Health insurance and medical care loom so large in our lives today. Maybe I’m just projecting – but I don’t think so; I think a good chunk of the population spends some non-trivial amount of time worrying about this issue. Prices on insurance keep rising; prices on medical care keep rising; and, it seems like – actual health consequences aside – we’re Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God; only instead of the pit of hell, it’s financial ruin.

Their foot shall slide in due time. Deuteronomy 32:35.

Anyway, the latest waymarker on this forced march is reflected in the City of Richmond’s efforts to grapple with its budget. Its proposal:

The city of Richmond’s administration plans to carve out spouses from health insurance coverage for city employees for the 2012 budget.

City director of human resources Sue Roberson told the Richmond Common Council that that is the administration’s plan in moving forward with preparation of next year’s budget.

. . .

The plan would combat increases in health insurance costs for the city that are expected to climb by 21 percent in 2012.

Among other things, we need to disassociate health care from employment. It’s bad for employers and, I think, it’s bad for employees. It’s probably bad for the economy as well if, for example, employees that could better use their skills elsewhere or go out on their own as entrepreneurs are discouraged from doing so because they are chained to health care benefits their employers increasingly begrudge them.

Becker and Posner have some interesting thoughts on income inequality, envy, and whether the inequality is deserved or not deserved.

I have seen more references to David Barton than is usual lately. Mostly I come across his name when Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars debunks one of Barton’s offerings. But now I’m reading about him in other places. For example, Tipsy notes a squabble between Barton and Ann Althouse.

There is an almost hermetically sealed, alternate intellectual universe where the half-truths and fabrications of guys like Barton are taken, almost literally, as Gospel. They strive to portray Founding and pre-Founding America as a place where there was not a notion that a wall should exist between (Christian) Church & State; and where other religions may have been tolerated but not equal in the eyes of the government. (See “Dominionism“) Chris Rodda has undertaken to debunk a good number of these in her “Liars for Jesus” (pdf). But, as historian Paul Harvey notes, such debunking is necessary but not sufficient because Barton is simply playing a different game than historians.

Barton’s intent is not to produce “scholarship,” but to influence public policy. He simply is playing a different game than worrying about scholarly credibility, his protestations to the contrary notwithstanding. His game is to inundate public policy makers (including local and state education boards as well as Congress) with ideas packaged as products that will move policy.
. . .
Barton’s success at withstanding the phalanx of professional critics comes because he taps into a long history of “Christian Nation” providentialism.

In short, perhaps the best way to understand Barton is as a historical product of Christian providentialist thinking, one with significant historical roots and usually with a publicly convincing spokesman. He is the latest in a long line of ideologically persuasive spokesmen for preserving American’s Protestant character.

Barton is the intellectual descendant of “Parson” Weems, Lost Cause historians, and William Jennings Bryan. (Harvey notes that Bryan’s Christian Nation bordered on socialism, in sharp contrast to the coldly libertarian one envisioned by Barton.) Harvey goes on to argue that the “debate” about the Founders view on religion is mostly fictitious — at least as argued against Christian Nationalists. The “godless” view of the Constitution recognizes that the Founders were, by and large, religious people. They just did not believe that religion should have any special privileges at the federal level. Harvey concludes:

The Christian Nation “debate” is not really an intellectual contest between legitimate contending viewpoints. Instead, it is a manufactured “controversy” akin to the global warming “debate.” On one side are purveyors of a rich and complex view of the past, including most historians who have written and debated fiercely about the founding era. The “other side” is a group of ideological entrepreneurs who have created an alternate intellectual universe based on a historical fundamentalism. In their drive to create a usable past, they show little respect for the past as a foreign country.

Guys like Barton are looking at the past, not for its own sake & not to understand it, but as a tool to achieve a predetermined purpose. And what’s the point? To influence politicians and policy. And it’s working. Mike Huckabee likes Barton so much that he joked that he wanted every American to be forced to listen to him at gunpoint.

And I just wish that every single young person in America would be able to be under his tutelage and understand something about who we really are as a nation. I almost wish that there would be a simultaneous telecast and all Americans would be forced, forced, at gunpoint no less, to listen to every David Barton message and I think our country would be better for it.

G.O.P. Presidential frontrunner, Michele Bachmann, wants Barton to teach “Constitution classes” to new members of Congress.

Bachmann and Barton have a long relationship going back to Bachmann’s time as state senator. Barton was invited to Minnesota to help Bachmann with legislation on school history standards, she’s appeared his radio show numerous times, and she and Barton have conducted tours in Washington, D.C., to demonstrate to tea partiers how religious the Founding Fathers were.

