The Benefits Of Being Gay
Gay couples get screwed out of benefits, thanks to the ban against gay marriage:
Same-sex couples face colossal fiscal burdens as they age -- including the potential loss of tens of thousands of dollars in taxes and an average of $5,000 in yearly Social Security survivor benefits -- due to the denial of their right to marry, according to new research by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC).A report to be released on Monday by HRC and the Urban Institute reveals that "widows" and "widowers" are heavily taxed on any retirement plan like 401(k)s or IRAs inherited from their partners, while heterosexual spouses can inherit the plans tax-free. Homosexuals are also charged an estate tax on the inheritance of a residence even if it was jointly owned -- a burden inapplicable for straight couples.
I'm visiting a tragically ill friend in the hospital in Manhattan, who's in an intensive care room with two other beds. One of those beds was occupied by an elderly gay man, who was conscious, but clearly extremely ill. His...well, "boyfriend" -- which doesn't begin to describe the relationship of this man -- was with him, caressing his face, mopping his brow. You see few couples of any kind of sexuality with the love between these two. I asked the caretaking man how long they'd been together, and he told me "30 years." These men are being denied marriage? Sick.
But, this article I linked to above brings up another issue. I just wrote a column on how marriage, if you're not looking to have kids, doesn't make sense anymore. (My philosophy: If straight people are allowed to not make sense, gay people should be allowed to not make sense as well.) But why are Social Security survivor benefits and other benefits and rights allotted to married people alone? We need a registered partner agreement in this country (like the PACS, Le Pact Civil de SolidaritÈ, in France), which can be broken more easily than a marriage (ie, isn't forever), but is not a marriage either. People just sign a PACs in a municipalityís city hall, and they are registered as partners. To break it, one of them just does the reverse -- declaring themselves out of the PACs. Marrying another person is another way to end a PACS.
More and more, people in this country are engaging in serial committed relationships. The way we distribute benefits should reflect that. If you're in a committed relationship (like these men were) for 30 years, and don't believe in marriage (as I don't), shouldn't you be recognized as a committed partner to another person in benefits you've paid in, just like everybody else, and in other important ways? Copying the PACS for use in this country -- which allows for one partner to continue renting the apartment after the other partner's death, and health insurance benefits, and the right to visit the other in the hospital, among other things -- seems most sensible, and the fair thing to do.
Carnival Of Critics
Cathy Seipp on the hilarious, the pissy, and the ridiculous at the TV press tour.
Note: I'm in the frozen tundra (aka New York City), visiting a very sick friend, so blogging will probably be very light until early next week.
In Flight
On my way to New York. More blog items later or tomorrow.
Will You Bury Me?
"Modern divorce is little more than a functional substitute for death.î
--historian Lawrence Stone, The Family, Sex And Marriage In England 1500-1800
Yuk-Yuk-Yuk
The hundred funniest jokes of all time, compiled for GQ. Some of them actually are quite funny:
A Catholic teenager goes to confession, and after confessing to an affair with a girl is told by the priest that he can't be forgiven unless he reveals who the girl is. "I promised not to tell!" he says. "Was it Mary Patricia, the butcher's daughter?" the preist asks. "No, and I said I wouldn't tell." "Was it Mary Elizabeth, the printer's daughter?" "No, and I still won't tell!" 'Was it Mary Francis, the baker's daughter?" "No," says the boy. 'Well, son," says the priest, "I have no choice but to excommunicate you for six months." Outside, the boy's friends ask what happened. "Well," he says, "I got six months, but three good leads."
An Irish friend of mine (from Dublin) told me a true confession-related story: He went to confession and said he had been thinking "impure thoughts" (good for him!) about this girl and that girl. The priest gave him a bunch of hail whatevers to say. He said them, and left, but started thinking more "impure thoughts" about different girls on the way home, so he went back and confessed again. And so on, and so on...until the priest yelled at him, "What are you doing?! Go home and stay home!"
The Great Indoors
"Now, nature, as I am only too well aware, has her enthusiasts, but on the whole, I am not to be counted among them. To put it rather bluntly, I am not the type who wants to go back to the land--I am the type who wants to go back to the hotel. This state of affairs is partially due to the fact that nature and I have so little in common. We don't go to the same restaurants, laugh at the same jokes or, most significant, see the same people." --Fran Lebowitz
reload
test
Bye-Bye Abortion Rights
In the eyes of the Christian right, writes Erica Jong, women are being regarded once again primarily as wombs. She urges women to wake up before they discover that they've lost the right to both abortion and contraception:
The "partial birth" abortion bill (Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003), signed into law in November by President George Bush (and promptly challenged by the courts), is not only misnamed but is so vague concerning gestational age and the health of the mother that it leaves ample room for the Government to interfere with sound medical judgement, at the expense of women's health.It may seem reasonable to limit abortion to the first trimester of pregnancy, but the truth is that many genetic tests - including those for Down syndrome, Tay-Sachs, Canavan's and other diseases - cannot be completed until the second trimester.
By then abortion is not such a simple matter, and limiting it makes a mockery of the right to choose not to bear a genetically damaged child. In the past decade our ability to test for genetic diseases has soared, and now we are taking away the opportunity to make informed decisions based on this technology - something no woman ever does lightly.
The contempt for women and for medicine that underlies the Christian right's attack on choice is as shocking as it is invisible. The right has been absolutely brilliant in cloaking an indifference to women's health in language that seems to affirm life.
A whole generation has grown up without knowing that in the days before legal abortion, many women died or were sterilised in their desperate efforts to terminate unwanted pregnancies.
And the pro-choice movement has been remiss in failing to remind people that banning abortion can in essence ban a woman's right to life-saving medical care.
