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The Financial Abortion Card
Posted: Sunday 12 March 2006 @ 10:39 pm by joecm
A lot of news has been made of a new lawsuit that attempts to allow us men to opt out of a pregnancy. The theory being that since women have the right to abort the baby, shouldn’t men be given the same right? Equal rights are guaranteed after all. Realizing the insanity of trying to make a woman have an actual abortion against her will, the lawsuit seeks what is cleverly being called a financial abortion. If the lawsuit succeeds, a man would have the opportunity to tell the woman that he did not wish to have the baby, and that he is severing all financial responsibility for the child. Now, this lawsuit seems flawed in many ways, but as I see it, the biggest flaw is that there is no way that a man would have such a conversation. We would rather chew our arm off than have a serious discussion. Right ladies?
Does that mean it can’t work? No. I suggest a Financial Abortion Card (FAC). What is that you ask? In soccer (football to all your non-americans), when a penalty occurs the official does not walk over to the offending player and have a conversation about what went wrong. He simply reaches into his pocket and pulls out a yellow card and holds it in the air. Enough said! The player knows what happens, the official knows what happens, everybody around knows what happens. No long conversation about it, play just resumes. The Financial Abortion Card works in a similar way. A man can keep it in his wallet and at the appropriate moment, he can simply take it out, hold it in the air for all to see, and walk away. Maybe even hand the card to the woman as a sort of receipt. I even have a good slogan for it, get the FAC’s. Ah, a fine system indeed.
Get out of my lane!
Posted: Friday 11 November 2005 @ 4:09 pm by joecm
A recent plan in California to allow solo drivers to use the carpool lanes for a fee has made we wonder; what are carpool lanes really for? The name would imply they are designed to get people out of individual cars in order to lower congestion and pollution. But as politicians increasingly get their hands into the use of these lanes, they are taking them places they were never intended to go.
The carpool lane has always been a flawed concept. The rule allowing children, even infants, to count as the second occupant has always seemed a bit odd. How is a parent driving their child around any more helpful to society than a a person with no children driving around? Do we really think the children are going to take their own cars if they aren’t allowed access? It seems to me that we should at minimum restrict the lane to cars with 2 or more driving age people.
Now, a recently enacted California law allows the owners of certain hybrids to apply for a permit to legally drive solo in the carpool lane. While this does promote environmentally friendly cars, it also favors higher income individual and does nothing to improve congestion (except removing these cars from the other lanes). Since carpool lanes, like all other public roads, were paid for by everyone, they should not favor one model car over another – especially a more expensive car.
I suppose we shouldn’t be too surprised that the government’s next step is to allow people to “buy” their way into these lanes. Why use them to promote any sort of agenda at all when you can use them to raise revenue? Sure, they will still be free to carpoolers and hybrid drivers, but now they’ll be sharing the road with that new V22 Hummer. What is this saying about the purpose of these lanes?
With all the new uses for these lanes, maybe it is time to ask if they should exist at all. I suppose with more and more cars being added to these lanes with all the different programs, these lanes may go away on their own.