Report Cards Are In!

How does your state fair when it comes to women's health?


National Women's Law Center Report Cards

Check out your state or just look at the key findings, if you want an overview. Interestingly, no state got a Satisfactory. The rankings start at a Satisfactory minus - and only three states achieved that! Most states rank as Unsatisfactory with the next biggest category being a flat out Fail. These health measures look at access to early screenings, dental health, pregnancy services, life expectancy, obesity and abortion providers, among many other things. Something else to think about in the ongoing health care debate.

-- DV

Credit Card Catastrophe

From the comments section in the most recent post:

"Additionally, many cards will soon be charging 5% minimum payment instead of 2%, which is more than doubling what you would be paying per month -- some people just aren't going to be able to afford this, especially with the economic conditions going on now."

This is one of the smarter regulations put in by the government. It is not the credit card companies that want people to pay more, they realize when individuals only pay the minimum 2% balance on their cards now they are not touching the principal portion of their debt and will never be able to pay off their balance. So, they have a consumer right where they want them a lifelong slave to the credit card company. By increasing the minimum payment balance to 5 percent it is ensuring that individuals who should've never put themselves in financial crisis to begin with by using credit instead of actually spending money they had, will actually begin to put a dent in the financial mess they created for themselves.

Anon, your first statement is simply wrong. The government did not put this regulation in place, and for good reason. The credit card companies put that new rule in place, although some like Bank of America have recently come out to say they will not raise the minimum payment percentage. Yes, it forces people to pay more on their principle and in theory that would get them out of debt faster. And I would agree with you that much of the debt Americans have gotten themselves into shouldn't have been racked up in the first place. But you have your facts wrong, and I'm afraid you're not thinking about the actual financial implications of this decision.

The government actually ruled that credit card companies could NOT impose rate hikes on customers (who weren't in default), and that law kicks in February 2010. To make sure they could get more money out of people, the credit card companies decided to hike the minimum pay back percentage to 5% during the grace period before the new rule takes effect, because the new law says nothing about raising the minimum payments, only stipulating that cc companies give 45 days notice to customers before changes are made. The only way out of the situation is to call the cc company and "opt out" -- but that means you must close the card down and make no new charges, which ultimately hurts your FICO credit score, because it is partly a measure of how much credit you have access to. You reduce that amount when you close a card down, which is why it is better to pay it off and leave it open rather than close it. A damaged FICO score means you will have a harder time qualifying for a good credit deal on everything from insurance for your car to the percentage you have to pay on a bank loan.

Mandatorily raising the minimum repayment amount is not the bright idea you think it is. The average American household has about $8300 in credit card debt. At a 2.5% minimum payment, they are paying on average a little over $200/month as a minimum balance. They can always pay more, but they have to pay at least that much. With this increase, it means that the average household must now pay $415/month minimum, without choice. If they cannot pay this 100% increase in minimum payments, then they will be hit by penalties and automatically fall out of the protection of the federal rule that does not allow cc companies to jack interest rates to 32%. Once they have defaulted once on a payment, that 32% kicks in.

Now how hard will it be to get out of debt, with your minimum payment at $415, and the interest rate at 32%? Do the math for a typical American household on 32% interest for $8300, and you'll discover that raising the minimum payment to 5% won't help these people get out of debt -- once the twin problems of 32% and 5% minimum are in play. With the number of people having difficulty paying their debts, with all the unemployed folks out there, could there be a worse time to raise the minimum payment? This is a catastrophe waiting to happen. And this is just on the personal level -- think of the small businesses that use their credit cards as a line of credit for growth and development. Who, in fact, have been explicitly encouraged to think of their cards as a business line of credit by credit card commercials! Doubling their minimum payments hurts small business owners at a time when small businesses are being forced into bankruptcy right and left. It's a piss poor idea.

People who can get out of credit card debt and can pay more than the minimum payments often do. Once you are forced to pay that much more, you'll have to start digging the money out of some place else. Maybe it'll come out of the "right" spots. Maybe you'll eat out less or stop going to the spa. And those folks who live above their budgets are one thing, sure. But there are lots of Americans who are living within their means, and this move is going to drive some of them to default on their credit cards, which is going to drive up the interest rates on their other financial products like car insurance, mortgage loans, car financing, student loan payback percentages, etc. The market is all interconnected. We'll see the ripples from this shortly after it becomes permanent for a lot of people.

