From Reuters...
Many New York state residents who buy health insurance next year will most likely see their premiums cut by half as President Barack Obama's healthcare law creates subsidies that may increase the number of people in this market by the hundreds of thousands.
It's going to be interesting to see how the Right spins this one.
Saturday, July 20, 2013
Friday, July 19, 2013
The View from the Other Side
There has been much wailing and gnashing of teeth over the George Zimmerman trial. When I saw who the jurors were (six middle-aged women) I knew that Zimmerman would get off. The jury would view him as a nice boy who was doing what he thought was right to protect middle-aged women just like them. They would think that he made an honest mistake that ended in a terrible accident.
I agree that the jury had no choice but to find Zimmerman not guilty under Florida law. But as two-thirds of the jury firmly believed, I also think that George Zimmerman was guilty of needlessly killing Trayvon Martin. The problem is, Florida doesn't have a law that they could charge for the crime that Zimmerman committed. In many other states it would have been an open-and-shut case of negligent homicide: Zimmerman instigated the entire confrontation, ignored the 911 operator's cautions instead of waiting for the police, and killed a kid whose only crime was walking while wearing a hoodie.
Florida law allows armed vigilantes to roam the streets, pumped with the false courage that comes from the barrel of a gun. Florida law explicitly allows people to stalk, confront and threaten innocent pedestrians with firearms, and then shoot them when things go south and they suddenly fear for their own lives. In Florida gun rights trump all others, even the right to life.
The trial was all about George Zimmerman's fear and apprehension. But as the president pointed out today, someone else may have felt fear: Zimmerman's victim, Trayvon Martin. We know that George Zimmerman feared for his life when he described to the police how Martin struck his head on the sidewalk.
What we couldn't hear was Trayvon's description of what he felt when that "creepy-ass cracker" was stalking him on that dark rainy day. We don't know what Trayvon saw when Zimmerman get out of his car and approached the boy. All we have is the killer's word that he didn't draw his weapon until Martin attacked him.
Based on other cases in Florida where people used guns to threaten others (20 years for firing a warning shot), it's very possible that had Trayvon survived to tell us of the fear he felt from Zimmerman's stalking, Zimmerman would have gone to jail for a very long time. But because Zimmerman killed Trayvon, preventing the boy from testifying, a killer got off. Florida law is completely screwed up.
What truly astonishes me is how so many people blithely talk about the hoodie and how it represents something terrible and ominous, something that only hoodlums and gangsters wear.
In the past year I have walked through my neighborhood on a cold or rainy day wearing a raincoat or a sweatshirt with the hood up dozens of times. Many of the people I pass -- including middle-aged ladies -- are also wearing hoods. The entire point of the hood is to keep your head warm and dry. But the number of times in my entire life I have driven through my neighborhood squinting at pedestrians through steamed-up windows while packing a pistol is exactly zero. I am therefore in much greater danger from idiots like George Zimmerman than I am from kids like Trayvon Martin. I therefore have utterly no sympathy for Zimmerman.
I can sympathize with the middle-aged jury ladies worried about their houses getting broken into: a dozen years ago while we were at the movies some punks kicked in our front door and stole a 15-year-old stereo system (they also rifled the drawers of our nightstand, obviously looking for guns and money). It was a couple of weeks before Christmas. They couldn't have gotten more than a couple hundred bucks for the stereo. But it cost us more than $2,000 to replace the front door and frame.
The burglars who broke into my house obviously had a car, because they got away with two very bulky speakers, a CD player and a receiver. They were apparently cruising the neighborhood looking for dark houses to rob.
So a guy like George Zimmerman slowly cruising down the street checking out the neighborhood looks a lot more suspicious to me than a kid walking in the rain wearing a hood and carrying iced tea and a bag of Skittles.
