America's National Shame

Last night in New York, a Grand Jury failed to indict the police officer who strangled and killed Eric Garner. Protests rightfully abound. Less than two weeks ago another Grand Jury, this one in Missouri, failed to indict a police offer who shot and killed an unarmed teenager, Michael Brown. Less than two years ago George Zimmerman murdered Trayvon Martin and was acquitted. 

Forget the specifics of each case which range from the literally outrageous to the somewhat plausible. What all three of them have in common is that the perpetrator looks like me and the victim is black. It's not that black people don't kill other black people, or for that matter that white people don't kill other white people or that Chinese people don't kill Chinese people, or that….you get it. Murder first and foremost is a crime of familiarity and intimacy. Most murderers know their victims. The way to prevent murder is to strengthen communities, the condition of which often display stark descrepancies along racial and policy fault lines. 

But that partially misses the point and partially exacerbates it. Why do these type of murders like these only happen when the victim is black and the perpetrator white, why are they carried out by agents of the state whose existence is premised on protecting the community, and why the perpetrator is never punished? 

Setting aside our feelings about the individual officers involved and their underlying motivations the answer is all too obvious, embarrassing, and terrifying. Things happen this way because we allow them too happen this way. We have codified racism in a way that turns the worst stereotypes into self-fulfilling prophecies. The stark and naked injustice is ugly and horrifying. 

Imagine if you will, two young white men walking down the street through a middle class suburban neighborhood and being asked to move onto the sidewalk by a black cop. Assume without assigning fault that the conflict somehow escalated into one in which non-lethal force was used, and the teen suffered some minor injury. What would happen to that cop for causing minor harm to a young white man? Fired, forced to resign, public apologies, a law suit if not a criminal trial? Would there be outrage in a white community if a black cop treated a white student that way? All of those are possible, if not probable, outcomes. 

The "system" is rigged in such a way that the above scenario is implausible. It seems unlikely that a black cop would find himself yelling at kids in an all-white neighborhood even if they, and not he, had initiated an altercation. It's certainly unlikely that he would use any manner of force, but especially lethal force, and you could bet the farm that if he did use lethal force there would be AT LEAST a trial. Already the hashtag #CrimingWhileWhite is trending filled with stories - probably true and false - of white people getting away with things. The tragedies we see are inevitable by design. 

It's not just the legal system that is the problem, although that's certainly a huge issue. From the time they're born, African-American children are more likely to be impoverished and to be denied a route out of that poverty. Imagine all the circumstances that led to Michael Brown even being told to get out of the street and for it to have spiraled out of control. Schools are generally horrible, opportunities are infrequent, financial resources are often inadequate, good food options are scarce. Instead we give poor minority communities a lifeline on subsistence in the form of welfare and other "handouts,"that are morally justifiable because they keep people alive, but do little to improve their circumstances in the face of these systemic inadequacies. 

The racism in the system only becomes visible to most people when it boils to a conflicts and simmers on the surface. Managed in the way it is, our entire socio-political system can be gerrymandered into our prejudicial whims, segregation can be made easy through hard and soft regulation, resources can diverted for the benefit of some people at the expense of others, white police can "protect" black communities by making residents feel unsafe. The odds can be stacked for white people like me and against black people like Eric, Trayvon, and Michael from day one. 

It is all to easy to see why things play out the way they do. That's how we designed it. Did it have to be Eric Garner? Did it have to be Michael Brown? Of course not, but it was going to be some black male and some white officer at some point, not because the black guy was necessarily a bloodthirsty thug or the white cop was a racist punk, but because the inequities in the system - that are glaring when investigated, but largely invisible when ignored - make it impossible for some encounters not to end in conflict. When they do, we see it. We see Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and Eric Garner (along with many others who sadly, remain invisible). And we are rightfully outraged. It is shameful that black men can be murdered without repercussion or regard. 

But it is more shameful that we will allow it to continue to happen by failing to prosecute, failing to provide, failing to care at all about low-income and minority communities and populations. Until the structural inequities are addressed, they will continue to operate as they were designed to do, and sadly more people will die. 

The Knowledge Pit

I very much believe that perception is reality. If I go around believing someone is out to get me, no matter how mistaken I am, everything that person does will seem like an attack. The list of how perceptions manifest as realities in everyday life is exhaustive. Politics, of course, is a stark example. In fact, as we have seen with President Obama, politics can be an extrapolation of the particular manifestation I mentioned above.

