Obsidian Wings

In A World Beyond Parody...

by hilzoy

From AFP (h/t Bilerico):

"Santas in Australia's largest city have been told not to use Father Christmas's traditional "ho ho ho" greeting because it may be offensive to women, it was reported Thursday.

Sydney's Santa Clauses have instead been instructed to say "ha ha ha" instead, the Daily Telegraph reported.

One disgruntled Santa told the newspaper a recruitment firm warned him not to use "ho ho ho" because it could frighten children and was too close to "ho", a US slang term for prostitute."

Look: it would be one thing if there were corpulent men in red suits wandering around Australia saying "Bitch bitch bitch!" (On reflection, there probably are.) But this is ridiculous.

Choose Your Own Adventure

by Katherine

(Note: In response to commenters' requests (thanks, guys) I'm promoting this response to Patterico's hypothetical about torture, which I posted last night.  I've edited for grammar, & in one case--the bit about Abu Ghraib & its relationship to the CIA torture program--for factual precision.)

No, the waterboarding session was not worth it.

The CIA officers charged with waterboarding KSM, lacking the knowledge that everything would turn out so swimmingly, would demand assurances from their boss that they could not go to jail for this. Their boss, & his boss, would ask the Justice Department to assure them that they would not go to jail. In order to tell them that they wouldn't go to jail, the Justice Department would have to write a memo falsely concluding that: (1) terrorism suspects were not protected by any portion of the Geneva Conventions, & the war crimes act did not apply; (2) waterboarding (& such other "enhanced interrogation technqiues" as the CIA would deem necessary) was not torture.

As a result of those memos, CIA agents would torture many other prisoners, and kill several of them, including some who were not high level members of Al Qaeda & whose torture & death did not save a single life. In order to justify what they had done & avoid liability, they would cover up the evidence of this. They would also make false and exaggerated claims about how the program was necessary, how many lives had been saved by torture.

The techniques--not waterboarding, so much, but many of the others--would spread to the military. In some cases, it would be because the Secretary of Defense thought it would be convenient not to have the Geneva Conventions apply to terror suspects in military custody, & to have authorization to use "enhanced interrogation technqiues" to abuse prisoners. After all, were America's brave soldiers lives less valuable than civilians? In other cases it would be because members of the military stationed with the CIA saw what CIA agents could do to prisoners: a guard at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, say, might come into work one night & notice that a CIA agent had tortured a prisoner to death & left his body paced in ice in the shower while higher ups fought about what to do with the evidence. The guard might unzip the body bag, take some pictures with corpse. It might not be the first time the guard had seen a CIA interrogator torture a prisoner. It might assure him that if the CIA could get away with killing a guy, surely he & his friends on the night shift could continue to have some fun with the prisoners, & continue to take some pictures.

Soldiers would torture many, many, many prisoners--in Afghanistan, in Guantananmo, in Iraq. Some of them would be tortured to death. Some of those tortured would be innocent.

The people tortured would make false confessions, which whether they were guilty or not would lead to them being detained for years without charge or trial. Their false confessions would lead to other arrests, and more torture, and more false confessions. Intelligence would be led down God knows how many blind alleys, resulting in the torture of God knows how many, the imprisonment of God knows how many more.

The results would be downright bizarre sometimes. We'd not only imprison & torture innocents--we'd imprison & torture guys we captured in a Taliban prison bearing scars from torture by high level al Qaeda members; one of whom Osama Bin Laden had personally accused of trying to assassinate him in 1998. We'd keep one of them in prison in Guantanamo for the better part of 5 years; another for 6 and counting despite the fact that he kept trying to kill himself.

The administration wouldn't be able to admit that this happened; it would have to classify as much as the evidence as it could, for as long as it could. It would have to keep the courts from examining the legality of these techniques, & push laws through Congress immunizing itself from prosecution, & ensure that the Justice Department remained in the hands of lawyers who would continue to falsely claim that everything had been legal; who would never investigate; who would never prosecute. Members of the President's party would have to support "enhanced interrogation" & pretend it wasn't torture; otherwise they would be admitting that a President in their party had participated in a conspiracy to commit war crimes.