Personal note, my Bank of America card raised my APR by several unacceptable percentage points several months ago. I didn't have a lot on the card, I hadn't missed payments or made late payments. So I called to find out why I was being punished, and they couldn't give me a good answer. They said that they were having to raise rates on everybody in order to collect form the few people they couldn't get money from. I promptly closed the account, and told them they had permanently lost any future money from me, once the balance was paid off. If that's how they want to treat good customers, I don't want to do business with them. I wouldn't touch a Chase card with somebody else's wallet. That's why I'm sticking to my credit union credit card -- which has done absolutely none of the things that the giant banks (who took your tax dollars in the form of bailout money) are doing to people during one of the worst economic disasters in our history.

Screw them. Go to a credit union.

-- DV

Another One Bites the Dust

No, not blog stalkers -- although this guy probably had the same major.

By committing insider trading (JP definition: Verb. Def. 1: buying/selling stock based on inside knowledge you have that has not been made public yet. Def. 2: very, highly illegal. Def. 3: layman's terms -- getting first crack at it because of an unfair advantage; known examples: Martha Stewart), the CEO of Galleon Group Raj Rajaratnam and several others are being charged in court although they haven't pleaded to the charges yet. article link

These sorts of unethical and illegal things helped propel Rajaratnam to the status of billionaire, with his net worth at 1.3 billion. Happy Raj:


Now, lawyers will be getting a good chunk of that wealth to defend him against the charges that he greedily jumped ahead of ordinary investors trying to do the right thing with the information they have available to them to make wealth for themselves. Sad Raj:


If the gap between CEO pay and regular workers weren't so damned large, perhaps there would not be the incentive to cheat. After all, even the shoddy argument that the CEOs "produce" something that is so much more intrinsically important than those who work for them is completely blown away by the state of the economy that their clever decisions helped to create. CEO pay and bonuses need to be reviewed, in my opinion. The financial industry itself is full of ethical problems it doesn't want to examine. I remember one of my finance profs answering my question about the quality of information really available by looking at things like p/e ratio, etc. His response, "We assume everybody's honest." I lol'd. This was just before the Enron collapse.

There are always things a single investor can do to try to make a difference on the high seas of finance -- an ocean absolutely riddled with pirates. Credit card companies are a good place to start. Currently, some credit card companies are jacking up the annual percentage rates on some customers as high as 30-32% -- for people who have never had a late payment! Additionally, many cards will soon be charging 5% minimum payment instead of 2%, which is more than doubling what you would be paying per month -- some people just aren't going to be able to afford this, especially with the economic conditions going on now. So, why not move your money to a credit union? They offer credit cards, they're easy to get hold of, and they're staffed by people who live in the community. Oh, and they are not the same people who took a government bailout -- your money, remember -- and are set to turn around and pay out bonuses to their employees, all the while telling you they can't possibly give you a break on that 30% APR or that 5% minimum payment.

As for the stock market, there are places like Ethical Investing

that monitor both stocks from companies with ethical behavior and stocks without such companies. You can simply google "ethical investing" and be on your way. Of course, there is the usual caveat to make sure you're really picking an ethical stock, etc. Just because it says it is, doesn't mean it is. And finally, there's always the "make noise" category, for whatever it's worth. For every Raj Rajaratnam there are probably ten more who haven't been caught yet. Or maybe Raj was looked into because some of his donation money went to a Tamil Tiger front posing as a charity. Who knows why they were clued into him. But politicians need to know how angry people still are at the financial inequality in the market right now. It isn't fair that we have no money for health care (regardless of what you think of the plan) but we do have money to bail out businesses that turn around and put the squeeze on already squeezed citizens. They need to know how unfair it is that the average citizen tries to buy stocks on decisions made on the market based on good faith, while people like Rajaratnam and his crew take advantage of what they know to grow even wealthier than they already are. It doesn't always work, but at least it shakes the foundation a little.

-- DV

What We're All Singing Around the House Today ...

Why you so obsessed with me...boy I wanna know ...

....

It's clear that you're upset with me.

