wrongologist – Page 213 – The Wrongologist

Where Are The Activists?

And why aren’t they out in the streets? Why isn’t every bank office, and every legislature, “occupied?”

The NYT reported on their NYT/CBS News poll on income inequality. It found that Americans are broadly concerned about inequality of wealth and income despite the improving economy. Among the findings:

Nearly six in 10 Americans said government should do more to reduce the gap between the rich and the poor.

Inequality is no longer a partisan issue. The poll found that inequality is important to almost half of Republicans and two-thirds of independents, suggesting that it is likely to be a central theme in next year’s general election. We are already seeing populist appeals by politicians of both parties who are trying to capitalize on the sense among Americans that the economic recovery benefited only a handful at the very top.

Sadly, the surveillance society has changed the costs and benefits of protests. The Occupy movement was crushed with a coordinated 17 city paramilitary crackdown. In this day of background checks as a condition to get a job, a misdemeanor arrest for protesting can make you unemployable. You can find yourself on any one of a variety of official lists that cannot be challenged because of secrecy laws; there are sham arrests like those conducted at Occupy Wall Street or, at the NYC Republican convention in 2004 by then-Mayor Bloomberg.

And the financial services industry seems to be able to get cops to come in and round up people on their behalf.

It is not enough to gather in the street. Once you are there and gathered, it must lead somewhere, there must be a goal. Admittedly, the problem with activism is that the fight is to change perceptions and narratives, and progress toward those goals is slow, and rarely concrete and visible.

It’s astonishing today to see how Americans have been conditioned to think that political action and engagement is futile. The Wrongologist was a demonstrator when the reverse occurred, when activism in the 1960s produced significant advances in civil rights for blacks and women, and eventually led the US to exit the Vietnam War. But today, when activism is an option, quite a few argue that there is no point in making the effort, that we as individuals are powerless. Yet, what Richard Kline wrote about protest in 2010 still applies:

The nut of the matter is this: you lose, you lose, you lose, you lose, and [then] they give up. As someone who has protested, and studied the process, it’s plain that one spends most of one’s time being defeated. That’s painful, humiliating, and intimidating. One can’t expect typically, as in a battle, to get a clean shot at a clear win.

What activism does is change the context, and that change moves the goalposts on your opponent. It also raises the political price for governments that make bad decisions. Demonstrations helped stop LBJ and Nixon from making a few bad decisions. The same principle could apply to the Conservative’s desire to kneecap Social Security, Medicare and Obamacare while they hand out more baubles to their rich friends. This kind of class inequality is deeply un-American, but it has big political benefactors in both parties.

We can’t use the protests of the 1960s as a model in today’s political environment. Back then, power feared the people. Power feared the people because there was a free press to publicize and record events. The White House press confronted presidents; they didn’t pander, or act as stenographers as they do now.

That no longer exists. The press has been destroyed by corporate consolidation and foreign ownership. Investigative reporting and the institutions that nurtured and supported it were alive and well.

In the 1960s, few local politicians would refuse a permit for a peaceful demonstration, if in fact, a permit was even required. That is no longer true. No permit, no demo. The arrogance of power is demonstrated repeatedly right in front of cameras and reporters; the police harass and provoke, restrain and intimidate at peaceful demonstrations. They also create incidents to blame on demonstrators, which are dutifully captured by the cameras.

If one unit of protest worked in 1965, we need 10 units today to achieve similar results. In the meantime, reflect on this quote from a noted demonstrator:

“When the idea is a sound one, the cause a just one, and the demonstration a righteous one, change will be forthcoming”–Martin Luther King, Jr.

See you on Sunday.

End Government Subsidies of Private Equity

We have written about taxpayer-funded corporate subsidies this week. Let’s talk about the Private Equity (PE) industry, where profit margins are pretty high. By PE we mean investing in assets that include equity securities and debt of operating companies that are not at the time of the investment, publicly traded. Having a number of streams of income coming from a variety of investments or income generating assets is one of the best ways to build wealth. You see, hPE is a re-branding of leveraged buyouts (LBOs) which were the way Wall Streeters built wealth in the 1980s.

