A Closed Mind

Normally I don't write a takedown piece, where the writer analyzes the arguments of another with the goal of dissecting them. And normally I don't make public the facebook writings of anyone else. But this interaction on my wall was so over the top, that I'll make an exception.

Original Post:

Me: This article is old, but points out that in a civilized society, less crime should mean fewer prisoners. Yet we have much less crime in our country and vastly more prisoners. That is a natural result of privatizing the prison industry.

A couple of friends commented initially, but I'm only including those whose comments are required for this post. All comments are shown in their entirety, misspellings and all.

Smart Friend: Another possible explanation for this is that in the Netherlands, almost nothing is illegal.

Confrontational Friend (CF): Isn't that the point of the prison system? They keep bad people from committing crimes. Death penalties in other countries are more efficient as well. ie. Less crime less prisoners.

Me: That's exactly my point. Who lobbies to make private behavior criminal? Why do these super tough sentencing laws get passed. An unholy alliance between law enforcement (gets more funding if there is more "crime), prison guard unions (more overtime better job security with full prisons) and private companies which profit from prison construction and operation. Throw in the slimy companies which get cheap prison labor and you have a disgusting group which extorts money from tax payers to steal the liberty of citizens.

Up to this point, things were going along as normal. I post links to articles which point out some of the public policy failings in our country, friends of different ideological stripes make comments which reflect either their disagreement with my assertion (e.g how I interpret the article) or disagreement with the ideology.

CF: By private behavior you mean: drinking and driving, selling drugs, doing drugs, stealing, fraud and tax evasion?
Yup those are totally victimless crimes! Set them all free! I've got my poster board and bull horn let's do this! (note the sarcasm)
What is a private behavioral crime?

CF: I have the end all be all answer! Stop commuting crimes!
It's really not that hard. When some has the urge to rap and Pillage. They should step back and say "hey I might just go to jail for this!" then not do it.
If you blame the justice system for how many prisoners are in the system, then I am going to blame my pencil for all my misspelled words!

Normally I don't mind the back and forth. I enjoy it actually. But I do not like to have my words intentionally mischaracterized. CF is not one who is classically trained in debate, philosophy or rhetoric, so I give him some leeway when he makes commits logical fallacies. But the stealing fraud and tax evasion comment was nonsensical even by the low standards that I usually hold him to, and I was uncharacteristically annoyed by that. So I was perhaps a little nasty in my response.

Me: CF - don't be an idiot. Seriously, it's beneath you. Stealing, fraud, tax evasion are not victimless. Recklessly endangering others (drinking and driving) is a huge public safety risk. I will do zero research and bet money that those are all illegal in the Netherlands.
Doing and sellin drugs are victimless. Which is why Phillip Morris and Anheiser Busch are billion dollar companies. The harm from consuming and selling drugs which are illegal is created by the illegality, not the substance.

CF: When did Phillip morris come out with crack and extasy? I did see it on the shelf last time I was at Safeway.
You tell a mother who's child OD'd or got shot by a stray bullet from a gang fight over drug turf.
Pull your head out of you fucking collective ass's and put the Blane on those that break the law.
You mean to tell me you would have your kids ride in a car with their friends parent if you know they were high? What if they wrecked and killed your kids as well as another family. Would smoking weed be a victimless crime?!?!?! Would it?
You just made my blood boil with such an arrogant comment.

Don't you love the straw man he sets up in his arguments? A child OD's on something (crack or ecstasy?) should mean that crack or ecstasy should be illegal? But thousands of young people die every year from alcohol. Tens of thousands of you count people of all ages. A kid gets shot by people in a gang fighting over turf and the fault is the drug? Not the fact that the drug is illegal? When was the last time you saw alcohol dealers shooting at each other in the streets? Oh yeah, when (and where) it was last illegal to sell alcohol. Of course nothing I have said in this argument or any argument ever has indicated that I advocate to allow people to drive while impaired. Although, I have pointed out that impairment from cannabis has not been shown to make people more dangerous drivers (unless they are also impaired with alcohol) and even then I do not advocate that they be allowed to drive while high.

CF: I'm done with this. I don't want to say something I will regret. Good day sir!

