Back to work after attending what I believe is my eighth funeral in as many years.
I think the ritual is very important, at least for most people, to help them mentally shut the door on the relationship they had with the deceased and get on with their lives. The ritual doesn't need to encompass the full suite of wake, viewing/visitation, religious ritual, trek to the cemetery, graveside ritual, and final reception. But I tell you what, I come away more emotionally satisfied and ready to face work the next day when I'm leaving the end of a full Catholic send-off than when I've attended a brief meeting in a funeral parlor.
Must be the incense. Or the obligatory references to prayers for the unborn, which will come as surely as will the Protestant "sinners in the hands of an angry God" warnings to choose the right kind of resurrection when it comes to the listeners' own turn to go to sleep and await the event.
Was much more involved in arrangements this time than I've ever been previously. Medical ventilators are violent things. Coffins, vaults, and related services are expensive. Embalming is bizarro. There should be a website called "remove-your-damn-ballcap-when-you-enter-the-funeral-home dot com." And everyone is unlikely to be truly prepared for the actual volume of legal paperwork afterward.
And so I've spent some time today getting over my trauma -- which can't possibly compare to that of the deceased's immediate family -- by reading up on end-of-life practices in North America and round the world.
Also reviewing my advanced health care directive.
24 July 2013
15 July 2013
Voter ID, the death of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the 19th Amendment
The Pennsylvania voter ID trial begins today. I still think voter ID laws are a 19th Amendment issue.
Who changes their names after marriages and divorces? Women.
Who has to run the paperwork gantlet to get a new driver license or passport, digging up marriage certificates, divorce decrees, and birth certificates or sending away to out-of-state agencies for proof that they're who they say they are, only to risk being turned down by a DMV functionary who orders them to transfer the title of their home into their maiden name (PDF)? Women.
Who are disproportionately represented in the Pennsylvania anti-voter ID case? Women (PDF).
And I'll go there. You think the prisoners fasting for Ramadan in Gitmo, or the 29,000 prisoners in California, are the first to go on hunger strikes for their cause? They're only the latest. Who was force-fed during their struggle for the right to vote? Women.
A hundred years ago, Emily Davison was about my age when she was killed attempting a theatrical gesture for women's suffrage. A 7-minute doc includes a film clip and calls her "a radicalized woman with nothing to lose" (4:10). Though she probably wasn't a suicide and never intended to be a martyr, she had a hero's funeral.
You can roll back the business end of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and implement anti-voting measures right away, but it can't end well. The little old ladies with no driver licenses will die off. Those of us born before all the birth records were digitized or originated on the computer will get our acts together and get the right ID. And people my daughter's age, who were in the computer from the get-go, won't have a problem getting their voter ID. Requiring state-issued ID and then making it hard to obtain is not a sustainable strategy. And it won't be too long now before that daughter of mine is voting.
Since, after all, your grandfathers and great-grandfathers were so gracious to vote for the 19th Amendment.
Who changes their names after marriages and divorces? Women.
Who has to run the paperwork gantlet to get a new driver license or passport, digging up marriage certificates, divorce decrees, and birth certificates or sending away to out-of-state agencies for proof that they're who they say they are, only to risk being turned down by a DMV functionary who orders them to transfer the title of their home into their maiden name (PDF)? Women.
Who are disproportionately represented in the Pennsylvania anti-voter ID case? Women (PDF).
And I'll go there. You think the prisoners fasting for Ramadan in Gitmo, or the 29,000 prisoners in California, are the first to go on hunger strikes for their cause? They're only the latest. Who was force-fed during their struggle for the right to vote? Women.
A hundred years ago, Emily Davison was about my age when she was killed attempting a theatrical gesture for women's suffrage. A 7-minute doc includes a film clip and calls her "a radicalized woman with nothing to lose" (4:10). Though she probably wasn't a suicide and never intended to be a martyr, she had a hero's funeral.
You can roll back the business end of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and implement anti-voting measures right away, but it can't end well. The little old ladies with no driver licenses will die off. Those of us born before all the birth records were digitized or originated on the computer will get our acts together and get the right ID. And people my daughter's age, who were in the computer from the get-go, won't have a problem getting their voter ID. Requiring state-issued ID and then making it hard to obtain is not a sustainable strategy. And it won't be too long now before that daughter of mine is voting.
Since, after all, your grandfathers and great-grandfathers were so gracious to vote for the 19th Amendment.
12 July 2013
Employers should embrace paying for health insurance, because abortions should be rare
Just as I don't understand why a health insurer itself would decide to cover pregnancy and birth costs (some $20,000 per event, and most women who do it once do it at least once more) but not pay for birth control (some $360 per year for pills, less for an IUD per year over its lifetime), I don't understand why an employer would be happy to pay for pregnancy and birth insurance, plus the real risk of high turnover among its female employees, but refuse to pay for birth control insurance.