A 1997 Nebraska bill identical to the one Bush signed has already been struck down by the Supreme Court. In the words of Justice Stephen G. Breyer: "The result [of this law] is an undue burden upon a woman's right to make an abortion decision. We must consequently find the statute unconstitutional."
The strategy of the right-to-life movement has been to keep passing the same unconstitutional laws until eventually they will be received by a Supreme Court packed with Bush appointees.
Sound farfetched? Well, look where we were, in terms of abortion rights, and look where we are now: it's becoming less and less farfetched every day.
A Contrary And Wonderful Thing
I highly recommend the book I'm reading, Christopher Hitchens' Letters To A Young Contrarian. Like me, he is not a believer in god. He says he is "not even an atheist so much as I am an antitheist; I not only maintain that all religions are versions of the same untruth, but I hold that the influence of churches, and the effect of religious belief, is positively harmful." (Anyone who thinks he's wrong should just look to the guy in The White House, trying to deny gays and lesbians rights in the name of religion.) Here's an exerpt from Hitchens' book, from the chapter on his views on religion:
I have met many brave men and women, morally superior to myself, whose courage in adversity derives from their faith. But whenever they have chosen to speak or write about it, I have found myself appalled by the instant decline of their intellectual and moral standards. They want god on their side and believe they are doing his work -- what is this, even at its very best, but an extreme form of solipsism? They proceed from conclusion to evidence; our greatest resource is the mind and the mind is not well-trained by being taught to assume what has to be proved.This arrogance and illogic is inseparable even from the meekends and most altruistic religious affirmations. A true believer must believe that he or she is here for a purpose and is an object of real interest to a Supreme Being; he or she must also claim to have at least an inkling of what that Supreme Being desires. I have been called arrogant myself in my time, and hope to earn the title again, but to claim that I am privy to the secrets of the universe and its creator -- that's beyond my conceit. I therefore have no choice but to find something suspect even in the humblest believer, let alone in the great law-givers and edict-makers of whose "flock" (and what a revealing word that is) they form a part.
Even the most humane and compoassionate of the monotheisms and polytheisms are complicit in this quiet and irrational authoritarianism: they proclaim us, in Fulke Grenville's unforgettable line, "Created sick -- Commanded to be well." And there are totalitarian insinuations to back this up if its appeal should fail. Christians, for example, declare me redeemed by a human sacrifice that occurred thousands of years before I was born. I didn't ask for it, and would willingly have foregone it, but there it is: I'm claimed and saved whether I wish it or not. And if I refuse the unsolicited gift? Well, there are stsill some vague mutterings about an eternity of torment for my ingratitude. This is somewhat worse than a Big Brother state, because there could be no hope of its eventually passing away.
In any case, I find something repulsive in the idea of vicarious redemption. I would not throw my numberless sins onto a scapegoat and expect them to pass from me; we rightly sneer at the barbaric societies that practice this unpleasantness in its literal form. There's no moral value in the vicarious gesture anyway. As Thomas Paine pointed out, you may if you wish take on another man's debt, or even offer to take his place in prison. That would be self-sacrificing. But you may not assume his actual crimes as if they were your own; for one thing you did not commit them and might have died rather than do so; for another this impossible action would rob him of individual responsibility. So the whole apparatus of absolution and forgiveness strikes me as positively immoral, while the concept of revealed truth degrades the whole concept of free intelligence by purportedly relieving us of the hard task of working out ethical principles for ourselves.
Daughter Of A Veep
Michael Signorile really lets Mary Cheney have it in New York Press:
Excuse me for being blunt, but my rights are at stake at the moment, as our born-again president has told his theocratic mentors that heíd sell usóyou, me and millions of other homosódown the river. So letís get to the point: What the hell happened to you? Are you just another spoiled rich bratóthe lesbian Paris Hiltonóworried about getting a chunk of those 30 million Halliburton bucks should Dadís heart conk out? I mean, this is one of those moments of truth, Mary, one in which the fundamentalist forces of darkness either march into the White Houseóenshrining antigay discrimination into the U.S. Constitutionóor are beaten back. And so far, youíve been working for the enemy, darling.
I guess it turns out that the brand of "compassionate conservatism" Mary Cheney was working to sell was "we feel for you, but we sure aren't going to extend you all our rights."
Shall I teach you how to know something? Realize you know it when you know it, and realize you don't know it when you don't.
Got God?
If not, you'd better not be running for president, because secularists pay a penalty at the polls. Cathy Young registers her alarm in the Boston Globe:
THE OTHER day, I was reading an interview with Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean in Newsweek when I had to stop and check that it was indeed Newsweek and not, say, Christianity Today. Yes, it was indeed Newsweek. And, after a series of questions about a variety of public policy issues, Dean was asked, out of the clear blue, the following question: "Do you see Jesus Christ as the son of God and believe in him as the route to salvation and eternal life?" For the record, Dean's somewhat cagey answer probably did little to assuage doubts about his religious faith: "I certainly see him as the son of God. I think whether I'm saved or not is not gonna be up to me." The real issue, though, is why this question even came up in a political magazine. Do we now have a religious test for public office -- something that was explicitly rejected by the Founders of the United States of America?I am not, for many reasons, a Dean supporter. But in the past few weeks, Dean has been the target of something dangerously close to a religious witch-hunt -- and that should concern all of us, whatever our party affiliation or our political, religious, and moral convictions.
Personally, I'll have a soft spot for any candidate who doesn't just believe what they're told (that there's a god), but insists on a scientific standard of proof. Always nice to have a rational person in the head office, don't you think?
