collegestudent22 wrote:Oh, no. Not an athlete that's one year older. The world will end if we let her play.

Really? That's your standard of what it takes to be a sensible rule? I honestly hadn't guessed that you'd take the position that we shouldn't complain because the world didn't end when Sandusky was bouncing kids off his lap in the Penn State showers.

Deacon wrote:Student athletes aren't allowed to intentionally repeat grades, delaying their entry into the collegiate athletic system.

I already quoted the NCAA's ruling, which was in the story.

The NCAA wrote:NCAA member schools created this rule to discourage prospective student-athletes from intentionally delaying university enrollment for athletic reasons rather than academic pursuits

Deacon wrote:Well of course that's the defense they're going to mount, to claim that her intentions weren't bad, that the athletic advantages gained were just a happy coincidence they hoped no one would notice.

I still want to hear how playing for Harvard is somehow a better basketball move than playing for Duke. Duke of storied basketball tradition and one of the handful of schools with a consistently competitive women's basketball program. As opposed to Harvard. What's the upside there? Where's the advantage gained? Keep in mind that Ivy League schools don't give out athletic scholarships. ACC schools, on the other hand, have no such reservations. So yeah, now she'd be playing in an inferior basketball conference, in a smaller arena, with no chance of any reward for this unless she manages to make a name for herself in professional women's basketball down the road. Which, incidentally, would be easier to do if she had gone to Duke. Way to cheat the system like a champ.

I don't see how repeating a year in order to go to Harvard can constitute an athletic advantage when the alternative is "just go to a school that already kicks ass at basketball and might be able to toss you a scholarship along the way." Unless there's some crazy Harvard-Yale women's basketball bet worth like ten million dollars that is at stake somewhere. Then the whole competitive advantage stuff would make sense. And since it's Harvard, it's impossible to rule that out.

Deacon wrote:And in this case especially we have a heavily recruited young girl ahead of the normal age trajectory for entering an NCAA program

Are we talking about some child's league here? Because if not, the age of the player is irrelevant. It's not entirely uncommon for athletes in their late twenties to find themselves competing in NCAA events--not every college student is the same age.

Deacon wrote:I take that to mean the concept of a red-shirt freshman is new to you as well?

Well no, but redshirting is much different than another year of playing in high school. As a redshirt freshman, a player plays extremely limited action in games if any, practices with the team, and gets to know that coach's system. In high school, she just plays more games against a level of talent below what she'd even see in the Ivy League. Not exactly a movie montage-worthy gauntlet, is it?

Deacon wrote:

collegestudent22 wrote:Oh, no. Not an athlete that's one year older. The world will end if we let her play.

Really? That's your standard of what it takes to be a sensible rule? I honestly hadn't guessed that you'd take the position that we shouldn't complain because the world didn't end when Sandusky was bouncing kids off his lap in the Penn State showers.

No, my standard for a sensible rule is that someone gets hurt. And no one gets hurt by a 17 year old playing college basketball against players that are actually older than her, regardless of whether she could have graduated from boarding school and repeated that last year to get her grades up or not.

Deacon wrote:you'd take the position that we shouldn't complain because the world didn't end when Sandusky was bouncing kids off his lap in the Penn State showers.

Just so you know, the NCAA has yet to sanction Penn State's football program. There's a pretty solid chance, as time goes on, that there will be no NCAA penalty. The Nittany Lions are bowl-eligible next season as things stand right now.

So um...yeah. That's kind of the NCAA for you. They'll take their sweet time on Penn State, but some girl at Harvard that has the totally unfair advantage of improved grades in high school needs to be dealt with swiftly and harshly.

So, yeah. Contraception mandate. Ignoring the huge abortion of personal freedom such a mandate requires, it just makes no practical sense. Even the "compromise" where the insurance companies have to provide it is nonsensical.

For one, on an individual level, birth control pills cost something like $10/month - not really a huge barrier to anyone with a job that would provide healthcare anyway, right? But in aggregate, I estimate a huge cost for the insurance industry:

Assume 310 million Americans (approx. 2010 Census data)
Estimate approx. 50% are of working age (required to get insurance under Obamacare)
Estimate further approx. 50% are women workers or covered by husband's insurance
That's about 77.5 MILLION women getting this insurance
For just "the pill", that's around $9.3 BILLION per year in free medical supplies
And that is just the pill - that does NOT include the "morning after pill", condoms, etc.

(BLS statistics indicate that the number of working age women in the US is actually 122 million - about a third of the population - which would actually cost $14.64B per year.)

Insurance companies are expected to just eat that cost? Yeah, right.

Yeah but... insurance companies adjust their rates according to what they cover, right?
So wouldn't the company paying for the insurance be the ones to pay the extra money in the form of higher rates?

And then you are right back at forcing Catholic employers to purchase insurance that covers things they find morally wrong under their religious beliefs. Right or wrong, they have religious liberty (not to mention the economic liberty to buy only the things you wish to).

