I recently saw a statistic that was fairly startling to me; that 40% of American women have had an abortion. I did a small amount of web-based research that suggested maybe the number is more like 30%.

This made me recall a conversation I had recently (with another guy) where we were musing about the strong reaction to the War on Women (or caterpillars, if you prefer) that was engendered when access to birth control was implicated. Whereas support for access to birth control is fairly strong, support for access to abortion is often very tepid even among those who support such access as an intellectual exercise. My friend said that abortion was just something that felt so alien.

If that statistic is accurate, maybe it’s something that’s alien to middle aged guys but not so alien to America’s women. I’m one of those people who support access to abortion as an intellectual exercise because I don’t regard a fetus in its early stages to be morally equivalent to a human even though it has the potential to become human. But, I don’t have the emotional response to restrictions on abortions that I do to restrictions on birth control because the former is nothing I’ve had to deal with directly and, so far as I recall, only one person I know has talked to me directly about her own experience.

It’s easy for me to say because I don’t have to deal with the backlash, but I think we could have a more honest discussion about abortion if the people having them were more open about the experience. The unknown horrors conjured up by your brain in ignorance are usually more terrifying than reality. I’ve told the story before about how I was something of a homophobe before getting to know some honest to god gay people. (Or, rather, people I knew were gay — I had known them, I just didn’t know that I knew them.) In much the same way, I expect that real atheists are less foreign to believers than whatever notions they have in their heads in the absence of real-world examples. And, I expect the people who actually have abortions present more sympathetic cases than the baby-murdering monsters currently occupying the void and informing public discourse.

You can still condemn abortion if you’d like, but such condemnation should be informed by the reality that 30-40% of the women you know may have participated in the exercise.

Nick Martin, writing for TPMMuckraker has an article entitled JT Ready Identified As Gunman In Arizona Massacre. The background is that yesterday, apparently, Ready killed himself and four other people: his girlfriend, her daughter, her daughter’s boyfriend, and the daughter’s 18-month old baby. It appears that he took measures attempting to make it look like the killings were the work of Mexican drug runners.

The article gives quite a bit of detail about Ready’s anti-immigrant fervor and ties with white supremacist organizations. But what really caught my interest was the opening paragraph:

Longtime white supremacist and border vigilante JT Ready saw himself as part of a war that few others would fight. He amassed weapons. He donned a uniform. He formed his own brigade of volunteers to walk alongside him as he hunted what he described as “narco terrorists” flowing across the Arizona-Mexico border.

It seems to me that, with some people, there is a driving need to see one’s self as a heroic figure in the consequential drama of one’s life. And that need leads to a view of the world that doesn’t comport with reality which, in turn, leads to interactions with the world that aren’t healthy and which aren’t helpful to others.

In this category, I also see the fervent believer with a personal relationship to God that helps them withstand the persecution that is everywhere while they are engaged in a noble effort to stand against evil; perhaps through a desperate battle to save America by battling its destructive cultural decline.

I’m sure there are plenty of other examples, religious and non-religious; left-wing and right wing. We’re all protagonists in our own story. That’s inevitable. Noted philosophers Jethro Tull explained that we’re “looking for a sign that the Universal Mind has written us into the Passion Play.” But, the self-focus and need to be central figures in the larger story can lead to destructive behavior and detract from our ability enjoy and participate in the reality that is actually around us.

Thomas Mann and Norm Ornstein, writing in the Washington Post, have an opinion piece looking at why D.C. is so dysfunctional and concluding, no, it’s not “both sides fault,” we can blame the Republicans on this one.

The response I’ve seen has been interesting if, maybe, predictable. I had one friend ask wearily, “since when did being conservative equal being the bad guy.” And, Doghouse suggests that this observation is at least thirty years too late. (“They called Truman a commie, for chrissakes”)

I’m too young and maybe not well enough educated to know whether the present political dynamic is different in kind from McCarthyite politics or is just pitching a different product. But, to my conservative friend, I can respond that this isn’t simply an indictment of conservatism – at least if that term means anything independently of “what the Republicans are doing at the moment.”

-Most recently: Allen West (R-Florida) – “78 to 81” Democrats are members of the Communist Party. No notable backlash within his party for this kind of stupidity.

-Moderate & center-right Republican lawmakers are a dying breed. Cites Bob Michel, Mickey Edwards, John Danforth, and Chuck Hagel. (We can look more locally to what’s happening to Dick Lugar.)