I agree that the jury had no choice but to find Zimmerman not guilty under Florida law. But as two-thirds of the jury firmly believed, I also think that George Zimmerman was guilty of needlessly killing Trayvon Martin. The problem is, Florida doesn't have a law that they could charge for the crime that Zimmerman committed. In many other states it would have been an open-and-shut case of negligent homicide: Zimmerman instigated the entire confrontation, ignored the 911 operator's cautions instead of waiting for the police, and killed a kid whose only crime was walking while wearing a hoodie.
Florida law allows armed vigilantes to roam the streets, pumped with the false courage that comes from the barrel of a gun. Florida law explicitly allows people to stalk, confront and threaten innocent pedestrians with firearms, and then shoot them when things go south and they suddenly fear for their own lives. In Florida gun rights trump all others, even the right to life.
The trial was all about George Zimmerman's fear and apprehension. But as the president pointed out today, someone else may have felt fear: Zimmerman's victim, Trayvon Martin. We know that George Zimmerman feared for his life when he described to the police how Martin struck his head on the sidewalk.
What we couldn't hear was Trayvon's description of what he felt when that "creepy-ass cracker" was stalking him on that dark rainy day. We don't know what Trayvon saw when Zimmerman get out of his car and approached the boy. All we have is the killer's word that he didn't draw his weapon until Martin attacked him.
Based on other cases in Florida where people used guns to threaten others (20 years for firing a warning shot), it's very possible that had Trayvon survived to tell us of the fear he felt from Zimmerman's stalking, Zimmerman would have gone to jail for a very long time. But because Zimmerman killed Trayvon, preventing the boy from testifying, a killer got off. Florida law is completely screwed up.
What truly astonishes me is how so many people blithely talk about the hoodie and how it represents something terrible and ominous, something that only hoodlums and gangsters wear.
In the past year I have walked through my neighborhood on a cold or rainy day wearing a raincoat or a sweatshirt with the hood up dozens of times. Many of the people I pass -- including middle-aged ladies -- are also wearing hoods. The entire point of the hood is to keep your head warm and dry. But the number of times in my entire life I have driven through my neighborhood squinting at pedestrians through steamed-up windows while packing a pistol is exactly zero. I am therefore in much greater danger from idiots like George Zimmerman than I am from kids like Trayvon Martin. I therefore have utterly no sympathy for Zimmerman.
I can sympathize with the middle-aged jury ladies worried about their houses getting broken into: a dozen years ago while we were at the movies some punks kicked in our front door and stole a 15-year-old stereo system (they also rifled the drawers of our nightstand, obviously looking for guns and money). It was a couple of weeks before Christmas. They couldn't have gotten more than a couple hundred bucks for the stereo. But it cost us more than $2,000 to replace the front door and frame.
The burglars who broke into my house obviously had a car, because they got away with two very bulky speakers, a CD player and a receiver. They were apparently cruising the neighborhood looking for dark houses to rob.
So a guy like George Zimmerman slowly cruising down the street checking out the neighborhood looks a lot more suspicious to me than a kid walking in the rain wearing a hood and carrying iced tea and a bag of Skittles.
Why Republicans are for Voter ID
A Pennsylvania Republican baldly admits the true purpose of the voter ID law:
Be Careful What You Wish For
When a corporation files for bankruptcy, it's the culmination of a series of unfortunate events that was likely caused by some sort of government over regulation. When a city like Detroit files for bankruptcy, it's a "win" for the Right and their minions in the blogsphere. Why? Well, it goes something like this.
Detroit is a city that has largely employed liberal polices.
Detroit has just gone bankrupt.
Employing liberal policies means every city every where will go bankrupt.
Indeed, the very definition of a logical fallacy. This is all they have. By this logic, San Francisco should be in deep, deep shit. The opposite, of course, is true. The city attracts the 4th most foreign tourists of any city in the world, ranking 35th out of 100 worldwide. Juxtaposed with the millions brought in by tourism are the 30 international financial institutions, seven Fortune 500 companies, and a large support infrastructure of professional services—including law, public relations, architecture and design. Liberal policies there certainly are not affecting that city in an adverse way. Or New York, for that matter. We don't see Wall Street relocating to a red state any time soon, right?
