R.P. Barr

Get Government Out of Marriage

Don’t you think that there are enough problems in the world already without the government worrying about who wants to get married? Marriage is a social and religious union. The government enforces contracts. We need to separate the contract from the social relationship. Right now, people who want to get married have to get a marriage license. Let’s drop the word the marriage. Call it a cohabitation license. Anyone who want to live in the same dwelling, share resources (50/50 unless otherwise specified), and share responsibilities (50/50 unless otherwise specified) can pay the filing fee and be domestic partners. The health department may want them to prove they are free of communicable diseases, and the government will check to see that they are not parties to other similar licenses. Since it is not marriage, anyone can apply. Sex is not a factor. Cohabitants can be lovers, or family members, or friends, or business associates. Simple. Divorce would also disappear. The contract could be dissolved like any other partnership. The property settlement, child and spousal support would still be factors, but sexual activity would no longer be a consideration. Marriage will still exist for all the romantics among us, but it would be the business of religions and other associations. Anyone who wants to have a ceremony or call themselves married is free to do so. Will this destroy the institution of marriage? Baptism, bar mitzvah, and other religious ceremonies don’t seem to have suffered from being outside of government concern. Marriage wouldn’t either. A marriage would include the contract. The scandals that are so entertaining would still occur. There might be some “marriages” with more than two participants, but the in-house politics of those situations would hold down the numbers. We would still have child protection laws. –And, for the sake of Bill O’Reilly, there would still be animal protection laws. The big difference is that politicians would have one less distraction—and maybe they could get something done.

Keeping Secret Service Secrets

At the outset, I want to say that I do not know the Secret Service rules for employee conduct.  However, law enforcement officers of all stripes have stressful jobs.  Actual risk may not be as high as in some other occupations, but the potential for sudden danger makes the job stressful.  In addition, Secret Service agents may, on any given day, have to leap in front of a bullet to protect the person in their charge.  All of that means that it is vitally important to know and trust the agents working with you.  Partying is not merely blowing off steam, it is bonding in a way that could save lives on the firing line later.

 I’ve been waiting to hear what terrible thing the Secret Service agents did in Colombia.  Did they compromise the President’s security?  That would be serious, but so far all that has made it into the public arena is speculation. 

 There was an argument over an $800 charge for sexual favors.  I don’t have a clue what the going rate is in Colombia, but that seems high.  The agent should have settled that before bringing the woman to the hotel.  If prostitution is legal in that venue, then he could be charged for theft of services if he refused to pay.  But, we haven’t heard of any charges like that.

 Did they spend government funds or do their carousing on government time?  Apparently not.

 I’m sure that the Secret Service brass has more information than they are releasing, but I have not seen anything so far to get excited about.  They had some free time in the evening.  They drank, probably to excess, and they had sex with strange women who they compensated.  There may be moral issues that need addressing, but those are personal matters.  I do not see a public scandal.  We've got to get over the national--or at least media--obsession with sex.  It's a fact of life.

 

Winning ticket

Last week, we had another example of how hard work and diligence pays off. I have been buying lottery tickets with some regularity for the past forty years. When I started, I was not winning a mere million dollars each time. But, I did not give up, I stayed with it and last week, I didn’t win $654 million. I feel proud.

Every time the pot gets big, the media trot out economists and the like to talk about the terrible odds, and how buying the tickets is futile effort, and a waste of money. I disagree. Sure, I have probably spent between one and two thousand dollars over the past forty years, and if you could show me any $2,000 purchase that I could pay off at a dollar a week, I might agree that I could have spent it more wisely.

Meanwhile, let’s look at the odds. The way I see it, either I win or somebody else does. That’s not a million to one, it’s 50/50. Admittedly, Somebody Else is on a hot streak, but how long can it last? Million to one shots come in every day. Sometimes they’re good things, sometimes not. We’ve all experienced them. Why not the lottery? The only absolutely sure thing is that if I don’t buy a ticket, I won’t win.

