Category Archives: Current Affairs

Health Care Rights

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Have you heard about the SCOTUS decision in the Hobby Lobby case? If you live in American and haven’t heard about it then you might live in a cave, but here’s the gist of it:

The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld a decision whereby closely-held companies can request exemptions the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) coverage provision for some contraceptives because of the corporations’ founding family’s religious beliefs…

Much of the controversy over today’s decision derives from the fact that Hobby Lobby and Conestoga are not in the business of conducting religious services or overseas humanitarian missions as their primary business. They are for-profit companies. The ruling allows the corporations to refuse coverage because of the religious beliefs of individual leaders.

Beyond selectively singling-out women’s reproductive care, the decision raises the question of whether corporate leadership elsewhere might refuse coverage of other drugs due to religious beliefs.

A lot of the reaction I’ve seen online has focused on a couple of points: the weirdness of bestowing religious rights on closely held corporations using the argument that the corporation is an extension of the owners (that’s simplistic but I think gets to the heart of it); that the religious rights of the corporation/owners trumps the reproductive rights of their female employees.

I’d like to focus on the second point for a minute because I think the argument is a bit off and, quite frankly, misses the larger point. While it is regrettable that employers like Hobby Lobby would refuse to pay for insurance that covers all of their female employees’ contraceptive choices it doesn’t mean that those same employees can’t go out and get those contraceptives if they’re willing to pay for it themselves. Thus they aren’t denying them anything, they’re just not paying for it. That might seem like semantics, but I think it’s important because what it exposes is that corporate health insurance in this country is not a right for anyone.

Health insurance as we know it came into being in the World War II era as an incentive companies used to attract and retain employees who were in short supply at the time. As such, health insurance was never a “right” but was a benefit that came to be so commonplace that most employees started to view it as a right. Then something funny happened – companies realized they could shift the cost of health insurance back to employees and not suffer too many dire consequences and so they starting jacking up premiums and co-pays or simply doing away with health insurance all together. The result is a growing percentage of our population without access to health insurance, which means they forego preventive care and rely on ERs when they get sick, helping drive up health care costs for everyone.

The Clinton administration’s effort to deal with the rising health care problem twenty years ago was a notorious failure. ObamaCare started out as an ambitious plan to provide health care coverage for everyone, fought the “socialized medicine” stigma, went through a negotiation phase involving the health insurance cabal that resulted in the imperfect system being fought out in the courts today. You’d be hard pressed to find anyone happy with the system, except maybe for the millions of people who had NO access to health insurance pre-Obamacare and now at least have the option to buy it.

Long story short, while it’s easy to get hung up on the reproductive and religious rights arguments raised by the Hobby Lobby case, it would be a mistake to limit the scope of the conversation. The bigger question is why we can spend so much time and energy talking about our religious rights, women’s reproductive rights, our right to bear arms, etc. but we never seem to debate whether we should have a fundamental right to affordable, adequate health care and whether or not relying on private companies to provide it is the best way to approach it.

With Malice Toward None

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A quote from Lincoln contained within an Esquire piece titled The United States of Cruelty:

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

That is a necessary reminder in this day and age, because the author of the Esquire piece is on to something with this paragraph:

We cheer for cruelty and say that we are asking for personal responsibility among those people who are not us, because the people who are not us do not deserve the same benefits of the political commonwealth that we have. In our politics, we have become masters of camouflage. We practice fiscal cruelty and call it an economy. We practice legal cruelty and call it justice. We practice environmental cruelty and call it opportunity. We practice vicarious cruelty and call it entertainment. We practice rhetorical cruelty and call it debate. We set the best instincts of ourselves in conflict with each other until they tear each other to ribbons, and until they are no longer our best instincts but something dark and bitter and corroborate with itself. And then it fights all the institutions that our best instincts once supported, all the elements of the political commonwealth that we once thought permanent, all the arguments that we once thought settled — until there is a terrible kind of moral self-destruction that touches those institutions and leaves them soft and fragile and, eventually, evanescent. We do all these things, cruelty running through them like hot blood, and we call it our politics.

Here’s the thing; our political debates lean towards us vs. them. We agonize over paying taxes that we perceive to be too high because we think that others are riding our coattails. Are some folks slackers? Sure, but many others are victim of circumstance just like those who are beneficiaries of circumstance. In the end what we need to remind ourselves is that a “common good” does exist, that in the end it is better for ALL of us if people have access to good healthcare, clean water, healthy food and a place to lay their heads. We can debate the details about how its done, but we shouldn’t be debating about whether it’s done. That, to me, is the definition of a divided and sick society.

