Credit limits: A Simile

Consider having finally bought the sports car of your dreams, getting your bills paid, and being able to afford the interest on your credit cards, even paying them down. You drive down the interstate smoothly, and see signs of construction ahead. That would mean a slow-down, but nothing insurmountable. But then you are told to hand the keys over to another guy, a good old boy with whom you've never agreed. But now he has the roadster, and is seeing what it can do. But shortly, through no fault of his own, a rock is kicked up, and cracks the windshield. "Duck this," he yells, and steers that roadster off the pavement and heads out at right angles from the obvious way forward to bounce through the desert. Rocks, gulleys, and sand are not really where a roadster belongs. So this fellow runs up the credit cards to the limit seeing to the incessant need for repairs. And he increases the limit regularly, as he cannot pay the bills. Seeing that this keeps the car running, he wants to see how far he can make it jump. Finally, the car is damaged almost beyond repair. He spends and raises the limit several times, in a last ditch effort to get the car almost running. But then he is told to hand the keys over to another guy: A tall, dark, erudite type with training specifically in aspects of handling a roadster. The new guy tries to steer the car back toward smooth roads, but the car barely runs when he gets it. He spends up to the limit just to keep it running. Then he begs to extend the credit limit enough to make it fully road worthy. But the friends of his predecessor are determined to prevent any extra spending. "Too much!" they cry. They don't feel that the car really needs work. Perhaps it should heal itself. Now, that makes sense!

Continue ReadingCredit limits: A Simile

Make every member of Congress speak frankly about birth control

When I see articles like this one at Huffpo, I am reminded that there are members of Congress who would like to keep women and men from deciding whether and when they will have babies. This impulse is often the result of a religious belief that it is their duty to discourage people from having sex unless they are trying to have babies. And sometimes, as indicated in the Huffpo article, it's motivated by a belief that other people should be compelled to have babies they would rather not have. Maybe my memory is foggy, but I don't remember this power of Congress being spelled out in the Commerce Clause or in any of the enumerated powers. I realize that the Huffpo article concerns health insurance coverage, but reading it reminded me of my recurring suspicion that many members of Congress are incurably meddlesome when it comes to other people's sexuality. [caption id="attachment_18928" align="alignright" width="180" caption="Image - Creative Commons"][/caption] It is my belief that people who feel these compulsions are engaging in warped sexual fantasies of their own. They are getting off on keeping others from getting off. I suspect that there are many of these pleasure police and it's time to OUT them. Let's force them to make their repressive sexual agendas explicit. Here's how I would do it, if I had my way: Make every member of Congress stand up at a podium, one by one, and answer a single simple question, but first they would be read the following explanatory prelude:

"The following question concerns only those pills and devices that are used prior to or during sex to prevent pregnancy. This question does not concern abortion."

Now, here's the question:

Every American adult should be entirely free to purchase any

currently available pill or product to prevent pregnancy.

Yes or No?

This imaginary spectacle would allow Americans see who is for personal liberty and who is for meddling. Let's make it all public. Let's allow The People to see who "represents" them:
An estimated 98 percent of sexually active women in America have used some form of birth control at some point in their lives. According to a recent Thomson Reuters/NPR poll, 77 percent of American voters believe that insurers should cover the cost of birth control with no co-pays.
Alas, my proposed thought experiment will never occur. For the foreseeable future, the meddlesome members of Congress will continue to express their aversions to other people's sexual pleasure only indirectly, for instance, by voting in wacky ways on insurance issues. I wonder whether Rep Steve King is against requiring people who have health insurance pay medical premiums that cover appendectomies because there are many people who won't need to have appendectomies. He's a real piece of work. At least he's already stepped up and declared his position: I like to meddle with other people's lives.

Continue ReadingMake every member of Congress speak frankly about birth control

No surprise that the bloated military budget was spared.

Tom Englehart discusses the military's profligate use of $400/gallon (and even $800/gallon) gasoline in the Middle East. It's a symptom of a much bigger problem:

So here’s a question at a moment when financial mania has Washington by the throat: How would you define the state of mind of our war-makers, who are carrying on as if trillion-dollar wars were an American birthright, as if the only sensible role for the United States was to eternally police the planet, and as if garrisoning U.S. troops, corporate mercenaries, and special operations forces in scores and scores of countries was the essence of life as it should be lived on this planet?
How many military bases does the United States have, by the way? Gloria Shur Bilchik of Occasional Planet does her best to provide an answer to this straight-forward question:
You can’t get a consistent answer from news stories, that’s for sure. Recent articles, media reports and op-eds peg the number variously at 460, 507, 560, 662 and more than 1,000 . . . According to the Department of Defense’s 2010 Base Structure Report, as of 2009, the US military maintained 662 foreign sites in 38 countries around the world. . . . the official US military tally underreports our presence by nearly 500 bases.
Why not cut the military budget at this time of purported austerity? It's about what you'd expect from a bunch of psychopathic leaders, people not like you and me, people who cease serving as representatives of the People soon after hitting Washington D.C. and getting high on a non-ending hit of campaign cash.

Continue ReadingNo surprise that the bloated military budget was spared.