Trump's Election Caused My Divorce

I told my husband that I wanted a divorce back in October.  I asked if he would like to go to a mediator to try to settle all the issues and then file a consent decree, instead of litigating everything in court. He refused to talk about it and refused to even talk about when he might be willing to talk about it, saying, "this is a bad time" and  "maybe after the holidays."

Truth be told, I might've deferred to my soon-to-be-ex-husband's desire to wait until January to discuss divorce, but for Trump's election.... See, I knew that I wasn't going to change my mind, so waiting seemed a little pointless. But I typically like to try to make others happy, so I waited a couple of weeks....

...until, on November 8, the unthinkable happened:  Trump got elected.

I am a hardcore hippie liberal who supported Sanders in the primary.  My soon-to-be-ex-husband is a Republican.

I can't stand Trump.  Policies aside, he seemed to me to be a racist, misogynistic, power-hungry, bullying narcissist with a tendency to overreact to perceived slights and with no experience, little knowledge, and no interest in learning anything about foreign policy.  In short, completely unqualified to be President, and a jerk besides.  I am terrified that he will start a global nuclear war in reaction to some perceived insult from a foreign leader.

My soon-to-be-ex-husband liked him. During the primary season, as we were arguing about Trump, I told him that if Trump got elected, I'd divorce him. I was kind of serious even then.  I have a hard time understanding how we have drifted so far apart in our core values.  He seemed to admire Trump's blustering, bullying, assaholic ways.  I noticed more and more that the things I dislike most about my soon-to-be-ex-husband are traits that he shares with Trump...

I never thought it would happen.  But it did. They announced that Trump had won the election.

And suddenly, I felt that I had to be divorced, ASAP.

See, I can deal with a certain amount of sadness in my life.  I can take a sorry excuse for a marriage if the world outside my home is tolerable.  I can take an intolerable president (Bush, for example), if my home life and mariage are tolerable.  But when both are intolerable, I can't take it.

When my marriage first really became intolerable, part way through Bush's second term, I got very depressed.  I was barely functional and many days would not have gotten out of bed except that I had kids to care for.  I never want to feel that way again.

Then Obama got elected, life was cheerier in general, and I became much more functional and less depressed, though still unhappy in my marriage.

But when we elected the narcissstic orange man as POTUS, despair set in.  I cannot take four to eight years of both my home life and the world at large sucking.  I would likely kill myself from despair if forced to endure both.

I can't control who is president, but I can damn sure control whether I'm married or not.

So, two days after the election, I filed for divorce.

It's not really fair to say Trump "caused" my divorce.  I would have ended up divorced eventually.  But his election was the precipitating event.

I want to be happily divorced for at least some amount of time before the nuclear holocaust begins.

A week to remember.

Love this.

Please see the explanation here about the copyright issues.  Proper credit for the original three panels should be given to Bob Englehart at the Hartford Courant.  It is unknown at this time who modified the original three panels and added the last two, but I love it.

A Liberal's Prayer (more email fun)

Dear Lord,

I know that I don't talk to you that much, but this year you have 

 taken away:

 my favorite  screenwriter, Nora Ephron,

 my favorite visionary, Steve Jobs,

 my favorite Science Fiction author, Ray Bradbury,

 my favorite childrens' author, Maurice Sendak,

 my favorite oldies disk Jockey, Dick Clark,

 my favorite hairdresser, Vidal Sassoon,

 my favorite Bluegrass Musician, Earl Scruggs,

 my favorite Monkee, Davy Jones,

 my favorite 60 Minutes guy, Mike Wallace,

 my favorite pop singer, Whitney Houston,

 and my favorite TV Sheriff, Andy Griffith,

 I just wanted to let you know that my favorite radio announcer is 

 Rush Limbaugh.

 Amen.

"Economic" Entertainment From LegalMist's Email Inbox

I received this today, and it made me chuckle even though I am firmly convinced that our economy is on the upswing and things will be better soon. (Or maybe I was able to laugh precisely because I think things will be better soon?)

* * *
Our economy is so bad that:

. . . I got a pre-declined credit card in the mail.

. . . I ordered a burger at McDonald's and the kid behind the counter asked, "Can you afford fries with that?"

. . . CEO's are now playing miniature golf.

. . . if the bank returns your check marked "Insufficient Funds," you call them and ask if they meant you or them.

. . . Hot Wheels and Matchbox stocks are trading higher than GM.

. . . McDonald's is selling the 1/4 ouncer.

. . . parents in Beverly Hills fired their nannies and learned their children's names.

. . . a truckload of Americans was caught sneaking into Mexico.

. . . Dick Cheney took his stockbroker hunting.

. . . Motel Six won't leave the light on anymore.

. . . the Mafia is laying off judges.

. . . Exxon-Mobil laid off 25 Congressmen.

. . . Congress says they are looking into this Bernard Madof scandal. Oh Great!! The guy who made $50 Billion disappear is being investigated by the people who made $1.5 Trillion disappear!

And, finally... the economy is so bad that:

. . . I was so depressed last night thinking about the economy, wars, jobs, my savings, Social Security, retirement funds, etc., I called the Suicide Lifeline. I got a call center in Pakistan, and when I told them I was suicidal, they got all excited, and asked if I could drive a truck.

* * *
And if you didn't like this list, well just remember it was free. You get what you pay for, right? When the economy improves, maybe you'll be able to afford some "real" entertainment.

Happy Tuesday, my bloggy friends. Happy Tuesday.

The Universal Health Care Debate

There are a lot of folks who disagree with the current proposal for health care reform. Many think we don't need reform at all. Others simply dislike the terms of the current proposal - or perhaps they dislike the terms that the extreme right-wing media has convinced them are in the proposal, even though they are not (there is no “death panel” for example). I am not here to argue the details of the plan. Those can and will be tinkered with over the years and certainly there is room for debate about how we should provide health care for our citizens. But in my view, we should not be debating whether to provide some form of basic health care for all of our citizens. We should just find a way to do it.

