Bad option or no option at all?

Sen. Harry Reid commented this morning that the U.S. is the only nation where people must file for bankruptcy because of healthcare costs. This may or may not be true. What he declined to mention is that in other nations most of these people would not have received the healthcare in the first place.

Healthcare is expensive. There are some areas where we can certainly cut healthcare costs but the reality is that if someone needs major surgery it is going to cost at least thousands and likely tens of thousands and maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars. The costs of the people involved, the equipment, drugs, and hospital facilities are what they are.

No nation can afford to provide full, complete, and unrationed healthcare to all of its citizens. The costs to do so, with today’s technology, would exceed the GDP of any nation.

Some form of rationing is required. There will not be enough to go around. Most countries with socialized medicine use Queuing as their primary method of rationing. You simply wait your turn until whatever you need becomes available. Many surgical procedures, such as a hip replacement, that we consider critical in the U.S. and that are often provided within hours, may involve several month waits in Canada, The UK, and other countries.

Limiting what procedures are available comes next. Many newer or more expensive procedures fairly widely available in the U.S. are not available at all in countries with socialized medicine. Worse, the vast majority of these are developed in the U.S., if we adopt government run healthcare system who will invent even better options?

The final form of rationing is probably best termed Justification. Does this person’s life justify spending limited resources on them? Is it worth spending $20k on a hip replacement to a 90-year-old? How about $40k in chemo therapy for someone with severe mental and physical disabilities?

So yes Harry, some people in the U.S. may go in to debt or even bankruptcy to get medical care . But under the system you want to give us they wouldn’t even have that option.

Gays @ CPAC: Separation of Church and Politics

Among the numerous commotions at last week’s CPAC in Washington was the official inclusion and recognition of Gay Republicans.

For some people this is a screaming huge oxymoron. How can someone who is gay, and more to the point, someone who supports being gay, be any part of the conservative (or Republican) establishment?

My question: Why can’t they be?

If I understand the purpose of CPAC it is to fight for political issues, not religious issues. If I’m correct, and I admit, I may not be, then our primary goals are:

National Security – We want (and need) our government to coordinate our national defenses. To help us protect ourselves from those countries, ideologies, and individuals who might want to harm us and take away our liberties.

Domestic Security – We need government to coordinate the laws and law enforcement necessary for peaceful and orderly daily life. We need laws and law enforcement to protect us from criminals who would do us harm such as murderers, rapists, thieves, and drunk drivers and we need laws for coordinating common and fair behavior such as rules of the road and financial accounting.

Functional Infrastructure – We need government to help coordinate the building and maintaining of roadways, flight control, telecommunications, and similar infrastructure for the public good.

Restraint – We want a more fiscally responsible, smaller, and less intrusive government. We don’t want government meddling in or taking over private enterprise or private lives. We don’t want socialist redistribution. We don’t want heavy regulations telling us what we can and cannot do if it doesn’t impact other people.

So far, I’d guess many gays fit in extremely well. I know a number of gays who support all of the above 100%.

So where’s the problem?

At the core is that, for many Christians, myself included, homosexuality is a sin. Well, if we kick out everyone in the conservative movement who sins, or even just the ones who sin regularly, we’ll have a pretty small group. The bigger issue though is that this isn’t a church. Do the Baptists want to kick out everyone who’s not Baptist? The Catholics kick out all the non-Catholics? What about the Episcopalians, Atheists, Presbyterians, Agnostics, and Jews? What religious groups ideology and theology do we plan to use as a litmus test for who to include and who not to?

This is a political group, not a church. Its purpose is to promote and organize a government that makes the U.S. a safe and equitable place for each and all of us to pursue life, liberty, and happiness. Someone being gay does not intrude on my life, liberty or happiness.

How about gay marriage? Well, I’m not for it. In fact, in light of recent events with Catholic Charities being forced out of their adoption business, I’m pretty strongly opposed to it. But then, a number of gays I know aren’t for it either. Gay marriage also isn’t one of the core fundamentals above. And if we’re planning to use support of gay marriage as a litmus test then we have a lot of non-gays to deal with first, starting with our newest Republican, Sen. Scott Brown. We can welcome someone who supports the core concepts of liberty and fiscal responsibility and agree to disagree on gay marriage while we continue to discuss it, its implications, and options, in a rational way.

