How to destroy a life

PLEASE NOTE: It took me forever to write this and it is overlong. I beg your indulgence. We have a tendency to pass laws in this country and then think that the problem is fixed. Often the laws cause as much heartache as the heartache they were meant to prevent. Like you, I am troubled by the predation and victimization of children. Problem is that I am also troubled by what our laws do to children.
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No longer a registered sex offender, but the stigma remains - CNN.com

The linked story is one of a life destroyed by sex offender registration laws. It is an example on what happens when "we the people" do not stop to consider the broad impact of our actions. It is an example of what happens when knee jerk politicians craft laws to support re-election efforts.

These stories repeat the tragedy again and again. The problem with these laws is that they criminalize normal adolescent behavior. Let's be clear here that we are not talking about boys having sex with children. It is true that the attachment to children as sex objects begins early in life, and so intervention designed to address that is a good idea (although community attitudes towards sex offenders often make it difficult for those so labeled to have a normal life.) Nor are we talking about forcible rape (a term that always struck me as redundant), there are sufficient laws on the books to deal with rape. What we are talking about is the very fuzzy area of law known as "Statutory Rape."  Statutory rape (these laws date to the 14th century and were originally intended to protect an important economic resources: a daughter's virginity) occurs when a person has consensual sex with a person below the age of consent.

There are several problems with these laws. One is that the age of consent is different in different states. In California it is 18 in most others it is 16. This means that if a 19 year old boy has sex with his 17 year old girlfriend of 2 years, he has committed statutory rape in one state, but not in another. In a sign of a drift toward rationality, many states now reduce the act to a misdemeanor if it there is not a 2 or 3 year difference in the age of the perpetrator and the "victim", but why criminalize sex at all? Because here's the thing, what consent laws also mean is that if a 16 year old boy has sex with his 14 year old girlfriend he has committed statutory rape in almost every state. He has become a "sexual offender."

A troublesome problem arises from the idea of consent itself. The basic idea of consent laws is that children are too "immature" to be able to manage the transactions involved in giving consent (although this same immaturity does not keep these kids from being tried as adults when politicians need to be "tough on crime".) This concept dovetails nicely with other approaches to power differentials in relationships, such as those on which sexual harassment laws are based and they make perfect sense when thinking in terms of adults having sex with adolescents, or adolescents having sex with children. they do not make sense when considering the behavior of adolescents within their peer group.

It is true that peer pressure can tilt young people towards behavior that they will regret later, but the idea that this is somehow something that is peculiar to adolescents is not supported. The whole concept of "groupthink" for instance, is based on the idea that everyone - even otherwise very intelligent adults - can be swayed by the pressure of their peers to adjust their thinking in not so useful ways. There is no doubt that peer pressure and sex are problems in adolescence, but to criminalize sexual behavior in this age group - and, in particular to require the inclusion of the names of these "criminals" in the registry of sex offenders - is unconscionable.

Another problem with these laws is that they are inconsistently enforced. In some states even different counties enforce state law differently. There are a variety of factors that cause this. One is ideological. Conservatives, who have held sway in the Federal government for many years, favor jail as "punishment" for this act. This is all tied up the the "Strong Father" movement and the "Purity" agenda, something that has some pretty creepy overtones of its own. The Supreme Court has been - or at least was before the empaneling of the Roberts Court - fairly clear that religious morality is not a sound basis for public law. The fact that some people consider premarital sex immoral is insufficient reason to destroy the lives of adolescent Americans.

And it was conservatives who pushed the "Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act" (Part of the Adam Walsh Act - are you as tired as I am of laws named after victims?) which required "offenders" as young as 14 to be listed on the registry, along with their photo, address and a notification on their driver's license.  Now, again, there are reasons for the registry and with habitual offenders there is some potential for protection in the community from their predation. There are however significant constitutional questions about the act, the 9th Circuit Court has already struck down its retroactive notification section.