"No Bride Left Behind"
That's what Arianna calls Bush's new $1.5 billion marriage initiative. Like me, she wonders whether the federal government really belongs in the marriage counseling business:
"Marriage programs do work," insisted Dr. Wade Horn, assistant secretary for children and families of the Department of Health and Human Services. "On average, children raised by their own parents in healthy, stable married families enjoy better physical and mental health and are less likely to be poor." Yeah, well so are children who can read. And those raised by parents who have a job. Or health insurance. Or access to a decent education.What makes the president's proposal particularly galling is that it's being offered up by a politician who came into office attacking federal programs like the one he is proposing for being too intrusive. "I trust people," said candidate Bush during one of his debates with Al Gore. "I don't trust the federal government."
Indeed, the very people who have been complaining for decades that government programs are not the way to fight the war on poverty are now determined to use Federal tax dollars to fight the war for matrimonial bliss. And they're using the same line of argument they excoriate liberals for using to explain why we need to invest in education, health care, and poverty fighting: "For every $1,000 we spend on public programs addressing family breakdown," said Tony Perkins, president of the conservative Family Research Council, "we only spend one dollar trying to prevent that breakdown in the first place. The President's initiative puts the emphasis in the right place ñ prevention."
Of course, these "family values" types, who insist that "marriage is between a man and a woman," uniformly fail to mention that, these days, marriage in America is, quite often, between a man who works eight hours a day in a factory and five hours a night as a security guard and then comes home to an empty bed because his wife is on the night shift, stocking shelves at Wal-Mart. It's pretty damn hard to "manage your conflicts in a healthy way" when the two of you are never in the same room. And for all the talk about how much better off kids in unbroken homes are, there is very little said about how these barely-making-ends-meet parents are supposed to pull off the Ozzie and Harriet routine. Talk to your kids about drugs? When? In the waits at the emergency room, which you're using as your GP because you haven't got health care?
Watch Out For Those Soccer Dads!
Family man Luigi Garofano gets swept up by the anti-terror squad for a 20-year-old drug charge. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, petitioned to deport him, but an immigration judge rejected their petition. The government can still appeal. As Mike Alissi from Reason put it, "Watch out for those soccer dad sleeper cells!"
(via Reason's blog)
Raining On The P.C. College Admissions Parade
Cathy Seipp exposes Pitzer College president Laura Skandera Trombley's soggy thinking about the SAT.
We Have Nothing To Fear But Gays On Steroids
Nick Gillespie came up with a hilarious super-condensed version of Bush's State Of The Union address:
Things are good, though terrorism is a threat to America and so are kids who take steroids and gays who want to marry each other. The housing market's never been better. I have a 10 year-old pen pal named Ashley who's swell.
The link to the full text of the State Of The Union Address is here, along with Gillespie's super-condense job on the Democrats' blather in response.
A Define Romance
The American Dialect Society has named the 2003 Words Of The Year. Here are my favorites:
ass-hat: noun, a thoughtless or stupid person.flexitarian: noun, a vegetarian who occasionally eats meat.
freegan: noun, person who eats only what they can get for free.
tanorexia: noun, the condition of being addicted to tanning.
tofurkey: noun, a faux turkey crafted from tofu. Also a trade name.
manscaping: noun, male body-shaving.
Collyer: noun, in New York City, a person trapped under their own collected debris in their apartment.
Any additions?
(via Metafilter)
UPDATE: In related news, Treacher makes yet another important contribution to western culture.
Putting The Self Back In Self-Improvement
Novelist and writer Louis Bayard is maxed-out on maxims.
(via Arts & Letters Daily)
Dad Wrong
Attention, men! You, too, can be a father! Father of a child you've never met; whose mother you've never had sex with, nor even seen -- a father who owes a considerable sum of child-support to that mother of that child you didn't father.
Matt Welch has done a masterful investigative piece in the February 2004 Reason magazine on the terribly scary fraud being perpetuated on men in the name of welfare reform: any woman can name any man -- even one she's never met -- as the father of her child, and if he doesn't fight back (and fast) -- he could end up losing everything. Yes, everything. "A name, race, vague location, and a broad age range is sufficient to launch a process that" can cause a man who is not the child's father to have his wages garnished and his passport blocked, and have liens put on his assets.
It isn't even a crime for the mother to name the wrong man. Welch notes that "for both the mother and the state, the punishment for making a mistake is indirect, in the form of receiving less child support." But, the man's credit -- and his life -- can be ruined in the process.
It all boils down to paperwork. If the alleged father doesn't get, or ignores the (confusing) notice to respond to the paternity charge, he has a limited time to contest it before he's assumed to be daddy in the eyes of the law -- whether or not he actually is. Welch reports that the accused father has 30 days to respond to a paternity complaint (it helps if the complaint form has actually gotten to him, but in many cases it never did). Then, he has 180 days to contest a child support order, and two years from birth to challenge paternity using DNA evidence. "If," Welch writes, "for whatever reasons, any of these deadlines aren't met, no amount of evidence can move the state to review the case; the DCSS has to be sued." Unfortunately...
...Family cases typically hew to the "finality of judgment" principle to prevent disruptions in children's lives. Or, in the words of former California legislator Rod Wright, "It ain't your kid, you can prove it ain't your kid, and they say, 'So what?'"That's how a man like Taron James could be slapped with a support bill for thousands of dollars from Los Angeles County in 2002, and continue to be barred from using his notary public license, even after producing convincing DNA evidence and notarized testimony from the mother that her 11-year-old son, whom he's seen exactly once and looks nothing like, is not his child and that she no longer seeks his support. James says his name was placed on the child's birth certificate without his consent while he was on a Navy tour of duty; then the mother refused to take blood tests for eight years, and he became aware of a default order against him only when the Department Of Motor Vehicles refused to issue him a driver's license in October 1996. By that time, James had missed all the relevant deadlines, the court was unimpressed with his tale of woe, and he has since coughed up $14,000 in child support via liens and garnishments.