But they wouldn't be able to keep it all secret; the world would find out. It would destroy our reputation, & make it impossible for us to credibly pressure other countries not to torture people or detain them indefinitely based on a bare allegation that they were terrorists or national security threats. It would help drive recruiting for Al Qaeda. It would help seal the failure of our invasion of Iraq.

I suppose you could add a bunch of other stipulations to your hypothetical to prevent these things from happening: these techniques would be practiced only against the highest level suspects, in a few prisons. They would be restricted to trained, professional, carefully selected CIA agents. It would only be used to prevent attacks when there was no other possible way to stop them. We would never torture innocents. We would never torture anyone to death. You could stipulate that, but it just makes the hypothetical even more of an irrelevant fantasy. In real life, this happened. In real life, it always happens when a country experiments with torture: it always spreads, it always leads to innocents being tortured, it never saves more lives than it destroys. In real life, a government who promises that this time it will be different is either lying, or kidding itself.

You should trust a government claiming it needs to torture exactly as much as you should trust a terrorist leader explaining why it needs kill just a few civilians (or a few dozen, or a few hundred), in order to save hundreds of thousands of Muslim children from death and slavery. I could make up a hypothetical where a suicide bombing prevented more evil than it inflicted & saved more people than it killed; would that show that opponents of terrorism just don't understand the moral complexity of it all?

More on Torture Hypotheticals Part I

This is NOT my substantive response to Patterico's continued discussion on the torture issue.  This is my response only to some theoretical matters.  I hope to have a more substantive response with concrete examples late in the day Friday.  I need to consult with our resident expert so I don't get my facts wrong.  But for anyone who wants to root around, we have a great archive here.  I also have other writings of my own on the topic here and here.  Please realize that this is a response to Patterico, and I am speaking to him as one conservative to another. 

Patterico's latest post on the topic is here. 

I don’t mean to insult the people here who have answered no. I just happen to think that a “no” answer to my carefully phrased hypo reveals such an incredibly ideological mindset that I can’t relate to it. It’s 2 1/2 minutes of a mild form of torture with no lasting physical effects, performed on an undoubtedly evil terrorist and mass murderer, to obtain information certain to obtain thousands of lives. When someone says that such mild torture would be morally unjustified, that answer to me lacks common sense. And when it’s coupled with a smug self-righteous attitude, — well, I find it insufferable.

This isn't the proper attitude to take on intensely difficult moral questions.  I take my lead from C.S. Lewis who counseled large amounts of humility on such questions.  When you are looking at balancing very important concerns against one another, you should be very careful about assuming that you have found the right balance. 

To take a step back from the torture example think of free speech and political contributions.  The desire for a political field which has vastly less corruption is a right and proper desire.  Unfortunately, some of the methods for controlling that end up being very severe restrictions against free speech.  The desire for free speech is also right and proper.  When these two particular concepts come into conflict, I believe that free speech ought to win for various reasons that I'm not going to articulate again right this moment.  But I recognize that the desire to reduce corruption is a strong and legitimate desire.  I think supporters of McCain-Feingold are wrong, or misguided, or improperly weighing things.  I do not however think that anything negative needs to be said about them on a moral plane just because they don't come to the same balance on interests that I recognize are very important.  This isn't relativism, I'm not saying that if people balanced having a tuna sandwich against free speech that it would be fine.  I'm recognizing that both interests are very important, and that I should be a little bit humble in my understanding of where to strike the proper balance. This is true even if my opponents are being a bit smug about where they strike the balance.  Their attitude doesn't automatically make them wrong. 

My first question to Sebastian is this: what do you think of the opinion of people who would answer that question “no”? What would you say to my commenter “Stace,” who said to me: “If you say yes, you disgust me.”? I bet that is not an uncommon feeling on the left. But, Sebastian, given the assumptions of my hypothetical, isn’t a “no” answer indicative of a highly ideological view of this subject — one that would alienate most of the American public?

I think they are wrong.  But I acknowledge that this is a choice between EVILS and very strong evils at that.  It is difficult for me to stir up much anger that in a choice between evils, not everyone would come to the same choice as me.  As for 'alienate most of the American public' that just isn't relevant to me.  I think that the American public doesn't have super strong views of the subject.  I think that they aren't particularly worked up over torturing actual evil people, but that isn't very relevant to the actual facts.  I suspect (hope?) that if they realized how many factually innocent people were being tortured, they wouldn't be thrilled.

