American Intelligence Test #17 – A Minimum Sage for Americans

Now here’s the thing about the big debate in Congress and across the political landscape on the minimum wage, it may not be clear to those engaged in the debate whether they know much of anything about what they are debating. This doesn’t mean that they don’t understand the words themselves, they do know what each means separately and some know what the combined set refers to at the most simple and primitive level. However, given how highly you rate Congress in general, what would make you conversely consider that they are going to be likely to understand this issue? Do you even think that you understand this issue? Are you comfortable relying upon these minimally sage representatives to both be smarter than you and to do the right thing?

The Minimum Wage issue is an important societal test. It puts before you a question that has far reaching implications and consequences, and thus is one of those ‘laws of physics’ problems that you may think doesn’t impact you much unless you are a minimum wage earner. However the ‘laws of physics’ aspect of a minimum wage are very big because the ‘cause and effect’ impact is recursive in nature. So if you are going to put your trust in politicians, Republicans or Democrats, then you better be sure that they comprehend this issue properly and those unavoidable consequences that result from their particular action that set into motion the consequences that you, I and everyone else will live with and have to be accountable for like it or not.

So if you had to decide on whether to set a minimum wage amount now, what would your sage decision be? Would you increase it, keep it the same, lower it, or eliminate it? Your answer to this question should be decided now, and you can make a note for yourself about your basic rationale for your determination. Got your answer? OK, now you can choose to change it as you proceed with the test; but wouldn’t that be basically cheating yourself, treating you the same way that politicians treat you? The following test asks a couple questions and you should answer them in terms of what you think the right answer is, not what the right answer is based on what the decision you just made about the minimum wage was. This is a little tricky because you might feel that you ought to have answered differently but try to be honest with yourself, no politician is ever going to do that and it will be a refreshing experience.
Let’s begin impacting the American economy.

Question 1:   The lower the minimum wage the more competitive the US is with the rest of the world.   True  False

Question 2:  Increases in the minimum wage produces higher unemployment. True   False

Question 3:  Minimum wages are forcing a redistribution of wealth from middle to lower-income individuals?   True   False

Question 4:   Keeping minimum wage levels low promotes the general economy.   True   False

Question 5:   The percentage of people receiving the minimum wage is constantly growing and placing an increasing burden on the economy.   True    False

The Critical X-Question:  If keeping the minimum wage from increasing would help the economy and job growth then logically wouldn’t keeping all wages lower be even more effective in supporting economic growth and job creation?    Yes    No
Would reducing wages and bonuses to the top 1% be proportionally more beneficial?  Yes   No

It’s over. The answers below are referential, that is they try to give some additional info that may give a perspective of why I have judged them to be the proper answers. The real ‘cause and effect’ forces of minimum wages are much more complicated then I suspect even those who study this issue are capable of comprehending. That people disagree is not surprising but that we don’t recognize and admit that we don’t understand most of what is really at issue is not worthy of us.

Answers:

1. False.  These jobs are not a significant portion of the income population. The work involved is not highly related to international competition as it is more often related to local job situations that are not subject to international competition.

2. False. There is no empirical evidence that increasing the minimum wage has a negative effect upon employment. The slight increase in income at the lower income level may actually increase demand on businesses that both employ and depend upon consumer demand from the lower income population. This emphasizes the Henry Ford principle of workers are also consumers, an unusual and unexpected insight from a leader of capitalism.

3. False.  Actually the dynamic existing in the economy is that the middle class is shifting slightly toward the lower income range in the income population distribution. It’s not that the lower income group is acquiring more of societies’ income, rather that the middle class is losing it to the higher income levels.

4. False. Holding minimum income levels constant is actually reducing the true value of the minimum wage level. The minimum wage level is fundamentally flat over its history in real economic value. Thus the logical conclusion absent any additional factor would be that minimum wage changes have had no impact on the economy since it has been constant during periods of good and bad economics.

5. False. Actually, the percentage of the population impacted by the minimum wage is declining. So it’s not getting to be a larger problem; it’s actually becoming of lesser importance, affecting fewer people, and a minor economic issue. This explains why it is increasing in political significance, which is why politicians use it as a divisive issue since they are spending a lot of time talking about something that is of meaningless substantive value but perceived as highly important by a large portion of the voters who don’t know much about reality.

X-Question. Yes to both. If lower wages to one part of the income distribution is beneficial then it is logical that it would generalize to all segments of the income population. I would propose that Congress should dismiss its efforts to raise the minimum wage and replace it with a new economic concept about which they are ill-informed, ill-equipped to manage, and ill-suited to have any say over and present and pass a law that establishes a Maximum Wage for the nation. This would create an entirely new political issue over which the idiots in Congress could wage their inane debates. Or as members of Congress would understand: “Stupid is as stupid does.”

American Intelligence Test #16 – Search / Save: Are Both Privacy Violations?

If you want your privacy protected what exactly would you expect, require or demand? US District Judge Leon has decided that the government gathering and collecting personal data, in this case phone records, is a violation of the 4^th Amendment. CEOs of a number of our largest technology companies have requested the Administration to reform the US’s surveillance practices. Certainly this issue is an important one; and one worthy of much study, discussion, debate and judgment. Now there will be a lot of talking about the issue that guaranteed; but talking is not study, discussion, debate or judgment. And the public will ultimately reap the fruit from this seeds planted in our democratic fields.

Surely this is a simple issue, a clear and easy question to answer, and an item that all of us can get our minds around and be together on. Of course that will require all of us to see this question in the same light and come to the same understanding of what it means to be on one side or the other. So maybe to begin some thoughtful contemplation on this question would not be a bad idea; perhaps there might be a payoff in the end from knowing what we are choosing to do or not do. Given the simple nature of the issue this shouldn’t be a problem. We all agree to the answers to these easy questions, right? Or properly put, you believe that everyone else agrees with what you think the right answer is?

When you select what your correct answers to the following questions are then you’ll also be sure that we all share those same answers. However, if when you’re finished you are also sure that there are a lot of folks that won’t agree with your correct answer then that’s a likely indication that this is a question that requires a great deal of thought by even those who are sure they are right.