I'm a small business owner. I've been one for years, and I spent a good part of the 1990s as a successful small business owner who hired employees. When I've had employees, I've paid for their health insurance. And I will in the future, if I ever get into the position where I can hire them again, even if the number of employees is below the Obamacare mandate threshold. Why? Because it's good business. It's cheap -- you have to do some research and some math, but it's not terribly expensive per employee. In the 1990s, I found a trade association that hooked us up to a group that tailored its plan to small businesses (even tiny ones, like mine) that wouldn't have been able to negotiate a good deal on their own. I bet there's a trade or professional association for every darn industry out there, and I bet to a one that they have affiliate health insurance programs. I know my local and state bar associations do. A business owner who doesn't do this research and math in their own industry just isn't doing the best job they can do as a business owner.
To be clear, I don't recall the numbers offhand, because it was over 15 years ago and the paperwork is long gone. And the numbers weren't negligible, and the 1990s was a very easy decade to make money in the industry I was in, and my employees were young, healthy people. But offering health insurance to them was worth every penny we spent on it. Combined with a reasonable sick and vacation day policy, the work environment allowed a sick employee to stay home, see a healthcare practitioner, and get back to work quickly. They didn't lose productivity, coming into work because they felt forced to though they were feeling lousy, getting everyone else in the office sick. And for the love of Christ, I never asked the women about their birth control. (Though I do know that if they were on the pill, they were covered, because they got the same coverage I did, and you know damn well my pills were paid for.) And you know why? Because one, it's none of my goddam business. And two, I didn't want "these fool feemale women" having unintended pregnancies and bringing drama and grief to the office, and needing time off.
And three, because there's that Clintony pro-choice line that abortion should be "safe, legal, and rare." Anti-choicers jump on that, with their favorite gotcha: "Why rare? If abortion is OK, why do you agree that it should be rare? You must actually think it's not OK, or else you wouldn't say it should be rare. Gotcha!" That "gotcha" is a logical fallacy. Do you see it? They beg the question as to Clinton's premise for why abortions should be rare. The reason isn't that pro-choicers think an embryo or fetus has the same right to life as the woman gestating it. The reason is that any abortion, even a very early or straightforward one, takes resources. It takes a woman away from her work or studies for multiple trips to the clinic or hospital (plus a trip to court if the patient is a minor in a state where she needs to get a judicial bypass around the parental notification law). It takes money, both in the cost of the procedure and travel costs to get it, plus lost wages from time off work. And it takes an emotional toll from the stigma, drama, and grief largely inflicted by the religious right.
Abortions should be rare because they cost women time, money, and work and educational opportunities. Abortions should be rare because they cost employers money. Oops, I think that makes me a capitalist! But hey, it's not me who wants abortions to be rare. It's just good business.
I'm a small business owner. I've been one for years, and I spent a good part of the 1990s as a successful small business owner who hired employees. When I've had employees, I've paid for their health insurance. And I will in the future, if I ever get into the position where I can hire them again, even if the number of employees is below the Obamacare mandate threshold. Why? Because it's good business. It's cheap -- you have to do some research and some math, but it's not terribly expensive per employee. In the 1990s, I found a trade association that hooked us up to a group that tailored its plan to small businesses (even tiny ones, like mine) that wouldn't have been able to negotiate a good deal on their own. I bet there's a trade or professional association for every darn industry out there, and I bet to a one that they have affiliate health insurance programs. I know my local and state bar associations do. A business owner who doesn't do this research and math in their own industry just isn't doing the best job they can do as a business owner.
To be clear, I don't recall the numbers offhand, because it was over 15 years ago and the paperwork is long gone. And the numbers weren't negligible, and the 1990s was a very easy decade to make money in the industry I was in, and my employees were young, healthy people. But offering health insurance to them was worth every penny we spent on it. Combined with a reasonable sick and vacation day policy, the work environment allowed a sick employee to stay home, see a healthcare practitioner, and get back to work quickly. They didn't lose productivity, coming into work because they felt forced to though they were feeling lousy, getting everyone else in the office sick. And for the love of Christ, I never asked the women about their birth control. (Though I do know that if they were on the pill, they were covered, because they got the same coverage I did, and you know damn well my pills were paid for.) And you know why? Because one, it's none of my goddam business. And two, I didn't want "these fool feemale women" having unintended pregnancies and bringing drama and grief to the office, and needing time off.
And three, because there's that Clintony pro-choice line that abortion should be "safe, legal, and rare." Anti-choicers jump on that, with their favorite gotcha: "Why rare? If abortion is OK, why do you agree that it should be rare? You must actually think it's not OK, or else you wouldn't say it should be rare. Gotcha!" That "gotcha" is a logical fallacy. Do you see it? They beg the question as to Clinton's premise for why abortions should be rare. The reason isn't that pro-choicers think an embryo or fetus has the same right to life as the woman gestating it. The reason is that any abortion, even a very early or straightforward one, takes resources. It takes a woman away from her work or studies for multiple trips to the clinic or hospital (plus a trip to court if the patient is a minor in a state where she needs to get a judicial bypass around the parental notification law). It takes money, both in the cost of the procedure and travel costs to get it, plus lost wages from time off work. And it takes an emotional toll from the stigma, drama, and grief largely inflicted by the religious right.