But what is the point of extending the registry to include 14 year-olds in the first place? A broad review of the available research on juvenile sexual offenders, edited in 2006 by Howard Barbee and William Marshall tied down several relevant facts about young sexual offenders. The first is that there are five groups of young offenders: 1) those who offend but stop at some point do not re-offend; 2) those that offend, are never caught and continue to offend in adulthood; 3) those who offend, are caught and never offend again;4) those who offend, are caught and treated and never offend again; and 5) those who offend, are caught and treated but continue to offend. This last group is the one included in most statistics about recidivism - but Barbee and Marshall's work demonstrates that recidivism rates are only about 15% for juvenile offenders. More important, what these categories tell us is that our laws intended to prevent re-offending have cast much too large a net. What we need are more effective techniques for addressing that 15%, not a mechanism that unnecessarily compromises the lives of the others.

Barbee and Marshall's work lists several risk factors that can be used to predict recidivism. Among them are whether or not the person has been arrested. One of the interesting bits of data from the book is that, although the recidivism rate for teen offenders is only 15% sexually, the recidivism rate for any crime (among the group of offenders) is over 50%. It may be that this statistic reveals a general level of sociopathy in these kids. It could also show the impact of integrating young offenders into the school of crime that is our current correctional system.

Another factor in recidivism however, is social isolation. The more socially isolated a kid is the more likely he is to re-offend. So here is the question. What could possibly increase social isolation more than having your name on a sexual offenders list and being prohibited by law from being in places where your peers congregate?

It is hard to read the stories of the damage done by the registry without becoming filled with rage. For me that rage focuses on the moralistic Americans who trumpet their religious values and believe that it is their job to protect us from our selves. But it is not just them.

We have come to a point in western culture that children are our most cherished possessions. We call them special, don't let them play the games we played when we grew up because they might have their little feelings hurt. We grow these cherished and special little ones into workers so spoiled that they cannot make it in the workplace. We will do anything to "protect" them from danger - real danger of course, but imagined danger as well. We are so mortified by what might happen "if", that we take no risks whatsoever.

Because of this, threats to children are often overblown because the media understands that it is fear of losing these cherished possessions - selfish fear for the most part - that drives us to the point of virtually imprisoning them in over-scheduled lives. And so we have Megan's law and Amber alerts and numerous other legislative palliatives that are designed to encapsulate children so their parents feel better. Extending the registry to 14 year olds is part of this trend.

The irony is that the actions we take to protect our own "special" children bring the cost of ruining the lives of other young people.

Nothing in what I am saying is intended to inhibit the reasonable execution of the laws of the land. The key word here is reasonable. It does not seem to me to be reasonable to throw young lives away in pursuit of goals better attained in other ways (please feel free to expand this argument to the "war on drugs", or the "war on terror" or hell, just war itself.)  And the simple fact is that we do not know whether treatment works or why (note: that cite is from 2008, this one said the same thing in 1997.) While it may seem to some to reasonable to label adults as incorrigible, I can see no rationale for the application of that word to brains that are not finished developing.

I beg you please to go to this site and join the effort to get our laws to make sense. And while you're at it, let your kid climb that tree.

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When reform will happen

In 1993, as the health care industry moved into complete encapsulation by the concept of "managed care," I made the following prediction:

For profit health care continually drains resources from the delivery of services in order to fund owner's equity. The result is that the insurer is left with three options: reduce coverage, raise premiums, or some combination of the two. Eventually services will be reduced and premiums raised to the point that the whole system is untenable. At that point insurers themselves will start to call for reform. What they will seek is to dump their costly products and get out of the market. Then we will have single payer coverage

Anthem Blue Cross has just fired the first major shot over the bow of government in the engagement of this process. The first people to be dumped from the market will be individuals, people whose risk cannot be spread out over a group. Next will come (actually this has been going on quietly and slowly for a while) the en masse dumping the sick and elderly from the rolls of the insured. Finally, insurers will complete the process of dumping employer provide coverage by intentionally raising rates to the point of rebellion.

In essence, the conservatives are right: we simply need to let the invisible hand of the free market direct the future of health insurance. The surprise for them is that ultimately we will end up with a state run system and it will be at the behest of the free market they so cherish. Of course there is the minor issue of the untold misery of those caught while the invisible hand is patting itself on the back. But hey, what the fuck. I mean didn't Stalin teach us that the suffering of millions is okay if the right people want it?

