Thursday, August 19, 2010

Thank you, Anne Rice

Anne Rice has publicly proclaimed what so many of us have privately held for so long: that the Church and/or Christianity no longer walks the walk it demands of it's followers, if it ever did. I've had much the same discussion with friends and family over the years, with much the same result she has received from the christian religious - a stunned "How can you say you're not a Christian?" My response to that question is simply this. I draw a line between what I believe and what I know. I can believe something that is impossible for me to directly know,or experience, whereas I cannot know something that is impossible for me to experience.Where spirituality is concerned I believe many things to be true. Our existence after death in some form is one of them. Do I know this for sure? Absolutely not, as I am still alive to write this. Treating others the way I wish to be treated, absolutely I believe this. And I know from experience that acting on this belief generally works better than the alternative.

There can be a tremendous difference between belief and knowledge. Believing something to be true and knowing through experience that it is true is one thing . Holding something as true while doing the exact opposite is hypocrisy, and a different matter entirely.  Historically, Christianity has preached one thing, love for God and neighbor, while acting in the exact opposite manner. And it continues to do so. This is the crux of Anne's argument. The fact that individuals have sometimes done great and good things in the name of God for their fellow man does not excuse an institution itself for poor behavior.

Is this a secular humanist argument against organized religion? Perhaps, but perhaps not. I would say that it's more a matter of calling a spade a spade.

Monday, April 19, 2010

We could learn a few things from our legal, and illegal immigrants

I hear this argument all of the time from those who argue against immigrants, legal and illegal. They're taking our jobs, they say.

An interesting friend of mine just applied for a decent job, not the best but far from the worst. The company gave applicants training materials to study for a pretest before being given the opportunity for  an interview. Fair enough, learn something about what you'll be doing if hired. The pretest was timed at 30 minutes, and the information was considerable in the training materials.

My friend was utterly amazed at how many people didn't study for this test. Here's where the irony comes in. So many so-called Americans who want work, weren't willing to put in the time needed to learn a small amount of material to gain decent employment.


I'm sick to death of Americans expecting jobs, and pay, without work. Why should any company have to go so far as to give an open book test to people wanting a job with them? I just hope my friend who studied has a prayer's chance at an interview.

At least the illegals are willing to do what it takes to get and keep the job. How ridiculous is that?

Understanding a wayward parent?

There's much I don't understand about the Tennessee mother who sent her adoptive son back to Russia.

If what we've heard through the media in any way approximates the truth, that family was a in a world of hurt. I understand being afraid of an emotionally disturbed child, and I understand feeling trapped with no way out.

I don't understand how any parent can fail to see the long term ramifications of such an abandonment: after all isn't part of the point behind adoption to avoid those long term ill-effects of not having a family? I also don't see how she didn't know she could terminate her parental rights in a more responsible manner.

How could she not see that her adopted son needed help from mental health professionals? Perhaps she tried, perhaps not. How can you expect a silk purse of a child to be immediately sewn from the pig's ear of life long institutionalization in an orphanage?

The only thing I know for sure is that her callous abandonment has further damaged an already damaged child. To what end he will come is far from assured to be a good one.Taking the media accounts at face value, there had to be a better way to protect her remaining children than by abandoning that boy to the wolves.

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Fixing the unfixable

I was listening to a New Orleans radio station while driving to the store today and heard something startling. A Cardinal just sent a letter to the Vatican stating in essence that allowing priests to marry would help fix the attraction of pedophiles to the priesthood. Since I am all about solutions, I applaud him for suggesting a “fix” for this tragic situation in the Church. But his fix is no fix at all.

I’ll be straight with you here. I’m not sure that anything can be done to fix pedophilia. No one is. Simply put, pedophilia is a fixation on children as the preferred sexual partner. There ain’t no fixing that. And marriage certainly won't. Pedophiles by nature gravitate to any occupation that allows them access to children, such as the priesthood.

Perhaps the answer is in fixing the process by which candidates are selected for the priesthood. Is there a checklist for hiring priests somewhere in the Vatican?  If not, there should be. Here’s mine:

Love God? Check.Love the Church? Check. Love people? Check. Love children? Check. How do you love children? Wait a minute. Houston we have a problem.

That thing about confession being good for the soul doesn't work in this case. Were it only that easy. But, wait it is that easy...

There are psychological assessments that can help the Church identify pedophiles trying to get into the priesthood. I figure if companies can use the Myers-Briggs assessment to help determine if someone is a good fit in the office, surely the Church could do this one crucial thing. Use the assessment as a tool to get the answer to that last question on my checklist. You know they aren't going to tell you they fantasize about children. If the assessment throws up red flags don't bring them into the priesthood.Will it catch all of them? No, but you have got to do better than you are now.

