Can Isaac Get a Mortgage If He Dismembers His Neighbor? November 12, 2003January 22, 2017 Tell me again? You can admit to killing your neighbor, go for dinner, come back and dismember him, throw his body parts in the Bay, and be found ‘not guilty?’ Maybe the murder was self-defense (and maybe his wife ‘just disappeared’) . . . but is there no law against dismembering – rather than reporting to the police – a body you have recently rendered inanimate? This would seem to the untrained mind to be ‘hit and run’ in the extreme. Jim Batterson: ‘You responded to a question [yesterday] about what Republican ideal you support. Consider this one from the 2000 Republican Platform: ‘Our families and most states are required to balance their budgets; it is reasonable to assume the federal government should do the same. Therefore, we reaffirm our support for a constitutional amendment to require a balanced budget.‘‘ ☞ Actually, I think a balanced budget amendment is a rotten idea. A small federal deficit is not a bad thing, and a big one at times of high unemployment is a good thing. But I certainly take your larger point – the irony of supposed fiscal conservatives setting us up for giant structural deficits long after the recession ends. And then there is the multi-trillion-dollar matter of what we’re borrowing for. Investments in our children? Investments in our infrastructure? Investments in technology and alternative energy? No . . . tax cuts for those who least need – and are least likely to spend – them. Chris Mason: ‘Whatever conservatives are e-mailing you, complaining about your ridiculously pro-Democrat columns, I second what they say!’ ☞ So there! I suppose you’ve seen this by now, but just in case . . . The New California Governor has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the state, rather than German which was the other possibility. As part of the negotiations, The Terminator’s Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5-year phase-in plan that would become known as “Austro-English” (or, if nobody will be offended, “Austrionics”). In the first year, “s” will replace the soft “c”. Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard “c” will be dropped in favor of the “k”. This should klear up konfusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter. There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the troublesome “ph” will be replaced with the “f”. This will make words like fotograf 20% shorter. In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent “e” in the languag is disgrasful and it should go away. By the 4th yer peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing “th” with “z” and “w” with “v”. During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary “o” kan be dropd from vords kontaining “ou” and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech oza. Isaac O.: ‘My sister and I recently inherited a house with a mortgage. The remaining debt is low ($33,500), and our respective shares of the equity will depend, of course, on the appraisal. (Small midwestern house that we expect to appraise around $70k.) Here’s the twist. I want to buy out my sister’s share (she is willing) and move in to the house. I have spoken to the current mortgage company and there is no need to change over the mortgage, but in order to pay my sister her share of the equity I will need to refinance. That’s where it gets a little rough. I have pretty rough credit. I have never filed bankruptcy or had a foreclosure, but I have had charge-offs and very bad payment histories on CCDs. My auto loans have been pretty good, but everything else has been pretty bad. I will be able to fully pay off most of my outstanding accounts before I apply for a mortgage, but my question is this: If the house is appraised at $70,000 and I only need a loan for $51k, will this be enough to counter the bad credit history? FYI, I have also moved frequently over the past few years, and have only been with my current employer for about 1.5 years.’ ☞ Well, the only way to know for sure is to try. You can almost surely find a way to do this, although you might find yourself paying a high interest rate. But what if, instead, you sold the house, took your share of the equity, and got to the point where you were completely debt-free (renting an apartment instead of owning this house)? I’m not saying this is THE thing to do. But would you not have a great feeling of relief to be off the debt treadmill . . . and to have everything effectively cost you 10% or 20% less once you were off that treadmill?