A homicide detective I heard once said that "Murder is about three things: sex, money or power. Sex is about power, money is about power. All murder is about power."

And that is what we are talking about in regards to the process of health reform: death (isn't it murder?) in the service of power. We will get reform when that death is no longer profitable.

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Somebody is missing the point

There has been much ado of late about President Obama's mishandling of terrorist suspects, from the underwear bomber to the decision to change the venue of the trial of terror suspect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed et al in New York City.

The controversy regarding Umar Farouk Abdulmudallah was focused at first on the failures of the Transportation Security Agency and the intelligence community in their task of preventing the attempt in the first place. But later frenzy was associated with the apparently horrendous mistake made in reading Abdul his rights, including the right to remain silent. This humane treatment of a person suspected of violating the US code prohibiting acts of terrorism has driven conservatives mad. Even after his consequent interrogation was said to have provided actionable intelligence.

The more recent decision to move Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's trial away from the US District Court in Manhattan was a reaction to the huge NIMBY response from the Mayor, residents and businesses in the region of the court. This effort to deny KSM the right to a public trial has been one of the few bipartisan efforts to come out of the 111th Congress.

What is at issue here is that the conservative propaganda machine is pumping Obama's actions in dealing with terrorists as a Judas goat to frighten the public and propagate the idea the Obama is weak in the area of national security - mainly because he has repudiated the Cheney/Bush efforts to re-write the Constitution. Much of this effort is built around the idea that terrorists are not "citizens." This thinking was most clearly stated by Virginia Republican Representative and Republican Minority Whip Eric Cantor on Jan 7th

"Many Americans are incensed to see that the Administration is treating Umar Abdul Mattallab as a common criminal with the rights of a U.S. citizen, including the right to remain silent, a lawyer at taxpayer expense and a civil trial, rather than an enemy combatant who committed an act of war. The Administration's treatment could afford a murderous terrorist the opportunity to negotiate a plea bargain and a lesser punishment - and that is not acceptable."

The text of the Constitution of the US uses the word "citizen" eleven times and only once in reference to the application of rights, in Article IV Section 2: "The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States." Clearly a distinction that was intended to be inclusive, rather than exclusive. The word "citizen" is not used once in the bill of rights.

In contrast the word "people" is used five times in the Bill of Rights, and is used most prominently in the Preamble to the Constitution. It is the third word: "We the People...."

There is nothing in the Constitution, or even in the US Criminal Code that implies that the law of the land is applicable only to citizens.The Constitution was written as it was because, at the time, the US hoped to become an island of liberty in a world of capricious autocracies. The Declaration of Independence stood on the firm principle that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (among others) were the inalienable of all people, not just the residents of one country, or the members of a certain class.

Umar Abdul Mattallab did not commit an "act of war." The United States of America is not at war. This man, and the "shoe bomber" and the people who flew the planes into the World Trade Center violated certain and specific sections of the US Criminal Code. There is not now, nor was there ever, a need to engage in combat to bring these people to justice, although certainly there was cause to bring force to bear on the rogue state that harbored these criminals.

The effort to deny these people of the right of due process, prior to denying them "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" is in specific violation of the 5th amendment which states simply that "No person shall be…deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law"(the word citizen does not appear in this amendment) and of the 14th amendment, which applies the 5th to the States and again says simply that "No State shall...deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." This amendment makes the specific distinctions between a citizen - in stating that the rights of citizens of the US shall not be abrogated by any state - and those of a person, as per the quote above.

I have no doubt whatsoever that Cantor is earnest in his assertion that "Many Americans are incensed," but this is because Americans are notoriously ignorant of their own history. Cantor's role should be to educate his constituency about our Constitution. Sadly, before he could do that, this elected representative would need to be educated himself.

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Can you spell Fuck NO!?

This is a link to a video about a billboard in Minnesota with a big picture of George W Bush and the caption "Miss me yet?