In the past 35 years, we have seen a finance-led revolution that has generated fantastic wealth for PE managers. PE has in large part, helped create the growing chasm between America’s most wealthy and everyone else. This is shown in the disproportionate numbers of private equity and hedge fund principals in the top .1% of American wealth. That wealth doesn’t only come from just making a killing when the target company goes public or is acquired, it also comes from favorable tax treatments for the PE company principals and investors.

Although the PE industry is often held up as an exemplar of free-market capitalism, it is surprisingly dependent on government subsidies for its profits. In a typical deal, a PE firm buys a company, using some of its own money and some borrowed money. It then tries to improve the performance of the acquired company, with an eye toward cashing out by selling it, or taking it public.

The key to this strategy is debt: the PE firms borrow to invest since, just as with your mortgage, the less money you put down, the bigger the potential return on investment. But debt also increases the risk that companies will go bust, so early on, the amount of debt PE firms employed was conservative.

That has changed in the last 10 years. After using debt to buy them, many PE funds now have their portfolio companies borrow even more. They then use that money to pay themselves “special dividends.” This allows them to recoup their initial investment while keeping the same ownership stake.

Before 2000, big special dividends were not common. But between 2003 and 2007, PE funds took more than $70 billion out of their companies. These dividends created no economic value-they just redistributed money from the company to the private-equity investors.

As an example, in 2004, Wasserstein & Company bought the mail-order fruit retailer Harry & David. The following year, Wasserstein and other investors took out more than $100 million in dividends, paid for with borrowed money. In 2011, Harry and David defaulted on its debt and dumped its pension obligations on the US government. And when an investment goes bankrupt, there are more fees, and maybe more tax write-offs for the PE partners.

Taxpayers are left on the hook. Interest payments on that debt are tax-deductible, and when pensions are dumped, a federal agency, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) picks up the company’s pension liability. That means taxpayers are on the hook for those unfunded pensions.

And the money that PE dealmakers earn is taxed at a much lower rate than normal income, thanks to the US tax code’s carried interest loophole, which permits that income to be taxed at capital gains rates.

Most do not know that the single largest source of investment capital in PE funds is government pension funds. According to Preqin, a database company that tracks investment in PE, approximately 30% of capital in US PE funds is contributed by government pension funds. Government pension funds are usually called “public” pension funds, administered by government employees and governed by officials who are directly elected by the public or appointed by elected officials.

A key point about the power and reach of PE. They have more than $3.5 trillion under management. Assuming normal leverage (30% equity) that gives them $11.7 trillion in buying power. That’s about 40% of the value of publicly-traded firms in the US. Think about the political clout they have by investing government pension money. Not only do PE firms own a huge portion of America’s productive businesses, unlike the diffuse ownership of public companies, they control them outright.

So, PE is a government-sponsored enterprise, both via tax subsidy and via funding. We taxpayers are helping them to fabulous paydays, thanks to our Congress Critters.

If PE firms are as good at remaking companies as they claim, they shouldn’t need tax loopholes to make their money. If we capped the deductibility of corporate debt, and closed the carried-interest loophole, it would not prevent PE firms from buying companies or improving corporate performance.

But it would add to our tax revenues, and that might keep a bridge or two from falling into a river during rush hour somewhere in America.

“The American Dream: You have to be asleep to believe it.” -George Carlin

Why Don’t Low-Wage People Get Better Jobs?

Regarding Tuesday’s post, “More About Taxpayers Subsidizing Corporations“, which deals with taxpayers subsidizing the low-wage employees of restaurant chains, long-time blog reader Kevin asks: “Why don’t the folks who flip burgers go out and get better jobs?” Excellent question.