"So if the argument is merely that waterboarding is too significant a decision to entrust to government, because government screws everything up, then I don’t think the argument ultimately prevails."

This may be too complex of an area to go into here, but in short I have a pretty strong libertarian streak and I've seen the perversions of justice that have come about from the drug war (see civil forfeiture, out of control SWAT raids, and search rules that eat away at the 4th amendment).  This is not the kind of power you want the government to have over people.  The ticking bomb scenario doesn't actually occur, so the justification you offer doesn't have force.  We really could use other techniques, and they really have proven to be more effective at eliciting truthful information.  Torture provides an incentive to scream out whatever you think your questioners want to hear.  The relationship between what your questioners want to hear and the truth is tenuous at best.

Sebastian supports his argument by asserting that we have actually tortured innocent people. He doesn’t provide links to any specific cases — and I bet that if he did, it would be to cases where someone claims to have been tortured and the U.S. government denies it — but he may be right. I’m not sure he’s proved it, but he may be right. We have also imprisoned innocent people, waged wars that proved to be a mistake, and made plenty of other errors. I need a better argument than that to deprive government of a tool that might be necessary to save thousands of lives.

While imprisoning people, we go through one of the more complex social structures around.  Through it all, we still make mistakes, but the process can be very exhaustive.  A lack of absolute perfection is not the crux of the argument.  The problem is that the kind of high pressure situation that is always used to justify torture (ticking bomb, imminent threat, near-term plot) is definitionally NOT conducive to exhaustively determining guilt before the torture begins.  Since, as you say, we make mistakes about innocence EVEN AFTER THE EXHAUSTIVE CRIMINAL PROCESS, it is a certainty that torture will be employed against innocents at a much greater rate than is found in imprisoning people.

I'm going to consult with Katherine about who the clearest cases are, but it is a fact that we have already tortured and sent out for torture, innocent people. 

And I find it very plausible in any case, because we know that the police sometimes torture suspects even though they know full well it isn't legal.  See for example the audio of a suspect who was tortured in his home here.  (Yes I know you have issues with Balko.  Just listen to the audio).

In a very conservative vein, I also would like to point out the rather strong formal governmental taboo against torture that has grown up in Western civilization.  Until you can firmly show why it exists, what purpose it serves, and how proposals to legitimize its use in certain situations won't undermine that, I'm not excited about just tearing it down because Bush wants to cry 'national security'.  He's lost the benefit of the doubt. 

Note to commenters here at ObsidianWings:  I know you have strong feelings.  I suspect it would be most effective to channel those feelings into factual discussions rather than nasty rants.  The facts are nasty enough as it is.  You don't have to give people an excuse to avoid looking at the facts by calling them names.    

Demand-Side Torture Support

by publius

It’s hard not to be repulsed by Deroy Murdock’s celebration of waterboarding. But what I’m interested in is how Murdock (and those like him) justify this position in their own minds. I doubt Murdock thinks of himself as an immoral, sadistic person. After all, no one likes to think of themselves as a bad person. Rationalization is a growth industry in that respect. To the extent simple good vs. evil explanations don’t cut it (maybe they do though), this part gets to the heart of it:

Though clearly uncomfortable, waterboarding loosens lips without causing permanent physical injuries (and unlikely even temporary ones). If terrorists suffer long-term nightmares about waterboarding, better that than more Americans crying themselves to sleep after their loved ones have been shredded by bombs or baked in skyscrapers.

You can think of support for torture (including willful blind-eye-ness) as a “supply-side” or a “demand-side” problem. The supply-side explanation is more simplistic. The idea is that many Americans have an overabundance of nativist-inspired cruelty and indifference that manifest in political support for torture. In short, it’s the “Americans are yahoos” theory, exemplified by Inhofe’s infamous “more outraged by the outrage” comment in response to Abu Ghraib. If torture support is simply a matter of excess supply, then we’re all screwed. That’s tough to fix.

