The Real Solution to the Connecticut Shooting Tragedy

The horrific tragedy in Connecticut will undoubtedly bring the issue of gun control to the forefront for a few days as it always does when such an event occurs.  Then, after a few days or weeks, it will fade away with little or nothing being done. 

The second amendment states: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”   It seems pretty obvious to me that this amendment was intended to protect the right of state militias to arm their soldiers.  Since soldiers used to provide their own weapons, that made sense then.  It doesn’t appear to have much of anything to do with anything today since soldiers no longer provide their own weapons.  I realize that the Supreme Court doesn’t see it that way, but then they also think corporations are people.

But as much as I would like to see assault weapons banned, the gun show loop hole closed, “cop killer” bullets prohibited, and other common sense rules put into place to regulate guns, this country is so absolutely inundated with guns that any new laws would take decades to have any real impact even if we could implement them successfully.  The FBI estimates that there are about 200 million privately owned guns in the United States not counting those owned by the military, police, and museums.  So even though there is overwhelming evidence that we aren’t as safe as countries with fewer guns, the odds of doing anything about it other than possibly addressing the most extreme cases such as assault rifles seem hopeless.

What we can do something about, however, is our mental health system.  I can’t think of a single mass shooting incident in which there weren’t advanced warnings that the shooter was in trouble.  Yet we don’t seem to have the will or the ability to do anything about it.  The troubled person is simply allowed to exist on the fringes until they pop.  I’m not in any way excusing the actions of these people, but they don’t suddenly appear out of nowhere.  There are nearly always one or more people who know that the person needs help or presents a danger.  Yet our laws and our regulations make it difficult or impossible for authorities to do anything about it until the person actually goes off the deep end and does the unthinkable.  This needs to change.

I’m not a mental health professional, so I don’t know the details of what a solution would look like.  I do, however, know that there are people out there that we need to be protected from.  If they can be helped, then we should get them help.  If they can’t be helped, then they must be restrained.  I know that this is a slippery slope with great potential to infringe upon the rights of innocent people.  However, I also know that doing nothing will yield the same result it always has – these things will just continue to occur at a far greater frequency in this country than in the rest of the world combined.

How about if this time we skip the fruitless and temporary discussion of controlling guns and get serious about the discussion of mental health.  We really need to do something different.

Why I’m Dreading a Romney Presidency

There is a good chance that Mitt Romney will be our next president.  I’m dreading that possibility, and here is why.

1.       Romney will explode our national debt.

       I know that Romney has been promising that he will reduce our deficit and get our national
       debt under control.  That’s one of the main reasons people are voting for him.  But if you look at
       what he is proposing to do, that can’t happen. 

       You can’t start out with a trillion dollar deficit, cut taxes by $5 trillion, increase military spending
       by $2 trillion, and pledge not to increase any revenues without doing one of three things.  The
       first would be to eliminate virtually all income tax deductions including home mortgage interest
       deductions, state tax deductions, medical deductions, charitable deductions, earned income
       credits, and standard deductions for everyone; not just the wealthy.  The effect would be to
       transfer taxes from the wealthy to the middle class.  Romney says he has six studies that show
       that he won’t have to do that.  His “studies” consist of blog posts and editorials by conservative
       writers.  He can’t do it, so he will take his second option.  He will play accounting games and
       explode the deficit.  The third option would be to make draconian cuts in research, education,
       Medicaid, Medicare, infrastructure, veteran’s benefits, social welfare, and everything that
       supports the middle and lower classes.  That would be too unpopular.  He will choose to explode
       the deficits on the promise that things will get better later.

       Clearly Obama hasn’t made as much progress on reducing the deficit as we need, but despite
       what you probably have heard, he has been reducing it.  Here are the deficit numbers for the
       past few years:  2009-$1.41 trillion (Wall Street bailout), 2010-$1.29 trillion, 2011-1.30 trillion,
       2012-$1.09 trillion, 2013-$0.90 trillion (projected).  Those are still unacceptable numbers, but
       there is reason to expect them to continue to decrease as the economy improves.

2.       Romney will kill jobs.

Romney claims he will create jobs through his tax cuts, mostly for the wealthy, based on his extensive knowledge of how business works.  I’m not sure why people believe that running a takeover company gives you knowledge that would be useful in managing the national economy, but apparently they do. 