He should have regretted making himself look stupid with his nonsensical arguments.

Me: I have some work to do, I'll get back to this in a minute. I'll address you points more gently then.

Yeah, that was a little snarky. I said "don't be an idiot, it's beneath you," by which I meant, I respect your intelligence, please use it. And in that last comment I was implying that he was being a petulant little child with his temper tantrum.

CF: No need to be gentle.
I just feel you should stop pointing fingers at everyone else.
It's funny how you try and use the points of they imprison people for cheap labor, job security and higher pay. Sounds like you want to be a prison guard for minimum wage!
Also that coming from a person saying that the average person can't support a family on $60-70k a year. Yet bitch about jailers making too much to deal with dangerous dirtbags!
It is beyond me the logic you use whilst backing all these conspiracy theories. You are an enabler nothing more. I really have nothing else to say to you. I really used to respect you. But you are constantly spewing this shit all over. And the sad thing is that the sheep with no ideals of their own will blindly follow you and others that think like you. You think you are fighting for a greater cause cause but all I hear is white devil this white devil that. The man is keeping us down! You go hold the hands of these so called wrongly imprisoned people you are bleeding your heart out over and tell them they did nothing wrong. While I tell my niece and nephew that for rich or poor being and good person and respecting the law and those that uphold it will keep you out of trouble and jail.
No need to respond I won't read it.

This is too incoherent to even make any sense of. I say that the prison guards union lobbies for tougher sentences and he takes that to mean to mean I think that they should guard for minimum wage? This from a guy who routinely argues against all manner of public employee unions and their "lavish" pay packages. No dummy, I do not think that prison guards should be paid less. They should probably be paid more.... but there are too many of them because we have too many prisoners. We have too many prisoners because the people who profit from the prison industry lobby for very long sentences. Is that hard for your tiny Fox News addled brain to understand?

Conspiracy Theories? Really? Do prison guard unions support longer prison sentences? A quick google search yields the answer. Does Corrections Corp of America (prison construction and operation company) do the same? Well of course they do. By the way I picked that link because it has no political agenda at all and it points out that CCA is lobbying the government on immigration reform. Not to go all conspiracy theorist on you, but how much you wanna bet that they are seeking detention for as many immigrants as possible for as long as possible?

White devil? White devil?!? At least he owns his fear with the statement "all I hear is white devil this and white devil that." I'm not even gonna address that it's so stupid and inflammatory. Oh wait, yes I will. The reason why that's what he's hearing is because that was his ears are tuned to hear. How? Well without knowing this for a fact (because I don't recall asking, and he hasn't responded to my request to have a conversation) he listens to Fox. Fox sells fear and racism. Period. They want honest hard working, under-educated white people to be afraid that the darkies are coming to get their hard earned stuff, to make their big pick up trucks more expensive to own (he has at least one), to take away their guns (he's an avid shooter), to have sex with their women and to make them marry other dudes.

I thought this was going to be fun... pointing out the logical inconsistencies and complicated mental gymnastics required for a normal American guy, to go off on such a stupid rant. But it wasn't fun. It made me sad. CF is a guy who used to work for me. He worked hard, he was honest, he did his job well. I ribbed him a bit because of his conservative politics, and took special joy when, for good business reasons, I had to send him to work in Berkeley for a while. But honestly, I liked him. I overlooked many of the racist things that he said because I wanted to educate him a bit about privilege. I figured that if I could get to him, a self described red-neck, then I would have helped the cause of justice because he could spread the word in places that I do not have access to. On previous threads, he would typically post stuff that started from an ill-informed place, but asked questions that indicated that he had at least an open mind. His last words "No need to respond I won't read it" were what made me the saddest. A closed mind turns a person into a pre-programmed robot. And his current programming, which I was trying to help him change, is odious.

Oh well... can't save em all I guess.

100 people, 100 dollars

My daughter asked me today about the Occupy protests. She's heard me blathering excitedly about them and was curious about what they are doing and why.

