My Blog About What Is Wrong With Healthcare.

This post was originally written on 1/5/2012

      My children have a wonderful pediatrician.  I like their doctor, and I have no complaints about her skill and knowledge as a doctor.  That being said, she provides me with a perfect example of what is wrong with the American health care system as it relates to the average American consumer- she costs too damn much.
      This pediatrician shares a practice with her husband.  He is a pediatric neurologist, and I like him too.  He has seen and treated both of my daughters, and I have no complaints about his skill or knowledge either.  A few years ago this husband and wife team chose to leave the large medical complex in which they had previously operated and open their own office.
       The new office is a simple frame construction building, set off by itself on land that they purchased.  Being somewhat familiar with land prices and construction costs in my area, I would estimate that their new location probably cost them no more than $200,000- if you include every expenditure, all the way down to the lightbulbs.  It is not a fancy office, and the most technologically advanced piece of equipment it boasts is the digital infant scale and the neat little wall mounted otoscopes.  Six patient rooms, one bathroom, two common areas and another six small rooms for storage and office space.  Overall about 4000 square feet of space (at the most) in a building that could easily be reconfigured into a single family home.  They do no lab work, it's just about seeing patients and writing prescriptions or referrals.
       Sounds commendable right? Two doctors simplifying the process and cutting their overhead to create an environment that functions solely to provide them with a space where they can do their jobs and see their patients.  Utility bills probably running them about the same as what their average patient pays at home.  They have a small staff- One LPN, four CNA's, two office girls.  Staff costs probably running them $200,000 per year at the outside.  So let's figure that the total overhead costs of this office- building, utilities, and staff are running them $20,000 per month.  I've gone ahead and inflated all the numbers just to give them the benefit of the doubt, assuming that they are paying their staff well above what is average for our area, and assuming that they financed the entire cost of building their location.
       Now looking at this number, one might start to feel a little bit sorry for these doctors about how much it costs them just to go to work everyday and do a job they love.  20K A MONTH just to go to work?  That's insane!  Don't start crying for them yet.
        Remember that I mentioned that this office has six patient rooms?  Well, with a little observation and some casual questions to the office staff, I've ferreted out that the policy of this office is to schedule 1 patient every 15 minutes for each of those rooms, 5 days a week, from 8:30 am- 5:00 pm.  The office is closed on weekends and maybe 4 days per year for various holidays.  A little more research (looking at the paperwork mailed to me by my insurance company) reveals that each of those visits is billed out at $125 each.  For a grand total of $25,500 PER DAY in office visit fees.  Each of the 256 days of the year that the office is open.  That grand total is equal to $6,528,000.  SIX AND A HALF MILLION DOLLARS a year in fees generated by a husband a wife team of doctors.
       Even now I am looking at this and thinking I must have missed something.  I've rerun the calculations 5 times, and yes, that number is correct.  What is terrifying is that those are just the charges for getting in to see the doctor or a member of their staff.  Every immunization, any thing that goes beyond just seeing and speaking to one of these medical professionals is billed as a separate and additional item to either the patient or their insurance company.  And these doctors (primarily the husband) also see patients in our local hospital.  Every single baby born who becomes a patient of their practice gets a visit in the hospital that generates another, much higher, charge.
       Now I know that doctors rarely manage to collect all their fees from their patients.  I know that they often pay fees to outside companies to handle their billing, and that they pay premiums for malpractice insurance, taxes, additional taxes for their employees, etc etc etc.  But come on.  75 years ago in this country doctors were still delivering babies and treating patients in exchange for potatoes.  Literally in some cases.  Despite all the hardships involved in becoming a doctor and maintaining a practice in today's economy and society, my pediatrician and her husband still manage to drive luxury vehicles and pay tuition for their children to attend Montessori schools (look up those prices if you want to make your eyes bulge).
      There are many factors that have contributed to us as a country having reached the place where this is accepted as the norm in healthcare.  The doctors and greed on their parts cannot be apportioned all or even most of the blame.  But people do need to start noticing and thinking about the situation that we're in, and give serious thought to whether we as individuals or as a nation can afford to go on letting this problem spiral out of control.  Doctors have their part to do, and patients, as the consumer, really need to start doing their part in dissecting the issue to understand how we got here and what it's going to take to fix the problem.
      No one has a true grasp of what health care is actually worth anymore, and without knowing what the value of something is you cannot begin to assess what is a reasonable amount is to pay for it.  Blindly ignoring the cost of health care until such time as you are forced out of need to pay for it makes you a victim of the person or entity that controls the thing you need, rather than a participant in a system that supposedly exists to meet a need.
      

What Is Wrong With The Two Party System

This post was originally written on 1/5/2012

This is a topic of conversation that has been batted around for years and that is gaining more and more attention as we head in to the home stretch of yet another extremely contentious election cycle.  My opinion on the subject, in a nutshell, is that the two party system is obsolete and overly divisive.
       No one can discount the fact that election based politics are by nature adversarial.  Every issue has two sides, if not more.  There will always be disagreements about which prevailing opinion is right and what decision is best for our society.  We cannot and will not change that no matter how hard we try or how badly we may wish to.  At issue is the fact that our system of choosing and electing political candidates is flawed, and becoming more flawed with every day that passes.
      The purpose of a political party, whether it be Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, whatever, is to provide support to potential candidates in the form of shared resources, and to simplify the process of selecting candidates for voters by narrowing the choices to a manageable number of candidates from which to choose.  The problem with political parties is that they have taken on a life of their own and have taken it upon themselves to oversimplify a very important and complex process by limiting our choices so drastically that we are left with no real choice at all.  It's like walking into a restaurant and being given the choice between beef or chicken as soon as you get to the coat check.  No menu, and if for some reason you have an aversion to beef, you automatically better like chicken.  Then you get to your table, running through all the different types of chicken you like in your head, and are informed that the chicken cordon bleu you were hoping to order isn't an option.  You are stuck with chicken fingers.  You start to think that maybe you'd have been better off opting for the beef, maybe then you'd have at least been able to get a nice juicy cheeseburger, only to look over at one of the beef tables and seeing that they are all being served tongue.  You may make a last ditch effort to try and switch to the vegetarian menu, but all they are offering is endive salad, and you're allergic to endives.  So you're screwed, but if you don't want to starve yourself out of existence you're forced to eat what has been put in front of you.
      Sorry for the digression, but I think maybe I'm a little hungry.  Anyways, instead of being able to look at each candidate on the merits of their beliefs and stance on the myriad of different issues that we care about, and judge which candidate holds the beliefs that best reflect our own, the political parties are determining at the outset what the party position is regarding each issue, and each candidate is then scrambling to fit themselves into the party box that is most like them, or at least most likely to get them elected.
      Of course you will always have someone come along and argue that this is a free country, and anyone can campaign and win their way into an elected office if they simply follow the procedure for doing so.  That is true, but the political parties that we have holding most of the electorate have spent a very long time at the local, state, and federal level making sure that they have the advantage in the process, and they have upped the stakes time and time again until the business of getting elected to office really is big BUSINESS.  Just like general store trumps street vendor, and big box store trumps general store, they have made it very hard for someone who isn't playing their game to even get a ticket way up in the nosebleeds.
      Man, I'm just queen of the metaphor tonight, aren't I?  Again, my apologies.  That last one did however bring me to a very important point.  Politics is not a game.  It is not a sport where we are mere spectators meant to watch as the opposing teams bloody each other until one scores more points by the final bell.  Our government was designed to be a representative government, and our elected officials are supposed to represent our views and our interests at home and abroad.  I don't think very many people are left that hold the opinion that it works the way it was intended anymore.
     The worst thing that the political parties can be accused of, and should be held accountable for, is their increasing tendency to treat the public as though we are stupid.  They have stopped even serving the function of providing us with information about the candidates that they are promoting, and instead spoon feed soundbites that are intended to inflame us into hating the other guy.  They market their candidates to us, and they tailor their message so as to engender the most fear and anger as possible in the hearts of the voting public as they can by customizing the message that their candidate delivers to play on the worst fears of the group being targeted. This fearmongering has led to a populace convinced that no candidate who holds views on an issue contrary to one's own can ever be elected because they will automatically begin a crusade to destroy the thing you hold dear, and that every politician elected must automatically go to work forcing the public through law to act, believe and behave as the people who elected them do.  There is no longer any room for compromise, or any incentive to leave anything free of legislation and government control.
       Now every issue is open for discussion and must be dealt with by government, as long as it can be used to drum up support for a candidate somehow.  Every candidate must promise to go into public office with guns blazing, ready to introduce new legislation addressing every problem that the people of our nation face, even if it is not a problem that government can ever hope to fix in a way that benefits everyone, or even that benefits the majority of citizens.  In order to make sure that everyone's voices and concerns are heard and addressed, the political parties have given rise to a subset of government in the form of committees, departments, and lobbyist groups that exist outside of the political process as it was designed.  Rather than electing the people who carry out the business of our country, we are simply left with the option of electing the people who now cater and pander to those who are really doing the work.  And to make it even better, the "two party system" holds our legislators in check by requiring them to agree with the party position in order to continue receiving party support.
       Thankfully, this is one problem that there is a solution for, and it isn't a difficult one to implement or understand.  You start by getting rid of political parties all together.  By simply removing that little letter that appears behind a candidates name on the ballot, you take away the ability of the voters to simply say, I like R's better than D's.  Or L's or whatever.  This means that those of us who do vote, should we wish to ensure that we are electing the person who best represents us, will need to take the initiative and learn about those candidates that we are casting a ballot for.  Voters who choose not to inform themselves can still vote using arbitrary criteria such as snippets of gossip, whose name in print gives them a fuzzier feeling, or eenie meenie.
      Please stay tuned for our next installment, in which we explain how we can ever hope to survive without the big dog political parties to help the little dog candidates without a boatload of cash get elected to any position higher than dogcatcher. 
      