But there is hope. It may be that political support for (or indifference to) torture is a problem of excess, inflated demand. When people feel threatened, they can justify doing almost anything – regardless of how heinous it may be. For instance, if someone is trying to kill you, moral limits give way to the more primal urge to survive. (Morality is a luxury located on up the Maslow chain, so to speak).

The problem then is not so much that torture supporters are bad people, but that they are misinformed about the nature of threats facing them. If you think of Muslims as an undifferentiated mass intent on storming our shores and drinking our blood, then torture seems like less of a problem. Similarly, if you think of al Qaeda as an existential threat to world civilization, then torture seems like less of a problem. And finally, if you think the nature of the terrorist threat against us resembles a plot from 24, then torture seems like less of a problem.

But all of these assumptions are wrong. Muslims are – it’s crazy I even have to write this – extremely diverse (ethnically, culturally, economically, religiously, etc.). Al Qaeda (which is a term that often conceals more than describes these days) is not an existential threat. They’re dangerous – but they pale in comparison to Cold War-era nuclear war in terms of threats to humanity. And of course, the series 24 does not reflect reality.

That’s what’s so dangerous about this perpetual state of fear that the Bush administration (and others) cultivate. It inflates demand for immoral action. Think about all the ways that fear is reinforced. The color codes. The conflating of groups like Hezbollah and al Qaeda. The use of “al Qaeda” to refer to any disfavored Iraqi Sunni insurgent group. The exaggeration of the Iranian nuclear threat – and of A-jad’s military power. The endless invocation of 9/11. The demagoguery that meets every attempt to reaffirm the rule of law and our moral values in terrorist-related legislation.

Taken together, these actions create artificial “demand” by making everyone think they’re on the verge of getting killed. And when people see themselves as under assault, they can justify anything. It’s no accident that Murdock invokes the sharp imagery of “baked” and “shredded” Americans. The cynical explanation is that he’s deliberately generating fear to justify abhorrent positions. The less-cynical explanation is that his perception of the threat facing us is simply inaccurate. He – like so many others – are justifying terrible things because they’re seeing monsters in the shadows.

Thus, one part of gaining political support for banning and punishing torture is making sure that Americans are better informed (the media plays a big role here). That’s why it's important to push back on things like Iran demagoguery, or on the conflation of distinct Muslim groups. The misinformation has real consequences. If people think Iran is about to shower us with nuclear missiles, then war makes a lot of sense. If people think the Great Muslim Horde is out to get us, then they’ll care less if we torture innocent people.

Someone once said that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. Well, that's more right than ever. With another war on the horizon, our own fear has – sadly – become a threat to the larger world. But on the bright side, that fear is hopefully something we can correct.

On Torture Hypotheticals--Conservative Perspective

--Sebastian

I've written on the topic before, but a recent post by Patterico convinced me to revisit it.  He hasn't finished all his thoughts on the issue, but I'll jump ahead anyway.  I find him reasonable on most topics, so I thought I would throw in my thoughts.  The presentation of his hypothetical is as follows:

Over the weekend, I asked a question about the morality of waterboarding. It was directed primarily at the self-righteous chest-pounders who like to pretend that the moral issues are easy and obvious — that of course we should never consider waterboarding under any circumstances, no matter how dire. The question was:

Let’s assume the following hypothetical facts are true. U.S. officials have KSM in custody. They know he planned 9/11 and therefore have a solid basis to believe he has other deadly plots in the works. They try various noncoercive techniques to learn the details of those plots. Nothing works.

They then waterboard him for two and one half minutes.

During this session KSM feels panicky and unable to breathe. Even though he can breathe, he has the sensation that he is drowning. So he gives up information — reliable information — that stops a plot involving people flying planes into buildings.

My simple question is this: based on these hypothetical facts, was the waterboarding session worth it?

Further assume that no less coercive tactic would reveal the information.

I am driving at a moral question here. What I really want to know is: do you consider the waterboarding session to have been the most moral choice under the circumstances?

Self-righteous chest-pounders like nosh, Oregonian, and Semanticleo all checked in at this blog since I put up the post. But none of them answered the question.

It wasn’t easy to get people to answer the question. The thread is over 470 comments, and it consists mostly of obfuscation and evasions. But I have gotten answers from many commenters.

