Author: Christopher Burg

Everybody Gets a Vote

Should people who are ignorant about a topic be given the ability to vote on it? If not, the United States should cease holding all elections because nobody has any idea what is going on:

Washington may be more secretive nowadays than at any time in recent decades. Federal policymakers have become accustomed to rationing what they release while citizens are assured that official secrecy makes them more secure. But American democracy cannot survive perpetual bipartisan coverups from the political ruling class.

Since 9/11, U.S. foreign policy has practically been governed by a Non-Disclosure Agreement. Did you know that U.S. troops are currently engaged in combat in 14 foreign nations fighting purported terrorists? That jolting fact is practically a state secret, though it did slip out in a recent New York Times editorial. After four U.S. soldiers were killed in Niger last October, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) admitted they did not know that a thousand U.S. troops were deployed to that African nation. Graham, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, admitted, “We don’t know exactly where we’re at in the world militarily and what we’re doing.” Congress has utterly defaulted on its role as a check-and-balance on the Pentagon, thereby enabling a surge in deadly covert interventions abroad.

An informed electorate doesn’t exist in the United States because the government that is supposedly guided by the voice of the people has developed a fetish for secrecy.

I’m going to return to the question with which I opened this post. Most people would instinctively say that everybody should get a vote even if they’re ignorant about the topic up for vote. This response is the result of living life in a country where democracy is touted as the greatest governmental system of all time. However, few people tolerate such a philosophy in their private dealings. Would you let somebody who is entirely ignorant about automobiles vote on what is wrong with your vehicle? Would you let somebody who is compute illiterate vote on how to fix your computer? Would you let somebody who knows nothing about medicine vote on what drugs you should take? If you answered yes to any of these questions, you’re a damned fool. If any of these resulted in your problem being fixed, it would be by sheer luck. The most likely outcome would be that a lot of money would be spent for nothing. The result of the last situation could even be your death.

As the article notes, even the people elected to the government often have no idea what is going on. Graham and Schumer may not have been aware that there were thousands of troops deployed in Africa but they certainly got to vote on military matters. This really should strike everybody as a problem. Why are people who are ignorant about matters voting on them? Why should a senator who doesn’t even know how to use e-mail have a say on topics such as national computer security laws? Why should a senator who doesn’t know what a barrel shroud is have a say in what firearm features should be prohibited?

When nobody has any clue about what is happening, it’s not realistic to expect people to make good decisions.

Going from Smart to Stupid

Last year the National Rifle Association (NRA) appointed Pete Brownell, the CEO of Brownells Inc., as its president. It was a smart decision. Brownell comes off as a reasonable human being and is a strong advocate for gun rights. This year the NRA decided to perform a complete 180 degree turn and elected a public relations nightmare:

Oliver L. North, who became a household name in the 1980s for his role in the Iran-contra scandal, will become the next president of the National Rifle Association, the gun rights organization said Monday.

The gun control crowd is already having a field day with this decision and I don’t blame them. It looks a bit hypocritical when an organization that talks insistently about “responsible gun ownership,” “law-abiding citizens,” and “enforcing the laws that already exist” has a bona fide weapon smuggler as its president.

Supporters of the NRA are trying to spin this by pointing out that the Iran-contra fiasco happened a long time ago but that is irrelevant. Time tables don’t matter in the realm of public perception. All that matters is whether gun control advocates are able to convince enough people that North’s previous actions are still relevant in the context of gun politics. If they can accomplish that, the NRA will face even more opposition.

The Justice System Doesn’t Like Its Privilege to Commit Theft Curtailed

After decades of civil forfeiture laws being on the books, some states are finally deciding that giving law enforces the privilege to steal property without first convicting an individual of a crime makes government look bad. In the hopes of restoring a veneer of legitimacy, these states are either proposing or have passed laws that require law enforcers to actually convict an individual of a crime before they can keep their property. Needless to say, this isn’t going over well with either law enforcers or prosecutors:

Kunzweiler, the district attorney, said the extra level of protection was unnecessary and that raising the bar for forfeiture would effectively roll out a welcome mat to ruthless drug traffickers from Mexico.

