Credit Cards

The lenders are, once again (still) asking Congress to protect them from themselves, at the expense of the people.

Baseball did this for a while (the Reserve Clause was defended on the basis that without it, the owners would start bidding wars and so offer too much money to the players... which is to say they needed to be protected from themselves, which kept the players from getting a fair share of the profits they were generating).

The argument goes like this: People take out debt. They take out too much. They can't pay it. They file for Ch. 7 bankruptcy (which kills debt, cold); they accept that they will have damn near zero credit for at least 7 years.

On one level I appreciate the credit card companies dilemma. They lent money. If they get told to pound sand, they lose the money. Not good business.

On another level, it's bunk. I get not less than 25 petitions a year asking me to take out a credit card. Some of these with credit lines of $10,000. I can't afford that kind of debt. Certainly not at the rates they charge. Which is where the argument of the creditors falls apart. Despite the bankruptcies they posted something like $30 billion in profit last year. Not revenue, profit.

Maia has no real income (her father is paying her tuition, and her bills). She does work in theatres, and (when we were in L.A. wrangles bugs for film... sadly she had to give up $1,200 this week, because it required being in L.A. for a couple of days. A pity because ants are easy to work) but that's spotty. On the other hand, she has $10,000 in credit. If she were at that limit, she'd be hard pressed to make more than the monthly payments. Which means the creditors are raking in free money, the principle would be barely nibbled.

That's bad enough. But now we have agressive interest adjustment. They offer a low rate, to get you to move the debt to their card. They then monitor your credit score, if you have a problem (late payment, even a day) with someone else they raise your rate with them. Bad enough (you've not failed to meet your obligation with them, what cause have they?).

But worse, some of them make that rate increase retroactive. One can find that they moved from 18 percent interest, to 21 percent. They moved to the other card, and made damned sure they met the payment dates, so they could remove some of that debt. They may have made the mistake (some mistake) of overpaying a bit, and so having a delay in the cell-phone bill, and they get punished, in spades.

Cynical bastard that I am, I suspect the credit card companies of targetting people. Of looking to give credit to people who have a track record of payments which are a little late. Not that they don't pay, but they can be a day, or so, behind. It shows an unwillingness to not meet debts. It means they will struggle until all other options are exhausted to pay the bills.

And they know they can sucker such people into a hole they can't get out of, without declaring bankruptcy (which most people are loathe to do). Now they want to play "whack-a-mole" when people try to dig their way out.

Link

ginmar is someone I like to read. We are sympatico. We see similar shades of gray, in between similar shades of black and white.

She is self proclaimed as loud, and abrasive. She doesn't lie. She is also soft-hearted, witty, insightful, argumentative, and not at all shrinking in defending her position. Disagree with her (I have) but don't wander in with assertions. Make arguments, support your position and accept that she may not (probably won't) change her mind. She may agree that you see a shade of gray which isn't, completely, wrong. She may decide that, in that instance, you are a fathead of the first water.

On the other hand, she won't lose respect for you, if you have some semblance of intellectual honesty (and ginmar I'm sorry if all this praise, which feels a tad fulsome to me too, is hard to read. Think of it as a jacket blurb).

Today she has comment on the situation in Baghdad, where the two of us have friends.

Imagine This

Birthday wishes

You may have noticed that I am not one who wishes people Happy Birthday in my LJ.

Today, however, I want to recall the birthday of the man, without whom, not only I, but none of us would be here.

Yes, someone would have done it without him, but Michel de Montaigne (b. 1533 d. 1593) who died when Shakespeare was just making his splash, when Francis Bacon was just coming into his own, he invented the essay.

He wrote to himself, as though another were to read it. Different from a journal/diary (one of which Victoria kept almost all her adult her life, only failing to make an entry on the day she died) these were rather his thoughts on matters which touched his heart and his mind.

"I find that our greatest vices derive their
first propensity from our most tender infancy, and that our
principal education depends upon the nurse. Mothers are mightily
pleased to see a child writhe off the neck of a chicken, or to please
itself with hurting a dog or a cat; and such wise fathers there are in
the world, who look upon it as a notable mark of a martial spirit,
when they hear a son miscall, or see him domineer over a poor peasant,
or a lackey, that dares not reply, nor turn again; and a great sign of
wit, when they see him cheat and overreach his playfellow by some
malicious treachery and deceit. Yet these are the true seeds and roots
of cruelty, tyranny, and treason; they bud and put out there, and
afterward shoot up vigorously, and grow to prodigious bulk, cultivated
by custom. And it is a very dangerous mistake to excuse these vile
inclinations upon the tenderness of their age, and the triviality of
the subject; it is nature that speaks, whose declaration is then
more sincere, and inward thoughts more undisguised, as it is more weak
and young; secondly, the deformity of cozenage does not consist nor
depend upon the difference between crowns and pins; but I rather
hold it more just to conclude thus: why should he not cozen in
crowns since he does it in pins, than as they do, who say they only
play for pins, they would not do it if it were for money? Children
should carefully be instructed to abhor vices for their own
contexture; and the natural deformity of those vices ought so to be
represented to them, that they may not only avoid them in their
actions, but especially so to abominate them in their hearts, that the
very thought, should be hateful to them, with what mask soever they
may be disguised....

