Gusalmighty.com: A Leaded Perspective

Bush on Liberty: Lip service on the domestic front?

President Bush gave a grand inauguration address that stressed liberty and freedom while shifting away from his typical emphasis on terror and fear. Rather shrewd, actually, to win the election by fear mongering and essentially telling the electorate that unless they elect you, they'll die, only to mark the historical record at the inauguration with a statement on freedom and liberty, photogenic ideals that inspire rather than dark emotions that intimidate. It was a good call, I agree.

I disagree with a couple implications of the speech though. Many Americans appear to have responded to it extremely favorably, pretty much as was intended. They didn't seem to understand that many nations and peoples outside of America's borders saw it as intimidating and threatening though. President Bush provide vague calls to action in support of freedom and liberty for people around the world and pulled out the gauntlet (if not throwing it down) in front of regimes and governments that do not provide for their people the expected freedoms. Essentially, Bush warned the world that it was their choice as to who set up the freedom in their countries. Like it or not, it was coming, and everyone had to choose whether to establish it themselves or let America come in and install it for them. Remote political administration of sorts.

I support the express statement in support of liberty, freedom, and self-rule. I think that America should take an ideological stand in this regard and seek to build and nurture wider democratic governance throughout the world. Is there really anyone in the US or Europe (and of course many other countries) who disagrees with this? It is uncontroversial to support democracy and strive to change the world in a way that empowers more people, offers them a better way of life, and ends up giving them at least some modicum of control over the way their lives are governed.

I believe that one of the best ways the United States can advance this cause is by assuming the mantle of freedom and liberty itself. Actions speak louder than words regardless of language and culture (indeed, actions are all we speak with to many people who tend to ignore speeches and promises and treaties). The United States needs to become a freer society that truly offers its citizens liberty to live their lives as they see fit.

Yet this is not possible now. In the United States, you are not free from indefinite incarceration without a trial. In the United States, you are not free from intrusion by the government into the personal choices you make in regard to how you wish to live your life. In the United States, you are not free from invasive surveillance, government raids, secret dossiers, and no-knock searches of your home. In the United States, you are legally forbidden from marrying your partner if your lifestyle doesn't fit the mold. In the United States, you are not free from harrassment based on your ethnic heritage. In the United States, you are not allowed to eat certain plants because the government has decided it disproves of the way ingesting them makes you feel. In the United States, you are not free to protect your personal and commercial interests as you see fit. In the United States, you will go to prison for years for possession of less than a fingertip sized amount of intoxicants yet you can steal millions and be home earlier. In the United States, women are currently destined to work for less pay than their relative male counterparts. In the United States, you can mismanage a company and squander billions of investor dollars and retire for $300,000 a month for the rest of your life. (Okay, these last few don't have squat to do with liberty but I couldn't help myself.)

The President has laid out an ambitious agenda that in general I support and applaud. But before we go about killing others in order to force liberty on them (Freedom is on the march!!), let's establish a free society at home first. The President (perhaps without realizing it) is arguing for a pluralistic, tolerant society, yet we have yet to succeed in establish that at home. The President has lofty dreams of fledgling democracies with emergent civic virtues, yet our own nations civic involvement has atrophied to a whiff of a shadow of what we had generations past.

As I wrote this, the amount of freedoms we DO have was brought into stark relief, almost to the point of making me feel a bit guilty about bitching about the freedoms we don't have. Yet as the President himself makes clear, there is nothing greater than a people free to live their lives according to their standards.

My point is not that the United States sucks; far from it. It is the greatest nation the known universe has produced. But greatest in its current form should not satisfy those of us with pride in our nation and pride in its ideals. The US can and should do better, especially if it is going to execute a strategy that establishes itself as the final arbiter of justice in a libertine sense.

Before we force others to live free, we ought to be doing the same ourself. Liberty does have limits, of course, but those limits ought to be prescribed according to how much permitting one activity results in limiting others. Choice is a good thing for the heart and mind, although it does require more effort. Freedom can best be protected by policies that permit the widest choices and impinge on people's options the least. If it doesn't hurt someone, allow it. If it excludes people, deny it. Gay marriage hurts none and empowers many; legal abortions preserve rights, outlawing it bans them; official prayers in schools exclude the non-sectarians, personal moments of silence permit all to reflect upon one's situation as they best see fit. The list is endless.

