Friday jukebox: Harry Nilsson

Music for your lunch break.

Hurricane season approaches and I'm not ready

Hurricane season officially starts at the beginning of June, but I don't tend to think of it as being a real problem here, so far north of the Carolinas, until we cool off a little in September. So while I feel as though I have a lot of time to spare, I've been taking some time today to look at my pantry cabinet and take stock of my emergency supplies.

And I'm low! What started as a little project to organize my pantry turned out to be a wake-up call that I don't have much at all beyond my minimum 2-week supply of nonperishable or ready-to-eat foods. That is to say, I have a good 2-week supply, but I'd be eating canned beans 3 meals per day toward end of those 2 weeks.

Off to the grocery store, but maybe not until this evening after the heatwave breaks. Among other things, I need to replace some single-serving, ready-to-eat rice packs, which I'll rotate out of storage and eat today and tomorrow since they're about at their best-by date. Single-serving, ready-to-eat, shelf-stable, fully cooked rice. We really do live in the future. I don't even want to know the carbon footprint of this stuff (though the rice is grown in the U.S., the final product is imported from Spain) but it's a brilliant addition to my emergency supplies.

Not that I truly, truly need a 2-week supply of instant or ready-to-eat food. In my section of the urban hellhole I can expect to be first in line for utilities to be restored after a storm. If they fail at all, that is. My water has never gone out; my electric goes out maybe once per year; and the only time my gas has ever gone out was when PGW shut it off deliberately for an infrastructure improvement project a few years ago.

That said, I think the derecho at the end of June put the fear of god into me. When much of West Virginia had no power for a few days, local officials and the Red Cross had to organize "mass feedings" (CNN). Evidently everyone had their power back 12 days later, but a lot of people were completely and totally unprepared for the situation. That's really uncool and I don't ever want to be in that position, unlikely as it would be for me in my location.

Romney's tax returns are out there and have been for 4 years

Sometime in 2008, as part of John McCain's vetting process for a vice-presidential candidate, Mitt Romney "reportedly provided McCain's team with more than 20 years of tax returns, significantly more than the amount of information Romney has made public this time around" (CNN). McCain didn't pick Romney for veep, so maybe there's some causal there there. Or maybe the causal there there is simply that Romney doesn't look as good as Sarah Palin does in a red leather jacket.

But my point, and I do have one, is: Oh, lordy. Will someone please, please, please leak these old tax returns already? Aw, man. They are out there. It can't possibly be the case that every last copy was shredded or deleted off all the hard drives when McCain picked Palin over Romney. It would be so easy, just one little click on "send" -- and we don't need all the schedules and attachments, either, just the 2-page 1040's (and only the second pages of those, at that). And we'd get to see if they prove Noz's theory that Romney was living the tax-free high life for some of those years.

Talking with new law students in the new no-law-jobs economy

I spent a few hours the other day talking to some students who are about to embark on their first year of law school. This wasn't the first "welcome the students" event I've ever attended, but it was the first one where I was very upfront about my employment situation. The question comes up all the time from these enthusiastic, bright-eyed young people, who see the next 3 years as just the merest obstacle between them and a personally fulfilling career pursuing justice for the oppressed or making big bucks in a prominent firm: "So, Glomarization, what kind of law do you practice?"

This time my answer was, plainly, "I'm underemployed in my solo practice doing [practice area] for [type of client], and I'm actively looking for a law firm job or employment in a different sector altogether. I get an interview about every other month, but mostly I'm not working as a lawyer, though I have a few volunteer gigs doing [REDACTED] that keep me busy."

One student gamely continued the conversation, talking about their interest in non-patent intellectual property (where there are absolutely no jobs outside of the non-hiring large law firms). I pointed out the jaw-droppingly low hiring rate for 2011 grads: only about 50% have full-time, permanent jobs where a J.D. is required, and some 15% have no job at all. That leaves about 35% who are working part-time, in temporary jobs (not necessarily clerkships, either), or in jobs where they don't need a piece of paper that cost $150,000 plus 3 years of unemployment. I said that I'm self-employed, but after a decade as a small business owner, I don't like being an entrepreneur. I went to law school so that I'd have a job at the other end of it. And not in an entitlement kind of way, but in an "I did this to better my life and I jumped through all your hoops, and now I find that there are no lawyering jobs, and my degree makes me less employable as a non-lawyer once people see the J.D. on my resume, what the fuck gives?" kind of way.

The student's response to this was something along the lines of, well, finding a job, it's all a matter of personality, really.

I can't talk to these people. They're operating from some different worldview, a completely different paradigm than I'm operating from. It's like when talking with a friend of mine from my undergraduate days who is an actual, real-life young-Earth creationist. Different paradigm. We cannot have a conversation when one of us sincerely, absolutely believes that the planet and the universe are literally younger than 10,000 years old. Our basic understandings of reality are irreconcilable, and it's the same between me and this shiny new law student I was speaking with. See, there's a 90% chance that the student will end up in the bottom 90% of their class -- but they will not allow that concept into their reality. Or if they will, they're assured that they'll beat that 50% employment figure anyway and that it's just a matter of personality as to whether they land a real lawyering job out of law school.