Gays in the military? No problem (though I don’t support Don’t Ask Don’t Tell as it effectively commands someone to lie, not a good precedent). The valid concern is one of housing and this can be solved similarly to how it was with women.

The gay agenda? First we have to define what ‘the gay agenda’ is, and that would take much longer than the time we have here. There are elements of it that I strongly oppose. Interestingly, I know gays who oppose these elements as well.

What about the estimated 17% of Republicans who visited prostitutes during the GOP convention in Minneapolis? Do we give them all the boot? Many politically active conservative Christians believe that drinking alcohol is a sin, are they working to kick everyone out of the conservative movement who drinks? We can welcome those who drink alcohol and at the same time support tougher drunk driving penalties. We can welcome gays and at the same time support separate housing for gays in the military.

Tiger - Just Average

Tiger Woods gave a brief 15 minute statement this morning. The first we’ve seen or heard from him since the public revelations of his sex life late last year. The amount of coverage devoted to Tiger and his sexual trysts over the past couple of months has been truly amazing. Perhaps more interesting is the amount of time over the past 48 hours given over to speculation on what he would say this morning. He even surpassed the profit motives of wall-street as trading came to a near standstill for the 15 minutes he spoke. And on the disgusting side is the coverage and stalking of his wife, children, and friends the past months.

And all of this because he’s, well, just like everyone else.

He’s like Elliot Spitzer, Hugh Grant, Ryan Philippe, Charlie Sheen, Jude Law, Peter Cook, Ethan Hawke, David Boreanaz, Jessie Ventura, Ted Haggard, Jimmy Swaggart, Jim Bakker, Kobe Bryant, David Vitter, Dick Morris, Larry Craig, Barney Frank, Henry Hyde, Bob Livingston, Geraldo Rivera, Newt Gingrich, Bill Randall, Bob Barr, Wayne Pace, Newt Gingrich, John Edwards, Gary Hart, Bill Clinton, Ted Kennedy, John F. Kennedy, David Letterman,

…and over 80% of all men.


OK, maybe he’s not totally like David Boreanaz who was married to Rachel Uchitel when he had a mistress (or three?) unlike Tiger for whom Rachel was a mistress. Got it?

Statistically, over 80% of the male journalists, pundits, and others talking about Tiger are no different than he is. And over 80% of the men watching the news coverage or reading the plethora of articles about him are just like him. And over 80% of the women have husbands just like him. Just about every study on this topic indicates that fewer than 20% of married men are monogamous (and then only if you don’t include porn).

And Tiger being average is news? This would be like news bulletins that Tiger believes Elvis is dead. Actually, there are probably more guys who believe that Elvis is alive than are monogamous so Tiger believing Elvis is dead would be more newsworthy.

Who are we to be critical of Tiger? Why is his sex life even remotely any of our business anyway?

I’m not saying that what Tiger did is OK or that it’s OK for anyone. But our collective national hypocrisy (to quote Joseph McNamara) is rather deafening.

We need to get over ourselves.

What Do Women Pray For ?

29 Hours in a Day
Male Menopause
A Truly Universal Remote
Free Chocolate
Male Periods
Clone to wash, cook, clean bathrooms, please him...
Three-Day Weekends
Bounce Free Workouts
Male Pregnancy
Urinals (just like the boys have)
Did I mention guys getting a visit from Aunt Flo? Every month!

Simple Public Decorum

Are people less considerate of others than they used to be? Are people in the U.S. less considerate of others than people in Europe? Or Asia?

Yesterday I was working in one of my favorite cafes. There is a line of about 10 small rectangular tables lined up along one wall that are prime spots for people with laptops. The table next to me was empty and a woman who’s a professor at a local university put her bag on it and began to get her laptop out when she noticed a friend sitting nearby. She stopped to talk to him briefly and as their conversation continued she sat in the chair to rest her legs (she walks with a cane, not sure why).