What happens though, when perceptions are not reality? After all, our opinions and biases color our lenses, but they don't change hard data. Suppose you think that human activity doesn't contribute to climate change, and that therefore there is no need for us to change our habits and energy sources because the earth is just in one of its "cycles," and inevitably that will change and all will be well. It's interesting to accept that aspect of historical science, that the earth is old and has undergone periodic and extended periods of hot/cold extremes, but not to accept the current metrics of science used to warn us of the microwave we're building for ourselves. What are the consequences when those perceptions and realities don't align? Will that knowledge gap doom us? How do we address our problems if we don't even know what they are or understand them?

In February of this year the results of 2012 survey by the National Science Foundation were released. According to the data 26% of Americans thought the sun orbited the Earth. Digest that for a moment. Just over 1/4 of Americans think the sun revolves around the Earth. Somewhere the ghost of Copernicus is pinching himself to see if he's still dead in 2014 or has awoken six centuries ago. If our perceptions are not rooted in fact, the realities they become will turn out very poorly. Like doctors of yore we will be treating patients with leeches, an appealing thought, I know.

Climate change is a glaring example of the knowledge pit, and has serious implications, but according to a recent study "Perils of Perception" it isn't the only thing we get wrong. If you'd like, try taking the 9-question, multiple-choice quiz yourself…I scored 6/9. When you answer a question, right or wrong, it tells you what the average guess was for your country. In America, the average guess for unemployment rate was 32% and for teen pregnancy rate of 24%!! In reality those %s are around 6% (currently) and 3% respectively. If you think we're screwed now, imagine how godawful things would be if 30% of us were out of work and 1/4 of the nation's teenage girls were reproducing! Societal collapse is nigh!

The disconcerting fear is that our lack of knowledge will harden our resolve to see things our way, to make our perceptions into realities, and that therefore our serious issues will be addressed based on prescriptions for the wrong ailments. It's one thing to think the president is Kenyan, Muslim socialist. It's another thing entirely to think the earth is 6000 years old or that people walked alongside dinosaurs. How those manifest politically is important if we are to solve our world's problems.

I find two important and inextricably linked takeaways in all this. First of all, the knowledge pit separating perceptions and realities is a disaster for our society regardless of your political stripes. Take the 32% unemployment figure. Too far in one direction and you think we should torpedo the budget with welfare payments; too far in the other and you probably don't think we should spend that much money on anything.

Which brings me to my second takeaway: whatever the argument, whatever the issue, there is no way we are resolving it unless we bridge the knowledge pit between perception and reality. The world and our ability to understand it have changed. To think that the unemployment rate is 32% is a tragic bit of misinformation that may alter policy. It is important that our civic discourse and media provide us with accurate, unbiased information about what is happening in the world. But thinking that the sun orbits the Earth is a fundamental misunderstanding of how the laws of nature work. That bodes poorly for the future of the individual and all of us.

If America truly wants to be a nation committed to a nation governed by its people, our society must ensure that we, the people, are up to the task of governing. The knowledge pit that can separate our perception from the realities of the world around us is a dangerous trap. If we delude ourselves into addressing imagined or exacerbated problems there is a good chance the real ones will catch up to us.

Happy Veterans Day!

I truly believe that there are many different ways to serve you country, but most of them do not involve putting your life in danger. For all the men and women whose service and sacrifice enshrines my rights, and whose willingness to be a force for good around the world help protects others, thank you for all that you do. This day is for you.

Resuscitation

Last week the Republican Party came back from the dead, which of course shouldn't surprise anyone, since that is what happens as the political pendulum swings every so many years.

I figured that it seemed appropriate for me to resuscitate my blog as the voters of America resuscitated the Republican Party. So after a 7-8 month layoff, here I am.

When I first decided to revive the blog, I thought I might begin by ranting and/or lamenting the fact that Republicans were able to turn obstinacy into gain. But lamenting that does me no good, and as bad as I have found the Republicans to be recently, the strategy of cynicism is not theirs alone, nor is it new to politics. Don't hate the player, hate the game - I hope for more on that topic later.

For now, then, that leaves me with two topics post election-day: what I think the message was; and what I hope Republicans will now do with their majority.

I'll start with the former. The message, I suppose was clear: Obama sucks. It's far past time to defend the president, and whatever the opposition was - and it was both dumb and unfaltering - the president himself wasn't exactly stellar. Far be for me to talk about his legacy at such a premature time, but no doubt voters in 2014 were unimpressed with the president.