Is There ANYTHING They Do Right? November 11, 2003January 22, 2017 THE GUY ARRESTED (IN AMERICA!) FOR HOLDING UP A PROTEST SIGN True or False (I asked back in June): A lone 54-year-old man in a crowd of people waiting for the President to arrive can be arrested and prosecuted for holding up a protest sign. Click here for the answer. (My favorite line: ‘The prosecutors say that Mr Bursey was not in a special ‘free-speech zone’ . . . Mr Bursey told the cops, defiantly, that he was under the impression that the whole of America was a free-speech zone.’) The State of South Carolina decided to drop the charge, but the Ashcroft Justice Department, in the person of of US Attorney Strom Thurmond, Jr., instituted A criminal proceeding. The trial is next week, your tax dollars at work. Here’s were it stands. PARTIAL BIRTH ABORTION Dr. Ken Ahonen’s note on Partial Birth Abortion last week elicited several e-mails. (Now there’s a surprise.) For one thing, several of you pointed out that the procedure Dr. Ahonen described performing was a C-section, not partial birth abortion. ‘True,’ he responds, ‘but if the woman had not been a surgical candidate, due to too high a surgical or anesthetic risk, then a vaginal procedure, Intact Cervical Dilatation and Evacuation (Partial Birth Abortion), would have been indicated.’ That was the sticking point over which a court almost immediately stayed the law President Bush signed last week: It did not contain an exception for the health of the mother. Dr. Ahonen argues that doctors and patients should be allowed to weigh the risks. ‘If the risk of complications from surgery and/or anesthesia were greater than the risk of performing the vaginal procedure (partial birth abortion), then the vaginal procedure would be preferred. Since that is no longer an option under the new law, the woman who is at high risk of complications from surgery would have no choice, if the law were upheld, but to take that high risk.’ Dr. Ahonen and others have noted that it should not be up to the all-white-male cast pictured at the President’s signing ceremony to make these terribly difficult decisions on behalf of women and their doctors. It’s a terrible procedure, rarely performed; but one that it should be legal to perform when necessary. JUDGES Ultimately, questions like this – and so many others – will come before the Courts. In which regard this New York Times editorial yesterday may be instructive. In part: November 10, 2003 A Manufactured Crisis on Judges Conservative activists have been demanding that Senate Republicans do more to push through the Bush administration’s most extreme judicial nominees. . . . Lost amid the grandstanding about a “crisis” in judicial nominations are the facts: 168 Bush nominees have been confirmed and only four rejected, a far better percentage than for President Bill Clinton. Bush administration nominees have been moving through the Senate at a rapid clip: in his first three years in office, President Bush has gotten more judges confirmed than President Ronald Reagan did in his first four. When Republicans controlled the Senate, more than 60 Clinton administration judicial candidates were blocked. DIPLOMACY Zbigniew Brzezinski in Sunday’s Washington Post: Forty years ago, an important emissary was sent to France by a beleaguered president of the United States. It was during the Cuban missile crisis and the emissary was a tough-minded former secretary of state, Dean Acheson. His mission was to brief French President Charles de Gaulle and solicit his support in what could become a nuclear war involving not just the United States and the Soviet Union but the entire NATO alliance and the Warsaw Pact. At the end of the briefing, Acheson said to de Gaulle, “I would now like to show you the evidence, the photographs that we have of Soviet missiles armed with nuclear weapons.” The French president responded, “I do not wish to see the photographs. The word of the president of the United States is good enough for me. Please tell him that France stands with America.” Would any foreign leader today react the same way to an American emissary sent abroad to say that country X is armed with weapons of mass destruction that threaten the United States? It is unlikely. The recent conduct of U.S. foreign policy, by distorting the threats facing America, has isolated the United States and undermined its credibility. It has damaged our ability to deal with issues in North Korea, Iran, Russia and the West Bank. If a case ever needs to be made for action against a truly imminent threat, will any nation take us seriously? ☞ Yes – but maybe not under this president. Ray Merrihew: ‘I do not dispute your view that political matters should influence one’s investment choices since decisions made in Washington clearly affect the long-term macroeconomic picture. However, you have made no secret of your passionate beliefs as a Democrat. Is there ANY single Republican stance that you favor? While I tend to agree with your investment advice, I can’t help but be skeptical of a macroeconomic outlook based on a biased viewpoint. That being said, do you think that the future prospects of the U.S. economy would improve with a Democrat as president, or is the damage under Bush too great to fix?’ ☞ Fair questions. The easy part first: historically, the economy – and the stock market – do better under Democrats than Republicans. Past results are no guarantee of future performance, as they say, but the correlation is high. Now the harder part: Is there ANY Republican stance I favor? Well, in those areas the two parties disagree I really do tend to believe the Democrats have it right. That wasn’t always the case when the leadership of the Party was considerably to the left, and the Republican leadership was only a click or two right of center. But in the last couple of decades the political landscape has shifted dramatically to the right. The Democratic leadership is now more or less in the center (maybe one click to the left), while the Republican leadership has shifted dramatically to the right. A moderate Republican like former Massachusetts governor Bill Weld could not even get confirmed by his fellow Republicans ambassador to Mexico, let alone considered a serious presidential contender, as he had hoped to be. So as something of a moderate, progressive, centrist myself, I’m happy with most of the Democratic positions. The most obvious area of disagreement that jumps to mind is tort reform. We need some. Not draconian tort reform of the type some Republicans advocate, but a lot more than Democrats are comfortable with (read: none). I wrote a whole book about how perverse and inefficient our tort-based auto insurance system is. And there are other places where improvements could be made. But for the most part? The current administration has (to my mind) been just appalling in its conduct of domestic and foreign affairs. We cannot fix this a minute too soon.
