That Old Time Judicial

It's been a couple of interesting weeks for all concerned.

Kavanaugh has been sworn in at this point and there are celebrations, cries of anger, sighs of relief, and, on my part, a certain astonishment that the GOP senators actually did what they were supposed to do.

I wanted to talk about the Supreme Court (SC) for a moment.  My interest was not in the discussion these last couple of weeks.  I'm not really surprised by that, just perhaps a bit disappointed.

My view of the court is that it's one more check on the powers of the legislature and the executive branch.

And that is all it should be.  I appreciate that others don't see it that way.

It's (I'll assume I'm right for the moment) a check in that nothing that the other two branches of government does can be in violation of the constitution.  As society in this country has evolved, the articles of the constitution have to be interpreted in light of this evolution. 

To some extent I have no problem with that.  Of course we all decide where the court should lean and not lean and interpret and not interpret.

What I don't understand is why anyone would want an activist court.  Do they really want to turn the court into a super legislate body?  Is it not clear that the left/right make up of the court will shift from time to time?  It's the old goose / gander issue.  But if the court is not a legislative body, then you don't have the problem when the make up of the court switches polarity.


I'll talk about guns for the moment.  They are specifically mentioned in the constitution.  And it is still a contentious issue.  Many other "rights" cannot be found in it.  And some of those are considered sacred no matter how much fine parsing was required "find" them in this old document.

The other issue is, of course, abortion.  Now, you can search the constitution backwards and forwards and there is no direction proved in it for the "right" to terminate a pregnancy.  It had to be "found."  Ok, public opinion changed and the people nudged enough and there it was.  Now it is the litmus test of any prospective justice by the left.  And Kavanaugh declared that he thought Rowe v. Wade was settled law. 

Personally, I don't care if anyone wants to abort.  I used to think that it would be a difficult decision to make and I'm willing to allow the person/people involved to make that decision.  I mentioned that to a female friend who informed me that the women in her circle saw it as birth control and didn't give it a lot of thought.  We can discuss sampling size and all of that, but I'm willing to let this be decided at a very local level.  I can also understand those who think it's a pretty bad business and ought to be outlawed.  It's not a simple issue, I think, and therefor the legislature ought to be deciding it, not the courts.  And I think it ought to be a state matter and not a federal one.  If some states want to allow or outlaw, that is their call. 

It seemed to me that abortion was the only issue in play this time around.  The tweets coming from notable entertainers, talked of other things, but basically it boiled down to abortion. 

The SC is petitioned to decide cases.  They decide which ones to take on.  They do not take up Roe v. Wade on their own.  So unless those issues come up in a case and the case is taken up and then and only then is Roe in jeopardy. 

I drawing from my law class for a lot of this...

Courts don't usually take on large issues.  They are very happy to decide a case on very narrow grounds, frequently technical. 

They also on occasion will not to take on cases where someone got screwed or a grave injustice has happened.  They even will not take on cases where they basically already decided the issue and it came up again and they let a contradictory decision stand.   They have some consistency issues and they are a court of law (we hope) and not one of justice.  (Let me digress a moment and talk about my law professor's take.  When he was in law school, his professor told them that they were going to take up the SC at some other point, as it was "all politics" in any case.  And certainly when a case comes up is more important than the case itself.  FDR had issues, we have the internment of Americans of Japanese ancestry in WW II.  The courts were involved and had no problem doing some very political things.)

But the unhappiness this last two weeks was an attempt to make sure that the court would, hopefully, operate as a super legislature and that its view point would be as left as possible.

We should probably discuss Dr. Ford for a moment.  I'm not ignoring her.  But her case was long on reconstructed memories and short on any corroborative detail.  Was Kavanaugh involved?  Was she assaulted?  Basically, in my mind, there is no proof of any of that.  I'm not going to keep someone from his dream job based on the total lack of any evidence.  

Enough of the setting of the scene.

What has really bothered me as I've started to pay attention to federal government, is that the senate and the house have no interest in doing their job.  Assuming that their job is running the country.   If their job is getting reelected, then they are probably more on the ball.

One of the things about Obama's voting record in the Illinois legislature was that he voted "Present" a lot.  Why is that even allowed?  Shouldn't it be called "I can't vote either way as it might upset a potential voter" or "I stand for nothing"?  And then he ought to be called out for cowardliness.  Or tossed out for not doing his job.  But it seems he was being groomed for other things and wanted the closet bones to be at a minimum.  That doesn't sit well with me either.