Our jobs market collapsed because the housing market collapsed, because financial mismanagement nearly caused our financial institutions to collapse, because of major problems in export markets, because of decades of sending our jobs overseas, because too much of our money has accumulated in the hands of a few people who can’t spend it, and in general due to an inadequate demand for our goods and services.  The idea that any significant part of it has to do with over-regulation, health-care uncertainty, or high taxes is ludicrous.

The job market is slowly improving, and the stimulus definitely did help in spite of the fact that Republican insistence on allocating 40% of it to tax cuts greatly reduced its effectiveness.  What is needed to further increase hiring is to take some of the money that has accumulated in the hands of the few and use it for productive spending.  Productive spending is not giving the money to free-loaders.  It is spending it in ways that make this a better place to do business and that create jobs in the process.  The best example is broadly defined infrastructure projects.  Not only do we need roads and bridges, but also better internet, railroads, airports, buried power cables, smart power grids, seaports, sewers, flood control, schools, hospitals, and telecommunications.  Smart spending also includes research, education, healthcare, public works, small-business incubators, conservation, clean energy, and public safety.  All of these will not only create jobs directly but will have a catalytic effect that creates even more jobs to support these activities.

Romney wants to do exactly the opposite.  He wants to give still more money to those who already can’t spend what they have, and he wants an austerity budget that will kill hundreds of thousands of government jobs and jobs that depend on them.  He loves to say that government doesn’t create jobs.  Try telling that to the 1.8 million people, including all of the politicians, who work for the federal government, and that doesn’t include the post office or military.

3.       Romney will appoint activist, conservative Supreme Court judges.

Romney may say that he is not against abortion in cases of rape, incest, or to preserve the life of the mother, but when he appoints still more activist, conservative Supreme Court judges like Scalia,  Row v. Wade will be overturned.  When that happens, all protections for abortion disappear.  The states and federal government can pass whatever laws they want, and as we have already seen, some of those will be pretty amazing.  Certainly a personhood amendment declaring that a fertilized egg has all the protections of an actual born human being will be one of them.  That will eliminate all abortions for the poor. The rich of course will still just go to another country as they did prior to Row v. Wade.  It will also eliminate most kinds of birth control and in vitro fertilization.

I’m old enough to remember when women had their lives ruined or even ended by back-alley butchers.  I don’t want to go back there.  If you believe that life begins at the instant of conception (which by the way takes several minutes or even hours) then don’t have an abortion, but please recognize that many of our citizens don’t see it that way, and don’t force your religious beliefs on them.

We can also expect more cases like the Citizens United decision.  In addition to giving corporations and foreign governments unbelievable influence over our elections, it has already allowed companies to start telling their employees how to vote.   Corporations are not people.  No serious, unbiased judge could ever conclude that they are.

The courts have been the most important protector of our rights over the past 50 years.  I’d like for it to stay that way.

4.       Romney will strip important regulations from our system.

It has become apparent over the past 30 years that a president doesn’t need to overturn a regulation or law he disagrees with.  All he needs to do is either to appoint no one or to appoint someone who doesn’t believe in the regulation to head the department enforcing the it.  Alternatively, he can fail to fund the responsible department.

Capitalism is a wonderful system, but it needs to be regulated.  Corporations will nearly always do the thing that makes the most money regardless of the impact it has on the public good.  Without regulation, Detroit would still be making gas guzzling, unsafe automobiles that pollute the environment.  Without regulation, unscrupulous companies would still be selling patent medicines that not only don’t help people but that actually hurt them.  Without regulation, our bank deposits wouldn’t be secure.  Without regulation, our financial institutions would bring our economy to the brink of collapse again.  Of course some regulations are overzealous or poorly conceived.  We need to fix those, but that doesn’t mean that we need to start throwing out regulations right and left to “help create jobs.”