Hideous stuff. Terribly wrong. It's clear what's right here, and all lawmakers like Sheila Kuehl (D-Santa Monica), who oppose paternity-related reform bills, should be voted out post-haste.
Personally, I would like to take the rights of men a step further. I don't think any man who doesn't want to be a father -- and clearly expresses that to a woman -- should be forced to pay for any child that ensues from having sex. Because a woman is the one who gets pregnant, if paying for and raising a child as a single mother is a problem for a particular woman, she needs to take steps -- and double steps -- to prevent pregnancy -- or be ready to have an abortion or give up the baby after it's born. Men shouldn't be forced into financing fatherhood -- by anyone -- be it a fuckbuddy or a representative of the state.
NOTE: To read Matt Welch's piece right now, buy the February 2004 Reason at any really good newsstand near you. When the link is up on the magazine's site, I'll put it up on my Web site, too.
Northworst For Privacy
I want my privacy back. Northwest Airlines, the flying cattlecar I take to my hometown, Detroit, very likely donated my private data to NASA without my permission. According to an AP story:
Northwest said it did not inform any passengers that it shared data with NASA. It also said it did not believe that the data sharing violated its privacy policy."Our privacy policy commits Northwest not to sell passenger information to third parties for marketing purposes," the company said in its statement to the Post. "This situation was entirely different, as we were providing the data to a government agency to conduct scientific research related to aviation security and we were confident that the privacy of passenger information would be maintained."
Well, I'm thrilled that they were "confident" about this. I just wish I'd gotten to weigh in, as it's likely that I was one of those informationally assaulted. Hmm, if I can't have my privacy back, maybe I can invoice them for a $500 Revealing My Private Data fee. Now, there's an idea.
Keep The Government Out Of Our Bloodstreams
The government, writes AP's Adam Geller, is preparing to use intrusive new ways to find out if employees are using drugs:
Saliva testing, done using a swab that looks much like a toothbrush but with a pad instead of bristles, is best at detecting drug use within the past one or two days.Hair testing, in which a sample about the thickness of a shoelace is clipped at the root from the back of the head, allows detection of many drugs used as far back as 3 months.
Sweat testing, in which workers are fitted with a patch that is worn for two weeks, is used to screen people who have returned to work after drug treatment.
Oops -- they forgot something. What about employees who are alcoholics? Doesn't that affect job performance? And maybe, like me, you know a high-functioning drug user or two -- like a famous Ph.D. university professor I'm acquainted with, who unwinds after a long day of important discoveries by smoking a thick doob. If it's not ruining his life or demonstrably affecting his work (he seems a tad overproductive, if anything) -- what, please tell me, could possibly be wrong with that?
Fundamentalist Welfare
Bush panders to the religious right with his $1.5 billion marriage money package -- which gays are excluded from partaking of. I'm against this package altogether (whatever happened to the guy who campaigned for small government?), but it's completely wrong (and certainly unconstituional) that one segment of the population is discriminated against by the government they pay taxes to on the basis of sexual orientation. Chris Geidner has a good piece on this. And one of his commenters hits on one of my suspicions:
I'm sure this money is really going to be thrown at various churches, whose training is largely going to consist of the importance of accepting the Lord Jesus Christ as your savior, and building & improving your relationship with Christ as a first step to building & improving your relationship with your spouse.Not to malign that as a possibly very successful means of improving marital relations, but it's one that should be privately funded.
Yes, it should.
Join the Penis Size Debate
http://psize.blogspot.com
http://psize.
blogspot.com
Cecile Dublog
And now, a blatant promo for a certain teen blog...
The Book Babes
On former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill's account of the Bush administration in "The Price Of Loyalty." Link to the book is here.
Where Is Mrs. Dean?
Dumb question, says Reason's Nick Gillespie, knocking her critics:
...we already know where Steinberg Dean is: somewhere in the Green Mountain State, doing whatever it is that country doctors do. The question really is, Should we care where Mrs. Deanóor any other candidate's spouseóis? The short answer is no.
He's right. Check your clocks. It's 2004. Isn't it time we get comfortable with a presidential wife who's more than political arm candy?
Imam-my Dearest
Imam sentenced by a Spanish court for advising men on how to beat up their wives without leaving incriminating marks.
(via Instapundit)
We The (Secular) People
The Constitution is a secular document, writes Susan Jacoby, author of the forthcoming Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism, and America is a secular country:
...The notion that elected officials should employ a religious rationale for policy decisions is rooted in the misconception, promulgated by the Christian right, that the American government was founded on divine authority rather than human reason. When I lecture on college campuses, students frequently express surprise at being told that the framers of the Constitution deliberately omitted any mention of God in order to assign supreme governmental power to "We the People."Dismissing this inconvenient fact, some on the religious right have suggested that divine omnipotence was considered a given in the 1780's ó that the framers had no need to acknowledge God in the Constitution because his dominion was as self-evident as the rising and setting of the sun. Yet isn't it absurd to suppose that men as precise in their use of language as Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison would absentmindedly have failed to insert God into the nation's founding document? In fact, they represented a majority of citizens who wished not only to free religion from government interference but government from religious interference.
This deep sentiment was expressed in letters to newspapers during the debate over ratification of the Constitution. One Massachusetts correspondent, signing himself "Elihu," summed up the secular case by praising the authors of the Constitution as men who "come to us in the plain language of common sense, and propose to our understanding a system of government, as the invention of mere human wisdom; no deity comes down to dictate it, nor even a God in a dream to propose any part of it."
