A Citizen's Guide to Indiana

Masson's Blog

On Liberty, God, and Morality

by 1 Comment

This is going to be a quick hit with no real answers; but I came across a couple of very interesting items this morning on the topics of God, Liberty, and Morality.

The first is Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars who asks “what do we think of the notion of a God given right to liberty (or equality) in order to make such rights “unalienable”? Attaching something to God is probably the only way to make such a concept we really like trump all other claims.”

While chewing on that, I stumbled across a page written by Wil Forbis entitled “searching for the Moral Directive in The Watchmen.” Since I read “The Watchmen” in the Spring of 1990, I have found a particular monologue by the character Rorschach to be very compelling. In that monologue, he says:

This rudderless world is not shaped by vague metaphysical forces. It is not God who kills the children. Not fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs. It’s us. Only us.

I suspect that formulation very well may be correct. It is up to us to assign value to our actions and the consequences of our actions. The proper yardsticks for doing so are not terribly clear, but I think it is up to us to create those yardsticks and apply them.

When considering Rorschach’s proclamation, Forbis turns to Yale Professor Arthur Allen Leff who wrote:

I want to believe —and so do you— in a complete, transcendent, and immanent set of propositions about right and wrong, findable rules that authoritatively and unambiguously direct us how to live righteously.
. . .
I also want to believe —and so do you —in no such thing, but rather that we are wholly free, not only to choose for ourselves what we ought to do, but to decide for ourselves, individually and as a species, what we ought to be. What we want, Heaven help us, is simultaneously to be perfectly ruled and perfectly free, that is, at the same time to discover the right and good and to create it.

Like I said, no answers from me at this point (if ever), but certainly some good stuff to chew on.

For-Profit Insurance: The 800# Gorilla of Health Care

by 4 Comments

South Shore Progressive posted a piece from Dr. Robert Stone of Bloomington, IN who suggested that for-profit insurance companies are the 800 pound gorilla in reforming our dying health care system.

Poor regulation has contributed to the overall financial crisis, no doubt. In the case of the health insurance industry’s predicament, at least two other forces are undermining its viability: the steadily declining numbers of people in employer-sponsored health plans and the skyrocketing costs of individual health insurance plans.

Private health insurance, with its rising premiums, co-pays, deductibles, exclusions, and so on, is becoming increasingly unaffordable for individuals, families and businesses. The private model of financing care is no longer sustainable; it is dying.

We simply can no longer afford to have these for-profit companies dominate our health care system. They ARE the problem, and retaining their inefficient, greedy business practices should not be part of the solution.

Instead, we should turn to the “other 800-pound gorilla” in the room – the elegantly simple solution staring us in the face: Medicare for all. Medicare is the universal government financed (“single payer”) health care system we have already for everyone age 65 and older. We have over 40 years’ experience with it. Simply replace for-profit insurance with Medicare for everyone.

Dr. Stone is a leader of Hoosiers for a Commonsense Health Plan.

Geithner’s Tax Issue

by Leave a Comment

Given that I had heard about the tax problems of Treasury Secretary nominee, Timothy Geithner, about three times this evening without once hearing them described, I thought I’d post a summary of his non-payment of taxes as reported by the Wall Street Journal:

The tax issue relates to Mr. Geithner’s work for the International Monetary Fund between 2001 and 2004. As an American citizen working for the IMF, Mr. Geithner was technically considered self-employed and was required to pay Social Security and Medicare taxes for himself as both an employer and an employee.

The IMF and World Bank reimburse employees, including U.S. citizens, for their U.S. income taxes, and make payments on a quarterly basis to cover those liabilities. They don’t, however, make contributions toward Social Security and Medicare taxes, which individuals are expected to pay on their own.

Health Insurance Reform and Workforce Instability

by Leave a Comment

Trifles from Anderson flagged a report on a federal study that concluded health insurance reform could create workforce instability. “Making health insurance less dependent on employment could induce workers to retire earlier or change jobs more often.”

It occurred to me when I read that conclusion that ending indentured servitude probably created workforce instability as well. Uncoupling health care from employment seems like an important thing to do. It just creates weird incentives all over the place. Ultimately, I think employees, employers, and the economy generally benefit if we limit the degree to which people are making employment decisions for non-work reasons.

He’s Not Wrong

by 6 Comments

Because it’s an “Open Letter,” presumably I can blockquote freely and shamelessly. Bill in Portland Maine on Daily Kos does not have high hopes for the new Congress:

Dear Congress,

Let’s get this out of the way right now: I think you’re gonna suck balls.

I base my opinion on your performance during the previous administration, and I see no reason to change my mind just because y’all have a bunch of new members and America has a new president.