And, the other likely G.O.P. Presidential nominee not named Mitt, Rick Perry, used Barton as a textbook expert. Using Barton’s mythical story of the Founding is argument by appealing to (fabricated) authority. They want a present where their view of Christianity dominates government policy; so, they want to create the illusion that there was a happier time in our past where our country embraced their policy views so that they can further argue that we should “return” to that embrace and, thereby, return to that happier time. This is necessary since, often times, the general public is a little skittish about embracing those views on their own merits. (See, e.g., a wife should graciously submit to her husband.) This is the sort of thing that gives rise to Stephen Colbert’s quip that reality has a known liberal bias.

The Guardian has an interesting article from a chapter of history about which I had previously known nothing. In 1961, Dag Hammarskjold was the UN Secretary General when his plane went down over northern Rhodesia on his way to peace talks about a rebellion in the Katanga region.

According to the article, the plane crash was chalked up to operator error at the time. But, it appears that the investigation was suspiciously cursory and that there is fairly good evidence that the plane was, in fact, shot down. Hammarskjold had pissed off just about everyone in the world already; and these peace talks were particularly unpopular in some quarters.

The investigation led Björkdahl to previously unpublished telegrams – seen by the Guardian – from the days leading up to Hammarskjöld’s death on 17 September 1961, which illustrate US and British anger at an abortive UN military operation that the secretary general ordered on behalf of the Congolese government against a rebellion backed by western mining companies and mercenaries in the mineral-rich Katanga region.

Hammarskjöld was flying to Ndola for peace talks with the Katanga leadership at a meeting that the British helped arrange. The fiercely independent Swedish diplomat had, by then, enraged almost all the major powers on the security council with his support for decolonisation, but support from developing countries meant his re-election as secretary general would have been virtually guaranteed at the general assembly vote due the following year.

Looks like maybe some truly hardball politics was at work there. Anyway, nice, long article for those of you interested in such things.

That didn’t take long. It looks like the Region’s Ken Allen is first out of the gate with a Fairground lawsuit.

This does not give me confidence that I was wrong when I offered predictions about how this was going to shake out.

“This was a terrible tragedy that could and should have been prevented,” Valparaiso attorney Kenneth J. Allen said in a news release. “The responsible parties must be held to account.”

Translation: Your Client Is Evil. Pay Me.

Matt Taibbi has a good article on the destruction of records from preliminary investigations known as “Matters Under Inquiry,” (MUI) apparently in violation of the SEC’s agreement with the National Archives and Records Administration and other federal records retention laws.

More importantly, it’s bad police practice to destroy such letters. According to Taibbi’s report, the practice, since 1993, has been to destroy MUI documents if the MUI doesn’t get green-lighted to become a “formal investigation.” To make that jump, it has to get the approval from higher ups from the enforcement division. These higher ups routinely get big pay days on Wall Street after they leave the SEC.

Taibbi points out that it’s pretty atypical for a law enforcement agency to destroy its own evidence. He concludes:

We’ll never know what the impact of those destroyed cases might have been; we’ll never know if those cases were closed for good reasons or bad. We’ll never know exactly who got away with what, because federal regulators have weighted down a huge sack of Wall Street’s dirty laundry and dumped it in a lake, never to be seen again.

I’m scarred by years of listening to plaintiff’s attorneys pretending to be sanctimonious, but I’m already tired of reading about whether or not the weather front that blew over the stage at the Indiana State Fair, killing and injuring people, could have been predicted or not. The “search for answers” in these cases is typically a search for someone upon whom we can pin the blame who also has money.

Here is the game plan: 1) find someone solvent; 2) find something they could have done better; 3) pretend that thing was the entire reason the stage fell over with people underneath; 4) hope the jury feels sorry enough for your client to more or less ignore the contributions to the accident by people or factors without money.

(Originally posted on 8/12/11 – I lost the original post in a server move and, consequently, any comments that went with it.)

Terry Turner, writing for the Gary Post-Tribune (h/t Indiana Law Blog), reports that the Starke County Commissioners have removed the Starke County Treasurer from office.

Board of Commissioners President Dan Bridegroom announced Belork’s removal from office at a special joint emergency session of the commissioners and County Council.

