Across the Great Divide

Life of the Mind. Life of the Ankles.

There are different ways of attaining a balanced life.

The best method, of course, would involve striking a daily equilibrium, with three square meals from major food groups, work and repose, exercise and reflection, time with loved ones, dashing off a check for the orphans, and a hearty beverage enjoyed short of the tipping point. Repeat.

For the more obsessive among us, balance tends to be an average calculated over longer periods as we careen between extremes. I live in balance, provided you don't draw conclusions from any particular moment. Or week. Or year.

This is my way of backing into the subject of home maintenance. Those law abiders clucking over Keith Ellison's city  inspection notices likely do not live in a century-old house or run around trying to change the world. Or have to decide whether peeling paint on their garage is more important than peeling lead paint in a kid's bedroom.

Although I am an Ellison supporter, I'm not trying to make excuses for him. I'm making excuses for myself. I can see when things are wrong with our house, and over the years we have invested plenty to fix them. But there are still things that get deferred or forgotten. Backs of garages are that way, and corners of basements.

To a man who goes along at half throttle, it may not be hard to pull over and simply fix some small aberration in the domestic order. Whacking weeds is a piquant punctuation to a fine weekend for the man whose idea of baronial bliss is breaking out the LawnBoy and making sharp corners. A man who hates his job may be fully invested in his castle.

But for the man going all out, steeped in thought and seeing the world far beyond the edges of his property lines, a weed is no simple a matter. Righting a board askew might as well be moon shot to the mind that has just come back from immersion in healthcare policy or peak oil.

Earlier this year, I took on the creeping charlie that infested my yard after I stopped paying men with tanker trucks to spray their chemicals. It had survived my attack in the fall, for reasons we won't get into. My plan this time was strategic, and I readied soil and seed to follow the killing assault. Grass would spring up like democracy.

But the creeping charlie did not die on my schedule, and I departed town with labors incomplete, a wheelbarrow full of a soil mixture left under a blue tarp to keep off the rain. By the time I returned, other obligations intervened and led to others. The time never seemed right to reseed. It was too hot and dry or I was too busy or something.

My mind was full of other things and my time followed.

But the blue tarp's reproach never disappeared. Would my neighbors to think all Ellison supporters were alike and that before long my car would be up on cinder blocks in the front yard?

So one day last week, I resolved to clear the delayed project from the corner of the house. How manly and farmer-like finally to stride out from these months of mental labors, seize the wheelbarrow, and fling seeded soil over the bare hungry patches!

My tarp, it turned out, had not entirely kept the rain out of the wheelbarrow. Underneath, I had a muddy soup to contend with. Oh well. I lifted the heavy edge to pour off the collected water.

The splashing sun heated-water was hot on my ankles. Surprisingly hot. HOTHOTHOTHOT!

I dropped the tarp and danced away and the burning persisted.

Wasps!

So many stinging at once, each a molten droplet.

I ran-hopped-slapped away like a crazed Appalachian clogger.

Later, I crept back to see the football-sized nest that had grown under the tarp while I had been preoccupied  with matters of the mind and fixed on changing the world.

There's a parable here, no doubt, but you don't need me to draw it. Besides, the Twins are on.

Follow the Oil

A series in the Chicago Tribune follows gasoline pumped from an Illinois gas station back to the source, and examines how our oil habit ripples across the globe.

[E]xclusive access to industry refining data made it possible, for the first time ever, to track the oil consumed by this one gas station back to the dusty war zones, belligerent autocracies and tottering nation-states where it came from.

For years, oil companies have insisted that this could never be done. Conventional wisdom holds that America's colossal oil flows get mixed together, swapped among companies and rebranded too many times to pinpoint the actual source of your $40 purchase of unleaded. The industry has encouraged this belief for years, partly to avoid boycotts.

Yet with a little research, and proprietary data supplied by the Marathon Petroleum Co., the Tribune could trace with unparalleled clarity virtually every bucketful of trucker Howard Dunbar's shipment back to its distant origins.