-Ascendancy of Grover Norquist and his absolutist, no-tax regardless of the need pledge. 238 of 242 House Republicans are signatories as are 41 of 47 Senators.

-Ascendancy of Newt Gingrich and his campaign to convince the electorate that Congress was corrupt in an effort to remove the then-majority Democrats from office. This one got away from him after it was successful and the Republicans took office and he tried to dial it back so he could govern.

-Nearly every Obama initiative has met with “vehement, rancorous and unanimous Republican opposition.” Compare this with the Bush administration wherein Democrats weren’t exactly lovey dovey but where many Democrats were willing to work with the Republicans on No Child Left Behind, the Bush tax cuts, post-9/11 war and security state measures, and the Iraq War.

-The filibuster has become routine, applied to even widely supported bills and to Presidential nominations. The press has become complicit in this, often failing to call it a filibuster or to note that the tool was once used sparingly and as a last resort. Now the press frequently just implies that 60 votes is a standard requirement in the Senate; but that’s certainly not how the Founders envisioned things. The Republicans have used this far more frequently than Democrats ever did when they were in the minority or even than minority-Republicans have done historically.

-The party has become dismissive of even non-partisan analysis and evidence where it does not conform to the prevailing ideology.

On financial stabilization and economic recovery, on deficits and debt, on climate change and health-care reform, Republicans have been the force behind the widening ideological gaps and the strategic use of partisanship. In the presidential campaign and in Congress, GOP leaders have embraced fanciful policies on taxes and spending, kowtowing to their party’s most strident voices.

-They abandon policies that they, themselves, endorsed when Democrats adopt those policies. (e.g. “seven Republican co-sponsors of a Senate resolution to create a debt-reduction panel voted in January 2010 against their own resolution, solely to keep it from getting to the 60-vote threshold Republicans demanded”)

So, the problem isn’t “conservatism;” rather, it’s the ideological rigidity and reflexive partisanship that’s problematic. Democrats bring some of that themselves, but not nearly as much and not nearly as uniformly. The Democrats occasionally bring a knife to what is turning into a perpetual gun fight.

Vic Ryckaert, writing for the Indy Star, has an article about a kindergartner in Shelbyville who had a pattern of aggressive behavior, kicked the principal, and threatened to kill him. The school called the cops and had the kid arrested.

Attempts to contact the family for this story were not successful.

In journo-speak, that could mean a few things; but I’ll go ahead and assume that this could be part of the problem. The paper was able to talk to a therapist and an autism advocate who said an arrest might not be the best thing for the kid; instead they recommended having the kid treated with counseling or seen by doctors.

I question whether those are options legitimately available to the school. The police are free, and they’re on call. (Which is why, in the absence of mental health options, the poor and mentally ill frequently end up in jail.) I don’t know if an arrest is the right thing, but I also don’t know that it’s fair to expect the school to be an extension of the mental health system. Maybe keep the kid out of class, tell the parents to come and get him, and don’t let him back in school until he gets a note from his doctor that he’s not going to be a behavior problem diverting resources away from the rest of the school kids.

Sarah Janssen, writing for the Fort Wayne News Sentinel, has an interesting article> about Emily Herx, a former teacher at St. Vincent de Paul Catholic school who suffered from infertility. She and her husband, wanting a child, underwent in vitro fertilization (IVF) procedures. The procedures were apparently covered by the Catholic school’s self-funded insurance plan. Management had some knowledge that she was doing this. But, about a year after the first round of IVF, when she was undergoing a second round, she was called into the office St. Vincent de Paul church leader Rev. John Kuzmich. Apparently someone had complained about her IVF treatments.

Kuzmich told her she was a grave, immoral sinner and that there would be a scandal in the school if anyone found out. When her contract was up, the diocese didn’t renew it. The non-renewal was because of her sinfulness and fear of scandal, not because of her teaching performance. (All of this, I believe, is from Ms. Herx’s complaint; the diocese might recall things differently). Her appeal to the Bishop did no good; he said, “IVF is an intrinsic evil, which means that no circumstances can justify itIVF is an intrinsic evil, which means that no circumstances can justify it.”

According to the complaint, male teachers are permitted to obtain vasectomies and use birth control with no adverse employment consequences. Apparently the ADA recognizes infertility as a disability, and Ms. Herx is alleging that she has suffered discriminatory and adverse employment actions because of this disability. She is further alleging that her employer is discriminating based on gender; given the disparate treatment of men versus women when it comes to sinful behavior with respect to the human reproductive system. (My phrasing, not hers.)

