime becomes all the more important.

But mostly, it gives me a little more sympathy for those that haven’t made it. Not enough sympathy that I want to move back to Belle Rieve or that I would raise children where we lived in Estacado or where we live now, but enough to feel a sense of sympathy rather than simply frustration when I bump into them on a daily basis.

-{Note: The setting of most of this post is Deseret, where 90% of the population is white (96% including white-Hispanic). The racial aspects of IQ are discussed at length elsewhere and I would prefer them not be discussed here. This post is about IQ. Not about IQ and race. Not IQ and immigration. Or welfare mommas. Or about how people that are not like you or don’t think like you are ruining our country.}-

-{Ed note: I wrote this post a loooooooooong time ago. Over a year ago, in fact. I know this because when I think I want to spike a post I forward-date it a month or a year. Well, a year later and it was still sitting in my queue and it slipped by me. So anyway, this was mostly a venting session aimed at the failings of democracy. Not sure how interesting you will find it. Click “More” to see the content of the post.}-
(more…)

For the purpose of this question, a “term” is defined as the span of time between a president’s taking of the oath and their leaving of the office. So, for instance, the four years for which Kennedy was elected to serve counts as two terms. Kennedy’s only term and Johnson’s first term.

Presidential terms are traditionally four years in length to the day. There are, of course, some exceptions to this. Twenty presidential terms have been of lengths shorter than one year four years. Eight of those terms were cut short because of a president’s death. Nine because of a Vice President ascending to the office to fill out a term after a death or resignation. So the question is this… to which three presidents did the three remaining terms belong and why were these terms less than four years in length?

Clarification: Presidential terms are usually cut short (in other words, do not last a full four years) because a president has died or a vice president takes office and is only serving the remainder of that term (unless re-elected in his own right). There have been three instances where terms were shorter than four years for different reasons than death or VP ascendancy. Who were the presidents whose terms were cut short and why were they cut short?

Transplanted Lawyer (self-declared atheist) brings up the story of the American Atheists trying to stop the Utah Highway Patrol’s desire to put up a white cross next to places where officers have been killed. He doesn’t think that it’s a good idea because it’s something that does not elicit an iota of general public support. And it risks backlash of the sort where the court can declare a cross a “secular symbol”… which is what the courts actually did. TL isn’t pleased by that result:

There you go — a ruling that the cross is now a secular symbol of death and mourning. Which means that not only can it go up on roadside memorials, it can go up on the walls of courtrooms, city halls, and the Utah Legislature because it can be called a “memorial” to fallen soldiers, 9/11 victims, or anyone else that no one with the remotest bit of political sense would dare attack. Good job protecting the wall of separation of church and state there, American Atheists!

There are two great ironies here:

1. The white crosses in the state of Utah are almost certainly secular in nature.
2. The Utah Legislature would have almost certainly no desire to put the cross everywhere, even if they could.

If a state in the south were to argue that the white cross is a secular symbol, I would probably scoff. Actually, not just the south. Almost any state. Any state except Utah, that is. And maybe Idaho. Why? Because Utah happens to be the only state in the continental United States that I am aware of where the dominant religion (or denomination, depending on how you look at it) does not recognize the cross as a holy symbol. Utah is, of course, predominantly Mormon. Mormons are particularly active in positions of authority such as police departments and government because they are united and civilly active. So it stands to reason that most of the people behind the push for the white cross are Mormons. And Mormons do not recognize the cross as a holy symbol.

Their churches do not have crosses. Their temples do not have crosses. Necklaces around their neck do not contain crosses. In short, Mormons don’t do crosses. So if Mormons (or Utahns) want crosses on the side of the road, it is almost certainly secular in nature.

What’s bizarre is that someone in the American Atheists must know this. Or if they didn’t know if off the bat, the Utah branch of the ACLU might have given their erstwhile allies a heads up. I had to check, but there is an ACLU in Utah, though I couldn’t find anything on American Atheists of Utah. Somebody, somewhere must have told them that this was not the fight to pick. Even if knowing that crosses are not a Mormon thing and that the crosses are religious in content if not in intent, surely someone, somewhere must have looked at this case and known that it was a fool’s quest. Right? Or are these people so insulated that they don’t know any Mormons to inform them of the whole cross thing or that suing cops wanting to honor their fallen brethren is a bad idea?