Finally found a girl that you couldn't impress

Last man on the earth still couldn't get this

You're delusional, you're delusional

Boy you're losin' your mind

It's confusin' you, you're confused and yo

Why you wastin' your time?

:D

-- DV

Pix 2!

So, the most recent Fight Night saw two stars hit this town.

Michael Clark is currently #12 in the US in the lightweight division, former #1 boxer in his division and appeared on The Contender, a reality show about boxing. And he was sweaty. Very sweaty. I have no idea why he came to this town, but I was happy to see him box in person.

Tommy's fight was something of a nail biter. Chuck "The Professor" Mussachio gave him a real challenge, and he clearly wanted Tommy's Fedecentro belt. The fight went the full distance, which if I'm not terribly mistaken is only the second time in Tommy's 19 fights he's ever gone to the cards. He outboxed Mussachio that night, taking punches, but giving them back in combos. He won unanimously on the cards -- but to Judge Jim Frio who scored the bout 100 - 94, are you kidding me?! I know he's this town's (and my) golden boy, but come on! Tommy lost a few rounds on points in there, most obviously in rounds 2 & 3. Judging by favoritism does NOT help boxing, thank you very much. Besides, if he had truly dominated that much, the The Prof would've been laying on the canvas. This fangrrl would know.

Pretty! And sweaty.
His comment: "I'm really sweaty, do you mind that?"
Me: "lol"

So, I got my fangrrl pic, in the "locker" room, no less. It helps to schmooze the people around him and drop some boxing talk. That's really what got us in the back door. In a disturbing but predictable sign of things to come, Tommy t-shirts were for sale this time. The boy's moving up. He's not ready for the cats who dominate the top five -- but he'll get there.

And yes, I got the t-shirt. And I got it signed. What are you looking at?

-- DV

Pics!

Due to an interesting combination of Mac/PC incompatibility and internet malfunctions, I'm behind on pics. Wa-a-ay behind. I'll do the Derbys first. I attended my third KY Derby this past May (giving up an opportunity to see Tommy Karpency fight -- why, oh why, does everything I enjoy have to happen all at once?). Yeah, I know, only about five months behind.

We dressed for disaster that never materialized (at least for us). The thing over the shirt is supposed to be the dress I was going to wear. Instead, because of the gloom and fear of cold, I ended up going with leather pants, galoshes and a white shirt under the dress. I looked like Paddington the Pimp, but I stayed dry and had a good time. The people in the tent behind us took turns falling over by mid-afternoon. D/B also whalloped a trollup later. It was funny watching her say: "Get out of my face one .... Get out of my face two ..."

Sister won over $400 on the long shot horse, Mine That Bird. She cried when the ticket lady cashed her bet. LOL. My horse, Papa Clem, got shut out just as he was making his move. Mine that Bird went on to run in the WV Derby, my first time attending.

Same outfit, take two. This is Mine That Bird's trainer, just standing around and waiting to take pics -- a much different atmosphere than the high security KY Derby. MTB actually placed third in that race. In other exciting races, D/B chased down Gene Simmons from Kiss, took a pic of his mug and then ran away. Why Gene Simmons was there in the first place is equally funny. But it was like its own race, watching her white feathered hat chase his black mullet: "D/B is three lengths back, making her move around the outside, now they're neck in neck, it's going to be a photo finish ... a-a-and ... she ran away??"

Good times.

I also learned I don't really like casinos. I don't like the concept of putting hard earned $$ down on the chance you might lose all of it. I passed a man with 198 credits in a $1 pull slot machine. Somebody put 200 perfectly good dollars in damned slot machine?! There's no IRA that needs funded? No nonprofit that could use the cash? I'm not passing judgment. It just doesn't seem like fun to me, and the people doing it didn't seem like they were having fun either. They seemed tense and anxious and they liked to bang on the machines. Seems kind of stressful.

-- DV

Then Again, Who Cares?