All I can say at this point, is good luck to the judge charged with untangling that one.

Interesting post about medical pricing by Roni Rabin entitled Confusion on Pricing at Hospitals Adds to Pain. (h/t Indiana Law Blog). It describes a study trying to determine the cost of a routine appendectomy in California. The price: somewhere between $1,500 and $182,955.

The post includes this paragraph:

Though she is an emergency room doctor herself, Dr. Hsia said, she has no idea what the hospital charges for various procedures. When patients ask her, she has to tell them she doesn’t know.

In my practice, I’m called upon to take the depositions of doctors from time to time. In the course of defending a personal injury case, we’re called upon to try to figure out the reasonable cost of past and future medical treatment the injured person might require as a result of their injury. Doctors are almost invariably unable to answer questions about what procedures cost.

If doctors, who are soaking in the system – smart people making their livelihood from these procedures – can’t tell you what a procedure costs; it’s ridiculous to center health care policy around the fiction that consumers can sensibly make economic decisions about their treatment in the current health care environment. Pricing transparency needs to come first.

Judge Posner has a blog entry entitled “Decline of U.S. Manufacturing” that, coincidentally, touches on some issues I mentioned in my prior post, “Technology and the Future of Work.” He, more lucidly, makes a point that I was sort of groping toward: there is nothing magic about having your workers employed in manufacturing versus some other kinds of work. After all, our economy did not become unsustainable just because Americans, by and large, left agricultural work to work in manufacturing jobs. By extension, there is probably no reason to believe that having Americans leave manufacturing work to work in service jobs is inherently any worse of a problem.

The decline in agricultural employment is a product of technological advance, and likewise the decline in manufacturing employment. Subsidizing manufacturing will no more increase employment in manufacturing than subsidizing agriculture has prevented the precipitous decline of agricultural employment, for a manufacturing subsidy will be used to speed the automation of manufacturing tasks and so accelerate the decline of manufacturing employment–unless the subsidy is conditioned on increased employment, which would would mean diverting workers from more to less productive work. We would not be better off if 40 percent of the labor force were in farming rather than 2.5 percent, or if 28 percent of the labor force were in manufacturing rather than 9 percent.

(emphasis added).

The problem is that we may not be diverting workers from more to less productive work. The workers themselves may not be engaged in any work at all. If we made a subsidy contingent on increased employment, we may well be requiring that the manufacturing be performed in a less efficient way. But, we’d be doing this to give the individual worker a basis for staking a claim to some of the value created by the production. This is less efficient, but it may be necessary so long as: a) we know of no more productive work that the individual worker can do; and b) we require work as a basis for making a claim for income.

That latter point touches on the issue discussed by Fred Clark in his reflections on John Kenneth Galbraith’s “The Affluent Society” which I summarized thusly:

Galbraith discusses the Puritan origins of a moral imperative to work. Goods were vitally necessary; the loss of available labor to produce those goods was extremely detrimental to society; and, therefore, the penalty – deprivation of all or most of an individual’s income – was appropriate. The penalty was so justified that there was no moral obligation to help someone who wasn’t helping themselves by working.

Now, in a world awash with goods, the loss of an individual’s productive capacity is incidental but the penalty remains almost equally severe – even where the failure to work isn’t through sloth but through lack of obvious opportunities. And, yet, the quest continues for a moral justification to allow the affluent to settle into a comfortable disregard for those not sharing in society’s affluence.

You get an economy that’s working very efficiently. But, because the world’s necessities can be created by a relatively small percentage of the population, the vast income generated pools in relatively few places; sort of a hematoma of the economic circulatory system. To remain healthy, the body politic needs good circulation, else part of it becomes gangrenous and poisons everything else. If possible, we need to find more productive work for our citizens. Otherwise, we need to figure out some other way for allocating some part of the economic flow to idle citizens.

My brain has a certain billy goat quality to it; casually chomping on whatever happens to be nearby. I can’t even remember what it was this time that led me back to territory I’ve covered before: the difference between hypocrisy and aspirational morality. I use the latter term to encompass the argument that usually comes up when moralizing politicians turn out to have private lives that are dramatically different than their public proclamations of proper behavior. The aspirational morality argument then says, “just because people sin doesn’t mean we’re wrong to aspire to better.” It’s kind of a “fake it, ’til you make it” approach.