In short, to the extent that this case drew my attention, it actually convinced me that white crosses are a secular symbol. Had this taken place in South Carolina, I would have doubted it very strongly. And if you would have told me that someone was suing the state of Utah because of some improprieties involving Church and State, I would almost certainly give the plaintiffs the benefit of the doubt. This is the case that convinces me that Utah isn’t always wrong on Church/State issues and that the cross is indeed a secular symbol, at least in it’s white-by-the-road form.

I don’t think that’s what the American Atheists were going for…

The commentariat over at MamaPundit are outraged at a law that requires drug tests and (if applicable) intervention in cases of:

(1) No prenatal care;
(2) Late prenatal care after twenty-four (24) weeks gestation;
(3) Incomplete prenatal care;
(4) Abruptio placentae;
(5) Intrauterine fetal death;
(6) Preterm labor of no obvious cause;
(7) Intrauterine growth retardation of no obvious cause;
(8) Previously known alcohol or drug abuse; or
(9) Unexplained congenital anomalies.

In the minds of the commenters, this law was obviously written by men with little or no understanding of pregnancy. Or by pro-lifers looking at a back door towards obtaining control over a pregnant woman’s body.

There are things to object to in this law. I for one and unenthusiastic about how the vague language of the law could be interpreted so that a doctor is liable if the woman does not seek help. And the question of how the state should intervene in the cases of drug use on the part of mothers during pregnancy is pretty rocky terrain filled with potential disagreement even among people who usually agree.

The odd thing about the post and the comments is that they focus at least in large part on the criteria used. This is odd to me because if this law was drafted by a bunch of men without a clue as to how pregnancy works, they obviously consulted doctors. It reads almost line-for-line what Dr. Wife describes as indicators of drug use. And if a woman has the above, chances are that she’s already being tested. And if a test comes up positive, there is already a mechanism in place to inform the authorities. The whole bit about meetings and attendance checks is new, but by and large on the doctor’s end it’s codifying what is already done.

Further, if a doctor has a patient that has the above indications of having taken drugs and does not run any tests because the mother lies and says that she does not do drugs, the doctor is liable for malpractice if something goes wrong. The notion that “Oh, well the patient assured me that she did not do drugs” isn’t going to cut it. I personally would not bet much money that the lawsuit of a mother that did drugs suing the doctor for something going wrong that can be traced back too the drugs would get very far, but it doesn’t have to get very far for the doctor to be professionally negatively impacted.

The concern of MamaPundit and her allies is that they’re targeting women that don’t seek prenatal care because the medical establishment wants to gain more control over the process and/or because they want the money that they get with prenatal visits. Sure, sometimes there are women that for one reason or another did not seek prenatal care, but the most frequent reason that a woman wouldn’t seek any is if she has antagonistic attitudes towards the medical establishment or she doesn’t want to be tested because she knows it will come up positive and social services will be informed.

In the case of the former, it’s unlikely that the law is going to apply to the woman anyway because women that don’t trust the medical establishment for prenatal care don’t suddenly trust them when it comes to delivery. In the case where a woman wants to go it on her own but changes her mind when problems occur, chances are she’s going to get a full work-up anyway and that’s going to include the drug test.

The in the case of the latter, well that’s the case that it turns out frequently enough to be to make a drug test worthwhile. I have heard this story over and over again. A woman knows if she goes to get prenatal care that she will be tested and then social services is likely going to get involved. Presumably, she puts off prenatal care in hopes that she can get it out of her system prior to delivered. All too frequently, that never happens and so the woman has put the fetus’s health unnecessarily at risk in two ways.

But what about cases that fall between the cracks of the above? Do they happen? I’m sure that they do. But the worst-case result is a test that comes up negative. I’m not entirely sure what the downside is here except for hurt feelings. The further stigmatization of having a miscarriage or having an unconventional approach to childbirth.

That’s hardly the goal, though. Doctors need to know these things in order to know what risks to keep an eye out for. Drugs and alcohol during pregnancy are known to increase risks. Doctors need to know what these risks are. They can be sued for being insufficiently thorough. Then, once the baby is born, it’s no longer a part of her and it gets health care independent of her and there is, of course, the question of whether or not the baby should remain in her custody..

Interestingly, according to Clancy, few women object to getting drug tests and almost none consider it remotely the imposition that MP’s commenters do. I was a little surprised by this, to be honest. Mothers that come up negative aren’t offended and mothers that come up positive and don’t want to fess up spend more time trying to explain why there might be false positives than arguing that nobody has a right to ask for a sample.