Marriage affixes your paycheck to your family, fixes your regular sleeping partner (unless he or she snores like me), and fixes your spouse to the TV when a game is on, but fix this? I think not...

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Just my opinion on viral emails

We all know the saying about opinions, and what they're like. That said, I have opinions, you have opinions, we all have opinions, and for the most part they all stink just like their metaphorical counterparts. I think most of us can agree on that line of reasoning.

But,  some of us cross the line and consider their opinion to be just shy of divine revelation. This is the Gospel  According to the Viral Emailer, straight from the mouth of the Almighty to the pen of the Village Idiot. Their mission: To deliver us from the evil of our ways, be they Republican, Democratic , supportive of the Limbless Latina Lesbian String Quartet, or the wisdom of the 1st,2nd, and/or 14th Amendment. Or all of the above. Or as they're neither fish nor fowl politically, especially…(gasp!) Libertarian heresy. Libertarians somehow manage to offend all sides of the American political spectrum, which is an impressive feat in and of itself. But that's a tale for another day.

As an aside Libertarians DO exist, though they be so rare as to qualify as a cryptozoological species only seen at night by one or a few witnesses through the haze of several beers after fishing and backlit by a bright light from the sky. But I digress…

The Village Idiot spews his vitriolic list of ills as fact, sprinkles in a few  supportive misquotes from historical figures, and issues dire warnings of doom. This bizarre concatenation of ideas is then emailed to like-minded people (what a frightening thought there), who forward it along, and so on, and so on. Even Chicken Little could do no better.

What amazes me even more than the ignorance of the Village Idiot - and his ignorance is awe-inspiring in it's immensity -  is the willingness of the general public to read it and accept it as fact before forwarding it to their unsuspecting friends.

Just one short search online will show the 'logic' of each particular Gospel missive to be buggier than a Roach Motel. I want to blame the American educational system for the asininity spouted in these missives, but I can't.  We, the American people, are the most anti-intellectual society in the world. We don't need to bog ourselves down with facts, and we don't need to think on our own. All we need is for someone to tell us what we want to hear. Voila! Instant Truth.

 In lieu of us taking the time to research just a tiny bit before forwarding a steaming pile of sociopolitical turds to the unwary, may I suggest that computer programmers do a tremendous social good and eliminate the forwarding option for email?

Friday, February 26, 2010

Paraphrasing Yoda

A favorite saying of mine is by Yoda, in The Empire Strikes Back;  "...Do or do not, there is no try." Sometimes just trying is doing. I'll try just about anything once. Those who have known me a long time will attest to that fact.  I've tried all manner of foods. Snake, shark, squirrel, tongue, and chitterlins just to name a few. And lets not forget my attempt at Thai cooking that even my dog wouldn't eat. I tried that too.  Like most college students, I tried liquors that were probably better used as industrial strength degreasers.  Herbal medicine? Yep. So it's probably no surprise to them that I've decided to try a relatively unknown holistic technique I learned of over the internet to try and regain some additional use of my right hand. 

Having recovered nearly all of my mental functioning (my brother can stop laughing now) and most of my physical functioning after a major stroke 12 years ago, I'd like to have my right hand working again if I could. Now, no talk here of the 2 year rule that says your recovery is pretty much over after 2 years.  Our brains aren't nearly as static as once believed. Our attitudes, yes, our brains no. Since this gentleman is based in the UK, a visit at this time is way out of the question so I did the next best thing - decide to give the method a try for much less than the trip.

Now, it hasn't arrived yet. God willing it does. This is what I say about anything I get over the internet, even from the most reliable retailers. I understand how snake oil salesmen work. They promise the moon, and can't even deliver a piddling stress ball that looks like the moon. Another of my favorite sayings is "if it's seems too good to be true, it probably is." But, and it's a big but, there are some times and situations where you have to go out on that proverbial limb to reach a goal if you can. I happen to think a hand, particularly my hand, is worth that shot in the dark. The trick is to minimize your losses by not overextending yourself. Paying $30 through PayPal is a far cry from emptying my savings account.

 If this works, great! I'll be singing hallelujah with the angelic host on high. If it doesn't, I knew it was a long shot going in to this. If it never arrives, I know it's snake oil, and I'm not out all that much.

I'll let you know what comes of this if anything. But I simply have to try...