Once you get past the adolescent game of "See? I told you!!" it's easy to see that Detroit has gone bankrupt for a number of reasons, none of which have to do with liberal policies. The city's woes have piled up for generations. In the 1950s, its population grew to 1.8 million people, many of whom were lured by plentiful, well-paying auto jobs. Later that decade, Detroit began to decline as developers started building suburbs that lured away workers and businesses. Then beginning in the late 1960s, auto companies began opening plants in other cities. Property values and tax revenue fell, and police couldn't control crime. In later years, the rise of autos imported from Japan started to cut the size of the U.S. auto industry.
By the time the auto industry melted down in 2009, only a few factories from GM and Chrysler were left. GM is the only one with headquarters in Detroit, though it has huge research and testing centers with thousands of jobs outside the city. Detroit lost a quarter-million residents between 2000 and 2010. Today, the population struggles to stay above 700,000.Detroit lost a quarter-million residents between 2000 and 2010. Today, the population struggles to stay above 700,000.
Add in the usual amount of corruption that goes on in big cities and it's easy to see how Detroit has fallen so far. Cory Williams over at AP has an interesting piece told from the perspective a primary source. The over riding diagnosis is severe mismanagement of public funds and a decided lack of even basic fundamental services. Of course, it's much more than that.
Detroit is a metaphor for globalization. It represents how the spread of free market capitalism around the world ended up eroding it here at home. It was the epicenter of the Golden Age of American Manufacturing at the heart of the Rust Belt. The various factors above brought about its fall and the main lesson to heed from this devolution is that if we want the world to be a democratic place rooted in free markets and liberal economic theory in practice, we must be careful what we wish for.
Because we got it.
Detroit is a city that has largely employed liberal polices.
Detroit has just gone bankrupt.
Employing liberal policies means every city every where will go bankrupt.
Indeed, the very definition of a logical fallacy. This is all they have. By this logic, San Francisco should be in deep, deep shit. The opposite, of course, is true. The city attracts the 4th most foreign tourists of any city in the world, ranking 35th out of 100 worldwide. Juxtaposed with the millions brought in by tourism are the 30 international financial institutions, seven Fortune 500 companies, and a large support infrastructure of professional services—including law, public relations, architecture and design. Liberal policies there certainly are not affecting that city in an adverse way. Or New York, for that matter. We don't see Wall Street relocating to a red state any time soon, right?
Once you get past the adolescent game of "See? I told you!!" it's easy to see that Detroit has gone bankrupt for a number of reasons, none of which have to do with liberal policies. The city's woes have piled up for generations. In the 1950s, its population grew to 1.8 million people, many of whom were lured by plentiful, well-paying auto jobs. Later that decade, Detroit began to decline as developers started building suburbs that lured away workers and businesses. Then beginning in the late 1960s, auto companies began opening plants in other cities. Property values and tax revenue fell, and police couldn't control crime. In later years, the rise of autos imported from Japan started to cut the size of the U.S. auto industry.
By the time the auto industry melted down in 2009, only a few factories from GM and Chrysler were left. GM is the only one with headquarters in Detroit, though it has huge research and testing centers with thousands of jobs outside the city. Detroit lost a quarter-million residents between 2000 and 2010. Today, the population struggles to stay above 700,000.Detroit lost a quarter-million residents between 2000 and 2010. Today, the population struggles to stay above 700,000.
Add in the usual amount of corruption that goes on in big cities and it's easy to see how Detroit has fallen so far. Cory Williams over at AP has an interesting piece told from the perspective a primary source. The over riding diagnosis is severe mismanagement of public funds and a decided lack of even basic fundamental services. Of course, it's much more than that.
Detroit is a metaphor for globalization. It represents how the spread of free market capitalism around the world ended up eroding it here at home. It was the epicenter of the Golden Age of American Manufacturing at the heart of the Rust Belt. The various factors above brought about its fall and the main lesson to heed from this devolution is that if we want the world to be a democratic place rooted in free markets and liberal economic theory in practice, we must be careful what we wish for.
