Syndicate and Hague

In light of my “rah rah gay marriage” posts over the last few months, I thought I’d point you to the Alternatives to Marriage Project, which takes up the social justice issues that marriage does not/should not solve and that we have a responsibility to address in our society.

Unlike those who decry advances in gay marriage because it means monogamy (it doesn’t if you don’t want it to) or because we should focus on other things first (nothing would ever happen if we looked at issues that way), the Alternatives to Marriage Project appears to have their collective heads screwed on straight. (Ha. So to speak.)

I’ll disclaim that a friend of mine just joined the board, so there you have that, but my friends are smart people…so…yeah.

From their website:

The Alternatives to Marriage Project is not against marriage. But we believe that unmarried relationships also deserve validation and support. People may be pressured to marry by their families, friends, and communities. They may also face marital status discrimination. We oppose this unfair treatment and advocate for the equal rights of unmarried people.

According to the 2000 Census, there are eleven million unmarried people living with an unmarried partner in the United States today, and this number has grown 72% in the last decade alone. Millions more people are not currently in relationships or do not live with their partner, and have no plans to marry. There are many reasons people choose not to get married. Some people, like same-sex couples and those in relationships of more than two people, are not legally allowed to marry.

The Alternatives to Marriage Project is open to everyone, including singles, couples, married people, people in relationships with more than two people, and people of all genders and sexual orientations. We welcome our married supporters, who are among the many friends, relatives, and allies of unmarried people.

Not to be crass, but seriously, all y’all libertarians and Republicans can go screw yourselves. Live on an island where you don’t care about the society you live in. Tear each other to pieces in some Lord of the Flies fantasyland where the strong survive and blah blah blah.

This is a note I might otherwise post on my Twitter feed. A 140 character WTF, but this is serious.

First, I’ll tell you why I’m beyond outraged. The Star Tribune wrote today that police and fire calls may start to be billed to the recipients of said services in Duluth.

Let me quote from the article:

Duluth city administrators are considering charging fees to property owners and drivers for police and fire responses.

City spokesman Jeff Papas says the amount of the fees haven’t been set yet.

If the Duluth City Council agrees to charge fees, it would then set an amount. The council could vote July 28.

Papas says the city is looking into whether it can charge different fees for residents and nonresidents. If so, fire and vehicle extraction fees would apply to everyone, but only nonresidents would pay to have accidents investigated.

Papas says the fees could bring in an extra $100,000 per year for the city facing a $4.5 million deficit.

Screed ahead.

If our economy/society is in such shambles that we can’t provide basic rescue and protection services to ourselves based on a shared pool of resources, we have a problem.

And here is the problem we face in general. Since the 1980s, certain members of our society have been reaping the tremendous benefits of deregulation, while society itself is cracking under the weight of economic and structural disrepair that has happened with the abandonment of checks and balances on the free market.

Laissez faire economic policy is a dumb idea. The fairy tale that what is good for “the market” is good for the society is preposterous. The current crisis with foreclosures is a fantastic example. “The market” drove up prices and encouraged greedy and corrupt mortgage brokers to get home buyers/refinancers to sign on with loans they had no perceivable way of paying off.

Why would they do this? Huge, huge commission. The bigger the “sale,” the bigger the haul. Lack of oversight and regulation allowed this to continue on a grand scale. There were home buyers/refinancers who made greedy/bad decisions, but if you read the personal stories that have been reported, some were just outright deceived.

Conned. Conned because a lot of people were making a lot of money.

And what happens to the people who really profited on this? They lose a tiny percentage of their ghastly wealth? That’s hardly punishment for hundreds of thousands of people losing their homes and the destruction that wreaks on neighborhoods.

But forget that. We could talk about deregulation of mining, all those cranes that keep crashing down and killing people, the airline industry.

Deregulation=no oversight. No oversight=no one to call you out on fraud.

And now we’re in a situation where a city in this great state, and this is a great state, is considering charging for basic rescue and protection.

Minnesota is not perfect, but we used to value our communities. We knew that in order to have a functional state with a good quality of life, you had to invest in the society. We are responsible for the quality of our communities and neighborhoods.

If there’s no money, raise taxes. Forget this “fee-based” Republican crap. We are a society. We stand together or else we will fall apart. Hardly any of us could afford as a single household to create the kind of life that we have when we combine our resources. It is beyond my personal comprehension that people can ignore this simple fact.

I could scream right now, I’m so frustrated. Our physical infrastructure is disintegrating, and now our rescue/protection infrastructure is something we might have to consider the cost of the charges against the benefits of getting help.

Taxes. Taxes. Taxes. Raise the damned income tax. Taxes are your obligation to the society in which you live.

Know what’s worse than taxes? A society where no one is accountable. Make people pay for rescue/protection services and some will opt out. You’d better hope those people don’t live next door to you if it happens.

We’re coming up here on one year. And by “we” and “one year,” I mean Megan and I are coming up on our one year anniversary.

It’s a big deal for me. Maintaining relationships has never been one of my greatest skills. I am, at my core, a frenetic girl. Warp speed brain, distracted, self-involved. As one of my friends (who I won’t name because he’s all “I want my privacy”) and I have discussed in the past, dating is hard for creative types like the two of us because the blank slate is all possibility and we can write such interesting tragedies.

And, c’mon, who doesn’t like a good passionate tragedy?

It has struck me over the last few months that movies/stories I once identified with (oddly enough, these stories are passionately tragic…) seem, well, kind of boring.

This kind of sustainable, non-tragic love has been good for me. I’ve mellowed a bit. Yeah, I’m still a ball of mental energy, but it’s not quite the same.

And so this is a public thank you to Megan:

• for humoring my need for text exhibitionism via Twitter et al and the blog and for the fact that she inevitably winds up with a presence there as well
• for being the ideal counterbalance to my spaced out, distracted mind
• for watching Countdown and appreciating Wonkette and introducing me to fantastic feminist blogs and consuming information and news at the same kind of rate that I do
• for being independent and stubborn and seemingly incapable of being steamrolled by my personality (no small feat, people)
• for understanding that anything I don’t know I must find out immediately, even if it means dragging my computer into bed to look up something on Wikipedia
• for being beautiful
• for making me a better person
• for all the things I can’t/don’t want to share on my little blog

This has been a year of being the happiest ever.

This is a very quick hit on the first part of a two part series in the Minnesota Daily on the survey of what students value and what they perceive the University as valuing and the difference between them.

Students at the University of Minnesota currently pay $3,750 per semester in tuition, $324.10 in student fees, and a $500 “University fee.” This brings the grand total of one semester of education at a land grant, state-funded university to a whopping $4574.10 per semester.

That is $9,148.20 per year before books and course-related expenses.

As a Minnesotan, I find this abhorrent. Tuition has nearly doubled since I graduated in 1999 and, as I’m sure you all know, incomes have not.

Strategic planning or not, big grant funding for research or not, it is the responsibility of the University to provide quality undergraduate education to our students and there is a pervasive problem at all institutions of higher education where intelligent, fantastic researchers are expected to teach courses but not expected to develop competency (to say nothing of expertise) in pedagogy (teaching).

This is a long-running problem. Teaching doesn’t bring in money, research does. The University needs money……and thus the cycle continues. Research gets priority over teaching.

The administration can spin things however they want. I went to the University as an undergraduate, so did many of my friends, we have all come to the same conclusions the undergraduates who were surveyed did.