Question 1:   To invade your privacy is there a requirement for the government to know who you are? Must they have an actual interest in you as a specific individual?                      Yes    No

Question 2:  If a legitimate subject of a government investigation were to become connected to your path thorough life, is it an invasion of your privacy should for the government to collect information about them that by default contains information about you?                                Yes    No

Question 3:  If someone were to follow the garbage trunk that picked up your garbage, follow the truck to the dump and sort through the trash to pick out information including data about you; would that be an invasion of your privacy rights?                Yes or No
What if they did this every week?            Yes or No

Question 4:   The government has an enormous amount of data about everyone already (not like the phone records folks are in an uproar about). Currently this data is not used to seek out any indicators that would be useful in identifying ‘persons of interest’ who may be engaging in suspicious behavior. Is the possession of this information an invasion of your privacy? Remember to consider that there was a reasonable justification for the government to have the data for its original purpose; the question is whether just having it with no effort being made to use it constitutes a violation of privacy?                               Yes or No

Question 5:  The government engages in an analysis of a massive collection of data to determine if there is a connection between a known group of terrorists and an unidentified contact in the US who is assisting them in coordinating an attack. The records searched include every phone call made into or out of the US. Thus every call that you made is by definition included, but no connection was established.

A.      Was your privacy violated?                                                             Yes or No

B.      Since a computer did this, did it violate your privacy?               Yes or No

C.      Is it the existence of your records that invades your privacy?   Yes or No

D.      Does it matter who holds the records, and as long as it isn’t
the government then it’s not a violation?                                    Yes or No

E.       If I looked at every record of every person in the US and except
for one person (not you) didn’t know who the records represented
have I violated everyone’s privacy?                                              Yes or No

The Critical Question “X”:  If the collection is impersonal, detached from anyone in general, and not used in connection with a pre-identified individual without a court approved warrant is that an invasion of privacy?          Yes or No

So given the clarity of the issue the answers are obvious, correct?

You are done, and you can now decide if you think we will have a collective public agreement. If it helps, here are what I think the reasonable answers would be.

Answers for all questions are No.

The dimension of this issue that needs to be factored in is whether possession of data is a violation? The 4^th Amendment is a protection against unreasonable searches. While Madison would have some serious concerns about the government indiscriminately searching information to see if the government can find something to use against you when you are a pre-defined target that they are “after”, I can’t say that he would see searching for data that is not about you but about everyone. In this context, you are not relevant. You are nothing more than a fleeting non-match in a computer program; just another binary field that has no meaning or interest to the machine.

The issue of privacy isn’t the data here. The privacy issue is the intentions of those who have chosen to do a search. If they have the intention to invade your privacy then using the data is a violation. But without that intention is it?

Now I am not asking you to trust government. I would hope you wouldn’t trust the technology companies to the same degree. Certainly don’t trust politicians. But since we have to decide what our society is to permit and what it is to protect, don’t we have to be “eternally vigilant in the protection of our liberties”? So we have to deal with the complexity of the world. Don’t make this a simple problem to answer. It isn’t. And we don’t have an answer yet.

A Thought on the Republican Party and Its Progeny - The TEA Party

Witness the political organism in mid-evolution. King's efforts may be nothing more than the normal response to the TEA party by its progenitor Repubican party in terms of the survival of the fittest. The political environment is not capable of sustaining both given the competition for the resources that each needs to survive at the level that it seeks: being the sole entity that will exist as the Republican party into the future. This competition isn't a bad thing, it's just what happens organically as the each political cell attempts to establish its dominance for the food of politics: money and power.

What emerges will be a creature of the Republican zietgeist in the party constituents, or at least those that have the influence over the decisions that formulate future Republican policies. This new Republican creature may be an evolutionary dead-end or it may spring forth as a vital and prolific group that overtakes our governance. Perhaps the two contending organisms will diverge and evolve into two separate and incompatible species that are constantly at each other until one is pushed into extinction.

The interesting question is whether whatever emerges in the end is an entity that is symbotic with our American values and freedoms or is a virulent cancer that will eat away at the nation's democratic foundations until it has destroyed the very social body that gave it birth.

I suspect that which path is followed will depend upon whether the organism applies intelligence, integrity, honesty and compassion to its behaviors. Time will tell. Evolution after all is indifferent to what you want, it only provides what you choose to do and the inevitable consequences that flow from those choices.

Who's Over-Paid Here?

Comment on several news outlets articles regarding: College Presidents' Pay

You may have seen a news article with a title like:
-  At several private colleges, president’s payday surpasses $1M
-  Report: Many private college presidents make $1M

Besides your article’s point that salaries for private colleges’ presidents and other executives have increased and that there are 17% more than there were last year, I find the information lacking a salient degree of appropriate informative rigor and intellectual completeness. To be honestly helpful to your readers it would be relevant to provide them with some comparative basis and referential data upon which to assist them in putting this report into a proper perspective. So this is a ‘teachable moment’, as one of the popular performance improvement concepts asserts, that could benefit both media producers and the reading public.

First, the 17% increase sounds like a lot. If I earned 17% more salary or income from investments this year versus last year I would consider that very good and impressive performance. However, I would be less impressed, and it would be significantly less meaningful if my salary was $100 and is now $117 or my investments were $1.00 and is now $1.17. So is the number of presidents that crossed that magic threshold really impressive or only ‘out of context’ apparently impressive? If it represents 6 individuals would readers be more underwhelmed; consider that 6 out of 500 private colleges is a staggering 1.2% increase in millionaires amongst these CEO-like individuals. Now this statistical clarification doesn’t address the question of whether private college presidents are generally paid more than would warranted, but the information provided is well equally insufficient in establishing a relevant assessment on that question either. So what exactly is the point that the 17% is intended to make?

