Update from the Heartland
No.525
2.1.12 – 8.1.12
Blog version: http://heartlandupdate.blogspot.com/
To all,
I was late to work on the first day after the holiday break. Why is that news, you ask? We attended an early morning ceremony before the Butler County Commission. Our youngest son, Deputy Sheriff Taylor Parlier, received a meritorious award for leading a high-speed chase across two counties that led to the capture of two 19-year-olds (a male and female), who killed the boy’s grandmother for drug money . . . allegedly, I’m obligated to add. Congratulations, Son. God bless you for your service to the community.
I was late to work on the first day after the holiday break. Why is that news, you ask? We attended an early morning ceremony before the Butler County Commission. Our youngest son, Deputy Sheriff Taylor Parlier, received a meritorious award for leading a high-speed chase across two counties that led to the capture of two 19-year-olds (a male and female), who killed the boy’s grandmother for drug money . . . allegedly, I’m obligated to add. Congratulations, Son. God bless you for your service to the community.
[file: Taylor award 120103A.JPG]
Taylor receiving award from Butler County Sheriff Kelly Herzet
The follow-up news items:
-- On Sunday last (1.Jan.2012), Hawaii and Delaware joined the list of states allowing same-sex marriage [110 & sub], according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
States that issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples:
Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa, Vermont, New Hampshire, New York and the District of Columbia.
States that recognize civil unions for same-sex couples:
Illinois, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and now Hawaii and Delaware.
California’s PropH8 same-sex marriage law is still working its way through the Judiciary.
-- Arrogance and audacity . . . an onerous combination. As we recall, Judge Rakoff rejected a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), US$258M deal with Citigroup Global Markets, Inc., to avoid trial – SEC v. Citigroup [USDC NY SD case 1:11-cv-07387-JSR (2011)] [520] (28.Nov.2011). On 15.December, the SEC filed a petition to stay Judge Rakoff’s ruling, pending appeal to the 2nd Circuit; followed 4 days later, by virtually the same petition for a stay filed by Citigroup Global Markets, Inc. In the latest rendition, Judge Rakoff concluded, “[G]iven the Court’s conclusion that the purported statutory basis for the instant appeals is patently defective, and given the absence of any obligation to consider a stay on the basis of the SEC’s putative intention to seek mandamus, there is no occasion for the Court to address the merits of the parties’ request for a stay. Accordingly, the motion for a stay is hereby denied.” To say the least, I was gobsmacked. The case really should be renamed SEC + Citigroup v. U.S. District Court. This case is getting curious’er and curious’er.
Two relevant articles in the continuing Death with Dignity debate [215 & sub]:
“Two men with money and influence are trying to change the law to make dying easier. It's scary”
by Cristina Odone
The Telegraph [of London]
Last updated: January 5th, 2012
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/cristinaodone/100127407/two-men-with-money-and-influence-are-trying-to-change-the-law-to-make-dying-easier-its-scary/
and
“Allow assisted suicide for those with less than a year to live – Doctors should be allowed to help terminally ill patients kill themselves – but only if they have less than a year to live, under proposals published in a major report today.”
by Martin Beckford
The Telegraph [of London]
Published: 05 Jan 2012; 7:30AM GMT
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/8992593/Allow-assisted-suicide-for-those-with-less-than-a-year-to-live.html
At least the British People have two outspoken national advocates for a citizen’s freedom of choice – Sir Terence David John “Terry” Pratchett, OBE, a successful author; and Lord Falconer [AKA Charles Leslie Falconer, Baron Falconer of Thoroton, PC], a Labour peer. Where are the American advocates for our individual freedom of choice and the defenders of our “unalienable rights [to] Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”?
News from the economic front:
-- The Labor Department reported non-farm payrolls rose by 200,000 last month – private companies added 212,000 jobs, while federal, state and local governments reduced by 12,000. The unemployment rate declined to 8.5% in December, from the revised rate of 8.7% in November – the lowest level since February 2009.