About 10 minutes later a guy who was sitting in one of the sofa’s came over, grabbed her bag and then shouted at me “Is this yours?”

“No.” I replied as I reached to keep her laptop from falling out of her bag.

The professor shouted over that it was hers and her friend came over and grabbed her bag from the ofe who was still holding it.

I said no more until about 30 minutes later as I was putting my laptop away to leave. I mentioned to the guy that he really shouldn’t grab other people’s stuff without asking. He was quite offended by my saying this.

In Defense of Pot Heads ?

Before delving in to this let me make one thing clear. SMOKING POT IS STUPID! It is not harmless. It messes with peoples mental ability.

But then, we all do stupid things occasionally don’t we?

I recently met a guy named Marcus. Marcus is African American, 37-years-old, dropped out of school in 11th grade, has 4 kids (that he knows of), and lives with the mother of the two youngest along with his second child. He doesn’t know where his first child, Sarah is. Sarah’s mother moved away with her soon after she was born. Marcus has a couple of arrests on his record for drug possession, once for cocaine, once for pot. Thanks to prison over-crowding he was given probation both times instead of a jail sentence. He no longer does cocaine, but still gets together with friends once or twice a week to smoke a joint in the garage behind his house.

I drove by his house one day. This is not a neighborhood I felt very comfortable in and I’ve spent some time in some pretty unappealing and rough neighborhoods. I didn’t even slow down when I drove by. His house is a 1940’s 500 square foot pseudo Cap Cod in need of a lot of work. I also saw the 1 car parallelogram shaped garage in back where he and his friends smoke their pot.

So, what do you think about Marcus? Sound like a problem? Not someone you’d want living next door to you? Someone with a lot of things in his life to fix? Should he be arrested and convicted for dealing and smoking pot? Think his children should be taken away from him?

I met Marcus through a mutual acquaintance, one of the people Marcus smokes a joint with occasionally. Our mutual acquaintance just so happens to also be his
former probation officer. Marcus has been off probation for 14 years but they’ve stayed in touch because his probation officer has become a mentor to Marcus for these many years. It was his probation officer who, a year after his probation ended, helped him decide to quite doing cocaine, to marry the mother of his child, and to become a father rather than just a baby maker.

Marcus works at an industrial laundry. He doesn’t make much money but it’s a job and has provided 7 years of steady income. He knows the street and the local gangs and works to keep his kids free from them. Though he cut his own education short he’s intent on all of his children at least finishing high school. He doesn’t know much about college or ‘professional’ careers but he does know that he wants them to get jobs and be “decent”.

What good would it do to arrest Marcus? To throw him in prison? He may not be an ideal father, but he is a father. Will his kids do better if they’re visiting him in prison instead of having him at home?

And what about a pot smoking probation officer? I met him at a Christmas dinner for the board of directors for our state’s second largest charitable foundation. My wife is on the board with his wife (who is BTW, a VP of Engineering for a Fortune 100 corporation). Their oldest child goes to NYU and plans to be a neurologist. Should he be arrested for his pot smoking? What good would that do?

Both of these guys will tell you that they know that they’ve been permanently harmed by their pot smoking. I don’t disagree, particularly with Marcus, who exhibits typical pot-head slowness. My probation officer friend said that he has cut back to just once or twice a month though. Neither of them believes that any future harm from their occasional use is worth giving it up.

On this last point I strongly disagree. I think that their current and future use, even just once or twice per month, will harm them. I also think that their actions are harming their families.

On the other hand, they are both, from everything I’ve been able to tell, decent husbands and pretty good fathers.

Is it possible that a pot head can also be a good spouse, father, and citizen? Probable even?

Our society’s solution is to arrest Marcus. Is that the right thing to do?

Christians divorce more than heathens ?

There is a well-known study by Barna Group regarding a higher divorce rate among Christians than among non-Christians. I've also mentioned my own initial study indicating that the divorce rate among those who meet at Christian colleges appears even higher than this.

The February 2010 issue of Christianity Today magazine includes an article entitled Why Gayle Haggard Stayed. The clear insinuation that it would be expected by Christianity Today's readers that she would have left her husband Ted Haggard.