Second, the fact that there was a 17% increase in the number of private college millionaires from 36 before this year to 42 now is perhaps explainable for reasons that are not overly unexpected and may be completely valid and predictable if the starting salary level before their current year increase represented nothing more than a normal ‘keeping pace with inflation’ or COLA increment. What was the average percent increase that each of these 6 individuals received that pushed them over that magic one-million dollar threshold. If they were already earning $975,000.00 then they got a 2.6% raise. Not overly impressive if that’s all that was producing this astonishing result. Now lacking the information that would allow me to know what the underlying mathematical ‘cause and effect’ phenomena is, I am left wondering does your article inform me, educate me, provide me with a rationale for taking a position, or creating a basis for others to question the judgments of the private colleges’ regents or boards in this and related matters.

Lastly, what other factors play into the salaries that these institutions’ presidents are behind the justification and value of paying them such salaries. Now if their arguments are generally that in order to get qualified individuals of the caliber that they need is their basic argument then I would contend that they are either clueless regarding how to efficiently and effectively perform the fiduciary responsibilities that their positions require, or that they are individually or collectively benefiting from this administrative pay-scale educational counter-part to ‘grade inflation’.

So I don’t question the facts in your article, but I think after reading this you might agree that there were one or two other worthy and salient pieces of data that could have served the readers, your organization and yourself better if they had been thought about in the preparation of the article. Don’t feel that this assessment is solely directed at you, I assure you that you are just an unfortunate data sample from the complete universe of new media producers.

Losing My Insurance – Not the Song Title

The President apologized and Congress is looking into who to blame for the flawed implementation of the Healthcare Exchanges. I don’t know why the President apologized or Congress is looking for whom to blame. Everything about the healthcare efforts that have taken place over the last four plus years has been an exercise in incompetence and in politics before duty or public service. Now don’t think that this is directed at the Democrats alone, the Republicans are substantive contributors to the typical waste and ineptitude that we have come to expect of our government. You may want to blame your particular party of the opposition but that’s not an assessment rather it’s one of the contributing factors in the poor quality and value that Congress and the Administration that have proclaimed to serve the public’s interests are delivering – the Healthcare Exchange being just the current headliner.

One of the President’s errors was in not knowing the difference between defining the goal versus implementing the methods of attaining the goal. These are not the same tasks and they do not require nor depend upon skills, capabilities and talents that are shared in common. Implementation is not a political act. It is not a committee process nor is it an endeavor that can be performed by individuals who are unwilling to force decisions on how to adapt the goal to the reality of the environment in which the implementation will or must take place. The President should not be apologizing that unforeseen and undesired consequences have resulted from the ACA’s impacts, but he should be apologizing for allowing the implementation to proceed without anyone understanding the consequences that the law would cause or would allow to be used by healthcare industry players who saw opportunities use the law to their benefit at someone else’s expense. The President should have realized that there should have been a “devil’s” advocate focus looking at how unintended consequences would produce undesired results.

But the President isn’t alone in being responsible for problems with the law, the Healthcare Exchange or the plethora of future unintended consequences that will bleed out over time. Congress (Republicans and Democrats alike) is actually more responsible and more involved in creating the healthcare mess that their efforts have produced through their ineffective, inefficient, and incompetent understanding of the issues, situations, and environments in which the ACA would have to function and exist. Instead of focusing on how to craft a Healthcare program and national policy Congress spent its time and efforts in rank bickering, seeking to obstruct the other side from winning some ideological item, playing to political campaign strategies, and believing that they actually knew what the interests of the American people were.

Congress should have been spending its time on crafting the law so that the law would have the anticipated objectives codified into its structure and so that there were defined responsibilities and requirements on achieving performance, cost and quality improvements; and on rewards and penalties for over-performs versus under-performers. Congress failed to see that their responsibility was not to know how to make the healthcare program or system work but to require that it perform, improve and advance the healthcare for Americans. Congress failed in legislating the law, in defining an effective funding mechanism for the law, in providing an oversight of its implementation, and in affecting no changes to the law to improve it since it was passed.

The President’s apology should have been an all-inclusive, government-wide and bipartisan admission that the Government once again failed the American people. Those who love the law failed to deliver, those who hate it failed to show how to make it work, and those who didn’t pay attention failed to remember that without the attention of someone who cares about the results the results you get are assured to be different than the ones you wanted.

The Supreme Court Doesn’t Have a Prayer: Prayer and the Government

One must have sympathy for the Supreme Court Justices when they are dealing with an issue that in all likelihood is beyond their abilities. Whether you are a Constitutional ‘strict interpretationist’ or of the Jeffersonian view of ‘belonging to the living’ there is no foundational answer to this dispute. People can, and as evidenced by the current case before the Court do, argue every conceivable position for supporting their individual view and interests. Despite this inherent conundrum the Court elected to put this issue on their table and agreed to render a Constitutional decision for the nation. So this may turn out to be a self-inflicted wound.

Whether the Court makes a broad, narrow or side-stepping decision remains to be seen; but I believe that this is exactly the right kind of issue that deserves to be addressed by the Court as it intersects with a number of our Constitutional rights and the role of our government (at the federal, state and local levels) in our society. Enmeshed in this issue are individual rights, religious freedom, separation of church and state, safeguarding minority rights, privacy, censorship, freedom of speech, and equal treatment under the law. So given the broad expanse of our civil structure that falls within the reach of this issue, we can be guaranteed that there will be a notable number of our citizens who will be displeased with the consequences of whatever decision is produced.

Surprisingly there is also an opportunity for the Justices, or at least a majority of them, to approach their decision in an unexpected and insightful way. The Court doesn’t want to get involved in “parsing” prayer for what is acceptable and what is not, nor in creating a societal issue that will raise the issue into the realm of another divisive political issue for our legislative lemmings to follow each other over the cliff. The resolution for the Justices would be to not come down on the side of what is restricted or what is allowed but rather what is required to fulfill all dimensions that societal contract. The Court could set a new course for the proper handling of the divisive positions that different population factions have in such cases where someone want to pit their favorite right or freedom against that of someone else.