Comments and contributions from Update no.524:
Comment to the Blog:
“I applaud your recovery from the surgery, and I envy your riding weather. I ride my bicycle for transportation, but I get less pleasure from our temperatures here, which run 15 to 20 degrees lower.
“I rejoice that New York prosecutors are using informants and other law enforcement processes to pursue another collection of crooked bankers. That ought to happen in every instance where evidence exists worthy of pursuit, but we both know that it has yet to happen in many cases.
“The Roman Catholic bishops’ suit seeking to enforce their church’s prejudice against homosexual parents is frivolous. If we set aside the nonsense and doubletalk, the fact is that the Catholic Church has voluntarily contracted with the US Government to provide a service under specific conditions. If they did not wish to meet the conditions, they ought not to have signed the contract. If they agreed initially but have changed their minds, they may end the contract according to whatever conditions are given in that contract, which may be expensive but is their choice. That concludes the functional part of the discussion. The fact that they entered into an enterprise which has a facet offensive to their beliefs is an internal conflict, not something that taxpayers should be obliged to resolve. At no time were they coerced to do anything against their beliefs; they freely chose to accept that agreement. My personal parallel for this issue is a temporary assignment that I accepted knowing that the client company made a product with which I felt uncomfortable. I became less and less willing to participate in that particular assignment. Despite it being a good assignment otherwise with prospects of becoming permanent at a good pay rate, I found another job, gave the proper notice, etc. Neither the client nor the temporary service had any obligation based on my discomfort. By that same logic, the US Government has no obligation to the Catholic bishops because of the Church’s unwillingness to treat homosexual foster parents the same way they treat heterosexual foster parents. The aim of the Bush-era law was to make it easier for faith-based organizations to provide a service, not to change the nature of the service.
“Carrying on from the comment section:
“Your technical description of the situation regarding the molesters who had a child confuses me. I will tell you that the molesting began at birth and ended at age 6. The person (daughter) I know has severe developmental delays and equally serious mental health issues, none of which are among those with known genetic causes. No other causes have been found either and no other members of her family share any of those issues. As you may be aware, there is no such thing as ‘scientific proof,’ only evidence. The evidence against the molester here carries a great deal of weight. As far as the legalities of Children Services taking away the molester’s subsequent child, I have little knowledge of the legal side of that. Obviously, my friend and her daughter have no contact with the molester. That the child was removed my friend knows through reliable, sympathetic sources who were involved in this situation. We may assume that the law is not a “cut and dried” thing; in this instance someone apparently found a way to apply the law in the interest of the child.
“A law requiring counseling prior to marriage would have to keep the basis for counseling separate from religion while allowing for people to examine religious issues along with their other attitudes. People tend to forget that marriage is not only a religious ritual. The legal contract of marriage can be and often is solemnized by judges, mayors, and ship captains as well as clergy. Writing the specifics for general use would be its own project. My personal approach tends to begin from known issues (prior marriages, events in the relationship, a discussion of both parties’ expectations) and go on from there. In my case, religion plays little to no part in this; I am available to anyone and not limited to or by my own religion.”
My reply to the Blog:
The riding weather appears to be ending, but never say die. I’ll ride when the opportunity presents. I do enjoy it.
Re: crooked bankers. Spot on! However, let us not forget, there are good bankers out there as well.
Re: Catholic bishops. We need the judge to declare it frivolous. I suspect he may want to push the constitutional question – it is rather unusual. Just to be clear, the non-heterosexual, non-discrimination requirement did not come until after the Bush 43, faith-based initiative, so to be fair, it was a post-contract provision. Nonetheless, like you, I think their argument is extraordinarily weak. Yet, when 62% (US$2.9B) of their annual revenue comes from the public Treasury, it should be no surprise they would take a stretch to preserve the revenue stream.
Re: molesters. If you are confused, imagine how confused I am. I was just trying to understand the relationships. I do not understand the cause & effect with them, other than by implication. There is certainly not much to their story other than has been presented so far. Unfortunately, laws are created by flawed men, enforced by flawed men, and interpreted by flawed men. The origin of this topic was an attempt to separate injurious from non-injurious conduct. Although we do not have more than anecdotal evidence the “abuse” led to the dysfunction, unless otherwise stated, we must assume it was the direct cause; as such, that conduct would be clearly injurious. Cases like your friend cannot be the lowest common denominator, i.e., because she suffered, all physical contact is therefore wrong and felonious. Again, we must separate injurious from non-injurious behavior. One size does not fit all.