Here are some things to think about before you pooh-pooh the idea of universal access to basic health care:

Do you know how much it costs to buy private insurance? Or does your employer provide it for you? If your employer provides it for you, you may pay a portion of the premium, anywhere from $1 to $500 per month, say (and you likely complain every time your contribution to the plan is raised). According to the National Coalition on Health Care, the average employer-sponsored plan premium for a family of 4 costs $13,000 per year. And employers generally get a discounted group rate!

So if you are complaining about paying $400 per month for your health care plan this year instead of the $300 per month you paid last year, just stop it. Instead, thank your employer for paying the lion's share of the premium for you, and be thankful you don't have to pay the entire $13,000 per year yourself. Also thank your employer for providing your insurance. Many employers do not, particularly for part time and lower-paid employees.

Now imagine yourself in the position of someone whose employer does not provide insurance. Suppose you are working a job that pays minimum wage. Or even $12 per hour. That would be $24,000 per year if you work full time. This amount likely is high enough that you are not eligible for any federal or state income-based health coverage. If you need to provide health insurance for your entire family, and assuming you could get a policy with the same coverage at the same rate your employer pays (on average, $13,000 per year), that would be more than half your income for the year - and likely about two-thirds of your take-home pay!! Could you afford to pay 2/3 of your take home pay for insurance? I thought not.

Suppose you are one of the few very lucky minimum wage (or thereabouts) or part-time laborers whose employer does provide some sort of health insurance plan.

What if you wanted to change jobs? What if you got laid off? Imagine that you have applied for several different positions but the new job offers you are able to obtain do not come with health insurance, either because the company is small and thus exempt from the requirement to provide it, or because the position is part-time, so the company is exempt from the requirement to provide it. Thus, to take the new job, you will have to absorb the cost of insurance yourself. Will the new job give you a raise of more than $10,000? Those of you earning upwards of $100,000 or more per year will find a raise of $10k (approximately 10% of your current salary) to be within the realm of possibility. But if you are earning $10 per hour ($20,000 per year), the chances of finding a new job that comes with a 50% pay raise are between slim and none. And the reality is that most lower paying and/or part-time jobs do not come with health care. So if you are merely unhappy with your new job, it's hard to financially justify changing jobs, and if you’ve been laid off, you will probably have to take one of the new jobs and simply go without insurance.

OK, you say to yourself, but if you are buying your own insurance, you don't need the fancy plan your employer provides. You would be willing to settle for true insurance against disaster instead of the fancy, full-coverage-for-every-mosquito-bite HMO (health maintenance organization) or PPO plan your employer provides. You might see ads from Blue Cross for policies for $50 per month that will cover catastrophic health problems and you might think, "Great! I can afford that!" But that would be for an individual, with no pre-existing health issues. The family premium would be substantially higher - often $400 to $1000 per month. That’s a large chunk of change for a person earning minimum wage or thereabouts.

Now suppose you or a family member have a pre-existing health condition. Perhaps you had cancer, or your spouse has diabetes, or your child suffers from food allergies, asthma, or a skin condition. Any private policy you obtain likely will charge a substantially higher premium than it would for "healthy" policy holders, and will preclude coverage for the pre-existing condition for at least a year. If you were previously covered under your employer's health plan and are seeking a new policy due to a job loss or change to a new job, the federal Health Insurance Portability Protection Act likely will apply, and will prevent the new insurer from excluding coverage for the pre-existing condition. But it won't stop the new insurer from charging huge premiums for coverage. You will be quoted a premium price that is far more than the $13,000 per year your employer was paying for your coverage.

Even assuming you can find coverage for your healthy family at a rate you can afford while working at your minimum wage job, private insurers often raise premiums yearly, even for their healthy policy holders. What happens is that insurers bundle policy holders into “groups.” Then, as the members of the particular group of policy holders start using the coverage, it costs the companies more to run the program. Companies are not allowed to drop policy holders (unless they fail to pay the premium), but nothing stops them from raising the premium costs substantially. So they raise their rates. Then the healthy policy holders seek out and find a new insurer that will charge them less. The less healthy ones cannot find a less expensive policy, so they stick with the initial policy. But now there are fewer remaining policy dollars to cover the remaining health problems among the remaining, somewhat-less-healthy policy holders. So the insurer raises the rates again. And more of the relatively healthy members seek and find other coverage, dropping the current policy. And then the insurer raises the rates again...

.... which means that if you get a private policy that costs you $200 per month for your family this year, and then you or any member of your family develops any sort of health problem, in 10 years you will likely be paying substantially higher premiums (perhaps $1000 per month or more), and may be unable to find new insurance at any price due to the pre-existing health issue.

Now suppose you don't have health insurance, and you are working at your minimum-wage job, which is the only employment you can find in this economy despite your college degree. And suppose your child develops a sore throat, cough, and a fever. You know you cannot afford a “quick trip to the doctor” to make sure it isn’t strep throat. So you give her an over-the-counter medicine and hope she gets well soon. Probably she does. But suppose that cough just won't quit. Do you pay the $200 or more to take your child to the doctor? If so, how will you pay the rent (or the mortgage, if you were able to obtain one) this month on your $1000 per month take-home pay?

Suppose you take your child to the doctor anyway, figuring you will find the money somehow or beg the landlord for leniency, and that cough turns out to be asthma or bronchitis or something worse, like lung cancer. How will you afford the bills to treat these expensive conditions? If you cannot afford the $500 to $1000 per month for private insurance, I can pretty much guarantee you cannot afford the medical bills to treat cancer or diabetes or even somewhat less deadly but still debilitating conditions like asthma.

And now how will you ever obtain affordable insurance for your child? You won’t. She now has a "pre-existing condition"!!