The answer to such careless disputes is not to try and determine who is right or who isn’t; because no one is either and that is why this issue creates the mess that it almost surely will.  If we value our rights and freedoms then surely we accept our corresponding responsibilities that entitle us to those rights and freedoms. If you are to choose to include a prayer in a governmental activity then anyone who has their own individual religious orientation should have their own prayer (or statement of belief or non-belief) incorporated into the same proceedings; after all, individuals have an equal right to their views. Before the evocation of prayers, it should be necessary to affirm that the governmental position on any and all views expressed in these prayers are considered of no official value or importance but merely serve to allow citizens to engage in some of our civil rights despite their irrelevance to the proceedings at hand. Because the freedoms are individual in nature, as I don’t believe that the Constitution establishes any group-only based rights, there should be no use of collective terms like ‘we’ or ‘us’ nor should there be any actions required or requested of individuals like standing or ‘bowing of heads’.

Now since this ‘inclusiveness’ principle will not ensure that any given governmental group might not intentionally or inadvertently discriminate against someone by failing to properly accommodate their freedoms into the proceedings there should be a pre-established penalty for such violations. Now there is no reason to believe that jail sentences are a reasonable or prudent punishment; rather there should be a value paid for infringing upon an individual’s rights. The penalty should be paid by those governmental officials who participate in the actions that violated someone’s rights and an equivalent amount to the sum of the officials’ fines would be paid by the governmental entity that the officials represent. The fines would be paid to the individual or individuals whose rights were infringed. Officials would have to actively withdraw their support or endorsement of all prayers before they begin or be subject to the charge of violation of rights.

The level of fines would probably be appropriately scaled on the basis of the number of citizens that the official represented. Thus at the local level fines might be $10K, at the state level at $100K, and at the federal level at $1M per infraction.

Under this system government entities are thus motivated to prevent the violation of anyone’s rights, and to be inclusive in their recognition of every citizen’s freedoms. Of course, there would be no requirement or necessity for a governmental entity to allow prayers to be part of their proceedings as it is not a function of government and thus merely a permitted practice if conducted in a civil and non-endorsed manner.

Free Speech Equals Money, Doesn’t Quite Equate

The Supreme Court is reviewing a case challenging the political contributions limits law. This is a sequel to the challenge made that corporations were people and could spend more on political contributions and causes. The current case focuses on the question of whether the current limits on political contributions are a violation of an individual’s freedom of speech rights. The odds-on favorite decision is for the Court to rule in favor of the plaintiff that it infringes upon his free speech.

The questions that won’t be asked and argued before the Court include what I suspect the Founding Fathers would consider the more significant and important ones. Thus while there are strict interpretation advocates on the Court, they are likely to have a blind eye to worrying about the intentions of the founders on this question as it might cause cognitive dissidence in a non-adaptive mind.

If we consider the easily understood position that money equals speech then it makes perfect sense that limiting the money that an individual chooses to expend toward their political goals is the same as preventing them from expressing their views, and hence their speech. More money allows you to basically shout louder which as we know in watching politicians is always an improvement in the value and virtues of their speech. Maybe money is speech because it allows you to buy someone who will speak on your behalf so you don’t have to; and in the case of politicians we know that you can buy them to say whatever you want them to. Perhaps more money is better characterized as a way to insure that more people listen to your views if for no other reason than sheer repetition of the message in the media distribution systems. But no matter how you characterize it, more money provides a direct, clear and easily associated substitute for speech. So just like everyone has the right to speak their views and opinions, and make their arguments for or against something, and to defend themselves against the opinions of others; being able to contribute money to someone’s political campaign is effectively the same thing.

And just like free speech, money is available to everyone equally. You and I can donate any amount of money that we chose to express our views, we are free to speak on an equal basis with anyone else. There is no bias in allowing someone with money to gain an advantage and privilege in having their speech attended to where someone with funds would be limited to not being able to have their views heard.

But if money is the same as free speech, and free speech is the right of every American, and not to be abridged by the government shouldn’t every American have the same rights? We should all be able to have our views expressed in comparable ways, right? So if someone donates a million dollars to a party that I believe is on the wrong side of an issue and the donated funding is used to present that party’s side to the public, my views should be presented to the public on an equal basis. Now given I don’t have a million dollars the political parties are just going to have to find a way to ensure that my speech is keep on par with their money (which is equal to speech).

Now if money is speech then politicians and parties should be willing to provide me with the same access and consideration that they will provide a money contributor. When they call and ask for a donation, they don’t accept my views or positions as having value and of being sufficient to grant me access. They treat money very differently than free speech.

And that is one of the principles, and principled, differences that the Court needs to consider. Money constitutes something very different than speech, ideas or rights. Money is a media of exchange that is meant to establish a means of trading one thing for another, to place a value on what I am getting for what you are giving up. The issue about money has nothing to do with anyone’s freedom of speech. It may be connected with some other right or freedom, but speech isn’t it.

The issue of money before the Court should be directed at whether there is a Constitutional basis for allowing or prohibiting money to be used to purchase the government? The effort of the wealthy to influence the political process is not new, it is not exclusive to our political system (any more than our system is exempt from it), and it brings consequences to our system of government when allowed and when permitted. As with many aspects of our society, the secret to America’s system is in finding checks and balances, in accommodations and compromises, and in protecting all members of our society from the majority whether the majority is counted in number of voters, or amount of money owned or controlled, or along any of the dimensions that America has present in its social amalgam (race, gender, religion, ethnicity, political affiliation, …). Simply equating money to free speech is the act of a Court that has lost its responsibility to preserve the Constitutional principles that take precedence over the small and narrow minded attempts to gain influence at the expense of our free and democratic system. Politicians already listen to money. Encouraging them to listen to only big money is diminishing the influence of the non-wealthy minority. This can only lead to circumstances and conditions that weaken America and perhaps render it not a democracy but an oligarchy of wealth. Given the incompetence of Congress to protect the nation from their own parties, how would they ever be able to protect the nation from those who own them?

America’s Syrian Chemical Weapons Issue

Should we or shouldn’t we? This has been the essential quality of the style and context of the questions that have permeated the political, national and global debate about American intervention in Syria over their use of chemical weapons. When the politicians, diplomats and experts of various arenas confronted these questions not surprisingly they tended to fall into one of three Venn-diagram regions: “must“ intervene, “mustn’t” intervene and the “this needs to be an international (United Nations) responsibility”. I don’t envy those drawn into, forced into or just finding themselves caught-up in the issue because it is not a simple, trivial or inconsequential issue. But perhaps the issue and the debates that have and still continue to be churned over on this question reveal a characteristic defect in how such questions are handled in our national and political debates and by our political, governmental and media organizations.

