Free speech and press

Misconstruing free speech – #TrumpCup

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 0 Comment

On November 18, a woman named Sam Montgomery posted this to Twitter:

And when others rightly claimed this is a violation of virtually every health code in existence in the US, she tried to counter by calling her actions “free speech” (including parent tweets to show conversation):

Later, this person claimed to have been fired from Starbucks, and she apparently received enough attention that a reporter contacted her via Twitter to ask about an on-camera interview.

The profile says that she’s “Co-author of Stats Canada: Satire On A National Scale”, meaning she might be a Canadian resident (so obviously not living in Kentucky). She claimed to have worked at the Starbucks in Lexington, KY. And Lexington has several more than just one Starbucks. So which location allegedly previously employed her?

Now the truthfulness of the account of events is not material for discussion. We can discuss the situation as if it is a hypothetical.

Freedom of speech doesn’t mean a right to injure someone else. The old adage is the right to swing your fist ends at someone else’s nose. And spitting in someone else’s cup, or adulterating or modifying their drink in any other fashion, is an injury to them. An example of which is spiking someone’s drink without their knowledge and consent.

Setting aside the risks of communicable illness, spitting on or at someone has never been treated as an exercise of speech, but always as an act of aggression. And any claim to freedom of speech ends when that person exercised aggression toward someone else.

But then there’s the claim of persecution for beliefs by being fired for threatening to spit in customers’ cups. Again, spitting is an act of aggression. So you cannot claim persecution for the consequences of threatening aggression on someone. Especially if what preceded the threat is a genuine act of speech — regardless of what you might think, #TrumpCup is an exercise of free speech.

Let’s say a minority individual were to threaten me in a public place to put me into the emergency room (or worse) for what I say publicly. And in response, I pull my legal concealed pistol in response, regardless of whether I open fire. The person who threatened me cannot then claim persecution, since a threat of aggression is not speech, and any threat of aggression can be met with a threat of reasonable aggression in return.

After all, the anti-Trump protesters arrested in Portland, OR, aren’t claiming to be political prisoners. And to claim as an act of free speech threatening to or actually spitting in someone’s #TrumpCup, and to then claim persecution when fired for threatening such on social media, would also mean the Portland protesters are political prisoners.

Violence makes any act of speech prima facie illegitimate. Violence is not speech. Threating to or actually spitting in someone’s #TrumpCup is not speech. Violent protesters cannot claim to be political prisoners. Firing someone for threatening to spit in someone’s cup is not persecution.

10Gb network upgrade

10 gigabit (10Gb) home network – Part I

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 5 Comments
Build Log:

Right now my home network is entirely Gigabit — minus any wireless devices or laptops that are using “Fast Ethernet” (i.e. 100 Mbps). And the time has come to take that further.

My Google Fiber connection is near Gigabit full-duplex. My home network is largely spliced off into two zones to keep from running everything on one circuit in my apartment.

Zone 1 is the living room. Living out there are the NAS and a virtualization server along with the router. Everything is connected to an 850W UPS. Zone 2 is the computer room. Absinthe and Mira plus the entertainment center are plugged into a Gigabit switch connected to the router via a long Cat5e cable.

The virtualization server is a refurbished HP Z600 I bought from refurb.io. It has two Xeon E5520 processors with a 500GB HDD that I intend to upgrade to an SSD eventually. I use VMWare ESXi 6.0 since it’s free and works quite well. One of the VMs is a Plex server that mounts to shared folders on the NAS.

So there’s a lot of competition on the Gigabit connection, essentially throttling everything. Including our Internet connection. (Yes, I can already hear the sarcastic cries of sympathy…) Upgrading the network’s backbone is the only way to alleviate that.

A simple solution would be buying two Gigabit switches that have 10Gb SFP+ uplinks and just connecting those together. And while that would alleviate some of the bottlenecking on the network, there are other reasons to go with 10Gb.

First, I want to upgrade Mira and Absinthe to use 10Gb as well. While Mira has 4TB of supplemental storage (4x1TB on a RAID 0), Absinthe doesn’t have anything extra. So upgrading to 10Gb will allow her to use the NAS as supplemental storage without being limited to just Gigabit. This will become even more so after I fill out the last of the HDD bays in the NAS.

But storage speed is the primary reason to go 10Gb. Mira and Absinthe both have Samsung 950 PRO NVMe SSDs. And the RAID 0 supplemental storage on Mira is also limited when copying things to and from the NAS. And the NAS itself is limited by its onboard Gigabit connections as well. So everything on the network has the potential to see massive improvements by jumping to 10Gb.

Custom switches

There’s really only one way to do this while still controlling cost: a custom switch. (Update: At the time I wrote this, it was true from what I could find. But not anymore.)

Two zones in my network means two switches are planned. Zone 1’s switch will be happening first. This will provide a 10Gb connection between the NAS and virtualization servers while still exposing them to the rest of the network through a Gigabit connection to the router.

To that end, I’ve made an order through eBay for several 10GbE SFP+ cards:

The dual-port and one single-port Mellanox card will go into Zone 1’s switch. The onboard Gigabit connection plus 3x10Gb connections will be all that’s required. In the end, the Gigabit connection to the router will be the only connection to the router from the rest of the network.

The Chelsio S320 is for the NAS, which is running FreeNAS. Mellanox ConnectX-2 cards are not supported by FreeNAS, but the Chelsio S320 is supported since it has the Chelsio T3 chipset. If I was able to find a Chelsio S310 single-port card, I would’ve gone with that instead.

Now for cables. Virtually every 10Gb home networking tutorial I’ve seen online uses direct-attached, twin-axial SFP+ copper connections (10GSFP+Cu). In part I think ease is the reason. Direct-attached copper is easier to use since it’s like plugging in your standard RJ45 cables, just with big connectors on the end.

And it’s perfectly fine for short connections. Just bear in mind that passive 10GSFP+Cu is generally limited to 5m (a little over 16ft). Beyond that you need to use active cables, which are expensive, or optical fiber.

Which is what I’m using.

While the cost of optical fiber (10GBase-SR) is similar to passive 10GSFP+Cu at lesser lengths, optical fiber allows you to go beyond 5m without significant cost. And since I intend to connect two switches in two completely different rooms, 10GBase-SR is basically required for this to keep cost down.

While I could use 10GSFP+Cu for the connections in Zone 1, I can’t use it to connect Mira and Absinthe in Zone 2. The switch will be on the opposite side of the room from the computers, easily eating up the 5m length limit with little slack. So since I’ll have little choice but to use optical fiber for all 10Gb connections in Zone 2, and for connecting the Zone 1 and Zone 2 switches, I’m just going to use it for all 10Gb connections.

The transceivers linked above are just 16 USD each, and the two 1m cables were under 3 USD, giving a single 1m connection between two systems at just under 35 USD plus shipping. A Fiberstore representative also consulted with me to make sure I was ordering the right transceivers for my hardware before releasing the order for packing and shipping. I love that level of customer service. And she said the “generic” transceiver linked above is compatible with the Chelsio S320 and Mellanox ConnectX-2.

The cards were bought from three different sellers on eBay, shipped via three different couriers (one each via USPS, UPS, and FedEx), with three different scheduled delivery dates. The Fiberstore order shipped the day the Mellanox pair arrived. From China. Hence the 22 USD shipping charge.

So everything should arrive in time for the Thanksgiving long weekend.

First parts arrive

The pair of single-port Mellanox cards arrived first, and the Chelsio cards arrived the next day. I did a quick test on one of the cards to make sure they were detected without issue in a Windows 10 test system. And they got oddly warm while idling.

a4gh_1_20150913525279633

The Mellanox cards have passive heatsinks over their chips. While switching to active cooling would certainly help, provided I could find active cooling that would fit, I started with removing the heatsink. And I was not surprised by what I found: fractured thermal paste that barely stuck to the NIC chip. There was likely not much contact between the heatsink and chip.

Arctic MX-4 to the rescue!!! But the chip still got very hot even at idle. So active cooling is going to be a necessity, whether by placing a fan to blow onto the card or replacing its passive heatsink with active. I discovered a forum post that also mentioned the importance of cooling the SFP+ connector on the card, so something else to keep in mind.

So definitely keep in mind if you go this route that, since you’re buying surplus used NICs, you need to replace the thermal compound under any heatsinks and set up for active cooling. And make sure to use a good thermal compound like MX-4 or IC Diamond.

If you are considering replacing the passive heatsink with an active heatsink, I recommend the copper heatsinks by Enzotech. Just measure the mounting holes on your card to get one that will work.

The Chelsio card doesn’t have a removable heatsink on its main processor. Instead it’s attached with thermal glue, so don’t try to wrench it off. The seller also included two 10GBase-SR modules with my card: Finisar FTLX8571D3BCL.

Installing the cards into the NAS and virtualization machine were straightforward. Now it’s just a matter of waiting for everything else so I can build the switch and connect everything together.

