(H/t Tim) – Obscenity law revolves around the elusive notion of “community standards.” MSNBC has a story up on a lawyer who planned to defend an obscenity case by using Google statistics to determine what our community standards *really* are; as opposed to what people *say* they are. The story points out some obvious defects in this sort of metric; but it’s still an interesting notion. A sense of shame and false notions about our proclivities versus those of our neighbors probably skews the “community standard” to a level more prudish than is actually prevalent. For example, long ago, I used to be under the laughable impression that masturbation was something rare in human society. Turns out, not so much.

I’ve got nothin’. Taxes are bad. Government is too big. Beer is proof that there is a God and he loves us. If you look too long at the abyss, you’ll find the abyss looking back. E pluribus unum. Discuss.

Just thought I’d bellyache about our current approach to health care. For any policy makers advocating a market based solution to our health care problems, I suggest that job one is transparent pricing. Without that, any signals from the market place are going to be about useless.

The reason I bring that up is that today Amy went about getting a prescription filled on some heavy duty skin cream for Harper. Our normal pharmacy quoted us a price that was wildly inflated from the price that had been quoted two weeks ago at the same pharmacy. At a second pharmacy, the price was somewhere between the two. She asked a few different people for an explanation on the pricing. All they could do was mumble about “the computer” and “insurance.”

So, if I find myself suffering from a sucking chest wound, I’m going to have to do my comparison shopping in a hurry. I’m going to want apples-to-apples comparisons.

Or, you know, we could go about planning health care policy with a recognition that “the market” is a difficult fit for delivering health care services in some respects.

John Lucas, writing for the Evansville Courier Press, asks some questions about the Founding Fathers.

How from such a small pool of people were so many giants produced 250 years ago?

And with so many more to choose from now, why can’t we seem to find people of such stature today?

How did those people — John Adams, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, George Washington and many, many less well-remembered delegates to the Congress and constitutional convention — come up with the framework of government that in the main serves us still today?

I think there were some unique qualities about the late 18th century that contributed to the availability of so many great minds. In particular, the Enlightenment philosophies that were prevalent at the time had to help – valuing observed truth over revealed dogma is a mindset that had to have helped. More important, in my opinion, is that society was less stratified when the country was that new: talent could rise to the top more easily. For example, Alexander Hamilton, one of the most important Founders, was a bastard child out of the West Indies who had proven himself in military campaigns and become a close aide to General Washington by the time he was in his early 20s (his exact year of birth is uncertain). While it’s not impossible that such a mongrel would rise so far so fast simply on his own abilities in today’s America, I contend it is a lot more difficult.

America at the time of the Founders was more like a start up company, where good ideas and hard work allow you to rise to the top rapidly. America today is more like a Fortune 500 company where you have to adhere to the established policies and procedures, rise through the ranks, and be good at corporate politics.

Just a theory.

Laura Misjak has an article in the Indianapolis Star about the troubles of ex-convicts in finding jobs once they get out. This is something I come across a lot since one of my collection clients is the county’s community corrections program. The people from whom I’m trying to collect in that situation are, by definition, convicts of one sort or another. Frankly, I have been impressed by the numbers who do manage to find work. The personalities of ex-convicts are pretty much as broad as the personalities of people generally, but one “kind” of convict I run across with some frequency is the guy who has really grown up because of the experience — just focused on working hard and extricating himself from the mess. (There are plenty who are still making excuses and complaining about how hard life is; possibly true, but irrelevant.)

Anyway, the article reports that the Indy City-County Council is looking at incentives to employers to get them to hire ex-convicts.

City-County Councilwoman Marilyn Pfisterer is trying to ease the way for those with felony records: She is sponsoring an ordinance to give businesses that hire them an upper hand when bidding on city or county contracts.

. . .

With fines, probation, child support and other costs, the average debt for those coming out of prison in Indianapolis is $28,000, Keesling said. In other words, finding a job is important.

“We’ve got to provide a person a fighting chance to do the right thing and this bill will do that,” he said.

The biggest problem I would have with this sort of legislation is if it would disadvantage potential employees who didn’t commit any crimes. If I were a law-abiding guy looking for work, I’d be pissed if I got passed up for a job because the government created a preference for convicts.

I don’t have any clue how such a thing would be implemented, but I would suggest something along the lines of an insurance program that reduces the risk to employers for hiring convicts – something that doesn’t necessarily give an advantage to employers for hiring convicts, but takes away the disadvantage.

The Supreme Court has issued another 5-4 opinion, this one addressing the Second Amendment which the Supreme Court has long dodged. Justice Scalia wrote the opinion, joined by Justices Thomas, Alito, Roberts, and Kennedy. I’ve only read the syllabus, but generally, it appears that the Court is recognizing an individual right to bear arms as opposed to one conditioned on being in a militia. To me, this has always seemed like the correct way to parse the text of the amendment:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

The Court decided that the prefatory language announces a purpose, but does not limit the scope of the right. The Second Amendment right is not an unlimited right to possess any weapon one chooses for any reason, but rather those in “common use” for “common purposes.” The gist of the opinion seems to be that people have to be allowed to have ordinary weapons for lawful purposes such as “self-defense” and laws that make those weapons useless for self-defense are unconstitutional. The court specifies that the opinion should not be read as casting doubt on prohibitions on possession of weapons by felons and the mentally ill. D.C.’s trigger lock ordinance was found to be unconstitutional because it rendered permissible weapons useless for self-defense in the home.

That was my take based on a quick reading of the syllabus. If you see something more reliable elsewhere, you’ll probably want to go with that. From the syllabus, anyway, it seems like a reasonable decision. I’ll have to read the dissents to see if they change my mind.

An interesting statistic I heard the other day: 90% of crimes occur on rental property. The source was credible, but what his foundation for the statistic may have been, I couldn’t say.