In January, the New York Times had a story on some of the data-mining that credit card companies are doing to “manage risk.” American Express was accused of, admitted to, then later denied using people that shop at particular merchants as the basis to cut someone’s credit down to size. Citibank is looking at mortgage data. CompuCredit got in trouble for slashing the credit of anyone that had the nerve to see a marriage counselor recently got a flat tire repaired. That latter part I guess is because if you’re too cheap to get the tire replaced, you must be hard up and a bad credit risk. I guess I’m lucky that last time I had a tire problem, it was beyond repair. Or I’m lucky not to be a CompuCredit customer.

I have no doubt that when it comes to a lot of these things do make you statistically more likely to be a problem in the aggregate. Marriage counseling, after all, is a step on the road to divorce sometimes. A part of me is sympathetic to the idea that lenders should be able to use whatever criteria they want because they should be free to lend however much they want to whomever they want. Free country and all that.

But that doesn’t do a thing to get me any less pissed off at this sort of thing.

It’s one thing to discriminate against people that have done something to suggest that they personally are a risk. Even there I have some problem with it insofar as it can misrepresent the service that they provide. When my ex-roommate Hubert got into a jam because his wife unwisely needed medical attention at a time when money was tight, despite their good record with their credit card companies they saw their interest rates skyrocket and credit lines dissipate because they were suddenly racking up a lot of expenses and weren’t able to pay everything off right away. Suggesting that you offer a certain amount of credit at a certain rate provided that you never actually need it and then pulling the rug out from under when they do is dishonest.

But some of the above is even worse because it largely involves things that you have absolutely no power over. Theoretically, Hubert and his wife could have had more money saved up, could have borrowed from friends and family, or something like that. But to have a house in a neighborhood where your neighbors are falling on tough times? Do we need to start asking for the credit ratings of our neighbors before we buy a house? Or cases where somebody is doing the prudent thing. Penalizing people for shopping at places where you can get things cheap? Should I really need to be concerned that the money I save by getting a tire repaired rather than replaced could come at the cost of my credit? Then the other thing is that we don’t even know what they’re looking. We have no way of knowing what we’re doing wrong. We don’t even know that we need to choose between going to a thrift store and keeping our credit lines. We’re expected to play by certain rules without being told what these rules are.

Worse yet, these things don’t just affect how much credit you have at any given time. They are materially important. From what I understand, if you have a creditor that closes your line, it hurts your credit rating. If you carry any sort of balance, your credit rating definitely gets hurt because you’re suddenly using more of your credit line than you were before your wings got clipped. A hurt credit rating means that you will pay more for the next house you buy than you otherwise would. It means that your car insurance rates might go up. There are places that run credit checks before they will hire you. There comes a point when it stops being about their right to define the terms of the money that they lend or how they evaluate your creditworthiness and it starts being about your right to not pay a price for the life choices you make that don’t adversely affect others.

I don’t know what the solution to all of this is. Or if there is one. Disclosure is important, but vague disclosures like “We can cut your rating for any reason or no reason at all” don’t cut it. Even vague proclamations like “We can cut your rating if we don’t like your haircut” don’t do it if you don’t have any idea of what sort of haircut they would prefer you have. And I still object to “You have our services until you need them.”

But I would start with disclosures of greater specificity than we currently have. And more notice that they’re going to do whatever it is that they’re going to do so that they can plan more ahead of time for what’s coming.

Web’s mention the other day of our rail system reminded me of two pet peeves of mine. The first is arrangements that get to rotate between profitability and public good whenever it’s convenient for them. The second is the absurd lengths that some places will go in order to be considered “World Class”.

It is by far the most ambiguous, empty goal that a city can have. Colosse has it, as did Santomas and I’ve read many articles in other cities talking about it. It’s essentially a blank check. It’s saying that we have to spend all of this money on stuff until we’re New York. And since Colosse will never be New York, the spending need never end! When you can’t justify something on the merits, you simply say it’s necessary to become World Class and suddenly all of the big pockets will spend money on campaigns to make people vote for a bond to make it happen.

There are honestly some drives that have been undertaken under the rubric of World Class that I liked and supported. Colosse’s temporary (and since lost) success at cleaning up downtown and making it a place to go was pretty cool. Mixed feelings about the sports stadia and smoking banss. Not so much on the light rail or some of the public park initiatives or so-called “Smart Growth”. Doesn’t matter, though. I support or oppose things things on the basis of whether or not they are good for the city. Others disagree with me and that’s fine. But any time you make any sort of headway opposing any initiative or that, you’re told that if you love the city you have to support it because if we do this the we can sit at the cool kids table with New York City and London.

