Livingston, I Presume

Pawns

I am so ready to jump in my mom-mobile and drive to Helena right now. The latest Republican antics--returning to HB2 as the budget bill but taking the time to give a big Lange-style raspberry to our governor in the form of eliminating one of Schweitzer's highest priorities, all-day kindergarten--are enough to drive me to drink. And it's only 8:30 in the morning!

The low-life-itude that it takes to use five-year-olds as pawns in games of political cat-and-mouse is astounding. A clear majority of Montanans favor all-day kindergarten, and those that don't--as always--are free to keep their children at home. For those who oppose it on fiscal grounds, I can only say that every dollar spent developing a five-year-old has got to be worth at least two dollars down the road. Every kid who gets a better start because of this will be that much closer to being able to contribute to the community later.

As much as the Bozeman cabal and their henchmen would like it to be otherwise, people in Montana still support public education. More than 90 percent of Montana kids attend public schools, and even those without kids in school have a vested interest in what happens there. If schools can't afford to do their jobs, how will future generations ever be able to do theirs? The answer is that they won't.

I'm tired of this BS. All of our lawmakers, from the City Councils to the Montana State Legislature to the U.S. Senate, work for us. In the wise words of someone who knows a little bit about the body, Jon Tester (hat tip to Jay)--gives an eloquent reminder:

"...the fact is, the Constitution is pretty darn clear about where our power comes from - it comes from the people that elect us. And that's it. Our power comes from them. Once you forget that... I can see how it can be a challenge to remain true to who you are."

Republican House members in our state have clearly forgotten that, along with basic rules of civil discourse and acceptable styles of negotiation. I hope that Montana voters will remember come November 2008.

Room for my 12-point buck antlers?

An architect that I work with has confirmed his intentions for the buildings he designs in Bozeman. He wants, quite simply, to drag Bozeman out of the log-cabin-n-animal-heads school of architecture. It's a goal I can get behind, but one that is, alas, at odds with the rest of the fashion world, according to today's New York Times. Put simply, antlers are the new black:

"Nature — or the appearance of embracing nature — is chic these days. Judging by the direction of fashion and home décor and of-the-moment restaurants and shops, you might mistake Manhattan for Montana. The raw concrete floors and white walls of 1990s minimalism have been swept away. In their place, new boutiques and cafes in the city’s glossier neighborhoods resemble overdesigned hunting lodges — dark and moody, with uneven floorboards to trip over and, almost inevitably, a set of antlers hanging from the rafters."

Damn you, New York Times! We here in Montana are doing our level best to move away from "overdesigned hunting lodges" and you go and invoke our name in your article about ridiculous poseurs who wouldn't know which end of a gun is used to bag an elk. (To be clear here, not that I would. But still.) What's next? Orange safety vests over skinny jeans?

Please don't think I'm trying to deny my Montana heritage here. Hey, I like expletive-laden rants from my public servants (NSFW!!) in the name of straight-talk just as much as the next gal, but does the image of Montana always have to involve dead animals? And worse yet, do we have to put up with being compared to "urban" cowboys?

Be afraid

Be very afraid.

An empty husk has some cosmic uses. The absence of a soul has apparently allowed room for Boris Nikolaevich to spend a little more time here on earth, possessing the body of Our Dear Leader.

We should think about reinstating Prohibition--at least where presidents are concerned--right away. And Michael Flatley should be located and sent to a secure location to make sure this thing doesn't spread.

More beauty and light

While I'm posting about nice things and generally trying to match my mood to the beautiful day underway outside--a day which, I might add, could very well see the completion of our driveway, ripped out more than a month ago to change the storm drain--I should take a minute to recommend another Livingston site, Arts Montana. The brainchild of Lynn Weaver, Arts Montana is a fantastic resource for anyone interested in culture of all kind in Livingston. But I'll let Lynn tell you about it:

Artsmontana.com is a discriminating and unified resource about the arts in Livingston, Montana. Artsmontana.com highlights the work of the many independent, professional artists who live and work in Livingston, and for whom art is a primary activity and, in some cases, a livelihood. It is also a source for arts reviews, interviews, articles, events, and featured images. The focus is on visual arts, but other arts will be covered, too.