        

How We Can Survive Without A Two Party System

This post was originally written on 1/5/2012

Once you take away the political parties, you are left with trying to decide how to fund elections and support candidates.  Again, this one actually isn't that hard to manage when you consider the fact that it's ridiculous for politicians to be spending two years and millions of dollars campaigning to get a job that pays a couple hundred grand a year.  There is nothing wrong with citizens volunteering their time to help promote a candidate whose views they believe in.
         Start at the local level and anyone who can convince a set percentage of the voting public to endorse their petition to get on the ballot may do so.  Then that person moves on to the state level, and must convince a percentage of that voting public to support their moving on to a national level when appropriate.  Prior to having their candidacy accepted at even the local level, each candidate must clearly and concisely express their views in writing, in a form that is easily and inexpensively able to be disseminated to anyone who wishes to know.  If during the course of their campaign their views change, they need to clarify that in writing and explain that their stance has changed.
        Once candidates have managed to gain enough support, through the efforts of themselves and their volunteer supporters, to move into the arena in which their election will be decided, funds collected by the appropriate government in the form of taxes and donations to support their election should be dispersed equally among each of the qualifying candidates, starting with half of the sum total of monies held in the fund. This money may be used to cover the expenses incurred by the candidate in order to campaign in the area from which they are trying to draw votes.  These monies cannot be used for the expenses of anyone other than the candidate.  Staff, spouses, anyone else who wishes to accompany the candidate must do so on  a voluntary basis and on their own dime.  Any candidate who cannot manage to drum up enough support among those closest to them to earn their loyalty and assistance with their campaign without recompense probably isn't someone who is going to inspire the public at large to vote for them either.
        With regard to television ads, print ads, etc. each candidate will be given equal time on public television in which to explain their views in whatever way they see fit.  All information regarding the candidate must be delivered directly by the candidates themselves, rather than by political action committees in the form of support or attack ads.  Candidates may no longer accept or request public donations from supporters to pay for their campaigns, nor may they hand out crap like bumper stickers, pencils, fans, etc.  Businesses are allowed and encouraged to create and sell such items to the public should they wish, but none of the proceeds from these sales may be given to the candidate in furtherance of their campaign.
        Debates should continue to exist, and should be open to all qualifying candidates, with each candidate being asked and allowed to answer every question put forth.  Questions for individual candidates should be sent to their campaign headquarters and responded to by the candidate in a newsletter or something that is disseminated to the public at regular intervals.  Whether these debates are corporately sponsored, or how they are made public is immaterial.  As long as they are open to all candidates and each candidate is allowed to participate equally.
        Primary elections may still be used to narrow the field of candidates in national elections, and each state may continue to set their own rules for primary elections as long as they conform to the following guidelines- 1) Each state primary must occur at the same time, so as not to grant any state's primary more weight than any other.  2) All qualified candidates must be included in the same primary.  3) The primary must be open to all qualified voters.  4) Ample time must be given during which voters may cast their primary ballot, allowing voters a reasonable window of time in which to cast their ballot without requiring them to drop everything in order to do so (i.e. a 24 hour time period in which to cast one's ballot vs you must be here between 10 and 11 am on the fourth Sunday of March, and oh yeah, that happens to fall on Easter this year)  5.) Undue hardship may not be imposed upon the voting public in the form of unreasonable distance between polling locations or voting requirements (i.e. no setting up one primary voting location for every 5 counties or requiring every voter to show 3 forms of ID, one being a major credit card.
         Should a candidate choose to drop out of the race, whether it be following a poor result in primary elections, or at any time for any reason, all campaign monies still unspent by them at that time on legitimate campaign expenses (yep, they do have to keep receipts and justify those expenditures) must be returned to the fund to be distributed among the remaining candidates.  Monies returned by candidates leaving the race prior to the primaries may be dispersed among the remaining candidates in equal shares as they are received.  Following a week after any primary elections, during which time each candidate can take a breather and reconsider their candidacy, the remaining half of the public election funds will be distributed to the campaigns of those candidates remaining in the race.  The same rules will apply regarding the expenditure of those monies.
        Come election day, a system of voting that is standardized for every voter eligible to vote in the particular election will take place.  States may still choose their own system of voting, but in the case of national elections, a uniform method of recording votes must be used.  This may lead to voters casting a paper vote for state elections and an electronic vote via touch screen for national elections- don't worry it'll be okay.  We are a species that has adapted to microwave ovens and flat screen TV's, we can adapt to a slightly different method of saying "I like that guy"
        Elections will be decided by popular vote, in the interest of choosing our candidates in a manner that represents the majority of the people who have voted.  In regards to local and state elections, the needs and wishes of each citizen of the town, county or state must be considered.  In regards to national elections, we are all citizens of one nation, and not just a collection of states.  Should an decision only have repercussions or benefits for the citizens of a particular state, it is not a decision that should be made by a national government anyways.
        Following each election, a period of three weeks will be taken in which to count every vote and settle any disputes regarding those votes.  No winner will be declared until the end of that period.  Sorry cable news networks, you can put away your maps and find something else for your pundits to do besides declare the election won before Alaska's polls have even closed.
        For my next submission, I intend to address what I personally think the role of our national government should be.  But first I need a short break.  Thank you for reading thus far, and I hope you will return for more, even if it's just to see how much more I can piss you off.

Why I Will Argue With Stupid People Until I Stroke Out.

This post was originally written on 1/5/2012

It seems like lately the planets have aligned to bring out all the stupid people in the world in force.  So I spend many of my days frustrated and angry unless I hide in my house and refuse to accept any input from the outside world.  Since I have children and a family and a pathetic little excuse for a life, this is not a practical solution for me.  Plus it's really boring, cause I'm stuck watching a small selection of the same movies and reading books that I've owned for years when I do.
       Before you stop reading and assume that I am considering anyone who thinks differently than I do to be one of the aforementioned stupid people, let me make it clear that this is not the case.  Stay with me for a bit, because I do have a point here, and it's not a hard one to follow or accept if you're willing to open your mind and let something besides your own preconceived notions in.
      First, you have to understand the distinction between ignorance and stupidity.  Ignorance is the lack of knowledge about something- essentially that you have not learned about something.  Stupidity is the insistence that you know something even when evidence exists to the contrary, and you refuse to educate yourself before you act on your ignorance.
      Now, in my personal sphere, the examples of stupidity that crop up most often and just make me feel like I have to argue with someone occur most often in the areas of politics and religion.  Usually when those two subjects begin to overlap and become intertwined.  Since we here in the US are in the middle of a very heated political cycle, my blood pressure is taking a beating.
     Throughout history we as Americans have lived through many periods of upheaval.  We have fought many wars at home and abroad to gain our land and our independence from outside influence.  Shamefully, some of these battles took place to wrest from others what we were not willing to ask for and share with those who were here before us as well.  Throughout our existence as a separate and sovereign nation, we have continued to grow and evolve through the addition of many different people, ideas, and technology.  We have struggled amongst ourselves and seen the abolition of slavery, and the recognition of ALL men and women as being created equal.  Another thing that we have seen is a tendency in times of fear and change for us to forget that we are all one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.  During these times, we become a nation of individuals, divided by the things that make us different from one another, whether it be race, culture, religion, country of origin, or sexual orientation.  During these times we fight amongst ourselves to assert our authority over and right to impose our way of life upon those who are different from us, rather than to trust in our system of government to do what is necessary for the good of all and to not do what only benefits the few.
        Currently we are facing the fears of a weakened economy, a changing situation abroad that leads us to fear what other countries can or will do to us, and a shifting demographic within our own borders which leaves many to question whether the country their grandchildren will grow old in will bear any resemblance to the one they grew up in.  Scary stuff, it's true.  But nothing worse that what we have faced and survived in our past.  To answer the question of how scary it will become, we must ask ourselves how willing we are to educate ourselves about the bad times we've had before, and learn from the mistakes we have made- or whether we are going to blindly move forward and repeat them.
        My biggest fear in these times is of the people who vehemently insisting that we return to the way were at some idyllic time in our distant past.  It matters little whether they are referring to the Era of Ronald Reagan, or the 1950's, or before our Civil War.  What matters is that these people are proposing that we revert to this perfect time because it is their vision of a Utopian society as it pertains to THEM.  They are not giving thought to what the major struggles of the day were for our nation or our citizens as a whole.  They are willing to trade the progress and changes that have improved the lives of countless men and women in exchange for what they believe would make them content and secure.  Take the population we have \ back to 1981?  We force millions of gay men and women back into the closet.  Take us back to 1952?  African American children are not allowed to school with white children, and their parents can't drink from the same water fountain as a white man.  Back before the Civil War?  Herman Cain would be the property of Rick Perry.  That may not matter to the person calling for the change, but it certainly isn't liberty and justice for all.
         You may have noticed that I keep referring to the Pledge of Allegiance, and you may also be thinking that I am missing something when I do.  There is a reason for that, and it brings me to my next point.  The Pledge of Allegiance, as it was originally written, goes like this:

            "I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation indivisible,    
with liberty and justice for all." 