On the hydrocarbon menu that September night, in round figures:

         Gulf of Mexico crudes--31 percent
         Texas crudes--28 percent
         Nigerian crudes--17 percent
         Arab Light from Saudi Arabia--10 percent
         Louisiana Sweet--8 percent
         Illinois Basin Light--4 percent
         Cabinda  crude from Angola--3 percent  
         N'Kossa  crude from the Republic of Congo--.01 percent

–"A Tank of Gas. A World of Trouble." Chicago Tribune

[via Oil is for Sissies]

 

Procreationism

Dan Savage comments on state supreme court rulings in Washington and New York:

A perverse cruelty characterizes both decisions. The courts ruled, essentially, that making my child’s life less secure somehow makes the life of a child with straight parents more secure. Both courts found that making heterosexual couples stable requires keeping homosexual couples vulnerable. And the courts seemed to agree that heterosexuals can hardly be bothered to have children at all — or once they’ve had them, can hardly be bothered to care for them — unless marriage rights are reserved exclusively for heterosexuals. And the religious right accuses gays and lesbians of seeking “special rights.”

Even if you believe that marriage plays a special role in the lives of heterosexuals with children (another point I’m happy to concede), can it not play a similar role in the lives of homosexual couples, whether they’re parents or not? Marriage, after all, is not reserved for couples with children. (Perhaps it will be soon, if courts keep heading in this direction.)

When my widowed grandfather remarried in his 60’s, he wasn’t seeking to further the well-being of his children, who were grown and out of the house. He was seeking the security, companionship and legal rights that marriage provides. The survival of humankind was the furthest thing from his mind.

– Dan Savage, "Same-Sex Marriage Wins by Losing," NYT

Freedom of Listening

Is it too gross to link to yourself?

Digging for something else, I came across this in an early post:

The Bill of Rights started by spelling out freedoms of religion, speech and assembly, but didn't enjoin Americans to listen to each other. Today, as we face amendments proposing to restrict freedoms, the speech won't be in short supply. Though I expect a fight, I'll also be looking for ways to listen.

I need to remind myself of that more often.

Sunday Funnies

Why don't the people calling for "up or down" votes on Bush nominees like John Bolton also support up or down presidential bill signing?

+++

A Maplewood minister speaks out against:

[T]he “hypocrisy and pettiness” of Christians who focus on “sexual issues” like homosexuality, abortion or Janet Jackson’s breast-revealing performance at the Super Bowl halftime show. He said Christians these days were constantly outraged about sex and perceived violations of their rights to display their faith in public.

“Those are the two buttons to push if you want to get Christians to act,” he said. “And those are the two buttons Jesus never pushed.”

And 1,000 right-thinking parishioners walk.

Mary Van Sickle, the family pastor at Woodland Hills, said she lost 20 volunteers who had been the backbone of the church’s Sunday school.

“They said, ‘You’re not doing what the church is supposed to be doing, which is supporting the Republican way,’ ” she said. “It was some of my best volunteers.”

 

Israel and the IRA

When the IRA used to cross the Irish border to kill British soldiers - which it did - did Blair and his cronies blame the Irish Republic's government in Dublin? Did Blair order the RAF to bomb Dublin power stations and factories? Did he send British troops crashing over the border in tanks to fire at will into the hill villages of Louth, Monaghan, Cavan and Donegal? Did Blair then demand an international, Nato-led force to take over a buffer zone - on the Irish, not the Northern Ireland side, of the border?

Of course not. But Israel has special privileges afforded to no other civilised nation. It can do exactly what Blair would never have done - and still receive the British Government's approbation. It can trash the Geneva Conventions - because the Americans have done that in Iraq - and it can commit war crimes and murder UN soldiers like the four unarmed observers who refused to leave their post under fire.

– The truth of Blair's 'urgent diplomacy', Robert Fisk [via Information Clearing House]

Pledge Protection Act is Assault on the Courts

"We should not and cannot rewrite history to ignore our spiritual heritage. It surrounds us. It cries out for our country to honor God."
– Rep. Zach Wamp, R-Tenn

"Previous American presidents have also cited God, and ... our constitution cites 'one nation under God'."
– Bush advisor, apologist and constitutional scholar, Karen Hughes

I don't know if you noticed, but the House once again has made a push for only state courts interpreting the First Amendment, at least when it comes to the Pledge of Allegiance.

The Pledge Protection Act just passed by the House is a direct assault on the federal courts, and another prime example of pandering from the Body of Panderers. I know it's my right, so I'm going to thank god for the Senate.