* * *

The current system provides fantastic health care for the wealthy and those covered under their employer's group insurance plans, and no care at all for the vast majority of the working poor (those on welfare generally are covered by state medical plans). It strikes me as hugely unfair that the wealthy, who can afford fantastic health insurance at a discounted rate through their high-paying jobs, will often have expensive elective procedures covered by their insurance, such as fertility treatments, vasectomies, and reconstructive surgery after an accident, while the less wealthy, whose employers do not provide insurance and whose salaries are so low they cannot afford expensive private insurance, cannot even obtain necessary medical treatments for non-emergency, yet serious, conditions such as cancer, bronchitis, asthma, or even the flu.

I agree we should not take away the option of purchasing private insurance that covers a huge range of elective and necessary medical procedures, for those who can afford it and wish to pay for it. I also think we should keep in place the option to pay privately any doctor who is willing to treat you for whatever medical treatment you and your doctor deem necessary. In a country that allows and even values income disparity because it is an incentive to work harder, better, more intelligently so as to raise your income, there will always be some disparity in the quality and amount of health care available to folks with more, or less, income. Some folks will be able to afford vasectomies (and vasectomy reversals, too!) and try every experimental and cutting-edge cancer treatment known to mankind, along with the more traditional treatments. Others will have to settle for using condoms and being provided with only the tried and true, proven-to-work, more widely available, and thus less expensive cancer treatments.

But I ask you this: Shouldn’t access to basic and decent health care - the proven-effective cancer treatments, for example - be a right for every citizen in this wealthy country of ours, rather than a privilege for only the lucky (or wealthy)? Just as it is critical to our national security and national well-being to provide a free basic education for our citizens so that they can become productive members of society, isn’t it just as critical to ensure that our citizens are reasonably healthy so they can be good students and become productive members of our society?

There is room for debate about what things should be covered and how the coverage should be provided. Reasonable (perhaps income-based, on a sliding scale?) co-payments should be charged for services to discourage truly unnecessary doctor visits and to help defray costs.

But is it really fair to tell a sick child, “sorry honey, I can’t take you to the doctor because I chose to buy food and shelter instead of medical insurance this month”?

Is it fair that a working class man cannot afford treatment for his prostate cancer because his employer does not provide health insurance, while a wealthy stockbroker can have a vasectomy paid for by his employer-sponsored health plan?

(Note: I’m not saying the vasectomy shouldn’t be covered if the private insurer wants to cover it. I’m sure the vasectomy is less expensive for the insurer than paying for any pregnancy and childbirth that might result if the man didn’t have the vasectomy. I’m just saying that the cancer treatments should be covered somehow, too!).

We need to find a way to make decent health care available to every citizen in this country. It’s just the right thing to do.

"Clever Cat" by Peter Collington - a Review by LegalMist

Ok, I know I promised a review of Cormac McCarthy's Pulitzer Prize winning novel, "The Road," but somehow I feel more compelled to review Peter Collington's children's book, "Clever Cat," which I checked out of the library several weeks ago for my six year old son, and which he adamantly did *not* want to return to the library when it was due. (I'm not sure what that says about "The Road." Probably it says more about my work load and motivation level than about either book, really.)

"Clever Cat" is children's literature, probably written merely to be cute, yet here I am mildly obsessed with the potential deeper meanings in the book.

I'll start by saying the illustrations are adorable, and the premise of the story is, as with most kid lit, rather fantastical, which is what makes it fun.

The story is about a cat who gets tired of waiting ... and waiting.... and waiting... every morning for his people to feed him breakfast, so he gets out the can and the can opener and serves himself.

The people are amazed at their "clever cat." The woman then gives him a cash card and a key to the house and asks if he can go buy his own food. So he does.

Then he discovers the joys of the cash card, taking out cash to spend at the local cafe (mmm, this food is so much better than cat food!), shopping, going to a movie, and even playing poker (in a cute scene reminiscent of the famous "dogs playing poker" painting on black velvet). He passes the other lazy kitties outside sleeping in the sun and feels superior to them. After all, there is so much to experience in life!

But apparently, the bills add up quickly, so his people take the cash card away and tell him to get a job to help pay the bills and rent.

He gets a job as a server at the cafe where he used to dine. At the end of the week, after he pays the bills and rent, he has only enough money to buy... cat food. He is so exhausted after his one and only week of work that he oversleeps the following week and is late and gets fired.

And then he decides that working life is for the birds (or humans) and resumes his cat behavior, simply waiting around to be fed.

The humans call him "lazy," but eventually they feed him anyway and he goes outside to sleep in the sun with the other lazy cats, who smile as if to say "Finally, a clever cat."

***

What does this all mean?

Is this an endorsement of shucking responsibility and living off of welfare and food stamps? You're "clever" if you find a way to get "the man" to feed you and care for you while you do nothing all day long? If so, what the heck does this book teach our kids?

Or is this a cleverly disguised conservative rant about a welfare system that encourages people to shuck their responsibilities and be lazy and live off of the labor of others? Is it saying, "look what slothlike behavior we encourage with our welfare system"?

Or, more subtly, is it a liberal rant about the inadequacy of a welfare system that does not provide proper incentives for people to return to work, such as by gradually phasing out the benefits (rather than cutting them "cold turkey" style when an income threshold is met) and allowing folks to keep some portion of their benefits (health insurance or food stamps, perhaps) even while they improve their lifestyle, so that they are motivated to work instead of simply collecting welfare?

. . .

Or is it just poking fun at humans who have been cleverly convinced by cats that we should feed and shelter them even though they really do nothing for us and they just sleep in the sun all day?

After all, sometimes a children's story is an allegory or a fable, designed to teach deeper truths (such as Aesop's fables). Other times, it's just a kid story.

What do you think?