Lest we get too excited about freedom and liberty, we mustn't forget that equality is the first casualty of freedom. But it's clear to me that the President is less concerned about equality than he is freedom. I'm not prepared to sacrifice all equality, as some limitations on freedom are necessary to ensure freedoms for all (unless we subscribe to the maxim Might Makes Right?), but in general I agree with the President. The world needs more freedom. More freedom of being, more freedom of thought, more freedom of action. Let's be sure to take advantage of it for ourselves too.

You've got the freedom to make comments. Take advantage.

First Facelift

It isn't quite as good as botox but the blog got some facelift loving. Some friends of mine are putting together a blog of their own that looks to be a sure hit and I'll be talking more about them once they go public. I've been privy to some of their preparatory dialogue and have seen their site in a pre-release stage. It looks pretty slick and it was just enough impetus to get me to dive into the CSS here to shape this place up.

I have to say that I think it looks pretty good. Big thanks to Ignatz Mouse for feedback on some of the colors. I'm hoping that it is all balanced and readable; your feedback on this is of great importance. Please let me know what you think. There is also a good chance that I missed something as well, so if you find a page with garish reds (I use red as a test color to see what effect is has. I don't actually know what I'm doing so I tweak a setting and reload the page to see what it looks like), let me know. I already caught one bit where a background color obscured the text and fixed it, but there are likely more problems.

I don't have the illustrative skills to conjure up some bunker love imagery, but I did try to aim for a color scheme that reflects the beloved Superfund Silver Valley. It's primarily a gray color scheme with hints of green, or at least that is what is should be. Again, feedback is essential here.

Another bonus: the constant reloading of the front page to see what effects my changes had have put my page views through the roof! This blog has been getting about 6 hits a day (that's one every four hours!) lately, but as you can see, I've really set a new standard.

Now that school is letting up, hopefully I can keep working here. I've said it before and I'll say it again, I would love to have someone else post alongside me here. I feel like I'm dancing in the middle of the room all by myself here.

Come volunteer!

Blurring the lines with tort reform

I just read a New York Times editorial about George Bush's proposal for "tort reform" in the United States and two issues of deception aimed at swaying people to a position stood out. First of all, the Times is guilty of portraying the president's proposal as an attempt to deny compensation to those deserving of it and the President is guilty of conflating dissatisfaction with the political implications of court decisions (e.g. striking down Ten Commandments in public places, etc) with malpractice suits and reform. He fans the flames of American dissatisfaction with the Constitution (his sneering use of "activist judges") to get people hot on the idea of reforming the courts and then suggests that we start with tort reform, which doesn't really address the activist judges issue but gives the impression that something was done just the same. I don't know if its done intentionally or not, but it's pretty despicable to manipulate people's perceptions like that. Make the case cleanly or don't make it at all.

But back to the Times. The editor writes that the President's proposal would limit "non-economic damages" $250,00 and that this would deny deserved compensation to those who truly deserved it after a doctor's negligence leaves them blind or brain dead or whatever. The Times then adds that oh yeah, that amount is hardly punishment either.

But what I think is wrong with this representation of the issue (I'm the first to point out that I could be wrong here) is that I think the President is seeking to limit punitive damages to a quarter million, not actual damages. There are two aspects of a financial decision in a malpractice or negligence (perhaps in a civil suit [or is that all these malpractice and negligence suits are?]), the actual damages and the punitive damages.

Actual damages are awarded to compensate a victim for losses they've suffered. Perhaps they cannot work any longer and actual damages will compensate them for future earnings. Depending on the injury, this can be very very high or comparatively low. The issue of punitive damages was developed to provide an avenue of punishing the guilty party when the actual damages are small enough that the guilty party can afford to pay them easily. The theory goes that without a punitive damages system, deep-pocketed companies can afford to be willfully negligent and just pay the meager actual damages.

The tobacco industry is a good example of this. Many people tried to sue them for damages and most were unsuccessful. Even those that were successful in receiving a damages award were only give a few million dollars at most in actual damages (as most damages were calculated as lost future revenue, I think, and most of these people would only gross a couple million at most in their middle class or manual labor jobs). The tobacco industry can afford to pay this every few years when a case slips through their defense, so there were given massive punitive damages (I think on plaintiff was awarded a few billion dollars, but I might be confusing the industry settlement with a specific case).

The point is that punitive damages have to be punitive, that's the whole point. Whenever we hear about the huge payouts that people win in these suits, those are punitive damages we are reading about. The President (and his lobbyists) argue that these are out of control and are driving malpractice insurance rates up and in turn driving doctor's out of business which then has the unfortunate consequence of depriving people of health care. Even when doctor's stay in business, the inflated insurance premiums raise the costs for the patient. Tort reform is the way to fix this, he suggests.