         These words were written by Francis Bellamy in 1892 as a submission to a contest held by a magazine.  The winning submission was to be included along with every flag sold to public schools, in the hopes of drumming up interest by school leaders to have a flag for each school.  It was first used in schools during Columbus Day celebrations in October of 1892.
         Ordinarily, the written words of an individual are considered to be their intellectual property, and to appropriate and use those words as your own, or to change them, has consequences.  But in 1923 the National Flag Conference decided to change it to specify the flag of the United States of America.  Later, in 1942, 11 years after Bellamy's death, Congress officially recognized this version of it:

            "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

           Later, The Knights of Columbus began adding the words "under God" when reciting the pledge at the opening of each meeting, and began a campaign to get Congress to recognize this addition for the entire nation.  From 1951-1954, several attempts to pass this through Congress failed, as did requests to then President Truman asking him to make the change.  It wasn't until 1954, when newly inaugurated President Eisenhower was approached with the proposal, that the change was made.  It was then, on Eisenhower's request, that the bill was proposed to Congress and the bill was made law.  It is important to note that this was during the same time period as McCarthyism.  This was a time when we as a nation were in fear of Communist Russia, and one of the main things that set us apart from the Communists was religion.  Here, we are free to believe and practice any religion we choose.  Communism in Soviet Russia imposed on it's citizens state atheism, and prohibited the practice of any religion.  Reminding folks on a regular basis that ours was a nation under God while theirs was not probably didn't sound like a bad idea at the time.
           My point when it comes to the Pledge of Allegiance is this:  Lately we hear a lot of people arguing that ours is a Christian country, and using those two words in the Pledge of Allegiance to support that argument.  They mistakenly claim that these words are in the Constitution, or assert that because some of the men who wrote our Constitution practiced Christian religions that they intended that we base our society on Christian principles.  They reach back into history and point out that the Pilgrims were Christians, and claim that these are the people who founded our nation, so we must be a Christian nation.  And they usually argue the loudest when insisting that a Christian belief that requires or prohibits a certain behavior should be made a national law that applies to every citizen.  They place this assertion on signs and yell it on street corners when they insist that others who do not share their faith have no place in our society.  They use this argument when claiming the right to make those who do not share their beliefs give time and space for them to espouse them, but without being willing to give the same time and space to espouse their own beliefs.
           We are once again in a time of fear, and we are becoming divided.  Stupid people who refuse to educate themselves about who and how our nation has come to be what it is today are using their ignorance to try and draw lines in the sand.  I fear that by not standing up to this threat I will allow it to come to pass.  And one day I will find myself living in a country where my life is dictated by beliefs I do not share, my behavior is checked by laws I have no voice to question, and my right to even be here is taken away.  So I argue.  Every single time someone charges forward to demand a change that is in violation of the document I hold sacred because they only care about what they hold sacred, I fight back. And I will continue to do so even if it does make me stroke out and die.  Because it's better to fight for the truth that I believe in than risk living with someone else's lies.

Public School Is Not Just The Cheaper Version Of Whatever School You'd Send Your Kid To If You Were Loaded

        This post was originally written on 1/5/2012

        I rarely get the opportunity now to see a political attack ad on television and have it piss me off.  That's cause I got pissed off enough at my cable company after a series of rate hikes that jumped my bill by 35% in 2 years that I cancelled my subscription a year and a half ago.  But thanks to the wonders of the internet, occasionally there will be an ad that is so stupid- so offensive- that it does cross my path.  This time it was a Rick Perry ad.  Basically whining about how he hates living in a country where gays can be soldiers, but cute little God Warriors can't pray or celebrate Christmas at school.  Vote for me and I'll shove all those freaks so far back in the closet they'll turn into albinos from lack of sunlight exposure.
        Anyone who has been paying even the slightest bit of attention has probably noticed that I'm not a fan of the current crop of GOP candidates, or really even Republicans in general.  For the record, I judge every candidate on what they say, what they do, and what they've done.  I don't give a shit about what they say they will do, and that applies no matter which party they belong to.  I admit that I judge Republicans with more scrutiny, but that is because there are some pillars of the GOP platform that I feel need to be dynamited.
         Anyways.  My particular beef with this particular ad is about the public school system, and what it is and is not.  This seems to be a big area of debate, and that debate has been getting louder and louder during my lifetime.  Here is my view:  public schools exist to provide ALL students with the information they need to grow up, get a job, and support themselves well enough that they can stay alive and maybe even have some of the stuff they want.  That is what they are there for, and it's the only thing they are there for.
         We educate our children so that they can become independent of us.  Over time several different options for them to obtain their education have evolved.  Initially, individual states set standards for how much education was enough, and what that education needed to include.  These standards are primarily based on what is deemed necessary to get a job and not be a drain on society.  The more that employers require, the more that states require.  When some states proved that they were not requiring enough for their children to be able to move to another state and thrive, or that their schools were not designed for the benefit of all students regardless of race, color, creed, or socioeconomic background, then Federal standards were enacted.
          Public schools are one option that we as parents have for educating our children.  They are supposed to be the one size fits almost all option that get the job done and that's it option.  They exist so that every child in our country has a chance at competing in the workforce to provide for themselves.  Parents and politicians who do not recognize this have corrupted the idea to make it seem like public school is an educational option that each parent can customize to meet their own personal ideas of how THEIR child should be educated.  It's not.  It isn't about sports, or art class, or music class, or this club or that one because my little Johnny is interested in that and I think that his school should offer him the opportunity to experience that at no cost to me.  It also isn't about your child sharing the information you have taught them about subjects unrelated to the curriculum with their peers.  If something isn't a part of the curriculum, it is because the people who specialize in crafting that curriculum have deemed it unnecessary for the goal of educating a large group of students from varying backgrounds so they can grow up and find a damn job.
         So many people today expend so much energy talking about how America has become a nation of people who feel entitled to things they haven't earned.  Most of them are right, but they don't realize as they say this that they are just as guilty of exactly what they are railing against.  Our great grandparents would think that we were aliens from another planet if we showed up in the schools they attended to explain to them that they had the right to the type of public education we feel our children should have today.  When they attended school, education was what they were there for.  They learned to read and write, and if they were lucky, they had teachers who could teach them other subjects too.  The fact that our children's days are now filled with music classes, archery instruction for P.E., baseball, football, soccer, and synchronized swimming is not because educational standards have improved, it is because whiny ass parents have taken a free service that existed to meet a goal, and whined and complained until it met all the goals they used to have to pay for.
         Before you climb on your soapbox and complain about how the public school system is failing your child, or it isn't fair that your child isn't learning enough about what you feel is important in their school, remember that it is YOUR child.  Because public school isn't just about your child.  Sure, there needs to be some variations to meet the needs and goals of all the students whose parents choose the public option, but you can't please everyone all the time.  Parents need to realize that not everything that your child learns in life needs to be taught to them by their teachers at school, and not every child needs to be taught what your child learns if it has nothing to do with them growing up, getting a job, and living their life.
          Back to the point.  Rick Perry.  Christmas has absolutely nothing to do with our children learning anything that they will be able to turn into a marketable skill when they are adults.  It is a holiday that is celebrated in many different countries and in many different ways.  Many people don't celebrate it at all.  Santa Claus is make believe, Jesus and the cute little story about his birth on Christmas in the manger has absolutely no basis in fact that can be confirmed, so it doesn't even qualify as history.  This is why schools no longer celebrate Christmas.  They have taken the reasonable position of letting kids burn off some energy around the holidays by having little parties and making arts and crafts that are respectful of all beliefs, because they are little kids, it's the end of the grading period right before a long break, and it's FUN. When you insist on making it all about the kids who celebrate the way that you do, it's not much fun for the kids that don't share your tradition.  Plain and simple.  The Holiday Program is meant as a cute little thing for the kids to dress up and have their family come to ooh and aah.  If you want the nativity scene, go to a church and watch their play.  They'd probably be glad to have your child participate.  If you want to see Santa, fine.  But Santa needs to share the stage with the iconic symbols of the other kid's traditions, cause it's their school and their program too.
       Finally, if you want your kid to pray at school, fine.  Encourage them to do so whenever they have the time between doing the tasks that they are there to do.  Quietly, to themselves.  And understand that while they do, the other kids have a right to go on about their day without joining in or giving them a moment of silence with which to speak to their Maker.  Because public school is a state institution, and we have a very clear separation of church and state.  Same thing goes for religious education.  Let them take their bible for free reading time, but if you want them educated according to your beliefs, then you should choose an education option for them that provides that instruction, not expect every child to learn your beliefs when there is no measurable benefit for them to do so.

I Voted! NOT!

This one is from 11/08/11.