Re: pre-marriage counseling. I understand your intentions, and I laud your objectives. However, the specter of imposing religious beliefs upon others causes me considerable pause. You are but one counselor. Others might fall victim to their particular biases, beliefs and idiosyncrasies. I know there are many things that should have been worked out before marriage, i.e., money management; children & child rearing; anger management; religion; sexual orientation, attitudes & preferences; problem resolution; habits; et cetera. We tend to jump into marriages for all the wrong reasons without any understanding of the right reasons. Certainly, professional counseling would help resolve that aspect, but only if it could be done from a neutral, non-judgmental basis.
A follow-up contribution:
“I am sure that bankers with real integrity live and work in America. They were and are unwelcome at the ‘too big to fail’ banks. They have been and perhaps still are subject to being less successful than others in banking in general due to the lure of derivatives, which leads to a powerful incentive for any banker with less than rock-solid ethics to sell mortgages regardless of risk in order to create derivative packages that are much more profitable than simply selling sound mortgages. Ordinary human beings have a difficult time keeping their integrity when a situation like that continues for several years. The run-up to this banking crisis lasted from about 1990 to 2008, with roots going back to before the Reagan Administration.
“I do not understand how I confused you with my story about the molester, my friend’s ex-husband. He molested his first daughter from birth to age six, at which point the discovery of his molesting was involved with his being charged with a variety of offenses, for which he served prison time. That first daughter will never have an independent life due to his actions. Once the molester was released from prison, he found a female molester and had a child with her. The child of the two molesters was taken away at birth by Children Services. I’m not confused by any of that. What baffled me was your attempt to analyze all of this by assigning abbreviations and other terminology to it all and further complicating it in ways I did not comprehend.
“I will note that laws are created and enforced differentially in part because no two people are exactly alike and therefore no two situations are identical. While I know nothing of the second (female) molester, the male molester had done a great deal of damage to his first child, and that surely influenced the action of Children Services in removing the child he had with the female molester. I did not state or intend to imply that all people charged with sexual behavior toward children resemble him or each other. In the case I described, the molesting began at birth and did a great deal of harm. Other cases may vary dramatically.
“Mandatory premarital counseling would indeed be difficult to do well, but not as difficult as the idea that precipitated the suggestion, which was to license childbearing (parenting).”
My follow-up reply:
I use a similar, more personal, analogy . . . I’ve long said that you did not need to be an a$$hole to be successful in business. While I still believe that basic premise to be true, I’ve not been particularly successful, so perhaps my premise is wrong.
Re: mortgage thus banking crisis. I used to give the initiating credit to Jimmy Carter; but I have since learned, actually, the true credit for letting slip the dogs of foolish mortgage credit (that culminated in the meltdown on September 2008) must be given to Gerald Ford [or perhaps Dick Nixon, since the law originated in the Congress of his administration, prior to his resignation] – Equal Credit Opportunity Act [PL 93-495; 88 Stat. 1500, 1521; 28.October.1974]. Virtually every administration since has contributed to the mess we still suffer to this day, with the worst of it coming in the Clinton and Bush (43) administrations. Of course, Congress denies any culpability, yet it is those foolish laws and congressional pressure that enabled greedy bankers to make Pollyanna mortgages that were destined to fail; it was only a matter of when. Then, as you so accurately note, other bankers decided to gamble our money on derivatives, and derivatives of derivatives. The bankers will undoubtedly argue that buying a share of common stock is a gamble. In the strictest sense, they are correct. We invest in stocks “betting” that a company will continue to grow, be profitable, and the value of our common stock will increase commensurately, to be traded at some future point for a profit to us. Yet, there is technically a physical asset attached to that share of common stock, just as there is to a mortgage. With derivatives, there is no asset; there is no value, other than what some other gambler wishes to attach to it. Then, like the bastards at Citigroup, the gambler sought ways to pass their gambling losses off to insurance companies and duped investors. The global economy being what it is, those bad, greedy decisions rippled across the entire planet. The consequences of “too big to fail” are simply not tolerable; and, I will go farther to say that the cross-functional connections between financial institutions are not acceptable either. In many ways, we allowed banks to lower or remove water-tight bulkheads with the same RMS Titanic result. We need compartmentalization within the financial system to avoid these disastrous cascading events that did and will again bring entire sovereign nations to their knees.