The site does not make money on the backs of local artists, either. Lynn does not charge artists to be linked on the site, and she doesn't make any commission. In other words, she's doing this for all the right reasons. I'm adding it to my links list and imagine I'll be visiting regularly.

Make someone happy

I'm never going to please everyone with my rants on the state of the world, but I can recommend some light reading that might brighten your day a little, particularly if you are a parent. Looky Daddy is holding Contest the Fourth for creative parental songwriting:

The rules are simple. Take a well-known children's song, a tune we all recognize, and devise your own lyrics.

Here's a concise ditty from The Dad to give you an example:

Potty Training at My House (Row, Row, Row Your Boat)

Sit, sit, sit for hours
Sit and pout and slouch
Then jump up and run top speed
To poop behind the couch

Apparently he has been time traveling to my house circa September 2006.

Entries are in the comments, and there are some very funny offerings. I even threw my (rashy) hat in the ring.

Enjoy!

Now what was I scared of?

Jay posted about a new Libertarian blog today, and it is as he describes: kinder and gentler than your average. But I'm in total agreement with Jay about the Montana Liberty Project blogger's link to a Michael Cannon article and explanation of the way to cure the health care crisis in this country: As Jay so succinctly explains and as I've said on a number of occasions, consumers are not the problem. I felt impassioned enough to leave a long comment for the MLP blogger, but it's in queue limbo, so I'm cross-posting it here:

I've lived under national healthcare (as a foreigner working legally in the Czech Republic) and under the U.S. system, and there's just no comparison. In the Czech Republic, I didn't lie awake at night trying to decide whether to buy the drugs that my child needs for asthma or that my husband needs for [a dangerous but treatable medical condition] or that I need to keep from getting pregnant. I just got them. I paid a little for some and none for others, and none of the prices even approached what we pay for a month's supply here.

If I needed to see a doctor, I knew it would be covered. If I wanted to have some kind of special service from that doctor--i.e. I wanted to be sure that he or she spoke English--I sometimes paid extra to see someone in private practice. Private practices were available widely and generally affordable, even for Czechs. When I went to the hospital to give birth, my care and the care of my son was covered. I paid for a private room.

I found nothing odious or overly bureaucratic about the system. Certainly my tax rate was higher than it is here, but it didn't come anywhere close to reaching what we now pay for high-deductible HSA insurance and out-of-pocket costs. I saw the doctors I wanted and found little hassle in being seen quickly and efficiently, and I was a foreigner. Had I been Czech, I would have been able to take full advantage without worrying about potential language issues.

Here in the U.S., we have some of the finest healthcare the world has to offer--IF you can afford it. That's a big if. I would so much rather have decent, affordable care for everyone than rock-star care for the privileged few.

Making consumers responsible for more of their healthcare costs is not the answer. I am the world's most careful shopper--coupons, sales, you name it--and I can't get anywhere trying to "choose" my healthcare providers for cost. Maybe if I lived in New York or San Francisco I would be in a better position, but when my son has an asthma attack in the middle of the night, my choice is Livingston Memorial Hospital or nothing. Where my husband and I are concerned, it more often ends up being nothing, since we put off seeking any medical care for ourselves.

I understand people's fears about "socialized" medicine. I really do. But after having lived in a country with national healthcare, I can't be scared anymore. People in countries with national systems are more free, as far as I can see, because a goodly portion of their mental energy is not being expended in wondering just how they will pay for their necessary medical treatment.

My riding the cause-horse for national healthcare will surprise none of my regular readers, but if just one person scared of the idea reads this and re-thinks his or her stand, it's worth the retread. Oftentimes I fear that anyone who hasn't had a significant healthcare issue or had to deal with a chronic condition cannot understand just how bad it is out in the trenches for the average person, even the insured ones. And the nightmares I have are nothing compared with the ones suffered by those who lack even crappy insurance.

We don't arrange any other necessary public services in this way. Speaking on an NPR program a couple of weeks ago, a doctor-turned-healthcare reform crusader made the comparison of medical care with public safety protection. In no way would we allow a fee-based, for-profit fire department or police station. Medical care is just as important and no less a right for a civilized nation.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to write to Tester, Baucus, and Rehberg.