Of course there are always those people who come along and snap me out of feeling too sorry for the human condition. And I'm getting closer and closer to sending the actual email or having the face to face conversation that I usually scurry home and blog about in an angry manner. Like so:

Dear Sweet Little M From Jersey: No one believes you when you claim to have gone to the building I work in and no one knew where the writing center was. Not even your own classmates believed you. You probably should've waited until after class to ask me about it, instead of confronting me loudly about how I must not know what I was talking about in front of everyone right before class started. I had to explain that if you had gone to the secretaries demanding a "peer review", they probably would've told you that they didn't know what you were talking about. If, on the other hand, you had used the two words "writing center" together in a sentence, then they would've pointed you in the direction of the basement. At this point you got a little pissy. You mentioned Sell-Out Sal who sits behind you and who totally went with you and, like, had the same problem. I mentioned Sal had emailed me that night and I had emailed her back the following morning -- three days ago. Didn't Sal tell you? Oh, wait, she didn't, did she? You could've always emailed me instead of waiting until the absolute minute the thing is due to bring it up. Maybe you should stop partying with her and letting her run your life. That's always an option.

Dear Sell-Out Sal: I'm getting to the point where I really don't like you as a person. I've watched you run New Jersey M's life from a decent B- student to a D student. I get that you're here to party. You don't believe me when I say it's probably not a good idea to pay a $28,000 cover charge instead of going to college. But you'll get yours grade-wise soon enough. What got me was the look on M's face when you whipped out that green sheet from the writing center, where you had gone to make up the day you both got kicked out of class for being screw-ups. You didn't tell her when you had it figured out by lunchtime the next day, did you? Oh, and so sorry that I screwed up your travel plans, as you announced at the beginning of class (again, in front of everyone, why?) that you couldn't stay because you were, like, catching a ride home, and you had to go. And then you tried to hand me a few loose pieces of paper instead of your portfolio. I took great delight in telling you that if that portfolio wasn't in my office by 5:00 today that you were getting a D on the midterm. It was on the syllabus. I sent out three reminder emails. We went over it in class for the past week. At this point, your forgetfulness is not my fault.

Dear Phil-a-Party-Pino: I get that college is, like, wa-ay better than high school and the dating pool just expanded. I'm also happy you turned in your portfolio, such as it is. You've got bigger problems, m'dear. You got your first alcohol incident within 24 hours of stepping foot on campus. You followed that up later in the week with a pot violation that landed you in required AA classes. You've since hit your third violation in the dorm for putting a pack of booze under your sweatshirt (dumbass, at least be smart and put it in your backpack), and you're being tossed out of that dorm. Of course, since they're just moving you to a different dorm, you'll learn nothing from this. Especially considering you got caught in a different dorm on an alcohol violation, but they let you skate on it. And then later two cops picked you up smoking a joint on a public park bench. LOL. You're lucky they let that one go, too. They really shouldn't have. You seem like the kind of person who has to hit absolute bottom with no get-out-of-jail-free cards in order to realize the situation you made for yourself. I just wish NJ M and Sell-Out Sal would quit partying with you.

Midterms are always such wonderful and reflective times. Sigh.

-- DV

Sometimes it feels like the weight of human suffering comes and sits on my shoulders. I know immediately how ridiculous that sounds. I live in the First World, full stop. I don't have to worry about clean water, electricity or food. I don't live in a place leveled by earthquakes and I haven't witnessed my friends and neighbors decimated by war. My son is healthy and goes to free public school (whether he likes it or not -- one can't have it all). Nevertheless, sometimes it sits on my shoulders.

Empathy in my opinion is a good quality. If you can understand how someone comes to be in the position they are in, it makes it easier to figure out what to do about it (if anything). Doesn't mean you condone the position -- just understand it better. When I look at my son, I can feel his frustration and fear about middle school. I might've come down hard on him, but I tried to also offer support where I thought he needed it. I think most parents who love their children feel deeply for them. For me, my heart sinks when his does, and I'm sure this is true for other parents.

I just wish I didn't feel this way about most people.

Maybe it's because I love writing about the human condition that makes me notice people more closely. But I just ... notice things; and those things pile up on top of me sometimes. We ran into a friend of El Hijo's in a store a few weeks back; the friend was with an older woman mentor/friend. It's the first time I'd seen either of them, and before I knew who they were, I made some comment about them being a couple. El Hijo laughed and explained otherwise. But a couple of weeks later he came home and told me the friend had just dropped the bomb that he had actually been seeing the older woman for a long time, and things had just gotten really complicated. It just seemed so obvious they were were in love at the time. That doesn't weigh on me, probably because I don't really know them.