Abortions should be rare because they cost women time, money, and work and educational opportunities. Abortions should be rare because they cost employers money. Oops, I think that makes me a capitalist! But hey, it's not me who wants abortions to be rare. It's just good business.
11 July 2013
Proposed: the Indiana Church of Homo Matrimony
You know what the state of Indiana needs? A church the only doctrine of which is same-sex marriage in the great State of Indiana. It should be called the Indiana Church of Homo Matrimony, and its greatest -- because only -- sacrament would be same-sex marriage. Which is a misdemeanor for a pastor to solemnize in Indiana. And I dearly, dearly want to see the pastor of the Indiana Church of Homo Matrimony to be arrested and charged for performing their congregation's most holy act. The law in question, via ThinkProgress and AmericaBlog:
You know, the Founding Fathers foresaw the trouble that comes when the state gets involved in deciding religious questions. As they put it when they were debating the text of what became the First Amendment, it's all fun and games for the legislature to mandate bible instruction in public schools, until you find out that the bible to be taught isn't your bible. Wars have been fought and countless people have been executed for hundreds of years over theological questions from "Should women be allowed to preach?" to "Which of the dozen commandments over multiple chapters and books are the actual Ten Commandments?" And when the government lays out religious doctrine as law and public policy, everyone except for rich, connected men loses.
Which, of course, is the point. It's the real reason underlying invasive, liberty-destroying restrictions on abortions: keep women from controlling their own reproduction, and they'll have to juggle duties at home and work, which keeps them from focusing on work as hard as their co-workers with fewer perceived home-based responsibilities (read: dads, and child-free men), which keeps them from being in a better position to bargain for higher wages and more power in the marketplace and the political arena. Keep young women from terminating unwanted pregnancies, and they'll have exponentially more trouble to finish vocational training or a college degree, which keeps them from fully actualizing themselves and earning more money.
And note that however it's done, when women don't earn decent money, they don't pay much into Social Security, which hurts both Social Security in general but also, and more importantly, themselves in particular, when they've retired (ha-ha) and receive smaller payments than what they would have seen if they'd had the credentials to earn higher paychecks in the first place. Again, fully actualizing themselves. (Which is why Justice Ginsburg practically begged women's rights proponents to give up on due process and aim for equal protection -- the strategy that finally worked against DOMA -- to attack abortion restrictions: privacy isn't the issue, because restrictions on abortion prevent women from "enjoy[ing] equal citizenship stature" and deny them "autonomy to determine [their] life's course" (Gonzales v. Carhart, 550 U.S. 124, 172 (2007) (Ginsburg, J., dissenting) (PDF)).)
But you know what is still available to a woman? Going to Indiana and starting up a church whose sole practice and faith is solemnizing same-sex marriages.
IC 31-11-11-7 Solemnization of marriage between persons prohibited from marrying Sec. 7. A person who knowingly solemnizes a marriage of individuals who are prohibited from marrying by IC 31-11-1 commits a Class B misdemeanor.A "Class B misdemeanor" in Indiana can set you back $1,000 and a half-year in jail. That's a lot of collection money going out the door, and a lot of Sundays with an empty pulpit.
You know, the Founding Fathers foresaw the trouble that comes when the state gets involved in deciding religious questions. As they put it when they were debating the text of what became the First Amendment, it's all fun and games for the legislature to mandate bible instruction in public schools, until you find out that the bible to be taught isn't your bible. Wars have been fought and countless people have been executed for hundreds of years over theological questions from "Should women be allowed to preach?" to "Which of the dozen commandments over multiple chapters and books are the actual Ten Commandments?" And when the government lays out religious doctrine as law and public policy, everyone except for rich, connected men loses.
Which, of course, is the point. It's the real reason underlying invasive, liberty-destroying restrictions on abortions: keep women from controlling their own reproduction, and they'll have to juggle duties at home and work, which keeps them from focusing on work as hard as their co-workers with fewer perceived home-based responsibilities (read: dads, and child-free men), which keeps them from being in a better position to bargain for higher wages and more power in the marketplace and the political arena. Keep young women from terminating unwanted pregnancies, and they'll have exponentially more trouble to finish vocational training or a college degree, which keeps them from fully actualizing themselves and earning more money.
And note that however it's done, when women don't earn decent money, they don't pay much into Social Security, which hurts both Social Security in general but also, and more importantly, themselves in particular, when they've retired (ha-ha) and receive smaller payments than what they would have seen if they'd had the credentials to earn higher paychecks in the first place. Again, fully actualizing themselves. (Which is why Justice Ginsburg practically begged women's rights proponents to give up on due process and aim for equal protection -- the strategy that finally worked against DOMA -- to attack abortion restrictions: privacy isn't the issue, because restrictions on abortion prevent women from "enjoy[ing] equal citizenship stature" and deny them "autonomy to determine [their] life's course" (Gonzales v. Carhart, 550 U.S. 124, 172 (2007) (Ginsburg, J., dissenting) (PDF)).)
But you know what is still available to a woman? Going to Indiana and starting up a church whose sole practice and faith is solemnizing same-sex marriages.
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