Gifted Children Are "Left Behind" Under NCLB

It is not a popular position, but here it is anyway: We need to invest more resources into educating our gifted kids.

It is an unpopular position for two reasons. Most people think the terminology "gifted" is somehow "elitist" and most people believe that "smart" kids don't need any "extra" help at school.

Regarding the "elitist" charge, I often hear the phrases "but every child is a gift" and "all children are like little learning sponges" used to justify some warped egalitarian idea that we should not recognize extraordinary ability when we see it. While it is true that every child "is a gift" in the sense of deserving our love, support, and best efforts to educate him or her, it is not true that every child is equally gifted and equally able in every area. We recognize this already when we invest extra funding into assisting those children who have learning disabilities, or who need special physical accommodations in order to learn.

I am willing to apply whatever term people find acceptable to describe the kids with IQ's and abilities that are far above "average." You don't like the connotation that "gifted" kids are somehow ... more endowed than the rest of the kids? Fine, come up with some other term to describe their amazing intellectual capacity. But I am not willing to accept the pablum that these extremely bright kids do not need or deserve any special educational accommodations because they are "bright" and so they will "do fine" even without extra resources and accommodations. It simply is not true.

First, it is unfair to the "gifted" children to be stuck in a classroom where they are not challenged and do not learn anything new for days, weeks, months, even years. Often they will end up bored, frustrated, and disillusioned with school. They end up being labeled with "behavior problems" because they have nothing better to do than to act out, pass notes in class, throw things, make smarty-pants comments, and make fun of other kids. After all, they finished their work in the first five minutes, doodled on their paper for half an hour, and the rest of the class still hasn't finished the assignment! How long can we expect them to sit and stare at the walls and "behave"?

When the lack of challenge occurs at the early grade levels, as is often the case, the gifted kids never learn how to learn. Everything is easy until some point down the road, perhaps in middle school, perhaps in high school, when suddenly they are faced with concepts that aren't "easy." But because they have never been challenged before, they don't know how to study and learn. They think that if they don't immediately understand it, they never will understand it, and they may give up in despair.

This is a true waste of talent. If they had been challenged with difficult (for them) work early on, they would have learned how to approach difficult tasks, how to persevere, how to study, how to learn... and not only would they be far ahead academically of the middle school or high school curriculum, but also they would know how to learn. So instead of appearing as a roadblock, the new, difficult material would simply be another challenge, another exciting thing to master.

Under our current "system" (or lack of one), instead of having exceedingly bright kids learning difficult material at a young age, we end up with bored teens who do not know how to study and persevere, who get disillusioned with school, and who fail and/or do not even try to learn despite their "high IQ."

This makes no sense, given the repeated cries heard in the media that America is "slipping behind" in math and science and technology. We claim that we want America to excel in science and technology, but so far, our politicians' answer to the problem of America "slipping behind" in these areas has been to enact legislation such as the "No Child Left Behind" Act (NCLB), which focuses on making sure that the kids with average and below average "intelligence" and learning ability achieve minimum standards of education. Sadly, NCLB provides nothing for gifted kids.

I have no problem with the concept behind the NCLB, in general (its implementation and focus on testing is another issue, for another day). I firmly believe that every child should be provided with the supports needed (physical or otherwise) to ensure that he or she can achieve minimal standards.

It was just a couple of decades ago when kids with a physical disability were assumed to be incapable of mental functions as well, and were not properly educated. They were labeled as "deficient" and our schools often didn't even try to teach them to read and write, regardless of their actual capabilities. I think we all agree that approach was wrong-headed and short-sighted and unfair to the kids who were mentally capable of so much more than they were allowed to achieve.

And even moving away from issues of physical disability, many, probably most, kids who are substantially mentally challenged, who are on the borderline between "normal IQ" and "mentally disabled" can certainly learn to read, write, count, and think well enough to get along in society, and our schools owe it to them to provide that education, even if they must devote extra resources to do so. It is important for these kids to be appropriately educationally challenged, and the schools are and should be obligated to provide an appropriate education.

And while there may be a few kids on the very fringes who truly are incapable of achieving even minimum standards, it would be (and was, until recently) a great tragedy to simply label large groups of kids as "unable to learn" and ship them off to an institution to spend their days staring at the walls and letting their minds wither and rot, rather than teaching them new things so that they can participate in and contribute to society to the best of their abilities.

The "No Child Left Behind" Act was based in part on the concept that we should not label kids as "deficient" somehow and then fail to educate them. But so far, we have ignored the kids at the other end of the spectrum, the kids with the far above average and "genius" level IQ's -- the kids who have the best shot at being the "next Einstein," if we would simply educate them properly.

Aren't these gifted kids essentially being "left behind" if they could be pursuing college level calculus but they are instead stuck in a classroom being subjected to rote learning of their times tables, which they learned three years ago?

It is a great tragedy to simply label them as "bright" kids who need no extra help in class, and then ship them off to an institution (school) where they spend their days staring at the walls (because they finished all their work for the day in five minutes) and letting their minds wither and rot, rather than teaching them something new so that they can participate in and contribute to society to the best of their abilities.

In my view, it is as much a sin to fail to properly educate a "gifted" child, as it is to fail to properly educate a "mentally disabled" child.

The federal government, the states, and the school districts, however, have so far refused to provide adequate funding to properly educate and challenge the high-IQ kids. Funding for "gifted education" -- to provide special programs, extra resources, better teacher training, specialized curriculum and aides to assist in implementing it, and specialized learning equipment for the kids at the "top" of the bell curve -- is invariably far below the funding appropriated for "remedial education" -- for the special programs, extra resources, specialized curriculum, aides, and specialized learning equipment for the kids at the "bottom" of the bell curve. Funding for gifted programs is also often the first funding that gets cut when times get tough.

This is not only unfair to our gifted kids, but it also makes no sense in the context of trying to achieve greatness in America.