I am completely mystified by the notion that, no matter how bad it gets in the US, anyone of sound mind would want to return to the days of Bush 43.

In case you have forgotten, here is a little trip down memory lane for you. First there are the war crimes. Then there is the economy (much of which Republicans are now trying to blame on Obama). More comprehensive lists include Katrina, Afghanistan and the lies that were the basis of our entry into the war on Iraq.

It would seem to me that even conservatives would not want be nostalgic about Bush, given the fact that he oversaw the largest expansion of government in 60 years. Not to mention his administration's complete disregard for the ideal of individual liberty.

Do I miss Bush? Well, yeah, I do. I mean, from the perspective of fodder for outrage, Bush's years in the White House were a cornucopia. But you know, even outrage gets old after a while.

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SSDD

Conservative wunderkind, 14 year old Jonathan Krohn has defined conservatism for us.

Quoting CNN, who listed Krohn as one of it Intriguing People to watch for today, "The four basic principles he advocates are respect for the Constitution and the rule of law upon which it is based; respect for life as an inherent and inalienable right for all individuals at all stages; insistence on a government in its most limited form so it does not conflict with an individual's rights and freedoms; and taking personal responsibility and working toward a system of government that makes individuals accountable for all his or her actions."

To start let me say that I heartily applaud this kid. He is thinking, well read and clearly engaged. Sadly however it appears that master Krohn has done little more than soak up the proverbial kool aid.

To begin, I would like to say that I am sick to death of the assumption made by conservatives everywhere that the values espoused above are conservative values alone. I know of no progressive person who eschews the rule of law, nor one without a respect for life for "individuals of all ages." There is no progressive value that would not also require working for a government that is accountable to the people. Short of the "limited government" claptrap (the largest expansion of government in 60 years took place under a "conservative" President and a Congress ruled by "conservative" legislators,) there are no values espoused in the paragraph above that are not the values of intelligent, informed and conscientious individuals everywhere.

With that out of the way, let's look at these one by one:

1. Respect for the Constitution and the rule of law upon which it is based.At what point do we discern a person's lack of respect for the Constitution. Is it when the right against unwarrented search and seizure is negated? Is it when due process is abrogated? Is it when we assume that the Constitution only applies to citizens, leaving us free to torture and imprison people indefinitely? On his web page, Krohn states that he believes that his book will come to be a "a timeless book of facts and logic." Well here are the facts: the concept of the "rule of law" comes down to how the law is interpreted. Interpretations by John Yoo and Alberto Gonzales empowered the President to behave in a many that many others considered to be a violation of the Constitution. Krohn, who claims to value logic, has himself fallen victim to the logical fallacy known as "appeal to belief": simply because someone believes that he respects the rule of law does not mean that his behavior reflects a respect for the rule of law.

2. Respect for life as an inherent and inalienable right for individuals of all ages. Here Krohn has become entangled in another logical fallacy. This one is known as the false dilemma fallacy: He believes that fetuses are individuals which causes him to determine that those who do not agree with him have no respect for life "at all stages." Is it not possible to have more respect for the life of the living mother than that of her as yet unformed fetus? The larger issue is this: how does this "respect" express itself? Is it respectful of life to preserve a fetus only to execute him for a capital crime when he is 25? Is it respectful of life to support an economic model that results in a portion of the population living in abject poverty? Here again, Krohn insists that he has confined himself to the realm of "logic, morality, and history" when he is really just dancing around in the world of personal opinion.

3. "Insistence on a government in its most limited form so it does not conflict with an individual's rights and freedoms" This is just libertarianism parading around in Ronald Reagan drag. The simple fact is this: it is impossible to design a federal government overseeing the welfare (a charge laid out in the preamble to the Constitution) of 300 million people in a way that does not conflict with an "individual's rights and freedoms." Laying aside for the moment the vagaries of the concept of "freedoms," our "rights" are only those laid out within the structure of the Constitution, along with the caveat of the 10th Amendment. It is important to keep in mind that the United States is not a union of people, it is a union of states. Such a union cannot have limited government as its highest value simply because it is an agreement between the government of the United States and the governments of the individual states. Our government is indeed a government of and by the people, but the functioning of that government entails the people agreeing to the limitation of individual freedom in order to assure the general welfare.