Because we got it.
Thursday, July 18, 2013
Wednesday, July 17, 2013
Willingly In A Prison
In the suburban town where I coach tennis, there is an infamous gated community called Blackstone. I say infamous because most everyone around the seven country metro area of the Twin Cities knows that's where some of the richest people in the state make their home.
There is a security check in when you drive in and 20 foot high stone walls around the several mile area of land that Blackstone envelops. There is a massive country club where the wealthy are served by those lucky few who are granted access as loyal servants to the many whims of the community. Some people have fairly large swaths of land while others have "simple" homes with "ordinary" back yards. Many people in the Twin Cities consider it a Shangri-La worthy of envy and a place they can someday live themselves.
I am not one of those people.
I've always been amused by the Right and their continued insistence that the only reason why liberals are teed off at the rich is jealousy. It must be, right? Wrong. Because (projection) the Right are actually the ones that want to live in places like Blackstone. In fact, that's what they want to turn our entire country into...a gated community.
They want a huge fence that runs along our southern border that doesn't let in the undesireables (interestingly, there doesn't seem to be much call for a northern border fence. I wonder why that is...:)). The irrational, frightened old people in Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas want protection, damnit! Just like the people of Sanford, Florida wanted George Zimmerman on the case. In fact, it seems they want more than that.
They want to be willingly put in a prison.
That's what I see when I drive by Blackstone from time to time on my way to a tennis lesson. The walls are so high that you don't get a view of the outside world...just the pale stone. I suppose they could look up to the sky if they really wanted to but I just don't get it. Sure, they can come and go as they please but when they are hanging out at home, they are surrounded by giant walls. I have the same level of puzzlement when it comes to building a wall around our country. By trying to keep people out, we are actually keeping ourselves in.
But that's just the problem with those who do not support the immigration bill that was passed by the Senate. They are those paranoid old people around the country who want to feel safe in the gigantic, gated community. Only a certain type of person is allowed and very few fit the bill.
There is a security check in when you drive in and 20 foot high stone walls around the several mile area of land that Blackstone envelops. There is a massive country club where the wealthy are served by those lucky few who are granted access as loyal servants to the many whims of the community. Some people have fairly large swaths of land while others have "simple" homes with "ordinary" back yards. Many people in the Twin Cities consider it a Shangri-La worthy of envy and a place they can someday live themselves.
I am not one of those people.
I've always been amused by the Right and their continued insistence that the only reason why liberals are teed off at the rich is jealousy. It must be, right? Wrong. Because (projection) the Right are actually the ones that want to live in places like Blackstone. In fact, that's what they want to turn our entire country into...a gated community.
They want a huge fence that runs along our southern border that doesn't let in the undesireables (interestingly, there doesn't seem to be much call for a northern border fence. I wonder why that is...:)). The irrational, frightened old people in Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas want protection, damnit! Just like the people of Sanford, Florida wanted George Zimmerman on the case. In fact, it seems they want more than that.
They want to be willingly put in a prison.
That's what I see when I drive by Blackstone from time to time on my way to a tennis lesson. The walls are so high that you don't get a view of the outside world...just the pale stone. I suppose they could look up to the sky if they really wanted to but I just don't get it. Sure, they can come and go as they please but when they are hanging out at home, they are surrounded by giant walls. I have the same level of puzzlement when it comes to building a wall around our country. By trying to keep people out, we are actually keeping ourselves in.
But that's just the problem with those who do not support the immigration bill that was passed by the Senate. They are those paranoid old people around the country who want to feel safe in the gigantic, gated community. Only a certain type of person is allowed and very few fit the bill.
Tuesday, July 16, 2013
An Illegal Foreign Land Grab?
There is a myth out there that basically states the Right is all for the Keystone Pipleline expansion and the left is all against it. It's simply not true. There are many people who feel that the approval of the pipeline will amount to government failure to protect eminent domain. Michael Bishop is one of them.