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Overdraft fees... Part 2

Yesterday, we talked about overdraft fees and how they apply to checking accounts on the personal level. Recall my pretend account overdrawn by $10, and that $30 fee. Before we go into the fees on the institutional level, we need to take a short field trip into what a bank really does.

A bank takes in deposits (your money and mine) and in essence puts it in a big communal pot. For the most part, I don't need all of my paycheck at one time, and neither do you. Overall, we consumers spend it in dribs and drabs. The bank is required by law to keep a certain amount of it's deposits on reserve, not all of it. What isn't held on reserve is loaned out, and the person who borrows the money pays back what they borrowed over time plus interest. The interest (profit) goes back into the communal pot. This is a very simple description of what a bank does and how it makes money. The field trip is now over, so lets go back to those pesky overdrafts, and peskier overdraft fees.

The really big picture comes into play with the thousands of checking accounts any financial institution maintains. Remember, paying an item into overdraft is an extension of unsecured credit (loaning you money without collateral to back it up). As a former bank employee, I can promise you that the just overdrawn $10 or less or only by one item scenario I used is the exception rather than the rule. I conservatively guesstimate that there are easily 10-15 accounts overdrawn by $200+for each account overdrawn by under $10.

Sticking with my most conservative guess, 10 accounts overdrawn by $200 each plus my piddling $10 equals a whopping $2010 just the first day these 11 accounts are in the negative. Multiply that times the hundreds, perhaps thousands of overdrawn accounts, daily, and you can see that we're really dipping into Uncle Bank's pocketbook. Not only are we dipping, but it's a double dip. The number and amounts of loans a bank can make is affected by this extension of seemingly insignificant amounts of credit. Fewer loans going out = less interest (profit) coming in. Overdraft fees help recover that loss of income.

Before you get your knickers all twisted up, remember the fees are still much less expensive than the lawyer for court costs…and if you can't afford the fees, I strongly recommend investing in a pencil and paper to maintain your check register. They're much cheaper than the overdraft fees!

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Overdraft fees, yea or nay? Part 1

It seems that most of America is bent on blaming the banking industry for all failures in our society. Problem there is that they are not responsible for every ill on the face of this green earth. Case in point, the dreaded overdraft fee . To be brutally honest, there is an incredibly easy way NOT to pay an overdraft fee; Don't overdraw your checking account! Stay with me, and snarl at me later...

Depending on your banking institution's policies, you may be charged per item paid into overdraft, or per day overdrawn, or both. I've listed the policies from least mercenary to most mercenary on the part of the financial institution.

America has forgotten this first crucial financial fact: Writing a check, swiping your card, and establishing automatic electronic payments are promissory notes that promise the person you're paying that the funds are in the bank waiting for them to collect their payment. Ever wonder what those neon notices are at cash registers? They're a reminder that your check is a promise of payment for the services or goods that you just purchased.

Believe it or not, there is a legitimate business case for overdraft fees. I vote yea for the least mercenary method: a charge per item overdrawing the account. The business case for OD fees is quite simple: paying an item into overdraft is an extension of unsecured credit on the part of said financial institution. When you don't have the money in the bank to cover your check/debit card transaction/ACH payment and the bank pays it for you, they have loaned you money on your promise to pay that item. Reread that highlighted part for me now. I've rewritten it for you here: they have loaned you money on your promise to pay that item.

Still following me? Good. Let's put this into play, and have one item overdraw my imaginary checking account by ten dollars, and to make the math easy, the overdraft fee is thirty dollars. So I now owe the bank forty dollars?!? Why not just $10? To quote my daughter, it now sucks to be me, or does it? The bank has charged me the equivalent of 300% interest, that I won't argue. But the bank has made good on my promise of payment when it didn't have to.

But let's look at the larger individual picture now, Remember these words from earlier: they have loaned you money on your promise to pay that item? If your check bounces to a business, that is technically fraud, and the business can prosecute you as such. I happen to think that 300% interest on my hypothetical overdraft of ten dollars is a pretty good deal when compared to court costs and possible imprisonment. It's certainly less expensive than a lawyer.

But it's only ten dollars, you say? Multiply that $10 by all of the accounts overdrawn on any given business day, and you've got an absurdly conservative estimate of how much unsecured credit the bank has issued on that day that keeps the Constable off of your collective fanny. Tomorrow we'll take up the rest of the issue.

Saturday, February 13, 2010

The Heinlein Plan

As far as the bailout of the banks is concerned, I agree with most of America that the bailout so far has done nothing but put taxpayer dollars in the hands of those who created the recession. While the banks are now solvent, most of the rest of us aren't. And credit is still increasingly difficult to find and get just like jobs.