Right now the Jr.-Me coworker is having some pretty substantial life stress. His wife is on the verge of emergency surgery -- they're in limbo waiting on a decision. I've covered five of his classes so far for emergency trips to the doctor. I know them well enough to feel how scared she is and how angry and frustrated and powerless he feels. But it's not just the negative emotions that work on me. She brought him some hot thermos of something last week, a few days after I'd covered a whole day's worth of his classes. He had been frustrated and slightly sick that morning, and he was still getting over having just driven eight hours one way to take her literally to the best doctor in the country. When she showed up in our office with that thermos, he was so touched and comforted -- it made me feel obscene to watch. For a moment, the whole world stopped for them. He loved her so much; she seemed so grateful to have him. I knew in an instant he would never cheat on her. I felt like an intruder, so I turned away. I have to cover his classes tomorrow, because she has another last minute appointment. Their worry and dread and comfort in each other has made me heartsick.

It's the same with some of my students. I remember their stories, their fears, the things that happen to them. It's because I remember, I think, that makes them so loyal to me. I remember their losses, I see the effects of neglectful mothers and drunks for fathers. I see the full hope and dreams an entire family has placed on the shoulders of one child whose body just crumples when she gets a really poor grade or realizes she has to tell her family that being a doctor is not really a choice because of the chemistry, which she just can't do, and that's all her family has ever thought college was about. Sometimes a C is more than just a grade. Sometimes I see the family just waiting to swoop in and ask for money from a boy who got to college in spite of their domestic abuse and drug addiction, but I know he sees them too. I've had them dissolve into tears because their best friend was killed, their brother was shot in Iraq and they have to drive to North Carolina to bring the body home, or they were raped in a home where they should've been safe.

I seem to specialize in motherless boys, and I have amassed nearly enough of them to start a baseball team. I can already start a basketball team's worth. They come by to introduce me to girlfriends for approval, or bring their creative projects for praise (I always find something to praise) or to ask me about money problems or drinking problems or anger problems. They tell me about their grand plans for themselves -- the houses they want to build, the books they are going to write, the work they are going to do. They tell me the secrets about themselves -- about the music they really like but won't share with their friends or their fear of becoming their fathers. Sometimes they come because they want to be teased, even though they pretend to be angry about it. I think mainly they drop in because they want to feel like they matter to somebody; and they do matter to me.

But sometimes the collective weight of all those motherless boys and the fear, the hope, the unknown, the small celebrations and the disappointments just gather right on top of my shoulders. And then I feel. And I feel and I feel and I feel, and I know I can do no more than I already have -- the kind word, the joke, the safe place to sit, the one who listens, the one who knows where things are, the small birthday present, the quiet question. But I still feel, until it has nowhere else to go, and it pours over.

And right now, I'm full-to-sloshing.

-- DV

Life is Complicated -- and Quieter!

Life has been nuts.

You'd think with a second "me" in the office, it would be easier. But then there is the mentoring and helping of Jr. Me, not to mention the complete and utter clusterfuck that one of our departments has created for us. I've had so much trouble out of them from the beginning -- and some of the mess they made is still not cleaned up despite numerous emails/begging/menacing tone/etc. It's so bad I made a Shit List. And they're on #33. Seriously. I want to blog about it, but so far I can't get past typing "BLARGHH!"

In happier news, I'm up for an Outstanding Teacher Award this year. The downside is that they basically put me up against Super Prof in my department. Seriously, this is like Hong Kong Phooey going up against The Green Lantern. So my chances of winning it are teeny-tiny. But, it still looks great just to be nominated, and there is a chance, however small, that I still might win. Part of what gets weighted in the decision is unsolicited student recommendations, and my first-generation students can absolutely kill in that department. But I'm not holding my breath. Besides, the nominations carry over to the next year, if I'm not mistaken, so then Super Prof won't be eligible after having just won it for another five years.

