Can’t we get it both ways?

America’s failed promise of equal opportunity
To achieve a truly fair society, we need to look to Lincoln, not Jefferson
http://www.salon.com/2012/02/12/americas_failed_promise_of_equal_opportunity/singleton/

I read this article thinking that I have always been an ‘and’ sort of guy. The article’s author implies (or at least that is how I read it) that a meritocracy wasn’t compatible with egalitarianism. I suppose if one takes the base definition of egalitarianism it is incompatible with the base idea of meritocracy, but it seems to me that in an open egalitarian society people who are good at certain tasks will rise to be in charge of those tasks largely because they merited that station because they had certain innate qualities, had studied the subject, or had been mentored somehow. It seems to me that the base form of egalitarianism is that everyone be held _down_ to the same level rather than letting people rise up to their most natural level. Because of genetic diversity coupled with the unique upbringing of each individual it seems impossible to me that there be any one-size-fits-all solution. So a ‘natural’ meritocracy (something that is probably just as impossible as any other societal form), in my mind, would be one where individual excellence was recognized whenever it occurred and each person would be allowed to be excellent at anything they happened to achieve.

Of course, this is all nonsensical since there is probably never going to be a world where either a meritocracy or egalitarianism dominate; power always attracts corruptible people and I can’t conceive of a society that lacks any sort of power structure. In my decades of studying forms of government the absolute best form I have ever encountered is the benevolent dictator, but there remains the nightmare problem of replacement since it is exceptionally difficult to get even a single benevolent dictator, getting a stable string of them to have long-term success seems like impossibility squared.

More reasons (as if needed) that our country is going down the toilet

An ominous silence on the Supreme Court
Justice Elena Kagan should explain why she’s not heeding the calls to recuse herself from the soon-to-be-heard Obama healthcare case.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-segall-kagan-recusal-20120212,0,4442652.story

I guess since it is cool that our Great President can assassinate US citizens without providing any rational, we should expect that it is OK to hold the Supreme Court to that same standard. I have complained about the Supreme Court a time or twain before (see here for instance) and it seems they are perfectly happy ignoring the law of the land (just like the other branches of our government) and doing what they want. From time to time my cynicism ebbs and I start to entertain fantasies that perhaps we won’t come to a dramatic and nasty end, thinking perhaps the ruling oligarchy will choose to return to us the illusion of control and let slip a bit more vertical mobility, but then I read stuff like this and get pulled up short like being smacked in the face by a cold, wet, dead fish. Since our government is so thoroughly corrupt and has so consistently not given a damn about what the sheeple think (of course, why should they since the sheeple will believe whatever they have been told; just yesterday I had a conversation with a couple of friends who have unassailable faith that Obama’s assassination of a US citizen is perfectly justified simply because Obama said he was a terrorist) I just can’t envision a scenario where the oligarchy would care to risk any possible loss in power by any smidgen of reduction in their stranglehold grip on our country.

As if more evidence was needed

Of our police state oligarchy…

Israel, MEK and state sponsor of Terror groups
http://www.salon.com/2012/02/10/israel_mek_and_state_sponsor_of_terror_groups/singleton/

I am waiting for (dreading) the day that Glenn is declared a terrorist and hustled off to Guantanamo. I guess it will be my signal to split, hopefully I will be able to convince my wife of the seriousness before I get disappeared as well.

I would like to add more, but am at a loss for words…

Why, oh why, the zebra stripe?

Zebra stripes evolved to keep biting flies at bay
http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/16944753

And now, for something completely different: a man with three buttocks. (Monty Python didn’t always fire on all cylinders, but they did provide some highly memorable lines!)

While the conclusion that it was evolutionary pressure that drove zebras to develop stripes is quite questionable (as the end of the article alludes), it is none-the-less quite an interesting idea. Since every animal isn’t zebra striped it clearly can’t be a huge advantage, but there are plenty of things that evolve for no other reason than the female of the species has happened to take a liking to something. So it might be a simple coincidence that zebra stripes lead to fewer fly bites, but that got reinforced, perhaps, because girl zebras were happier with boy zebras that spent less time prancing around in agony from fly bites (and I mean agony, those damn things feel like they are carving a cubic inch of flesh out when they latch on to you).

