Update: Links # 5 and #11 have now been fixed.
Post as you will shall be the only law.
Self-linking is encouraged, because it’s blogging with someone you love.
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- Kentucky court denies rights to lesbian co-parent. Because allowing a co-mother to be ripped away from her child won’t be harmful to the child at all, right?
- Ugly Betty and Affirmative Action.
- “State’s rights” wasn’t always just a fig leaf to promote White supremacy over Black people. Sometimes, it was used to promote White supremacy over Native Americans too.
- Social Class, Rape, and Intimate Partner Violence.
- Does a flight attendant deserve ten years in prison because she gave her hair stylist discounted plane tickets in exchange for hair care, and unbeknownst to her, he was a drug dealer?
- God Hates Figs. Awesome.
- The US Army took a prostetic leg away from a prisoner and forced him to stand. You know the reason they hate us? Because we’ve earned their hatred, that’s why.
- Good policy idea: subsidize people trading in old clunkers for new, cleaner-running cars.
- Homeless taking over foreclosed homes. Excellent.
- The economic crisis is all the fault of left-wing intellectuals.
- Renee discusses “This Is Why You’re Fat” site.
- Does racism end the death penalty? No, but the price tag might.
- Little Light is missing living in the country. Not political, but lovely writing.
- Mental Health and Promescuity.
Oh, and here’s a weird/creepy/gross animated video (via Boing Boing).
A friend, Tristan Anderson, was critically wounded by the IDF while protesting a wall that’s being built to annex Palestinian land. Here’s a good report on “Democracy Now”:
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/3/16/us_consul_general_says_awaiting_israeli
Just one more reason to hate golf.
FR is hosting a contest to win a copy of Thembisa Mshaka’s Put Your Dreams First.
Reviews of the week:
Creating a World Without Poverty: Yunus’ analysis, which captures the severity of the current conditions and holds corporations accountable, is well-founded. However, his solution is contradictory. While he argues that it is conflicting for businesses to pursue profit maximization and social benefits, he admits that his model of social business encourages the pursuit of profit in order to repay investors and expand social efforts.
Houston, We Have a Problema was obviously intended to be Jessica Luna’s coming-of-age tale, but if falls very, very flat. It also only furthers certain negative stereotypes associated with Latinas; that all of us love drama, that we want men who are bad for us, that we’re meek, apologetic, and indecisive.
Our City Dreams is a combination love letter to overtly feminist artists and the city—New York City—in which they reside. Representing a range of women artists whose age and work span nearly six decades, the film’s scope never becomes too wide or convoluted.
I Am Not Afraid of Winter: Her descriptions of experiences are singularly intense, and had the ability to draw me into a sense of familiarity. The imagery hit me with a spark of recognition.
Amp #5 is link to google reader; can you fix it? Thanks.
Link #11 doesn’t go to anything about “This is why you’re fat” as far as I can tell. The name in the hyperlink doesn’t even sound like it was just a slight error. Perhaps you got the hyperlink from one post mixed with another connection you intended?
Yeah, I went to the “this is why your fat” link and it was the wrong target.
I mention it because that site is a guilty pleasure of mine. Even if the name of the site is kind of vicious, I can’t look away from page after page of culinary horror.
Ampersand & all – here’s the link to “Renee’s response to “this is why you’re fat” site –
http://www.womanist-musings.com/2009/03/this-is-why-youre-fat.html
Thanks for the linky love Amp
73 year old Bernard Monroe survived cancer until the police shot him dead: Looking at police brutality against blacks.
It’s Fitness First Fatty: Looking at the public shaming that the exercise industry engages in
FGM There is a price to speaking out: Looking at how activists are shames when they try to end the practice of FGM
Boo Yaa It’s Period Time: A frank conversation about menstruation.
I’ve fixed the two broken links — thanks, everyone.
Thanks for the awesome golf video! I’m going to add it to my own post on golf, and how much I hate it because it’s an arrogant, wasteful game.
I also wrote today about an apparent uptick in incidents of black-people petting. And yesterday, about racist disparities in media portrayals of emiseration caused by the housing crisis.
So after you watched that golf video, did you check out any of the others that were linked to it? Yow.
I’m really appalled by the effort to paint a happy, romantic picture in the first few paragraphs of this article.
And then there’s the rest of the story…
So a woman who already has survived rape and death threats now has been emotionally blackmailed into marriage by a government employee who was charged with her protection?
UGH. I hate this shit. I hate that people think manipulation and coercion just show how much someone loves you. He’s not “madly in love,” he’s just mad, as in crazy. The poor woman has been through so much and now she’s got some asshole putting it on her conscience that he’ll kill himself or divorce his first wife unless Mukhtar marries him. I just hope that he leaves her alone now that he’s gotten what he wanted.
From #9:
Well, I’m sure that there are thousands of foreclosed homes with no one living in them. Of course, the owners of those homes (the financial institutions that held the mortgage) will if they are smart call the cops and have these people evicted. Not because they are teh eeeevill heartless corporations, but because they are liable for any injuries that people incur on their property and they also risk damage to their property by these folks.
First, the proper term to describe taking something from someone without their knowledge or consent is “stealing”, not “borrowing”, especially if there’s reason to believe that if you did seek their consent the answer would be “No”.
Secondly, the city has no responsibility or obligation to tell them any such thing. Finding them homes is not the responsibility of the city. And it’s ignorant and arrogant of this woman to talk and act as though it is.
Housing the homeless is a Christian thing to do and very commendable. This is not the way to do it.
I would just like a solid answer once and for all from you people: Do you believe that the government should impose Christian morality by force of law?
If yes, then great! We’ll get heavily state-subsidized care for the poor, massive taxation of the rich, and a foreign policy that believes in turning the other cheek!
If no, then great! We’ll get gay marriage, comprehensive sex-education, abortion, and access to contraceptives!
What I don’t want to hear is, “Yeah, the government should impose Christian morality . . . but only when it means fucking with people who are not like me.” Unfortunately, that’s the only answer anyone seems able to offer. It’s sad and pathetic and deeply hypocritical, and anyone who took their faith even vaguely seriously would be consumed by shame.
—Myca
Re # 5:
The issue in this instance is not the sentencing process so much as the guilt/innocence process and the drafting of the criminal statutes.
I mean, obviously mandatory minimums only matter if you are found guilty. And while i have seen plenty of problems where people are obviously guilty and get extreme sentences (10 years for stealing a videotape, etc.) this particular case isn’t that.
Mandatory minimums are the real problem when you get someone doing something for which they are obviously guilty and then they get hammered for it. but (and of course this is a one sided article, but still…) the questions for my mind was not “is the sentence too harsh for this woman?” but rather “did she actually do anything that would make us, as a society, want to punish her criminally?”
IOW, the issue isn’t that she should (if this story is true) get a light sentence, it is that if the story is true she should be found not guilty. I mean sheeit, as a general rule we don’t want to have people get punished for things they didn’t mean to do. If we draft criminal codes in such a manner that they are intent-neutral and allow people to get convicted for things they don’t know about, then the criminal codes are wrong.
I would just like a solid answer once and for all from you people: Do you believe that the government should impose Christian morality by force of law?
Gee. Who are “you people”? Is it like when bigots refer to blacks as “you people”? Is it like when bigots refer to Hispanics as “you people”? Is it like when people refer to gays at “you people”? Frankly, it’s been my observation that people who refer to (what they imagine to be) a group of people as “you people” are bigots.