       So today is the first Tuesday of November, also known as Election Day here in the good old USA.  True, this year it's an off year, so all the elections are just piddly little municipal races for offices like Mayor and such, but still a noteworthy day for us civic minded Americans.
       Over the past few months I have been following the mayoral candidates in my town and weighing their pros and cons.  I had made my decision, and was ready to cast my vote.  Now all I had to do was figure out where to go to do it.  See, municipal elections don't draw as big a crowd as the nationals, so in order to keep election costs down, only a handful of polling places are staffed with people, and people often end up casting their ballots in an unfamiliar polling place.  In my case, I've only lived in this town for about 4 years, and I've moved since the last election, so I had absolutely no idea where I needed to go.  I also still haven't learned the town well enough to be able to follow a local's directions.
        I fully intended to spend last night scouring the internet figuring out where my polling place was.  I figured worst case scenario, I could go sometime today and drive in concentric circles around my neighborhood until I stumbled on a VOTE HERE sign.  But I fully intended that I would not miss my opportunity to cast my ballot.  Then a miracle came to me in the form of a telephone call around 3 pm yesterday afternoon.  It was a campaign worker.  For the candidate I intended to vote for.  They were calling to remind me that the election was today, and reminding me to go vote.  They were even nice enough to tell me where my polling place was.  600 S. XXXXX Dr., aka Fire Station Number 9.  Yay!  Less leg work for me!
       I'd like to note that I did point out to the person on the phone that said street ran east and west, and I questioned the address.  She assured me that the address was correct, and replied to my request for details on the location of the place with "It's on XXXXX Dr., and it is FIRE STATION NUMBER 9."  I gave up, thinking that since she was talking to me like I was an idiot, it must be pretty easy to find.
       Then hubby came home last night and informed me that he would be needing to drive my van to work today because something is wrong with his truck.  So my plans to head out early to vote just in case something got screwed up were dashed.  Even so, I was confident that with a minimum of searching, I would find the elusive polling place, and the hour between his coming home and needing to leave again for class would give me ample time to do so.
        So we fast forward to this evening.  Hubby comes home at 5, and the polling places close at 6.  Hubby also needs to leave for class by 6:15, so unless I want to take the monsters with me, I need to take care of business in a timely and efficient manner.  I pull out of my driveway at 5:03 and head to XXXXX Dr.
Here I should note that our town is laid out with numbered streets running North and South, intersected by Streets that seem to have been named at random after people and places running East and West.  Except for the Avenues, which are numbered and run East and West, sometimes intersecting their numbered Street counterparts.  For example, one of the local hospitals is located at the intersection of 8th Street and 8th Avenue.  We also have half streets, apparently added as an afterthought.  Hubby 2.0's favorite bar is on the corner of 6th1/2 street.  I assumed ( I know, don't even say it) that the place I was looking for would logically be located near the intersection of XXXXX Dr. and 6th Street.  Seemed a little far from my house, but okay.  So that's where I headed first, getting onto XXXXX Dr. at about 14th and heading West.  No joy.  So I turned around and headed back the other way.
        By 5:25 I was pulling into a gas station to put $5 worth of gas in the van because hubby had returned it to me with the idiot light shining, and I was afraid I was about to have my search cancelled due to lack of fuel.  No, I still has not found the infamous Fire Station Number 9, despite having driven almost 40 blocks up and down XXXXX Dr.  After gassing up in record time, I was struck with inspiration and decided to try one more idea.  I hopped on the interstate and drove down to the exit on the far western edge of town, got back on XXXXX Dr., and quickly located Fire Station Number 9 way the fuck out in the boonies past the Post Office.  It was 5:45 p.m. when I walked through the door.
         Old lady asks for my ID.  I hand it to her, on guard for further fuckery.  Sure enough, she can't find me on her list.  She passes me off to Old Lady # 2, who upon not finding me on HER list, passes me off to Old Lady #3.  Well whaddya know?  I'm not on anybody's fucking list!  Then the problem strikes me like a bolt of lightning.  Nice helpful campaign worker person?  Who so miraculously called to tell me where to go and cast my vote for the prodigal candidate?  She was working off of an old goddamn list!  When I finally got around to updating my license with the motor vehicles department a few months ago (another long story) I also updated my voter registration, which changed my polling place.  It had seemed strange that my polling place would be 10 miles from my house...
             A phone call quickly revealed that MY polling place was located a mere 10 short blocks from my house,  all the way back across town.  Some helpful, sickeningly cheerful little polling place worker gave me a "You've got 10 minutes, you can still make it!" and I headed out the door.  I knew I didn't have a fucking prayer of making it, and I really shouldn't even try since hubby needed me home so that he could leave, but I still found myself driving in the general direction of my proper polling place, cursing under my breath the whole way.  Never mind that it was 5:54 and I was heading for yet another location that I had unclear directions to (someone back at FS#9 had kindly informed me that the elementary school I was looking for was somewhere off 25th street) I figured that I had given an hour of my life, and I was GOING to vote.
             Alas, all hopes were dashed when at 5:56 I had to slam on my brakes to avoid rear ending a PT Cruiser.  As per usual, there was a train, stopped, on the tracks at XXXXX Dr. and 19th street.  PT Cruiser or the idiot in front of them had apparently not noticed the line of 40 unmoving cars in front of them, and had just about caused a pileup.  After my heart rate returned to normal, I said fuck it and drove home to wash down some ibuprofen with some caffeine, which I laced with booze for good measure.
           Oh, and the best part?  The polling place I should have gone to would have been my own child's school, had the town in their infinite wisdom not drawn the dividing line for the elementary school districts right down the center of my street.

The Point Behind Political Correctness.

This post was originally written on 1/14/2012

A lot of people complain about Political Correctness, and how it infringes on THEIR rights to free expression and independent thought.  They talk about how frankly, they think it's all just a bunch of bull created by whiny little babies who need to shut up and get over it.  Most, if not all, of these people need to get over THEMSELVES and realize that PC isn't about them, it's about everybody.  Plainly and simply it's about getting along.  As individuals we may feel that "getting along" is unimportant, but since the consequences of not getting along typically have repercussions for groups rather than just individuals, everyone else in the group needs to be considered.
    The fact of the matter is that as human beings, we have 1 planet, made up of 7 continents, that are currently divided into about 196 countries.  Since the foreseeable future does not hold any likelihood that any of those countries are going to realize any potential for creating an off planet colony, so that that people can move to space should they get sick of their neighbors down here on the ground, we're all kinda stuck making do with this reality.
    Right now we have a global population of somewhere between 6 and 7 BILLION people, all trying to live out our lives on about 57.5 MILLION sq miles of land.  Now, I'm not a math whiz, so my exploration of the numbers is going to end here, but suffice it to say that this basically means there is only so much land that each person on the planet can claim for themselves without bumping into the land that someone else can claim for THEMSELVES.
    Up until about a century ago, there was still a fair bit of land left for us to spread out on.  To be fair, there WERE people using that land, but it WAS there for the taking or buying.  People who just could not bring themselves to play along with those around them still had the option of packing up their stuff and moving away.  Now?  Well now just about every square inch of land that anyone WANTS to claim HAS been claimed.  With the exception of Antarctica (access to which is controlled by Mother Nature and some scientists with government and big money backers) every area of the world has been claimed by a person, group, or government.
    So what happens when all the land belongs to someone and you can no longer just move away from the people who bug you?  Well, history tells us a little about that.  We can look back at how people handled the situation back before they realized that the world was bigger than just the portion they could walk across.  We can also look at how the different groups of people who couldn't decide WHO should move have handled it.  We will look at the different options, from least to most extreme.
    Option One: Ask nicely for your neighbor to quit bugging you.  This option has been exercised with limited success in the past.  The obvious problem is that it relies on the neighbor to be a decent sort who realizes that they're being an ass, and is amenable to toning it down.  When this is not the case, most reasonable people will move on to option two.
    Option Two:  Barter for a peaceable solution.  This can involve a number of different approaches, from negotiating a system where the space you and your neighbor has to share is divided between you (i.e. you can use it during the day time and I'll stay out of your way, if you agree to let me use it at night in exchange for the same consideration) all the way up to flat out buying your neighbor out of their space to induce them to go somewhere far away from you.  Often this option is used by governments to try and settle ongoing disputes.
Sometimes it works, and sometimes the interested parties move on to option three.
     Option Three: Fight about it.  This is what not getting along usually leads to.  Eventually someone just cannot be satisfied with the way things are, so they just have to bring the situation to it's inevitable conclusion and see it settled once and for all.  Typically these fights start with words, and rapidly progress to physical violence, which continues until one side is either dead or begs for mercy.  We're talking about war here folks, good old fashioned bring out your weapons and let's settle this war.
     Now that we have covered what our options are, let's take it back around to Political Correctness, shall we?  Hopefully by now you have caught on to the fact that Political Correctness is a kinder, gentler way of saying War Avoidance.  Because it is.  Taking it back down to the individual level- your right to be a dick directly coexists with the rights of everyone else to get tired of you and kick your ass.  Here you may be saying a variety of things, such as "I'm willing to take that risk" "Bring it bitch" or "I can take em".  The problem is that these fights are almost never confined to just individuals.  It starts with guy A running his mouth and guy B getting sick of it, then it progresses to all of guy A's friends jumping in on his side and all of guy B's friends jumping in on HIS side.  Then you've got a real rumble going on.  Soon it is chaos as everyone who sees the fight starts picking sides and getting into their own fights with people supporting the other side.  That, boys and girls, is commonly referred to as a riot.  And if those sides decide to take a break and get themselves organized and armed before they start the fighting, it's a war.
     The other thing that we as a species have been busy doing in the last century or so (besides populating the Earth like bunnies and settling all the land) is that we have been learning how to kill each other in spectacular and horrific ways.  Little guns, Big Guns, pink, yellow, and green guns.  Poison gases, bombs, and the mother of all people killers- the NUCLEAR bomb.  We've made so much progress in this area that you now run the risk of pissing off the wrong person and having them destroy your little corner of the planet as a Fuck You Very Much.
     By now I'm sure that there are plenty of people shaking their heads and saying "No one is going to drop the A bomb just cause their feelings got hurt when I called them a name."  Really?  Are you so sure about that?  If you are, then fine- you go on with your bad self.  But do the rest of us a favor, those of us who have the unfortunate privilege of sharing the same neighborhood, town, country, or political allies as you- please go down to your local hardware store and buy some supplies.  Make a big sign, and put it on the roof of your house where it can be seen by anyone flying overhead or peering down with Google Earth.  On this sign, please paint the following words, nice and clear- "I'M THE ASSHOLE, SO GO AHEAD AND BOMB ME, YOU STUPID FUCK!"  Hopefully anyone who is inclined to take you up on the offer will go ahead and use a LITTLE bomb that doesn't wipe out your neighbors as well.
    Anyone who still thinks that Political Correctness is crap, just keep in mind that most of us have some kind of access to the internet now.  The individual that you are offending with your "opinions" about their lifestyle, religion, what you think about their outfit, etc., now has the same ability to connect with others like them that you have.  And the people they connect with may be batshit crazy and trigger happy.  So good luck with that.