The defect is, to paraphrase, in the details. What after all is the question being presented to America for an answer? I won’t presume that my following attempt is ‘the’ quintessential and be-all and end-all proper formulation of the question; but I hope it provides a slight illumination on what American’s should expect and demand from those who serve as our representatives in the debates, discussions and information dissemination (the media). The question that the use of chemical weapons in Syria has birthed is:

What are America’s responsibilities and interests that should define and direct how the United States should respond to the circumstance that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons against it own population; and given those responsibilities and interests what course of action is it prudent and appropriate for the United States to take?

A central tenant of this question is that it is incumbent upon those engaged in the discussion of this issue to present the dimensions/factors that define the context that the issue exists within. I do not think that the question is simply that the President of the United States warned Syria not to use chemical weapons against its people and thereby ‘drawing a red-line’ on the issue. This may be a minor issue, and an insubstantial one even if considered, when seeking to understand the question and the problem that America must solve. If you think back upon what you have seen and heard about the issue, do you think that our politicians, government officials, media, or the experts have attempted let alone done?

Shouldn’t the public and their representatives have demonstrated that they have considered the question fully and from all the perspectives that we would think relevant? If this is what we expect and depend upon our leaders to do, don’t you have a problem with where we are on the question today?

Consider which of the following dimensions have been prudently and reasonably discussed:

·         The US being a signatory to a chemical weapons ban

·         The US being a member nation of the UN

·         Whether the massive number of deaths in Syria by non-chemical means is relevant

·         The impact and risks that the Syrian civil-war has and is having on other nations in the region

·         The long-term implications to US interests and influence in the Middle-East or even throughout the world

·         American’s being war-weary

·         What the immediate and the long-term goals and policies are

·         What are the consequences to US relations to other nations both in the region and elsewhere in the world for doing nothing, for intervening

·         Whether there are alternatives that aren’t being considered just because no one is considering and ensuring that the question is being thoroughly assessed and comprehended

·         You can add your own dimensions that I have indicated here …

So the Syrian issue is more than just the chemical weapons point, it’s just that the imprudent decision by the Syrian government to use them has created a global issue that the United States must confront in with some well thought out strategy and policy or accept that it is better to accept America’s decline as a world power which will bring with it it’s own consequences. There is no guarantee that there is a clean, easy, risk-free or desirable course of action or in-action. The only reality that the public should be assured of is that everything you do (or don’t do) has consequences. If you haven’t learned this life lesson, whether you are young or old, you cannot avoid the “laws of physics” that are at play in this as in every issue.

Privacy: Where Are You, You? When Are You, You?

If the government keeps records about everyone's name, their phone numbers and addresses would they be infringing on anyone's privacy? And not just possessing these records but getting updates on every change that occurs. Clearly you are being monitored and watched at the level of this information. Now without going any further than just keep track of these items, would you think the government has stepped over the line and violated your privacy? Is this a first, even if minor, step in government abuse of power?

If you believe it is and you would act to curb even this level of our government overstepping the limits that our Constitution defines in the protection of our individual rights particularly that of privacy then your interpretation of the Constitution is rather strict and conservative. There is nothing wrong with your opinion but I would ask if you truly think this must be stopped and would never relent on your conviction? Is having, using and even acting upon the information all that is required to be invading your personal space? Is nothing more required?

If your are of the opinion that the government hasn't exceeded its authority and intruded upon your person then I would say we will have to look further for yet another dimension of our existence and world for when either your privacy surfaces or where it surfaces. I don't mean to say that this is a simple question or that the range or extent of information about you might not make a difference. So the where dimension may possess a point at which the government crosses the line, and I would argue that there is such a point beyond which your privacy is being violated. But this is the very issue that we and the government must contend over where that line is drawn.

Let's consider the when dimension from a moment. When may actually present more than one facet to the complexity of the question. 'When' could be in terms of when the government seeks to examine information specifically about you; are they doing it constantly but with no objective except to wait until they see something that triggers their interest, or 'when' could be conditions where you engage in something that causes afterwords causes the government to determine that you have done 'something of interest' and now the government seeks out your information and data to see what else they can find. 'When' could also be an event that has no connection with you directly and the government is not actively aware of you. You are not a person who exists from their perception of the world. However, once an external event/action has occurred the government searches the records that contain information about you. Are any of these invasions of your privacy? Again there is an attribute of the time dimension that will present a point where the government would pass from not infringing to violating. But I don't think that is starts at “any time”; there is more required. The simple deciding factor is not obviously defined and determined because by itself the one dimension is incomplete and inadequate. There once again must be more.

To briefly jump-back to the beginning, you did recognize that the information that the government was recording and monitoring: name, address and phone number are a phone book? Something which exists and is held and accessed by many entities. Phone companies keep it; utilities, state and local governments, various businesses come close to having access to such information (and much, much more). Libraries and the internet provide such information and allow people to monitor and research a variety of things using this data as basic data elements. So where did your privacy start, and when did it reach the point of being private?

Privacy Rights versus National Security: Understanding What’s Fueling the Fire

We will occasionally hear the phrase “a delicate balance” when confronting public and national issues where two or more of our societal rights or our governmental responsibilities overlap or come into conflict with respect to the ‘precedence’ or ’priority’ that one might have relative to another. The current national security versus privacy conflagration has our law makers, governmental agencies, media, political parties and various segments of the public being consumed in heated arguments and fiery proclamations spreading like drought driven wildfires across the nation’s landscape.

