Insult or Injury - Part 2

Tabletop Joe is no friend of Senator Mike Young's politics. This much is clear. And like most people, Tabletop Joe doesn't care to be lied to.

Mike Young likes to lie to me or, at the very least, communicate with me in bad faith. My lone reader will recall my recent rant about Mike Young and his track record on education. Well, this morning, Mr. Career Politician who got his law school paid for by the public and has spent his life currying favors for his donors Young sent me another message, this time touting the new policy that will allow for the use of public money to put metal detectors in schools. Nevermind the reason why the metal detectors are necessary, right?

Well, that inspired me to look up some advocacy groups' "scoring" of Senator Worthless Young. My research found:

• A grade of D from the Indiana Coalition for Public Education in 2016; and
• An award for Excellence from the American Conservative Union in 2016 (which scored positively, among other things, Sen. Young's votes to allow guns in the capital and school corporations to hire unlicensed teachers).

There is plenty more, but I note that Sen. Young brags about "protecting schools" while doing nothing whatsoever to curtail the epidemic of gun violence and undercutting the quality of the teachers in the classroom. 

I voted for Phil Webster in 2016 and would do so again in a heartbeat. I know Coach Webster personally, worked with him at Decatur Central, and have the utmost respect for him. Mike Young? Not so much.

Hearing Mike Young tout his record on education is like listening to Tipper Gore express her affection for the first amendment. 

Philosophical Question

This:

Is the Constitution a charter of self-government that allows the people’s elected representatives to try to find reasonable institutional solutions for the varied problems of the world? Or is it a charter for property owners that allows them to craft a state that’s well-armed and capable enough to defend their rights but incapacitated to govern the economy in any way?

Never Forget

It is no secret that I am a lawyer. Insert joke here.

That said, I have an enormous affection and respect for  the judiciary. It hurts me to my soul what is invariably going to happen to the Supreme Court.  

It was bad when they refused to so much as consider Merrick Garland.

It was bad when they eliminated the filibuster so that 51 senators, making it possible for senators representing less than 19% of the American population to put someone on the highest court in the land, for life, regardless of what the other 81% of Americans think. (And this doesn't even take into account the fact that most of those senators were likely elected with approximately 55-60% of the popular vote in the state, rendering the 19% more like a well-connected 10-11%, but I digress).

Now, we live in a world where it is highly doubtful whether the U.S. Senate will, in my lifetime, ever confirm a Supreme Court nominee from the other party. Thanks Mitch McConnell.

We also live in a world where, whether it is Kavanaugh or someone else nominated, 4 out of 9 Supreme Court seats are occupied by justices who were appointed by presidents entering office after having received fewer votes than their opponents.

We also live in a world where the Senate Majority/President is desperately trying to look like they give a damn about the allegations against Brett Kavanaugh without allowing these allegations to even slightly influence their votes. Can you say, "Gleichschritt?"

I suppose it shouldn't surprise me, after all. After all, this:

That's all bad enough. Now, consider this:

Over the weekend, Dr. Ford reached a tentative deal to testify in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday. Most of her other requests were denied, as apparently Senate Republicans feel no particular need to respect the wishes of a mere woman. Republicans are going to make her testify first, when she’d asked to testify second. Republicans refused to call other witnesses who Ford claims have first-hand knowledge of the attack (more on that collection of heroes later). And Republicans are currently on the hunt for a woman, any woman, to do the attack job on Ford for them, so they don’t have to face the “optics” of attacking a potential survivor of sexual assault.

And Republicans are already indicating that nothing Ford says will matter to them in the least. Lindsey Graham, for instance, said: “What am I supposed to do, go ahead and ruin this guy’s life based on an accusation?”

I highly suggest you read either the linked article or one of the numerous articles available not only detailing the allegations against Kavanaugh, but also addressing the way the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Republican leadership (ahem, a bunch of old white men, ahem) has decided to handle this. It is shameful, and everytime I think we've reached rock bottom, we just keep on digging.

My Annual Rant

As N. Carolina cleans up from Hurricane Florence, I suppose it is time for my annual rant about flood insurance.

Can someone explain to me why it is that tax money is used to subsidize flood insurance:
1. On pieces of real estate that the natural ecosystem requires to dampen the impact of hurricanes, erosion, etc.
2. On pieces of real estate that the vast majority of tax payers can't afford to ever buy.