I have follow-up questions for the people who answered the question. But before I get too far into the follow-ups, I want to make sure I have all the liberals here on record answering the question. Especially the self-righteous ones like those named above.

I'm sometimes self-righteous (though I try not to be) and I'm not particularly liberal, but since my overall mindset is closer to his, I thought this might be useful. 

My answer to his hypothetical is 'yes, it would have been worth it'.  I know that isn't everyone's answer, and it will probably cause me lots of grief here, but that is mine.  In extreme situations, where you know that the person knows the information, and you need an immediate answer, IF it were effective, I wouldn't shed too many tears over 3 minutes of waterboarding.  (Though I will note that you took an easy route by not positing 6 hours of off and on waterboarding, or 5 days)

That is my answer to the literal hypothetical.  I think torture is wrong, but on a scale of wrongs--in that situation--I'd get over it. 

My answer to what I think lies behind the hypothetical is rather different.  The hypothetical has nothing to do with the discussion of whether or not we (the United States) ought to be torturing people.  One of the key things that conservatives ought to remember (and which we notice all the time in liberal proposals) is that INTENTIONS DO NOT EQUAL OUTCOMES.  The government is horribly incompetent at all sorts of things and we ought not abandon that insight when analyzing proposals of people who allege that they are our allies (the idea that Bush is a conservative ally is something I'd like to argue about on another day--but my short answer is that he isn't).

As with limitations on free speech, I don't trust the government to be able to fairly and nimbly navigate the rules that would be necessary to  make certain that it only used a legal right to torture  when it was the right choice.  Sadly this is no longer a hypothetical question.  In actual practice, we find that Bush's administration has tortured men who not only didn't know anything about what they were being tortured about, but weren't even affiliated with Al Qaeda. 

Let me say that again.  Bush's administration has tortured men who were factually innocent. 

Not men who got off on technicalities.  Factually Innocent. 

Your hypothetical demands that the government be CERTAIN of the following things:

This man is who we think he is.

This man knows what we think he knows.

No non-torture technique will work.

Patterico, you work with the government.  You know for a fact that it gets things wrong all the time.  Even when we go through the huge and complicated process of a trial, it gets things wrong.  And we aren't talking anything like a trial here.  In reality, we are talking about torturing *suspects*.  That is not a power to be given to the government.

Your hypothetical doesn't speak to the question of what the policy of our government ought to be, because no important part of the hypothetical actually has anything to do with the empirical reality of governmental torture.  You pride yourself at not being distracted by stated intentions which have bad consequences in areas like rent control, housing policy, and education policy.  Don't let Bush wave the national security flag and make you forget everything you know about how the government actually operates.   

Why Defend Reagan on Race?

by publius

Let me heartily endorse Krugman and Herbert’s respective takedowns of David Brooks on St. Reagan and race. Even excluding Philadelphia (which shouldn’t be excluded), Reagan’s race-baiting is beyond dispute. It happened too often, for too long, and too systematically. The more interesting question is why modern-day defenders of the Order of St. Reagan (like David Brooks) continue to whitewash it. Why not just say, “Yes, that part was shameful, but that’s not the complete picture.” Let’s just be honest about it.

The answer, I think, hits upon a much larger and more interesting theme. Modern conservatives – the majority of which are certainly not racist – have successfully ignored the racist foundations of much of modern conservative political power and even thought. It’s not so much that the doctrines remain racist today – or that they lack non-racist interpretations. It’s that they are historically rooted in racist backlash. In this respect, Reagan’s dark side is simply one part of a much larger pattern.

The more conventional argument about ignoring race relates to the idea of race as “The Great Contradiction.” Quite literally, since the founding of this country, race has “contradicted” the American ideal. In 1776, we were the slave-holding nation that fought a war for liberty. In 1789, we created the most modern, rationalist, democratic government in history, but one that reduced black people to 3/5 of a person. We erect statues and monuments to great men, who happened to own slaves. In World War II, we rightly fought a war against hideous doctrines, while we tolerated Jim Crow. During the Cold War, we wrapped ourselves in rhetorical cloaks of freedom, while churches burned in Birmingham. Even today, we praise American markets and prosperity, while hurricanes (ever so briefly) force our eyes upon urban black poverty.

