Saturday, June 12, 2010

Perils of Presbyopia Part II, Politics, and Rent-A-Thug in Aspen Hill

We all remember Mr Magoo, right? A classic cartoon from the 1960s? The silly man whose terrible eyesight constantly gets him and everyone else into trouble? And prlbably the drinking isn't helping any:



Believe me, I can relate. However, as I am not a cartoon, if I drop a piano 12 stories, it's not something to laugh at.

I suppose people will come out of the woodwork to declare that I'm a horrible racist or something, but I really don't care, at this point, what people call me, as long as they're not trying to incite a riot.

Nor, for that matter, do I give a rat's ass about the ramifications to my political career. My political career is over, as far as I am concerned. I hold a record which should be mathmatically unsurpassable, that record being that I lost the most consecutive public elections in Maryland in the shortest period of time. It's not generally possible, in the normal scheme of things, to be running for office three years running. Yet I was able to do that, and lost all three times. Top that, I dare you.

Generally speaking, I must add, my life here in Montgomery County Maryland has sucked so very badly for some decades now that I just can't muster any enthusiasm for the place, nor generally speaking as well, for the people who live here. Hey, I've done the right thing, as far as I am concerned: I have no arrest record, I have been active for almost a decade in trying to bring more opportunities and better security to the nearby neighborhoods as well as to my own. It is the American dream that any law-abiding citizen can run for office, and I have lived that dream, three years in a row. I saw a clear and present need for some changes to policy and to law, and ran on my expressed perceptions of how to deal with those needs, how to change policy and to reform the laws. Maryland being Maryland, and Marylanders being Marylanders -- and none are moreso thus than my neighbors in and around Aspen Hill -- my commonsense ideas were rejected along with my candidacy and things are as they are. Just don't ever anyone say that I didn't put forth my best ideas and efforts. I did the best I could. Yet in this nearly-perfect democratic system of government, people get the government they deserve.

That government -- or at least the politicians who shape that government -- is extremely slow to react and generally grossly under-reacts to actual serious problems, and wastes most of its time in hot pursuit of utter trivialities. Yet such is the nature of politics here that it was difficult indeed to get an actually useful anti-gang law passed, but there's nearly unanimous and knee-jerk consent for making it almost impossible for lenders to foreclose on deadbeats whose mortgages were obtained by criminal fraud. To anyone who has ever had to try to understand the root causes of what's wrong with Maryland in general and with Montgomery in particular, it seems as if the intention is to put forward the appearance of effective law while actually undermining the commonwealth while rewarding the gangster and putting the honest folks to the sword, converting respect into ridicule and rewarding incompetence and sneakery more than we reward forthrightness and diligence.

In a recent meeting of the Aspen Hill Civic Association, Inc., we heard from those of our elected State officials who will seek re-election this year. A note in passing, Rep Henry "Hank" Heller will not seek re-election and will retire from a long career characterized by diligence and even some forthrightness, especially in the difficult realm of the State budget process.

Those officials seeking re-election expressed an intention to remedy a long-overdue problem in employment law. It seems that an unfortunately high percentage of employers are basing their hiring decisions, based at least in part on the credit record of applicants. The proposal is that this practice will be restricted or even actually prohibited.

My prediction? This will wind up like almost all other Maryland law, effectively unenforceable. Good luck with that, fellows, because first the applicant believing themselves to be the victim of credit-discrimination would have to become aware of it, then they'd have to prove that their employer accessed their credit record, and they'd have to prove that a decision had been made on the basis of that credit record, etc.

The only way that Maryland itself could prosecute the case would be if Maryland declared sovereign access to the credit records of all persons residing, or seeking employment, in Maryland. That effectively would make the State the arbiter, and passage of such a law would remand authority to the State which ordinarily would be considered to be personal information protected from seizure by the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution. Speaking from personal experience, all information on any individual which makes it into any information system in the State will almost immediately make it into the information systems -- electronic or otherwise -- in the political subdivisions of the State, and from there, into the hands of contractors to the State and political subdivisions, and from there it will make it into the hands of the business and activist communities who will argue successfully in court -- if they are even ever discovered or challenged - -as being entitled to free and total access to public records. Thus, all that will be accomplished by this "protection" will be the exposure to the public eye of all personal credit information. Talk about an Identity Theft paradise!

As for me, having recently got my allowable and free ChoicePoint background, I can state with full disclosure that my credit report is full of big fat zeroes. I don't use credit, other than in terms of paying on time for services rendered, for such things as insurance or internet connectivity. I often wonder whether or not this might be why nobody wants to hire me; I'm not a lackey of the system and nobody is more "undependable" than a man free and unencumbered. Or perhaps it's other records that give prospective employers a bad impression of me... at least employers in Montgomery. Strangely enough, potential employers outside of this jurisdiction seem to think I'm a hot property. What could it be about Montgomery County that's preventing me from getting work?

The politicians -- however anxious to reform credit-review as a hiring practice -- don't even mention the vast potential problems of review of medical history as a hiring practice.

Once again, to take legal action as an individual against a hiring entity, you'd have to prove that someone accessed your records and that this access was causative in a decision to not hire, and you'd have to prove personal injury or loss of income. Good luck with that in a civil suit; if your medical services provider is handing out copies of your records, even if you can catch them at it, they've got Deep Pockets and can afford better attorneys than you can, and can afford them for timeframes exceeding possible human lifespans.

For the State to take action on your behalf, as a criminal matter, first, there would have to be a law against it. There are such laws, at the Federal level, such as the Americans With Disabilities Act. Yet even that legal recourse is effectively hamstrung for all practical purposes. It is enforced by the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission ("EEOC") which only has the authority to issue a writ allowing the injured party to sue with the blessing of the EEOC.