Two thoughts. First, they should move up whenever possible, and the chart below about restaurant employee turnover should lead us to believe that they do move out, if not up. When it comes to workplace changes, everyone deserves the chance to move up into higher positions and therefore, this will increase the rate of employee turnover. Research from Work Institute has suggested that 22% of turnover was due to career development and a higher chance of job growth. Being able to excel in your chosen career can only happen if these people decide to make this change. But, whether they leave or not, those jobs will remain at or below minimum wage, and the taxpayers will continue to subsidize these restaurant corporations who underpay them. It falls to the social safety net to make up the difference. Take a look at restaurant employee turnover statistics:

Source: People Report, a division of TDN2k

The burger flippers turnover is the highest among restaurant hourly employees, and it is growing. These are the people who don’t even get tips, so since employee turnover is the highest where wages are the lowest, it’s the burger flippers who move on. This could also be due to job satisfaction they may feel in the workplace. It could be argued that they do not feel the same level of appreciation within a service profession as they would in an office environment that would buy gifts for employees in order to boost their morale in an attempt to keep them for longer.

A second thought is, what jobs can they move up to? Here is a little background:

The US lost more than 8.84 million private sector jobs in the Great Recession. Now, five years after employment hit bottom in February 2010, private sector employment has returned to prerecession levels. The National Employment Law Project (NELP) indicates in a study that low-wage job creation didn’t just happen in the first phases of the recovery, but today, five years in, job growth is heavily concentrated in lower-wage industries. Lower-wage industries accounted for 22% of job losses during the recession, but 44% of employment growth.

Worse, low-wage jobs account for 100% of the net job growth in the economy. Today NELP reports that there are:

• 958,000 fewer mid-wage jobs than at the start of the recession
• 976,000 fewer high-wage jobs than in 2008

The National Restaurant Association’s 2015 economic forecast says the restaurant industry in 2014 added 1,000 jobs per day. It is projected to provide a record 14 million jobs in 2015.

So, where do the motivated, striving burger flippers go?

The glibertarians say the burger flippers should work hard, save money from their minimum wage jobs, get a better education, and move on to a higher paying job, maybe in an office or a laboratory. OK, that’s possible for some.

They say that Mr. Market determines what the value of a burger-flipping job should be. And, if it isn’t a living wage, the burger flipper should study some more.

But when they move on, odds are that they will move to another low-wage job, more likely than not, in the restaurant industry.

And regardless of what new low-wage job they take, the taxpayers’ subsidy of the Corporatists will continue.

More About Taxpayers Subsidizing Corporations

Yesterday we talked about how apartment rents can’t be afforded by minimum wage workers. Today, we look at one industry with low wage workers, the full-service restaurant industry. Full service restaurants are the large name brands like Appleby’s, Cracker Barrel, Chili’s, Outback and Olive Garden.

Full service restaurants employ over 4 million people and that is expected to grow by nearly 10% by 2022, which means that these companies are in a profitable market segment. The top 5 full service chains made $705 million in profits last year, while paying out another $751 million in dividends and stock buybacks.

A new report by the Restaurant Opportunities Center (ROC), shows that five of the ten lowest paid jobs as reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) are in full-service restaurants. Since many full-service restaurant workers receive wages below what is needed to meet their basic necessities, these workers rely on taxpayer-funded programs in order to meet their basic needs. We pay the full-service restaurant industry a double subsidy:

• High numbers of full-service restaurant workers are on public assistance
• By paying a less-than-minimum wage, customers are paying restaurant workers’ wages directly through tips

The ROC’s analysis looked at utilization of public assistance programs to estimate annual benefit expenditures for families of full-service restaurant workers for the years 2009-2013. Here is a summary of their findings:

• Nearly half of the families of full-service restaurant workers are enrolled in one or more public-assistance programs
• The cost of public assistance to families of workers in the full-service restaurant industry is $9,434,067,497 per year (that’s $9 billion for the math-impaired)
• Tipped restaurant workers live in poverty at 2.5 times the rate of our overall workforce
• The taxpayer underwriting of social programs for low-wage workers in a single Olive Garden is $196,970 annually.

ROC estimated that low wages and lack of benefits at the five largest full-service restaurant companies in the US cost taxpayers an estimated $1.4 billion per year. They focused on the major means-tested public programs that provide income supplements for working families. These included Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program, or CHIP, the federal earned income tax credit (EITC), food stamps (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP), basic household income assistance (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF).