No one is or should be surprised that we find people with views diametrically opposed to one another and are looking for our political leaders to quench the fires burning through our society with a resultant decision that satisfies their position’s expectations. This will be a challenge for our politicians that will certainly be worthy of a Solomon-like determination of an answer for how to accommodate both individual privacy rights and the responsibility to protect the nation’s security. However, to expect our leaders to effectively and reasonable arrive at a sound and viable solution that properly respects our rights to privacy and to ensure our country’s security interests requires a lot from our politicians. Politicians to be qualified to deal with these issues would necessitate that they are informed, intelligent and rational individuals capable of dealing with the breath and depth of the factors and facets that are encompassed within conflicting demands between rights and responsibilities. Given we are talking about our politicians in Congress, we are asking for more of them than they have been able to demonstrate being capable of even when dealing with far less complex and contentious issues.

In the area of protecting our privacy rights, we would all have to agree that our societal contract, the Constitution, definitively provides for protection of our “persons, houses, papers, and effects” against “unreasonable search and seizures”. Now as clear and obvious as this may be there are several dimensions of this freedom that do deserve some discussion in the context of the protection or the search. Where the government is obtaining a copy of information pertaining to various activities: phone calls, text messages, banking and credit card transactions, post office mailings, and internet searches and activities; is the acquisition of the data itself a search? Is it a seizure? The process of obtaining the data does not in and of itself perform any search-like function. Nor is it clear they any individual has lost anything in as much as they have, possess and can use all the information that they had prior to, during and after a copy was made. Nothing has been lost in the context of person or property. So is the act of having a copy of information a violation of anything? If not acted upon in reference to you as an individual is the possession of that information an invasion of privacy?

If so, what is the nature of the violation? Banks, phone companies, internet providers and search engine companies, and many other entities have copies of information about you. Some of these companies are obligated to protect your privacy rights relative to much of that information. In the case of these various companies, the possession of the information is not in and of itself a violation of your rights. What makes the government’s possession substantively different? Does looking for a needle in a haystack mean that the rights of the hay are infringed? Doesn't it matter if the looking has an impact on the hay?

What if I look at your data but don't know who it relates to? Is your privacy affected if the information is not informative about you? So scanning and searching through data for connections and associations without picking out you or even your information as relevant, and being done by a computer algorithm, is your privacy breached? By whom? To what effect?

 

The government's collection of 'massive' amounts of data by itself can make you ask, why and what are they doing with it? Certainly one can be legitimately concerned with what the government's interest and intentions are, and with the efficacy with which they manage its use to fulfill those purposes. But does the act of accumulation raise the action to the level of a violation of your, mine or anyone's privacy rights? I think that another dimension of the issue is required to make any progress on this. Possession may be nine-tenths of the law, but it doesn't seem to be sufficient to clear the bar on being a privacy invasion without something more.

So the potential is there, we just need to think through the nature of what 'more' is; thus more is next.

National Security versus Personal Freedoms

One of the fallouts from the Snowden security breach is the conflicting interest of national security versus the potential for governmental violations of our freedoms and civil liberties. Curiously the uncrossable political fissure between Democratic and Republican parties that are omnipresent in almost every other issue that confronts the nation. In this case, the Republicans are not universally set on thwarting any actions on the part of Democrats, nor are all Democrats intent upon imposing their will upon Republicans who ubiquitously oppose them. Somehow the government's information collection programs have instantly touched an issue that goes straight to the core of individuals beliefs on both sides; and in doing so short-circuited the knee-jerk reaction to “oppose on principle” anything that our current day politicians use in responding to every other national issue, question or debate. While I am amazed that there was an issue that would actually demonstrate that our politicians possess even a small ability to think, I am not sure that it will show in the end that they can think competently.

What we have is a situation where Republicans and Democrats are staking out positions that will resonate with their core constituencies and then try and twist and contort the discussion / debate to best suit their political interests. They will allocate blame where it doesn't belong, attribute motives that didn't and doesn't exist, and they will lie to the American principally because that is what we have bred our politicians to do. You can't after all breed and train pit-bulls to be attack dogs and then expect them to be safe and docile pets.

What is less likely to happen is for our politicians to actually formulate an informed and reasoned discussion and debate about the issues involved. Instead of recognizing and admitting that these are, have been, and will always be conflicting interests and facets of our society. As with most issues, our Republican and Democratic representatives will decide what their position is, insist that they are right and tolerate no consideration of anyone else's views, and as always demonstrate no understanding or insight into how to deal with this conflict of public interests in an intelligent manner.

Many Americans will cheer one side or the other, because they have come to view politics as a sport and entertainment. Looking for a 'win' for their side and a 'loss' for the other without any perspective on what the 'win' costs them or means to the nation. If their side 'loses' then they will seek ways to reverse the 'loss' without ever having considered if the outcome resolves their basic underlying concern. The 'loss' will not go unrevenged.

To salvage victory for the American people from this gladiatorial display of political theater, the public will need to strenuously seek opportunities and outlets where the facts are presented and discussed, where the functions and processes used are understood in the context of individuals personal information and details, what purposes and objectives are intended by involved agencies, and how freedoms are either impacted or impinged upon by those processes. Additionally, these discussion should present what the values and impacts of performing the functions are against the consequences and impacts of not doing them. Lastly, proposals for how to amend or adjust the policies, laws and processes that accommodate a reasonable and prudent accommodation that best serves and protects both the public's freedoms and the public's security is required; both of which are Constitutional mandates of our society.

A follow-up article on the issues involved will be forth coming.

Standing ‘Stand Your Ground’ On Its Head

Now that the verdict is in and the legal system has had it day-in-court on the Zimmerman/Martin (Z/M) case, it’s an opportune time to look at the Stand Your Ground (SYG) law and the Z/M case in a structural manner. The general premise of SYG laws is that you have the right to defend yourself without the condition of attempting to avoid, evade or flee from a confrontation. So if your person is at risk of harm, you can use force to protect yourself and be either immune from prosecution or use SYG as the basis of your defense that your actions were legal and justifiable. In the Z/M case, the SYG law was stated as the defense’s position for exempting a determination of murder and justifying the homicide as an act of self-defense. Whether you adhere to the defenses view of self-defense or the prosecutor’s view of murder, independent of the jury’s decision of ‘not-guilty’, you should be able to easily resolve and answer the following questions consistently and without any conflict.