Re: molesters. I offer my most humble apologies for my lame attempt to de-personalize the scenario.
Re: premarital counseling. Touché! Spot on! Counseling is probably workable from a practical perspective, if we devoted enough thought and effort to the task. Procreation licensing will never enter the practical domain in a free society; it is only an attractive dream to deal with the bad parents among us. I will say, my notional concept of social police might bridge that gap and reinforce the need for neutral premarital counseling as a prerequisite to state-sanctioning a marriage, or at least help in that filtration process.
My very best wishes to all. Take care of yourselves and each other.
Cheers,
Cap :-)
-- On Sunday last (1.Jan.2012), Hawaii and Delaware joined the list of states allowing same-sex marriage [110 & sub], according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
States that issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples:
Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa, Vermont, New Hampshire, New York and the District of Columbia.
States that recognize civil unions for same-sex couples:
Illinois, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and now Hawaii and Delaware.
California’s PropH8 same-sex marriage law is still working its way through the Judiciary.
-- Arrogance and audacity . . . an onerous combination. As we recall, Judge Rakoff rejected a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), US$258M deal with Citigroup Global Markets, Inc., to avoid trial – SEC v. Citigroup [USDC NY SD case 1:11-cv-07387-JSR (2011)] [520] (28.Nov.2011). On 15.December, the SEC filed a petition to stay Judge Rakoff’s ruling, pending appeal to the 2nd Circuit; followed 4 days later, by virtually the same petition for a stay filed by Citigroup Global Markets, Inc. In the latest rendition, Judge Rakoff concluded, “[G]iven the Court’s conclusion that the purported statutory basis for the instant appeals is patently defective, and given the absence of any obligation to consider a stay on the basis of the SEC’s putative intention to seek mandamus, there is no occasion for the Court to address the merits of the parties’ request for a stay. Accordingly, the motion for a stay is hereby denied.” To say the least, I was gobsmacked. The case really should be renamed SEC + Citigroup v. U.S. District Court. This case is getting curious’er and curious’er.
Two relevant articles in the continuing Death with Dignity debate [215 & sub]:
“Two men with money and influence are trying to change the law to make dying easier. It's scary”
by Cristina Odone
The Telegraph [of London]
Last updated: January 5th, 2012
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/cristinaodone/100127407/two-men-with-money-and-influence-are-trying-to-change-the-law-to-make-dying-easier-its-scary/
and
“Allow assisted suicide for those with less than a year to live – Doctors should be allowed to help terminally ill patients kill themselves – but only if they have less than a year to live, under proposals published in a major report today.”
by Martin Beckford
The Telegraph [of London]
Published: 05 Jan 2012; 7:30AM GMT
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/8992593/Allow-assisted-suicide-for-those-with-less-than-a-year-to-live.html
At least the British People have two outspoken national advocates for a citizen’s freedom of choice – Sir Terence David John “Terry” Pratchett, OBE, a successful author; and Lord Falconer [AKA Charles Leslie Falconer, Baron Falconer of Thoroton, PC], a Labour peer. Where are the American advocates for our individual freedom of choice and the defenders of our “unalienable rights [to] Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”?
News from the economic front:
-- The Labor Department reported non-farm payrolls rose by 200,000 last month – private companies added 212,000 jobs, while federal, state and local governments reduced by 12,000. The unemployment rate declined to 8.5% in December, from the revised rate of 8.7% in November – the lowest level since February 2009.