I went to the Florida pan handle on vacation a few years ago; not exactly a luxury vacation spot, I might add, but it was very nice for my middle-class tastes. I noticed that there were some houses in Seaside, FL that look as though they would fit in in many newer neighborhoods in Indianapolis. Of course, a 1,300 sq. ft. condo on the beach sells for $300,000+ down there; the cheapest single-family house I could find for sale down there on Zillow was $819,000. Based on the old adage that you shouldn't carry debt more than 3X your annual income, we can safely assume that whoever buys this house makes nearly $300,000 a year, presuming this is a primary residence. If it's a second, vacation, home, we can probably assume that our buyer makes not less than $600,000/year. In the alternative, our buyer has this amount in cash sitting around, and we can only speculate as to where s/he got it.

My point is that for all the talk about "socialism" when it comes to stuff that, you know, regular people need . . . stuff like healthcare and education, the government never seems to have the money and people pitch a fit about it.

On the other hand, when it comes to socializing the risk to which the wealthy are exposed, socialism is never even considered.

It reminds me of the old saying about "Rugged individualism for thee (poor, worker); socialism for me (wealthy investment banker)."

By all means, let's subsidize insurance for the priciest homes in America, while more than a half million of our fellow citizens, and more than 100,000 children, sit homeless.

Makes you want to scream.

Insult or Injury?

I was a public school teacher for the better part of a decade.

I left teaching to become a lawyer. People often ask me why, and I've settled on a fairly simple answer: a profession should be rewarding, either personally or financially. Teaching wasn't.

It wasn't personally rewarding for me. I could enumerate specific reasons, but this is not long-form writing . . . it would take too long. Simply put, teaching ceased to be personally rewarding because seemingly everyone, from the President to the Governor to my students' parents to my students themselves, expected me to care more about my students than any of them, including their own parents and indeed themselves. The old meme about "Welcome to teaching, where the pay sucks and everything is your fault" rings very true.

As to the finances, I'm fairly certain plenty has been written about that already. I tend to hear people who've never taught talk about how easy teachers have it; that's a crock of $hit. Anyone making such a claim is hereby challenged to (1) get licensed; (2) teach every day for a year; (3) live on a teaching salary for a year; and (4) continue talking about how easy teaching is.

As I've noted before, I am a civil litigator. I have tried cases that could result in hundreds of thousands of dollars in judgments against my clients, bankrupting their businesses and ruining their lives. Particularly when weighed against the annual income, the total stress of litigating doesn't outweigh the total stress of teaching by much.

Anyway, this is all a lead-up to the "insult to injury" email I got from Sen. Do-Nothing Government-Funded-Lawyer/Lobbyist Michael Young. Sen. Young, having voted to hamstring teachers' ability to collectively bargain for better wages, having voted to make school funding a statewide issue (so that it can be underfunded), having voted to wrench local control away from schools, now has the brass to send an email to me about Scholarships for Future Educators.

How about this Sen. Young? Maybe, instead of throwing paltry scholarships at prospective educators, you treat current educators with the same respect you would treat opposing counsel? Maybe you acknowledge that their jobs are difficult and valuable? Perhaps you acknowledge that teaching is not a hobby but a profession, and that requires actually paying people. Maybe you can acknowledge that for decades, society has been getting teachers at a cut rate because their labor is undervalued as "womens' work" as opposed to the "manly" work of construction or factory work (both of which pay better, I might add, and construction allows its seasonally laid off employees to collect unemployment; teaching? not so much).

Simply put Sen. Young, perhaps you could acknowledge that there is a large swath of society that actually makes money by working instead of trading off connections to do stuff like be a lobbyist, get elected to the state legislature, or get your law school tuition paid.l

Best quote in a long time

This:

 if you take on the job of steering the American economy, your performance will be judged based on whether or not you steered it to prosperity — not whether you steered it better than your least informed critics would have.

Interesting Tit-for-tat Hypothetical

It seems rather clear to me that GOP lawmakers have made a bargain with President Trump:

• On the one hand, they will look the other way with respect to his considerable personal corruption and that of his administration and campaign (see: Trump Hotel D.C., Emoluments Clause, Pornstar Payoffs, Profiteering from the Presidency as demonstrated by the financial information we know about Ivanka/Jared, Michael Cohen, Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn, et al)
• On the other hand, he give the GOP establishment the policy that it wants: tax cuts, conservative judges . . . the rest of the stuff can be forgiven so long as its not too egregious or costs them elections

Given the probable, though by no means certain, takeover of the House of Representatives later this year, I wonder if they too are willing to accept this kind of Faustian bargain. Allow Trump to continue to marinate in his swam in exchange for more money to social programs and cuts to the military?

Something to think about.