Seriously, buying a lottery ticket is a whole lot cheaper than professional therapy. I don’t look at the tickets right away. I wait weeks or even months. As long as I have a ticket in my pocket, I could be a millionaire. That thought has gotten me through a lot of rough spots. Instead of dwelling on the misfortune I’m in, I think about what I’ll do if the ticket has the right numbers. It’s easier to keep plugging away with that siren’s song folded in my wallet.

Then, some day when my spirits are high, I look up the numbers, and don’t mind so much that none of the tickets I’ve saved have won. The people who bet the rent money are the ones for whom the lottery is a bad investment. I’m not investing. I’m buying a wisp of hope, and it’s a good deal.

Making a Case

A month ago, in Sanford, Florida, George Zimmerman, 28, shot and killed Trayvon Martin, 17.  There have been a lot accusations flying around, and I’d like to try and sort them out.

 First, there is the matter of race.  Was the killing racially motivated?  Possibly, but it doesn’t matter.  Was race involved in the police decision not to arrest George Zimmerman?  Probably, and that may be the most troubling aspect of this case.

 Yes, that is more troubling than the fact that a young man was cut down in his youth because it is a sad fact that young men die every day.  If the police had held Zimmerman and done a thorough investigation, this case would have had its day in the sun and faded away—except for the Martin family and a few friends for whom the loss would be permanent.

 The case will become an even bigger deal if the Florida Stand Your Ground Law is used to defend Zimmerman. 

 Let’s analyze the case as presented in the media.  Zimmerman was a self-appointed neighborhood watch commando who aggravated his neighbors with complaints about noise and whatnot.  Then, he got a gun.  Neighborhood watch members are usually unarmed for good reason.  They are not supposed to interact with the bad guys.  They watch and call in the professionals to deal with suspicious characters.  Evidently, that was not good enough for this patrolman in a gated community.  Zimmerman is not a policman.  I submit that he did not carry a gun for the protection of himself and his neighbors.  George Zimmerman wanted to validate his self-importance by shooting a miscreant.  Unfortunately he was in the wrong neighborhood.  

 Zimmerman may be a racist, but he didn’t shoot Trayvon Martin because he was black or wearing a hoodie.  Zimmerman shot Martin because he was the only game in town.

 That doesn’t make it murder--yet.

 Zimmerman was in his SUV following a suspicious character.  We may disagree with that conclusion, but Zimmerman was expecting to see a suspicious character sooner or later.  He called the police and that should have ended his involvement.

 If we give him the benefit of his zealousness, he could have followed Martin at a safe distance.  He didn’t.  If we stretch our understanding a bit more, we can see an impatient Zimmerman approaching the young man.

 The conversation should have gone like this: Zimmerman: “Good evening, I’m George Zimmerman of the Neighborhood Watch.  Do you live here?” 

 If Zimmerman’s voice was sufficiently casual, Martin might have volunteered that he was visitng his mother.  If Martin took offence, Zimmerman should have joked with him and asked again.  When Martin finally told Zimmerman what he was doing in the neighborhood, Zimmerman could have offered to walk with him to see that he got there safely.  Then, when Martin was welcomed into his mother’s house, Zimmerman could have wished them all a good evening and gone on his way.

 That didn’t happen.  Zimmerman let himself get into an argument with a suspect.  Very unprofessional.  Then, according to him, Zimmerman walked away.  Really?  The cops are on their way, remember?   And, he turns his back on a suspect. 

 Zimmerman claims that Martin punched him in the nose and knocked him down.  Zimmerman was bigger and heavier, he didn’t need his gun to defend against this kid.  And if he did want to brandish it, Martin was not drunk or high.  The sight of a gun should have caused the teenager to back away from the fight.

 Instead, Zimmerman claims that the two wrestled for the gun and it went off.  There goes the Stand Your Ground defence.  He is evidently not claiming self-defence, but an accident.