When we want to win a championship in sports, we spend money to train the most talented athletes and the most likely prospects; we do not recruit the average or below-average athletes, hoping to make them into champion basketball players, soccer players or gymnasts.

Similarly, if we want America to produce the finest mathematicians, physicists, engineers, chemists, researchers, and so forth, we need to invest the resources required to identify and train the "best and brightest" kids to the best of their abilities, rather than making our only focus the achievement of "minimum standards" by the kids with average or below average IQ's.

Are we hoping that, if we just spend enough time and money focusing on making sure that every kid in the country can pass a test measuring "minimum standards," the kids with the 82 IQ will somehow become the next Nobel Prize winning scientist? I suppose it could happen -- after all, Muggsy Bogues did make it in the NBA (doing a bang-up job for the Charlotte Hornets from 1988-1997!), even though he was only approximately 5 feet 4 inches tall. In his case, his natural ability and years of training were enough to overcome his major height disadvantage. But it is far more likely that the next NBA star will be a player who not only has some natural ability and years of training, but also is over 6 feet tall. In other words, you need certain physical characteristics plus talent plus training to become an NBA star. Similarly, it is far more likely that a kid with a 142 or higher IQ, with a natural talent for science, and who receives lots of specialized education focused on developing his or her special talents, will be the next Nobel Prize winner in science.

Let me be clear: I am not advocating that we stop educating "special needs" kids. I am not advocating that we cut funding for "special education." (On the contrary, perhaps we should consider a "gifted" child to have "special needs" and then provide a specialized curriculum!)

I value all of our children and I believe that each child should be challenged and assisted to achieve his or her best educational outcome. And certainly it would benefit America to have every member of our society educated to his or her greatest potential.

As it stands now, however, our gifted kids are being denied the opportunity to be educated to their greatest potential.

It is unfair to the gifted kids.

It is also a poor strategy if America wants to excel in science and technology in the coming years.

I hope President Obama will address this glaring deficiency. President Bush certainly did not.
.

Important Stuff Alert - Read This Now

A lot of my readers, perhaps all of you, already know about Skyler's Dad's blog, "Some Days It's Not Worth Chewing Through the Leather Straps." If you haven't read his blog yet, you should. His posts run the gamut from hilarious to thought-provoking to heartbreaking. Mostly hilarious, though. I'm sure you'll enjoy his blog.

But even if you don't want another blog to read and/or follow, at least go there right now and read this letter. It's heartfelt and well-written. Read it, and pass it on to as many people as you can.

Oh, and if you happen to be, or to know, a legislator, governor, congressperson, or member of our new President's administration, please make sure they read it, too.

Thanks!

Recent Arizona Governors' Hall of Fame and/or Shame

I promised you all some entertaining stories about Arizona politicians, so here is the "Recent Arizona Governors' Hall of Fame and / or Shame":

First up, we have former Governor Evan Mecham. Elected in 1986, he began his term as Governor in 1987. (Should I still use the title "Honorable" for a fellow who was impeached and resigned in disgrace? Just curious). While serving as Governor of our great state, he cancelled Martin Luther King Day, and also used (and defended the use of) the word "pickaninny" and made other racist remarks, provoking a "boycott" of the State by people in other states, which eventually cost the state an opportunity to host the Superbowl. In 1988, after serving only one year of his term, he was impeached for fundraising improprieties that had occurred during his campaign, and was removed from office in April 1988 before he could cause any more damage to the State's image and financial well-being.

The Honorable Rose Mofford, who was at the time of Mr. Mecham's impeachment the Secretary of State, by statute took office upon Mr. Mecham's removal from office. She was a very cool lady and was the first woman Governor of the State of Arizona. She restored Arizona’s image as a decent State, and governed with grace and good humor. She wore a "beehive" type hairdo and heavy fake eyelashes, and in 1988 she commissioned and sent out holiday cards with a caricature drawing of her as a toga-wearing "Goddess of Liberty" atop the state capitol – and showing lots of leg.... a real jaw-dropper! Sadly, she declined to run for another term after completing her "fill-in" term for Mr. Mecham.

For more on Ms. Mofford, including a photo of her famous hair, see this article at azcentral.com.

For an even better photo, see her biography cover photo at Amazon.com. You should probably buy the book. I'd be willing to bet it is fascinating!

Sorry, I couldn’t find a color photo (or even a very good quality photo) of the famous holiday card (maybe there is one in the book?); I did find a rather grainy black & white photo in the Tucson Observer archives, which I have reproduced here:




(You can follow this link if you want to go to the original source).

The card received national press coverage, as well – it was written up in Time magazine, although apparently with no photo. At the time, there was lots of talk about how "inappropriate" this card was and how awfully wrong Governor Mofford was to have commissioned it. If that was the worst they could say about her, well, compared to her predecessor and her successor, I'd say she did a mighty fine job as Governor. Also, I subsequently learned that these caricature cards are a holiday tradition for Ms. Mofford -- see this example on flickr.

Fife Symington was the successor to Governor Mofford. His campaign claimed that Mr. Symington was a successful businessman, and he promised to run the State like a successful business and solve the State’s financial problems. Sounds good, right? Well, his business ventures were so "successful" that he ended up filing bankruptcy in 1995, and (apparently based on statements made during the course of his bankruptcy case) he was later indicted and prosecuted in federal court for extortion, making false financial statements, and bank fraud. After his conviction in 1997, he was forced to resign. His conviction was overturned on appeal due to issues with a juror at trial; before he could be retried, he was pardoned by President Clinton in 2001.

After his pardon, Mr. Symington attended culinary school. More recently, Mr. Symington has appeared discussing UFOs on Larry King Live, and has claimed that he saw a UFO in March of 1997. Follow this link for more information.