My latest treading of this mental path got me to wondering why I didn’t think much of this argument. After all, humans have long used myths to inculcate desired behavior into their youth. For example, the stories of Odysseus were useful in telling Greek youths that being clever could be heroic. Heroes in other cultures might be more prone to the brute force hack as a method of solving their problems. It’s how you educate your kids on what is right and wrong.

But, it turns out that I already covered the distinction in my post from a few years ago. (I write so much, I have a tendency to forget what I wrote. “That guy has some great ideas! Oh, wait, that was me.”)

The problem, of course, is that socially conservative politicians never seem to cast these moral aspirations as aspirations – rather they profit politically by holding themselves out as exemplars of these virtues. They tend to cast those who do not live up to these proclaimed virtues as sinful objects of scorn or pity. What’s worse is that, rather than turning out to be mildly or even ordinarily flawed, they turn out to be extraordinarily flawed.
. . .
The medium is the message here. Because guys like Ensign and Sanford are the messengers, the message becomes tainted. We don’t need purity in our messengers, but we do need less stern judging and more acknowledgment that people who fall short are common — not sinful, corrupt, pitiable or rare. It’s the difference between “We all fall short one way or another, we should try to do better, and we can help one another in this way” on the one hand and “They fall short in this way, they are corrupting us, and we should stop them in this way” on the other hand.

Ed Brayton has an article entitled Hutcherson: Beating a Child Prevents Homosexuality.

Apparently an ex-football player by the name of Ken Hutcherson advocates a “spare the belt, spoil the child” approach to child rearing. One form of spoiling, in Hutcherson’s estimation, is that the child could be gay. So, just a reminder, aside from not working, trying to smack the gay out of a child can have fatal results.

And, really, this idea of corporal punishment is one of those things I originally took for granted but which makes less and less sense the more I grow up and the more I think about it. Hitting is wrong unless the victim is completely defenseless and trusts you most of all?

The Midwesterner has a post entitled The Outsourcing of Santa Claus. The post discusses an article by economist Michael Spence.

There are some notions in here that I’m sure I will muddle, even though the Midwesterner has simplified them for me, but Spence apparently argues that the economy consists of tradable and nontradable goods. (Somewhat confusingly to me, services are a subset of goods in these definitions). Tradable goods appear to hold their value across space (e.g. most manufactured goods). The value of nontradable goods appears to be dependent on proximity between provider and consumer (taxis, haircuts, and healthcare).

Automation and competition against cheap foreign labor has diminished the number of Midwesterners who can be employed producing tradable goods. Focus has been made on nontradable goods.

Many Midwestern cities see their post-industrial future in a combination of health care, education and high-end manufacturing. They may be chasing an impossible dream.

This is a conclusion drawn from recent studies that argue that manufacturing — high-end or not — isn’t coming back, at least as a major source of jobs, while growth in jobs in health care and education is going to slow down or stop, mostly because the governments that fund it are deeply in debt.

For many Midwestern cities, this is like telling them there’s no Santa Claus.

The problem may be that Luddite fears could be coming to pass. Technology is killing jobs. We’re still producing as much as ever – more even. The economy is working just fine. It just doesn’t include as many people.

This has me noodling about the nature of wealth, the nature of money, and the nature of work. I think there is an underlying premise that we can’t sustain a middle class society if we all just go around giving each other haircuts or whatever? The government can’t just give away money. Sounds reasonable, but why not? Because we have to eat and have shelter; we need someone to make the stuff. Who is going to do the hard work to farm and make stuff when they can just get free money from the government? People will stop working, you’ll have more demand than supply, money will be worthless.

But, I wonder. Automation suggests to me that these goods are easier to make. What happens if government is essentially printing money to pay for these non-tradable goods (healthcare and education, for example) and the money supply enters the economy that way instead of through the Federal Reserve?

I think of money as a way of storing value, like a battery stores energy. Instead of trading this service for that product directly, you use money so that you can get more people in on the game at once. Maybe you cut hair and you don’t know a widget producer who needs a haircut. But, if you give a haircut to a lawyer who writes a contract for a boat maker who sells a pontoon to a widget maker, the potential for agreeable exchanges expands exponentially. The key is to make sure that people trust that the money they receive in exchange for their service holds value long enough that they get a fair trade when they’re ready to spend their money.

Seems like if people are willing to work there should be a way to let them do so in a way that lets them hook up with other people who also want to work and let them trade one thing for another. Unemployment due to reasons other than laziness seems like a failure of coordination more than some inevitable byproduct of technology.

I’m mostly thinking out loud with this post, so take it for whatever it’s worth.