It's can be a pretty tricky topic to explain to most adults, and touches on the financial crisis, credit default swaps, the decline of the labor movement, Glass-Steagel, Citizens United, etc, so I struggled a bit about how to explain it to a 10 year old. Rather than tell her, I decided to pose a situation and ask her some questions about it.

Me: Imagine if the whole country were just a group of 100 people, and they had 100 dollars of money to between them.

Ella: OK

Me: How much money would every person have if they all had the same?

E: that's easy, one dollar.

Me: Right. Now you know that some people have more money than others, so how much money do you think the richest person has?

E: hmmm.... I don't know. 5 dollars?

M: OK, then how much do you think the poorest person has?

E: there are people in the world who don't have anything at all!

M: true, but I'm talking about in this pretend country that we just made up that has 100 people and 100 dollars.

E: right. The poorest person would have 5 cents I think.

M: OK. So how much money do you think that the richest 1 person would have to have before the poorest 50 people would get really mad and start to protest the situation?

E: uuuhhhh.. hmmm... if the richest person had 25 dollars that would be a lot.

M: OK, then how much would the poorest 50 people have combined?

E: I guess 50 dollars?

M: I don't think that would work. Because if the richest 1 has 25 dollars and the poorest 50 have 50 dollars, then that leaves only 25 dollars for the almost richest 49 people. So I think with that example, if the richest 1 had $25, then if everyone else had exactly the same, they'd each have about 75 cents each. Which would mean the the poorest 50 would have about 35 dollars combined. But that's not really likely since some people have more than others.

E: ok, so I guess if the poorest 50 people had 25 dollars combined, then they would be really mad and protest.

M: OK. Do you want to know how it really is now?

E: yes

M: the richest person has about 40 dollars and the bottom 50 have about 1 dollar between all of them combined.

Her eyes got really big, and she understood why so many people are so pissed off. Then we got in the car to pick her brother up from basketball practice. We took the long way there so we could drive past City Hall and see the protesters. We passed them at about 7:15pm, while they were in the middle of a General Assembly. Hundred of people listening to each other. Quietly, peacefully making the point that enough is enough.

28 Years

A tiny little bit of justice was handed down today in the cash for kids scheme. The judge was sentenced to 28 years.

It's impossible to know how many kids had chunks of their life stolen by this creep. The PA supreme court has recommended that every case that the judged handled between 2003 and 2008 be vacated and the children involved have their records expunged. That involves 4,000 children.

This situation is the poster child for why we should never ever privatize prisons... not running them, not building them, not administering them, nothing. The profit motive in the prison industry has a voracious appetite for human liberty and tax revenue. Prisons are a necessary evil that a sane society would do its best to minimize. Any company which makes profit on prisons has an incentive to maximize the number of people in prison. Therefore, there is no way for such a company to exist in harmony with the goals of a reasonable society.

Goofy Financial Analogies

In order to make sense of our federal government's budget, lots of normal folks have been making the "if the government were a family..." type of analogies lately. Here's a pretty typical example:

"If the US Government was a family, they would be making $58,000 a year, they spend $75,000 a year, & are $327,000 in credit card debt. They are currently proposing BIG spending cuts to reduce their spending to $72,000 a year. These are the actual proportions of the federal budget & debt, reduced to a level that we can understand." - Dave Ramsey

For the sake of the argument, I'll accept that the numbers are accurate. That's entirely besides the point. The analogy is dangerous because it implies the common sense, and entirely wrong, solution that we need to spend less money. Folks understand that.

Let me propose a different family analogy:

If the US were a family, it would be one where mom, dad and the oldest kid were all contributing roughly $25k each to family expenses. Since those expenses come in at about 73 to 74k, they are putting a little money aside by paying down their home equity line, their mortgage, their credit cards and the loans they took to get junior (the oldest) through college. The rest of the home includes grandmom (who is past her ability to work, and in fact requires some expensive medicine), a college student and a grade schooler, none of whom have jobs.