This is important stuff, but it’s not really what makes Brooks’ op-ed so significant. What’s significant is that Brooks – like so many before him – is trying to ignore the debt of modern conservatism to race. To be 100% clear on this, I am not accusing Brooks – or conservatives more generally – of being racist. I don’t think they are. The problem today is less racism, than an unwillingness to deal honestly with the consequences of prior racism (check out this old Legal Fiction piece on post-racism for more). Rather than coming to terms with this reality and moving on (like Mehlman did, to his credit), Brooks is pretending it didn’t happen.

Most obviously, Republican political power today rests on the race-based realignment that George Wallace first exploited. That’s why the term “Reagan Democrats” should actually be “Wallace Democrats.” Nixon and then Reagan both ruthlessly exploited white resentment to reshift the map. If you think these efforts don’t matter, check out how the bloc of Southern states voted in the 2000 and 2004 elections.

But more abstractly, much of modern conservative doctrine has foundations in racial issues. The clearest example is state rights and federalism. It’s true that progressives used states rights at times (e.g., to attack anti-labor federal judges in the early 20th century). But for pretty much all of American history (and certainly from 1948-88), it was code for race issues. Today, one can be a good federalist without thinking of race at all. But that doesn’t change the history of the ideology.

I Blame The Patriarchy

by hilzoy

Melissa McEwan has a post up that has to be seen to be believed. It includes images of sixty five disembodied breast novelty items, many of them very odd (I mean, who, exactly, is the target market for the Boobie Pacifier?), and some, especially the very realistic breasts meant to be sucked or squeezed in some way, flat-out revolting.
[Picture of revolting shower dispenser is now below the fold, with the other pictures.]

I don't know about you, but I think that anyone who uses this might as well put up a large sign saying: I don't expect to have women over to my house, ever, for the rest of my natural life.

As Melissa says:

"I can, quite genuinely, understand why people look at one—or maybe even two, or three—of these items and dismiss them as "just a joke." If I wrote a post about just a frying pan that turns eggs into boobs, I'm certain even some truly feminist women and men would defend it as just a bit of harmless kitsch. It's just a joke; what's the big deal? I get that; I really do.

Which is why I went for critical mass.

It isn't just one "boob novelty" (or, as they tend to be called, "boobie novelty"). It's sixty-five. If I hadn't totally run out of steam, I probably could have included sixty-five more. And these things aren't relegated to adult stores and websites—ads for the Jingle Jugs are being run on radio and TV during ballgames, and many of these items can be found in regular old party stores and gag shops like Spencer's Gifts, which has franchises in every bloody mall in America. The "Stress Chest," "Beer Boob," and "Boobie Fuzzy Dice" are all sold at Spencer's, right alongside Harry Potter action figures.

The ether is permeated with boob novelties (which is to say nothing of vagina novelties, women's ass novelties, the women-as-toilets products, etc.), and while each on its own may not be such a terrible thing, the combined effect is having turned disembodied women's body parts into just so much cultural detritus to be consumed or ignored. No rational person can argue that makes no difference to how women are viewed, as a group and as individuals, by men and by themselves. And that isn't a laughing matter."

Well, that's just Melissa being a humorless feminist again. Because, honestly, what red-blooded American girl could fail to see the fun of, say, her body parts mounted as trophies?

[Picture of boob trophy racks]

And if Melissa doesn't think the toilets she posted here and here are funny -- well, I guess some people just can't take a joke, is all.

Happy Veterans' Day

by hilzoy

Rachel Nardin in the Boston Globe (h/t Christy at fdl):

"According to a study by some of my colleagues at Harvard Medical School, to be published in next month's American Journal of Public Health, nearly 1.8 million veterans had no health insurance in 2004, up 290,000 since 2000. An additional 3.8 million members of their households were also uninsured and ineligible for care at hospitals and clinics run by the Veterans Health Administration of the Department of Veterans Affairs. The 2006 data released this year show little change in these numbers.