“What we’re talking about is inviting some of the most violent people on the history of this planet,” he said on the Pat Campbell Show on KFAQ. “You see what goes on in Mexico, you see people’s bodies decapitated and hung from bridges. And if you want to bring that drug cartel ideology to Oklahoma, do exactly what Senator Loveless’ bill is suggesting,” he said.

“We have meth coming through here; it’s all coming from Mexico,” Kunzweiler continued, going on to say that Loveless was trying to remove “our incentive to take away their profit.”

If these really are some of the most violence people in the history of this planet, then prosecuting them for a crime should be the easiest case any attorney could take on. I don’t see why Kunzweiler is complaining. It sounds like these individuals are free money for him regardless since convicting them before keeping their property should be so simple that even a child could do it.

I have no sympathy for supporters of civil forfeiture laws. They’re advocating that the power to commit crime is necessary to fight crime, which is the entire basis of government come to think about it. But such advocacy necessarily states that crime in of itself isn’t bad but instead what determines whether a crime is good or bad is who commits it. If a private individual commits a crime, it’s bad. If a government agent commits a crime, it’s good. The entire premise is nonsensical.

Solve the Housing Shortage by Making Houses More Expensive

California is suffering from a decades long housing shortage. This shouldn’t surprise anybody. The regulatory burden in California has been increasing along with the population, which has made new construction more expensive than it otherwise would be. But instead of working to relieve the shortage by allowing homes to be built for less, the California bureaucrats have decided to make building new homes even more expensive:

On Wednesday, the California Energy Commission approved a set of standards that will require most new homes built in the state after 2020 to include solar panels on their roofs.

The standards (PDF) apply only to single-family homes and certain low-rise condos, townhomes, and apartments. Exceptions are made for homes with roofs that would receive excessive shade during the daytime or homes with roofs too small to benefit from a few solar panels.

The last two exemptions are interesting because they have the potential to change how houses are predominantly built in California. I foresee a trend in small roofs and heavy shading.

This legislation is also, rather obviously, aimed at coercing a preference for high-density residential. While that may make sense in an extremely dense urban area like Los Angeles, it doesn’t make sense to implement such a requirement statewide since much of California is actually rural and therefore space isn’t at a premium. However, bureaucrats are seldom aware that the existence they experience in their capital city isn’t the experience of everybody in their state, which is why centralized planning always turns into such a fiasco.

It’s Not the Badge You Wear, It’s the Badge in Your Heart

The brutal attitude held by man law enforcers isn’t instilled by the badge that they wear but by the badge that exists in their hearts:

An analysis by The Intercept, using data from the Fatal Encounters project, found that plainclothes cops play a role in such killings disproportionate to their relatively small numbers among the NYPD’s ranks. Plainclothes police have been involved in nearly a third of all fatal shooting incidents recorded since 2000, according to The Intercept study.

There have been at least 174 fatal shootings by on-duty New York City police officers since 2000, according to an analysis of data from Fatal Encounters, a website that tracks deaths involving police. Plainclothes or undercover police were involved in 54 of those deaths, while uniformed police were involved in 41 fatalities. Eleven cases involved both uniformed and plainclothes cops. (Three of the shootings were self-inflicted.)

There is a lot of speculation one could make about this but at this point I just find it to be an interesting statistic. The New York Police Department has a reputation for brutality and it appears that that reputation doesn’t cease when an officer exchanges his uniform for street clothes.

I Am Altering the Deal

When Obama was in office, he entered the United States into a nuclear nonproliferation deal with Iran. Yesterday Trump pulled the United States out of that deal:

With a stroke of his pen US President Donald Trump has jeopardised the one agreement – good or bad – that seeks to constrain Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

He launched a scathing assault on the deal and its deficiencies.

But he offered no alternative policy to put in its place. He has put US diplomacy on a collision course with some of Washington’s closest allies.