That’s coming with the next part.

Politics

Post-election (willful) ignorance

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 0 Comment

Let’s start with these two:

  • “Will my marriage stay legal?”
  • “Will Roe v. Wade be overturned?”

Anyone who asks these questions obviously does not know how the Courts work. In the Supreme Court of the United States and virtually every other Court in the US (including State and local Courts) is a concept called stare decisis. This means “let the decision stand”. This concept goes by a different name of which most people are familiar: “precedent”.

While it would not be true to say that the Supreme Court has never reversed itself, it would also not be true to say it happens often. It is quite rare. And, in general, it requires presenting to the Court through a properly introduced case that the Court

  • had a demonstrable and/or egregious misinterpretation of standing law, precedent, or the Constitution (note the SCotUS is generally perceived to be the arbiter of its own precedent), or
  • has an unresolved conflict in is precedent history that is highlighted by a lower Court (see Ring v. Arizona, 538 US 584 (2000), for an example)

Not liking an outcome is not enough to get the Court to reverse itself.

Two cases come to mind where the Supreme Court has explicitly reversed itself: Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, and West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette. In both cases, the Supreme Court was nullifying standing precedent in favor of a completely different ruling.

In the former, the Supreme Court, under Chief Justice Earl Warren, oversaw the beginning of the dismantling of state-sponsored and state-enforced mandatory segregation that had been upheld under the “separate but equal” doctrine of Plessy v. Ferguson. In the latter, the Supreme Court overturned a ruling (Minersville School District v. Gobitis) that upheld compelling student recitation of the pledge of allegiance.

I think we can all agree that the overruled cases were egregious interpretations of the Constitution.

Roe v. Wade has stood the test of precedent since its publication. It has been strengthened by Planned Parenthood v. Casey in 1992, and most recently with Whole Women’s Health v. Hellerstedt. And the foundations on which Roe draws its reasoning comes from several other preceding opinions: Griswold v. Connecticut and its companion Eisenstadt v. Baird, and United States v. Vuitch.

And it must be pointed out that the respect of stare decisis is why Roe v. Wade has not only not been overturned, even in the face of a 5-4 “conservative” majority, but likely never will. And the same with Obergefell v. Hodges, which overturned and declared a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment the restriction of gays from being able to marry an adult partner of his or her choice.

If you honestly think a Trump presidency means those decisions, that long-standing precedent and the respect of stare decisis goes away, you’re not only deluded beyond the limits of what I’m capable of believing, you have no idea how things actually work.

The United States is a federated republic. The President is merely the presiding officer of the Executive Branch. He is not a dictator. The country does not bend to his whim. You would be thinking of North Korea.

But it does mean that DC v. Heller and McDonald v. Chicago also were largely not in danger of being overturned. Instead the fears of gun rights advocates wasn’t losing at the Supreme Court, but the constant, subtle chipping away at gun rights in the US. Such as what was seen with the various ballot initiatives this last go around. And Clinton’s constant reverence of Australia as a model for the US.

Speaking of Clinton, it also means that, despite her efforts, she would have been unlikely to get Citizens United v. FEC overturned as well.

  • “Are we safe?”
  • “Am I safe?”

The first question appeared three times in the image. Let me answer that question succinctly: we are no less safe today than we were last week before the election. Even taking into account the actual violent crimes that have occurred since the election, there is no reason to believe you are at any higher risk of being the victim of any crime, let alone any hate crime.

Yet paranoia is alive and well.

If you legitimately have concerns about your safety, you do have the right to own and possess a firearm for your personal safety — provided you do not fall under the ATF’s classification of “prohibited persons”. Buy one. And learn how to use it to defend yourself.

But at the same time, get over your paranoia.

The ones who are so concerned about their safety in the wake of Trump’s election I feel have the fear of having brought it on themselves. You see, prior to all the identity politics of the last several years, most couldn’t care less if you’re homosexual, transsexual, or what have you. We just didn’t care.

The only reason there’s been a backlash with regard to a lot of their demands is because you shoved your personal identities in our faces and acted like they mattered more than your actions, or acted like they excused your actions. If you felt emboldened by a black President and felt emboldened by the prospect of a female President, emboldened by the prospect of being able to shove more of your identity politics on us and the limitations to our free speech and due process rights that have come in their wake, then you have only yourself to blame for not only Trump’s victory, but your paranoia and anxiety in its wake.

And if you truly feel in fear of your life, time to swallow your discontent with the Second Amendment and exercise the rights it protects by buying a gun. Who knows, you might even grow to like being a gun owner.

  • “What’s going to happen to my Healthcare?”

In the short term, not much.

Many feel that Republicans just couldn’t wait to get that majority in Congress plus the White House to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Rest easy, though. Now that they have the reins, they’re not going to be so quick to do that. “But they voted xxx number of times before to repeal it.” And that was also when Republicans knew they had a snowball’s chance in hell of succeeding with the repeal. Now that a repeal has a much better chance of succeeding, they’re not going to be so quick about it.

And Trump has already said he’s not interested in a full repeal. Instead he wants to rework and retool the Act into something that will work better in the long term.

But much of what already exists is unlikely to change, or change much in the next few years.

  • “Will my trans child be safe at school?”

Trans child? If you’re asking this question legitimately, you are a rare parent indeed. Few children are capable of understanding gender dysphoria, the true definition of trans-sexuality, and any who do experience it won’t realize it until they hit puberty. Your child is very, very likely not on par with Kim Petras, Jazz Jennings, and Jackie Green.

But let’s set that aside for now.

Many fear that Trump supporters will be emboldened by his election to be downright tyrannical to minority groups and women. So far this has not manifested. And there’s little reason to believe it will.

The thing that needs to be kept in mind is that the kind of people who would feel emboldened to do such things by Trump’s election are the kind of people who would look for any excuse to do it anyway. In other words, your fears are largely overblown. This doesn’t mean you let your guard down, but it does mean you don’t walk through life constantly looking over your shoulder.

School, especially high school, can be a downright traumatizing place for some, especially given the absolute difficulty of curbing or countering bullying. But will bullying escalate against minorities — especially LGBT students — in the wake of Trump’s election? I’ve yet to see any reason to believe that to be the case.

And don’t fall for the fallacy and mental trap of believing that an increase in reporting or awareness means an increase in incidence.

  • “Will this increase the militarization of the police in my predominantly black neighborhood?”

I think you’ve forgotten the separation of powers between the Federal, State, and local governments. Trump’s presidency won’t increase the police presence anywhere unless he decides to step up enforcement of Federal laws in areas where Federal crimes are prevalent.

A new United States President largely won’t change how your local police operate.

 

Marriage and Relationships

Naming children

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 0 Comment

I love my mother-in-law, I really do. But her baby name choice, Esmeralda, was not, I repeat, not, anywhere near the top of my baby name list. She knew that, I knew that, and my wife knew that. And yet, my daughter’s name is Esmeralda. It was a surprise to me when I saw it on the birth certificate. I was so mad that I just went along with it. What was I supposed to do, argue with the woman who just brought life into this world?
— Antonio H.

To say the above quip made me angry would be an understatement. It’s from a slideshow on The Stir called “11 Moms & Dads Who Totally Regret Their Baby’s Name“. This is absolutely downright despicable behavior as well. It doesn’t matter if it was the wife or the mother-in-law who put the name on the birth certificate.

Naming your children should always be a partner agreement. Meaning if one of the two is completely opposed to a particular name, regardless of how much the other might “love” it, you don’t go with it. It doesn’t end up on the birth certificate in any capacity.

And if the name were to end up on the birth certificate, I’d consider it grounds for divorce. Because it shows that, for decisions that have such a long-term impact, you’re either unwilling to compromise or at the least are willing to be underhanded to get what you want.

At minimum, if I were in Antonio’s position, I’d be filing with the Court to get the birth certificate withdrawn. And absent that, I’d be looking at other options to get the name changed so we could come up with a name more to our joint agreement. And, again, if the mother were to contest, I’d consider it grounds for divorce.

It’s one thing if she is single, the father is out of the picture, and the woman is giving birth and raising the child on her own. But if she’s married, then the name must be a joint decision. No sneaking around. No subterfuge. No subversion.

If either sneaks a name onto the birth certificate and files it, especially if it’s a name the other parent has expressly opposed, again that’s grounds for divorce if they don’t go along with having the name changed. Because if you’re going to sneak around for something as supremely important as naming a child, it gives reason to not trust you on lesser decisions.

Absinthe

Another glass of absinthe — II

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 0 Comment

Build Log:

In the interim, the R9 290X was put back into the system and the GTX 1080 pulled and sent back to NewEgg on RMA. Unfortunately NewEgg didn’t send out the replacement till they had the original.

Replacing the R9 290X back into the system was as easy as pulling it out, thankfully: drain, remove the bulkhead fitting, remove the GTX 1080, seat the R9 290X, then screw the rotary fittings back into the R9’s water block. Then it was a matter of bleeding the system again.