Many uninsured veterans are barred from VA care because of a 2003 Bush administration order that halted enrollment of most middle-income veterans. Others are unable to obtain VA care because of unaffordable copayments for VA specialty care, waiting lists at some facilities or the lack of VA facilities in their communities. Almost two-thirds of uninsured veterans were employed, and nearly 9 out of 10 had worked within the past year. Most uninsured veterans were in working families. Many earned too little to afford health insurance, but too much to qualify for free care under Medicaid or VA rules.

The VA is a rare success story in our healthcare system. The system offers more equitable and higher quality care than the average care in the private sector, and has become a medical leader in research, primary care, and computerization. Studies in the Annals of Internal Medicine and elsewhere have shown that compared with patients in HMOs, a higher percentage of patients at VA facilities have adequate control of high blood pressure and diabetes, and receive appropriate medications after a heart attack. So it's not the quality of care that veterans receive that's the problem; rather, it's their restricted access to care."

This is just shameful. Guess how much a veteran without a service related condition or recent combat service has to make to be excluded from coverage? $27,790 for a single veteran, and $37,082 for a family of four. (According to Congressmen quoted here, the limit can be higher in some parts of the country. However, the VA website does not mention that fact, so even if it's true, it's not clear that it's adequately publicized.) That's not a lot of money if you want to buy health care in the individual market, as people who don't have access to health care through some other source have to do. In 2005 (pdf; p. 8), 54% of people with individual insurance (as opposed to insurance provided by a group or an employer) had annual premiums over $3,000, and 32% had annual premiums over $6,000/year. In California in 2006 (pdf, p. 17), the average premium for individual coverage was 3,108 per year. Since those plans covered just 54.6% of health care costs (p. 15), the average total expenditure on health care by Californians in the individual market in 2006 was $4,933 (p. 17). That's almost 18% of the income over which a single veteran is excluded from VA coverage.

Personally, I think it was wrong for the Bush administration to start excluding veterans from VA care in the first place. But they did. As a result, 12.7% of veterans had no health insurance in 2004 ("the most recent year for which figures are available.") We owe them better than this.

Luckily, Rep Steve Rothman and Sen. Patty Murray have introduced legislation in the House and Senate that would extend VA care to all veterans. This would cost money, but, as I said, we owe them. I would gladly see my taxes raised a bit to pay this debt.

Happy Veterans' Day.

Oh, And One More Thing...

by hilzoy

A friend of mine asked me to post the following:

"I guess Andrew Sullivan is just on a roll this week. After essentially erasing transgendered persons from existence by saying that all minorities are now protected against employment discrimination, Sullivan now has taken it upon himself to explain why it is that we transsexuals aren't really part of the LBG community, borrowing this lovely quote from someone named Rex Wockner:

I've been sitting here sort of picking my own brain and asking myself if gay and trans people do in fact have some crucial thing in common. I've read tons of opinion pieces and blog posts on the ENDA war in recent weeks, but none of them really opened my eyes. What do I have in common with a guy who wants to remove his willy, grow breasts, become a woman and get married to a man? From where did this relatively new concept of "the LGBT community" come?

This may be a mystery to gays who tend to still appear generally masculine, but to any effeminate gay man or butch lesbian, the parallels are quite real. Gender expression falls into many categories, and for anyone whose methods don't fit neatly into the male-female dichotomy, they can expect a lot of social intolerance. Of course, all gays face varying degrees of intolerance, but transgendered persons and non-gender normative gays face very similar issues, and both will still face employment discrimination if the current version of ENDA is passed into law.

It would be nice to think that, since both the GLB and TG communities face a great deal of intolerance from society, we might do a better job of understanding one another. But prejudice is a strong force, and just because you've been subjected to it doesn't mean you can't apply it just as well. Transwomen like me get to deal with issues like not being eligible for treatment at some rape crisis centers because we're not 'real women.' Gays like Andrew and Rex think we're just weirdoes who want to get our genitals snipped. And plenty of heterosexuals think we're just trying to find a way to sneak into the ladies room.

Maybe I don't have much in common with the Andrew Sullivans of the world. I certainly can't speak to what his experiences may have been. But I can't help but wonder if the kind of hell that I have gone through wondering what is wrong with me because I never felt like a man despite my body isn't in many ways similar to the struggles gays go through as they wonder why they don't feel attracted to the opposite sex. And I think it's a shame Sullivan has never even considered that possibility."