4. "Taking personal responsibility and working toward a system of government that makes individuals accountable for all his or her actions." All I can say here is "from Krohn's mouth to God's ear." The whole idea of classical liberalism, the antecedent to all of Krohn's values, assumes a rational and responsible population. Unfortunately - or rather fortunately - our Constitution is based on the more practical Hamiltonian belief that people will always act in their own selfish interest and so government needs to be structured in a way that takes advantage of that fact and uses that self interest to support the common good. Our Constitution assumes that people will behave selfishly and so taxes that selfishness. It would be wonderful to live in a world where humans were rational, sadly that is not the case. Indeed, if we were capable of acting in our own enlightened self interest neither George W. Bush, nor Karl Rove's Congress would ever have been placed in power.

Now, it may seem cruel to be taking a 14 year old to task, but the reality is that there is nothing new here. What Krohn espouses is the same "conservative" mumbo jumbo that has been shrilly touted for years by the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck (sorry, I cannot bring myself to provide links to these guys.) Clearly this boy is more articulate than Sarah Palin, but he is saying the same old shit.

Tags: Conservative, Liberal, Libertarianism, Krohn

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Health Care Redux

"In an interview Sunday with Katie Couric of CBS News, Obama said he planned to ask Republican leaders 'to put their ideas on the table.'"

As if.

The Republicans do not have any ideas. What they have are objections and tweaks. Their "plan" is not unknown to us. This was the Republican "plan" on 10/31/2009 as articulated by House Minority Leader John Boehner:

– To let individuals and small businesses look for better insurance deals in other states.

– To allow them to pool together to receive the kind of insurance deals typically offered to large corporations.

– To create an environment that gives states greater range to experiment with cost-saving health care reforms.

– To institute tort reform.

Item one: Simply preserves the present "free market" approach to health care that has left thirty million people with no health care coverage. So what if a mom and pop grocer in Ohio can get insurance from a company in Missouri? They still can't afford it. The idea, of course, is to increase competitiveness. Yeah John, and we know how well that has worked out with Cable Television.

Item two: Again, the function of this is to support insurance companies in the "free market". The fact that larger groups spread risk has not prevented the continuous rise in rates for corporations and has done nothing - as the linked article attests - to prevent them from using discriminatory practices that push some people out of the market. Setting up "health care co-ops"may improve access to insurance, but it does not address costs in anything but a superficial manner. Someone who makes $25,000 per annum cannot afford $13,000 per year for insurance for their family, no matter where they get the coverage.

Item three: Another pet project of conservatives such as Boehner is to return us to the Articles of the Confederation, that is, a loose confederation in which states are more or less autonomous members. All that is really happening here is that Boehner and the Republicans continue in their effort to strip the Federal Government of any power to regulate the states, outside of the first nine amendments to the Constitution. And this is the rub: "experiment"?! Here is how things worked out with Tennessee's most recent "experiment" with health care cost savings reforms: hundreds of thousands of people kicked off of the health care rolls and hundreds of thousands more required to absorb major costs for their care. Yes John, let's do experiment with peoples lives, I mean after all, your coverage is secure. We should remember that it was the states, not the federal government, that created the Jim Crow laws. It was the Feds who ended them. But then maybe John doesn't think ending them was such a good idea.

Item four: Boehner thinks that tort reform is a big deal. He has felt that way for years, there is nothing new here. He thinks it will be the magic pill. Truth is, not so much. What it does do is pit two of the most powerful lobbying groups in DC - The American Medical Association and the Trial Lawyers Association - against each other. which means that both will be dumping beau coups bucks on the Congress. Reform? Maybe not. Let's be clear: George W. Bush was a major advocate for tort reform at a time when Congress was owned by Republicans. Wonder why it never happened? The call for tort reform is nothing more than a call for continued paralysis.