Wow! Another thoughtful article from the WSJ

The Real Trouble With the Birth-Control Mandate
Critics are missing the main point. There are good reasons that your car-insurance company doesn’t add $100 to your premium and then cover oil changes.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204136404577210730406555906.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Because I keep coming across articles like this I look at a lot of WSJ articles, but find, generally within the first paragraph or so, that the articles are generally a bunch of namby pamby 1% elitist nonsense that demonstrates so clearly that they are out of touch with what happens in the real world. However, occasionally I find some gems and this is one. As the article states so well (I am resisting the urge to post it in its entirety, so please take a few minutes and read it), the controversy over this birth control mandate is totally missing the point. The problem has been, and will continue to be until this it is resolved, that employers pay for your health insurance. It was a dumb idea done for the typical short-term political expediency at a time of national crisis (WWII if I recall my history correctly) that, like so many other dumb ideas done for political expediency, became cemented into our society (for instance, while I enjoy and take advantage of it, what the hell is the point in offering the mortgage interest deduction as an incentive for people to purchase houses when the target demographic isn’t one that itemizes their damn taxes to begin with? (Other than as a gimme to the rich, of course)). If people got their own insurance instead of this idiotic employer managed crap we have now, in addition to vastly more real competition, people could tailor their policy for their specific needs and if they wanted to pay extra for an ‘oil change’ (as so eloquently put in the article (another attempt to get you to read it)) then they could while the rest of us could get just liability insurance if that was all we wanted. As mentioned…

The taxes and spending we argue about are the tip of the iceberg. Salting mandated health insurance with birth control is exactly the same as a tax—on employers, on Catholics, on gay men and women, on couples trying to have children and on the elderly—to subsidize one form of birth control.

What is the chance that we can get this employer mediated health care eliminated? First the tax benefit would have to be waived, how likely is that? Then the companies that have competed based on the benefits they offer would have to be somehow convinced to take that money (which, btw, gives them a _huge_ competitive advantage over competing start-up, something I discussed here somewhere but can’t find to provide a link) and give it to their employees and hope that they don’t now decide to move on (locking people in with generous benefits being a time-honored way of reducing turnover, doanchano). Then, of course, we still need to convince people to get health insurance, something that isn’t even universal with car insurance where there is a legal (but seldom enforced) requirement to have it.

Right now we have the worst of all possible worlds. Individuals have absolutely no control over what sort of insurance they have (unless they want to jump employers), thus no control over the cost or benefits offered yet we also have government mandates that force us to pay for insurance many of us don’t need. Couple that with the highly anti-competitive nature of the health insurance market (regionally dominated (or even with de-facto monopolies) by very few companies) you have our typical Made in the USA government sponsored extortion of the ‘free’ market to fleece the little guys (how can the GOP believe that they can repeal ‘Obamacare’ when the insurance industry basically wrote the laws themselves and would now stand to lose billions by its repeal? (Of course, they don’t really intend to repeal it, instead talking about doing so is just naked pandering to their ignorant base)).

Of course, since the oligarchy stands to lose profit margins by going this route, you can be 100% sure it will never happen no matter who wins office this fall.

‘Enough’ must be indexed to inflation!

Can the 1 percent accept “enough”?
The rich can’t stop trying to justify exorbitant salaries for everyone from Wall Street bankers to college coaches
http://www.salon.com/2012/02/10/can_the_1_percent_accept_enough/singleton/

I have always felt that there is a very low value on the upper limit of reasonable salaries. The idea that one person can impact a company with thousands of employees to such an extent that he or she is worth millions of dollars a year is insane. This idiocy is magnified by offering compensation based in part on the incremental increase in stock price (something trivially manipulated by senior executives) that don’t actually require the executive to ever actually purchase anything to realize the reward (i.e., they take no risk whatsoever (sort of like our Wall Street Ponzi scheme we (99%) are still digging out of)). Of course, I don’t blame the CEOs for asking for the astronomical compensation, why shouldn’t you ask for more? The problem is that the CEOs are already in bed with the board members (look it up; you might be shocked (sickened?) by how many of these guys (or their wives) are on each others boards) and since the board members have absolutely no personal skin in the game they don’t give a damn about the size of the CEO’s compensation (very analogous to how our government freely gives tax dollars to these very same crooks; the President doesn’t lose a nickel because he gave a trillion dollars to Wall Street!). I respect (but do not necessarily like, but that is another matter) people like Gates, Jobs, etc., they at least worked their asses off to achieve their rewards, taking great personal risk, working long hours, etc. Often they don’t take much compensation as salary, they just sell off parts of their stock (note, most of the time it is real stock, not options).