County Attorney Martin Lucas said the commissioners had the authority to seize Treasurer’s Office records, freeze county bank accounts and dismiss Belork and her employees “to safeguard the county.” The commissioners secured a restraining order from Starke Circuit Court for these measures, which also included banning Belork from access to paper and electronic records. It also indicated the county is seeking a default and damages from Belork’s surety bond.

I expect that this kind of thing will be a huge headache and a lot of work for county attorney Lucas, occasional commenter here and friend of the blog. Hang in there, Marty.

The issue is that, apparently, about $800,000 in taxpayer money is missing. The Starke County Board of Commissioners and the Treasurer have been at odds for awhile, according to the report. The Treasurer failed to attend a Commissioners meeting when asked. For her part, the Treasurer did not comment on the article but had complained in the past that Treasurer record discrepancies predate her tenure in office.

This kind of thing can get expensive for a county awfully quickly; particularly if they lose. Clinton County sued Rep. Clements for actions taken in her former capacity as an auditor. They lost, and, as a result, had to pay her attorney fees (pdf) as well. But, if the Starke County Commissioners legitimately think $800,000 has been misappropriated in some fashion, they might not have any other choice.

(Originally posted on 8/12/11 – I lost the original post in a server move and, consequently, any comments that went with it.)

Alex Campbell, writing for the Indianapolis Star, reports that Rep. Phil Hinkle picked up an eighteen year old man on Craigslist.

You can go to the article itself for the details and decide for yourself, but it certainly appears to be a male prostitution situation. Hinkle himself suggests that it was a shakedown but, when pressed, did not elaborate.

Again, for me, I’m not terribly interested in what people do behind closed doors. To the extent this constitutes infidelity, this is between himself and his wife. If he wasn’t a proponent for enshrining a marriage discrimination amendment in the Indiana Constitution, I probably would not even bother commenting on this. But, he is, and so, I am.

When these situations have cropped up in the past, I think one of the standard apologies is to excuse apparent hypocrisy with arguments about aspirational morality. “I am fallen and fallible, but that is no reason not to legislate to require the morality to which I aspire.” Or something like that.

But what I think we need to get out of our collective heads is the notion that being gay is immoral. Cheating on your wife is immoral (but not, so far as I know, illegal) because it’s a betrayal of trust. I’m open to the idea, but not necessarily convinced, that paying for sex is immoral. But I don’t see the immorality of being gay. Some would point out that the Bible disapproves of it; but that’s not so much an argument as an appeal to authority. So far as I can tell, the negative affects surrounding being gay pretty much all flow from social opprobrium, not from the fact of being gay itself. By voting to ban marriage equality, Rep. Hinkle has contributed to that opprobrium; apparently to his own detriment. And, political petard hoisting is pretty generally news worthy.

It’s fashionable in some circles to sneer at optimism. It’s a too-cool-for-school teen affliction; and, in political circles, it’s a way to try to get one up on Obama who used notions like Hope and Change for political gain. Sure, his use of those abstractions was calculated, and certainly the Obama administration’s governing has fallen well short of the rhetoric. But, it must be said, governing is harder than talking. And, there is certainly the suspicion that President Obama wouldn’t make good on some of his rhetoric even if he had unilateral control of the government. But Palinesque “hopey changey” mean girl venom disturbs me. It reminds me of a passage from a SubGenius rant from long ago, Nenslo’s “Hateword.”

The scariest part of the Con’s lulling lies is that they are all true. Not the ones about the products and how bad you need them, I mean the ones about how life can be beautiful, it’s easier to go with the flow, things are better than they’ve ever been. They know how True they are, so they do anything they can to make those True truths look stupid and childish. They make “don’t worry, be happy” into an insulting song, ugly t-shirts, plastic hats, moronic coffee mugs so when someone says it to you it makes you want to smash them in the face, but you can’t, so you go buy a three dollar shot of Bar Gin instead. And worry miserably.

They make you want to KILL “Have a Nice Day,” and then sell you the T-Shirt with a shot and bleeding smiley-face on it. They make you HATE LOVE and LOVE HATE, mock sincerity and honesty, and sneer at genuine emotion. Then they sell you two-hundred-dollar leather jacket so you can prove you “aren’t a Conspiracy Zombie” like all those poor schmucks who don’t have skulls on their t-shirts.

In some respects, I think America has gotten too smart for its own good. (While, in other respects, of course, we can be a nation of mouth breathing morons.) I think we’ve lost a certain naive optimism of the kind that often results in prosperity for hard workers who are too dumb to fail. And, we sneer at genuine emotion.