New GTX 1080

And then doing it again with the replacement.

testbench1

testbench2

testbench3

This time to avoid complication, I had the replacement seated in an open system for easier testing without having to tear apart the loop. That’s an AMD A8-7600 system that had been running Einstein@Home on Linux for a while. It’ll be converted into another computing system for BOINC or Folding@Home later.

Thankfully this unit didn’t have the prohibitively loud coil whine. But I left it running for a while just to make sure, along with making sure it could handle the stress. When building Desert Sapphire last year, I had to RMA the original GTX 980 as it wouldn’t go into any 3D mode. Thankfully Amazon turned it around quickly.

Now while the coil whine wasn’t prohibitively loud, there is still some coil whine. There will always be coil whine. The question is the degree.

In Unigine Valley, it wasn’t noticeable, but in Heaven it was. When tessellation was turned on. Otherwise it wasn’t there.

1080_backplate

1080_block

I went with the Aquacomputer kryographics with the passive backplate. It’s the best line for power delivery cooling. Which is very important, especially when overclocking. I used it for the R9 290X for that reason, and also for the GTX 980 in Desert Sapphire.

To flush the loop, I used a technique similar to what JayzTwoCents used to flush his build: open the drain valve about half way, and then just keep flowing distilled water through the reservoir.

Though with the setup in Absinthe, that wasn’t nearly as easy as I would’ve liked. But it gave me a reason to buy another 5-gallon bucket and some more tubing from Home Depot. While I wouldn’t recommend the plumbing tubing from there for a loop, it works great for temporary uses. Ultimately I didn’t use it, merely because I wanted to ensure the fluid had a direct path from the drain valve to the bucket.

drain

Once it was drained it was a matter of swapping out the cards and bleeding the loop. Unfortunately I did have to make some tubing modifications — the fittings aren’t in exactly the same place as on the R9 290X, but it wasn’t much. But unfortunately bleeding the loop didn’t go as planned and one of the tubing actually popped out of one of the fittings, first spraying, then pouring the coolant out.

Needless to say that meant disassembling the entire system to clean things up and make sure the coolant didn’t spray onto something vital. Thankfully the mainboard and other components came out without much cleaning needed. The radiators were a different story, but then they really needed a cleaning anyway from being pretty well covered in dust.

Time to hit the showers!

I’ve read before of people trying to clean radiators by running water across them without much luck. That’s largely because the water pressure isn’t where it needs to be. If you really want to clean your radiators of dust, use the shower head. Better still, use a handheld. While you could also use a spray hose at the kitchen sink, bathroom shower heads and handhelds cover more area and have more pressure.

Plug the fitting openings with stop fittings first. Then just spray the water up and down and up and down the length of the radiator, spraying into all the little nooks as well. Use about the same temperature of water as you’d normally shower with — unless you’re one of those insane people who takes cold showers, in which case use warm water as that will help rinse away the dirt and dust better.

The thinner water jets on the shower head will get into the nooks and between the fins much better than just running it under a tap. Plus the higher pressure of the thinner jet can power away the dust much more efficiently. Just be sure to do this to both sides of the radiator to make sure you get everything, especially if you’re cleaning 45mm or thicker radiators.

You’ll notice as you’re doing this that the water will cling to the fins like honey to honeycomb. You’ll need to give a couple swift downward shakes to get the bulk of the water out of the fins. Then set the radiators on towels to dry, preferably overnight.

The result?

They look practically brand new now except for some minor paint wear. If only I could do this with the fans. Next time I tear this system apart, I’ll have to see about doing that to the chassis. I could swear I took pictures of the clean radiators, but apparently never did…

Reinstalling everything

With the radiators rinsed and the rest of the coolant cleaned up out of the chassis and off all the components, it was now a matter of putting the whole thing back together. The fittings and tubing pieces were rinsed in distilled water first to ensure they were clean.

I used this as a chance to make some minor changes to the loop layout — flipping the CPU block and some other minor tubing changes. It also gave a good chance to refresh the thermal paste. I saw from removing the block that I didn’t have as even of a spread as I would’ve liked.

I needed to redo the cabling anyway as the GTX 1080 needed only one PCI-Express power cable. And then once it was all assembled, it was a matter of bleeding the loop, then turning it back over to my wife after doing some temperature testing.

absinthe

Accounting/Debt

Integrating budgeting and accounting with GnuCash

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 0 Comment

gnc-download

There are a lot of approaches to budgeting and personal financial management, it seems. Some are rather complicated, while others make you wonder whether their advocates actually practice what they preach (*cough* *cough* Dave Ramsey *cough*).

I use GnuCash for managing my personal finances. It is a completely free, open source application available for the three major desktop platforms — Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. As of the time I write this, it is not available on any mobile platforms, though you can run it on a Windows-enabled tablet such as the Microsoft Surface (in my case, the Toshiba WT8-B).

To use the system I describe herein, you need to be familiar with GnuCash and double-entry accounting, which is well beyond the scope of this article, and I will assume that if you keep reading beyond this point that you are familiar with both concepts.

Some of the concepts described herein can likely be applied to other personal accounting systems, such as envelope budgeting and paycheck budgeting.

“Envelope budgeting” with GnuCash

“Envelope budgeting” is simple: divide your income into separate envelopes and spend from those envelopes. Dave Ramsey advocates using physical envelopes with physical cash. And many other advocates of “envelope budgeting” say the same. But “cash only” tends to mean different things. For example, a “cash only” clinic is one that does not accept insurance of any kind. And my spending is “cash only” in the sense that I rarely use credit cards anymore.

You implement “envelope budgeting” with GnuCash by using its concept of “sub-accounts” — do a Google search for “GnuCash envelope budgeting” (without quotes) to find articles on it. When you receive your paycheck, you would split the income into the various sub-accounts. Divide the income by splitting the transaction1See section 4.2.2 of the GnuCash manual, or by moving the money through separate transactions. I prefer the latter as it makes later adjustments a lot easier.

If you practice zero-sum budgeting (often erroneously called “zero-based budgeting” by many, including Dave Ramsey), your entire paycheck is split off into sub-accounts. Expenses fitting those budget categories would come out of the sub-accounts, and you’d use transfer transactions to move cash between those envelopes as needed.

You can still reconcile transactions against your bank account doing this — check “Include sub-accounts” when reconciling.

Most envelope budgeting systems go on an ever-running basis or on a monthly period. I prefer paycheck budgeting combined with envelope budgeting. And I believe, based on my own practice, that is the optimal budgeting and financial management setup.

Paycheck budgeting

Most budgeting systems use a one-month cycle. Indeed every budget system or application I’ve seen locks you to a one-month cycle. For paycheck budgeting, your budget period is the pay period instead of a set calendar month. It is a lot easier to manage your money when budgeting only on the pay period.

Organizing expenses is easier when your pay cycle is semi-monthly or monthly. Your employer pays you on the same days of the month (or thereabout) and your bills are due on the same days of the month. Ongoing organization is necessary if you are paid weekly or bi-weekly, as your paydays are always changing.

Regardless paycheck budgeting forces you to organize your expenses. Create a spreadsheet showing your monthly bills, including the due day and amount owed. Include in that the day your credit card accounts issue a statement. This will be necessary to create future budgets.

Create budgets for several months at a time — at least one fiscal quarter if not an entire fiscal half. This allows you to balance expenses across pay periods. You’ll want to account for expenses such as pre-orders, property tax payments, and other anticipated expenses. If you are paid weekly or bi-weekly, this helps avoid having pay periods with a lot of money available and others with little available.

Paycheck “envelope” budgeting

To combine paycheck budgeting with envelope budgeting, you’re basically creating an envelope for each pay period, then envelopes inside that envelope for budgeting categories:

  • Checking account
    • Pay period – 2015-05-22
      • Bills
      • Gasoline
      • Loan payments
      • Lunch

Let’s start with an example. Let’s say that you, the reader, are a single person living in Kansas City, Missouri, making $50,000 annually and paid bi-weekly with no additional deductions beyond the requisite taxes — gross pay would be 1923.08, and net pay after deductions is 1417.33.

Based on the spreadsheet you made earlier, let’s say the expenses that overlap with this paycheck are

  • Rent: 675.00
  • Power bill: 75.00
  • Wireless: 65.00
  • Netflix: 7.99
  • Hulu Plus: 7.99
  • Student loan: 200.00

New paycheck

When a new payday arrives and the paycheck is direct deposited into my checking account, I’ll set up a new budget account as a child to the bank account:

Creating new budget account

Account tree

and add the initial deposit. I typically track taxes and other paycheck deductions in separate expense accounts — in part due to the 401(k) I have through my work — but for simplicity, I’ll only do the net income for this deposit.

Paycheck deposit

From here I’ll start making allocations. You should’ve noticed from above that the pay period account has two additional child accounts: “Anticipated expenses” and “Pending expenses”. Allow me to explain these categories.