As Marci Hamilton explained two years ago, the Act "would deprive all federal courts, even the Supreme Court, of jurisdiction to hear constitutional challenges to the 'under God' Pledge of Allegiance."

The Establishment Clause was motivated by the fear that Congress would oppress the American people in exactly the way Congress is now trying to do. It says that "Congress shall make no law establishing religion. . ."

But by attempting to insulate the monotheistic "under God" pledge from court review, in the Pledge Protection Act, that is exactly what Congress is trying to do. It's a one-God-fits-all formula that hearkens back to Britain under Queens Mary and Elizabeth, who practiced the same principle, and only differed on which religion received their imprimatur.

From their own experiences in Britain and Europe, the framing generation knew the baleful consequences of joining the power of a national government with religion. The colonists came here in the wake of the Reformation and the extreme religious turbulence that resulted when Protestants and Catholics jockeyed for power under the British monarchs. They knew, many of them firsthand, what happens when a centralized government becomes a partner with a particular religion.

[...]

The Pledge Protection Act also betrays the framers' vision in another way -- it is a frontal attack on the valuable constitutional check provided by the federal judiciary.

The framers, of course, believed in the absolute necessity of limiting power and pitting power against power so that no entity could get overweening power. Yet Congress is now attempting, with the Act, to deprive the federal courts of jurisdiction to check Congress's wayward ways -- in an arena where Congress was specifically believed by the framers to be dangerous. (Recall that phrase from the First Amendment's Establishment Clause, "Congress shall make no law.....)

Do the members of Congress genuinely think that 50 state supreme courts -- with a host of disparate views -- could possibly keep Congress in check? Or do they perhaps, believe that as members of Congress, they need no check? My money is on the latter, but either way, they are very wrong.

As for "one nation under god," that's  still missing  from the constitution.

Why Invest?

Tene Wells wasn't worried about paying her taxes when she came to WomenVenture as a client — a single mother trying to work her way out of poverty, but stuck between work, child care, tuition and time for school.

In a Pioneer Press response to the claim that Growth & Justice's Invest in Real Prosperity plan will hurt single women, she says:

Luckily for me, Minnesotans believed in investing in Minnesota's people and places, and I benefited from child-care subsidies and grants for my higher education. Now, I am a successful and productive member of society assisting others.

Today, Wells is president of WomenVenture, a non-profit that helps women find better jobs or develop the skills to start their own businesses.

Wells has said, "The women who come to us are often in crisis, they have lost their job, they are going through a divorce, and minimum wage is not going to cut it. A woman needs to be able to earn enough money to support herself and her children."

Investment doesn't mean pumping money into government bureaucracy or making endless handouts. That's what anti-tax mythmakers want us to think. Instead, it means adding to the productive capacity of society — of individuals and the public and non-profit institutions that help them succeed on their own.

The investment in Tene Wells has been repaid a thousandfold. The challenge for Minnesota is developing better ways to invest in more Tenes.

Mandates May Push, But What's Pushing Them?

Katherine Kersten today actually put her finger on a real issue today, but then in typical fashion, managed to avoid actually following it to a non-ideological conclusion. ("Mandates push health insurance rates up and up.")

The issue is healthcare mandates and how they relate to the cost of insurance and to inequities across states.

I agree that mandates (the state telling insurance companies what treatments they must cover) are not a good idea in the ideal world. We saw that when Minnesota mandated coverage of bone marrow transplants to treat breast cancer, a therapy that has been established as ineffective. And there are probably others out there. Legislatures will make dumb decisions when they try to practice medicine.

But effectiveness is not the argument Kersten and her sources are making. It's cost. The cost for business. That's always the argument, isn't it?

It's undeniable that the cost has already crippled some U.S. businesses and will continue to squeeze even  more. State mandates do add costs, and they probably exacerbate the situation by increasing administrative costs for insurors and employers who work across state lines and conflicting mandates.

I'd argue that mandates are not the cause of the cost problem, though. They are the ineffective cure applied when businesses and insurance companies follow their cost-cutting logic and  start cutting coverage that is costly — whether or not it's effective or morally right to provide.