The 18th-century public's understanding of the Constitution as a secular document can perhaps best be gauged by the reaction of religious conservatives at the time. For example, the Rev. John M. Mason, a fire-breathing New York City minister, denounced the absence of God in the preamble as "an omission which no pretext whatever can palliate." He warned that "we will have every reason to tremble, lest the governor of the universe, who will not be treated with indignity by a people more than individuals, overturn from its foundations the fabric we have been rearing and crush us to atoms in the wreck." But unlike many conservatives today, Mason acknowledged ó even as he deplored ó the Constitution's uncompromising secularism.
Americans tend to minimize not only the secular convictions of the founders, but also the secularist contribution to later social reform movements. One of the most common misconceptions is that organized religion deserves nearly all of the credit for 19th-century abolitionism and the 20th-century civil rights movement. While religion certainly played a role in both, many people fail to distinguish between personal faith and religious institutions.
Abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison, editor of The Liberator, and the Quaker Lucretia Mott, also a women's rights crusader, denounced the many mainstream Northern religious leaders who, in the 1830's and 40's, refused to condemn slavery.
In return, Garrison and Mott were castigated as infidels and sometimes as atheists ó a common tactic used by those who do not recognize any form of faith but their own. Garrison, strongly influenced by his freethinking predecessor Thomas Paine, observed that one need only be a decent human being ó not a believer in the Bible or any creed ó to discern the evil of slavery.
Here are two mini-reviews of her book from Amazon.com:
ìFreethinkers is not only a good book, it is a necessary one. Ranging from the freethinking Revolution to the pious administration of George W. Bush, this dramatic study offers a welcome reminder that the Founding Fathers were intent on keeping church and state firmly separated. Lively, impassioned, and impartial, Susan Jacobyís argument deserves more than respect; it deserves support.î óPeter Gay, Sterling Professor of History Emeritus, Yale UniversityìThis book is fresh air for those who defend the separation of church and state. Here, clearly written and without apologetics, is the noble record of the struggle to retain Americaís precious freedom of conscience, her pride for two centuries, now under threat from the political Right as never before.î óArthur Miller
Hillary In 2008
She's outhawking the hawks all the way to The White House, predicts Andrew Sullivan.
Payless Car Rental: We Spy Harder
Christopher Elliott writes in The New York Times about car rental companies using tracking devices against their customers. One customer, a Mr. Son, "received a shock" when he returned the Ford Escort he'd rented to Payless:
The $259.51 bill he expected had ballooned to $3,405.05 - most of it a result of a $1-a-mile fee for each of the 2,874 miles driven. It turned out that by crossing the state line, he had violated his contract with Payless."If we had known we couldn't drive the car outside California, we wouldn't have rented it," Mr. Son said.
Penalties for taking a rental vehicle beyond state lines or national borders are not new. But the way in which Mr. Son's surcharge was applied was somewhat novel. The rental company presented him with a map showing his exact route outside California as relayed by a tracking device in his car. Mr. Son said he was surprised to learn that his movements were being tracked. A letter was included with the bill. "Should you choose to dispute this amount," wrote Umesh Pudasaini, the Payless branch manager, "we will pursue all avenues" to collect full payment. Car rental companies have come to rely on an emerging technology called telematics - which combines satellite-based Global Positioning System tracking, wireless communications and vehicle monitoring systems - to keep tabs on their vehicles. About a quarter of the rental cars in the United States are equipped with tracking technology, analysts estimate. The industry views telematics as a way to enforce its contracts, but some customers regard it, at best, as a means to make more money and, at worst, as an invasion of privacy.
Neil Abrams, an auto rental consultant, said early uses of G.P.S. technology in rental cars, like the Hertz NeverLost system, were intended to help motorists find their way. But recent efforts have quietly focused on catching renters who drive out of state or break speed laws.
I'll focus my efforts on renting from companies that respect my privacy -- if any.
UPDATE: Speaking of scary, here's Reason's Brian Doherty on CAPPS II, which "could be operating in our nation's airports as soon as next month." Oh, relinquishing our privacy is all for our own protection, is it? Oh, goody.
Dawn Of The Same Old Day
Like me, Bernadine Healy wonders why in the world the morning-after pill is up for debate. The answer, of course: fundamentalists. Their attempt to turn back the clock on women's health issues is supposedly about "choosing life" -- a choosing that gives none of the choice to the women who, in turn, end up unnecessarily barefoot and pregnant, maimed or dead.
The Land Of The (Fat-)Free
MSNBC's Howard Mortman on the elected nannies who seek to take a tax bite out of our junk food. Are you fat? Take a walk, don't take liberties with the price of my once-a-year fast food burger and fries. (Those sugar-dusted McDonald's fries...mmm-mmm good!)
(via Reason's blog)
Stay-At-Home Dads
Chances are, they're gay. Ginia Bellefante reports for The New York Times about "an emerging population of gay men who are not only raising children but are also committed to the idea that one parent should leave the workplace to do it":
Of 9,328 same-sex couples with children whose census returns were randomly selected for analysis by the Census Bureau, 26 percent of the male couples included a stay-at-home parent, said Gary Gates, a demographer with the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan research organization in Washington. That figure is one percentage point more than for married couples with children and four percentage points higher than for female couples, said Mr. Gates, who performed the analysis for this article.The percentage of men who stay at home is significantly smaller among married heterosexual couples, Mr. Gates said.
The obstacles of finding surrogate mothers and of discriminatory adoption laws that favor heterosexual couples have led some gay men to pursue parenthood with fervor.