So, how much should be enough? Well, except under extraordinary circumstances (at this moment I can’t think of any exceptions) I would say a few hundred grand (indexed, as always, with inflation). Except in some of the most expensive places in our country that amount of green, if properly managed, allows one to live in a very very nice house, send their kids to the best schools and drive around in really nice cars AND retire at 50 if they are so inclined. If they want to have more, then they should put some personal skin in the game and take some of their salary and invest it in starting their own business or helping to grow the one they already run, then, if their efforts were successful, their reward would be the increased value of the stock they own, not some silly-assed back-room payoff for looking the other way when a compatriot ripped of another company.

I know all sorts of perfectly qualified (I would argue in most cases the people I know are vastly more qualified (I even dated one for a couple of years!) than the overpaid buffoons currently in control) people who would be cheerfully happy to take a couple of hundred grand to take on the challenge of managing a corporation at the top. Just because these assholes are paid millions doesn’t mean they are worth it, in actuality, based on my research over the years, the actual long-term health of a corporation is _inversely_ proportional to the pay of the senior executives!

Would it make any difference? Not today with our oligarchy-controlled government. In the laughably unlikely scenario that something like this appears to be getting passed by our Congress, I am quite positive that any look at the details will immediately reveal that there are so many exceptions that it basically has no meaning whatsoever (but will, I am sure, be used to punitively punish those few from the middle class who start to claw their way to the edge of the 1%).

I learned a new term today

“Gutter service”

I was reading Matt’s Taibblog:

Why the Foreclosure Deal May Not Be So Hot After All
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/why-the-foreclosure-deal-may-not-be-so-hot-after-all-20120209

Where he backs off his earlier ‘praise‘ of the proposed mortgage settlement now that the fine print is available. Shockingly, it is a bad deal for those with mortgaged houses (how did I not see that coming? ;-)) and virtually a slap on the wrist (those that think $25 billion is a lot of money need to learn what percentages mean, not to mention tracing some of the TARP money; when they do they will realize that that money is actually our tax dollars). Since the companies involved have suffered essentially no punishment whatsoever, coupled with toothless ‘enforcement’ of the remedies, we are back to exactly where we started where the companies routinely commit illegal acts with impunity. Welcome to America! Land of the free!

So, back to ‘gutter service’. It seems that quite a few people paid to serve summons (that document you are supposed to get personally hand delivered telling you about a court date) simply threw them in the trash, yet swore (the legal type of swearing) that they had, in fact, delivered it. Since these people are committing perjury, I would think our justice system would put these people in jail straight away, but it seems that is not the case:

Lawsuit Over Process Server Fraud Seeks to Vacate 100,000 Credit Card Lawsuits
http://www.longislandlawyerblog.com/lawsuit-over-process-server-fraud-seeks-to-vacate-100000-debt-collection-judgments

Instead of jail time AND any lawsuit so tainted being dismissed with prejudice (such that those who paid for these gutter serviced documents are also punished; there is no way in hell that anyone paying $8 to serve a document can possibly think that they are actually getting that document served, even if the person to be served is at home the very first time they contact them it is likely to be a minimum of an hour spent on the process, not to mention gas, etc. expenses), they want to vacate the cases (which allows the suit to be brought again, meaning the whole process starts all over again (just like the mortgage settlement fiasco)) and, at least in the article mentioned above, nothing bad happens to the people who committed perjury.

Ain’t this America a great place! Law only applies to little people, the rich and powerful are immune!

How Obama’s administration pays back honesty

Obama’s unprecedented war on whistleblowers
From Manning to Kiriakou, critics are aggressively targeted as the White House turns a blind eye to abuses
http://www.salon.com/2012/02/09/obamas_unprecedented_war_on_whistleblowers/singleton/

Echoing my constant drone on police state is this author. Unlike most reports, though, he is himself a victim of the Obama’s administration’s attack on whistleblowers and reports on his experience. There are slight shreds of optimism, as he reports toward the end, but on balance things look quite grim. I would like to fantasize that this is the beginning of the pendulum swinging back toward rationality, but I just can’t muster the enthusiasm to do so. His story is interesting reading and I strongly suggest reading the above as well as the other stuff he has produced. I would probably buy his book if I hadn’t already decided I wasn’t going to read the books I already have.

Why do we run on our heels?

