Living Wages

Credit: Our Walmart

A study just released by Dēmos indicates that Wal-Mart could pay an average annual wage of $25,000 if it just halted the practice of buying back its stock at a cost of billions of dollars per year. This buy-back mostly benefits current stockholders, particularly the heirs of founder Sam Walton, who in 2009 owned about 42% of the company. A direct result of this siphoning of profits into the coffers of the have-mores is the sad tale of a Wal-Mart in Canton, OH where employees have set up donation bins at the Thanksgiving season to collect food from employees for distribution to other employees in need.

How extreme must the contrasts become before the Waltons realize that sharing wealth is a sustainable approach and hoarding wealth isn't? Perhaps, when their employees are so poor that they can't afford to shop in their own stores?

But pragmatism shouldn't be the primary impetus towards economic justice. I can say the following without qualification or hesitation: if you can afford to pay your employees a living wage, it is immoral not to do so.

Bravo, Chipotle

This short film, titled The Scarecrow, was designed as an advertisement for the fast-food restaurant Chipotle to promote its policy against factory farming. I find it heartening to see a company with such credibility among aficionados of fast and filling fare taking such a stance and implementing it as policy. While I strive (mostly with success) towards vegetarianism, I know that I live in a world where people of good conscience don't necessarily share my concerns about the consumption of animal products. However, I do think that this video's raising of meat-eaters' consciousness along with Chipotle's tactic of making meat an optional ingredient instead of the heart and soul of its dishes are helping to make us a less meat-centric and inhumane society. Bravo.

Mental Illness and Firearms

The recent mass killing at the Washington Navy Yard is yet another instance of a mentally ill young man with easy access to firearms exercising his madness on large numbers of strangers. How many more must die before a consensus is built to address this particular confluence of factors? Does the NRA actually want the mentally ill to have unfettered access to firearms? Why is setting a high bar of trustworthiness for gun licensure oppressive?
According to ABC News:

"Just 12 states actively submit mental health records to the federal background check system, according to a recent Government Accountability Office report. Those that do are only required to provide documents related to court-ordered committals. Thousands of felony convictions across the country have also been left out of the system, advocates say. In many states, the records are still paper-based and have to be entered into the background check system by hand -- a costly and time-consuming process."

Tightening up issues like this should disturb no one, since just doing a better job of what we already purport to do may have helped in some of these cases. For example, the Navy Yard killer, Aaron Alexis, reportedly once shot out someone's tires when they had parked in his space. This was a matter of public record, as he was arrested for the incident and later admitted to it, citing blackout-inducing anger. Anyone who has used a firearm in such a way should never have access to them ever again. If we don't improve our success rates in separating the mentally ill from firearms (and other means of mass murder), tragedies like this will go on and on with increasing frequency.

The Exponential Benefits of the ACA

Source: Keith Ellison

I believe that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) will have exponential positive benefits that most of us aren't even anticipating. For example, once the exchanges are established and working throughout the country, the uncomfortable and perhaps unfair requirement placed on employers to provide coverage may be scaled back, even eliminated. I think this will do what most folks on all sides of the issue think is reasonable -- to divorce healthcare coverage from employment. Another till now unforeseen consequence of the ACA is that people who are working only to retain affordable coverage could stop working. A study performed by economists from Northwestern, Columbia, and U. of Chicago anticipates that this could free up nearly 1 million jobs for the unemployed to fill. This couldn't happen unless individuals could find affordable coverage on their own, a possibility that the ACA is now establishing.

"This boy is Ignorance"

      

John Leech, Illustrator
 A Christmas Carol, 1st Ed.

Utah State Senator Aaron Osmond has called for the end of compulsory education in his state. The trajectory of the dominant strain of conservatism in this country has always been clear to me: increase stratification, decrease equality. In Dickens' A Christmas Carol, The Ghost of Christmas Present shows Ebenezer Scrooge two emblematic, mythic children: 

"This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased."

Education is the mechanism by which we better our selves, our societies, our planet. In ignorance we descend into barbarity, slavery, and inhumanity. Beware this politician and all his like.

The Sympathy Gap

The tragedy of the Trayvon Martin case does have a primary source: the presence or absence of sympathy for someone that is in some way different from us. After listening to Anderson Cooper's interview of an anonymous juror from the case, I am convinced that her sympathies lay primarily with Zimmerman. What I mean specifically is that she felt she knew who Zimmerman was, what motivated him, what his values were -- and that she felt a sense of kinship with him. That five white women and one Hispanic woman felt more sympathy for a half-white, half-Hispanic man than for a black boy is sadly unsurprising to me. 