Except that first it’s futile. Cities like Colosse will never sit at the cool kids table. Santomas gets to sit there on the basis of charisma and not stature and definitely not because of the light rail system that it doesn’t even have. The only way Colosse gets taken seriously is by being its best self. Taking what makes it successful and expounding upon it. Taking what is unsuccessful and correcting it. Bringing in business thus jobs thus people. Good government. Livability. Clean air.

Available jobs will bring in ten times as many people as will a little toy train that runs from one place most people can’t afford to live to another place that most people can’t afford to live. Pollution and crime will drive far more people away than the absence of that fourth greenbelt around the downtown area. The “World Class Cities” are barely even growing (if they are at all). Colosse is. Santomas is. Phoenix is. Boise is. The cool kids will only take the Colosses of the world seriously when they have to. Bike trails (while nice!) won’t do that. People and money will.

Sheila Tone has an interesting post on Econoholic about Nadya Suleman, otherwise known as the Mother O’Eight:

Come on sisters, where are all your usual snide remarks about “clown car vaginas?”

The difference is that Nadya Suleman is a single mother on public assistance. So we’re not allowed to be mean to her. If she were a married fundie like the Duggar mom (deft switcheroo, Richaro) she’d be fair game.

Why the hostility? Perhaps it’s because the married, employed Tones are in the process of carefully planning our second, and last, child. We have a 30-month-old. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about why I want to be a mother, if and why I’d want a second child. And, oh yes, I spend a lot of time working. And a lot of time soul-searching. What’s my purpose in life? Am I a worthy human being? Having a kid turned up those voices, and added “Am I a worthy parent?” to the chorus.

I had to work hard to find which portion to blockquote. Read it all. I chose that portion because it gets to the nub of one of the things that interests me most about this discussion, which is to say the difference in reaction to different situations. Some liberals are saying that if Suleman were a Christian couple like the Duggars, they’d be applauded as the Duggars are. That this is really a classist issue and, owing to Nadya’s last name, possibly a racist one.

But Sheila points out that there are a number of differences between the Duggars and Ms Suleman. Which is one of the things that bothers me about the sort of “If circumstances were different, you’d be saying something different” gotcha attitude that infects blogs from to time. Yes, when circumstances are different, people render judgment. That Suleman will not be remotely able to care for her children, as the Duggars do, makes it something of a different situation. That Suleman used technology and had them all at once - which increases risks to their health and makes caring for them more difficult - matters. There are plenty of reasons to approve of the Duggars and disapprove of Suleman. There are fewer reasons to do the inverse. Those reasons usually come down to “But they’re icky Christians!” and that the Duggars will inflict bad ideas into their kids (this is, of course, in marked contrast to the wonderful ideas that Suleman will pass on… if she has time to).

Truthfully, though, I don’t approve of either the Duggars or Suleman. I don’t know what the “right” maximum number of kids to have is, but it’s clearly fewer than fourteen. An acquaintance of mine, the second of seven, said that once you reach five or so you start running into a situation where the older siblings raise the younger siblings. So on one hand, that seems a good a place as any. It could be said that helping to raise a sibling could be a learning experience for the older siblings, but from my mother’s stories on raising her sisters they can often lose more than they gain from the proposition.

Clancy and I have talked a bit about the Suleman situation. She takes something of a harder line. I feel sorry for Suleman, though I should note that I feel sorry for her at a comfortable distance wherein I am not affected by her actions and compassion is extremely easy. Clancy, like Sheila, has to deal with the consequences of irresponsible behavior every day at work. And as a woman, Clancy (like Sheila) has had a lifetime of experience trying to do the responsible thing in terms of procreation and is less inclined to have much sympathy for someone so clearly reckless. Objectively, it’s hard to disagree with her.

I am a little softer on irresponsible reproduction than are Sheila and my wife. I do see a sort of right-of-reproduction (God willing) in at least a limited fashion. The first child because of the right to reproduce and the second because children need siblings. Had Suleman had the octuplets because she desperately wanted a child, couldn’t afford multiple attempts and so stocked up on her single attempt, and had a moral reason not to abort… I might be willing to chalk it up as an epic lapse in judgment rather than a lapse in morals. But that she already had six that she was not able to take care of on her own and thus knew that she was enlisting her parents in something they didn’t want makes me disinclined to forgive any further pregnancies because her tubes should be tied.