With male governors like these "bad boys" with their impeachments and criminal charges as "bookends" to an uneventful yet amusing female Governor, is it any wonder that Arizonans subsequently have elected (so far) only women Governors after Symington? Jane Hull (Republican) followed Symington, and Janet Napolitano (Democrat) followed Jane Hull.

Welcome to Arizona politics. Now, aren't you sorry we didn't elect Senator McCain as our new President? Surely it would have been a more entertaining and eventful 4 years than Mr. Obama is likely to provide...

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Arizona Secession Talk (otherwise known as "Monumental Stupidity, Part II")

Yesterday, I blathered at length about some racists in the South who are talking foolishly and (as Fancy Schmancy pointed out in the comments, treasonously) about secession merely because a multiracial person has been elected president. And although I think this “secession” talk is based on both morally repugnant principles and ignorance, it is, at least in some twisted way, based on principle.

What I mean is, I suppose I might be tempted to talk of secession or at least leaving this country if, say, a Nazi who campaigned on a platform of racial separatism and eugenics were elected president. And, by analogy, a multiracial candidate who campaigned based on “including all voices” and “change” might well be a pretty scary thought for a white racist. In that sense, the fact that these racists might want to politically separate themselves from the rest of us because we will have a multiracial president, while ignorant and repugnant to most of our sensibilities as well as pretty monumentally stupid, is not quite as monumentally stupid as what (I heard) actually happened here in Arizona back in the early 1990's.

Here is the tale, true to the best of my knowledge and belief:

A friend of mine worked as an intern at the State Legislature in the earlyl 1990s. At the time, a federal highway funding law had required states to enact certain laws (regarding speed limits and such) in order to obtain federal highway funding.

My friend reported that a certain state legislator (who shall remain unnamed here because I don't want to be sued later for libel or defamation or whatever) was appalled and outraged at the federal government's attempt to control us, to bind our hands, to prevent us from making our own laws and rules.... "We should be allowed to set whatever speed limit we want, here in Arizona! We shouldn't have to comply with federal directives about that! That's just wrong!!" he shouted. (This is a paraphrase, obviously, since I wasn't there.) Okay, I can understand the sentiment, but...

What was his proposed solution? "Arizona should secede from the Union!!"

Yes, folks, you heard that right. He proposed secession as a solution to the perceived problem of the federal government using its purse strings to encourage Arizona to enact particular laws, apparently not even thinking about the fact that it was treasonous to propose secession, or even considering the two most obvious implications of his proposal:

(1) If the entire South in the 1860s (at the time, half the states) couldn't muster enough armed forces to successfully secede from the Union, what made him think that Arizona, one of the least populous states, could manage it alone in the 1990s? (Or perhaps he thought the federal government would just let us go without a fight, since it's mostly just desert out here anyway? Yeah, ok, that'll happen.)

(2) Why bother to secede? If you don't want to be controlled by the federal government on these issues, just set the speed limits any old way you want them and forget about the funds -- after all, if Arizona did manage to secede from the Union, the United States government surely would not provide Arizona with any federal highway funds... (Or perhaps he thought we'd make up for it with the money we'd save by not having to pay federal taxes? Ah, yes, but then our State taxes would go way up, leading to hugely unpopular state representatives, and we'd still not have enough money to build all those miles of highways in this huge state).

Yes, folks, this is the caliber of elected official we were blessed with in our great state in the early 1990's. (Not sure it has improved much since then, actually).

Next time, I’ll tell you about a few other notable Arizona politicians in recent memory.

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Southern Secession Talk (otherwise known as "Monumental Stupidity, Part I")

I read an article* today which stated that there is a "white backlash" because of Mr. Obama's election, that the election "has triggered more than 200 hate-related incidents" so far, and that this watershed event will be a "potent recruiting tool" for white hate groups.

That is seriously depressing. But I can't say it is entirely unexpected. People in this country -- heck, in many, perhaps even most countries -- have serious issues with race and ethnicity. Witness the genocide (to name just a few examples) in Darfur, in Bosnia, in Cambodia, in Nazi Germany ... the list goes on and on, back to the dawn of time.

Most of us have difficulty understanding how anyone in this country that is made up of immigrants from all over the world and with our Statue of Liberty proclaiming that we welcome the "teeming masses" -- refugees from foreign lands -- can hate a person based merely on their race or ethnicity. But there is, and long has been, in this country a substantial minority of persons who believe that folks who are "other" (i.e., "other than white and male") are somehow "lesser" and should therefore be hated (or at least "kept down").

I have Republican friends who feel angry, sad, scared, and a host of other negative emotions because of Mr. Obama's win, because they believe that with the Democrats in power they will lose money, the economy will get worse, and the country will veer toward socialism. Think what you want about whether these fears are rational and whether having Democrats in political power will be good or bad for the country, but whatever your beliefs about that, at least these reactions are based on someone's theory of economics and/or politics (things the election was supposed to be about), not based on the fact that Mr. Obama has dark skin and a mixed heritage.

The fact that some people feel angry, sad, scared, and a host of other negative emotions solely because our newly elected President is not a white male (and apparently without regard to whether they agree with his economic or political views) makes me feel angry, sad, scared, and a host of other negative emotions.

But here is the show-stopper: Apparently, according to the article, there is "talk of secession" in "some parts of the South."

Wow.

I will concede that the fact that there is a "backlash" and that the election is serving as a "recruiting tool for hate groups" makes some sort of twisted sense. After all, people are often moved to act when something happens that they don't like. For example, the re-election of Bush 4 years ago was a "potent recruiting tool" for the Democratic party and many of Bush's policies may have unintentionally provoked a "Democratic backlash."

So if you are a close-minded bigot who believes in white supremacy but haven't been active in a supremacy group, then the election of a multiracial individual might spur you to join one. It's sad, but at least is logically consistent with the bigoted viewpoint.

