Socialism Is Scary! Boo!

I am terrified--terrified!--of the extent to which socialism has permeated American culture. For all the air time Republican talking points about socialist creep have gotten in the past few weeks, I have the scary duty of reporting that the problem is far more dire than even they realize. Forget about the esoteric threat of government taking part of your paycheck to pay for common goods like roads, schools, and defense. No, the horrors of Communism are much closer at hand, and so insidious we can't see the threat as it lurks outside our own front doors. Even our children, our babies who do not yet bring home a paycheck, are being indoctrinated in this eeevil plot to deprive good, law-abiding Americans of the hard-earned spoils of their own labor, to steal from the rich and give to the undeserving poor.

That's right, the redistributionists have inculcated schoolkids in the tenants of socialism, egging them on as they go from door to door, demanding candy and sweets from those who have them (respectable, wage-earning adults!) so "spread the wealth around" among those who have never bothered to lift themselves up by their bootstraps to earn those sweets. These zombies (of the state?) go from home to home, taking from the candy-rich and giving to the candy-poor, hinting threateningly at the "tricks" that will befall these righteous Americans if they do not submit to this collectivist pooling of treats. Their actions are positively ghoulish in their similarity to Stalinist Russia. If Sacco and Vanzetti were alive today, those Commies would find solace in the guise of devils and axe-murder victims. After camouflaging their true identities, they could have continued their plot against democracy and meritocracy, mini Snickers bar by mini Snickers bar.

The public education system in this country, socialist to its very core, is certainly in on this dirty game: they sponsor "Halloween pageants" and "Halloween parties" which are little more than training camps for socialist terrorism. Children talk amongst themselves about which "rich" neighborhoods to hit up first, based on their ideological commitment to a progressive taxation system that extorts full-size candy bars from those high-earning households, while accepting substantially smaller snack-size treats from middle class families. And of course, pink-o Hollywood is in on the game. Has anyone else noticed the Great Pumpkin looking a little red these days?

Forget about the dangers posed by an Obama administration, the powers of the state have already been bent to this nefarious end of overthrowing capitalism in America and replacing it with good old-fashioned Communism. Don't believe me? Just check your local newspaper: your local police department has probably declared so-called "trick or treating hours" during which the extorting hordes of socialists will not be stopped in their reign of candy terror.

Just you watch. This November 4 business is a red herring. When the lights go down tonight, and your doorbell starts ringing, you'll see: no one across this great nation will be safe from the creeping threat of socialism.

What are you handing out tonight? We've got an assortment, about $20 worth, all from Target's 2 bags for $4 sale: Snickers minis with dark chocolate, Twix, Butterfinger, Whoppers, Swedish Fish and Sourpatch kids. A few others. I'm hoping the kids all go home before we have to break out the Almond Joy--I want those all to myself. Lucky me, Shiner hates sweetened coconut so I don't even have to share. Mmmmm.

Women Charged More For Health Insurance

Two people, the same age, the same level of health, the same insurance plan. One pays 30% more than the other, month after month. The difference? The person who pays more is a woman.

The New York Times reports that in the individual insurance market (that is, where individuals buy their own policies rather than getting it through their employer), women are paying significantly more than men for the same policies--that is, coverage that does not include materinity expenses. And no one seems to have a very good explanation of why that might be.

One justification proferred by insurance company spokesfolks is that women are more expensive to insure because they use more preventative care: physicals, annual pap smears, and the like. But wouldn't higher usage rates of preventative care service decrease health insurance costs in the long run? An ounce of prevention being worth a pound of cure and all. It's possible that insurers don't tend to insure individuals long enough to see the dividends of preventative care, but whoever insures them down the line, whether a job-based program or a state or federal program, would see those savings.

Another justification is that women get pregnant and men don't, so their health care is more expensive. But for many women, the costs of labor and delivery are not covered by individual plans unless they have added a separate (and very expensive) rider to their coverage, and the Times only compared men and women with identical policies (i.e., those without L&D riders) So this could only be so if the pregnancy costs themselves were signficant--unless there are complications, L&D is way more expensive than prenatal care. After all, that's where they start trying to give you drugs. So the woman-as-babymaker argument is weaker than it first appears.