But the narrative of whether voters opted FOR Republicans or AGAINST Obama is worth exploring a bit more, particularly because Republicans campaigned not on their plans to govern but almost exclusively, and very explicitly AGAINST Obama. Behind the Republican surge, there were quite a few more forward-looking referendums, and in that, I see a huge sign of progress.

The real wins for America's future last Tuesday were, I think, the minimum wage increases in Arkansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Alaska. As far as I am concerned, a living wage should be a right. It is easily more important to our nation's future than, for example, the right to bear arms, and I was encouraged to see voters simultaneously enact policies themselves via referendum while opting for candidates who still publicly voice support for the debunked and disastrous notion of supply-sided economics.

I don't buy the common political excuse that the messaging just hasn't caught up to the policy. Truthfully, as far as the politics behind it are concerned, the party supporting these ideas is meaningless, and what is far more important than either political party pushing this policy is the fact that the minimum wage votes were referendums. I can only hope this means that the same flawed economic policy that preceded Obama's presidency won't also follow it.

So the election results themselves were more fortuitous - I believe - than the names of the politicians-to-be would have led me to assume.

Just as importantly, what can Republicans do with their new Congressional majorities if they actually dedicate themselves to governing and turn away from the mindless and detrimental zombie-tactics that have defined the party for the last six years?

The five major Republican pushes articulated here are worth considering. I'd like to explore each, one at a time and as a package.

1. Energy - the only concrete issue mentioned here is the Keystone Pipeline which unsurprising. I don't know if Republicans have ideas for energy other than approving the Keystone Pipeline. It'd be great to see them get some momentum around addressing global warming, particularly through an idea like cap-and-trade, which was born in a conservative think tank, but that will necessitate taking on the anti-intellectual base of the party in a way that legislators may be afraid to do. Still, I have and still do support the Keystone Pipeline - if done in an environmentally friendly manner and as a bridge to cleaner and more sustainable energy. While this, I believe, will have nothing like the desired economic effects Republicans predict, it will spur job creation. If coupled with investment in clean energy, this has the potential to be a win, if only a small one.

2. Budget and Spending - my hopes here are low to say the least. I'm all on board with cutting spending and making government more efficient, but I have yet to see a plan that I think achieves those goals. Past budgets have purported to cut spending, but lacked the math to back up that claim. A budget would be nice, but I fear the one Republicans will likely create will lead us to spend more on bombs and less on books. I await with very tepid optimism the first blueprint.

3. Taxes - this deals with an overhaul of the entire tax code rather than simply lowering taxes on the super-rich under the guise of promoting growth. While that would probably be a cornerstone of any Republican plan to overhaul the tax code, it wouldn't be a bad component if the rest of the outline looked good. Simply lowering taxes on the wealthy is an economic plan in need of serious re-evaluation, but the tax code is currently so byzantine and archaic that a full overhaul should be a top priority for everyone. If it is possible to lower rates and close loopholes in a (relatively) revenue neutral manner while simplifying things for everyone, this would really be a huge win and eliminate efficiency in both the public and private sectors.

4. Healthcare - and here we go…still waiting for the predicted disaster of Obamacare to actually develop. Who knows what Republicans will do now that they've spent years calling the law Armageddon without seeing any real signs of the apocalypse materialize? The Affordable Care Act can certainly be improved, and given that Obama's legacy rests upon it, no doubt he'd be a willing partner in trying to strengthen the law, but are Republicans actually interested in strengthening it, or will they double down on the looming-in-perpetuity disaster? Like the budget, this is a realm in which Republicans have long been short on ideas (unless they've been hiding them). I'm curious to see if they actually try to improve healthcare outcomes and contain cost or if they pursue their redacted history in which America died in 2009 because of Obamacare.

5. Trade - I almost feel as thought this was a "throw in" because it should be such a no brainer to agree on free trade deals that I feel as though there is no better reason than "politics" for why more of these agreements haven't already passed. If Obama and Republicans can't come to terms on trade deals then democracy may truly be broken.

On the whole, there are a lot of areas not just for compromise, but for Republican ideas and ideals to propel America forward. Still, the onus for implementing those ideas now fall on a group of people who have spent six years being too immature to try and make them happen for our collective benefit, and instead somehow convinced the nation that their pouting was a reason to let them lead. If Republicans can overhaul the tax code and create budgets based off a sensible new set of laws, then we will all benefit. I'd call that a big IF, however, and I'm far from convinced it can or will happen.