My name is Michael Bishop and I am a landowner in Douglass, TX in Nacogdoches County. I have been fighting TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline for almost five years now and, except for a handful of good Americans, was told there was no interest in eminent domain cases or that I “couldn’t win a case against TransCanada.”
There are many landowners like Bishop. No one is listening to them.
What I find further disturbing during my research in the cases I have filed against TransCanada, the Texas Railroad Commission and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, is the level of corruption I have uncovered and witnessed in our judiciary and legislative representatives. Sadly, this allegation goes all the way to the White House. During my fight against this illegal foreign land grab, I have seen many good people in Texas and other states destroyed by the actions of TransCanada Keystone XL Pipeline, and their dreams (along with mine) for the future of their children and grandchildren shattered by greed, lies, propaganda and bullying tactics of a private, foreign corporation that has the complete and overwhelming support of these corrupt local leaders, politicians and judges. It is time for change.
Wow. Doesn't exactly sound like your typical Texan portrayed in the media...except maybe the anti-government part. One would think they would be all pro oil on everything (at least, that's what the right wing blogsphere tells me) but clearly they aren't. It's also sort of amusing, in a hypocritical way, that some on the Right are all for a foreign country taking American land for their own profit.
The rest of his letter raise many interesting points that haven't hit the mainstream media. I'd like to see his view get some more attention as we debate whether or not this project go forward.
My name is Michael Bishop and I am a landowner in Douglass, TX in Nacogdoches County. I have been fighting TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline for almost five years now and, except for a handful of good Americans, was told there was no interest in eminent domain cases or that I “couldn’t win a case against TransCanada.”
There are many landowners like Bishop. No one is listening to them.
What I find further disturbing during my research in the cases I have filed against TransCanada, the Texas Railroad Commission and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, is the level of corruption I have uncovered and witnessed in our judiciary and legislative representatives. Sadly, this allegation goes all the way to the White House. During my fight against this illegal foreign land grab, I have seen many good people in Texas and other states destroyed by the actions of TransCanada Keystone XL Pipeline, and their dreams (along with mine) for the future of their children and grandchildren shattered by greed, lies, propaganda and bullying tactics of a private, foreign corporation that has the complete and overwhelming support of these corrupt local leaders, politicians and judges. It is time for change.
Wow. Doesn't exactly sound like your typical Texan portrayed in the media...except maybe the anti-government part. One would think they would be all pro oil on everything (at least, that's what the right wing blogsphere tells me) but clearly they aren't. It's also sort of amusing, in a hypocritical way, that some on the Right are all for a foreign country taking American land for their own profit.
The rest of his letter raise many interesting points that haven't hit the mainstream media. I'd like to see his view get some more attention as we debate whether or not this project go forward.
Monday, July 15, 2013
Sunday, July 14, 2013
What is Prejudice?
This...
Can't think of a better video to sum up my thoughts on the Zimmerman verdict.
Can't think of a better video to sum up my thoughts on the Zimmerman verdict.
Saturday, July 13, 2013
End Game for Ender's Game?
I first heard of Orson Scott Card in 1977. That fall an acquaintance of mine came into the office of the magazine I worked on in college and announced that he'd had his first story published in the August 1977 issue of the science fiction magazine Analog. It was a novelette called "Ender's Game."
I congratulated my friend, who we'll call "Plucky." I remembered the story and had been unimpressed: it was a kid story, and I hated kid stories. It was typical adolescent wish fulfillment, which I found uninteresting and unmemorable. Not wanting to offend, I wracked my brain to find something inoffensive to say and came up with, "Wasn't that published under the name Orson Scott Card?"
Yes, Plucky said, and he launched into the story of how he came up with the pseudonym. He'd met with Ben Bova (the editor of the magazine at the time) in the Analog offices in New York. Bova reached into a desk drawer and pulled out some cards and pieced the name together. Voila! Instant pen name.