Liberals Are Not Anti-Capitalism!

This post was originally written on 1/15/2012

That's it.  Everybody out of the pool.  The piss me off button has just been pushed, and now it's time to talk turkey.  I just read yet another article that basically boiled down to "Republicans believe in capitalism, Democrats want everyone to get everything for free."  Now I feel like I have to explain, as if to my third grader, why this is false.
      We all have a rough idea of what capitalism is, right?  Hopefully you do, because it is actually something that doesn't have a clear definition.  Basically it means that people or businesses own stuff, and sell it to other people or businesses.  The Free Market is another term that gets tossed around with capitalism a lot, and that means that people or businesses that are selling the same stuff can all sell their stuff at the same time, and compete for customers.  Very simplified explanation, but remember- third grader.
      In the United States, we have capitalism, as opposed to socialism or communism or whatever other ism.  Businesses set up shop, decide on a product or service that they want to sell, and then compete with other businesses to try and sell more of their stuff to people who want to buy it.  Socialism means that pretty much everything is owned by the state, and in turn the state takes care of the needs of it's citizens.  Communism means that everything is owned by the group equally, and everyone is entitled to an equal share.
     It is not my intention to discuss the relative merits of each system, or get into how well each system is working out for the countries that practice them.  Frankly, it is really hard to apply any of these systems to an entire country, so very few of the well known countries have been successful in sticking with any of these systems in their purest form.  There is always a little bit of each type of system being used to keep a country and it's citizens going, because in all reality each one works a little bit some of the time.
     As far as the United States goes, we're mainly fans of the capitalism thing.  People who own businesses are usually big fans, and people who buy from those businesses are fans most of the time.  But pure capitalism does have it's problems.  Because with pure capitalism, everything must be purchased to keep the system healthy.  People buy stuff so that businesses can afford to make more stuff for people to buy so that...get it?
     Taking it back around to politics; somewhere along the line, The Republican Party decided that they were the party of capitalism, the supporters of business, and the party for the people who owned or wanted to own businesses.  When that got decided, Democrats (the other guys) got cast as being anti capitalism, bad for business and our way of life, blah , blah , blah.  This isn't really an accurate characterization, because Democrats like making money just as much as the next guy, we just tend to realize that not everything can be about making money.
     Personally, I can agree with most of what your average Republican political candidate says about everything except for the hot button social issues.  What I cannot agree with is what they actually mean.  When they say that the US government should stop spending like it's water, I can agree with that.  But when what they mean is that the US government should stop spending money on everything except the stuff we say you should that just so happens to increase the profits of this multi-billion dollar company that I happen to know the owner of, well then all of a sudden I don't agree with them quite as much.  When they say that government should be less intrusive in our daily lives, I'm down with that.  Until you catch on that what they are asking for is for government to stop telling them that they can't dump toxic chemicals into the water supply, then it's whoa, hold on there.  Especially when right after they say less government intrusion, they say government should make laws about who you can consider to be your family.
    Back to capitalism.  We have always been a capitalist society.  True, back when our country was getting started, there was a lot more bartering, and a lot more going out and getting things for yourself rather than buying them, but that's because not many people were flush with cash, most people didn't live right around the corner from a Kwik E Mart, and business owners had to be pretty certain that the product or service they were selling was going to be in demand before they gave up their day jobs to start a business.  Then business was focused on providing the things that people couldn't provide for themselves.
    The problems came, as they usually do, when we added a lot more people and then got more serious when technology joined the scene.  More people means more workers.  More technology means less labor is needed to do the jobs that the people used to do.  So more people are sitting around wondering what to do to make money so they can buy stuff.  If nobody is hiring, then what do you do?  You find something that you can sell to the people who have jobs!  Hooray!  All the problems were solved.  As the farms got machines and needed few hands, and the factories got machines and needed fewer laborers, more small businesses popped up to sell people more stuff.
    Eventually you get to the point where just about every idea has already been thought of.  Businesses already exist to provide the people with things they need, and another business that opens up selling the same thing as someone else means either both of them are going to earn so-so money, or one of them just isn't going to make any money at all because people like buying from the competition better.  So then what do you do?  Well, think of something else to sell them.  Something they don't need, but maybe you can convince them that they need it, or at least make them want it really bad.
    Time passes, and everything that anyone could ever need or want is for sale somewhere.  But we're still adding people, and technology is still cutting the demand for workers.  Times start to get kinda hard, and pretty soon you have a lot of people, but not a lot of them are making money.  This kills off the little businesses first, but eventually even the big businesses are feeling the pinch, because broke people don't buy anything that they don't absolutely have to.  Then someone hits on a brilliant plan.  What if I could figure out a way to MAKE people buy my product?  How do you make them?  Well, pass a law of course!  And how do you pass a law?  Darn, you can't.  But government can!  Suddenly you have businesses working with government officials to force people to buy that business' product.
    Let's give an example, shall we?  Let's examine water.  Now, people didn't always buy water.  It's in the ground and in lakes and streams, you just went to where the water was and carried it home.  Or you dug a well and it came to you.  Digging wells and carrying water is pretty hard work, so at some point an enterprising person decided to create a business around digging wells.  Then another person decided to create a business around running pipes from a stream or reservoir.  At that time, people could choose to either continue to get their own water, or pay someone else to do the hard part for them.  Eventually it occurs to someone that it would be a great idea if towns ran pipes from where the water was to each house.  So towns paid for this service, and collected money from the people who lived in the towns to pay for it.  Of course, people could still choose not to have a pipe run to their house, they could still dig their own well, or carry it from the stream.  The business owner wasn't happy that people didn't want to buy his water, so he got together with the government of the town and got a law passed that everyone in the town had to get their water from the city source, no more digging your own well.  Once that law was passed, the Water Company could start charging people whatever he wanted to charge, cause it was illegal for them to not use his water, and they certainly can't do without water.
      This is the problem that many democrats, myself included, have with capitalism.  It's not that the whole system is bad, it's that it has limits.  It is limited by the needs and wants of the consumer.  Business owners never want to hear that they can only expect to make so much from their business, and so the unscrupulous business owners try to use government to guarantee a profit even if the free market just isn't that interested in buying their product.  I can go out and buy the ingredients to make my own lemonade at home.  I may decide, when I have spare cash, that I'd rather pay more to buy it from a company that sells it ready made.  But if I have a short paycheck due to an illness, or just decide that I want to go back to drinking homemade, I don't want the lemonade maker to convince the government to force me to buy lemonade.  Especially if the government is also going to make rules that make it harder for some other lemonade maker to come into town and compete with the first guy.; which forces me to buy lemonade from him at whatever price he wants to say it's worth.
      On a final note, the other problem with the idea of capitalism is that we really don't have a "free market."  In a free market, every business is left to it's own devices, to succeed or fail on their own.  A business that mismanages itself into bankruptcy goes out of business in a free market, they don't get infusions of capital from a source that will not make a profit on that investment.  Having the kind of fallback plan that leads to government bailouts, that is Socialism, plain and simple.  When only certain companies that offer a product or service qualify for that type of assistance, their competitors are not free to compete with them in the market place.
       So, capitalism is good.  Greedy, corrupt business owners and the politicians who work for them are bad.  Class dismissed.

