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. 

Don’t Be a Grammar Goon

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Tempted to make fun of someone on Facebook because he doesn't know the difference between lose and loose? Probably not a good idea, and it might actually mean you're a bit of a whank:

There was a time that it gave me a blush of pride to be referred to as “the Spelling Sergeant” or “the Punctuation Police”. I would gleefully tear a syntactic strip out of anybody who fell victim to the perils of poor parallelism or the menace of misplaced modifiers. I railed against atrostrophes and took a red pen to signs posted in staff rooms, bulletin boards and public washrooms. I was, to put it bluntly, really, really annoying…

So if I crap on Jonny’s spelling, I’m either reinforcing an oppressive status quo, or picking on a person with a disability, or both. And taking part in these kinds of insults, even when they’re directed at an Internet troll, encourages other people to participate in this kind of shaming. It’s frankly also pretty ineffective as a debate tactic. I’m not going to change Jonny’s mind, nor help him improve his writing abilities, by making fun of him. He may be a jerk because he’s never learned how to express himself in a healthy way, and I’m not doing much to help him. And reducing my arguments to the level of ad homonym attacks debases my own credibility – because if I have a valid point to make, I should be able to make it without resorting to pettiness. Furthermore, it is guaranteed that somewhere out there on the Interwebs, there is someone I agree with whose reasoned arguments are disparaged, dismissed or ignored because they come wrapped in a package of nonstandard language.

This is no trifling issue, either. I like to shock the new tutors I train by quoting statistics from theInternational Adult Literacy Survey. I ask them to estimate, in a developed country like Canada or the U.S., what percentage of the population has literacy skills below the very basic level needed to function well in our society. People usually guess ten percent, fifteen percent, maybe as much as twenty-five. Then I pull out the sad, stunning facts: nearly half of all North American adults cannot cope with complex written material of the sort that the other half of us take completely for granted. HALF, you guys. This should be considered anational crisis. Not fodder for sport.

The blog post that's the source of these opinions is titled Literacy Privilege: How I Learned to Check Mine Instead of Making Fun of People's Grammar on the Internet and it's well worth the read, if for no other reason than absorb the list of privileges we literate members of society enjoy. Here's a sample:

  • I can easily and safely navigate my way around the city I live in because I understand all of the posted signs, warnings and notifications.
  • I can make healthy and informed choices about the products I purchase because I can accurately read their labels and price tags.
  • I can safely use pharmaceuticals prescribed to me without having to remember the doctor’s or pharmacist’s instructions because I can accurately read their labels.
  • When required to visit doctors, hospitals, government agencies, banks, or legal offices, I do not have to invent excuses to bring paperwork home so that someone else can read it to me. If I live alone, I do not have to expose myself to judgement and ridicule by asking the doctor, nurse, agent, clerk, lawyer or other employee to read it to me.
  • I can independently make informed medical, legal, political and financial decisions about myself and my family because I can read and understand important documents.

The companion pieces to this post are also well worth the read. You can find them here and there.

The Miracles and Limitations of Modern Health Care

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My wife and I spent yesterday at Brenner Children's Hospital in Winston-Salem with our youngest son. Our son has been dealing with a condition called supraventricular tachycardia (SVT), which in layman's terms means his heart will sometimes beat really fast – like 200 beats-per-minute fast – for extended periods of time even if he's sitting still. He was in the hospital for a procedure called a cardiac ablation which, if successful, would prevent these episodes from happening in the future.

The way the ablation was explained to us is that the doctor would send catheters through major veins in the legs to our son's heart and, depending on where in the heart the problem was, either burn or freeze the part of the heart that was causing it to go into this abnormal rhythm. Our son would be put under general anesthesia for the procedure and it would likely take about four hours. They would provoke his heart into going "wonky" (that's our technical term for it), identify the problem area, treat it and then observe it for a period of time to make sure they got all of it. If they needed to they'd freeze or burn more spots until they had the problem area taken care of.

Here's the really amazing part: if all went as planned we'd have our son back home the same day and he'd be under orders to take it easy for four days, not lift anything heavy for about a week, and then he'd be back to normal. To us this was truly a miracle of modern medicine – our son would have a heart procedure as outpatient surgery!

Thankfully all went as planned and we had our son home last night. Truly amazing.

Unfortunately modern medicine also has its limitations. While we were in the waiting room during our son's surgery a doctor came out and met with a mother and grandmother waiting near us. It was very early in the morning and most of the folks in the waiting area were asleep, thus it was pretty quiet. We tried our best not to eavesdrop, but it was impossible not to hear pieces of what the doctor was telling the mother – that her child did indeed have some rare, malignant cancer. It was also impossible not to hear the mother's crying and her mother trying to console her. And quite frankly it was impossible not to break down ourselves once they left – I haven't cried in public since I was a child, and I'm not ashamed to say that I just couldn't hold it together. I can't imagine going through what that family is going through right now.

Right now our country is dealing with a lot of change in our health care system thanks in large part to the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare. There's (rightfully) a lot of discussion about how our health care system and the related health insurance industry work. The debate often focuses on cost and on whether or not we're moving towards a system of "socialized" medicine similar to Canada's or the UK's, and if we are, whether that will lead to a stall in medical advances that have led to every day "miracles" like what our family experienced.

Those are all worthy discussion points, but after yesterday all I could think was this: when it's your child in the operating room you really don't care how expensive the procedure is, you just want him to have whatever it takes to make him well. I would gladly live in a cardboard box in order not to have to hear what that poor mother next to us heard. Whatever we do I hope we continue to work towards making sure that fewer and fewer parents have to hear that their child doesn't have a miracle available to them at any price.

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?

“In Second Grade They Have a Dream. In Seventh Grade They Have a Plan.”

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The title of Nicholas Kristof's column – Profiting From a Child's Illiteracy – gives you a clue about his take on the unintended consequences of America's anti-poverty programs:

THIS is what poverty sometimes looks like in America: parents here in Appalachian hill country pulling their children out of literacy classes. Moms and dads fear that if kids learn to read, they are less likely to qualify for a monthly check for having an intellectual disability…

This is painful for a liberal to admit, but conservatives have a point when they suggest that America’s safety net can sometimes entangle people in a soul-crushing dependency. Our poverty programs do rescue many people, but other times they backfire…

About four decades ago, most of the children S.S.I. covered had severe physical handicaps or mental retardation that made it difficult for parents to hold jobs — about 1 percent of all poor children. But now 55 percent of the disabilities it covers are fuzzier intellectual disabilities short of mental retardation, where the diagnosis is less clear-cut. More than 1.2 million children across America — a full 8 percent of all low-income children — are now enrolled in S.S.I. as disabled, at an annual cost of more than $9 billion…

THERE’S no doubt that some families with seriously disabled children receive a lifeline from S.S.I. But the bottom line is that we shouldn’t try to fight poverty with a program that sometimes perpetuates it.

A local school district official, Melanie Stevens, puts it this way: “The greatest challenge we face as educators is how to break that dependency on government. In second grade, they have a dream. In seventh grade, they have a plan.”

Complex problems beget complex solutions, or no solutions at all. As a society we long ago made a commitment to help those who needed a hand up, but we've struggled with how to do it without giving them a handout. If you read the full column you'll find that Kristof sees some programs – maybe not so coincidentally they are non-government programs – targeted at children that have shown promise. Unfortunately we don't seem to have the political leadership we need to make these programs a reality on a large scale – and it's appearing increasingly doubtful that we'll see that kind of leadership in this country any time in the near future.

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).