Gray Wolf State Management Act of 2017

I don't actually want my blog to constantly be about political and legal issues, but this really got me going today.

My wife posted an article with the title:

'Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Wyoming have decided to eradicate wolves'

When I was a kid, wolves were my favorite. I got big non-fiction books from the library about ecology and wildlife before I could even read them, because they were about wolves. I ran around the house pretending to be a wolf so much that my mother was never without a supply of denim patches for my knees. I had to learn more. Especially because the piece that was linked seemed a little biased and maybe I was missing something.

I found this, which also reads a little alarmist but linked me to the actual bills that have been introduced introduced to the US House and Senate. I was disappointed to see MN legislators as co-authors on both bills; Reps Tom Emmer and Richard Nolan, and Sen Amy Klobuchar. I'll put their contact information below.

I found this article from the Center for Biological Diversity which gives a helpful summary of some of the legal battles over wolf management since protections began in the 1960s. Basically, as wolf populations have rebounded (which they have certainly done with protections in place), some have decided that the wolves no longer need protection. I'm guessing this is based on loud complaints from ranchers and farmers in the few areas where wolves can predate livestock, but also by conservatives looking to cut budgets and regulation, and probably also by underlying psychological hangups people might have about wolves. In any case, the fact is that wolves used to live over basically the entire United States, and the fact that there exist small areas with healthy wolf populations does NOT mean we should stop mandating scientifically-directed management. The key thing is that scientists who know wildlife management from an ecological perspective need to make conservation decisions, not lawmakers.

In this sentence, I refuse the temptation to go off on a tangent about badass park rangers in the last couple days.

However, it gets so much cooler - I learned about trophic cascades (Wikipedia), where re-introduction of a predator (the top trophic level) has rippling effects down through the rest of the ecosystem. This link from Yellowstone Park has a fantastic video about what happened there after wolves were re-introduced. WATCH IT! The amount of change they saw in the ecosystem of the park was amazing. I took ecology classes in college, and even spent a semester in a biodiversity and conservation program, and I would not have imagined the extent to which the ecosystem benefited from the re-introduction of wolves.

I can't believe you're still with me. Stop reading this and call to tell your reps and senators that these bills are irresponsible and need to be eliminated. The bottom line is that ecological and conservation science needs to drive wildlife management decisions.

The MN cosponsors are here, but the bills have been introduced, so contact your reps and senators where-ever you live!

Rep Tom Emmer - (202) 225-2331
Rep Richard Nolan - (202) 225-6211
Sen Amy Klobuchar - (202) 224-3244

Drazkowski Amendment - follow-up

Things I learned in the last 3 days: 

• If I title a blog with a somewhat lesser known piece of state-level legislation, a google search will direct traffic to my blog. The previous post on the Drazkowski Amendment saw more traffic in 2 days than my blog had ever seen in it's entire prior history. 
• This made me embarrassed about my non-title and so I changed it again, based on a private joke with my gaming group and by recommendation of my wife. I'm still not sure if I'm satisfied. 
• I can get way, way more traffic to this blog than normal and still get no comments, but I think that might be a good thing, the way comment sections tend to go online. I think people who know me personally feel comfortable commenting, since it is a personal blog. 
• The amendment was NOT included in the final package passed by the MN legislature. I am very pleased to hear this. 

Also related, my e-mail to Rep Drazkowski did get a reply. It was carefully worded and misleading, and I wrote back to call him out as such. My opinion of him has some direct evidence now, and I will not feel at all bad about encouraging people NOT to vote for him in the future. 

Drazkowski Amendment

I saw this list of items of health care online last night, with an alarming message: 


So I looked into it and indeed this was part of the 'Drazkowski Amendment' and was passed through the MN house, as our state tries to legislate repair of our health insurance system. Neither Governor Dayton's plan, nor the plan in the senate, includes this amendment.

There are fairly informative articles here:
PB article
MN Lawyer article

In a nutshell, there are 68 line-items that are required to be covered under ACA (Obamacare), and the Drazkowski amendment makes it optional for insurers to cover them. They must offer a plan that covers all of them, but can also offer plans that cover some or none of them. This means that the insurance market will have cheaper plans available that provide crappy coverage. It encourages consumers to make irresponsible health care decisions based on cost.

SO ... this morning I wrote to my state senator, Dave Senjem, and to Rep Steve Drazkowski of Mazeppa. I'll post the text below, but the point is this:

PLEASE, if you're in MN, take 5 min and call your senator and rep (contact info here) and tell them what you think, remind them that you vote and will encourage others to let this issue influence their votes as well. Or write - their e-mail is there, too. I wrote first because it lets me compose my thoughts, but I plan to call as well. I understand that calls tend to carry more weight, as someone in the office has to spend time listening and recording your message. Feel free to take text and thoughts and ideas from what I wrote if you want.

Hi Senator Senjem

Last night, I saw some details of the ongoing work on health insurance legislation that are very concerning. Specifically, the amendment from rep. Drazkowski with a list of conditions that would not need to be covered by insurers. 

The language of a "la carte insurance" seems to me in this case to simply be a wide open door for insurance companies to save money and expand profits by not covering mental health, maternity care, addiction services, cancer care, diabetic care, emergency services ... the list is ridiculous. 

Insurers are well aware that many customers are stuck choosing insurance by price tag, and allowing them to offer a cheaper plan that consists of horrible coverage is irresponsible legislating. 

So, I'll be looking for where this amendment goes and how you and my representative vote on it, as the conversation on health care moves ahead. I will make sure to inform as many people as I can in my district about the issue and make sure it is remembered at election time. 