The Rabbit Hole of American Political Discourse

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A columnist at Philly.com wrote a piece called “America…what the hell’s wrong with us” about the Bowe Bergdahl story and captured the bizarro world that is American political discourse. He points out the hypocrisy of some politicians calling out the President last year for not doing enough to secure the freedom of Bergdahl and then lambasting the President for the prisoner exchange that freed him. He also writes that this whole story arc is predictable (he’s right), and so didn’t really bother him until learning that Bergdahl’s hometown had to cancel a homecoming celebration due to all the nastiness. That’s when he decided we’d really reached a new low in our society:

But the bottom line is that if you see a woman standing in the middle of the road and a Mack Truck bearing down on her, you don’t stop to grill her on whether she just used heroin or left her child on a stoop somewhere. You pick her up and swoop her out of the street, and deal with the rest later. So should it be with saving Sgt. Bergdahl. For God’s sake, where’s the humanity? A couple of decades ago, two Inquirer reporters wrote an award-winning series and book called “America: What Went Wrong?” Today it’s more appropriate to ask, America…what the hell’s wrong with us?

Here’s what one fairly knowledgeable chap said about the Bergdahl affair earlier today. “We don’t leave Americans behind. That’s unequivocal.” That wasn’t some knee-jerk Obama apologist in Congress, that was former Gen. Stanley McChrystal, Bergdahl’s supreme commanding officer when he was captured in 2009, and — if you recall — not a big fan of the president. But he does know right from wrong. As noted here the other day, Israel traded more than 1,000 prisoners, including a sizable number of Palestinians detained for alledgedly murderous acts of terrorism, to win back just ONE of its citizens. Say you will about the Israeli government’s policies, but the Israeli citizens value human life. I don’t know what America values anymore.

Did Bergdahl make a horrible mistake in judgment, or worse, when he left his base? Probably. Did some American troops die in combat because of the search for Bergdahl or related events. Possibly. But we should also talk about the fact that we sent thousands of American soldiers into a war that has lasted a remarkable 13 years, and the longer that a war lasts, the more heartbreaking, soul-crushing things are going to happen. It’s even more tragic when our leaders can’t even articulate why our troops — Bergdahl, the ones who went looking for him, the ones who will be there even after the war was supposed to end later this year — are even in Afghanistan anymore. Today, Pennsylvania lost one of our own — Capt. Jason B. Jones of Orwigsburg in Schuylkill County, killed by small arms fire in Jalalabad. Please take a moment and honor Captain Jones’ sacrifice — if you can hear yourself think over the sick cries of political blood lust.

I agree with the writer that the cynicism is sickening and I fear it’s only going to get worse. Ironically, the people who claim to be bringing morality back to government seem very intent in not following the Golden Rule. We’d be a helluva lot better off if they’d take a refresher course on moral behavior and then started to walk their talk.

Is Pro-Gun Invasion of Chipotle Terrorism?

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If you consider terrorism to be taking actions that strike fear in the hearts of innocent bystanders then it would be hard NOT to define a bunch of imbeciles walking into a restaurant with semiautomatic weapons strapped to their chests as terrorism. Sheesh. http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/5358483

**Update** They moved from Chipotle to Target. I ask again, how is this not terrorism?

Our Poop Problem

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Anyone else feel like we missed a huge opportunity when we didn't use the economic crisis as a reason to put people back to work by engaging them in massive public works projects? Seeing reports about our aging and crumbling infrastructure you can't help but think, "Why didn't we take some of those billions (trillions?) of dollars we spent bailing out various industries and dedicate them to upgrading our roads, bridges and sewers?" Wait…sewers? Yep. Apparently our concrete sewers aren't being eaten by the very stuff they transport:

“The veins of our cities are in serious trouble, and they’re in serious trouble because of corrosion, and this corrosion has been unanticipated and it’s accelerating,” said Mark Hernandez at a symposium on the microbiology of the built environment in Washington DC yesterday. Hernandez is a civil engineer, but he’s meeting with microbiologists because this problem is bacterial. Essentially, it’s an infection of the nation’s sewage system.

Here’s what’s going on. One set of microbes emits hydrogen sulfide, the gas that is also responsible for raw sewage’s unpleasant smell. This gas fills the empty space between the top of the pipe and the water flow. Another set of microbes living in this headspace turns hydrogen sulfide to sulfuric acid, which eats away at concrete, leaving behind gypsum, the powdery stuff you find in drywall.

“Essentially what we’re ending up with is wet drywall,” said Hernandez. This is one reason the American Society of Civil Engineers has gave our wastewater infrastructure a D grade.