A Speech Worth Reading November 10, 2003March 25, 2012 If you are interested in your liberties as an American and missed Al Gore’s speech yesterday, click here to read it. There is no small irony in this. Just as it’s not clear to me why Republicans are so ready to add trillions of dollars to the national debt (weren’t they not long ago against deficits?) . . . and why they are so eager to overturn California‘s medical marijuana and Oregon’s assisted suicide referenda (weren’t they not long ago the party of state’s rights?) . . . and why they were angry that the Supreme Court struck down laws regulating the behavior adults may engage in at home in bed (weren’t they once the party of individual rights and small government?) . . . so it’s hard not to wonder what Barry Goldwater – say – would have made of some of the more far-reaching provisions of the Patriot Act, and related Bush policies. It’s worse than you thought. Read the Gore speech and see if any of it troubles you.
Unprecedented November 7, 2003February 24, 2017 THE NEW GOOGLE DESK BAR Roy Gilbert: ‘You may be interested in the latest addition to the Google labs: http://toolbar.google.com/deskbar/index.html. It’s like the toolbar, but you don’t have to open your browser to use it.’ LEFTIES John Mandeville: ‘Did you know there is a larger percentage of lefties in the scientific community than there is in the overall population? I am a retired engineer and it was not unusual to have 3 or 4 of us in a meeting of 5 engineers. Remember when Clinton, Bush, and Perot ran for president…..all left handed.’ RADIOACTIVE Alex: ‘Broccoli is just as radioactive as bananas.’ Bill Baron: ‘Here‘s a link to put the banana radioactivity risk in perspective. It shows that living in Denver exposes you to about 14 times more radiation than eating a banana every day. So you can keep feeding that contented little chimp within.’ WATCH THIS! Unprecedented: The 2000 Presidential Election airs on the Sundance Channel over the next week. It’s so hot it’s radioactive. The scandal is that it has not aired more widely, and long ago. Could this be part of the same climate that led CBS to drop the Reagan documentary? It’s worth your taking the time to figure out where the Sundance Channel is on your cable line-up – most cable systems carry it – and taping it, in case you decide you want to show friends. It airs: > Saturday afternoon Nov 8, 1:15 PM > Sunday afternoon Nov 16, 12 noon > Wednesday evening Nov 19, 9 PM > Friday evening, Nov 21, 12:45 AM (technically, Saturday morning) Watch it tomorrow, and if you think it’s important, pass the rest of the schedule on to your list.
Bananas – and Another Radioactive Topic November 6, 2003February 24, 2017 DUCK AND COVER – IT’S BANANAS! Michael Axelrod: ‘Yes, bananas are wonderful. I generally eat a banana after vigorous exercise to replace the lost potassium. And yes indeed that potassium makes those bananas radioactive, but not so radioactive as granite. If you stand near the granite statutes in the Capitol rotunda, say six hours a day, you will come close to the allowed exposure for radiation workers. A cargo container full of bananas will look like someone is trying to smuggle a nuclear weapon into the country. And this is a problem for the homeland security folks.’ EVERBANK John Lemon: ‘I’ve had an internet checking account with them since 2000. If I keep a $1500 balance, the checking is free, is interest bearing (insignificant now but it paid a promotional 6% when I opened the account) and the on-line bill pay is free. The only down side is that they take five days or so to post deposits of over $1000. Totally legit.’ PARTIAL BIRTH ABORTION President Bush, surrounded by proud male legislators (no females) – who feel they know best about motherhood and medicine – signed what is loosely known as the partial birth abortion ban yesterday. A friend who has performed one writes: Ken Ahonen: ‘As an emergency physician, I once took care of a 20-year-old woman (a girl, really) who was pregnant. Because of her pregnancy, she developed uncontrollable seizures that threatened her life. She, her husband, and her parents were informed that the only way to save her life was to stop the seizures. The only way to stop the seizures was to deliver the baby….right away. ‘The problem is, the baby was too young to live on its own, even if put on life support. If delivered, the baby would surely die, but the young mother would live. So everyone decided to terminate the pregnancy and save the life of the 20 year old woman. It was a decision that was made by the woman, her husband, her parents, me and the obstetrician, not the government. ‘The delivery went smoothly and quickly, and the woman lived. The obstetrician said that she most likely can have a normal pregnancy in the future, should she choose it. ‘Now here is the good part of the story: the government had no part in this decision. It was all decided by the woman herself, along with advice from her husband, her family and her doctors. ‘The anti-abortionists have termed this procedure ‘Partial-Birth Abortion’ to generate public support against abortions and to empower the government to make these all-important decisions for women. This procedure should rather be called Life Saving Termination of Pregnancy, because that is what it is. ‘The baby in this case was delivered by C-section, as they usually are in late terms, since this is the safest way for the mother. The suction and skull crushing thing is another wrong dramatization created by anti-abortionists. Though the procedure exists, it is basically not ever done like that. (Ew!) After C-section, the baby is never deliberately killed. If the baby is less than 24 weeks and therefore ‘non-viable’ it is placed in a bowl and sent to the pathology lab to look for abnormalities. If 24 weeks or more, then resuscitation is attempted and often successful.’