Several months later the nominations for the 1978 Hugo Awards were published in Locus magazine, along with pictures of the authors. It turned out Plucky had lied about the whole thing: he wasn't Orson Scott Card. When I mentioned this story to others who knew him they said, "That's why his nickname is Plucky."
"Ender's Game" didn't win the Hugo that year. But the novelization did in 1986. It was optioned by various movie studios, and finally Ender's Game is a major motion picture, starring Harrison Ford, to be released this fall.
Which has caused Orson Scott Card to reappear on my radar. It turns out that Card is a Mormon and staunch opponent of gay marriage. He's been railing against homosexuality for years. And now people who object to Card's never-ending vilification of the gay and lesbian community are calling for a boycott of his movie. Card's response:
By Monday evening, Mr. Card was issuing a public plea for tolerance of his views — “with the recent Supreme Court ruling, the gay marriage issue becomes moot,” he noted in a statement to the Entertainment Weekly Web site — in response to a planned boycott that had burst into prominence only the day before, when The Huffington Post published an article about a Web site called Skipendersgame.com.Card sure does have a lot of gall. In an impassioned diatribe against gay marriage, abortion, no-fault divorce, adultery, and RICO laws applied to anti-abortion terrorists, he wrote in 2008:
Because when government is the enemy of marriage, then the people who are actually creating successful marriages have no choice but to change governments, by whatever means is made possible or necessary.It sure does sound like Card was calling for the violent overthrow of the government should gay marriage be legalized. It was just fine for Card and the Mormons to spend millions of dollars to write their intolerance of gays and lesbians into the California constitution. But now that Card stands to lose millions of dollars if the movie flops, he pleads for tolerance of his reactionary views. Because five geezers in Washington made the very core of his moral and religious beliefs moot.
But everything about the Mormon high-horse about homosexuality rankles: a major pillar of Card's Deseret diatribe was his impassioned defense of monogamy. But the very basis of the Mormon faith is polygamy. Many Mormons still practice polygamy, with some taking child brides and going to jail for it. There are even TV shows about it.
Polygamy is required to maximize the number of descendants males can have so that they can achieve maximum godhood. More descendants = more power. The Mormon Church was forced to redact all that when the big bad federal government made polygamy illegal. But that's why Mormons have scoured genealogical records the world over for people to baptize, going so far as to posthumously baptize Jews killed in concentration camps. Why? So that Mormons can get their own planets to be gods of. According to the Mormons, God was just a regular Joe from a planet named Kolob. We can all be gods (well, at least us men) if we knock up enough women. Screwing your way to godhood!
Now that sounds like the plot of another award-winning science fiction adolescent wish-fulfillment novel.
Friday, July 12, 2013
Will He Get Any Credit?
Through the first eight months of the budget year, the deficit has totaled $509.8 billion, according to the Treasury Department. That's nearly $400 billion lower than the same period last year.In fact, the federal government on Thursday reported a rare surplus of $116.5 billion in June, the largest for a single month in five years. The gain kept the nation on track for its lowest annual deficit in five years. I guess that's what happens when reduced spending and increase taxes. Huh...
The deficit reached a record $1.41 trillion in budget year 2009, which began four months before Obama took office.The president promised that he would cut the deficit n half during his first term. That didn't happen largely because of the economic downward spiral as well as GOP adolescent foot stomping and stubbornness (we can't let him succeed.....wahhhhhh!!). But now he has achieved his goal and fulfilled his promise.
I wonder if he will get any credit for it....
The deficit reached a record $1.41 trillion in budget year 2009, which began four months before Obama took office.The president promised that he would cut the deficit n half during his first term. That didn't happen largely because of the economic downward spiral as well as GOP adolescent foot stomping and stubbornness (we can't let him succeed.....wahhhhhh!!). But now he has achieved his goal and fulfilled his promise.
I wonder if he will get any credit for it....
