Category Archives: Current Affairs

The NRA: An Elaborate-Avant Garde-Joaquin Phoenix-Style Joke

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If you haven't seen the NRA's ad questioning the President's stance on armed guards in schools you need to check it out. Even if you think armed guards in all schools are a good idea you have to wonder which genius at the NRA decided it was a good idea to take this tack.  

Update 1/18/13: So it ends up that the NRA's assertion is false on factual grounds too. Sidwell Friends, where the Presidents daughters go to school, doesn't employ any armed security guards. From the Atlantic Wire:

An erroneous report on Breitbart.com, the conservative activist news website, led NRA officials to believe that Sidwell Friends employs armed guards. (Breitbart seems to have misread a job posting for a security officer.) The NRA even appropriated Breitbart's argument: that the existence of such guards at an elite private school reveals Obama as an out-of-touch elitist, unaware of his own hypocrisy.

End update.

It would be fun to break down exactly how stupid the ad is, but it's even more fun to watch Jon Stewart do it:

 

Fear the Chreasters

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Remember Nate Silver? He's the guy who got so much attention for accurately predicting (in an eerily detailed way) the results of the last election. He's come out with an analysis of gun owners in the US and going by his numbers it looks like the most well-armed segment of our population is white middle-aged men, who are married with children, make between $50-100k, belong to the Republican party, are Evangelical Christians (but only go a couple of times per yeare, i.e. Chreasters), didn't graduate from college, live in the rural midwest and served in the US military.

I can't imagine that fits anyone's stereotype of a gunowner.

538guns

Chart from FiveThirtyEight.

An Adult Discussion?

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The massacre in Connecticut last week of small school children and several of the adults charged with teaching them has prompted discussion of gun control in the United States. Again. This is a "Groundhog Day" issue for the country and sadly it seems that no matter how tragic the event that prompts the discussion, we can't have an adult conversation that explores the complexities of the issue. We repeatedly fall back into our prescribed bunkers of belief and refuse to consider the points made by those of opposing beliefs, or to explore the gray areas that are always present in these large societal debates.

To be fair this incidence seems to be a little different for a couple of reasons: mental health has emerged as an issue with almost equal footing to gun control, and even the most ardent gun rights folks seem to be a bit cowed. From Harper's Weekly Review:

The shooting was the second deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history, the sixteenth mass shooting in the United States this year, and the thirty-first school shooting since the Columbine High School massacre in 1999. “These tragedies must end,” said President Barack Obama during a speech in Newtown. “And to end them, we must change.”[6][7][8] The same week, police in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, arrested a high school student who was planning to kill his classmates with guns and explosives; police in Cedar Lake, Indiana, seized 47 guns from a man who had threatened to attack a nearby elementary school; police in Birmingham, Alabama, shot a gunman after he wounded three people at a hospital; a man in Portland, Oregon, shot and killed two people at a mall, then fatally shot himself; two police officers in Topeka, Kansas, were fatally shot outside a grocery store; and a federal appeals court struck down the country’s only statewide concealed-weapons ban.[9][10][11][12][13][14] The National Rifle Association disabled its Facebook page, and 31 Republican senators with pro–gun rights voting records declined invitations to discuss gun control on Meet the Press. “A gun didn’t kill all those children,” said a Newtown gun owner. “A disturbed man killed all those children.”[15][16][17] At an elementary school in Chengping, China, a man carrying a knife wounded one adult and 22 children, killing none.[18]

That last sentence makes a point that should be made over and over during the discussion of gun control: gun rights advocates are right when they say that a gun, an inanimate object, does not kill anyone without a person using it. That's a red herring, though, because guns like the semiautomatic AR-15 are tools that allows a person to do exponentially more harm than he could do with any other tool. You'll also hear gun rights advocates say that a smart guy like the Connecticut shooter would have found a way to kill even if he didn't have access to guns – that he'd go on the internet and learn how to build a homemade bomb that he'd then use to kill or maim everyone in the school. That's an almost laughable argument. These guns are easy-to-use, convenient and astoundingly lethal and to argue that a mentally disturbed person would simply build a bomb instead is an astounding feat of false equivalency.