Since 1991, the federal tipped sub-minimum wage has been set at $2.13 per hour, but states may establish a minimum wage that is higher than the federal government’s. So restaurant workers in 22 states receive the federal sub-minimum wage of $2.13 per hour, while restaurant workers in 20 states receive higher state sub-minimum wages of up to $5.00 per hour. Restaurant workers in eight states receive the full minimum wage.

Women make up 66% of all tipped workers, and people of color make up 40% of the total. Unsurprisingly, their poverty levels are higher in states that pay a $2.13 sub-minimum wage than in states that pay one minimum wage for both tipped and non-tipped workers.

You will pay more for a meal at most of these restaurants than at the fast food places. And that cost will go up if you believe in a fair wage for a fair day’s work. Naturally, the industry, represented by the National Restaurant Association is fighting any increase in the minimum wage for restaurants. This is something ALEC has been working with the National Restaurant Association and state governments to fight.

How about if the 535 well-coiffed rubber stamps in Washington start by raising the wages on any companies where public assistance subsidizes payroll wages? Why should taxpayer money be going to fund stock buybacks and bonuses to restaurant chain CEOs?

We could dream big, of tying the minimum wage to the cost of local resources like housing. Given the problem we reviewed yesterday, the minimum wage could be linked to how many hours is necessary to pay a month’s rent and utilities.

Every low wage worker needs a place to sleep when they aren’t working. It shouldn’t be on the street so that their employers can repurchase more stock.

On our dime.

Monday Wake Up Call – June 1, 2015

How many hours does it take to make rent at the minimum wage? The National Low Income Housing Coalition looked at the number of hours minimum-wage employees have to work per week in each state just to rent an apartment and survive financially. Their headline conclusion is there is no state where a minimum wage worker can earn enough to make the fair market rent for a two-bedroom place on 40 hours a week. West Virginia tallied the fewest hours at 63 to make the average fair market rent. Hawaii was 175 hours. California, Maryland, New Jersey, New York and Washington, DC were all over 130 hours. So, no chance to get an average place for a family while working 40 hours. Here is a chart from their report:

The Wrongologist would have preferred if the study had used median rents rather than average rents. The red bars show the gap in hourly wages between the state’s minimum wage and the cost of an average two bedroom place. This is another artifact of the Great Recession. Let’s recap what has happened since it ended:

• The percentage of people employed in the US has never recovered
• All income gains went to the top 1%
• There has been a huge bull market in stocks, despite stagnant income for all but the top few

If we don’t wake up, America will be a banana republic, with the emphasis on the “banana”, since the “republic” is already dying. The US will be small enclaves of massive wealth run by a few oligarchs. Think of it as Manhattan, a few square miles where the Corporations and their top employees reside, surrounded by a sea of low wage cast-offs.

None of this is inevitable. We could increase wages, we could rebuild our decaying infrastructure. This approach is dismissed as “Keynesian” by our right-wing brothers. The only kind of Keynesian stimulus they will accept is military Keynesianism. It’s not that peaceful Keynesian stimulus doesn’t work, it’s just that they won’t benefit from it. They see war as prosperity. China is next in their battle sights.

Wake up America, time is running out to keep us on a course that avoids our demise as a middle class economy. The next election may be the most important in our lifetimes. Here is today’s wake-up call, Amy Speace, a folk singer featured in a NYT Money section article. Here is her song, “Spent,” about trying to make rent:

Sample lyric:
We’re head over heels,
In over our heads,
We borrow and steal
To pay the rent.
How are we gonna save any money
When it’s already spent?

For those who read the Wrongologist in email, you can see the video here.

Today’s breakfast links:

Study shows human attention span now lags that of a goldfish. Who is behind the study? Microsoft, who wants to learn how modern technology impacts the attention span of people who use it. (Insert your own joke here)

Sudden loss of ice in Antarctica was large enough to affect Earth’s gravity. The ice loss causes small changes in the gravity field of the Earth, which were detected by a satellite mission, the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE).