Anticipated and pending expenses

Most who use a financial management system are familiar with cleared and un-cleared expenses. I’ll be discussing three kinds of expenses: anticipated, pending and confirmed. These are not expense types that GnuCash enforces in any way, but categories I imposed on myself.

  • Anticipated expenses are expenses you anticipate will be charged to your bank account during the pay period. These could be obligations that fall within the pay period, pre-orders that may deliver during that time, and anything else you can reasonably “anticipate”.
  • Pending expenses are expenses you have already initiated with the recipient — checks in the mail, EFTs waiting to be acknowledged by the bank, and so on — but haven’t yet been deducted from your bank account balance. I classify expenses that will be automatically charged to my bank account as pending expenses as opposed to anticipated because I don’t have to do anything to initiate payment.
  • Confirmed expenses are expenses that the bank has deducted from your account balance, whether they have “cleared” or not. These are the only expenses that target an Expense account.

The progression of expenses goes anticipated to pending to confirmed. Debit card payments will likely hit your bank account immediately and deduct from the available balance, so while those payments are initially anticipated, they will target the appropriate expense account when started with the recipient.

By keeping track of expenses in these three categories, you can keep the balance that GnuCash displays for the “Checking account” account in synchronization with the balance reported by your bank while also keeping track of what you have spent. Transactions that target the Anticipated or Pending expenses envelope accounts don’t deduct from the total balance for the checking account. That balance is only affected when the expense targets a separate expense account. But they do deduct from the balance of the pay period envelope, which is what matters.

Let’s illustrate by setting up the anticipated expenses for this paycheck.

Anticipated expenses

The current balance of this envelope account, 311.35, I refer to simply as “discretionary” — money not allocated toward anything else, so I can allocate it elsewhere if I want, or I can spend it freely. In zero-sum budgeting you would set up additional child accounts similar to the Gasoline account to allocate funds toward those other spending categories such that either no money would be going into the main pay period envelope, or the remaining “discretionary” would be allocated to spending categories instead of left like this.

In general you’d want to allocate funds for expenses you can reasonably anticipate. Gasoline is a good example. I have two SUVs — an Equinox and a Santa Fe. The Santa Fe tends to get filled up only once per pay period, while the Equinox gets filled up twice, and I can approximate how much I’d need to allocate for gasoline based on that.

Let’s look at the account page after this.

Anticipated expenses - Accounts

As you can tell, the Total for the “Checking account” is still the same as the initial deposit. That is simply because it is showing the sum total of all sub-accounts underneath it along with whatever balance might exist in that account — currently for this example, it’s zero.

Initially all of these transactions are listed as “anticipated”. Neflix and Hulu auto-bill, so I’ll change those to “pending” pretty much right away — I might even list them as “pending” instead of anticipated when making the initial entries. Then I’ll pay the remaining bills. The power bill, student loan, and rent are paid by EFT — electronic funds transfer — so those transactions get changed to target the “Pending expenses” account so I know those are payments that have been made but that haven’t yet been initiated with the bank, transactions for which I don’t need to do anything more. If I’d written a check for any of these payments, they would have targeted “Pending expenses” as soon as the check was dropped in the mail.

The wireless bill I pay through my debit card, so it targets the appropriate expense account immediately.

Bills paid

And looking at the Accounts page, we can see that the balance of the checking account has gone down slightly, because of the AT&T Wireless expense. If this were a real checking account with online access, the online balance would reflect that AT&T Wireless has already been acknowledged by the bank while everything else won’t be till the next business day at the earliest.

Bills paid - Accounts

Within the next several business days, the remaining pending transactions will be initiated with the bank, and so I’ll change them to target the appropriate account. Note how the student loan payment targets a Loan account. This is because I follow the standard accounting guidelines for accounting for outstanding loans — i.e. loan payments are not an “expense”.

Clearing pending expenses

Looking at the Accounts page:

Clearing pending expenses - Accounts

Now the bank account balance has dropped a bit more. This is because now the expenses are targeting the Expense account. If I were to log into this bank account online, the reported balance should match. But the entire time the “discretionary” never changed — though it would have if additional expenses were added. So as long as spending stayed within that $311.35, you would be fine and would not be at risk of overdrawing your bank account.

Now during the course of the pay period there will be other expenses, of course. Each expense deducts from the “discretionary” balance, so it is important to list all known anticipated transactions up front as shown above so you will know how much you will have available to spend as you saw fit.

Sealing the envelope

At the end of the pay period, zero out the pay period account in a way similar to how you’d zero out the income and expense accounts. You can still do this if you have transactions targeting the “Pending expenses” envelope as the totals would be unaffected.

In all of the sub-accounts for allocations — in our case, just the gasoline account — zero-out the account to the pay period account. If the final balance of the pay period account is still in the black, congratulations, you’ve ended up with a surplus. If it is in the red, this means you spent more than your paycheck and have a deficit. Obviously you want to avoid deficits as much as possible and have as many surpluses as possible, and have those surpluses be as large as possible.

Now zero out the pay period account to the “Checking account” account such that the balance of that account reflects how much surplus cash you have just sitting in the bank not really going anywhere or doing anything. Pay period deficits deduct from this balance while pay period surpluses add to it, and you’ll want to add to it as much as possible and avoid deducting from it where you can.

Obviously there will be times where you’ll need to “tap into” your surplus cash. Things will come up, and my wife and I have had to tap into our surplus before. But it shouldn’t be a habit, and you shouldn’t make excuses to do it either. That surplus is your personal profit, and you want to maximize it by keeping your expenses lower than your income. You can generate a Cash Flow report (Reports->Income & Expense->Cash Flow) to see how well you are managing this. The Liabilities Over Time graph report (Reports->Assets & Liabilities->Liability Barchart) will show the progression of your liabilities for whatever range you specify. You’ll want to keep that on a downward trend as much as possible.

Note as well that you will still want to zero out the Income and Expense accounts to Income Summary, then zero out Income Summary to Net Worth (also called Retained Earnings). Do this at the end of every pay period as well, as this is part of standard accounting practice.

Savings envelopes

Along with having the envelopes for your pay periods, you may also want to have envelopes for certain savings targets. I’ll use myself as an example. I have an espresso maker. It’s a decent one but I have my heart set on a better one.

To set aside that money, I have another envelope account under the “Checking account” account called “Espresso machine fund”. Periodically I will add money to it. It’s still under the “Checking account” account, so the total balance showed on the Accounts page reflects that money, but any money I add to it counts against the discretionary for a pay period, but does not count for or against any surplus cash I have in the bank.

The purchase will come out of that fund account — I won’t move the money to a pay period account before accounting for an expense.

Here’s a little trick.

If you have a particular saving goal, create a sub-account for the fund and call it “Target amount”. If you’re saving for specific expenses, call it “Anticipated expenses”. Now create a transaction entry to transfer the target amount to the sub-account. If you’re saving up for specific expenses, then you’d create an entry for each expense you anticipate — hence the “Anticipated expenses” account.

target-amount

Doing this doesn’t affect the balance of the “Checking account” account. But it will show you how much more you need to save to meet your goal by putting the balance in the red. If the account ends up over-funded, or you take advantage of a deal that allows you to spend less than you anticipated, the remainder would be moved to the cash surplus, the current pay period account, or another saving fund.

Making it work

There aren’t really any hard and fast rules for this system beyond what double-entry accounting requires — and what GnuCash directly enforces. And that, I feel, is the one advantage to what I was able to develop over time: I didn’t follow anyone else’s rules. I don’t adhere to zero-sum budgeting (or zero-based budgeting, if that’s what you call it) and the rather strict rules that come with it.

For me the above is a system that evolved over time, not something I just adopted out of the blue. I didn’t just wake up one day and say “I’m going to do this”. I started with something smaller and worked into what I currently have. It’s one of the reasons it has worked well for me. I could see quite plainly what changes worked and what did not, what changes added value and what did not.

Splitting things out into anticipated and pending expenses was more about having an immediate check on everything. Does the balance calculated in GnuCash match the balance reported by the bank? And I’m checking that balance several times per day as well to keep things up to date. If there are any transactions that don’t look familiar, I’m forced to look into it (and possibly interrogate my wife) to get things back into balance.

I’m also doing the same with the credit cards, since I do have transactions that auto-bill to them. I want to make sure the balances and transactions in GnuCash match what is listed by the bank and credit card companies. And staying on top of your bank account balance is the best way to avoid overdrafts and get ahead.

Conclusions and Takeaways

If you want to get ahead financially, you need to be spending less than your income. And the best way to make it so your spending can be less than your income is to plan out your expenses versus your income using paycheck budgeting. If you’re not doing that, you leave yourself open to having to borrow or put expenses on credit cards to keep from overdrawing your checking account and paying late fees.

This doesn’t mean you avoid debt entirely, as leveraging credit — such as deferred interest deals — can also help you get into a better financial position, provided you plan for it properly.