And even so, as Maine's insurance superintendant points out, "There’s a strong public policy reason to prohibit gender-based rates. Only women can bear children. There’s an expense to that. But having babies benefits communities and society as a whole. Women should not have to bear the entire expense." Even if you don't buy that society has an obligation to shoulder some of these burdens (and if you don't, I suggest re-reading the Mayflower Compact, since that is actually one of the founding concepts of the nation), it's worth remembering that more often than not men have had something to do with pregnancy, and it makes sense that men should shoulder some of the costs for those pregnancies.

So basically, the rate disparaty is bullshit.

Marcia D. Greenberger, co-president of the National Women’s Law Center, an advocacy group that has examined hundreds of individual policies, said: “The wide variation in premiums could not possibly be justified by actuarial principles. We should not tolerate women having to pay more for health insurance, just as we do not tolerate the practice of using race as a factor in setting rates.”

It would be swell if this sort of discrimination was prohibited. But right now, it's A-OK. Which is one reason to be suspicious of health care proposals that de-incentivize employers from providing coverage and encourage individuals to buy their own policies on the open market. Especially when that proposal is coupled with an ideological committment to deregulation at all costs. Which presidential candidate does that sounds like? Oh right, McCain.

Under his proposals, we'll wind up with fewer people having health insurance thorugh their jobs, where sex-based discrimination in rate setting is illegal, and more people having to seek it on the open market, where women have to pay more for the same coverage as men. Considering that McCain is an avowed deregulator, it doesn't seem likely that he'd support legislation extending the ban on gender discrimination to the individual insurance market. I guess that's what we get from a guy who thinks women's "health" is some sort of nefarious plot.

How To Care For Your Clothes, Part 2: Handwashing

Handwashing is more gentle than machine washing, and can actually improve the texture of certain fabrics when compared with machine washing or dry cleaning. It's also pretty easy and quite cheap, especially compared with the cost of dry cleaning.

Step 1: Identify clothes to be handwashed. Your first step is to look at the care instructions on the label. The general rule of thumb is if it says "Dry Clean," you can safely hand wash the item. If it says "Dry Clean Only," don't hand wash. I prefer to hand wash items labeled "Machine Wash Gentle" too. No label? Lingere and tights can almost always be handwashed, as can natural fibers like wool and alpaca. Gather your hand washables together in one place so you don't accidentally mix in any dry clean onlies.

Step 2: Gather your gear. You will need a gentle detergent like Woolite, a clean sink, a clean plastic tub (I use a shallow underbed storage unit from Target), several clean bath towels, and a flat surface relatively free of dirt or cat hair (I use the guest bed, stripped of sheets). If your hands are small, you might also want to use a clean kitchen colander for wringing out and carrying knits without stretching them. I also use a clothes drying rack.

Cover the flat surface with a layer of towels. This is the surface you'll use to block and dry your clothes after they are clean. At this point, take a quick look at your flat surface and estimate how many tops you can lay flat on it. This is usually the biggest bottleneck of the whole operation. Don't wash more clothes at one time than you have room to lay flat. My guest bed can accommodate between fve and six sweaters, so that's the maximum number of sweaters I wash at any one time.

Step 3: Sort your clothes. The dyes in fabrics can bleed like crazy, so you'll want to wash your clothes item by item, moving from the lightest colored fabrics to the darkest colored ones or else you can stain your clothes. If your flat surface can accommodate three articles of clothing, and you have three items to wash, you are in luck. Sort them from lightest to darkest. If you need to wash more things than your drying surface can accommodate, you'll have to do this in shifts. Never fear, it's actually kind of a zen way to spend your time.

Step 4: Prepare the water. Fill the large plastic tub 2/3 full with hot water. Ideally it should be at 82 degrees, which means it feels hot but comfortable to the touch. Add a tablespoon or so of detergent and swirl to mix.

Step 5: Wash your first, lightest colored item. I like to throw in the first item, turn it end over end a couple times to make sure it is saturated with soapy water, and then to let it soak for a couple of minutes to relax the fibers and loosen any dirt or stains. Then knead the item for three to five minutes. I am not especially precise about the time, I usually listen to music while I do this, so I'll knead for about the length of a song. The kneading motion is important. Pretend you are kneading bread dough. You can also gently squeeze the fabric to move water through it. Do not ever rub the fabric against itself or against the tub. This can cause natural fibers to felt together, almost as though they've shrunk in certain spots.