Then, junior (who makes more than mom and dad combined) decides that he doesn't want to contribute such a large portion of the household expenses, and starts paying $20k instead of the 25k he had been paying. After all, he's not 1/3rd of the family, why should he pay a third of the expenses? Mom and dad figure that things will work out, so rather than cut back or give junior a swift kick, they just continue on as if nothing had happened and take our another home equity loan to avoid having to cut back or have that difficult conversation with junior (after all, junior did take them out for a nice dinner to announce his reduced contribution). Then, the financial crisis hits and Mom gets her hours cut and dad is forced to take a pay cut in order to hold on to his job. So now between the two of they are contributing 33k instead of their normal 50k. To make matters worse, the maintainance on their big house, that they had been deferring since junior cut back his contribution, is starting to catch up to them and the roof has started leaking. And junior, feeling his oats, is insisting that since his parents are contributing less, he should also contribute less. But junior being a smart kid recognizes that eventually the bank is going to stop extending the HELOC, so he gets the idea that mom, dad and the rest of the family (who fed him, paid for his education, financed his first small business and still patronize it) should eat less, use less medicine ignore the leaking roof, and not worry about his younger siblings' current and impending college education costs. Meanwhile, he's gotten a 7 figure bonus for outsourcing jobs like his mom's and for forcing laborers like his dad to take a pay cut.

Now I get that my analogy isn't nearly as concise or pithy as Mr. Ramsey's. In fact mine is a little complicated and perhaps difficult to follow. But it's a damn sight easier to follow than the actual US economy. Which is really the point. The Federal Budget is not like a family budget. Not at all. Which isn't to say that we can't understand it. We can. But only if we stop pretending that the situation is as easy to understand as a family budget.

The Energy Speech I Wish the President Would Make

The Energy Speech I Wish the President would Make.

It's as predictable as the tides. Every time the price of gas goes up, three things happen. First, people complain about how much it costs to fill up their tanks. Reporters are dispatched to gas stations and show people putting 20 or 25 gallons into the tanks of their large vehicles (only vehicles that get poor gas mileage have 20 + gallon tanks, as tank size is calibrated to roughly get us 300 miles between fillups), and to listen to them claim poverty about how they can't afford to spend that much money on gas, how it's taking food out of the mouths of their children, etc. Second, politicians call press conferences and say that the price of gas is too high, ordinary Americans are suffering, and if they are from the opposition party, something must be done. If they are from the majority party, they claim that they will do something.

The third thing of course is that people use less gas.

What I really wish our President would do is let his brainiac of an Energy Secretary write his speech. I imagine it would go something like this:

My fellow Americans, I'm going to tell you something that you already know. The price of gas has gone through the roof. It's causing you pain at the pump. Some of you are suffering because of it. You're spending an increasing amount of your paychecks not on good food for your kids, or education, or healthcare, or even vacations, but simply on getting to and from work. You drive by the gas station and the price seems higher each time you go by. You're not sure if you should top up today at $4.50 per gallon or drive until your tank is empty and hope that it will be back down to $4.25. Its frustrating and to be quite frank, scary.

It's also dangerous to our economy. The price of fuel is a part of the price of almost everything we buy. When fuel costs, or more specifically, transportation costs, go up, the price of any good that has to be transported will go up.

And it gets worse than that. Since we currently import most of our oil, the benefit of that higher gas price flows primarily out of the country. It increases our trade deficit, and does nothing but harm to our economy. We have to find a better way.

And that's actually where the good news is. There is no resource mightier than the ingenuity of the American spirit. We might not have enough oil to to fuel our current transportation energy needs, but the American entrepreneur, the American Engineer, the American innovator and the American people in general can fix pretty much any problem that is thrown their way. If.... If they are given the proper incentives and if the government does not try to solve the problem for them.

I am going to put a plan forth today that meets the following criteria:

- First - it will provide immediate assistance to all Americans, especially those who are having difficulty making ends meet.
- Second - it will not add a single penny to the deficit. Nor will it create a new source of government revenue
- Third - it will provide the proper incentives to encourage us to innovate our way out of our dependence on imported oil

I know that these three criteria sound almost impossible to meet in one program. Presidents have been promising to do something about the high price of oil since the first oil crisis in 1973. The truth is that we have always known how to address the problem, we just haven't mustered the political will.

