False Positives
A week ago I remember debating whether to pull up west of Memphis in Arkansas for the evening for a gas fill-up and a hotel while there was still daylight. I thought I had cleared most of Memphis, although I-40 hadn't narrowed to 2 lanes, which I preferred for on-off. (I recently discussed aspects of my move here.) I wasn't running on empty (but had normally filled up between a quarter to a half tank), and I was also hungry and needed a restroom break. It turned into a logistics nightmare because when you are towing a car you have to turn at right angles, and even gas stations in cities don't have much room to maneuver around. Not only did I need to occupy a pump lane, but I had to stop in the cross lane near the convenience store. I considered myself lucky just to get back to the interstate (never mind find a hotel had parking I could use), but now it was pitch black. I didn't know if there was anything between Memphis and Nashville, maybe a 3-hour drive away. I had started the day in West Texas, and I was definitely tired. I was relieved to see a Days Inn sign for a facility maybe an hour's drive east. I then saw two interim exits with hotels; the first exit was a waste of time (the hotel wasn't readily visible off the main drag from the exit), but I did find success off the second--with a Days Inn, to boot. (As I explained I've had good luck parking UHaul's at Days Inn in the past.) The hotel clerk in this case was less flexible, wanted me to park on the inside curb on the right side to the lobby, but I didn't mind--I just needed a good 5 or 6 hours of sleep.I thought I was in the clear when I handed my credit card to the clerk, and she returned it to me, saying my card had been declined. I've certainly seen and/or heard of people having run up credit cards to their credit limits, but even with all the expenses I had incurred before and through the trip, I couldn't have used more than a third of my credit limit; I frequently scrutinize each and every charge and have occasionally challenged a dubious transaction, and the issuer fraud unit, to its credit, will occasionally challenge a transaction (maybe one every 2 or 3 months) I almost never carry a balance but invariably pay off my statement balance. I was horrified at the idea the clerk might think I'm some sort of deadbeat. She actually anticipated the problem: "Does your issuer know you're moving?" (I hadn't closed on the apartment lease, so I hadn't made an address change.) I tried calling my issuer and got a message that there was suspected fraudulent activity on my account, but I quickly got put into some queue (have you ever tried to call an issuer on a Saturday night? I think it probably took 15-20 minutes of being on hold.) As like any good DBA, I'm big on redundancy and quickly gave her another credit card. (For some reason, I've had problems doing things like the USPS change of address with my primary issuer. They try to do a minor verification charge. USPS claims the transaction fails; the card issuer says it processed USPS transactions. I get nowhere trying to resolve the discrepancy. USPS has not had an issue processing my second credit card.)
I don't mind the occasional false positive; it's good that the issuer is being preventive. But it's extremely humiliating when the transaction blows up in my face.
The DMV or How to Ruin a Saturday
To be honest, when I left Maryland in late 2013/early 2014, I had no intention of returning to Maryland anytime soon. (I was also recently looking at prospective offers from Louisiana, Texas and southern Virginia.) But on top of everything else, you usually have to get a new state drivers license within a month or so of moving. Every state has its idiosyncrasies. For example, in WV, they were anal-retentive about documenting your residency; I ended up having to make 3 (40-mile round trips) trips over the copy of my apartment lease. In SC, I had to pay some sort of car usage tax. In MD, you have to get regular vehicle emission tests.The driver's license transfer usually requires evidence of residency and/or various PII, like your social security number card, passport, birth certificate, etc. There's also a vision test. So I decided to go ahead, after checking what I needed and operating hours. They posted fewer hours on Saturday and only covered driver's licenses (vs vehicle registration) (I usually want to take care of both). But I don't know when I can get time off work to take care of this stuff.
I went to Google Maps and noticed that a heavily used route indicated tolls, which I thought was unusual, for the MVA office some 20-odd miles away. There was an I-95 alternative, but I know there's also a toll. So I figured, fine; what could it be: $2-3? Hell, no. More like $8. ($6 if you have EZPass.) I suppose readers may be laughing--"I've seen worse." I was used to getting nickled and dimed in the Chicago suburbs. I don't mind legitimate tolls (for user fees vs. tax expenditures), but government has been known to continue to collect the tax, after the project has been paid off.
Now how could my day get worse? Just guess (I bet you can). It took a while for me to find it with my Garmin because there was no sign and the building was back a distance from the street. When I get there, the parking lot is almost completely empty. You would think if there's a time the MVA is crowded, it's when most people are off work. The only guy there in another car said, "Is it open?" I said it should be--but then noticed a couple of signs up saying it was closed today.
So I headed home, only this time I take a detour to I-95, because I wasn't going to pay another $8 to cross that bridge.