But secession? Really?!? Didn't the South learn anything last time? Well, in case you've forgotten, or never studied it in your American History class, it was a complete disaster. Huge death toll. Houses, farms, towns, even whole cities (e.g., Atlanta) ruined. People left destitute. Brothers fighting brothers, sons fighting fathers, sisters being raped and killed.... And in the end the North won, and despite (some say because of) the "reconstruction" efforts, the South was in economic ruin for years. Why would anyone think it is a good idea to try that again?

I recognize that the number of persons proposing secession likely is not large, and I am guessing no State will actually try to secede from the Union because most people in the South (I know this because I was born and raised there) are not actually close-minded radical bigots. And I also concede that the article says they aren't talking about "1860's style secession," more of a political autonomy concept. But still...

Even to talk about secession merely based on who is President seems to me to demonstrate monumental stupidity. After all, our system is set up to encourage change and experimentation. Presidents serve only a 4 year term, and if they do a bad job they can be voted out at that time. If they are horribly corrupt, they can be impeached and tossed out even before then (e.g., Nixon). If they refrain from obvious corruption and either do a good job or smear their opponent enough during the subsequent election, they can be elected for another 4 year term, but then, no matter what -- good, bad, honest, crooked, worthy, unworthy -- they are gone. Why would anyone want to risk political upheaval, and the potential for civil war and economic disaster, over a mere 4 to 8 years of a President they don't like?

Truly, from a logical viewpoint, the slavery question and the Emancipation Proclamation provided a much better justification for secession. After all, whether you approved of the institution of slavery or not, the fact is that it was a way of life in the South and was even enshrined in our Constitution, and many landowners had lots of money invested in slaves and in the plantations on which they worked. Freeing the slaves was certain to cause economic upheaval and to change an entire way of life, and the change was going to last far longer than the 4 to 8 years that any given president would serve. While I think slavery was morally repugnant, I can understand how someone might feel compelled to fight for their way of life and their economic well-being when threatened with permanent change.

But I don't understand how someone would feel moved to secede from the Union and potentially trigger a civil war merely because someone they don't like has been elected President.

He'll be gone in 8 years, tops. Live with it, people!


Tomorrow, I'll share a stupid and humorous story right out of Arizona political history, which may make some of you even happier that Mr. McCain (an Arizona politician) was not elected.

(I must say, however, that I do not mean to imply, nor do I think, that Mr. McCain even begins to approach the level of stupidity, irrationality, and ignorance to be illustrated tomorrow. In fact, I think he is reasonably bright and is a decent and honorable person and a good family man (to paraphrase his description of Mr. Obama), with whom I happen to disagree on some issues.)

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* (The article is here, at azcentral.com, but I don't know whether it will be there for long so if you are reading this months later, the link may no longer work.)

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Marital Musings

I was going to try to be the first on the block to write about gay marriage, but GreenYogurt beat me to it. She did a fine job, and here is a link to her awesome post.

Being a wordy attorney, however, I have to add just a couple of points. And then I have to belabor them ad nauseum just in case anyone is interested, and even if they're not. It's what I've been trained to do, so get used to it. (Happy reading....!)

A Republican friend of mine stated that she felt that allowing gay marriage would "devalue" the sanctity of her own marriage. I asked her for clarification, didn't get much, and have struggled to understand how this could be. And frankly, I just don't understand the relevance of someone else's marriage to determining the value or sanctity of my own marriage.

There are two aspects to marriage: the social and the legal. I assume that her comment about gay marriage "devaluing" her marriage is referring to the social aspect, since the legal status of her marriage is not in any way jeopardized by gay marriage (or any other kind of marriage, for that matter).

The legal contract part of marriage is between two people and the State. The State has taken over the right to determine the social, tax, and death benefits of marriage. These benefits include, among many others, tax benefits, the presumption that a child born during the marriage is the child of both marital parties, the right to visit your spouse in the hospital, to determine whether he/she is removed from life support or kept on life support, and to determine whether he/she is buried or cremated after death, the right to sue for wrongful death, and the right to rest secure in the knowledge that even if you fail to prepare a legal will, your spouse will inherit your property. The benefits also include the right to access the courts to divide property and debts equitably if you decide you no longer want to be together (divorce); this is not a right that is granted to folks who merely live together -- they are at the mercy of the person they are breaking up with to determine whether the division of assets is fair and who gets the equity in the house (not an enviable position).

Many of the benefits of marriage can be conferred by contract or other legal documents. A power of attorney, health care power of attorney, mental health care power of attorney and a last will and testament or properly drafted trust can do wonders to cement a loved one's position as your caretaker and recipient of all your stuff, whether you're married or not. But the right to access the courts for a divorce cannot be conferred by contract. One must be legally married in order to get a divorce. You can't get the marriage tax benefits by contract, either. The IRS frowns on attempts at that sort of thing. Here is some free legal advice for you: Don't do things that make the IRS frown.

There are legal burdens to marriage, too. In community property states, for example, you can be held financially responsible for debts your spouse incurs during the marriage.

Frankly, I don't understand why the State should care if the two people seeking the legal benefits and burdens of marriage at issue are men, women, or hermaphrodites. (And here, I have to insert a plug for a novel I enjoyed a few years ago: Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides.) If they are of legal age and want to be married, the State should let them be married. It certainly would not change the legal status of anyone else's marriage. And it seems unfair to deny a substantial portion of the population the potential legal benefits of marrriage just because they are born gay.

Moving on to the social or spiritual aspect of marriage. This is an aspect that the State should not concern itself with. The State does not have the right to impose any particular religious beliefs. Under the Constitution, the State also does not have the right to force us to associate with others, nor the right to keep us from associating with others (with some limited exceptions in the criminal law area such as allowing the State to prohibit contact between felons).