There's another common argument you hear from gun rights folks – that the bad guys already have guns, so by banning guns you're preventing law abiding folks from obtaining arms to defend themselves. If we're talking about a gun ban then they might have a point, but when you're talking about gun control that argument is pretty much a non-starter. 

Unfortunately when you try to engage in an intelligent discussion about the gun control issue you run into the stance promoted by the NRA, which stated in its simplest form is, "If you ban one gun that's a foot in the door to banning ALL guns." (See this interesting piece about the NRA's role in changing the interpretation of the Second Amendment in the last 30 years). When you start a discussion from this viewpoint then its impossible to explore the possible ways of allowing hunters, marksmen and those who would like some form of home protection to keep their guns, and at the same time finding a way to stem the flood of assault weapons entering the public realm.

On the flip side you can be sure that anyone who firmly believes we need to melt down every gun in America is going to have a difficult time hearing anything said by a pro-gun person with anything other than disdain. Were the NRA to come out publicly today and say, "We think there should be an outright ban on all semi-automatic weapons" the gun-melters would scoff and say, "That's a good start but until we eliminate all guns we're not going to fix the problem."

Simply put, in order for us to have an intelligent discussion about guns in America the pro-gun folks will have to listen to the concerns of the gun control advocates and be prepared to accept that not all guns are equal – some just shouldn't be allowed in the hands of any citizen. On the flip side the gun control folks need to acknowledge that there's a long tradition of responsible gun ownership in this country and that there are many people who enjoy socially acceptable sports like hunting and target shooting.  If we can't get those minimal steps from each side of the philosophical divide then we're going to have a very difficult time resolving our gun problem.

The mental health issue is also worth exploring. Unfortunately our society is struggling with how to deal with mental health issues. Funding for mental health programs has been slashed, and we're struggling with how and where to treat the mentally ill. To be fair it should be pointed out that in the Connecticut case it's probably wrong to point to funding cuts as an issue since the shooter came from a well-off family that probably had the resources to get him whatever counseling is available. It's a good thing that our society is starting to address mental health issues, but it's a damn shame that it takes tragedies like the Newtown shootings to do so.

So here we are, again, dealing with an unspeakable tragedy that we can be sure will not be the last until we can have a serious, thoughtful discussion about how we can change our society to help prevent such tragedies in the future. And of course we'll have to follow that discussion with serious, thoughtful action. Are we capable of it? If not we leave our children and grandchildren a tragic legacy.

Update: Some hope that intelligent discourse is possible has been found at Ed Cone's blog. Commenters from opposite ends of the ideological spectrum, whose normal engagement with each other rises to the level you'd normally found on an elementary school playground, found a way to address this issue seriously and with consideration of the others viewpoint. 

The (Unwinnable) War on Drugs

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The "War on Drugs" has been waged in America for decades now, and it's becoming increasingly clear that the tactics used in the "war" haven't been real effective. One reason is that every time drug enforcement agents plug one smuggling hole another one opens up, and often in ingenius ways:

Just when you thought drug running couldn't get more extreme, U.S. border patrol officers find 33 cans of marijuana in the desert near the border that they believe were fired from a cannon in Mexico. Authorities caught wind of the new technique when they received reports of some strange canisters popping up near the Colorado River in southern Arizona recently. Agents arrived at the scene to find the cans which collectively held 85 pounds of marijuana. That's worth $42,500 on the street. By the looks of it, the smugglers had loaded the cans into a pneumatic-powered cannon (think: potato gun) and blasted them 500 yards over the border. Bummer none of their buddies came to pick it up before the police.

So maybe it's time to rethink our tactics like Portugal did ten years ago:

Now, the United States, which has waged a 40-year, $1 trillion war on drugs, is looking for answers in tiny Portugal, which is reaping the benefits of what once looked like a dangerous gamble. White House drug czar Gil Kerlikowske visited Portugal in September to learn about its drug reforms, and other countries — including Norway, Denmark, Australia and Peru — have taken interest, too.

