Why would someone rob a bank for $1?

If there was any doubt about just how far out of whack our healthcare system is in the US, look no further.

This story featured on Reader Supported News, originally featured in the UK’s Guardian newspaper, details James Verone and the most unusual of bank robberies. James robbed a bank for $1, just to get arrested so he could be seen by a doctor. (He was charged with “stealing from a person”, not actual bank robbery, as the prosecutors think they couldn’t make the latter charge stick.)

The former Coca-Cola delivery man of 17 years was unfortunately let go by the beverage conglomerate (the article does not say how long ago), and lost his health insurance along with his job.

You’ll notice I’m referring to James by his first name, which ordinarily means by convention he’s one of the “good guys.” It is a bit difficult for me to take side with a bank robber. However, in this case, it’s not about the money; it’s about things one cannot reasonably be expected to quantify with an amount of money: self-preservation, health, and dignity. On one hand, I applaud James’s ingenity and resolve. At the same time, I’m saddened and horrified that anyone should feel they have to do something like this to be able to see a doctor.

In countries with sane healthcare systems, this simply does not happen. This is the strongest argument in favor of healthcare reform I have seen to date. Even if we get it wrong, even if Obamacare turns out to be a disaster of a different sort, it’s still an attempt to fix the problem. And there is no doubt in my mind that there is a problem.

To those against healthcare reform as it stands: if Obamacare is not the answer, what is? How much longer are we going to let insurance companies set the price of healthcare, getting great group deals for their policyholders and setting up people like James to be hung out to dry?

Two badge-heavy cops plus one mentally handicapped teen…

…equals an outrage waiting to happen.

My faith in and respect for law enforcement does increase, slowly, over time. But, it decreases rapidly right back to near-zero when stories like this one from Infowars involving a mentally handicapped teen get brought to my attention.

From the article:

Dayton police tasered, pepper-sprayed and beat a mentally handicapped teen [Jesse Kersey] and then charged him with assault. What did the disabled boy do to deserve this onslaught? The police officer [Officer Willie Hooper] “mistook” his speech impediment for a sign of “disrespect”.

As mentioned in this Courthouse News Service article, all charges against Jesse were dismissed. However, Officer Hooper, and another officer, John Howard, are named as co-defendants in a civil suit brought against the city by Jesse’s mother, Pamela Ford, for many torts including false arrest, assualt, battery, and civil conspiracy.

It’s bad enough when a mentally handicapped person is the victim of police brutality, as in this case. However, to be beaten up by the cops and then charged with assault on top of that? I can’t imagine what these maniacs with badges were thinking.

I’m glad the criminal court judge presiding over the case aganist Jesse had some sense. So in a rather rare move for this blog, I will commend the judge (unnamed in either the Infowars post or the Courthouse News Service story) for an excellent job of dispensing justice, by dismissing the obviously trumped-up charges against Jesse. I’m hoping the judge and jury responsible for the civil suit against the city of Dayton, Ohio, have the same good sense of justice.

I’m also hoping that Officers Hooper and Howard, and any other officers responsible for the initial incident unnamed by the sources linked above, find a new career completely removed from law enforcement. If we’re going to throw the book at common citizens who commit egregious acts of assault and false arrest, we need to do the same to cops who overstep their authority.

A lawyer, a judge, and the Pledge of Allegiance

I’ve got a lot of these to slog through. I’ve already deleted two drafts that upon further review just weren’t interesting enough to comment on and post.

There’s very little to quote in this ABA Journal article, which is itself a followup to this earlier article. So I’ll just summarize: A judge in Mississippi (Chancellor Talmadge Littlejohn) jails a lawyer for not reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. The lawyer (Danny Lampley) stood, but did not actually recite the words. He was then asked to individually recite the pledge, and he refused. Judge Littlejohn finds him in contempt and jails him for most of the business day (five hours). The aftermath: Judge Littlejohn is reprimanded and fined $100 for abusing his contempt powers.

And rightfully so. I believe Danny was within his rights to not recite the pledge. Asking Danny to individually recite the pledge after the others have finished was clearly intended to humiliate him. Judge Littlejohn should be ashamed of himself; he damn near got away with a flagrant abuse of his contempt powers. Here’s hoping the next judge that does something this stupid is given a more appropriate sanction, such as a fine in the $1,000 to $2,000 range.

Actually the more I think about it, this is a strong argument to actually outlaw the recitation of the pledge in courtrooms. I’ve never been in a courtroom where I was required to recite the pledge; if I am, at the very least, I’m leaving out “under God”. It is this I would like to elaborate on before I close out this post.

My personal reason for omitting “under God” is that it is at odds with the separation of church and state mentioned both in Article VI and the First Amendment to the US Constitution. I feel it is an inappropriate reference to religion that makes too many people uncomfortable.