I’ve been using paycheck budgeting for the last six years, but I wasn’t budgeting in the full sense of the word, but merely using a spreadsheet to organize obligations against pay periods. Even doing that allowed me to predict months in advance when I would be able to pay off debt accounts and plan to make those pay-offs — a great feeling, to say the least, when you’re climbing out of a massive chasm of debt created by a lengthy unemployment. Loans were paid off in advance, credit card and collections accounts zeroed out.

We were gaining ground, even despite additional liabilities coming onto us in the interim — my wife’s inpatient surgery followed by several outpatient surgeries, parts replacements on the car, and so on.

We got to a point where we were able to buy a used SUV from my mother-in-law for cash split into several payments, while also helping a friend pay off a several-hundred dollar balance on a veterinary bill. Now it helps that we have the income we enjoy, and most households may not be able to get to that point, but you should get to a point where you are making gains instead of feeling like you’re just treading water.

Most importantly, though, keeping those gains requires maintaining the kind of self control that otherwise allows you to make those gains to begin with. It only takes one day, one lapse in self control, to undo any gains you make. Trust me when I say that seeing the cushion of cash (“surplus”) we have just sitting in the bank is quite tempting — I can think of a number of things I could do with that, and so can my wife.

I’ve been using the above-described system for over two years, and I still have a spreadsheet for keeping obligations organized. Along with allowing us to create and meet saving goals, we’ve managed to create a decent surplus as well — though not as large as I’d like it to be, but we’re getting there. But we are ahead financially and gaining more ground each pay period.

More importantly, we stopped lying to ourselves. The financial system showed us the full scope of our situation.

References[+]

Politics

Referendum on the left

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 0 Comment

I knew from the outset that Trump would win Kansas last night. So my vote really didn’t really matter in the grand scheme of who would carry the night. Only eight times since becoming a State in 1861 has Kansas not voted Republican: 1892 (James B. Weaver), 1896 (William Jennings Bryan), 1912 and 1916 (Woodrow Wilson), 1932 and 1936 (FDR), and 1964 and 1968 (LBJ).

So voting for Gary Johnson was more of a protest vote than anything else. And I joined my wife and almost 4 million people in the United States to vote for him. That along with the more than 1 million votes for Jill Stein shows that many are fed up with the Democrats and Republicans. And over 5 million of us were at least brave enough to cast our vote to say that.

But the Republicans being handed not just the White House with Donald Trump, but retaining the Senate and House shows that the American people have had enough of the Democrats. And not just the Democrats, but everything the left has come to represent. The people are just sick of it.

Identity politics has become front and center in the US. In 2008 we were told that if you didn’t vote for Obama, then you’re racist — I voted for McCain that year. In 2012 we were told the same — I voted for Gary Johnson. This year we were told that voting for Trump or supporting him made you a Nazi sympathizer, racist, homophobic, transphobic, Islamophobic, sexist, and all other kinds of nasty labels that the left hoped would scare people away from voting for Trump and toward voting for Clinton. After all, you wouldn’t want to be known for being those things, right?

They forgot one key rule, though. The more you call someone those things, the less sting they have over time. You build up an immunity to it.

I’ve been called those things for years. Ever since Atheism+ first arrived on the scene over four years ago and lines were drawn in the sand within atheism’s supporters and activists. This was my first foray into social justice activism and my first encounters with social justice warriors. Seeing what that did to people who I initially considered rational and reasonable, I could see the poison eating away at everyone else.

Battle lines were drawn. Around race. Sexuality. Gender expression. Identities became more important than attitudes and actions. People who largely couldn’t care less about someone else’s race, sexuality, or gender expression found themselves caring simply because of those who made it a point to push that on us.

Like a battle-hardened physician who has seen diseases many of us wish never existed, many of us have seen what happens when social justice activism festers within communities. And when their opportunity came to put one of their own in the White House, we struck back.

The results of that occurred last night.

They forgot that the vast majority of people actually care about basic liberties. They want their freedom of speech to be unencumbered, even supporting the Supreme Court when they ruled in favor of the Westboro Baptist Church. They don’t like the idea of the government encroaching on gun rights the way that Hillary Clinton and her camp promised they would with their continual references to Australia.

They also forgot that many distrust the media to the point where they’d do their own fact checking. And that is where social justice activism goes to die.

Indeed social justice activists continually spread lies. I saw it in the atheist communities before they hit the general body politic at large. Victim politics became the name of the game, or as I’ve seen it described elsewhere, the “Oppression Olympics”. And while competing for the gold, trying to guilt and shame the rest of us into submitting to a reduction in rights by labeling as “hate speech” virtually anything we said that didn’t align with their beliefs.

Now that they have failed to get one of their own in the White House, many have threatened riots. Because infantile and immature people throw tantrums at not getting their way.

And to answer Van Jones in asking how to explain Trump’s victory to your children, it’s quite simple: you tell them the truth.

But telling them the truth requires you to accept the overwhelming lies that the left has been telling. Not just about Trump. Not just about Republicans. But about the People of the United States of America in general. The left has tried to spin a narrative wherein, in short, the United States has either had virtually no social progress since the 1950s, or has reverted back to the 1950s.

Polls were manipulated. The Democrat Party did everything within their power, regardless of whether it was within the boundaries of ethics or legality, to push the election the direction they wanted it to go. But the people wouldn’t bite.

So instead now the left will likely continue lying. They will write articles and opinion pieces about how the United States has basically reverted back to the 1950s. And how we’ve become like the Weimar Republic to paint Trump as basically America’s version of Adolf Hitler. Which has basically been their modus operandi for the least year or more.

They’ll continue to call the tens of millions of people who voted for Trump the various little words they’ve been employing since it became clear that Trump will be the Republican nominee. They’ll basically demonize half the country for not getting their way. And I don’t buy for a moment that the Huffington Post will “start [over] with a clean slate” in covering Trump.

The game has proven profitable for them with regard to political capital. And they’ll play it for as long as they still can.

What would actually surprise me is if all of that ends. If we all stop dehumanizing everyone else over petty things. If we all just live and let live.

White Lightning

Another build project – White Lightning

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 0 Comment

Another project is now in progress, sort of. Just as Desert Sapphire was a build for one of my wife’s friends, this build will be for another of her friends. Speaking of Desert Sapphire, that one is coming due for maintenance in the coming months, so stay tuned.

This build will also be happening in two phases.

The client’s current system is a rather atrocious system that she bought from a rent-to-own place while she was still married. From what I know of the specifications, they are:

  • AMD E1-1500 APU
  • 16GB DDR3 RAM
  • 500GB HDD

The APU is a dual-core running at 1.48GHz with a Radeon HD 7310 as the embedded GPU. It was made for laptops and netbooks, but some computer makers (e.g. HP) have also used it in cheap desktop systems. The system initially came with 4GB but was eventually upgraded to 16GB.

Time to change that. But right now I can’t afford to buy much in the way of hardware, so I’m going with something I have readily lying around. Just to give her something relatively right away that’s much better than the current setup.

Not the AMD FX-8350 that I recently pulled from β Ori when upgrading to Mira. That chip will be repurposed for something else. Instead she’ll be getting another APU, but one that’s a hell of a lot more powerful.

The A8-7600 is a quad-core processor clocked at 3.1GHz, boost to 3.8GHz, so it will be able to run circles around the current system. It’s the APU I initially intended for Colony West and initially tried to use for Colony West with mixed results.

Given the system will be used primarily for World of Warcraft, or at least that’s the most stressful thing that will be run on this, I also decided to strap the stock cooler back onto one of the GTX 660s I have and put that in the system. It’ll perform significantly better than the integrated GPU, and according to Game-Debate.com, brings the system well above recommended requirements for Warcraft while also keeping power requirements lighter than if I used a GTX 680.

But I needed a few other things. The idea here is to create a setup that will be upgraded in the next phase.

The little sister to the H440 is what I selected. And to be a little different, I went with the white version. And it’s a gorgeous little case, and at 65 USD it was a bargain too given what NZXT gives you. And I loved building into it as well. Cable management capability was the best of any chassis I’ve used thus far. Only downside: no reset button. Seriously, NZXT?

Along with that, the chassis doesn’t have any active cooling across the 3.5″ HDD bays, which are out of the way under the power supply shroud with no way to even provide active cooling. Now the trend away from HDDs and toward SSDs for typical storage reflects this, with the larger H440 available for those who want to use HDDs along with or instead of SSDs, like what I have in Mira. With that, I decided against an HDD — I considered a spare 500GB drive I had laying around, but felt it’d get too hot in that location. So instead I’m throwing in a spare M.2 Samsung 850 EVO mounted inside a Startech.com M.2 to SATA enclosure.

Now the savvy reader might know that the mainboard doesn’t provide SATA III connections, only SATA II. And I was alerted to this when first attempting to run Samsung Magician. So to give it full, or nearly full, SATA III bandwidth, I have it plugged into a SIIG SC-SA0R11-S1 that I had lying around.