My Thoughts On Catholic Institutions Being Required To Follow Laws Against Their Beliefs

This post was originally written on 2/13/2012

This is a topic that is starting to get way too much play in the media and the minds of the American public, and since I for some reason cannot comment on Yahoo news articles lately, I'm going to blog my thoughts.  Bear with me, it could get long and bitchy as I wander through all the different areas where this subject invariably leads.
      First let me say this- Corporations are NOT people.  Corporations are things that are owned and run by people.  Not the same thing.  A person converts oxygen into carbon dioxide, organic foodstuffs into calories that are burned as energy, and has the potential to reproduce another person sexually even if they lack the social skills to convince another person to help them accomplish that goal.  A car wash cannot do these things, a Dairy Queen franchise cannot do these things, and neither can a church, an insurance company, or a bank.  Doesn't matter how big or small those institutions are, they just simply are not people in their own right.
      Humanity at its basest level is the individual person.  Then those people group themselves together in different ways using various criteria that makes them similar to each other.  Joining those groups does not make the individual any more or less than the person they started out being.  They may add labels to themselves because of their associations, such as a label that identifies the country they were born in, or a label that denotes that they believe a certain religious doctrine, like a particular type of music more than another, but they don't gain any extra powers over and above those they already had as an individual, like the ability to fly or shit golden nuggets.
      The country in which I live, the United States of America, had its leaders decide long before I was born  that our country was going to recognize each individual as having the same value as every other individual, and the same rights to do some basic things too.  It took them and later leaders and citizens another good length of time to sort out exactly just what was meant by that, but by the time I was born, it was accepted by the government that it really does mean each person in this country, as long as you are old enough to vote and haven't done anything to prove yourself unworthy of being able to vote.  Criteria for determining who is ineligible have been figured out too.
     So we have a country where each person who is allowed to vote gets to, and must, vote on things as an individual person.  Think something through for yourself, then announce what your personal choice is in the matter.  We don't have to ask anyone's permission to vote our own conscience, and nobody is allowed to punish us for not agreeing with another individual as long as we follow the agreed upon rules.
     Where am I at?  Oh yeah, individuals.  Okay, so whole bunch of individuals, each with their own opinions and each one gets to have them and act on them and such within the laws.  Nobody starts out or gets to be better than any other individual, yada, yada, yada.  Now lets move on to the Catholic Church:
     The Catholic Church is not a person.  Not an individual.  It is a group of individuals, headed by another individual, that bases their group on a shared belief in a religion.  No problem with the individuals in that group being a part of that group, or for believing what they believe about their religion.  Problem comes from the people who belong to that group thinking that their group is somehow entitled to special treatment just because it happens to be a large group, or that their beliefs are "right" while everyone believes something that is "wrong".
      Like many other groups, or corporations, or non persons who are believed in and supported by actual persons, the Catholic Church would really like to influence American politicians (and through them, the American public) to follow the rules that this particular church thinks people should live by.  This is a pretty big problem, because not only is the Catholic Church not a person who is eligible to vote in the United States of America, its headquarters and leading members aren't even persons who LIVE in the United States of America.  They've already got their very own little country where they have set their own rules for the citizens to live by.  So it's kind of like Queen Elizabeth of England pressuring our politicians to make changes to the way we do things (or not make changes) according to the rules that her English subjects have to follow.  Funny, that seems awfully familiar.  Almost like we've been through something like that before...
       Oh yeah!  We HAVE!  It was called the American Revolution, and it happened right before those leaders I mentioned a little while ago declared that we were an independent country, and that each individual that lived here had the right to certain unalienable truths, like the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness.  They also took the time to mention something about all men (yeah, pre women's rights movement, I know) being equal.  Hmm, looks like we've already got a pretty clear idea of what we are expected to think of the leader of another country telling our citizens what we can and can't, or have to do.  It's even in our history books.
      So the Catholic Church has things that they don't like about our country and our citizens, and we as a nation are already clear on the fact that as a group, we don't really give a shit what they think.  Looks like the Pope and all the other Catholics that are not American citizens themselves can kiss our ass.  Those members of the Catholic Church who do happen to be American citizens of course do have the right to share their opinions with the rest of us, and to use their voices and votes to try and influence the way that things get done around here, but there are some rules that those pesky leaders who started it all laid down about that too.
     See, it seems that one of the big problems that led to the people coming here, and starting us out on the path to becoming an independent nation, was religion.  Not to say that none of these people believed in a religion- many of them did.  Problem was that not all of them believed in the religion that was accepted by the leaders of the countries they came from.  Sometimes they'd start out believing in the same religious ideals as their leaders, then something would happen and those leaders would change their mind.  When that happened, the leader thought everyone should change their minds too, and sometimes people who didn't want to had bad shit happen to them.  Basically, the guys who set up our country thought that it would be best if the people leading the country stayed the hell out of the religion business, and left choices about religion up to the individuals.  They were very adamant about this, and made it one of the first rules we had. Government can't set up a religion, and they can't stop anyone from following a religion either.  Smart move.
       Of course, over time people have chosen as individuals to subscribe to the beliefs of a variety of different religions.  No problem there.  Also, over time, a vast number of laws have been written and enacted governing the behavior of the individual citizens that live in this country.  Some of those laws are good, some are bad, and some are just asinine.  Where they get especially asinine is when they are written to try and govern the behavior of non persons, or to govern them according to the complex beliefs of a group of persons who aren't thinking with their heads, but are instead reacting to something with their emotions.
      For example.  The rules and laws that have been written and enacted regarding the medical procedure known commonly as abortion.  This is a procedure that's origins are based in fact, in that it was discovered that a pregnancy that had begun could be stopped from reaching it's usual end by removing the cells that usually grow into a baby before they had a chance to grow into that baby.  It is indeed fact that this procedure can be done, and that it does accomplish the goal that it sets out to do.  Once it was proven that it could be done, fact took a back seat to emotion and people started arguing about the implications of that fact, and a whole lot of laws got passed based on how people felt about that fact.
     Certainly emotion plays a large part in many of our laws.  One could argue that unless an emotional reaction is stimulated, no one would care enough about anything one way or the other to try and control it.  But emotion has to at some point be tempered by logic, and when something comes along that inspires strong emotions about an issue, then that issue needs to be broken down to its simplest components in order for us to decide as a nation how we are going to react to it before we begin making laws to address it.  Some would claim that the simplest issue surrounding the abortion debate is when life begins.  I think that in order to hold true to the ideals of those leaders who set down our procedure for making laws, we need to ask ourselves whose opinion matters in this case.  In this case, it is hard to argue that the woman who is pregnant is the one who is most affected by whether or not she stays pregnant for the better part of a year.  Does the potential baby get a vote or a say?  Well, no.  Because even if that baby were born, under the laws of our nation, which have already been decided upon by citizens who were actually alive, they still wouldn't be able to vote to change or enact any laws for another 18 years.
      Let us get back to the issue actually at hand, before anyone's head explodes.  The Catholic Church.  They happen to own and operate a number of businesses here in the United States, as do citizens who belong to the Catholic Church.  Despite the fact that one's religion isn't supposed to confer upon them ay special status in our country, these businesses because of their affiliation with the Catholic Church have certain rights and privileges that other businesses like them which are not affiliated with a church don't have.  They get by with not having to allow people to do things that go against their religious beliefs on a variety of subjects in places that they own, they get by with allowing certain things that aren't allowed in other places as long as they happen in places that they own.  For example, they don't have to let doctors or patients in their hospitals save the cord blood of babies who are born there, even if neither the doctor or the patient is Catholic.  They can also have Casino nights down at the local Catholic Church in a county that prohibits gambling in any establishment.  This is because various Catholic citizens have chosen at different times to influence politicians to support the right of the church to run things their own way and call it protecting the free expression of religion.
       President Obama, in an effort to address some of the issues that we have with our nation's health care system, recently chose to make it law that certain Catholic institutions, namely those who employ people in positions that have nothing to do with promoting the Catholic religion, to offer to those employees the same type of health insurance coverage that businesses not owned by a church must offer to their employees who do the same jobs.  The Catholic Church and some of its members oppose this law, on the grounds that it forces the Catholic Church to support financially medical decisions that their employees make that go against the teachings and beliefs of the Catholic religion.  Well, we already know what the US and its citizens think of the Catholic Church (that non person) setting the rules for people who live and can vote here, and we already know what we think about the Pope setting the rules for the people who live and can vote here, so that leaves us with just the individual Catholics who live here and can vote.  What about them?
       Well, those people are certainly entitled to their own beliefs, and to live their own lives according to those beliefs.  But if the government, having been invested with the power of the people through our votes, cannot insist that we all live our lives according to the beliefs of a particular religion, then it certainly stands to reason that no individual can force another individual to lives according to a religion that they don't personally believe in either.  One can try to make their children follow those religious rules, but that's about as far as their power extends.  A business cannot belong to a particular religion, because a business is a thing.  Once the people who own that business expand it to serve and employ people who don't believe in the religion of the people who own that business, they can no longer claim that the business is a purely religious institution and cannot deny those who employees or customers of that business the right to make decisions of their own based on the beliefs that those people have.
      If Catholic institutions truly want to refrain from being subject to the laws that govern everyone equally, regardless of religion, then they need to limit their scope to only those things that fall under the purview of their beliefs and restrict the services that they provide only to their members.  It's as simple as that.  Close your doors to anyone who is not a Catholic, insist that every employee you hire be a Catholic in good standing with their local parish, and get those employees and customers to agree that they are willing to live under the laws of your church rather than the law of the country in which you are operating your business.  You cannot have your cake and eat it too.  The rest of the American public will find a way to go on without you, and there are plenty of individuals willing to open and operate businesses to accommodate those customers that you turn away, and hire those employees who do not share your beliefs.