The whole problem arises from an "all or nothing" approach to health insurance anyway. Just try to get covered for only catastrophic problems - getting cancer and similar chronic or life-threatening issues. You pretty much can't - and once Obamacare kicks in completely even the "pretty much" goes away. You have to have everything covered - even $10/month optional birth control pills. And that will not solve the problems - it will only make them much, much worse.

Far, far too many Americans (and an even greater percentage of Europeans) think the solution to every problem, every desire, every annoyance is a new law or regulation. If only we give more control to Washington, D.C. - cede just a bit more of our remaining liberty - our problems will be solved. And this absurdity isn't limited to "the Left" led by Obama - Rick Santorum's entire campaign is built on bending the government busybody agencies to "solve" the problems "the Right" perceives to exist. But this never works. Problems can't be solved in this way - not without creating more, and worse, issues. Generally, the exact opposite of a solution occurs. The government's "War on Poverty" has stalled the rate of poverty from declining as it did during the 19th and early 20th century. It's "War on Drugs" has created the organized criminal drug cartels and ceded power to them by driving the drug industry underground (just as Prohibition did with alcohol before it was repealed). It's "solution" to the problems created by the fraudulent fractional reserve banking system - bank runs and financial panics - was to institutionalize it with the backing of government in the Federal Reserve System, destroying the value of the US dollar and creating financial bubble after bubble, each worse than the last. And the overall theme throughout this century long legislative revocation of liberty has been the nonsensical idea that tyrannical government busybodies ignoring the Constitution - and not the innovations of truly free people - can solve our problems (and with no unintended consequences to boot - somehow). Give me virtually any problem and its government "solution", and I can detail why it won't work, why it undermines liberty, AND give you an alternative solution that would work better without undermining human freedom.

Well... I see where you are coming from.

I have been doing working class/labour jobs for years. Some of them had pretty shitty benefits, some better, but I am lucky to live in a place where basic medical care is mandatorily taken care of. I do believe that having some things guaranteed to have coverage is important. Accidental injury, for example, is a very important one.

It is debatable that birth control may not be vital. I don't want to debate that, but I do think that mandating certain vital medical coverage is a good thing. I have a family now, and if I get unlucky and lose my job, I think it is best if I know that my next job will have the same vital coverage (For myself and my son). How else can we ensure this coverage will be there aside from making them mandatory on a government level?

Jamie Bond wrote:How else can we ensure this coverage will be there aside from making them mandatory on a government level?

The sad part is - that doesn't last. Sure, for a time - even a few generations - everything seems fine. Until that artificially spiked demand (hey, it's free - why not get whatever I want, instead of what I can afford or need) cannot be met (especially given the lengthy training required to become a doctor). Then you have four options: government rations (sorry, your kid isn't old enough to be deemed important yet), it raises payments (and thus either taxes you into oblivion or debauches the currency to worthlessness), or it does nothing, and the result is either massive shortages of doctors and medical supplies or a lack of quality. The latter has been going on in the UK for decades. Canada has been able to do a bit better - but there taxes drive the prices up of ordinary goods. (From my experience, the Subway "5 Dollar Footlong" will cost around $8 in Canada. And the Canadian Dollar is on par with the US Dollar now - meaning that extra $3 is almost entirely due to taxes. Books used to say they cost $1 or $2 more in Canada - my newer books just say "Higher in Canada" after the US price. Etc.)

No, a much better solution is to require personal responsibility. Saving for future problems - and choosing the necessary level of insurance you need - is a far better solution. (I'm willing to bet that if you really kept track of it, the difference you pay in goods there versus here due to taxes would be more than enough to cover basic insurance for you and your family.) Were the market actually free from nonsensical interference, all of this would be cheaper than it currently is.

Before 1965, when government started interfering with Medicare and Medicaid in the US, there were charity hospitals - usually run by churches - in almost every major city (in some small towns, people can still receive charity care from local doctors, but this has become much rarer). Ron Paul even detailed his experience working in one for $3/hr (about $20/hr now, thanks to inflation) in the 60's, providing free healthcare funded by church and charity donations. Later, when he had his own practice, he still provided free care to people that couldn't afford it.

More on a free market solution for healthcare. Some material on the Canadian system, specifically.

The Cid wrote:Just so you know, the NCAA has yet to sanction Penn State's football program.

So no rules should be enforced at all. Got it.

collegestudent22 wrote:So, yeah. Contraception mandate. Ignoring the huge abortion of personal freedom such a mandate requires, it just makes no practical sense.

Whoa holy shit is this for real? How in the world can they possibly think its ok to force every woman to take and use birth control??

collegestudent22 wrote:Rick Santorum's entire campaign is built on bending the government busybody agencies to "solve" the problems "the Right" perceives to exist.

Well to be fair our system of government together with human nature tends to drive politicians to exactly this approach. An entire campaign revolve around using the government to solve whatever their faction perceives as a problem. A Libertarian will promise to solve the problem of too much government involvement and interference in our lives.