***

OK, this is hilzoy again. Following Sullivan's link to the clueless Rex Wockner, I find this quote:

"In the end, Barney and I and HRC and NGLTF and Lambda Legal and the rest don't really have a lot of power to make sure more congressmen and women become more familiar with transgender people. It is up to transgender people themselves."

Is it really? Why? Most of us who are not transgendered are, after all, adults and free citizens. We presumably do not need to wait for other people to educate us. We can do that for ourselves, and we should. Especially in this case. As I said earlier, transgendered people have enough on their plate as it is. We can take up the slack, and we should. If that requires actually trying to understand why someone might want to undergo gender reassignment, then making that effort would be worth it.

Likewise, why does John Aravosis write things like this?

"I support transgendered rights. But I'm not naive. If there are still lingering questions in the gay community about gender identity 10 years after our leaders embraced the T -- and there are -- then imagine how conflicted straight members of Congress are when asked to pass a civil rights bill for a woman who used to be a man. We're not talking right and wrong here, we're talking political reality."

If, as he claims, Aravosis does support transgender rights, then why just describe this political reality with regret, rather than trying to change it? Why not use his very public platform to try to inform his readers? Why not exercise some actual leadership?

***

* Note: the fact that both of the people I cited are openly gay does not mean that I think gays, lesbians, and bisexuals have a special obligation to do this educating. I don't think anything of the kind -- I'm straight, and I'm trying to do my bit. It's just that Aravosis and Wockner, like Sulivan, are people whose posts have made me think: why all this public bafflement, rather than an attempt to inform and persuade, or to fix the problem they're bemoaning? I imagine it's no accident that all three are members of the LGBT community; or that most straight bloggers haven't written on this at all. I'm not too happy about that one either.

Also: for what it's worth, there are still a couple of unclaimed copies of She's Not There, which I described here. Send me your address (which I will not use for any other purpose), and I'll send you one.

Andrew Sullivan: drop me a line. One copy has your name on it. :)

The FCC Won't Let Cable Be

by publius

As the NYT reports, big things afoot at the FCC. In particular, Chairman Martin seems poised to pass a number of regulations aimed at cable companies to increase video competition. The new regulations would, among other things, cap the size of cable companies, increase competitors’ access to programming, and require providers to offer channels on an a la carte basis.

Sounds great, but before we celebrate, it’s worth asking – “Why is Martin – a deregulatory Republican – pushing this hard?” As you might expect, there are some cynical explanations.

But first, some credit where credit’s due. Martin is a fierce partisan, and a skilled DC political infighter. But, he does seem genuinely concerned about anti-competitive markets. It was Martin, after all, who sided with the Dems to get the (perhaps fleeting) open access provisions in the 700 MHz spectrum auction.

Unlike much of the modern institutional GOP, Martin’s position is pro-market, not necessarily pro-big business. There are important differences. When I worked in DC (having come of age in the Gingrich/Bush era), I remember asking an experienced telecom hand why on earth Reagan’s DOJ would have ever broken up AT&T. The response was simply that, at least back then, some Republicans actually believed in making markets work. It was about more than simply subsidizing industry donors.

Ok, now for the cynical explanations. First, regulations against cable help the Bell phone companies (AT&T, Verizon). Martin has long been accused of being a Verizon hack. And while that’s unfair, it’s not altogether wrong either. Phone and cable companies are competing for phone and broadband users, with video service just around the bend. These new regulations – along with the franchise reform Martin pushed earlier – will inevitably strengthen the phone companies’ positions.

Second, as the NYT hints, Martin is planning to jump back in the media consolidation fray – a political minefield. Taking strong stands against consolidation in the cable industry gives him some cover on that front.

Finally, it’s widely rumored that Martin will return to North Carolina and run for Congress or for Governor. Coincidentally, he takes strong ostentatious stands on issues near and dear to religious conservative voters' hearts (e.g., obscenity). The a la carte system (which allows you to pick and choose your channels) falls into this category. Religious groups support such a system because they want to keep smut out of the house.

Ah, DC – the city where nothing is what it seems. I love it.