Bananas November 5, 2003February 24, 2017 I praised them thus last week: ‘Bananas! They are just so wonderful, safe, comfortable, unchallenging – like coming home. Could this be the contented little chimp in us?’ You replied: Doug Simpkinson: ‘You should be aware that bananas are radioactive, so that special glow you feel isn’t just from the texture.’ Chris Williams: ‘One word. Carbs.‘ Meanwhile . . . Would you agree with me that left-handed Americans (of whom I am one) use a bit more hot water than right-handed people? And which do you think weighs more: a pound of $45-a-pound shrimp from the Epicure market or a pound of $7.99-a-pound shrimp from the Publix 500 yards away (and, thank heavens, 400 yards closer to me)? I discovered an amazing thing about the little shrimp. If you hold two tails together and dip – and then eat – them simultaneously, they’re still not remotely as large as the $45 shrimp, but they’re twice as large as they were, and just as tasty. This is the opposite of pill splitting. Shrimp doubling. The reason I think we lefties use more hot water, at least marginally, is that hot water taps tend to be on the left, cold on the right, so we are more likely than our right-handed friends to reach for the hot water tap. Then again, a slightly higher proportion of lefties than righties may be concerned with the environment, and so might be more aware of not wasting water – particularly hot water, which also wastes energy. So maybe I’m all wet and we actually use a bit less hot water. I run through all this as a way of writing something that, by comparison, will make my observations on bananas seem important, and well grounded. (Hey: you never get this stuff from Quicken.) Tomorrow, or soon: Globalization
GWB: Reluctant Warrior; John Lewis: Warrior for Civil Rights (Don't Forget to Vote Today) November 4, 2003February 24, 2017 ‘NOBODY, BUT NOBODY, WAS MORE RELUCTANT TO GO TO WAR THAN PRESIDENT BUSH.’ That is a direct quote from this remarkable little exercise in Harper’s. No one would suggest the story makes an effort at balance. But the twist is that it’s told entirely in the administration’s own words. ‘WE ALL LIVE IN THE AMERICAN HOUSE’ I’m sorry, but this Boston Globe op-ed, by a great civil rights leader, is a must read: At a crossroads on gay unions By John Lewis, 10/25/2003 From time to time, America comes to a crossroads. With confusion and controversy, it’s hard to spot that moment. We need cool heads, warm hearts, and America’s core principles to cleanse away the distractions. We are now at such a crossroads over same-sex couples’ freedom to marry. It is time to say forthrightly that the government’s exclusion of our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters from civil marriage officially degrades them and their families. It denies them the basic human right to marry the person they love. It denies them numerous legal protections for their families. This discrimination is wrong. We cannot keep turning our backs on gay and lesbian Americans. I have fought too hard and too long against discrimination based on race and color not to stand up against discrimination based on sexual orientation. I’ve heard the reasons for opposing civil marriage for same-sex couples. Cut through the distractions, and they stink of the same fear, hatred, and intolerance I have known in racism and in bigotry. Some say let’s choose another route and give gay folks some legal rights but call it something other than marriage. We have been down that road before in this country. Separate is not equal. The rights to liberty and happiness belong to each of us and on the same terms, without regard to either skin color or sexual orientation. Some say they are uncomfortable with the thought of gays and lesbians marrying. But our rights as Americans do not depend on the approval of others. Our rights depend on us being Americans. Sometimes it takes courts to remind us of these basic principles. In 1948, when I was 8 years old, 30 states had bans on interracial marriage, courts had upheld the bans many times, and 90 percent of the public disapproved of those marriages, saying they were against the definition of marriage, against God’s law. But that year, the California Supreme Court became the first court in America to strike down such a ban. Thank goodness some court finally had the courage to say that equal means equal, and others rightly followed, including the US Supreme Court 19 years later. Some stand on the ground of religion, either demonizing gay people or suggesting that civil marriage is beyond the Constitution. But religious rites and civil rights are two separate entities. What’s at stake here is legal marriage, not the freedom of every religion to decide on its own religious views and ceremonies. I remember the words of John Kennedy when his presidential candidacy was challenged because of his faith: “I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant, nor Jewish — where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the pope, the National Council of Churches, or any other ecclesiastical source — where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials — and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.” Those words ring particularly true today. We hurt our fellow citizens and our community when we deny gay people civil marriage and its protections and responsibilities. Rather than divide and discriminate, let us come together and create one nation. We are all one people. We all live in the American house. We are all the American family. Let us recognize that the gay people living in our house share the same hopes, troubles, and dreams. It’s time we treated them as equals, as family. John Lewis, a Democratic congressman from Georgia, was one of the original speakers at the 1963 March on Washington and is author of “Walking With the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement.” © Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.