I can't claim this idea as mine, but did anyone in Congress consider Robert Heinlein's idea of opening up military service to anyone interested? How Heinlein's plan could work now is that we have military support needs stateside, bookkeepers, data entry, secretarial functions, and service industries. These positions were the mainstream of our pre-recession economy, and they still are.

Why not allow stateside functions to be handled by those out of work now? Induct them, and put them to work. Yes, this will increase military payrolls, but by doing that tax dollars would be going back into the economy where they belong. And it would definitely help with the health benefits situation, simply by providing health care benefits to the new inductees and their families.

This could provide the much needed Public Option for health care and make the obscenely huge, ridiculously difficult to comprehend Health Care Bill next to unnecessary.

Are you an out of work mechanic, truck driver, administrative assistant? Can you cook and clean? Push a broom? Sign up brother(or sister, as the case may be)!

I'm not talking about fitting grandma out in combat gear. I am talking about the government taking over what is rightly theirs; the Commissaries, the information staff at military hospitals, and all stateside administrative functions to put civilians back to work under the same terms and code as the rest of the military except combat duty. This will help on the civilian side by putting people to work as well as free up able bodied troops for deployment. Like it or not we will always need combat forces, and unpleasant truth be told, they are now, and always will be young. Right now the only real military crossovers with the civilian world are medical personnel. And we civilians need a wakeup call, and military discipline is a perfect fit for that.


I don't claim this idea is perfect. I do however claim that this plan would have benefitted out of work Americans, and ultimately would benefit big business by putting the money where we know it will be spent to support businesses and banks - in the hands of Joe and Jane American. The other main benefit is that we stop giving things to people or businesses for free.

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

A sensible bailout plan

It seems to me that whenever the government sees something needs doing, an agency is created or mandated to do the task. If the task is completed, then I have no issue with it. Witness FEMA, an agency that at best puts people from one state to work "helping" those in an other state who have had the daylight whooped out of them by one sort of natural disaster or another. In theory this is a 'good thing', but how many Americans know we keep begging FEMA funding even now and get told yes?


Ifyou've read my post to Colts fans, you'll know that I am an expat New Orleanian. What you don't know is that I am also a Gulf Coast resident. My beef with FEMA isn't that they took too long to get here. Anyone with even half of a functioning brain cell knows that clearing roads to get in takes time, especially when those poor benighted National Guardsmen have to carry EVERYTHING they need, plus everything we needed. (Thank you again ladies and gentlemen of the Guard!)

My beef with FEMA is that they're still a presence here because we're still asking for help for post Katrina. Does anyone even know how much we've spent on just Katrina? I doubt even the GAO could tell us, and they've got the ledgers, though not enough fingers and toes to count how many billions. Last count -in 2007 mind you! - 116 billion plus dollars.Even now, much of that money is unaccounted for.

That should sound familiar to all of us. Where on earth did all of that money in the recession bailout go? The arrangements for the bailout were instituted by the Fed, ostensibly not part of the government. The monies were promptly delivered into the gaping maw of those who created the recession.

The solution to both situations was simple, and could have saved boatloads of money. For Katrina relief : Cut each household in the affected area a check for one million dollars, with the caveat that no more money is coming. Stay and rebuild, relocate, do as you wish, just don't look for anymore money from us.

For recession relief: the same. Pay off your mortgages, start a new business, invest it, hide it under your mattress, just don't ask us for anything else.

Now, ultimately the money would have wormed it's way back to the banks, but it would have been by our choosing.

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Open Letter to Indianapolis Colts Fans and the rest of us, too

Your team did what all but one other team did not do - went to the Super Bowl! They played well, and fought hard. Surely more than 11 of you could have shown up and supported your team, clapped them on the shoulder and told them, "well fought, gentlemen!"

In general we have lost the ability to be graceful in defeat, when it doesn't count. And loyal when it does. Though the Super Bowl does generate beaucoup in revenue for the NFL, and much by way of civic pride, when all is said and done it does not cure cancer, or put any of our millions back to work.

The city of New Orleans, in its support of their professional football team over the past 43 years has shown all of us a lesson in graciousness, loyalty, and civility in defeat as well as in victory.

As a proud expatriate New Orleanian, let me be one of the first to tell the Colts what their fans did not - you played well and fought hard gentlemen. I sure wish your fans could appreciate it. And yes, I would have said the same thing had you won. My momma taught me better than that!