Let’s imagine two individuals: AA and BB. Each is a male, they are of different ethnic backgrounds, and they differ in age by roughly 10 years. They interact with each other in an area that each has a reasonable and legal right to be. You don’t know these individuals and should be careful to not assume any fact or condition not explicitly stated to be applicable to the situations presented.

Situation 1: AA approaches BB, and AA inquires, “Why are you here?”  BB and AA begin engaging in back-and-forth shouts to the effect that “it’s none of your business”’ and “get out of my face”. After just a few minutes, AA believes that BB is going to escalate the confrontation to the point that AA’s well-being/person is at risk. BB uses a pointed-finger to poke AA in the chest. A struggle ensues and AA kills BB. When the police arrive, AA states that they were afraid for their life and this is a SYG case of self-defense.

                Does SYG apply, and was it self-defense?

Situation 2: BB has been following AA for several minutes, and AA becomes aware that BB is following them. BB approaches AA, and BB inquires, “Why are you here?”  BB and AA begin engaging in back-and-forth shouts to the effect that “it’s none of your business”’ and “get out of my face”. After just a few minutes, AA believes that BB is going to escalate the confrontation to the point that AA’s well-being/person is at risk. BB uses a pointed-finger to poke AA in the chest. A struggle ensues and AA kills BB. When the police arrive, AA states that they were afraid for their life and this is a SYG case of self-defense.

                Does SYB apply, and was it self-defense?

Situation 3: BB has been following AA for several minutes, and AA becomes aware that BB is following them. AA approaches BB, and AA inquires, “Why are you here?”  BB and AA begin engaging in back-and-forth shouts to the effect that “it’s none of your business”’ and “get out of my face”. After just a few minutes, BB believes that AA is going to escalate the confrontation to the point that BB’s well-being/person is at risk. BB uses a pointed-finger to poke AA in the chest. A struggle ensues and BB kills AA. When the police arrive, BB states that they were afraid for their life and this is a SYG case of self-defense.

Does SYB apply, and was it self-defense?

Situation 4: BB has been following AA for several minutes, and AA becomes aware that BB is following them. AA approaches BB, and AA inquires, “Why are you here?”  BB and AA begin engaging in back-and-forth shouts to the effect that “it’s none of your business”’ and “get out of my face”. After just a few minutes, AA believes that BB is going to escalate the confrontation to the point that AA’s well-being/person is at risk and BB believes that AA is going to harm them on an equivalent basis. AA uses a pointed-finger to poke BB in the chest. A struggle ensues and BB kills AA. When the police arrive, BB states that they were afraid for their life and this is a SYG case of self-defense.

                Does SYB apply, and was it self-defense?

Situation 5: BB has been following AA for several minutes, and AA becomes aware that BB is following them. AA approaches BB, and AA inquires, “Why are you here?”  BB and AA begin engaging in back-and-forth shouts to the effect that “it’s none of your business”’ and “get out of my face”. After just a few minutes, AA believes that BB is going to escalate the confrontation to the point that AA’s well-being/person is at risk and BB believes that AA is going to harm them on an equivalent basis. One of them uses a pointed-finger to poke the other in the chest. A struggle ensues and one kills the other. When the police arrive, ?? (the surviving individual) states that they were afraid for their life and this is a SYG case of self-defense.

Does SYB apply, and was it self-defense if AA is the survivor?
What if BB is the survivor?

Last situation: If the prosecution in the Z/M case were to have claimed that Trayvon was killed when he was reasonably and justifiably “standing his ground” in self-defense, is it logically and reasonably possible that someone SYG can kill someone else SYG and be completely acting in a legal and acceptable manner?  Does it depend upon who is SYG first? And if so, how do you determine that?

One of the problems with SYG is that it relies upon an assessment of when and what constitutes a condition of risk that cannot be guaranteed to be deterministic in a given case. So when you wind up with an absolute certainty of what the Z/M case was, no matter which side, would you be comfortable with that same clarity should you be in the AA or BB shoes?

How to Handle Congress: A Plan for Amb. Pickering

Retired Amb. Thomas Pickering wants to testify before Congress on the report that he and retired Adm. Mullen oversaw on the State Department’s review of the attack on the U.S. facilities in Benghazi, Libya. There is a point of contention between the committee lead by Rep. Issa wants closed-door testimony and has relented to allow public hearings only after a closed-door session. Pickering does not believe that it is appropriate or in the public’s interest to have the closed-door interview prior to the public. This contention on what the ‘proper’ course of action is has now ratcheted up to Issa issuing a subpoena for Pickering to be deposed in private before any public hearing.

Issa might have the power to compel such an interview but Pickering has the ability to control the communication. He should request that the interview be taped, or at least transcribed verbatim, that he receive an unedited and untouched copy of the recording, and that he would insist upon the right to use the information in that recording as he sees fit in insuring that his views and statements are properly and accurately represented by any individual who makes claims related to them. There are many advantages to this for Pickering, some obvious and some not so. On the obvious side would be his ability to clarify any representation made that is either factually inaccurate or lacking in sustentative intellectual comprehensive skills on the part of an individual who could not understand his testimony. In another context, it would permit him to assess such incongruous interpretations as indicative of someone who is either duplicitous or less than intellectually up to the task required or expected of a representative of the people.

On the less obvious side, the recorded testimony would become an ideal tool to be used by Pickering in conducting his public hearing testimony, assuming that after the closed-door interview the public hearings were not deferred or cancelled. That possibility of the public hearings being postponed for the equivalent of an infinite amount of time would then permit Pickering to conduct the equivalent of a public hearing independent of the Congressional committee.

Now Issa and the Committee may not agree to the recording of the closed-door proceedings, granting those recording an official status; but there are recourses to that also. You just need to be flexible and creative.

Rather than viewing Issa’s committee demands for a closed-door hearing, Pickering should be welcoming it. People are to often assessing situations in a much narrower context than they should. When the conditions are not to your satisfaction, that is the time when you need to step back and expand the strategies and tactics that you employ in dealing with the problem facing you. When you see people testifying before Congress, more often than not, they are of the opinion that Congress holds all the power in those situations. For that statement to be true, Congress would also have to be better informed, more knowledgeable and smarter than the people being questioned. Statistically speaking you would assume that that should only be true about half the time; and with our familiarity with Congress I think that most people would probably assess that that would be true less than ten-percent of the time.