7.2%, the Yuan, Car Insurance November 3, 2003February 24, 2017 7.2% It’s good news that the economy grew so rapidly last quarter. But for a bit more perspective, click here for the web page of the Center for American Progress. Perhaps even sign up for the daily e-mail (just what we all thirst for, more e-mail) – to my mind, among the best of the web. CHINESE MONEY Jim Grant, a surpassingly smart and eloquent guy, thinks the Everbank Chinese-denominated CDs mentioned Friday may not be so dumb – as he writes here. (The irony, for those too young to catch it, is that ‘Chinese money’ used to be a synonym for ‘funny money’ . . . which used to be, and still is, a synonym for, basically, bogus money . . . and here, now, are the Chinese economy and currency, symbols of strength.) CAR INSURANCE LuckyinCalifornia: ‘Your article in Sunday’s PARADE on car insurance may lead to disaster. You are correct that if your car insurance covers rentals, you probably do not need extra rental insurance. However, if you drive an older car without collision insurance and then rent a car, you won’t be covered for collision on the rental car – a set-up for disaster should you have an accident. For years I followed your advice on both these counts, then realized what could happen. The small annual charge for collision (even in California) was much smaller than extra rental car insurance and well worth it. The best advice is to have the collision insurance unless you are certain you will never rent a car.’ ☞ Good point – though in many cases you are covered by the credit card you used to rent the car. As suggested here, you need to check the credit card’s fine print to be sure. John Douglas: ‘The car rental companies sell very expensive insurance at the counter, especially when annualized, but they sell this insurance by always staying one step ahead of the insurance available. The current method to force you to buy their insurance is known as “Loss of Use”. Should you damage, or total, the rental car, the rental car company will take that vehicle out of service until repairs are complete. The lessee will then be charged (on his credit card) the loss of income the lessor would have earned had the vehicle been in service. Coverage from your own insurance policy will typically not pick this up. Unfortunately we have to spend a little more at the counter . . . but it is better ‘spend a little to save a lot.’ And, as I’m sure you are aware, studying the car rental contract at the counter with a line behind you can be daunting.’ ☞ Thanks, John! Fascinating about loss-of-use. But don’t the odds still favor not taking the insurance? If the car is out of commission for two weeks at the $350 weekly rate – which strikes me as a lot – you’re buying a policy to cover a $700 risk. What does that cost – and how often do you have accidents? Every tenth day you drive? Every thirtieth day? Many of us can go a full 100 days without having a single accident! I heard of one guy who went 200 days. At $14.99 a day plus tax for collision coverage, that guy would in effect be paying more than $3,000 to avoid the $700 loss-of-use charge when he had an accident on the 200th day. Of course, to someone who can’t afford the risk of having the accident on, say, the first day instead of the 200th, all this is academic. But most people who rent cars can probably afford $700 risks. Bryan Jurgensen: ‘I think you should reconsider your advice on liability insurance. Specifically this statement: ‘When it comes to liability coverage, take the legal minimum if you have little to be sued for.’ Wouldn’t you agree this is morally irresponsible? The legal minimums are usually well below the possible damage that can be caused by a motor vehicle. How many permanently disabled people suffer every day because some irresponsible driver didn’t have enough insurance to adequately cover their medical expenses? I think you should write a short essay in PARADE retracting this statement and giving the reasons it’s the right thing to carry the maximum amount of auto liability insurance. I don’t sell insurance and have never been in a personal injury car accident, I just know what is right and what is wrong.’ ☞ The auto insurance system in this country (except Michigan, which has it largely right) is DREADFUL. But telling a person earning $16,000 a year with no assets to protect – struggling to feed a family – to spend $2,000 to take high liability limits to protect ME, while good for me, is not really good advice for her. For much, much more on this, hie thee to the library to read My Vast Fortune. Tomorrow: President Bush, the Reluctant Warrior; John Lewis, Warrior for Civil Rights [Don’t Forget to Vote!]