What do you get if you take the blades off a wind turbine? A better wind turbine. This new turbine is a hollow straw that sticks up 40 feet up in the air and vibrates like a guitar string when the wind blows. Its 50% cheaper than blade turbines, and while it is also 30% less efficient at capturing energy, a wind farm can double the number of bladeless turbines that occupy a given area. That’s a net energy gain of 40%. The company is Vortex Turbines. Invest at your own risk.

A new salt reactor will use spent nuclear fuel to make energy. This nuclear reactor generates 75 times the electricity per ton of uranium compared to today’s light-water nuclear reactors, since it burns 96% of its fuel, compared with only 4% in light-water reactors. The company is the venture-funded Transatomic Power. They hope to build a 20-megawatt demonstration reactor by 2020. With nearly 80,000 tons of radioactive waste in the US (and with 2,000 tons added every year), it could turn something toxic into something useful. Invest at your own risk. With this being said, it could be as simple as doing some research into something like uranium mining stocks and finding out about this sector in this particular industry. The more people know about investing, hopefully, the more clued up they will become and potentially make better decisions.

A PA newspaper published a letter calling for President Obama to be executed, but now they’re apologizing. The paper says: “We will strive to do better in the future.” Another example of our media’s inexorable descent. They are only sorry they got caught.

Here is a list of Zagat’s best brunches in Manhattan.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – May 31, 2015

Get a cup of coffee and ponder a few things on this Sunday.

First, from the NYT’s Upshot, data-driven news you can use: Clinton vs. Sanders voting record. Top line numbers, they voted the same way 93% of the time. However, the 31 times that Ms. Clinton and Mr. Sanders disagreed happened to be on some the biggest issues of the day, including measures on continuing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, an immigration reform bill and bank bailouts during the Great Recession. Bernie was opposed to all these actions.

Second, recycled neo-con viewpoints from the Washington Post Editorial Board on the Obama administration’s strategy in Iraq and for ISIS: (brackets by the Wrongologist)

The Obama administration has been unable to induce [Iraq’s] Abadi government to deliver desperately needed arms…to the Sunni tribes and Kurdish forces. Yet it [the Obama administration] simultaneously refuses to deliver materiel directly to those fighters, on the grounds this might undermine the Abadi government.

Then the Jeff Bezos team trots out Iran bogeyman:

Meanwhile, US officials watch as Iran continues to provide massive direct support to Shiite militias, including forces the US has designated as terrorist organizations.

Finally the neo-con wet dream of more troops on the ground emerges, repeating John McCain’s view:

Mr. Obama should bolster them with more US advisers, including forward air controllers, and more air support. He should insist that Mr. Abadi open a weapons pipeline to Sunni and Kurdish units. Perhaps most important, Mr. Obama should make his priority eliminating the Islamic State — as opposed to limiting US engagement in Iraq.

What we know: Experienced Iraqi army officers, who were largely Sunni, were left jobless when the Iraqi army was disbanded in 2004. Some of them joined ISIS. And Iraq’s current army officers are incompetent and corrupt appointees of an incompetent and corrupt Iraqi government. No matter what equipment we provide to the Iraqi army, all the Iraqi army will be capable of doing is spending our money and losing on the field of battle.

The editors of the WaPo have an agenda that isn’t serious about Iraq. The Iraqis do not lack weapons. We have spent nearly $40 billion on weapons and training. What money can’t buy is the will to fight. The Iraqi army apparently doesn’t have a lot of that.

If what the WaPo and Republicans really are saying is that more American men and women should die in Iraq for a country whose soldiers flee at the first sight of ISIS, then they should say that.

Let’s fight an endless war with money we don’t have. Great idea. Go ahead, you can now have your flashback to Vietnam.

On to a few cartoons.

Obama’s ISIS conundrum in a nutshell:

FIFA’s story inspires others:

FIFA gets 47 count indictment:

Texas floods delay Texas policy:

One-third of Nigeria’s rescued girls are pregnant:

Tribes of America

We have two tribes in America, largely represented by our two political parties. The parties debate the correct course for the country, without any chance of reaching compromise. One of the parties has begun acting like insurrectionists.