Again, if the State were to pass such a law, how could the State enforce it? First, the State would have to have access to all medical records of all persons treated in Maryland, or at least to all logging of access to such records. Ask yourself: do you want the bureaucrats to have access to your medical records, regardless of whether or not you pay your own bills? Yet here is another little legal problem: so far as I can tell, there's no law covering that aspect, either. Again, if the State has unregulated access to your medical records, doubtless the County agencies have access to your medical records, and so do their contractors, and any of their employees, and potentially so does anyone else who wants to file a FOIA request for access to public records.

Now, unrestricted access to medical records potentially exposes a person to medical fraud and potentially to some degree of identity-theft, but the potential for employment discrimination far outweighs those risks.

Consider, for example, that you might have been tested for the genetic markers for a specific type of breast cancer. Now, you might be at significant risk of that type of breast cancer, and you might choose to have prophylactic mastectomy. Does a potential employer need to know that you had your breasts removed? Do they need to know that you probably should, and that if they hire you they can reasonably expect that at some time soon you'll be taking a month or three of medical leave? The potential employer has all sorts of benefits to their operations and profitability if they know this, so they will be seeking such information as aggressively as they can, and such information is potentially so valuable to potential employers that they will do almost anything to retain access to such information, whether or not their access to such information is strictly legal.

And what happens to the applicant whose medical records are improperly -- but perhaps not illegally -- accessed? Well, she doesn't get that job. Since the practice is so profitable to business, she doesn't get a job anywhere. So, she can't save up the money for her "elective" surgery, genetics proves to be a reliable predictor of illness, and rather than a prophylactic mastectomy, she gets a mastectomy after the cancer has metastasized and she dies -- destitute -- in the charity hospital at taxpayer expense.

Thus, an employer's "reasonable due diligence and cautious business planning" saves them some money but it results in someone dying horribly and preventably and leaves the taxpayer footing the bill. Folks, you're paying for this, whether or not you are more directly victimized. So, when your talking to the candidates at various forums or "town hall" meetings, be sure to ask them what they're doing to increase your level of protection from unreasonable and non-medical uses of your medical records.

Expect both the medical and 'human resources" professions to fight this tooth and nail.

And now for some advertising. Would you like to move next door to me? The neighbors are trying to sell their house. So far they've been mostly trouble-free to me, despite the fact that they're involved in the ministry of a Baptist sect well known hellfire preaching and bible thumping, and I'm a godless heathen. Well, maybe they finally got fed up with the rapidly increasing crapification of the neighborhood or maybe their growing family is getting too large for a mere 3-BR/2.5 bath single-family detached residential home with a finished basement.

As my new neighbor, I should notify you that I won't take kindly to massive violations of County Code, operating a brothel, converting the yard into an out-of-zone mechanic shop, or unlicensed rentals of overcrowded basements to illegal aliens. (According to the county, they don't care about illegal aliens so long as the property owner has a rental permit.) I should also inform you that although I play guitar well, I play guitar loud and I do so during those hours where it is legal to do so. Furthermore, I am in fact a generic non-denominational pagan of the sort who considers it to be proper celebratory form to slosh bread and beer at the "four corners" at astronomically-determined times, which happen to be at night, and in my back yard, which happens to be totally paid-for and outside of both mortgage and deed-covenants. You would probably think I'm silly looking but I think the same thing about the Pope, the Ayatollah, and those guys who tie little boxes to their heads with ribbons on High Holy Days. Unlike them, I don't claim to be tax-exempt. Also, I do not want to be the police officer who brings me before the commissioner for worshiping my Creator as I see fit, nor the person who calls that officer to that task.

Of course, with my luck, CASA de Maryland will buy the place and rent the basement to a clique of MS-13, and I'll just wander around muttering "Maryland being Maryland, and Montgomery being MoCo, I should just move back downtown to the District, where it's a lot less weird".

Moving right along: Aspen Hill Shopping Center seems to still be having its "security" provided by people who seem to be well-organized thugs, and in keeping with the change in the neighborhood demographics, these "security personnel" blend easily into the crowd frequenting the place. Like almost everyone else in that shopping center these "security personnel" are "latino".

The "spotter" is a young male, light complected but otherwise dark hair, dark eyes, kind of skinny, not particularly well-dressed nor poorly-dressed, age somewhere around 23 to 27 or so.

The "muscle", on the other hand, is a very dark-skinned Native American man, seems to be in his early 40s, about 5-11 to 6-0 feet in height, and a very muscular and stocky 280 pounds or so. Face is fairly badly pocked or scarred, in a way that could be from severe teen acne to having survived a nearby shrapnel burst. My bet's on the shrapnel.

The "muscle" doesn't show until and unless the "spotter" calls him in, and the "spotter" probably doesn't call him in until and unless the "spotter" thinks it's more than he himself can handle.

This is the first time I've seen the "muscle"; the "spotter" has been seen a few times in the context of Dino's barber shop, where I have been getting my hair cut now and then since the shopping center was built. Interested parties can go try to spot the "muscle" in surveillance video from the Aspen Hill Radio Shack as of June 11 at 12:39PM. If there's audio along with that tape, people might be fascinated by any conversations after I walk out of the store with over $50.00 of goods paid for with cash, including an extended-warranty contract in my real name. PS, the "muscle" is the extremely large individual taking up position behind me in a stance bespeaking readiness to do some serious whacking on yours-truly. Frankly, I thought I was about to get robbed.

Who are these guys, with what outfit are they associated, are they licensed for this sort of work, and by whose authority are people without badges pretending to be police at Aspen Hill Shopping Center? Inquiring minds want to know.

Posted by Thomas Hardman at 8:32 AM
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