In other news, we had Dante's first parent/teacher conference since he started middle school. Not Good. While Dante has mostly B's with a high C or low A here and there, he's not going to maintain that much longer because of his work habits. We were a little suspicious that he rarely brought in homework, and we had good reason to be. He was slopping through his math homework and turning it in, getting 50s on it (out of 100). He was missing just enough work to seriously impact his grade -- and his teachers had given him several opportunities to make this work up. But what was worse to us was that he simply wasn't doing much of anything in class. The teacher would say to get started, he'd dawdle around, she'd tell him to get busy, and he would be "defiant" and still not do the work. I think he is basically not paying any attention, so that when they tell him to get started, he has no idea on what and doesn't want to get into trouble by asking. Then there is his organizational issue. I would say most 12 year old boys aren't very organized. But I've seen the inside of Dante's locker, and let me tell you, it should be labeled a crime scene. That's why work doesn't get turned in -- it wanders off to die at the bottom of his locker. Nothing goes in folders. He has to dig and search for everything.

What's really ironic is that in a lot of other ways, Dante has adjusted to middle school just fine. He's dealing with a locker, he meets his close friends for lunch, he seems to be handling the new start time well. He even joined the Technical Student Association and the Robotics Club. This is when I became suspicious that my child had been taken over by the Body Snatchers and replaced with Pod Dante. He's gone to math tutoring workshop during lunchtime. He's signed up for Teen Talk group sessions with the counselor. He even went to see the counselor personally twice, because he thought it was a good idea they had a job just to talk to kids. He promptly reported a drinking problem and parental neglect. He picked these off the information sheet she passed out when she did his class visit. He explained that his drinking problem involved having to go to the water fountain too many times and getting into trouble, and parental neglect as the fact that El Hijo and I don't always like playing Nerf guns and Star Wars video games. I'm still waiting on the call from Social Services.

So after the conference, I was pretty hot. El Hijo and I went home and made a plan before we picked him up from the Boys & Girls Club. We welcomed him home into a whole new world of concentration. We were pretty harsh, because he was fucking up pretty good. We grounded him from going outside for a week. We took away all electronics, including watching TV and playing on the computer. He comes home, he gets to work on his homework or studying for a test; he has to get his planner signed by every teacher in his core schedule, whether he has homework or not, and we sign it at the end of the day; we went after school and he completely cleaned up his locker; I've driven him promptly back to school to retrieve "forgotten" homework; if he doesn't get the planner signed by all teachers, his grounding extends a day for each day he gets; each week we email all his teachers to check on his behavior -- if they tell us things aren't improving, he gets grounded until we ask them again. For a flitty bird like Dante, this was hell. If it would be possible to look up "flibbertygibbit" in the dictionary, an interactive video showing him being him would be available next to the definition. Maybe this punishment isn't as bad as the time I garbage bagged up everything he owned and he earned it back through good behavior piece by piece. But nearly so. Probably ranks as #2 in the list of punishments he's had in his life. But the reaction he's had has been a bit surprising.

Day One: Much weeping, gnashing of teeth, wearing sackcloth, and lamenting for lost technology. To quote the Bible, which was totally speaking about poor school performance here: "For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath. And cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth." (Matthew 25:2). Hath he done his homework, technology shall have been given, and he would've had in abundance. I think Dante would definitely say he had been thrust into outer darkness, given the electronic glare he prefers to live in.

Day Two: Whimpering over loss of technology; eventually gets out Legos and builds an impressive starship that includes a sickbay, repair-bots and mounted smaller gunships. A considerable peace falls over the house. It's amazing how loud technology can really be.

Day Three: Some words mentioned about loss of technology. More gunships built. Sat down and read two chapters of Newbery Award winning fiction book. Played Clue with parents and Quiddler. Self-initiated cleaning of entire room, and did it mostly right. Cleaned out all garbage, sorted papers, dug out dirty clothes from the hinterlands of his tiny bedroom. Put together Halloween costume made entirely from pieces of previous years' costumes. He's going as a Funk Skeleton (his term). What that means is he's wearing a trench coat looking thing, has a full skeleton head with chest piece (which is tucked into trench coat) and a giant afro wig. He tried it on -- it looks hilarious. He looks like a funk extra from the Thriller video. I'll take pictures when he's got it exactly where he wants it.

I may bust all the technology in the house accidentally-on-purpose. He's been more creative in the past few days and gotten more done than he ever has in his life!

-- DV