Does Foot Form Explain Running Injuries?
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/08/why-runners-get-injured/

I was a runner in high school (not a very good one, my best mile was a bit over 5 minutes and at 3 miles I was just over 18 minutes (this when competitive was just over 4 minute miles and 15 minutes for 3 miles)) and while far from diligent (I don’t think I have been diligent at anything my whole life, which probably says a lot about my personality) I did run often enough to get sore enough to stop or even injured enough to take weeks long breaks. As I got older (and fatter) I still jogged (I don’t dignify what I do with the term ‘run’ any more), but seemed to get injured more often and eventually switched to biking as a way to save my feet and knees. The last couple of years, though, I have switched back to jogging because unlike our situation where we lived in North Carolina, it really isn’t that practical to go biking from the house, thus necessitating the extra activation energy of assembling everything onto the car and driving to the destination just to start biking. Expectedly I started to have lots of pain and explored ways to ameliorate the pain. I stumbled across the idea of barefoot running and while, as the article states, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of science behind it, it seems quite clear to me that since shoes are a quite new invention by human evolution standards and that many of the best professional runners learned to run barefoot, running with shoes might indeed be a source of my ills. I have been working to switch over to running on the balls of my feet in an effort to strengthen my body for an attempt at barefoot running (I won’t actually run barefoot, but intend to get a pair of those goofy looking foot gloves so I don’t also have to produce quarter inch thick callouses). I have been finding this process is itself injurious and have pulled calf muscles and believe I have triggered plantar fasciitis, but I am planning on stubbornly persevering in the hopes that the more gentle impacts of running on the balls of my feet will make my knees less painful going forward. One of the other benefits mentioned by the proponents of barefoot running is by having a better sense of the actual terrain under your foot you are a bit less likely to turn your ankle as well. I have noted myself many times when I turn an ankle that I really didn’t have any sense of the uneven ground under my foot at the instant I started to apply pressure, so I suspect that idea might have merit as well. The above article, though, isn’t about barefoot running, it is about running on the balls of your feet and how it seems to reduce the potential for injury, so it would seem that my approach might have some efficacy even if I never get to the foot glove stage

This needs addressing on a Federal level

Arizona woman off ballot after high court agrees her English isn’t good enough
http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2012/02/08/arizona-woman-off-ballot-after-high-court-agrees-her-english-isnt-good-enough/?hpt=hp_bn1

While I firmly believe that English should be the official language of these United States (decades ago I was quite flabbergasted to learn it wasn’t already), I also firmly believe that _until_ such laws are passed at the Federal level it should be considered unconstitutional for any state to have such a requirement. Further, if such a requirement is had, there must be an unambiguous, crystal clear definition of what ‘adequate’ command of our language is. I have communicated with people from the North East and often find them challenging to understand (why do they talk so damn fast? Whats the rush?) and my lovely wife, while Filipino, speaks excellent, accent-free English, but initially had very substantial difficulties communicating with people when we lived in North Carolina (I, being Southern Born, evidently inherited the ability to follow their drawl). So, what is good enough English? It would seem clear, upon reading that article, that the woman in question has inadequate English skills and since the communication at city council meetings is undoubtedly going to be in English I feel it is reasonable to expect that representatives should be able to communicate without a translator, so on the surface I agree with the judge’s decision. However, since there is no objective criteria for deciding what is good enough besides a judge’s whims, I have a problem with the whole process. The point of law in our country (mostly ignored as regular readers are well aware) is to be uniformly applied to everyone regardless of race, religion, creed, wealth, station, etc., etc., etc. How can anything be uniformly applied if there is no definition?

Of course, defining what would be adequate is probably a very challenging task and undoubtedly why the Arizona Legislature never got around to doing so. Indian English can be very difficult to understand (just ask anyone who has got tech support!), yet I would argue that they speak better English than the majority of our nation’s natural born citizens. (Don’t ever accuse them of speaking poor English, unless you want an earful; they do have an official language and it is English and they are taught it English in school!) Heck, I have attempted to communicate with people from England and even though nominally we speak the same language, we have to talk like idiot morons in order to get thoughts across because when we talk at normal speed with normal word choices and emphasis we might as well be talking different languages. I have also been told of people who are several generations removed from having immigrated, yet because they almost exclusively interact with their relatives and close family friends, even though they were taught English in school they can barely speak it today.

On an amusing counter note (amusing to me, at least), when my wife and I were living in North Carlina we stopped at a local sea food store. As there wasn’t anyone available we called out as we entered and were answered by the purest southern bell blue-eyed, blond haired accent you can imagine. Then, around the corner comes this 100% pure ethnic (I believe her family was) Vietnamese girl (still cute as a button, but about as far from blue-eyed and blond haired you can probably get). She acted as translator for her parents as it seems their command of English was such they didn’t care for being embarrassed by trying to use it.