Sailorman – yeah, that’s got me curious as well. I thought that to be found guilty of a crime there had to be intent. If this woman is to be believed – and there was no information in the story that showed that anyone tried to prove different – she had no intent to commit a crime. Is there a lawyer here that can speak to this?
she had no intent to commit a crime
Even with crimes that require intent, it’s not “intent to commit a crime,” it’s “intent to do the predicate act.” I may not intend to break federal law, but so long as I intentionally trade with a country that boycotts Israel, I’ve committed a crime despite having no knowledge that what I did was a crime.
Ooh, you called me a bigot! Wow, that’s awesome. What I meant by ‘you people’ was perfectly clear (political/religious conservatives), and what’s more you understood it perfectly at the time. Somehow, I have seen through your cunning ruse.
You’re trying to dodge the question because you have no answer. You would like Christian morality enforced in cases where it does not impact you (gay marriage, for example) and you would like freedom where government mandated morality might mildly inconvenience you (higher taxation to provide for the poor).
—Myca
RonF, do you honestly think that a homeless person who takes up residence in a foreclosed home will sue the bank who owns the home if they trip and fall down the stairs? What kind of legal resources do you think are available to the homeless, pray tell? That argument just sounds like more business and legal racket arguments against all0wing the homeless to survive. Fuck the banks, if people are living in the streets in Minneapolis, they need shelter. And if the banks take a loss because of that, too bad. Let’s prioritize human life above profitability, for the love of all that’s good.
Yes, PG, i know that–sorry, I was typing in a rush.
My point is that we have occasionally defined perfectly normal behavior as criminal. In my admittedly somewhat limited experience, this is especially the case when it comes to certain types of criminal conspiracy, and aiding/abetting charges.
To use your trading example: while it is probably perfectly valid to ask me, an attorney, to verify terrorism status of a party before I close a million dollar real estate transaction… well, that’s actually not so simple (plenty of lawyers screw it up) and it is probably completely unrealistic for many citizens.
The general rule is that ignorance is no excuse. But I think that we need to reconsider that mantra as applied to a large set of statutes, for which ignorance really should be an excuse.
Sure, we all “should” know that stealing is wrong. But should we all know that driving someone to the bus station is wrong? Should we all know how to identify someone as a drug dealer, and exactly what behaviors of ours (which are perfectly fine for most people) suddenly become criminal as applied to a dealer?
Should we all know that driving them to the bus station (enabling interstate transport) is somehow “more” wrong than driving then to a friend’s house? Should we know that it’s OK if a dealer asks you to watch their camera bag and there’s a camera in it? Should we know that even dealers can sue you if you steal your camera? And should we know that if you don’t open the bag and it contains drugs you can get brought to court?
If asking people to obey and have knowledge of the law becomes unrealistic, then we have a problem. I think it allows for arbitrary enforcement, and i don’t think the criminal code should be about luck.
Too many of our laws are, i think, “unknown” t vast segments of the population. that produces some really horrible results.
Have you ever actually been in a bank owned house? They’re not concerned about damage. They don’t clean the house. They lock the house, seal it up and turn off all the utilities. That does great things through summer and winter. You need to gut the whole thing to remove the mold and water damage to make it livable after it’s been owned by the bank for more than 6 months.
Yes he is. I have nothing approaching nice to say about that.
I don’t know why the invisible hand fails here. I don’t know why hundreds of thousands of dollars of damages are done to assets and the owners of those assets don’t seem to care – but it happens with monotonous regularity.
“Abandoned” properties represent massive hoards of man-hours flushed down the drain to be destroyed by the elements. As much damage as a squatter does to the property, an ownership squatter (used in the sense of the term “domain squatter”) does far more. Look at any old post-industrial cities, even ones that aren’t Detroit, and you’ll see row after row of hundred-year-old buildings that would be invaluable if well-maintaned, but instead are utterly worthless… and to the observer, it makes no sense at all.
How the hell does the math work out? How do you allow hundreds of thousands of dollars of damage, rather than maintaining minimal maintenance and inspections?
Either way, I take the side of whoever is taking care of the place.
Jake is right that foreclosed homes fall into a terrible condition, and the property even can become a danger to others — in California, foreclosed homes with pools have become literal breeding grounds for West Nile virus.
However,
RonF, do you honestly think that a homeless person who takes up residence in a foreclosed home will sue the bank who owns the home if they trip and fall down the stairs? What kind of legal resources do you think are available to the homeless, pray tell?
I’m pretty sure homeless people have roughly the same access to ambulance-chasers working on contingency as the rest of us do. If we passed a statute saying that anyone who trespasses onto foreclosed property does so entirely at his own risk, even if the bank is fully aware of the squatting and is aware of dangerous conditions on the property, we could avoid the possible torts. Who wants to spearhead the passage of the legislation that allows banks to be completely irresponsible for the condition homes fall into?
PG, what are you saying?
In a general sense, being ‘responsible’ for homes only deals with protecting the public from attractive nuisances. Are you suggesting that people should be responsible for the condition of the interior?
That seems odd to me. What are the banks supposed to do? If they don’t foreclose, there is no guarantee that the occupant will keep the house up. And of course, foreclosure is generally the only leverage they have.
If they foreclose, however, the market will go up eventually and then in theory they can resell the house.
i wrote about those disgusting new taco bell ads: http://filthygrandeur.blogspot.com/2009/03/men-can-only-empathize-with-pregnant.html
and also i wrote about the environments of rock and rap concerts, based on my own experience: http://filthygrandeur.blogspot.com/2009/03/environments-of-rock-and-rap-concerts.html
I read through several pages of the “This is why you’re fat” site. And no, actually, that shit isn’t why I’m fat.
You can tell that most of the food there is people taking normal unhealthy food and then dressing it up specifically to take a picture, probably to send it to that site. There is a chicken sandwich from McDonalds put in the middle of a double cheeseburger. Nobody eats that shit. Nobody sells that. Same with the “9 decker filet o fish” sandwich. Cute, you bought 9 fish sandwiches and sent it to a website to make fun of fat people.
Then there’s the “on a stick” pictures. Scotch eggs are admittedly unhealthy, but not much more so than a standard “eggs and sausage” breakfast that is perfectly acceptable at any number of restaurants that serve breakfast. But, ON A STICK?? That somehow puts it over the edge to be on this site. Deep fried tootsie rolls on a stick. You know how tiny tootsie rolls are? But deep fry them, and put them ON A STICK! Wow! Those fatties sure do CRAZY STUFF!
For what its worth, I went over to my friend’s house once recently and we deep fried candy bars and they were YUMMY. And ON STICKS. But I was the only fat one there. And it wasn’t my idea.
EDIT: Found another “on a stick”. Cheesecake! On a stick! What it is about putting food on sticks that takes it from “unhealthy and delicious” to “holy shit that is disgusting”?
Yeah, but since they don’t maintain the house at all, they can only sell it for an extremely reduced price. Usually less than the principle left on the mortgage they foreclosed on. I don’t understand the banks strategy at all. Well, I do, but it’s that whole short-term profit only thinking.
The problem with not maintaining a building is not only the condition of the interior. Roofs, chimneys, siding – none of that is maintained and, especially in urban areas, that can be a danger to the public. In addition, lack of maintenance (or any attention whatsoever) is an open invitation to squatters and others.
I think an argument can be made that the banks know that a certain percentage of their foreclosure acquired property will be squatted. Should they have no liability? Now this is starting to interest me.
What’s rich? If you go here, you can type in your annual income and it will tell you where you fall on a global level. No, it doesn’t take into account cost of living, etc., but it’s kind of interesting, nonetheless.
After you get the results, it will try to make you feel guilty and suggest donating to charity. If that offends you, well, fair warning.