Trump’s detractors are claiming that this will ensure that Iran acquires nuclear weapons while his supporters are claiming that the deal was a terrible deal. I’m not going to argue the pros or cons of the previous deal. However, I do want to take a moment to discuss a facet of this issue that isn’t getting much attention.

It is notoriously difficult for foreign governments to deal with the United States. Every time the party in power switches hands between the Democrats and Republicans the rules seem to change. When the Democrats were in power, Iran was able to make a nonproliferation deal with the United States. Now that the Republicans are in power, it cannot. In the span of less than a decade the rules between Iran and the United States changed… again.

Imagine if business deals were as volatile as deals between foreign governments and the United States. Would anybody continue doing business with, say, Microsoft if every time a company made a deal to license the company’s operating system for five years it decided to cancel the deal after two years? No, because nobody can realistically do business in an entirely unpredictable environment. Contracts exist to ensure that there are consequences for violating a deal. Unfortunately, most foreign governments can’t punish the United States for breaking a deal because they lack the military might to do so.

It’s easy to blame Obama for making a bad deal or Trump for pulling the United States out of an existing deal. What seems to be more difficult for people to grasp is that the United States has developed a reputation for being unreliable and that reputation is going to hinder its ability to make any kind of deal with a foreign government.

He Just Wanted to Go Home to His Family

Discharging a firearm in an uncontrolled environment always carries a certain amount of risk. This is just one or many reasons why it’s smart to avoid deadly force when possible. But law enforcers often have a different attitude. Many law enforcers seem to think that even minor situations should be escalated to deadly force:

A deputy with the Carroll County Sheriff’s Office fatally shot a groundhog in Eldersburg on Sunday in an incident captured on video that has been widely shared on social media.

The deputy stopped when he observed the groundhog acting oddly, department spokesman Cpl. Jon Light said.

“It doesn’t appear that it had bitten anyone at that point,” Light said.

It is unclear whether the groundhog was rabid, Light said.

If an animal appears to be acting oddly, it’s probably smart to call animal control since individuals who deal specifically with animals are more likely to know whether something is wrong with the animal or if it’s seemingly odd behavior is actually normal. What isn’t smart is getting out of your vehicle and approaching it. What’s even dumber is needlessly discharging a firearm at it when there are other people in the vicinity.

With all of that said, at least this law enforcer waited until the animal was actually acting aggressively against him (possibly because the animal wasn’t happy with the enforcer acting aggressively towards it) before he shot it. That amount of restraint is far more than is commonly shown by his fellows in situations like this.

Eight Percent of the Time It Works Every Time

The Transportation Security Agency (TSA) is the embodiment of government incompetence. It has failed 95 percent of red team exercises, which doesn’t bode well for the agency’s general ability to detect weapons before air travelers are able to enter the “secure” area of an airport. However, the United States doesn’t have a monopoly on government incompetence. The United Kingdom (UK) also has its own program that has a failure rate of 90 percent:

A British police agency is defending (this link is inoperable for the moment) its use of facial recognition technology at the June 2017 Champions League soccer final in Cardiff, Wales—among several other instances—saying that despite the system having a 92-percent false positive rate, “no one” has ever been arrested due to such an error.

Of course nobody has been arrested due to a false positive. When a system has a false positive rate of 92 percent it’s quickly ignored by whomever is monitoring it.

False positives can be just as dangerous as misses. While misses allow a target to avoid a detection system, false positives breed complacency that quickly allows false positives to turn into misses. If a law enforcer is relying on a system to detect suspects and it constantly tells him that it found a suspect but hasn’t actually found a suspect, the law enforcer quickly ignores any report from the system. When the system does correctly identify the suspect, there’s a good chance that the law enforcer monitoring it won’t even bother to look at the report to verify it. Instead they’ll just assume it’s another false positive and continue sipping their tea or whatever it is that UK law enforcers do most of the time.