NCAAbsurdity

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I love college basketball and really like pretty much all college sports. It's fun watching these kids compete and, especially with the "big" sports like basketball and football, it's great seeing the excitement the teams produce for the students, alumni and the rest of the school's community. All that said the current state of college sports is absurd and hopefully something is soon to be done about it. First let's highlight the absurdity of the NCAA:

Exhibit 1: Walk-ons, aka non-scholarship players, are allowed to participate in team meals but they have to pay for them. "Walk-ons, by NCAA rules, are free to eat team dinners, but they have to pay. It comes out to roughly $15 per meal, which Auslander figured wasn’t fruitful, because that could buy two meals at Chipotle."

Exhibit 2: Everyone but the players is making an absurb amount of money. Sure the kids get a "free" education, but is that really a fair trade when you consider what everyone else is getting out of the deal? Hell, the men's basketball tournament alone brings has a 14 year, $10.8 billion TV deal attached to it. How is it then that a walk on, who isn't even getting a free education, has to pay for his own team dinner?

The absurdity that is the NCAA is obvious, and has been for years, but until now there hasn't been a whole lot done about it. Thanks to a potential class-action lawsuit that might soon change:

Sports labor attorney Jeffrey Kessler has filed suit against the NCAA and five power conferences, alleging that capping player compensation at the cost of a scholarship is an antitrust violation. Unlike previous suits, this one does not seek damages. It wants to tear down the NCAA. "We're looking to change the system," Kessler said. "That's the main goal."

The suit names as defendants the NCAA, the ACC, the Big 12, the Big Ten, The Pac-12, and the SEC. The plaintiffs are Rutgers forward J.J. Moore, Clemson DB Martin Jenkins, UTEP TE Kevin Perry, and Cal tight end William Tyndall, though as a class action claim, it hopes to represent all FBS football players and D-I basketball players.

Don't get me wrong, I would love to see college sports stick around, but not in their current form. Hopefully the reform that is most definitely coming will change the system for the better and we'll end up with a something that is fair to all concerned, especially the players, and can be a continuing source of pride for the schools they represent.

 

Mind the Gap

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It will be interesting to see if the Republicans in the states that decided not to expand Medicaid as part of ACA will pay a political price for the outcome. From the Wall Street Journal:

Some GOP-led states are revisiting their decision as complaints pile up over the coverage gap—and its consequences for businesses—in such states as Utah and Florida. The state senate in New Hampshire last week reached a tentative deal to expand Medicaid. In Virginia, newly elected Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe hopes to get legislators to reverse his Republican predecessor's stance against expansion.

Lawmakers are also getting a push to boost Medicaid rolls from hospitals that expected a vast new pool of paying customers under the health-care law. Instead, the failure to expand Medicaid coverage by some states not only adds fewer insured patients, it also eliminates the payments hospitals had long received to cover the cost of uninsured people they treat free…

Eugene Steuerle, an Urban Institute economist and former Treasury Department official who served under presidents in both parties, said he couldn't recall a social program that excluded beneficiaries because they earn too little…

Governors in some states that refused to expand Medicaid now say the coverage gap is hard to ignore. "I am not a fan of the Affordable Care Act," Utah Gov. Gary Herbert said in an interview. But, he said, he is working with state legislators on a plan to expand Medicaid after advisers calculated that about 60,000 of his constituents would fall through the gap.

"That is not fair," Mr. Herbert said. "When I say doing nothing is not an option, I'm talking about the 60,000 people in Utah who live below the poverty line and don't have access to health care."

5 Ways We’re Proving Marx Right

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Because calling someone/something Marxist is as damning a critique as we have in America it's important to share the last part of this piece from Rolling Stone first so that we can keep an open mind for the author's main thesis – that in five ways Marx accurately predicted the current state of our capitalist world:

Marx was wrong about many things. Most of his writing focuses on a critique of capitalism rather than a proposal of what to replace it with – which left it open to misinterpretation by madmen like Stalin in the 20th century. But his work still shapes our world in a positive way as well…

Without further ado here are the five ways Marx accurately predicted the effects of capitalism:

  1. The Great Recession (Capitalism's Chaotic Nature)
  2. The iPhone 5S (Imaginary Appetites)
  3. The IMF (The Globalization of Capitalism)
  4. Walmart (Monopoly)
  5. Low Wages, Big Profits (The Reserve Army of Industrial Labor)

Reading the rationale for all five is definitely worth the time.

 

Thinking About Water

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Update 2/4/14 – Fast on the heels of posting this yesterday I came across this article about a coal ash spill from a shuttered Duke Energy plant into the Dan River on Sunday. That hits very close to home.
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Over at Head Butler there's an interview with one of the co-authors of Running Out of Water: The Looming Crisis and Solutions to Conserve Our Most Precious Resource and it's eye opening:

JK: As the book explains — with unusual restrain and modesty — you did. Now that you’re an expert witness, tell me: Which is the bigger crisis, oil or water?

