Morning Mumblings

As I enter day two of "insurance geek training", a few rambling thoughts before I meander off to learn about the wonderful world of Life & Casualty.

Giulani signifies one of the two great errors in direction of the GOP, the other being represented by Sam Brownback of Kansas. Giulani stands for the Dem-Lite East Coast GOP, only slightly less burdened by "liberal guilt" and enthused about the messianic nature of big government than their Democratic brethren. Their main disagreement with the Democrats is over *where* heavy-handed government intervention is appropriate, rather than whether it's appropriate at all - and often their differences are fairly quibbling.

Brownback represents the other extreme of GOP error - the heavy-handed theocrat ever-eager to dictate the morals of the populace and "preserve the Christian nation". Jefferson would be horrified.

Neither serves the GOP or the nation well, variously detracting from the electability of GOP candidates and from the desire of most of the citizenry to simply be let alone by their government. Most folks, in my experience, are fairly happy with the notion of fire/police/parks/emt services, a secure set of borders, and economic stability or improvement - and grow increasingly suspicious as government ventures beyond these narrow missions.

That said, let's take a look at an exciting new initiative by Bank of America aimed at illegal immigrants - credit cards for illegal immigrants. Aimed at persons without social security numbers or credit histories, they seem a likely haven not only for illegal immigrants but for other "privacy enthusiasts" of both the sort we like and those indulging in criminal hobbies.

Without investigating in detail, my head already aches with the opportunities to go horribly wrong the above presents...countered only by the notion that I *do* find privacy rather charming, and wouldn't be opposed to having a credit card myself where I didn't need to offer a social security number or a credit history to get it.

I am sure that more will emerge on this trend as time goes on...

Till later..