The Times is opposed to this suggestion and understandably so for the reasons I just laid out. However, it is unacceptable for the Times to present the President's proposal in a way that makes it look like he is suggesting that the maximum amount of damages anyone can ever recoup for any injury is merely $250,000. Perhaps that is true and I'm running off in the wrong direction here, but I don't think so. The president likely supports the idea that if you make $100,000 a year and have 15 wage earning years left until retirement, if a drunk doctor amputates your legs instead of removing the ingrown toenail, you deserve 1.5 million in inflation adjusted wage compensation. But the President seems to be saying that he thinks the doctor would only be liable for a $250,000 levy as punishment.

This clearly isn't the correct answer either. Punitive damages shouldn't be limited as a dollar amount. If a limit on damages is the goal, a percentage of gross income would be a better indicator, as a $250,000 payout by a tobacco company is chump change but would destroy an independent practitioner. The goal of punitive damages shouldn't be to put people out of business but it should punish them for their mistakes in an manner reflective of the degree of the mistake made.

Perhaps a different solution would be to create a patient's fund for punitive damages that all awards for punitive damages are paid into. The goal of punitive damages is to punish the offending party as opposed to compensate the victim, so nothing is "denied" to victims under this system. The fund could be used to fund research into medicines that don't have the financial incentive needed for big pharmaceuticals to get interested. Cures for diseases that have only a few sufferers or are primarily problems in developing countries (i.e. those that can't pay for medicines) would benefit from this.

Knowing that victims aren't going to be receiving the money would help delineate the conceptual confusion between actual and punitive damages, perhaps reducing punitive damages to a level more in tune with the intent rather than as influence by the emotional impact of a severely disabled person waiting for a judgement.

Please post comments here.

How much busier can life get?

As one ages, time slips by faster and faster. This is partly due to the aggregation of lifespan; one year is over 10% of your life when you are 9 years old but only 2% by the time you are 50. It's not surprising that a year doesn't seem to last as long.

But another huge effect on the perception of time accelerating is the demands on our attention. As a kid, life was governed by very few demands on our time. We had to spend a lot of it in school, but this didn't feel like a demand on time and we had enough of it outside of school anyway. Life was governed by about 15 minutes of chores, 1 minute of homework, and a few major holidays. Over the course of a year, this wasn't very much.

In college, my time was occupied with classes, studying, work, and leisure. I was much busier but still had ample time for leisure. Even when I began working a real job teaching at university, leisure time was plentiful and spent reading, out with my wife, playing music, and so on.

Then I graduated from uni and started working full time at the university, which includes an equal or greater non-classroom time commitment for committee work, curriculum development, and research and publication. A few months before I was promoted to this job, my daughter was born.

Free time?

I'm not complaining in the least. This post is more about observing the changing guard as one passes into a new phase in life. I got slammed hard core at work this year. Teaching 2 new classes with strict curricula was a difficult adjustment for me as I became familiar with the material and had to keep the pace. Finding ways to meet my obligations in committees and other expectations was challenging as well. I didn't succeed with tripping here and there but overall I weathered it pretty well. I've learned a lot about organization and am developing a system for dealing with the demands on my attention better.

As for the lack of free time at home, I wouldn't have it any other way. I love playing with my daughter. She is only 16 months old now and in a few years she'll be more independent, playing on her own or with friends and studying or being busy with school. I'll have more free time then and will miss what I have now. I don't get to read as many books, play as many video games, watch as many movies or write as many blog entries as I would like to, but I'd rather spend an evening playing with Little People and Mega Bloks for now.

I'm almost despondent about the future heartbreak in store when I'm no longer the most important person in her life (I expect it we're halfway there already). It's kind of cliche, perhaps, but Chapin's Cat's Cradle is my worst nightmare. Perhaps that is why I'm fanatical about taking pictures of her. I enjoy photography a lot, of course, but having a visual record gives me something to hang onto once this era has passed.

But the point here isn't to whine about the joys and perils of parenthood. Youth is wasted on the youth, and I hope that everyone who happens to read this (and even those who don't, by jove!) takes advantage of wherever they are right here, right now. Don't ever be bored; this is the easiest affliction in the world to cure! Don't wish to be some place else because soon you will be and you'll realize how nice it was before (not that it isn't nice where you are. It's just that in hindsight you'll see that it wasn't as bad as you thought it was and that you squandered it by wanting to be somewhere else).

Comments go here