'Tis by the mediation of custom, that every one is content with
the place where he is planted by nature; and the Highlanders of
Scotland no more pant after Touraine, than the Scythians after
Thessaly. Darius asking certain Greeks what they would take to
assume the custom of the Indians, of eating the dead bodies of their
fathers (for that was their use, believing they could not give them
a better, nor more noble sepulture, than to bury them in their own
bodies), they made answer, that nothing in the world should hire
them to do it; but having also tried to persuade the Indians to
leave their custom, and, after the Greek manner, to burn the bodies of
their fathers, they conceived a still greater horror at the notion.
Every one does the same, for use veils from us the true aspect of
things."

Happy Birthday, to us.

Dobson

James Dobson (whom I despise) has the ear of the president.

Why do I despise him? It isn't that he said Spongebob was gay. He didn't. No, what he said was worse than that; he said Spongebob was being used to make children tolerant. Which means Dobson is against tolerance. More on that later.

His views on discipline are scary. Not that he advocates spanking, per se (I was spanked on occasion, I seem to have survived. On the other hand I can't really see myself using it as a tool, myself. I am not going to condemn it, out of hand), but rather the ways in which he describes it.

Should a child be spanked with a hand or some other object?

Question
There is some controversy over whether a parent should spank with his or her hand or with some other object, such as a belt or paddle. What do you recommend?

Answer
I recommend a neutral object of some type.

To those who disagree on this point, I'd encourage them to do what seems right. It is not a critical issue to me. The reason I suggest a switch or paddle is because the hand should be seen as an object of love -- to hold, hug, pat, and caress. However, if you're used to suddenly disciplining with the hand, your child may not know when she's about to be swatted and can develop a pattern of flinching when you make an unexpected move. This is not a problem if you take the time to use a neutral object.

My mother always used a small switch, which could not do any permanent damage. But it stung enough to send a very clear message. One day when I had pushed her to the limit, she actually sent me to the backyard to cut my own instrument of punishment. I brought back a tiny little twig about seven inches long. She could not have generated anything more than a tickle with it. She never sent me on that fool's errand again.

Elsewhere he says that if spanking doesn't seem to be be working (and recall, his preferred method is with, "a neutral object") it's probably because one is being too gentle.

He does admit that spanking might not work for all. The child may be of stronger will than the parent. The child may have ADHD, and spanking will prove counter-productive. He does seem to think, however, the vast majority of children will respond to it. One just needs to be firm enough.

He also thinks it's not just for parents, but also for designated authority figures, "Corporal punishment is not effective at the junior and senior high school levels, and I do not recommend its application. It can be useful for elementary students, especially with amateur clowns (as opposed to hard-core troublemakers). For this reason, I am opposed to abolishing spanking in elementary schools because we have systematically eliminated the tools with which teachers have traditionally backed up their word. We're down now to a precious few. Let's not go any further in that direction."

Why am I looking at his attitudes on physical punishment?

Because of his son, being groomed to replace him as the head of Focus on the Family.

Ryan Dobson is portrayed, with deliberation, as a "rebel for Christ," and his take on what needs to happen to make America right is this, "Kids today are looking for something to die for, they're looking for a cause," Ryan said. "If you give them something to die for, they'll go to the edge of the earth for you. Kids like that give me hope for revolution in America."

That was from his new book 2Die4, which follows his first book, Be Intolerant, Because Some Things are Just Stupid.

At the National Religious Broadcasters conference he was interviewed by Media Transparency Air Jesus, "During a brief Q&A session, I asked Ryan if he thought there were any specific causes kids should die for. I wanted to know if he sought to literally usher children toward martyrdom like some Hamas lieutenant or was just using jarring rhetoric to spur apathetic teens to activism.

Without hesitation Ryan responded, "People keep saying we need to change the discussion on abortion before we can ban it. We don't need to change the discussion. Like 80 percent of the country is against abortion," he stated, citing some highly dubious polling data. "What kind of country fines people $25,000 for killing a bald eagle but doesn't do anything when unborn babies get thrown in the trash?" But before he could complete his apparent endorsement of a violent struggle to stop abortion, Ryan trailed off on a platitude about keeping himself "pure" for his fiancee.

Now I may not be an expert, but I can't see a whole lot of "kids" as Ryan Dobson calls them, who are going to go out and let themselves be killed as martyrs. One, I don't see all that many of the Evil Left running around threatening to kill them, and two, they are not the stuff of which Ghandis are made.

The audience Dobson aims at is the audience which wants to kill those who, "oppose our way of life,", which means they have a certain inclination for violence, at least at the rhetorical level. Looking at Tim McVeigh, Eric Rudolph, the Christian Identity Movement, the preachers who say killing, "abortionists" isn't a sin; may even be a calling, and the like, I see the possibility of people, even kids, dying in this, "revolution," but it doesn't start with Dobson's adherents.