Over the past 40 years, the Republican Party has transformed into a party that flouts the law when it is in the majority, and threatens disorder when in the minority:

• No Democrat has called for secession, as Rick Perry did
• No Democrat defied the Supreme Court by sending in the National Guard and provoking a confrontation with police, as Jeb Bush did during Schiavo
• No Democrat is so anti-science that they believe that if women are “legitimately raped,” they will be protected from pregnancy, as Todd Akin did
• No Democrat has said, what Mike Huckabee has said: The Supreme Court is only that…it is not the Supreme Being. It cannot overrule God…when it comes to life, and when it comes to the sanctity of marriage, the court cannot change what God has created
• No Democrat has suggested that states disregard EPA rules on coal plant emissions while various court challenges occur, as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell did

Politicians keep their jobs because they win elections, and a politician who openly admits that he only believes in democracy if it achieves his desired ends, is at minimum, a radical, or more likely, is an insurrectionist.

There is a precedent for the actions of today’s Republican Party. It is the antebellum Southern Democrats of John C. Calhoun, who threatened to nullify federal legislation, and who later led the fight to secede from the union over slavery.

The homeland of today’s right-wing insurgency is the very same place where the last insurgency originated: The Old Confederacy. History offers some geographical perspective: The South had an almost unbroken control of the Federal Government from 1789 until secession. Our presidents were either Southerners, or when they were Northerners like Pierce and Buchanan, they were puppets of Southern senators and cabinet members.

For 70 years, the Supreme Court had a majority of Southern justices. With the aid of Northern allies and the three-fifths rule, the South continuously controlled one or both houses of Congress. The 15 Slave States, with a white population of not quite eight million, had 30 Senators, 90 Representatives, and 120 electoral votes, while the state of New York, with a population of four million had two senators, 33 representatives, and 35 electoral votes.

Lincoln’s election in 1860 left the South in control of both houses of Congress, and until 1863, Lincoln and the Republicans would have been powerless to pass legislation hostile to the South. Through its control of the Senate, the South could have blocked the confirmation of any Lincoln appointee whom it considered unfriendly. In spite of this, and notwithstanding Lincoln’s repeated assurances that he would not, directly or indirectly, interfere with slavery where it already existed, the South seceded.

Today, the two parties are still the two tribes that were created out of secession, and the same political dynamic prevails today. The civil war map looks starkly similar to the political bases of both parties today, with the addition of the new Randians in the Upper Midwest.

This tribe now includes Republicans, the Tea Party and right-wing conservatives. They now control 36 state legislatures that are trying to eliminate abortions, remove environmental protections, enhance gun rights, and privatize education, all of which need a weak federal government in order to succeed. Time to call it what it is: A domestic insurgency by America’s right wing tribe.

After the Civil War, we passed the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, ending slavery, formalizing birthright citizenship, creating black male suffrage, and guaranteeing equal protection under the law. Later, after the Great Depression, we enacted laws to protect the people from financial abuses by businesses and corporations. With Civil Rights legislation, the federal government protected citizens from abuses at the hand of businesses as well as local governments.

Much of these will be unwound if the insurgency succeeds.

What good are policy proposals in the face of an insurgency? We no longer have fellow citizens, we have enemies. We do not have common views, we have religious, racial, class, and political factions.

When we see each other as enemies, we are the Middle East, we can no longer work together for the common good.

We should deal with our tribal issues at home instead of trying to fix the tribal issues in the Middle East.

Sec Def Carter Says What Politicians Can’t

After Ramadi fell to ISIS, Mr. Obama said in an interview with the Atlantic, that the fall of Ramadi was a “tactical setback” in the US effort to defeat ISIS but said, “I don’t think we’re losing.” Then, because something real had to be said, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter said it:

What apparently happened was that the Iraqi forces just showed no will to fight…They were not outnumbered. In fact, they vastly outnumbered the opposing force, and yet they failed to fight. They withdrew from the site, and that says to me, and I think to most of us, that we have an issue with the will of the Iraqis to fight ISIL and defend themselves.

He captured the essence of the problem:

We can give them training, we can give them equipment — we obviously can’t give them the will to fight…But if we give them training, we give them equipment, and give them support, and give them some time, I hope they will develop the will to fight, because only if they fight can ISIL remain defeated.