It’s all so predictable. With virtually no exceptions, Republican members will continue insisting that the policies of shitting on the little guy are the only ones that they’ll support, and Democratic members will continue to give these idiots serious thought and consideration in the futile hope that we can all just get along. In essence, you’ll continue governing as if we are a “center-right” nation, which we most assuredly are not.

You’ll continue to act quickly on things that should be acted on slowly, and you’ll act slowly on things that should be acted on quickly. You’ll insult our intelligence, waste our money (or, rather, waste our grandchildren’s money since you spent ours and our kids’ long ago), give plenty of face time to the rich and powerful, and collapse at the mere hint of a filibuster threat.

I know you want me to believe you’ll do things differently, but that’s like Lucy promising Charlie Brown that she won’t pull the football away—for real this time. Uh huh. George Bush may be the worst president ever, but at least he was right when he stammered, “Fool me once shame on you. Fool me…can’t get fooled again.”

I know I’m being a tad negative, but can you blame me? You authorized the Iraq war, legalized warrantless wiretapping to make Bush’s illegal wiretapping retroactively legal (that was a neat backflip), agreed that habeas corpus was disposable, wasted floor time condemning MoveOn.org for exercising its freedom of speech, took impeachment off the table, failed to notice the collapsing economy, and wouldn’t even allow the government to use its power to negotiate lower drug prices. You failed us and failed us and failed us. Collectively you’re a bunch of irresponsible opportunistic whiny ether-sniffing assface sissypants bedwetters until such time that you prove through your deeds that you’re not.

I’ll close on a happy note in the interest of bipartisanship: nice shoes.

Hugs,

Billy

Devilstower on Priestley

by 2 Comments

Devilstower over at Daily Kos has an interesting book review of The Invention of Air by Steven Johnson. The book is about Enlightenment era scholar and writer, Joseph Priestley.

Priestley was apparently very much a man of the Enlightenment, committed to the free flow of information and following ideas wherever they might lead. He was a religious man, but apparently saw science as a way of revealing God. And, if science and religious texts were in conflict, perhaps it was the religious texts that were wrong. This notion is anathema to a nontrivial number of conservative religious types for whom control over an individual’s proper relationship to God represents temporal power.

In our era, commitment to the scientific method as the best way to understand the world around us seems to be more of a liberal ideal than a conservative one. During the Bush administration there were any number of efforts to subjugate scientific findings to political doctrine. Meanwhile, during the same period, the liberal “netroots” has strongly embraced Enlightenment ideals with respect to the value of the scientific method, free flow of information, and the proper placement of political power in the citizenry. It remains to be seen whether the Obama administration will embrace these ideals as fully, though initial signs appear good that it will at least do better than the Bush administration on these matters.

Anyway, Devilstower’s review is worth a read and the book seems to be as well.

Lugar Becomes Most Senior Senate Republican

by Leave a Comment

With the retirement of Pete Domenici and felony corruption conviction fueled defeat of Ted Stevens, Indiana’s Richard Lugar has become the Senate’s most senior Republican. He has been in the Senate for the past 32 years.

Here is a Q&A with Senator Lugar on the subject. When he got to the Senate, there were 38 Republicans. (Now there are 41; a pick up of almost a seat a decade. That’s a Daniels-esque hot streak! Ha! I kid because I love.)

He thinks he has become more diplomatic over the years, particularly with respect to issues on the foreign relations committee where he is now the ranking member and has been the chair when Republicans were in control. He believes that it’s more important for a committee like that to show a united face to the world.

He also provides some interesting commentary on how important it is for a Senator’s family to be on board with the job because it is a time consuming kind of career.

The most substantive issue discussed in the article is Sen. Lugar’s desire to renew the START treaty. It expires in December of 2009 and has resulted in the elimination of about 80% of all strategic nuclear weapons in existence as of 2001 when it was implemented.

Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine have disposed of all their nuclear weapons or transferred them to Russia; while the U.S. and Russia have reduced the capacity of delivery vehicles to 1,600 each, with no more than 6,000 warheads.

That last was from the Wikipedia entry and this next is from my own less than extensive knowledge, but it seems that the renewal of the treaty will be made more difficult by the more belligerent stances recently adopted by Putin and his successor, Medvedev. In any event, START seems to be one of Sen. Lugar’s primary focuses, and I wish him the best of luck in these efforts.

Doghouse on Early Bush Coverage

by Leave a Comment

Doghouse Riley provides us with a nice retrospective of the press coverage of the early days of the Bush administration. The eagerly credulous reporting on those missing ‘W’ keys and of the trashed Air Force One let us know what we were in store for from the “liberal” media. The never-missing ‘W’ keys would become phantom Nigerian yellow cake, and the never-trashed Air Force One would become never dangerous aluminum tubes.