Throughout the Biblical period and likely up through the first 1800 or so years of Christianity no such headline would ever have appeared. Until just very recently, perhaps the past 80 or so years, a woman in Gayle's position wouldn't have even considered divorcing her husband. Why? First because doing so would go against God's commands regarding marriage and divorce, second would be her love for her children and the knowledge of the impact of divorce on them, and perhaps a distant third would be her concern for how she would support herself and her children as a single-mother.

Some reading this will quickly disagree with my first point. Certainly it would be OK and maybe even preferable for Gayle to divorce Ted in this situation. Biblically though, that's not so. The only reason given for divorce in the Bible is adultery, which throughout history and until just very recently involved a married woman having sex with someone other than her husband. Ted having sex with someone other than his wife was not adultery and from a Biblical standpoint was not grounds for divorce.

I'm not excusing Ted Haggard's actions. From my reading of the Bible, he was clearly involved in sexual sin. But when we wonder why we get divorced so much more now than ever before and more often than non-Christians, well...

Pre-Teen Sex

I received a few comments castigating me for supporting pre-teen sex with my post about the 11-year-old girl giving birth.

There was nothing in that post, as I read it anyway, supporting pre-teen sex. I never said that. The gist of that post was the interesting dichotomy of something that Jesus would have considered quite normal, we consider abnormal and even criminal. And yes, I was also poking fun at our (and Fox News) apparent love of hysteria and finding things we can get all worked up over. We do love to get worked up over things…


Mother’s Age & Birth Defects

Also, just an hour after I posted, a study was made public discussing the higher incidences of autism in children born to older mothers. While the study listed data for a continuum of mother’s ages, it focused on those over 35 who have the greatest risk of a child with autism (about 1 in 300 at age 35, about 1 in 200 at age 40). Looking at the data though it is clear that the risks of autism begin to significantly increase with mother’s over about 24.

Further, the probability of a variety of chromosomal issues, such as Down’s Syndrome, increase with mother’s age over 20. Below 20 the risk is about 1 in 3,000. By 25 it’s about 1 in 500. By 40 it’s 1 in 60.

There have also been a number of studies regarding the danger of birth defects and other health problems for young mothers, under about 14. A very quick perusal of these reveals that the primary cause is not actually the age of the mother, but the poor healthcare that many of these young mothers receive.

I’m not recommending that we start encouraging teens to have babies (or sex). But this does seem to raise an interesting issue. Throughout Biblical Israel and the first 1500 years of Christianity girls married at about 13 and produced children from about 13 to perhaps 25 or 30. This also seems to coincide with the age their bodies were designed by God to normally and safely produce children. Let’s not forget that God can do miracles though – Sarah was 90 when she gave birth to Isaac.

Jobs: Just Do Something ?

There is a lot of gnashing of teeth over jobs and the need for ‘the government to do something’.

Let’s consider what happens when the government does something as opposed to the citizenry doing something.

If I earn $100 I will pay $40 in taxes and take home $60. Of this $60 I’ll save $10, invest $10 and spend the other $40 on housing, food, clothes, transportation, and entertainment.

If the government ‘does something’ they’ll take an extra $10 from me in taxes so that they’ll have money to ‘do something’. Of this $10 about $2 will go to the government bureaucracy to run the ‘do something’ programs. Another $2 will go to the government of China to pay interest on the money we’re borrowing from them. Of the remaining $6 that actually goes towards ‘do something’ jobs programs maybe half, $3, will be used to actually employ someone – if we’re lucky.

So that’s good, we’ve employed someone. The program is working.

Oops, there’s a hitch. How many people lose their jobs because of the higher taxes? Since I now have $10 less of what I’ve earned I won’t eat out as much so some restaurants will close, others will just lay off staff. I’ll have less to spend on clothes and I’ll postpone buying a new Ford.

The worst part of the monetary equation though is that I will have less to invest. I’ll cut that $10 to maybe $3. So, U.S. manufacturers will have more difficulty raising capital for new ventures that over future years would have become self-sustaining enterprises that employ people, bring capital into the U.S. from other countries, and prop up the value of the U.S. dollar.