Back to our legislators...  They should be working by creating some national goals and figuring out how to get there.   If the left and right can't come up with a national goal that we can all agree on, then they should do nothing.

What has happened a lot is that the left won't advance legislation that won't pass and have then relied on the courts to appease their constituents.  We are then back to the "do nothing that will upset someone."  Abortion and gay marriage are in this area.  Even in California they couldn't get a pro gay marriage proposition to pass.  The courts made that decision, the people for the most part were not on board with it.

The other item that happened a long time ago, but seems to me was a mistake, was the direct election of Senators.  The original idea was that they were appointed by the states for a longish term and would be the more deliberate body; immune to short term delusions and were to make sure that states' interested were taken into account.  But direct election removed those functions.  I think those are useful checks to the house. 

I think this has gotten long enough.  I think Kavanaugh deserves to be where he is.  I'm glad the protestors in the street didn't get to use the hecklers' veto.  I hope Dr. Ford finds peace.

Stay tuned for the next post where we discuss the power of the timing of ideas!

Trump and Some Changes

I read the the blog, see address below, quite often.  He is a physicist in the Czech republic, but frequently comments on the US science fronts.

Here is a recent post of this.  Published 12/17/16 or there abouts (17/12/16 for my foreign readers!)

http://motls.blogspot.com/2016/12/study-hollywood-like-dramatic-style-not.html#more

It covers a number of topics that I've held dear over the past couple of years, that being the "science" of climate change and peer reviewed papers and their worth to world at large.

I don't have anything to add to Lubos' thoughts and writings, just that the election has brought to me a great sense of relief.  I hope that the EPA, IRS and all of climate science get a huge shaking up.  That would not have happened under Hillary.  Donald might not be able to do it, but there is a chance.

Yah, Obamacare needs some work too, but I'm taking advantage of that and can't complain too much. 

So go read it, it's good and his other stuff seems well grounded in fact and logic.

My Humble View on the Past Election

There are a number of tears in my family and my sister professes to depression. 

I, on the other hand, find this election result to be wonderful on a couple of fronts. 

Firstly old Hill is kept out of the White House, which is important if we want to retain the nation's china and not have it wind up sold to some collector over seas.

Secondly, we have the nation telling the elected leaders that they are not doing a real good job.  Perhaps we will get some change from this.  I hope so. 

Clearly HRC was the representative to the way things were.  And rejected out of hand by the folks who don't live on the coast. 

But what about Trump?  I hear you ask.  He may or may not be important in the history of the US.  He is no social conservative, so those who are crying for the supposed future suppression of folks that are not mainstream in various orientations, I think have no real fears.

I want the EPA and the IRS and NASA reset back to their original missions.  It looks like there are movements in that direction.  So, I'm hopeful.

But expecting that government will actually shed mission items and contract is dream street.  I wish, I hope, but probably not going to happen.

Warning (EC) Only!

In Hillary's emails and I guess all the others that contain confidential info, they use a (c) to denote this.  (There is an open issue if the great Hill knew this or not.)

I asked someone on FB if they were serious about asking of the request to see if the CIA could kill someone who suggested Hill was not on the up and up.


That brought a return remark that it was humor and tongue in cheek and didn't I have a sense of humor?  Well, the prior comments before hers had little whimsy that I could spot nor did the one following.  I suggested a smiley face to point this out to oblivious readers.  No answer to that.

Then Paul showed up and suggested I go away.  More evidence that this might not have been a humor post, but more of an echo chamber.

More comments followed and they seemed to lack a spark of humor and I could probably stretch to suggest not much humanity either.

Paul put up a citation that I was supposed to read before I went away.  It was about something a Trump supporter did that wasn't funny either.  It seemed "they did it first" so the current post was OK too.

But I'm not really excited about Paul and folks who don't like Trump or Hillary, I was caught up on the idea of the echo chamber.

So I suggest that if you don't want someone to point out or ask about things that you use this: (EC Only), so that folks who are not enamored with the subject, point of view, or blind devotion to the object of adoration will skip on by and not disturb the rightly guided.

And what is it that caused Paul to lash out a bit?  Is there angst in his position or did he feel caught doing something naughty?  I'll have to think about that, but will Paul?

Disaster!

If you've read a lot of the posts, I've gathered much material and inspiration from my friend G on facebook.  But disaster has struck and G as unfriended me!  What will I do to keep this blog going?