This was all too much for the Republicans, who are attacking President Obama’s “failed” strategy for dealing with ISIS. John Bolton said on Fox News Sunday: “We’re losing. There’s no doubt about it.” John McCain, on CBS’s Face the Nation: “We need more troops on the ground. We need forward air controllers”.

The Republican 2016 candidates also attacked Obama’s strategy, but said little about what they would do differently. Those who have spoken out, want thousands of US troops back in Iraq.

• Lindsey Graham and Rick Santorum want to deploy 10,000 American troops in Iraq as part of a coalition with Arab nations
• Jeb Bush thinks additional American soldiers would have prevented ISIS from gathering strength in recent years. But an American-led force now? “I don’t think that will work,” he said last Friday
• Marco Rubio described his strategy against ISIS with a line from the movie “Taken” — “we will look for you, we will find you, and we will kill you”
• Scott Walker and Rick Perry are open to a combat mission
• Rand Paul wants boots on the ground — as long as they are “Arab boots on the ground”

The Republicans offer “more troops” and movie quotes. They seem to say, “It matters not if you win or lose, it’s where you place the blame”. They also want us to believe that the “surge” defeated the Iraqi insurgency back in the day, and that if Obama had just stayed in Iraq, ISIS wouldn’t be there today.

It’s just more Republican delusion about a country we broke and can’t put back together.

Def Sec Carter was correct to rebuke the Iraqis for cutting and running at Ramadi. The Iraqi military and police forces outnumbered the attacking ISIS forces by 10 to 1, and were more heavily armed. Yet they still ran away as fast as their US-provided ground vehicles would carry them. The Iraqi forces have pointed out that they did not have as much air support as they wanted.

Ok, but it is fair to point out the total lack of air support available to ISIS forces. Any army, like the Iraqis who have air support, when facing an enemy who fights without air support, and finds itself unable to overcome that enemy, is probably fighting poorly.

The military situation is that ISIS and the Iraqi Shias are evenly matched in weaponry, and the Iraqi army has superior numbers. ISIS uses their arms and smaller numbers better, and leads their fighters more skillfully. What is keeping the Iraqi army from using the mobile, combined arms operations tactics that ISIS executes routinely? Is it lack of US air support? Lack of Iranian support?

Maybe it is a marked inferiority in leadership. How about a lack of competence in tactics, logistics, maintenance and supply, not to mention nepotism and chronic corruption?

This is not our fight, and it never was. Now that the apple cart is upside down, and the Sunnis and Shias are at each other, there is absolutely no place in this for the US. At the end of the day, we need to have both Sunni and Shia friends in the ME.

Bravo, Secretary Carter!

Keep our politicians real whenever they try to posture about the ME and ISIS.

Nothing to Hide?

Here are two interrelated ideas about privacy and personal freedom. We know that most Americans value privacy and oppose mass surveillance. Of the large minority who think spying is okay, they justify it by saying it is because they have “nothing to hide”. 49% % said keeping the details of the government’s programs secret is more important than justifying their legality. Edward Snowden spoke last week about “nothing to hide” in a Q&A on Reddit: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

I think the central issue is to point out that regardless of the results, the ends (preventing a crime) do not justify the means (violating the rights of the millions whose private records are unconstitutionally seized and analyzed).
Some might say “I don’t care if they violate my privacy; I’ve got nothing to hide.” Help them understand that they are misunderstanding the fundamental nature of human rights. Nobody needs to justify why they “need” a right: the burden of justification falls on the one seeking to infringe upon the right. But even if they did, you can’t give away the rights of others because they’re not useful to you. More simply, the majority cannot vote away the natural rights of the minority.
But even if they could, help them think for a moment about what they’re saying. Arguing that you don’t care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don’t care about free speech because you have nothing to say.
A free press benefits more than just those who read the paper.

On the other hand, YouGov’s latest poll shows that many Americans support making it a criminal offense to make public statements which would stir up hatred against particular groups of people.