Abortion- What Is It Good For?

This post was originally written on 2/20/2012

      First off, let's discuss the title of this blog.  When sitting down to write this, the song "War" By Edwin Starr popped into my mind.  For me, the medical procedure commonly referred to as abortion has a lot in common with war.  It isn't pretty, it isn't anything that anyone wishes to see or hear about, but it does exist and it does serve a purpose in our society.  Both are problems that many people within the society of man would prefer to see an end to, but it is unlikely that until the underlying causes that lead to those problems are effectively dealt with that either one of them will ever be eradicated.  So it felt right to me somehow to make the correlation between these two problems when I had to pick a title for a blog that is probably going to be difficult for me to write.
      Having been born in the United States some time after the Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court decision was made, there has never been a time that I can remember when a woman did not have the legal right to choose whether or not to carry her pregnancy to term.  Having been raised in a pretty dysfunctional family with a variety of parents who didn't waste much effort in hiding anything from the kids, I had a basic understanding of how human reproduction worked at a very young age, and the subject of abortion was one that I was familiar with before I was out of grade school.  I don't think that there has ever been a time in my life when my thoughts on the subject would classify me as anything other than Pro-Choice.
      I understand that for some men and women, life begins at the moment of conception, and they view any deviation from the path of fertilized egg to newborn baby as the loss of a life.  I do not agree with this view, but I feel no need to argue with those people and try to convince them to see this issue from my point of view.  Their beliefs and their choices are theirs to make based on what they believe.  It is my firm belief that it is up to each individual to live their life and make the choices that directly affect them for themselves, based on the beliefs that they hold.  I hold beliefs that are contrary to the norm about a variety of subjects, and I live my own life and make choices based on those beliefs almost every day.
      There are of course many arguments put forth by those who are Pro-Life or anti-abortion as to why women should not be allowed to make the choice to have an abortion, but they all boil down to one thing- someone other than the person who is pregnant thinks that it is wrong, and therefore it should be up to them to decide how that pregnancy turns out.  No other issue that is considered by man is seen by so many in such absolutely black and white terms.  Not one.  Not even the murder of another human being.  Murder of an already living person can sometimes be justified as self-defense, or collateral damage, or as being the result of the perpetrator's unbalanced mind.  Almost no one, when hearing that a child was killed in a war zone, will automatically condemn the person who caused that child's death without stopping to consider all the other complex issues surrounding the act.  Almost no one, when hearing that an intruder was killed by their victim, will stop to consider the life that was lost because someone was unwilling to part with their material goods.  For every situation that exists concerning living, breathing human beings there are shades of gray.
      The current political climate has resurrected arguments among members of our society, the one that we have here in the United States, not only about whose beliefs are correct regarding when life begins, but also whose beliefs are correct about the effect of different forms of birth control in preventing pregnancy, and whether access to those forms of birth control should be available to people, whether their use should be promoted, who should pay for them if they are, and who has the right to decide whether that access is granted or denied.  In short, we're spending a lot of time talking about SEX.  Who should be having it, when and why they should be having it, and what should happen if it leads to women getting pregnant after they have it.  At one extreme, we have deeply religious people claiming that only married people should be having it, and then only when they are trying to make a baby.  At the other extreme, we have people who thing anybody who wants to should be having it, but that as far as having kids goes, nobody should ever be allowed to have more than 1 or 2 if they can prove that they are fit to raise them and can support them- anybody else should have to abort any pregnancies that might result from all that sex if their birth control fails.  I think it's a safe assumption that the other 98% of people have opinions that fall somewhere in between those extremes.
       Since it is impossible for me to begin to grasp the reasoning of others that has led them to their personal opinions about abortion, I'm going to explain mine instead.  What I think, what I wish, and what has happened in my own life and the lives of women that I have known that brought me to this point believing what I do.
       I believe every woman faced with the prospect of carrying and delivering a baby needs to decide for herself whether that is something she is willing and able to do.  I believe that the decision should be made by her and her doctor, and I believe that the father of the child if he is known should be the only people included in that decision.  If the father is not known, then unless the mother is unsure of his identity due to having been raped, every effort should be made to identify him using DNA testing of amniotic fluid (at the potential father's expense) should he wish to be involved in the decision.  Should the mother wish to terminate the pregnancy and the father wish it to continue, I feel that the law should require the mother to enter into a surrogacy contract to carry and deliver the child for the father to raise as his own in exchange for financial compensation.  I believe that the going rate for a surrogate is $23,000 plus medical expenses, which works out to about  $3.40 an hour for a full term pregnancy being pocketed by a woman who is being forced to carry and give birth to a child that she did not want to have in the first place.  If the mother and father both wish to terminate, or the father is unable or unwilling to pay the price to rent the mother's body as an incubator for 280 days, then they are the ones to make that choice, no one else.
      As to what I wish?  Well that is completely different.  I wish that all the money that has gone into fighting for and against a woman's right to have an abortion over the years had instead been poured into research and development of  a safe and effective birth control implant.  This implant would be used to temporarily sterilize every male and female at the onset of puberty, and could then be removed at a later time upon request when those young men and women made the conscious choice that they actually wanted to begin trying to conceive a child.  Remember Robin Hood: Men in Tights?  Kind of like Maid Marian's chastity belt, but modernized....  Of course you're going to have your parents who will refuse to have their child implanted with something that could interfere with "God's Plan", but those kids might get lucky and actually avoid pregnancy by following the abstinence only education that their parents are preaching, plus once they are legally adults, they can choose for themselves to use more effective forms of birth control if they want to.  And if all else fails and those kids do end up making a baby that they didn't plan for and don't want? 
      Of course there are things that neither of my plans addresses.  What if a woman chooses to try and get pregnant, then discovers that her baby has something wrong that makes it less than perfect?  In that case, knowing that she consciously chose to get pregnant, she needs to give it a chance.  If she and her partner do not feel equal to the task of raising a special needs child, then they have the option to give that child up for adoption.  What if a woman is in imminent danger of losing her life by carrying her pregnancy to term?  Then she can choose to have an abortion, because no one can be asked to give up their own life for anyone else, born or unborn.  What if a woman is raped by a man while she is trying to conceive with another man?  Here I think that the mother's state of mind needs to take precedence.  If it is going to cause her psychological harm carrying a constant reminder of her rape to term, then she should be allowed to terminate the pregnancy.  Otherwise it is hoped that she could at least carry to term, even if only for the purpose of placing the child up for adoption.
       Ideally, even if none of my other ideas ever comes to pass- any person who goes beyond having an opinion against a woman's right to choose and begins to try and influence legislation forbidding women the right to choose should be required to adopt at their own expense one unwanted child.  Unless they are willing to put their money and their time where their mouth is, then they shouldn't be able to use their mouth to control what another person chooses to do with their money and their time.  Wouldn't be a bad idea to require those people to raise that child according to the beliefs and principles held dear by the person who created that child either.  See what they think of having to live their lives according to someone else's beliefs for a change.
       So how did I get here to the point where I hold such off the wall opinions about abortion and birth control and a woman's right to choose and everything?  Well, that's a long story.  Not to say that I'm not going to try and tell it, just cluing you into the fact that we're not done here yet.
       The first way that I got here was that my Mother got pregnant at 15 by a 21 year old man that my Grandmother thought was a "great guy"  Since he was such a great guy, Grandma pushed my Mother to keep dating him even after my Mother said she didn't really like him.  But don't worry, that guy isn't my father.  Cause the child my Mother conceived off of that guy, my Grandmother forced her to abort back when she was 15.  There wasn't any discussion beyond the fact that Mom told Grandma she was pregnant, and Grandma showed up in her room the next morning and told her she wasn't going to school.  Grandma drove her to the next town over (the hospital in town that Grandma worked for was a Catholic one, so that one wouldn't work) and next thing Mom knew, she was having an abortion.  She later learned that my Aunt had a similar experience when she turned up pregnant by the brother of that "great guy" I mentioned.  Not sure what Mom would have chosen for herself, she doesn't like to talk about that much.  Pretty sure that Grandma didn't give a damn what Mom thought, since she still never cares what anyone else thinks.
        The second way that I am here is because my Dad knocked up a girl while he was in his Senior year in high school.  Cute baby.  But that kid isn't me either.  The mother of that child moved out of town while she was pregnant with her folks, and when the baby was born she told everyone that it's father was a different guy, who she later married.  Everyone knew she was lying, and she even admitted that she was lying, but that guy was less of a shit head than my Dad, so she picked the better guy.  This left my Dad feeling 10 feet tall and bulletproof though.  Kind of like there was never any scrape he couldn't get out of.