Thursday, July 11, 2013
Wednesday, July 10, 2013
Dynamite Hill
I was at a Fourth of July picnic when, out of the blue, two middle-aged middle-class whites just started talking about how they didn't understand why blacks think society owes them so much. They thought that blacks should just suck it up and work harder to make a better life. One of the conversationalists is an unabashed liberal on most issues, and the other an archconservative.
I pointed out that poverty and lack of education are the real causes of social immobility. American slaves were bought and sold like cattle, frequently forbidden to learn to read, to marry, and even keep their own children. It takes generations to overcome that kind of history. When blacks finally got schools, they were separate and vastly inferior (something that still hasn't been satisfactorily addressed). And these days poor whites, especially in the south, are falling prey to out-of-wedlock childbirth, divorce and other historically black social disorders at ever increasing rates. Poverty and ignorance, not ethnicity, keeps people down.
A couple days later I heard a story about "Dynamite Hill" on the radio. This was a neighborhood in Birmingham, Alabama. From the 1940s to the 1960s blacks who did better would buy houses on the "wrong" side of the street. They were greeted by bullets and bombs.
So, when blacks in Birmingham did exactly what my white friends insisted they should do -- work hard, earn more and improve their lives -- they were greeted by terrorist death threats.
Some of that ended 50 years ago with voting rights and affirmative action legislation (which was just overturned by the Supreme Court). But just because you outlaw legal discrimination doesn't mean that the people who threw the bombs had changed their hearts and minds.
The people who committed those acts of terrorism did so with the tacit consent of the police. In many cases they were the police. Since then blacks have lived among people who had once tried to kill them. How easy was it for them to get jobs from those people at decent wages? To get a loan from a bank run by a bomber? To buy a house through a real estate agency owned by one of the shooters? To get fair treatment at a traffic stop from the cop who looked the other way when white men threw bombs through their front window?
Most of those terrorists are dead now, fifty years on. But their sons and grandsons have inherited their businesses. How many have also inherited their fathers' hatred and racism?
White Southerners are still carping about the Civil War (they call it the War of Northern Aggression), which ended almost 150 years ago. Yet somehow my friends think blacks should forget the institutionalized racism and police-condoned terrorism that occurred within their own lifetimes, at exactly the same time the hard-won legal protections of the civil rights era are being completely dismantled by the Supreme Court.
I pointed out that poverty and lack of education are the real causes of social immobility. American slaves were bought and sold like cattle, frequently forbidden to learn to read, to marry, and even keep their own children. It takes generations to overcome that kind of history. When blacks finally got schools, they were separate and vastly inferior (something that still hasn't been satisfactorily addressed). And these days poor whites, especially in the south, are falling prey to out-of-wedlock childbirth, divorce and other historically black social disorders at ever increasing rates. Poverty and ignorance, not ethnicity, keeps people down.
A couple days later I heard a story about "Dynamite Hill" on the radio. This was a neighborhood in Birmingham, Alabama. From the 1940s to the 1960s blacks who did better would buy houses on the "wrong" side of the street. They were greeted by bullets and bombs.
So, when blacks in Birmingham did exactly what my white friends insisted they should do -- work hard, earn more and improve their lives -- they were greeted by terrorist death threats.
Some of that ended 50 years ago with voting rights and affirmative action legislation (which was just overturned by the Supreme Court). But just because you outlaw legal discrimination doesn't mean that the people who threw the bombs had changed their hearts and minds.
The people who committed those acts of terrorism did so with the tacit consent of the police. In many cases they were the police. Since then blacks have lived among people who had once tried to kill them. How easy was it for them to get jobs from those people at decent wages? To get a loan from a bank run by a bomber? To buy a house through a real estate agency owned by one of the shooters? To get fair treatment at a traffic stop from the cop who looked the other way when white men threw bombs through their front window?
Most of those terrorists are dead now, fifty years on. But their sons and grandsons have inherited their businesses. How many have also inherited their fathers' hatred and racism?
White Southerners are still carping about the Civil War (they call it the War of Northern Aggression), which ended almost 150 years ago. Yet somehow my friends think blacks should forget the institutionalized racism and police-condoned terrorism that occurred within their own lifetimes, at exactly the same time the hard-won legal protections of the civil rights era are being completely dismantled by the Supreme Court.