Hi Rep Drazkowski

I'm Tommy, a voter in SE MN. 

Last night, I saw some details of the ongoing work on health insurance legislation that are very concerning. Specifically, the amendment you authored, included in the house health insurance bill, with a list of conditions that would not need to be covered by insurers. 

The language of a "la carte insurance" is simply a wide open door for insurance companies to save money and expand profits by not covering mental health, maternity care, addiction services, cancer care, diabetic care, emergency services ... the list is ridiculous, and your framing of it is about a hair's breadth shy of outright 'alternative facts'. 

Insurers are well aware that many customers are stuck choosing insurance by price tag, and allowing them to offer a cheaper plan that consists of horrible coverage is irresponsible legislating. 

You ought to be ashamed of this amendment, which is a handout to insurance companies at the expense of your constituents.  

So, I'll be looking for where this amendment goes and how the reps and senators in my community vote on it. I will make sure to inform as many people as I can in my district about the issue and make sure it is remembered at election time. 

Pugilistic

I have never punched anyone. I'm happy with that statement, and don't foresee myself punching anyone. I doubt I'd be much good at punching anyway, with zero experience and a build much better suited to playing a cello or working with a pipettor in the lab. 

There is, though, this voice in the back of my head, telling me that if I ever did punch someone, however unlikely, it sure seems like punching a nazi would be the way to go. 

Just, as a mental exercise, finish the following sentence a bunch of ways:

A person wearing a mask was caught on camera punching a  ______. 

Fill that in with "child" and you're immediately describing a horrible person. 

Fill it in with "muslim woman in a hijab" and it sounds like a pretty well-defined hate crime. 

Fill it in with "spouse" and that tells a difficult story, probably also of a horrible person. 

Fill it in with "rapist" and now what is it? Vengeance? Justice? Still horrible?

Fill it in with "nazi", though, and are we talking about a masked vigilante? a hero? still a horrible person? A patriot? 

Punching a nazi sounds to me like punching a bad guy. I just have a hard time getting emotionally disturbed by the fact that a nazi gets punched. Is there a cutoff somewhere shy of nazi that makes me feel like maybe its okay for a person to be punched?

Punching a white supremacist? 

Punching a Fascist?

Punching a misogynist?

Punching a member of the alt-right? See - that feels different to me now. The importance of labels. 

Punching an ultraconservative? Now this sounds like a political distinction, and not a reason to punch someone. 

There is another litmus test, though, and it makes me feel like a bad little monkey thats playing games with my lizard-brain:

Who would Jesus punch? 

I just think the answer here is obviously nobody. Even when he was furiously flipping tables in front of the temple, I don't remember anything about fists flying.

So there it is. Punching is wrong, even if its a nazi. That's my final answer. 

(but maybe it's less wrong?)

Hats, hate, Selma, and laughter

Two things today - the title of my blog, and reactions to watching Selma last night.

So, I need to change the blog title. Way back when I started this thing, it seemed super clever to make up a word that summed up what the blog might be. Since I didn't know whether kid posts, D&D posts, rants, creative writing, or anything else would dominate the blog, I wanted to reflect the potential for variety. I riffed on the idea of wearing many hats and came up with poly-hat-ism, the state of filling many roles/wearing many hats. I congratulated myself on a catchy creative effort and didn't think about it  ... until I started using it for political thoughts and sharing them, and more people stopped by. I know that at least two people, because they specifically asked me about it, read my title as poly-hate-ism, and why would I call it that? Why focus on the hate and the hating?

I guess this is the danger of generating your own words. Since I have fun with words, maybe I could call it logophilia instead. No way anyone will think I have a fetish for logs, right?

If you have a suggestion, I'm all ears. Comments make me happy.

Cue awkward segue where 'if my blog were actually about hate' meets Selma, a movie about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, and the march he organized toward the goal of ending racist voter suppression in the 60s. Consider it segued.

My family was sitting down to have dinner last night and Audrey suggested we do a movie night and watch Selma as a way to learn more about MLK's life and work. So my father hat is on, and I am hyper-aware of every ugly thing said, every expletive, all the violence. The movie didn't pull any punches about how ugly the environment was around race in Alabama in the 60s, and I was keenly aware of all of it. Ethan has a habit of calling out people on TV when they say a bad word, and while he eventually gave up, there was a steady stream of "that's a bad word!" and "He shouldn't say that" and even "that man is smoking - that's not healthy!" going through a lot of the movie. I kept wondering if having him watch this with us at 8 years old was a horrible idea. However, teaching my kids to value social justice and equality is very important to me, and I think spending MLK day watching something that shows them some history of the civil rights movement is worth being uncomfortable over. Cain and Rae, definitely old enough to understand the movie in much more depth, were pretty quiet afterwards, and we talked a little about where we are as a country now, what progress has been made, some ways that we are still struggling. We talked about concern about the empowerment of racist ideologies in the wake of a Trump presidency. We actually stopped the movie at one point to talk about rep. John Lewis (who is portrayed in the film) and why he is in the news right now, and not attending Trump's inauguration.

The conversation with Ethan was different, very brief, and impressed me so much.
I put him to bed and just asked "What did you think about that movie?"

"He didn't laugh enough. I think Martin was a person that laughed more." (Ethan had decided earlier in the evening he was on a first-name basis)

I don't remember exactly what I said - I think I tried to explain how when people make a movie they try to set a tone and tell a specific story and can't show all the moments that aren't related but might be happier, and that I bet Martin did laugh more that that. And internally, I was thinking about the power of joy and positivity and hoping that MLK and his friends laughed a LOT.