 Here is where forensics comes in.  The Sanford Police blew part of the investigation by not seizing Zimmerman’s clothes to look for signs of contact with Martin.  They may have blown the rest of the case if they did not preserve the crime scene.  Two people cannot wrestle without an exchange of fibers and DNA.  The position of Martin’s body on the ground would tell part of the story.  The location of the Skittles and can of iced tea would tell even more.  One doesn’t fight while holding onto snacks. 

 Still, if they were fighting over the gun, there should be powder residue on Martin’s clothes.  These are the things that will decide the case. 

 Meanwhile, the police had a shooter and an unarmed victim.  No matter what the opinion of the officers, they should have investigated the case as if it were a homicide, if only to prove self-defence. 

 Apparently things are not done that way in Florida.  This is more than racism that discriminates against one group, this is bad police work and it affects everyone.

 

Evangelical Error

With Rick Santorum leading the current charge, we are once again hearing choruses of “Don’t impose your values on me. I want to impose my values on you.” That sentiment is blatantly un-American.

Religious freedom means that each person may practice whatever his or her conscience dictates as long as it doesn’t violate the rights of others to do the same. Along the way, the elected representatives of the people have set some broad rules that all must obey so that society may have some order. Laws should be as value neutral as possible.

Before you get excited about what your neighbor is doing with his or her body, I would like for you to step outside some evening and look up. You will be seeing pretty much the same sky that was there a couple thousand years ago when Middle Easterners founded three of the world’s great religions. True, they didn’t see airplane lights or gleaming satellites, but the rest was there—and probably a little easier to see without modern pollution.

In those days, a man (or woman) could cover with his thumb any object he could see in the night sky. No wonder people then believed that this teensy planet was the center of the universe, and all the rest was of little consequence or concern to the Creator.

The books these ancients wrote were about what they could see—not about what God knew. They did not write about distant galaxies, planets or moons. They did not even write about penguins, kangaroos, rainforests, viruses or electricity. God knew about all those things. The ancient holy books are splendid expressions of faith and excellent foundations for the religions that have grown around them, but they are not the works of God.

If you want to see what God wrote, look at the night sky, or a drop of water under a microscope. Every time an animal goes extinct due to man’s greed, we are committing an offence against that creature’s creator. Every time someone kills or abuses another in the name of God, it is blasphemy. If you would protect your soul, protect that which the Creator made.

Genesis 1:28 says that God gave the world, animals and plants, to man to subdue and rule—not to destroy. Personally, I find that and many other sections to be a little self-serving, but nowhere does it say that man can rip the tops off mountains to scoop out the minerals within, nature be damned.

Meanwhile, what fundamentalists everywhere should remember is that men can print thousands of books that are exactly the same. God gave each person a mind that was exquisitely unique. Which do you suppose He would want us to respect more?

The Monster We Made

[reference: http://apnews.myway.com/article/20120224/D9T3O0MO0.html]

How did American private equity firms cause dozens of people in India to commit suicide?  To be fair, it wasn’t entirely their fault.  Like the roadhouse on the highway is not responsible for the accidents caused by drunks leaving their parking lot.

Here is what happened.  In the 1970’s, Bangladesh was, and probably still is, the most impoverished country on the planet.  A Bangladeshi economist named  Muhammed Yunus had an idea.  Working from the principle that poor people cannot get credit, he would—from his own pocket—make small loans to poor women (because men are more likely to waste the money).  When they paid back the money, he would roll it over into loans to others.  He had a 100% repayment rate and Yunus formed the Grameen Bank.  Each village would have a board of five women who would decide which applications to approve.  The business grew and Yunus received a Nobel Prize for his creation.  So far, so good.  Bangladeshis helping Bangladeshis.