Imagine for a second that your son, who just turned seventeen, is on his way back to your girlfriend's apartment from a 7-11 run so you all can watch a football game together. It's about 7PM, it's dark and rainy, so he's pulled the hood on his sweatshirt over his head. While your son is talking to a friend on his cell phone, he notices that a man is following him. 

Now, let's start over. Imagine that your twenty-eight-year-old brother is out doing his bit to keep his family safe by pulling neighborhood watch duty. He sees a young man with a hooded sweatshirt walking along the street in his neighborhood. He calls 911 to report a suspicious character in his neighborhood. The operator tells him that he doesn't need to follow the suspicious guy anymore. But he decides to do so anyway because he's frustrated that guys like that always get away. 

Now, let's start over again. You are a disinterested by-stander faced with a situation where two men have had some sort of an altercation. One was armed and the other was not. The armed man is alive and in reasonably good condition: a few cuts and bruises, a broken nose, but walking, talking, and in no need of hospitalization. The unarmed man is dead with a bullet through his heart.

In what logical universe could these three perspectives lead to the armed twenty-eight year old man's killing of the unarmed seventeen-year-old man be declared justified? The only solution I can come up with is an unwarranted sympathy for the shooter and a total lack of sympathy for the victim.

I generally don't see racism everywhere and skeptically scrutinize situations where it's alleged. But in the case of Trayvon Martin's death, I think racism is not just present, it's almost the whole story.

Transgressive Dissent

A few days ago, the First Lady was interrupted by a heckler at a private DNC fundraiser at a Washington, D.C. residence. The heckler, Ellen Sturz, is a LGBT activist who was protesting the fact that the President has not signed an executive order banning discrimination against LGBT people by Federal contractors.

I don't like public rudeness and I would have been uncomfortable with Ms. Sturz behavior had I been there. That being said, I understand from Ms. Sturz's reports that Mrs. Obama confronted her physically, getting three inches from her face. As we praise Mrs. Obama for her firmness are we actually saying that she has set the new example for how hecklers should be handled? Should speakers bodily confront rude audience members?

Additionally, with Mrs. Obama offering no sympathy to the concerns being raised by the heckler, she leaves the impression, unfair or not, that she has no sympathy with the heckler's concerns. As a gay man, I'm really asking myself now -- "Gee, how supportive is Mrs. Obama regarding my equality?"

While I am sympathetic to Mrs. Obama's situation and how frustrated she may have been, I just can't say that she handled this situation well.

Finally, the point that bothers me most about the almost unanimous support for Mrs. Obama's reaction is the implicit disapproval therein of all forms of dissent that can be characterized as 'rude.' Are we now against all sit-ins, marches, shouting, picket lines, and protests of any kind that can be deemed obnoxious or transgressive? I hope not. Sometimes the 'proper' avenues for expressing our opinions are wired shut and we need to allow for 'improper' avenues as a fallback option.

The Persistence of Truth

Source: Antonu

I begin to despair of our ability to maintain our most precious talent: truth-seeking. It is as though a new world is being formed, populated by masses of gullible work-a-day folks and cadres of cynical charlatans misleading them. In this world

• 'argumentation' is a process wherein you use words to intimidate, demoralize, or silence anyone who is in disagreement with you
• a 'fact' is any story, whether true or false, that strengthens your 'argumentation'
• 'logic' is any way of stringing these 'facts' together that strengthens your 'argumentation'

Yet, in the face of all this, truth yearns to be discovered, even bursting out when we try to squelch it.

The Civil Cold War

Source: ThinkProgress

Per ThinkProgress, the soon-to-be president of the NRA has even more radical views than his predecessor. I think the hysterical mistrust of the Federal Government that has infected the South since the founding of our country has spread throughout the country and we are fighting what I would term a 'Civil Cold War' that is nation-wide in scope. Our segregation is less geographic than ever and more maintained by news sources, pastimes, religions, and other more portable markers.