Nevertheless, I'm going to spend at least the next two years, and probably longer, living in a nation lead by a Republican Congress, so I probably ought to hope for the best and use my voice to encourage Republicans to pursue their good ideas that can help us all.

The resuscitation of conservatism brings the revival of this blog. Here's to a good two years for both.

Hiatus

It's been nearly three weeks since I last wrote, and plenty has happened. Russia is making Mitt Romney look like a foreign policy genius as Ukraine teeters on the verge of collapse; Syria is still crumbling; the House voted to pass a clean debt ceiling hike; immigration reform died; and somehow or another in a recent poll, independents are favoring Republican candidates in the midterm elections. Maybe I'm just unfamiliar with those candidates, but if they're anything like the current crop, this just means independents have gone crazy.

As much as there is to talk about, I don't intend to use today's post to go into detail on any of these topics. In fact, I'm not entirely sure that I will continue to blog at all. I'm also not convinced I will stop blogging, but the more I read and study politics, the more I realize how fundamentally broken our system is, and how my contribution to fixing it through this blog is minimal if not non-existant.

In a previous post, I laid out my views on being what I called a "leftward leaning libertarian." Since writing that post last August, I have spent much time mulling over the ideas within and trying to determine ways to be more proactive.

To that end, the blogging hiatus will continue as I pursue ways to flesh out some of my ideas and come up with solutions rather than retroactively contributing to the noise. There are enough people doing that already.

When the time comes I will reactivate this blog either to resume it or to encourage anyone who still checks it to check out what I hope will be more fruitful endeavors. Thank you for taking the time to read this.

Let's make America better for today and stronger for tomorrow.

What's next for Obamacare?

This shouldn't be a real question. In fact, maybe it isn't a real question. In an ideal world - one in which facts and data ruled the day rather than punditry, misinformation, and outright lies - Obamacare would be given a chance to work. Data would be collected, and the program would be judged on whether or not it actually expanded coverage to uninsured Americans and held down costs. For quite some time I've been saying that the jury is still out on Obamacare while simultaneously deploring Republican attempts to derail the program before it ever had a chance to work based on nothing other than...well lies.

To date there hasn't been even a shred of evidence that anything Republicans have said about Obamacare is true, and even if there were, their lack of any other ideas for fixing our broken healthcare system is hard to hide. They've been able to shield themselves behind the wall of attacking Obamacare for years, but behind that facade is an absolute vacuum of proactive thinking.

From death panels to job killer, we've heard wave after wave of attacks from Republicans with no data or even reliable anecdotes to back them up. Until, perhaps, now.

Last week, the Congressional Budget Office reported that due to Obamacare, the size of the workforce could decrease by as many as two million full time positions. Obviously this is an alarming headline, but delving deeper into the report, we find that that projection is not based on the stunting of private sector hiring, but on the assumption that as more people gain insurance coverage from outside the workplace many of them will choose to work less. So while the end result is a net loss of jobs and hours, the reason isn't because employers are choosing not to grow companies because they can't afford it, but because people may choose not to work because they don't need insurance provided by their employer.

I see both pros and cons here. A net reduction in jobs - though as the report details, it isn't the jobs that will be lost so much as it is the hours totaling a net loss of two million jobs - could have an impact on growth. Whether we look at the loss as one of fewer hours or one of fewer jobs, we are still looking at fewer rather than more, and generally that means less productivity. So it is possible that by reducing the number of workers and/or the number of working hours, Obamacare could indeed have a negative effect on economic growth.

Of course having said that, we need to ask ourselves what the purpose of economic growth is. After all, the economy is not a living, breathing entity that needs to grow. The whole purpose of a steadily growing economy is to provide a higher quality of life for those lucky enough to participate in such an economy. In that case, this report might not be such a bad thing. If people choose to work less because they feel more secure then we've actually made progress. The conservative counter point to this would be that we don't want people becoming lazy and relying only on subsidies rather than on their own income to purchase insurance, and this is certainly something we should monitor and be mindful of moving forward, but that's not happening yet. And of course, libertarian Republicans should (but probably don't) love the idea of freeing up workers to make their own decisions about how often they need to work to support themselves. After all, isn't that the point of libertarianism; freeing up people to make decisions and take control of their own lives? Giving workers that freedoms seems like a good thing. That's what the American dream is, right? The ability to move from job to job and improve your quality of life? Finally, there is an argument to be made that by reducing the labor force, wages will actually go up as there will be fewer people competing for jobs. Given the unsustainable and growing income gap between the rich and poor in this country and our dwindling middle class, this can only be a good thing.

