That’s what Eric Zorn, the Chicago Tribune columnist, is writing about in his blog today: the notion that the GOP is “stuck” with ObamaCare because a true attempt at repeal will take away provisions that Americans like, as well as the buggy exchanges: the ability of children up to age 26 to stay on their parents’ policies, the expansion of Medicaid to larger segments of the working poor, the end of the ability of insurance companies to take away coverage... Read more

OK, I know my readership is really too small to ask questions of my readers, but I’ll do so anyway: I was thinking the other day of the frequently-heard statement that, among the very poor, fatherhood has so much disappeared that no one knows what a father is supposed to do anymore anyway. And I pulled out a book I had held onto from my college days, The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy by William... Read more

Two anniversaries: The first, Kristallnacht (or, more commonly in German, Reichskristallnacht), the night of terror on November 9/10, 1938 — when Jewish synagogues and businesses were torched, windows smashed, and Jewish men rounded up and sent to Dachau. For many such German Jews, this was the turning point when they finally recognized that the persecution they had to this point experienced was not going to fade but only get worse, and began to work seriously on getting out of the... Read more

So a while ago, I wrote a post in which I said that the key to the problem of children born into single-parent homes is the men: women get the rewards of motherhood, plus state and social services supports, so their motivation to avoid pregnancy is small compared to a man who genuinely believes he’s going to lose half his income for the next 18 years. But on the other hand — there are very clear obstacles to demanding men... Read more

Just a five-minute gripe: I tell myself it’s a good thing that the internet browser on my work computer is really outdated, and I can’t comment on (or even read) the comments on blogs/sites such as Slate’s Double X or National Review, and somehow my IP is blocked and I can read the comments, but not reply, on Eric Zorn’s Change of Subject blog at the Tribune site. It keeps me focused on work, right, and it would be unethical... Read more

Sorry, I keep coming back to this topic, and am still working things out, so I’m not as coherent as my incisive commentary on pension- and healthcare-related topics (ha!). But I wrote yesterday on the traditional (= present-day Catholic, and somewhat abandoned Protestant) view on marriage:  uniting a couple in a “two become one flesh” manner, permanent, and open to children.  As a culture, we’ve abandoned the openness to children.  The permanence has been impaired by no-fault divorce, and the... Read more

So I pulled out my catechism — that is, the Catechism of the Catholic Church — for a definition. There isn’t a single definition as in a glossary. But the key items are unity, that is, the two becoming “one flesh” with mutual self-giving; indissolubility; and openness to fertility. To contract a marriage also requires free consent. My understanding — though it’s not spelled out — is that if one of the two never really was open to children or... Read more

So I didn’t actually finish this book, but it sat on the bookshelf for too long after checking it out from the library and now it has to go back tomorrow. The bottom line of the book is that communists — both actual KGB spies and just communist sympathizers — penetrated the highest reaches of the US government, especially during FDR’s presidency. What’s more, American politicians and American media ridiculed those who tried to expose them. Basically, McCarthy was right... Read more

(Look, I wrote this up while proctoring an actuarial exam without internet access.) We all know that having children outside of marriage is not new — what’s changed is, first, its prevalence, and, second, its acceptance. We’re told that, when blacks were slaves, and children were raised communally by the grandmothers too old to work in the fields, and marriages weren’t legally recognized and could be split up by the slaveholder in any case, having children “out of wedlock” was... Read more

That’s what I’d like to say to Amanda Marcotte, writing in Slate’s Double X blog about the fact that insurance companies are now required to charge men and women the same rates for health insurance. Here’s the key paragraph: Under the ACA, the individual market is being set up to look like the kind of insurance that you get through an employer, as Jonathan Chait at New York Magazine explains. So whether you are using a health exchange or you... Read more