Now how else to cap off my Saturday? How about a trip to the local post office? Oh, and no parking there? (There is free public parking a couple of blocks away.) I had to return a security token to my former employer. (These generate random 6-digit numbers every several seconds you might need to access, say, company email.) Only the postal clerk is arguing that the address doesn't match the USPS database. I don't know the issue, but I was pretty sure about the address because I had many things, including my former company PC, shipped to the same address. I don't want to argue the issue. It was still funny hearing her mispronounce Yuma ("You-ma" is the target; I think she pronounced it: maybe "Umm-ah"). It reminded me of a math professor I had once TA'ed for, an East European who pronounced "naitch-er-ul" numbers.
Tweet Wars and Civility
The idiom goes that "you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar". I realize that I don't have hundreds of followers on Twitter, despite attracting more than 1000 impressions a day over extended periods of time, including dozens of tweets which have attracted hundreds, even thousands of viewers. And, to be frank, I can be blunt and call people names like "idiots" or "morons". I could tell you that I've been called even worse things, which, of course, I don't republish. I don't start out sniping at any fool that tweets absurd things; I would have my hands full just following Trump. There are lots of things I just let slip by. Usually I'm putting my old teacher/professor hat on making a succinct rebuttal.Now, of course I realize I'm not going to convert an ideologue, socialist or progressive with one timely tweet; I also know that some (if not most) Twitter users aren't amused by opposing tweets and aren't serious about debating their point of view. When and why do I reply? It may reflect my mood at the time, the proverbial one straw too many, an extremely obnoxious, over-the-top meme, trite political spin or partisanship, etc. And if there is a reply, what might escalate the Twitter war is when the user responds with predictable spin or propaganda, not even addressing the substance of my tweet.
Yesterday was a good example. I was scanning one of the trending hashtags (I think it might have had to do with a baseball player) when I ran across a strident, off-topic pro-government healthcare tweet. (I think some people try to gain impressions by sticking trending hashtags, even unrelated ones, at the end of their rants.) And to be honest, I was not in the mood to suffer fools gladly. The progressive was totally uninformed; for example, she might not know there's a law against hospitals refusing emergency care on the basis of ability to pay; Nearly half of uninsured qualify for government health care or tax subsidies. Government has restricted openings of new hospitals (certificate of need), new medical schools, occupational licensing restrictions/scope of practice (e.g., nurse practitioner ability to treat routine health matters). There are time-consuming paperwork requirements, not to mention government regulation over provider activities, on providers. Government policies constrain the practices of private sector hospitals, even nonprofit Catholic ones. To a large extent, government policies discourage price competition among providers, marketing of alternative, e.g., barebone catastrophic healthcare policies and limit competition within and between states. We see constraints against pools across states. I could literally go on at some length.
You would think the fact that sectors largely constrained by government policy (e.g., healthcare and education) are among the most inflation-bound would chasten even the most ardent progressives, that the showpiece of socialized medicine, the VA hospital system, has been the subject of numerous scandals, would embarrass the committed Statists.
No, instead the ideologues persist in the belief that a handful of overpaid executives dominate the sector, not the government, which controls prescription drug approvals and at last count half or more of the dollars spent in the sector. Never mind that health insurers have tiny profit margins next to, say, Big IT like Apple or Google. Or that ObamaCare has seen a mass exodus of providers, health insurance rates have skyrocketed, and Congress has to funnel huge amounts of subsidies to keep remaining providers in the system.
The government has its special interests, like the bureaucrats, various benefit advocates, and the people whose medical expenses are subsidized, directly by taxpayers or indirectly by other policyholders having to offset the losses of below-cost insured.
We can see a prior example of government malpractice catering to farmers during the Great Depression. In a deflationary environment, the government was worried that farmer debt was unsustainable, that they needed to prop up commodity prices to ward off catastrophic collapses in the farm sector. So they manipulated prices by imposing quotas. Do you think consumers with limited resources benefited from artificially higher produce prices? Of course not.
I'm just scratching the surface of the Fatal Conceit, that the privileged elite are an effective surrogate for 320M consumers. Government makes innovation all but impossible in the sector. Extended discussions are almost impossible in a 140-character format. (No, I don't have academic credentials in healthcare or economics, but at one point I had an employer which had a government contract under CMS. and I administered some related government databases, I subscribe to free market medical newsletters, and I've widely read various sources. I know and have talked to people in the profession.)
So why do I call these ideologues "idiots", "morons", "fascists", etc.? In part (especially given the economic meaning of the term "fascist"), I think they are accurate. But mostly, I'm trying to wake these people up, like Cher's signature slap across the face in "Moonstruck". Does it work? Probably not. I've had a handful of language police Twitter user rebuke my use of language, and I have zero tolerance for language elites. It's just not worth my message getting confounded with my use of blunt language. I've been tapering off and will continue to do so.