I noticed on the news that they’re investigatinng the fertility clinic, which is something that Clancy and I have been discussing. There aren’t laws, but there are (obviously ignored) guidelines that if followed prevent this sort of nonsense. If there is a positive result in all this, hopefully it is a clamping down on this to prevent this sort of thing from happening in the future. We shouldn’t even have to be discussing this because it shouldn’t be legally permissible (assuming that it is).

Addendum: Sheila has followed up with a post on three ways to discourage welfare mothers.

“Mark my words — if we let them take away our God-given right to pickle small children in a nicotine haze, they won’t stop there. Don’t come crying to me if somebody eventually questions whether it’s wise to let children watch fourteen uninterrupted hours of television, or if tossing a baby into the air repeatedly until he throws up is harmful for his development.” -Tony Woodlief

I hate the very existence of inaugural poetry. Despite all the pomp and preening involved with inaugurations, it’s that which I find over-indulgent. Maybe I just can’t consider poetry beyond proto-goths dressed all in black sitting in the back of a classroom feeling so tortuously misunderstood. Obviously on some level I know that poetry is used for other things, but I swear I have difficulty ever reading poetry that doesn’t say “Hey, look at me!” or “Hey, look at me look {nature/life/God/Mother Earth/whatever}!”

I didn’t get to watch the inauguration as I was stuck in traffic when it happened, though I will shortly have the whole thing downloaded.

Mindstorm made a pretty big to-do about it. Employees (in our building, at least) were invited to watch the swearing in and speech on the TVs in the cafeteria.

I thought that it was interesting that John Paul Stevens swore in the Vice President. I figured that the VP was sworn in by the Chief Justice, too. Apparently there’s quite a bit of discretion and that they don’t even have to be sworn in by a judge (Mondale and Cheney were sworn in by the Speaker of the House, Gore and George H. Bush by associate justices). I learned something new today!

It’s rather unfortunate that the special occasions was flubbed by the Chief Justice during the oath, which caught the now-president off-guard. Took them a minute or two to get their act together, but I suppose it’s forgivable since not only is it both of their first time, but as recently as five years ago it was exceptionally unlikely that either of them would be holding the positions that they now do.

The conspiracy-mongering among liberals that Roberts screwed up on purpose so that conservatives will be able to delegitimize Obama’s presidency (”He never took the oath!”) are kind of funny. As are murmurs on the right that it is somehow “revealing” that Obama took the oath with his middle name (”Such things are unheard of if you look back at and only at Jimmy Carter!”).

It took me quite a bit of time to find a picture of Obama taking the oath that didn’t prominantly feature Roberts’s bald crown but had no luck. Roberts needs to take some Rogaine. He’s the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. It’s not like anybody can badmouth him for it. Of course, perhaps being Chief Justice means that you don’t have to worry about Rogaine in the same way that being old means that you can wear your pants however darn high you please.

Obama’s speech contained what I’m pretty sure is an inaccuracy less than five sentences in. Forty-three men have taken the oath, not forty-four. But surely Obama’s speechwriters and handlers would catch a mistake before I did, wouldn’t they? Did someone take the oath but never the office? I don’t see how that’s possible. Then again, they did claim to be directing the non-existent “Office of President-Elect” when no such office exists and Obama wasn’t technically even the president-elect, so maybe such details were considered unimportant.

Bush is apparently back in Texas. The whole concept of going from the most powerful man in the world to having to move out in one day seems kind of weird to me. I’m not sure how that works. Were they living out of suitcases that last week? I like to imagine that there was luggage in the back of that helicopter.

I’m sure that Half Sigma considers it suspicious that Bristol Palin’s newborn baby wasn’t at the inauguration (almost as though she doesn’t exist! Hmmmmmm…).

ADDENDUM: Roberts and Obama decided to take another shot at it, just to be cautious. No doubt Lincoln’s Bible had been put away, but odd that they wouldn’t go to the slight inconvenience of finding another one. Did the Bushes not leave behind any? Why have the Gideons let us down? Now we get four years of some people saying “See! He didn’t take the oath on the Bible after all! Just like we said he wouldn’t!”

-{Note that while this is about a political event, I tried not to take sides. Leave comments with care.}-