Comments and contributions from Update no.524:
Comment to the Blog:
“I applaud your recovery from the surgery, and I envy your riding weather. I ride my bicycle for transportation, but I get less pleasure from our temperatures here, which run 15 to 20 degrees lower.
“I rejoice that New York prosecutors are using informants and other law enforcement processes to pursue another collection of crooked bankers. That ought to happen in every instance where evidence exists worthy of pursuit, but we both know that it has yet to happen in many cases.
“The Roman Catholic bishops’ suit seeking to enforce their church’s prejudice against homosexual parents is frivolous. If we set aside the nonsense and doubletalk, the fact is that the Catholic Church has voluntarily contracted with the US Government to provide a service under specific conditions. If they did not wish to meet the conditions, they ought not to have signed the contract. If they agreed initially but have changed their minds, they may end the contract according to whatever conditions are given in that contract, which may be expensive but is their choice. That concludes the functional part of the discussion. The fact that they entered into an enterprise which has a facet offensive to their beliefs is an internal conflict, not something that taxpayers should be obliged to resolve. At no time were they coerced to do anything against their beliefs; they freely chose to accept that agreement. My personal parallel for this issue is a temporary assignment that I accepted knowing that the client company made a product with which I felt uncomfortable. I became less and less willing to participate in that particular assignment. Despite it being a good assignment otherwise with prospects of becoming permanent at a good pay rate, I found another job, gave the proper notice, etc. Neither the client nor the temporary service had any obligation based on my discomfort. By that same logic, the US Government has no obligation to the Catholic bishops because of the Church’s unwillingness to treat homosexual foster parents the same way they treat heterosexual foster parents. The aim of the Bush-era law was to make it easier for faith-based organizations to provide a service, not to change the nature of the service.
“Carrying on from the comment section:
“Your technical description of the situation regarding the molesters who had a child confuses me. I will tell you that the molesting began at birth and ended at age 6. The person (daughter) I know has severe developmental delays and equally serious mental health issues, none of which are among those with known genetic causes. No other causes have been found either and no other members of her family share any of those issues. As you may be aware, there is no such thing as ‘scientific proof,’ only evidence. The evidence against the molester here carries a great deal of weight. As far as the legalities of Children Services taking away the molester’s subsequent child, I have little knowledge of the legal side of that. Obviously, my friend and her daughter have no contact with the molester. That the child was removed my friend knows through reliable, sympathetic sources who were involved in this situation. We may assume that the law is not a “cut and dried” thing; in this instance someone apparently found a way to apply the law in the interest of the child.
“A law requiring counseling prior to marriage would have to keep the basis for counseling separate from religion while allowing for people to examine religious issues along with their other attitudes. People tend to forget that marriage is not only a religious ritual. The legal contract of marriage can be and often is solemnized by judges, mayors, and ship captains as well as clergy. Writing the specifics for general use would be its own project. My personal approach tends to begin from known issues (prior marriages, events in the relationship, a discussion of both parties’ expectations) and go on from there. In my case, religion plays little to no part in this; I am available to anyone and not limited to or by my own religion.”
My reply to the Blog:
The riding weather appears to be ending, but never say die. I’ll ride when the opportunity presents. I do enjoy it.
Re: crooked bankers. Spot on! However, let us not forget, there are good bankers out there as well.
Re: Catholic bishops. We need the judge to declare it frivolous. I suspect he may want to push the constitutional question – it is rather unusual. Just to be clear, the non-heterosexual, non-discrimination requirement did not come until after the Bush 43, faith-based initiative, so to be fair, it was a post-contract provision. Nonetheless, like you, I think their argument is extraordinarily weak. Yet, when 62% (US$2.9B) of their annual revenue comes from the public Treasury, it should be no surprise they would take a stretch to preserve the revenue stream.