Thus, even if two persons have a marriage license from the State, my church is not required to perform the marriage ceremony. So if my God (church) doesn't recognize gay marriage, that's fine; I don't have to acknowledge or sanctify someone's gay marriage in my church. I don't have to socialize with gay people, any more than I have to socialize with white people, or black people, or hispanic people if I choose not to do so. (I am not advocating rampant discrimination; merely pointing out that there is no legal requirement to spend time with people you don't like, even if your reason for not liking them is narrow minded and abhorrent). I don't have to recognize their union as being blessed by my God or Gods. I can simply view it as a government-blessed legal contract, or a marriage blessed by some other church (much like we would recognize a plural marriage in an Islamic country. We might or might not agree that such marriages should happen, and we don't have to perform them in our church, but I assume we would recognize their legal validity in their own country). If I don't want to associate with persons who are gay and married, I don't have to go to their church, hang out with them, or even think about them.

If my God / church chooses to recognize such unions, that's fine, too; I can acknowlege and sanctify that union in my church. But if the church down the road recognizes and sanctifies gay unions, who am I to tell them not to do so just because my church doesn't recognize it? There is no universal religion that everyone agrees with, and, as GreenYogurt pointed out, even those who agree with a particular religion don't always follow every rule, so why should they be allowed to tell others which particular rules of their religion everyone must follow?

And it seems to me that the spiritual status of someone else's marriage, or even my belief about whether my God thinks their marriage is valid or not, simply isn't relevant to the sanctity or validity of the marriage between me and my spouse, or (if I am religious) between me, my spouse, and God. If I am in a wonderful, spiritually fulfilling, God-exalting marriage and the neighbor down the street cheats on his wife, well, I may be sad to learn that, may be appalled at his adultery, may feel that he has devalued his own marriage, may feel repulsed by him and many other emotions -- but the feeling that my own marriage was devalued would not be one of them.

So it seems to me that, even if one disapproves of the concept of gay marriage, the fact that it happens would not "devalue" someone else's marriage.

In short, let the State set the rules for the legal consequences of marriage, and let the churches decide which marriages they will sanctify before their God, and let individuals decide for themselves which church, if any, to join, and which marriages will be accorded their full support and respect. If some people and private churches choose to exclude or shun gay married couples, that is their choice to make. But let's not allow them to make a public choice for all of us regarding whether the State can confer certain legal benefits on gay people.

Just my two cents.

Looking forward to the comments (I think).

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Late addition: in addition to Green Yogurt's excellent post, here is another insightful blog post with a more humorous approach. My thanks to "Dave" for posting a comment to point me in the right direction for this post.

More Choices

Barack Obama, or John McCain? "Hillary Clinton," some would say. Well, as I tell my kids, "that's not one of the choices."

If you had told me ahead of time, I would not have believed it could happen, but I have seen them interviewed on television, and have read that it is true, and so I am forced to believe it -- a small but substantial number of women who were disenchanted with the Democrats for selecting Barack Obama instead of Hillary Clinton, have now thrown their support to the Republican candidate, John McCain, apparently only because he picked Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential running mate. This boggles my mind.

Don't get me wrong. I am all for women, of either political party, running for and holding any political office in this country. In fact, I would have loved to see Hillary Clinton as the Democratic candidate and Sarah Palin as the Republican one, just for the thrill of seeing two strong, smart, lively, and likable women on the national stage battling it out, with a healthy debate about the issues that are most important to us, for the most powerful office in the world. I am also not arguing that no rational woman could support John McCain and Sarah Palin. Clearly, many rational women agree with the Republican platform and therefore rationally support them.

And although there is ample irony in the choice of Palin -- for example, after all the Republican brouhaha about Obama's "lack of experience," Palin has very little actual relevant governing experience and virtually no knowledge of foreign affairs; and after all the Republican brouhaha about "family values" and their condemnation of teen pregnancy, Palin is the mother of an unwed pregnant teen with a boyfriend who "plans to marry her" (can you imagine the condescending remarks about "broken black families" and the "culture of poverty" if Obama's daughter were the one who was pregnant with a "baby daddy" who "is gonna" marry her someday?); there are other similarly ironic facts, but that is not the point, here -- the long list of ironies is not why I am questioning the choice of these former Clinton supporters.

No, what I am wondering is how you go from supporting a candidate who is for adopting some sort of national health care program, is pro-choice, is in favor of increasing marginal tax rates for the wealthiest Americans, is opposed to drilling in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge, has stated that the Iraq war was a bad idea and should be ended as quickly as is reasonably possible, and generally supports every other plank in the Democratic platform (in fact had a message nearly identical to Obama's), to supporting a candidate who is against nationalizing health care, is pro-life, is in favor of cutting taxes on wealthy Americans, is all for drilling in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge and anywhere else we might find oil of some sort, has stated that we should "Pray for our military men and women who are striving to do what is right. Also, for this country, that our leaders, our national leaders, are sending [U.S. soldiers] out on a task that is from God," [see here for the source for the quote: http://news.aol.com/political-machine/2008/09/02/sarah-palin-iraq-war-gods-plan/], and generally supports every other plank in the Republican platform.

Do these women who have suddenly changed their allegiance because of Palin's nomination not know what McCain's and Palin's positions are on these issues? I find that hard to believe, if they were active enough in politics to have supported Clinton before she was even nominated.

Did they suddenly change their views so drastically and completely? I find that hard to believe, too, given how entrenched is the disagreement between pro-life and pro-choice; pro-war and anti-war; pro-drilling and anti-drilling; and so forth.

Does anyone have a way to explain to me how this could rationally happen? If not, I will be forced to conclude that these women truly were supporting Clinton only because she is a woman, and now have decided that they will support McCain only because McCain has a woman on the ticket and Obama does not. ("Issues be damned! We've got to elect someone with a uterus!")

In the words (word?) of Carolyn Hax (at washingtonpost.com), who provides a one-word answer for when you are rendered speechless by the sheer idiocy of something, "wow." That's all, just "wow."