And that is the point of the Republican's plan. The idea is the appearance of change, with no actual change. They really don't think that things are so bad the way they are. Again and again they tout the idea that America has the best health care in the world. And they should know, they alone have access to it. The facts are a little different: the US has the highest percent of Gross Domestic Product devoted to health care, the highest per capita spending on health care and the highest percentage of health care cost covered by private insurers, according to a report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Yet we get much less bang for our considerable bucks than nations such as France and Norway.

So, yeah, Mr. President, invite the Republicans to the table. Just please have no illusions that it will make any difference whatsoever to the American people.

Tags: Health Care Reform, Republicans, Obama, Boehner

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Finally!

President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan have announced plans to reconfigure the No Child Left Behind Act. Included in his 3.5 trillion dollar budget is a 7% increase in funding an a change if focus from test scores to real outcomes, such as the development of career skills.

As a parent of a school age child my perception is that NCLB, Bush 43's biggest domestic success (and interestingly for a Republican President and a Republican Congress represents the biggest intrusion into state's rights since the Reconstruction, not that I am complaining, the states, left to their own devices, usually end up looking like idiots), has resulted in nothing more than the amputation of quality educational programming such as arts programs and physical education and health programs and has damaged the very math and reading education programs it was intended to improve.

Obama and Duncan want to improve the Act by looking at where children go as they move through school "We want accountability reforms that factor in student growth, progress in closing achievement gaps, proficiency towards college and career-ready standards, high school graduation and college enrollment rates,” Duncan said, noting that the new approach is a “cradle-to-career agenda.

As attractive as this sounds, it is simply a hopeful fix of a broken system. There are two major - and integrally related - problems with the US educational system that these earnest men's efforts do nothing to address.

The first is funding. Funding for US schools is based primarily on local property or school taxes. What this means generally is that poorer states spend less per student than wealthier states, even when things such as cost of living are accounted for. The result is a system that is inherently tilted toward better education for the affluent and than for those in poverty.

Despite the nationalization of education under NCLB, nothing was done to address this inherently inequitable funding scheme. This was due in part to the Bush administrations paradoxical embrace of both states rights and legislation that abrogated them, but also because Congress never would have supported funding reform as it would have meant the end of its members' political careers. In the end the Bush administration did not even provide the funds originally promised NCLB.

The second issue is poverty itself. Schools in impoverished areas do not provide an achievement oriented education except for the most talented and motivated of the students within them. Poverty and its correlates - fatherlessness, single parent homes, drugs and drug related violence, gang activity, poor nourishment - all conspire to destroy educational environments, both within and without the child.

The problems with our educational system arise from a cycle of impoverished educational systems failing to provide the tools for people to rise out of poverty, leaving poverty itself to render children in impoverished areas virtually ineducable.

Good teachers will not work in impoverished areas and impoverished areas do not have the resources to support students in schools even if good teachers remained.

There is no single fix for this but there are basic issues that must be addressed to form a bedrock on which further progress can be made. The first is funding. States must be required to abandon local funding in favor of uniform pupil-weighting funding mechanisms. Teachers salaries must be structured in a way that encourages them to work in challenging districts.

There are other changes that must be put in place as well. One is the an end to the "War on Drugs" with its imprisonment of hundreds of thousands of men and women on minor drug charges, with its distinctions between crack and powder cocaine that result in harsh prison sentences for young black men and slaps on the wrist for affluent white folks. This "war" has done more damage to the lives of American young people than any amount of drug use could have done.

A focus of law enforcement on the interdiction of illegal weapons would properly use the otherwise wasted resources sucked up by the "war on drugs".

Finally health care reform must make pre and post natal care, parent education, nutritional information, education and supplements available to all Americans.

These are not easy fixes and they are only the beginning. They will all piss of some interest group or other, which means that we will have to have leaders with the courage and political will to advocate for them. What I am suggesting here is a basic reformulation of our society around preparing our citizens for self-sufficiency in a world that is changing at a breakneck pace. Drug reform is necessary but not sufficient, health reform is necessary but not sufficient and education reform is simply a waste of time if we do not address the infrastructural and cultural issues that undermine the capacity of the individual to be educated.