I think we cannot generally demand that banks grant others the right to use their property (taking without compensation). We can, of course, condition lots of things (bonuses, tax breaks, bailouts) on the right behavior, and that is a powerful hammer.
But so long as it is not legal, I think it should not be encouraged. I support changing laws which are cruel, but I don’t support breaking them unless required by exigency.
Also, it takes a a fairly long time for a home to become a danger, in most places. I paint my trim once a decade or so; I replace my roof once every 20 years. I could abandon my house and it would be just fine for a while.
Depending where you live, your house could likely be an unlivable hellhole after a single summer or winter. That’s what happens w/ no heat, no ventilation and not cleaning the gutters. You are severely overestimating the amount of time it takes for a house to need extensive work to be considered livable.
But can we hold them liable when they don’t take common sense, usual and customary action to ensure that nobody is squatting or partying in their dangerous properties?
I agree. But mandatory minimums are also part of the problem. Without mandatory minimums, there are two points in the court system where someone could exercise discretion in a case like this — the prosecutor could elect not to press charges (or to press lesser charges), and the judge could decide to set a light sentence. Mandatory minimums take that power away from the judge, so the only person who can exercise discretion once it’s in the judicial system is the prosecutor.
(Of course, the lack of a mandatory minimum can also lead to injustices, such as when a judge gives second chances to upper-class white kids that wouldn’t be given to lower-class black or latin@ kids. So either way can suck.)
By the way, I think it’s really hard to be the sole right-winger on a topic. So if people could dial down the mean tones when addressing RonF, I’d appreciate it.
Yeah, i am really torn on mandatory sentencing guidelines. I tend to come down against them, but I don’t really like the alternative either.
It is obvious to me that there are some really horrific ones, like the three strikes law. But I also have a lot of experience with seeing “discretion” get applied in some really detestable manners, by a variety of people who have it.
In a perfect world, we would be able to staff the entire court system with really ethical people. in a less perfect world, limiting discretion to some extent may make sense: the harm caused by “less flexibility” can be balanced by “less differential treatment.”
The other problem, of course, is that mandatory sentencing just gets a workaround by selective prosecution. So even if you have a mandatory sentence for a drug law, the fact remains that Rich White Hollywood Actor is not going to get the mandatory sentence. Why? because he’ll work a deal with the prosecutor, or the cops, or the judge, to get out of it.
That kind of pull isn’t available for normal people. So the likely effect of a mandatory sentence is that it gets applied to two completely disparate classes of people: (1) Folks who have some something horrible enough that the prosecutor and judge won’t make a deal, and (2) folks who have absolutely no pull in the system, and who just end up with the default mandatory sentence.
Plenty of people who could be charged with the crime don’t get charged with it, because they have decent representation, or “good community standing” (code for “being rich”) or political pull. The ironic thing, of course, is that this is just the type of disparity which the mandatory sentencing laws are designed to prevent. moreover, it means that they are functionally getting enforced by prosecutors. And prosecutors, while they are often a likeable bunch, are more numerous than are judges, are not vetted as highly, and tend to be biased against accused criminals.
Cheesecake! On a stick! What it is about putting food on sticks that takes it from “unhealthy and delicious” to “holy shit that is disgusting”?
I think this is 100% a class issue, considering that cheesecake on a stick (as well as goat cheese or smoked salmon on a stick), when done by a big name chef who feeds skinny women at Bloomingdale’s, is deemed totally cool — I mean, “inventive haute dining.”
In a general sense, being ‘responsible’ for homes only deals with protecting the public from attractive nuisances. Are you suggesting that people should be responsible for the condition of the interior?
Jake answered that for me:
In addition, lack of maintenance (or any attention whatsoever) is an open invitation to squatters and others.
Attractive nuisances — they’re not just for kids anymore!
PG:
Even with crimes that require intent, it’s not “intent to commit a crime,” it’s “intent to do the predicate act.” I may not intend to break federal law, but so long as I intentionally trade with a country that boycotts Israel, I’ve committed a crime despite having no knowledge that what I did was a crime.
Ah. Thanks. Except when you trade with such a country, you at least did intend to trade with them. I had thought that if you give someone a suitcase with a key of coke stashed in it but had no idea of such and intended to just transport their clean clothes that it made a difference. It would seem to me that the predicate act here was “hand over some coke”, not “hand over a suitcase” and that she had no intent of handing over coke.
One would think that this had been explored at trial, but then people without a lot of money often tend to get less than topnotch legal representation.
Ooh, you called me a bigot! Wow, that’s awesome./
What do you think would be the response if I got on here and referred to blacks or feminists as “you people”?
What I meant by ‘you people’ was perfectly clear (political/religious conservatives), and what’s more you understood it perfectly at the time.
You’re right in a sense. What you meant was perfectly clear. What you meant was to lump together a collection of individuals with some overlapping views into a single depersonalized group and attack it. “Othering”, I believe it’s called.
Did I know what you meant? No, I didn’t. And your explanation confuses the issue more by conflating two different groups with some overlap into one. Conservative political != religious conservative. So, which do you mean? Political conservative, or religious conservative?
And in any case, I have never and am not willing now to speak on behalf of conservatives (of any persuasion) in general, so I can’t answer the question anyway. I don’t know what “you people” want, and just like any other group (e.g., gays, blacks, Catholics, Episcopalians) there’s a variety of opinion within the group on the matter. Do you see yourself as authorized to speak on the behalf of the various groups you identify with? How many times have I seen here and elsewhere people castigated because they made the assumption that all gays or all blacks or all leftists or all feminists share the same political or social outlooks?
Now, are you interested in what I personally think? Or will only a spokesperson for “you people” do?
Damn, now I wish I had posted my “nothing approaching nice” in my comment because I called this response before deciding that that wouldn’t be nice.
Sailorman:
If asking people to obey and have knowledge of the law becomes unrealistic, then we have a problem.
Tax law is fast approaching this, if we’re not already there.
Whit:
RonF, do you honestly think that a homeless person who takes up residence in a foreclosed home will sue the bank who owns the home if they trip and fall down the stairs?
Sure. Or someone will do so on their behalf in pursuit of an agenda.
What kind of legal resources do you think are available to the homeless, pray tell?
Various advocacy organizations that would be only too happy to paint the homeless person as a victim of teh eeeevill bankers and try to get a bunch of money out of them to benefit the homeless – after they take their cut.
All:
The banks own the properties. Properly used (including but not limited to periodic inspections and maintenance) we could get people off the streets and into decent housing. But there’s expenses pursuant to that, and the assumption of liabilities as well. Legislative action could do something about the liability, but once something happens people will attack that. The costs of inspections, maintenance (foreclosed houses are often not exactly in tip-top shape to begin with), utilities and tenant property damage will have to be paid, and assessing the banks for this when it was never their intent to house people in foreclosed homes in the first place is not going to work. Note that from what we see upthread the general business plan is to lock the doors and then completely neglect the properties, so blowing up the business model by forcing them to pay for utilities and maintenance might actually bankrupt the banks. You’re making the banks into landlords, and they are just not at all set up for it.
This would be telling the banks that they have to use their properties as we, not they see fit, and that they have to pay for it.