Re: molesters. If you are confused, imagine how confused I am. I was just trying to understand the relationships. I do not understand the cause & effect with them, other than by implication. There is certainly not much to their story other than has been presented so far. Unfortunately, laws are created by flawed men, enforced by flawed men, and interpreted by flawed men. The origin of this topic was an attempt to separate injurious from non-injurious conduct. Although we do not have more than anecdotal evidence the “abuse” led to the dysfunction, unless otherwise stated, we must assume it was the direct cause; as such, that conduct would be clearly injurious. Cases like your friend cannot be the lowest common denominator, i.e., because she suffered, all physical contact is therefore wrong and felonious. Again, we must separate injurious from non-injurious behavior. One size does not fit all.
Re: pre-marriage counseling. I understand your intentions, and I laud your objectives. However, the specter of imposing religious beliefs upon others causes me considerable pause. You are but one counselor. Others might fall victim to their particular biases, beliefs and idiosyncrasies. I know there are many things that should have been worked out before marriage, i.e., money management; children & child rearing; anger management; religion; sexual orientation, attitudes & preferences; problem resolution; habits; et cetera. We tend to jump into marriages for all the wrong reasons without any understanding of the right reasons. Certainly, professional counseling would help resolve that aspect, but only if it could be done from a neutral, non-judgmental basis.
A follow-up contribution:
“I am sure that bankers with real integrity live and work in America. They were and are unwelcome at the ‘too big to fail’ banks. They have been and perhaps still are subject to being less successful than others in banking in general due to the lure of derivatives, which leads to a powerful incentive for any banker with less than rock-solid ethics to sell mortgages regardless of risk in order to create derivative packages that are much more profitable than simply selling sound mortgages. Ordinary human beings have a difficult time keeping their integrity when a situation like that continues for several years. The run-up to this banking crisis lasted from about 1990 to 2008, with roots going back to before the Reagan Administration.
“I do not understand how I confused you with my story about the molester, my friend’s ex-husband. He molested his first daughter from birth to age six, at which point the discovery of his molesting was involved with his being charged with a variety of offenses, for which he served prison time. That first daughter will never have an independent life due to his actions. Once the molester was released from prison, he found a female molester and had a child with her. The child of the two molesters was taken away at birth by Children Services. I’m not confused by any of that. What baffled me was your attempt to analyze all of this by assigning abbreviations and other terminology to it all and further complicating it in ways I did not comprehend.
“I will note that laws are created and enforced differentially in part because no two people are exactly alike and therefore no two situations are identical. While I know nothing of the second (female) molester, the male molester had done a great deal of damage to his first child, and that surely influenced the action of Children Services in removing the child he had with the female molester. I did not state or intend to imply that all people charged with sexual behavior toward children resemble him or each other. In the case I described, the molesting began at birth and did a great deal of harm. Other cases may vary dramatically.
“Mandatory premarital counseling would indeed be difficult to do well, but not as difficult as the idea that precipitated the suggestion, which was to license childbearing (parenting).”
My follow-up reply:
I use a similar, more personal, analogy . . . I’ve long said that you did not need to be an a$$hole to be successful in business. While I still believe that basic premise to be true, I’ve not been particularly successful, so perhaps my premise is wrong.
Re: mortgage thus banking crisis. I used to give the initiating credit to Jimmy Carter; but I have since learned, actually, the true credit for letting slip the dogs of foolish mortgage credit (that culminated in the meltdown on September 2008) must be given to Gerald Ford [or perhaps Dick Nixon, since the law originated in the Congress of his administration, prior to his resignation] – Equal Credit Opportunity Act [PL 93-495; 88 Stat. 1500, 1521; 28.October.1974]. Virtually every administration since has contributed to the mess we still suffer to this day, with the worst of it coming in the Clinton and Bush (43) administrations. Of course, Congress denies any culpability, yet it is those foolish laws and congressional pressure that enabled greedy bankers to make Pollyanna mortgages that were destined to fail; it was only a matter of when. Then, as you so accurately note, other bankers decided to gamble our money on derivatives, and derivatives of derivatives. The bankers will undoubtedly argue that buying a share of common stock is a gamble. In the strictest sense, they are correct. We invest in stocks “betting” that a company will continue to grow, be profitable, and the value of our common stock will increase commensurately, to be traded at some future point for a profit to us. Yet, there is technically a physical asset attached to that share of common stock, just as there is to a mortgage. With derivatives, there is no asset; there is no value, other than what some other gambler wishes to attach to it. Then, like the bastards at Citigroup, the gambler sought ways to pass their gambling losses off to insurance companies and duped investors. The global economy being what it is, those bad, greedy decisions rippled across the entire planet. The consequences of “too big to fail” are simply not tolerable; and, I will go farther to say that the cross-functional connections between financial institutions are not acceptable either. In many ways, we allowed banks to lower or remove water-tight bulkheads with the same RMS Titanic result. We need compartmentalization within the financial system to avoid these disastrous cascading events that did and will again bring entire sovereign nations to their knees.