There's absolutely nothing I can say to this student. But I do promise that I won't say, "I told you so" to them 3 years from now, even though their comment was, at bottom, not very nice at all.

Penn State-style groupthink needs its own term

Are you familiar with the phrase "going to Abilene"? It's an aspect of the concept of groupthink. Specifically, it's a paradox where someone in a group suggests a course of action; everyone agrees to follow it though individually nobody actually wants to; the group takes the course of action anyway; and in the end everyone is disappointed, upset, uncomfortable, saddened, or even angered that the course of action was taken. The practical results include opportunity costs and wasted time, money, and other resources, not to mention legal risks.

Note that this is not a problem of a charismatic leader persuading people to dangerous, illegal, or unspeakable acts. It's a phenomenon that occurs when no one wants to rock the boat or go against the grain -- but everyone fails to check the group's assumptions and speak up for themselves honestly.

This is similar, though not exactly the same as, the kind of groupthink that was happening at Penn State, which the Freeh report discusses: a "cocoon" where decisions were made not based on right or wrong, but based on the "Penn State way." Penn State adds a wrinkle, though. There's no charismatic leader, just an overly powerful individual in the organization that the institution's leadership fears to piss off and defers to, in service of a larger-than-life personality and a decades-long tradition (and billions of dollars in revenue).

Other schools, from the tiniest colleges to Penn State's peers in the category of oversized land-grant universities, must have dynamics like this going on. Since "going to Abilene" isn't exactly apt, I humbly suggest a new phrase for dealing with university sports-program groupthink: Going to Happy Valley.

Throw Joe Paterno under the bus

So the Paterno family is rejecting the Freeh Report, a document the production of which was headed by a former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and which involved combing over literally millions of communications and hundreds of personal interviews to determine who knew what and when they knew it. Instead, the Paterno family, like O.J. Simpson, has vowed to launch their own investigation to find the real harborer of child rapists at Penn State.

I humbly suggest that the Paterno family needs to shut up and enjoy the proceeds of JoePa's ill-gotten estate. Or, even better, they should throw dear old dad under the bus (suggest: "We're horrified that Joe -- we won't even call him our father any more, but 'Mr. Paterno' -- allowed Jerry Sandusky to rape those children. We're shocked and saddened at the Freeh report and have nothing of substance to add to its almost certainly true and correct findings") and donate the Penn State contract settlement money to a charity that addresses child sexual abuse (suggest: "We've calculated that about $6 million in cash of Mr. Paterno's estate derives directly from his work at Penn State, and we are presenting a check today in that amount to RAINN, on the express condition that they do not name any funds, buildings, or legislative initiatives after Mr. Paterno. P.S. We are never speaking to the media again").

I mean, you are allowed to throw a family member under the bus, even your dad. When your dad protects, allows, and even enables child rape for years, you are allowed to throw him under the bus. You don't even have to wait until he dies.

Scaling up: Allentown School District versus Penn State

The Allentown (Penna.) School District has settled a lawsuit by agreeing to pay $825,000 to 4 plaintiffs who alleged that a 12-year-old boy sexually assaulted them at school, by getting them alone in bathrooms and then attacking them. The lawsuit asserts that the school's response to complaints about the boy, who leaders at the school knew had a troubled history, was "wholly inadequate" (WPVI-TV).

How much does that kind of settlement translate to the Penn State situation, where a predator with a known troubled history assaulted victims in bathrooms (Harrisburg Patriot-News)? How should it scale? Keep in mind that Jerry Sandusky was some 40 years older than his victims; his victims numbered 10 (at a minimum; that was the number in the criminal case); and Sandusky's rapes took place over years, if not decades, while the Allentown assaults spanned only a few months (PDF, p. 2).

The Allentown School District had an operating budget surplus of some $10 million in FY 2010-11 (PDF, see the school district's Finance Reports page); and its FY 2011-12 operating budget contemplates revenues of nearly $260 million (PDF). As I've mentioned before, Penn State has an endowment of over $1.5 billion (PDF); and its proposed FY 2012-13 operating budget contemplates general funds income of nearly $2 billion (PDF, see Schedules I and III).

How much should Penn State pay Sandusky's victims? How should Penn State scale up the Allentown School District's $825,000 for 4 victims to Sandusky's 10? Should it matter that there's a distinguishing factor here, that is, that the perpetrator in Allentown was another minor student, whereas Sandusky was an adult employee, or at least a colleague? Because that said, both institutions were mandatory reporters, whether literally or through the Clery Act, and both failed miserably in their legal duties -- not to mention their moral duties.