So – presuming that matching up people on the streets with vacant housing is considered a societial good, how do we make that work? We could first limit the liability of the banks. You can’t hold them responsible to maintain a property for a use for which they never intended to put them. Then we could enable them to transfer occupancy rights to existing private organizations that currently deal with the homeless (Red Cross, homeless advocacy groups, Salvation Army, Catholic Charities, etc.) (not government agencies) with the concept that it’s their responsibility to get people into those homes and get them squared away to stay there. It has to be quite clear that this does not compromise the overall property rights of the property owner, who is still free to dispose of the property at any time as they see fit with no obligation to the occupants other than a reasonable notice period (say, 30 days). It will be up to the charitable organizations to see that the homes are livable and maintained. Oh, and donations to those organizations becomes a tax credit (not a tax deduction). You give them a dollar, Uncle Sugar gets a dollar less, not 25 or 36 cents less.
Note the issue of obligation to the occupants. Things are not going to stay like this forever. When the economy improves the banks are going to be able to sell those properties. What happens then? Teh eeeevill bankers are actually going to profit and the people go out on the streets? How will that go down? Or will there be tremendous pressure on the banks to give the properties up and take a dead loss on them? Because that’ll bankrupt a bunch of them I bet.
Any societal obligation to house the homeless is (should) be borne by society, not the banks. Society can pay the banks, deal with the banks; change the laws to accommodate dealing with the banks. But the fact that banks happen to be owners of homes which are vacant does not make them responsible for solving society’s homelessness problem.
Now, of course the government could buy these houses at a relative steal, fix them up, and turn them into housing. So could a variety of organizations. But they don’t want to do so.
That is because, as it happens, being landlord is generally a very difficult job. It’s hard enough for private individuals who get to discriminate somewhat; it’s even harder for the general public, which contains a reasonably decent percentage of really shitty tenants.
So who gets to play landlord here? That’s a job that the banks shouldn’t have to assume. Who gets to unclog the plumbing? Who gets to deal with the property damage and security deposit–if there is one? Who does their best to ensure that people with no ownership interest in a home will, nonetheless, treat it as well as if they owned it? Who gets to evict the people who don’t pay rent?
I almost feel weird putting up my own links now because of the extensive threaded discussion, but hey, people did it upstream, so it’s still OK, right?
I wrote a post with the text of my comment about the proposed rescission of the HHS conscience rule.
I have two replies – turned – posts. One is about how slut shaming young feminists isn’t going to help me be a future abortion provider. The other is about how people will use protecting children as an excuse to cover up their own biases.
Finally, in a totally shameless self promoting kind of way, I posted a link to photos from our medical school’s production of the Vagina Monolgues. If I do say so myself, we were pretty fabulous.
Actually, they’re talking about doing just this where I live. I don’t remember all the details, but it was the county and a local non-profit that focuses on housing issues buying up foreclosed homes in the census tracts that had the most foreclosures, turning them into public housing and keeping them off the market.
The money was allocated under a foreclosure prevention program, but they ran into a bunch of legal barriers to using public money to benefit private property owners, so they thought this was the most good they could do with the money they had. But the scale was really small. They think they only had a million dollars or so, so maybe a dozen houses or something like that.
Any societal obligation to house the homeless is (should) be borne by society, not the banks.
So then we come to a) just what is the societial obligation to house the homeless, and b) what of that is properly a governmental responsibility – and if any, how is it distributed among Federal, State and local governments – and what of that is properly a private responsibility. After all, government != society.
Since the general question is how people who favor enforced biblical morality for others but low-tax low-obligation economic freedom for themselves reconcile their beliefs . . . or, actually if they even bother to try to reconcile that sort of hypocrisy, yes, I’d love to hear what your answer is.
—Myca
Ah, but what if they don’t become landlords? What if they simply turn the houses over to these folks? Is there a significant group of people who can’t get a down payment together but could make monthly payments – even at a reduced or subsidized rate? Would buying foreclosed homes at the currently greatly depressed market rates and then turning them over to such people help? Heck, there’s organizations out there (the name escapes me at the moment) that BUILD new homes for people. Why not have them fix up existing homes instead? You’d think it would be cheaper.
RonF, see my comment at #43. One of the other things they were talking about doing is making the homes available for purchase to the people they would rent them to, along with down payment assistance and credit counseling, and then using the money from selling the homes to buy up more foreclosed properties and make the program an ongoing thing rather than a one-shot deal, as well as getting some of the homes off the government and back into private ownership.
I believe that both the letter and the spirit of the Constitution should be followed. That means that the power of the government should be constrained to explicitly limited circumstances, and that the lowest level of government that can deal with a problem should do so, and that if a given level of government is not explictly granted a power then it’s reserved to a lower level of government or to the people themselves. I don’t think that the goverment should impose any kind of morality on the basis that it is derived from Christian belief. I think that government’s obligation and ability to impose or prevent any specific kind of behavior is only justly derived from the will of the electorate in accordance with the law.
We’ll get heavily state-subsidized care for the poor,
Read what Jesus says about giving money and other aid to the poor, to our neighbors, etc. What He says is that YOU should do it. Personally. Maybe (and I’ve have to check) through the Temple. Not once do I recall him saying that you should give to the government and that they should do it.
massive taxation of the rich,
Same thing. Jesus said “Give unto Caesar that which is Caesar,”, but that was in the context of asking whether or not paying one’s taxes to an occupying power was religiously permissible. He said it was. I don’t see him ever saying that it had any great merit, or what levels of taxation the government should impose or what purposes it should use your taxes for. He certainly felt that the wealthy should give money to the poor, etc., but the concept is to do so willingly and directly. He didn’t say “the government should take it from you by force, and handle it’s disbursement.” He saw people, not governments, as having primary agency and obligation to give aid and other such things.
and a foreign policy that believes in turning the other cheek!
“Just war” is a well-established Christian doctrine. And in Matthew 8:5-13, he healed a son of a Roman soldier and praised him for the strength of his faith (which the soldier himself had expressed in military terms) without saying one thing to him about his status as a soldier. Having said that, carefully note that I make no claim about the justification of any particular conflict (such as the current ones in Iraq and Afghanistan) – only that conflict is not considered to be forbidden under any circumstances by Christianity.
If no, then great! We’ll get gay marriage,
I have never mentioned Christianity as my justification for my opposition to same-sex “marriage”.
comprehensive sex-education
I see no conflict between Christian faith and comprehensive sex education. Presuming that you define “comprehensive sex education” as “here’s how things work” and not indoctrination as to the relative morality of homosexuality vs. heterosexuality, etc. That discussion does NOT belong to the State.
abortion,
People identifying the origin of their opposition to abortion as a violation of Christian ideals are among the most vocal opponents of abortion. But one need not be Christian to view human life as worth preserving and the moment of conception as the beginning of human life. I have never cited my Christian faith as the reason I oppose abortion. My degrees in biology and biochemistry have provided me sufficient reason.
and access to contraceptives!
I was not aware that access to contraceptives in America is particularly limited. My local drugstores has a 5′ by 4′ display of, what, maybe 30 different varieties of condoms that you can throw in the basket next to your toothpaste. As far as I know anyone of legal age can go and get a prescription from their doctor for such devices or medications as need such, and a parent can bring their minor child to a doctor and get one with no trouble. Use of contraceptives in America by Christians is, I would guess, quite high.
chingona – when you had referenced “public housing” I took that as “housing the government owns”, not housing that’s privately owned. The government has consistently done a terrible job as a landlord, at least here in Chicago, and finding a way to get foreclosed/vacant/abandoned housing livable and into private hands again is a public good for multiple reasons.
Now, if someone wants to propose that the government give such an organization a below-market-rate loan – even zero interest – or even a grant to get the ball rolling, we can talk.
When it comes to the conflict between the needs of the homeless and the property rights of the banks, part of the difficulty here for me has to do with the differing levels of harm involved. I don’t think that there’s any question that the banks have a legal right to these homes, and that by squatting, homeless families are infringing those rights and breaking the law.