• Americans narrowly support (41%) criminalizing hate speech
• Most Democrats (51%) support criminalizing hate speech
• Independents (41% to 35%) and Republicans (47% to 37%) tend to oppose making it illegal to stir up hatred against particular groups

Support for banning hate speech is particularly strong among racial minorities. 62% of black Americans, and 50% of Hispanics support criminalizing comments which would stir up hatred. White Americans oppose a ban on hate speech 43% to 36%.

In both of these cases, loss of privacy, and the suppression of hate speech, the practical question is, what does more harm?

With mass surveillance, we give up a constitutional right to prevent the very tiny chance of being killed by a terrorist. Contrast that with the certain chance of being spied upon, and the certainty of losing your 4th Amendment rights in the name of protecting you from terrorists.

In the case of hate speech, think about it: It’s always easier to defend someone’s right to say something with which you agree. But in America, we defend free speech, even if you strongly object, because that is a right contained in the 1st Amendment.

Liberals are divided by these two ideas. They are against the Patriot Act’s attack on unreasonable search and seizure, as contained in the 4th Amendment. On the other hand they have a real problem with unfettered hate speech, which according to the YouGov survey, makes them want to limit free speech, putting them on the wrong side of the 1st Amendment.

There is no moral calculus that addresses either of these issues with certainty.

How Cleveland shoots. Links:

49 Shots And The Cop Goes Free. On May 23, Michael Brelo, one of the Cleveland police officers involved in the 2012 shooting deaths of Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams, was acquitted of manslaughter by an Ohio judge, who found that while Officer Brelo did fire lethal shots at the two people, testimony did not prove that his shots caused either death. 49 shots by Brelo, through the car’s windshield. While standing on the hood of the car. And reloading. You have to wonder what it takes to get a conviction. Black robes, white justice. NOTE: all cops involved fired 137 shots. However, only one cop, who fired 49 times, was charged.

It’s been 6 months since Tamir Rice died, and the cop who killed him still hasn’t been questioned. Tamir was killed because he was waving a toy gun. There is explicit surveillance video of the shooting, and the officer who shot him has a troubling record. So why is the investigation taking so long? And adult white men can carry weapons openly, in large groups, in public restaurants and stores, and have no fear of being shot.

Continuing our exploration of springtime at the House of Wrong, here is an Indigo Bunting. They are occasionally at our bird feeders:

For those who read the Wrongologist in email, you can view the video here.

Memorial Day 2015

“I have never been able to think of the day as one of mourning; I have never quite been able to feel that half-masted flags were appropriate on Decoration Day. I have rather felt that the flag should be at the peak, because those whose dying we commemorate rejoiced in seeing it where their valor placed it. We honor them in a joyous, thankful, triumphant commemoration of what they did.” – Benjamin Harrison

Welcome to Memorial Day Weekend. Before 1971, it was called Decoration Day, which was first observed on May 30, 1868, when flowers were placed on the graves of both Union and Confederate soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery. The Civil War claimed more lives than any conflict in US history, but until 1867, we had no national cemeteries in which to bury them. The Decoration Day holiday was established by a military general order issued by Gen. John Logan, the national commander of the Grand Army of the Republic. This is from Gen. Logan’s order:

The 30th of May, 1868, is designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers, or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village and hamlet churchyard in the land

Back then, it was America’s most solemn holiday. By the end of the 1860s, Americans in towns and cities everywhere had begun holding springtime tributes to these countless fallen soldiers, decorating their graves with flowers and reciting prayers.

Decoration Day became Memorial Day when Congress passed the National Holiday Act of 1971, which moved most national holidays to Mondays, creating three-day weekends. So, along with the picnics, three-day sales, and celebrating the start of summer, let’s stop and remember the people who died in our wars. Let’s do that regardless of whether we “supported” a particular war. Make it a time of remembrance along with the bbq and beer.

There are no “blue” or “red” gravestones in our national cemeteries:

This week, banks became felons, but their bankers did not:

There was one airbag recall, but there should have been two:

Spring graduations are full of messages:

The fields surrounding the House of Wrong have two bluebird houses, and both have nests and fledgling birds. Here is a video of Eastern Bluebirds along with a Tree Swallow: