Capital punishment

Revisiting capital punishment

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 0 Comment

It’s been a little over four years since I last wrote about capital punishment (i.e. the “death penalty”). There really isn’t a lot to be said about it. And since that time I’ve actually wavered a bit in my support for it, but not entirely. And I realize that in my libertarian views, it is a point of inconsistency, and I’ll explain why in a moment.

Recently, libertarian writer Julie Borowski posted a video called “Why You Should Oppose the Death Penalty” (embedded below, blog article here). And I don’t think she realizes her video could easily have been called “Why You Should Oppose the Criminal Justice System”, but let’s get into this.

She starts out the video talking about her history of supporting the death penalty, which is immaterial to the discussion. But she says what started to turn her away from it is when a friend pointed something out about it to her, “Okay Julie, so you’re cool with the government having the power to kill people?”

In actuality, her entire video should’ve revolved only around this question. This is really the only reason to not support the death penalty. Death is certainly quite serious, and we treat it seriously as well — and have for… well, forever. So giving a few people the power to, albeit only under certain, very limited circumstances, the power to kill people without penalty is certainly quite troubling.

And any person who wants to argue against the death penalty need only have that as their point of argument. Everything else, including most everything else in Julie’s video, is immaterial. Virtually every other argument she presents in her video I’ve already handled in my previous article on the topic, so I’m merely going to be doing a copy/paste job here to reply to them.

Many, many studies have shown no credible evidence that the death penalty deters crime.

I would not consider it unreasonable to expand the argument to say that the entire criminal justice system doesn’t deter any crime. All it takes is a moment to ponder this question: does a person typically consider the potential criminal penalties of an action before performing it, or not until after, if at all?

For a long time I assumed that the death penalty was cheaper than feeding and housing a prisoner for life. I was wrong. Turns out the death penalty costs taxpayers more than life in prison.

She goes on to give the details of this. Again, the details are irrelevant.

It also costs more to incarcerate a person for life than it does to parole them after 20 years, depending on the prisoner. Should we abolish mandatory life sentences without the possibility of parole?

If we start successfully arguing that certain punishments should not be allowed because of cost, eventually it’ll become that no punishment should be allowed because of cost. Instead of incarceration, perhaps just fine people for their crimes since that actually provides a positive revenue stream to jurisdictions instead of paying out to support prisoners while they are in jail.

Now a lot of you might be thinking that I’m arguing that such a statement about the costs of capital punishment is a slippery slope, and in a way it is. It is the only criminal sentence for which cost is actually brought up. No one argues about how much it costs to house a 21 year-old murder convict for the approximately 55 to 60 years it’ll take for that convict to die of natural causes, presuming average life span. And I’ve seen estimates that it costs about the equivalent of an average median household income per year per prisoner to keep them incarcerated, and the United States leads the world in the number of incarcerated persons per capita.

So why not just get rid of the entire corrections system, then? Imagine how much in taxpayer dollars that would save!

But then no one argues in that direction, because it would be considered certifiably insane to do so. Instead most people argue about what should be a crime (seeming mostly arguing in the direction of legalizing a lot of things that are crimes) and, once defined, what kind of penalty should go with it. But never is the cost of the penalty to the taxpayers ever really considered… until the topic turns to the death penalty.

More people are wrongly convicted than a lot of people might think. Just imagine being on death row for a crime that you didn’t even do.

Julie then goes on to point out the number of people who’ve been released from death row after having their convictions overturned and how terrible such a thing is. Miscarriages of justice do result in lost years for the innocent, and lost lives in the case of a wrongful execution. True there isn’t any way to truly know how many people were executed for a crime they did not commit.

But again, such an argument can again be used against the entire penal system. You might as well say that those who’ve been released from prison, as contrasted from death row, due to new evidence surfacing means that the entire penal system should be abolished.

The fact that the prisoner was on death row is irrelevant to the argument. They were incarcerated by the State following a conviction by a jury of their peers in a Court of law, meaning the jury weighed the evidence presented to them and returned a verdict of Guilty.

Evidence later surfacing that provides the reasonable doubt necessary for a conviction to be set aside isn’t a problem with capital punishment, but with the criminal investigation. The only thing that capital punishment brings to that party is an implied time limit. I say “implied time limit” because there is not any limit on when a person can have their conviction overturned or vacated to the best of my knowledge. The only difference is whether the person will be alive when that happens.

Indeed recently there has been a push to seek a new trial for George Stinney. Stinney was 14 years old when he was convicted of killing two white girls and executed in the State of South Carolina in 1944.

But the notion also applies equally to individuals not sentenced to death, as the person incarcerated could die unexpectedly in jail, whether on death row or not, or might expire during a life sentence before new evidence surfaces that allows the conviction to be vacated.

And yes, there have been cases where a person’s conviction has been posthumously vacated where the person in question died in prison. In 2000 convictions for murder against four members of the Patriarca crime family were overturned. The conviction was secured in 1968, and by the time the conviction was overturned, two of the men had expired in prison.

Miscarriages of justice are unfortunate, but abolishing the death penalty will not eliminate them, and there is nothing to suggest that the occurrence will be reduced. And using miscarriages of justice as an argument against one criminal penalty means that same argument could, in theory at least, be used against all criminal penalties.

Again if you’re going to argue against the death penalty, the only argument anyone, libertarian or otherwise, need employ is simply that the death penalty is the government having the power to kill people without penalty. And following on a common libertarian argument, if it is not legal for one person to kill another, it should not be legal for the government to do the same. And while a person has the ability to claim self defense, the government does not.

Politics

Fuck the rules, because we’re Americans!

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 0 Comment

Recently it was reported that the International Olympic Committee is requiring the goalie for the US Women’s Hockey team to remove an inscription of the Constitution from her mask. Now the IOC rules are clear about what can and cannot be on a team’s uniform:

“It is our understanding that this is not an issue about the patriotic nature of the image depicting the U.S Constitution,” Koch said. “The adjustment was necessary because the image did not meet IOC guidelines. It contained wording, which is not allowed on uniforms for any sports at the Olympic games.”

Vetter’s alterations — she was also required to remove a depiction of the Olympic rings and a Wisconsin Badgers logo, a nod to the University of Wisconsin, her alma mater — are not without precedent.

Four years ago, U.S. goalies Ryan Miller and Jonathan Quick had to change their masks. Miller had to remove the phrase “Miller Time,” and Quick had to drop the words “Support our troops.”

Again, this is about a uniform not meeting the long-standing rules regarding team uniforms during the Olympics. But for some reason, there are people who just cannot accept that as the reality and, basically, want the rules bent for this goalie simply because she’s an American. On Fox News Insider, these were some of the comments left using the Facebook plugin:

ioc_comments.png

Yes because the IOC is out to destroy the American way of life and all that is American.

In case you haven’t noticed, there is the word “International” in the name of the International Olympic Committee. This means the rules they make must be observed by all nations participating in the Olympics. No exceptions.

That and some Americans just cannot get it through their minds that we are not the greatest country in the world and do not deserve to have everyone bend to what we want simply because we’re the United States. Grow up, people!

Abortion/Religion

Legislating morality

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 0 Comment

In any debate regarding abortion, it can be expected that someone may say, “You cannot legislate morality.” That person’s opponent may reply by citing several provisions of the criminal code, such as the laws regarding murder, rape and assault.

But doing so avoids the larger question of whether actual morality can be legislated. In saying that one cannot legislate morality, what is being said, in actuality, is that the government does not declare what is moral and what is not. Now nothing is stopping Congress from creating a new title within the US Code called “Morality”, or passing a bill with the title of “Moral Code of the United States”. Would they then be said to be “legislating morality” if they were to do this? No.

So can morality be legislated? No it cannot, because the government does not have the power to declare what is moral and what is not, and that is often what is meant when someone says that you cannot legislate morality. To counter by citing provisions of our criminal laws overlooks the fundamental truth: laws must be consistent with what is moral, not declare what is moral.

So then what is the basis of morality?

In answering that question, many turn to the Bible, declaring it and the god associated with it to be the only and true source of morality. And it is true that you can find the definition of morality in the Bible, but the Bible is not the only source of it.

I am referring to what is known as the Golden Rule. It goes by several names and exists in several different incarnations, but the basic idea is the same: treat others as you would want to be treated. Libertarians know this as the non-aggression principle, that one shall not initiate violence or force against another except when necessary to counter force or violence that has been initiated against you or to protect and defend someone else against the unjustifiable initiation of violence against them.

More importantly, one must also not call upon someone else to initiate violence or force against someone else except when necessary to counter force already initiated against them or someone else.

This also means that the God of the Old Testament has, in many ways, acted against the Golden Rule, declared “laws” that have no basis when weighted against that basic moral principle.

When keeping that basic moral principle in mind, you can easily see that much of our criminal code is consistent with that principle. It is immoral to kill someone because I’m pretty sure you do not want to be killed either. It is immoral to break into someone else’s home and steal things because you do not want that happening to you. In both instances there is very demonstrable harm, and in both instances it is the initiation of violence against you.

At the same time, just as you cannot kill someone unless that person is trying to take your life, you cannot have the government kill that person either.

So, again, the government (“we”) does not legislate morality, but merely declares actions that are to be called “crimes”, whether they are inconsistent with the Golden Rule or not, and declares punishments for those actions. There is no legislating of morality, and in many cases legislation that is quite inconsistent with it.

Charity/Economics/Religion

Giving the gift of well-being

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 0 Comment

Ah Christmas. Certainly a great time of year, where people are generous – or at least try to be – and people become upset at the gifts others thoughtfully bought them. That’s why December 26th is the day customer service departments all across the country loathe.

So how can you prevent your gifts from being returned? Well take a page from my book.

Whenever my parents or anyone else asks me what I “want” for Christmas, I turn it around and say to them what I need. Indeed for the first couple years after I moved out of the house, I always said to my parents to focus on what they think I need when thinking of gifts to buy. And if I don’t need anything, I give them a list of places I frequently shop and ask for a gift card to one of those places. I know a lot of people hate giving gift cards, because they seem so impersonal, lazy and thoughtless, but that’s actually not what you should be thinking.

Allow me to explain.

Typically when it comes to gift cards, I say one of three things: Wal-Mart, Amazon.com, or Visa. I’ll add a fourth to this list: HyVee. There’s a reason behind all of these: my wife and I frequently shop at Wal-Mart and HyVee, we order things through Amazon and have things on preorder as well, and a Visa gift card can be used anywhere – though I hear they can be somewhat problematic trying to swipe them at gas pumps. Does Phillips 66 have gas gift cards?

When someone gives my wife and I a gift card to Wal-Mart or HyVee, what they are actually doing is making our next grocery runs a little easier on our budget. Implicitly they’re saying, “I want to make it a little easier for you to get what you need“. As most households do not have the income mine enjoys, when you give someone a gift card, you’re making their life easier, especially if you’re giving a gift card to a place where they buy their groceries.

It’s one of the reasons people love to receive cash as gifts, whether that cash is set aside or spent within the next couple days, or put in the bank to be applied to later bills. You are saying to that person that you want to make their life just a little easier, even if for a short while. Money is the one thing we all need, because it is the only way we can conveniently participate in the economy, so cash and gift cards will typically always be welcome gifts.

Gift cards are also, more often than not, better than cash, because if it’s lost or stolen, it can be reported and replaced, although with some loss of convenience.

Now if the person on your giving list is someone on SNAP, or otherwise not really well off or is financially struggling, food, especially non-perishables, will always be welcome ideas. I can speak from experience on this one, as that is what my parents gave my wife and I back in 2008 while I was still sitting on unemployment. I think my mom also handed me an uncooked meatloaf that Christmas, or it might have been on a different night.

If you’re financially well-off, but have a friend or family member in the area that might not be, or who came on hard times, take them to the grocery store and stock their pantry and fridge on your dime. I call this the “Bob Cratchit” treatment, because in many movies adapted from A Christmas Carol, they typically show Scrooge being a lot more immediately generous to his clerk than he actually is in the book, though they all still accurately portray Scrooge scaring him shitless on Christmas morning. Or rather, it was the day after Christmas when Bob shows up for work.

Don’t get me wrong, Scrooge is still generous, but it’s in the way he is generous that really counts. On the day following Christmas while at Scrooge’s business, shortly after Bob walks in later than he was told to report, Scrooge declares:

I’ll raise your salary, and endeavour to assist your struggling family, and we will discuss your affairs this very afternoon, over a Christmas bowl of smoking bishop, Bob! Make up the fires and buy another coal-scuttle before you dot another i, Bob Cratchit!

When you give cash or a gift card to a place where someone buys their groceries, you are helping someone with their livelihood. When you focus on what someone needs as opposed to trying to come up with a thoughtful gift to give, you are again helping with their livelihood.

And given how many people are still struggling as we approach Christmas Day this year, making someone’s life a little easier, even if just for a short while, is always going to be the most welcome gift of all.

Free speech and press

Misconstruing free speech

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 0 Comment

Ah, another article about the recent “Duck Dynasty” fallout. How nice, right? Oh and it’s by an atheist, so this is gonna be good, too.

Let me say up front that freedom of speech and freedom of religious expression are two concepts I have very heavily defended everywhere possible. Phil Robertson has every right to speak his mind in whatever venue will allow him to do so. The venue that allowed him was Gentleman’s Quarterly (GQ). In response to the comments he made, not just about homosexuality but also the Jim Crow era, A&E put him on an indefinite suspension.

1525306_727405303937117_1920767008_n.jpgIn response to the suspension, conservatives and Christians in the US are blowing things way, way, way, way out of proportion. If you listen to any Christian conservative, you’d think that A&E somehow nullified everyone’s First Amendment protected right to free speech. Sorry, cousin, but that not only did not happen, it is not possible. Free speech is not in danger, but

No speech is immune from consequence

If you were to look up the domain name for this blog, you’d find that this blog is not hosted on WordPress or any other blog hosting site. Instead I set up this blog myself on my own web space for which I pay a quarterly fee. Sure I could instead point my domain name to a WordPress.com subdomain and save a good chunk of change every year, but I have very specific reasons for not doing that.

But I’ll go one step further.

I am employed by one of the largest companies in health care in the United States, which enjoys between 20% and 25% of hospitals and hospital networks in the US as clients. They also have clients in several countries around the world, and their reach is expanding. If you look around this blog, you will notice I don’t talk about health care all that much, and when I do choose to talk about it, I’m not typically all that specific. I’ve barely stated my opposition to the Affordable Care Act.

No law stops me from talking about health care. And the First Amendment protects my right to talk about health care in the United States, using whatever words I choose to employ.

However, anything I write about health care in the United States could be seen by one of the higher-ups at the company that employs me – i.e. the company currently funding my livelihood, including the ability for me to pay for the web hosting that keeps this blog running. If I write something that could be interpreted as disparaging my employer or one of their clients, or could be viewed as not being in line with the corporate goals or mission, or, while highly unlikely, could interfere with their ability to compete in a particular market space, I could lose my job.

And there isn’t any law in the US Code or the Revised Statutes for the State of Missouri that would stop them from doing so unless what I write happens to qualify for whistleblower protection.

No speech is immune from consequence. Even what I write on religion and politics could be used against me at work, albeit in more subtle ways that keep up an air of plausible deniability.

Speaking of, if you’re someone who is trying to use the Federal statutes to say that Robertson’s suspension was illegal, while at the same time calling for the striking down or non-enactment of laws that would protect homosexuals from being fired merely for being homosexual, then please take your hypocrisy and shove it up your ass.

While you’re at it, have you also forgotten that Robertson said the Jim Crow laws – i.e. state-sanctioned segregation and discrimination – weren’t all that bad?

But listening to the Christian conservatives who’ve backlashed against A&E, I’m starting to think we do need a law to shut them up, and not in the way you might be thinking:

No person who makes any kind of speech or expression that is consistent with the words and teachings of the Holy Bible shall be subject to any kind of reprisal or consequence stemming from said speech or expression. If said person does become subject to reprisal or consequence due to said speech or expression, such person shall be entitled to reasonable punitive damages.

What do you think, conservatives? This is what you’re wanting, isn’t it?

Given what you’re saying right now, how free speech is so under attack because a private organization suspended someone for some rather disparaging remarks, I know you feel all speech consistent with the Bible must be immune to any consequence because it is speech consistent with the Bible. Sorry, but things don’t work that way.

The First Amendment only protects your speech from reprisal by the government. It does not protect you from reprisal by anyone else. No person can subject you to serious harm for anything you do say, just as no person can subject you to serious harm for any reason other than to defend him or herself, but no expression is immune from ridicule, criticism, rebuttal, or societal repercussions.

How can you tell if your right to free speech and free expression has been violated? It’s really quite easy: did your speech land you in jail? As Phil Robertson is still a free man, he still and always has had his right to free expression, just as you still have your right to free speech and free expression.

Phil Robertson’s “suspension” from A&E did not change that, so stop acting like it did.

Minimum wage

It’s partly a numbers game

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 0 Comment

Let’s do some math, but first, we need to define some terms.

Expenses and expenditures are two words that can be used interchangeably, and basically it’s money that a company spends. Wages and salaries are expenses. For the sake of simplicity, I’m not going to differentiate between (tax)deductible and non-deductible expenses. Income and revenue are two words that can also be used interchangeably, though revenue typically applies to business income, and that’s the word I’ll be using from here on out.

Profit is all revenue minus all expenses.

According to CNN Money, Wal-Mart posted a total annual profit of approximately $15.7 billion at the end of 2012 on revenues of shy of $447 billion. Wal-Mart employs approximately 1.2 million people. Wal-Mart’s profit per US employee is a little over $13,000. Note: for the sake of simplicity, I’m going to operate on the presumption all numbers are US only.

Wal-Mart is currently the largest target of the calls for a $15/hour minimum wage, the equivalent of $31,200 per year at full time (40 hours per week).

Now a lot of people could live well with an extra $13,000 a year. But if Wal-Mart were to give every employee that kind of raise, it wouldn’t have any profit to roll over into the next year.

A lot of people make the mistake of thinking that profit = cash in the bank, that if you take the sum total of all profits and losses year over year that you have an idea of a company’s bank account balance. Not so. Part of that profit is set aside and used to cover expenses ahead of future revenues, and this includes employment expenses such as salaries and wages. A company’s profitability ensures they have the liquidity necessary to cover expenses when those happen to overtake revenues. For the first quarter or half of a year, that could mean the difference between staying in business and going under.

Plus the profit is typically re-invested into the company across the next year or several years as the company seeks out new markets or areas for business, new ventures to take, expansions of current ventures or within current markets, etc. So stripping away their profit would hurt the company’s ability to do this. Now while many believe Wal-Mart is a market predator, there will always be places where they cannot reliably compete. As an example, while they do have automotive centers, they’re worthless if you need anything more than basic maintenance or small repairs, and you can always get better tires either through your dealer or through one of the many established tire sellers such as Firestone and Goodyear.

But Wal-Mart wouldn’t have been able to venture into basic automotive services without actually having the cash in the bank to venture into that arena. That required remodeling existing stores, to begin with, along with increasing the costs for building and maintaining new stores capable of handling automotive. I assisted in the construction of one such store as a contractor back in 2005.

And their selections on other things tends to be toward the lower-end, to cater to the affordability of those who most shop there. Their most expensive items tend to be electronics, but even those aren’t considered high-end compared to what stores like Best Buy offer.

Wal-Mart takes a lot of flak because they have high profit numbers, again about $13,000 per employee, despite having a modest profit margin, only about 3.5% at the end of 2012.

Let’s do some more math: to pay all of their employees at a minimum $15/hour and employ them at 40 hours each week would cost the company almost $37.5 billion per year, just in wages and salaries – 1.2 million employees * $15/hour * 2080 hours/year = $37,440,000,000 or almost $37.5 billion.

So what if we instead cut the pay of the highest paid in the company? To raise the pay of the employees by just $1 per year – make sure you read that correctly, I said $1 per year – would require reducing the pay of an executive by over $1 million per year. How many people actually think about the numbers before spouting out these ideas. To get an extra $1,000 per employee you’d need to cut $1 billion out of executive pay, presuming they’d be able to retain their executives after doing that, and presuming there is actually that much to cut.

So what if Wal-Mart forgoes the dividend on its common stock and gives that to the employees instead? Wal-Mart would actually lose shareholders and its stock price would plummet. This could actually be good for the corporation itself as it could convert common stock into treasury stock (i.e. common-stock buybacks) at a much lower rate, but that would take cash out of the coffers as well until they decided to turn around and re-issue that stock publicly.

The situation isn’t easy to solve. You can sink Wal-Mart to give their employees a "living wage", thereby risking all of their employees, or force Wal-Mart to cut employees, possibly close stores, to give the remaining employees a "living wage". These are the unintended consequences constantly pointed out to the "living wage" crowd that seems to continually fall on deaf ears (just look at the comments section to any article pointing this out). Prices will go up to offset, at least in part, the increased employment costs. This will cut into the purchasing ability not only of the Wal-Mart customers, but also the Wal-Mart employees, who likely have an employee discount they can exercise as a means of helping get still more of what they need.

The one thing everyone forgets is that the cost of business falls on its customers. And as part of Wal-Mart’s customer base is its employees, it’s a delicate balancing act that can be easily disrupted. But often looking at just the numbers and just saying "they can afford to give up some of that" often is shortcut for "wow that’s a lot of money" without many more brain cells going into thinking it through.

But what seems to take still fewer brain cells to conjure, simply because it sounds good, is the idea that employers must provide their employees with a particular living standard as opposed to merely providing a job.

Animals and pets/Religion

Putting a value on life

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 0 Comment

It is a universal law that actions beget reactions, that every action has a consequence of some kind. To say that any life is without any kind of value, or that life itself is without value, is to say that an action can occur without a consequence. It is how we interpret the consequences of actions that determines the value those actions have, even if those consequences are unforeseen or, in large part, unforeseeable.

Atheism says nothing of the value of life, because to say anything of the value of life is to say we have the ability to ascribe value to life. But to say nothing of the value of life is not to say life is without value. Yet that how many Christians appear to interpret that point of view. When atheists say there is no afterlife, we are not saying it is okay to rape, steal, pillage and kill, yet that is how Christians interpret our words, using Christianity itself to twist those words into such an abhorrent notion.

While some atheists take the absolute position – inappropriately dubbed the “strong atheist” position – that there is no supreme being or deity, most atheists likely do not take such an absolute position. I certainly do not. Instead many take the agnostic position that if there is a deity, it is impossible to really know anything about that deity, and any proclamations of knowledge regarding that deity are to be dismissed if nothing concrete is presented affirming that claim.

As such atheism means not possessing any belief in a supreme being, and all the trimmings that seem to come with it, because of no reason to possess such belief.

If there is a deity, there isn’t anything concretely known about it. There’s a lot that has been assumed and proclaimed as true, but nothing concretely known and demonstrable. If a being exists that we can properly refer to as a deity, or if even multiple such beings exist, and they are interacting with our world and our lives, they are not doing so in such a way that is easily detectable, nor are they doing so in such a way that gives our lives or any particular person’s life any discernably additional value or meaning.

To say that life is without value unless there is a deity, to say that life is without value unless there is a specific deity, most typically the God of Abraham, is to say plainly that life is without value. Life either has meaning and value unconditionally, or it has no value or meaning because of the conditions applied.

You will be hard-pressed to find a person, atheist or otherwise, who genuinely holds the claim that life does not have meaning or value. No atheist says such. In fact, we say the exact opposite: that the idea of an afterlife actually degrades and devalues the life and time that we actually have. This is especially true given that it appears to be the typical Christian point of view that the afterlife is reserved just for us, the species Homo sapiens sapiens, and is not for our companion pets, or any of the other animals in the world.

* * * * *

Ashley Paramore said, “The universe is absolutely massive, and we are virtually insignificant in it.” Contrary to the common belief, this universe was not created for us. It is supremely arrogant to assert such. But to say we are insignificant within the totality of the universe is to not say we cannot be significant in some other way. But we do not need validation from anyone else, not from any person or even any deity, for our lives to be significant or to have meaning.

And saying we were not specially created by a deity in his image is not to say we are utterly worthless, that the time we do have is without value or meaning. But that again seems to be the point of view of many Christians, and if you don’t believe as they do, then you must believe that life is meaningless and worthless.

But there’s one problem: your life does not have value or meaning simply because someone else says it does, regardless of whether that person opining on the matter is another person or a deity. Your life only has whatever meaning you can and do give it, through your interactions with others and society at large. Your life could be significant in ways you don’t immediately realize, but not immediately realizing your significance is not to say you are without significance.

What does not seem meaningful or valuable to one person may be meaningful or valuable to someone else. An example of this comes from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, chapter 23 called “Christmas on the Closed Ward”, toward the end of the chapter:

[Neville’s mother] did not seem to want to speak, or perhaps she was not able to, but she made timid motions toward Neville, holding something in her outstretched hand.

“Again?” said Mrs Longbottom, sounding slightly weary. “Very well, Alice dear, very well – Neville, take it, whatever it is…”

But Neville had already stretched out his hand, into which his mother dropped an empty Droobles Blowing Gum wrapper.

“Very nice, dear,” said Neville’s grandmother in a falsely cheery voice, patting his mother on the shoulder. But Neville said quietly, “Thanks Mum.”

His mother tottered away, back up the ward, humming to herself. Neville looked around at the others, his expression defiant, as though daring them to laugh, but Harry did not think he’d ever found anything less funny in his life.

“Well, we’d better get back,” sighed Mrs Longbottom, drawing on long green gloves. “Very nice to have met you all. Neville put that wrapper in the bin, she must have given you enough of them to paper your bedroom by now…”

But as they left, Harry was sure he saw Neville slip the wrapper into his pocket.

Where Neville’s grandmother saw a practically worthless gum wrapper, Neville saw something else. And as Neville’s grandmother’s comment as they left noted, that wasn’t the first time he’d been given a gum wrapper by his mother. But each time he likely treated it as the first, and valued it because it was his mother giving it to him, even if to the rest of us it just looked like a piece of refuse.

* * * * *

In some respects we never die. Our lives are entangled with those who come after us, just as our lives are entangled with those who came before us. I mean there is scarcely a living soul on this planet that doesn’t go to bed at night without their lives in some way being effected by the work of the hands and minds of folks like Faraday, Newton and Pasteur.

But these entanglements go way beyond the vulgarly obvious main ones, for similarly almost everyone’s life is intertwined with the people who grew the grain and made the bread that these men ate.

So it becomes clear that death is not “the end”. We are intertwined with both lesser and greater things.

– Phil Mason, PhD, a.k.a. “Thuderf00t”

This past Thursday morning, Thanksgiving morning, a short time after the clock passed 8am, one of my two beloved feline companions died in my arms at just 8 years old. While we don’t entirely know what caused his end, his life had great significance, great value and great meaning.

His life was intertwined with mine in ways that at first did not seem significant. Now that he is gone, I am aware in great detail how significant those entanglements actually are and were.

When we all inevitably meet our end, there will not be a heaven or hell waiting, no eternal reward or punishment. Instead it’ll be just like flipping a switch on your consciousness, and the lights will just go out. That is what I saw with Charlie as I watched him die, felt his body go silent while he was in my arms. There is no heaven that welcomed him, no “rainbow bridge” on which he’ll be waiting the decades it’ll hopefully be until I and my wife pass on.

But does that mean Charlie’s life was somehow worthless, his existence meaningless? Absolutely not.

His life had meaning, his life had value because of the impact his life had on me, my wife, his surviving brother, and my parents for the several months they cared for him after he was born. His life likely also had an impact on the veterinarians and veterinary technicians that assisted in his care during his brief years.

Even in death his life will continue to have value and meaning as my wife and I look back at the pictures we have of him and remember the time we had with him – all the little things he used to do that seemed insignificant at the time, but we now realize were very significant parts of our day as we’ve looked around expecting Charlie to be there.

His life most certainly had value and meaning, regardless of whether there actually is a deity or not.

Feminism/Life

An act of war? Really?

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 0 Comment

I’m really starting to wonder how uptight women have become today when a woman posting a picture of herself several days after giving birth is called “an act of war“.

I’m referring to Caroline Berg Eriksen and the picture she posted last week, a mirror self picture (i.e. “selfie”) of her wearing only a bra and panties showing her athletic figure and the caption “I feel so empty, and still not 4 days after birth”. Many of the comments on the Instagram picture are, thankfully, quite positive, and many have instead taken to other venues to express their animosity regarding this.

And it’s rage that I don’t understand. It’s almost as if women are no longer allowed to be thin post-partum.

And if that’s the case, then someone needs to tell my sister-in-law. After her first child, a son, several years ago, she bounced back to her normal thinner figure in less than a month, likely in less than a couple weeks. When I first saw her after giving birth, you could hardly tell she had even been pregnant. She’s recently given birth to a second child, a daughter this time, and I’ve yet to see her so I don’t know if that still holds true.

So the question then is whether all this animosity is over the fact that Eriksen and other women like her have achieved their pre-pregnancy weight (or pretty close to it), or that they have the audacity to show it off.

Claire Mysko chimed in for Yahoo! Shine:

While I don’t think it’s helpful to shame the individual mothers who choose to post pictures of themselves, I do think the pushback signals a healthy reaction to some very unhealthy and unrealistic cultural expectations.

Cultural expectations? Since when are women expected to have Olympiad bodies not long after giving birth? Did I miss a memo?

Here’s the thing: if you’re intimidated by other women posting pictures of themselves post-partum looking thin and fit, it is you who has the problem. Evidence of that fact is the animosity you display in response to it. That is what is unhealthy, because it implies you have a need to prop yourself up by bringing down someone who you perceive as being superior to you. Perhaps discussing with someone whatever inferiority complex you might have would be well worth your time.

I mean I thought the whole idea is to accept what you have while not feeling intimidated, envious or jealous of what someone else has. Apparently I’ve missed something.

A couple years ago, in response to Glenn Beck’s disgusting on-air response to Meghan McCain’s appearance in a skin cancer PSA television ad, I said (from “Nudity and Prudery“) “Sometimes the best response to something you dislike is just walking away from it.” In this instance, I think that would have been the best response to this image and the seemingly ongoing controversy over this whole exercise.

Term limits

Rebuttal to Jonathan Zimmerman, "End presidential term limits"

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 0 Comment

Jonathan Zimmerman is a professor of history and education at New York University who recently penned an op-ed for the Washington Post regarding the 22nd Amendment, the Amendment that establishes the two-term limit on the President (and 10-year limit on a person who succeeds to the office), and why it should be repealed.

On principle I agree with Zimmerman, that the term limits are not, in general, a good idea. But I think his efforts are misplaced. Amending the Constitution to limit the presidency in such a manner is an implicit message to the executive as to whom he answers: Congress and the States. It is not Congress and the States who answer to the President, as many seem to think and Zimmerman seems to imply in his piece:

Democratic lawmakers would worry about provoking the wrath of a president who could be reelected. Thanks to term limits, though, they’ve got little to fear.

Congress should never fear any "wrath" from the president. It is the president who should always fear the wrath of the legislature. After all it is the legislature who has the power to remove him for really any reason they happen to declare a "high crime or misdemeanor", so long as the House of Representatives can get two-thirds of the Senate to agree with them on the charges.

All power of the Federal government originates with the House of Representatives and the Senate. The smallest branch of the Federal government is defined by the longest article in the main body of the Constitution of the United States. Make no mistake that the drafters of the Constitution did this with a clear reason: to ensure all power of the Federal government originated with and was checked by the proxies for the People and States that comprise the United States.

As such to say legislators should fear any wrath from the President is absurd as the legislators should never fear the president. It should always be the president who fears the legislators.

Nor does Obama have to fear the voters, which might be the scariest problem of all. If he chooses, he could simply ignore their will.

Zimmerman is correct to say that the President no longer fears the voters. We saw this very clearly following his re-election, which coincided actually quite coincidentally with the Sandy Hook tragedy.

In the first term he was mute about gun legislation – likely out of fear of Democrat voters who are friendly to gun rights – but immediately went full-tilt in favor of gun control after the election had already passed and the electoral votes counted. He no longer feared the People on that.

But the Senate still did. It is why Senators overwhelmingly rejected key aspects of Reid’s latest attempt at gun legislation: expanded background checks that would’ve required obtaining a certified background check for even private sales, renewing the assault weapons ban (rejected by the largest margin with 60 Senators rejecting it), and renewing the magazine capacity limitation.

It is odd how people thought the Senate would readily ratify Feinstein’s proposed measures simply because the Democrats had control of the Senate. Instead it became similar to trying to pass the Affordable Care Act in that the Democrat leadership in the Senate needed to appease other Democrats. They failed miserably when fifteen (15) Democrats joining Republicans to vote down renewing the assault weapons ban.

The House of Representatives also still fears the People. And so long as the branches from which all Federal power originates can still be periodically checked by the People, I think we’ll otherwise be fine with a presidential term limitation.

The first president to openly challenge the two-term tradition was Theodore Roosevelt, who ran for a third term as president in 1912 on the Bull Moose ticket. When he stepped down in 1908, Roosevelt pledged not to seek a third term; reminded of this promise in 1912, he said that he had meant he would not seek a "third consecutive term." The New York Times called Roosevelt’s explanation a "pitiful sophistication," and the voters sent Woodrow Wilson to the White House.

Not quite.

Wilson’s election had little to do with Roosevelt seeking a second full term as President and more to do with the schism in the Republican party that started in 1910.

Roosevelt challenged William Howard Taft, who was seeking a second term as President in 1912. Taft had actually been selected by Roosevelt to be his successor on the Republican ticket, but Taft’s performance as President disappointed him, as Taft’s politics were becoming more conservative while Roosevelt and a good size of the Republican Party were becoming more "progressive".

So for the 1912 election, Roosevelt challenged Taft initially in the Republican primaries, where he failed, and then by running as a third party under the Progressive Party banner.

His presence on the ballot split the Republican party base, ensuring that Wilson won the plurality vote, and the Electoral College with it. Had Roosevelt never challenged Taft for his election, Taft likely would have been re-elected to a second term, but probably only just as the Democrats controlled about 45% of the popular vote at that time, making the schism in the Republican Party fatal with regard to the presidential run.

A cursory glance at Wikipedia would have prevented this glaring history inaccuracy from a professor of history.

Only in 1940, amid what George Washington might have called a "great emergency," did a president successfully stand for a third term. Citing the outbreak of war overseas and the Depression at home, Democrats renominated Franklin D. Roosevelt. They pegged him for a fourth time in 1944 despite his health problems, which were serious enough to send him to his grave the following year.

To Republicans, these developments echoed the fascist trends enveloping Europe. "You will be serving under an American totalitarian government before the long third term is finished," warned Wendell Wilkie, Roosevelt’s opponent in 1940. Once the two-term tradition was broken, Wilkie added, nobody could put it back together. "If this principle dies, it will be dead forever," he said.

In 1933 talk of FDR assuming dictator-like powers was being thrown around Washington. Take that notion, memories of it likely still floating in heads in Washington , along with the fact that FDR successfully broke the ceremonial two-term limit that Jefferson started, and you’ve got a good reason for a paranoid Congress and a paranoid country.

And as difficult as it might be to believe, the word "dictator" was being thrown around as if it was a good thing, and Walter Lippman said to NPR, "The situation is critical, Franklin. You may have no alternative but to assume dictatorial powers." The idea even appealed to FDR’s wife.

The situation to which Lippman is referring, of course, is the Great Depression.

Ratified by the states in 1951, the 22nd Amendment was an “undisguised slap at the memory of Franklin D. Roosevelt,” wrote Clinton Rossiter, one of the era’s leading political scientists. It also reflected “a shocking lack of faith in the common sense and good judgment of the people,” Rossiter said.

Common sense and good judgment? I’ll just quote what I said in a previous article (from "Advice and consent"):

The People do not have nearly as much ability, especially given how easily we can be reduced into pesky, pestilent, squandering, argumentative and belligerent mobs, often at the mention of only a few words. In other words the People tend to act in a democratic fashion, as history has shown, and that is the fastest way to erode a republic.

The Founders knew this. This is why prior to the Seventeenth Amendment the more powerful chamber of Congress was left to the selection and safeguard of the State governments. This is why the power of advice and consent was left solely with the Senate and not with the House of Representatives. The Federal government was intended to be insulated from the People for reasons we have been witnessing since about the time of the Civil War.

Sorry but the people tend to not have or act with common sense and good judgment. This is why the drafters of the Constitution put so many barriers between the People and the Federal government as possible, preferring instead to have the State governments have more direct involvement with the Federal government than the People.

When they succeeded in limiting the presidency to two terms, they limited democracy itself.

"I think our people are to be safely trusted with their own destiny," Sen. Claude Pepper (D-Fla.) argued in 1947. "We do not need to protect the American people with a prohibition against a president whom they do not wish to elect; and if they wanted to elect him, have we the right to deny them the power?"

Again the President was not intended to be directly electable by the People, so there was no limitation on democracy. Instead the limitation lies with the temptation of power. Just look at all the kind of messianic and imperialist displays that were made in 2009 and 2010 not long into Obama’s first term. They treated him as if he was, as Sean Hannity rightly observed, an "anointed one", as if he was the savior of America.

Given all of this, given how trumped up the perspective of Obama was during his first term, early in his first term, how can we trust a man to limit himself with power? On the campaign trail he said he would "fundamentally transform America" while calling for a "civilian national security force" that is "just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded" as the Department of Defense. This is similar to the call for "storm troopers" during FDR’s first term in office.

The only reason Obama was elected to a second term is his opponent was Mitt Romney. We would be insane to hand him a third term in office.

Given that not even the people can be completely trusted with even the legitimate power that rests with the Federal government, let alone the illegitimate power it has seized over the last century and a half, how can we trust one person with the presiding office of the Federal government?

Clearly as FDR showed, we cannot, especially when that person is seeking to maintain power in the middle of a crisis. FDR’s policies only perpetuated the Great Depression and, with it, his hold on the highest executive office in the country. With people initially talking dictatorial powers for him, about him acting under some kind of martial law to stem the chaos as best as possible, and looking at the entirety of FDRs term and what he did, it should be no surprise that not only were the Republicans handed power in 1946, but they used that power to limit the presidency.

While some called it a slap on FDR’s legacy, it was most certainly a reassertion of power by Congress and the States on the president, a reassertion to the executive as to whom he answers.

As such, it is not "time to put that power back where it belongs", because history shows time and again what people do. We don’t act rationally and responsibly when it comes to exercising our voting authority. We devolve into bickering mobs and factions, and such devolution operates on a hair trigger. The very things the Founders warned of in the Federalist Papers can be seen today.

As such, the more safeguard we have on the Federal government, the better. The 22nd Amendment should remain in force. And so long as it takes a full amendment process to accomplish, such will be the case.

Anything less diminishes our leaders and ourselves.

Except President Obama is not our leader. He is the presiding officer of the Federal government and the commander-in-chief of the military. He is not to lead us at all. Instead he answers to us. He answers to the Senate and the House of Representatives. He answers to the Federal judiciary.

And it’s about time he remembers and acknowledges that.

Children/Health/Health care/Law/Vaccines

Codifying child care

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 0 Comment

When you send your kids to a public school or private school, you have to abide by the rules of the game. It’s as plain as that. Public schools are owned and operated by the local or state government. As such, the government sets rules about attendance and those who attend.

An obvious example of this is the vaccination schedule. For decades, public schools have required that students be vaccinated in accordance with a recommended schedule codified in their regulations. For the most part these schedules follow the CDC recommendations. If you do not keep your child’s vaccines up to date, you will be notified of the noncompliance. If you refuse to bring your child’s vaccinations back into compliance, your child will be removed from the school, and other repercussions could arise as well.

It is very well known, very well documented what happens when vaccination coverage lapses. Varicella (chicken pox) outbreaks were once routinely accepted as a part of school attendance when I was growing up. Today they’re exceedingly rare thanks to a varicella vaccine and almost 20 years of active vaccination.

Measles outbreaks also used to be a frequent occurrence when my parents were young and my grandparents were growing up. Thanks to the measles vaccine developed and propagated in the late 1950s and early 1960s, measles is very rare in the United States. And the same can be said with numerous other diseases, including polio of which the most famous victim is arguably President Franklin Roosevelt.

One thing that a lot of parents forget is that when a child is attending school, that school becomes responsible for the child’s welfare. As such laws, rules and regulations have been stipulated as part of that attendance. Vaccines are one part of it, but some States even stipulate that a child must also receive routine medical and dental exams as well.

A lot of this, I feel, arises from a "cover your ass" perspective in which rules and regulations arise as a means of preventing lawsuits, which can be extremely costly to a school district, especially if they lose. This is despite the fact parents may often be required to sign releases of liability when enrolling their children into the public school system or at a private school.