Raised on the Registry

I found this new report Raised on the Registry by Human Rights Watch and was really surprised at the legal ramifications children are facing here. I hope this report changes some minds, particularly those of lawmakers. Branding a person for life as the worst kind of person for a mistake made out of ignorance when they were ten or twelve seems truly awful and tragic. Also, to be clear, I don't think sympathy is zero-sum in this case -- having sympathy for children labeled as perpetrators should not diminish our sympathy for children recognized as victims.

A Burgeoning Non-issue

Kwaku Alston for Sports Illustrated

This week Jason Collins became the first current major league player to come out as gay. I hope the largely positive reception is a sign that being gay will soon be a non-issue in all aspects of our society -- as much of a non-issue as being Jewish or married. It should be such a non-issue that it can be casually mentioned in a conversation (or public interview) without headlines or fuss.

Stop the Disrespect

A man in Missouri has been not only barred from his husband's hospital room, but has been arrested because he dared to assert his rights as the man's partner. No, this didn't happen ten years ago, or even five years ago. It happened two days ago. This is why we need nationwide same-sex marriage laws and LGBT non-discrimination laws. There is too much evidence that, left unfettered, bigotry against LGBT people will thrive. In the absence of clear, uniform laws, any hospital employee can become a petty dictator, imposing their own bigotries on already desperate medical situations. There's just something profoundly nasty about taking advantage of the situation when one partner in a same-sex relationship is incapacitated. How would any of us feel if our so-called loved ones used our illness to warp our lives to match their vision. The level of disrespect that shows is fundamental. Each of us has the right to shape our own lives even when we're not able to enforce it.

The Power of Satire

Source: Arab American Institute

Bassem Youssef is the host of an Egyptian television program called al-Bernameg. He has been arrested for allegedly "insulting Islam and the Egyptian president." His show features satirical representations of the leadership of Egypt and has an enormous following. 

Satire is a powerful tool against governments in that it illuminates hypocrisy, ineptitude, corruption, and other undesirable characteristics, while at the same time providing a comedic and emotional release for the government's subjects. A smart government would welcome satire as a way of tightening up its game. In fact, any government that can't withstand a bit of mockery doesn't deserve to be in power. 

America has benefited enormously from Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Saturday Night Live, etc., who have prompted their viewers to turn out of office ridiculous extremists like naked emperors. Egypt and other burgeoning democracies should (in this case) follow America's example.

The Singularity Approaches

Source: NASA

For some time now, science fiction writers and scientists have envisioned an event called the singularity, where humans and computers will merge into something transcending both. Stanford researchers have developed genetic transistors, which show how computing does not require what we traditionally have considered 'computers.' This singularity may be achieved by incorporating biologically-based, human-engineered computing into human bodies instead of incorporating mechanisms into human bodies. The implications of this are inconceivable. Indeed, that is why this event is called a 'singularity,' because it is almost impossible to see beyond it.

Profiles in Courage

Well, the Clintons finally decided that same-sex marriage is a human rights issue. Just when Secretary Clinton was starting to win me over, she releases a self-serving, just-in-time, public statement in favor of marriage equality. As with her husband's a few weeks earlier it seemed more like a concession to momentum than the joyous announcement of an opened heart. I predict an avalanche of such announcements in the near future by brave Democrats who don't want to be the last one on the bandwagon. I think the response to these johnnies-come-lately should be "That's great -- but don't expect any pats on the back." Let's instead praise those who have taken truly brave stands such as:

• Gavin Newsom. In 2004 this mayor of San Francisco ordered city authorities to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples -- in defiance of California state law.
• Ted Olson. Since 2009, this leading Republican attorney (and former Solicitor General of the U.S.) has been leading the legal case for same-sex marriage to be deemed a constitutional right based upon the Fourteenth Amendment. This case is currently in front of the U.S. Supreme Court in the form of Hollingsworth v. Perry.
• Dennis Kucinich. Since at least 2003, this Democratic Congressman and perennial Presidential candidate from Ohio has been arguing vigorously for same-sex marriage as a human right, shaming his colleagues in the process.

Bravo, Gentlemen!

The Irrevocable Mistake

Credit: publik15

The Maryland legislature has repealed the death penalty, assured of the Governor's signature. This is a heartening move and I hope it is emulated by other states in short order. Hopefully in a few years we can eliminate this practice throughout the nation.

The death penalty is inherently flawed because of its irrevocability. There is no way to be absolutely, mathematically certain that a person has committed the crime  for which they are being executed. Even confessions can be lies or delusions. Even eyewitnesses can err. Even DNA evidence can be flawed. While a convicted criminal is adequately incarcerated, the public is insulated from any further crimes and needn't fear for their safety. There is no need to execute and there is great danger in doing so. In cases where a person is falsely convicted, they can be set free from prison and compensated for their time -- but they can never be given their life back.

A good rule of thumb for an individual (or a collection of individuals, such as a state) is to avoid mistakes that are not fixable -- and there is nothing less fixable than taking someone's life mistakenly.

Compromise and Consensus

Peter Larson/Medill News Service

Paul Ryan, in his role as chair of the House Budget Committee, has released a budget proposal that calls for the repeal of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), i.e. Obamacare. The President and his Democratic compatriots ran on the record of the ACA and won popular majorities in the House, Senate, and Presidency. However, per the Huffington Post, Ryan has stated:

"The election didn't go our way. Believe me, I know what that feels like. That means we surrender our principles? That means we stop believing what we believe in? Look, whether the country intended it or not, we have divided government. We have the second largest House majority we've had since World War II. And what we believe in this divided government era, we need to put up our vision."

While the meaning of his last sentence is somewhat unclear, what is clear is that he feels no humility in the face of the popular will, and no responsibility to compromise with those who reflect that will. We tend to admire and support those who stand on principle, even if we disagree with their principles. But the job of legislators is to persuade, cajole, arm-twist, shame, beg, entice, etc. each other into a workable consensus on tough, divisive issues. Their job is not to cross their arms, hold their breath, jump up and down, etc. until they get their way -- or just take their marbles and go home.

Divided government relies upon compromise and consensus to function, and it is necessary that government function. Therefore, as long as we have divided government, we need compromise and consensus -- and anyone in government who isn't seeking compromise and consensus doesn't belong there.

The Next Tech Revolution

3-D printing is probably the most life-impacting technology that most people still haven't heard about. The applications range widely from life-saving cranial implants to life-threatening firearms.

Credit: OsteoFab

While we have been able to have messages, music, books, films, etc. delivered to us without human hands involved for a few years now, this technology may allow us to have physical objects manufactured to spec in our homes without human hands involved. (Imagine having a pair of jeans manufactured in your home in a few hours that match your exact measurements.)

The impact this will have on manufacturing, commerce, and the economy in general is almost unfathomable. Fasten your seat belts.

Nightmare Bacteria

What the CDC is describing as 'nightmare bacteria' are evidently spreading.

Dangers like this are why we need strong Federal agencies like the CDC, acknowledging that we live side by side, sharing the same facilities, walking the same sidewalks, eating the same foods. We just don't live isolated, truly independent lives. We are collaborative, cooperative, interdependent -- and our public policy needs to acknowledge that.

Obstacles to Consensus

Our budget crisis, particularly the current sequester, is driven by the division in Congress and between Congress and the President. That much seems to be well-understood. What isn't so well-understood is that 'rules' and 'policies' are actually thwarting the ability to overcome this division.

In a situation where people with diverse opinions have to come to consensus, they must seek compromise and build their consensus thereupon. Sometimes that entails participants changing their minds, contradicting what they have said earlier, or otherwise exhibiting a lack of consistency. Additionally, it sometimes entails bearing the disappointment of their former allies who stick to their opinions and do not compromise. Put simply, consensus in these situations is built when people are willing to abandon compatriots and embrace opponents.

In today's Congress, not only is there an unwillingness to entertain such consensus, it is actually prohibited by an informal but enforced policy: the so-called Hastert Rule. This prohibits a Republican Speaker of the House from bringing a bill to the floor for a vote unless a majority of Republicans will support it -- even if a majority coalition of Republicans and Democrats would support it.

Every American who is disgusted by the inability of Congress and the President to come to compromise and pass a competent budget should condemn this policy and demand that it be rescinded.

Ted Nugent at the State of the Union

In April of last year Ted Nugent stated that he would either be dead or in jail within a year if Obama were re-elected in November.

This statement earned him a visit from the Secret Service due to the reasonable interpretation of this statement as a threat against the President. Now, Nugent has evidently been invited to tomorrow's State of the Union address by a Texas House member, Steve Stockman. If anyone wants evidence that Tea Party conservatives are the primary authors of the nasty tone in Washington, look no further than Mr. Stockman. His invitation is not only unseemly, it's chilling.