It seems like an incomplete analysis if we just look at the legality of the situation without examining the possible or likely harm done to the families vs. that done to the banks. That’s the part where we run into the fact that we’re talking about February in freaking Minnesota, and that while the banks might lose some value from their investment, the families are looking at freezing to death. It’s not like that means that the bank’s property rights are meaningless, but I find it inhuman to value human life so lowly. I mean, I feel like we’re in Jean Valejan territory here, folks.
—Myca
Do you currently have any justification left for your opposition?
—Myca
That discussion belongs to the state as much as any other discussion of morality belongs to the state. If you don’t want the state to teach that homosexuality isn’t immoral, that’s because (once again) you want the state to refrain from teaching things that conflict with the doctrine of your chosen faith.
This is because you have an awful lot of unexamined privilege revolving around your religious values, to the point where you assume, as a matter of course, that it’s not the state’s purview to teach that consensual sexual behavior between adults is acceptable.
—Myca
RonF @49 … The program as I understood it (I had a fairly long talk with someone who was involved in setting it up a few months back, but I didn’t take notes or anything, so I’m going from memory here) was that the government would be the landlord in the short-term, but they really don’t want to be in the landlord business long-term, at least not in terms of these foreclosed homes (there is some public housing here anyway, but not a ton). The idea is buy them up, clean them up, rent them out, and if the family renting the home has a stable enough economic situation and can qualify for a low-interest loan, perhaps with down payment assistance, help them buy the house. The goal is get foreclosures off the market so they stop dragging down the values in the rest of the neighborhood, not end up with vacant houses that get used for criminal activity or that deteriorate to the point they pose a health hazard, provide housing for families that need assistance during this crisis, and have a way to transition out of this role when intervention stops being necessary.
You may not think the government should do this – that instead it should be a private organization – but a lot of the big social service non-profits get a big chunk of their funding from the government anyway.
The point is, it’s simply not true that no one is interested in taking on the responsibility of turning foreclosed homes into housing for people who need help now, and there are ways to go about this that don’t leave one sector of the economy solely and privately responsible for solving a collective problem. And there are ways to go about it that don’t turn the government into the single largest landlord in the country.
As far as Christian personal obligation to charity versus government obligation, sure, in broad terms I agree, but then, that’s the point. ALL religious obligations and restrictions ought to only apply to those who freely subscribe to that religion.
That means that if Christians have a problem with gay marriage, they need to suck it up and not get gay married. There really isn’t a decent non-religious justification for prohibitions against gay marriage, bizarre fantasies about the ‘history of marriage’ aside. If Christians have a problem with gay people in the military, they need to accept that it’s unreasonable to expect their religion’s morality to automatically apply to everyone. The same thing applies across the board.
—Myca
you assume, as a matter of course, that it’s not the state’s purview to teach that consensual sexual behavior between adults is acceptable.
I agree that the state shouldn’t get into what is morally good and bad when it comes to the vast variety of sex acts themselves (do we really want 7th grade gym teachers explaining that it’s morally OK to derive sexual pleasure from whipping your girlfriend? even if you believe it is, do you think that should be the official message of the government?). However, that also means that the state has to be inclusive and non-judgmental in teaching about sex acts as they are relevant to health (which BDSM isn’t particularly — you can’t get pregnant or HIV from it). Thus it is important to teach about sodomy and to be gender-neutral in describing the sex of the participants. Supposedly the kids trying to preserve technical virginity are even MORE likely to engage in sodomy, so it’s vital for them to understand what it involves, what you can catch doing it, and how to protect yourself to the extent possible.
RonF,
From what I understand, you’re saying that so long as a democratic majority at some level of government (preferably city or state) wants to prohibit a particular behavior because they find it immoral, you’re OK with that. I’m still waiting for your explanation of why this applies to same-sex marriage but doesn’t apply to interracial marriage.
Oh, certainly agreed.
Also agreed!
Even beyond the issues of health in a medical sense, though, I think it’s important for schools to tackle homophobia head on as a social issue. Homophobia does damage to the health of our society as do all widespread social bigotries. It’s perfectly appropriate for public education to address that.
We have no problem with schools teaching that there’s nothing lesser about being a woman. We have no problem with schools teaching that there’s nothing lesser about being black. Yet, somehow, all kinds of objections are raised when it’s suggested that it’s appropriate for the schools to teach that there’s also nothing lesser about being gay. And yeah, I’m sure that the status of that debate has nothing to do with religion.
—Myca
Myca: There really isn’t a decent non-religious justification for prohibitions against gay marriage, bizarre fantasies about the ‘history of marriage’ aside.
Speaking of the history of marriage, do you consider any of the historical proofs of gay marriage in your recent post adequate expressions of gay marriage? You put a lot of stock in their existense but what I read stuck me as minor unions, even experiments. Formal acknowledgement of live-in lovers and ersatz brothers, and the elite doing whatever they wish because they are elite. None of them succeeded in becoming a general model for family in their societies, and each of the practices died out.
Maco,
What would you consider an adequate expression of a particular form of marriage? For example, was there “adequate” expression of interracial marriage in history prior to 1787 (when the U.S. Constitution was adopted), or was it mostly a practice of elites (e.g. Alexander the Great marrying his way through the lands he conquered)?
Adequate for what?
—Myca
Maco @ 58:
There, I fixed that for you! You’re welcome.
Hearts and flowers,
l.l.
God, I love and hate covering local elections. It’s fun to write about but the peanut gallery is back out again labeling me a “cop-hater” and gasp, a rad-fem!
I kind of went off since I figured out who some of them are anyway. I don’t know if it’s good prose but it felt good.
As the economic problems become more and more prominent there have been calls from the left asking everyone to join together and accept President Obama’s leadership. There’s a certain logic to this, and I have finally been swayed. Yes, there is something that will affect my personal economics that I can see that our President knows more about than I do. And so I will follow his leadership in this. Yes, I’ve decided to use President Obama’s NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament picks in our office pool. I have entrusted the considerable sum of $25 from my personal finances in his expertise. Let’s see how he does.
I can’t wait for people to start demanding that he publicize a bracket for the Women’s tourney.
Myca:
It seems like an incomplete analysis if we just look at the legality of the situation without examining the possible or likely harm done to the families vs. that done to the banks. That’s the part where we run into the fact that we’re talking about February in freaking Minnesota, and that while the banks might lose some value from their investment, the families are looking at freezing to death. It’s not like that means that the bank’s property rights are meaningless, but I find it inhuman to value human life so lowly. I mean, I feel like we’re in Jean Valejan territory here, folks.
I agree, actually. Which is why I proposed steps that would make the property owners whole (or at least minimize their risks) while still getting people in the homes.
That’s because you are looking at it from a limited perspective, where you are making a prior assumptions and basing your conclusion on them.
Say you’re King of Minnesota. You want to help homeless people, and provide them with a place to stay.
You could, of course, do so in a variety of ways.
You could open up public buildings. Commandeer every gym in every public school. Open shelters. Command public officers to arrange for housing in their offices in the evenings.
If you wanted to so do–if you viewed this as an emergency–then you could probably get almost all those homeless people off the streets into somewhere warm; you could feed them on the government dime; you could set up emergency medical clinics. you could care for them.
All this would be within your power *without* the requirement to order private citizens or corporations to give up their things for public use. The government is big enough, and powerful enough, that it can do this on its own.
So then, it’s not quite so Jean Valgean (nice reference though!) as it seems.
The issue is only “leave them in the snow or put them in those houses” if you assume that there are no other options than putting them in the foreclosed homes. But there are.