Re: molesters. I offer my most humble apologies for my lame attempt to de-personalize the scenario.
Re: premarital counseling. Touché! Spot on! Counseling is probably workable from a practical perspective, if we devoted enough thought and effort to the task. Procreation licensing will never enter the practical domain in a free society; it is only an attractive dream to deal with the bad parents among us. I will say, my notional concept of social police might bridge that gap and reinforce the need for neutral premarital counseling as a prerequisite to state-sanctioning a marriage, or at least help in that filtration process.
My very best wishes to all. Take care of yourselves and each other.
Cheers,
Cap :-)
2 comments:
First, I want to apologize for not following up your last reply last week. The combination of illness, graduation, and work pretty much overwhelmed all else. I do, however, remember pointing out more politely in an earlier reply that “scientific proof” is an oxymoron, not a possibility, due to the nature of science.
I will agree that the case you mentioned should be renamed SEC + Citigroup v US District Court. That combination of arrogance and audacity comes back to the concept of willful blindness. It matters very little whether they consciously know what they do; they should be held accountable either way.
I read those two articles on the “right to die.” After all is said and done, I don’t see that as viable in its current form. I simply do not trust heirs, particularly where substantial money or property bends people’s opinions. Ending someone’s presumed suffering becomes a much more important motivation when one’s subconscious or conscious mind knows that the bills are mounting or when envy and all the rest set in. Even beyond that, doctors have not learned to pronounce people terminal with any degree of reliability. There is a legend in my family that my grandmother was pronounced terminal eight times and outlived seven of the doctors who so pronounced her. Even if it was only two or three of the doctors, you get my point. If Sir Terry Pratchett wishes to commit suicide while he remains capable of doing so and has a clear head, he has that option in the UK. If he chooses to wait until he cannot, so what?
Calvin,
I hope and trust you are feeling better; that is always first priority. Congratulations on your graduation. Hopefully, you can eventually find the time to continue that discussion topic. First, I do not agree that “scientific proof” is an oxymoron. Second, I just sought to understand cause & effect within an important, relevant example.
Willful blindness certainly is a major factor in the banking crisis. I absolutely agree regarding accountability. First, I do not think those bankers were ignorant of the law. Second, even if they were, ignorance of the law is no defense. Third, based on the SEC’s performance in Citigroup and others, the USG does not seek accountability, only the image, the façade, of accountability. US$285M to Citigroup is a parking ticket. We can only hope Judge Rakoff’s message gets through to the USG.
Re: “Death with Dignity.” Your concern is valid, appropriate and worthy of our calm, careful contemplation. I share your concern. The key is mental competency of the individual. Using Oregon’s law as a worthy example, Death with Dignity can only be available when two independent medical professionals can assert: 1.) the mental competency of the individual, 2.) the terminal phase of the individual’s illness or condition, and 3.) the independent free choice of the individual devoid of undue influence. It sounds like your grandmother would not have sought that capability, which of course was her choice entirely. On the other side, my mother sought that ability, but it was denied her, and she had to endure a long, lingering death. If we truly believe in those unalienable rights, then we must respect every individual’s freedom of choice to that last decision. As with all sensitive topics & decisions, let us seek and find a reasonable, contemporary compromise to protect the individual and his/her freedom of choice.
Thank you for your opinions. Take care and enjoy.
Cheers,
Cap
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