Engineering Medicare and Medicaid

Politics as usual has corrupted, distorted and damaged the well-being of the healthcare system. Now don’t jump to your particular partisan view that this has been done by the Democratic/Republican party that you automatically, reflectively and unthinkingly attribute all evils in the world to. Both entities have through their active agents served as the viral vectors to distribute and incubate the deadly political pathogens that infect the healthcare system, policies and participants. So it can come as no surprise that the carcinogenic consequences of these malignly mutated muddleheaded agents of waste will lead inevitably to the demise of the healthcare environment and societal goals that these same malcontents are responsible to the country’s citizenry for promoting.

You must by now be fully aware of the identities of these toxic agents or at least a number of them as some are rarely seen and often go undetected and undiagnosed even as and after they damage the body of the healthcare system. So what are we to do with Congress, our political parties and the political industry (lobbyist being only one facet of this) that are spreading their epidemic diseases to the nation’s healthcare? How do we triage the damage and the risks that they are imposing on us all?

The answer of course is that we need to change the carrier and the carrier system of these destructive pathogens: Congress. The change will require American voters to seek and support only candidates that are willing to not be for or against healthcare, but rather that are committed to imposing requirements on our Government’s programs and policies that produce efficient and effective healthcare, that use informed and intelligent methods and approaches that guide and adapt the administration of the components of the system, and that are indifferent to the partisan views by favoring and rewarding achievement over adherence to a political view.

Healthcare can be better, cheaper and more vital as a US industry and social value than any currently proposed or current program is capable of being. We are watching healthcare suffer from the indifference and carelessness typical of endeavors managed by Congress.

The Wondering Whiz-herd of Washington

Sometimes it’s easy to relate an allegoric story and its characters to its intended subject. Sometimes it’s not even recognized that the characters in a story are meant to be symbolic representatives of anything.  So when attempting to use a story or its characters to convey an allegoric relationship to another context there is the potential for the misapplication of the intended dimension of the character’s quality with the perceived dimension. Despite the hazard of such mismatched meanings between writer and reader, the attempt is justified on the “nothing ventured” principle.

As we journey down the crumbling brick road to the infamous ‘Embattled City’ of DC, we encounter many tales about the denizens of that city and of the strange and damaged creatures that inhabit the land of US. The citizens of US look to a collection of individuals collectively known as the Whiz-herd of Congress to provide the solutions to all their problems. These Whiz-herd representatives of the people are themselves characteristic of the creatures in US, and we gain an understanding of the US by understanding these Whiz-herds themselves.

What personalities, abilities and attitudes then do we find amongst the Whiz-herds revealing the explanations for the failures, dysfunction and problem producing actions that they impart upon the nation?

The Whiz-herd includes a number and a variety of scarecrow types. They range from those whose standard persona are the harbingers of doom to those who, like the reeds that famously stuff their heads, bend and twist with every wind that blows through the political fields. There is not much difference between the motivations at work within these effigies of political ineptitude that burn so brightly within their Party. Whether these Whiz-herds are fanning the flames of fear or of hatred or are simplistically following from the front of their constituencies’ anxieties about and toward the future and change, they are doing so with the intelligence and rationality that would be expected from someone with a brain made of desiccated pasture fodder. It is this deficiency in insight, comprehension and reasoning that most informs us about these Whiz-herds’ inability to serve the public and accomplish productive, efficient and important service to the nation. Can we really be astonished about the non-functioning of Congress when considering the composition of the compost that most assuredly is fermenting within their cranium and which, like its gardening counterpart, will only be useful when deeply buried within the ground and far out of sight.

The scarecrow dimension of the Whiz-herds is not the only or even necessarily the dominant characteristic among our members of Congress. There are plenty of Whiz-herds with the tin-man property incorporated into their construction.  Those Whiz-herds most embodying these mechanical and rigid approaches to every situation and problem are the proud and pompous promoters of unfeeling compassionless non-solutions that reflect their stifled visions of America.  And the public suffers from these Whiz-herd solutions that are built as inflexible and intolerant programs into the operating system of our society inflicting the dehumanizing philosophies imprinted upon the central processor of these tin-men.

Continuing in this allegoric line of references are the cowardly lions of the Whiz-herd coterie. We will recognize the bellowing, blustering, bombastic bullies who believe that their pontificating positions of power in the pride endow them with an automatic authority that is part of the natural order of the world. They operate from a mind-set of fear either in themselves or their supporters which they translate into the need to attack every movement or shadow in the hope that it will scare off anything that might require real courage to stand up and challenge the established herd or Whiz-herd mentality.  These lionized representatives who cower before a media poll statistic that to act against would require them to fight for an idea or ideal that serves the nation’s interests but directly challenges the inferred public position of any group from which they receive support.  We find in our safari through the Congressional savannas these officials who tremble before a pledge requiring their submission to the alpha-males that control the pride. And so are left with Whiz-herds who can only operate within the pack’s political policies because any attempt to challenge the status quo would mean actually taking a risk of becoming a powerful king of the political jungle.

It is from these qualities and personalities that we are left with the Congress of Wondering Whiz-herds. Those purveyors of politics that are more involved in misdirections, sleights of hand, and flash over substance displays that are performing their role not to serve but to placate, entertain and deceive the public so that they can continue their tenure in the halls of power.

So don’t look behind that curtain and witness the Whiz-herds’ true nature. If you start examining what the Whiz-herds are doing or are not doing, you will begin to realize that they are not doing the peoples’ business, they are not solving our problems, they are not leading or protecting us. The Whiz-herds are desperately working to prevent anyone from demonstrating that they don’t have the answers and can’t address the real national problems.

The denizens of US must look away from the media theater of personalities and pointless principles of platitudes, and stay out of the enticing political poppy-fields cultivated by our Republican and Democratic parties. The time has come for a great political tornado to rid the halls of Congress of these Whiz-herds and return us to a land of the people, by the people and for the people. We have always been able to return there, we just seem to have forgotten that we must do it.