“The disasters that were predicted by critics didn’t happen,” said University of Kent professor Alex Stevens, who has studied Portugal’s program. “The answer was simple: Provide treatment.”

Drugs in Portugal are still illegal. But here’s what Portugal did: It changed the law so that users are sent to counseling and sometimes treatment instead of criminal courts and prison. The switch from drugs as a criminal issue to a public health one was aimed at preventing users from going underground.

Other European countries treat drugs as a public health problem, too, but Portugal stands out as the only one that has written that approach into law. The result: More people tried drugs, but fewer ended up addicted.

Later in the story we learn that the US is spending $74 billion on criminal and court proceedings for drug offenders and just $3.6 billion for treatment. Maybe if more emphasis were put on treatment we would see the market for illegal drugs shrink, and demand would eventually fall far enough that smuggling would be less profitable, and the motivation to build cannons capable of blasting barrels filled with drugs hundreds of yards into America would disappear.

Crazy right?

US Student Loan Debt Up 814% Since 2001

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GrowthOfDebt

Mary Meeker of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, does an annual "Internet Trends" presentation, and this year's slide deck can be found here. Included in her presentation is an amazing graphic (slide 79 of 88) that you can see above; it shows how the share of US consumer debt has changed from the 4th quarter of 2001 to the 2nd quarter of 2012.

It is absolutely stunning how much – and how quickly – student debt has grown in this country. From $100 billion in 2001 to $914 billion in 2012 is an 814% increase in just a decade. The next fastest growth category is "home equity" at 390% and it wouldn't be a stretch to say that at least some of that is attributable to parents taking out home equity to pay for the kids' college tuition, so it's conceivable that education is responsible for even more debt than is being reflected by this graph.

One has to wonder – has higher education delivered a return that can possibly justify such massive debt?

I Don’t Remember

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Those of us with children have had countless conversations with them that went something like this:

Parent: Why did you <insert some inexplicably stupid act>?

Child: I don't know.

Parent: What were you thinking?

Child: I don't remember.

Apparently the CEO of Bank of America is very much like a child:

In the case of Bank of America, MBIA has long wanted to depose Moynihan because it was precisely Moynihan who went public with comments about how B of A was going to make good on the errors made by its bad-seed acquisition, Countrywide. "At the end of the day, we'll pay for the things Countrywide did," was one such comment Moynihan made, in November of 2010.

As it turns out, Moynihan was deposed last May 2. But the deposition was only made public this week, when it was filed as an exhibit in a motion for summary judgment. In the deposition, attorney Peter Calamari of Quinn Emmanuel, representing MBIA, attempts to ask Moynihan a series of questions about what exactly Bank of America knew about Countrywide's operations at various points in time…

Early on, he asks Moynihan if he remembers the B of A audit committee discussing Countrywide. Moynihan says he "doesn't recall any specific discussion of it."

He's asked again: In the broadest conceivable sense, do you recall ever attending an audit committee meeting where the word Countrywide or any aspect of the Countrywide transaction was ever discussed? Moynihan: I don't recall.

Calamari counters: It's a multi-billion dollar acquisition, was it not? 
Moynihan: Yes, it was. Well, isn't that the kind of thing you would talk about? 
Moynihan: not necessarily . . .

The exasperated MBIA lawyer tries again: If it's true that Moynihan somehow managed to not know anything about the bank's most important and most problematic subsidiary when he became CEO, well, did he ever make an effort to correct that ignorance?  "Do you ever come to learn what CFC was doing?" is how the question is posed.

"I'm not sure that I recall exactly what CFC was doing versus other parts," Moynihan sagely concludes.

The deposition rolls on like this for 223 agonizing pages. The entire time, the Bank of America CEO presents himself as a Being There-esque cipher who was placed in charge of a Too-Big-To-Fail global banking giant by some kind of historical accident beyond his control, and appears to know little to nothing at all about the business he is running.