To kind of give an idea of the direction of the next phase, I selected the Corsair H115i to provide for overkill cooling for the APU, while remaining more than adequate for the next phase. In previous observations I found an H60, which is a single-120mm radiator, can keep the APU under 40C under full load without struggling. The H115i, which is a dual-140mm radiator, won’t have any difficulties at all.

The power supply was a toss-up. I wanted something quiet, preferably full modular. While 80+ Bronze rated PSUs would’ve saved a little money, I wanted at least Gold. And I opted for the EVGA 650 G2. For the planned parts, it’ll provide more than enough power under full load.

The power supply and AIO were ordered through Amazon (here and here) at a much, much lower price compared to Micro Center. There wasn’t much saving attempting to buy the chassis online, so it was bought locally.

So even though the first phase is not something to write home about, it’s still significantly better than the original system.

20161024_184635

The next phase will be in December.

Politics

Opposing Hillary

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 0 Comment

Saying to someone “vote for Hillary, you racist, misogynist, transphobic, homophobic bigot!” isn’t going to convince people…

When Hillary’s supporters play the identity politics game we’ve seen constantly played since 2008 (and to some extent before that), is it no surprise that Trump has the support he does? People are sick of the identity politics, especially when it’s played in complete contradiction of facts!

Many point out that Trump has a lot of support from whites. And the reason is because Trump isn’t telling them that they’re responsible for all the world’s ills. Hillary’s supporters and the social justice warriors that make up the bulk of her most vocal supporters and surrogates constantly tell me and people like me that we’re “the problem”. If only I’d just renounce my cisgender hetero-normative straight white male upper-middle class “privilege” — all the while having to dodge being constantly called racist, misogynist, transphobic, homophobic, and classist….

And you wonder why they support Trump?

Cracked actually did an article that outlines in quite stark contrast why many support Trump, even if they don’t think he’s the best thing since sliced bread. It starts by pointing out that Democrat support is actually quite concentrated in a relatively small land area compared to Republican support. Those people living in largely rural areas and small towns don’t like being told by urban elites in their ivory towers how to live. They don’t like those urban elites and arrogant SJW jackasses looking down their noses at them while telling them that they’re “the problem”, that they’re all racists and homophobes when mostly people out in those small towns and rural areas couldn’t care less about your race or sexual orientation so long as they don’t have to keep hearing about it all the time.

And they support Trump because Trump seems like he’ll actually direct some relief toward the rural areas that’ve been hit the hardest since the 2008 recession and have yet to see any meaningful recovery, rather than being blamed for everything that’s wrong in the United States.

Abortion

Aborting black babies

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 0 Comment

One idea commonly parroted by those who are anti-abortion or “pro-life” is the idea that the “abortion industry” is targeting minorities, particularly blacks. It is certainly a persistently pressed idea, and there are entire organizations that exist just to perpetuate this claim. Indeed an entire organization exists saying that abortion is “black genocide”.

And when you have an agenda and you find facts that can be twisted to be in support of that agenda, it is easy to take things a little too far and say things that are not true. I’m certainly guilty of this myself, though I feel I’ve been getting better at this over time.

Now anyone who thinks that abortion is a black and white issue (no pun intended) is not thinking things through. It is a complicated issue with many different facets. But all ideas originate somewhere, and I believe this idea is derived from several claims.

Claim #1: Black women have more abortions

The first claim is simply this: the abortion rate among minorities is significantly higher than among whites. After all, if this were not the case, the “pro-life” crowd would not have any leg to stand on with regard to the general idea that the so-called “abortion industry” is targeting minorities.

Earlier in 2016 the Guttmacher Institute published a revision to their “Facts on Induced Abortion in the United States” report showing the demographics of abortion patients for 2014. The breakdown on abortion rates by race shows this:1Jerman J, Jones RK and Onda T, Characteristics of U.S. Abortion Patients in 2014 and Changes Since 2008, New York: Guttmacher Institute, 2016, www.guttmacher.org/report/characteristics-us-abortion-patients-2014.

So black women account for about 28% of all abortions. That’s a pretty big number given that according to census reports, those who are black account for approximately 12.6% of the population according to the 2010 census.2Humes, Karen R., et. al. “Overview of Race and Hispanic Origin: 2010“. (2011, March). And if we presume an even distribution of men and women, that means that 28% of abortions are obtained by 12.6% of women.

According to the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, here are the various pregnancy statistics for all women in the United States for 2008 (per 1,000 women aged 15 to 44 years old):3Ventura, Stephanie J., et. al. (2012, June 20). “Estimated Pregnancy Rates in the United States, 1990-2008: An Update“. National Vital Statistics Report (60):7.

Overall about 18.4% of all pregnancies in 2008 were terminated via abortion. The lowest abortion rate is among white women, with about 1 in 8 pregnancies being terminated. Next lowest is the rate among Hispanic women, with a little over 17% of pregnancies being terminated. And the rate among blacks is the highest, with approximately 36% of pregnancies being terminated, over 1 in 3.

Looking at the overall numbers between racial groups, we can see that the abortion rate for Hispanics is about 2.5x that of white women, while the abortion rate for black women is almost double that of Hispanic women and almost 5x that of white women. This despite the fact the pregnancy rate for black women isn’t even double that of white women — 144.3 and 87.5 per 100,000 respectively. What could explain that disparity?

That question will be addressed later.

Claim #2: Most abortion clinics are in “black neighborhoods”

The second claim that is commonly provided by anti-abortion organizations is the idea that the majority of abortion clinics are in areas predominantly patronized or occupied by blacks, so-called “black neighborhoods”.  The Guttmacher Institute recently evaluated this claim and published a report on it.4Dreweke, Joerg. (January 2011). “Claim that Most Abortion Clinics are Located in Black Neighborhoods Is False“. They summarize the claim as

Antiabortion activists often claim that most abortion clinics are located in predominantly black neighborhoods. However, this claim—offered as supposed proof that abortion providers “target” African-American women—is never documented.

According to the report, a majority of clinics providing abortion services are located in areas or neighborhoods predominantly occupied by non-Hispanic whites. Here’s the breakdown based on which ethnicity accounts for the majority of the population in a given area around the clinic:

So 15% of clinics are in neighborhoods or areas where there is a significant mix of ethnicities within the population. These clinics could be in non-residential areas as well, but most clinics are in areas where the population is dominated by non-Hispanic whites.

Claim #3: Cascading argument – Abortion = racism, eugenics

This last claim I’m going to call the “cascading” argument because the argument starts with several premises and results in a conclusion, the conclusion being the argument that is attempted. The argument can typically be phrased as this: Planned Parenthood performs more abortions than any other abortion provider, Planned Parenthood was founded by Margaret Sanger, Margaret Sanger supported eugenics, eugenics called for the extermination of blacks and other “lesser” races, therefore abortion is racist or a form of eugenics.

I’m unsure if this is circular reasoning or an attempt to make a slippery slope argument, but that’s a technicality that is immaterial. This argument basically asks or demands the person hearing it to accept the argument without knowing all the applicable facts. The connection seems reasonable on the outset, but breaks down under scrutiny with only a modicum of critical thinking.

Planned Parenthood was founded by Margaret Sanger. Planned Parenthood started as a small birth control clinic in 1916. At the time, dispensing birth control was a crime in the State of New York, and in much of the United States, and Sanger was jailed for doing so. The clinic was reorganized in 1921 to be a member of the newly-formed American Birth Control League, which was organized at the First American Birth Control Conference in New York City that year, but was officially incorporated under the laws of New York in 1922.

In 1942 the league reorganized to become the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and it is one of the most familiar names in women’s reproductive health services.

Margaret Sanger was a supporter of eugenics, but so were a lot of people 100 years ago. Like slavery, eugenics was once a popular idea that is now seen as abhorrent. Many have accused that Charles Darwin was a supporter of eugenics by way of his published theory of evolution, but the concept of eugenics originated with Darwin’s cousin, Sir Francis Galton, and Darwin wanted nothing to do with it and did not support the idea at all. Eugenics is a bastardization of the concepts inherent to Darwin’s concept of evolution. Its most prominent practitioner was easily Adolf Hitler, though the concept was supported by the likes of Winston Churchill, Theodore Roosevelt, John Maynard Keynes (after whom is named Keynesian economics), and George Barnard Shaw.

The concept of eugenics is in wide practice today, just not on human populations. Instead eugenics is practiced with animal populations, especially that of horses, cattle, dogs, and cats, among others. Basically wherever artificial controls are exerted over the act of reproducing – i.e. by controlling with whom a subject mates or even employing artificial insemination – you have a form of eugenics.