American individuals and businesses are fundamentally intelligent. We respond appropriately to situations that we can predict and understand. If you knew today that the price of gasoline would never come down, ever, and in fact, you knew that it would continue to rise at a rate faster than that of inflation, it would affect your decisions, wouldn't it? You might go and immediately check the inflation on your tires. You might call your co worker who lives a few blocks away and see about arranging a car pool. You might look at your old gas guzzler and decide that it was time to trade it in for a more efficient car. If you were looking longer term, you might even consider moving closer to where you work or getting a job closer to where you live.

If you owned a business that spent a lot of money on transportation, you'd be even more likely to look into how you use energy. You'd find ways to spend less money of gasoline, whether that was using more efficient routes for your delivery trucks, buying new trucks or even changing how you get products to market.

If you ran a company that makes cars, trucks, generators and other things that burn gas, you'd likely spend more getting more efficient products to market. But only if you were absolutely sure that gas prices weren't going to come back down. Because if they did come down, you know from history that as soon as they do, consumers stop caring about efficiency, and all of that money that you spent creating more efficient cars, trucks or generators would have been wasted.

Hopefully by now, I've been able to convince you that there is an opportunity in high gas prices, that we can use these high prices, as long as they stay high, to make some changes in the way our economy works, so that we can become more efficient and use less gasoline. But even if I have convinced you that it might be a good idea, some of you are going to point out, rightfully so, that high gas prices cause real Americans real pain, right now. And if the prices go any higher, that pain is going to get worse.

You're absolutely right, and my plan will address that.

I propose to give every American a subsidy to help them pay for the high price of gas. The amount of that subsidy will start fairly small, but will increase over time. This will ensure that the people who are barely making ends meet right now won't be pushed over the edge by increased gas prices.

I see that you are looking at me like I'm crazy. After all, with a large budget deficit and and huge debt, how can we afford to increase government outlays. Here's how - the subsidy, I'm going to call it a royalty payment, is going to be paid for by implementing a new fee on oil. In other words, this royalty will cost the government not one penny, nor will it be used to raise government revenue. It will be a straight pass through - we will pay out in royalties all of the money that we collect. The only difference will be the cost to administer the program. But since that will be done using the existing tax collection infrastructure, even that amount should be small.

Here's how it will work: the royalty will be a refundable tax credit. We will immediately apply that to the way withholding is computed, so that you will see more money in your paycheck as soon as the plan is passed.

But let's be clear, you will all also see an immediate increase in the price of gas. For those of you who use the average amount of gasoline, the net effect will be that you will have a larger paycheck and will spending more at the pump. If you make no changes in how and what you drive, there is no net effect on your wallet.

But, if history is any guide, you will see that high price of gasoline at the pump, and will decide that you'd like the benefit of the bigger paycheck without having to pay the cost of the higher gas prices, and that will motivate you to act. Some of you may decide to stop driving altogether, and ride a bike to work. Or take public transportation. Or walk. Those might be good outcomes for you and your family, but you won't do it because you can't afford to drive, you'll do it because you would rather use your royalty payment for something other than buying gasoline.

The whole point of the plan is to unleash the energy of the American spirit to solve this problem. But if we want to kick our addiction to foreign oil, the only way to make sure that we will do that is to increase the price that we pay. And if we don't kick our addiction to foreign oil, we can be pretty sure that the price will go up anyway, there just won't be any royalty payment to offset it.

Grant Hill comments from privlege

You may have already read Grant Hill's response to the Fab 5 documentary on HBO. You may have, like I did, read Hill's New York Times Op-Ed, and felt that Hill had a great point. I mean if we are going to say that the children of stable middle class families are Uncle Toms (probably one of the worst things one black person can call another), then we, as a community, are doomed.

But I urge you to not make the mistake of coming to a conclusion without seeing the documentary. And not just the part where Jalen Rose explained why he disliked Duke and its players. Watch the whole thing. Understand where the players involved were coming from (interestingly, Chris Weber did not participate). If you do that, I think you'll come to the conclusion that the documentary was not about Hill or Duke.

Lots of words have been written about the documentary. I'm not going to add to that. I am focused on Hill's response.