An apologia for avoiding an "inhumane result" in Sandusky's case

Philly.com op-ed by Drexel Law prof Daniel Filler fails to use the term "child rape" to discuss what Jerry Sandusky did and what Joe Paterno, Graham Spanier, Gary Schultz, Tim Curley, and others (including the campus rent-a-cops) at Penn State failed to report to the police and the federal government:

But there is another lesson to be learned from this horrible story, and it's time we acknowledged it. Penn State's administrators might have buried the charges against Sandusky partly because our national anxiety about sexual abuse has resulted in a lattice of laws so toxic that people are afraid to report it. Although Penn State officials may have wanted Sandusky to stop, they also may have feared the overwhelming consequences of reporting the crime.

Oh, wah, wah, wah! Mike McQueary saw Sandusky raping a boy in the shower, and his bosses "feared the consequences"?

There's no doubt that Penn State administrators were trying to protect the university and its football program. But they were also trying to protect Sandusky and themselves from the tsunami that would follow. I take Spanier at his alleged word that he feared an inhumane result. He isn't alone: Some recent research suggests that some prosecutors shape their charging and plea-bargaining decisions to moderate the effects of current laws.

Here's where, if I were worse at my rhetoric, I'd say that I wish prosecutors seeking to moderate the effects of current laws would get child-raped themselves. But I don't wish that, really I don't. I don't even wish child rape on law school professors. What I'll do instead is point out that a law school professor would have ridiculed me for not distinguishing between a case where the result is "inhumane" and child rapist Jerry Sandusky's case.

An "inhumane result," as even the Georgia Supreme Court figured out, was Marcus Dixon's, where prosecutors won a conviction and a 10-year sentence on an 18-year-old charged with felony aggravated child molestation, rather than misdemeanor statutory rape, for having sex with his 15-year-old girlfriend, and guess which one of the couple was white and which was African-American. Here, McQueary witnessed Sandusky raping a child in the shower in 2002, when Sandusky was 57 and his victim about 10. Sandusky remained unindicted for another 9 years and unconvicted until a year after that. Which is the "inhumane result" now?


Former president of Pennsylvania State University Graham "don't want to be inhumane, you understand" Spanier in 2003, 2 years after he learned that Jerry Sandusky was a child rapist but did not report the rape to police.

I've got a lot of friends and colleagues, and, you know, I'm not the president of a university with a very important football team, but I have to think that if I learned that a friend or colleague of mine were raping children, I'd report their ass to the police. But, hey, maybe that's a particular character trait of mine that explains why I've never been able to claw my way to the top of a Big 10 school with an endowment of over $1.5 billion (PDF). I've never been a law school professor, either.

Media starting to notice Pennsylvania's little mass disenfranchisement problem

Today's Daily News offers up an unsigned editorial warning that over three quarters of a million registered, otherwise eligible voters will be disenfranchised in November if the courts decline to block the Commonwealth's voter ID law. The editorial goes on to assert that this was almost undoubtedly the GOP's plan from the get-go:

According to figures released a few hours before the July 4 holiday, 758,939 registered Pennsylvania voters don't have a Pennsylvania driver's license or alternative PennDOT identification. That's 9.2 percent of Pennsylvania's 8.2 million voters. In urban Philadelphia, a full 18 percent of registered voters -- 186,830 -- do not have PennDOT-issued ID.

[ ... ] Compare that to the claim by Secretary of the Commonwealth Carol Aichele, repeated without documentation for months before and after the passage of the law, that just 1 percent of Pennsylvania voters (a not-insignificant 82,000 citizens) do not already have acceptable ID.

[ ... ] Aichele and [Governor Tom] Corbett also have long ignored the fact that there is no hard, or even soft, evidence of a need for a law preventing voter impersonation in this state or others. In fact, a group of Republican lawyers could document only 400 voter-fraud cases in the entire country over a decade, less than one case per state per year.

[ ... ] A couple weeks ago, [Pennsylvania House majority leader Mike] Turzai [R-PA 28] let the truth slip out. In bragging about the law to the state Republican committee, he crowed that it "is going to allow . . . [Mitt] Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania."

I'm blogging infrequently and I'm a voice in the wilderness, but I told you so. And when I was telling you so, why wasn't the Daily News demanding proof from Aichele? Her statements were like a live-action Wikipedia [citation needed]. November is going to be horrible.

Obamacarization

I would go into some in-depth analysis of the Obamacare decision, but really my questions all just boil down to: How will the decision affect the level of heartburn I have almost daily as I try to figure out how to pay my household and office bills this month?

Lynn and Sandusky parallels

As you may have heard, verdicts on 2 big cases just came down in Pennsylvania. While former Penn State football coach Jerry Sandusky was convicted of 45 counts ranging from inappropriate behavior to outright child rape, former Philadelphia Archdiocese cardinal's aide -- executive assistant, I guess -- William Lynn was convicted of just 1 count of child endangerment.