I'm sure you are asking, "what caused that?"  It is true that G and I have tangled a number of times and managed to survive.  But it seemed I stepped over the / a line with this last one.

"The details!" I hear you ask.  Well, of course!  That's where all the goodies are.

And speaking of details, which I'll get to in a minute, why don't my liberal friends every supply then?  "I want some industries to be socialized!"  "Which ones?"  Never an answer!  "There is so much wrong with society; we need change!" "What would you  change?"  No answer.

Ok,we have the sit in in the house with a bunch of guns owners protesting how easily they got their guns and how they want to make it more difficult for the rest of us.

There was some photoshop memes going around to make fun of this.  One had pacifiers in all the mouths of the Reps. 

It seems one of the guys, John Lewis, had walked across some bridge in the 60s on Bloody Sunday, got beaten to "an inch of his life" (what I read, it was a cracked skull, serious, but not too serious that he went on TV before going to the hospital) and therefore John should never be made fun of.  I think those were the rules, but again, details were lacking a bit.

So suggested that G's logic was a bit soft and he unfriended me for not feeling ashamed at making fun of John's actions.  And proclaimed that his logic was solid and spot on.

Oh, really?  Let's look at G's law for a moment.  I'll grant that John was a civil rights hero and did everything that G said he did and that for these actions G demands that for some lengthy time that we never make fun of this guy. 

I, of course, have some questions!

Will this last for a life time?  Or would 50 years be enough?

Is the contrapositive true?  In other words if this guy has done bad things at 21 would he never recover from that? 

Is shaming and unfriending folks the proper punishment?  Maybe public stoning would be more effective.

Since he is no longer a civil rights protestor, but basically the opposite, will he get off the "never make fun of" list?  Or as long as the list manager doesn't like the second amendment too, John stays on?

Since the guy was protesting the exercise of civil rights now, it would suggest that he has changed his view on various articles of the constitution and are we allowed to reassess?

I'd also like to know who is on the list (is it secret?  How do you get on or off?  List additions, corrections and edits are all the rage these days!), and who maintains the list?  Is the list biased?  What other lists are there?  Can I start my own?

So I didn't have the proper amount of shame and while some pols seems to be fair game, this guy and some others seem to be off limits per G.  I can live with that. 

I'm sorry to lose G as he did cause me to look stuff up and think about stuff.  I still think he logic is bad; perhaps "Frequently wrong, but never in doubt" is a more common condition than I think it is.

Farewell G, may your convictions never falter!

Retirement Reaction

A friend on Facebook asked about retirement and what it was like.  He was going to do it soon.  I suspect he is curious.

The first interesting thing I noticed is that I had no emotional reaction to retiring.  I would have expected something: better sleep, worse sleep, laziness or something, but every day just seemed to be like the last Saturday.

Secondly, my views on time have changed.  While I was rarely under time pressure in my career and life, there is almost none of it now.  Spend a bit more time at the driving range?  Sure!  Or linger over that Polish dog at Cafe $1.64 and perhaps a stroll around Costco with the second refill of a finely iced soda.

I'm planning a road trip - there is another travel blog that I will open up in a bit - and I'm pulling together the things I expect to need.  I'm going to do some car camping, so the list is somewhat lengthy.  These chores require some time management and also there are a few things to do around the house before I leave.  But besides these items, time is to be enjoyed and not wrestled over.

I recommend retirement without reservation.  It's a grand feeling after 47 years of straight work with only a bit of time in school to break it up. 

I think that next year will be very different from this year.  If I like the car camping there may be more of that, though probably not as long as planned as this year's.  Otherwise, it will be more time locally.  I'm working on my golf game and there are a few older hobbies that I may resurrect. 

I'd summarize it by saying that it gives you the time to spend time with different things than when you are working -- cooking is no longer a rushed job, but something that can be enjoyed and not hurried.  Allows for more creativity, etc.

Now, as I write this, work has called me back in for a could of weeks of light duty.  The experienced folks are off playing in the desert and leaving the new guy in charge.  Not a problem unless something happens.  So I'm going in every other day for a few hours to fix a bug (today) and pass on some knowledge.  I don't mind it, but it's not what I want to be doing.

Obama Care for California - a bit of my trip down fantasy lane

Having recently gone through signing up and such, I can relate my experiences with the ACA (Ha!) as it is incarnated in the CoveredCa.gov site.

What is that ACA anyways?  Basically what our dear leader and his henchmen did was to rewrite the basic non-group major medical (MM) insurance policy. 