5.       Romney will get us into a stupid war.

Romney is a rank amateur when it comes to foreign policy.  He’s a businessman.  Has it normally been your experience that business executives have a good knowledge of foreign affairs?  Of course he will have advisors just as Bush the Second did.  Of course they will drag us into stupid wars, just like Cheney did.  Romney obviously believes that if he just spends enough on our military, Iran will be so afraid that they will just do what we want just like he thinks the USSR did under Reagan.  That wasn’t why the USSR collapsed, and it won’t work with Iran.  It’s a really scary prospect to have someone with absolutely no idea what they are doing running our military and foreign policy.

6.       Romney will waste four more years not doing anything about global climate change.

Honestly, I don’t know whether Obama will do anything about global climate change either, but I do know that Romney will not.  Climate change is real.  It is caused by human activity.  It will have catastrophic results.  Many of us will live to see it.  The clock is running.

7.       Romney does not really believe in church/state separation.

Separation of church and state is good for the state, and it is good for the church.  If you want to find a country where they don’t take religion seriously, look for one with a state religion.  The whole right wing of the Republican Party, which Romney has so heartily endorsed, doesn’t believe in separation of church and state.  I do.  I don’t want to see it end.

8.    Romney will try to get rid of Obamacare.

       Maybe other people don't mind paying $2,000 per year in increased medical costs to cover the expenses of those who choose not to get insurance and get their medical care through the emergency room at our expense.  I do mind.  Obamacare will stop that.

Why is it a bad thing for 30 million people who get minimal medical care because they have no insurance to now have a way to take care of themselves and their children?  I think it's a good thing?

       I like that people with pre-existing conditions will be able to get insurance, that people won't
       lose their insurance because they exceed some lifetime cap or change jobs, that older youth can stay on their parents' policies until they get established, that insurance companies have a limit on how much they can spend on administrative and executive costs, and that people won't go bankrupt because of unforeseen medical expenses.

       We were the only major democracy in the world that didn't provide medical care for all of its citizens.  Obamacare is far from perfect.  It would be much better if Obama hadn't made so many concessions to the Republicans who ended up not supporting it anyway, but it is way better than where we were.

The one area where Romney may actually be an improvement over President Obama is in working with Congress.  Although they will certainly be partisans, I do not believe that the Democrats will put up the iron wall that the Republicans have in which all considerations of what is good for the country will be cast aside in pursuit of what is good for the party.  In case after case the Republicans have been united in their opposition to ideas that were originally theirs and that they sponsored bills to establish, just because President Obama came out in favor of them.  It is truly the most cynical thing I have ever seen to throw the country under the bus repeatedly by obstructing anything Obama wanted to do no matter how good for the country and then criticize him for not getting enough done.  The Democrats will not do that, so Romney wins on this one.

Constitutional Amendment to Reform the Financing of Political Campaigns

In my opinion, the United States government has become a plutocracy in which wealthy individuals and companies own the government. 

This has happened primarily because successful political campaigns have become so expensive that candidates must solicit huge amounts of money from those who have it.  If they want this stream of contributions to continue, they have to dance to the tune that their donors play.  In addition, government has become a revolving door in which many of those who hold office or work for those who do, trade their service for vast riches by going to work for those who can make fertile use of their connections once they leave public service.

These factors, combined with the fact that campaigns have become very good at using our new media and their huge resources to manipulate public opinion, have led to a government that at the very least is no longer for the people.

This country is facing very serious problems.  That's not new.  What is new is that we are making practically no progress in addressing them because our government no longer serves the people.  I don't see how that can change until we effectively take big money out of our political process.

In some past crises, we have been able to look to the Supreme Court to set things right.  However, in this case through the Citizen's United decision and overturning campaign finance reform, they have made things much worse.

It appears to me that only through a constitutional amendment can we get our government back.  This won't be easy.  Those who benefit from the current system are those who have to initiate the changes.  However, the people still ultimately hold the power if we get organized.

I am proposing the following constitutional amendment to address this problem.   Admittedly, I am not a constitutional scholar or even an attorney, but someone needs to get the ball rolling.  I have no doubt at all that much of what I have been proposed can be improved, but it is a starting point.  What do you think?

Twenty-eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution


Section 1

Only individual, living, human beings shall be eligible to contribute to the campaigns of those running for public office.  No companies, corporations, labor unions, political parties or other groups may contribute directly or indirectly to political campaigns.

Section 2

Contributions to political campaigns by individuals are limited to $500 per candidate per election. Congress by a two-thirds vote of both Houses shall have the power to adjust this amount, but in no case shall the maximum exceed the greater of $500 and 1% of the total compensation for the office the candidate is seeking.  Such contributions may not be solicited or received earlier than 1 year before the election for the office being sought.

Section 3

Individuals can contribute only to the campaigns of candidates for whom they are eligible to vote.

Section 4

No entity other than a candidate’s duly recognized political campaign shall fund attempts to promote one candidate or denigrate another for the purpose of influencing the outcome of an election.

Section 5

When a campaign ends, amounts collected for a candidate’s campaign but not used for that purpose must be submitted to the federal, state, country, or city government for which the office was sought.  No amounts contributed for a campaign may be retained by the individual seeking office for their own use or carried forward for future elections.

Section 6

No member of Congress nor any person employed in an official capacity by any member of Congress nor any person contracted for substantial official work by a member of Congress may be employed by any registered lobbying company or its agents for a period of 5 years following the termination of the member’s Congressional term.  In addition, such a person may not act as a paid consultant to Congress or its members.

Will the Voter ID Laws Reduce Your Representation in Congress?

If the Republicans in various states are successful in using Voter ID laws to disenfranchise the elderly, the poor, college students, and others who frequently vote for Democrats, why wouldn’t that reduce the number of representatives that state gets in the House of Representatives and the number of votes it gets for President in the Electoral College?

Read Section 2 of the 14^th amendment to the Constitution.  What else could you conclude?  If you deny the right to vote to male inhabitants over 21, the basis of representation is reduced proportionally.  Sorry about the male part.  I didn’t write the amendment, but here it is.  Read it yourself.

Amendment 14 - Citizenship Rights - Section 2
Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

Conservation - Energy's Best-Kept Secret

Energy is never far from the newswire.  Should we build the Keystone Pipeline to help Canada move its oil to the U.S. and also to international markets via Houston?  Do we dare to apply sanctions to Iran that might disrupt world oil supply?  Will the projected increases in fuel prices this summer derail our economic recovery?  Can we ignore the effect that burning fossil fuels has on global climate?  Is fracking (hydraulic fracturing) for natural gas safe?  Should we stop building coal-powered power plants that are known to be major polluters?

In most of our discussions about energy, we all seem to be die-hard supply-siders.  We focus most of our attention on how to obtain more energy and very little on how to make better use of what we have.

It is difficult to know how much energy we waste in the United States.  Information provided by the Department of Energy^[1] and Lawrence Livermore labs^[2] has been used to argue that we waste more than half of the energy we use. That may an overstatement since conversion and transmission of energy inevitably lead to some loss.

Nevertheless, we do use an extraordinary amount of energy, and much of it is unnecessary. In 2009, the U.S. consumed 9.4 quadrillion BTUs of energy.^[3] That is enough energy to heat all of the water in the Atlantic Ocean by more than half a degree.^[4]  We also know that the U.S. uses more than twice as much energy per person as does the European Union and more than four times as much as the world average.^[5]

We spend a lot of time, money and effort trying to find clean and renewable ways to produce energy, and we should.  However, it appears unlikely that any of these will be game changers in the near future. 

We wring our hands about energy independence, engage in wars over energy resources, and support horrible governments to get access to their oil. We dig in places that would be better left undisturbed. We pollute our environment with the byproducts of burning unbelievable amounts of fossil fuels. We flirt with unimaginable disasters by using nuclear energy.  We extract oil from sources like tar sands that are known to be environmentally damaging.  We extract natural gas using fracking techniques that pump thousands of gallons of toxic chemicals into our underground aquifers and may increase the odds of earth quakes.   And all the time the real payoff is simply to quit wasting energy. Conservation doesn’t mean sitting at home in the dark with your coat on. It simply means stopping the flow of energy that isn’t needed.

The opportunities are everywhere and include insulation, smart lights, smart power grids, black pipes on roofs to heat water, heat pumps, high mileage vehicles, goods shipped by train rather than truck, passengers moved by train or bus rather than by plane or car, high efficiency furnaces and air conditioners, and smart buildings. The opportunities are almost endless, and the government can have an enormous impact on facilitating their implementation by providing incentives and assistance. Doing so will create jobs, increase our quality of life, reduce pollution, improve international relations, and improve our business climate.