Sailorman,
Er, it’s actually still quite Jean Valjean — it’s not as though Valjean lived in France before there was organized government capable of providing for the poor. However, the government did not meet the needs of the poor, and in desperation, Valjean breached others’ property rights.
Myca: Adequate for what?
Adequate for gays. If the modern equivalents of your historical examples of gay marriage were what gays had rights to today, would you feel gays had adequate rights today? Or if you were living in their time period, would you feel gays had adequate rights then?
LL: Many of them succeeded in becoming a general model for family in their societies, but most of the practices were stamped out by cultural imperialists
I accept that as a legitimate opinion LL, but one of the measures by which I judge the worth of a culture’s values and practices is that it maintains its existense, and it is a fairly important measure to me. Pointing out cultures that adopted these practices, then got stamped out after adopting them, doesn’t do much to lure me to your side of the fence.
I believe they fail the test of time, whether by conquest or simply fading away, because the integrity of a culture (relative to competing cultures) is derived from the multiplicity of bonds that connect person to person, that directly connect provider to dependent and back again, and the duration of a culture (relative to competing cultures) is determined by the multiplicity of bonds that connect each generation to the generations before and after them.
In cultures where family links are based on blood kinship these connections are numerous and lifelong, and include everyone that lives within the framework of a family, even the disadvantaged and the undesired. In cultures where family links are based on personal preference these bonds are created only as desired, take only the forms that are desired, last only as long as desired and could never include everyone. Inevitably, cultures that take the former road outclass and then outlast cultures which adopt the latter.
I totally agree, Sailorman, but the thing is that nobody actually gets to be ‘King of Minnesota,’ and if anyone was, it certainly wouldn’t be the folks who are making these decisions. I agree that there’s a broad range of possible actions here, especially if you consider all possible actors, but the actions available to the actors immediately concerned are somewhat more constrained.
And yeah, to echo what PG said, the French government certainly could have started a widespread program of ‘free bread for the poor,’ but since they didn’t, Jean Valjean’s available actions were constrained to either ‘steal bread’ or ‘watch my family starve’. He’d already tried to get work and money, but the story was set in a period of great economic depression. Also totally unlike today. ;->
—Myca
PG: What would you consider an adequate expression of a particular form of marriage? For example, was there “adequate” expression of interracial marriage in history prior to 1787 (when the U.S. Constitution was adopted), or was it mostly a practice of elites (e.g. Alexander the Great marrying his way through the lands he conquered)?
Adequate is when we can agree that they have what they are entitled to, when there is no moral obligation to grant more, even if they want more.
Ask and you shall receive … Atheist Salt.
h/t jewschool
Most interesting (and disturbing–to the degree that Godlewski’s (he’s the Christian salt guy) thinking reflects the thinking of other Christians) is this from the piece in the Examiner :
Ethnic/religious targeting much? I mean, the guy has, obviously, a right to sell what he wants to sell. But why not brand the kielbasa made by the business he founded and now run by his nephew?
Also, I’m pretty sure we already have Christian bagels – all those rolls with holes in the middle at the big bagel chains and in your grocer’s freezer. But yeah … clearly the guy has issues.
Adequate for gays. If the modern equivalents of your historical examples of gay marriage were what gays had rights to today, would you feel gays had adequate rights today? Or if you were living in their time period, would you feel gays had adequate rights then?
It’s absurd to try to compare the pack of rights from one time and culture to another — I’d consider marriage grossly inadequate for women in pretty much all societies until the last 50 years or so. Does that mean that because heterosexual marriage has been inadequate for women for all but 0.01% of the history of the institution, we shouldn’t have hetero marriage now? (I know some feminists who think so — they believe marriage started rotten at its foundation and it’s a fool’s game to keep trying to reform it.) Or does it mean that marriage can evolve to become more inclusive and egalitarian? (my own belief)
Also, this claim —
In cultures where family links are based on blood kinship these connections are numerous and lifelong, and include everyone that lives within the framework of a family, even the disadvantaged and the undesired.
— is getting old and almost offensive through repetition.
We’ve previously discussed how blood kinship DOESN’T include everyone. The Spartans killed disabled infants; many cultures (including my family’s) that were based on blood kinship have targeted and continue to target females for abortion and infanticide. Blood kinship never has kept a culture from making some family members — particularly the “disadvantaged and undesired” — into outsiders, and cultures that offer only blood kinship mean that there is no alternative for those rejected by their families. If there is no adoption outside the blood, then one family’s unwanted girl can’t become another family’s cherished daughter.
In cultures where family links are based on personal preference these bonds are created only as desired, take only the forms that are desired, last only as long as desired and could never include everyone.
You keep asserting this “could never include everyone” without any basis for the claim. Why do you assume that it never could be anyone’s “personal preference” to embrace someone whose own family didn’t want her?
Maco,
That’s modern American marriage between a man and a woman. The horse is out of the barn.
That’s meaningless. Equality is adequate, and nothing else.
Some cultures and times, yes. Some cultures and times, no.
Some cultures and times, yes. Some cultures and times, no.
You do understand that we’re talking about many different examples from many different cultures across thousands of years, right? Like . . . do you get that?
Lumping Roman same-sex-unions in with Native American two-spirit people in with modern same sex unions is ignorant in the extreme. For that matter, lumping ancient Roman heterosexual marriage in with modern marriage is ignorant in the extreme.
—Myca
Well… yes and no.
For me, the real issue comes up when you cross that line between private property and public property. If the government isn’t serving the homeless I would totally support a sit-in, for example, where folks refused to leave government owned buildings. Or even a sit-in where people refused to leave other places that got government funding. Even ones that I like: I’m an arts fan, sure, but I’d have no problem if people sat in in a museum which got tons of public funding, holding signs that said “art is important but less important than food.”
Similarly, if banks are recklessly foreclosing people, I have no issues when those people fight back. Hell, I fight banks for a living: I have clients who haven’t paid a cent on their mortgage in almost a year, and I use every legal trick in the book to keep them in their houses. I’m all for those people fighting, protesting, occupying, or sitting in.
But there needs to be a direct link of some kind between the protesters and the protestees. If the problem is “I’m homeless” and the solution is “take someone’s house who wasn’t involved in making me homeless, and who doesn’t have the social contract to help me” then I don’t like it.
I think you’re confusing political action with survival tactics, Sailorman. Both are useful, but they have different goals.
To go back to Prisoner #24601, the baker he stole the bread from had no obligation to help him, and staging a protest at government offices would have been more targeted and appropriate . . . and also, his sister and her child would have starved to death as he protested. Sometimes, you do what you have to do to continue living.
—Myca
But that’s not what we are talking about here.
If you read that article, you get a sense that the organization is trying to make a point. It’s not necessarily that people will freeze to death unless they have access to that particular foreclosed home, as far as i can tell. It’s more that the people running the organization are of the mind that it is morally wrong to let homes go unused when people need homes.
they’re making a moral judgment, not a survival call.
Sailorman,
I think putting it this way “take someone’s house who wasn’t involved in making me homeless, and who doesn’t have the social contract to help me” attempts to pull in connotations that don’t belong here. It’s not like the homeless people are invading homes where someone currently lives. They’re squatting in unused homes. If the banks were foreclosing on the properties and then turning around and renting them out at the low prices the housing market currently can bear, while looking for a new buyer, the homeless people never would have shown up there. (Indeed, with that influx of supply to the rental market, the lower overall prices might decrease the total number of homeless people, at least of people who are homeless solely because they have been priced out of the market and not because they also have other issues — i.e., people for whom a market solution is sufficient to address their problem.)