Tuesday, July 09, 2013
You Are Not That Conservative (or liberal for that matter)
Tom Jacobs has a great piece over at Pacific Standard that analyzes a recent study on just how conservative and liberal people are these days.
In three experiments described in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, researchers found “a systematic bias among young adults to perceive themselves as somewhat more conservative than they actually are.”
And the reasoning behind this is simply that the word "conservative" brands better than the world liberal. I've often thought this because when you really start asking people, who self-identify as conservative, where they stand on issues, they really aren't that far right at all. They just don't like the word liberal and are embarrassed to label themselves as such. This is largely due to the immensely successful job the Right has done at negatively marketing that word.
In the first group, “liberal Democrats significantly overestimated their liberalism,” the researchers report. “However, moderate Democrats, Independents, and Republicans significantly underestimated their liberalism.” A very similar pattern was found in the other groups, with an underestimation of one’s liberalism “more pronounced” among self-described conservatives.
Here is the quiz that was taken. How did you do?
In three experiments described in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, researchers found “a systematic bias among young adults to perceive themselves as somewhat more conservative than they actually are.”
And the reasoning behind this is simply that the word "conservative" brands better than the world liberal. I've often thought this because when you really start asking people, who self-identify as conservative, where they stand on issues, they really aren't that far right at all. They just don't like the word liberal and are embarrassed to label themselves as such. This is largely due to the immensely successful job the Right has done at negatively marketing that word.
In the first group, “liberal Democrats significantly overestimated their liberalism,” the researchers report. “However, moderate Democrats, Independents, and Republicans significantly underestimated their liberalism.” A very similar pattern was found in the other groups, with an underestimation of one’s liberalism “more pronounced” among self-described conservatives.
Here is the quiz that was taken. How did you do?
Monday, July 08, 2013
Back To Benghazi
You don't hear much about Benghazi these days as all of the so-called "scandals" have fizzled (except inside the bubble, of course, where they are alive and well). In fact, I think most people missed this book when it came out last February as it didn't fit in with all the established narratives. From the review...
They also state that President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton learned of the situation too late to do anything about it. I’ve dealt with the State Department and Department of Defense bureaucracies long enough to believe that. They also point out that the consulate in Benghazi was not a true consulate, but a temporary facility. Again, I buy that at face value. In addition, the unselfish heroism of CIA contractors in giving their lives to attempt to save other Americans is not disputable. They were true American heroes. The controversy is that the contractors initiated the rescue mission from the CIA compound despite the guidance of the CIA boss.
Apparently the book lays quite a bit of the blame over security failures at the feet of the CIA. This is likely why we have not heard much about went wrong at the compound and who was responsible for both the attack and the intelligence. The CIA is very secretive to begin with and are not very keen to mea culpa.
It might be years before we find out what exactly was going on at Benghazi and with the new revelations that Ambassador Stevens may have turned down calls for extra security himself, it may even be more muddy.
They also state that President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton learned of the situation too late to do anything about it. I’ve dealt with the State Department and Department of Defense bureaucracies long enough to believe that. They also point out that the consulate in Benghazi was not a true consulate, but a temporary facility. Again, I buy that at face value. In addition, the unselfish heroism of CIA contractors in giving their lives to attempt to save other Americans is not disputable. They were true American heroes. The controversy is that the contractors initiated the rescue mission from the CIA compound despite the guidance of the CIA boss.
Apparently the book lays quite a bit of the blame over security failures at the feet of the CIA. This is likely why we have not heard much about went wrong at the compound and who was responsible for both the attack and the intelligence. The CIA is very secretive to begin with and are not very keen to mea culpa.
It might be years before we find out what exactly was going on at Benghazi and with the new revelations that Ambassador Stevens may have turned down calls for extra security himself, it may even be more muddy.
Sunday, July 07, 2013
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