But while Sanger was a eugenicist, one has a lot of evidence to uncover to support the idea that abortion is either inherently racist or a form of eugenics. For starters, the medical concept of induced abortion predates much of modern medicine and the concept of eugenics by millennia, with the earliest evidence of induced abortions being dated back to 1550 BC in Egypt.5Potts, Malcolm; Martha Campbell (2009). “History of Contraception”. Glob. libr. women’s med..DOI:10.3843/GLOWM.10376. ISSN 1756-2228. The Chinese practiced it as far back as 500 BC, but Chinese folklore dates abortions back approximately 5,000 years.6History of abortion. (2012, June 28). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 19:01, July 28, 2012

All of this being true, Sanger’s views on eugenics are immaterial to the modern practice of abortion. The two are not and cannot be linked. This is especially true given that overall, based on raw numbers, the plurality of abortions are not obtained by blacks, but by whites, as explained in the evaluation of the first claim. It’s about like finding one person at a technology company who is a member of the KKK and then saying the entire organization is racist as a result. Talk about a leap of faith, to say the least.

Further Sanger’s focus was on birth control, not abortion. Sanger’s own writings show that she did not support abortion, calling it a “disgrace to civilization”7Sanger, Margaret. (1920). Contraception or Abortion? In Women and the New Race (p 120). New York: Truth Publishing Company. and saying that birth control was a “cure for abortions”8Gray, p 280, citing 1916 edition: Sanger, Margaret (1917). Family Limitation. p. 5..

Intermission

One point I want to make very, very clear: I am not arguing in favor of abortion, only trying to counter one of the loudest claims made by those who vehemently oppose abortion – basically putting the numbers to the claim to see if there is any merit to it. Fronting a claim that has not been demonstrated to be true just because it sounds good is dishonest, and plenty of people on the pro-life side of this debate are dishonest. This is not to say that there is no one among those considered “pro-choice” that is dishonest as there very likely are.

But let’s summarize the three claims above.

The percentage of abortions obtained by blacks exceeds their representative proportion in the population of the United States, with the former being about twice the latter, and the rate of abortions based on population among blacks is about 5x that among whites.

This does not, on it’s own, mean that the abortion industry is targeting minorities. It’s a disingenuous explanation: blacks are having abortions at a higher rate, so the abortion industry must be targeting blacks.

Further, the pregnancy rate among blacks exceeds the overall pregnancy rate of whites by a significant margin. This alone leans very heavily upon the real explanation of why the abortion rate among blacks is so high. More pregnancies means there will be more abortions. But is it really that simple? Not quite. As we shall see when I attempt to explain in detail why the abortion rate among blacks is much higher.

At this point, being honest requires us to dismiss the claim that the abortion providers are targeting blacks. There is no evidence to support it. While there is evidence suggesting it – such as the vastly higher abortion rate – that evidence has alternate explanations and does not support the claim in exclusion of other possibilities. Unless there is hard evidence that minorities are being targeted directly by abortion providers, that claim must be dismissed.

From here, let us proceed to see if we can explain why blacks have more abortions by examining various counter-claims to the main idea. The explanation is, to say the least, rather complex. From there we should be able to come up with a comprehensive and data-supported method of reducing the abortion rate, among blacks and overall, that will have more success than simply banning it.

Counter-Claim #1: Higher rates of unintended pregnancies

There is a very strong correlation between unintended pregnancy and abortion. Given the high abortion rates among blacks and Hispanics, established above, it is reasonable to predict that such a correlation is to be reflected among blacks and Hispanics.

First, this is a breakdown of the total percentage of pregnancies among whites, blacks, and Hispanics that are unintended for 2011:9Finer, Lawrence B. and Zolna, Mia R. (2016). Declines in Unintended Pregnancy in the United States, 2008–2011. New England Journal of Medicine, 374(9), 843-852. doi: 10.1056/NEJMsa1506575

Overall about 45% of pregnancies were unintended in 2011, down from 51% in 2008. And while high at 64% among blacks, that’s down from a near 7 in 10 unintended pregnancy rate for 2008.

So among blacks, there are about 2 unintended pregnancies for every intended pregnancy, while nearly the opposite among whites. Even among Hispanics, about half of pregnancies are unintended, but Hispanics account for only 1 in 4 abortions. Taking these percentages and applying them to the “overall” number above reveals the rate of pregnancies that are unintended (per 1,000 women aged 15 to 44):

So in 2011 about 1 in 10 black women of reproductive age became unintentionally pregnant. Let that number sink in a little. And that number is just shy of triple the unintended pregnancy rate for whites, with the unintended pregnancy rate for Hispanic women being more than double that of white women.

But do these numbers explain why the abortion rate among blacks and Hispanics is significantly higher than among whites? Not entirely.

First, we need to determine why blacks and Hispanics are becoming pregnant unintentionally at a much higher rate. Only two predictions can be made from this, and they work in tandem: they are more sexually active and/or less likely to use contraception consistently and correctly.

Counter-Claim #2: More sexually active

Recall from above that blacks became pregnant at a rate of 144.3 per 1,000 women in 2008 compared to 87.5 in 1,000 white women. That’s about a 65% higher rate. Even among Hispanics the pregnancy rate was about 56.5% higher than among whites — 136.9 in 1,000 compared to 87.5 in 1,000. Higher pregnancy rates infer more sexual activity.

The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention publishes on a bi-annual basis a report regarding risky behaviors among high school students as part of the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System.10Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System As of the time of this writing, the most recent statistics available are for 2015. The data are viewable online, and a nice interface for filtering the data is provided, so I encourage you to take a look at the web site and look at the data for yourself. If you notice any disparities in the data versus what I provide here, I welcome the feedback.

The data are provided with overall numbers and numbers for males and females. For the most part, I will be looking only at the overall numbers. Let’s look at a few key numbers. Among surveyed students, the percentages reporting having ever had sexual intercourse are (95% CI):

So the overall numbers are pretty well in line with the pregnancy and abortion numbers. Overall the highest rates of pregnancy, unintended pregnancy, and sexual activity are among blacks, with Hispanics still higher than whites but less than blacks.

Now these sexual activity numbers are for high school, and the percentages do converge more in the higher grades but never cross. And it’s reasonable to presume that sexual activity among blacks will remain higher than among whites and Hispanics even in adult years.

This is especially true when talking about the number of respondents reporting having had sex before age 13. According to the survey, 8.3% of surveyed black high school students reported having sex before the age of 13, compared to only 5.0% of Hispanic high school students and 2.5% of white high school students.

And 13% of surveyed black male freshmen and 4.3% of surveyed black female freshmen reported having 4 or more sex partners in their life. At senior high school grades, the numbers jump to 46.1% of surveyed black men and 20.1% of surveyed black women report having 4 or more sex partners. For whites at the senior grade, it is 18.2% of surveyed men, and 16.8% of surveyed women. For Hispanics at the senior grade, it’s 23.5% of surveyed men and 12.8% of surveyed women.

All of this means exposure to a higher risk of unintended pregnancies not only during high school but also later in life unless their ways change.

Counter-Claim #3: Less likely to use contraceptives or use them properly

The sexual activity statistics alone do not account for the high rate of unintended pregnancies among blacks and Hispanics. There must be a complementary factor, and the only complementary factor is a lack of proper contraceptive use.

Given the overall pregnancy rate among teens aged 15 to 17 was 39.5 in 2008, with about 1 in 4 of those ending in abortion, that’s a likely factor. The pregnancy rate among blacks aged 15 to 17 in 2008, however, was 72.8 in 1,000. And the abortion rate was 26.7, meaning over 1 in 3 pregnancies among black teens aged 15 to 17 ended in abortion.11Ventura, Stephanie J., et. al. (2012, June 20). “Estimated Pregnancy Rates in the United States, 1990-2008: An Update“. National Vital Statistics Report (60):7.

The data from the CDC Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System does not appear to support this notion among high school students, at least in overall statistics. But the one thing to bear in mind is that these statistics are among high school students. Further the question that is asked is whether they used a condom during their last sexual encounter. The question about birth control does not ask how long the student had been using it, or whether they were complying with the administration instructions, only if they were self-administering it at all.

But one thing that is of note: condom use among black students is negatively correlated with age, with more 12 grade black students reporting they did not use a condom than 9th grade black students. Again, though, the question is about their most recent sexual encounter, and does not attempt to determine whether that use was consistent or even correct.

In November 2015, the CDC published an analysis of contraceptive use for 2011 to 2013 in the United States among women aged 15 to 44.12Daniels, Kimberly, et. al. “Current Contraceptive Use and Variation by Characteristics Among Women Aged 15–44: United States, 2011–2013“. (2015, November 10). It showed that about 6.9% of respondents reported having had intercourse within the 3 months preceding the survey while not expressing any desire to become pregnant.

The survey reported that 61.7 women were actively using contraception. This doesn’t mean they are using it consistently or correctly. Blacks are slightly more likely to rely on condoms and the withdrawal method, slightly more likely to use the patch or ring, but 40% less likely to use either the pill or intra-uterine device (IUD). Blacks also get the intravenous contraception (Depo-Provera) at over 3x the rate of whites.