Both of these child predator cases involved decades of known criminal behavior and cover-ups ranging from negligent non-reporting to intentional hiding and destruction of documentation. The circumstances surrounding Sandusky's case include possible Clery Act violations, and more than one federal investigation is continuing. (Imagine Penn State losing its federal financial aid funding!) Lynn's case involved a list of abusers that the cardinal ordered destroyed but that one person, in a half-assed, ineffective gesture of minimal concern for the abused children, retained in a secret, locked location for years.

I bring up the Clery Act (text: flip down to subsection (f)) because it effectively makes school administrators "mandatory reporters" of campus crimes and creates a paperwork parallel between the Sandusky and Lynn cases. McQueary's statements to Paterno and the campus police guy should have gone onto paper and become part of the crime log and annual statistics, even if the head of campus police decided it didn't need to go to local law enforcement. And the list that Bevilacqua got should have gone to the parishes, not into a shredder as he ordered. I mean, let's be clear: Bevilacqua should have sent the list to law enforcement; but at the very least parish leadership should have had the information that they were being asked to welcome child rapists into their midst.

Here's Philadelphia D.A. and noted Catholic Seth Williams's take on the Lynn result:



("This should be a lesson, victims of sexual assault need to report the crime [to] law enforcement...not only to the institution that victimized them." Or, as The Onion put it, "Nation's 10-Year-Old Boys: 'If You See Someone Raping Us, Please Call The Police.'")

I'm not a fan of the victim-blaming phrasing in the first part of Williams's statement, but I agree with the overall message, and for both cases. In the face of obfuscation, denial, and vigorous legal defense of child abuse scandals in Massachusetts, Canada, Ireland, and Australia since the 1930s and earlier [1], pedophile priest victims and their advocates cannot reasonably conclude that the Church will ever go to the least trouble of trying to bring the abusers in its house to secular justice. But more than that, outside of church abuse situations, victims need to go to law enforcement way outside of their rapists' organizations. McQueary should have gone to the actual police, not the campus rent-a-cops, when he saw that nobody was looking to have Sandusky arrested for the child rape he witnessed and reported. Clearly, the campus cops are too intertwined with the school administration to act as disinterested law enforcement. I'm not saying that the Penn State campus police should be disbanded and replaced with local and state patrols, but I'm saying that the Penn State campus police should be disbanded and replaced with local and state patrols. What else do you do with a pile of cops whose response to a report of child rape is to ignore federal reporting requirements and merely ban the accused from a single facility?

Which was still better than the Church response. Here's my take on the parallels between the Lynn and Sandusky results:

If Penn State were the Philadelphia Archdiocese, Sandusky would have been quietly shipped parish to parish until he died (maybe in repentance), Paterno would have died peacefully in his sleep at home (oh, wait), and McQueary would have been a low-level church bureaucrat left to take the fall on a two-bit child endangerment conviction.

As one of the Sandusky victim parents said, no one wins. Because even that said, Penn State football will go on this fall and Paterno's estate is likely judgment-proof since the man met his own legal reporting duties, and the Vatican is continuing to hand out mealy-mouthed fake apologies and fight civil liability awards tooth and nail.

Maybe the Vatican wins.

What's killed me throughout both of these cases is the staggering number of people who knew what was going on and said nothing. Note that I don't say "must have known." I'm asserting that people actually knew that Sandusky was raping children and Lynn was a participant in Philadelphia archdiocesean cover-ups, and that these people didn't do anything. I wonder what really made McQueary so shaky and upset after he went to Paterno. Was it witnessing Sandusky raping a child in the shower, or was it having to be a whistleblower against a campus full of people who would riot and destroy property after Paterno was fired for failing to properly deal with (read: report, follow up, expose, fire) a child rapist in his organization?

And finally, if you were surprised that Sandusky's son is also a victim, you're part of the Penn State and Catholic Church problem. And that's not 20/20 hindsight. That's a reasonable interpretation of the facts when a man and his wife have no biological children but have adopted half a dozen boys and fostered other boys from a charity he founded for at-risk boys. (And the man fails a background check for an ordinary volunteer coaching job.) The parents I know who foster and adopt at-risk kids don't select by gender -- except for the molester who adopted my mom, choosing her specifically rather than the brother just a year older than her.

---

[1] Here, have some low-hanging fruit.

Bisy backson

I would be posting more, but the school year ended (so I'm hanging with my daughter and not sitting at my desk much longer than I have to most days), and I'm making barely enough to pay my office rent (so I'm spending a lot of time looking for paying work or a full-time job rather than poking around looking for outrageous news to write about).

Though I hate "sorry I haven't been blogging" posts, um, sorry I haven't been blogging.

Also, Blogger's new interface is just lousy and does not encourage me to write.

Cutting childcare subsidies costs money in the short- and long-term, California edition

[Former employee of a non-profit organization Clarissa] Doutherd, who lives in Oakland, Calif., with her 4-year old son Xavier, had been able to cover the nearly $1,000 monthly child care bill thanks to a state subsidy that helps lower-income working parents. The support disappeared after budget cutbacks last year.

"In June, I had to quit my full-time job," after her salary was insufficient to cover her child care costs, she said. "I was on the brink of being able to pay the full cost, just another raise away from being completely self-sufficient" (MSNBC).

I love a good cliché, and the one that works best here is "penny-wise, pound-foolish." How much money is the state of California saving by cutting childcare subsidies? Better to ask, how much income is the state losing? Now that California forced Ms. Doutherd to quit a full-time job where she was expecting a raise, the state treasury is no longer receiving from her . . .

• Income tax, which would likely have gone up with her raise
• Sales tax, to the tune of 8.75% minus Oakland's cut, on purchases other than groceries, medicines, etc.
• Tolls, which finance road construction and seismic retrofitting of bridges

I don't know exactly how much her subsidy was, but it was something less than $1,000 per month. Clearly, she probably wasn't paying $1,000 per month in taxes. But let's say that she was, or that the state was actually spending that full amount, while keeping in mind that a 4-year-old kid won't require full-time daycare for much longer. For $1,000 per month, the state of California was helping her earn, save, and spend money, keeping it moving around and working for her and for the businesses and services she used. It was allowing her to maintain and even build her skills, and spend time with her colleagues and professional peers. It was helping her "bank" time at her job so that she'd get seniority and earn a raise. The other side of that coin: the non-profit organization employer was guarding some institutional memory, and thus was better able to use its state tax-exempt status to the benefit of its constituents in the state, by avoiding turnover in her accounting job. And the state was moving money to the federal government in the form of income and social security taxes -- the federal government loses some taxes now, and Ms. Doutherd will have a number of months or years where she won't be putting money into her own social security for later. And more, the state was helping Xavier get pre-school enrichment and socialization outside of the home that will help him when he enters kindergarten or first grade, particularly if the program he was in was something like Head Start (PDF), (PDF).

How long will Ms. Doutherd's household make it before she needs to apply for food stamps, utilities aid, subsidized housing, or some other assistance? Luckily for her, the article appears to state, she has just the one kid, and at age 4 he'll be in full-time school sometime soon. Until then, the household will be treading water and doing absolutely nothing to rebuild the state or national economy, all to save the state under $1,000 a month, on the back of a single mother. Great job, California!

Twelve versus seventy

Today in job search news, my anecdotal, unscientifically tested impression lately is that open job positions either pay $12.00 per hour, or require 70 hours per week and a resumé with about 15 fewer years on it than mine has. There is no in between, there is no happy medium, there is no reasonable option for a mid-career professional.

I don't want to go so far as to say that I never should have gone to law school; but right now that diploma looks less like a career-boosting, life-changing credential, and more like $150,000 worth of mental masturbation. And not that I'm totally against mental masturbation -- my long-term, post-childrearing plans include pursuing a Ph.D. -- but right now I'd prefer to be getting some regular cash.

Speaking of which, couple of paying tasks today, so I'm off to get to work.

And again with the voter ID issue

Did you notice that all but one of the plaintiffs in ACLU-PA's lawsuit against Pennsylvania's voter ID law are women?

If you are an otherwise voting-eligible woman in Pennsylvania, check your wallet. Does the name on your poll-acceptable ID match the name under which you're registered to vote? There is a one in three chance that it does not. If not, start the ball rolling now to fix the situation. Either change your voter registration to match your driver's license exactly, or get a new driver's license so that it matches your voter registration exactly. If you need a birth certificate to get a new driver's license, request one immediately. It can take 14 weeks (not a typo) to get it, and that's even if the state complies with the request: ACLU-PA's petition includes a plaintiff who has been requesting a birth certificate multiple times over several years but hasn't gotten an answer.

This is a 19th Amendment problem because it disenfranchises women overwhelmingly, denying them at a rate of potentially one in three their right to vote -- to the obvious satisfaction of Governor Corbett and the state GOP. This is a 19th Amendment problem that none of the civil liberties lawyers groups is addressing as such. It's up to you.

Forty-two years on

4 May 1970:

As they arrived at the top of the hill, twenty-eight of the more than seventy Guardsmen turned suddenly and fired their rifles and pistols. Many guardsmen fired into the air or the ground. However, a small portion fired directly into the crowd. Altogether between 61 and 67 shots were fired in a 13 second period. [ ... ] Four Kent State students died as a result of the firing by the Guard.

To understand who came looking for a riot, see who came dressed for a riot. When a protest situation gets out of control, you have to ask, every time, who did the escalating? Who brought in horses? Who is carrying pistols? Who is using billy clubs? Who is wearing military- and SWAT-style protective gear like helmets, body armor, body shields? Who arrived in a Blackwater armored vehicle? Who brought a panjandrum to a knife fight?

Honestly, I think the only reason we're not getting murders like this with Occupy events is that the actual National Guard is in Iraq and Afghanistan right now, instead of staying stateside to help evacuate cities during hurricanes and stuff.

GOP to women: You can pay your student loans, or you can have pap smears

The House will vote Friday to extend current rates on federally funded college loans for one year, Speaker John Boehner announced on Wednesday in what is seen as an attempt to blunt President Barack Obama's momentum on an issue popular with young voters.

Boehner said the extension will be paid for with funds from the Affordable Care Act, the Obama administration's signature health-care law. [...]

The Republican proposal [...] covers the $5.9 billion cost by dipping into a fund in the Affordable Care Act called The Prevention and Public Health Fund. According to health.gov, the fund is intended to promote wellness, prevent disease and protect against public health emergencies (CNN).

Specifically, the GOP proposal uses funds earmarked for cervical and breast cancer screenings to pay for extending the lowered rates. Got that, college-educated women? This is what the GOP thinks of you. They beg the question that money for the extension has to come out of the Affordable Care Act to begin with, as opposed to any other government program or billionaires' tax loophole. And then after deciding that the ACA is totally the best place out of the federal budget to seek funding, they zero in and go directly after what they call a "slush fund" for women's preventive healthcare.

My "portfolio" of law school loans includes one federally subsidized loan. Doubling the interest rate on that loan would increase my monthly payment by about $25, for an added $300 per year. At least the GOP's math is right: that's about the same cost as one pap smear and one mammogram.

Little old lady unable to get Pennsylvania poll-approved ID

And this year's mass disenfranchisement of Pennsylvanian women begins:

[A] 91-year-old grandmother [went] to a PennDot office, looking for a photo ID so she could keep her 70-year voting record intact.

Joyce Block of Doylestown Township is such a dedicated voter that [Doylestown Borough Council President Det] Ansinn took her from the hospital in a wheelchair to vote in 2010 because she couldn't get an absentee ballot.

She has an old voter registration card with her married name, but she has never had a driver's license.

Block had all the documents on the Department of State checklist - birth certificate and Social Security card, both with her maiden name; her marriage certificate; deed to her house; Peco bills; plus her IRS refund check.

That wasn't enough to satisfy PennDot, Ansinn said.

Her Hebrew marriage license was rejected because the PennDot worker couldn't read Hebrew.

And the deed and Peco bill were rejected because they had her married name, not her maiden name.

The state worker suggested she take legal action to switch the ownership of her home to her maiden name, which she hasn't used in 60 years. Then, maybe, she will be allowed to vote in the November election (Inky).

Emphasis added. Women in photo ID states, check your wallets! And make time now to obtain a poll-acceptable ID -- the process can take weeks, or even longer if your only option, as is evidently the case with Ms. Block, is to modify the deed to your home.

No, really: a huge number of women will be disenfranchised in November

Another 8 weeks, another job interview scheduled.

Add to my previous dataset the new statistic that this will be for a "J.D. preferred" job, not an actual attorney position. With an accordingly dismal salary expectation.

But back to photo ID requirements for voters. Current lawsuits challenging voter ID laws are attacking them via the 14th and 24th Amendments or as a Voting Rights Act problem. But you know what would be neat? Since one third of American women do not possess a piece of ID that meets the requirements of these photo ID laws (PDF), it would be really neat to see a disenfranchised woman or class of women bring a § 1983 action against one or more of the states enacting the voter ID laws, on the grounds that it deprives them of their 19th Amendment right to vote regardless of sex.

Barring a massive "get your female voting friends and family to the DMV" awareness-raising effort, in some states one third of the female electorate will be disenfranchised in November. That is an outrageously huge fraction, and it will be a huge number standing alone. I'm actually really surprised that no one is pursuing this issue as an unconstitutional sex discrimination problem. But what do I know? I'm just an unemployed lawyer.

Friday jukebox: Syd Straw

Seven schools in seven states and the only thing different is my locker combination.

Women will be disenfranchised this November

Have been keeping myself busy with non-paying work, a couple of trips up and down the Northeast Corridor, and academic politics. My most recent stabs at employment in a venue where someone else would cut my paychecks have gotten nowhere. I've been advised by a very interested party to simply take the J.D. off my resumé. However, as the advice did not include any correlating advice as to what to do with the 3 school years and 2+ underemployed years that would then go "missing" off the resumé, I've so far declined to follow it.

In the meantime, we appear to have a definite GOP nominee for president. Bizarrely, some polls are putting him at a dead heat against President Obama. Did the poll-takers not speak to any women at all?

Speaking of which, women voters in photo-ID states need to beware, and they need to beware fast. Fully one third of American women over 18 do not possess a valid photo ID, one that the pollworkers will accept, reflecting their legal name (3-page PDF), mostly for marriage or divorce reasons. Pennsylvania just enacted a voter ID law that will permit ID-less voters at the primary election next week, but will disenfranchise people without photo ID in November. The process can take weeks because of documentation requirements, and the rule in November will be strict.