An Indian alumnus of Tufts University, Yale and the University of Chicago, Vikram Akula took the concept to his own country in 1997, and founded his own microcredit organization, Swayam Krishi Sangam (SKS Microfinance), Sanskrit for "self-help society."  Like Grameen, it prospered, doing well by doing good.  So good that in 2005, SKS evolved into a for-profit organization.  His American education paid off.  And, like a good American businessman, in 2010 Akula took SKS public.

If you’ve followed the trends in American business you can already see how this story would end in dozens of suicides.  If not, well, Akula didn’t see it either.

According to the AP article, “Exuberant investors oversubscribed the $350 million offering nearly 14 times. The stock surged more than 10 percent its first day. The company handed out 21,000 watches to employees in celebration.”

Boston-based Sandstone Capital had made a major investment in 2008 and probably saw a public offering as the best way to see a profit.  It was soon joined by Sequoia Capital from Menlo Park, California.  This partnership became the largest shareholder in India’s SKS Microfinance.  Vikram Akula resigned as chief executive, but stayed on as chairman of the board.

Across South Asia, thousands of people kill themselves every year because of insurmountable debt and poverty.  Grameen and SKS were created to provide a way out.  But, the management philosophies of investment firms in the air-conditioned comfort of Menlo Park and Boston, believe that growing the numbers in corporate ledgers is the goal of all business.

SKS began to market loans to impoverished Indians without concern for their ability to repay.  Agents were given incentive prizes that could exceed 10 times their annual wage.  SKS had 6.8 million borrowers in a 100,000 villages, and loaned $3.2 billion. SKS began bundling loans and moving them off their books by selling them to investors.  Does this pattern sound familiar?

 Then, when the borrowers defaulted, agents began a system of horrific harrassment: seizing household utensils, ordering mothers to sell their daughters into prostitution, telling other loan applicants that they could not get loans until this named person repaid his/her loan, setting up demonstrations in front of borrower’s homes.  Women began drinking pesticides and drowning themselves: one in a pond, another in a well.  44 recorded cases so far.

In November 2011, Vikram Akula resigned from SKS Microfinance.

You might argue that business never was about morality, but it used to be more local, and more focused on the idea that getting ahead means providing products that fill a need and responsible service.  If a merchant was perceived as abusing his neighbors, he faced the opprobrium of the community.  In today’s world of long-distance capitalism, there are no neighbors, and those who are victimized often have no recourse.  The only answer is for government regulators to keep businesses honest and responsible.  Unions also have a roll in counter-balancing greed-soaked schemes.  But, the bean-counters are winning, profitting from failure, and women are drinking pesticide.

 

A Word about Honor

We often hear the word “honor” in connection with the military. To be sure honor can be used to describe the behavior of a great many service men and women. But, honor is not looking sharp in a uniform, and it doesn’t come from being shot at, or killing the enemy. Honor involves performing the mission with respect toward others, doing what needs to be done without betraying the ideals one is protecting--especially when it is hard to do. The honor of the U.S. Military as an institution was tarnished with the verdicts against the Marines who massacred 24 civilians in Haditha. A roadside bomb blew up a Humvee. Tragic. Did the bombers live in the nearby houses? There is no reason to believe that they did—or didn’t. It is unlikely that the bombers would try to drive past the Marines in a taxi in the aftermath. Perhaps passersby needed to be searched for weapons. That is prudent. Murder is not. Five students and the driver were summarily shot to death. This was not in the heat of battle, and it served no military purpose other than to inspire recruits for the other side. The Marines claim there was small arms fire from the neighborhood. No Marines were hit, so one wonders who the target was. The squad “cleared” the houses by throwing in grenades and spraying the rooms with machine gun fire. Many of the dead: old men, women and children, were shot in the chest and head. Wounds—from what I read--not likely to have been incurred by indiscriminate fire. There was no honor in those murders, even though we can all understand the feelings that motivated them. On the other hand, the cowardice of the reviewing officers who released the killers without charges is inexcusable.