Among overall contraceptive usage among all race classifications, the percentages reported for blacks were the lowest at 54.5%. Contraception usage among whites the highest at 64.7% of respondents.

In 2014 the CDC published a data brief13Daniels, Kimberly, et. al. Current Contraceptive Status Among Women Aged 15–44: United States, 2011–2013. (Dember 2014). from the 2013 National Survey of Family Growth that included contraceptive use among interviewees. Several findings are key:

  • Contraceptive use was higher among women aged 25 or higher compared to women aged 15-24
  • White women were more likely to use contraception (65.3%) than blacks (57.9%) and Hispanics (57.3%)
  • 6.9% of women between 15 and 44 who are sexually active do not employ contraceptives
  • Education level had little impact on contraceptive use
  • Condom use among 15-24 and 25-34 age ranges was similar, but lower in the 35-44 age range. Race was not a factor in determining condom use.

In a special tabulation, the National Center for Health Statistics determined that that shy of 1 in 4 women surveyed (24.3%) used a condom at their most recent sexual encounter. The condom was still the leading choice for contraceptive use for first intercourse, but for established sexual relationships appeared to not be preferred. It’s overall use among women surveyed was about 9.4%.

Less than 1 in 5 women and less than 1 in 4 men report using a condom every time they have sex.

Back in 2010 the CDC published another study regarding contraceptive use that followed several different time frames, the most recent being 2008.14“Use of Contraception in the United States: 1982-2008“. That study noted that slightly over 1 in 10 women who responded to the survey who were at risk for an unintended pregnancy were not using any form of contraception.

Among age breakdown, that number becomes 18.7% for women aged 15-19 years, 14.3% for women aged 20-24 years, and 11.9% for women aged 25-29 years. Among women with no high school diploma, non-contraception use among women at risk for unintended pregnancies is at 11.9%, with that rate dropping to 9.3% for women with a high school diploma, 9.1% for women with less than a bachelor’s degree, and 8.2% for women with a bachelor degree or higher.

Further, women below the poverty line are most likely to not use contraception: 12.6% of at-risk women between 0% and 99% the poverty level income don’t use contraception. Overall of women under 150% their poverty level, the percentage of non-contraceptive use is 12.3%. This drops to 10.3% for women between 150% and 299% poverty level, and drops to 7.9% for women at or above 300% poverty level.

And going back to race, the numbers again are quite telling. Among black women, 16.3% of black women at risk for an unintended pregnancy did not use contraception, while the percentage among white women was only 9.4%. For Hispanic women, the percentage was 13.8%.

This, however, begs another question: why is contraceptive use lacking when they wish to prevent pregnancy? The survey asked women who became unintentionally pregnant as to why they did not employ contraception. The results showed that 43.9% of women were not aware they were at risk for a pregnancy, while 16.2% of the women were concerned about side effects from the contraception – makes me wonder what kind of contraceptive methods they considered employing.

Here’s a startling number: 16.9% of the women who responded said their male partner didn’t want to use contraception. Another one: 14.1% of the women responded said they didn’t expect to have sex. So overall we have a general problem of both men and women not really understanding how female fertility and contraception works so they know best how to avoid pregnancy when they want to.

Further the numbers clearly show that blacks are less likely to employ contraception than whites, and slightly less likely than Hispanics. Those who are younger and at risk for an unintended pregnancy are also less likely to employ contraception. And women who are at or below the poverty line are also less likely to employ contraception, as are women who are lesser educated.

So young, undereducated, impoverished black women seem to be the least likely to use contraception given the numbers. And given the rate of unintended pregnancies, they are also significantly more likely to not use it properly when they are at risk of becoming pregnant and want to prevent it.

Counter-Claim #4: More black individuals live below 200% of the poverty definition

According to the United States Census Bureau, here is the poverty breakdown in the United States for 2010 by race:15Carmen DeNavas, Bernadette D. Proctor, Jessica C. Smith. (September 2011). “Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2010“. United States Census Bureau: P60-239.

Now the definition of “poverty” varies based on household. The government definition of what constitutes the poverty threshold is determined by the Census Bureau.16Poverty thresholds. US Census Bureau. A person who lives alone is considered impoverished if their annual income is less than $11,344 for 2010. The poverty level for a single parent with a child is $15,030, and the level goes up incrementally based on the size of the household, and the threshold is determined based on a calculated cost of living.

So a single person living alone is at 200% the poverty threshold when they have an annual income of $22,688 – the equivalent of an hourly wage of $10.90 for a 40-hour work week.

There is a clear correlation between poverty and abortion. Those below the poverty line are significantly more likely to obtain an abortion when there is an unwanted pregnancy. The majority of abortions are obtained by women living below 200% the definition of poverty for that individual. This according to the Guttmacher Institute:17Jerman J, Jones RK and Onda T, Characteristics of U.S. Abortion Patients in 2014 and Changes Since 2008, New York: Guttmacher Institute, 2016, www.guttmacher.org/report/characteristics-us-abortion-patients-2014.

According to the data 75% of abortions, 3 in 4, were obtained by people living below 200% the poverty definition, with almost half of all abortions obtained by individuals living at or below the definition of poverty. Using the 2008 figure of 1.2 million abortions, that’s 600,000 abortions obtained by individuals at or below poverty, with another approximately 312 thousand obtained by individuals living above the poverty level but below 200% the level of poverty. That is a significant number unto itself.

So let’s summarize the data for this claim:

  • shy of half of all abortions are obtained by women meeting the Federal definition of poverty
  • another 1 in 4 are obtained by women between 100% and 199% the Federal definition of poverty
  • the poverty rate among blacks is more than 2 ½ times that among non-Hispanic whites

So poverty is clearly correlated with the rate of abortions. And blacks and Hispanics are more likely to be impoverished than whites. And blacks and Hispanics are more likely to become unexpectedly pregnant, and more likely to terminate that pregnancy via abortion.

Conclusions

The data do not support the claim that the so-called “abortion industry” is targeting minorities. There is no “black genocide” with regard to abortion, and in particular with regard to Planned Parenthood.

While clear that blacks do have the higher incidence of abortion, and they are seeking abortion services at a higher rate than other ethnicities, they also have a much higher rate of unintended pregnancies – almost 2 in 3 pregnancies among blacks are unintended. The rate of unintended pregnancies is so high because blacks are more sexually active and less likely to use contraceptives in a consistent and correct manner. The unanswered question being why.

So if they are having a much higher rate of unintended pregnancies, it is reasonable to presume that they will seek abortion services at a higher rate, especially given that blacks are more likely to be living below the poverty line. Half of all abortions are obtained by women living at or below the poverty line, with overall 3 in 4 abortions obtained by women living below 200% poverty definition.

Contrary to seemingly popular belief among anti-abortion activists, the majority of abortion clinics are not in areas predominantly frequented or occupied by blacks. That fact alone casts serious doubt to the claim the “abortion industry” is targeting blacks.

To support the claim that the “abortion industry” is targeting blacks for “black genocide”, you must demonstrate that abortion providers are

  • encouraging blacks to be more sexually active, and to become sexually active at a younger age
  • discouraging blacks from consistently and correctly using contraception to prevent pregnancy, such that they become unexpectedly pregnant
  • encouraging unexpectedly pregnant black women to seek abortion services rather than carrying the pregnancy to term

The explanation that the “abortion industry” is targeting blacks is without evidence, and without merit. There is plenty of evidence supporting contrary explanations. To put it simply, without hard evidence of direct marketing or targeting of blacks by abortion providers, the claim can be shown by the numbers to have no merit at all.

Reducing the number of abortions

Many pro-life organizations would have you believe that outlawing abortion is the solution to the issue of abortion, as if the law will operate like some magic spell and cure that issue. Except the world, unfortunately, doesn’t work that way.

Reducing the total number of abortions performed each year requires reducing the total number of unintended pregnancies. This can come about in several ways. And we can start by teaching minors in school about proper contraceptive use while encouraging it among teens who are sexually active. Further abstinence needs to be promoted, as abstinence is the only 100% guaranteed way of preventing pregnancy and the contraction of an STD.

But abstinence-only education programs, however, will not help solve the problem, and there is reason to believe it will only exacerbate it.

Along with this, we need to understand why contraceptive use among sexually active blacks appears to be so lacking. What can be done to encourage responsible sexual activity?

But this is only one side of the coin and will not solve the problem entirely.

If you really want to deal a blow to the number of abortions in the United States, the one critical way to do so is by lifting minorities out of poverty. We need to foster the kind of economic environments in which prosperity and wealth flourish. “Wealthier is healthier,” John Stossel has said on his program on the Fox Business Network. And so too a wealthier, educated population is significantly more likely to use contraceptives consistently and correctly. They are less likely to become unintentionally pregnant. And they are less likely to have abortions than their impoverished counterparts by significant margins.

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