Conservation may not be as cool as some sexy new technology, but it sure makes a lot of sense.

References

[1] http://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/annual/index.cfm#summary
[2] https://www.llnl.gov/news/newsreleases/2010/images/energy-flow-annotated.pdf
[3] http://www.pennenergy.com/index/articles/display.articles.pennenergy.power.operations-reliability.2010.05.us-energy_consumption.QP129867.dcmp=rss.page=1.html
[4] http://www.chacha.com/question/how-many-gallons-of-water-are-in-the-atlantic-ocean
[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_resources_and_consumption

Model Shoot Photos

I was lucky enough to be able to participate in an amateur model shoot through my camera club.  I took a lot of pictures.  Here are some of my favorites.  Having great models, lighting, and backdrops really makes things easier.

 

The Catholic Church and the Minnesota Same-Sex Marriage Ammendment

In November, Minnesota voters will be asked to decide whether or not to join 31 other states that have passed constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage.  Even though Minnesota already prevents same-sex marriage through its Defense of Marriage Act, this amendment would extend the prohibition to the constitutional level thus barring challenges to the law’s constitutionality. 

Specifically, the proposed amendment states, “Only a union of one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as a marriage in Minnesota."

According to a recent report from the Minnesota Campaign Finance Board, the Catholic Archdiocese of Minneapolis & St. Paul and the Catholic Dioceses of New Ulm contributed $700,000 last year to support passage of this amendment.  Half of that money, $350,000, was donated to Minnesota For Marriage, an organization that is spearheading the push to get the constitutional amendment approved.

According to Catholic World News, Archbishop John Nienstedt and other church leaders in Minnesota are enthusiastically supporting this amendment and he has warned his priests that open dissention will not be tolerated.  One priest who has challenged the archbishop on that point, Father Mike Tegeder, has reportedly been warned that he could be suspended from ministry if he continues to oppose the amendment campaign.

The Catholic Spirit reported that as part of a statewide effort by the Catholic bishops of Minnesota, the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis provided $650,000 in 2011 to the Minnesota Catholic Conference for that organization’s activities to get the amendment on the ballot.

More than 400,000 DVDs have been mailed to the homes of Minnesota Catholics, courtesy of Catholic bishops in the state.  The 18-minute DVD includes an appearance by the Archbishop in which he says it is time for Minnesotans to vote on a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between one man and one woman.

So the question is this.  How can this possibly not invalidate any claim the Catholic Church has to tax exemption?

Austin Cline provided an overview of the tax exemption laws in About.com.  To paraphrase (emphasis mine):

Tax exemptions are not a right.  No group or church is owed a tax exemption. These exemptions on various taxes are not protected by the Constitution.  They are created by and regulated by the legislatures and can be taken away by them. Tax exemptions are provided in exchange for groups’ providing services to the community.  Church tax exemptions are in jeopardy if they engage in direct political activity either against or on behalf of a political candidate or in an attempt to directly influence the passage of particular legislation. Losing tax-exempt status can mean both having to pay income taxes and that donations to the group will not be tax deductible by the donors.

This excerpt from the IRS Tax Guide for Religious Organizations describes what churches must do to retain their 501(c)(3) statuses that allow them to be tax exempt and allow people contributing to them to deduct the contribution.

In general, no organization, including a church, may qualify for IRC section 501(c)(3) status if a substantial part of its activities is attempting to influence legislation.  Legislation includes … a referendum, ballot initiative, constitutional amendment, or similar procedure.  A church or religious organization will be regarded as attempting to influence legislation … if the organization advocates the adoption or rejection of legislation.

How could this be any clearer?  The Catholic Church has attempted to influence whether or not the constitutional amendment is passed by contributing large amounts of money to lobbying organizations, by trying to influence voters who are members of the Church on how to vote, and by muzzling its own leaders’ ability to discuss the issue.

The Catholic Church must lose its tax exempt 501(c)(3) status, and contributions to the church by individual tax payers must not be deductable.  This is a fight we must engage in if we expect the separation of church and state to mean anything.