Now the question being asked on this is whether this is all somehow a violation of a parent’s rights.

That question is mostly being asked by a lot of "liberty-minded" conservatives who see this as somehow being a violation of their parental rights. These individuals also tend to be hardcore pro-life, which is the position wherein a woman’s rights take a back seat when she’s pregnant. And then when she gives birth, suddenly she has full dominion over the child. They declare the unborn child to be fully-human with all the rights and privileges of the born, then promptly forget that or set it aside once the child is born.

The proper question on this situation must come from two other sides: the school, whether public or private is immaterial, and the student, a minor who is wholly dependent upon his or her parents/guardians for his or her livelihood. As such, what is the role and responsibility of a school when it comes to their students, and to what is a child entitled from his or her parents under the dependency to which they are all subject while minors?

In examining the questions within the proper scope, you will notice one thing is missing: parent’s don’t actually have "rights". Instead they have only responsibilities and duties to their children. They have some discretion in making decisions over how to care for their children, such as in determining meals and clothing styles, but only to the extent that it does not come into conflict with their duty to provide an adequate level of care for their children.

An adequate level of care is typically defined as ensuring the child is not starving – starving being defined as chronically hungry, not the acute hunger we’ve all experienced in our lives – and is otherwise in good health and has adequate and appropriate clothing for the given weather and circumstances. In any area of this where a parent may fall short due to inadequate income or circumstances, help is available through government agencies and various charities.

One thing that has a lot of parents upset over this whole thing is the existence of regulations and rules for school attendance that basically forces it upon parents, despite the fact that in many States these rules and regulations have existed for years.

It is no secret that most adults would rather avoid the dentist and doctor, likely until necessary. I’ll admit that I’m like that. And even then we probably procrastinate. It would not surprise me if most adults do not have a regular physician or a regular dentist, and do not get regular health exams as a result. Now while it is debatable whether getting an annual medical exam is cost-effective, especially if you’re young and healthy, having one every couple years has its benefits – it’s one of the reasons the Affordable Care Act requires this to be covered by insurance with no out-of-pocket expense.

Dental exams, however, are a bit different. Bi-annual exams are beneficial and cost-effective – and something I’ve been putting off for a long time, as the last time I saw a dentist was when a wisdom tooth exploded when I brushed it a little too hard, as that’s how badly it had decayed.

So why are routine dental and medical exams being required in some States in the same fashion as vaccines? Let’s look at yet another angle to see why such ideas are actually justified.

I have two cats, and as a pet owner I have certain duties under the law. The law recognizes in part that these two cats are autonomous with certain rights that are derived from their dependency on me for their care and livelihood. Like parents are required to get their children vaccinated to attend school, I’m required by law to have my pets vaccinated against, at the least, rabies. My veterinarian recommends other vaccines as well, which I do get, to ensure adequate protection, while kennels may require other vaccines as well to squelch the possibility of an outbreak. The veterinary clinic that cared for my two while we were living in West Des Moines required a particular vaccine (I want to say feline leukemia) to house a cat in their kennel, and I’ve always presumed the requirement came in response to an outbreak.

Along with this, I also have the duty to ensure they are not starving. And even though every morning they like to make me think they are, they most certainly are not. I also have to ensure they have adequate clean water and a clean litter box. If I do not provide these things and it becomes noticeable to someone else, the city may seize my cats from me, charge me for any veterinary care necessary to bring them back to health, and then adopt them out.

And I could also be arrested to face charges of animal neglect.

Along this line they have had a health exam every year along with receiving their annual vaccines. Medically speaking, I take care of my cats better than I take care of myself. Both are eight years old, and while one is overweight but otherwise healthy, the other is a textbook example of a healthy feline.

Now though the law codifies various requirements of pet ownership, are these requirements a violation of my liberties as a pet owner? Not really.

If you have an adequate understanding of the dependency relationship and a healthy understanding of the non-aggression principle, you recognize a couple things: 1. like a child to his or her natural parents, my cats did not choose their dependency to me, and 2. because they did not choose it, I actually have a greater responsibility to them to ensure their care and comfort. And if I cannot provide it, I should seek out help to that effect or be willing to give them up to someone who can.

And so the same applies to a parent as to their child.

Codifying a requirement for school attendance that parents take their children in for routine dental exams and periodic medical exams is not a violation of parental "rights" any more than the legal requirements surrounding the care of my pets. Instead what the codifying of that requirement provides is a punishment for dereliction. As I can lose my cats and face arrest, fines and possible imprisonment for neglecting them, so too parents can face the same with regard to their children.

And screaming "parental rights" or something to that effect won’t change that fact.

Those who scream that their parental rights are being violated when these requirements come to light tend to be ones who feel that their personal beliefs come first. They scream when laws or regulations differ from their "beliefs". It all comes down to merely believing that one’s beliefs trump the rights of their children.

Anti-vaccine parents don’t like that children must be vaccinated in accordance to a particular schedule and hold beliefs contrary to two centuries of scientific evidence. Anti-medicine parents eschew modern medicine in favor of homeopathy, naturopathy, chiropractic, or any other kind of care that doesn’t require seeing a physician carrying the letters MD after their name.

And worst still are the parents who eschew all of this in favor of only prayer.

Keep in mind that how you raise your child affects everyone in your community and beyond. Homeschooling your child does not escape you from that reality. Homeschooling your child does not alleviate you from your responsibility to ensure your child is healthy and remains such, and that includes routine medical and dental exams and vaccinating on time (unless you have a justifiable medical reason for not doing so).

The only thing that homeschooling provides is a larger buffer to discovering any potential neglect.

Again the codified rules that children receive routine dental and medical exams do not violate parental rights, because you do not have a right to be derelict in ensuring your child is healthy. And in actuality, parents don’t really have rights anyway. They have duties and responsibilities, not just to their children, such as in ensuring the child is healthy, but in how they teach their children to interact with the rest of the world.