"Being a planned gay father is such a project in itself," said Judith Stacey, a professor of sociology at New York University and a senior scholar at the Council on Contemporary Families, a research organization. Often, Professor Stacey said, gay fathers or those aspiring to be "remain very judgmental of parents who don't stay home."
To some gay men, the idea of entrusting the care of a hard-won child to someone else seems to defeat the purpose of parenthood.
Ray Friedmann, of Portland, Ore., gave up an accounting job at a credit union after he and his partner adopted their daughter, Ceriwen, now six months old. Unable to join his partner's medical plan because it does not provide for domestic partners, Mr. Friedmann, like many other gay fathers, pays for his own health insurance.
"We never thought we'd even be able to have this child," Mr. Friedmann said. "When we had the opportunity to do it, we wanted to give her the best attention and love."
Perhaps you've seen the above-quoted Judy Stacey, a friend of mine and Lena's, who testified in the case against the Florida ban on gay parent adoptions -- aka Rosie O'Donnell's Prime Time Live coming-out party. Two gay parents, Steve Lofton, 44, and Roger Croteau, 46, took in a bunch of kids that nobody wanted -- kids with AIDs and other serious illnesses, and difficult backgrounds -- and created a family so happy that a lot of kids with hetero parents would probably petition to join it. Now the state of Florida is trying to take one of those kids away -- just because the parents are gay. Go ahead -- tell me fundamentalism isn't evil.
Urine Terrorist Territory Now
Plotting to empty your bladder while flying from Sydney to New York? Better hope you don't have company. The TSA has outlawed collective pee breaks on planes to the USA.
(via Metafilter)
Did Michael Jackson Do It?
Like me, Leo McKinstry, of the London Spectator doubts it:
...Eccentricity does not necessarily imply guilt. Personally, I have the gravest doubts about the charges made against Jackson. Not only are the motives of his accusers open to suspicion, but also Jacksonís behaviour does not match that of a predatory, duplicitous child-abuser. The present case arose out of the television documentary made about Jackson by Martin Bashir. Broadcast in February 2003, this programme featured Gavin Arvizo, who was filmed leaning his head on Jacksonís shoulder while he talked of his devotion to the pop star ó hardly the behaviour of someone living in terror of abuse. Indeed, Gavinís mother, Janet Ventura, was so furious at the way Bashir hinted at Jacksonís impropriety that she made a formal complaint to the Independent Television Commission, arguing that Bashirís programme was ëa complete distortion of the truth about Michael Jackson as I know and admire him. At no time has Gavin ever been treated with anything other than love, respect and the deepest kindness by Michael Jackson.í She stressed that Jackson had helped her son in his battle with cancer through ëhis constant support, both practical and emotionalí.Those words will return to haunt Ms Ventura in court, for she is now one of the star witnesses for the prosecution against Jackson. She claims to be acting from a spirit of outrage, but others say that she is acting out of spite because Jackson would no longer give her financial support. Over the years, he has showered her with gifts, including a car and an apartment for a boyfriend, but earlier this year, when he told her that ëthe free ride is overí, she is alleged to have turned against him. Witnesses at Neverland state that they saw Janet Ventura, ëhigh on crackí, arguing with Jackson and making verbal threats to go to ëthe tabloids and tell them some stories if you donít take care of meí. Some might see Jacksonís supposed generosity as nothing more than hush money to cover up abuse. Yet if he was succumbing to such pressures, why would he suddenly stop paying?
Intriguingly, this picture of a grasping woman bent on revenge is supported by Janet Venturaís estranged husband, David Arvizo, who says that his ex-wife was obsessed with becoming a celebrity and was only ëinterested in money and herselfí. It has also been pointed out that Janet Ventura previously made allegations at the supermarket J.C. Penney, claiming to have been battered and sexually assaulted by security guards. She won $144,000 in an out-of-court settlement. During her divorce battle, she also accused her husband of abusing their children. For this purpose, she is said to have written out scripts for the children so that they would back up her testimony in court.
Ms Ventura and her son Gavin may indeed now be telling the truth, though it seems odd that they should have so radically changed their story in less than a year. Celebrities are uniquely vulnerable to allegations from disgruntled ex-employees and acquaintances, who seek wealth or fame. Prince Charles, the TV presenter John Leslie and the cricketer Geoff Boycott are just three examples of famous men who have recently been subject to vicious, unfounded campaigns by disturbed or money-grabbing individuals.
In Michael Jacksonís case, the fact that he has been so open about his childlike fondness for the company of young boys is surely a mark in his favour. A man who had something to hide would hardly proclaim in a TV interview, as Jackson did on 26 December, ëWhatís wrong with sharing your bed?í Jacksonís stance of outraged innocence might be an act, but equally it might reflect the real personality of someone who has never embraced adulthood.
Jesus Kicked Me In The Shins
David Bernstein, over at volokh.com, makes a really good point about people's silly tendency to give god credit for anything good that happens:
Americans have a tendency to publicly attribute any success they have had--anything ranging from winning a Little League playoff game to winning the lottery--to God's intervention on their behalf. But I haven't noticed a countervailing tendency to blame God when things go wrong, an especially annoying defect in the sports world, where victories are freely attributed to Jesus's blessings. If God wanted the Marlins to win the World Series, doesn't that mean he wanted the Yankees to lose? Just once, I'd like to see the losing Super Bowl quarterback tell the media "Guess Jesus really had it in for me today."
Yeah, and there's war in Iraq only because god's a little busy making some 10-year-old second baseperson drop the ball so your kid's little league team can win. Rrrright!
Return To Consenter
In the state of Michigan, according to a Local 6 report, "sex is a crime if both consenting parties aren't at least 17 years old." In other words, if you're a consenting 17-year-old girl, and you have sex with your (exceptionally grateful) consenting 16-year-old boyfriend, you can be charged as a sex-offender.