It used to be that one could buy a basic MM policy that cost $125 or so per month and covered up to a million or so coverage for the year -- there were limits; and it had a deductible of $10k or so.  Don't quote me on the numbers, this is my general knowledge and, of course, those days are gone for the nonce.

What was decided was that 1) everyone needed Health Insurance (HI) and 2) the basic policy had to have a bunch of stuff. 

The bunch of stuff is the big problem.  They decided that there would be a lot of "free" stuff and that even if you didn't want some of the stuff, you still had to pay for it.  For example, maternity is covered.  Great if you are female and 20 to 40, but worthless otherwise. 

(I'm going to discuss the Bronze plans.  I signed up for one of these.  The others cost more up monthly, but the deductibles kick in earlier.  They are worth looking at if you get sick a lot and your income is low as there are subsidies. )

So the bare-bones policy went from $125 per month to $650.  Rumor is that the numbers will rise as there is a lot of red ink in the system.  But the deductible went down.  It's not $10k but it is $6500 and there is no limit per year.

So basically before you get anything for your bucks, you will spend 12 * $650 + $6500 per year.  This is $7800 + the $6500 or about $14k.  Now that might be cheap if it keeps you from bankruptcy, but as a normal monthly expense, it's over $1000 per month.  Some of that can be paid for via a Health Savings account, which allows you to use pretax dollars.  But there are restrictions on who can use that and it is only for the high deductible plans for people with low income.

"What about the poor people?" I hear you cry.  Yep, we have something for them.

In California if you have limited income, you can get help with the plans.  If you have very little income then they will plunk you into medi-cal or is it Medi-care?  I'll look it up.  But if you have some income you can buy into the offered plans.  The incomes above $46k offer no help and you'll pay at least $650 per month.

Note that financial worth is not part of this -- it is based solely on income.  Note that if your income cannot be confirmed from a ping to the IRS, you may have to document the income you have.  There are a number of ways to do this -- basically you upload various statements.  They give you some time to do this.

The Kaiser plan I signed up for allows some free stuff before the deductibles kick in.  Per their blurb on the web site, the plan provides for 3 office visits, 3 urgent care visits and 3 emergency visits per year.  After those you pay everything until the $6500 limit, then they get the rest.  As I mentioned above, if you are not very sick and don't go to the Dr. much, this is a reasonable plan. 

Now, as the law stands, and I would guess it will change drastically if Washington gets their act together, you only need this until you are 65 and are enrolled into MediCare.  The reasonable strategy is to keep income low and ride the subsidies until 65.  (Note that while universal HI might be a good idea, the way this was done and what was covered and what was "free," the program is not self sustaining.  There will be changes if the pols have any intelligence.  I'd prefer going back to a cheap, high deductible plan and others for folks that want more / need more services.  But note that if you need $500 worth of care every month, then that policy has to cost $500 + $125 (for the big stuff) + some overhead + some profit.)

Note that there is a period of time in the year that you can change your plan.  There are life events that will open the door and let you change or enroll.  Loss of job, divorce, retirement, etc.

I used the phone exchanges to some of this and it went quite well.  The operators were good, knew what they were doing and could get stuff done.  For example I did something reasonable when I started my account, but my record was locked.  It needed the phone guys to unlock it.  Also the code is crappy.  For example, I wanted to enroll on 4/1 and I couldn't do that 2 weeks in advance.  "Call back on 3/30 or 3/31 and we can sign you up."  Who wrote that policy?  It's not like there isn't a start date on everything.

That's about all I know.  Is this the best way to get health care to everyone?  Well, we didn't do that.  We got them health insurance.  And if they can't afford the deductibles, then they can't use it.  Basically it feels to me like a vast rip off of the folks that buy the basic plan at anywhere close to the full pop of the policy and are not very sick.  If you are expensive to treat, then this might work for you as someone else will be paying your medical bills.

"What about single payer," I hear a member of my family say.  In theory I think she is right.  You could design a system where all the bills get paid by some benevolent government agency. 

However, I believe that in practice, that is the path to disaster.  The reasons I believe this is that the insurance companies have reasons to be frugal, to be efficient.  Government agencies don't work that way.  In fact the more they spend the better it is for the agency.  Bigger budgets are a goal if you are a government agency.  And it is not their money they are spending.  It's yours.  More on this at some later point if I get inspired or have a couple of beers.

Comments are welcome.  I believe the numbers to be fairly accurate, but don't trust my advise for anything -- well, I know a lot about yo-yos and software.