Tags: Education, NCLB, Bush, War on Drugs, Poverty

The Damage Done

I have always like Fareed Zakaria. He has the capacity to explain, in plain language, fairly complex issues. In this case what he is talking about is not really all that complex: the American debt crisis. I cannot really improve what Zakaria says here, I suggest that you go and read it. His basic points are these: 1. America needs to begin to resolve its extreme deficits within 5 years or it will lose the confidence of the world (not a good thing - despite what the Europhobics may think.) 2. There are some simple fixes: focus on reducing health care costs; eliminate middle class entitlements (mortgage interest deduction), and raise taxes - oh and shave some of the costs from medicare.

However, we will not do these things. Why? Well, I'll let him tell you. "Because we have a political structure in Washington today, that if one side proposes any solution to these problems, the other side does not ask itself: How can we have a compromise that solves this problem? Instead they think: How can we demagogue this issue to fundraise, to win votes, to scare people, to polarize the political climate and gain advantage from it? It's almost that the entire strategy now is how can we take any proposal that anyone makes and turn it into a fundraising opportunity for our extreme wing."

So here is the thing: who is going to fix Washington before they sink the whole county?

You are. How? By not responding to the bullshit your elected representatives are spouting. By taking people out of office who play the games that Zakaria descibes. If you don't do it, who will?

Tags: deficit, budget, taxes, middle class, entitlements

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Well duh!

Intelligence chiefs say another terror attempt in U.S. is 'certain' - CNN.com

Have you ever watched those "psychic" folks on TV? What they do is tell you the obvious and let you give them the information they need to feed the illusion of knowledge. So called "intelligence" folks these days are playing pretty much the same game.

The United States has 1,969 miles of border with Mexico and 5,525 of border with Canada including the shores of the Great Lakes and the border with Alaska. There are 19,280 total airports in the US accounting for millions of passenger arrivals and departures (more than 45 million at Atlanta alone.) There are 150 ports in the US accepting a million or more tons of freight a year, totaling hundreds of million of gross tons of freight. There are more than 25,000 miles of navigable waterways (excluding the Great Lakes and the St Lawrence Seaway) and 12,280 miles of coastline in the continental US. Alaska, with all its islands has almost 34,000 miles of shoreline and Hawaii, well Hawaii is a bunch of freaking islands.

In short, of course there will be another terrorist attack in the US.  I will go out on a limb here and predict that there will be a terrorist attack in the next ten years whose casualty rate will exceed that of 09/11/2001. Predicting this is like saying that there will be a major storm that will hit Florida.

Security is an illusion it always has been and always will be. We can not be secure against terrorists threats. We can reduce their likelihood certainly, but not through the rather stupid measures that are applied to day. These really amount to nothing more than closing the barn door after its proverbial equine resident has absconded. And detaining eight year old autistic children is probably not going much to put of the fear of Allah into the hearts of al Qaeda. Nor will strip searching eighty year old grandmothers.

All we are doing today is making security companies and gadget makers wealthy - which the more cynical among us suspect is more or less the point of all of the squawking about what makes us more secure.

The thing is this: there is no system designed by a human being that cannot be defeated by a human being. If someone creates a neural network or quantum computer to design a system supposedly unbreakable by humans, other humans will simply create neural networks or quantum computers to defeat it

Does this mean that we should stop trying to save lives and prevent terrorism? No. It just means we should stop being stupid.

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Asylum for child abusers?

A New Basis for U.S. Asylum Claims: Homeschooling - TIME

Oh good! Now we are importing wackos from other countries.

Richard Dawkins has famously described religious indoctrination as a form of child abuse. If that is the case, then home schooling may be the institutionalization of that abuse. The raison d'etra of home schooling is that "Schools, even private schools, are deemed to be harmful because of the poor values they transmit: their 'progressive dogma', social diversity, lack of discipline, sex education and pro-abortion stances threaten the balanced development of Christians." (from Alternet)

Just to be clear, "progressive dogma" is what the rest of us refer to as a secular education. A 2007 survey by Department of Education revealed that 1.5 million children - about three percent of the school age population - are homeschooled, a number that is ever trending upward. Eight-three percent of parents of homeschooled children indicated that their choice to homeschool was based on "a desire to provide religious and moral instruction." (I wonder if that means that my children have not had moral instruction.)