In the end, Moynihan even doubles back on his "we'll pay for the things Countrywide did" quote. Asked if he said that to a Bloomberg reporter, Moynihan says he doesn't remember that either, though he guesses the reporter got it right.

Well, he's asked, assuming he did say it, does the quote accurately reflect Moynihan's opinion?

"It is what it is," Moynihan says philosophically.

(H/T to Lex for linking to this).

 

 

Fox News Tries to Demote Christianity

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Fox News' flagship personality, one Bill O'Reilly, has tried to demote Christianity from a religion to a philosophy – apparently in a battle fought in the War on Christmas. Jon Stewart, Comedy Central's flagship personality who happens to be Jewish, is there to set Fox and Bill straight:

 

 

Social Media Political Derangement Syndrome

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Every four years we have to suffer through a Presidential campaign, but in the era of social media the agony has truly been heightened to an almost unbearable level. Not only do we have to listen to candidates and pundits, now we have to bear our (supposed) friends sharing their own, often wharped, views about the various candidates and their supporters. I have to admit I kind of snapped this morning and wrote this on Facebook:

An interpretation of modern American politics based on extensive reading of my friends' Facebook and Twitter posts – in four paragraphs:

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.

Teach a Republican to fish and he hires all the non-union fishermen, pays them minimum wage, decimates the fishery, ships the entire catch to the Cayman Islands and has them stored in a secret freezer. He keeps a small portion in the states to live off of day-to-day and pays capital gains on it. Fires all the fishermen and figures out a way to get more fish in China. Blame the lack of fish in American waters on the Godless Democrats' turning us into a non-Christian nation and hope that no one has actually read the Bill of Rights.

Teach a Democrat to fish and he establishes a Department of Fishing, writes 3,425 pages of regulations, hires all the fishermen, pays them so-so wages but gives them killer pensions, accidentally decimates the fishery and taxes the cattlemen to help pay for the clean up. When they get mad he starts talking about rising tides lifting all boats, but gets distracted and starts blaming the Republicans for global warming. 

The Green Party candidate doesn't eat fish so he fries up some tofu and calls the Democrat and Republican mean names.

Admittedly it's not very witty, nor very inciteful, but it made me feel better. Sure, I could turn off social media, but then I'd lose out on this unprecedented opportunity to learn exactly how wharped many of my "friends" are.

Credit Where Credit is Due

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Remember "It's the economy stupid?" The first President Bush certainly does, because that phrase famously summed up the soon-to-be President Clinton's campaign focus in beating him. Here's the thing – Clinton ended up getting too much credit for the economic recovery that occurred during his first term, and Bush-the-first didn't get enough credit for making the tough and politically disastrous policy decisions that kick started the recovery in the first place.

Why bring that up now? Because it's interesting to see how President Obama is blamed for things that he literally has no control over, like high gas prices, but gets no credit for things he had a direct hand in, like an improving economy. He is also being criticized for budget deficits that were largely made necessary by the policy decisions of his predecessor, President Bush-the-second. Could Obama have made policy choices that kept the deficit from growing as much as it did in his first term? Sure, but many economists think that would have been much worse for the economic recovery we're seeing. In fact some argue that his policies weren't aggressive enough – that larger short-term deficits might have led to a faster, steeper economic recovery. 

What further complicates the issue in this election cycle is that President Obama came into office as the US economy was in an unprecedented-in-our-lifetime freefall. In the same way that it's difficult to prove a negative, it's also difficult for a sitting President prove that the economy could have been in worse shape if his policies had been different. Quite frankly it's easier for a challenger to say that things could/should have been much better and that it's the President's fault that they aren't; he literally doesn't have to prove it since it's a matter of opinion.  That's how Clinton took out Bush Sr. and that's how Romney is trying to take out Obama. 

It remains to be seen if the recent economic improvement will be enough to convince voters that Obama is worth keeping around. If it's not, Romney will inheret a growing economy and unless he really screws up he'll be given far more credit for it than he deserves.