This 15-year-old girl's daddy is now crying rape -- after allegedly providing the girl and her boyfriend with condoms and a bed! -- because he found out her boyfriend was 20, not 18 like he'd said. Unfortunately for daddy, the police are charging him, too -- with the same three counts of criminal sexual conduct they're charging the boyfriend with -- for allowing the whole deal to go on.
While the backfiring aspect in this case is kind of hilarious, the law behind it is scary, and as stupid as our age limits on who can drink. How about we only call rape what is rape -- clearly forced sex on somebody who doesn't have the capacity to refuse? Sure, a 15-year-old having sex with a 20-year-old is usually ill-advised, and definitely, in this case, a sign of bad parenting. But, it sure isn't rape.
Crime Limit
Spent last night drinking with the homicide squad in Detroit. Flying home soon. More blog items later!
The Modern Leftist's Association
The Modern Language Association is an organization supposedly all about promoting "the study and teaching of language and literature." According to a Boston Globe story by Scott Jaschik, it seems they're much busier promoting the idea of America as The Evil Empire. At their recent convention in San Diego, English professor after English professor weighed in on "American imperialism":
Anthony Dawahare of California State University at Northridge said that "whoever wins the war in Iraq, the working class people in Iraq and in the US will be subject to a dictatorship of the rich." In an interview, he said that unless Howard Dean challenged capitalism itself, student activism on his behalf would be "a waste of time."
Hmm, being subjected to "a dictatorship of the rich" (A wide-screen TV in every living room?) sounds a lot better than being subjected to a dictatorship of a guy who regularly tosses 400 citizens' dead bodies in a ravine. How about we drop-kick this guy into Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia and see if he starts missing democracy a little?
(via Reason's blog)
The Bush Brats Get Their Way
An excerpt from Ann Gerhart's book, "The Perfect Wife: The Life and Choices of Laura Bush," on Jenna and Barbara Bush:
The armored black limousine glides to a stop near a U.S. military jet at Andrews Air Force Base early one morning in May 2002. Laura Bush is about to embark on her first solo trip as first lady, a 10-day visit to three European nations, where she will speak out for Afghan women's rights.An aide opens the door, and Mrs. Bush slides her legs carefully out and steps onto the tarmac. By this point, she knows her part well: Pause to smile, wave and let the photographers dutifully record the image. The small press corps knows its part, too, and watches the routine preflight maneuver with no expectations. Suddenly, one leg in worn corduroy, then the other, swings off the smooth leather limo seat. Jenna Bush stands up to follow her mother into the plane for this spring fling, and the reporters go on alert. It's the rowdy twin, the one who has been busted twice in four weeks for underage drinking, who has run her Secret Service detail ragged, who was captured in the National Enquirer falling down, a cigarette in her hand.
The corduroy jeans are ratty at their too-long hems, where Jenna has ground them into the pavement too many times. She is wearing a short black T-shirt, and her exposed tummy pooches out over the low-riding waistband. Flip-flops are on her feet. Her blond hair has been pinned carelessly up with a plastic clip. Sunglasses cover her eyes. Hoisting a backpack, she clomps up the plane stairs and disappears.
She hardly looks appropriately presidential daughterly, but then again, she has time to get herself together before the entourage lands in Paris, where French and American officials will greet Mrs. Bush and hand her flowers. The girl is hardly flying coach: Her mother has a hairdresser and a makeup artist on board the military plane, and there's a lovely wide bed and full shower.
But upon arrival 71/2 hours later, while her ladylike mother smiles and embraces the waiting welcomers, Jenna appears at the plane door looking exactly the same. The flip-flops still on the feet, the belly still exposed, the hair still not brushed. Suddenly, she darts back inside. The twin has spied the telephoto lenses of several French photographers far away, behind a fence. For a few moments, nothing happens, and then the limousine trunk floats open by electronic remote. A White House valet retrieves one of Mrs. Bush's Neiman Marcus garment bags, carefully laid out in the trunk, and he carries it back up the plane's steps. The reporters watch in wonder. While he holds it aloft, Jenna slips behind it, and he walks back down the stairs, shielding the first daughter from the prying eyes of all media, foreign and domestic. Only the top of her blond head, bobbing up and down, and those flip-flops are visible.
Jenna is hiding, literally, behind her mother's skirts.
There are only two possible explanations for what the reporters have just witnessed. Either, A) Laura Bush has asked her 20-year-old to please make herself more presentable, more fitting as a representative of the United States using taxpayer dollars on an official visit, and her daughter has adamantly refused, or B) Laura hasn't even bothered to ask.
The rest is here.
Back In The USSR
Well, not quite. Speech is still free in the US -- as long as nobody can hear those objectionable things you're saying. James Bovard reports on so-called "free-speech zones":
Attempts to suppress protesters become more disturbing in light of the Homeland Security Department's recommendation that local police departments view critics of the war on terrorism as potential terrorists. In a May terrorist advisory, the Homeland Security Department warned local law enforcement agencies to keep an eye on anyone who "expressed dislike of attitudes and decisions of the U.S. government." If police vigorously followed this advice, millions of Americans could be added to the official lists of suspected terrorists.
Excuse me, but when do we all get terrified about the continuing eradication of rights in the name of "national security"?
UPDATE: Longtime political dissenter Brent Bursey is fined $500 for breaking a a federal law "designed to shield the president from harm," reports Clif LeBlanc, in a story in the Columbia, South Carolina newspaper The State.