I think we’ll have to disagree on this one.
From my view, your summary “attempts to pull in connotations that don’t belong here,” because you are talking about use and ignoring ownership.
My house is my house. It’s my house if I live there. It’s my house if I move out. It’s my house even if I’m not using it, and even if you really want to use it.
I agree that there are a variety of doctrines which support someone else moving into my house.
The emergency use doctrine, for example, might prevent me from evicting you if you needed to use my house in an emergency (though IIRC you would still be liable for rent and occupancy, you would need to be strictly limited to an emergency, and you’d be liable for any damages. I’m going from law school memory here–it’s that case with the the boat in a storm tying up to a dock; you know the one I mean….)
Or the adverse possession doctrine: you’re a trespasser and can be treated as one, but if you maintain open notorious hostile use long enough (2o years in my state) you could get ownership.
But I don’t get how ownership here appears to be moot. there’s no “feel good” exception that I know of. You’re a lawyer, too, right? How do you view this? Civil disobedience (but it’s against the wrong party?) Adverse possession? Plain old trespass? Where are you getting support for the concept that it’s OK to do this? Do you think that this falls under one of the exceptions?
For one thing, when you talk about “someone,” you actually mean a legal fiction of someone — i.e., a bank, which is a corporation and only a person for certain purposes under the 14th Amendment. You’re not talking about a natural person, a human being (which is what most people have in mind when they say “someone”).
I’m not saying that ownership is moot. But you haven’t been discussing this from a purely legal standpoint, instead a largely moral one. You didn’t respond to the Jean Valjean comparison by saying, “Yeah, and he broke the law too and got the punishment the law requires — no failure of procedural due process there.” You tried to distinguish the example.
What the squatters are doing is almost certainly illegal and a lawyer would have a tough time defending it in a bench trial. However, I bet he’d have an easier time obtaining jury nullification because of the appeal to morality: “They didn’t take someone’s house, they squatted in a house owned by some faraway bank that’s probably getting bailed out by the government anyway.”
Good thing there’s a constitutional right to a jury trial in a criminal matter.
Maco said:
It’s very nice that you BELIEVE that. But belief =/= fact.
In fact, all the evidence (also known in some circles as “facts”) we have is that those societies that were stamped out fell due to a multiplicity of issues that had NOTHING to do with recognition of some version of gay marriage.
In the case of the Greeks: divisive city-states, disolution of an empire after the death of its ruler (Alexander), and eventual conquest piece-by-piece by a greater power (Rome).
In the case of Rome: barbarian invasion, a weakened military, and inbred emperors.
In the case of Native American practices: disease, a better armed and technologically-equiped enemy, and forcible religious conversion.
Are you seriously suggesting that gay marriage was the reason that:
A) The traditionally fractious (as in “reported in every myth and legend” and supported by primary source evidence) “Greek nation” fell apart and was eaten by a larger empire;
B) Roman emperors became inbred after a few hundred years (that’s like… the OPPOSITE of same-sex unions, there) and barbarians invaded wholesale;
and C) Native Americans didn’t invent guns and penicillin fast enough?
If you do, you only prove your own ignorance about both history and sociological fact and your “belief” is nothing more than what you’ve presented it as: the worthless and privileged belief of a bigot.
Using your same line of reasoning, heterosexual marriages are to blame for more conquests than homosexual ones… because more societies supporting a solely heterosexual paradigm have fallen under the boot-heels of conquerors than the inverse. Therefore, we should outlaw heterosexual marriage.
Are you really comfortable with advocating that sort of approach to human rights?
PG: Or does it mean that marriage can evolve to become more inclusive and egalitarian?
I’m owed nothing everyone else isn’t owed, I’m obligated to nothing that everyone else isn’t obligated to. I’ll hold that up as a valid standard of inclusiveness and egalitarianism.
PG: You keep asserting this “could never include everyone” without any basis for the claim. Why do you assume that it never could be anyone’s “personal preference” to embrace someone whose own family didn’t want her?
Without basis? I’ll look again, but I’m sure the last time I checked the world was brimming with people who are not wanted by anyone, who never will be wanted by anyone.
I only make assumptions where being wrong is good. Assuming things will work out for my girl if I decide not to be her father is not one of the assumptions I make.
PG: Also, this claim –
In cultures where family links are based on blood kinship these connections are numerous and lifelong, and include everyone that lives within the framework of a family, even the disadvantaged and the undesired.
– is getting old and almost offensive through repetition.
PG: [followed by various examples of the ways some people treated one another like crap a long time ago]
Yeah, except we do it exactly as I described it above and we avoided feeding infants to our pets or burning widows alive, we just got a fairly uniform upper middle class lifestyle.
My family is doing very well, not rich, but well enough that I cannot complain, but all around me are people I love with less security and freedom in life than we have, and it is because they don’t have the kind of people standing by them that we do. I want them to have what we have, and they’re capable of having it, but instead of building it, I watch them build another generation that also doesn’t have it. They follow in their absent parent’s footsteps and their children grow up in other cities with their unwed GF’s. In my life I have watched two of my friends families through three generations occupy a far lower social stratum than mine, each generation apeing the previous one’s pattern of having or being transient part time dads, their sons and daughters having no concept of commitment. I often reflect that I don’t know the circumstances for sure as to why Carlos or Gina or Michael never learned what a father was from their fathers, but it established patterns that have been cloned in the next two generations after each of them, and I see it brewing in the fourth.
So when someone argues that their personal preferences are sufficient reason for begging off and they say of course it doesn’t make a difference, I wonder if they they understand what they’re saying. And I feel a little like my friends are being fucked over. And it hurts to watch it.
Myca: You do understand that we’re talking about many different examples from many different cultures across thousands of years, right?
I want to know which of those examples you thought did it right. Time and place. You like consequence free sex and you don’t think men and women have intrinsic bonds to their children and I think it colors your opinions. If I look at your best example, will I find same sex marriage in a stable society, where family commitment is ethical and strong, because I didn’t know the roman empire was noted for that. And will the same sex couples be raising these children or will they be nothing more than having a special word for two old guys who really love going fishing together?
treated one another like crap a long time ago
If you think abortions and infanticide based on the baby’s being unwanted due to its disability or gender only happened a long time ago, you evidently missed a rather lengthy discussion on this blog recently about the rate of abortions of Down’s fetuses in Western countries, the rate of abortion of female fetuses in China and India, and the rate of infant abandonment in poor countries where abortion is not accessible. All of which is happening right now, today, not “a long time ago.”
That’s a cute little world you live in — sorry to disrupt it with the real lives that exist outside your uniform upper middle class lifestyle.
Speaking of getting rid of babies (or potential babies) because of race… Forced sterilizations of native american women persisted until 1975, to the extent that nearly 1/3 of all native american women of child-bearing age had been sterilized.
Just thought I’d throw that stat out there again. Cuz, yeah. Scary shit.
Also, let a mod know if y’all get tired of kicking around this talking-points football.
PG, do you distinguish between using things in an emergency–Jean Valgean, etc–and encouraging others to use things in a planned, non-emergency, fashion?
IOW, do you think taht there’s a distinction to be made between the homeless people using the houses and the organizations encouraging them to do so?
@Maco, 83:
For the record, my parents are pretty much doing things “exactly as you’ve outlined above”: stable upper-middle-class lifestyle, emphasis on “family values” etc. Even within families that strongly value connections-by-blood, domestic violence, alcoholism, and abuse are very much possibilities.
The theory that “having a father” is vital to children’s growth is a large part of why my mother has refused to acknowledge my father’s abusive behavior and has refused to leave him. Additionally, the implication that people like me would be better off remaining in environments that toxic is absurd.