And there is a solid line of reasoning behind this. According to this story by Dr. John W. Baer on oldtimeislands.org, the gratuitous addition of a religious reference would have been opposed by Francis Bellamy, the Baptist minister who originally wrote the pledge in 1892:

In 1954, Congress after a campaign by the Knights of Columbus, added the words, ‘under God,’ to the Pledge. The Pledge was now both a patriotic oath and a public prayer.

Bellamy’s granddaughter said he also would have resented this second change. He had been pressured into leaving his church in 1891 because of his socialist sermons. In his retirement in Florida, he stopped attending church because he disliked the racial bigotry he found there.

Think about this for a minute: the pledge as originally written by a Baptist minister did not contain the words “under God”. Does it not fly in the face of logic to stuff those words in there when a minister has implied they don’t belong by their omission?

Fading from the limelight: New York City Opera

As mentioned in a recent New York Times story and an article on artinfo.com, the economy has done a real number on a once prominent performing arts organization, New York City Opera. The anatomy of the downfall of New York City Opera highlights just how important donations are to keeping an arts organization alive, as those new to the performing arts are simply not aware of how little ticket sales bring in compared to grants and endowments.

Even though, again, I’m over a thousand miles removed from where New York City Opera performs, the case study is of relevance to any arts organization anywhere at least in the US, if not the world. From the NY Times story:

Fund-raising has been flat, though in the past year, [New York City Opera artistic director George] Steel said, donations rose to a projected $18 million, up $3 million from last year. Still, that was well short of the $22 million that had been budgeted.

And from earlier in the story:

It realized $3 million in annual ticket revenues, which covered 10 percent of its budget.

Now, compare those two numbers. $3 million from ticket revenues, versus $18 million from donations. In order to get the same amount of money from just ticket sales, New York City Opera would need to sell tickets at about six times their current price. And that’s acting on the very generous assumption that the same people will be willing to pay six times as much, which is almost certainly not the case.

There’s more to it than that, however. The other mistakes New York City Opera made are worth learning from. In 2008 the situation was so dire the company had to raid their endowment fund for cash, which required special permission from the New York (state) attorney general. Now, this year, New York City Opera simply can’t afford to perform in Lincoln Center, instead opting to perform in different locations around the city.

It didn’t exactly help that New York City Opera, known for being a bit more eclectic than the Metropolitan Opera (usually called simply “the Met” and the more prominent of the two opera companies in New York City), perhaps got a bit too eclectic. Again quoting the Times article:

Last year’s eclectic mix of productions — including an updated Donizetti; a Leonard Bernstein New York premiere; a new work by the composer of the Broadway musical “Wicked,” Stephen Schwartz; a lesser-known Strauss; and a bill of three contemporary one-acts — failed to catch on with traditional operagoers or audiences seeking something new.

“Has anyone ever heard of any of those things they were selling?” said Carol Vaness, the soprano and a onetime City Opera star. “They didn’t do the operas people wanted to see.”

While I have not recently had the resources to attend performing arts events in recent months, I admire the eclectic and eccentric productions to a point. It’s okay to push the envelope a bit, but push it too much and you wind up with plenty of red ink on the balance sheet, as New York City Opera found out.

Time will tell what will become of the once-proud New York City Opera. I hope they recover, but even more so, I hope other arts organizations learn from and avoid the mistakes of New York City Opera. While it is painful to watch an organization with such a strong legacy sink into obscurity, the only thing worse would be for that to happen only for others to repeat that organization’s mistakes.

Father’s Day: my thoughts

I have all kinds of news stories in the queue to write about, but I’m going to let them linger there a bit longer to make this timely.

Father’s Day is tomorrow, June 19. By the time you’re reading this, it is probably already here, or maybe it has even already passed. I’m writing this simply to express my perspective on Father’s Day. Maybe a few of you will identify with it.

I never met my father. My grandfather was the closest I had to a father figure; he left this world some years ago. So, normally, I don’t give Father’s Day much thought. I have no idea, but this year, I really got to thinking about it.

And I read up on the history of Father’s Day according to Wikipedia. It’s an interesting read. But it raises the question I’m asking this year: did the people who came up with the idea for Father’s Day ever really think about what Father’s Day really means for those of us (like me) who not only grew up without a dad, but may well never get a chance to be a dad themselves?

Yes, to me, seeing Father’s Day observed and celebrated is a painful reminder of my fatherless past, and a reminder of the likely future that I will probably never get to be a dad no matter how badly I want to. (Please understand that yes, I do try to retain my optimism on the latter point, but it becomes more difficult as the years go on.) I’m sorry if I let it slip “what’s so happy about it?” when asked if I had a happy Father’s Day. I know I’m too young to be seriously considered a curmudgeon (I’m well over a decade away from AARP membership, thankfully), and I will admit I have a fair amount of things not to be proud of. But, I say things the way they are, not the way we wish they were.