Step 6: Rinse.Squeeze out the soapy water as best you can. Don't wring it hard, you don't want to stretch the fabric or tear the fibers--keep in mind that natural fibers are at their weakest when they are wet, so you don't want to be too hard on them. I then transfer the item to a sink, put the stopper in the sink, and run the tap for three seconds or so until the item is just barely submerged. Then I knead just like I did before, but drain and refill the sink every few kneads to make sure I'm getting all the soap and dye out.

Step 7: Block. When the rinse water runs more or less clear (and depending on the fabric you're working with, this can happen on the first rinse or on the tenth), drain the sink one last time and sqeeze out as much water as you can. You'll want to carry the item to your flat blocking surface in one lump, not letting anything hang over and stretch out. If your hands are small, this is where the colander comes in. Some would say this is overkill, but as a knitter of lace, I err on the side of caution--you could not pay me to carelessly stretch out knitwear. Dump your item onto the blocking surface and carefully block it flat. Blocking is just a fancy word for "lay the fabric into the shape it's supposed to dry in." Blocking is a great opportunity to reshape a sweater that has stretched out. I usually start with the shoulder seams and then block down the torso, being careful to maintain any haping at the waist and also to get the edges straight on both the top and bottom layer of fabric. Then I block the arms straight out in a T position, and then fold them in diagonally to save space on my blocking surface.

When I am washing multiple items, I like to soak the next item while I'm blocking the first one.

Repeat until you have run out of flat blocking surface. If your fabrics have bled dye into the wash water, you may need to change the water. I don't usually bother if I'm washing black fabrics next, but otherwise I don't want to run the risk of discoloring the stuff I'm trying to get clean. I let these dry overnight or a little longer until they are mostly dry, and then drape them over the drying rack to finish drying. If I still have handwashing to do, I toss the damp towels in the dryer for a couple of minutes while I prepare the next batch of washing water and then wash the next five or six times. Unless an item is very dirty, I wash my sweaters seasonally, so I handwash only rarely but deal with large volumes of clothes when I do.

As a side note, lingere and tights don't need to be blocked nearly so carefully. I usually just sling them over the shower curtain rod or a doorknob after I've rinsed and wrung them out. It lends the bathroom a lovely debauched look.

How To Care For Your Clothes, Part 1

I've been writing, and thinking, a lot about clothes lately. Well, a lot for me. The last time I bought more than one or two items in a month was about three years ago when I realized come out of school that I didn't have any cold-weather dress clothes appropriate for work. Aside from replacing undearwear and socks as they wear out, I buy probably fewer than 5 or 6 items of new clothing each year. So all the thought I've been putting into my wardrobe lately has been, to say the least, uncharacteristic.

I suppose I could blame the economic climate, and the fact that when the economy is shaky, business places tend to move away from casual dress codes to more formal business dress. The other major factor is that although I am usually able to dress on the casual side of business casual in my current job, my next job will require me to look decidedly more formal, and I'm trying to buy a few items every month in preparation rather than having to make one huge shopping spree just before starting that position. Consumption smoothing at its finest. And let's not forget the pondering I've been doing about clothes and image.

At any rate, I've spent a lot of time poking through my wardrobe during the past few weeks. I've been shopping a few times, but I've also been thinking about less expensive ways to keep up a professional appearance. In the next couple of weeks, I'll be posting about how to care for your clothes--as in, how to take care of them, but also how to like them better. Because if you like what's already in your closet, you don't have to go shopping for more, or you will only need to fill in a few specific gaps when you do shop.

Look for posts on:
--how to handwash clothing
--how to weed out your closet
--how to do basic clothing repair yourself
--how to work with a tailor to keep borderline clothes wearable
--how to shop for clothes
--how to polish your shoes

This stuff is not hard, it's not expensive, it doesn't take a ton of time, and you will no longer look like a disheveled grad student when you schlep into the office (says the formerly disheveled former grad student).

These are all things I've been puzzling through during the last three weeks or so. Are there things I'm missing? Drop me a note in the comments.