I don’t know much, but…

I don’t know much about what happened the night of Feb. 26, 2012. I don’t know if anyone was a racist and I don’t give a crap about the skin color of those involved. I don’t know if one party was acting suspiciously or who decided to initiate a confrontation. I don’t know if one guy smoked weed or wanted to watch a game with his dad, or if one was a good family man or a tough guy with a gun. I don’t know about Stand Your Ground or Castle Doctrine or any of the other legal mumbo jumbo lawyers like to throw around.

What I do know is this: an armed civilian reported that he saw someone “suspicious” and was told by the dispatcher to leave the situation to the police. And there’s almost no scenario in which George Zimmerman follows those instructions and Trayvon Martin ends up dead.

Folk wisdom solves gay marriage debate

Your rights end where mine begin.

It’s a simple enough idea—arguably the mantra of libertarians everywhere—and as rules of thumb go, it’s a pretty good one. After all, the argument says, in a free country I can swing my arms all I want, as long as I don’t hit your nose.

For me, it’s difficult not to apply this simple folk aphorism to the debate about gay marriage, which became turbocharged this week when President Obama waded in and (some would say finally) declared his support for the idea.

I have to dismiss many of what could be termed impact-on-society arguments here, because let’s be frank, most are ridiculous. Some people say allowing men to marry men will destroy the institution of marriage, as if a divorce rate somewhere north of 40 percent for first-time marriages hasn’t already done that. As one friend recently stated, “I believe that marriage is one of the most beautiful and sacred things to ever be offered as a prize on a game show.” Read More

The slow-motion SGR train wreck

The debt deal is a piece of crap. At least part of it…

Raise your hand if you know what the SGR is. Okay, I’ll explain. Back in the ’90s, Congress decided to limit the growth of Medicare physician reimbursement through something called the Sustainable Growth Rate formula. Essentially, if reimbursement costs outpace estimates provided under the formula, physician pay is cut the following year to compensate. Read More

Debt and taxes

As much as I cherish my ignorance, I’ve been reading up on some of this debt ceiling stuff. Here are a few links that you don’t need an economics degree to read. I’ll try to add more as I find some good ones.

How we got into this fine mess
Pointing the finger at…well…everyone really.

Who Rules America?
This article is a little more involved, but it’s important. In 2007, the top 20% of the U.S. controlled 93% of the wealth, and the economic downturn of 2008 is estimated to have widened that gap.

The Laffer Curve debunked; Part One
Nice look at the Laffer Curve—the theory we’d all love to believe in—in which the government takes in more revenue as taxes get cut.

Debunking One of the Worst Ideas in Economics
More on the Laffer Curve, in case the previous article didn’t take.

Dating the crazy chick is fun…for a while

A guy I used to know ended up dating the crazy girl. You know the type: outgoing, artsy, off-beat, plenty of piercings and tattoos. She seemed pretty cool at first. Loads of fun at parties, and from what I was led to believe, the sex was great. But over time, she became more demanding, more jealous. She had a very dark side that came out more often as time when on. The two of them almost got married and if that had happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if one of them had ended up killing the other. For a long time after they split up, he was an emotional wreck.

I’ve been thinking about this as I’ve watched the Tea Party gang yank the old-school Republicans around on this debt ceiling issue. There are plenty of reasons why the debt limit needs to be raised, but they’re boring and I don’t want to get into them here. Suffice to say that the U.S. defaulting on its obligations would be unprecedented and very, very bad. So the limit needs to be raised. This isn’t a particularly partisan issue. It might be distasteful, but it has to be done. Read More