PG:That’s a cute little world you live in — sorry to disrupt it with the real lives
I appreciate that.
MM: Are you seriously suggesting that gay marriage was the reason that…
No.
Quill: Additionally, the implication that people like me would be better off remaining in environments that toxic is absurd.
I would never force you to remain in an abusive home.
Maco: “I would never force you to remain in an abusive home.”
Nope, just say that you aren’t allowed to form any new family, because the only permissible family is one bonded by blood.
And some news regarding people of Maco’s mindset.
Coming back to the squatter discussion, an interesting piece by a property law professor.
Nice news on Plan B:
http://consumerist.com/5182893/judge-orders-fda-to-make-plan-b-available-to-17+year+olds
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/24/health/24pill.html
And one more re: foreclosures. Bank walkaways — banks are refusing to take possession, leaving legal responsibility for the property on the shoulders of owners who’ve already gotten kicked out.
Six disabled people killed by neglect in the UK. This is chilling.
http://www.mencap.org.uk/page.asp?id=9604
Writing in the New Yorker, Atul Gawande discusses the widespread use of solitary confinement in American prisons, the long-term effects on the brain (similar to traumatic brain injury), and whether this practice constitutes torture (almost certainly).
This is in response to Sailorman and PG about FMLA v. Pregnancy Discrimination Act.
I’m (obviously) not a lawyer, but I did a fair amount of research when I was looking for a job while five months pregnant and contacted several organizations that do advocacy around this issue trying to make sure I understood my rights (and my non-rights). Here’s my understanding: the Pregnancy Discrimination Act bar employers from discriminating against you because you are pregnant. It does not require that they give you any leave for pregnancy or childbirth. And FMLA doesn’t kick in unless you’ve worked for your employer for the last 12 months and worked at least 1,250 hours in that time, so pretty much anyone hired while already pregnant is not going to be eligible for FMLA. So the issue you face as a pregnant woman looking for work is: Can you have a baby without leave? Or will the potential employer give you leave they aren’t obligated legally to give you? My understanding is that an employer could say yes, we’ll make you a job offer (complying with Pregnancy Discrimination Act), but no, we won’t give you any leave other than whatever sick days or vacation days you would have accrued by then (and still be in compliance with FMLA). And then if you didn’t take the job because of the lack of leave, then that would be on you, not them.
So, FMLA extends significant additional benefits to all employees that the Pregnancy Discrimination Act does not. The Pregnancy Discrimination Act essentially is a one time imposition on the employer – don’t fire, demote or not hire someone because they’re pregnant. FMLA is an ongoing obligation that could crop up anytime. Which actually is why it would be really pointless for someone to not hire women because of FMLA. FMLA applies equally to fathers and to mothers. That men very rarely take their full leave stems from (in my opinion) a combination of social factors and the leave being unpaid. But it applies to people who get cancer and people who are so depressed they can’t work. It applies to people who get in car accidents and get laid up in the hospital or in rehab. And it applies to the family members of all those people. My childfree by choice co-worker recently took FMLA when her husband was in a motorcycle accident and spent several weeks in a medically induced coma, followed by several weeks in rehab. Shit happens. And it’s not all babies.
chingona,
Thanks for your explanation; it pretty much jives with my understanding that the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, as an amendment to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, requires equality in how pregnancy is treated but doesn’t impose much in the way of new substantive requirements. That is, the PDA requires that an employer who gives leave for temporary sickness/ disability give the same leave for pregnancy, but doesn’t prescribe that any amount of leave must be given. The FMLA then fits into this by creating the substantive statutory right to leave and saying you get it for all forms of temporary illness and disability for yourself or immediate family, including pregnancy. So an employer who was always crapping on his employees in terms of allowing sick/disability leave wasn’t much affected by the PDA, but things do change for him with the substantive requirements of the FMLA.
Shit happens. And it’s not all babies.
True, but cancer, depression, car and motorcycle accidents are unforeseeable events that could happen to anyone. Only women get pregnant, and in this age of reliable, woman-controlled contraception, they do, THANK GOD, have some control over whether and when that happens.
True, but cancer, depression, car and motorcycle accidents are unforeseeable events that could happen to anyone. Only women get pregnant, and in this age of reliable, woman-controlled contraception, they do, THANK GOD, have some control over whether and when that happens.
This is true enough, in its way, but I’m not sure what you’re trying to say by adding this. I’m presuming you’re not trying to say that it’s perfectly acceptable for employers not to hire women because they might or might not get pregnant but if they do, it’s their fault. But I’m not sure what your point is.
chingona,
You made a pragmatic claim, that the fact that FMLA applies to people besides women and in circumstances other than pregnancy “actually is why it would be really pointless for someone to not hire women because of FMLA.” I pointed out that pregnancy is different from the other situations you noted, in that it is foreseeable and generally planned (at least of pregnancies that are carried to term). Therefore, if there were no laws prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex or pregnancy, it would be in an employer’s rational self-interest — i.e., not pointless — to avoid hiring women of child-bearing age and instead hire equally good candidates available for the same wages who are unlikely to require FMLA leave for pregnancy.
I’m very much in favor of enforcing anti-discrimination laws, so I would want to stop such behavior, but I’m not going to assume that someone who did discriminate in this fashion is an irrational dope who was acting pointlessly.
I am 100% sure that PG is not in support of discrimination against pregnant women. I’ll eat my hat if I’m wrong. (I am not, either.)
What PG (and I) are doing is analyzing the motives of employers. The fact is that from a certain perspective, in certain cases, some level of sex discrimination can “make sense,” if you are looking at the economic cost/benefit.
If the goal is to get employers to change their behavior, it is important to analyze and understand their motives in discriminating. But that doesn’t mean one should agree with them.
I’ll plug my own solution again, just for fun:
Absent laws to the contrary, in our current employment situation, pregnancy (and medical) leave has a net cost to employers. However, in almost any circumstance, widely available pregnancy (and medical) leave has a net benefit to society.
The goal of FMLA and other similar statutes is to increase the cost of not offering sufficient leave, to where it is “cheaper” to offer it than to risk getting tagged for damages. I’ll refer to this class of laws as a “cost statute.”
Generally speaking, cost statutes lead to evasion. They are better than nothing, but often inefficient. The main problem is that it is very difficult, if not impossible, to close all the loopholes. The secondary problem is that the statutes apply to an enormous range of people or entities, so that any attempt to close loopholes runs into potential issues of unfair application. The third (and by no means last) problem is that everyone affected by the statutes hates them.
If you want to get around that, you need to use an “incentive statute.” Incentives work better because everyone who participates is doing so voluntarily. So the government can be pickier about offering incentives (which everyone wants) and the issues becomes how to keep unwanted people OUT of the program, rather than how to force wanted people into the program.
So:
We make companies pay workman’s comp insurance themselves, because we want to discourage them from unsafe practices. GOOD: incentives match goals.
We make companies pay unemployment contributions, because we want to discourage them from mindless firing of employees. GOOD: incentives match goals.
We make companies pay for employee leave, but we want to encourage them to hire people who might need leave. BAD: incentives opposite to goals. Making it even worse, companies who break the law pass the costs on to society unequally.
We need to tax companies more. Using a tax will make it harder for companies to escape the cost. Then we need to subsidize the leave in a way that incentivizes companies to hire women.
I don’t care if it’s $10, $100, or $1000: the day that some executive can say “Good news! Sarah got pregnant and she’s going on leave! Free money for us!” is the day that women all over the country will get job offers.