The desecration of fallen enemies has a long, dishonorable history. Severed heads were once posted on pikes. Crucified bodies left where they died as warnings. Vlad the Impaler skewered an entire army on upright stakes and left them as symbols of his wrath. On a more personal level, fingers, ears, noses, tongues etc. have been cut from the dead. Recently, corpses have been dragged through the streets. Urinating on the dead is rather tame by comparison, but still dishonorable.

Men in combat have more in common with the people shooting at them than they do with their own families and neighbors back home. Respect for the enemy does not mean granting them leniency, it means acknowledging the hardship and grit and fear that are involved in battle. And, if you think of Afghanistan, consider that the Taliban and their friends do not have air cover, or med-evac capability or body armor. If you think that roadside bombs are sneaky and cowardly, weigh them against bombs that fall out of the sky. The Taliban regime was as evil and destructive of basic human rights as any in history, but their fighters walk miles over desolate terrane, hide in caves, and attack troops who have them out-numbered and out-gunned. —Well, they may have to be shot, but their bodies deserve a minimal level of respect. That’s honorable.

 

Romney's Job Creators

Last week, Sears announced the closing of 120 Sears and K-Mart stores.  (Sears owns K-Mart.)  As part of the NPR report on this news, a retail expert pointed out that when Wal-Mart and Target had invested in renovating their stores, improving the lighting and layout, etc. The hedge fund that owns Sears had used their extra cash to buy up Sears stock in the expectation that a shortage of stock would drive up the price for benefit of those who owned it.  The dingy, dated stores that were left to languish did not attract shoppers.  Sales dropped off until the bean counters decided the best way to show a profit was to cut stores and personnel.

Business owners like that are the “job creators” that Romney and the Republicans want to protect from regulations and taxes.  I mention Romney because he recently proclaimed that he did not want the United States to be like Europe.  Of course, not like the Europe of today.  The direction he’s heading will make the U.S. more like the the Europe of the 15^th Century, with a handful of superrich nobles riding on the backs of the rest of the population.  That’s freedom to Mitt Romney.

Lawrence Lessig wrote Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress--And a Plan to Stop It, in which he points out that the country is not run by the top 1%, but by the .05% who finance political campaigns.  The question is how the rest of us can take the country back.  The campaign contributers find that putting money in political coffers is a very economical way to get the favorable treatment that keeps them rich.  For Congressional office holders for whom elections have become so expensive that they spend half their time fund raising, the opportunities for extortion that expiring subsidies and regulations create are irresistable.  The lawmakers are not going to change the system.  They’ve legalized corruption.

Don’t look to the Tea Partiers who are more concerned with redefining Christianity as the faith that turns its back on its neighbors and squeezes camels through needle eyes.  The Occupy Wall Streeters have got to get out of their tents, stop complaining and stand for something.  Conservatives love to march in time with each other.  For them, unity is more important than truth—or thought.  Liberals can’t agree on which way to walk in a revolving door.

What to do?  George Bernard Shaw said, “The more I see of the moneyed classes, the more I understand the guillotine.”  It may come to that.  If we keep going in the same direction, and can’t get focused on  political solutions, bad things are bound to happen.

Happy New Year!

 

War in Peace

U.S. forces are out of Iraq.  We should never have been there, and it ain’t over yet.

After 9/11, I oversaw a retraining program for my agency to redirect them toward anti-terrorism.  In preparation, I read a few books about al-Qaeda and terrorism.  I don't claim expertise, only a little study.  But, I told people in the classes I taught that Iraq was not the enemy.  Saddam Hussein was a nasty dictator, but not suicidal.  He would not attack us.  He also knew that al-Qaeda’s top two concerns were 1) to get Western influence out of the Middle East, and 2) to overthrow secular leaders in Muslim countries and install theocracies like Iran.  Saddam would not give powerful weapons to al-Qaeda for fear that they would be used against him.  Many, if not most, of my colleagues believed President Bush’s accusations.  A West Point graduate even argued with me.  I told him that as the war stretched on and American casualties accumulated, the people would turn against the war.  He dismissed me a deluded liberal.  The war would be over in a few weeks.  I wonder if he recalls that conversation now.