SL: Water, definitely. When I talk to people, I start by saying, ‘You know, it’s the same water since the beginning of time.’ They ask: ‘What do you mean?’ I say: ‘We’re using the same water — just recycled. Water is finite. How we treat it affects the quality of all of our water in the future.’ And I go on to say: ‘There is no substitute for water. Solar or alternative energies might replace oil, but there’s no alternative to water.’ At which point, someone says: ‘Desalinization.’ I say: ‘Do you have any idea of the cost, the energy, the environmental impact?’ They say: “But Israel…’ I say: ‘Israel is a small country.’ And then they start to get it…

JK: Sounds almost like we’re going backwards.

SL: The basic problem: People get 30-year mortgages — but they don’t know if they’ll have water for 30 years. And they don’t think to ask. We’re on a collision course between the increasing demand of a growing population and a finite amount of water. To make matters more complicated, we pollute the water we have and then you can add climate change into the mix. We already see the effects of climate change in the West with decreased snowpack and water shortages. On the East coast, climate change means storm surges that overwhelm the aging waste water treatment plants…

JK: In some California counties, water companies are paying customers to remove their lawns. How about golf courses?

SL: Golf courses should be using recycled waste, and we’re seeing a trend toward that. A greater concern for me is how little individuals understand that they have a water footprint that is much larger than their daily household use. Most of us think we use 80-100 gallons a day. Wrong. Our water footprint is about 1,800 gallons a day. Like me. I love steak — and we need 630 gallons of water for one 8 ounce steak! But now that I know that, I am a much more conscious consumer of beef and other water-intensive foods. (Emphasis mine- JL)

I'm thinking about getting the Kindle version of the book, but part of me is resistant since I really have enough to worry about these days without adding water to the mix. 

 

Today’s Teens’ Tepid Take on Transport

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My kids, all three of them, have had an extraordinarily luke-warm attitude towards getting their driver's licenses and based on conversations I've had with some of their friends' parents they aren't the only ones. Sure there are still plenty of kids chomping at the bit to get their licenses the day they turn 16, but the percentage of kids who don't seem too excited about it seems much higher these days than when their parents were that age. Why is that? Netscape founder and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen might provide a clue in his answer to the question of why he's so excited about the potential of car-sharing services:

Ask a kid. Take teenagers 20 years ago and ask them would they rather have a car or a computer? And the answer would have been 100% of the time they'd rather have a car, because a car represents freedom, right?

Today, ask kids if they'd rather have a smartphone or a car if they had to pick and 100% would say smartphones. Because smartphones represent freedom. There's a huge social behavior reorientation that's already happening. And you can see it through that. And I'm not saying nobody can own cars. If people want to own cars, they can own cars. But there is a new generation coming where freedom is defined by "I can do anything I want, whenever I want. If I want a ride, I get a ride, but I don't have to worry. I don't have to make car payments. I don't have to worry about insurance. I have complete flexibility." That is freedom too.

While Andreessen is talking about the future of car sharing services (which by the way seem much more likely to succeed in dense urban environments than in small urban/sprawl environments like where my family lives) he's stumbled on an important influence on our kids today – they don't need cars to connect with their friends because they have smartphones, computers and game consoles to connect.  Sure their parents had phones, but with the exception of the lucky few who had their own phone lines in their bedrooms they had to share the phone with the rest of their families and had zero expectation of privacy. Today's kids don't just have private phone conversations they have the ability to have private video chats which their parents could only dream about 30 years ago.

In the case of our youngest, who is well into his 17th year of life and has no desire to get his license, he doesn't even have to leave the living room to play games with his friends. Thanks to Xbox Live he plays games with/against them all the time. His dad had to use that shared family phone to call his friends to coordinate a time to meet at the arcade to watch each other play Galactica. Once that beautiful day in the early 80s rolled around when he got his first Atari system he called his friends over so that could play Atari football head-to-head!

The point is that teens are decreasingly equating a driver's license with freedom. In fact our youngest has flat out said that he's dreading getting his license because he doesn't want the responsibility. On the other hand his dad is pushing him hard to get the damn license so he doesn't have to keep getting out of bed an hour earlier than normal in order to get the kid to school in time to catch the bus to the career center!

But I digress. There truly is a large behavioral shift going on with the younger members of our society. Thanks to the mortgage meltdown many young adults no longer assume that homeownership is all that their parents thought it was cracked up to be, and now that people have mobile networks at their disposal they're no longer socializing in the same way either. Of course kids will still want to get together to party and act like the fools they are, but how often they get together and how they get there is changing very quickly and those habits and patterns will last into their adult years. It'll be interesting to see how it all shakes out.