Deacon wrote:

collegestudent22 wrote:So, yeah. Contraception mandate. Ignoring the huge abortion of personal freedom such a mandate requires, it just makes no practical sense.

Whoa holy shit is this for real? How in the world can they possibly think its ok to force every woman to take and use birth control??

Are you joking, or just so unaware of current events to be serious?

Deacon wrote:

collegestudent22 wrote:Rick Santorum's entire campaign is built on bending the government busybody agencies to "solve" the problems "the Right" perceives to exist.

Well to be fair our system of government together with human nature tends to drive politicians to exactly this approach. An entire campaign revolve around using the government to solve whatever their faction perceives as a problem. A Libertarian will promise to solve the problem of too much government involvement and interference in our lives.

I'm not debating over the idea that there are problems that need to be solved - just over the idea that government busybodies can solve them by trampling all over human liberty. The idea used to be constrained mostly to "the Left", at least in rhetoric, whereas "the Right", led by Reagan - and Goldwater before him - were people that said such things as "government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem" and "Those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth. And let me remind you, they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyrannies. Absolute power does corrupt, and those who seek it must be suspect and must be opposed."

Goldwater, in particular, was dead set against Santorum's brand of "conservatism":

Barry Goldwater, in speech to the US Senate, 16 September 1981 wrote:The religious factions that are growing throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom. They are trying to force government leaders into following their position 100 percent. If you disagree with these religious groups on a particular moral issue, they complain, they threaten you with a loss of money or votes or both.

I'm frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in "A," "B," "C" and "D." Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me?

And I am even more angry as a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who thinks it has some God-granted right to control my vote on every roll call in the Senate. I am warning them today: I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of "conservatism."

Deacon wrote:So no rules should be enforced at all. Got it.

Oh come on. Really?

I do not, for the life of me, understand how this Harvard student is gaining an unfair advantage here. Again:
-Harvard is an Ivy League school. The Ivy League does not give out athletic scholarships, and the level of women's basketball competition is low by Division I NCAA standards.
-Duke is an ACC school. The ACC does give out athletic scholarships quite regularly. Duke's women's basketball program produces teams that are consistently ranked toward the top of the national polls. The level of competition that they face both inside and out of their conference is considerably stronger than what Harvard would face.
-This particular player could have gone to Duke and played basketball had she not repeated a year of high school.
-The NCAA passed judgment on this "violation" considerably faster than they have dealt with significantly larger scandals in sports with a higher profile.
-Harvard alumni in professional sports--the meteoric rise of Jeremy Lin aside--are pretty rare, and when they come along they typically aren't high draft picks that get large contracts off the bat.
-The WNBA is not the NBA in terms of giving out money to players, especially rookies. Some teams are deeply in the red and the league has had to move/lose teams in the past.

So given all of that, what reasons aside from academic reasons would inspire an up-and-comer in women's basketball to stay in high school for an extra year to go to Harvard instead of just redshirting with the Blue Devils? Seriously, I'd love to see at least one good reason for that from a basketball standpoint.

collegestudent22 wrote:No, a much better solution is to require personal responsibility. Saving for future problems - and choosing the necessary level of insurance you need - is a far better solution.

It's not always that simple... overall economic efficiency is important, but it is not the only attribute to look at.

I think 100% private health care can work, and I think public health care can work. I think both sides have positives and negatives. Personally, I would rather pay more to ensure all citizens of my country can go to the hospital whenever they need, regardless of their station in life. That includes homeless who likely wouldn't have insurance, and families who are in such tight financial straits that they are forced to choose between a number of very vital and important life necessities.

I am biased because of personal experience. Rather, the experience my parents were in when I was very young.

When I was a small child (Between 1 and 3 years old), I had a number of instances where my windpipe closed up, and I could not get any air. This occurred a handful of times (I think between 4 and 7 times I don't know exactly). Each time this happened, I had to be brought to the hospital and spend a number of days in an oxygen tent.

At this time, my family had almost no money. My dad was literally just starting his own business while this was happening. I don't know how things would have turned out if we were using private health insurance. Given we had so little money, how much coverage would we have been able to afford? Would it have been enough to cover my very expensive and multiple stays at the hospital? It might have been, or my father may have been faced with the choice of abandoning his business, and finding a job with good health coverage.

As it turns out, the healthcare system worked for us. My dad was able to create a business which became more successful every year. My parents retired early.

Again, I know there are benefits to having private health care, and for you those benefits may be the most important thing to look at... But I also know first hand (As in - my life right this moment) what it is like to be raising a family with very little money. I am going to school right now to get a good paying job, but currently finances are very tough. There are many families like this all over the world, and it is not always due to poor or irresponsible financial planning.

The bottom line is people will often have to make very hard choices due to tight finances, and I personally don't think basic medical coverage should be one of those choices. I will take a system with its flaws to ensure this.