I've been learning a lot about anti-racism work. In doing so, we focus a lot on what is called white privilege. It's basically the pass, the benefit, that white folks get just from being white. Generally, I think that we make too much of the racial element of privilege and too little of class element. But that's splitting hairs.

What's not splitting hairs is when someone from privilege watches someone talk about the hurt and pain and alienation that comes from being ignored or marginalized. and thinks that somehow it's about them. It's like when, as a black man, you talk about the pain of not being able to hail a cab, and a white person feels hurt because you bothered to mention it. Or minimizes what you say by mentioning the one time a dark skinned cab driver drove past him to pick up the black man 20 yards further down the street (who may or may not have been there first in any case). It's infuriating.

And it sounds a whole lot like the self indulgent piece that Hill wrote in the NYT.

I agree with the idea that we should celebrate families that manage to give their kids the best of all possible opportunities. We should celebrate those couples who manage to stay together and provide a stable platform for their kids. That's the ideal, and when it works, it's best for everyone involved. But we should also celebrate those single moms and dads and nanas and pop-pops who manage to provide against all of the odds. And we should work hard to make sure that their work is easier not harder. Ignoring or minimizing their pain to focus in the fact that sometimes, when someone is in the position where they can clearly see that their life is harder than yours, they might think ill of you. Especially if their a teenager. And especially if you, or your college, don't do anything to help them out.

And another thing... why did Grant put that piece in the NYT? If he was interested in reaching out to black folks so we could work, together, on some of our issues, then wouldn't The Root, or Ebony or Jet, or or or, have been better? Maybe he was reaching for a different audience, one that was perhaps less black? Is he planning to run for office? Or perhaps he feels that the NYT readership would be a more hospitable audience for his whining, I mean opinion. I don't want to give away anything from the documentary, but one thing it points out is that in America, you can get pretty far exploiting or demonizing black folks. Especially young, black men from the hood.

Meg Whitman's Mexican Problem

By now we've all heard poor little rich girl Meg Whitman complaining about how mean old Jerry Brown is making her look bad. "I didn't know that my house keeper was not legally allowed to be in the states. How could I know? I'm not ICE.I used a service, the maid had a social security number..."

Nonsense.

But let's take Ms. Whitman at face value. Let's assume that 1). she believed that her housekeeper, Nicky Santillan, was here legally, 2). that Whitman, a billionaire with political ambitions, didn't do a background check on a person who would have unfettered access to her home on a regular basis, and 3). both she and her husband managed to miss the letters from the feds telling them that Ms. Santillan's documents weren't right. If all of that is true, we still get to see how Whitman deals a slightly tricky problem.

While planning to run for governor, her employee confesses to being here illegally. What should she do? First, make damn sure that this employee is made to feel happy. Make sure that she is properly taken are of so that there is nothing even close to a legitimate claim of underpaying her or treating her badly. Then pay her a small severance, have her sign a document that says that she has been fully paid for all of her services, make sure that all of the taxes are paid and then send her on her way. If Whitman had done that, she'd have been able to "confess" that she too, like so many California employers, was stung by our dysfunctional immigration policy. But that she had treated this person well and complied with the law.

If she had done that, she'd have shown herself to be, at minimum, politically astute, and possibly even honest. But that's not what she did. She basically stick her fingers in her ears and said lalalalalala and hoped the problem would go away.

Let's be clear here, I don't buy for a second that Whitman thought Santillan was here legally. She knew better. She knew better because legal employees (especially of billionaires with political ambitions) demand to get paid for every minute that they work. They know that the employer has more to lose than the employee. But people working illegally have to put up with whatever abusive nonsense their employee dishes out. Make me work 45 hours but "forget" to pay my overtime? Have you ever met a legal employee who wouldn't deal with that issue on the day their pay check comes up short? In other words, not only did Whitman know Santillan was here illegally, she used that fact to steal from her (remember, that is the allegation here).

Whitman is just like most business people. They want cheap labor. Like some, she is willing to ignore the law to get it. In fact, Whitman and her ilk prefer illegal labor because those employees will not enforce their own rights and can generally be paid less than what they are worth.

Whitman is lying. And she doesn't even respect the voters enough to tell us a lie that we could believe without feeling disrespected.