       So then my parents hooked up with each other.  Why did those other pregnancies lead to me?  Well, if Mom had actually given birth to her child, there's no way in hell my Dad would have had anything to do with her.  Even if she had been forced to give the child up for adoption, the chances of the two of them coming together when they did are nil.  The only reason he was able to land my mother for the short time they were together was because she didn't have much choice but to shack up with someone in order to escape from her mother.  Had she fought to keep the baby she wouldn't have been able to keep up with his partying, and had she given it up, she wouldn't have ever come back to their tiny ass town afterwards.  Grandma would have shipped her off. And Dear Old Sperm Daddy?  Well, remember he already dodged one bullet, so he wasn't too worried about having to deal with any consequences of his behavior, so they just partied and had sex and pretended that everything was perfect.  Then came me....
      By this point, Mom was out of Grandma's, cause Grandma was off playing around with husband #3.  Her and Sperm Daddy tried to play happy family for a couple of year down in Texas, but him getting stoned and beating her ass broke up our happy home.  Mom came back up here with me and decided to try out the single mommy thing.  That lasted until she got knocked up by the guy she was having a fling with at work.  He was all of 19 years old, and she was a mature 24.  They actually got married, and fought like hell for couple more years after Brother Noah was born.  Then they decided that they wanted to get divorced, cause she thought he was a drunk, and he thought she was a bitch.  Too bad for all of us that she was pregnant again, and found out right after they split up...  Eventually they decided to give it another try, but not before Drunk Daddy told 8 year old little me not to get excited about the baby brother or sister I'd heard them fighting about, because Mom was gonna get an abortion.  Seems that they disagreed about that, and Mom obviously won, cause Baby Sister showed up right on schedule...
       While all of this was going on, Sperm Daddy had come back from Texas and married The Step Mom, and had given me a delightful <bullshit> little step-sister, aka Younger Sister (unplanned 17 year old pregnancy kid from TSM's first marriage) and Little Sister (planned, but was supposed to be a boy- oops!) Of course, by now, many of you are wondering whether any of these damn people ever heard of using birth control or keeping their damn pants on.  You're not the first to ask that question, many people have asked it quite loudly, thank you very much.  Which brings me to the next chapter: My sex life.
      I started having sex at 14.  By this point Mom was dating the man who would later become Dad Like Dude, Drunk Daddy was shacking up with a girl not even out of her teens, and Sperm Daddy and The Step Mom were seriously on the rocks.  Plus by this point all of my grandparents were divorced and banging new people too, except for dear old Grandma, who had moved onto husband #4 shortly after I was born, so at least he was familiar to me.  To put it mildly, I had some serious daddy issues.  I was also fairly unattractive, poor as dirt, and just mouthy enough to be getting my ass beat on a semi regular basis.  Brother Noah has ADHD, which was pushing me towards a nervous breakdown as I was going through puberty, and everything sucked some major ass.  So when a friend of mine clued me into the fact that boys liked boobs (those at least, I had) I started to notice the boys.  One boy in particular caught my eye, because we took up a collection for flowers when his mom died of a drug overdose right after my 12th birthday.  Dude had worse problems than I did.  He and I "dated" for about a year and a half, and when his grandmother (who was raising him) died right before our 14th birthdays, we got a whole lot closer.
      Logically, yes- I understood how babies got made.  I was scary smart, and biology was of special interest to me ( I was already trying to figure out just how fucked up my DNA was going to doom me to be).  There were girls at my school who had gotten pregnant, but they were only a very small percentage of the girls who I knew were having sex, so I figured it wasn't something that happened easily.  I also was more concerned with keeping my man happy than I was with anything else, to be quite honest.  That's why, when the Trojan Magnum condoms that he insisted on getting from his brother kept falling off of his less than Magnum sized member while we were having sex, I didn't push to make him get smaller ones.  I didn't want to hurt his feelings.  That's why when he insisted that it would be okay as long as he pulled out all those times when neither of us could get a condom (14, no jobs, no money, no cars to go anywhere with....) I didn't argue.  We did of course get caught, and my mother put me on birth control, but she wasn't any better about reminding me to take them than I was about actually remembering to myself.
     I made it through that relationship without getting pregnant.  I did have one scare early on, which led to me drinking Castor Oil, douching my way to a yeast infection, and contemplating having someone punch me in the stomach over and over.  Luckily I was just late.  But I guess that answers the question of whether I would have ever had an abortion or not.  Now, looking back, I don't think I'd have gone through with it even if I had known how to go about getting one.  But 14 year old me?  I might have done anything to avoid having to tell my mother I was pregnant.
     I made it through several other relationships and the next 8 years too.  Not by being any smarter or better about remembering to take my pills, but by being damn lucky.  I still made the same mistakes over and over again, just trying to keep my men happy and find someone who would love me enough to rescue me from my shitty life.  Of course I know now that I'd have been better off studying and ignoring the boys and should have just busted my ass to get myself out, but all I had ever known or seen was that the women who had better than what I had also had decent men helping them to get it and keep it.  So that was what I wanted.
    I was getting close to figuring out the whole "live your life for you" thing when I met The Ex.  My relationship with him was more about the pity I felt towards him and thinking that he was a decent guy who deserved a way out of HIS shitty life.  So he moved in with me, and I spent about a year helping to build up his confidence.  In that year, my Aunt had a baby, and I looked back on the life I'd lived so far and started feeling it weighing on me.  Didn't matter that I was only in my very early 20's, I'd lived a lot by then and I was starting to fear that I was never going to find that nice "normal" life that I wanted so badly.  I was finally free of my parents and their drama, and I wanted to start my own family on MY terms.  So The Ex and I got engaged.  Because of all the "not pregnant" test results that I had gotten when I couldn't believe I'd dodged the bullet again, I seriously had begun to think that I couldn't get pregnant.  This belief was reinforced by my having been told by a gynecologist that my uterus was abnormally tilted, and that I might not be able to conceive because of that.
      Just about the time that I was beginning to wise up to the fact that maybe The Ex and I weren't completely compatible, BAM!  We're pregnant.  I was less than thrilled, having finally spent enough time in the real world to realize that it was fucking expensive, and I was freshly unemployed.  But oddly, my Mother was thrilled, Grandma was telling me when my wedding needed to be so as to not interfere with her vacation plans, and The Ex repeatedly refused my offers to let him off the hook and for me to raise the baby on my own without his help.  So we got married, and he spent the entire pregnancy trying to convince me that he did want me, and the baby, and that we'd work everything out.
       Clearly we didn't work everything out, because he never envisioned getting laid off when Thing One was 2 months old, and he'd conveniently forgotten that his way of dealing with stress was to be a crackhead and a drunk.  Last straw was when he got his DUI with Thing One in the car.  Goodbye marriage, hello to being a broke ass single mommy!
       I spent 9 months on my own after that before agreeing to go out on a date with a guy who was working in town from out of state.  He was wrong in so many ways, but he was the first guy I'd ever known that made me feel like he was the strong one, so I fell HARD.  This time I was protected from pregnancy thanks to the depo shot, but unfortunately not from the venereal disease that he gave me.  Now wasn't that just a fun little reminder that my life is destined to be shit?
       H2 and I met while I was trying out the online dating thing.  Younger Sister thought that I needed to spend the time that Thing One was suddenly spending with her father (after a year of only supervised visits he was getting 2 overnights a week) getting out in the world rather than sitting at home licking my wounds.  After ascertaining with an IQ test that he's at least as intelligent as I am, and after dating about for 8 months, we decided to move in together.  I moved here since his job wouldn't let him transfer.  A cancer scare that I didn't have health insurance to cover pushed up our wedding plans, and we got married.  He really wanted a baby, not having ever had any children himself.  I reluctantly agreed to one, and we started trying.
      Six months after the marriage, neither one of us was real happy.  He didn't like the fact that wife me wasn't as interested in sex as girlfriend me had been.  I didn't like the fact that he and Thing One seemed to be constantly at odds.  So we talked about a divorce.  Then we thought maybe we should take a pregnancy test before we made that call.  I had not had a cycle the entire time that we were together due to the depo having not worn off, but we knew that I had probably ovulated once if not twice.  Sure enough, we were pregnant.  Luckily we were both amenable to the idea of working it out for the baby's sake, and hopefully no lasting damage has occurred to Thing One that therapy won't fix in the process.  Now we're here, doing the best we can, with him neutered cause I am for damn sure not ever having another child.
        I suppose that someone reading this could find many examples to prop up their argument for why abortion is never the answer, or why people shouldn't have sex if they aren't prepared to deal with the consequences.  Those people didn't need my story to affirm their beliefs though.  And that is not what living my life has taught me.  What I've learned is that every person has to live and learn from their own story.  They have to make their own choices.  Because every choice has a consequence that can reach far into the future and change the whole rest of your life.  Every action that is taken without thoroughly evaluating every possible outcome can lead to the outcome that you least want and didn't really expect.  The life I have now is a result of the choices that I and others have made.  It has taught me a great deal about myself and those close to me, but it hasn't taught me enough to qualify me to make choices for anyone else whose life I have not lived.
       Not everyone is strong enough to live the life that their mistakes has created for them.  I hope that I can be, although at times it has almost been more than I could bear.  For those who recognize that they have made a mistake, or had someone else make it for them, that want to change the path that mistake will carry them down, the choice to do so should always be there.