The root of the problem is employer-funded healthcare itself. Companies are supposed to make a profit, so they want to minimize expenses that don't help produce one. They want healthy, productive  employees, and they may buy into the premise that a good health plan helps them maintain a healthy workforce. But I'd bet most would struggle to point out where they've actually benefited financially from offering coverage.

They're more likely to look at healthcare as part of the compensation package needed to attract and retain talent. When those costs become unsustainable, they seek other ways to get the work done. In comparison, any health results the plan actually produces would be a distant concern. As I've said before, the present system is more about about cost containment for the employer than healthy outcomes for the consumer:

Today, third parties in the healthcare system — HMOs, plan administrators, insurers, etc. — work for the consumer in the same way a veterinarian works for the cows. Any concern and laying on of hands may incidentally improve the welfare of an individual animal. But the system exists to manage the herd over time.

And it makes sense. There's no strong incentive for employers and insurors to pay for preventive care or costly treatments for chemical dependency that have low success rates. Why? Because employers no longer expect employees to stick around for a lifetime, and insurors know that the plan members getting those preventive treatments today may well be with another insuror in three years — either because they changed jobs or the employer switched plans ... in an attempt to cut costs.

On the other hand, the consumer has only one life and maintains most family obligations for life. They  irrevocably pay for early decisions, treatments or lack of them. An insuror might not need mandates if it had the same certainty that it would pay for the long term consequences of a person's lifetime health care decisions.

With single payer, the consumer's and the payer's interests are much better aligned.

Let's Start Talking Investment

I've been trying to stir up some discussion about investment in Minnesota over at The Test Tank, and there's also commentary on Growth & Justice's Invest for Real Prosperity over at the Citizens League here, plus here and here.

Blankout7 requested the response to Jancek's piece I mentioned a few days ago. I've included the gist of it below the fold, and it's circulating in a few other forms. (For the record, this is the first time I've typed "below the fold" and I don't plan to again.)

Some think it's not helpful to talk about raising taxes in an election where we're trying to get more progressive candidates elected. But was have to start reversing the anti-tax mythology sometime, and why not in a campaign where more people are presumably listening. I believe wise investment is a concept that can supplant tax-and-spend eventually, but it will never fly if we're too frightened to talk about where the money comes from and what we expect it to accomplish. The G&J strategy is to develop a  framework that helps moderates and progressives have this conversation and keep it going for the long haul until it starts to influence policy.

Anyway, head over to one of these places and add some thoughts. Or do it here. Or with Mitch. Let's just start talking about something besides traffic tickets and billboards.

In her Pioneer Press commentary, “How the Growth & Justice tax increase would hit singles,” Sarah Janecek tries to ”do the Growth & Justice math” for single taxpayers in Minnesota. In fact, most single Minnesotans would see no income tax increase, and most of those who do would owe less than $100. Here’s why she got it wrong.

She’s wrong about the tax rates in the proposal.

“If Growth & Justice has its way, the lowest tax rate would be 6.35 percent (a 19 percent rate increase) and the highest will be 9.85 percent (a 25 percent rate increase).”

She’s wrong about the bottom rate. It stays at 5.35% under the proposal, which is careful not to increase the tax burden for lower income households. And, it's why almost half of all Minnesotans would see no income tax increase.

She’s wrong about who would pay.

“Growth & Justice would start raising taxes on incomes above $45,000. In Minnesota, there are many single taxpayers making that figure or more. They are long-term schoolteachers and other public employees as well as many employed in the private sector, and often make between $45,000 and $75,000 a year.”

Okay, she's not technically wrong, because "many" is an imprecise word. But in fact, 80% of singles earn less than $50,000, 13% earn between $50k and $75k, and the rest earn more. This means more than half of single filers would owe no additional income tax under the proposal.

And she’s wrong about how much they’d pay.

Here are Janecek’s “calculations” of the extra income tax for single taxpayers, with the Growth & Justice estimates in the actual proposal. [Note: Proposal figures are averages within broader income ranges because individual returns will vary.]

Janecek Calculation        Actual Proposal

$395 ($45k income)        $  80 ($30k-$50k range)
$515 ($60k income)        $256 ($50k-$75k range)
$665 ($75k income)   

Wonks may love this. The rest of you are forgiven if you don't.