This is going to be huge. You think the ACORN debacle was stupid? Do you want to take a stab at what the 2-digit percentage will be of women across the country who won't be allowed to vote for president in November?

-tap tap-

Is this thing on?

Komen link round-up; local protest later today

Richer, smarter, and funnier minds than mine have explained why it's stupid for Susan G. Komen for the Cure to politicize women's healthcare by ending grants to Planned Parenthood that provide breast screenings to underserved American women. In short, cancer prevention activities make up some 16% of the patient care Planned Parenthood delivers, compared to 3% for abortion services. Math from figures in a Bloomberg Businessweek article indicates to me that Planned Parenthood used Komen grant money to provide about 172,000 breast exams in the past 5 years ("Komen grants paid for about 4.3 percent of the 4 million breast exams and 9 percent of the 70,000 mammogram referrals provided at Planned Parenthood clinics in the past five years, Planned Parenthood said"). That's not a whole lot of exams -- 34,000 per year -- and it was probably not even 172,000 individual women. But it's 172,000 exams that wouldn't have taken place without the grants, and it's 172,000 encounters with women who got some education on breast cancer prevention and detection.

Komen says they're "dedicated to the fight against breast cancer in the world." They need to add the qualifier, unless the service reaches you through Planned Parenthood.

EDIT: Word on the street is that there is a fundraiser for the Philadelphia Komen affiliate today at the Cescaphé Ballroom, 932 North 2nd Street, and that activists will gather at 5:30 p.m. to urge the affiliate to join those in Denver and Connecticut in telling the national organization that it sucks to politicize women's public health.

Contract with America evolves: contract on whistleblowers

Newt Gingrich says his best-case scenario is that next January he'll walk from the inauguration ceremony to the Oval Office and sign the repeal of Sarbanes-Oxley (MSNBC video, skip to 9:05).

Dude's candidacy gets hilariouser and hilariouser.

Stats on looking for work

My job application-to-interview ratio seems to be about 6:1. I'm on track to apply for 72 jobs this year and interview for 6.

By "apply" I mean carefully select positions that interest me, that I appear qualified for, that I reasonably believe I have a good chance of getting, and that I make a good-faith effort to tweak my resume and compose a solid cover letter for. I don't mean shotgunning: shotgunning my resume out to all the lawyering positions I see on craigslist takes away time from my law practice. Which has at least been paying my office rent for a few months now.

Stats from this week's job interview: There were 3 interviewees (including myself), and it'll be about 4 weeks before they make their hiring decision.

Who is Jessica Buchanan?

Who is Jessica Buchanan, and what about her caused the President to give the go-ahead for a Super Special Black Ops Navy Seals operation to kill nearly a dozen militant pirates to get her out of Somalia yesterday, just before the State of the Union address?

Maybe she's this Jessica Buchanan.

EDIT: Or maybe not. Later news reports say that she's local, a student at Valley Forge Christian College (CNN). I'd guessed the Buchanan in the LinkedIn profile based on age and work in the Middle East.

Excitotoxins!

"Excitotoxins"? This is my word of the day. My made-up word of the day:

Don't you have to cook grains in order to get their nutritional benefit?

This question presupposes that grains such as rice, wheat, barley, and oats are helpful to the body's nutrition. Actually, they are not. The fact that they must be cooked to be edible is the first clue that something is wrong with them. They are bland to the taste and are virtually inedible without salt, spices, and condiments, the deadly "excitotoxins". Grains are acid forming in a body that needs to be slightly alkaline. Many people have substituted cooked grains in place of meat in their diet, and as a consequence, have shown a marked reduction in cardiovascular disease. However, because cooked grains create a condition known as acid toxemia, these same people will instead, suffer from a higher risk of arthritis and cancer. Cooked grains also contain opioids (which are addictive), cause daily mood swings, and contribute significantly to obesity.

As the joke goes, [citation needed]. Christ, why can't I look up some information about growing bean sprouts at home without being associated with looney-tunes raw foodists? (I recently started up again, after having quit since renouncing my former life as a hippie. All the internet research I can find indicates that the beans I'm sprouting are so old that they shouldn't be sprouting. But three dinner guests and my ravenous daughter found differently this weekend.)

Further on in the FAQ:

Too much fat will thicken the blood

Oh, man, that line brings just one thing to mind:

Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full
Of direst cruelty! make thick my blood;
Stop up the access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
The effect and it! Come to my woman's breasts,
And take my milk for gall, you murd'ring ministers,
Wherever in your sightless substances
You wait on nature's mischief! Come, thick night,
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,
Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,
To cry "Hold, hold!"

Crazy-making

I think it bears repeating that being un- or under-employed is incredibly stressful. I have a great undocumented, unofficial safety net of friends, family, and a partner who buys my groceries; but that's all it is, a safety net. I'm not building reserves. And I've had to accumulate debt on my credit card again because last month I had an only somewhat expected, but totally uninsured loss at my home.