 I just saw the movie, Fair Game which is about those early pre-war days, and how hard the Bush Administration fought against those who challenged their views.  The right learned nothing from Vietnam.

Saddam Hussein, like Muammar Gaddafi and the Iranian Ayatollahs, did sponsor terrorist activities here and there, but nothing big enough to prompt an invasion.  The world is a better place without him.  Whether getting rid of him was worth a half million Iraqi lives and 4,500 Americans is another question.

 Some commentators worry that Iraq will dissolve in civil war.  It might, but I don’t believe it will happen in the near future.  A few bombs, but no armed uprising.  The primary aftermath, as far as we are concerned, will be taking care of the men and women who served, those who returned with disabilities, and the widows and orphans of those who died.  For at least the next fifty years the government—you and I—will be paying for the wounds of that war just as we have for all of the others. 

 Did you see that the last combat veteran of the First World War died this past year?  I’m sure that there are still a handful of widows and maybe some dependent children who continue to receive benefits.  That’s how long a war takes.

 And, before we get involved in another—after Afghanistan—Congress needs to set aside a century’s amount of benefits.  That should be a requirement.  Budget for that before a single boot steps into combat.  Make the Administration that agitates for war pay for it up front.  Maybe then they will think twice.

 

Putting the Republic at Risk

The first coal in my stocking this Yule was the vote on granting the government power to detain anyone anywhere, including the U.S., on mere suspicion of aiding terrorists.  The first vote on this provision was overwhelmingly in favor.  This bill was the worst threat to the the United States since the British burned Washington in 1814.  It’s been watered down, but hasn’t been killed completely or universally denounced.  

 It is appalling that any Americans would think that our justice system is incapable of dealing with terrorists.  In 1862, the Sioux in Minnesota massacred some 800 settlers.  303 Sioux were arrested, tried and sentenced to hang.  Abraham Lincoln reviewed the sentences and commuted all but 39, which is still the largest mass execution in American history.  Southern sympathizers murdered Lincoln, but the system was trusted to try and condemn 8 conspirators.  In 1920 two men were murdered by anarchist bank robbers. Ferdinando Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were tried and executed.  When communists stole secrets of the atomic bomb, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were arrested, tried, and executed.  I could go on.  Some of the cases are still controversial—and the rules of civilian trials were not always followed--but the point is that none of the suspected terrorists walked away free.  Our record of catching the bad guys is excellent.  We have more people in prison than any other country.  (The pros and cons of executions can be saved for another time.) We don’t need to broaden our detention rules.

 Besides that, we have a reputation (somewhat tarnished now), of being fair.  Our enemies tell their recruits that we are cruel and barbarous.  Reinforcing that prejudice is not helpful to our cause.    Americans like to think of ourselves as the good guys, and our men and women in uniform have proven that to be true in combat zones all over the planet.  The exceptions to that practice have been, in fact, exceptions.  We cannot allow a bunch of millionaire dilettantes in Congress to endanger our troops and diplomats by throwing out the Bill of Rights in an effort to appear tougher than the men and women who actually go into harm’s way.

 Of course it is really less about terrorism than it is an attempt to shut down debate and the free exchange of ideas.  If someone disagrees with a government policy, he is, by definition, an enemy of the state who is giving comfort to the foreign powers who hate us, and should be locked away.  That can be any one of us, depending on who is in office at the time.  And, detention without trial means that you or I don’t even have to disagree with the government.  If I object to the charges on my credit card statement and make a stink about it, the bank manager could make a call, and I disappear.  Take away the matter of credit cards, and that is how some detainees wound up in Guantanamo and spent years trying to fight evidence held in secret.  We must give our enemies benefit of our Constitution in order to protect ourselves.