The Subtle Ways Technology Shapes Our Lives

Some schools in the United Kingdom have announced that they’re removing analog clocks because students are unable to read them:

Some U.K. schools are ditching analog clocks from test rooms because a generation of kids raised on digital clocks can’t read them and are getting stressed about time running out during tests, London’s Telegraph reports.

“The current generation aren’t as good at reading the traditional clock face as older generations,” Malcolm Trobe, deputy general secretary of the U.K.’s Association of School and College Leaders, told The Telegraph.

I, along with many other people, initially scoffed at this announcement. Teaching somebody how to read an analog clock takes a matter of minutes. On the other hand, as a few friends pointed out to me, the skill is almost entirely unnecessary today. Most of us carry a pocket computer that displays the current time. Those pocket computers usually display the time in the friendlier digital format. Since most people carry around a time telling device, public clocks are less important than they were. People who have a pocket computer that displays the time in a digital format don’t need to know how to read an analog clock.

This is just another subtle, albeit major, way that technology is shaping our lives. Another example is cursive writing. I learned how to write in cursive around second or third grade and continue the practice today because it’s faster than writing block letters. However, cursive is indecipherable to many younger individuals. Why? Because the ability to write quickly is less important in a world where computers are prevalent. It’s rare for me to be in a situation where I have to write something. Usually I can type it out on a computer or tap it into my phone. The generation that came after mine never knew a world where computers weren’t prevalent and the current generation is growing up with touchscreen devices (a technology I once saw in my youth, although in a very rudimentary form, and thought it was the coolest thing ever) that fit in their pockets and can automatically transform their spoken words into typed text or transmit it directly.

When I was in school, pocket calculators were already prevalent, which caused us students to ask our math teachers why we had to memorize so many mathematical operations. Our teachers responded that we wouldn’t always have a calculator with us. I can’t say that they were wrong. At the time I rarely carried a calculator with me. Pocket space was at a premium and I couldn’t carry every with me. Fast forward to today. I always have a calculator with me because it’s an app on my phone. My teachers’ response to my question, although true back then, is no longer true.

Remember paper maps and compasses? I do because I used to have to use them to navigate in unfamiliar areas. If I was in an unfamiliar city and needed to get somewhere, I had to either get out of my car and ask somebody for direction (which may or may not result in receiving good directions) or pull out a paper map to determine my current location, the location of my destination, and the best route to get there. I then used a compass to keep myself going in the right direction. Now I type my destination into my phone and let it guide me to my destination. In addition to being faster because it already knows where everything is, it can also provide me a better route because it also knows the current traffic conditions. Navigating with a map and compass is another skill that is largely irrelevant in a world of ubiquitous smartphones and cellular coverage.

Many of the skills that I learned were important at one time but are of little importance today. When I sit down to think about it, it’s fascinating how technology has changed my world in so many subtle ways. My skills of reading an analog clock, cursive writing, performing math in my head, and navigating with a map and compass are pretty much irrelevant. I wonder what other skills that I learned will be made less relevant by technology in the coming years.

Straight to Deadly Force

Would you execute somebody if you suspected that they had stolen $1.19 worth of merchandise. Most people probably wouldn’t but I can state for a fact that there is at least one person who would and, surprise, he’s a law enforcer:

One minute, Jose Arreola was buying a pack of Mentos at an Orange County service station.

The next minute, he was at the business end of a gun drawn by an off-duty Buena Park police officer who thought Arreola had stolen the $1.19 roll of mints.

This didn’t have the appearance of an armed robbery so there was no threat of violence on the table until the officer pulled his gun. Instead of jumping straight to deadly force, he could have asked the clerk whether the mints were paid for or not. That simple question would have cleared the entire matter up without anybody having to be threatened with a summary execution.

I also think that it’s fucked up that an officer would consider jumping straight to deadly force over a roll of mints. If I owned a convenience store and somebody slipped a $1.19 roll of mints into their pocket without me realizing it, I’d write it off because the cost of doing anything about it would greatly exceed the value of the merchandise. I certainly wouldn’t call the police because I don’t believe having $1.19 stolen from me warrants the use of deadly force.