Not a state decision

Never say that NPR doesn't warn before it disturbs. On Morning Edition--after a warning about the nature of the story--I listened to something has been reported elsewhere in the international press but has not surfaced (to my knowledge) elsewhere in the U.S. media:

During the past week, dozens of women in southwest China have been forced to have abortions even as late as nine months into the pregnancy, according to evidence uncovered by NPR.

China's strict family planning laws permit urban married couples to have only one child each, but in some of the recent cases — in Guangxi Province — women say they were forced to abort what would have been their first child because they were unmarried. The forced abortions are all the more shocking because family planning laws have generally been relaxed in China, with many families having two children.

The story was terrifying. Women who had been judged unfit to have a baby--whether because they already had one child or because they were unmarried, as the report described--were forcibly taken to area hospitals and made to have abortions. In one case described in the report, a teenage mother only days away from delivery was forced to get an abortion. A witness quoted in the report said that on one floor of one hospital alone, 41 beds were occupied by women who appeared to have been forced to abort.

There are no words sufficient to describe the horror I felt in hearing this. Somehow, after having a baby, these kinds of stories hit on a visceral level that they never did before. But I want to be clear about something: This violation of women a world away is simply the other side of a storm that is on its way in our own country. If the government can force a person to have a baby--as is the case in societies in which women do not have access to safe, reliable birth control and legal abortions--the state can just as easily decide at some later date that it has the right to decide who cannot have a baby.

Maybe on some level, deep down where we live, we might feel such restrictions are common sense. After all, I've said many times that it's crazy that a 16-year-old needs to take classes and pass various tests to become a driver but can become a parent simply by making bad choices. The way that reproductive capabilities are apportioned out sometimes seems like a cruel joke. But that's not a power we should give the government, even more than we should allow the government to force someone to become a mother.

It's two sides of the same coin, people. Government control over women's bodies can go both ways, and the numerous Americans celebrating the "end" of certain abortion procedures would do well to remember that.

Russia without Boris

Boris Yeltsin is dead.

Yeltsin to me represents the beginning of my international political awareness. The USSR fell the year I graduated from high school, and the events leading up to that were what inspired me to devote a huge chunk of my higher education and later my work life to studying the countries and languages of the post-Communist world. When I studied in Moscow in 1994, it was still possible to see the battle scarring on the parliament building to which the military, still loyal to Yeltsin, had laid siege. It was a fascinating time, made no less fascinating by Yeltsin's later decline.

There is an oft-repeated story that I first remember reading in high school about Yeltsin convincing his elementary school classmates to jump out the window with him to escape a teacher he found tyrannical. In that case, the window was on the ground level, so no one was hurt. What he did with Russia strikes me as similar, however. No doubt the country would have changed without him, but Yeltsin did convince a huge number of Russians to jump with him. Unfortunately, the heights were higher and so were the stakes.

In the coming days, I'm sure I will scour the coverage obsessively, trying to get an idea of how history will view this man. His impact on what was once the Soviet Union will no doubt be debated for generations to come.

Go with God, Boris.

...

My life is apparently worthwhile if and only if my uterus is unoccupied.

While I very much like my uterus and (most) of the things that issue forth from therein, I must protest vehemently that I am more than my uterus. Much more. All women are.

I really don't want The Handmaid's Tale to become a documentary. A work of non-fiction.

We have some work to do here, folks. Visit here and here for more actionables. And pray for a country that would allow a woman to die or a baby to be born only to live a life of misery and suffering rather than undergo a procedure that a doctor has deemed necessary.

Heartsick

The Virginia Tech shootings are only the latest, worst incidence of mass gun violence in our country. Thank goodness our president has his eye on the ball:

"The president believes that there is a right for people to bear arms, but that all laws must be followed," (White House spokeswoman Dana) Perino said.

Spare me the Second Amendment lecture, if you wouldn't mind. Somehow I don't think the Founding Fathers were thinking about mowing down college students with their well-regulated militias.