A news item the other day mentioned that women are more likely than men to experience mental illness (MSNBC). How is this report surprising? When you jump through the right hoops, you do all you're supposed to do -- I put myself through law school so that I could double or triple my administrative professional's salary and show my daughter a better life -- and you get jack for it. What kind of jack? I serve on a volunteer committee with a guy who graduated below me in my law school class, who can't figure out how to calendar meetings on the iPad his Biglaw job gave him and who can't meet a deadline to save his life, and yet I'm the one who knows that, right now, I have $68.17 in the bank. This guy takes home six figures a year from his office; in my office, I get asked for free advice on how to legally force a grant-making foundation to give money to an organization that hasn't even applied for its determination letter yet.

I applied for dozens of jobs in 2011, landed a half-dozen interviews, and made less money in the past two years than a relative of mine spent in six weeks to finish their basement.

My friend Bee Lavender on American poverty and the lack of will on the part of political leadership to address it:

[E]normous numbers of people are forced into bankruptcy because of the egregious and parasitic [health] insurance industry. Others are trapped in jobs and relationships that restrict their aspirations, usefulness, and profitability, because they need the insurance. Health care reform hasn't happened in a fashion useful to me, and I very much doubt that it will in my lifetime. Not for lack of need, or care, but because the political will does not exist.

But instead of talking about the reality of poverty, and what it means to be poor, we get to hear presidential candidates shit talk our brothers and sisters, wives, husbands, children.

They say we're poor because we're lazy. I say I've never met a lazy poor person, though I have met quite a few rich people who lie and cheat and steal.

The esteemed Republican presidential candidate does not seem to grasp some basic concepts about life, work, or economics. Repealing child labor laws would certainly not have helped me as a child (my absenteeism being the result of cancer, not a bad attitude). My parents were already forced by necessity to take any job on offer, no matter how demeaning or low paid.

My dad is a janitor; Gingrich says we should fire janitors and make kids do the job. I would like to ask him what my father is meant to do? He is sixty-two years old, and has the best job he can find. If he loses it, there is no alternative career path.

This is crazy-making. In the face of ad-hominem attacks from politicians who blame the poor for their condition, and yell "look, Elvis!" to successfully draw the media's attention away from government policies that allow incomprehensibly high corporate profits to go untaxed while social services, public education, and the nation's infrastructure crumble, it's enough to make an un- or under-employed person crazy.

Of course Gingrich's daughters are defending him

The CNN blog headline reads, "Gingrich's daughters defend him ahead of ABC interview with ex-wife." I was going to make a comment along the lines of, well, of course they're defending him. It's perfectly reasonable for a man's children to stick up for him. Parents generally treat their offspring very different from the way they treat a spouse, and no child shares the perspective, knowledge, and experience of a spouse when a marital relationship goes kablooey. So I was going to say, you know, I imagine my daughter would defend her dad ahead of a television interview with me, just as Gingrich's daughters are defending him as against one of his ex-wives; but that statement would seem to equate my ex-husband with Newt Gingrich. And no matter how smelly the dirty laundry is between me and my ex-husband, I would never dream of equating or even comparing him to Newt Gingrich. After all, my ex-husband never asked me to open up our marriage, or cheated on me with someone 23 years younger than he is (as far as I know), or discussed divorce proceedings with me while I was in the hospital, or brought legislation destroying the welfare state to the sitting Democratic President for his signature.

When abortions are illegal, women still get abortions

. . . and they get more of them. A study, published in The Lancet, covered the years 1995 to 2008 found:

Abortion rates were lowest in Western Europe -- 12 per 1,000 -- and highest in Eastern Europe -- 43 per 1,000. The rate in North America was 19 per 1,000. Sedgh said she and colleagues found a link between higher abortion rates and regions with more restrictive legislation, such as in Latin America and Africa. They also found that 95 to 97 percent of abortions in those regions were unsafe[, defined as] any procedure done by people lacking needed skills or in places that don't meet minimal medical standards.

The researchers' conclusion: "It is precisely where abortion is illegal that it must become safer," and providing education and birth control universally will go a long, long way.

The full text of the study is available free with registration at The Lancet's website.

Gruesome, public Center City suicide mostly unreported

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Who signed it?

Looking at the credentials I've hung on my wall -- B.A. diploma, J.D. diploma, certificate admitting me to the bar of Pennsylvania -- I see that every last signature on them is that of an older white man. My other credentials, too; everything going back to my high-school diploma and all the academic awards between is signed by only older white men. It makes me feel that I've earned my credentials not because of those signatures but in spite of them.

Doesn't help that, last night, after I dispensed about $300 worth of legal advice and business counseling to a non-profit organization, an older white man took me aside and gave me spontaneous, unsolicited advice on how to drum up business.

Anyway, as to the anti-SOPA website blackouts -- you know President Obama said two days ago that he won't sign the SOPA bill, right?