The question now becomes, which of these things will happen? Will a reduction in working hours totaling nearly 2 million jobs stunt economic growth enough to dampen the quality of life for all of us, or will workers now earn higher wages as a result of decreased competition and more flexibility and upward mobility. I don't know for sure, but I posit that no one else does either. All we have is projections, and even the most recent one is no death knell for Obamacare - though the Republican spin machine will no doubt spend millions trying to make it one.

For the time being, the best approach is to see what happens. When trends start to develop we'll have a more clear sense of whether this is ultimately good or bad, and until then we'll be subjected to the same talking points from both sides that we've been hearing for the last few years. What's next for Obamacare should ultimately be decided once we've seen if Obamacare will be a boon to the American people or a hindrance, but alas, it is very possible that it's fate will be determined well before then, in fact, it's possible that Obamacare's fate has already been decided because of all the negative attack, misconceptions, and lies spread about the program.

I'm curious to see moving forward if Obamacare becomes the job killer Republicans have long predicted - though without evidence - or if it will ultimately benefit the American people. Either way, the CBO report adds a new layer of complexity to the argument, and should elicit a serious and thoughtful conversation from people on both sides of the debate...like that will happen.

Being Israel's Friend

American politicians love to talk about how their support (or America's support) for Israel is "ironclad." If I were an Israeli, this would trouble me somewhat since ironclads were a product of Civil War era engagements. I would feel better if America's support for Israel were titanium-alloy plated or something of the sort. Alas, as an American who supports Israel, I don't see that America's actions are titanium-plated, iron-clad, or even cloth-covered. What I see when I observe America's relationship with Israel is a big brother who lets a little brother run amok doing things that are ultimately detrimental to that little brother's well-being, while simultaneously failing to stick up for that little brother when he does actually need help.

What do I mean by this? For starters, being someone's ally (or someone's friend for that matter), doesn't mean letting them do anything they want to their own detriment. As a friend, it is my job to tell a friend when he or she is engaging in destructive behavior. America seems incapable of telling Israel that the ongoing expansion of settlements in the West Bank is isolating Israel from the global community. Sanctions and boycotts are already coming in from Europe, and as the population of occupied Palestine grows, Israel will be forced into making the decision between existing as a Jewish state or existing as a democracy. Many in the global community already view Israel as an apartheid state, and while many in the US may scoff at that notion, Israel is undeniably moving in the direction in which a Jewish minority exercises control over a Palestinian majority in what is already viewed by the global community (including the United States) as occupied territory, NOT part of Israel.

While the US tacitly condones Israel's expansion of settlements - while paying lip service to the idea of a two state solution, but doing next to nothing to pressure Israel into stopping it's self-destructive encroachment of Palestinian territory - the US has failed to intervene in Syria, a major arms conduit through which missiles flow from Iran to Hezbollah before often being lobbed into Israeli cities.

I've been making the case for humanitarian intervention in some form in Syria for months now, long before chemical weapons were used. But there is a more realpolitik reason to intervene, and that reason is our alliance with Israel. The end of Assad could well mean a decreased flow of weapons from Iran into Lebanon, destabilizing and hopefully delegitimizing Hezbollah. This is a good outcome for Israel, and that nation has already launched strikes in Syria to ensure that weapons are not misplaced or worse.  Helping end the Ba'ath party's rule over Syria not only ends a slaughter and hopefully paves the way for a more stable Democracy next door, but it will eliminate the arms pipeline from Iran to Hezbollah whose fighters, by the way, are fighting and dying next to Assad's forces in order to preserve his regime.

But rather thank taking touch and necessary action - telling Israel what it needs to hear and more proactively ending the bloodshed in Syria - the US allows Israel to pursue its own destruction internally while doing nothing to ward off external threats. If this is what "ironclad" support for Israel looks like, then it's pretty safe to say that the US does not have the best interests of Israel in mind.

I do stand by Israel. I believe in that Israel. I believe in America's alliance with Israel, but that doesn't mean that we should stand idly by while a group of right-wing religious extremists lead Israel country the path of losing its Jewish identity, nor does it mean that we should avoid engagement when Israel could truly use our help. Right now we are failing to meet either of those benchmarks for true friendship, and I would argue that Israel will be worse off as a result. If we are really Israel's friend, we will push them to do what they need to do and give them support when it is needed.