(via David "Tell Me Everything" Rensin)
Belief Blower
In the February Psychology Today, Erik Strand does a mini-profile of The Brights -- "a growing group of atheists, humanists, and free-thinkers" with "a naturalistic worldview that rejects supernational and mystical thinking." It's a group that happens to include yours truly, and Strand included me in the piece:
Syndicated advice columnist Amy Alkon, who has slapped the sobriquet "Godless Harlot" on her business card, puts it this way: "Our country is run by [religious] fundamentalists in so many areas that it's important to come out of the closet."
Come out of the closet as a rational thinker, I meant. And, how scary that, in 2004, there's still a closet for that. Sure, we have cell phones that stop just short of making us hot buttered toast, but as far as advances in rational thought go, much of the world's population seems firmly planted in about 1652. And that's just the western portion.
NOTE: (The article isn't on the Internet yet, but it is on page 82 of the print version of the January/February Psychology Today, on newsstands now.)
Trough With The Pounds
No, lifting the Big Gulp to your fat face isn't exercise. How obvious is that? Not obvious enough, apparently, because a professor just did a bunch of research and came to the stunning conclusion that Americans are huge because they eat huge portions:
The University of Illinois researcher has set up several food experiments that show the more people are given, the more they will eat - regardless of whether they are full or think the food tastes good."In the obesity war, portion size is the first casualty,'' said Wansink, who founded the University of Illinois' Food & Brand Lab. "It's easy to point at, and we don't have to take responsibility because we can blame the restaurant or the packaged food manufacturer.''
Wansink and other researchers hope the results can help the federal government devise more user-friendly nutrition labels for packaged foods. For example, instead of stating that a handful of granola has 200 calories, the label instead could say the consumer would have to walk 2 miles to burn it off.
We couldn't possibly ask people to reflect on the obvious all by themselves, now could we? Eat a feed-bag of Ding Dongs every day, and you'll have an ass the size of Kansas. Not exactly advanced-placement calculus, now is it?
Keeping The Ex In Ex-Con
The New York Times' Adam Cohen reports on San Francisco's popular Delancy Street Restaurant, staffed entirely by ex-cons, where work seems to be working as a way to turn criminals into productive citizens:
It is...the centerpiece of the Delancey Street Foundation, where ex-convicts live together, run businesses and move to self-sufficiency. After three decades and 14,000 graduates, Delancey Street is at the intersection of two white-hot trends: the growing focus on "re-entry," the moment prisoners rejoin society, and "social entrepreneurship," using business to tackle social problems.It is also well positioned ideologically. In a field overrun with liberal and conservative platitudes, it reflects the pragmatism of Mimi Silbert, who holds a Ph.D. in criminology from the University of California at Berkeley and who founded the group with an ex-convict in 1971. Dr. Silbert, who grew up in an immigrant family and worked on a kibbutz, drew heavily on both experiences to create an environment emphasizing hard work and mutual support.
Delancey Street's "third way" ó neither harshly punitive, nor mindlessly permissive ó has won backers ranging from Senator Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, to George Shultz, secretary of state under President Ronald Reagan.
Maybe, when people are still in prison, we need to be a little less focused on simply punishing them for their crimes, and a little more focused on the fact that most of them will be out of prison sooner or later.
survivor pics that Jenna and Heidi be looking pretty!.
Yo, Pat, God Give You Any Winning Lottery Numbers?
Pat Robertson claims he had a little chat with God the other day, reports the AP's Sonja Barisic. According to Pat, God said it's Bush in 2004, and it'll be "a blowout." Now that that's squared away, what I'm wondering is whether God and Pat got themselves a set of those cellphone walkie talkies, or whether Mr. Gossip (aka The Surpreme Being) just pops in at Pat's place to read him the News Of The Universe from time to time.
(via David "Tell Me Everything" Rensin)
Cathy Seipp's Media Roundup
Miss Seipp reviews her favorite media moments from 2003. Don't miss the semen special!
Crime Doesn't Repay, But It Should
Wendy McElroy proposes something that I've been in favor of ever since I had my car stolen -- the concept that criminals should not only have to compensate their victims, but pay the cost of trial and jail:
A criminal court that focused on restitution would force those convicted to repay their victims not only for direct financial losses but also in compensation for emotional trauma. Criminals would bear the cost of court proceedings and of collecting any restitution that is not rendered voluntarily. If criminals did not have the means to pay a judgment or could not be trusted to do so over time, they could be monitored or confined to an institution for the sole purpose of working to earn that compensation and to pay the cost of confinement. The taxpayer would be taken out of the loop.Objections immediately arise: for example, some categories of crime are so heinous that they do not seem to allow restitution. How can you compensate a victim of rape or murder?
I have always found this objection to be odd. The fact that there may be no perfect or adequate form of restitution is not an argument against providing whatever repayment is possible. A rapist cannot restore a victim's sense of safety but he or she can be made to pay such items as medical bills, the cost of counseling, and compensation for emotional trauma. A murderer cannot repay his debt to the dead but he can be forced to earn money to pay in perpetuity the expenses of a victim's family: food, mortgage, tuition, and so on. It is odd to argue that only non-criminal or trivial injuries deserve restitution. The more serious the injury, the more it seems that the victim deserves compensation.
The way I see it, our prisons should all be turned into hamster wheels of repayment. You want to watch Law & Order, con man? That'll be 120 extra license plates you'll make today!
Wooden Ya Know
"When I first got up here, I thought blogging was an Irish dance."
--Tricia Enright, communications director for Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean, in a USA Today piece on the growing influence of political blogs.
The Luck Factor
Are you lucky? Give yourself a pat on the back.
UPDATE: Here's your handy-dandy link to the Seligman book my favorite epidemiologist keeps recommending.