OK, so the monetary side doesn’t look so good…

What about people? Our nation was built on the ingenuity and work-ethic of its citizens. Interestingly, the Democratic party was founded on the principle of freeing citizens from government. The Democratic party’s goals during the 1800’s was as little government as possible. They fought to give every person the freedom to pursue their dreams - Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. Their mantra for decades was ‘We’re Americans, we can accomplish a lot if government will just get out of our way. We don’t need government interference.”

Fortunately, the Democrats won, with perhaps the biggest break coming in the Supreme Court’s decision in Gibbons v. Ogden that limited government meddling and opened up business to unfettered competition. Every person was free to pursue their dreams. Someone who valued life and leisure over wealth could choose to work less for less income. Someone who valued wealth could choose to work harder to obtain the luxuries they desired.

People were responsible for themselves. If someone wanted something they had to work for it. During the 1800’s and into the 1900’s we had the hardest working, most productive, and most inventive and creative citizenry in the world. Because of this we’ve enjoyed the highest standard of living of any nation in history. And this highest in the world standard is not the wealthy, but the average laboring citizen.

Compare all of this to what happens when government gets involved. A government program doesn’t encourage me to work hard or be inventive. Why should I work hard if the government will provide me with what I need? If I work hard and start earning money to support myself the government will just reduce how much it’s giving me and give it to others. If I work even harder and take some risks to invent something or start a company, the government will just tax me more.

Suddenly it seems really stupid for me to work hard or invent anything. What benefit will there be? The only inventiveness that will benefit me is the inventiveness in how best to take advantage of government programs.

But wait, what if the government is just providing job training or education assistance? Certainly that’s OK? How can that hurt?

Well, the same principles apply. If someone else is paying why should I be careful in what training I choose, how well I do in it, or how hard I work to learn? If I’m having to pay for it myself I’ll make sure I get MY money’s worth. I’ll choose a program that I think will have a very high likelihood of providing me with gainful employment in the future. I’ll make sure that the training provided is ‘up to snuff’. I’ll work really really hard to learn so that when I’m done I can earn as much money as possible.

The problem with government programs is that they simply kill individual initiative. I’m a pretty ambitious person (pause of laughter…), but if there is no benefit to me in doing something I’m not likely going to do it. Why waste my time and energy?

There are individual stories of people who have taken advantage of government programs to make a better life for themselves. The problem is that for every one of these there are 9 others who wasted the effort. If these same 10 people were having to pay for it themselves, my guess is that 7 or 8 of them would have chosen not to pursue it, but that the 2 or 3 who did would have each been more successful than the 1 person who succeeded in the government program.

And from a cost perspective, since we wasted money on 9 people, we spent 10 times as much to educate 1 person as that person would have otherwise spent. What a waste! What a waste of our money. What a waste of the resources of the instructors. What a waste of the time of the 9 people who just took up space in the training.

11-year-old gives birth

A couple of days ago FoxNEWS’ Martha MacCallum was apoplectic over the news that an 11-year-old girl had given birth. She had guests Dr. Manny Alvarez and psychologist Dr Keith Ablow on to comment. Both discussed how awful this was and listed a plethora of physical and emotional trauma that can come with an 11-year-old giving birth.

And I guess to some extent this is somewhat sensational in our day and age.

Historically though, this would not have been unusual.

Jesus mother is widely believed to have been about 13 when she gave birth to him. So did God impregnate a 12 or 13-year-old? What kind of physical and emotional trauma did God inflict on her?

We include in our Bibles a rather erotic sonnet written by a 45-year-old man to his 13-year-old bride. Imagine if a 45-year-old in your church wrote something even mildly like Song of Solomon to a 13-year-old girl in your church’s youth group. Why do we include such a horrible thing in our Bible?

Well, despite all of the hand wringing the 11-year-old girl is apparently both physically and emotionally OK and the 5 lb baby is reported to be very healthy. We will likely inflict far greater trauma on his girl by making a big deal out of it than she would otherwise experience. We are a pious lot aren’t we?