Sex education is the big thing. Surely there are good reasons in some regions to consider home schooling. Issues such as the prevalence of drugs or violence and substandard local academic achievement; indeed homeschooling was a leftist creation of the 60's and early 70's (they wanted to protect their children from capitalist indoctrination) but it is science, in particular biology as it relates to the human race and procreation, that is at the root of this flight from public schools. "Science" curricula for children homeschooled by religious parents consists in titles such as titles such as "Christian Kids Explore Biology" described by the publisher as "unabashedly Christian". Other titles include the the "God's Design for Sex series" by author Brenna Jones, who describes herself as " a mother whose goals have focused on the nurture and formation of the character of her children". As if the rest of them are not.

Biology is not all that is at issue. There is physics - "Christian Kids Explore Physics" described thusly "The universe that we live in is the result of God’s thoughtful design and careful building. Physics gives us a glimpse into the materials, laws, and structures of that universe. " And we must not forget history - "Mystery of History Vol. 1 Creation to Resurrection", which purports to be "An historically accurate, Bible-centered approach to ancient history. This user-friendy curriculum can be used with the whole family." (I am guessing that the authors are not getting the irony in this statement.)

There are many relevant questions about homeschooling that have been aired ad nauseum and defended in kind by homeschoolers. Google "Homeschooling, murder" and what you get is two and half pages of shrill defense before you even get to the CBS news link about which they are all so upset. Ditto for issues such as the qualifications of homeschooling parents and the incidence of abuse in homes where children are schooled.

But what is at issue for me in all this is not those questions - the homeschoolers are right, abuse, murder and poorly qualified teachers exist in abundance in the society of families who do not homeschool. What I question - along with Dawkins and others - is, is the simple presence of religious indoctrination abusive? We certainly object to the idea of madrassas indoctrinating young men into Islam, and no one is more shrill of this point than the Christian right. Are not religiously homeschooled children in the same situation?

The Time/CNN article referenced above discusses the granting of asylum to a family of Christian fundamentalists who were "persecuted" by the laws of Germany, which require mandatory attendance to school. Apparently the state does not feel that homeschooling qualifies.

Say what you want about homeschooling, but the creation of a new class of refugees: people (Christians only, presumably - there is no counterpart that I am aware of for granting homosexuals amnesty because they are subject to religious persecution in Iran) who wish to escape the democratic process of their country, is an extension of the concept of asylum into the absurd.

Wait, though. I wonder if I could get amnesty in Amsterdam to escape the US's oppressive laws against pot.

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The Real Sucking Sound

The Pentagon under Robert Gates has now moved fully away from the Cheney/Rumsfeld/Rice Cold War model of thinking about national security. Review shows dramatic shift in Pentagon's thinking - CNN.com

Too bad more than 5,000 American men and women have died and more than 35,000 have been wounded in the paean to past mistakes extant in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is not to mention - because it is not mentioned in the US - the more than 1 million civilian casualties in these wars. (Well, they are not really wars, since only Congress can declare war and they have never done so.)

However, the greatest damage from Rummy's cold war strategy has the been economic toll of the conflicts. To date, spending amounts to more than 1 trillion dollars. This number does not include the costs of future lost wages for disabled vets, the costs of treatment (including psychiatric treatment for PSTD), the cost of human suffering nor the cost in terms of losses associated with human service programs and education whose resources are drained daily in trade-offs taken to pay for the conflicts.

Gates is moving in the right direction. But he is pushing against a military industrial complex that has become quite used to feeding off the government teat.

In 1992 Ross Perot became famous for his projection that the NAFTA treaty would create a "giant sucking sound" to the south as money flowed from the US to Central America. Turns out that Perot was right about the government's creation of a giant sucking sound, he just had the geography - and the suckers - wrong.

PTags: Iraq, Afgahanistan, Robert Gates, cost of warowered by Qumana